That Fiend in Hell: Not misunderstanding

I am happy to mark completion of the tenth post devoted to examining the book "That Fiend in Hell": Soapy Smith in Legend. I have taken time and care with these posts as each has required close and careful examination of the author's reasoning and conclusions.

Not Misunderstanding "That Fiend in Hell"

On her blog Cathy Spude writes,

The purpose of the book is to use the story of the last months of Smith's life, as it evolved after his death, to illustrate my understanding of how history, legend and myth intersect in modern American society. It is simply an exercise in the dissection of popular history.

… I was not interested in the details of history but the framework of the legend....

… My book is not about history. It is about myth and legend in modern American society….

Ever since my first comment regarding That Fiend in Hell, the author has insisted that I do not understand the purpose of her book. I do understand her statement of purpose. I also see many problems in her book that undercut that purpose. As I mark post #10 on this blog, I wonder if she can now understand why I have undertaken this blog. The reason for each posting is self-explanatory, and the accumulation of their type points to the general cause: the book contains a large accumulation of errors in fact and of interpretation.

To repeat, I absolutely understand her words as they are written above. Her book is not about history but about myth and legend, and yet she seems to want to revise history to justify her understanding of myth and legend. Looking into the exaggerated and fictional stories weaved into Soapy's life history is indeed interesting and even a little fun. However, I did not start and now continue this blog to examine those falsehoods and exaggerations. No, I began this blog because (1) I also found that many of the historical facts had been misinterpreted or interpreted so strangely as to merit examination, and on a personal note, because (2) there are discourteous accusations about my research and book that I seek to dispel.

Cathy Spude has also written that she believes I interpret "That Fiend in Hell" as a “personal affront” to my ancestor. Rather, in general, I interpret her work as an affront to history. While in various ways and in various sections of her book, she undeniably presents new information and apt interpretation, her book also contains many instances of error and strangely insistent and narrow interpretation. As a result, I have many more detailed points to publish before this blog is complete.

I hope you are enjoying the posts as much as I do in bringing them to you. While their cause is not so enjoyable, I find that the opportunity for close examination of topics is. My objective in conducting each of these examinations remains the same, to serve the goal of the Soapy Smith Preservation Trust: To preserve, promote, and expand a factual history of Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith II. The purpose of Cathy Spude's book is often obscured by numerous factual and interpretive errors. These I do not misunderstand in the least and will continue to address them in the months and years ahead.

That Fiend in Hell: "Jeff Smith fails to mention," except that he did "mention"..., and a lot more about the murderer of Soapy Smith.

THE END OF SOAPY SMITH
The Shootout on Juneau Wharf
Smith and Reid shoot one another as Jesse Murphy (left)
rushes in to aid Reid. Murphy kills Smith with Smith's rifle.
Artist Andy Thomas worked closely with Jeff Smith to get the details precise.
(Courtesy of Andy Thomas)

(Click image to enlarge)

On pages 192-93 of "That Fiend in Hell," author Cathy Spude offers an example of how I make an "effort to convince … readers that Jesse Murphy 'murdered Soapy'…." She points to a news report that I cite in the July 19, 1898, issue of the Portland Morning Oregonian and asserts that I cite only the portion of the sentence that serves my point (that Murphy claimed to have killed Soapy Smith) and that I purposely left out the rest because it disputes my point. To make her case about the omission from the Portland paper, she uses phrases like "Jeff Smith fails to mention" and "he fails to point out."

This is indeed a very strange quibble because I did quote the entire sentence. In fact, I quote not just the entire sentence but the entire paragraph in which the sentence appears. The matter is made even stranger because to document her accusation, she cites the numbers of three surrounding pages on which discussion of the matter appears, but she fails to list the page on which appears the entire sentence and paragraph from the Portland Morning Oregonian. Here for clarity is that paragraph as it appears on page 548 of Alias Soapy Smith.

The shooting, Dr. Cornelius says, is the best thing that ever happened to Skagway next to the new railroad. Dr. Cornelius performed the autopsy on Smith’s body for the coroner’s jury. A man named Murphy claimed after the first autopsy that it was his bullet that killed the gambler, and it was necessary to perform a second [autopsy] to determine that Reed’s [sic] bullet did the work.

I would like to think that the author of "That Fiend in Hell" just made a mistake. Mistakes happen. I even made one once … perhaps two. But Cathy Spude takes such a heavy handed approach that it seems there is much more than a mistake at work in her thinking. In writing that "Jeff Smith fails to mention" and "fails to point out," she does not imply but rather outright accuses me of intentionally leaving out text in order to "justify" a conclusion. I cannot know what was in Cathy Spude's mind, but the stern, accusatory tone of her language does make itself known and felt as she apparently intended. Then in light of how her example is in complete error, revealed is not just a mistake or careless inattention to detail but a deep and determined bias against my biography of Soapy Smith. I am at a loss for any other way to explain such a focused indictment based on an error of her own making.

Cathy Spude in her criticism of my treatment of Soapy's death and the cover up that followed would have a reader believe my conclusion is based on half a sentence rather than the 23 pages of evidence and interpretation that appear in chapters 25 and 26 of Alias Soapy Smith (pages 538-561). I took much time and care in laying out the evidence, evaluating it, and drawing reasoned conclusions about it. To my knowledge, nothing has been omitted or obscured.

The story of the murder of Soapy Smith has just appeared in a feature-length article I was invited to write for Wild West magazine (April 2013, pages 44-51). It's a nice spread, with many illustrations. Though a feature piece, its space requirements called for compression, so only the most pertinent facts and the overall conclusion appear. For the full story, my book is the ultimate source for a survey of all known evidence and an even-handed examination of it.

Cathy Spude on page 193 of her book also claims that Jeff Smith lacks "understanding of [the] historic context" of Skagway in 1898. Probably no one will be surprised to learn that Jeff Smith disagrees. For three decades I have studied the players of this period and the details of their doings. I know this context extremely well; I just don't follow Cathy Spude's interpretations of people or events. Each of these disagreements, as well as correction of errors—one at a time—will make good reading for other days.

That Fiend In Hell: Research for Alias Soapy Smith was unscholarly and lazy?

Throughout That Fiend in Hell, author Cathy Spude assails my research as unscholarly and at times implies that I was lazy in its conduct. Emphasized is the assumption that the bulk of my research was performed online, but as explained in the preface of my book, that was far from the case. Newspaper research was especially difficult in 1985 when I began the task as there were no online collections that allowed one simply to open a screen and type in a key search word. My early research took me to numerous libraries, archives, and museums in Alaska, Colorado, and Washington to view microfilm unavailable through inter-library loan. On page 192 of her book, Spude assumes and implies that I accessed Alaska newspapers online, but as she researched the same Alaska newspapers I did, she is fully aware that, even now, these newspapers are not available online. Further, she assumes I accessed other sources for quotation from these newspapers. This is not the case. Every quotation in my book that is from Alaska newspapers in Skagway for 1897-98 comes from photocopies in my possession from library-held microfilm of those newspapers, cranked through a "reader" page by page.

In my home state I ordered microfilm rolls, one at a time, for two decades. As microfilm has no search capability or index, thousands of hours were invested in scouring each of the many reels, reading page-by-page, day-by-day, year-by-year, researching my subject and those in his circle in newspapers of that time and place. I was extremely successful in finding and publishing information that otherwise might never have been uncovered and explored because much of it lay buried until I found it, assembled it, gave it interpretive context, and published it in 2009. "Reading upwards of 90,000 pages took years. It was a daunting task but proved a goldmine of information not known to have been republished anywhere...." (Alias Soapy Smith p. 6).