CHAPTER 11
BACK IN KANSAS, SALLY AND THE CHILDREN WERE HAVING A hard time with Fred’s absences. They had become accustomed to his periodic travels as a freight agent, but looked forward to the long bonding times at home between trips. Now he was gone more than ever, and returned more enervated than they had ever seen him.
“Papa, when are you coming home?” his daughter Minnie, now ten, wrote to him in Las Vegas. “Mama cried all day Sunday because you was not home.”
He was missing important milestones in his family’s life, not just birthdays, anniversaries, and school pageants, but other memorable moments. Cities across the country were just starting to offer rudimentary home phone service, but Fred wasn’t home the day the Harveys got their first telephone in the dining room. He was also away when Leavenworth finished installing its first electrical generator, and for the first time electric lights were visible in a few commercial buildings.
Ford was already away at prep school in Racine, Wisconsin. Fred had missed the tail end of his eldest son’s childhood. It even fell to Sally to send Ford off with words of wisdom, as she inscribed his photo album: “Desire not to live long, but to live well; How long we live, not years, but actions tell.” And the other kids were growing up largely without their father.
By now, Sally had grown accustomed to attending Leavenworth social events alone. Her biggest distraction was playing cards, especially euchre. The game was all the rage across the country, a form of light gambling acceptable even in religious communities, the shift from poker to euchre a sign of becoming more “civilized.” Euchre was so wildly popular in Leavenworth that the society columns were beginning to read like sports coverage, reporting not only what people wore to card parties and what they ate but who took the prizes in the “progressive euchre” tournaments. Sally played in those, but also had other housewives over for more casual games, and perhaps a drink or two.
Fred did manage to get home for major holidays, though, and these were warm and memorable. The Harveys traditionally celebrated Christmas with Byron Schermerhorn’s family, and they always had a raucously good time. The younger children would go wild together: Schermerhorn’s daughter Nell would never forget little Byron Harvey shouting down to Sally, “Mother, make the girls put some clothes on! They’re running all over upstairs without any.”
Fred’s Christmas gift from his best friend would be a barrel of pure corn whiskey, which was put out in the stable and siphoned into bottle after bottle during the visit. After a few drinks Byron would start making jokes about Fred’s dogs. He got along fine with Charlie, the elderly King Charles spaniel with halitosis, but he was scared to death of Fred’s Old English bulldog Crib, which was descended from a famous bullbaiting dog of the same name. He claimed that if he ever met up with Crib outside of the Harveys’ yard, “I’d certainly cut off one of my arms and throw it to him.”
In fact, one year Byron conspired with Fred’s neighbors to lobby for the dog’s exile. He arranged for almost half of Leavenworth to have their servants carry identical holiday messages over to the Harvey home.
“If you will remove that bulldog from the front steps,” each handwritten note read, “we would like to call on you.”
JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS 1881, Fred walked briskly over to his bank to offer his favorite teller, twenty-two-year-old David Benjamin, a position that would change both of their lives.
Cherubic, charming, and quietly assertive, with wire-rim glasses, black hair parted just off the middle, and a neatly trimmed mustache, Dave was bright and ambitious and, much to Fred’s delight, loved talking about their common homeland, Great Britain. The Benjamin family had left London when Dave was young, relocating to Leavenworth, where they became cornerstones of the large local Jewish community centered at Temple B’nai Jeshurun, the first synagogue in Kansas. Dave was the eldest of three close brothers, who by their teens were already impressing business leaders in Leavenworth. As Dave worked his way up at the First National Bank of Leavenworth, where Fred Harvey and other prominent men sought his counsel, his middle brother, Alfred, was becoming a protégé of one of Fred’s closest friends, Colonel Abernathy, in his large furniture business. The youngest brother, Harry, was a rising attorney at the prominent Leavenworth firm of William C. Hook and Lucien Baker.
Fred came to Dave’s window and made a withdrawal. While passing currency through the steel bars at his station, they started to chat.
“Do you really plan to be a banker for your entire life?” Dave would later remember Fred asking.
“Yes, sir, I have always intended to be a banker.” It had, in fact, been Dave’s childhood dream.
“Lots of bookkeeping experience?” Fred asked.
“Lots of it.”
“I need a good general accountant for my business. I think you would like that better than a bank.”
“Yes,” Dave said, surrendering his dream for a better one without a moment’s hesitation. “I think I would.”
Fred no longer had much of a business presence in Leavenworth; he had long ago sold his ticket operation there, and just maintained a small office in the Hannibal & St. Joseph depot. His books had been kept by a railroad accountant at the Santa Fe general office in Topeka, J. J. Blower, but he knew it was time he had his own business manager, somebody to oversee the numbers for his growing chain the same way that Bill Phillips in Florence was overseeing the food.
He also knew that with all the time he was spending away from his family, especially now that Ford was away at college, it might help the situation if he had a trusted associate in Leavenworth. Dave could not only do his books, he could help him stay in better touch with Sally and the kids when he left civilized Kansas and returned to the pistol-packing patrons of the Southwest.
AFTER SEVERAL GRUELING weeks back in New Mexico in early 1882, Fred appeared to have finally made some progress at the Hot Springs Hotel. The Optic reported that “things are now in such a shape that the guests are beginning to murmur, because they have nothing to grumble about.”
With the construction at the Montezuma looking as though it might actually come to an end soon, both the railroad and the local physicians began publicizing the place, especially the curative powers of the hot springs. The water itself was frequently analyzed by different experts, and each time a new element was found, it was added to the list at the top of the letterhead and on all the promotional materials. One day a visitor, Professor Hally, announced that “the waters are especially adapted to the ailments of the left kidney.” But the resident physician, Pettijohn, went a step further. According to the Optic, he claimed the waters “will cure anything from a sore thumb to unrequited love. He even goes so far as to say that three straight drinks of the water per day will keep a man on good terms with his mother-in-law.”
After inspecting the Montezuma, Fred headed back east for a cross-country shopping spree, picking out furnishings, cookware, dishes, silver, and stemware for his new hotel dining room. He also visited his favorite hotels in St. Louis, Chicago, and New York and shopped for staff, pulling aside chefs, concierges, maître d’s, waiters, and housekeepers he liked to let them know of the wonderful opportunities at the Montezuma. In Boston, he met with the corporate executives at the Santa Fe office there, which also gave him a chance to spend time with his favorite coffee purveyors, Caleb Chase and James Sanborn—later known just as Chase & Sanborn—who roasted a special blend that was being used in all of Fred’s restaurants.
As the last touches were being put on the Montezuma, the railroad built a six-mile branch line from town so that guests could be brought by Santa Fe train all the way from the Midwest to the front entrance of the new hotel. And on the morning of Sunday, April 16, 1882, several dozen well-dressed men and ladies took their places in four lavishly appointed Pullman cars at the Kansas City station. Among the passengers were Sally Harvey, the Harveys’ close friends Colonel and Mrs. Abernathy, Elizabeth Custer (George’s widow), and Kansas City meat magnate S. B. Armour and his wife. They were joined along the way by well-known Mexican-American politician and businessman Don Miguel A. Otero and editors from newspapers in Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Topeka, and Leavenworth.
Also on the train was that inevitable, junket-loving American correspondent for The Field, Samuel “St. Kames” Townshend, who over the years had become good buddies with Fred Harvey and Bill Phillips. Townshend was part of the in-train entertainment, as he and a half-dozen other guests amused themselves by putting on a “sacred concert … in which all the familiar camp meeting melodies were grandly rendered,” according to the Optic. “The singing was kept up until 11 o’clock and there was little sleep in any of the Pullmans until it subsided.”
When the guests arrived at the new Montezuma hotel depot, they were met by a flock of bellmen who whisked away their bags, leaving them to stroll leisurely across the Gallinas River footbridge and along a small path from which the hotel was barely visible for the trees. Then, suddenly, the massive 270-room, four-story wooden structure loomed on their left—and when they were done staring, a turn to the right revealed a broad, lush park with fountains, footpaths, lawn tennis courts, archery ranges, even a miniature zoo.
That evening, there was a banquet in the main dining room, a forty-by-seventy-foot hall with floor-to-ceiling windows topped with stained-glass transoms. It was lit by eight massive crystal chandeliers, each with four gas jets, and adjoining it was a separate serving room equipped with carving tables and built-in steam to heat the trays.
The feast began with bluepoint oysters, followed by a consommé of green sea turtle—made from turtles harvested in the Gulf of California and kept alive in a man-made pool outside the hotel. Then came an array of succulent dishes: fresh California salmon and mountain trout; spring lamb with French peas; tenderloin of beef with truffles and stuffed tomatoes; sweetbreads braised with mushrooms; pâté; asparagus with butter sauce; deer with currant jelly and watercress; and broiled teal duck. The dessert spread included Queen’s pudding; lemon, coconut, and apricot pies; various jellies; Muscatine ice; California fruits; and a dazzling array of cheeses.
And after the meal, of course, came the toasts, dozens of them. The first ones were “to the press … men of brains, energy and education” whose words were disseminated by “the greatest and grandest medium through which intelligence is conveyed to a civilized world.” There were similarly effusive toasts “to the railroads”—which William Strong and the assembled Santa Fe brass accepted warmly—and “to the doctors.” This included not only the physicians caring for hotel guests but the Montezuma’s special medical friends around the globe who presumably would be prescribing the hot springs “cure” and New Mexico’s healing climate. They went on to toast the great territory of New Mexico and the American hotel industry.
And then they raised their crystal glasses one last time, with all eyes turned to a proud but depleted Fred Harvey. He acknowledged their accolades with a pursed smile and eyes full of weary relief.
“Entertainment is the soul of my business,” he said, “and I can only hope that we have so satisfied everyone here tonight that they know they can always expect a courteous reception here at the Las Vegas hot springs.”
And with that, the dining hall was cleared of tables, Professor Helms’ Famous Fourth Cavalry Orchestra set up and sounded the Grand March, and the Montezuma Ball was under way. While there were only fourteen numbers listed on the printed dance card, the frolicking started at 9:30 p.m., and the band was still keeping “feet in a bustle” until sunrise.
Fred, however, had retired early, long before his usual bedtime of 11:00 p.m., and the next morning was unable to leave his room, or even get out of bed. The Optic, which sometimes appeared to be receiving more medical information about high-profile patients than the patients got themselves, reported that Fred was “dangerously ill … no visitors are admitted to his room today.” Fortunately, he recovered within a day or two, because the hotel was booked solid.
MANY OF THOSE reservations were the result of a new American social phenomenon: group tours called Raymond Excursions. Organized in major cities by the Boston-based Raymond & Whitcomb vacation company, they were the latest thing in leisure travel.
England’s famed Thomas Cook travel agency had made its name booking European Grand Tours, which cultured people were expected to take at least once. They were both a travel experience and a social one, since it was common for groups who had “Grand Toured” together to remain close friends, hold lavish reunions, and even privately publish accounts of their journeys.
Raymond & Whitcomb had started out organizing regional trips—a group from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Washington would travel together to Niagara Falls or even the coal country of western Pennsylvania, which was considered an exotic tourist attraction. But now the hot Raymond Excursion was the grand tour of America, back and forth across the country over fifty-nine days, for an all-expenses-paid fare of $450 ($9,777).
A group of 150 Raymond “excursionists” had left the Boston area on Pullmans two weeks before and arrived at the Montezuma on April 21, 1882, at six in the evening, in time for dinner and perhaps a soak in the mineral baths. They were off the next morning—Montezuma porters complaining about their meager tips—and headed south to Deming, where the Santa Fe met the Southern Pacific, whose tracks hugged the Mexican border across Arizona into southern California. From there, the Pullmans carrying the Raymond excursionists continued north to visit Yosemite and later stay at the only western resort in the same league as the Montezuma: the Del Monte, which the Southern Pacific had built in Monterey. Finally they connected with the transcontinental railway heading east through Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska, crossing the Missouri River, and returning to civilization. As they headed home, other groups of Raymond excursionists were already departing from Boston and Philadelphia to become American grand tourists.
The Montezuma attracted all kinds—the well, the “worried well,” and the truly ill—from America, Europe, South America, even Asia. One of its first celebrated international guests was British army officer Captain Henry John Brinsley Manners, the eighth Duke of Rutland. When Captain Manners arrived, he immediately announced his intention “to live on the grounds in a tent, in the manner of the wild, free trappers and hunters of the region.”
Fred did his best to talk the duke out of it.
“Captain Manners,” he said, “while it is true we are in the wilds, we are not of them.”
When Manners insisted, Fred let him pitch a tent, but only under two conditions. The captain had to take his meals in the main dining room—and, like all the other men, wear a jacket while eating. He also had to answer nature’s call in the hotel’s handsomely appointed bathrooms, and not among the bluegrass and shade trees they had labored so diligently to grow in New Mexico.
After the hotel had been open for six months, Fred hosted a group at the Montezuma who were on a junket to Mexico—organized by the Santa Fe and his former employers at the Burlington, and led by his friend and fellow Burlington freight agent Edward Payson Ripley. In fact, Fred met the train in Pueblo and rode with the large group of agents from railroads all over the country down to Chihuahua—or “Che! Wah! Wah!” as the dozens of jovial excursionists called it. The entire trip was documented by journalist George Street, who was voted the group “historian” and made it very clear in his account how much the large group of men enjoyed meeting captivating dark-eyed “señoritas”—including several dozen local women who came onto their private train to tour the luxurious Pullmans. Fred had to laugh as the men literally tripped over themselves rushing to offer guided tours.
Some excursionists decided to stay one night in a Mexican hotel, rather than in their Pullman berths, and had quite an adventure: Several of them went out to a local casino and then found themselves locked out of the inn, so they had to sleep on park benches. Others who stayed in the hotel slept with their clothes and boots on, their money and prized belongings in their pockets, because the doors had no locks and the windows were wide open.
They were all relieved when the train returned them to New Mexico so they could luxuriate in Fred’s hospitality at the Montezuma, where “adjectives fail to express the excellence of the dinner” and the railroad agents danced all night with “as fair partners as ever graced a ball-room.” At 2:00 a.m., the orchestra ended with “Home Sweet Home,” and as they left, several members of the group broke into a rousing rendition of “Good Night Ladies.” The next morning, they got a complimentary visit to the bathhouses for Turkish baths, Russian baths, mud packs, and other treatments they had never even considered, let alone tried. They walked through the baths wrapped in sheets and then were shown into their individual rooms, where they sat on small stools and the doors closed behind them. Then:
a thousand jolts of hot water suddenly strike you like needles, from all directions … and the boiling process begins. You gradually feel yourself melting away, and wonder how much of you will be left to take home to your family; but before you are entirely evaporated, the attendant makes his appearance, asks you how you feel, just to see if whether you can speak yet, opens the prison door and leads you to the next room. There you are put through a course of spouts. Hot and cold water are fired at you alternately; you are laid on a marble slab, drenched with soapsuds, scrubbed with a brush until you think that the able-bodied attendant has mistaken you for a pine floor, shampooed until your skin is as smooth as the marble slab you are lying on, spanked with a paddle or some other weapons till you are sore; your joints are all pulled, twisted and bent, dislocated and re-set, and after being drowned once or twice more you are rubbed down with dry towels, taken into a warm room and put to bed, where you may stay till you have recovered and feel well enough to get up and dress. Going again in to the open air, you feel like a bird, fly across the bridge, prance around the balcony, and then enjoy the best and biggest breakfast you have ever had.
After breakfast, some of the excursionists went hiking in local ravines or watched Indian women wash their clothes in one of the bubbling hot springs. Others remained at the hotel, chatting with the ladies in the parlor or retiring to the basement to play billiards or try their hand at the bowling alleys. There was yet another banquet that night, and they departed in the morning. Fred took the train with them as far as Raton and bid them farewell, but the group had a hard time getting his hospitality out of their minds. They voted to create an association to commemorate their ten days together, and meet for dinner once a year. They named it the Montezuma Club, and after electing officers, and drafting a resolution thanking the Santa Fe railroad, they broke into song, ending with their war chant:
“Che! Wah! Wah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”