Capitol Hill and cost $54,000. It was on Thirteenth Avenue and its
grounds ran through from Sherman to Grant Avenue. A brown stone wall
about three feet high ran around the lower end of the velvety lawn where
the ground sloped down the hill, and it had two driveways to the
stables. Tabor engaged five gardeners and housemen, two coachmen, and
two footmen. We had three carriages and six horses.
Two pairs of horses were pure white. One carriage was brown trimmed in
red. Another was dark blue enamel with thin gold striping, and lined
with light blue satin. The last carriage was black, trimmed in white,
and upholstered in white satin. I would order up the carriage and horses
that best suited the costume I was wearing that day. Most often it was
the blue carriage and the four glossy whites, caparisoned in shiny,
brass-ornamented harness, to set off the blue of my eyes should anyone
glance from the sidewalk to look at me.
Troops of children used to follow along behind my equipage every time
the coach and footmen drove me downtown, exactly as if they were
following a circus parade and would shout out comments on my color
scheme of the day. Naturally the various uniforms of the servants
matched the complete outfit planned around each dress. They were maroon
for the brown carriage, blue for the blue, and black for the black,
although I alternated and switched them for the most startling effect in
relation to my own costume. One of the little girls who used to join the
traipsing throng, later grew up to be one of Colorado’s great women—Anne
Evans (prime mover of the Central City Summer Festival).
But before the house was ready for occupancy, Tabor heard that General
Sherman was to pay a visit to Leadville. He borrowed Dave Moffat’s
private car, loaded six cases of champagne aboard, and together we set
out on the South Park line for the Clarendon Hotel.
“Well, this won’t be like the time General Grant came to Leadville!”
Tabor said with a happy sigh. And it wasn’t.
Tabor met the famous Civil War general in the morning and escorted him
on a tour of the mines. Later, in the evening, General Sherman and his
party joined us at a special table set for us in the hotel while an
orchestra, composed of miners that Tabor had engaged during the course
of the day, played during dinner. Afterward we took the party to the
Tabor Opera House. Our box was decorated in lilies—a custom Tabor always
followed in both Leadville and Denver whenever I was to be in the
audience—and throughout the performance, Tabor saw to it that the
champagne corks kept popping.
General Sherman enjoyed himself immensely and in saying goodbye, bowed
low over my hand with:
“The hospitality and beauty of the West amazes me.”
Then he looked me directly in the eye, with a meaningful twinkle!
This was the second time that year that I had met men of national
prominence, and on each occasion they had patently liked me. But why
wouldn’t their women accept me? I had done nothing really wrong. I
hadn’t stolen Tabor from Augusta, as they said. She had lost him first
and then I had merely loved him more than she. I could hardly bear this
turn of events.
Back in Denver, things were worse. Bill Bush and I had been growing more
and more incompatible for a long time and I finally persuaded Tabor to
bring on my younger brother, Peter McCourt, to have as his manager
instead of Bill. This led to a very sensational public quarrel. Tabor
brought suit against Bush for embezzling $2,000. Bush was acquitted and
in reply, he placed a deposition before the Supreme Court, claiming that
Tabor owed him $100,000 for various services rendered. He asked $10,000
for securing testimony and witnesses for Tabor’s divorce at Durango, and
for persuading Augusta at last to bring suit. He asked a larger sum for
“—aiding him in effecting a marriage with the said Mrs. Doe, commonly
called Baby Doe.” He asked $1,547 for bribes paid to legislators during
the Senatorial election, in sums ranging from $5 to $475, and the whole
bill of particulars was equally dreadful. It was just a vile attack. (In
truth, Bush owed Tabor; and Tabor later got judgment for $19,958.)
Luckily, the court struck the complaint from the record as indecent and
irrelevant. But the harm had been done. Tabor’s political prestige again
waned. Tabor and Bush never made up this nasty quarrel, although Bush
remained a friend and partner of young Maxcy Tabor, who had sided with
Augusta at the time of the divorce. I had always distrusted Bush and now
hated him.
“May the devil destroy his soul!” I used to say to Tabor.
Augusta and I met twice.
The first time was when I was living at the Windsor Hotel toward the end
of 1881 and before I had moved to the American House. I was very
surprised one afternoon to have the bellboy present a hand-written card
on a salver. It read “Mrs. Augusta L. Tabor” and startled me so that I
never found out what the “L” stood for—Augusta’s maiden name was Pierce.
In December of 1880 Augusta had bought out Mr. Charles Hall’s interest
in the Windsor Hotel, and she had made a point of coming down and
carefully going over the books with Bill Bush and Maxcy Tabor who was
employed in the office. Personally, I had a feeling that she had done
this not only to make a good investment but to keep a closer eye on
Tabor’s goings and comings. That particular day, he was away on
business, and she undoubtedly knew it.
I had been reading a new novel by Georgia Craink and my thoughts were
far away. I didn’t want to receive Augusta but I knew it would only make
more trouble if I didn’t. So I told the bellboy to show Mrs. Tabor up.
It was one of the most uncomfortable interviews I ever had. Augusta kept
sniffling about “Hod” (as she called Horace) and his disgusting taste in
bad women. She talked about two of Horace’s former mistresses—Alice
Morgan, a woman who did a club-swinging act at the Grand Central in
Leadville, and Willie Deville, a common prostitute, whom he had found in
Lizzie Allen’s parlor house in Chicago. Tabor had brought her back to
Denver and set her up lavishly. Later, he had taken Willie on trips to
St. Louis and New York, but terminated his affair with her by a gift of
$5,000, claiming she talked too much.
“Why do you tell me these things?” I asked Augusta with as much steel as
I could put into my voice. Inwardly, I was furious.
“To show you that if he tired of them, Hod’s sure to tire of you.”
“In that case, there’s nothing more to say, Mrs. Tabor. I do not want
your confidences.”
Then she began to weep again and beg me to give her husband up. She
blabbered in such a confused manner I could not possibly hear the exact
words. I did not want to discuss Horace with her nor anyone else, and
certainly not to talk about anything so intimate as our relationship. I
had to think quickly.
“I will not give him up, Mrs. Tabor. If he chooses to give me up, then
no doubt he will make me a parting gift, too. But I do not see that that
concerns either of us. I have nothing more to say. Good-afternoon.”
She left with her ramrod gait and, always after that call, her
bitterness and malice toward me were complete. Perhaps if I had been
able to handle her more tactfully, she would not have been so obstinate
about granting a divorce in the succeeding years. But I consider that
she was very lucky that I didn’t lose my Irish temper completely and
throw things at her.
The second time was January 16, 1884, when Maxcy married Miss Luella
Babcock. The occasion was formal and Augusta and I behaved accordingly.
I was still a bride and the sensation of the nation. No one in the
country was spending as much on their wardrobe as I was at that time. I
had everything. Beauty, grace and charm were mine, as was a loving
husband who lavished every conceivable extravagant attention on me. It
seemed as if all doors were about to open for me.
But weeks and months dragged by and no women called. I might have felt
this disappointment more poignantly if I hadn’t been sustained by the
happy knowledge that I was to have a baby in July. Tabor was as excited
as a boy at the prospect, and was making all sorts of elaborate
preparations for the most expensive layette a baby ever had. He planned
a charmingly decorated nursery. The baby was to have every conceivable
attention a doting father could arrange.
“I hope the baby is a girl,” he would whisper to me fondly.
And the baby was a girl. She was born July 13, 1884, and we decided to
take her to Oshkosh for her christening. Papa had died the year before,
a couple of months after our marriage, and Mama would appreciate having
us—and her granddaughter! Tabor was so ecstatic that he sent out to at
least a hundred prominent citizens a small package containing a gold
medallion the size of a twenty-five cent piece. On one side was
inscribed
BABY TABOR
July 13
1884
On the obverse side was “Compliments of the Tabor Guards, Boulder,
Colorado.”
Employees of the Matchless mine sent her a gold-lined cup, saucer and
spoon. It seemed as if the baby had been born to every luxury and joy.
My own cup of bliss was overflowing for some time and I forgot all about
the jealous cats and sanctimonious old battle-axes of Denver. I was a
mother! The mother of an exquisite little girl. Tabor and I couldn’t
have been more proud.
For her christening, she had a real lace and hand-embroidered baby dress
fastened with diamond-and-gold pins, special hand-made booties, and a
tiny jeweled necklace with a diamond locket. The outfit cost over
fifteen thousand dollars. Mama could not have been more elated when she
saw the baby finally dressed and the name of Elizabeth Bonduel Lillie
pronounced over her.
“Papa would have been so pleased to see you happy and settled down,” she
murmured several times.
For ten years this happiness lasted. There were minor heartaches along
the stretch of that decade and some of these might have been major
catastrophes if we had allowed ourselves to dwell on them. But we
didn’t. Tabor’s investments spread like a network, everywhere, and the
Matchless mine in Leadville continued to pour out its treasure of ore,
often running as high as $80,000 a month. We had everything that money
could buy.
But what I learned with hidden sadness in these years is that money
doesn’t buy everything. Tabor poured untold sums into the coffers of the
Republican party in Colorado for which he never got the least
consideration. He wanted the gubernatorial nomination. But consistently
during the ’80s, they took his money and denied him any recognition.
During this period two private sorrows came to me. One of them disturbed
and vexed me for years. The other was a swift and desperate grief. The
first unhappiness was because I made no real friends and had received no
invitations in Denver. Through Tabor’s prominence in Denver and
Leadville, I met and entertained many men interested in politics. The
famous beauties, Lily Langtry and Lillian Russell, and other well-known
figures of the nineteenth century stage such as Sara Bernhardt, Mme.
Modjeska, John Drew, Augustin Daly, William Gillette, Edwin Booth, and
Otis Skinner frequently played at the Tabor Opera House, and Tabor and I
would entertain them at champagne suppers after their performances. They
always seemed to like me and would ask to see me on our fairly frequent
visits to New York. The excitement of these friendships, knowing the
great artists of my day, proved a great compensation for my early
ambition to go on the stage. But the society women of Denver remained
steadfastly aloof.
The other sorrow was the loss of my baby son. He was born October 17,
1888, and lived only a few hours. I suppose every mother wants a boy,
and this new chastisement from God made my life almost unbearable. I had
no real place in life except as a good wife and mother and I wanted for
Tabor’s sake to be able to fulfill this place to my very best. Augusta
had borne him a son and I wanted to, too. I cried silently in the nights
about his death, longing for another boy.
But this was not to be. On December 17, 1889, I had another daughter,
Rose Mary Echo Silver Dollar Tabor, whom I nicknamed “Honeymaid.” But
most of her friends as she grew up called her Silver. Lillie, the first
little girl, was blonde like myself, but Silver was dark like Tabor, and
very lovely in appearance.
By the time she was born, many of Tabor’s mines had fallen off in
output, but the Matchless was still bearing up. Some of Tabor’s other
investments had not turned out as we thought, although we were still
hopeful and felt it was just a question of time. We continued to live on
the same lavish scale; Tabor mortgaged the Tabor Block and the Opera
House until some of the other mines he had bought should begin to pay.
Silver had nearly as gorgeous clothes and toys and ponies as Lillie did.
But this was not to be for long. However, at that time we had no inkling
of what the future held for us. Tabor made frequent business trips East
and to his mining properties. Mostly I went with him but sometimes I
stayed with the children. His holdings were enormous and he was
expanding in many directions that required his personal attention. He
bought a yacht in New York City with the idea that when the children
were older we would cruise down to Honduras to see his mahogany forests.
Peter McCourt, my bachelor brother, meanwhile was fast making himself a
secure place in Denver both in the social world and in financial
circles. Since everything he had was due to me, it was particularly
galling that he should be asked everywhere that I was barred.
One night he was entertaining a group of his friends at poker in our
house. Will Macon, Jack Moseby, Will Townsend, John Kerr and John Good,
all from good families, were there. After the game was over he planned
to serve them an elaborate champagne supper which our servants were in
the habit of preparing whenever Tabor and I entertained.
I was upstairs alone. Tabor was away on one of his business trips. I got
to brooding about how unfair everyone in Denver had been both to him and
me. They had punished him politically for nothing else than that he had
fallen in love with another woman, and they had cruelly ignored me,
making me suffer over and over again for having given myself to the man
I loved before we were married. No one gave me credit for being a tender
mother and faithful wife. They merely stared at me with their noses in
the air.
But stare, they did. When I would attend the theatre and sit in Box A
(which Tabor had had re-upholstered in white satin), they would raise
their opera glasses or lorgnettes to study every detail of my costume.
Then they would go away and have their own cheap dressmakers copy my
designs. My clothes and hats were good enough to imitate, but I was not
good enough to be received!
The more I thought about this, the more furious I grew. I jumped to my
feet and began to pace up and down the floor.
“It’s all so unjust,” I thought to myself. “The very mothers and sisters
of those bachelors downstairs are making me pay today for something I
did long ago. I didn’t hurt Augusta—why should they hurt me?”
As I paced, my temper mounted. Finally, in a burst of rage, I ran down
the large oak stairs and into the dining room where the young men were
seated at table, laughing and talking. I stamped my foot.
“If I’m not good enough for your mothers and sisters to call on, how can
my food be good enough for you to eat?” I demanded at the top of my
voice. My hands trembled with the fury their easy-going faces aroused in
my breast.
Pete looked up at me, startled at my behavior. It was hardly news, my
not being accepted. The situation had gone on for years. The expression
on his face only infuriated me further. I stamped my foot again.
“Go on and get out!” I shrieked. “If your women haven’t got enough
manners to call on me, I don’t want you around here eating my food and
drinking my wine.”
The boys had risen at my sudden entrance. Now, embarrassed by my attack,
they began to put down the morsels of food they still had in their
hands. With heads down, they began shuffling from the room.
“Well, good night, Pete,” they mumbled.
After the door had closed on their unceremonious departure, Pete turned
on me:
“What do you mean by saying I could have my friends over and then
causing a scene like this. Do you want to disgrace me?”
“Disgrace you! Everything you have in the world is due to Tabor and me.
If you had any gratitude, you’d have your friends invite me to their
parties—not use me to further your own ends!”
This led to a violent argument and we did not speak for several days.
Eventually, Pete and I talked this all out and we made up our
differences. We were very close, as he was just two years younger than
I. But the day was to come, when we were to part forever. I never
forgave him for not helping Tabor in his hour of need. Of that, more
later.
I didn’t always lose my temper, however, over these slights. Sometimes I
maintained a real sense of humor. One day one of the coachmen came to me
and said:
“If you please, ma’am, the maid next door says that one of the reasons
the ladies don’t call is because of all those naked figures on the lawn.
They think they’re indecent.”
I thanked him with a twinkle in my eye.
“How absolutely silly!” I thought.
The figures that stood on our lawn were the very finest masterpieces
cast by the same Parisian bronze foundry that cast the sculpture of
Rodin. They had been especially ordered and shipped from Europe. There
were two sweet little deer that stood by the carriage entrance in front,
and in the corners by the shrubs were Psyche, Nimrod, and Diana, of
Grecian gracefulness. Perhaps these figures were somewhat advanced for a
town that had been a frontier only a few years before, but they
certainly weren’t indecent.
I sent the coachman down to fetch the costumer and when he arrived, I
commanded:
“Now make me clothes exactly to fit these figures. I want Nimrod with
red hunting hoots and a derby hat. I want Diana in flowing chiffon and
panties underneath, and I want Psyche in stiff satin.”
He surveyed me as if I were crazy.
“The maid next door says her mistress can’t stand these naked
figures—they shock her,” I explained. “These clothes are for the
neighbor’s benefit, not mine.”
The costumer did as he was bid and in a couple of weeks, my statues were
all fitted out to the Queen’s taste—Queen Victoria’s. But underneath the
banter of my attitude and the humor of my little stunt, there was a
heart that was sore. My husband couldn’t rise as he should and my
children were excluded from the normal place they should hold, because I
and my former actions were frowned on. Any wife and mother must know how
deeply worried I was behind my pertness and bravery.
Yet suddenly all this didn’t matter. Real tragedy fell on us. The year
1893 arrived and with it the silver panic. Almost overnight, we who had
been the richest people in Colorado were the poorest. It seems
incredible that it should have all happened so quickly, but with one
stroke of President Cleveland’s pen, establishing the demonetization of
silver, all of our mines, and particularly the Matchless, were
worthless.
Tabor’s other holdings which had sounded so spectacular and so promising
on paper, turned out, many of them, to be literally paper. He had been
duped or cheated by associates and friends for years without either of
us realizing it. Some of his real estate was already mortgaged, and,
when the blow first fell, he mortgaged the rest. Afterward we learned
what a mistake that was. We should have learned to economize
immediately.
But none of the mining men believed the hard times would last. Ten
Denver banks failed in three days during July and our cash went when
they crashed. Gradually, with no money coming in, we could not meet
payments on the mortgages. The banks wouldn’t loan us any more money and
our property began to fall on the foreclosure block.
“Take my jewels and sell them, Tabor,” I volunteered.
“No, the day will come when you’ll wear them again. I’ll make another
fortune. That gold mine I bought near Ward and never developed will help
us out. The world wants gold now—not silver.”
Before the house was taken from us, the Tabor Block in Denver and all
the Leadville properties fell. What wasn’t taken for mortgages, began to
go for unpaid taxes. When I had married Tabor, he had spent $10,000 a
day during his thirty-day stay in Washington because at that time his
income from the Matchless alone had been $80,000 a month. Yet just ten
years after, we were actually worried about our grocery bill.
I knew Tabor’s dearest possession, next to the Matchless mine, was the
Tabor Grand Opera House. When the mortgage owners gave notice of
foreclosure on that, I went personally to plead with young Horace
Bennett for an extension of time and leniency.
“We millionaires must all stick together,” I said.
He regarded me with cold blue eyes and replied:
“I am not a millionaire, Mrs. Tabor, and this is a business transaction.
I appreciate how you and Mr. Tabor have sentimental feelings about the
Opera House. But in that case, you shouldn’t have mortgaged it.”
I could not make him share my belief that Tabor would recoup everything.
In my innermost heart, I knew he would. But here was a new kind of man
in Colorado who did not look at life the way the first-comers did. Those
men were plungers, gay and generous. When they had money, they spent it
and when they didn’t, they had the bravery to start out on new ventures
and make other fortunes. When a friend was down, they loaned him more
than he needed and forgot the loan. That was Tabor. But not these
newcomers who were settling and growing prosperous in Colorado.
And even my own brother! I went to Pete to save the Opera House for
Tabor.
“I haven’t the money, and even if I had, you’d only mortgage it over
again for some silly extravagance,” he said.
I was furious. From that day until he died in 1929 I never forgave him.
When his will was read, he had left a quarter of a million dollars but
he only left me, who had made all his affluence possible, some worthless
carriage stock. He was the most bitter disappointment of my life.
There was one man who was an exception. He was W. S. Stratton of
Colorado Springs who made many millions in the Independence mine in
Cripple Creek. When he heard of Tabor’s plight, he wrote him a check for
$15,000 to use in developing his Eclipse mine in Boulder County.
“There’s a true friend,” Tabor remarked with touching humility. It wrung
me to the quick to see him act like this, pathetic and almost beaten.
When he had had money, and even in the days before I knew him and before
he became rich, his generosity and honesty had been proverbial. In
return, the world gave him only deceit and niggardliness—and a cold
shoulder. Many a night I wept with secret rage at the world as much as
sorrow for Tabor.
Once again I openly lost my temper. Workmen came to our house to turn
off the lights and water because of unpaid bills. Tabor protested
against this humiliation but without success. Finally he turned back
into the house saying:
“Well, tell your bosses how I feel about it.”
Gathering up my skirts, I flew into the yard like a wildcat.
“The idea of your doing this to Tabor! The man who gave Denver its
beautiful Opera House! The man who has done much more for this town than
ever it deserved. He’s invested large sums in your very own business and
helped most of your own officers to political positions. Why, this is an
outrage!”
“Orders is orders,” they replied belligerently, and went on with their
work.
“Well, just wait until Congress changes that ridiculous law about silver
and the Matchless is running again! Then you’ll be sorry you acted like
this.”
I had lived all my grown-up life with miners. I could not believe, even
if the rich vein of our fortune had thinned, that the pay ore would not
widen again a little further on. I had implicit faith in my husband and
his judgment. I have always had implicit faith in the Matchless. But
sometimes it has been hard to make others understand.
When I had no visible effect on these men, I turned to Tabor and said:
“Well, lets make a game of it.”
So we giggled while we carried lighted candles from room to room of the
great house, and toted our drinking water from a barrel—water hauled to
the house from the Old Courthouse pump. Somehow I kept our spirits up.
Whenever Tabor was around, it was a game—I insisted on it for his
benefit. But soon the illusion was gone. No game was possible when the
Eclipse mine proved worthless.