Gone West

The Great War generated its own vocabulary:

“Kick the bucket” because men in the trenches stood on buckets to aim their rifles and often were shot down themselves,

“Lousy” because lice were everywhere,

“Break new ground” because the soldiers constantly dug more trenches,

“Basket case” because gravely wounded soldiers often were carried off the battlefield in baskets, and so forth.

The expression “Gone West” – to die – may have originated in ancient Egypt because the uninhabited Western desert across the Nile was thought to be the land of the dead.

But it became very popular during World War I. In 1919, a book called Gone West, by a Soldier Doctor was published. Its authors were two middle-aged ladies in a small town in upstate New York.  

Mattie Mitchell Hunt and Harriet McCrory Grove were old friends. In 1885 their families lived in the same building in Minneapolis. By 1900, Harriet worked as a librarian in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Mattie had married and lived in San Antonio.

Mattie’s maternal ancestors served in the Continental Army, so she made a few appearances in D.A.R. Lineage Books. Her father, Lester, started as a small-town physician and became wealthy as a director of two Midwestern railway corporations and a milling company.   

Somehow Mattie met a financier named William Hill Hunt who hailed from Alabama. She was 26 years old in 1894 when they married and moved to San Antonio. From there, William pursued shady business transactions in Mexico. Their son and daughter were born in Texas.

The tale of William Hunt is full of deception. But he always picked himself up and went right on fooling his investors. *

Around 1900, the Hunt family moved to New York City. William continued his swindling ways and eventually went to prison. Mattie remained loyal until she learned of his serial infidelity. After a protracted divorce suit, she left him in 1912.

At that point, Mattie and her children took off for Hamburg, N.Y. in the far west part of the state near Buffalo.

Main Street, Hamburg, N.Y., 1904;
newly paved with bricks

Her friend Harriet had lived in Hamburg since 1903 when she married a roofing contractor named Frank Grove. It was his hometown.

In 1915, Harriet and Mattie started to collaborate on Gone West, by a Soldier Doctor. The manuscript would be a series of conversations with an older acquaintance who had died fairly recently.

Dozens of books about psychic phenomena had already been published in the U.S.  Spiritualists started captivating Americans during the mid-nineteenth century, and women especially were drawn to their performances. During these years, many hoaxes were exposed as well.   

It’s easy to imagine Mattie and Harriet, sitting in a dark parlor figuring out the plot. 

Or did the soldier / doctor really contact them? He had a lot to report. He told them to write it all down just as he communicated it from beyond. The two women and the doctor went back and forth telepathically. They used a technique called automatic writing, in which the writer acts as a receiver. She puts her pen on the page and starts to write involuntarily. Everything flows.

It’s kind of startling when that happens. Suddenly her pen was seized by an unseen force and the preceding words were written . . . as the doctor spoke loud and clear from across the Great Divide.

He had served in the Civil War and later became a physician. He died on Lincoln’s Birthday, 1915, and now he’s reaching out across the battlefields of World War I.

He describes to the ladies how he passes his days.

The thing that interests me most right now is the law of vibration. It is necessary to understand it to see how our worlds intermingle and still do not collide. The Astral Plane this is called.

He counsels them to prepare for going west themselves: You girls must study thought and ‘thought action’ constantly.

He communicates from a place where he comforts wounded and dying soldiers. When the war is over, the soldier / doctor bids the ladies “au revoir” and the book ends.

Diagram of automatic writing, circa 1900

It surprises me that the book’s preface was written by Frederick W. Kendall, literary editor of the Buffalo Express. In fact, Kendall’s imprimatur made possible the book’s publication. “Mr. Kendall vouches for the good faith and integrity of the writers,” according to reviews.

I can’t help but wonder why Kendall endorsed such a flighty book while being married to a woman who was so seriously occupied in the here and now.

Ada Louise Davenport Kendall met her husband when she became the first woman reporter for the Buffalo Express. Initially angry about the hire, he eventually fell in love with her and they married. She went on to write a Sunday newspaper column, “The Garret Philosopher,” for 16 years.

The Kendalls also lived in Hamburg (with their four children).

In 1910, Ada became active in the National Woman’s Party, led by suffragist Alice Paul.

While protesting outside the White House in 1917, Ada and five other suffragists were arrested and sentenced to 30 days at a prison workhouse in Virginia. Ada spent seven days in solitary confinement. She wrote to her husband, now city editor of the Buffalo Express, who published his wife’s descriptions of the horrendous conditions she endured and observed.

Portrait of Ada Kendall with one of her children

After her release, Ada continued to write and push for the vote. She became a heroine of the movement and was recognized widely for her success in journalism and as a poet. 

I like to imagine the passionate, intellectual Ada, conversing with her pet parrot, Mattie and Harriet, their pens in hand, and Frederick Kendall, holding onto his hat as the wind blows off Lake Erie.

*The story of William Hill Hunt appears in the July 20, 2016 post.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/12/gone-west.html?m=1

William Hill Hunt: American Scoundrel

William Hill Hunt, 1900

Just at that moment, timing couldn’t be better – the turn of the switch of the twentieth century –

Successful American, an illustrated monthly magazine featuring “sketches and portraits of representative men and women,” made its debut.  

Women were largely confined to society notes at the back of each issue. Politicians and educators appeared here and there. The real focus was railway magnates, bankers, industrialists; the men who used to be called capitalists. Their stories dominated the pages of Successful American, with each picture accompanied by a caption that said it all:

One of Our Most Experienced Engineers, and Identified with the Gigantic Developments of the Period.

Introducer of the Automatic Weighing Machine, and Connected with a Host of Industries.

A Hustler in the Best Sense of the Term – A Modern American Full of Vim and Energy.

Known as One of the Leading Lights in the Financial and Railroad World.

And in December 1902, here came William Hill Hunt:

The Pioneer of American International Banking, A Progressive and Successful American.

Hunt was born in Alabama in 1864. His father, an overseer (that would be slaves), died the same year. The son started his career as a grocery store clerk. By the age of 21, he had established two banks in Selma and made valuable connections. Somehow he met Mattie Mitchell, daughter of a Minneapolis physician who had amassed wealth as a director of two Midwestern railways.

In 1894 Mattie and William married and moved to San Antonio where he worked as a banker. Almost certainly the proximity to Mexico led to his interest in making money there. While agriculture still dominated the Mexican economy, manufacturing, mining, and other businesses were taking off as the government encouraged foreign investment.

William was on the move.

A son, Lester, arrived in 1894 and a daughter, Siloma, in 1897. A few years later, William moved his family to New York City. They lived at The Alimar, a fancy new apartment house on the Upper West Side.

The Alimar, 925 West End Avenue, Manhattan
(The Architectural Review, June 1903)

In June 1901, William Hill Hunt established the Mexican Trust Company, the first U.S. financial institution to operate a branch banking system in a foreign nation. Mr. Hunt studied the problem for eight years before figuring out how to break the European monopoly on international banking, according to Successful American.            

In 1902, Hunt changed the company’s name to the International Bank and Trust Company of America.

A year after that, the bank went into receivership with a $1 million loss.

A year after that, Hunt reorganized the bank as the Pan-American Banking Company.

And in 1905, the state of Illinois indicted him for larceny. Accused of accepting deposits as an officer of his company when he knew it was insolvent, Hunt also falsely used the name of General Nelson A. Miles, a veteran of the Civil War and Spanish-American War, to lure investors. The judge set bail at $5,000.

The loyal Mattie set to work lobbying the Illinois governor for a pardon, and finally succeeded. After William got out of jail, she asked her father to help her husband restart his career. William established the United States Industrial Company and hoped to make another fortune through trade with Argentina. When one plan failed, Hunt moved onto another.

Announcement of Hill's 1916 business endeavor: "William Hill Hunt,
of New York, devised the scheme of organization and made a trip to
Argentina to discuss the plan with merchants and importers. . ."

Meanwhile Mattie left in 1912, taking the children. Her cousin had arranged to have William tailed and it turned out he had been unfaithful. Next, a mining engineer came out of the woodwork to testify that Hunt had “misbehaved” in Cuba in 1896 and described his “notorious” conduct with women. After two years of working with a court-appointed referee, Mattie received a divorce decree.

The man from Alabama continued to scheme until he had to stop. When he died in 1928 the New York Times reported politely that his banking operations “brought him a good deal of notoriety.”  

An inglorious end for a “successful American.” And, in the end, a truly American story. A young, ambitious banker who overvalued social status, William Hill Hunt became cagey and deceitful, lying recklessly to his own investors. He thought himself invincible.

Yet Hunt certainly was a man of his times. 

Mustachioed and packed into an Edwardian waistcoat, like so many others he launched himself greedily into the new century.

Mattie's story will follow. 

See also April 20 post about William Hunt's sister, Mamie Hunt Sims, and her book Negro Mystic Lore.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/07/william-h-hunt-american-scoundrel.html?m=1

The Story of Negro Mystic Lore

Advertisements for the book appeared exclusively in To-morrow Magazine, an early 20^th century journal whose writers enthused about Socialism, atheism, and woman’s suffrage.

The “talented authoress,” an Alabama native named Mamie Hunt Sims, wrote with “a Pathos and a Sociological Insight” and “knew every touch of Negro Philosophy,” according to the promotion.

In passing, I assumed that Negro Mystic Lore, published in 1907, was written by a black woman.  Perhaps it explored stories told by former slaves and analyzed their African antecedents.

But now, book in hand, I realize that my assumption was absurd.  Negro Mystic Lore comprises 18 stories written in what linguists today define as African American Vernacular English.  In her foreword, Sims wrote that she hoped “to show the real kindly feeling that existed between the people of the South and the better class of the negroes.”

A character named Uncle Jake, based on a real person according to Sims, is the main voice in a series of interactions between “de collured pussuns” and “white folkies.”  He is a grotesque caricature:

You chillun is too interruptin enny how and ef you all don’t hush I gwine to hush my mouf and I ain’t gwine to tell you nuthin. I did low ter tell you some two or three nannydotes dis mawnin in case hits too naturally hot ter work dat garden an I mout as well be erestentin you chillun as gwin ter sleep under dat fig tree.

According to the sole notice the book received, Mrs. Sims originally created the stories as entertainment for her friends. “Her work is at once a memory of the ‘Old South’ in its pride and beauty, and a suggestion of the new and greater South flushed with the dawning of more glorious days,” wrote the reviewer.

The title page bears the quotation: “Dem dat has must give to dem dat hain’t.”

How did Negro Mystic Lore come to be published? The likely answer is that it was a favor granted by Parker Sercombe, editor of To-morrow Magazine who also ran a press.

The self-aggrandizing Sercombe (see earlier post), stood accused of many things but not bigotry. He had railed against South Carolina Senator “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, a white supremacist who led a KKK-style terrorist group called the Red Shirts. He expressed solidarity with J. Max Barber, editor of the newspaper Voice of the Negro, who fled a white mob in Atlanta in 1907.

But it turns out that one of Sercombe’s friends, William Hill Hunt, had a sister named Mamie Hunt Sims who wanted to publish her stories. Sercombe obliged.

William Hill Hunt, born in Alabama in 1864, grew up in a family with some wealth in its past. He became successful in business at a young age. In 1902, he founded the Mexican Trust Company with a group of American investors. Around this time, Parker Sercombe also was active in banking in Mexico.

Like Sercombe, Hunt proved slippery. In 1905, the state of Illinois accused the latter of violating its banking laws when he accepted deposits from a bank that he knew was insolvent. Sentenced to Joliet Penitentiary, eventually he received a pardon from the governor.

Mamie Sims dedicated Negro Mystic Lore to her brother, thanking him for his support and encouragement.

The book is a nasty relic of racism written 44 years after the end of the Civil War. But it is typical of its time. During the Progressive Era, America’s white upper class perpetrated outrageous indignities against black people in books, music, and theater. The insults reflected the deep-seated, rationalized prejudices of educated whites.

During the Theodore Roosevelt administration, performers at the White House included Mary L. Leech, a soprano who performed a selection of “coon songs.” The German diplomat Baron Speck von Sternburg and TR’s Secretary of State, John Hay (once President Lincoln’s private secretary) were among the guests who applauded “You’se Just a Little Nigger, Still Youse Mine All Mine” and “Is Dat You?”

Whose dare? Whose dare?

Oh who’s dat knockin’ at my door?

Is dat you, Sambo?

Is dat you, Sambo?

Now you better stop dat knockin’ at de door!

Although Negro Mystic Lore was published by an obscure press and scarcely advertised, my bet is that it was read widely.

Mamie Hunt Sims, frontispiece of Negro Mystic Lore

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/04/the-story-of-negro-mystic-lore.html?m=1