Southern Colorado author weaves the untold lives of the Palmer sisters

A new historical fiction by former Pueblo West valedictorian Ashley Eiman tells the story of General William Jackson Palmer’s three daughters, love and a world where England met the West.

Ever since she was a young girl, 29-year-old fiction author Ashley Eiman has been fascinated by the history of Colorado Springs founder General William Jackson Palmer — especially the lives of his three daughters Elsie Myers, Dorothy Palmer, and Marjory Watt. What followed the fascination was a historical fiction on the Palmer family.

It took two years to write the book, entitled A Thing of Beauty: A Novel of Glen Eyrie.

Eiman self-published the fictionalized account of how the Palmer girls moved back to Colorado after their mother’s death to live with their influential father.

The book, released in June, describes each girl’s struggle to grow up in the West, the drama of finding love and the aftermath of Palmer’s untimely fall from a horse’s back that left him paralyzed in 1906.

Born in Wisconsin, Eiman moved to Southern Colorado in 1993. She graduated as a valedictorian from Pueblo West High School in 2005, then moved to Colorado Springs 11 years ago. Eiman has a bachelor’s degree in English from University of Colorado — Colorado Springs and has worked as a professional writer and editor in Colorado Springs.

“When I was a little girl, my mom took me to Glen Eryie for high tea, and I just fell in love with the fact that there was a castle here,” Eiman said.

Eiman has been collecting information about the Palmers ever since her childhood, but the idea of writing A Thing of Beauty didn’t truly germinate until she attended a writer’s conference in 2010 and realized she had a story to tell: That of Elsie, Dorothy and Marjory.

“The girls are what are interesting to me. How they lived in England and then had to come here and make their way in West as English women,” Eiman said.

No biographies were allowed to be written while General Palmer was still alive, so the earliest one was written years after he died, and none of the biographies focus on his three girls. Eiman read everything she could on the Palmers, and she used Penrose Library — part of the Pike’s Peak Library District — to do extensive research with the help of the library’s staff.

“A lot of the biographies were a little bit contradictory with facts and dates, so I did my best to try and cobble together what would’ve been the truth,” explained Eiman.

When writing A Thing of Beauty, Eiman was amazed at what she uncovered about each Palmer woman.

Elsie Myers, the oldest daughter, was 36 when she got married — which in that time period was very unusual.

“For her to be a well-bred, well-educated woman and to not have any solid prospects was interesting to me,” Eiman said. “Her family was rich, she was well connected and she ended up marrying someone from her childhood.“

Elsie married an Englishman named Leopold Hamilton Myers — a childhood friend of Elsie’s who became a writer and moved to the United States to write in the mountains. “I had to figure out how and when he would’ve made contact with her again and why it took so long,” described Eiman of writing their romance plot.

Dorothy Palmer lived a life dedicated to fighting for social justice, attended nursing school, and became a social worker in London’s slums. She never married, but lived the rest of her life in a seemingly platonic arrangement with the famous painter John Singer Sargent, Sargent’s wife, and another artist.

In A Thing of Beauty, Eiman wrote an entirely fictionalized romance between Dorothy and a servant named Florenz Ordelheide — a young man around Dorothy’s age who did reside at Glen Eyrie at the same time Dorothy did.

“I was trying to explore Dorothy’s intense hatred of having a relationship of any kind with a man,” Eiman said. “So I wanted there to be kind of a Jo and Laurie from Little Women type romance there as an answer as to why maybe Dorothy chooses to not get married in the end.”

Marjory Watt, the youngest Palmer daughter, had a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis. She was engaged to be married to a Lieutenant Richard Wellesley in 1905 — the son of one of her mother’s former friends. However, after General Palmer’s tragic accident, a doctor named Henry Watt came to live with the Palmers at Glen Eyrie, and gradually Marjory fell in love with the older man. Marjory called off her engagement to Wellesley en route on the Atlantic about a week before her scheduled wedding day.

“I think she connected with Doctor Watt because she had tuberculosis,” concluded Eiman. “And so I think he saw her as someone he could take care of, and she saw the same in him — despite the age difference.”

Marjory and Henry stayed in Colorado Springs even after General Palmer’s death in 1909 — although the other two sisters left for England. The Watts never had children, but devoted themselves to caring for people with tuberculosis.