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SILVER QUEEN
The Fabulous Story of Baby Doe Tabor
Copyright 1950, 1955 by Caroline Bancroft
All rights in this book are reserved. It may not be used for dramatic,
radio, television, motion or talking picture purposes without written
authorization.
Johnson Publishing Co., Boulder, Colorado
[Illustration: _The Denver Post_]
The Author
Caroline Bancroft is a third generation Coloradan who began her literary
career by joining the staff of _The Denver Post_ in 1928. For five years
she edited a book page and wrote historical features for the Sunday
edition. On a travel assignment for the _New York Evening Post_, she
interviewed a long list of celebrated authors in New York, London,
Paris, Holland and India. Her articles have appeared in many nationally
known magazines.
Her long-standing interest in western history was inherited. Her pioneer
grandfather, Dr. F. J. Bancroft (after whom the three-crested,
Continental Divide peak just south of James is named) was a founder of
the Colorado Historical Society and its first president for seventeen
years. Her father, George J. Bancroft, a mining engineer, wrote many
mining and reclamation contributions to the growing body of Colorado
lore.
Caroline Bancroft has carried on the family tradition. A Bachelor of
Arts from Smith College, she later obtained a Master of Arts degree from
the University of Denver, writing her thesis on Central City, Colorado.
She has taught Colorado history at Randell School in Denver and is the
author of the intensely interesting series of Bancroft Booklets about
Colorado, including _Historic Central City_, _Denver’s Lively Past_,
_Augusta Tabor_, _Tabor’s Matchless Mine and Lusty Leadville_, _Famous
Aspen_, _Glenwood’s Early Glamour_, _The Brown Palace_, _The Unsinkable
Mrs. Brown_ and the extremely popular _Colorful Colorado_.
Edwin C. Johnson,
Governor of Colorado
1931-37, 1955-57
SILVER QUEEN
The fabulous story of Baby Doe Tabor
by
CAROLINE BANCROFT
Johnson Publishing Company
Boulder, Colorado
1962
_My Interest in Baby Doe_
The formerly beautiful and glamorous Baby Doe Tabor, her millions lost
many years before, was found dead on her cabin floor at the Matchless
Mine in Leadville, Colorado, on March 7, 1935. Her body, only partially
clothed, was frozen with ten days’ stiffness into the shape of a cross.
She had lain down on her back on the floor of her stove-heated one room
home, her arms outstretched, apparently in sure foreboding that she was
to die.
Newspapers and wires flashed the story to the world, telling the tragic
end of the eighty-year-old recluse who had, during the decade of the
1880s, been one of the richest persons in the United States. Her body
was found by a young woman, known to Leadville as Sue Bonnie (her real
name was Naomi Pontiers), with whom Mrs. Tabor had been very sociable
during the last three years of the older woman’s life. Sue Bonnie had
become concerned when she saw no smoke coming from her friend’s cabin
and had persuaded Tom French to break a way through three feet of snow
from Little Stray Horse Gulch to Mrs. Tabor’s lonely cabin on Fryer
Hill. When the couple peered through the window, they discovered her
prostrate form.
The once proud beauty was dead. Leadville, Denver, Central City and the
world reacted immediately, producing a host of memories to round out the
details of her extraordinary career. Other reminiscences came from
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where she was born, and from Washington, D. C.,
where she had married Tabor, President Arthur and several members of the
cabinet in attendance at the wedding.
Her story had been a drama of contrasts, from rags to riches and from
riches back to rags again, the whole play enacted against the backdrop
of Colorado’s magnificent and munificent mountains. But what those
ruthless snow-capped peaks give, they also take away and almost as if
they were gods, they single out certain characters in history to destroy
by first making mad. Mrs. Tabor went to her death with a delusion about
the Matchless Mine.
She had lived during the last years of her life largely through the
charity of the citizens of Leadville and the company that held the
mortgage on the Matchless. The mine had produced no ore in years and was
not really equipped to work, although she could not find it in her soul
to admit the harsh fact of reality. She dressed in mining clothes and
off and on during the last twenty years made a pretense of getting out
ore with a series of men she inveigled to work on shares. But she either
quarreled with these partners when she became suspicious of their
honesty or the men became disillusioned about the supposed fortune
hidden in the Matchless and drifted off.
I only met her once, in the summer of 1927, when I called on her with my
father, a mining engineer, who was making a swing around the state to
report on the mining situation. Mrs. Tabor, who had known my father for
many years, showed us over the premises. She was polite to me but
largely ignored me since she was concentrating on my father with the
hope he might get her new backing.
The tiny cabin she lived in had been a former tool and machine shop of
the Matchless and the actual hoisthouse was perhaps thirty feet or so
away. When we entered the hoisthouse, it already had an aura of ghosts.
Dirt and rust were accumulating from disuse and covered the hoist,
cables and machinery that were still left there. It was my father’s
opinion, voiced to me as we drove off past the Robert E. Lee mine, that
quite a lot of machinery had been stolen from the hoisthouse without her
being aware of it. Or perhaps “the old lady,” as he spoke of her, had
sold it to get enough to eat and had forgotten the transaction in the
forgetfulness of what mountaineers call “cabin fever,” a strangeness
that overtakes elderly people who live alone.
I was not so interested in the mining aspects of her situation as my
father (who was always avid on the scent of ore—gold, silver, copper,
tungsten, and at the end, rare minerals such as vanadium, molybdenum,
uranium, titanium and tantalum). What interested me about Mrs. Tabor
were her looks and her personality. I studied her quietly while she and
my father talked about the glorious riches that would be uncovered if
she “could just drift a little further north on the third level” or
“sink a winze through to that stope on the fourth.”
She was a little woman, very withered, and unattractively dressed in
men’s corduroy trousers, mining boots and a soiled, torn blouse. She had
a blue bandana tied around her head and when we first drove up back of
the Matchless, as close as the car could make it and started to walk to
her cabin, she met us halfway, a very belligerent expression on her
face. My father and she had not met in several years and it was not
until after he gave his name that her manner changed.
She smiled then and said, “Why, of course, pray do forgive me. And what
a beautiful daughter you have! It is my lasting sorrow that the Lord’s
work has taken my own daughter....”
I could not have been more startled. The smile, the manner, the voice
and the flowery speech were anomalous in that strange figure. Her smile
was positively, although very briefly, gay and flashing; the teeth, even
and white and the voice, clear and bell-like, while the manner I can
only describe as queenly despite her diminutive size.
I only remember two other things about that afternoon. After we had
spent some time in the hoisthouse and walking about outside, while she
and my father talked about the direction of veins and probable apexes,
the price of silver and other matters not very interesting to my
youthful ears, Father suggested that in the car he had a jug of homemade
wine his housekeeper had made. It was during Prohibition and wine of any
sort was a rarity so that when he invited her to have a drink for old
time’s sake, she seemed pleased and asked us up to the ledge to her
cabin.
While Father went back to the car for the wine, she and I strolled on
ahead. I complimented her on the spectacular view of Mt. Massive and Mt.
Elbert, two among three of Colorado’s highest peaks, that we had had
driving out Little Strayhorse Gulch.
She did not say anything but she turned her eyes full upon me, the only
time I think that she looked directly at me. Again I was startled. They
were very far apart and a gorgeous blue, their unusual color preserved
through all the violence and drama and bitterness of her then
seventy-two years.
Her cabin, really no more than a shack, was crowded with very primitive
furniture, decorated with religious pictures, and stacked high in
newspapers. It was quite neat although, to my mind, it could have stood
a good dusting and the window panes had evidently not been washed since
the winter snows. We drank our wine from an assortment of cups, one of
them tin. She apologized for their not being very clean and said
something about hauling her drinking water from some distance and using
boiled mine water for other purposes.
I did not listen—to my shame, now. While they went on talking, I
entertained myself with my own thoughts. I knew almost no Colorado
history in those days; I had been out of the state for nine years at
school, college and working in the East, my interests completely
disassociated. To me, she was just one more of the queer mining
characters my father knew, and he knew dozens. But I lived to regret my
youthful ignorance and indifference.
At the time she died, I was in the East and two years later, the editor
of _True Story_ magazine commissioned me to write her biography, my fare
being paid from New York to Colorado to do research for a five-part
serial. I spent eight months in Leadville, Central City and Denver
talking to old-timers, literally scores of them, who had known Baby Doe
Tabor. I also looked up court records of Gilpin and Lake Counties and
read old newspaper files. Through the years I have intermittently
continued my study of Baby Doe, adding to my knowledge of her in the
course of other researches. But for human interest details, my greatest
source of information proved to be Sue Bonnie who had discovered Mrs.
Tabor’s body.
Sue Bonnie sold me the use of her name in order to meet the editorial
requirements of _True Story_ and in consequence, the original version of
“Silver Queen,” now very much altered, appeared from January to May of
1938, signed “Sue Bonnie.” Of course, the serial was actually written by
me, but through the publicity of that seeming authorship, she later
became something of a town figure on her own. Sue Bonnie has since died.
This young woman had drifted into Leadville from New Haven, Connecticut,
and had struck up an intimate friendship with Mrs. Tabor, apparently
since the pretty Easterner reminded Mrs. Tabor of her dead daughter,
Silver Dollar. The older woman had nicknamed the curly black-haired Sue,
“Songbird,” and it was their custom to visit back and forth two or three
nights a week in each other’s cabins, exchanging tales of dreams they
had had, their probable meanings and writing down spiritualistic
revelations they obtained from a ouija board.
Sue Bonnie gave me a large number of these papers written in a stubby
pencil by Mrs. Tabor’s hand and a scrap-book of hers pasted up
spasmodically by the older woman. I, in turn, donated these documents to
the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library where they
may be viewed today by serious research workers. These papers are very
helpful to an understanding of Baby Doe’s character in its declining
years.
But what was most revealing were the many reminiscences of the past
which Mrs. Tabor chose to tell Sue Bonnie. Neither her friend nor I had
any way of telling whether these many intimate memories of Baby Doe’s
were literally true. Sue Bonnie, who idolized her, believed every word
and I, for my part, found in those instances where I could check what
Baby Doe Tabor said against documentary evidence that they were
substantially right.
I was never sure about Baby Doe’s exact age; I thought she had tampered
with it—and I said so in the first editions of this booklet. Oshkosh
readers interested themselves in my problem. They established the fact
that for Colorado consumption she had taken six years off her age and
had arranged a middle name for a more pleasing and romantic effect. I
still hope to journey to Oshkosh sometime to personally thank residents
there for copies of her christening, her wedding and other important
documents. In 1953, the Colorado Historical Society opened to research
workers letters and scrapbooks in their possession, unavailable for
eighteen years after her death, so that a definitive biography may
finally be written.
But in whatever form it is presented, popular or scholarly, Baby Doe’s
story has an astonishing vitality. Her name is as imperishable as the
mountains she chose to live in for the greater part of her life. Her
cabin in Leadville was for many years torn at and carved upon by
souvenir-hunting tourists. Finally, it was a desolate ruin, until, in
1953, I spearheaded a civic movement to restore the cabin and open it as
a tourist attraction. The cabin is now an almost exact replica of the
home she lived in. Also, some of the fragile gold furniture and jewel
box, salvaged from her heyday, may be seen at the Teller House in
Central City. Until 1958 her famous suite could be seen at the Windsor
Hotel in Denver, and her wedding dress and other Tabor relics are on
exhibit at the Colorado Historical Museum. She is immortal.
So let us have Baby Doe Tabor tell us of her life in nearly her own
words—many she actually used in talking to Sue Bonnie and others I have
imagined as consonant with her character and the facts of her story.
_Chapter One_
“Oh, you are too beautiful to work, my lovely Bessie. I want you to keep
your arms always as exquisite as they are now. Never spoil those
curves!”
I can remember my mother pushing me away from a scrub-board with these
words when I was a girl. It was in the kitchen of our home in Oshkosh,
Wisconsin, just before the great fires of 1874 and 1875. Papa was still
quite rich, even though he had been badly hit in the horrible fire of
1859. Later he was nearly ruined by these last ones which practically
destroyed our whole town twice in little more than a year. Mama was a
darling. She had a gay, uncomplaining disposition, although she bore
fourteen children and life was far from easy for her. She was very good
to all us children but I think, in some ways, I was her favorite of the
eleven who grew up. She always said she wanted me to have all the things
she had missed and little did we think, then, how fabulously and how
violently her wish would be fulfilled.
My parents were Irish and were very good Catholics. Before St. Peter’s
Church was erected in 1850, divine services were held in our home since
my father, Peter McCourt, was a good friend of Father Bonduel. Father
Bonduel was the first missionary priest of that wild lumber country. He
had spent twelve years with the Indians of Lake Poygan before he came to
Oshkosh, and his spirit was an inspiring one.
All Father Bonduel’s adventures had happened, of course, many years
before I was born. But so fond were Mama and Papa of him that when I
came along, the fourth child, they were still talking about him while I
was growing up. He died when I was seven years old, but I liked the
stories about him so much that I changed my middle name from Nellis to
Bonduel, later on. I was christened Elizabeth Nellis McCourt (which was
Mama’s name) at St. Peter’s on Oct. 7, 1854, when I was twelve days old.
My religion, so begun, was to stand me in good stead as the years rolled
by with their extraordinary story.
“Too beautiful to work!”
I’m afraid that phrase helped to make me vain, and I already had the
upright pride natural to all us McCourts. But there were lots of other
things besides vanity and pride instilled into me as I was maturing,
too. I would not for the world want to reflect on the bringing-up Papa
and Mama gave me. They were truly fine people, respected and admired by
the conservative members of the community.
Oshkosh, in those days, was a very lively, up-and-coming town. It had
been called after Chief Oshkosh, a famous Indian of the Butte des Morts
district, whose name in Menominee speech means “brave.” And certainly no
town was more brave. It had every grandeur of bravery—the swaggering
bravery of the frontier and the spiritual bravery of people who have
great faith.
The swaggering frontier bravery was all around. It resounded in the
dangerous felling of pines, the perilous running of logs, the great
lumber barges with their snarling bargemen floating through the middle
of the town into beautiful Lake Winnebago. Seventeen sawmills, six
shingle mills, and three planing mills buzzed and whirred constantly. In
these, many friends and acquaintances were amassing great lumber
fortunes.
Today the forests have been cut back into the northern part of the
state. But at that time Oshkosh was at the outlet of the Wolf pinery.
Log runners, tree cutters, millers, shippers—lumbermen of all sorts came
into Oshkosh for a good time, with their wages or their pile, and many
remained to build homes and settle down. They were a devil-may-care,
hearty lot, ruddy-skinned and robust. Hardly any foreigners were among
them. Mostly they were enterprising young Americans who had come from
farther East to grow up in a new country. Their masculine bravery made a
great impression on a young girl’s heart.
The spiritual bravery of the place was also magnificent. When I was
nineteen and twenty we had those two terrific fires in the town which
practically destroyed it. Papa had a clothing and custom-tailoring store
at 21 Main street. It was from McCourt & Cameron that most of the
fashionable men of the town bought their suits and accessories. I liked
to hang around the store to watch them drive up in their smart buggies
and toss the reins to a hitching-post boy Papa hired. Nearly always they
would stop at the counter before going to the fitting rooms at the rear
and say:
“Beautiful daughter you have there, Mr. McCourt—aren’t you afraid
someone will steal her?”
I thought this much more fun than associating with girls my own age, and
when the first fire started I was, as usual, down at the store. It began
up the street, and since all the buildings were frame, spread rapidly. I
ran home with the news.
“Mama, our store’s on fire!” I yelled at the top of my lungs as soon as
I got home. Our house was a palatial one on Division street easily to be
compared with the fine residences on stately oak-lined Algoma boulevard.
We even kept a maid of all work—but these good days were soon to pass.
July 14, 1874, was a fatal day.
Mama came running out on the verandah, and the expression on her face
was dreadful. Up to that moment I had only thought of the excitement of
it all. But when I saw her horror and dismay I realized the danger.
Perhaps Papa would be killed fighting the fire—or if he lived through
it, he might not have enough money to build a new store and stock it.
All sorts of awful thoughts ran through my head and they were true
forebodings. We lost both our store and our lovely house in this
disaster.
So did lots of other brave people. It seems impossible when I think of
it now. But there were actually seven hundred structures—houses, barns,
and places of business that had to be rebuilt that summer. The smell of
new lumber, which goodness knows we were used to in Oshkosh, now came
from our own front yards. Since our house was lost, we went to stay with
more fortunate friends of Mama’s until we could re-build. We had our
lumber delivered to their yard so that it wouldn’t be stolen. It was all
very exciting.
“Frontier courage,” Mama said.
“Faith,” Papa contradicted, because he believed everything that happened
was God’s will.
The hammering, banging and shouting that summer were terrific. The noise
and energy made a deep impression on me. My brothers and I would walk
around and watch the bustling, stimulating activity. It was one of the
most delightful vacations I ever spent. That year I didn’t go down to
the waterfront as much as I generally did, to watch the steamers hauling
fleets of logs and timbers. I didn’t bother to see the graceful yachts
of the Oshkosh Yacht Club go skimming out over the broad blue waters of
the lake toward Calumet County on the eastern shore. I just watched the
carpentry sideshows along Main Street.
It was the next spring that brought final tragedy to Papa’s fortunes. He
and his partner had just got a store re-built and running again when the
Lord’s chastisement fell once more. It was a windy spring day, April 28,
1875, that another fire broke out, this time in Morgan’s mill. Papa had
been home to dinner and it was just past one o’clock when I was
shepherding my younger brothers and sister, Claudia, back to school. As
we started down the street a lumberman on a horse came galloping up.
“We need every able-bodied man down by Fox River. Fire in Morgan’s
mill,” he yelled to Papa.
We all climbed into the buggy and set off at a fast trot. The tugs
slapped the horses’ flanks as we all but flew down hill in the violent
wind. When we drew onto Jackson Drive, enormous flying cinders were
shooting from Morgan’s mill and floating across to some lumber piles.
The scene was unbelievably beautiful, but there was a note of
desperation in Papa’s voice:
“We’re done for in this wind—”
He was right. Roaring and crackling, the lumber piles by the river went
up in flames like match-boxes. Immediately the street became bedlam.
Everybody tore towards their stores to try to save their stocks of
goods. Breathless, terror-stricken, we ran behind Papa toward our own
store, where he and his partner, Mr. Cameron, loaded us with goods to
stow in the buggy. All Main street was wild. Someone rushed up and tried
to grab our team’s bridles and lead them off. I was just coming out of
the door with a bolt of brown suiting.
“Hey, there!” I yelled, dropping the bolt and making a dive for the
buggy whip.
The man ducked and dashed off. Before I knew what was happening
something thundered by and knocked me down. Luckily I wasn’t hurt. As I
started to cry out in protest, I saw it was a crazed horse with no
bridle that someone had let loose from the livery stable a few doors
down.
Beyond, pandemonium was rampant everywhere. The whole town was trying to
save something, seizing any sort of empty vehicle or cart and piling
stuff in. The board walk was alive with jostling crowds, fighting their
way in and out of the stores. Careening teams in the street broke away
from their drivers and ran away from the fire, some of them overturning
their wagons as they fled. Luckily, we were able to hold our team still,
and after the buggy was filled with goods, we unfastened the tugs and
hitched the horses to a buckboard we found abandoned in the street. Papa
and Mr. Cameron filled it and drove off. Grasping the tongue of the
buggy, we young McCourts were able to haul it slowly up Main Street away
from danger. The spreading fire blazed fiercely, and near us walls were
falling.
The flames took only twenty minutes to race from Morgan’s mill to the
Milwaukee and St. Paul depot and freight station. We had hoped the fire
would turn back toward the river, but it was becoming evident that it
wouldn’t. After our store caught and we had carted away what goods we
could, we went back as near as we dared to watch the terrific holocaust.
“Oh, I can’t bear it!” I wailed as I began to realize the extent of the
destruction before my eyes.
The Harding Opera House was starting to go. Flames from the large
windows of the Temple of Honor and its projecting wooden balcony were
leaping out and licking my favorite building, the Opera House. In the
midst of the noise and confusion I got separated from the rest of the
family and just stood, numb and helpless, my eyes filling with tears.
The Opera House was a symbol to me—it made my secret ambition to be an
actress seem more than a dream—and I had had thrilling afternoons there
enjoying matinees of the many road companies as well as at our own
McCourt Hall, which had been the theatrical center before the Opera
House was built. Now both were going—
I put my hands up to my eyes to shut out the sight. But the roar in my
ears remained, and was just as heart-rending. Fascinated as if by a
spell, I uncovered my eyes and stared. I couldn’t move. After hardly
burning at all, the walls of the Opera House collapsed with a terrifying
rumble that made the ground tremble. Thudding bricks rolled near me. The
terrific heat at its sides had been too much for the great pile I
adored.
“You better not stand so close. It’s moving this way. Where’s all your
family?” A man’s voice said behind me.
I turned around but could hardly see through my tears.
“You were wonderful,” he went on, “hauling that buggy away from your
father’s store.”
“Oh, I’m so upset—and it looks as if it never would stop. I’m afraid our
houses will catch next—”
Then the swirling crowd separated us and he was gone.
The great blaze kept up till midnight, spotting the dark night with
sudden flashes of red, and spreading over the whole town an ominous halo
of light. For a long time I watched its destruction. It seemed the end
of the world.
The next morning, the heaviest gloom pervaded our breakfast table at my
sister’s house, Mrs. Andrew Haben’s.
“Well, Mama,” Papa said, “we’re just about cleaned out. I think I can
borrow enough to build a new store—and it’ll be brick this time—two
fires in one year are enough—but I don’t know what I’ll do to stock it.
Or where we will live.”
“You’ll manage somehow, Papa. You always have.”
When we went down street, everyone was already outside estimating the
damage, throwing dirt over a few smouldering places, and pulling debris
out of the wreckage to see if there were any salvage value. You cannot
imagine the spirit of that town! Hardly anyone was talking about losses.
But on all sides there was earnest talk of dimensions and materials, for
these eager people were impatient to get to work on their new buildings.
Many families had lost their homes and had bunked in with friends,
sitting up most of the night to tell of exciting side adventures that
had befallen them that frightful day. As we came by, many of them ran
out to repeat these stories to us.
Papa and his partner, Mr. Cameron, set to work on their plans, too.
Within the year they had erected at 21 Main Street, now numbered to be
64, a splendid brick and stone building which cost $4,000. Papa’s
interest in the store had to be very much less because practically all
his capital (which was around $75,000) had gone in the fires. The bank
really owned the store and Papa worked for a salary as a merchant tailor
despite the fact that he had opened the third clothing store in Oshkosh
and in the early days had been one of its most enterprising business
men. I know this was very galling to Mama’s pride but I was too young
and heedless then to really understand how deep was her humiliation. My
own affairs absorbed me.
“The belle of Oshkosh!”
That was my nickname—and more. So many times did I hear myself thus
described that I had decided I really was the belle of Oshkosh. And
because I had my three younger brothers, all near my own age, and their
friends to associate with, it was only to be expected that I should
gravitate toward the opposite sex. As I had grown older, Mama, who was
very proud of my looks, encouraged me in this tendency.
By the time I was sixteen I was five feet four, as tall as I was ever to
be. In later years it amused me very much the way in which writers all
across the country would refer to me as “regal” or “queenly” considering
how short I actually was. But I could understand how they came to choose
those words because I always kept my carriage meticulously correct—no
matter what hardships or disappointments, my chin was high—and that must
have given an illusion of greater height. Perhaps I really did seem
“queenly.”
All my life people have complimented me on the sweet flash of my smile
which gave them a glimpse of my even white teeth, and made my bright
blue, far-apart Irish eyes sparkle merrily. I have never lost my smile.
But at twenty I had a peaches-and-cream complexion, and a curving,
rounded figure which everyone found very seductive. My hair was light
golden, rather reddish, and naturally curly. My nose was slightly
tip-tilted, and my mouth was rounded and soft. My ready wit was the true
Irish “gift of gab.”
Brought up in such an energetic town by industrious, ambitious parents,
I was naturally very high-spirited. In addition, I had a marvelous
constitution, which stood me in good stead all my life—I was seldom to
have need of a doctor except when my babies were born. My parents and
brothers spoiled me and men all around paid me attention. It was only
natural that I should be headstrong, and feel no need for the friendship
of women—especially since I could clearly see they were jealous.
All during the next months Oshkosh was hard at work with the same spirit
it had shown the year before—as always immune to the heart-break of
recurrent disaster. In 1875, the people built four hundred and
seventy-six brick and fireproof buildings, and laid ten miles of
sidewalk. That was a herculean task for a town of seventeen thousand—but
do it they did! By now, though, I was too busy with my beaux to pay much
attention to anything except my flirtations. I was going to dances and
sociables, attending the theatre, taking buggy rides behind smart
trotters, and sailing with yachting parties on thirty-mile Lake
Winnebago.
“You oughtn’t to sit up until midnight sewing for that girl and making
her clothes,” Papa would complain to Mama. “And you ought to chaperone
her more—she’ll get a bad name.”
But Mama would just laugh.
“Lizzie will take care of herself. She’s got a head on her shoulders. I
wouldn’t be surprised if she became a great actress and why not, with
her looks? Besides, I want her to have all the good times I missed!”
Papa would turn away with a shudder. He did not approve of Mama’s
encouraging me in my desire to go on the stage, or of her taking me to
matinees whenever we had a little extra money to spend. He would put on
his hat and leave quietly by the back door to pray alone in church. To
him McCourt Hall had merely been a place to bring in rentals. He never
watched the shows and he felt our souls inclined too much toward the
paths of sin.
One April evening in 1876 my brother, Peter, and I took a walk. I
stopped to get up on an enormous keg of nails to peer through a window
into a new house where the men had stopped work. Behind me, I heard my
brother, Pete, say:
“Hello!”
I turned around, and there was a very nice-looking young man standing on
a lumber pile, also inspecting what the workmen had accomplished. All of
us young people were very much interested in this particular house
because the owners had sent all the way to Chicago for the latest
wall-papers. As far as I could see, they were gold and brown flowered
patterns, but the dining-room paper was still in rolls on the floor, and
looked as if it were going to be a red geometric design.
“Hello,” the young man said. “Is that your sister?”
“Yes,” Pete answered proudly, “my sister Elizabeth.”
“Hello,” the stranger said to me shyly, “I’m Harvey Doe.”
“Oh yes,” I replied, “I know who you are. Your father comes into the
store.”
“Yes,” he answered slowly—and then with a rush, “and he says you’re the
prettiest girl in town.”
After blurting out this he blushed, stepped off the lumber pile, and
started down the street.
“Well, I’ll settle him—” Pete began menacingly.
“Oh, don’t, Pete. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything. Look how he blushed.
I think he wanted to be nice.”
Secretly, I was very pleased.
“Funny way of showing it,” Pete grumbled. But with that the episode was
closed and we both gave our thoughts to other youthful interests.
He had spoken in a soft, refined voice, and I was quite attracted. I
arranged with my older brother, Jim, to bring him over to call a few
nights later. I noticed how different he was from most of the chaps I
knew. He seemed more quiet and chivalrous. When I had seen him on the
street, I had thought his shyness just gawky, rather peculiar in a
grown-up, but now it seemed strangely attractive. I began to look at him
with fresh appreciation.
Harvey Doe stayed several hours, visiting with us all that evening, and
from that night on I began to feel real affection. Everything was more
serious after that. Mama asked him to come to supper one night soon and
he accepted. I had found my true love at last.
That winter there was more than usually good skating. Oshkosh was always
famous for its ice and, before artificial refrigeration came in, at
certain times of the winter the lake would be covered with a great band
of men and troops of horses, cutting ice. Each team of horses drew an
ice “plough” which had seven cast-steel cutters on it. Naturally, with
the residential district sloping right down from a little elevation to
this lake, everyone did lots of skating and had skating parties in the
winter.
“Did you know the young men at our church are going to have a
competition for the best skater on Saturday afternoon?” Harvey Doe said
to me one evening. “I’m going to try for the first prize—though I don’t
suppose I shall have a chance.”
Harvey’s family belonged to the Methodist and Congregational Churches—in
fact his uncle, the Reverend F. B. Doe, had preached the opening-day
sermon when they finished building their church that year of 1875. He
had also preached in Central City, Colorado, in the first years of the
gold rush where he had gone to visit his brother, Harvey’s father, who
had mining interests in the famous camp. His family was the sort of
Protestants who thought of Catholics almost as heathen idol-worshippers.
Harvey never said anything to me about their attitude, but I had heard
from the neighbors that his mother wasn’t a bit pleased with his seeing
so much of a “Romanist and Papist.”
“I’d just like to show Mrs. Doe up,” I thought to myself—I was an
extraordinarily good skater, and could do all sorts of figures and
arabesques—so I asked aloud:
“Who’s going to be allowed to compete?”
“Oh, anyone in Oshkosh who wants to and can pay the entrance fee—it
isn’t really a church affair. It’s just to make money for some of our
church charities.”
That settled the matter with me. All the next week I stole down to the
lake and practiced in a secluded spot. I knew no other girl would enter,
since it wasn’t considered ladylike to appear in public lifting one’s
legs as it was necessary to do to be a good figure skater. But I didn’t
care about that—I would really rather enjoy shocking the town.
I kept my plan a secret from everyone except Mama. She thought it would
be as much fun as I, and started fixing over a green woolen outfit I
had. She shortened the skirt and trimmed a green hat with a band of fur
to go with the dress. One of her dearest possessions was a set of mink—a
long tippet and a muff to match. She loaned me these to wear, and I
practiced two afternoons with them on. I had to get used to balancing
and keeping in motion while still holding the muff gracefully.
Saturday afternoon arrived. Pretty nearly the whole town was gathered on
the bank, sitting on rugs or grouped around little bonfires. The judges
were three older men very important in the community—I think one of them
was Mr. James Clark, the match manufacturer. I had just made my entry
under the name of L. McCourt. Everyone thought it was one of my
brothers, not paying much attention to the first initial. Imagine their
consternation when my name was called and I stepped out from the crowd
at the bank!
“Lizzie McCourt!”—I could hear my name being whispered all around from
one group to another and I could also imagine the raised eyebrows of
Mrs. Doe. It really amused me. I took several little running steps on my
skates and then sailed out onto the ice and into the improvised rink. As
I twirled and skimmed by the judge’s stand, they smiled. I knew in my
heart it was only the women on the banks who would be against me. The
men had too ready a twinkle for the fetching figure I was cutting in my
green and brown outfit.
It was great fun having all the eyes of the town focused on my movements
and instead of being frightened I found the experience exhilarating.
This is what it would be like if I ever got to be a great actress! My
performance passed in a dream, and seemed over in a moment. Soon I was
sitting on the bank again with Mama while she tucked me up under a
laprobe from the buggy.
“You were wonderful, dear,” she said, her eyes aglow with excitement.
The contest went on, but I was so thrilled with my daring that I
couldn’t concentrate on the other competitors. What was my surprise,
though, a little later to hear one of the judges call out:
“First prize—Miss McCourt.”
Me, the only girl among all those boys and men! I really was tickled to
have won over them all. I scrambled out of the laprobe as fast as I
could and hurried on to the ice to receive the blue ribbon and box of
candy that was being held out to me. First prize, Miss McCourt!
Harvey came over after supper to call.
“You really were wonderful, Lizzie,” he said. “Mother and I quarreled
about you all the way home, but I think you were superb. I just knew I
loved you when I saw you out there on the ice before all those
people—not even perturbed—it was glorious—and I know now that I want to
marry you.”
“Why, Harvey....”
This was not the first proposal I had had, but it was the first to move
me deeply.
Harvey had always seemed to me different from the other men of the town,
and he _was_ different. He would come over to play the piano for all my
family in the evening, seeming to love us all. He would join in the
general fun without trying to monopolize me, like most of the other men.
He wasn’t so terribly much older than I, under two years, but he seemed
older. He was always so considerate and unselfish. Though shy, he
carried his years with a dignified air of responsibility. I think it was
this, added to his sweetness, and musical talent that made him stand out
from the others. Anyway, deep down in my heart I must have known for a
long time that I was just waiting for Harvey.
“But, Harvey, what will we live on? If your family doesn’t approve of
me, what can you do?”
“I think Father knows how I feel—he’ll help us. He said something the
other day about sending me out to see about some mining property he’s
part owner of at Central City, Colorado. We’ll go West and make our
fortune overnight in gold. People are doing it all the time out there!”
Love and adventure all at once!
It seemed as if my whole life were blossoming into one great golden
sunburst that evening. For some time I had been gazing across the broad
waters of Lake Winnebago and picturing the world beyond. The more I
thought about it, the more I knew I didn’t want to settle down in
Oshkosh. I wanted to try my wings—with Harvey! But I still didn’t say
anything to him as we sat there.
“Let’s just be secretly engaged for a while,” Harvey went on, “until you
get used to the idea. And maybe Mother will change—.”
Romance began for me then, warming gradually each day into a brighter
and more glowing emotion. It was several months before I even told Mama
what I was planning. I kept right on seeing other men meanwhile. But
more and more I knew girls were saying catty things behind my back,
insinuating I was fast. Several older women had cut me dead ever since
the skating contest, and I was beginning to be not only restive, but
rebellious.
“It’ll certainly show them all up if I marry Harvey!” I said to Mama,
with a toss of my head.
The Doe family was very much respected in Oshkosh. Harvey’s father, W.
H. Doe, was so important in the community that one of the new fire
houses and steamers, located at 134 High Street was named after him—the
W. H. Doe Steamer. The snobbish girls who said I was just the common
daughter of an Irish tailor would certainly have to eat their words if I
were Mrs. W. H. Doe, Jr.
“Pay no attention to them, Bessie,” Mama said. “They’re just jealous of
your looks—and wish they could attract men as easily as you do.”
But, little by little, they _were_ bothering me, and more wholly and
longingly I was falling in love with Harvey. He was very sympathetic
with all my pet foibles, and was the only man I ever met who encouraged
me to develop my acting ability. He said that naturally anyone as
beautiful and talented as I had the right to be seen by many people.
That would only be possible if I were on the stage.
“Only I love you and need you much more than audiences who haven’t yet
had a chance to know you!” he would add, with a beseeching, tremulous
smile.
But I wanted more time and it was not until spring, 1877, that we
actually announced our engagement. When we finally told our plans, the
Does were very bitter. They said things about me, and even added to
remarks made in the town—at least Mrs. Doe did. Mr. Doe did not feel
that way, but he probably felt he couldn’t contradict his wife and
relatives.
Mama made a glorious trousseau and spent much more money than she should
have, which made Papa either complain disagreeably, or brood in long
sulky silences. I kept telling him Harvey and I would make such a
splendid fortune in Colorado that in no time I could pay him back. But
Papa was getting old, and this didn’t cheer him up a bit. My younger
brothers and sister, however, especially Claudia, were thrilled at the
prospect of picking gold nuggets off the ground or from the creek beds!
Their eyes would get as big as silver dollars while I talked to them of
the marvelous life Harvey and I were going to lead out West.
I had always thought the morning of my wedding day would be the happiest
of my life, but somehow this wasn’t. I couldn’t tell why. As I jumped
out of bed and ran to the window to see what the day was like I had a
brief feeling of foreboding. Quickly I shook it off and made myself
think:
“Ridiculous! You’re worried because Mrs. Doe has been so difficult and
at the last minute may not come to the wedding at all—or make a scene in
front of all the guests.”
Soon my chin was up, and I was light-hearted and gay again, planning
ahead for the golden future that was to be Harvey’s and mine—dreaming
those fairy-tale dreams of a happy bride who is setting out on the
hopeful path of marriage with the man she loves devotedly.
The rest of that day, June 27, 1877, went smoothly enough. I was
twenty-two and Harvey was twenty-three. We were married by Father James
O’Malley at St. Peter’s Church. My brother-in-law, Andrew Haben, was
mayor of Oshkosh that year and both our families were so well-known that
crowds were standing in the street and the church was overflowing. We
had a small reception afterward. Mrs. Doe was cold and taciturn and
repressed, but at least she was not openly rude to me or any of my
family. Mr. Doe was obviously happy, but whether because of our marriage
or because Harvey was going to Central City to carry on with his mining
interests I couldn’t tell.
Harvey’s shy eyes were alight and full of ecstatic unbelief every time I
looked at him. Mama was pleased and exuberant, playing the benevolent
hostess. I was triumphant, young and extravagantly hopeful. It was thus
I became Mrs. William H. Doe, Jr.
As we left to go to the station I took a last, reflective look at
Oshkosh, “The Sawdust City.” Factories and mills burst with the rattle
and clang of industry. Across the two wagon bridges of the city moved
streams of traffic. Here in the bustle and excitement of a frontier town
I had been cradled. But now it was frontier no longer—and I was eager to
follow that exciting horizon Westward. Although I was sorry to leave my
family and home, I was breathless to be off.
“Darling, now our life is really beginning,” Harvey whispered to me as
we stood on the little open back platform of the train pulling away from
the station.
I leaned against him for support, and thrilled to the thought. We waved
handkerchiefs to our family and friends as long as we could see them,
shaking the rice from our clothes at the same time. Finally, laughing
merrily when Oshkosh was no more than a blur in the distance, we turned
into the train and took our seats in the coach.
Outside the rolling, hilly country of Wisconsin was abloom. Green grassy
fields and waving marshes were flying past—or at least we thought of our
speed as flying. The little train really made not much more than fifteen
miles an hour, I imagine. But it seemed to me, who had never ridden on a
train before, that we were literally hurtling through space.
“I love you, my sweet, beautiful little bride!” Harvey whispered
passionately, pressing my hand and looking adoringly into my eyes. His
words were like a song, sung to the rhythm and bounce of wheels along
the tracks—an urgent, earthy obligato.
“And I love you, darling Harvey.”
Our honeymoon had begun—the world was fair, and all life lay before us—I
couldn’t possibly describe the intoxication of that moment!
After an arduous trip, steaming endlessly, it seemed, across prairie
lands of the Great American Desert, we arrived in Colorado. My first
glimpse of the Rockies, viewed from the train window one morning, did
something to me I was never to get over. All the adjectives in the
language have been used to describe that sight, by explorers, by learned
travelers, by writers, and by humble people keeping diaries. And still
it was an experience so important in my own life that I, too, must try.
People have said they “rise up” suddenly—and so they do. But to me, on
that bright, crisp morning, they seemed to have been let down from the
sky, like a gigantic backdrop on the stage of the world, their colors of
grey and red and startling white painted on by a Master Hand. They
looked unreal, like an experience from another world, but at the same
time an experience of such magnitude and importance that I must bow in
worship before their granite strength and snow-white purity.
“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Harvey asked.
“They’re more than gorgeous,” I answered reverently, then silently
prayed to their rugged magnificence that, to the end, the power the
sight of them gave me might never wane.
Some premonition told me in that moment my prayer would be heeded. I
could not suspect what those mountains would do in the shaping of my
life, but I was sure they would shape it. And so they did. I was never
again to be away from their influence, and only for brief periods away
from their sight. I loved them instinctively that day—and I never lost
that love—strange though it may seem for a girl brought up beside the
water.
“They are our future” I added to Harvey, my voice trembling with
excitement.
“Yes!”
My future, yes—but not our future. Still, I could not know that, then,
nor even guess it. But deep in my bones, I felt their power.
Denver in those days was a turbulent, thriving community, the trading
and outfitting center of all the dramatic mining activities of the
state. It had grown into a town of over thirty thousand population.
Pioneers struck it rich in the hills, but they brought their wealth to
Denver to spend.
And spend it they did! I had never been in a hotel like the American
House. Every sort of cosmopolitan figure dotted its elegant lobby,
carpeted in red. These glamorous people smiled at me and invited my
husband into the bar. Five years before, the Grand Duke Alexis had been
entertained in the sumptuous dining-room of the hotel, transformed for
the occasion into a ballroom, and the hosts were all the great names of
Colorado. The belles of Central City (where I was now bound) had come
down from the mountains by stagecoach for the event. This was high
adventure, colorful pageantry—and I was a part of it. This was a new
world, where European royalty and English nobility moved perfectly
naturally. Those dreams I had dreamed on the shores of Lake Winnebago,
at home in Oshkosh, were actually coming true.