Read Ebook: Augusta Tabor: Her Side of the Scandal by Bancroft Caroline

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Ebook has 124 lines and 10508 words, and 3 pages

As the years passed, Augusta's natural New England frankness grew more tart. She found Horace's easy-going ways irritating. His off-hand generosities made no sense to a woman who knew the value of a hard-earned dollar. Or, perhaps, some psychic intuition warned Augusta that that very same trait would bring her eventual heart-break, and she was trying subconsciously to ward off the blow.

The blow came disguised as good fortune. In 1877 the news leaked out that those heavy particles of black sand, which had been so difficult for the placer miners to separate from gold, were really bits of lead-silver carbonates. A second rush to California Gulch began. The newcomers were silver-seekers and chose the lower part of the gulch in which to settle. The Tabors decided to move their Oro City store a mile farther down, and selected a site on the south side of Chestnut Street, a door below the Harrison Avenue corner. They built a story-and-a-half log and frame building with sleeping quarters upstairs, and dining and kitchen arrangements to the rear.

Business boomed. Tabor had to hire two clerks to take care of the post office alone. Soon he was forced to open a banking department since he owned an ordinary iron safe which sat outside the counter. Everyone wanted to deposit their cash in his safe. The cashier divided his time between the dry goods and grocery divisions, and the receipt of deposits and writing of exchange. Tabor hired still more clerks and expanded jovially in the balmy atmosphere of his new importance.

In January, 1878, the settlement comprised some seventy tents, shanties and log cabins. The inhabitants decided to call a meeting, effect an organization and choose a name. "Leadville" was selected, although a few people thought "Cloud City" was more poetic. A short while afterward they voted Tabor to the mayorship, and officially confirmed his year-long office with a city election in April. Tabor was now worth between ,000 and ,000.

As sleeping and eating facilities were at a premium, the Tabors decided to build a residence for themselves, where Augusta could serve meals, and to allow the clerks to sleep above the store. They chose a site at 310 Harrison Avenue, way off from the settlement, and began to build in the spring. Meanwhile Tabor was handing out grubstakes and still dreaming.

Then the momentous day of his Castles-in-Spain arrived. On Sunday, April 21, 1878, two German prospectors, August Rische and George Theodore Hook, asked him for a stake while Tabor was sorting mail. Postmaster Tabor told them to pick out what they needed, and the men chose about worth of supplies, mostly groceries. They drew up an agreement that Tabor was entitled to a third of what they found.

A few days later they came back and asked for a second hand-out. They had staked a claim and they needed shovels, a hand-switch, drills and blasting powder to sink a shaft. This brought the total outlay to some .

Early in May, Augusta was coming downstairs one morning when August Rische burst into the store. As she told the story to Flora Stevens, his hands were full of specimens. He rushed toward her and shouted:

"We've struck it! We've struck it!"

Augusta said she was rather frigid to him.

"Rische, when you bring me money instead of rocks, then I'll believe you."

But it was true. Their mine, the Little Pittsburgh, netted Tabor 0,000 in the following fifteen months. He bought the Chrysolite which proved to be another bonanza. Augusta continued to keep boarders during the summer and Tabor, to supervise the store's activities. But then Tabor began to splurge, and in the autumn they sold out. The fall election had made Tabor lieutenant-governor of Colorado, so they planned to move to Denver.

In January, 1879, Tabor rented, and the next month purchased, the Henry C. Brown house at 17th and Broadway, paying ,000. According to Augusta, when her husband took her to see it, she was very mindful of the quick rises and equally rapid descents of Colorado fortunes. Augusta took one look at her husband's idea of a new home and said:

"I will never go up these steps, Tabor, if you think I will ever have to go down them."

Thirty-five curious callers appeared the first day she was at home. She remarked sarcastically:

"I would scarcely know how to return the call of the woman next door who arrived in a carriage."

Tabor provided the means for returning the call. It was a ,000 carriage, an exact replica of the one driven by the White House coachman around Washington.

"La," she told Flora Stevens, "If we had only had the money that is in that carriage when we began life."

Delegations from the various churches also came to call, each seeking the Tabors' membership. Augusta remarked:

"I suppose Mr. Tabor's and my souls are of more value than they were a year ago."

Poor Augusta! Time was running out. Tabor's answer to her tartness was to spend his evenings in the variety halls and bordellos. As his interests and investments widened, he took the most seductive inmates traveling with him. The newspapers reported that Tabor had given clothes, jewelry, furs and furbelows to three or four women so that they could appear as "Mrs. Tabor." One that he singled out was Alice Morgan, an Indian club swinger at the Grand Central variety hall in Leadville. Next he was charmed by Willie Deville in Lizzie Allen's parlor house in Chicago, and he brought Willie west with him. Augusta discovered the affair and the miscreants promised to part.

But this was a ruse. Tabor kept on seeing her secretly and took Willie on a trip to New York. There, she was so indiscreet about their relations that a woman in the hotel tried to blackmail the Silver King. Tabor told Willie she talked too much and made her a gift of ,000 to soften the blow of saying "good-bye."

In September, 1879, Tabor sold out his interest in the Little Pittsburgh for a cool million dollars. He bought the Matchless for 7,000 and over 800 shares of stock of the First National Bank in Denver. Then he and Augusta went East for six weeks while he made further investments, notably land in South Chicago.

On November 5 the Tabors returned to Denver and Horace left for Leadville to see to the completion and opening of the Tabor Opera House. Augusta remained in Denver. Tabor did not return even for Christmas. His bachelor suite on the second floor of the Opera House proved too delightful for a man whose eyes wandered.

Augusta and he began to quarrel more violently. During 1880 they appeared together at balls of the Tabor Hose Co. in Denver and of the Tabor Light Cavalry in Leadville, and when Tabor entertained ex-President and Mrs. Grant in the "Cloud City." The two couples sat together in the left-hand box for the second act of "Ours," and then left to attend a ball in the general's honor. This was July 23, 1880, a momentous date for forty-seven-year old Augusta--not because she had met a president, but because just about that time Horace ceased to be her husband.

In the autumn, back in Denver, Horace gave her 0,000, following his usual practice of making a parting gift. In January, 1881, Tabor left the Broadway mansion irrevocably and established residence in a suite at the Windsor Hotel of which he was part-owner.

What had happened was that, some time during the spring or summer on one of his frequent trips to Leadville, Tabor had met "Baby" Doe. She was twenty-five and he was forty-nine. They were introduced by Bill Bush who had known the Dresden-doll beauty as Mrs. Harvey Doe during her two-and-a-half year residence in Central City. Bill Bush had been proprietor of the Teller House and had also known her husband and in-laws. She had obtained a divorce from Harvey Doe in March, 1880, for adultery and non-support, and shortly after arrived in Leadville.

Baby Doe said that it was "love at first sight" on her part. With Tabor, the feeling grew on him. She became his mistress almost immediately, but it was not until January, 1881, that he began to think of divorce and re-marriage. Augusta put her foot down. She refused successive overtures of a handsome settlement in return for a divorce.

Augusta knew what was going on. In December, 1880, she bought a third interest in the Windsor Hotel from Charles L. Hall of Leadville. The other third was owned by Bill Bush, who also managed the hotel, assisted by her son, Maxcy. In the next months Augusta used her ownership to check up regularly on activities at the hotel. When Tabor brought Baby Doe down from Leadville and installed her at the Windsor, the two women must have passed in the lobby frequently.

Augusta realized a fine monthly profit from her Windsor investment, and in April, 1881, she treated herself to a trip abroad for several months. Both Tabor and Bush wanted to buy out her share. Tabor did not like her making "such a damned nuisance of herself" going in and out of the rooms, and Bush wanted to obtain a controlling interest in the hotel. Augusta kept on saying, "No." No divorce and no hotel sale.

When Augusta returned from Europe, she found her husband had risen to new heights. He was being considered for a senatorship and he had finished building the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver. The citizens were tendering a ceremony and watch fob to him on the opening night.

Augusta wrote him a letter apologizing for what she "had said in the heat of passion." She also asked to be allowed to come to the opening night of the Tabor Grand and to go with him to Washington as a senator's wife. This letter turned up among Baby Doe's papers at her death. No one knows how, or if, it was answered. But the Tabor box was empty on September 5, 1881, the gala occasion Augusta wanted to attend.

In April, 1882, Augusta instituted a suit for payment of ,000 a year alimony despite the fact that she was not divorced. She listed Tabor's holdings and their specific worth, an impressive tabulation, which brought the total to ,410,000. The suit caused a lot of scandal, damaged Tabor politically, but accomplished nothing for Augusta since it was thrown out of court as illegal.

Augusta gave in on the hotel-sale petition first. She sold her interest in the Windsor to Bush for close to ,000 in May, 1882. Finally, on January 2, 1883, she gave Tabor a divorce in exchange for property worth about 0,000. She caused a sensation at the divorce trial by reiterating:

"Not willingly, Oh God, not willingly!"

It was this public statement of hers to the judge which made her feel that the divorce was not valid.

Amos Steck, Augusta's lawyer, summed up the whole five years of public quarreling and scandal when he talked about her to a reporter:

"Oh, she knows all about his practises with lewd women. I never saw such a woman. She is crazy about Tabor. She loves him and that settles it."

For years Augusta hoped that Baby Doe would tire of Horace and, crestfallen, he would come back to his first wife. She thought that when the money was gone, the young hussy would flit. She told reporters she was building up her own fortune and hanging on to her large house in order that she might take care of Tabor in his old age.

But Augusta was wrong. She had underestimated her rival. When the Silver Panic of 1893 reduced the former millionaire to poverty, his pretty blonde wife stuck like glue.

Belatedly Augusta realized the true character of Baby Doe. In 1892 the first Mrs. Tabor sold her house on Broadway and moved across the street to the newly-opened Brown Palace Hotel. Although Maxcy and Bill Bush were the managers and lived there also, Augusta did not enjoy hotel life. Her health was starting to fail and she went to California for the winter, seeking a milder climate. There in Pasadena, on February 1, 1895, at the age of sixty-two she died, her social position still secure, if not showy, and her fortune built to a million and a half dollars.

She said in her own words when Tabor was at his richest:

"I feel that in those early years of self-sacrifice, hard labor, and economy, I laid the foundation for Mr. Tabor's immense wealth. Had I not stayed with him and worked by his side, he would have been discouraged, returned to the stone-cutting trade and so lost his big opportunity."

All Colorado agreed with her at the time--and then the mills of the Gods ground slowly and exceedingly fine. Tabor's immense wealth evaporated.

But its going did not bring Horace back to her; he clung to Baby Doe until the end, four years after Augusta's death. Never once was there the slightest rumor of any infidelity of his to her after 1881 and none of Baby Doe to him after their first meeting. It must have been galling to Augusta.

Maxcy Tabor inherited the money his mother had husbanded with such business acumen. He brought her body back from California and she was buried in Riverside cemetery. With the passage of the years Maxcy was laid to rest in Fairmount beside his wife; and Horace Tabor, in Mt. Olivet beside Baby Doe. Augusta lies alone in an old-fashioned cemetery, as alone as she lived her last fifteen years, terribly alone.

For many years of her middle life Augusta was called "Leadville's First Lady." The nickname was spoken in affection and in admiration, and she was interviewed for the Leadville papers under that heading. Yes, she was a first lady in many ways, courageous and industrious and civic. The tragedy of her life lay in the fact that, although she was beloved of many, she lost the key to the only heart she wanted.

GULCH OF GOLD

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