The Richest Woman in America (10 page)

Sylvia employed a staff that increased along with her frailty. Besides Fally Brownell, her housekeeper and cook, there was Fally’s husband, Frederick, her handyman; Electa Montague, the nurse who had worked for Hetty’s mother; Pardon Gray, now her full-time carriage driver; and Eliza, a night nurse. In addition, there was sometimes a relief nurse, a cook, and a chambermaid.

Hetty not only felt the size of the staff was excessive, she saw it
as evidence of her aunt’s lack of love for her. How could the woman spend so much money on household help and fritter away her inheritance? How could Sylvia employ people who competed with Hetty for her love? When Fally served her food, Hetty complained she gave her the toughest meat. When the caretakers fluttered over their charge, she feared they were after her aunt’s checkbook. Like everyone in New Bedford, they were well aware of Sylvia’s huge bank account.

When her aunt announced she was building a wing to accommodate them, Hetty called the addition wasteful. In a fit of temper she announced she was giving up her own space for the staff: she opened her closet and bureau drawers and pulled out her clothes, stripped the mattress off her bed, and carried them all to the attic. Her upstairs stay was short, but she thought she had made her point.

In the early fall of 1861, still smarting over the loss of her mother’s money, and angry at her father, Hetty sat down with Sylvia at Round Hills to discuss their mutual wills. They concurred that in the unlikely event Hetty should die first, she would leave her fortune to whatever children she might have, with half of it going into a trust fund; if she had no offspring, she would leave nothing to her father but would bequeath it all to her aunt’s favorite charity, the New Bedford Orphans’ Home. With witnesses in attendance, Hetty signed the paper and sealed it in a yellow envelope. Sylvia ordered her maid to unlock her treasure chest and place the envelope inside.

Sylvia’s own will, written earlier, stipulated that a quarter of her estate would go to friends and charities, and three-quarters would be left to Hetty; of that, half the money would be put in trust. Now Hetty insisted that almost all the money be left directly to her. After hours of arguing, as darkness fell her aunt agreed to the idea; once they had worked out the details, Hetty asked her to sign the paper. But as the light flickered in a whale oil lamp, Sylvia said no, claiming she was too weak to hold the pen.

“I can’t. I’m not able,” she cried, quivering in her chair while her maid stood by. “Then you never will be able,” Hetty snapped. “You can do it now as well as ever.” Sylvia refused and went to bed. The paper remained unsigned. Rebuffed, Hetty warned the maid, “I never set out for anything that I don’t conquer.”

For weeks she pleaded with her aunt, her bullying tone receding
into begging. If the money did not go to her, she wailed, she might become “a poor, neglected orphan” and a “recipient of public charity.” As absurd as it may have sounded to the servants who overheard her, for Hetty the fears were real. Injured by her mother’s indifference, foiled by her father and his grip on her money, frustrated by her aunt’s manipulations, she felt helpless and fearful of what might happen next. If the money went into a trust, she would have no control over it. Hadn’t her father demanded that she maintain the family fortune? But what if the trustees cheated her? What if they did not invest it well? What if they lost it all? The father who rejected her for being a girl, who cast her off as an infant, and deceived her about her inheritance, could easily leave her destitute. Yet her only value as a person was her fortune. She simply had to inherit Sylvia’s assets. In a family that equated righteousness with money, what was she worth without wealth?

It took months of coaxing and cajoling, but at last, in January 1862, Sylvia succumbed. Seated on a lounge chair in the front room over the parlor, her spine propped up with pillows, a book on her lap to lean on, in the presence of witnesses she slowly penned her signature on the will. Later, Hetty would say that she and her aunt had written a second piece of paper that her aunt had signed when they were alone. For now Hetty felt triumphant.

Nonetheless, the household stormed with suspicion. Hetty’s arguments with the staff swirled through the rooms and reached a breaking point two months later, when she battled with Fally, the housekeeper. Once before they had fought so hard that Hetty had told the housekeeper: “Take your duds and leave.” Fally refused.

This time Hetty was breakfasting with her aunt and Electa, the nurse, when she left the table and went upstairs where Fally was cleaning the chamber pots and filling pitchers with water. A sudden crash drew the attention of the women downstairs. In a fit of temper, Hetty had pushed the housekeeper, who tripped and fell down the steps. When Sylvia heard the story she turned rigid with rage. Sylvia threatened to call Thomas Mandell, trustee of the estate; terrified of losing everything, Hetty begged forgiveness while Fally was given a gift of $1,000 by Sylvia to keep her in the household. It was time for Hetty to join her father in New York.

New York was the essence of America’s moneymaking ethos, the perfect setting for Edward Mott Robinson. As an English visitor of the time observed, “
Americans speak of a man being worth so many thousands or millions. Nowhere is money sought so eagerly; nowhere is it so much valued; and in no civilized country does it bring so little to its possessor. The real work of America is to make money for the sake of making it. It is an end, not a means. The value of the dollar consists in the power to make dollars. It is an almost universal maxim. In politics and business and I am afraid in many other matters,” said Thomas Low Nichols, “money is the great object … the habitual measure of all things.”

From his offices at Pearl and Wall streets, Edward Robinson surveyed the flourishing city and saw the great potential for making more money. Gold was flowing in from California, oil was oozing in from Pennsylvania, grain was billowing in from the Midwest. Railroads were hauling record amounts of freight, and ships were loading more goods than ever in the New York harbor.

Robinson’s firm, William T. Coleman & Company, earned its profits several ways. It shipped cargo to China, California, Boston, and New York; it served as a factor, advancing discounted money to merchants who shipped goods on Coleman’s boats. Additionally, Coleman & Company often purchased entire consignments of wheat and other goods and traded commodities futures to protect themselves.

Edward Robinson was prospering from his large stake in the business and from other astute investments. Like other shrewd financiers, he used devalued greenbacks to buy government bonds that paid interest in gold. The 6 percent rate offered in metal currency, called specie, by the Treasury when it needed money for the Civil War effort was just the sort of return that made him smile. Indeed, on one of his frequent weekend trips to New Bedford, he told his lawyer, William Crapo, that he was doing so well he was even considering starting a private bank.

Edward wasn’t the only one thriving in New York. Although the early scare from the South before the start of the war had sent the markets tumbling, the city’s rich were now more numerous than ever, and once again they went on a spending spree. When Hetty came to stay with her father, the city glittered with the gold flashed by millionaires.

But even as New Yorkers celebrated prosperity, some watched
with sadness and pride as their sons signed up as volunteers for the war. When volunteers were no longer enough, Congress passed a conscription law that drew on the names of all eligible young men. Carnegies, Morgans, and others rich enough to pay $300 escaped compulsory service, but a few went willingly, with velvet camp stools and sandwiches packed by Delmonico’s. Phalanxes of poorer men were marched off to fight for the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation, declared two months earlier, in January 1863, affirmed that the war was as much about abolishing slavery as it was about keeping the Union intact. The draft that followed enraged the mostly Irish immigrants in New York. They felt forced to fight for Negroes, who, they feared, were coming north to take their jobs.

Thousands of men protested; mobs rioted in the streets, striking innocent people and beating up policemen, breaking into private homes, burning buildings, and wrecking businesses. Racing to the Negro Children’s Orphan Asylum, started by Quaker women twenty years before, a horde of men attacked the orphans and engulfed the building in flames. For four days the insurgency smoldered and thickened the air. More than a thousand people were killed, countless buildings were destroyed, hundreds of orphans were hurt, and thousands of colored citizens were driven from their homes. It took federal troops, city police, and a group of prominent men including Edward’s partner, William Coleman, to quell the rebellion.

Weeks later the draft became an orderly process and life returned to normal. Once again, sumptuous carriages drove through the nearly completed Central Park; sopranos and tenors sang
Don Giovanni
at the Academy of Music; smart crowds celebrated at Delmonico’s. Hetty roomed on Twenty-second Street and socialized with her cousins the Grinnells and their friends Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, whose family made their fortune in tobacco, banking, and real estate, and Annie Leary, whose rich father sold fur hats to Astors and other members of the upper class. With her good looks, Mayflower lineage, and the promise of a fortune, Hetty had more than enough of the requirements for a young lady in society.

Known for her translucent skin and twinkling blue eyes, Hetty dressed in hoop skirts and rustling taffetas and showed off her wit in
the homes of fashionable families. She attended concerts and operas and waltzed at balls with prominent bachelors. Beau Brummells such as Annie’s brother, Arthur Leary, and William Gebhard, members of the exclusive Union Club, and Joseph Choate, a lawyer, filled in their names on her dance card. The striking Hetty was a “brilliant, light hearted and greatly admired young girl,” said Edward Pierrepont, who saw her at many parties. The
New York World
called her “a belle of New York society, ardently sought by numerous lovers not only for her wealth but also for her beauty.” But like her friends Kitty Wolfe, who had lost the love of her life, and Annie Leary, who had no inclination to marry, Hetty was in no rush to wed.

From time to time Hetty traveled on business with her father to Boston, or rode the train on her own to see friends and family in New Bedford. She lodged at her aunt’s, where she expected to be welcomed. But the withering Sylvia was now under the influence of a physician who fed her doses of laudanum and forbade her to see her niece. Instead, Sylvia spent her time at Round Hills, carried around by her servants while strapped in a sedan chair created by the doctor, and Hetty stayed in town. Occasionally, she sent a note to the nurse Electa, whom she considered an ally, begging permission to visit her aunt and giving them news of friends and relatives. “Will you ask Aunt if I may come over there any time after Thursday for a day or so. I shall try to go to Saratoga if I am well enough—I want to see her about something and should like to leave very soon,” she wrote. At the end she added, “Cousin Lydia Congdon sent her love. Mrs Loring is dead. Grand Mother [Ruth Howland] is about the same.”

On one of these trips Hetty learned that her aunt was proceeding with the addition to the house. It wasn’t building the wing itself that bothered her, she wrote to Electa; it was being betrayed: “I cared more about her not telling me,” she said. “It will take me two years at least to get over the shock.” She added that the news brought on her old headaches, such terrible headaches that she could not read or sew. “Help me if you do not want me to live alone as an invalid all my days,” she begged, pleading permission again to visit her aunt at Round Hills. But her request was denied. A few weeks later she tried again, and again she was refused. Rejected and suspicious, she returned to New York.

A few months later after another visit, Electa wrote, with her poor grammar, to wish her a happy New Year from her aunt and the rest of the household. “Very glad hear of your safe arrival your Aunt is so very glad that you have got such nice rooms to[o]…. we can talk about you almost see you made comfortable it gives us great joy.” Sylvia was pleased that her niece had a nice quilt to keep her warm and “nice, clean clothes” to wear in New York. “Write soon,” Electa scrawled. But she did not invite Hetty to see her aunt.

After another New Bedford visit, Electa sent a note saying how Hetty had disappointed her aunt by forgetting to take a black cashmere shawl. “She wants you to wear it and look like a lady,” she wrote. As always she said, “She sends her love to you.” Then she added, “O this awful war. Oh how many are killed.”

      
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either the smoke of burning plantations nor the stench of soldiers’ charred bodies sullied the New York air, but the sidewalks were choked with rumors. Wall Street shook with fear that England would side with the South; it calmed only when news arrived that the battle at Antietam had ended in a draw. That was enough to worry the British and keep them out.

To finance the war, Washington issued $150 million in paper currency printed with green ink and backed, not by gold, but by the good word of the government. Markets roiled and men’s hearts raced as stories of battles sent stocks bouncing up and down. Defeat in Lexington and Lynchburg caused a lack of confidence in the Union, devaluing the paper money and pushing gold prices up; success in Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg sent greenbacks up and gold prices reeling down.

As always, Hetty traipsed between New York and New England, making excursions by steamboat to Saratoga in summer and traveling to New Bedford all year long. In 1864 on a trip to Boston she entered the popular dining room of the elegant Parker House hotel, famous for its puffy rolls and chocolate cream pie. Spotting a family friend, she stopped to say hello to Solon Goodridge, whose business, like her father’s, was in China trade. He introduced her to his luncheon companion, Mr. Edward Green, who also knew her father. Miss Robinson’s
good looks caught the eye of the stranger. Goodridge’s grandson recalled the story: “Hetty walked into the hotel dining room and Mr. Green fell for her.” He had recently returned from Asia and was living in New York at the Union Club. Perhaps he might see her sometime.