MEETING “T. R.”Baby Doe’s happiest moment about Silver was this one, recorded on August 29, 1910, when the ex-president Roosevelt was visiting in Denver and received a song about his former visit with lyrics signed by Silver Echo Tabor, age 20, a pretty brunette.
MEETING “T. R.”Baby Doe’s happiest moment about Silver was this one, recorded on August 29, 1910, when the ex-president Roosevelt was visiting in Denver and received a song about his former visit with lyrics signed by Silver Echo Tabor, age 20, a pretty brunette.
MEETING “T. R.”
Baby Doe’s happiest moment about Silver was this one, recorded on August 29, 1910, when the ex-president Roosevelt was visiting in Denver and received a song about his former visit with lyrics signed by Silver Echo Tabor, age 20, a pretty brunette.
THE PROPHETIC CURTAIN AND ITS FATAL WORDSThe Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” But the people of Denver, attending performances in the Tabor Theatre, looked at the curtain and quoted Kingsley’s sad couplet:“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
THE PROPHETIC CURTAIN AND ITS FATAL WORDSThe Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” But the people of Denver, attending performances in the Tabor Theatre, looked at the curtain and quoted Kingsley’s sad couplet:“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
THE PROPHETIC CURTAIN AND ITS FATAL WORDS
The Tabors lived opulently and showily right up to the moment of the Silver Panic in 1893 when their fortune came tumbling down. In the same year, 1895, that Augusta died a wealthy woman in California, they were bankrupt. Tabor became a day laborer and Baby Doe did the hardest sort of manual work. Finally Tabor was appointed postmaster of Denver. The Tabors and their two little girls moved into two rooms at the Windsor and here they lived until Tabor’s death in 1899. His dying words to Baby Doe were, “Hang on to the Matchless. It will make millions again.” But the people of Denver, attending performances in the Tabor Theatre, looked at the curtain and quoted Kingsley’s sad couplet:
“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
“So fleet the works of men, back to the earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
THE MATCHLESS MINE BECAME BABY DOE’S HOMEFor nearly thirty-six years after Tabor’s death, Baby Doe followed her husband’s injunction. Between leases, and sometimes during leases, she lived in a small tool cabin beside the shaft and the hoist house. At the time of the author’s visit, in 1927, the mine looked as above. This shot is taken looking west, in the direction of Leadville, and a spur of Fryer Hill is blocking a view of the continental divide. Baby Doe furnished the cabin (at the left) with plain furniture and subsisted on cheap edibles. But the cabin was always extremely neat and her coal and wood in tidy piles. Below is one of the last pictures taken of her, October 6, 1933, and shows her characteristic clothing. In winter, she wrapped her feet in burlap.
THE MATCHLESS MINE BECAME BABY DOE’S HOMEFor nearly thirty-six years after Tabor’s death, Baby Doe followed her husband’s injunction. Between leases, and sometimes during leases, she lived in a small tool cabin beside the shaft and the hoist house. At the time of the author’s visit, in 1927, the mine looked as above. This shot is taken looking west, in the direction of Leadville, and a spur of Fryer Hill is blocking a view of the continental divide. Baby Doe furnished the cabin (at the left) with plain furniture and subsisted on cheap edibles. But the cabin was always extremely neat and her coal and wood in tidy piles. Below is one of the last pictures taken of her, October 6, 1933, and shows her characteristic clothing. In winter, she wrapped her feet in burlap.
THE MATCHLESS MINE BECAME BABY DOE’S HOME
For nearly thirty-six years after Tabor’s death, Baby Doe followed her husband’s injunction. Between leases, and sometimes during leases, she lived in a small tool cabin beside the shaft and the hoist house. At the time of the author’s visit, in 1927, the mine looked as above. This shot is taken looking west, in the direction of Leadville, and a spur of Fryer Hill is blocking a view of the continental divide. Baby Doe furnished the cabin (at the left) with plain furniture and subsisted on cheap edibles. But the cabin was always extremely neat and her coal and wood in tidy piles. Below is one of the last pictures taken of her, October 6, 1933, and shows her characteristic clothing. In winter, she wrapped her feet in burlap.
Baby Doe at the Matchless Mine.
FORTUNE HUNTERSAfter Baby Doe’s body was found frozen, March 7, 1935, vandals entered her cabin, ransacked her belongings, ripping up the mattress and overturning everything, while they tried to find a fortune they imagined she had hidden. But all the effects, that had been preserved from her glorious days, were with the nuns or in Denver warehouses. Baby Doe, herself, was neat and tidy.
FORTUNE HUNTERSAfter Baby Doe’s body was found frozen, March 7, 1935, vandals entered her cabin, ransacked her belongings, ripping up the mattress and overturning everything, while they tried to find a fortune they imagined she had hidden. But all the effects, that had been preserved from her glorious days, were with the nuns or in Denver warehouses. Baby Doe, herself, was neat and tidy.
FORTUNE HUNTERS
After Baby Doe’s body was found frozen, March 7, 1935, vandals entered her cabin, ransacked her belongings, ripping up the mattress and overturning everything, while they tried to find a fortune they imagined she had hidden. But all the effects, that had been preserved from her glorious days, were with the nuns or in Denver warehouses. Baby Doe, herself, was neat and tidy.
JACOB SANDS’ HOUSE IN ASPENBaby Doe’s friend bought a cottage at Hunter and Hopkins in 1889 and later he rented this house on Main Street. Both his residences still stand and are the delight of the tourists. In 1898, he and his wife and their children moved to Leadville, then Arizona, and are now lost to history.
JACOB SANDS’ HOUSE IN ASPENBaby Doe’s friend bought a cottage at Hunter and Hopkins in 1889 and later he rented this house on Main Street. Both his residences still stand and are the delight of the tourists. In 1898, he and his wife and their children moved to Leadville, then Arizona, and are now lost to history.
JACOB SANDS’ HOUSE IN ASPEN
Baby Doe’s friend bought a cottage at Hunter and Hopkins in 1889 and later he rented this house on Main Street. Both his residences still stand and are the delight of the tourists. In 1898, he and his wife and their children moved to Leadville, then Arizona, and are now lost to history.
THE ETERNAL SNOWS VIEWED FROM FRYER HILLWhen Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial restoration in 1953.
THE ETERNAL SNOWS VIEWED FROM FRYER HILLWhen Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial restoration in 1953.
THE ETERNAL SNOWS VIEWED FROM FRYER HILL
When Baby Doe walked to town by the road that led into Leadville’s Eighth Street, this was the view that faced her across the Arkansas Valley. The mountains are miles away but seem close in the rarified atmosphere. They are Elbert (Colorado’s highest) to the left and Massive to the right. Below is the Matchless Mine after its partial restoration in 1953.
The Matchless Mine.
Now, in the shadow of the Continental Divide, this man, this Croesus, had become my lover. I just knew those gorgeous mountains would answer my prayer that first morning I saw them!
Meanwhile, Mrs. Tabor and Horace were entertaining society in their fine house in Denver and I only saw him on his visits to Leadville. But these visits were frequent, because that was the year of the fires in the Chrysolite mine and the strike that finally turned out all the miners of the district. Leadville was bedlam in June. Knots of men were loitering around everywhere, or preventing other miners from entering town, and the whole temper of the streets very ugly. Strikers and mine-owners both grew increasingly obstinate.
The strikers were most virulently angry against Tabor. Everyone went armed and the tenseness of the situation seemed about to destroy my new-found happiness. The miners said Tabor had been one of them just a short time ago, and it was their vote that had put him in political power. Now he had forgotten.
“Dirty B——, to turn on us,” I overheard many of the men in the street muttering.
Something had to be done. Tabor was one of the property owners to organize a Committee of Safety. They met with dramatic secrecy in Tabor’s private rooms in the Opera House, and after drawing up an agreement similar to that of the Vigilance Committee of early San Francisco, elected C. C. Davis, the editor of theChronicle, their leader. Mr. Davis first sounded out Governor Pitkin on declaring martial law, but he said to call on him only as a last resort.
Feeling climbed to a higher pitch. Seven committees of local militia were organized and tempers were now reaching the boiling point. One day on Harrison Avenue for a distance of eight blocks, eight thousand striking miners menacingly swaggered back and forth and a like number of citizens of opposite sympathies paraded with determination as grim as theirs. The street was jammed. As I looked down, worried and fearful, from the window of my suite, it seemed as if at any moment, a local war would break out and the whole camp be destroyed by flames and bloodshed.
The leading men of the town took this moment to read a proclamation to the miners. Tabor, Davis and a number of others stepped out on the balcony of the Tabor Opera House. I hurried into the street to watch the proceedings, my heart beating wildly with fear. The seething mass of humanity below these men were all armed and they were mostly good shots. Tabor standing up so tall and dark and fierce on the balcony would make an excellent target.
“Oh, dear God,” I prayed. “Don’t let anything happen!”
I hardly realized I was praying at the time. But Davis demanded menacingly that the strike be called off. He told the miners to return to work, then said that if they would not accede, the citizens would protect the owners.He said they would bring in other workers to take their jobs. My fear was so great that I could actually hear my lips mumbling incoherent, beseeching words.
A shot rang out!
The sharp noise seemed to rend my heart in two. I hardly dared take my eyes from the balcony to glance around for fear of missing a falling figure among that intrepid group. But Tabor and his friends were straight and unconcerned. Their belief in law and order made them brave. The cut-throat mob must have sensed that. No figure fell from their midst. Whatever the shot was, it had not been fired at them. I sighed with relief.
Colonel Bohn of the Committee of Safety was trying to urge a horse he was mounted on through the mob, and was brandishing a drawn sword to emphasize his right. It was a very foolish thing to do at a time like that.
“Somebody must be trying to shoot the old fool,” the teamster next to me in the crowd remarked.
“Maybe a signal for the miners to start firing,” the man with him offered as a counter-suggestion.
I was terrified—not for myself—but because of Tabor’s exposed position. My hands flew to my throat.
“Oh, don’t say that!” I almost screamed.
The teamster turned around and stared at me.
“You’re all right—they won’t shoot you. It’s them damned slave-driving millionaires they’re after.”
And Tabor was the one they were after most! But nothing happened. A policeman pulled Colonel Bohn off his horse and rushed him to the jail “for disturbing the peace,” although it was more likely for safe-keeping. Finally, both sides of the fray began to split up in little groups, then to disperse and go home. The immediate danger was over. But I knew now what it was like to be in love with a prominent man in an important political office. It meant helpless fear of an assassin’s bullet. And fear was a new emotion to me—that’s where love had brought me. I shuddered and turned inward to the Clarendon.
Martial law was declared some hours later and slowly the miners went back to work, having lost their cause. There was covert grumbling in the saloons and on the streets for some time, but at last, life got back to normal, and the regular hum of the pumps at all the mines around filled the night again.
That July, ex-President Grant came to Leadville for a ten-day visit in and about the mining country. He came as Tabor’s guest and Tabor, as lieutenant-governor, headed a committee sent down to meet the general’s private car. It was coming on the D.&R.G. tracks from Manitou where the great man and his wife had been taking the waters. The committee accompanied the presidential party into camp over a road lighted the last miles with enormous bonfires. I was very thrilled at the idea of the President actually being in my hotel. After he had toured the mines and smelters and addressed discharged soldiers from the Civil War, a banquet was given him at the Clarendon on the last of his three days in the town proper.
The luxuriousness of the scene was impressive. TheLeadville Chroniclewas printed on white satin to give to the President at the banquet as a souvenir of his visit. The gift made such a tremendous impression on him that whenhe died, he willed it to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington where it may still be seen.
Tabor, rather bewildered and shame-faced, came to me afterward in our suite and said:
“Darling, I know the President wanted to meet you more than anyone else in Leadville. I saw him look at you several times—you are always the most beautiful woman in any gathering. But you know this mining camp and how it talks. We must be discreet.”
“Yes, I understand perfectly,”—and I leaned over and kissed his forehead. He had thrown himself down rather disconsolately in a big overstuffed chair, and now he gathered me into his lap. We were locked in each other’s embrace for some minutes. We were happy just to be together.
When our relationship first began, I’m sure I was the most in love. But all through the summer, Tabor had begun to talk to me more and more seriously. Though he talked mostly about mining matters and about his political ambitions, he spoke finally about Augusta and me. It was an enormous experience, touching me to the soul, to watch the unfolding of the love and trust of the man I adored.
At first, I had been hardly more than a pretty toy of which he was very fond. He would lavish all sorts of costly presents on me—jewelry, clothes, and that rarest and most extravagant tribute in a mining camp at 10,000 feet altitude, flowers.
I remember one day he sent up a woman who used to peddle hand-made underwear across the mountains from camp to camp. She carried her samples and some of her wares in a large bag she packed on her back. Tabor sent her up to my suite one day. Then when she had everything in the way of exquisite lace and embroidered chemises laid out over the chairs and bed, he joined us and bought me over $350 worth of her goods!
But now things were different, I didn’t hear so many stories about his other women. I could feel his love for me growing with the appreciation he had for my character.
“You’re always so gay and laughing, Baby,” he would say, “and yet you’re so brave. Augusta is a damned brave woman, too, but she’s powerful disagreeable about it.”
He would sit glum and discouraged for a while, and then add:
“And I can’t imagine a woman who doesn’t like pretty things! I’ve tried to buy her all sorts of clothes and jewelry since we’ve had the money. But she just throws them back in my face and asks me if I’ve lost my mind.”
You can hear it said and you can read it in books that I broke up Governor Tabor’s home, and that he broke up mine. But that is far from the truth. Both of our marriages had failed before we ever met.
Augusta Tabor had no capacity for anything but strenuous work and very plain living. When they moved into their palatial new home, she wouldn’t live upstairs in the master’s bedroom but moved down in the servants’ quarters off the kitchen. She said they were plenty good enough for her—and how could she cook all that way away from the stove? She also insisted on keeping acow tethered on the front lawn and milking it, herself. Tabor was very humiliated by these actions. As lieutenant-governor of the state, he was very anxious to live in a style befitting his station. Also, he hoped to be senator.
But Augusta Tabor laughed at his ideas in a very mean way. Tabor had a really sweet disposition. He would come to me often to tell me of some upsetting incident, with a dreadfully hurt look in his eye. Another trait of Tabor’s that irritated Augusta tremendously was his generosity. Anybody could touch Tabor for sizable loans with no trouble at all. He was delighted to help people less fortunate than he.
He had always been like that, and he was to the day he died. When he was Leadville’s first postmaster, he made up out of his own pocket the salaries of some five employees just so that Leadville could have more efficient service. He gave money to every church in Leadville for their building fund regardless of the denomination. He gave money for the Tabor Grand Hotel in Leadville (now the Vendome) in 1884, even after he moved away. He was the same lovable donor when he moved to Denver.
He sold the land at the corner of Sixteenth and Arapahoe Streets to the city of Denver for a postoffice, at a bargain price, and he followed this gesture up with a hundred and one donations to private and public charities.
“Trying to buy your way to popularity,” Augusta would sniff disparagingly.
Tabor would wince under her barbs. He gave because he liked people. He was naturally friendly, and the only times he gave money, hoping for some definite return, were in political channels. All his other gifts were spontaneous. But Augusta did not understand this generosity and she didn’t like it. And what Augusta did not like, she could make exceedingly clear with her sharp tongue! He never was her husband after July, 1880.
Naturally, in these trying circumstances, Tabor turned more and more to me. Later, that fall, he suggested that he should re-furnish one of the suites at the Windsor and that I should move to Denver to be closer to him. Nothing could have thrilled or delighted me more.
“Oh, darling! I would adore to live at the Windsor,” I cried, throwing my arms around him.
The Windsor was the last word in elegance, with a sixty-foot mahogany bar, a ballroom with elaborate crystal chandeliers, and floor of parquetry, and a lobby furnished in thick red carpet and diamond-dust-backed mirrors. It was much more impressive than the old American House, which had thrilled my girlish heart when I had first come to Colorado. Here was my dream slowly unfolding before me, almost exactly as I had first visualized it—to be a queen in the cosmopolitan circles of Denver!
Later we departed for Denver separately. I took the Rio Grande and wore a heavy veil. He took the stagecoach over to South Park and then went on the rival narrow gauge in David Moffat’s private car. But our reunion at the Windsor was all the more delightful because of our enforced separation. After Augusta’s comments on the Leadville strike, Tabor never spent an evening up on Broadway, but came to me more and more often.
“You’re a vulgar boor—I’ve always known that,” she had said, “but atleast I thought you had enough sense not to call a common lynching gang a Committee of Safety for Law and Order. And getting mixed up with that silly egotistic rooster, Davis, who used a six-shooter for a gavel! And forcing Governor Pitkin to declare martial law. Mark you my words, you’ve lost all the political popularity you’ve been so busy buying by your recent actions.”
Tabor was very hurt at this, the more so because there seemed to be an element of truth in her words. The attitude toward him in Leadville had changed and Tabor really loved that mining camp—it was always “home” to him, much more than Denver. And in later years, I felt the same way, although just then I was eager to conquer fresh fields.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m sure she’s wrong—and besides what do you care about that ugly old mining camp? You’re a big man going to do the biggest things for the nation. And what if Governor Pitkin doesn’t like you? Probably next election, you’ll be governor, yourself!”
Meanwhile, Tabor busied himself with plans for building another opera house, The Tabor Grand, in Denver. He called in his architects, W. J. Edbrooke and F. P. Burnham (who had designed the Tabor Block) and stuffed their pockets with $1,000 notes.
“Go to Europe and study the theatres of London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Pick up any good ideas they’ve got laying around and improve on them. I want only the best!”
Besides the architects, Tabor sent other agents on various missions. He detailed one man to go to Brussels for carpets, another to France for brocades and tapestries, a third to Japan for the best cherry wood to make the interior woodwork, a fourth to Honduras for mahogany for other trimming. A dozen contracts were drawn up in New York and Chicago for furnishings and fripperies. The building would be the most expensive west of the Mississippi.
About this time, Tabor went back to Leadville on a spree that Bill Bush was careful to tell me about. Bill had begun to feel jealous of my influence with Tabor although we were still outwardly very good friends. He wanted to make me jealous, in turn.
Tabor borrowed Dave Moffat’s private car and went to Leadville for a ball that the fast women and sports of the town were giving in the Wigwam. He told me and, undoubtedly, Augusta, that he had to go up to Leadville on some mining business and would probably be gone several days.
The ball turned out to be an orgy. Everyone drank too much and Tabor was supposed to have stumbled about with a girl in a gaudy spangled gown which, a few days before the ball, had been on display in the window of the Daniels, Fisher and Smith Dry Goods Emporium on Harrison Avenue, Leadville, bearing a tag marked $500. Bill Bush tried to insinuate that Tabor had bought it as a gift to another one of his loves.
“And why shouldn’t he, Bill?” I asked. “I love the man as he is. You forget I’m not Augusta. If he wants to have a good time among his friends, I think that’s fine. He knew all of them a long time before he knew me.”
But Bill wouldn’t believe I was sincere. He replied:
“Well, you’re a good actress!”
Then he added some more juicy details. After the ball, those who couldstill walk trooped over to the Odeon Variety Theatre where a new show started at 3 a.m. Tabor had sat in a box smoking cigars and drinking champagne. Every time he thought a girl was especially attractive, he would throw a shower of gold and silver coins over her head. At the intermission he had invited the actresses into his box and put his arms about their neat waists.
After the show ended at five o’clock, he went to the Saddle Rock Cafe, our favorite restaurant, for breakfast. Then he went back to the Clarendon, finally, to sleep. He slept all the next day. In the evening he asked three or four successful mining men to accompany him back to Denver in the private car. Having slept all day, he sat up all night as the train climbed over Kenosha Pass, playing poker, using twenty-dollar gold pieces as chips.
“And why shouldn’t he? I like a gambling man—someone who isn’t afraid to take chances—that was one of the worst faults of Harvey Doe.”
Bill Bush shrugged his shoulders. Presently he laughed off the whole conversation with:
“You’re a clever girl, Baby—shrewd as they come! But talking about your late and not too much lamented husband, where is he and what’s the state of your divorce? The Governor wants me to find out.”
“I don’t know where Harvey is but my divorce is final—I got it a year ago and I am a completely free agent.”
The year was now 1881. All that spring and summer, Tabor and I were immersed in the planning and erection of the great building that was to be a monument to the Tabor name for all time. Tabor had left home unequivocally in January, but as he was on so many frequent trips to New York, Chicago or Leadville, where he stayed was really not noticed until that autumn.
At the festive opening night of the Tabor Grand Opera House, with Emma Abbott singing Lucia, Box A of the six fashion boxes was conspicuously empty. That was the box Tabor had reserved for himself and family. It was wreathed in flowers and a huge pendant of roses hung above it. He was on the stage or in the wings waiting for the ceremony of dedication. Augusta, alone of all elaborately gowned Denver society, did not put in an appearance. I could hear whispers all around.
“Look, Mrs. Tabor isn’t here! Probably she’s found out about that blonde! Wonder if the little hussy’s had the nerve to come....”
I was there, but veiled and sitting in an inconspicuous seat in the 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 Taborin his capacity as an editor of theDenver Tribune, printed a complimentary quatrain:
“The opera house—a union grandOf capital and labor,Long will the stately structure standA monument to Tabor.”
“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.”
“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.Youare 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, feelingwe 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 arespectable 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 withextraordinary 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.”
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 thathere 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 ofAugusta’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 JerseyStatesmanhad 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.
The second house that Tabor bought was one of the most pretentious on 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 upholsteredin 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 bribespaid 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 bitternessand 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 TABORJuly 131884
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 Leadvillecontinued 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 YorkCity 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: