Mr. Browne heard his wife’s mention and chose to respond with an honest statement. “I lost money in the Panic of ’93. The bank closed.”
“But he personally guaranteed the deposits and no one else lost money,” Mrs. Browne said.
“I had other businesses. And those people would have been destitute if I hadn’t kept my commitments.”
I liked his integrity. I could imagine them as friends and realized how much proximity meant to the establishment and sustenance of relationships with friends. I’d walked right back into laughter with Delia and Carrie and Hester and even with Annie Boone, who I hadn’t known all that well. But we’d had sustained times, worked through issues with our committee, planned events together. Entertained each other. I’d mostly only chummed with my sisters before Caldwell. Well, Pard and I played too, but in recent years, those excursions had been more obligations than adventures. And in Boston, staying in one hotel all those years, we’d lost the surprise in each other and in our lives. Perhaps Robert’s wanting to pick out our home was his way of bringing surprise back into our marriage. And he had waited before acting. I gave him credit for that.
After dinner, we said good evening to the Brownes. “I hope you’ll see your way into becoming the mistress of our . . . your home,” Mrs. Browne said. “And bring your many talents back to Spokane.”
“I’ll think about it, certainly,” I said. “I understand how a home can mean so much to a family.”
Robert stood as they left, then said he’d call a carriage to take me back to my house. “Unless you want to spend the night in my hotel room.”
“Are you propositioning me, Mr. Strahorn?”
“I am, Mrs. Strahorn.”
“Then let me counter. Why don’t you spend the evening with me at my home? We can talk about acquiring an architect for this house you plan to buy. Is there room for a dog?”
His eyes lit up. “Yes. Oh, yes. Any number of dogs. We can discuss architects . . . among other things.” He put his elbow out and I took his arm as he opened the carriage door. He pulled the step down, then took my hand and helped me in. I let him.
“I’ll join you in a week,” I told Robert the next morning. “I want to close up this house or maybe make it available to one of the college teachers. If students have difficulty finding housing, I suspect the teachers may as well.”
“Very civic minded.” He brushed the crumbs from his mustache. He looked out of place in my little house, his tallness filling it. “The Browne house,” he said, changing the subject. “It has three stories. I’d like to see steam heat in it and billiards, a bowling alley and buffet palace in the basement.”
“Is it that large? And how much will the renovations cost?”
“I want it to be one of the finest houses between Minneapolis and Portland. But you have to choose it, to make it yours. Ours. Whatever you want, that’s what we’ll do.”
“As I have with my little Caldwell house.”
“As you have here.” He paused, then looked at me, those black eyes shining. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come back. I . . . I brought along the Brownes because I couldn’t bear it if I’d had to return to Spokane alone without you or the promise you would return to me.”
“And my heart sank when I saw you with an attractive woman on your arm.”
“You didn’t think that I—”
“I didn’t know. Perhaps I’d given you cause, leaving you. But I’m grateful she wasn’t a replacement for me.”
“There will never be a replacement for you. You’re my partner and always will be.” He kissed my fingers. “Don’t ever doubt it.”
“And the cost?”
“Don’t worry about it. The budget for remodeling is $100,000.”
I gasped. “Robert—”
“We can afford it. I promise. The money is in the bank.”
“I’ll like to see the accounts.”
“Absolutely. Anything you want.”
Robert had arranged for the driver to pick him up so he could catch the train and ride back with the Brownes. I came along and told them all goodbye.
“You will come to tea soon.”
“Within the month,” I told Mrs. Browne. They boarded and Robert and I stood on the platform. He held my hands.
“Why don’t I wait and travel with you?” Robert said.
“Go on. Get the papers signed for the house.”
“You don’t want to look at it first?”
“It was less about having a home of our own than about who I am with you, home or not. I have a better understanding of all that now. I think I’ve matched the hatch that will make the flow go so much easier.”
And so, it did.
The Browne house on West First Avenue was astonishing. The structure sat in the trees and we called it The Pines, though others called it Strahorn Pines or simply Strahorns. Mrs. Browne had recommended Kirtland Cutter as an architect. I met him at the house and liked him. He was a few years younger than me, and he took me around by carriage to several homes he and his partner had designed so I could see the possibilities. He’d made a name for himself rebuilding after the big Spokane fire of 1889.
“Sometimes out of flames the new has a chance to flourish,” he told me.
“It’s good to be able to push away the bad with something good,” I agreed. “We’ve never lived through a fire.”
“Spokane lost the entire downtown. I’d suggest a fourth floor, Mrs. Strahorn.” We stood in front of our new home. Pard had left us to it. He was off making plans for his North Coast Railway and another idea, one in Central Oregon near Bend; another not far from Crater Lake.
“A fourth floor?”
“You could then put that bowling alley in the basement. That would be quite a dramatic draw.” He often spoke in alliterative phrases. He parted his hair in the middle and didn’t always wear a hat, which gave him a boyish appearance. A storm thundered in the east and shafts of color in a linear rainbow broke the horizon. “And steam heat, the first in Spokane.”
“I hadn’t thought of a dramatic draw being in the basement.”
“I see handsome hand-carved beams and woodwork, damask-covered walls with rare oriental rugs, mosaic floor tiles.”
“Oh, I know of an old palace in Italy. We might be able to get tiles from there.”
“We’ll work well together, Mrs. Strahorn. Your husband has said I have a blank check.”
“We still need to be . . . wise,” I said.
He nodded. “It’s likely to take a couple of years to do all we want. I can get sixty carpenters working at once if need be.”
“Just so at the end there are enough bedrooms. We’ll have many guests, I’m sure.” Daisy trotted around, following us.
“Nine or ten bedrooms with the master suite, of course. Will that be enough?”
“I should think so.” We walked in the upstairs hall, looked at the maid’s room, then made our way to the kitchen. He made notes about the pantry and a small mudroom near the back door. “Daisy will have a place here but of course in our bedroom as well.” He smiled. “And I hope to see if Whitworth University students could use rooms. What’s the use of a large house without young laughter and the happy barks of a dog within its walls?”
“That’s a splendid idea, Mrs. S. What a prize for those students to have time with you.”
I hadn’t told Robert yet about the student invitations. I would find a new way to mother in this West. A crystal chandelier cast a rainbow across the empty foyer as the architect, Daisy, and I made our way down the grand staircase. I took the rainbow as a sign.
From the preface of Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, vol. 1, by Carrie Adell Strahorn (page xv)
The main purpose has been to record some of the humorous and thrilling events during many years of pioneer travel, leaving out most of the heartaches and disappointments, the excessive fatigue and hardships, and giving more of the rainbow glow to an adventurous life on the frontier.
34
S
urprises
I had to live the best chapters for my autobiography and that was making The Pines our home and sharing it with others.
May 12, 1901
The house became my artistic palette, but I made certain to make and maintain real friendships. I took trips back to Caldwell for weekends, staying with the Blatchleys, fly fishing as an escape. Once or twice I dragged Robert with me, packed a picnic lunch, and we ate on the banks of the Boise. The carpenters worked through the winter months and I was there to cheer them on—and give advice. I bought a horse, a thoroughbred named Morning Song. I called him Song for short.
In Spokane, I joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, as my own history included a great-great-grandfather who had fought for our country. At a suffrage meeting, I met the famous, now elusive and often talked about Helga Estby who, with her daughter, had walked to New York City. We society women admired her greatly, but she was shunned by her Norwegian neighborhood for having left her family to make that historic walk. And I understood she no longer spoke with the daughter who had accompanied her. It all seemed very sad to me. How easily our fortunes could change.
I expressed concern about shifting fortunes to Robert one morning when Kirtland (the architect and I were on a first-name basis by then) told me what it would cost to have bathrooms attached to the many bedrooms.
“That’s fine,” Robert told me. “It’s only money.” We walked beneath a scaffolding where men had worked earlier in the day on plastering the walls. The house was silent now, with a May sunset turning the world pink inside and out. We’d been at the remodeling for more than a year.
“Yes, but there could be a limit to ours. We’ve been there before when we slipped out of the hotel in Fairhaven and I don’t want to go there again.” I’d looked at the books and monitored the expenses, but to my questions about where the money came from Robert had been as elusive as mist. “As much as I don’t understand finance, I wonder if you ought to take time and really teach me. I do trust God to take care of us, but still, if we foolishly spend lavishly—”
“Dell.” He interrupted me, then stared as though thinking. “Look. We have a blank check from Harriman. For all of this.” He spread his hand. “He . . . he bailed us out in Boston.”
“The Union Pacific did? You said you’d made some money buying warrants.”
“I did. I did. Harriman advanced the money. I’ve paid him back. And now he’s financing my North Coast Railroad and The Pines is collateral—”
“Harriman owns this house?”
“It’s in our name. We have the deed. I covered it with his ample assistance paying me for the work I’m doing. But I’ve also mortgaged it.”
I frowned. “Mortgaged it?
“It’s a common practice, Dell. Nothing to worry about. But you can’t say anything. If we’re to get all three railroads here, we can say nothing about Harriman’s involvement, because he and James J. Hill of the Great Northern hate each other. It’s going to take all my finesse to make this happen. Meanwhile, we do have money of our own but most of this—” he waved his arm again to take in our house—“most of this remodeling is Harriman’s doing. He agrees we need a lavish place for us to entertain, to bring in the right people, to make Spokane the grand city it’ll be. And he wants that major depot here as much as I do. We’re partners, but he’s the silent one. It’s ironic that people call me the Sphinx.”
I dropped down onto a pile of fresh-cut lumber. “I’ve heard that. I thought people were being coy about what they really wanted to say out loud: ‘Where is Strahorn getting all his money?’ I’ve had women ask as much in their side-way language. I always tell them you made your money in bonds and warrants in Boston.”
“I did. But it was Harriman behind it. I made a killing. We are millionaires, Dell. But these big investments—oh, not the $100,000 in the remodel, that’s nothing—I mean the railroad depot, the North Coast Line, my Oregon line I’d like to see, all of that—Harriman’s behind it. Remember when we went to Klamath Falls?”
That had been in the ’80s.
“It was to touch base with Harriman. His lodge on Pelican Lake. Now, he deposits money in an account. I take it out and put it in our personal account. And I pay our bills with it and bills for the railroad ventures. And I buy up what Harriman wants me to. That’s all the finance you really need to know.”
“The house? This house?”
“It’s ours. But Harriman’s money helped and we’ll repay him with your grand parties and your being the greatest hostess of the West as we wine and dine investors, sell ideas and dreams. We cannot talk about him. With anyone. Later, when all three lines are here, then it can come out. But not before. But I know I can trust you. You’re my partner.” He grinned.
I had stopped calling him Pard in Boston. It seemed out of place when we were in the East, but now I realized I had already known that we were no longer the partners we’d once been. Coming to Spokane hadn’t changed that. At that moment, I missed my father terribly. I would have liked to have talked with him, sorted out all of this. For five years Robert had been partnering with Edward Harriman of the Union Pacific and I’d known nothing about it.
Perhaps I deluded myself, but what did it really matter where the money came from? Some people made money raising wheat and corn; others by selling fabric at the mercantile. Still others built hotels and made their money through people who stayed in them as we did while we worked on the house. Still others were teachers or librarians or police officers whose salaries came from taxes paid by those who made money enough to pay them. And in return, they paid taxes. It was all as interconnected as a railroad hub with tracks coming from faraway places bringing passengers and goods in and taking others out. And yet . . .
“I’ll keep your secret, certainly, Robert. You know that. I feel a little chagrined that it’s taken you this long to share it.”
“I didn’t want to burden you, Dell.”
“Information is never a burden, Robert.”
He dropped his eyes.
“Well, I will do my best to be that hostess you envision. If I can sleep in a room with twenty-six men and live to tell about it, I guess I can plan a party for a couple of hundred people and live to tell about that too.”
“That’s my girl.” He hugged me to him.
“But I do have one suggestion. And I do hope it doesn’t have to pass through the hands of Mr. Harriman.”
“Name it. A lavish mural painted on the living room walls by a renowned artist? Gold-plated furniture in the drawing room? What about leaded-glass windows? Greek statues?”
“I hadn’t thought of any of that except the windows, but it’s intriguing. No, I want to see if Whitworth University needs student housing. I’d like to keep three of those nine bedrooms to house young ladies’ laughter.”
“Great idea! You can hire them as maids for the parties.”
“No. I won’t want to interfere with their studies. We’ll hire real maids and chauffeurs and chefs and housekeepers and pay them good wages and keep Mr. Harriman’s money in circulation.”
While I knew that all we’d acquired had come because of business, after a time I did see it as a kindness extended by those Robert had worked with and befriended enough to keep us not just afloat but lavishly swimming.
One evening in 1902 at the Davenport Hotel, I arrived for a small party Robert had arranged. “It’s a business dinner,” he said. “Wear that Giuseffi gown with the blue overlay. It shows off all your curves.” He winked.
But when I headed toward the door of the private dining room where I expected to meet our guests, the maître d’ directed me to the ballroom.
“Hattie? What are you doing here? And Mary?” My sisters are here? I looked around. There stood, applauding, dozens of friends from Caldwell and Hailey and beyond. Robert had sent a private car for the Caldwell crowd and a stage for the Hailey crew to get to Caldwell for the occasion, which he reminded me was our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Then in front of
everyone, he handed me the key to The Pines.
“It’s finished. And it’s my anniversary present to the most remarkable woman who ever graced the West. Or East for that matter.”
“Where are all the other keys?” I said. “It has two dozen doors.”
Everyone laughed as I hoped they would. And, well, I knew it wasn’t quite finished and I was a bit irked that Robert had stolen my thunder. But I’d plan the first party in The Pines, at least.
We hadn’t moved in yet, but I had met the three young women who would be using our “dormitory bedrooms,” as classes would be starting soon. They’d brought their trunks and chosen their bedroom views. I looked forward to their presence. But I had yet to hire the maid or chauffeur. The housekeeper and chef were in place.
Kirtland Cutter was at the party, as were the Brownes, whom I’d grown quite fond of, them and their houseful of children. Many of Robert’s railroad friends attended (though not the elusive Mr. Harriman, who I wasn’t sure had even been to Spokane). But so were the Blatchleys and the Littles and the Gwinns. And Peter and Hester came too. All would be staying at the hotel. I wished I’d known, as I’d have rushed up efforts to have our guests stay in our new home. But I think Robert liked the idea of the surprise and his big moment. It was sweet of him, even if overly dramatic to hand the key to me and make his announcement that “Strahorn Pines” was his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary present to me.
“And I have a surprise for you too,” I told him. “I didn’t expect to be telling you in front of everyone, in case you don’t like it.”
“I’d like anything you gave me,” he said. The crowd applauded.
“I didn’t bring it with me, obviously not knowing all of you would be here.” I spread my hands to take in the shining faces of our friends. “But it does involve transportation, the heart of Robert’s life.” He grinned, anticipating. “It’s two tickets aboard the ocean liner Americana. We are headed to Europe, Mr. Strahorn. That’s my anniversary present to you.”