Titan

by Ron Chernow

  While Rockefeller’s home looked small and cramped beside Amasa Stone’s towering manse and other gaudy monstrosities, it was a substantial two-story structure with a mansard roof, a portico, and arched windows, shielded from the street by an iron picket fence that spanned its entire 116-foot frontage. Rockefeller could have afforded something showier than this $40,000 house, and pedestrians might have thought its owner a lesser light in business, yet this was exactly the misimpression that he wanted to convey. Far from trying to parade his wealth, he wanted to blend into the scenery. Even at home, Rockefeller was discreet and behaved as if he was concealing some secret from prying eyes. Beyond that, he had the Puritan’s discomfort with possessions, a nagging Baptist anxiety that decoration might appear idolatrous. Again, like Weber’s ideal capitalist, “he avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recognition which he receives.”1

  Fond of roomy, ungainly houses that he could remodel ceaselessly, Rockefeller would have been stymied by a house that required no improvement. Utilitarian by nature, he was more concerned with the grounds and interiors of homes than with the subtleties of architectural ornamentation. “I hate frills,” he once said. “Useful things, beautiful things, are admirable; but frills, affectations, mere pretences of being something very fine, bore me very much.”2 With a country boy’s love of open spaces, he hated anything confined or cluttered and probably chose the Euclid Avenue house for its large, high-ceilinged rooms, which included a parlor, a sitting room, and a dining room downstairs plus four bedrooms upstairs.

  Rockefeller devoted more time and expense to the trees and shrubbery than to the house itself. To expand his gardens, he bought an adjoining lot but was disturbed by the house that came with it and obstructed his view. Since he detested waste, he donated the house to a new girls’ school being built a block away. In what was hailed as an engineering wonder at the time, the brick house was jacked up by a windlass and rolled down the block on greased logs—a spectacle that was covered by local papers and drew spectators. “Mr. Rockefeller . . . set [the house] on new foundations where it was as good as ever,” Lucy Spelman said of her brother-in-law’s feat. “This was a marvelous undertaking, but then he was always undertaking marvelous things.”3

  Behind the house, he built a stone stable and coach house more magnificent than the residence itself. Over one hundred feet long, it had stout beams, pine panels, and elaborate chandeliers. An expert driver with either a pair of horses or a four-in-hand, Rockefeller had a passion for trotters, and Euclid Avenue provided a perfect straightaway for races. If anybody tried to pass him, the hypercompetitive Rockefeller automatically turned it into a trial of speed. John, William, and Frank were stockholders in a racing club called the Cleveland Driving Park Company, the first amateur club of its sort in America. Unable to do anything in a casual manner, Rockefeller became obsessive about his hobbies, which he could sometimes indulge in extravagant fashion. In the 1870s, his records show, he paid stupendous sums—from $10,000 to $12,500—for thoroughbred trotters with such evocative names as Midnight, Flash, Jesse, Baron, and Trifle.

  In his early days in business, Rockefeller often suffered from severe neck pains that might have indicated stress on the job, and he turned to horses as a therapeutic diversion. “I would leave my office in the afternoon and drive a pair of fast horses as hard as they could go: trot, break, gallop—everything.”4 Since Cettie was also fond of horses, they often rode together. His style of racing was also revealing: He never applied cruel, coercive measures to recalcitrant horses but studied them closely and tried to coax them along gently and with great patience. “I remember when my brother William and I used to go riding,” he said. “I would invariably come in first. He would be covered with perspiration, as was his horse. My horse would be too—but I would be as cool as I am now. I always would talk to my horses—quietly, steadily—never get excited.”5 This unflappable style and conservation of energy also characterized his approach to the management of his vast oil empire.

  Unlike his philandering father, John D. Rockefeller remained firmly, almost prudishly, anchored in domestic life. Much like Jay Gould—who didn’t drink, smoke, or gallivant with women—Rockefeller’s harsh business tactics were counterbalanced by exemplary behavior at home where he was a sweet, respectful Victorian husband. To borrow a line from Flaubert, to be fiercely revolutionary in business, he needed to be utterly conventional at home. Eternally at war with the devil, John and Cettie allowed their religious beliefs to define their entire cultural agenda. They subscribed to seats at the philharmonic, for instance, but theater and opera were too racy for these professing Christians. Shying away from social situations that weren’t safely predictable, they socialized only within a small circle of family members, business associates, and church friends and never went to clubs or dinner parties. “Club life did not appeal to me,” said Rockefeller. “I was meeting all the people I needed to meet in my day’s work. . . . My family would rather have me at home—even if I were snoring in an easy chair—than going out for the evening, and certainly I preferred to stay at home.” 6 He especially enjoyed the company of ministers whose genial, homiletic style matched his own. Thus walled off from temptation, Rockefeller was virtually untouched by the decadence of the Gilded Age.

  Much of Rockefeller’s preference for home life stemmed from his strict temperance views. Even late in life, he accepted an invitation to a hotel barbecue, then went to investigate the site beforehand. When he spotted empty beer bottles on the premises, he promptly withdrew his acceptance. Since he and Cettie were deeply involved in temperance work—they did everything from sponsoring lecture tours to lobbying to have temperance principles inserted in school textbooks—they avoided the very presence of liquor, and this severely cramped their social activities. Yet within their circumscribed world, they had a happy home life.

  Rockefeller bridled at the notion that he was a business-obsessed drudge, a slave to the office. “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the waking hours of the day to making money for money’s sake,” he recorded in his memoirs.7 He worked at a more leisurely pace than many other executives, napping daily after lunch and often dozing in a lounge chair after dinner. To explain his extraordinary longevity, he later said, doubtless overstating the matter, “I’m here because I shirked: did less work, lived more in the open air, enjoyed the open air, sunshine and exercise.”8 By his mid-thirties, he had installed a telegraph wire between home and office so that he could spend three or four afternoons each week at home, planting trees, gardening, and enjoying the sunshine. Rockefeller didn’t do this in a purely recreational spirit but mingled work and rest to pace himself and improve his productivity. In time, he became something of an evangelist on health-related issues. “It is remarkable how much we all could do if we avoid hustling, and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.”9

  There was a clockwork regularity about Rockefeller’s life that made it seem mechanical to outsiders but that he found soothing. He didn’t seem to require time to indulge normal human idleness, much less illicit passion. In his rigidly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family, or exercise. Perhaps these daily rituals helped him to deal with underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain in creating his oil empire. He fretted endlessly about his company and, below the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness, he recalled that “for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out. . . . I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome. . . . All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.”10

  By the time they moved to Euclid Avenue, the Rockefellers already had one child, Elizabeth (always
called Bessie), who was born in the Cheshire Street house in 1866. (When Cettie was confined during childbirth and couldn’t attend church, John jotted down notes on the sermon and read them back to her afterward.) All of the remaining children were born in an upstairs bedroom at Euclid Avenue. Their second child, Alice, was born in July 1869 but died a year later; then came Alta (1871), Edith (1872), and John Jr. (1874). They were delivered by a pioneering physician, Dr. Myra Herrick, Cleveland’s first woman doctor, who organized a short-lived homeopathic college to train women in the field. When she set up a free medical dispensary, staffed exclusively by female doctors, to assist low-income women, Cettie and Mary Flagler were prominent contributors.

  A surprisingly flexible, egalitarian father, Rockefeller never shrank from child care. His sister-in-law, Lute, who gave up teaching and went to live with them, told how John eased the burden from Cettie’s shoulders when he was at home: “He would get up from his nap the moment he heard a baby cry and carry the little one up and down the room until she was quieted.” 11 Rockefeller was always patient with his children and seldom lost his temper or uttered a harsh word. As the son of a self-absorbed absentee father, he made a point of being an affectionate parent and something of a homebody.

  Like Big Bill, however, Rockefeller could be a sprightly companion for his children. He would get down on all fours and bear them on his back, recapturing a boyish glee that was seldom evident at the office. When they played blindman’s buff, he electrified them with daring feints, sudden thrusts, and unexpected, wheeling turns, followed by whoops of delight when he won. Attuned to their fantasy world, he liked to gather the children around him and tell fairy tales. Also like his father, he had an inexhaustible supply of stunts. At dinner, he dazzled the children by balancing fine china plates on the tip of his nose; he also balanced crackers on his nose, then gave them a sudden flip and caught them in his mouth. He taught the children to swim, row, skate, and ride, and he had a talent for devising imaginative outings. On moonlit nights at Forest Hill—the Cleveland estate Rockefeller bought in the 1870s—they ventured forth on bicycle trips, with Rockefeller pinning a large white handkerchief to the back of his coat and leading the children through winding, mysterious forest roads. John Jr. never forgot skating with his father: “The lake was deep, so we took under each arm long narrow boards, which would hold us up in case we broke through the ice. That was characteristic of Father. He always took the utmost care to examine any project thoroughly; then when convinced it was safe, put it through without further question.”12

  Perhaps to create a substitute for theater and other entertainments proscribed by their religion, John and Cettie encouraged the children’s musical talents, and each one took up an instrument. They formed their own quartet— with Bessie on violin, Alta on piano, Edith on cello, and John Jr. on violin—so that the house echoed with the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel. The children approached music as serious art, not frivolous amusement, and performed frequently at church events. They weren’t barred from playing contemporary popular music.

  If there was more merriment in Rockefeller’s household than we might have suspected, there was also an underlying sobriety. His children remembered the playful moments, but outsiders were struck by the somber, stuffy atmosphere and found something almost spooky about the Rockefeller home, with one disgruntled tutor leaving this ghastly description: “The elastic step, the laughter of youth, the light heartedness, the romping about, the playfulness, which one is supposed to meet among the young and happy were entirely lacking, lacking almost to dejection. It was a gloomy horizon, with a heaviness that pervaded the entire household. Silence and gloom everywhere.” 13

  Rockefeller kept his children hermetically cut off from the world and hired governesses to educate them at home. Aside from church, they never engaged in outside social or civic functions and betrayed a very Baptist fear of worldly entertainments. In the summertime, the children’s friends might come to visit for a week or two at a time, but never the reverse, and even these playmates were the cautiously screened offspring of John and Cettie’s church companions. As John Jr. remembered, “Our interests centered in the house; our friends came there almost wholly. We went rarely, practically none at all, to neighbors’ houses.”14 John Jr. hinted that the children brought to visit weren’t real companions and were mostly window dressing to gratify his parents. “We had no childhood friends, no school friends.”15 It was a far cry from Thorstein Veblen’s image of the spoiled leisure class.

  Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare boyhood. The first step in saving them from extravagance was keeping them ignorant of their father’s affluence. Until they were adults, Rockefeller’s children never visited his office or refineries, and even then they were accompanied by company officials, never Father. At home, Rockefeller created a make-believe market economy, calling Cettie the “general manager” and requiring the children to keep careful account books.16 They earned pocket money by performing chores and received two cents for killing flies, ten cents for sharpening pencils, five cents per hour for practicing their musical instruments, and a dollar for repairing vases. They were given two cents per day for abstaining from candy and a dime bonus for each consecutive day of abstinence. Each toiled in a separate patch of the vegetable garden, earning a penny for every ten weeds they pulled up. John Jr. got fifteen cents an hour for chopping wood and ten cents per day for superintending paths. Rockefeller took pride in training his children as miniature household workers. Years later, riding on a train with his thirteen-year-old daughter, he told a traveling companion, “This little girl is earning money already. You never could imagine how she does it. I have learned what my gas bills should average when the gas is managed with care, and I have told her that she can have for pin money all that she will save every month on this amount, so she goes around every night and keeps the gas turned down where it is not needed.” 17 Rockefeller never tired of preaching economy and whenever a package arrived at home, he made a point of saving the paper and string.

  Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. “No,” said Cettie, “we will buy just one for all of them.” “But, my dear,” John protested, “tricycles do not cost much.” “That is true,” she replied. “It is not the cost. But if they have just one they will learn to give up to one another.”18 So the children shared a single bicycle. Amazingly enough, the four children probably grew up with a level of creature comforts not that far above what Rockefeller had known as a boy. Except on Sundays, the girls wore simple gingham dresses and hand-me-downs. In later life, John Jr. confessed sheepishly that until the age of eight he wore only dresses, because he was the youngest child and the three older siblings were girls.19

  Rockefeller’s home secretary saw much of the children because they liked to sit quietly and observe the mysterious clicking of the telegraph wires in her office. She described Rockefeller as extremely gentle with the children but attached to certain fixed principles that he expounded with didactic, wearying repetition. The children were told so often that cards were sinful that they couldn’t distinguish one card suit from another. To teach self-restraint, Rockefeller limited them to one piece of cheese daily. One afternoon, little Alta tattled on her younger sister Edith for having eaten two pieces of cheese, and Rockefeller professed shock at this epicurean indulgence. As the secretary recalled: “All that afternoon whenever Edith came within hearing her father would say, slowly and impressively, ‘Edith was greedy.’ At another time both little John and Alta called out, ‘Edith took the biggest.’ Repeatedly that afternoon, Mr. Rockefeller said in his impressive manner, ‘Edith was selfish.’ ”20

  Yet the thing to be husbanded most jealously was time. One could neither be too early nor too late. In fact, there was such a fetish about punctuality that it occasi
oned discernible anxiety among the children. Rockefeller’s home secretary said that John Jr. had computed, down to the second, how long it took to get from her telegraph office to the schoolroom upstairs. “After that, whenever I read to the children near school time, John would sit with watch in hand, and his rising was signal for the reading to stop and for the girls to follow him.”21

  Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, meting out a penny fine to latecomers. Everyone took turns reciting from scripture, and John or Cettie elucidated difficult portions and prayed for guidance. Before bed, Cettie listened to the children recite their prayers, and nothing could divert her from this sacred duty. They were encouraged to be active in prayer, especially at Friday night prayer meetings. As John Jr. recalled, at an early age they were encouraged “to take part like the older people, either in a brief word of prayer or a word of personal experience.”22

  Sunday was a heavily regimented day, starting with morning prayers and Sunday school then proceeding through afternoon prayer meetings and culminating with evening hymns. If the children had spare time, they couldn’t read novels or worldly literature but had to restrict themselves to the Bible and Sunday-school literature. Strangely enough, the children didn’t remember this as oppressive. As John Jr. observed, “A day with such limitations as this would simply appall the modern child. And yet I have only the happiest recollections of the Sundays of my childhood.” 23 Cettie turned Sunday into a day for serious reflection, asking the children to reflect upon such weighty maxims as “He who conquers self is the greatest victor” or “The secret of sensible living is simplicity.” 24 Leading the children in an hour-long “home talk,” she asked each child to select a “besetting sin” and then prayed with the child, asking for God’s help in combating the sin. The implicit Baptist message was that people were inherently flawed but—with prayer, willpower, and God’s grace—infinitely capable of improvement.