(FIFTEEN)

The Adobe in early years

5

  On February 10, 1908, Pearl wrote to the Riverside Title & Trust Company (“Certificates of Title a specialty”), making certain inquiries about her land in Section 15, most of which included the McCallum Ranch.  On February 13, the Company responded [emphasis added]:

Dear Madam:- We have received your letter of the 10^th inst., and have made a preliminary search of the title to your land in the East half of Section 15, Township 4 south Range 4 East.  The description you gave us is designated by metes and bounds some of the points and lines of which are not shown upon the map; it is there­fore impossible from the records to trace out exactly what land you wish us to include in the Certificate; but in locating your holdings in Palm City, we notice that there seems to be nothing standing in your name North of Spring Street; but your description includes a portion of Block 30, and possibly a portion of Block 9 which blocks lie North of Spring Street.

  We would suggest that you authorize us to make a Certificate on all of your holdings in Palm Springs which Certificate would include a plat showing the streets, distances, and points marked on the map, and from that you could easily designate what portion you desire this particular Certificate on.  The expense of a Certificate on your entire holdings in Palm Springs would be but very little more than a Certificate on a small portion, because the title runs practically the same; and with this Certificate as a base we can make Certifi­cates hereafter on any particular part which you may designate at small cost.

  We notice that the Deed from Emily McCallum to yourself [signed originally in Chicago on October 28, 1901] recorded Nov. 2^nd 1901, in Book 129 page 326 of Deeds, records of Riverside County, described the East half of Blocks 17 and 18, but it should read the North half of these blocks.  This Deed also excepts from Block 1 the “Hillside House” and we cannot determine from the records whether it is intended to except simply the building or a part of the land; possibly the West 250 feet of Lot 4 Block 1 was intended because this was deeded to F. J. Porter in 1900 [by Harry McCallum].  Please give us what information you can on this point.

  We have not completed the search because there are some old tax sales in San Diego County which we must check out to see if properly redeemed since the division of the County [from Riverside County]; and the Probate of the Estate of John G. McCallum, deceased, was had in Los Angeles County, but we can have the Certificate ready in 3 or 4 days after hearing from you.

  If Emily McCallum is still living you should get a Quit Claim Deed from her to correct the errors above mentioned:  if not, and you have the old Deed in your possession, it would probably be all right to make the corrections and re-record the Deed since it is plainly a clerical error.

Kindly let us hear from you at once, and oblige.

Yours very truly,

Riverside Title and Trust Company,

D.W. Lewis, Manager.

To reply please refer to Order No. 19449.

  In reference to a portion of Block 30, and possibly a portion of Block 9 which blocks like North of Spring Street , Pearl had included 182,070 square feet “of a southern portion of Block 30 and 79,458 square feet of Block 9” none of which had been included in the 1897 inventory of John Guthrie’s estate, and therefore had not been cross-deeded in the 1898 family partition.  This meant that 261, 528 square feet, or approximately six acres of the ranch, according to the court propor­tion of 1898 before the partition, was owned by Emily (one-half), May (one-fourth) and Pearl (one-fourth), and had not been cross-deeded in the partition.  If so, would the title search reveal there were other “blocks” and “lots” in Section 15 to which Pearl didn’t have clear title, in which May would have a one-fourth interest after Harry’s death?  To avoid this, Pearl decided to work from the 1897 inventory of her father’s estate, ignoring the 1898 court distribution and the family’s cross-deed partition­ing, asking the title company to discover and secure certificates of title to all her father’s land, as well as from any unrecorded deeds not in the inventory of John Guthrie’s estate.  The “Complete and Final Accounting and Distribution of Estate of J.G. McCallum” June 24, 1908 was issued by the title company in “Order No. 19449.”  Pearl made sure that neither her mother nor May would ever see this final account­ing and distribution because in effect, May now had no vested interested in any property from her father’s estate.  Clearly, Pearl had committed fraud in collusion with the title company.

  November, 1908, five months after “Order No. 19449” was issued, found May sinking into more frequent periods of depression.  She couldn’t sleep and asked Hamilton to give her barbiturates.  In mid-November, she developed a condition known as uremia, caused by an excess of barbiturates in the system which poisons the kidneys.  Saturday afternoon, November 20, the children were asked to come to her bedside.  Jane recalls the moment:

  “I was six years old.  My father told us to go one at a time up the long stair­case of our rambling house to see my mother.  Jack, being the oldest, was first—then Katherine, then me.  Marjorie was only three years old, so was kept away.  My mother said to me, “Be a good little girl, Jane.”  As I grew, I remembered very little about my mother.  I remember her playing the piano and singing.  My father played the piano too, “by ear,” as they say.  I recall being lost in a department store in Redlands and my mother finding me.  I remember her soft features and flowing chestnut hair.  I do not remem­ber loving her as most children love their mothers.  I don’t believe she was an affectionate woman.  The next morning she was gone.  Aunt Pearl and my grandmother Emily had come in from Los Angeles or Palm Springs, I don’t know which, and later they buried my mother in Rosedale Cemetery on Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles alongside her father and her two brothers, Johnnie and Wallace.  Katherine, Marjorie and I were not allowed to go to my mother’s funeral.  Grandmother Emily stayed behind to watch us.  Only my father, Aunt Pearl, and our brother Jack attended.  Jack was thirteen.

  “At Christmas time, after my mother died, Aunt Pearl and my grandmother Emily came to visit.  I had written a letter to Santa Claus, and when my grand­mother saw it, she threw it in the fireplace. . . .”

  May died just after Saturday midnight on November 21.  After the holidays, the first month of 1909, Hamilton moved to Los Angeles with his son Jack, now thirteen.  Pearl and Emily took Katherine and Marjorie in Palm Springs, six year old Jane to live with her father’s parents in Tustin. Emily often requesting Jane visit in Palm Springs.

This concludes Chapters/May and Hamilton.  Next - Emily and Pearl

  (FOURTEEN)

May

May and Hamilton

3

  In May and Hamilton’s time, long before Palm Springs was transformed into a movie-star wonder­land, there was a brooding silence beneath John Guthrie’s mountain.  Before glamour and ballyhoo and frenetic Hollywood children escaped into the solitude of the desert in the 1930s—before they dug their chlorinated pools and hid themselves behind high, concrete walls; before Main Avenue became Palm Canyon Drive choked with Model-A Fords and Packard motorcars and wild teenagers on spring break and the gray men of the 1950s restructured the town and its environs into golf courses for public relations festivals and profited from lease of Indian lands to build garish hotels for peripatetic Easterners (ironi­cally, predominantly from Chicago) to flounder their winters away; and heteroclite roosts of hippies littered the trails beneath Tahquitz Falls in the 1960s, ripped at the ash trees and graffitied the rocks—the persuasive stillness beneath the mountain weighted the eardrums  with such inten­sity, you could almost believe you’d lost your hearing.

  Today, men of science and education, and some not so smart, will explain the pressure of silence is caused when the traveler descends twenty-five hundred feet out of San Gorgonio Pass.  At times, some claimed, the silence was broken by  rolls of thunder tumbling out of the canyons, not easy to explain, so the scientists said it was distant thunder, even if no rain came with it.  How could one give credence to demons or an ancient Cahuilla chieftain who cursed the valley when the white man came?  Johnnie McCallum died because his feet got wet sleeping under an orange tree while he watered the orchards; Wallace from influenza in Chicago at his sister’s home; Harry, for the same reason and in the same place, both far from the valley.  John Guthrie from heart failure  not because he was “cursed,” but more likely from over-exertion on a hot, dry day in February.  A ghoul from the mountain?  Not likely.

  May’s fourth child, Marjorie, was born on May 20, 1905 in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles.  The family rented a large, frame house a few blocks from the ocean in Santa Monica, about fifteen miles from downtown Los Angeles—ninety or so miles from Palm Springs.  The protracted, ten-year drought seemed to have ended with the winter rains of 1904-05.  It had lasted longer than any other drought in a hundred years.  After Marjorie was born, the family moved to Redlands, near the mountains—San Bernardino to the north, the San Gorgonio mountain range to the east.  The railroad ran well east out of San Bernardino, tracking south, allowing Redlands to develop as a tranquil town with a character of ranchero days—red tiled roofs and white stucco walls.  Now the family was closer to Palm Springs, forty miles down through San Gorgonio pass.

  May sold what was left of her land in Section 19.  Fortunately Barker Brothers, a large furniture store in Los Angeles, accepted payment to furnish their new home in Redlands by taking title to a portion of the land.  What remained was sold to the Masons.  On paper, at least, May now had no ownership or interest in Palm Springs land, except, significantly, that property which had passed to her with Harry’s death and would pass to her through her mother’s estate.

  In addition to the advantage of being closer to the desert, Redlands was good for Hamilton’s professional life.  Not only could he continue his work with the Mission Indians in Palm Springs, but he was assigned as lecturer at Redlands Hos­pital’s training school for nurses.  It had been two years since he’d had a chance to teach.  He became a member of the University Club of Redlands and Secretary-Treasurer of the Physicians Club.

  The house on Walnut Street, a mile or so south up the hill from the central village, was an imaginative structure, ornate and Gothic with a purposeful lack of unity and distinguished by double-towers with feathered shingles, a huge, covered porch with a Chinese railing and supported by pillars formed with delicate spindle work.  Lining the street were box alder and pepper trees, and a few purple blossoming jacarandas.  For the children, the house and shaded back yard was a magical place full of mysteries and secluded hideaways.

  Jack was getting a little old, he thought, to be romping with his younger sisters, and would take to his room in the western wing beneath the pointed gable to read tales of high adventure by Joseph Conrad.  He didn’t quite fathom the psychological complexities of Conrad’s heroes but felt a deep kinship for their cleverness and noble sacrifices.  Trying to figure out these strange characters on his own, he didn’t share his discoveries with mother or father.

  May had given up expecting relief from Katherine in managing her baby sister Marjorie.  Four-and-a-half year old Jane was not problem.  Perhaps May was too severe with the nine-year-old Katherine, but if she didn’t exact discipline from her, what would become of the child?  Already she was making it clear she was her own boss, satisfied to mind when she felt like it, thank you.  Jane was an enigma—a dreamer, it appeared to May, sometimes sitting for hours at the kitchen table, her large, blue eyes staring into space, watching May prepare dinner, or keenly following any person who might come into the room.  May had discovered long before this, she couldn’t prod the child.  Poke at little Jane or become too insistent with her, and she withdrew.  But she seldom cried.  Marjorie was unpredictable—screaming for atten­tion or gurgling joyously.

  Emily and Pearl continued to live with them; Pearl’s trips to Palm Springs, now frequent, as she hoped to reclaim the land and extract some income from it.  She and their mother couldn’t depend on May and Hamilton forever!  At the time, Pearl knew nothing about water rights, legal or illegal stream diversion, nor the significance of the Preston stipulation in 1888 which had allowed her father’s Palm Valley Water Company use of the Whitewater ditch he’d constructed, even though it passed through the Indian reservation.

  Pearl burst into the kitchen after one of these excursions, shouting, “The Indians and their attorneys will ruin us!”  A startled May turned from the stove and said quietly, “Calm down, Pearl.  What is the matter?”  “A lot you care,” Pearl shot back, not bothering to explain further, rushing out and leaving May wondering.  But May had determined to forget about Palm Springs.  They would do everything they could to help Pearl and their mother, but Pearl was on her own.  They couldn’t very well live in the desert.  If anything was to come from their legacy in Palm Springs, it was up to Pearl.

4

  Hamilton immersed himself in work at Redlands Hospital.  Sometimes his trips to Palm Springs stretched out to days-on-end and May found herself alone with her mother and children—isolated into a shrinking world; longing for Chicago and the splendid cultural life there.  Why had they ever left?  For Pearl.  Everything was for Pearl and Palm Springs.  When Hamilton was at home, he played with the children and beguiled them with stories and candy-drops; occasionally banging out tunes on the piano—“My Old Kentucky Home” and “Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny.”  Some evenings, however, he shut himself up in his study writing reports or “keeping up,” he said.

  At first, May considered a growing estrangement with Hamilton simply resulting from the natural evolution of marriage.  They continued to sleep together and it was comforting that Hamilton never spoke harshly to her—nor to anyone.  They continued to share a physical relationship, although less frequently, and with less affection.

  Emily watched silently over May and the children.  She helped when she could but kept her mouth shut—about Palm Springs, and Pearl.  Certain observations prompted her to conclude that Hamilton’s long absences and Pearl’s increasing obsession with Palm Springs were having a debilitating affect on May.

  In 1907 Hamilton’s parents moved to California; his father establishing a pharmaceutical practice in Tustin, a small town in orange grove country close to Santa Ana south of Los Angeles, and thirty miles from Redlands down through Riverside and the canyons.  Visits between the two families were infrequent.  Even when they did get together, May found little opportunity to confide in her in-laws, to unburden her secret fears and longings, not that given the chance she would have.  Who was there to confide in?  Pearl was more terse than ever—tight-lipped and opinion­ated.  Emily seldom volunteered a confidence, and Hamilton was gone most of the time.

  It was the silence between them that upset her.  It was as if she were surrounded by strangers.  It hadn’t been this way when they first returned to California.  After Marjorie was born, she and Hamilton took long walks in Santa Monica, wandering in the cool evenings along the palisades to watch the sun set in the ocean.  The sting of salt air and the sound of surf reminded her of Johnnie and how he loved the sea—how he’d been close to the sea at the Hotel Coronado when he died.  Once she had mentioned this to Hamilton.  There was no response, but he placed his arm around her, kissing her warmly, and she felt secure again.

  They moved to Redlands for one reason only—to be close to Palm Springs.  In the beginning, Redlands held a promise of continued happiness.  May awoke in the mornings plagued with a mixture of remembering and a touch of optimism.  Nights alone without Hamilton meant sleepless nights but she refused Hamilton’s offer of sedatives or medication which might give her relief.  She was determined to face her fears without help.  Discipline! Discipline was everything! and never would she allow her distress to affect her love for the children.  Certainly she was strong enough to conquer haunted dreams and loneliness.

  Jack and Katherine attended the same grammar school; Jane, just starting kindergarten.  Each morning dawned new and fresh and work to be done—getting a warm breakfast into the children, walking them to school down shaded streets in bright sunshine.  She could touch the trees.  She could breathe clean air, shake her head into blue sky and hope again.  Her whole life was ahead of her.  Why should she doubt her right to happiness?  She had everything to live for!

  Home again, she would find her semi-invalid mother sitting quietly in the parlor, watching over Marjorie who most likely was in a bluster, scampering about the room.  To see the child in itself was a comfort, and didn’t Marjorie always run to her mother, follow her to the kitchen to get underfoot?  Life with the children engulfed her.  How could she malinger over the silence with the clatter of pots and pans—cries of laughter?

  Shortly after noon, she picked up Jane and walked her home.  After a nap, Jane settled in the kitchen and watched her mother get supper.  Then, before twilight set in, May, Emily and the children had their dinner together around the dining table.  And then, inevitable nightfall; the children tucked into bed, Emily asleep in the parlor; waiting for Hamilton.  Silence pervaded the rooms.  Elation which had filled her with hope at dawn, faded with darkness.

  Hamilton was concerned and trying to spend more time at home, she kept telling herself.  Hadn’t they been married for over ten years now?  And wasn’t she the mother of his four children?  Passion and romance couldn’t last forever.  And wasn’t he immersed in his responsibilities as a physician?  She hadn’t married an iceman; she’d married a distinguished doctor.  She tried not to trouble Hamilton with her moods and growing uneasiness and the feeling she was failing him—failing herself.

  Two more years passed.  On January first, 1908, May reached thirty-nine years of age.  In another year she’d be forty.  Hamilton attempted to appease her whenever he could—to show her that he still loved her.  An evening in February after an abortive attempt to make love to her, he rolled out of bed and said, “This is painful for me, May, and frustrating.”  He reached for his robe to cover himself, turning back to her, sitting on the bench in front of the vanity mirror.  “I thought you’d be happy here, May.  You’ve been close to Palm Springs, and Redlands is a beautiful town for the children—good schools.  What else can you ask for?”

  “I’m alone so much of the time.”

  “I can’t help that—you have the children.”

  “The children are in bed by sundown.  Jack’s locked in  his room, mother’s asleep.”

  “You need some kind of activity, May—something to fill in the hours.”

  “You wish me take up knitting?  Joint the Women’s Club?”

  “There’s not enough social climate here.  In Los Angeles at least, we could go to the theatre or vaudeville now and then.  I think your trouble is that you feel shut up here—cut off.”

  “Do you know I’ve read every book in your library?”  She moved with difficulty out of bed, pulling her night gown across her breasts, standing quietly a moment.  She laughed softly.  “Next thing you know, I’ll be reading your medical books.”

  “They’d bore you to tears.”

  She threaded her fingers through her loosened hair.  “I’m not getting any younger, Hamilton.”

  He came to her, reaching out for her, drawing her close.  “You’re my beauty, May, always have been.  I’ll simply have to devote more time to the home—cut short my work at the hospital.”

  “I don’t want you to do that.”

  “We should never have moved to this quiet town.  Maybe we should’ve stayed in Chicago, or Los Angeles.”

  She broke away from him, moving to the window, pulling the drapes aside and looking out into the dark night.  “We had to come back to California—for your health,” she said.  “You couldn’t take those long hard winters.”  She turned back to him.  He was sitting on the bed, looking up at her.  “And of course—”

  “Yes,” Hamilton said, “Palm Springs.  Pearl’s not much of a comfort, is she?”

  “She’s seldom here.  Mother says Pearl’s been looking into land titles, did you know?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Mother tells me she’s spent several days in Riverside recently at some title company.”

  “You should ask her why—find out what she’s up to.”

  “Mother says it has something to do with Johnnie’s Ranch—some mistake in the deed she made to Pearl in Chicago—Harry’s Hillside House, I think.  So Mother has to quit claim the ranch to Pearl all over again.”

  “There’s no danger in your losing the ranch, is there?”

  “No, I don’t think so.  But Mother says Pearl may be trying to get title to other property which was not included in our 1898 partitions to Mother.  It’s all quite complicated.”

  “Try not to worry about it, May.  I’m sure Pearl’s intentions are good.”

  She bent down and kissed him, her hair falling across his shoulders.  He drew her next to him on the bed.  “We should try to get some sleep,” he said.

  Hamilton didn’t sleep.  He lay awake in her arms for almost an hour, not sure any of his unhappy wife’s problems had been solved.  She’d never really for­gotten, never let go of the things which haunted her—the failure of her ambitions for an operatic career before their marriage; had never forgotten the loss of her three brothers—her father, the wasted years all of them had given to John Guthrie’s “dream.”  And all for nothing—for a pile of sand.  How could he possibly extricate May from these things?

  And now Pearl.  What indeed was she up to?  Was she engaged in a comprehensive title search of all McCallum holdings in Palm Springs?  Was she trying to exclude May from her rightful inheritance?  Who knows, the “pile of sand” might develop into something of value one day.

  On February 17, 1908, Emily quit-claimed a corrected description of the McCallum Ranch property o Pearl.  A few days later when May returned home from walking Jane to school, Emily called to her from Hamilton’s study.  She was standing with some difficulty next to the roll top desk.  “I think we’d better have a talk about Palm Springs,” she said.

  “Certainly, Mother.  Where’s Marjorie?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  “So early?  How did you manage?”

  “We played extra hard this morning,” Emily said, smiling, “and I promised her a special treat at lunchtime.”

  “Well, what is it?  Palm Springs is not my favorite subject.”

  “Sit down,” Emily said.

  “What’s happened now?” May asked, taking a chair in front of the desk.  Emily settled next to her and placed a hand on a sheet of typewritten paper.  “Read this,” she said.

  May took the sheet from her mother and glanced through it quickly.  “It’s a deed to the McCallum Ranch—to Pearl—a quit-claim deed.  Doesn’t she already have title to the ranch—in 1901 in Chicago after Harry died?”

  “This is a correction to exclude Hillside House from the deed.  Harry sold this property before he came to Chicago.”

  “Yes, I know.  I understand.”

  “On top of this, she’s asked me to write a Will.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  “She wants me to assign all of my interests in Palm Springs over to  her, and to include all of Harry’s land as well.”

  “I didn’t think Harry had any more land—except the Syndicate property.”

  “Well, yes, he does.  Pearl ran across some deeds that were never recorded.”

  “But Mother, you can’t give Harry’s land to Pearl.  It belongs to all of us.”

  “I know that!” Emily snapped.  “I know Harry’s land is not mine to give, and I have no intention of giving it to Pearl.  When I pass on—”

  “Please, Mother, let’s not—”

  “When the time comes.  I’m not going to live forever and I plan to do just as your father did, let the courts divide my estate between you and your children and Pearl.  I explained this to Pearl—that she must recognize the trust we’ve placed in her—in each other.  We had quite an argument.  But I’m grateful for it.  I haven’t felt so alive in years, not since your father was living.  I threatened not to give her this deed at all, then what could she do?  I insisted she reassign the ranch to me so I could pass it on through my estate to both of you.  She refused.  But a change came over her.  She’s quite an actress.  Suddenly she was all vanilla ice cream.  She assured me she would keep the ranch in trust and that if she were to reassign the ranch to me now, the entire matter of Harry’s creditors would crop up again and we might lose every­thing.”

  May got up and stood for a moment, looking away.

  “And another thing,” Emily said.  “Pearl bought a new padlock to your father’s trunk in the Adobe.  She’s been going over all of your father’s old deeds, as if she’s rediscovered the Mother Lode.”

  May stared down at her mother and with a heavy sigh, again turned away.  There was nothing more to say—nothing more to be done.  She would have to live with it, if she could.

  Emily watched her as she walked out of the room.  It seemed as if May were sleep walking.  She had   to lean against the door frame to steady herself.

 (THIRTEEN)

Chicago Today

2

  After Harry passed away, May struggled to revive  her hopes for the future.  Hamilton purchased the Western Springs Sanitarium property where Jack and Katherine had been born.  Time should have been the enemy of sorrow, and May tried to work through fits of depression.  The difficulty of getting along with Pearl didn’t help.  Both of them were stubborn.  Pearl tried to draw her out.  “One has to be a mind reader to understand you, May!”  Pearl was right about everything!  “They should clean up the Levee!  It’s disgusting! Have you heard the latest?  The pimps have formed a Cadets Protective Association!”  The horrendous Levee was a Chicago red light district bounded by Clark Street, Wabash Avenue and Twenty-Second and Eighteenth Streets, packed in with all sorts of vice.  Its showplace was the internationally infamous Everleigh Club run by two Kentucky sisters, Ada and Minna Everleigh.

   “Pearl!” Emily admonished.  “You shouldn’t know about such things!”

  “I know plenty!” Pearl fired back.

  If it wasn’t vice or politics, it was May’s children.  “You’ll spoil them rotten!”

  There were interludes of relative peace.  Pearl did enjoy the children, although she was a little stiff with them, like a spinster aunt rather than fun-loving girl in her early twenties.  She couldn’t seem to relax into slinging mud pies with Katherine in the back yard or charging up San Juan Hill with Jack’s toy soldiers.  She insisted on reciting the alphabet or reading them Horatio Alger, “Luck and Pluck,” and “Tattered Tom.”

  “Those stories are too advanced for the children,” May warned her.  “Ease up a little.  They’ll love you more.”

  Hamilton had purchased the Western Springs Sanitarium in 1902, and on July 17, that year May gave birth to her third child.  When Pearl heard what they were going to name her, she scoffed.

  “Jane!  It’s such a common name!  Why don’t you call her Jean, or Jennie, or Jeanine!”

  May said nothing.  If this was the kind of factitious nonsense Pearl was picking up at Miss Stone’s School, the family had wasted their money.

  Chicago at the turn of the Century was much more than a city of vice and depravity, thieving politicians and rascals, as pictured by hysterical reformers.  Perhaps the utterance of the historian, John Clark Ridpath was a bit exaggerated—“It’s a marvel,” he declared after ascending Sullivan’s Tower, “not only of our own age and century but of the modern world.  Even from the dome of St. Peter’s the landscape is by no means so fine, so extended, so full of progress and enthusiasm.”

  On the other hand, Rudyard Kipling declared, “Having seen it (noisy, industrious, wicked and brash Chicago) I urgently desire never to see it again.  It is inhabited by savages.”  But nobody paid any attention to him.

  A move was on to clear up the lakefront, leaving the Art Institute as it stood.  The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, reigned over by Theodore Thomas, performed fifty successive concerts a season, “The only city on the continent,” Thomas said, “next to New York, where there is sufficient musical culture” to give so many performances in a series.  By 1902 John D. Rockefeller had contributed “spare change” of over ten million dollars to the University of Chicago which had opened its doors on October 1, 1892.  Chicago rapidly was becoming the literary capital of the United States.  The movement had started in 1892 and came to be called the “Chicago Renaissance.”

  May and Hamilton enjoyed the stimulation of the city’s social life, when­ever he could get away from the Sanitarium in Western Springs, lecturing at the University, or from his duties with the State Electro-Medical Society.  Emily was on hand to watch the children.  Hamilton didn’t enthuse over the opera or symphony as much as May; comedy and vaudeville more to his liking.  They barely missed the tragedy at the Iroquois Theatre on the afternoon of December 30, 1903 at the perfor­mance of “Mrs. Bluebird” starring Eddie Foy.  Pearl also had planned to go with them but a personnel problem came up at the Sanitarium and Hamilton couldn’t cut free.  May had a premonition.  Pearl fumed.  They stayed home.

  In the “absolutely fireproof” theater, as the happy audience applauded the performers, an unseen strip of gauze on the proscenium drapery ignited from an open arc light; a tiny flame sputtered up the strip and licked at a velvet drape.  The flimsy scenery caught fire.  The audience rose in panic.  Eddie Foy in his grotesque costume, called out, “Please be quiet!  There is no danger!”  The orchestra, taking his cue, struck up a tune and calm was restored—briefly.  But then blazing muslin drifted down, followed by more fiery fragments.  Instantly the auditorium trans­formed into a scene of horror.  Crazed, screaming struggling people, men women and children, rushed for the exits, some of which were locked tight.  The asbestos curtain jammed half way down.  Flames billowed upward into the ceiling and roared toward the balcony.  In fifteen awful minutes, five hundred and ninety-six persons were dead.

  News from California was less grim.  They kept up with events there, alert to the slightest cue which might draw them back again—the end of the drought; improved economic conditions.  Hamilton had maintained  his professional contacts from 1899.  He was preparing papers on the “diagnostic problems of the Mission Indians” and anticipated some day he would continue on-the-spot research.

  May longed to return—if not to the desert—to most anywhere in Cali­fornia.  The Iroquois Theatre tragedy had depressed her, as had a particularly harsh winter.  She longed to see mountains again and breathe in the smell of eucalyptus after rain.  Living in Palm Springs was out of the question, but they could always settle close to the valley—in Riverside or Redlands, perhaps.  All depended on Hamilton’s practice, now their only source of income.  Remembering the historical deluge in Southern California in 1883, Emily declared, “San Bernardino is out!”

  The drought in Southern California held into the rainy season of 1903-1904.  That didn’t stop “progress” in the vast Colorado desert, however.  There were some startling results.  Harry had carried stories to them of a gigantic desert recla­mation project in the making—a wild scheme to harness the Colorado River to bring water into a huge trough known as the Salton Sink far south of Palm Springs and extending to the Mexican border.  “And people thought father was crazy!”  Harry said.

  George Chaffey, the irrigation expert who’d developed Ontario in the eighties, renamed the southern part of the trough, the Imperial Valley.  Harry had attempted to tie in the Palm Valley Water Company holdings, but their rights were too far removed from the area to be reclaimed.  Who needed the meager resources of the Whitewater River when the speculators had all of the Colorado to draw from?

  In a complex structure involving eight mutual water companies which purchased shares of water stock from the California Development Company and then transferred the stock to a holding organization known as the Imperial Land Com­pany staffed entirely by promoters of the Development Company, the speculators began enticing prospective settlers.  The “homesteaders” had to take care of getting their own land from the government by filing homestead claims from the checker­board land grant acres owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad or from the California Development Company.  But to obtain water for their new land, the settlers pur­chased stock in one of the mutual companies, which in effect, meant the Imperial Land Company, and usually they bought on credit.  If the land failed, it reverted to the Imperial Land Company to sell on a rising market.  How altruistic now seemed John Guthrie’s enterprise in Palm Springs! 

  Chaffey started digging his aqueduct in November, 1900.  In May, 1901, as soon as water flowed into the Imperial Valley, crops sprang from the earth.  Land prices skyrocketed.  But in 1904 silt began too plug the upper end of Chaffey’s canal.  Water deliveries shrank.  Directors of the California Development Company, now close to bankruptcy, cut a new opening in the riverbank south of the border to take water through a temporary ditch, but they made no allowance for high water.  A series of floods poured down the Colorado and Gila rivers.  The unguarded break below the border sucked in the entire Colorado flow and flooded into the Salton Sink, spreading until it was thirty-five miles long, fifteen miles wide and forty feet deep, creating the Salton Sea.

  Fortunately the disaster hadn’t touched Palm springs, but it strengthened Hamilton’s argument that the family couldn’t depend on the Palm Springs property as a means of income.  If it wasn’t drought, it was flood and if they ever went shop­ping for cash to develop the land, they’d end up in the clutches of avaricious specu­lators, or worse, the extent of Harry’s land holdings would become known, and wouldn’t the creditors love to get onto that!

  One year after Harry’s death, C.G. Kellogg in Los Angeles was appointed administrator of Harry’s estate—most likely at the instigation of his creditors.  In the final report of his administration on October 26, 1903, Kellogg reported that Harry’s estate was worth only twenty dollars!—that his death occurred “on August 2, 1902 in Los Angeles,” and he left no heirs.  Following this, on January 11, 1904, another petition was submitted by Kellogg presenting that Harry’s personal property was valued at a total of ten dollars.  In this petition, Harry’s next of kin were listed:  “Emily McCallum, mother; Pearl McCallum, sister; May McCallum Forline, sister; all residents of Chicago, Illinois.”  The petition continues:

  That due search and inquiry have been made to ascertain if said deceased left any will but none has been found, and according to the best knowledge, information and belief of your petitioner said deceased died intestate.

  So the family had succeeded in hiding Harry’s assets and the true date of his death.  It would appear that the McCallum Ranch had been deeded by Emily to Pearl more than a year before any possible probate of Harry’s estate; thus no fraudulent attempt had been made to avoid liens on the McCallum Ranch which Harry might have incurred using his mother’s Power of Attorney.  Presenting also that since Harry died “in the County of Los Angeles” according to Kellogg’s first petition, was it not apparent the family knew nothing about his holdings, or debts?

  In February, 1903, the M.W. Stewart Company, now United Wholesale Grocery, did come after satisfaction of the loan of one thousand dollars against Section Eleven.  This would become known by May’s children in later years as “Emily’s Grocery Bill.”  The property was sold in default of the loan on February 26, but for only two hundred and fifty dollars.  When United Wholesale looked for the remaining debt of seven hundred fifty dollars, they discovered Emily had no more assets—not even the McCallum Ranch; Pearl owned it, even before Harry died, supposedly.  The Los Angeles probate of Harry’s estate in 1902 had revealed Harry had nothing left to will to his mother.  Dying intestate, Harry’s interest in Syndicate shares of six hundred acres in Palm Springs passed to his mother and sisters after his death—but this fact remained hidden.  The ruse had worked.  The McCallum Ranch couldn’t be touched.

  May and Pearl were, however, drawn into the sale of Section Eleven to United Wholesale Grocery because of a technicality—the incorrect description of the property when Harry, May, and Pearl deeded the property to their mother in the 1898 partition.  On May 4, 1903—once again and in Chicago—May and Pearl quit-claimed their share of Section Eleven to Emily, just as they had done in the partition so that she would have clear title to sell the property to satisfy the debt to United Wholesale—to pay “Emily’s grocery bill.”

  This new quit-claim from May and Pearl to their mother, underscored the tacit agreement the family had to their joint ownership of all the Palm Springs property—no matter who had title to it; and the assurance that all of them would do whatever necessary to protect the McCallum Ranch for their successors.

  However, Harry’s estate wasn’t quieted yet.  On February 25, 1904, Kellogg again petitioned the court,  this time at the request of the First National Bank in Los Angeles which held the Water Company stock.  The petition stated:

  That decedent during his lifetime borrowed from the First National Bank . . . a large sum of money which, including principal and interest amounts to the sum of $10,000, and that at the time of borrowing said sum the decedent delivered to and hypothecated with said First National Bank, said shares of stock as security for said money so borrowed; thereafter an assessment was regularly and duly levied to pay the debts of said corporation [The Palm Valley Water Company] . . . estate of decedent owns an equitable interest in said stock; That the estate of decedent has no means with which to redeem said stock or any part thereof . . .

  Since some of the stock pledged belonged to Emily and May; and since Harry’s estate by law passed to Emily, May, and Pearl because he died intestate, the possibility arose that all property might be attached if public auction of the stock failed to settle the loan.  But the two Powers of Attorney from May and Emily never were made part of the petition, and again no connection was made between Harry and his heirs, nor the six hundred acres of Syndicate land, even though this land had been deeded to Harry in the 1898 partition, and these deeds were public record.  Had such connections been made, it’s probable the Ranch still would be protected since the primary heiress—that is, Emily—no longer owned it.  The wisdom of deeding the Ranch to Pearl again was confirmed.

  In July 1903, in Western Springs, May was driving the phaeton, accom­panied by seven year old Jack, when, frightened by an automobile sparking at full speed beside them, the horse kicked off the dashboard of the phaeton, causing a compound fracture of May’s leg.  In spite of the injury, May controlled and checked the frenzied horse as it ran through the streets, managing to turn it into the golf links where it finally settled down.  May was laid up for weeks after the incident.  It didn’t help her melancholic spirit.  She longed to return to California no matter what the cost to Hamilton’s work.

  But the clinic at Western Springs was failing.  In 1904, the Sanitarium faced it’s own water crisis—the springs dried up.  Hamilton was adjudged bankrupt and a trustee was appointed, and May began slipping further into melan­cholia and severe moods of depression—fear she might lose Hamilton’s love.  She was pregnant and wondered if she might die in childbirth.  Hadn’t the McCallums been haunted with death for the past fifteen years?  She was thirty-five years old; Hamilton still young for a man—only a year older than she.  How could she live through the next nine, irritating months; drag herself through the drab winter, denied the physical comfort of her husband while she watched lines creep from the corners of her eyes?  She fought her moods but they persisted like March sleet and snow.  She must get back home.  The failure of the Sanitarium convinced Hamilton there wasn’t much   left for him professionally in Illinois.  He agreed the time had come to return.

  (TWELVE)

Aerial View, 1893 Chicago World's Fair

May and Hamilton

1

  The Muse is a Lorelei, luring us to a portrait of May McCallum Forline with scent from a jeweled cache of crushed, dry rose petals; seducing with sepia-tinted photographs—astonishing beauty—pensive eyes.  But the story of her brief life deserves more realistic elegy.  When May traveled with John Guthrie to Boston in the Spring of 1890, she experienced moments of elation, permitting herself to let go long enough to enjoy her father’s company; even to imagine she would succeed in her studies and become a great opera star—and skilled—mastery was most important to her.

  Optimism and idle hope weren’t part of May’s nature; for if she were instilled with a single fragment of the Tahquitz demon, it took the form of driving self-discipline, uncompromising self-appraisal.  If she failed it could only be the result of her own lack of effort—and deficiency.   She and she alone would be responsible; harsh, self-imposed demands for a girl of twenty-one.  Her mother admonished, “Be more kind to yourself, May.  You’re young.  Don’t fret if your studies turn out differently than you expect.”

  The trip itself was a pleasant diversion during which she tried not to anticipate how her study in Boston would evolve.  It was her first time out of California.  Not that going by rail was all that luxurious, but they were traveling first class, such as it was, and so much to see!  She was content to sit by the window all the daylight hours absorbed in the incredible panoply of the land which seemed to change with every mile; fascinated as they neared Chicago by the cozy farms and greening thick woodlands—so unlike California.

  Her father was delightful company.  He beguiled her at mealtime with stories of his early days in California—the rowdy years in San Francisco, his brief flirtation with the “Know-Nothings,” the violence of the Sacramento political riots—stories she’d never heard at  home.  She began to feel less like a daughter, and more like a friendly companion.  For a man of sixty-four he looked amazingly young.  Perhaps because he was clean shaven at the time, not even a moustache—and more significantly, because his wildest imaginings had come true in Palm Springs.  His eyes revealed a zest for living—enthusiasm for the future.

  As they sped through Illinois farmland, she learned something about her father she’d never known.  Sitting across from her in the compartment, looking out across verdant pastureland, he said, “This is the land, the earth of my childhood.  It’s different here in the east, May.  Severe winters test a man’s endurance.  And in Spring, God rewards us.”

  Tears filled his eyes.  “Do you see now what it is we’ve created in Palm Springs?  We’ve brought eastern values to the desert, as never before, in spite of too many greedy men who have no respect for the land.  I challenged the old devil Tahquitz, but I didn’t ravish his stronghold.  I improved it—not only for us, but for his people.  So you see how magnificent an achievement!  In giving water to the desert, we’ve been rewarded—the fulfillment of a young man’s dream.  I have never forgotten it.  Once long ago on my way to California, I wanted to settle on the land in Nebraska and if I hadn’t been drawn to California in the search for my brothers, I may well have.”

  May listened, fascinated.  He smiled, sitting upright suddenly, as if ready for a brawl, but his voice was gentle.  “Those Syndicate partners, I had them going every which way of Sundays and when they beheld the orchards, they stood in awe.  They, who wanted to rip up Palm Springs, cheat the Indians out of their land and build cement factories and tear into the mountain!  Well we showed them, May, and it’s only the beginning.”

  Stopping over in Chicago, John Guthrie arranged for them to stay with the Forlines in their elegant home on the lakeshore.  He hadn’t seen anyone in the family since leaving Indiana more than forty years ago but he’d kept in touch.  Dr. Henry Harrison Forline, a younger man than John Guthrie, had married during the Civil War and now practiced medicine in Illinois.  John Guthrie’s father had known his father.  Both had settled along the Ohio River in 1815.

  One of their heroes was William Henry Harrison, a frontier American, who drew national attention as the first representative of the Northwest Territories in 1800—“northwest” to easterners; actually what we consider today the Midwest—with his “Log Cabin” bill providing for poor settlers to buy small govern­ment tracts.   Harrison had defeated Chief Tecumseh’s brother, the Prophet, at Tippecanoe; freed the Territory from threats of British invasion and concluded several treaties with the Indians opening the Territory for rapid settle­ment.

  As a young man on the Indiana frontier, John Guthrie had known the Forlines more than casually, although Henry Harrison was only twelve years old when John Guthrie left for California.  Now Henry Harrison was a successful, practicing medical doctor with two sons, Marc and Henry Hamilton, who liked to be called “just plain Hamilton,” he told May.  He was a few years older than May, a student at Northwestern University studying medicine and with scrapping fellow-students had founded the Phi Rho Sigma Fraternity.  Originally they called the fraternity  “Hamline,” but that seemed a bit egotistical, and was quickly renamed.

  It was John Guthrie who brought back the story that “May’s voice was ruined by that blasted teacher who tried to force her to sing soprano!” not aware that he himself might’ve been responsible by encouraging May to study at so young an age.  Then Johnnie died.

  Failure because of her own shortcomings—yes, she could live with that—but not being able to prevent the loss of her beloved Johnnie at so early an age, darkened a corner of her mind forever.

  On the first of May, 1892, Chicago opened its splendiferous “White City” – the World’s Columbian Exposition.  Seven months after the four hundred year anniversary of America’s discovery it was intended to celebrate, John Guthrie and Emily packed up and traveled eastward with Wallace, Harry, May, and Pearl, hoping that visiting the Exposition would alleviate some of the sorrow over Johnnie’s death; and John Guthrie would assist the delegation of Luther Calvin Tibbets in River­side to promote the navel orange.

  Certainly the wonders of the Exposition were a diver­sion:  thousands of exhibits gathered from all over the world emblazoned by the new wonder of the century, electricity.  The Exposition was graced with both artistic and aesthetic exhibits—gleaming lagoons and a midway for pleasure seekers featuring the gigantic Ferris wheel imported from Europe, rising one hundred and sixty-five feet in the air; an intramural train with a third electric rail, a huge network of incan­descent lighting, a telephone hookup for listening to concerts from New York, engines and water wheels and refrigeration machines and horseless fire trucks, awesome naval guns, hydraulic presses, Edison’s Kinescope with camera and phonograph working simultaneously.

  On display were expensive paintings in the Fine Arts Palace, cured meats from Chicago stockyards, rose plantations, and French tapestries and model tene­ments; a Canadian ten-ton cheese, the Yerkes telescope.  And “Little Egypt” dancing the hootchie-kootchie on the Midway’s “Streets of Cairo.”

  Also it was an opportunity for John Guthrie to reacquaint himself and family—especially May—with the Forline family.  Hamilton had just graduated from the Medical Department of Northwestern University with an M.D.  He was going to be twenty-five in November.  Young and vigorous, Hamilton seemed gentle, but May sensed a lurking animal virility beneath the smooth, flushed face and intensive blue eyes.  They fell in love.

  Hamilton was ambitious—almost to excess, she realized, and this thrilled her even more than physical attraction.  Here was a man she could not only look up to, but admire, support and encourage.  His proposal of marriage was tentative.  “I’m leaving within the week for London,” he told her, “for post graduate studies.  Then, Paris—Vienna.  Electricity is opening up a whole new science of diagnostic tech­niques.  We excel in technical proficiency but I’m afraid the Europeans are far ahead of us in subtleties, and the Germans even outpacing us in the mechanics.  I’ll probably be gone for an entire year.”

  She touched his hand.  “I’ll wait, Hamilton, but shouldn’t you perhaps take advantage of opportunities here?  You’re recently out of school—valedictorian of your class—yes, your father told me—a recognized anatomical expert—and head pro—what is that word?  I’ll never get it straight!”

  “Prosector.”  He laughed.  “What are you up to?  Playing the doctor’s wife already?  Prospector means only that I indulge frequently in dissection to demonstrate anatomy in front of a lot of sleeping med students.  I guess I’m somewhat of an expert in anat­omy, but what do you want me to become—Coroner for Cook Country?  Like your father, I’ve got no use for politics.”

  “You could set up a private practice with no difficulty.”

  “The country doctor?  No, that’s not for me.  Let me tell you—I don’t want to brag or anything you understand, but I’ve got this sixth sense figuring out what’s wrong with people, physically, that is.  Diagnosis is second nature to me, and I seldom miss the mark.  I want to do something with that.  For instance, I’ve got a special interest in diseases of the spinal cord and I’m—well, right now I’m trying to work out an injection method for treatment and—there’s so much more, a bundle of things I don’t know beans about.”

  May shrugged.  “I’ll wait for you,” she said.

  They were married in Los Angeles on September 19, 1894—a church wedding, the reception held at the McCallum home on Bunker Hill.  Hamilton had completed his studies in Europe.  At Western Springs, a suburb of Chicago south of Cicero, he’d succeeded Dr. Justin Hayes at a popular health resort Dr. Hayes and his wife Julia had founded in 1885, building a house and Sanitarium there.  Also, Hamil­ton was to instruct Clinical Medicine at North­western University Medical College as Adjunct Professor of Medicine and Diagnosis at the West Chicago Post Graduate School.  May braced herself for the role of a doctor’s wife.

  In 1895 at the Western Springs Sanitarium, young John McCallum Forline was born—they called him Jack.  Hamilton also was building a practice and a reputation as “healer” in Chicago with offices at 391 Fifth-fifth Street.  One his most bizarre challenges was to bring a young woman, Sadie Johnson, out of an hypnotic spell cast upon her by her aunt, Emma Johnson, during a party at the Johnson home at 5343 Ingleside Avenue in Madison Park.  The girl refused to wake up.  Not a few guests at the party believed the young girl wasn’t hypnotized at all.  Dr. Forline was called in.  After several attempts to revive her, Hamilton as a final resort, said, “If you don’t wake up, young lady, I will throw you out the window.”  Instantly, the girl was on her feet.

  When  they came back to the Coast in 1899 to be close to Harry and support him, Hamilton joined the Los Angeles County Medical Association and the Medical Society of the State of California, continuing research medicine in spinal cord diseases, later originating a “supra-dural injection method of treatment,” and a “nutro-alternative solution” to accomplish it—a delicate operation requiring great skill.  (Supra-dural matter is situated above the outermost, toughest and most fibrous of three membranes covering the spinal cord; the solution invented was to change the blood composition in this microscopic membrane reestablishing “healthy functions to the system.”)

  During the winter of 1899 in Palm Springs, Hamilton’s attempts to prescribe for Harry ran up against the same kind of stubbornness he’d found in May.  “You McCallums are all alike!” he bit a Harry.  “You won’t listen to anyone except your demons.  You’ve got to get away from here, young man, or you’ll destroy yourself.”

  In California that year, May and Hamilton became closer than they’d ever been.  She’d drawn him into family affairs and sometimes, when Hamilton came back after an afternoon of administering to the Indians, it was as if John Guthrie himself were walking up the path.  When he tried desperately to help Harry, May’s love for him deepened.  Every­thing had meshed—her life with Hamilton  conjoined with Palm Springs.  She permitted herself some optimism.

  Staying in Los Angeles with visits to Palm Springs for long periods was difficult.  John would start school in the fall.  Hamilton’s practice in California was slow in developing, and he was needed in Western Springs,  Pearl was about to finish high school at Ramona Convent.  Reluctantly with the children, Emily and Pearl, they returned to Chicago in September, 1900, but not until they’d extracted a commitment from Harry that he would close up the Palm Springs venture, for a little while at least, and come live with them in Chicago.  He warned May it might take him more than a year to “close up things,” and there were several ideas he wanted to look into.  The Imperial Valley was developing down near San Diego and that meant, soon, the Coachella Valley closer to Palm Springs would follow.    “There’s possibilities we might yet pull ourselves out of the hole!”