A Home of One's Own: the Life of Helen Hunt Jackson
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1 A HOME OF ONE’S OWN: THE LIFE OF HELEN HUNT JACKSON Helen Hunt Jackson was a famous nineteenth-century American author whose twelve years in Colorado Springs were the most productive of her career. She arrived in 1873 an invalid in search of health, and a woman who had suffered a devastating series of losses. She was an orphan, a widow and a childless mother. In Colorado Springs she built a new life and discovered the cause she championed until her death in 1885. In retrospect, Helen was both an unlikely westerner and a reluctant activist. She initially found the treeless plains and stark scenery of the region dreary and depressing. However, her health improved and daily carriage rides into the foothills improved her outlook. She met and married William Sharpless Jackson who accepted her on equal terms affirming, “You will lead your life in your work & in which you are doing good. I will lead mine in a business line…I promise you will find me meeting you even more than half way.” A prolific author in a variety of genres including poetry, travel writing and domestic essays, Jackson insisted publishers pay her well. Her work appeared in Scribner’s, Century Magazine, Harper’s and the Atlantic among others. She was financially independent and maintained a tight circle of literary friends, most of whom were reform-minded. However, Jackson claimed to detest “women with a cause” and found them tiresome. Perhaps no one was more surprised than Helen when she “found a cause” in 1879. For the next six years, Jackson worked feverishly as an advocate for American Indian Rights in an era when it was unpopular to do so. She declared to William, “…I am stirred to the core…I do feel as earnest & solemn a ‘call’ as ever a human being felt to work for this cause.” At first Helen Hunt Jackson was a writer who used words to overcome grief. In doing so, she changed her life. Later, she used words to champion the rights of American Indians. In doing so, she changed the world. AT HOME IN COLORADO William Sharpless Jackson came to Colorado Springs in 1871 as Secretary-Treasurer of the Denver & Rio Grande under General William Jackson Palmer. In 1873 he helped found the El Paso County Bank (later the El Paso National), served as a member of the first Colorado Springs school board from 1872-1874 Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 2 and was a trustee of Colorado College for four decades. After his death in 1919, he was eulogized as a brilliant businessman, a loving father, and a generous reform-minded benefactor. Helen Fiske Hunt arrived in Colorado Springs in 1873 and took up residence at the Colorado Springs Hotel, where she met Jackson. In October 1875, the couple married and moved into 228 East Kiowa. For thirty-five year old Helen, this was her first permanent home and the next decade was the most productive of her career. However, she continued to travel seasonally due to persistent bronchitis and sore throats. Helen also took trips to conduct research, spend time with literary friends, and to avoid bouts of loneliness when William was away on business. In June 1884, Helen fell down the stairs of her home and broke her leg. Bedridden for months and seeking relief, she travelled to Los Angeles where her health conditions only worsened. In August of 1885, HHJ died of stomach cancer in San Francisco with William at her side. She was buried according to her wishes on Cheyenne Mountain, “the spot I love best of the whole world.” However, her gravesite became such a tourist attraction that William had her body reburied in Evergreen Cemetery in 1891. Prior to her death, Helen encouraged her husband to remarry, and to consider her own niece as a potential wife. In 1888, William married Helen Fiske Banfield, twenty-three years his junior, and the daughter of Helen Hunt Jackson’s sister Anne. The couple had seven children, six of whom survived to adulthood. They raised their large brood at 228 East Kiowa and their marriage lasted until Helen’s death in 1899. After college, the Jackson children had distinguished careers in medicine, law, education and journalism. Sons Roland and Everett served in World War I. To this day, members of the Jackson Family continue to reside in Colorado. 228 EAST KIOWA STREET The rooms seen here are part of the real home of Helen Hunt Jackson. This is not a model. Although the house was razed in 1961 to make way for a new police department building, these original rooms and their contents were preserved and reassembled in the museum. This house was built in 1873 by Joseph Dozier and Winfield Scott Stratton, the latter eventually famous as a Cripple Creek mining millionaire. Of note is the wooden stairway bordered by stars, and the library alcove known as “flirtation corner.” Master woodworker Fred Ege reportedly built the bookshelves, mantels, and built-in cabinets in the dining room. William Sharpless Jackson purchased the house for $4,000 in 1874, prior to his marriage to Helen Hunt (HHJ) in October, 1875. The home that William boasted to Helen as, “one of the best in town,” faced Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 3 east on Weber Street. She requested it be reoriented to face south on Kiowa in order to achieve a picturesque view of Cheyenne Mountain in the distance. Today, the interior is very similar to how it looked when HHJ lived in the home from 1875-1885. She loved decorating and filled her home with objects from around the world, artwork, hundreds of books, and bits of nature. At home in Colorado or while traveling, she collected shells, leaves, pinecones, and ferns. She gathered kinnikinnick by the armfuls in Cheyenne Canon and trailed the vines around furniture and wall hangings. After Helen Hunt Jackson died in August 1885, William married her niece Helen Fiske Banfield. The couple had seven children, six of whom lived to adulthood. In 1893 the house was expanded to accommodate the growing family. Their son William S. Jackson Jr. later raised his family in the home, after which his sister Helen Jackson resided there until 1961. For the third Helen Jackson, the home was filled with happy memories and stories. As she described it, “I think the house was the loveliest place in the world.” HELEN HUNT JACKSON IN COLORADO After arriving in Colorado Springs in the fall of 1873, Helen Hunt Jackson remarked that "one might die of such a place alone…death by disease would be more natural." The dry tendrils of shortgrass that surrendered before the ominous darkness of the mountains distressed her; the sheer expanse of land around her was as foreboding as the health problems that had brought her there. Adrift between it all was Colorado Springs, a town too small and too new for Jackson to feel assured by. However, as time passed the sorrowful prose that marked her early literary career gave way to verses of enchantment, lifting her words out of the darkness she had sheltered in for nearly a decade. She had traveled far and frequently in her life, often publishing articles on the places she had visited, but never did she write about another place with the same reverence as she did Colorado. There was a sanctity she found in her surroundings, and it struck both fear and awe within her. What lay hidden beyond the pines of Cheyenne Mountain captured her imagination the most, as she personified the landscapes there and established them as the central characters in her narratives. She wrote of ruins that were once alive, slowly hushed by the passage of time; of storms that lassoed the tops of mountains that stood like gods. For Jackson, this was no ordinary place. She found that it was one imbued with spirit, one with a distinct sense that there is something living — yet undeniably ancient that rests just below our feet. Despite the allure of returning East, Jackson had forgiven the landscape that once terrified her and chose to remain in Colorado Springs, eventually remarrying and making the house on Kiowa Street her Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum – Leah Davis Witherow, Curator of History – October 2018 4 permanent home. She later wrote in Bits of Travel at Home that there had never been another day like the first she had experienced in Colorado, her terror fading away in time as if it had only been a nightmarish dream. Once she had witnessed the true beauty of the place, she returned to it time and again. THE AUTHOR Helen Hunt Jackson was a prolific author who left a rich literary legacy. In just two decades of work she demonstrated mastery in many styles including: poetry, travel essays, novels and finally — protest literature. She defied easy labels and successfully avoided most stereotypes. She belonged to elite literary circles with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once remarked when asked if she was the best woman-poet on the continent, “Perhaps we might as well omit the woman.” While most writers in the era struggled to make a living, HHJ demanded and received among the highest rates of pay. Despite all this, she was an unlikely author. Helen Maria Fiske was born in October 1830 in Amherst Massachusetts to parents Deborah and Nathan Fiske. Her childhood was dominated by Deborah’s struggle with consumption (now known as tuberculosis) and Nathan’s near-obsessive devotion to his work as a Professor at Amherst College and a Classics scholar.