Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 272

Price Realized: $ 3,380
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
"HERE IN DENVER IS SATAN'S SEAT" (COLORADO.) Hart, H. Martyn. Diary kept by the controversial dean of Denver's St. John's Cathedral. 192 manuscript diary pages, plus [46] pages of other memoranda. 4to, 11 x 9 inches, contemporary 1/2 calf, moderate wear, rebacked; minimal wear to contents, missing the leaf immediately after the last diary entry; signed on front pastedown. Vp, 1883-1919
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Henry Martyn Hart (1838-1920) was a London clergyman who in 1879 was called to serve at St. John's Episcopal Church in Denver. When a new cathedral was built there in 1881, Hart became its dean, and remained in service for the remainder of his life. He was perhaps best known for his partnership with local Jewish, Catholic and Congregational leaders in founding the interfaith Denver Charity Organization on a British model in 1887; it later evolved into the United Way of America.
The diary begins with long daily entries on 21 April 1883, with occasional entries through 27 August 1899 over 192 pages. The diary is followed by memoranda through October 1919 including notes on building renovations and a new church organ, 1908-19 (pages 213-223, 354-5), and notes on sales of various books authored by Hart (pages 408-410). Laid in is a 1920 issue of the Rocky Mountain News featuring his obituary.
We find no formal mention in this diary of the charitable organization Hart helped to form, but he was frequently involved in charity cases. On 2 January 1887, he wrote: "During my sermon an insane Negro walked up the aisle & across towards me. He would have come up the pulpit stairs to have asked me to help his wife & children, but Mr. Williams quietly took him into the vestry." Hart also describes a meeting with a missionary who had recently returned from Hawaii: "Lepers are taken off to one island. The natives try to hide their lepers but the government sends them off. The only non-leperous person on the island is a R.C. priest who has been there 10 years! He does everything for them. He has left all & followed Him" (25 April 1883). This certainly refers to the Belgian priest Saint Damien of Molokai, who succumbed to leprosy himself in 1889. Hart was also an inventor, and signed an agreement to manufacture Perchoid (a rubber substitute) on 16 February 1898.
Hart was apparently a charismatic but irascible figure. Clashes with church leadership are a common theme in the diary, particularly with John Franklin Spalding, missionary bishop of Colorado. Hart had a conflicted relationship with his adopted city, once writing "Another evil day. One might as well live in a cesspool as in this vile city. . . . But how often have I said, that here in Denver is Satan's seat. The very air propagates lies!" (8 May 1883). He was not a believer in the separation of church and state: "For two weeks I have been abused by the papers for suggesting that as we have now one criminal to every 200 of the pop., the 10 commnd'ts should be made a part of the public school curriculum" (11 March 1889). His efforts to halt Sunday amusements in the city gained him some enemies. These tensions boiled over on 22 January 1893, after he had the police stop a concert: "Not a few lost their temper. Somebody shouted 'To Dean Hart's' & away went they, sweeping the sidewalks of the loafers, & by the time they arrived here they were about 2000. They held a booing concert opposite the house. I turned out the gas & we all (Mrs. H., Edith & Maggie) kept away from the windows. They broke a couple of windows. Then the police arrived & at once dispersed them. Next morning it was in the New York papers & over the world. The good applaud, the bad curse, as usual."