Blanche Partington

Blanche Partington
Blanche Partington, c. 1890
Born	(1866-11-25)November 25, 1866 , Cheshire, England
Died	March 12, 1951(1951-03-12) San Francisco, California, United States
Occupation	reporter

Blanche Partington (25 November 1866 – 12 March 1951) was a prominent San Francisco journalist and member of the San Francisco Bay Area literary and cultural scene. She is particularly noted for her relationships with prominent California writers, including Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, and Yone Noguchi.

Blanche Partington was born to artist John Herbert Evelyn Partington (1843–99) and his wife, Sarah Mottershead, in Cheshire, England, and was christened on November 25, 1866, at . Blanche was the eldest of seven children, all of whom would achieve success in careers connected with the arts, among them, artists Richard Langtry Partington and Gertrude Partington Albright as artists, Phyllis Partington (an opera singer under the name Frances Peralta), and theater manager John Allan Partington. The family lived briefly in Heysham, Lancashire, and Ramsey, Isle of Man during the 1880s. "John H. E. Partington was a great lover of travel and moved his family so often that no formal schooling was possible. He solved his children's education by training them himself. After they had learned to read and write, he read them famous poems which they were then asked to recite from memory. As recreation they had music, drawing and painting, offered them in much the modern, progressive method of letting each child's talents unfold."

In 1889, the family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. John Partington established a studio and art school on Pine Street. Richard and Gertrude were soon working as sketch artists for local newspapers, while Blanche and Phyllis developed their musical talents.

J. H. E. Partington by John Miller Nicholson, 1880

Blanche Partington by J. H. E. Partington, 1891.

In 1892, Blanche, then twenty-six, began an intimate friendship with fifty-one-year-old writer Ambrose Bierce. Blanche became one of the famed humorist's favored correspondents, a position she still retained at the time of his mysterious disappearance in 1914. It is generally assumed among Bierce scholars that the two were lovers, but it is clear from Bierce's early letters, during the summer of 1892, that Blanche looked to Bierce for instruction about a possible career in journalism. "When you are quite sure of the nature of your call to write--quite sure that it is not the voice of 'duty'--then let me do you such slight, poor service as my limitations and the injunctions of circumstance permit."