"Down on the old plantation!"

In 1902 J. S. Hogg’s oil interests were paying off. On November 26, the day before Thanksgiving, he wrote to Ima that he had sold his interest in the Texas Oil and Fuel Company for $35,750. These 1902 dollars would be worth nearly 25 times that today. 

Time for Thanksgiving, indeed.

He wanted his family to spend the Christmas holidays at “The Varner,” the old plantation in Brazoria County he had made into a showplace. He wrote to Ima in New York:

         I am anxious to have you spend Christmas with our boys. Your influence over them, by reason of their deep love for you, is potent and far-reaching. You have always exercised a fine control over Will. As to Mike and Tom, you know well, how they idolize you, and yield to your will, sometimes, with boyish reluctance, but at all times with manly fortitude, when the issue is made. . . .Your opportunity to influence them could not be greater than on a Christmas outing with them – down on the Old Plantation! Hunting down there is fine for the boys, and it may not be unattractive to you. I have the house comfortably furnished, and plenty of room. With an excellent, large hack and team, and saddle horses and dogs and guns and “plenty to eat” there could be no reason we shall not have a fine time down there for a week or so. Nothing would please the boys more than this; and you see it would open their young hearts as wide as the Ocean’s bosom to receive the good sentiments to be strewn there by you – and me! Of course, if you so desire, you could have some “chum” with you. And probably a “house party” might be allowed also. But as to this, we can talk later. Friends at Houston would like to give you a party before your return to NY. And then, possibly we could find time, before you go back, to attend the Governor’s Inaugural Ball early in January. Really I think we can spend a few weeks together very pleasantly. How does this strike you? Write candidly, as usual.

                                             Lovingly, Your Father,

                                             J. S. Hogg

         But Ima needed time to think this over. New York City was full of exciting things--and one of them may have been the young man named R. W. Alexander. 

A Shocking Murder Tale

When Ima returned to New York in the fall of 1902 she had to change her residence: During the summer, Mrs. Greene, the headmistress of Ima’s boarding school, had developed “distressing heart trouble,” and died. As Ima wrote years later, “So I found a school quite different and more convenient, the Comstock School, 20^th & W. 40^th St.” The school, described as a “Family and Day School for Girls” at 32 West 40^th Street, was run by Miss Lydia Day, “a delightful and cultured lady.” 

        

         But the Comstock School and Miss Day, Ima soon discovered, were connected to a shocking murder: Ten years earlier, in 1892, New York newspapers had covered the sensational trial of Carlyle W. Harris, a young man accused of killing Helen Potts--who was then a student at the Comstock School under Miss Day’s administration. The lurid story behind this murder had fascinated readers in New York for weeks. In January 1891 Helen Potts, a nineteen-year-old student (described as “a brunette beauty”) was found dead in her room at the Comstock School (described as “an elite finishing school”). She had died from an overdose of morphine given her by a medical student who turned out to be her husband. Carlyle Harris and Helen Potts had been secretly married the year before, and she became pregnant. She then had, as the newspapers put it delicately, “an operation” (read abortion), and enrolled in the Comstock School. But her husband wanted to be rid of her, and gave her a “lethal dose of morphine.” He was tried and convicted, and was executed for murder at Sing Sing prison in 1893.

         In October 1902, Ima, newly enrolled at the Comstock School, heard this story and was evidently disturbed by it. Both her father and her brother Will wrote to her about it.  Will advised her, “If you are uncomfortable & wish to move for such cause, why, go to Miss Day and talk plainly to her.”  

        

         Apparently Miss Day dealt with Ima’s concerns. Ima stayed at the school, and she and Miss day became good friends. 

A New York Romance?

In Ima’s letter about knee breeches she had also mentioned politics. What she said prompted a response from her father:

         By all means, my daughter, keep up interest in politics. Understand well the principles on which your rights are based, and stand by them. In politics, as in all the affairs of man, woman, indirectly or intentionally, certainly wields great influence—when she is posted! Know your lesson—your duty—and you can lead or teach others. . . . And when you go to preside in that house you seem so busily planning, you will be the pleasant, intelligent, autocrat whose sway must be felt far beyond the domestic circle and the culinary department.—What house is that anyway? And why is this your last opera season in NY? When you write again, please tell me if there are any innuendos in these queer expressions!

         If she did, her letter has not been located, leaving a mystery.

         It is possible that Ima’s reference to  “planning a house” may have had something to do with a romantic attachment she kept secret from her family. In New York she was seeing a young man named R. W. Alexander, but she obviously did not tell her father about him. Was she in love with him? Were they planning to marry? R. W. Alexander wrote to Ima on June 6, 1902 that he was  “delighted . . . that you say ‘yes’ to my invitation for a honeymoon trip Monday after dark. . . . Try to be ready about nine for I will call at about seven forty.”  Was this merely lighthearted banter, or was it serious?  No one knows.

         Ima came home to Texas a few days later and spent the summer there. But R.W. Alexander wrote to her, anticipating her return to New York for the winter theater season, with stars such as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. In September 1902 Ima set out again for New York. She would spend another year studying at the National Conservatory of Music.

And she would see more of  R.W. Alexander.

"The most popular of the Teutonic's Passengers"

On April 18, when J. S. Hogg returned from England, The New York Times reporters met him at the pier:

        

Ex-Gov. James S. Hogg of Texas, who has since February been in London, arrived home on the White Star Liner Teutonic yesterday. The Governor was in splendid health, as well as humor, and though he said that he was mighty glad to get back home, he nevertheless took occasion to say a lot of nice things about the Britons, whom he said had received him as one of the family, and had done everything they could to make his stay with them an enjoyable one.

The big, jovial Governor was undoubtedly the most popular of the Teutonic’s passengers, especially with the younger women. When he left the pier he was given a hearty send-off, the demonstration, according to one of the passengers, who, like the Governor, comes from Texas, being a regular old-time Lone Star ovation.

         

At the Waldorf-Astoria, where he lives while in New York, Mr. Hogg was seen yesterday and asked about his experiences while abroad.

         “What about those knee breeches they wanted you to appear in at Court?” he was asked.

         “Now, let’s don’t talk about that. I am too good an American to hob-nob around in any such get-up. A nice figure I’d cut in knee pants and a cockade hat, with red rooster feathers in it.”

         To imagine J. S. Hogg, all 6 feet three inches and 300 pounds of him, in such a costume, boggles the mind.  

"Balked at Knee Breeches"

In the spring of 1902 J. S. Hogg, now in the oil business, went to England in search of investors. He had never been abroad, and was royally entertained, but declined an invitation to be presented to King Edward VII at a royal levee.

        

On March 2, 1902 The New York Times headline reported that Hogg had "balked at knee breeches." Said the Times: 

         All arrangements had been completed with the United States Ambassador, Joseph Choate, to enable the well-known Texan to be presented to King Edward at the forthcoming levees. A hitch occurred, however, for Mr. Hogg found that he must appear in knee-breeches, with a sword and all the accompaniments of the regulation Court dress.

         “Never,” said Mr. Hogg: “if I cannot appear in the ordinary evening dress of an American citizen, I will not appear at all. A pretty sight I would look rigged up n all those gewgaws. I have not the faintest idea of trying to revolutionize or even criticize English customs, but blamed if I’ll wear another country’s uniform; no not even for the sake of meeting the King.”

        

Said J. S. Hogg to Ima:

         My rule is to observe the customs of the people wherever I go, aiming at all times to preserve my own self-respect without offense to others. I could not attend this levee and “shake hands” with the King except in “Court dress” as it is called – Knee breeches, Silk stockings low quartered shoes, full-shirt front, low cut vest, “cut-away” coat and plug hat; the coat, pants and vest to be of black velvet. So I have this day called, thanked Ambassador Choate and notified him of my respectful but positive declination.

Then he wrote to Ima after the levee:

         Well, the King’s Levee is over and I am glad I declined to attend the foolish affair. Accounts of it have been given me by a Count who attended it in a bran new Court Suit, which cost him 250.00. He said all he did, or got a chance to do, was to “bow to His Majesty!” No hand shaking. Now you know from observation that I am a great hand-shaker. Had I been there right on this point I should most likely have made a mistake by shaking the King’s hand! Then criticisms would have made you blush for me.

When Ima teased him again about the knee breeches in her next letter, he answered:

         I must say that any American who would change the dress suit of a gentleman for the Court Suit of a King is a snob whose example at home, if he had influence, would in time raise up in our Country a race of flunkies contemptible among freemen. . . .

J. S. Hogg of Texas was not called “the People’s Governor” for nothing.

"What were you doing at West Point?"

In January 1902 Ima’s youngest brother, Tom, wrote to her in New York and asked, “What were you doing at West Point?”

What Ima was doing at the U.S. Military Academy is best described in her memoir:

Mrs. Greene, the owner [of Ima’s New York boarding school] was from Virginia. She was one of those impoverished remnants of the Old South Aristocracy. She was hardly fitted to discipline a school of girls. Any girl who was a belle or received such attention from young men ranked high in her esteem. She encouraged us to accept invitations from cadets at West Point. When we went to balls . . . our programs were already made out for us by the cadet escort. [Among the young men’s names Ima remembered on her dance cards were Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall.] We were invited up on Saturday nights. There was one hotel. Bitter cold did not deter us from making the train trip. We were always met and escorted to the hotel. As many as four or five girls from Mrs. Greene’s School went periodically to West Point. All the cadets looked handsome in their unusual grey blue uniforms with big brass buttons.

When some cadets said they were coming down to New York to celebrate Christmas with us, of course we visualized them escorting us to the theatre in their uniforms. They appeared in fatigue suits—to the girls’ dismay. Their glamour was gone.

West Point’s shine may have dimmed, but Ima sparkled: After she attended a Confederate Veterans’ Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria, an admirer wrote to her that was “the undisputed Queen of that night. This is no ‘taffy’ but a fact.”

But New York was not all parties and dances:

I really was a hard student of music, in spite of some dissipation. A strong constitution made it possible for me to work and attend concert after concert, opera after opera, with theater thrown in, almost every night. . . .

While I enjoyed social life, it was mostly going to some theater, concert, or opera with my escorts—but always with chaperones.

       Mrs. Greene was careful of her girls’ reputations.

"He patted me on the back..."

In the fall of 1901 Ima was beginning music studies in New York City. She was no stranger to the city, having visited there with her father in 1894. But since then it had more than doubled in population, with over 3,500,000 people. On her 1894 visit she had seen the sights--the Brooklyn Bridge (1883), the Statue of Liberty (1886), and the tallest building, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World Building, at 20 stories, completed in 1890. By 1901 a taller landmark, the Flatiron Building at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23^rd Street was under construction. It would be finished in 1902. This triangular architectural oddity, shaped like a flatiron, was 21 stories tall.

Ima boarded at Mrs. Greene’s School for Young Ladies, just off Riverside Drive at 311 West 82^nd Street, but she attended the National Conservatory of Music on East 17^th Street, just off Union Square. That was about 60 blocks from Mrs. Greene’s, so Ima would most likely have taken a trolley car across Manhattan. With numerous stops, the trip would have taken half an hour or more. New York had no subways until 1904.

The nineteen-year-old from Texas found Manhattan a cultural wonderland: Plays and musical comedies and operettas flourished on Broadway (though electric lights on marquees did not make it the “Great White Way” until 1906).  Operas and concerts (the Metropolitan Opera had been there since 1883) beckoned.

As for her studies at the National Conservatory of Music, she met with disappointment at first: 

My teachers in Austin had greatly exaggerated my talent and status as a performer. I was advised to play for the great master pianist and teacher, Rafael Joseffy. When he heard me play he patted me on the back and suggested another preparatory teacher. . . .

Ima’s audition was evidently a disaster. She told Vivian Breziger, her best friend in Austin, and word spread. Another friend wrote to Ima, consoling her for her “complete failure , improvising, etc., etc., and of his [Joseffy’s] refusing to accept you as a pupil.”

But all was not lost, as Ima wrote later:

Soon after that I heard Adele Margulies [another pianist/teacher at the Conservatory] play with her trio and I knew at once she had what I wanted. She was an amazing pedagogue who knew how to impart what she knew to others. . . . Under her I felt transformed and for two or more years with intervals in between for a long time I progressed rapidly.

         And she enjoyed herself immensely, as we shall see.