No Job for a Lady (37 page)

F
REDERIC
G
EBHARD

(Library of Congress)

Mr. Gebhard’s father left, upon his death, an estate valued at $5,000,000. Frederic Gebhard early came into an income of about $80,000 a year. The newspapers of many years ago said that he was the best-dressed man of the times. He gave himself up to answering the calls of society, went in for racing and yachting, and lived generally the life of the accomplished, leisurely man about town.

One of his earliest interests outside of ballroom and clubs was horse racing. He owned the famous runner Eole, and paid $10,000 for the filly Experiment, which he renamed Louise in honor of his first wife. Volunteer II, and Olinda, the famous high jumper, were also property of his. For a while he was in partnership with A. W. Hunter in the management of a string of racers.

For several years after he met Lily Langtry, the famous beauty, who was termed the “Jersey Lily.” It was reported that they were to be married. They bought adjoining ranches in the West, both giving it out that they were going to lead simple lives. The stage called her back, and he could not escape Broadway and Fifth Avenue. They drifted apart in 1893.

The following year he became engaged to Miss Louise Hollingsworth Morris, then perhaps the best-known beauty in Baltimore. The wedding was on an elaborate scale. Friends of the two families came from all parts of the world to attend it. The couple were divorced in 1901 in South Dakota, Mrs. Gebhard later marrying Henry Clews, Jr.

Again free, he took up the old life that he had followed years before. In the latter part of 1906 it was announced that in January of that year he had married Marie L. Gamble, an actress. The Rev. Henry Marsh Warren performed the ceremony at his home, 48 West Ninety-fourth Street, and kept it a secret until the end of the year. It was said at the time that Mrs. Gebhard before her marriage had speculated luckily in Wall Street and had made $750,000.

She was the daughter of a Washington business man. At the age of sixteen she eloped with a clerk named Urimstatt in the Government Printing Office, but the marriage was unhappy and they were divorced.

The year after his second marriage it was said that at last Mr. Gebhard had come to the end of his resources. Mrs. Neilson, his sister, obtained a judgment against him for $72,159, which he had borrowed, it was alleged, in 1905. He paid the judgment in January of 1907. In July of that year he and Waldo Story, a sculptor, went into trade at 547 Fifth Avenue under the name of the Ritz Importation Company of America, Canada, and Cuba, selling wines, coffees, and spices.

Mr. Gebhard was born in this city. He belonged to nearly every club in the city at one time and another, including the Metropolitan, Union, Coaching, Knickerbocker, Racquet, New York Yacht, Larchmont Yacht, Tuxedo, and the Westminster Kennel.

*   *   *

W
HEN
N
ELLIE CONCLUDED
that Sundance was born to hang, she was right.

Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, went west from Pennsylvania on a wagon train when he was just fifteen years old, in 1882. He soon earned his outlaw handle by stealing a horse, saddle, and gun from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming.

Sundance was fast with a gun and became known as a gunslinger. He eventually became a member of the Wild Bunch gang with Butch Cassidy and pulled off the longest series of successful bank and train robberies the country has ever seen.

He and Butch are the best-known outlaws in American history, thanks to the 1969 movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

It is believed that in 1908, Sundance and Butch Cassidy (his real name was Robert Leroy Parker) were killed in a shoot-out with the law in the South American country of Bolivia. However, no one knows for sure if they were killed. Modern DNA tests were conducted on bodies interred after the fight, but these DNA samples did not match the DNA of either man’s descendants.

FRONT ROW LEFT TO RIGHT:
H
ARRY
A
.
L
ONGABAUGH (ALIAS THE
S
UNDANCE
K
ID);
B
EN
K
ILPATRICK (ALIAS THE
T
ALL
T
EXAN);
R
OBERT
L
EROY
P
ARKER (ALIAS
B
UTCH
C
ASSIDY).

STANDING:
W
ILL
C
ARVER AND
H
ARVEY
L
OGAN (ALIAS
K
ID
C
URRY).

(Photographed by John Schwartz, Fort Worth, Texas, 1900)

So whether Sundance and Butch bit the dust in a gun battle over a mule train of gold or died with their boots on in some luxurious tropical paradise paid for with ill-gotten gains is a mystery covered by the dust of history.

NOTES

NOTE

FROM

The Editors

I
N REGARD TO
No Job for a Lady,
we are once again forced to defend against accusations that real-life events in Nellie’s life were merged with a fictional story that was concocted. It’s true that Nellie’s 1888 book,
Six Months in Mexico,
does not include the murders, treasure hunt, were-jaguars, or the other mysteries and adventures recounted here, but that’s because Nellie was forced by the Mexican government to omit from her own book all the facts concerning Montezuma’s treasure.

As we have with the other books in the series, we want the reader to rest assured that they may compare the truth and veracity about the series to that attributed to the lioness of literature, Lillian Hellman, by none other than Mary McCarthy.

Nellie’s book about her trip to Mexico was not published until 1888, two years after her attempt to establish herself as a foreign correspondent by running off to Mexico. When she did return to Pittsburgh, she believed that because her articles sent to
The Pittsburgh Dispatch
were so well received and enjoyed by readers, she would be officially appointed a foreign correspondent.

Instead, Mr. Madden, the managing editor, thought Nellie was very lucky not to have been kidnapped, raped, or killed. He said she could have her previous job back, writing society twaddle—and nothing more.

Angered, Nellie headed for New York. Publication of her Mexico experiences (those she was able to share with the public) had to wait until her spectacular ten days in a madhouse caper, which we shared with readers in
The Alchemy of Murder.

The following are excerpts from the 1888 publication of
Six Months in Mexico.
Her opening paragraph reveals in an understated manner that she had left the reporter’s job “usually assigned women on newspapers” and headed for Mexico to become a foreign correspondent, with her mother tagging along.

O
NE
WINTRY NIGHT
I bade my few journalistic friends adieu, and, accompanied by my mother, started on my way to Mexico. Only a few months previous I had become a newspaperwoman. I was too impatient to work along at the usual duties assigned women on newspapers, so I conceived the idea of going away as a correspondent.

Three days after leaving Pittsburgh we awoke one morning to find ourselves in the lap of summer. For a moment it seemed a dream. When the porter had made up our bunks the evening previous, the surrounding country had been covered with a snowy blanket. When we awoke the trees were in leaf and the balmy breeze mocked our wraps.

The land was so beautiful. We gazed in wonder on the cotton-fields, which looked, when moved by the breezes, like huge, foaming breakers in their mad rush for the shore. And the cowboys! I shall never forget the first real, live cowboy I saw on the plains. The train was moving at a “putting-in-time” pace, as we came up to two horsemen. They wore immense sombreros, huge spurs, and had lassos hanging to the side of their saddles. I knew they were cowboys, so, jerking off a red scarf I waved it to them.

I was not quite sure how they would respond. From the thrilling and wicked stories I had read, I fancied they might begin shooting at me as quickly as anything else. However, I was surprised and delighted to see them lift their sombreros, in a manner not excelled by a New York exquisite, and urge their horses into a mad run after us.

Such a ride! The feet of the horses never seemed to touch the ground. By this time nearly all the passengers were watching the race between horse and steam. At last we gradually left them behind. I waved my scarf sadly in farewell, and they responded with their sombreros. I never felt as much reluctance for leaving a man behind as I did to leave those cowboys.

I shall never forget the sight of that waiting-room [at the El Paso, Texas, train station]. Men, women, and children, dogs and baggage, in one promiscuous mass. The dim light of an oil-lamp fell with dreary effect on the scene. Some were sleeping, lost for awhile to all the cares of life; some were eating; some were smoking, and a group of men were passing around a bottle occasionally as they dealt out a greasy pack of cards.

It was evident that we could not wait the glimpse of dawn ’mid these surroundings. With my mother’s arm still tightly clasped in mine, we again sought the outer darkness. I saw a man with a lantern on his arm, and went to him and asked directions to a hotel. He replied that they were all closed at this hour, but if I could be satisfied with a second-class house, he would conduct us to where he lived. We were only too glad for any shelter, so without one thought of where he might take us, we followed the light of his lantern as he went ahead.

El Paso, the American town, and El Paso del Norte (the pass to the north), the Mexican town, are separated, as New York from Brooklyn, as Pittsburgh from Allegheny. The Rio Grande, running swiftly between its low banks, its waves muddy and angry, or sometimes so low and still that one would think it had fallen asleep from too long duty, divides the two towns.