Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Fanciulla del West
The Girl of the Golden West

Dame Shirley

James J. Rawls

Women were a rarity in most gold-rush communities. They represented about one-twelfth of the state's non-native population in 1850, and increased only to one-third by 1880.

One of the most remarkable women in gold-rush California was Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe. She lived for over a year in a rough-and-tumble mining camp along the Feather River. She's known to us today by a marvelous series of letters she published under the pen name Dame Shirley.

The letters are a valuable resource because they provide a woman's perspective on life in the gold rush. They contain a wealth of detail on the interior furnishings of miners' cabins, the clothing worn by the forty-niners, and their typical daily fare.

Dame Shirley also records the miners' unusual figures of speech. "Seeing the elephant," for instance, meant having a truly remarkable experience, something as unusual and unexpected as encountering an elephant in the mines.

Reprinted courtesy of the California Historical Society.

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