The Svengali and the Rolling Stone - A Brocton Tale
By Richard G. Waite
This is a story reminiscent of Weird Tales—but it’s true.
It is the story of Laurence Oliphant, a worldly member of the mid-19th century British establishment, a self-professed rolling stone who came under the thrall of Thomas Lake Harris, a svengalian American mystic, prophet, manipulator and swindler. Much of this story unfolded in the peaceful Chautauqua County community of Brocton.
Laurence Oliphant was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1829. Known for his “cheerfulness and buoyant good nature,” he possessed an assurance that belied his years. At 24, Laurence took up a nomadic life guaranteed to gather no moss on the proverbial rolling stone. Among his many adventures, he accompanied Lord Elgin to Canada as his diplomatic secretary, observed the Sepoy Rebellion in India and actively schemed with the Italian patriot Garibaldi. As first secretary to the British legation in Eddo (Tokyo), Japan, Laurence was severely wounded by a sword-wielding samurai.
The attack on Laurence Oliphant and George Morrison by a samurai, July 5th, 1861, in Jeddo (Edo), Japan.
Credit: From The Illustrated London News, volume XXXIX, October 12, 1861
As a profitable sideline to his many excursions, Laurence penned several well-received travelogues, including The Russian Shores of the Black Sea and Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan. In 1865, Oliphant successfully ran for Parliament, but his career as an MP failed to attain the high trajectory expected and he resigned two years later. That same year he disappeared from the gaiety of the London social scene, where he had garnered a reputation as a rakish womanizer, and travelled to America, driven there by his inner demons and lured there by the charismatic Thomas Lake Harris.
Thomas Lake Harris was born in England in 1823, and emigrated to Utica, NY, five years later. Rejecting his Calvinist upbringing, Harris became a Universalist minister, which quickly led him to join James L. Scott in founding the Spiritualist community of Mountain Cove, VA. After the collapse of the utopia, he retreated to New York City and founded the Church of the Good Shepherd. During his five-year pastorship, he drifted away from Spiritualism and came to embrace Fourierist socialism and Swedenborgism.
In 1861, Harris founded the Brotherhood of the New Life and purchased land in the Hudson Valley with life savings culled from his wealthy devotees. Eventually setting up shop in Amenia, NY, the land was held by Harris, “in trust for the Lord.” The Brotherhood sustained itself through subsistence farming, supplemented by commercial enterprises such as a gristmill, a bank (T.L. Harris, President and J.A. Requa, Head Cashier), and the marketing of greenhouse grapes.
The 1865 building that housed the First National Bank of Amenia still stands, but now with a different banking institution’s name on the outside. Inset: An 1865 one-dollar bill from the First National Bank of Amenia. Note signatures of J. A. Requa, one of The Brotherhood’s devotees, and Gail Borden, of Borden Dairy fame. Both were founders of the bank, along with Harris.
Credit: Seth Gaines photograph, 2012 and private collection
The Subjugation of the Oliphants
Harris was well-known on both sides of the Atlantic, having successfully published several lengthy poems noted for their romantic verbiage, purple prose, strange metaphysical ramblings and subtle erotic imagery. Laurence and his mother, Lady Catherine Oliphant, attended several of Harris’s lectures. Swept up by his intense charisma, the recently widowed Catherine followed him to Amenia where, following Harris’ teachings, she set about washing dirty laundry, ironing, mending and scrubbing—unaccustomed labors that she willingly embraced. Laurence, however, was instructed to stay in England and prove his devotion to “The Prophet,” as Lake Harris called himself. In addition to attending to his parliamentary duties, he was tasked with performing, “a daily measure of sewing, the surest way to necessary humility, so that when he was not [at work], Laurence sat in his room hemming petticoats.” He remained true to these assigned tasks and closeted himself with his sewing for two years.
Oliphant was eventually cleared by “Father Faithful” and allowed to emigrate to New York, where he was immediately transformed into a rustic farm laborer in literal isolation from the rest of the Brotherhood. Early assignments included mucking the cattle barn, currying horses and shining boots. By his own account he resided in a shed furnished with grape crates, lived “a sort of hermit life,” and was “not allowed to hold intercourse with anyone,” including his mother. Rising at 5 a.m., he would dutifully “hoe for about ten hours under a broiling sun.”
Title page from An Epic of the Starry Heaven, a book of writings by Thomas Lake Harris, published in 1855.
Credit: Courtesy Harvard University
The Community of Brocton – Salem-on-Erie
In 1867, the Brotherhood was uprooted from Amenia and transported 400 miles westward to the Chautauqua County village of Brocton. The move was initiated when James Requa visited a friend in Brocton that summer and realized the potential profit to be had from establishing a vineyard. Thus, 2,000 acres of Brocton farmland was purchased with money derived from the sale of Amenia lands and funds consigned to Harris by members of the Brotherhood of the New Life. It extended from the shoreline of Lake Erie southward to Brocton’s main street (today’s Rt. 20). At least half the purchase price, about $200,000, was paid with money obtained by Harris from Lady Catherine and Laurence Oliphant.
Harris commandeered a house known as Vine Cliff for his own use. The Brotherhood called its acreage Salem-on-Erie. In addition to the farming community, Main street Brocton also witnessed an invasion of Brotherhood activity, including a gristmill and a general store, plus a hotel and restaurant. The most profitable Brotherhood activity, however, was winemaking. Bottles were labelled as the product of the Lake Erie and Missouri Wine Company, while advertising proclaimed that the wine was for “medicinal purposes only,” and was “filled with divine breath so that all noxious influences were neutralized.”
The sizeable acreage in the Town of Portland, Chautauqua County, owned by Harris’ Brotherhood of the New Life is shown outlined in red on this map showing Brocton and its environs.
Credit: From The Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Chautauqua New York, 1881
Vine Cliff, located at 6151 West Lake Road, north of Brocton, was commandeered for Harris’ use. The house still stands today and is home to the Vine Cliff Vineyard. Credit: Author’s collection and courtesy Painted Hills Genealogical Society
Though seemingly idyllic, the Salem-on-Erie community was ruled by their charismatic leader with an iron fist. While insisting his disciples remain celibate, even in marriage, Harris himself maintained a mystical conjugal relationship with a heavenly partner named Queen Lilly, which manifested itself in earthly copulation with a select few of his devotees, including the now-widowed Mrs. Requa.
Meanwhile, during a trip to Europe to cover the Franco-PrussianWar, Oliphant met his future wife, Alice le Strange. When Laurence advised her that they could only marry if she agreed to live life on Harris’s terms, Alice wrote to The Prophet pledging obedience to his will and announcing she intended to make all her property payable to him. Harris consented to the marriage only if the partners agreed to remain celibate—which they apparently did—for 12 years.
While Laurence was sent to work in Canada, Harris ordered Alice to Brocton, where she spent the first eight months housed in an ancillary farmhouse with Lady Catherine Oliphant and made to fend for themselves. Following that, they were brought back to live at Vine Cliff, where their lives of drudgery and debasement got no better. In the summer, Alice was enjoined to go shoeless as she gardened, tended the chicken coop and cooked. On several occasions, The Prophet, sensing an overbearing vanity on the part of the woman, buried her up to her neck and dumped dirt over her head. Oddly, Alice accepted this without complaint.
To California—Fountain Grove
Returning to Salem-on-Erie in 1877, Laurence was met by his mother, but Alice was gone. In 1875, Harris had decamped with Mrs. Requa and a few select devotees and gone to California. There, at a new estate he named Fountain Grove in Santa Rosa County, he replicated on a grander scale the winery and Brotherhood cult he had established at Brocton. By 1876, a fortune in Brotherhood of the New Life funds from the Chautauqua accounts had been spent at Fountain Grove, buying land, building three ornate homes and establishing an extensive agricultural operation. Also, by then about 100 Californians had joined the Fountain Grove Brotherhood, but only a select few from Brocton. Among the later were Jane Lee Waring and Alice Oliphant.
“The Commandery” at Harris’ community of Fountain Grove, near Santa Rosa, CA, was home to Harris and some of the male members of his flock. Perhaps ironically, the figure of a woman can be seen on the second-floor balcony at left center. This house succumbed to a fire in 1908, two years after Harris’ death, while much of the modern Fountaingrove vineyard was destroyed by the 2017 Northern California Tubbs Fire.
Credit: Courtesy Sonoma County Museum
As with many things associated with Harris, it is not exactly clear why this move took place. Harris claimed that he had wearied of the cold Brocton winters. That, however, does not explain his disinclination to allow a westward migration by the Salem-on-Erie community. Several factors were likely in play.
After an eight-year reign over the Brotherhood of the New Life in Brocton, Harris’s more authoritarian and manipulative activities must have worn thin within the members of the society. Doubters were subjected to extended periods of sleep deprivation as punishment, or to strange exorcisms to drive out the evil spirits that had turned them against The Prophet. Children were segregated from their parents and were neglected. They were not allowed to attend school, but were assigned menial labors throughout the estate. A state of mass agitation and weariness ensued when entire groups of men or women were shuffled between houses in the middle of the night at the whim of Father Faithful. Also, Harris himself was never seen to labor. His days were spent writing innumerable tracts or exhibiting bizarre fits as he wrestled with infernals or evil spirits. Nights, noted those under enforced celibacy, were spent abed with his latest paramour, dreaming of Queen Lilly. The final straw may have been when a mother and father complained of Harris’ over-attentiveness toward their young daughter.
By 1875, rumors of some of these goings-on were circulating in Brocton village. The façade of normalcy was collapsing and it was time for Father Faithful to move on. Salem-on-Erie, however, had to be maintained as a revenue stream for his California venture.
In 1878, Laurence arrived at Fountain Grove unannounced. He had travelled across a continent to reunite with Alice, but was rebuffed by Harris. Unaware that, just prior to his arrival, Harris had evicted the penniless Alice from Fountain Grove, Oliphant took up his nomadic life once again. Some argue that Alice’s eviction was precipitated by her refusal to replace Mrs. Requa as Harris’ bed mate. Alice herself declared it was the result of her desire to become an independent woman, something that Harris never would have allowed. She then lived alone as a music and art teacher in a rural community outside San Francisco.
For two years, Laurence was consumed by a laudatory, but failed, attempt to resettle Jews threatened by Russian pogroms into Syria. In 1880, following two years of hectic Middle Eastern travel, his health broke down while he was in London. Miraculously, Alice arrived from California to nurse him. After returning to Salem-on-Erie, he found his mother deathly ill with cancer. In desperation, the two journeyed to Fountain Grove, where Harris had been boasting about a new-found ability to conquer death. Turned away, they withdrew to San Francisco, where Lady Catherine Oliphant died.
The Death of the Brocton Community
While Oliphant was conversing with Harris at Fountain Grove, prior to being turned away, he and his mother had seen a watch sported by Mrs. Requa. It was Lady Catherine’s keepsake from her departed husband. After 16 years of devotion, this was the final straw for Laurence. Harris’ spell over him was finally broken, and the enraged acolyte returned to Brocton and instituted a lawsuit to recover Salem-on-Erie lands purchased with Oliphant money. Harris countered in a failed attempt to convince Alice to have her husband committed to an insane asylum. Laurence successfully re-claimed title to 900 acres, which he then sold at a loss. Other Brotherhood members followed suit and the Brocton community came to an end.
Laurence Oliphant wrote two autobiographical novels, published 15 years apart, with characters who gave voice to his innermost thoughts. The first, Piccadilly, published in 1870, provided evidence of an unmoored mind treading on the edge of madness. In it his protagonist states:
People call me odd. I wonder whether other people’s thoughts are as like clouds as mine are – sometimes when it is stormy, grouping themselves in wild fantastic forms; sometimes chasing each other through vacancy. . . . Love, friendship, hate, pity, admiration, treachery – mere words to spell, ever combining wrongly, and never letting me rest, till I thought something must crack under the strain.
In an earlier letter to his father, Laurence had proclaimed, “There should be some place where, when a man is bankrupt in character, he might go and get whitewashed.” Added to that desire was an admitted naivete which could certainly lead Oliphant astray. “I confess,” he said in 1867, “that I find it generally more easy to delude myself by believing in the sham of a reality, than in the reality of a sham.” And so it was that Laurence Oliphant delivered himself into the hands of Harris, whose 1867 poem, The Great Republic, quoted favorably in Piccadilly, says: “World harmony springs through the perfect man.”
Writing in 1927, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle surveyed the life and teachings of Harris, “a mystic about whom there has been the utmost difference of opinion ranging from the Messianic to the diabolical,” and concluded that, “At the end of it all I find myself in the same perplexity as ever, and have no sure idea whether I am dealing with a megalomaniac ranter endowed with considerable worldly cunning, or with one who really has a breath of the divine afflatus.”
Oliphant addressed that very issue in his 1885 post-Harris novel, Massolam, in which he described the Harris character as an originally honest but increasingly fallen individual. “He had been tempted,” wrote Oliphant, “from the path of duty and of strict service by the blind devotion of his disciples, and the wealth with which that devotion had supplied him. The demons of pride and avarice had effected a subtle entrance, tainting his motives and gradually acquired a mastery over them.” “He might be,” said Laurence, “the best or the worst of men.” It is likely that he never heard Father Faithful when he proclaimed that, “The sight of an abject human being moves me to reverence and awe.”
Following their Brotherhood experience, Laurence and Alice Oliphant retired to Haifa, Palestine (present-day Israel). There, living in a spacious hillside house, Alice entertained numerous visiting guests while Laurence continued to follow his dream of establishing a homeland for persecuted Jews within the Ottoman Empire. They remained celibate. Alice died in 1886. Two years later, Laurence visited the United States one last time. There he married Rosamond Owen, granddaughter of famed utopian socialist, Robert Owen. He died in England that December, where The Times said of him, “Seldom has there been a more romantic or amply filled career, never, perhaps, a stranger or more apparently contradictory personality.”
The Fall from Apotheosis
The end game for Harris began 14 years after his founding of the Fountain Grove Brotherhood colony, in 1891. Following a six-month stay with the Brotherhood, Alzire Chevaillier, a magazine writer and, “a gadfly seeking celebrity for herself,” threatened to present “damning evidence of immorality and fraud” to President Benjamin Harrison, and “ask him to break up this vile society.” Once again, it was time for Harris to move on. Before doing so, he married Jane Lee Waring, prompting a local paper to snidely remark, “The Prophet is Celibate No More.” Earlier, Father Faithful had announced that through the utmost struggle he had conquered death. He declared:
I have passed through December, [and] I am in the Maytime, conscious that I hold in quickened mind and flesh the final secret and method and law and power for the resuscitation, the rehabiliment, the organic restoration of the nobler multitudes of Earth’s aged.
The San Francisco Call published a special Sunday section, announcing the demise of Harris’ Fountain Grove colony. By that time, Harris and his new wife had fled the colony and moved to New York.
Credit: San Francisco Call, May 19, 1901
Exiting Fountain Grove, the couple traveled to New York City, where Harris maintained communication with several Fountain Grove devotees. His end is humorously summed up by Jeff Elliott, Santa Rosa historian:
1906, astonishing news: the man who had promised he would live forever hadn’t. They announced his death in May, just as the weather began to warm up and presumably assured them that this was not a drill. He’d actually died two months earlier, but his remaining followers hadn’t mentioned it just in case he was, you know, testing them or something.
About the Author
A frequent contributor to Western New York Heritage, Richard Waite is a retired teacher who taught history, psychology and sociology at Williamsville North High School.