parquet. I was right where I could see Tabor’s son, Maxcy, in Box H with
Luella Babcock of whom his father had told me he was very fond, and the
sight made me both happy and worried. I was happy to be there on an
occasion so memorable to the great man I loved. But I was worried and
unstrung about what would be the outcome of our love.
Augusta did know about me, because Bill Bush had been sent to her to try
to negotiate a divorce a short time after Bill had looked up the record
of my proceedings. But Augusta was obdurate. She considered divorce a
lasting disgrace and stigma. She had refused pointblank. And so without
a bid from Tabor that tremendous night of September 5, 1881, she stayed
home.
The newspapers of Denver devoted pages to the opening and dedication.
Even Eugene Field who ordinarily poked a great deal of unkind fun at
Tabor in his capacity as an editor of the _Denver Tribune_, printed a
complimentary quatrain:
“The opera house—a union grand
Of capital and labor,
Long will the stately structure stand
A monument to Tabor.”
The brick and limestone building, five stories high with a corner tower,
was described as modified Egyptian Moresque architecture. It housed
stores and offices besides the theatre proper, and all the necessary
property and dressing rooms. The auditorium had an immense cut-glass
chandelier and a beautiful drop-curtain painted by Robert Hopkin of
Detroit. It showed the ruins of an ancient temple with broken pillars
around a pool, and bore the following inscription by Charles Kingsley:
“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
Many writers since that day have pointed out the weird prophecy of
Tabor’s fortune hidden in those lines. But no one thought anything of
the curtain that night except that it was dignified and very decorative.
Of course, I had seen the curtain before as I (shrouded in a veil when
there were associates or too many workmen about) had spent much time
with Tabor going over every detail.
Originally he had planned to have a portrait of Shakespeare hung in the
lobby, but I said:
“No. Have your own portrait. _You_ are Denver’s benefactor.”
The next day he had the portrait altered. I also suggested the idea of a
large silver plate with gold letters to be hung on Box A. When the
jeweler delivered it, the block was two feet long and six inches thick,
of solid silver from the Matchless Mine. The name Tabor was in relief
letters of solid gold. I thought it was one of the handsomest things I
ever saw. But I could spend pages on descriptions of the luxuries and
elaborate furnishings of that building—as indeed many writers have
already done before me.
But after that night, tongues wagged more venomously. Augusta continued
mad and obstinate. It was a very trying situation for Tabor in a
political way, as naturally all this defaming talk would have a bad
effect on his reputation. Often he would come to me with his troubles.
Finally, I suggested:
“Perhaps, if I moved over to the American House and gave you my suite,
that would at least stop gossip around the Windsor. Nobody much hangs
around the American House, the way they do this lobby.”
“Baby, you are wonderful. You are the cleverest little woman in the
world! No one knows how much I want to make you my wife. And be able to
show you off to the world as the proud man I really am! And not have to
hide you behind that hideous veil—but what can I do with Augusta? She
won’t talk to me and she won’t listen to Bill Bush. I haven’t given her
any money for months now, just to try to force her to listen to reason.”
“There must be some way. First, I’ll move. You stay here at the Windsor
and then we’ll see.”
“It isn’t as if she loved me. She couldn’t, and talk to me the way she
always has. It’s just that she’s a dog in the manger—she doesn’t want me
herself, but, by gad, she’ll see to it that you don’t get me!”
“Love will find a way,” I said encouragingly. My own heart leaped with
excitement. Tabor had proposed to me before and told me that he loved
me. But I had been afraid to let myself believe entirely in the last
complete fulfillment of my dream. I loved the greatest man in Colorado,
and he loved me. That was almost enough. Now he wanted me to become his
wife! I lifted my mouth to his with new depth and resolution in my soul.
Sometimes when I would be writing home to Mama trying to describe to her
all the strange glamour and drama and riches of my new life, I would
think of the other side of my existence. That side was not so pretty,
for the daughter who had set out as a bride. Harvey Doe was almost as if
he’d never been—my whole life was Tabor. Naturally, my letters reflected
the truly great love that absorbed me, even if it had to be hidden from
the world.
But I knew Mama would understand and love me just the same, and Papa
would forgive me when finally Tabor and I were actually married.
Augusta, however, made the first drastic move. She brought suit for a
property settlement, and publicly dragged the situation into the
limelight. She wanted the courts to compel Tabor to settle $50,000 a
year on her and also to give her the home on Broadway as well as some
adjoining land.
Her bill of complaint gave a list of his holdings totaling over nine
million dollars and said she believed his income to be around $100,000 a
year. Meanwhile, she said he had contributed nothing to her support
since January, 1881, and she had been compelled to take roomers and
boarders into her home to support herself. This was not true. Bill Bush
had been told to offer her a very substantial settlement if she would
give Tabor a divorce and she already had some money of her own.
“Now I’m mad!” Tabor said to me that night. “Nobody ever called me a
stingy man till this minute. And by God, that old termagant will find
out I can be stingy!”
He had that suit quashed with no difficulty as being without the
jurisdiction of the court. But the divorce question was different. The
lawyers were deadlocked for months. Augusta wouldn’t grant the divorce.
In turn, Tabor wouldn’t grant her a penny with or without the divorce. I
rather encouraged him in this last stand, probably foolishly, but I had
seen her hurt him so frequently that when he did turn on her for such an
unjust attack, I told him he should fight back. But this battle only
delayed my own chance for happiness, and, meanwhile, wasn’t doing
Tabor’s political reputation any good.
“Tabor,” I said to him one evening when he came to call at the American
House, “I have an idea where we might be a little foxier than Augusta
and, if nothing else, frighten her into a different position.”
“How’s that?” he said glumly—we hardly ever had any fun any more,
feeling we had to hide away from people. Besides, most of the time,
Tabor was stirred up about Augusta’s meanness and obstinacy.
“Well, with all your influence, couldn’t you get a divorce in some other
county than Arapahoe where you also own property? Maybe it wouldn’t be
entirely valid. But we could act like it was, and get married. If
Augusta knew she was married to a bigamist, maybe she would consider
that a worse disgrace than being a divorcee!”
Tabor leaped up out of his chair and charmingly whirled me off my feet
and around and around in the room with boyish enthusiasm.
“Baby, I always told you you were wonderful! I know just the
place—Durango! I own a mine down there, and the judge is a great friend
of mine. I’m sure I can fix it up in no time at all. If we can just keep
it secret from everyone but Augusta—and then just flash the decree under
her nose—and then our marriage certificate—we’ll have her where we want
her!”
Meantime, all during the year of 1882, subversive political factions
were at work to bring pressure on the legislature of one kind and
another. When President Garfield had been shot in July of the year
before, Chester Arthur succeeded to his position. President Arthur
appointed Senator Henry M. Teller to his cabinet. This left a vacancy in
one of Colorado’s electoral seats. Governor Pitkin appointed a mediocre
politician by the name of George Chilcott to Teller’s place only until
the legislature should convene.
“Just did that because he wants the office himself and to spite me,”
Tabor explained.
And I heard this opinion verified frequently by other men. The
legislature was not to meet until January of the next year, 1883, when
they were to elect two senators, one to fill a six-year term, and the
other to the thirty days remaining of Teller’s term. Everyone said that
Tabor would get the six-year term, even though Governor Pitkin wanted it
and had the support of the regular Republican machine. Tabor was so
popular.
But Augusta ruined all that. The Durango divorce came through without
any hitch in the summer of 1882, and on September 30, Tabor and I met
secretly in St. Louis, having gone by different trains. We met in the
office of Colonel Dyer, a leading attorney, who summoned John M. Young,
a justice of the peace. When we went to the court house to get a
license, Tabor took the recorder, C. W. Irwin, aside and fixed it up
with him that under no circumstances should our license be included on
the list given to the daily press.
“Secretly divorced and secretly remarried,” Tabor said that night,
elated as a school boy. “That’ll be something for Augusta to swallow
about the man she thinks she can keep tied down! It’s also a good
precaution for those scandal mongers at the senate. If they get too
nosey, we’ll show them we’re really married.”
I tried to pretend I was as happy as he. But to me, a marriage was only
binding when it had been sanctioned by the church and performed by a
priest. And I knew Papa would only forgive my transgressions on that
basis. I had drifted very far away from much of Father Bonduel’s
teachings but the kernel still remained. I had offended against many of
the Church’s mandates and of God’s. But I still wanted to be safely back
in the fold, living the life of a respectable married woman, devoted to
her husband, her children, and her home. With that picture in my mind, I
could not join as heartily as I should have wished in the champagne
toast Tabor made at a tete-a-tete supper at the old Southern Hotel.
“Here’s to our wedding day!” he exclaimed with sincere joviality.
“Yes,” I agreed, and added with the fervor of the wish that was gnawing
at my heart, “here’s to our marriage!”
The New Year of 1883 dawned with both our heads whirling with hopes and
fears. Hope ran very high that Tabor would soon be going to Washington
for six years and I, with him. Fear besieged us with the thought that
Augusta would prevent all this. But two enormous events happened that
January.
Augusta sued for divorce and accepted a settlement of their house, the
La Veta Place apartment house, and a quarter of a million dollars worth
of mining stock, including one half interest in the Tam O’Shanter mine
above Aspen. Augusta created a hysterical scene in court, which did
Tabor a lot of damage. When the trial was over and she was asked to sign
the papers, she turned toward the judge and shrilled in a fearful voice,
“What is my name?”
“Your name is Tabor, ma’am. Keep the name. It is yours by right.”
“I will. It is mine till I die. It was good enough for me to take. It is
good enough for me to keep. Judge, I ought to thank you for what you
have done, but I cannot. I am not thankful. But it was the only thing
left for me to do. Judge, I wish you would put in the record, ‘Not
willingly asked for.’”
Augusta rose and began to sniffle in a horrible manner, making a
spectacle of herself. Before she reached the door, she broke down in
tears and sobbed, “Oh, God, not willingly, not willingly!”
I was not there but many people ran to tell me about it, particularly
Bill Bush, who dramatized his sympathy very heavily.
“Well,” I said, not feeling in the least sorry for Augusta, “If she
really did feel that way, why did she go home to Maine and stay so long
that autumn before I met Tabor? That was when she lost him. He had a
chance then to find out there were plenty of other women in the world,
and what’s more important, with better dispositions and nicer looks.
Either she should never have left him or else she should have been twice
as sweet when she got back.”
Reluctantly, Bill agreed with me—he had to admit the truth.
But the newspapers were different. They printed scathing editorials
about the whole affair, and intimated that Tabor would be forever damned
politically.
They weren’t entirely right, but they nearly were. The contest in the
legislature was long and bitter. The balloting went on and on and no one
could break the deadlock between Pitkin and Tabor. All of a sudden the
Pitkin men switched to Bowen, a third candidate, a wealthy mining man
from the southern part of the state whom no one had taken seriously up
to that time. Out of a clear sky he got the six-year term.
As a sop to Tabor, he was unanimously offered the thirty days remaining
of Teller’s term. Tabor was always a good sport. He accepted the offer
with extraordinary grace under the circumstances, congratulated his
rival, and prepared to leave immediately. That was January 27, 1883, and
by February 3, he was being sworn in at Washington. I have never seen
anyone so delighted and happy as Tabor was, leaving Denver. He was
fifty-two years old but you would have thought he was twelve and had
been given his first pony. I, too, was joyful and expectant.
“And what a wedding we’ll have, Baby!” he said in parting. “I’ll fix all
the details and send for you to be married just before my term is up. If
all goes well, you’ll have both a priest and a president at your
ceremony! A lover couldn’t do more.
“But don’t tell anyone anything about my plans, or they may go wrong.
Get your clothes ready. Write to your family very secretly in Oshkosh to
join you in Chicago. I’ll have a private car put on there for you just
about a week before March 4.
“And you’ll be the most beautiful and talked-of bride in the world. Just
you wait and see.”
_Chapter Four_
My wedding day! A lavish, historic wedding that was famous around the
world and was to be talked of for years to come—that was the marriage I
had.
Toward the end of Tabor’s thirty-day stay in the senate in Washington,
he sent for me. In the meantime, I had left Denver and gone back to
Oshkosh to visit my family. Mama was elated with the dazzling good
fortune that had befallen me. She wept with excitement and joy; Papa was
gradually becoming reconciled to the idea of a second marriage provided
the ceremony could be performed by a priest. Tabor wrote he thought he
could arrange this.
“I’d certainly like to run smack into Mrs. Doe,” Mama sniffed. “Here she
thought you weren’t good enough for Harvey—and now you’re marrying one
of the richest men in the United States and may end up living in the
White House!”
In some ways, I shared Mama’s spitefulness but I was too absorbed in
anticipation of my jewelled future to spend much time looking backward.
Mama couldn’t understand how Tabor and my love for him had completely
blotted out everything that had gone before. In fact, I don’t think she
understood then that I really was in love with Tabor, a man twenty-four
years my senior. Later, she learned that I was sincere in this great
overwhelming emotion of my life.
Papa and Mama, two of my sisters, two of my brothers and two
brothers-in-law arrived at the Willard Hotel the last week in February
to be with me. The wedding invitations had quarter-inch silver margins
and engraved superscriptions, also in silver. I addressed them in my own
handwriting, sending them to President Arthur, Secretary of the Interior
and Mrs. Henry M. Teller, Senator and Mrs. Nathaniel P. Hill,
Senator-elect Tom Bowen, Judge and Mrs. James Belford (he was Colorado’s
only congressman at the time), Senator Jerome B. Chaffee and others with
Colorado affiliations.
I had them delivered personally by a liveried coachman in the rich
victoria which Tabor had engaged for his stay in Washington, and which
I, as Miss McCourt, was now using.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” the coachman said on his return. “Mrs. Hill said to
give you this.”
In his hand lay a returned invitation torn vigorously once across.
I blushed but said nothing. In my mind, I resolved that the day would
come when Denver society would not be able to insult me like that. After
we were married, had traveled in Europe, and were settled in the grand
house that Tabor would buy me, they would feel differently. Just let
Mrs. Hill who had lived so close to me in Blackhawk wait and see! Maybe
her coachman did hire my friend, Link Allebaugh, to drive a wagon filled
with her household goods when she moved to Denver and maybe she had seen
me with Jake in Sandelowsky-Pelton, but times were different now!
At nine o’clock in the evening of March first, the wedding party
assembled in one of the larger of the Willard’s parlors. I was gowned in
a marabou-trimmed, heavily brocaded white satin dress with real lace
lingerie, an outfit that cost $7,000. I had hoped to wear Tabor’s
wedding present to me, a $75,000 diamond necklace which he was having
made in New York. It had been sold to him as an authentic part of the
jewels Queen Isabella had pawned to outfit Columbus for his voyage to
America. My dress was made very decollete so as to show off the necklace
to the best advantage, but it was not completed in time, so I omitted
jewelry. I wore long white gloves and carried a bouquet of white roses.
My family was in black since they were in mourning because of the recent
death of my older brother, James. Mama’s and the girls’ black silks were
relieved, however, by ornaments of diamond and onyx which Tabor had
given them. Tabor appeared with Bill Bush and Tom Bowen.
We stood in front of a table richly draped in cardinal-red cloth. It
held a candelabra with ten lighted tapers that shed a subdued and
religious light over the assemblage. All the men had come, including
President Arthur, but none of their wives. I was hurt and disappointed
at this turn of events but I didn’t let it spoil the sweetness of my
smile nor the graciousness of my behavior to any of them.
The ceremony, an abbreviated nuptial mass, was performed by the Reverend
P. L. Chapelle of St. Matthew’s. When it was over, Tabor kissed me and
then President Arthur stepped up to offer his congratulations.
“I have never seen a more beautiful bride,” he exclaimed, shaking my
hand. “May I not beg a rose from your bouquet?”
Flattered and pleased, I broke off a blossom to fasten in the lapel of
his coat while Mama beamed with pleasure. All of my family pushed up
next. We kissed and embraced, excited and thrilled. It hardly seemed
possible that here we McCourts, all the way from Oshkosh, were about to
sit down to supper with the great ones of the nation!
After the rest had congratulated us both, folding doors were opened by
the servants and we moved into the next chamber to the supper table. The
centerpiece was six feet high. A great basin of blossoms held a massive
wedding bell of white roses, surmounted by a heart of red roses and
pierced by an arrow of violets, shot from a Cupid’s bow of heliotrope.
At either end of the long table extending the whole length of the
parlor, was a colossal four-leaf clover formed of red roses, white
camelias and blue violets, garlanded with smilax.
Over a separate table required to support the wedding cake, was a canopy
of flowers with trailing foliage. In each corner of the room was a bower
of japonicas arranged in duplicate form to the boxes of the Tabor Grand
Opera House at home, in Denver. Violets encircled each guest’s place at
table and other flowers garlanded the champagne buckets.
“It’s like fairyland—or heaven!” Mama whispered to me.
Supper was very gay. Everyone celebrated the occasion with hilarity and
although President Arthur took his departure at about quarter to eleven,
many of the other guests remained until midnight. It was a truly gala
feast.
This was the first of March. With the next day, scandal broke in the
papers. Father Chapelle returned the $200 wedding fee that Tabor had
given him and publicly announced that he had been duped by Papa into
marrying two divorced persons.
“When I asked the bride’s father if he knew of any impediments to the
marriage, he clearly answered he did not,” Father Chapelle was quoted as
explaining. “To say all in a few words, I was shamefully deceived by the
McCourt family.”
He also threatened to have the marriage declared illicit by carrying the
question to the highest authorities in the Church. Eventually he thought
better of it, after Tabor had sent Bill Brush around to pacify him. But
Washington buzzed with gossip.
The next day a greater sensation occurred when the newspapers got hold
of the fact that we had been secretly married six months previously in
St. Louis and three months before Tabor’s legal divorce from Augusta.
Both Tabor and I publicly denied this because of the political prestige
we hoped he would yet win.
“Just malice and envy of a great man,” I told reporters.
The next day, Tabor’s last day in the Senate, I went and sat in the
ladies’ gallery. I was dressed in one of my most stylish trousseau
costumes, a brown silk dress with a tight-fitting bodice, and I wore a
sparkling necklace, ear-rings and bracelets. I had on my jeweled
waist-girdle in the shape of a serpent, with diamond eyes, ruby tongue
and a long tail of emeralds. So attired I went to watch my husband
during his final session. I could hear whispers going all around the
assembly as I sought a seat and, pretty soon, masculine necks on the
floor began to crane around in order to see me. I was the most talked-of
figure in Washington. My beauty was discussed, my clothes, my jewels, my
spectacular lover and husband, his lavish spending, all the details of
our romance, and of Augusta’s position, our future plans and if the
marriage would last—Washington and the nation talked of nothing else
that week.
I suppose all of us frail mortals enjoy the limelight and I, as much as
the next. Since only the flattering bits of conversations were repeated
back to me, I was as proud as a peacock and immensely flattered by this
wide-spread attention and admiration. Some of the papers were referring
to me as the Silver Queen and none of them failed to speak of my blonde
beauty. It was enough to turn the head of any twenty-eight-year-old
(although, of course, I said I was twenty-two).
“I’m so happy I can’t believe it’s all true,” I whispered to Tabor as we
left Washington on a wedding tour to New York.
“But it’s nothing to the happiness we’re going to have,” he answered,
giving me an affectionate squeeze. “You’ll be the first lady of Colorado
next!”
When we returned to Denver, Tabor first settled me in a palatial suite
at the Windsor Hotel. He gave a banquet to which he invited two hundred
people. The liquor flowed until dawn and there were many speeches and
toasts to Tabor and his greatness. Just before that, the Bayonne New
Jersey _Statesman_ had carried a banner headline reading “For President
of the United States: Horace A. W. Tabor,” and many people at the
banquet referred to the article very seriously, complimenting us on the
Senator’s future.
“First lady of Colorado. Hell!” Tabor said. “You’ll be first lady of the
land!”
I shivered with excitement. It really seemed as if my wonderful husband
would raise me to the most exalted height in the country. I, little
Lizzie McCourt from Oshkosh!
But meanwhile, weeks began to drag by and no one came to see me. None of
the ladies made party calls (which were absolutely obligatory in those
days) and no one signified the least desire to welcome me as a newcomer
to the ranks of Denver society. I wanted to succeed for myself. But even
more, I wanted to succeed for Tabor as a helpmate. I wanted to be beside
him in his brilliant career.
Tearfully, I broached the subject to Tabor.
“Don’t worry, honey. It’s just that they don’t want to come to the
hotel. Wait till we get settled in the home I’ve bought for you—then
they’ll be around.”
Tabor first bought a fine house at 1647 Welton. It was brick with a
verandah on the first floor and an awning-shaded porch on the second.
But he wanted something more elaborate. In December, 1886, he found it.