The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote Edited by Rodman W . Paul

Books A VICTORIAN GENTLEWOMAN IN THE Deadwood to investigate Black Hills fortable despite his inability to resist FAR WEST mining properties for eastern investors expensive and unworkable ventures; The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote while Mary fled eastward to her family. most of his savings were squandered on Edited by Rodman W.Paul That was the first of a series of moves: an attempt to build a road into the High The Huntington Library . .$8.50 to Leadville in Colorado (where logs for Sierra. their cabin cost a dollar each "and they This is the story told by Mrs. Foote in Reviewed by Ray Allen Billington were not very long logs either"), to her reminiscences, and a compelling Thanks to Rodman W. Paul, Mary Mexico where he worked in mines near story it is. She never really liked the Hallock Foote may be more remembered Morelia, to Idaho to manage properties West ("I love my West when I am in by future generations for the revealing near Boise. In Idaho, Foote succumbed the East," she once wrote), yet she was memoirs published for the first time in again to his visionary dreams, abandoning so fond of the soft, dry air, the riotous this handsome volume than for the short his profession to spend years on an irriga- scenery, the vastness of the landscape, stories, novels, and illustrations that tion project that collapsed when British that neither was she happy when visiting gained her modest fame at the turn of the capitalists tired of pouring money into a the literary circles of New York for century. Prepared late in her life for the scheme that was a generation in advance which she constantly longed. Nor did she eyes of her family and written in flowing of its time. Only Mary's "potboiling," as merge into western society; the Foote's prose marred only by a tendency toward she called it, kept her little family together friends were almost exclusively well- Victorian effusiveness, they tell a fascina- during those trying times. educated mining engineers of their own ting, if tragic, tale of a talented woman Not until James Hague again came to cultural level. With the ordinary folk forced to leave her beloved East to brave their rescue with a chance for his brother- they had nothing to do. Her memoirs, the discomforts of life in mining camps, to in-law to manage his North Star mine in hence, shed little light on the frontier bear her three children amid primitive California's Grass Valley did their for- social order. They more than compensate conditions, and to provide much of the tunes turn. This time Arthur Foote stayed for this lack with their magnificent de- income needed to sustain a husband con- on, using his considerable mechanical scriptions of the countryside, their ac- genitally incapable of translating dreams skills to turn the North Star into a profit- counts of mining operations at New Alma- into a livelihood or catering to the whims able operation. For the next 30 years the den and Leadville, their word pictures of of his employers. Footes lived in Grass Valley, fairly com- the lot of a cultured woman in Idaho's Born in 1847 on a worn-out farm near Boise River Valley. Milton, New York, Mary Hallock studied Rodman Paul has performed well be- art in New York, where she established yond the call of duty in placing Mrs. lasting associations with the literary world Foote's remembrances in a useful setting. before she married Arthur De Wint Foote, His historical introduction is a model of an ambitious young mining engineer who compact writing, essential to understand- had largely trained himself for a glamor- ing the story that follows. His editing, ous new profession that promised a lucra- particularly in the identification of the tive career in the West. many literary allusions, is unbelievably They settled first at New Almaden in thorough; what labors went into locating California, one of the largest producers the line "as the legs without a man" in of quicksilver in the world, and there William Cowper's The Task ( 1785), or Mary produced her first child and her first "joy in its mighty heart" in Kipling's stories-stories of "Mexican Camp" and "The Conundrum of the Workshops"; of a company store where "the policy was what research was needed to explain such frank extortion" and of anxious hours dated phrases as a "ha-ha fence," "wear- when her husband would vanish for days ing the willow," and "the softness of at a time into the deep tunnels. Baloo." The Huntington Library has What seemed a promising career ended provided these efforts with a worthy set- when Arthur Foote suddenly resigned- ting by publishing a superbly designed there were, his wife wrote, many people volume, lavishly illustrated with family "he couldn't work forw-moved his fam- portraits and Mrs. Foote's drawings, at ily to Santa Cruz, and began a fruitless a price that is today a remarkable bargain. attempt to develop a new type of hydraulic --- cement for use in mine shafts. Only the Ray Billington is a research associate on paternalistic aid of his brother-in-law, Rodman Paul the staff of the Huntington Library, a James D. Hague, a successful mining distinguished historian, and author of the engineer, rescued the family from that recently published book Frederick venture; Hague sent young Foote off to Jackson Turner. .

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