What Gold Buys

by Ann Parker

The traveller decided to sign in and stay at this hotel while he searched. It would be expedient to be in this liar’s sight, a constant reminder of the web of lies he was weaving. Eventually, the liar would make a mistake, say something that doubled back on him.

  If the woman and child were here in Leadville, the traveler would find them. If not, he would find that out as well. If this were the case, he would proceed to the next step and find out what had happened to them. Eventually, and it was always sooner rather than later for him, he would uncover the trail, no matter how obscure, how old, how hidden. Because that was what he did: search out what was lost and find it. Go after what was stolen and return it. Find what was in the dark and bring it into the light. That was what his considerable skills were focused on and what people paid him so well to do.

  The traveler filled out the register, using his real name. There was no need to hide, not here. He despised lying in others. When, through employment or circumstances, he had to dissemble, to lie, he despised himself. But, business was business, and sometimes it was required.

  The receptionist spun the register around to read it, and the traveler braced himself for the inevitable butchering of his last name.

  The receptionist tried. “Mr. de, uh, B-Brooo-eeee-gin?”

  Wolter Roeland de Bruijn didn’t even wince. “Brown. It is pronounced Brown.”

  Author’s Note

  As always, be forewarned: spoilers lie within.

  First, let’s deal with what is “truth” (always a relative term) and what springs from my imagination, starting with place and location. There is a Leadville, Colorado, which has a rich (and long) history of mining. And there was a silver rush in “Cloud City” (one of Leadville’s nicknames) starting in the late 1870s. Many made fortunes in this time, including Horace Austin Tabor, the Guggenheims, David May, Charles Boettcher, and J. J. and Molly Brown. If you haven’t been to Leadville, you’re missing a grand experience. History infuses the high mountain air, the people are friendly, and the views are a treasure greater than gold.

  In 1880, Stillborn and Tiger alleys existed, as did “the rows.” The newspapers of the day used very colorful language to describe these areas; it helps to keep in mind we are viewing these descriptions through hindsight and our own frames of reference. Trying to “pin down” the exact configuration and location of the rows was an adventure for me and Lake County Public Library historian Janice Fox. From the 1880 census and city directory, we determined Kate Armstead lived in the rear of 137 West Second Street (or West State, if you prefer). I proceeded from there. The higher-class parlor houses were situated on West Fifth Street, while State Street (also known as Second Street) was the more notorious red-light district. The railroad depot was brand new in that timeframe. Evergreen Cemetery existed and had its “pauper fields”: the Protestant Free and Catholic Free sections. At that time, there would have been few or no trees (they all having gone to other uses in the burgeoning city). Today, you can visit the cemetery and identify the free sections: no gravestones or markers, just undulating ground in all directions, dotted with new growth evergreens.

  Thriving 1880 Leadville businesses mentioned in What Gold Buys include the Tontine Restaurant, the Chronicle offices and newspaper (and its newsies in their fancy brass-buttoned uniforms), Steve’s Health Office, the Board of Trade Saloon, and the Grand Central Theatre. The “Undertaking” section of the city directory lists the Leadville Undertaking Company as well as Nelson and Company, and seven undertakers appear in the census, allowing me to slide in my fictional Alexander’s Undertaking without issue. The Silver Queen, The Independent, the Stannerts’ little blue house, and Susan Carothers’ photographic studio are also part of my fictional world.

  As for who is real in this milieu: Judge Updegraf presided over the county court in 1880, and I’ve tried to be careful in my treatment of him, as by all accounts he was an upstanding and honest sort. Kate Armstead lived in Coon Row and, according to the newspapers, was a force to be reckoned with. The architect and builder Eugene Robitaille lived on Fourth Street—right in Inez’s neighborhood—and built some lovely structures, including the “House with the Eye,” which is now a museum. Newspaperman Orth Stein (my fictional Jed Elliston’s nemesis) was conducting investigative journalism and spinning tall tales for the Chronicle starting in the summer of 1880. In fact, Orth Stein’s story of secret anatomy lessons appeared in great and enthusiastic detail in the August 10, 1880, edition of the Chronicle under the title “Cadaver Classes.” I can hear fictional Jed gnashing his teeth even now.

  Some of my references for Leadville and its people during this timeframe are:

  Leadville: Colorado’s Magic City by Edward Blair

  History of Leadville and Lake County, Colorado (Volume I) by Don and Jean Griswold

  A Social History of Leadville, Colorado, During the Boom Days, 1887–1881 thesis by Eugene Floyd Irey (thesis)

  Leadville Architecture by Lawrence Von Bamford

  Olden Times in Colorado by C. C. Davis

  Tourist Guide to Colorado in 1879 by Frank Fossett

  The online Colorado Mountain History Collection, which you can find on the Lake County Public Library website, is a fantastic resource for city directories, cemetery records, newspapers, photos, and maps.

  My focus for this particular book—the “afterlife,” in both physical and spiritual realms—owes its being to two inspirations. The first was the aforementioned newspaper article by Stein. The second was an e-mail I received waaaay back in 2010 from Myfanwy Cook of the Historical Novel Society. Myfanwy happened to mention that a fellow from Cornwall, England, came to Colorado in the late nineteenth century, died in Denver, and was shipped home in a glass coffin.

  A glass coffin?

  Hmmmm.

  Thus began my research into life after death.

  I’ve learned more about undertaking and embalming (plus the resurrectionist side of things) since then. For instance, did you know that embalming was the province of medical physicians (embalming surgeons) until the early 1880s? I didn’t. But I do now, thanks to James Lowry, who very kindly responded to my out-of-the-blue inquiry. Embalming was refined during the Civil War, when the need for methods to preserve the dead so they could be shipped home for burial became important. The first embalming school in the U.S., the Rochester School of Embalming, opened its doors in 1883. However, even before then, some undertakers were forming “alliances” with embalming surgeons and adding that art to their skills set. One need only look at the plethora of undertaking/embalming advertisements and banner ads in the Leadville city directory and newspapers to realize: there was gold to be made in the trade. A lovely bit from the pen of a Boulder News and Courier journalist reinforces this supposition. The journalist visited Leadville in late August 1880 and noted that Leadville was a great place to live if one wished to make money rapidly, adding, “Its supreme attraction is for the heavy gambler in mining property, next for fast men and women, and those who wait upon their demands; then, for hotel and boardinghouse keepers, people who own a cow, washerwomen, doctors, undertakers, lawyers, mechanics, honest laborers, and tradesmen, about in the order named.” So my fictional Alexanders were in an excellent position to make money, if only things had only turned out differently.

  As to more ethereal side of the afterlife, efforts to communicate with those who had “traveled on” were quite common. Spiritualism was alive and well in Leadville in 1880s. Two self-reported fortunetellers (both women) are listed in the 1880 census, and there are numerous mentions of séances and mediums in the local newspapers. For instance, a Chronicle article of January 10, 1881, notes, “Leadville is, for a city of its size, overrun to an unusual extent with spiritualists, clairvoyants, and others of the ilk who either profess to be in intimate converse with the ghosts of the departed or to be gifted with an occult sense that reads with equal facility the hidden future and equally hidden past.” A Leadville séance c
onducted in early 1880 by a noted spiritualist was attended by three journalists and a Methodist reverend. When it was over, the reverend told one of the reporters that “there were many of the acts performed which he believed he could account for as the deception of a scientific hand, and there were others that he attributed to the well-acknowledged gift of mind reading; but there were some things for the explanation of which he could offer no theory or solution…he admits himself mystified by the human mechanism and the miracles which can in these latter days be accomplished through aid of a brain and hand (Chronicle, April 3, 1880).” Some modern-day scholars now see the Spiritualism movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as closely entwined and allied with the early women’s rights movement, which is fascinating territory in itself. For more about death, resurrections, undertaking/embalming, and the “afterlife” of body and spirit, I turned to:

  Death in the Victorian Family by Pat Jalland

  Burke & Hare by Owen Dudley Edwards

  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

  Embalming Surgeons of the Civil War by James W. Lowry (pamphlet)

  The Principles and Practice of Embalming (Chapter 2: History) by Clarence G. Strub and L. G. Frederick

  Buried Alive by Jan Bondeson

  Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual by Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington

  Other Powers by Barbara Goldsmith

  Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in the Nineteenth-Century America by Ann Braude

  For nineteenth-century viewpoints, you can’t beat the books, newspapers, and circulars of the day. Regarding Spiritualism, for instance, the Internet is a goldmine. Two examples are:

  The Herald of Progress (the July 16, 1880, issue is a nice example of what you can expect to find)

  Seers of the Ages: Embracing Spiritualism, Past and Present: Doctrines Stated and Moral Tendencies Defined by J. M. Peebles (1869)

  As to what was known/unknown about the human brain in 1880, and how physicians and psychologists viewed the interaction of brain and mind, again, turning to the documents of the day proved fruitful. Just search “brain” in any one of these to be treated to some interesting insights:

  Rocky Mountain Medical Review: A Journal of Scientific Medicine, Volume 1 (1880–1881)

  The Transactions of the American Medical Association, Volume 31 (1880)

  The Mechanism of Man: An Answer to the Popular Question: What Am I? — A Popular Introduction to Mental Physiology and Psychology by Edward William Cox (President of the Psychological Society of Great Britain)

  Now, moving on to Drina Gizzi, who “materialized” out of thin air and insisted on being put on the page, and Madam Labasillier, who did much the same…Who are these women? Where did they come from? Well, I did some exploring, but they didn’t like to be pinned down:

  Travellers, Gypsies, Roma: The Demonisation of Difference by Michael Hayes and Thomas Acton

  Gypsy-travelers in Nineteenth-century Society by David Mayall

  The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook by Kenaz Filan

  Turning to Drina’s daughter Antonia/Tony, I slid sideways into the newsie idea when my wandering eye snagged on the comment about the “brass-button uniforms” the Chronicle supplied to its newsboys. Also, long ago, I knew an elderly gentleman who sold newspapers on the streets of New York City when he was three years old (during the late 1880s, most likely). One reference leads to more, so this is just skimming the surface:

  Children of the City at Work and at Play by David Nasaw

  How the Other Half Lives by Jacob A. Riis

  Calling Extra by Kristina Romero (a Young Adult fiction book with references listed in back)

  Speaking of eyes, I did do some research into the genetics of heterochromia iridium (two different-colored eyes within a single individual). Sometimes the difference is due to injury/trauma; sometimes there is a genetic component. However, the genetics of eye-color inheritance is still somewhat of a mystery. To learn a bit more, check out these two online articles (very different in tone): Scientific American, “How does someone get two different-colored eyes?” from November 3, 2001, and “Heterochromia is very groovy mutation—maybe” by Esther Inglis-Arkell on io9, October 18, 2012. In both cases, be sure to read the comments. Verrrry interesting indeed. If you think you spot the comment that caused me to bolt upright in my chair and say, “Whoa!” contact me at annparker@annparker.net. If you are right, I will send you a special little something.

  Finally, there is the matter of Inez and Mark Stannert’s divorce and the final custodial guardianship of their son, William. I have been pursuing the realities of this particular situation for well over a decade now, and I must give my colleague Colleen Casey a standing ovation. She helped me unearth and pull together all the legal information for setting the legal foundations and commentary needed for these critical scenes. The information is all there, in the statutes, laws, and codes, and luckily for us, all that and more is now available online. My Google library is now populated with tomes such as

  General Laws of the State of Colorado, Comprising that Portion of the Revised Statutes of Colorado, and the General Acts of the subsequent Legislative Assemblies of Colorado Territory for the Years 1870, 1872, 1874, and 1876, Still Remaining in Force, and the General Laws Enacted At the First Session of the General Assembly of the State of Colorado, Convened November 1, 1876…(1876)

  and

  The Legal Relations of Infants, Parent and Child, and Guardian and Ward: And a Particular Consideration of Guardianship in the State of New York, Including Practice and Procedure in Surrogate’s Courts, and in the Supreme Court, and County Courts, and the Superior Courts of Cities, in Matters of Guardianship; and in Actions Against Infants to Compel a Conveyance of Real Estate, and for the Partition of Real Estate; Also an Appendix of Forms for All Such Proceedings by G. W. Field (1888)

  Okay, I’m now exhausted just from typing the titles of those two references. Suffice to say, Inez and Mark’s divorce, the complications, and the discussions between Inez, her attorney, and Judge Updegraf were all as accurate as we could make them.

  For those who respond to Inez’s “riding off into the sunset” with, “Inez leaving Leadville? Nooooooo!” I assure you, she will eventually return to Leadville and in fine fettle. After all, consider: from November 1879 to November 1880 she has had quite a year, what with all those mysteries to solve and her very complicated personal life. Too, I wonder what Wolter Roeland de Bruijn will do, now that he has arrived in this very foreign (to him) City in the Clouds and the object of his search has vanished.

  Hmmmm.

  Shall we find out?

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