Gentlemen on the Prairie: Victorians in Pioneer Iowa

6. Some Difficulties Surmounted

CHAPTER S I X Some Difficulties Surmounted , N the ",Iy "'1<'" of CI"", Brothers, William attempted to make money on all aspects of the operation-tutorial fees, land-sale commisSIons , percentages on ImprovlOg raw prame, banking personal accounts, and farm management for British investors who never intended to become colonists. In the latter category, Richard Sykes, John Close's friend, was the biggest client and the most trouble. Sykes asked William for impossibly detailed information: when his land was to be broken, what buildings were to be erected, and where and exactly who would manage the farms, and how the half-share system worked. "You understand," William wrote James, "that he wants all rents on half-shares, so send estimates for amount of seed required, value & how much to be in what and how much in corn." A simpler way would have been a cash-rent agreement, so much per acre going to the landlord, the tenant making what he could on his own. Share-rent management of farm property for fussy clients like Sykes was simply not feasible for Close Brothers, although William was not yet aware of this. Furthermore, Sykes was delinquent in paying. "As you have failed to pay in the money I am forced to decline to act as your agent in this purchase and have wired the facts to my brothers," since "they do not keep such sums as£1,200 ($6,000) idle to suit the convenience of clients." Almost by return mail Sykes sent £800 ($4,000), insttucting Close Brothers to purchase land to that amount. "I am fast getting into a quarrel with Sykes," William wrote James. "He is most slippery." Sykes requested William to withdraw his statement that he would not act as agent. "I see nothing ... to withdraw- that we can't buy land unless the money is paid up. He accuses us one and all of being most unbusinesslike, so for goodness sake hurry up and send his title deeds [for lands purchased already] .... He complains much about that. I have him, though, on the hip. He alleges that he could not pay up for Spirit Lake because he was too busy? By the way, he says that his first investment through you was entirely in a philanthropical spirit to help a young man starting in the world." Sykes also had to be made to understand that to purchase the choice Spirit Lake lands, he must agree to have Close Brothers improve them for the usual_ charges. If he were merely interested in buying lands for speculative purposes, holding them and then selling, some other tracts would have to be found. Because of these difficulties with Sykes, William began to clarify the difference 77 78 GENTLEMEN ON THE PRAIRIE between a settler and a speculator-the former to receive prime consideration. "You are mistaken," William wrote Sykes, "in supposing that you are to have the whole list of lands before you and that you are to have your choice. All I promised was that as you and John had your names down first for anything that might turn up, James was to give you two the first choice for an improved farm, i.e., the two best improved farms to go to you and John respectively. The rest will be divided equally by James and Fred out there. It is perfectly impossible for me here to divide the lands." After receiving further infuriating notes from Sykes, William sent back the £800 check, "in order that if you were willing, we could start afresh with a proper understanding between us." As it worked out, Sykes finally purchased about 30,000 acres in the extreme northwest corner of Iowa. Much of it had belonged to the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad, which Close Brothers sold for them. By 1881 fifty breaking teams were at work creating quarter-section farms upon which the necessary buildings were erected. Sykes and his friend John Close arrived for a visit in the spring of that year- John's sole trip to Iowa. After the farms were ready to be worked, Sykes hired good overseers, and in this way he did not have to be in residence except during the nice weather. The Sykes home, "Larchwood" (later the name of the town), was one of the most impressive in the area. He enjoyed playing the grand seigneur with the local folks, and one Larchwood resident recalled the excitement in school when Mr. Sykes of Manchester, England, dropped by for a visit, passing out oranges and candies to the children, looking very grand and important a~ he strolled about the classroom. "I still possess a 'drawing slate' he brought me on one of those occasions, and some specimen beads from strings of 'Irish beads' he brought to my somewhat older schoolmates .'" Sykes's stock farms dealt principally in Galloway and Black Welsh cattle, his heifers and young bulls highly prized. By 1888 Sykes was selling some ofhis land on a ten-year term basis. He had gained the reputation of being a tough customer for anyone having business dealings with him. The widow of the Close Brothers' attorney had to go to court to wring legal fees out of him; it took her four years to secure a judgment of $1,500. When it became more profitable for Sykes to unload the higher-priced land on new settlers, he relinquished all of his Iowa holdings and by the turn of the century no longer had any connection with Middle West farming. While clients like Sykes added greatly to Close Brothers' coffers, it was the colony itself that increasingly absorbed William's attention. How were the young lads doing? Did they like the country? James must continue to "be their advisor or mentor to whom they can turn for instruction, so that they are not cheated on arrival. ... Of course, all extra expense, buggies and so on, they must pay, and lawyers' fees. Your principal work should be sitting in your office and dispensing advice." Had James made arrangements with the lumber companies , the furniture suppliers in Chicago, with the machinery people? "I have Some Difficulties Surmounted 79 some 35 booked to sail in the next six weeks, and goodness knows how many are thinking about it." He had been working too hard. "Every night up to twelve or one o'clock and all Sunday." The total sum already paid in by clients came to over $100,000. "I feel very tired but can hold out until Con Benson returns [from Iowa]." Mrs. Harriet Humble seemed like an ordinary parent-investor when she deposited a premium for her son, William, embarking from Liverpool 22 January 1880 aboard the City o/Richmond. As a £25 pup, he was to be settled on some suitable farm in the colony. "He's a young, inoffensive smug of 18," William wrote James. Mrs. Humble was only recently widowed; her husband had been a large landowner in the Midlands, with several farms in Yorkshire, a hunting lodge in Scotland, plus "financial interests in the United States:' according to his grandson. There were eight Humble children, four girls and four boys. One girl had married and was living in Wales, but the rest of the children's futures had to be somehow managed by Mrs. Humble. The attraction of the Iowa British colony was surely that her son William would come under the supervision of an older man - to make up for the lost father. Once the boy got settled in Iowa, he wrote lively letters home describing farm life, with the result that his sisters decided to visit, as well as Mrs. Humble. Since they were extremely attractive girls, they were immediately noticed in the colony and widely introduced. According to octogenarian T. J. Maxwell, once the groom of Fred Close, one day while out horseback riding Fred spied two of the Humble girls bathing in a stream. He was so struck by their beautyparticularly Margaret's-that he fell in love on the spot. However the romance started, it quickly became serious, and Fred married Margaret in the fall of 1881. The other sister, Susan, married James Close on Christmas Day, 1885, in Chicago. A third sister, Annie, married a later Close Brothers partner, Samuel Houghton Graves. 2 With William Humble on board the City 0/Richmond was W. White Marsh, whom William characterized as a "gentleman son of a Rev'd, been sheep farming in Australia and wants to get onto a sheep farm." Marsh's brother, Arthur, and his wife shipped out a few months later, but instead of remaining in farming he became an ordained Episcopal minister, serving as rector in Blair, Nebraska. His son, upon graduation from the University of Nebraska, won a Rhodes Fellowship in 1905 and studied theology at Oxford. In this fashion the transplanted Englishman, Arthur Marsh, was able to follow the advice of Blackwood's magazine (March 1889): whereas a well-educated gentleman who had once known civilization and the stimulating company of congenial friends could live a rustic life for years, his offspring could not. "If an emigrant has children he ought to pinch to his last farthing to give his son an education in Great Britain." When young Marsh returned to Nebraska after Oxford he became vicar of St. Paul's in Omaha, but died in France in 1917, serving as chaplain with the American troopS.3 80 GENTLEMEN ON THE PRAIRIE The Honorable Henry Frank Sugden sailed a few days later than Humble and Marsh from Liverpool aboard the City 0/Chester. Sugden "intends to pick out a piece of land and improve it through our firm," William reported. How much he was to be charged William left to James; special consideration ought to be given because Sugden had been serving as a Close agent, receiving a£2.10s. commission on every pup he persuaded. "He takes two out with him to view the country." Frank Sugden was the grandson of Lord St. Leonards, an eminent law reformer, sworn to the Privy Council in 1834 and created Baron St. Leonards in 1852, the birth year of the future British emigrant to Iowa. Frank's father was a clergyman, a second son who did not inherit the title. Frank had already spent considerable time on the southern Minnesota border as a sheep and cattle farmer. When the Close Colony formed, he endorsed William's prospectus, speaking from his Middle West experience. One year later, all set up on the West Fork near the Close stock farms, Sugden was heavily involved in raising sheep. In January 1881, 400 of them died, more than he had ever lost before, although in Minnesota he had carried as many as 3,000 sheep through a winter. His losses were attributed to inferior Missouri-bred sheep, which he'd purchased cheaply the previous fall. "He is satisfied that it is bad policy to bring sheep from the south to winter here," the local paper reported, "no matter how tempting the price may be at the time."4 A sister kept house for Frank, but in 1882 they decided to return to England; the whole Sugden establishment was put up for auction, "a large lot of horses, cattle, implements, and household goods." However, the following year the Sugdens were back and continued to play an important role in the colony. When Frank's father died in 1886, rumors spread throughout the English settlement that a new baron was in their midst. Miss Sugden sent word to the press that such was not the case. The confusion among the transplanted Britons perhaps arose because of the cause celebre following the death of the first Lord St. Leonards in 1876, which some may have remembered. Frank's grandfather, author of the Handy Book on Real Property Law, was "one of the most learned real property lawyers who had ever sat on the bench," and there were eight codicils to the will, set down in precise, technical language, as if Lord St. Leonards in a parting shot would demonstrate what a brilliant attorney he had been. His grandson, offspring of the first-born male, inherited the title, but his daughter Charlotte, "a lady of great ability," who had "largely assisted her father in the preparation of his legal treatises;' saw to it that her brother, the Reverend Frank Sugden, and herself were designated to receive the bulk of the estate. Narurally, the new baron protested. But Charlotte and her brother won the case. When the judge, Lord Brampton, died, the Times obituary referred to the suit: "It was probably the most singular instance in the annals of our law of the establishment of a lost instrument by secondary testimony ," most of it accomplished "on the evidence of Miss Sugden." Although Some Difficulties Surmounfied 81 the Iowa Frank Sugden did not inherit the title upon the death of his clergyman father in 1886, his financial situation was considerably changed for the better. Thus "Old Sug," as he was called, left Le Mars and returned to England.s THE colony would be attractive to settlers only if word of mouth were favorable, and William was distressed that a couple of brothers had complained about sleeping two to a bed. "With the premiums they pay, they must be provided with a bed each. Don't overwork them." Another wrote "a vicious and unwarranted letter. We don't wish any of this to get out. He says the country is not fit for darkies- the cold is awful. He runs down everything." William was beginning to realize that some of the rambunctious young bachelors fresh from the public schools were not "taking" to rugged prairie life and needed the settling influence of solid, older married couples. These seasoned homesteaders would become the bulwark of the colony. "Capt. Mount Batten, with whom I am staying now, will probably go out next month [February]. He is sick of farming here and Madge is all on fire to go out-and would tomorrow if she could.... Looks like it is all not that ladies can't go out with their husbands, and the sooner we get some ladies with real go in them ... the greater our colony will be. I can't see any objection to ladies as long as we can get a dozen ... at a time and in one place." Spirit Lake might be settled with such English families; "we can soon get it a fashionable American watering place and make it a very paying concern by selling lots and building hotels." Captain]. C. Cooper and Mrs. Cooper, already Le Mars residents, were another stable couple, "having been a captain in the army, he's always a good reference"; furthermore, Cooper and Batten had served in the same battalion and were old friends. So was Capt. W. P. Bridson from Manchester, who booked passage soon after reading William's letter about the colony in a local newspaper. To this group of ex-service officers would be added Col. James Fenton and his wife, who initially requested Close Brothers to find an improved stock farm near Le Mars. "He has ten children and therefore must be near schools," but now "'he would like to go to Spirit Lake." Another eminently suitable pair were Mr. and Mrs. W. McOran Campbell. He was thirty-three years old, son of a wealthy Scottish landowner who was magistrate for the counties Dumbarton and Lanark and Lord of the Barony of Tullichewan. These married gentlemen immigrants would "form a capital nucleus for your society [William says your, not our], and then by judiciously starting a small hotel we could make a lot of coin by making it en vtJle de pleasance. People coming back somewhat complain of the hotels. Why don't you run up some addition to your Le Mars establishment and make newcomers comfortable on their 82 GENTLEMEN ON THE PRAIRIE arrival? ... You could charge a reasonable amount until the pups are stowed away. Men like Batten and Campbell it would pay to put up free and make reasonably comfonable." The Field correspondent visiting Le Mars in the summer of 1881 found the hotels the worst feature of the "rising and stirring little town." Nothing even in West Texas or Nevada could rival the Le Mars hotels for "general discomfort and bad cooking." The only good to be said of them was that "the proprietors are very civil, and do not pretend to think they do the thing well, which is some mitigation of their offence." In addition to his other duties, James was not to neglect the management of William's personal stock farm. "I shall invest all I can in sheep and stock. I want to have 3 or 4,000 pounds [$15,000-$20,000] in sheep and stock... reinvest all my seed [unused seed was to be sold] in my stock farm." Had James arranged to "sell my wheat as soon as there is demand for spent seed? Don't let it go too late, for the moment the demand for seed wheat is over, there is a fall in price. Will a bicycle be of any use to you to go from farm to farm? A man who is a good bicycle man wants to know. His name is Dalton." Obviously, William had totally forgotten the state of most Iowa roads or he would not have asked such a question. Bicycle or not, several Daltons emigrated and soon were highly visible in the colony-with a town west of Le Mars named after them. The pressure William put on James also reflected his anxieties regarding the Paullins and pain over his broken engagement with Mary. Love and money were so intertwined he could not separate them, and the Paullins appeared to be aware of his vulnerability. Then a letter arrived from James with the surprising news that the Paullins had managed to scrape together the needed cash after all. They had saved their piece of the Bloodgood-Stanton lands, and now Ed was his old boasting, braggart self. He ridiculed the Close Brothers' purchase price for the Spirit Lake tracts, telling James that it could all have been bought for $8.75 an acre. William consoled his brother: "He only wanted to show you that you lost by not dealing through his father. He told all sorts of untruths in the same way" to several others. James would have to decide on the ownership assignment of the parcel, with the Paullins receiving title to acreages for which they actually put up cash. William took some satisfaction in specifying that along with other parcels, "the Paullins are to have ... the worst 40 in S.E. of 24.89.43." But William's bitterness evaporated when he received a different kind of Paullin communication-this one from Mary. The letter arrived in late February or early March, an epistle so winning and conciliatory that suddenly, as far as William was concerned, the courtship was fully restored, perhaps stronger than ever. Up to the moment he received Mary's letter, William stated no intention of returning to Iowa in the spring of 1880. He had all he could do managing the London end of Close Brothers. The suddenness of his change of Some Difficulties Surmounted 83 plans suggests the depths of his feelings toward her, but just what brought about her change of heart long puzzled the Close family and aroused numerous suspicions. William's niece, Anne Eaden, who transcribed "The Prairie Journal" and for years served as unofficial family scribe, claimed she understood how it happened. "I am in a position to know," she wrote, for she'd been on intimate terms with her Uncle Bill. In Anne Eaden's view, although William was "deeply in love.... She did not return it."6 Why then did she make the crucial move that brought about the reconciliation ? Anne Eaden believed (implying that it was finally her Uncle Bill's opinion) that "Her father for financial reasons wanted the marriage: eventually she gave way." It was not merely the $22,500 debt various Paullins owed William , but if this interpretation is correct, Daniel Paullin shrewdly realized that Close Brothers and the partners involved were on the verge of an enormous financial success. Paullin had been instrumental in bringing it about, having befriended and trained William in land purchasing. Such an investment in a promising young man's career should not be lost just at the point where substantial gains for the Paullins might be realized. Fathers often prevailed upon daughters when it came to marriage arrangements; even educated, emancipated Mary seems to have bent under this patetnal coercion. To mitigate the crassness of such scheming, Paullin could take comfort in the notion of how pleased William would be to have his bereft, lonely condition alleviated, his love finally consummated. These months since the break, William had continued to demonstrate his emotional involvement with the Paullins, and certainly the family appeared to need a bulwark like this gifted, enterprising young man. Daniel Paullin was entering the last year of his life. Health failing, he may have exerted particular effort to secure the well-being of his children who would soon be orphans. The boys' future lay in farming in northwest Iowa, but what of the girls? At least Mary would be handsomely taken care of by a good man already on his way to riches, who wanted nothing more in the world than to make her his wife. Mary played her part convincingly. William sailed from Liverpool aboard the Celtic, disembarking at New York on 20 April 1880. He routed his train trip west through Quincy but only visited Mary a few days; on 26 April he arrived in Le Mars, ready to undertake the last full season of his tenure on the prairie. Now that he was about to achieve all that he had been striving forsuccessful in his marriage suit and rapidly becoming a wealthy businessmanthe "trials" were over. The rest of his life would unfold directly from this destiny of his own making. But his best years had involved the struggle itself, not the realization of his dreams. ...