During that entire weekend, I wandered about Denver in a daze, telling my rosary in first one church and then another. About my neck, instead of beads, I always wore a long black shoelace knotted intermittently to form beads and holding a large plain wooden cross. Friends gave me other rosaries but I clung to my improvised string.
In some ways, my plain bedraggled habit, my make-shift rosary, my legs strapped in gunny sack and twine and my grey shawl over the black dress seemed only a just penance for the clothing extravagances and sins of my youth. I did not like to explain my attitude to most people—although I sometimes mentioned my feeling to friends or Fathers who were truly devout Catholics—but this thought gave me the courage to forget how I looked. Those rags were a chosen punishment for former vanity.
“Dear God, help me to save the Matchless,” I prayed on my shoestring over and over again all day that Sunday. Suddenly as I knelt in St. Elizabeth’s an inspiration came to me bathed in a white light. Gathering up my full skirt, I hurried from the church and headed toward the corner of Ninth and Pennsylvania Sts. and the home of J. K. Mullen. He was a millionaire miller and a liberal donor to many Catholic charities.
Outside in the night air it had begun to snow but I plodded on resolutely. By the time I had reached his dignified old mansion, it was past nine o’clock and I was afraid I should find no one home. But summoning a show of boldness, I rang the doorbell.
For a long time, there was no answer. I was cold and nervous, apart from my anxiety about the mine. I shifted my weight from one foot to another trying to make up my mind to ring again. At last I was sure enough to press the button. This time, after a short wait, the door slowly opened and revealed Mr. Mullen, himself.
“Good evening,” I said pleasantly. “I’m Mrs. Tabor and I wondered if I might see you, although”—and laughed with that same musical laugh that had charmed so many illustrious men in its day—“it’s a rather odd time for a call.”
“Why, certainly, Mrs. Tabor, do come in. I’m all alone. And being Sunday night, the servants are all out—had to answer the door, myself.”
He led me into a gloomy spacious room lit only by one reading lamp and by the flames from the fireplace.
“It’s a pretty bad night for you to be out,” he remarked.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to the Leadville blizzards I face all the time up at the mine. I’m used to a hard life.”
“Well, you have a lot of courage.”
“I need it—and it’s taking a lot of courage to come here—but I’m depending on my cross,”—and I clasped it more tightly in my hand.
“What do you mean?”
Hesitantly I began to unfold my story to him. When I spoke of my loneliness and having only this one trust to live for, he remarked:
“Yes, I’m going through the same thing. You know, don’t you, that Mrs. Mullen died last March? My daughters are all married and now I have nobody who really needs me.”
“Oh, I’m deeply sorry.”
We sat silent for some minutes, watching the fire and lost to our own thoughts. Finally Mr. Mullen urged me to go on. When I had finished my plea, he suddenly exclaimed:
“I will redeem that mortgage!”
Striding over to his desk, he sat down and wrote a check for $14,000 with the same impulsive generosity as W. S. Stratton had written his for $15,000 to Tabor in 1895.
“Oh, Mr. Mullen,” I cried. “You are an angel!”
“Your story appealed to me, Mrs. Tabor, appealed to me very strongly. I think you deserve to keep the management of the Matchless.”
My life and my mission were saved by a message straight from God!
Following up this action, in 1928, the J. K. Mullen estate created the Shorego Mining Co. and technically foreclosed the Matchless. But their action was to prevent other depredations and to preserve me from unfortunate business dealings. The Matchless has been really mine.
With the coming of the depression, gradually the owners and lessees abandoned the mines on Fryer Hill and the Matchless among them. Immediately after the pumps were stopped, the mines began to fill with water. Since many of the drifts are interlocking, today, in order to work the Matchless, not only its own shafts and drifts would have to be pumped dry but almost all of Fryer Hill, too. It has been a discouraging time, disappointments mounting one upon another.
I have had no income. Yet with my pride, I have never accepted charity. Where the least aspect of condescension could be imagined, I have returned gifts and refused offers of aid. But when I have been sure that people were genuinely friendly or would not speak about their generosity, I have let them help me, I have also received many donations through fan mail of late years—bills for $5, or $10 or even larger. These have come because of renewed interest in the Tabor name brought about by newspaper stories or by the book and movie, “Silver Dollar.”
I read the book.
“It’s all a pack of lies,” I told anyone who asked me about it. But the story as a whole was more nearly right than I would care to admit especially considering its sneering tone. Of course, there are many inaccuracies like referring to Tabor as “Haw” (which no one ever called him in real life) and some straight geographical and historical untruths, such as having the Arkansas flow in Clear Creek Valley and talking of Central City as a collection of shanties when it is all brick or stone. The author was most unkind to me and talked about my guarding the mine with a shotgun, when in actuality I have never owned a shotgun that worked. It is true that I do not like strangers and I have several ways ofdealing with them. If someone knocks, I peek out the corner of the window (which was once shaded by coarse lace, then burlap and finally newspapers), lifting just a tiny flap so as to show only one eye. If they see me and recognize me, I say I’m taking a bath—and I have been known to give that same answer all day long to a series of callers!
Sometimes I alter my voice and say, “Mrs. Tabor is downtown—I am the night watchman,” (as I did when Sue Bonnie was making her first efforts to meet me) and sometimes I just sit as quiet as a mossy stone, pretending the cabin is uninhabited.
Nevertheless, the author of “Silver Dollar” did me a real service in bringing me many unseen friends and correspondents all across the United States. Carloads of people flock up Little Stray Horse Gulch each summer, seeking a glimpse of me, so many cars that I have renamed that road My Boulevard!
But I never speak to them or admit them to my cabin except, occasionally, when they come properly escorted by a Leadville friend. And when I go to town, I frequent the alleys as much as possible, my figure dressed in my long, black skirt and coat, my legs shrouded in burlap and twine and my face hidden by the perennial auto-cap with its visor and draping veil. I, who used to vaunt my public appearances in the streets by the most elegant dresses, matched by gay floating-ruffled parasols and by my liveried brougham and team, now skulk along beside the garbage cans and refuse.
When the movie “Silver Dollar” had its premiere in Denver late in 1932, the management approached me with an offer of cash and my expenses to Denver to be present. “No, I will not go,” I replied firmly. “I can’t leave the mine.” (Actually I couldn’t bear to see myself and all that I hold dear maligned.)
“I don’t suppose you’d let us have some ore, then, from the Matchless? We want to have an historical exhibition in the foyer of everything we can get that relates to the Tabor mine.”
“Certainly,” I replied. “I’d be delighted. That’s quite different. Tabor was a great miner and the Matchless is Colorado’s most famous mine—naturally people will be interested.”
I, myself, escorted the men out on the dump and helped them pick up a gunny sack full of the richest bits of ore we could find. When they had filled their sack, I waved them pleasantly on their way.
“Don’t believe all you see,” I said. “I’m not half as bad as in the book.”
A couple of years later the motion picture came to Buena Vista and my friends, Joe Dewar and Lucille Frazier, asked me to motor down with them to see it. They were to keep our going a secret, I would wear a veil, dress differently than usual, and sit in the back of the theater so that no one would recognize me.
“That’s a date, then,” Joe said. “We’ll be up for you Thursday evening.”
But when Thursday arrived, I did not have the courage to go through with the plan. Here was I, a lonely, poverty-stricken old woman with only a sacred trust left to me out of all the world, a trust that most people spoke of as an ‘obsession’ or a ‘fixation.’ Yet now I must go to see what the world thought of me as a national beauty, a scandalous home-wrecker and a luxury-loving doll.I could not face it. If I had sinned, I had paid a sufficiently high price for my sins without deliberately giving myself further heartache. I sent down a message to the village that I could not go.
Meanwhile, shortly after the premiere of the movie in Denver, I saw Father Horgan approaching with two men. When anybody knocked at my cabin, I always peeked out of the window to see who was there before admitting them. As I raised the burlap curtain sewed in heavy stitches of twine and recognized him, I asked:
“Whom have you got with you?”
“Two lawyers from Denver who want to talk to you about signing a paper—a business matter.”
“Very well,” I said. “Since you brought them—you know I don’t like strangers. But I’ll see them for your sake.”
They entered and sat down in my humble quarters. I always kept the cabin very neat with a small shrine fastened to the far wall, my boxes, table and bed arranged around the room and the stove near the lean-to. It was December and very cold. They unfastened their coats and broached their offer by saying:
“How would you like to make $50,000?”
“You want to lease the Matchless?”
“No. We think your character has been damaged in the motion picture founded on your life and that you should sue for libel.”
“But I haven’t seen the movie—I can’t testify to that—”
“Well, we have. And legally you have a very strong case.”
So legally I had a very strong case? I knew something about litigation—my whole association with Tabor had been involved in law suits. Most of them, to be sure, were suits about mining claims but there was also the secret Durango divorce suit and the legal battle with Bill Bush. No good had ever come out of all that except fees to the lawyers—neither of us had gained anything in money or in reputation.
“But I do not need $50,000,” I replied. “The Matchless will soon make many times that sum. But thank you very much indeed for your kindness and interest.”
I turned to Father Horgan and introduced a discussion of religious matters with him. Shortly, however, the lawyers cut in again.
“But you could certainly use $50,000 extra. And all you have to do is put your name on this line.”
They held out a paper already drawn up with an agreement for them to go ahead and sue in my name.
“But I’m not interested in the law. I’m interested in mining. To enter into such a business with you, I would have to learn many new things and I’m only interested in the price of silver, in high-grade ores and such like matters.”
“You don’t have to learn anything. Leave it all to us. We’ll tend to everything.”
“God will look after me. I put my trust in Him—not in men.”
Each time they returned to the issue of obtaining my signature, I circumvented them in some such manner for I knew what that suit meant. It meant scandal. It meant the opposing side’s digging back in the past and finding the name of Jacob Sands. There was not enough money in the world to pay me for besmirching the Tabor name, rightly or wrongly. But I did not hint at my real reasons for refusing. I merely turned to Father Horgan and asked him about another religious topic.
At last they became discouraged and took their departure. When I had said good-bye and closed the door, I stealthily opened it again, just a crack curiously wondering if I could hear any of their conversation. I only caught one comment as they went over the hill. One of the lawyers was saying to Father Horgan:
“Well, either that woman is the craziest woman in Colorado—or else she’s the smartest!”
I closed the door and laughed merrily aloud.
“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “Well, I’m neither.”
I was an old woman, living on stale bread that I bought twelve loaves at a time and plate boil which I bought in dollar lots. Plate boil is a brisquet part of the beef, like suet, and very, very cheap, at the same time that it generates heat. Lucille Frazier once asked me how I could bear to live on such a diet.
“Oh, I find it delectable,” I answered, “really delectable.”
That statement was not entirely true. But my dainty palate that used to have champagne and oysters whenever it wanted, had changed so much with the hardships of life that it no longer craved delicacies. My tongue had lost its taste for many sweetmeats and actually found this meagre unappetizing fare satisfying—and certainly more satisfying than to accept charity!
The Zaitz grocery kept me during these depression years in the necessary groceries at a very cheap rate or on credit. In addition, their delivery boys would often give me a lift from town to the cabin, sometimes breaking a trail through the snow for me.
When I was sick, never anything more than a cold, I would doctor myself with turpentine and lard, my favorite remedy for any ailment. And so I managed. If I did not have enough coal or wood to heat the cabin, I would go to bed for warmth. My Leadville friends generally kept an eye out for me and helped me surreptitiously through the worst crises. In these last years, there are many more friends than I could name.
So I have lived on—‘existed on’ would be a more correct statement. I have been lonely, blue, often cold and starving in the winters, and beset by many torments. But I have been sustained by a great faith and a great love. I have lived with courage and a cheery smile for my friends. As I look out over the abandoned shaft-houses and dumps of the fabulous Fryer Hill ruins, over the partially deserted town of Leadville to the glorious beauty of Colorado’s highest mountains, I know that I have surely expiated my last sin and that I have fulfilled the trust my dear Tabor put in me when he said:
“Hang on to the Matchless.”
The last day anyone saw Mrs. Tabor alive was February 20, 1935. On that morning, she broke her way through deep snow around the Robert E. Lee mine which adjoined the Matchless on Fryer Hill, and walked the mile or more into the town of Leadville. Her old black dress was horribly torn and the twine and gunny sack wrappings on her feet were dripping wet because she had repeatedly fallen through the lowest snow crust into the melting freshets of running water beneath. The Zaitz delivery truck ran her home and let her out in Little Stray Horse Gulch beyond the abandoned railroad trestle (now gone), as close to the Matchless as it was possible to get. She walked off through the snow, carrying her bag of groceries and waving good-bye to the delivery boy, Elmer Kutzlub (now the owner of his own grocery store in Leadville).
Nothing more was known of her for two weeks although Sue Bonnie observed smoke issuing from her stack during some few days of that time. Then a fresh blizzard blew up, blotting out all vision for three days. When the storm cleared, Sue Bonnie, seeing from her own cabin on the outskirts of Leadville that Mrs. Tabor’s stack was smokeless, became worried. She tried to reach her friend through the heavy fall of new snow but was not strong enough to make it. Sue had to wait until she could obtain help from Tom French to break a trail.
When they reached the cabin, all was silence. They broke a window and forced an entry. Mrs. Tabor’s body, in the shape of a cross, was frozen stiff on the floor.
After the couple found Mrs. Tabor’s emaciated form and her death was broadcast to the world, fourteen trunks of her earlier belongings turned up in a Denver warehouse and in the basement of St. Vincent’s hospital in Leadville. But there was no other estate.
Burial posed a problem, both the question of place and the matter of expenses. But unsolicited donations poured into Leadville, sufficient to present a solution on both counts. The J. K. Mullen heirs, particularly the Oscar Malos, aided munificently. An interesting sidelight, during those days of indecision, was a bit of information given by Jim Corbett, the mortician, who said there were almost no grey hairs on her head. This corroborated Mrs. Tabor’s claim that the one element of beauty left to her toward the end was her hair; for that reason she always wore the horrid motoring cap to hide it, punishing herself for the past.
Some weeks later, Baby Doe’s body was shipped to Denver and buried in Mt. Olivet cemetery beside that of Horace Tabor who, in the meantime, had been moved from the now abandoned Calvary plot. At long last, after thirty-fiveyears vigil, peace and reunion with her adored Tabor had come to Baby Doe’s troubled soul.
And there, she rests today. On the edge of the plains where, a few miles beyond, the rampart of the Rockies bulks protectingly against the fair blue sky, little Lizzie McCourt of Oshkosh has found her final defense.
Despite the dazzling chapters and the story’s consistent flamboyance, hers is a tragic tale. Although she epitomized a roistering era and a swashbuckling way of life made possible by the mining frontier of Colorado, the granite gloom of those powerful mountains has forever lowered the curtain on her dramatic period and on the valiant, if mistaken, spirit of Baby Doe Tabor. In relegating both, and their final evaluation, to the pages of history, the lines inscribed on the stage drop of the Tabor Opera House recur, ever again, emphasizing their fatal prophecy:
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.
Twelve years ago the first edition of this booklet appeared—on June 26, 1950. Five thousand copies sold in four months, and a second edition appeared before the end of the year. Since that time the editions have consisted of ten thousand copies each. The original edition was in the nature of a real gamble. In my mind the Tabor story had already received more than adequate attention in three books and countless articles, not to mention many fictional treatments and one movie. My work seemed rather supernumerary.
But this booklet had two virtues. In the other histories Baby Doe had been given the brush-off; as a floosy, when young, and a freak, when old. The other authors gave their sympathy to Augusta, and their research was not too painstaking. My booklet was based on what reporters call “leg-work.” It was slow but it led me to an entirely different view of the second Mrs. Tabor and to a closer approximation of the probable truth. The general public liked my two contributions.
Among certain sectors, however, I was very much criticized for daring to defend Baby Doe and for writing fictional passages in this booklet for which I still have no proof. But oddly enough in some instances documentation later turned up for scenes that began as invention.
In 1956 the late John Latouche was chosen to write the libretto for an opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe. He read all available treatments of the Tabors but preferred this booklet (as he said in Theatre Arts magazine). His lyric telling of the story follows fairly closely the same line and found audiences across the United States and in Europe, where the opera has had a number of productions.
During the intervening years I have received fan mail from as far away as Yokohama, Japan, and Stuttgart, Germany, and the booklet continues to have wide appeal. It had been my intention to write a definitive large-size book on Baby Doe but I am not certain if there is sufficient interest for such a work. I should be glad to have the opinion of current readers.
Caroline Bancroft, 1962
(reprinted from the fourth, fifth and sixth editions)
Father F. M. McKeogh of St. Peter’s, Oshkosh, James E. Lundsted of the Oshkosh Public Museum, and J. E. Boell of the State Historical Society at Madison have supplied masses of Wisconsin data. Their courtesy and unusual interest in running down many obscure points in the last three years have amplified and verified my knowledge of the Doe and McCourt families. In Denver, The Western History Department of the Denver Public Library—Ina T. Aulls, Alys Freeze and Opal Harber—have suffered with me intermittently for the eighteen years that I have been working on the Tabor Story, lending aid and enlightenment. At the Colorado Historical Society, Agnes Wright Spring and Dolores Renze have been phenomenally generous and helpful.
Marian Castle, author of “The Golden Fury,” has made pertinent suggestions for clarifying captions and improving the general style.
Mrs. J. Alvin Fitzell has graciously read and re-read galley sheets in order to catch errors.
Fred Mazzulla, collector of Western Americana, has been a beaver of industry and ingenuity in locating unusual prints and in making gifts of copies. The Western History Department has supplied the great majority of prints used; generously donating these in return for my gift of many originals. Frances Shea, Dolores Renze and Edgar C. McMechen of the Colorado Historical Society provided ten views from the Tabor and W. H. Jackson collections. Samuel F. McRae, Lenore Fitzell, Mary Hohnbaum, Ralph Batschelet, Gene Hawkins, Florence Greenleaf and the Central City Opera House Association have all contributed in large and small ways to the final lay-out.
C. B.—1953
Colorful Colorado: Its Dramatic History: “... a remarkable feat of condensation ... ought to be a copy in your car’s glove locker.”Robert Perkin in theRocky Mountain News.Historic Central City: “We could do with more such stories of Colorado’s fabled past.”Marian Castle inThe Denver Post.Famous Aspen: “It’s all here ... Aspenites should be grateful.”Luke Short inThe Aspen Times.Denver’s Lively Past: “With zest and frankness the author emphasizes the dramatic, lusty, bizarre and spicy happenings.”Agnes Wright Spring inThe Denver PostTabor’s Matchless Mine and Lusty Leadville: “Seventh in her series of Bancroft Booklets retelling segments of Colorado’s history They are popularly written, color-packed little pamphlets, an it’s a pleasure to commend them to native and tourist alike.” Robert Perkin in theRocky Mountain News.Augusta Tabor: Her Side of the Scandal: “Miss Bancroft with bold strokes has provided the answers to ... Mr. Tabor’s philanderings.”Agnes Wright Spring inColorado Magazine.The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown: “Caroline Bancroft’s booklets an brighter, better-illustrated and cheaper than formal histories of Colorado.... The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown was a delightful person, and I wish I had known her.”John J. Lipsey in theColorado Springs Free Press.The Brown Palace in Denver: “Miss Bancroft has a sure touch and this new title adds another wide-selling item to her list.”Don Bloch inRoundup.Glenwood’s Early Glamor: “Another triumph for Miss Bancroft—and for Colorado.”Jack Quinn in theCripple Creek Gold Rush.Lost Gold Mines and Buried Treasure: “Caroline Bancroft has gathered an intriguing lot of local lore.”Cervi’sRocky Mountain Journal.Unique Ghost Towns and Mountain Spots: “The new Bancroft numbers are the best yet ... and pictures are excellent.”Stanton Peckham inThe Denver Post.
Colorful Colorado: Its Dramatic History: “... a remarkable feat of condensation ... ought to be a copy in your car’s glove locker.”Robert Perkin in theRocky Mountain News.
Historic Central City: “We could do with more such stories of Colorado’s fabled past.”Marian Castle inThe Denver Post.
Famous Aspen: “It’s all here ... Aspenites should be grateful.”Luke Short inThe Aspen Times.
Denver’s Lively Past: “With zest and frankness the author emphasizes the dramatic, lusty, bizarre and spicy happenings.”Agnes Wright Spring inThe Denver Post
Tabor’s Matchless Mine and Lusty Leadville: “Seventh in her series of Bancroft Booklets retelling segments of Colorado’s history They are popularly written, color-packed little pamphlets, an it’s a pleasure to commend them to native and tourist alike.” Robert Perkin in theRocky Mountain News.
Augusta Tabor: Her Side of the Scandal: “Miss Bancroft with bold strokes has provided the answers to ... Mr. Tabor’s philanderings.”Agnes Wright Spring inColorado Magazine.
The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown: “Caroline Bancroft’s booklets an brighter, better-illustrated and cheaper than formal histories of Colorado.... The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown was a delightful person, and I wish I had known her.”John J. Lipsey in theColorado Springs Free Press.
The Brown Palace in Denver: “Miss Bancroft has a sure touch and this new title adds another wide-selling item to her list.”Don Bloch inRoundup.
Glenwood’s Early Glamor: “Another triumph for Miss Bancroft—and for Colorado.”Jack Quinn in theCripple Creek Gold Rush.
Lost Gold Mines and Buried Treasure: “Caroline Bancroft has gathered an intriguing lot of local lore.”Cervi’sRocky Mountain Journal.
Unique Ghost Towns and Mountain Spots: “The new Bancroft numbers are the best yet ... and pictures are excellent.”Stanton Peckham inThe Denver Post.
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Forty-two of Colorado’s romance-packed high-country towns have their stories told with old and new photos, history and maps. $2.00.
The rollicking story of an ignorant Leadville waitress who reached the top of Newport society as aTitanicheroine. Illustrated. $1.00.
Thirty romantic and fabled tales of Colorado’s misplaced wealth inspire the reader to go search. Illustrated. $1.25.
The infamous quarrel of the 1880’s is told from the viewpoint of the outspoken first wife. Illustrated. 75¢.
Colorado’s most publicized mine was just one facet of the extraordinary history of the lusty camp where it operated. Illustrated. 75¢.
Colorado’s first big gold camp lived to become a Summer Opera and Play Festival town. Illustrated. 85¢.
Today the silver-studded slopes of an early-day bonanza town have turned into a scenic summer and ski resort. Illustrated. $1.00.
A wild frontier town, built on a jumped claim and promoting a red-light district, became a popular tourist spot. Illustrated. $1.00.
No hotel had more turn-of-the-century glamor, nor has seen such plush love-affairs, murders and bizarre doings. Illustrated. 75¢.
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