Carlotta Speaks: The Letters of Carlotta Monterey O'Neill to Gene Baker McComas, 1918–1952

Before going off to London and Paris to be educated and begin the twenty-year professional stage career that preceded her marriage to Eugene O'Neill, Carlotta Monterey (born Hazel Tharsing) spent her formative years in Oakland, California. In addition to occasional brief visits, she returned to Oakland to live several times in adulthood, most notably during her short-lived second marriage to Melvin Chapman Jr., which produced her daughter Cynthia in 1917, although she spent only about a year and a half with Chapman before returning to New York and the theatre. During Carlotta's brief marriage to her first husband, John Moffat, the couple had spent some time in Oakland prior to their 1914 divorce as they tried to recover from his financial setbacks.

Carlotta's time in California did not produce a great many lasting ties outside her family, but one exception was Eugenia Frances Baker McComas (1886–1982). Gene Baker, as she was known before her marriage, was highly visible in the Oakland social and cultural scene. Her father, Joseph Eugene Baker, had figured prominently in the San Francisco area for his work on one of the oldest California newspapers, the Alta California, as well as the Chronicle and the Examiner in San Francisco, and finally the Oakland Tribune. An active hostess and club member in her youth, Gene Baker received a good deal of attention in the area newspapers. She was a conspicuous participant in activities involving music and the plastic arts, but it was theatre that most drew her attention early on. Before 1910 she was a core member of the literary and dramatic section of San Francisco's California Club, which held play readings and discussions of serious playwrights like Maurice Maeterlinck and Maxim Gorky as well as occasional full productions of local plays. Gene Baker was a central participant in the play readings, which were directed by Mrs. Will Maddern, a playwright as well as the aunt of one of the most celebrated actresses of the day, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and her younger cousin, Merle Maddern. Gene Baker, like Carlotta Monterey, was a close friend of Merle Maddern, and often gave teas and lunches in her honor when she was in the area.

Unlike those of Merle and Carlotta, Gene's theatrical career did not get beyond the amateur level, but in her mid-twenties she began to pay serious attention to her talent for painting. In 1912 she began studying with Xavier Martinez at the California School of Arts and Crafts, and she received conspicuous notice in several reviews of the annual shows. A year later, she began a romantic affair with Francis McComas, a prominent artist and friend of her mentor. After McComas's messy and well-publicized divorce from his socialite wife, he and Gene were married in 1917 and lived in an atelier in Monterey before buying a comfortable house and studio in Pebble Beach, the upscale resort on the Monterey Peninsula, where their life was divided between the artistic community and the famous golf course.

Francis McComas was one of only three California artists invited to exhibit in the 1913 Armory Show, and he had an entire gallery devoted to his work at the 1915 San Francisco World's Fair. His was the dominant career in their life. During her marriage, Gene Frances, as she signed her paintings, tended to leave the larger landscape paintings to her husband while she focused on smaller subjects like still lifes and flowers. After Francis's death in 1938, however, Gene returned to two of her early loves, the landscape and the mural, with considerable success. She continued to receive commissions for murals throughout her career, and her work appeared in a number of gallery and museum exhibits, including a solo exhibit of her drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1942.

Carlotta Monterey's letters to Gene McComas span a long period in Monterey's life, from 1918, when she was an up-and-coming Broadway actress, until 1952, when she was suffering in the last throes of...