On Thursday, after their first six-hour ordeal, they treated themselves to the hot sulfur baths down the street. They had not had an “all-over” since their night at the Brown Palace three weeks earlier. Ros loved the public swimming pool but found the stench of the water dreadful. In 1923 the town’s founding father, James Crawford, described how he had been fascinated by “the very nest of springs” when he came upon them fifty years earlier, and how the sulfur “continues to the present time to attract the attention of the olfactories.” The spring near the future site of the Moffat depot sounded then “exactly like a steamboat laboring upstream.” That evening they got to know Mrs. Peck. She was three years older than Mrs. Harrison and about the same size. The state seemed to be full of invincible tiny women who never complained—a source of inspiration, particularly to Dorothy.
Mrs. Peck, formerly Emma Hull, first taught school at the age of sixteen in Clear Creek County, thirty-five miles west of Denver. Some of her students were older than she was. She liked to tell a story about a hulking seventeen-year-old who went home after the first day and told his mother that his teacher was “a little girl who isn’t any bigger than a half pint.” Three years later, Hull married Harry B. Peck, and in October 1883 they moved with their first two children to Hayden.
Dorothy described Mrs. Peck as “thoroughly delightful—and such stories as she told us! Originally her territory was as big as the state of Mass. . . . and she drove 1,200 miles her first year! She had four little children at the time she was teaching, took them all to school all day and kept house and did regular ranch work, too!” A reporter made the same observation a century later: “While she washed dishes, or mixed bread, or churned, she heard one child say his multiplication tables and upbraided another for never seeming to be able to learn the principal exports of Germany.” Soon she was asked to teach at a new school in Craig, and when she heard she would have sixty-two pupils, she demanded that the board add another teacher for the older ones. It was the first “graded” school in the county. Like other frontier women, in addition to her work in the house and on the ranch, she took on wider duties as called for, delivering babies and closing the eyes of the dead.
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The teachers finished the last exam on Friday afternoon, and that night Ferry turned up in Steamboat Springs and took them out for a celebratory steak dinner. He was on his way to Salt Lake City for his monthlong civilian military training at Fort Douglas. Although President Wilson was campaigning for his second term with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” the armed forces were preparing for possible American involvement in the European conflict. Carpenter had invited Bob Perry’s sister Charlotte to join them. Charlotte had been two years behind them at Smith; Ros and Dorothy remembered her as an active participant in drama. She was tall and thin, with springy red hair and blue eyes. As one friend described her, she “moved like a bullet shot out of a machine gun.” Charlotte, along with her own close friend from Smith, Portia Mansfield, had recently started the Rocky Mountain Dancing Club, later renamed the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp, hidden away in a corner of Strawberry Park, a few miles outside Steamboat Springs. The first of its kind in the country—more of a school, except in its rustic setup—it offered young women serious training in dance and theater. Charlotte insisted that they go see it and spend the night there.
The teachers readily agreed, curious about Charlotte and Portia and their ambitious undertaking. Ferry accompanied them on their two-mile walk through Steamboat Springs, along Soda Creek, and onto a narrow trail into the woods. Dorothy and Ros discussed school matters with him, aware that in his absence, they would be managing the school on their own.
Hiking along a trail of pine needles, they found themselves in a landscape that was completely unlike Elkhead—a densely forested hillside of fir trees and aspens that overlooked a green meadow and the close backdrop of the snowy Rockies. At the top of the steep bank above the creek, they passed six white canvas tents, their wooden floors built on a foundation of tree stumps. Partway down the hill, they came upon a clearing and the main lodge. It consisted of a dance studio, screened on three sides, and a big living room, its log walls stained dark, Elizabethan-style, and a stone fireplace at the far end. Hung on display were the skins of bears, coyotes, and wild cats—shot by Bob’s and Charlotte’s older sister, Marjorie.
Charlotte, who was more artistic in her tastes, had always been uninhibited in her undertakings, pursuing her interest in theater despite her parents’ misgivings. Once, when her father was in New York raising money for the Moffat Road, and she was taking part in a performance of Robin Hood at Miss Wolcott’s School in Denver, she ripped the green felt off her father’s billiard table for costumes. He had an explosive temper, but it didn’t intimidate her. Her mother, Lottie, had expected her to be a Denver debutante. When she told her parents that she and Portia intended to start a dance camp, Sam Perry scoffed at the idea, but Lottie, more indulgent and open-minded than her husband, convinced him to let her try. He warned Charlotte that he would disinherit her if the camp failed.
They set out to make a go of things. Bob found a piece of land for them in Strawberry Park, and Charlotte and Portia spent two years in Chicago, living in Hull House, where they made enough money to buy the property. Charlotte gave Bible lessons and taught basketball, while Portia taught dance. In addition, Charlotte studied and taught drama and art, and Portia taught classes at the Hotel del Prado in classical, athletic, Russian, interpretive, eurythmic, toe, and social dancing. They also went to the Lewis Institute, where they convinced some Irish coffin-makers to show them how to make furniture that could be disassembled and screwed back together. They built a few large tables and a chair for the main cabin at the camp, then took them apart and put them on the train to Colorado.
There was an abandoned homestead on the property that served as Charlotte and Portia’s home—and soon as the camp’s music room. They took blue theater curtains and hung them on rods held in place at either end by Y-shaped tree branches. Bob Perry loaned them half a dozen carpenters and an ill-tempered mule from the Moffat mine to help build the main lodge and the tents for campers. The two women worked alongside the men throughout the construction. They also cooked for them, and Charlotte had to tearfully consult with Bob when the workers threatened to quit, complaining that they couldn’t eat the meals. Portia recalled, “He told us to soak the potatoes in grease, over-cook the meat, boil the coffee, and serve them soggy pie. We tried this formula, and they loved every bite.”
The two made a good team. Portia, the self-confident, dreamy daughter of a Chicago lawyer, had rippling masses of auburn hair to her waist. Her father died soon after he saw her off to Northampton, and as a dance teacher, she largely supported herself, her sister, and her mother. At Smith, she had convinced the physical-education teacher, Senda Berenson—the sister of the art critic Bernard Berenson—to start a class in ballet. Berenson focused on classical technique while Portia experimented with an improvisational style inspired by Isadora Duncan, whose work wasn’t yet widely known.
In 1910, after graduation, Portia moved to Omaha. She had heard that the city had a vibrant cultural life, and she had no trouble getting work. She knew early on that, much as she loved to dance, her real gift was as a teacher. In Omaha, she saw Anna Pavlova a former member of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes, in The Dying Swan, a performance that she said changed her life. She was also strongly influenced by Sergei Diaghilev, whose “Russian dancers” had so impressed Dorothy and Ros in Paris. Like Diaghilev, Portia borrowed from many art forms—painting, drama, ballet, costume, and lighting—but she encouraged her students to move as naturally as possible.
As the camp got under way, Charlotte worked as chief set designer, costume-maker, and general manager. Portia was the choreographer. They enrolled fifteen students the first summer, including a girl from New York City whose parents, Francois and Mary Tonetti, were prominent sculptors and friends of
Isadora Duncan. Alexandra Tonetti, who was thirteen that summer, recollected that Portia was “a sort of Greenwich Village artist,” and Charlotte, raw-boned and businesslike. “She grew straight and had never been twisted. Very Western.” They made a profit of five hundred dollars after the first season and soon established a winter studio in New York and a summer traveling dance company. Sam Perry, no longer contemptuous about the venture, attended some of the performances and loaned them horses from his stable in Denver. Marjorie Perry led the students’ afternoon and weekend trail rides. In coming years, the camp became nationally known for its superb teachers and choreographers and its experimental approach to the arts.
For the first decade, the camp was lit only with candles and kerosene. The hand pump drew water from the spring at the bottom of the hundred-foot cliff. The students made lanterns out of recycled peanut-oil cans, which they pierced in decorative patterns. A chandelier was created from a cast-off wagon wheel and hung from the ceiling. There were Indian rugs on the floors and flowers in an array of Indian baskets. Ros wrote to her parents about the living room, “really it is one of the loveliest and most artistic rooms I have ever seen.” Dorothy and Ros could scarcely believe what Charlotte and Portia had accomplished in such a short time. Ros described the camp as “a dream come true, and these two girls saved every penny for it from their earnings as dancing teachers.”
Many neighbors in Steamboat Springs, though, were shocked by the stories of barefoot young women in diaphanous dresses dancing on the lawn to the accompaniment of strange music. In the eyes of local ranchers, whose notion of dance was a good hoedown, the activities at the camp were sinful. They wouldn’t allow their wives and daughters past the front gate, telling them that the two madwomen were in league with the devil. Milk and butter deliveries were left in the creek, to be picked up later in the morning.
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Ros and Dorothy spent the next day at the camp, watching the students rehearse. “They dance in filmy costumes of chiffon—Greek style—and all colors,” Ros wrote. “It was a fascinating sight—such a contrast between the Rocky mountain setting and the return to Rome and Greece.” At noon, Bob drove up from Oak Creek, bearing freshly shot grouse. They spent the afternoon together and had a picnic with him at camp. “This Bob Perry,” Dorothy wrote, “is very attractive and saved our lives by offering to bring us home by machine.” Ros, for her part, was beginning to take more than a friendly interest in Bob, with his fine features, athletic prowess, and generosity.
They left the camp at eight-thirty on Saturday night, drove back to Steamboat Springs, where they picked up their belongings at the hotel, and continued on to Hayden, a three-hour drive. Several days earlier, when they had registered at the Hayden Inn, the proprietor announced to Dorothy and Ros, “You schoolmarms want to marry some rich ranchers & settle out here.” Dorothy was sure they scandalized him when they showed up close to midnight with the most desirable bachelor in the county.
Bob called for them at five the next morning, and they stole out in the dark. It turned out to be a beautiful late-summer day, and his little Dodge somehow conquered the steep grades to Elkhead. Dorothy wrote, “We came sailing over the new road; when it looked impossible, we would get out, figure out the one way, and plow on.” To the Harrisons’ amazement, they got to within a mile of the house, the first time an automobile had ever made it that far. Bob carried their suitcases, they took their bundles, and they reached the house by seven A.M.
After a hasty glass of milk, he hurried back to meet his father at the mine in Oak Hills. “Imagine being escorted home 60 miles!” Dorothy wrote. “It has been some trip I can assure you—each night in a different bed and every hour crammed full! We were so glad to get home and had a most enthusiastic welcome from the Harrisons who were bursting with pride over a new Sears Roebuck stove & a new brass bed in our room!” What was more, Lewis had found Ros’s lost skirt, caught in some sagebrush, when he had returned with their horses on Wednesday.
They soon received their teacher’s certificates, signed by Emma H. Peck. Dorothy’s average was 905/12, and Ros’s, 905/6. Dorothy wrote to her father, “It is a great satisfaction for of course everyone will know it and they will have much more confidence in us now.” Ros, noting the uncanny similarity in their scores, said, “Mother Dear, . . . Well, Dotty and I are overcome at these magnificent grades. . . . I think Mrs. Peck must have been perjuring her soul, to give them to us.”
12
DEBUT
Dorothy and Ferry at Oak Point, 1916
Every August, Ferry Carpenter held a birthday party for himself at Oak Point, transforming his quiet bachelor’s cabin into a boisterous all-night dance that drew more than a hundred guests, from many miles away. That year he saw the occasion as a “kind of coming out party” for the teachers. On the evening of the party, Dorothy and Ros stayed at school until seven-fifteen, and then had an hour’s ride to Oak Point, watching the sun set and the moon rise over the mountains. When they arrived, the party was well under way. Out front was a big bonfire of logs and brush, topped with an old washtub of coffee. The furniture had been moved outside to make room for the dancing.
“I wish you could have seen that picture,” Ros wrote to her family. “The low ceilings—the log walls—dimly lighted by kerosene lamps—the musicians huddled over their fiddles, playing the strangest music, and the oddly dressed couples whirling through the steps of the square dances which are the popular thing here. . . . One dark complexioned cow puncher leaned against the door jamb calling the figures.” They played quadrilles, waltzes, and two-steps, and she and Dorothy had more partners than they could count. “Bob Perry (whose sister I knew slightly at Smith) was there and so nice to us. He whisked us through the quadrille in great shape.” Still, she added, “Mr. C.,” for the first time dressed up in a white shirt and tie, “was a better dancer than Mr. P.”
Ros was aware that, even in that peculiar locale, she was acting the part of a traditional debutante. Ferry’s party was far more diverting than the balls at the Owasco Country Club, but she couldn’t take seriously most of the men who presented themselves to her. One bachelor, a pig farmer named Roy Lambkin, asked her to be his company at supper. Lambkin had helped Carpenter break up his land and plant crops in his early years as a homesteader. “I had to lay down the law to him later,” she wrote, “and assure him that schoolmarms hadn’t a moment to themselves—Sundays were our busiest days!” She didn’t add that the afternoons were reserved, after church, for Bob and Ferry.
Twenty-four-year-old Everette Adair, the son of the wealthy rancher John Adair, was especially persistent. The object of frequent jokes between Ros and Dorothy about his flamboyant style of dress and his flashy rings, he showed up at the house a few weeks later, leading two horses. When they consulted with Mrs. Harrison about the propriety of going riding with him, he poked his head inside and answered for her: “They will be just as safe as tho they were in the arms of Jesus.” Still, as Dorothy put it after the party, the real “belle of the ball” was Carpenter’s newly installed bathroom. Ferry wrote more graphically, “Everywhere guests rushed up to me and said: ‘Happy Birthday! Show me the flush toilet!’ ”
At midnight, Mrs. Murphy served a supper of sandwiches, cake, and ice cream outside. Afterward, fueled by food and coffee, the dancers picked up the pace, and the fiddlers started a double quick. “How I wish you could have seen us madly dancing around those two small low-ceilinged rooms!” Dorothy wrote to her father. Ferry, in a letter to his parents, said that it was the fastest music he had ever “stepped to,” but his partner was Annie Elmer, the prize hay pitcher of Morgan Bottom—the productive flat land just north of the Yampa River—and they had no trouble keeping up. “Round and round we tore—it was fine with the floor all to ourselves—an occasional whoop or yell of encouragement as ‘Stay with ’em Tex’ or ‘Go to it Ferry,’ & soon we all had our coats off & the sweat a rolling off of us—well there were no quitters & after nearly an h
our the musicians gave it up & slowed down to a last step & quit amid much shouting & clapping.”
By daybreak, the babies were asleep in their mothers’ arms; most of the older children were piled upstairs in the loft on some bedding Ferry had strewn about. But Tommy Jones was still wide awake at five A.M. He told Ros, “ ’Ere were ’ifteen auto ’ere ’at night!” She commented, “He can’t talk any other way but he’s cute as he can be.” At six-thirty, the musicians played “Home Sweet Home,” and people began getting into their rigs and autos. The two women rode wearily home and slept until noon.
Dorothy wrote to her father that it was “a never-to-be-forgotten experience,” an impression Ros confirmed over sixty years later, when she said that as they rode back to the Harrisons’, she realized it was “the first time in my life that I’d seen the sun set, moon rise, the moon set, and the sun rise all in one night.”
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Nothing Daunted Page 14