Aileen was provided for from the income of the balance of the estate. At her death, his art gallery and collection of paintings and sculpture, valued at $3,000,000, were to be given to the City of New York for the education and enjoyment of the public. Cowperwood had heretofore placed in the hands of trustees $750,000 for these galleries. In addition to this, he willed that a plot of land be purchased in the borough of the Bronx, and a hospital, the buildings to cost not more than $800,000, be erected thereon. The balance of his estate—part of the income from which would provide maintenance of the hospital—was to be placed in the hands of his appointed executors, among whom were Aileen, Dr. James, and Albert Jamieson. The hospital was to be named the Frank A. Cowperwood Hospital, and patients were to be admitted regardless of race, color, or creed. If they lacked financial means with which to pay for treatment, they were to receive it free of charge.
Aileen, once Cowperwood was gone, being extremely sentimental about his last wishes and desires, focussed her first attention on the hospital. In fact, she gave out interviews to the newspapers elaborating her plans, which included a convalescent home which was to be free of any institutional air. She concluded one of these interviews by saying:
“All my energies will be directed toward the accomplishment of my husband’s plan, and I shall make the hospital my lifework.”
Cowperwood had failed to take into consideration, however, the workings of the American courts throughout the nation: the administration of justice or the lack of it; the length of time American lawyers were capable of delaying a settlement in any of these courts.
For instance, the decision of the United States Supreme Court, killing off Cowperwood’s Combination Traction Company of Chicago, was the first blow to the estate. Four and a half million dollars of his, invested in his Union Traction Company bonds, had been guaranteed by the Combination Traction Company. Now they were faced with years of wrangling in court to decide not only their value but their ownership. It was too much for Aileen. She promptly retired as executrix and turned the problem over to Jamieson. And in consequence, almost two years passed with little or nothing accomplished. In fact, all of this was during the panic of 1907, by reason of which Jamieson, without knowledge of the court, Aileen, or her attorney, turned the bonds in question over to a reorganizing committee.
“If they were sold out, they would be valueless as they are,” Jamieson explained. “The reorganization committee hopes to work out a plan to save the Combination Traction Company.”
Whereupon the reorganization committee deposited the bonds with the Middle Trust Company, the organization interested in combining all of the Chicago railways into one big company. “What did Jamieson get out of it?” was the query. And while the estate had now been in the course of probation for two years in Chicago, no move had been made to settle affairs in New York. The Reciprocal Life Insurance Company, holding a mortgage of $225,000 on the addition to the Fifth Avenue Mansion, along with $17,000 of unpaid interest on this mortgage, started proceedings to collect. And their lawyers, without the knowledge of Aileen or her lawyers, worked out a plan with Jamieson and Frank Cowperwood, Jr., whereby an auction was held and this gallery, along with the pictures in it, was sold. The proceeds of this sale barely covered the claims of the insurance company and the City of New York for unpaid water bills and taxes amounting to around $30,000. To add to all this, Aileen and her lawyers appealed to the Probate Court in Chicago to have Jamieson removed as executor.
In sum, as Aileen informed Judge Severing:
“It has been all talk and no money ever since my husband’s death. Mr. Jamieson talked pleasantly about money and was a good one at making promises, but I was never able to get much real money out of him. When I demanded it directly, he would say there wasn’t any. I have lost faith in him and have come to mistrust him.”
She then related to the court how he had transferred $4,500,000 worth of bonds without her knowledge; how he had arranged for an auction of the art gallery, which was sold for the sum of $277,000, whereas it was valued at $400,000; how he had charged her $1500 collection fee when he had already been paid as executor; and how he had refused her attorney access to the books of the estate.
“When Mr. Jamieson asked me to sell my house and art collection,” she concluded, “and pay him 6 per cent on the transaction, I simply told him I wouldn’t do it. He threatened to blow me higher than Gilroy’s kite if I didn’t.”
The hearing was adjourned for three weeks.
“It is a case of a woman meddling in things she does not understand,” observed Frank A. Cowperwood, Jr.
Thus, while Aileen was attempting to remove Jamieson as executor in the Probate Court in Chicago, Jamieson, after three years of inaction in New York, was applying for ancillary papers there. However, Aileen’s move brought up the question of his fitness, which caused Surrogate Monahan to postpone action for fifteen days to show cause why he should or should not be granted ancillary papers. At the same time, in Chicago, Jamieson, replying to Judge Severing on the charges of Aileen, insisted that he had done no wrong and had never received a dime illegally. Rather, he asserted, he had done much to preserve the estate.
However, Judge Severing, refusing to remove Jamieson as executor, remarked:
“On the question of the widow’s award, an executor who would charge a percentage for the collection of her award, in addition to his fee from the whole estate, and who would be so forgetful of his duties, ought to be removed, it is true. But it is doubtful if I have the power to remove for that cause alone.”
Whereupon Aileen started plans for an appeal to the Supreme Court.
At this point, however, the London Underground Company brought suit in New York in the United States Circuit Court, to collect $800,000 due them. They did not question the solvency of the estate, although authoritative statements did show some $3,000,000 had vanished into thin air in the process of litigation. The Court appointed one William H. Cunningham as receiver in connection with this suit, and this receiver, although Aileen was ill of pneumonia at the time, proceeded to place guards on duty at the Fifth Avenue property, and three days later arranged for a three-day auction of pictures, rugs, and tapestries to meet the claim of the London Underground. The guards were on hand twenty-four hours a day to insure against disappearance of any portion of the property that was to be auctioned. They roamed over the premises, to the great prejudice of orderly management of the household, and in defiance of the right of possession and occupancy.
Charles Day, one of Aileen’s lawyers, submitted to the court that the proceeding was one of the worst pieces of judicial tyranny ever attempted in this country; that it was purely a conspiracy to get into the house by illegal means, for the purpose of forcing a sale of the house and pictures and destroying Cowperwood’s intention and desire to leave the mansion and its contents as a museum for the public.
However, at the same time that her New York attorneys were trying to prevent the temporary receivership being made permanent, her lawyers in Chicago were attempting to have a receiver appointed there for the entire estate.
A clear title to the additional art gallery, sold as a result of the foreclosure proceedings of the Reciprocal Life Insurance Company, had never been obtained, and after four months the insurance company filed a suit against Receiver Cunningham and against the title company which refused to take title to the art gallery.
In addition, while the reorganization committee of Chicago capitalists were working on a plan with representatives of the House of Brenton Diggs, the bondholders of the three underlying companies demanded that bills of foreclosure be filed. Contending that the Cook County Court had jurisdiction over all of the Cowperwood property, Aileen’s lawyers asserted that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction. The judge of the said Circuit Court admitted as much by announcing that it would withdraw as soon as Jamieson succeeded in taking charge of the New York property.
However, five months following Aileen’s appeal to The United Stat
es Circuit Court of Appeals, a two-to-one decision was reached, which made permanent the temporary receivership of William H. Cunningham. Nonetheless, a dissenting judge contended that the Federal Court could not meddle in probate matters, which were the business of the State. The agreeing judges, on the other hand, claimed the receiver should remain until a reasonable time had elapsed—as judged by the Circuit Court—for creditors to ask the Surrogate Court to appoint an administrator, at which time they would turn over the property to him. At the same time, a temporary injunction preventing Jamieson from applying for ancillary letters was dissolved.
And now there were endless delays, courts, claims to be satisfied, and decisions to be made. And opposed to these, a legally uninformed widow, whose total supply of money, left her by her dead husband, was being used in defence of her complicated rights. And lying ill, her health completely shattered, and her actual means now dangerously low.
Therefore, Aileen’s lawyers, together with Jamieson’s lawyers, and the legal representatives of the London Underground, arranged a settlement whereby she would receive $800,000 in lieu of her dower rights, and as a part of her personal estate due her. A petition was filed in the Probate Court in Chicago for confirmation of this unrecorded agreement.
The Inheritance Tax Appraiser pronounced a total value of the estate, four years after the death of Cowperwood, at $11,467,370,65. Hearing on the motion to have the appraiser withhold his report was taken up and argued in Judge Roberts’ chambers. Mr. Day, appearing for Aileen, claimed that if Judge Severing confirmed the agreement, nothing remained but to sell the assets of the estate. Day claimed the appraisal was too high, both in value of the art collection at $4,000,000 and of the furniture, which, he said, above the second floor, was not worth more than $1,000.
Then Jamieson applied to Surrogate Henry for ancillary letters in New York. At approximately the same time that Aileen lost her suit to prevent him from obtaining these ancillary letters, Judge Severing confirmed the agreement between her and Jamieson whereby she was to receive $800,000 and the widow’s one-third of all personal property after the debts were paid. Under this agreement, Aileen transferred to Receiver Cunningham the house, art gallery, pictures, stable, etc., to be auctioned off, and Jamieson, more than four years after probation proceedings had been begun in Chicago, was appointed ancillary executor in New York. He should have stopped proceedings for the auction of the property in New York, but he did not. Included in the gallery were 300 pictures valued at $1,500,000, among them works of Rembrandt, Hobbema, Teniers, Ruysdael, Holbein, Frans Hals, Rubens, Van Dyck, Reynolds, and Turner.
And yet, out in Chicago, and at the very same time, lawyers for Jamieson were going before Judge Severing, in the Probate Court, claiming that the only way to save the estate from insolvency was to turn over the
$4,494,000 in bonds of the Union Traction Company to the reorganization committee for the purpose of forming a new company, and Aileen’s lawyers were contending the action had taken place secretly and without the sanction of the court. At this point Judge Severing announced that he did not believe he could enter an order to that effect unless both sides agreed to it. Hence action was postponed indefinitely to give attorneys for both sides opportunity to reach an agreement.
More delay! Delay! Delay!
Corporations! Corporations! Corporations!
Decisions! Decisions! Decisions!
Courts! Courts! Courts!
Until, in fact, five years had passed, ending in the auction of everything that had belonged to Frank Cowperwood, the proceeds of which, including all the real property, amounted to $3,610,150!
Chapter 75
Five years of wandering through the endless wilderness of law, lawyers, corporations, courts, and judges had left Aileen with the painful realization that at the end of whatever steps she took in any direction, there was nothing. In fact, the sum and substance of all those years and efforts was that she lived alone, was visited by no true friend, legally defeated in one honest claim after another, until at last she fully realized that the dream of grandeur which this house represented had vanished into thin air. There remained only, as her part of the estate, the $800,000 and the widow’s one-third of all personal property after debts were paid, in return for her transfer and surrender to Receiver Cunningham of the mansion, art gallery, pictures, and everything else. The law and the corporations and the executors, like wolves, were constantly on her trail, and finally they had caught up with her to the place where she now had to move out of her own home in order that it could be auctioned off to strangers.
But even before she could move into the apartment she had chosen on Madison Avenue, the house was overrun with agents of the auctioneers, tagging articles of every description with their appropriate catalogue numbers. Wagons drove up to take away paintings—300 of them—to the Liberty Art Galleries on Twenty-third Street. Collectors came and sauntered about, speculating. She was ill and depressed, having to listen to Receiver Cunningham explain that it was his duty to make a complete inventory of the house and gallery and submit it to the court.
There followed announcements in the newspapers to the effect that beginning Wednesday of the following week and continuing for three days and evenings, the furniture, bronzes, statuary, ceiling and overdoor panels, and art objects of all descriptions, including the large library, were to be disposed of. The place: 864 Fifth Avenue; the auctioneer: J. L. Donahue.
Amid the irritating confusion, Aileen wandered about collecting her personal belongings and having her few faithful servants remove them to her apartment.
The interest and curiosity of the public in the Cowperwood possessions grew steadily from day to day, and the demand for admission tickets to the house was so great that the auctioneers were unable to meet it. The charge of one dollar admission fee, both to the exhibitions and the sales sessions, was apparently no deterrent to those interested.
On the day the sale opened at the Liberty Art Galleries, the auditorium was crowded from pit to gallery. There was tremendous applause when certain masterpieces of art were offered. On the other hand, at the Cowperwood mansion, the difficulties increased. The catalogue of objects to be sold there contained more than thirteen hundred numbers. And when the day of the auction finally arrived, motors, taxicabs, and carriages hugged the curb at
Fifth Avenue and Sixty-eighth Street while the sale was going on. There were millionaire collectors, famous artists, and celebrated society women—whose motors had never stopped there in earlier days—all clamoring to get inside to bid on the beautiful personal belongings of Aileen and Frank Cowperwood.
His gold bedstead, once owned by the king of Belgium and bought for $80,000; the pink marble bathtub in Aileen’s bathroom, which had cost $50,000; the fabulous silk carpets from the Mosque of Ardebil; the bronzes, red African vases, Louis XIV gilt sofas; candelabras, also Louis XIV, of cut crystal, with amethyst and topaz drops; exquisite porcelain, glass, silver, and smaller objects such as cameos, rings, pins, necklaces, precious stones, and figurines.
From one room to another they followed the booming voice of the auctioneer which reverberated through the great rooms. They saw “Cupid and Psyche” by Rodin sold to a dealer for $51,000. One bidder, who had gone as high as $1600 on a Botticelli, lost it to a $1700 voice. A large, impressive woman in purple, who stood near the auctioneer most of the time, for some reason always bid $390 on an article, never lower, never higher. When the crowd rushed into the palm room on the heels of the auctioneer to view a Rodin statue, he called out to them “Don’t lean against the palms!”
Throughout the sale, a brougham drove slowly up and down Fifth Avenue two or three times, its occupant a lone woman. She looked at the motors and carriages rolling up to the entrance to the Cowperwood mansion, and watched the men and women crowding up the steps into the house. It meant much to her, for she was viewing her own last struggle: a final separation from her earlier ambitions. Twenty-three years ago she was one of the most ravishingly beautiful
women in America. To a certain degree she retained something of her former spirit and bearing. She had been subdued but not altogether crushed, as yet. But Mrs. Frank Algernon Cowperwood did not go in to attend the sale. Yet she saw her most treasured possessions being carried out by buyers, and occasionally heard the voice of the auctioneer crying: “What am I bid? What am I bid? What am I bid?” Eventually she decided she could endure no more, and told the driver to take her back to her Madison Avenue apartment.
A half-hour later she stood alone in her bedroom, silent and feeling the need of silence. No trace of all that had almost magically on this day disappeared. She would be alone now. Cowperwood would not return, even if he had desired to do so.
And then, one year later, she was suddenly seized with another attack of pneumonia, and passed from this world. Before she died she sent a note to Dr. James:
If you will be so good, I beg of you to see that I am buried in the tomb alongside of my husband, as he wished. Will you please forgive me for my discourtesies to you in the past? They were due to miseries beyond my power to convey.
And James, folding the letter and meditating on the anachronisms of life, said to himself: Yes, Aileen, I will.
Chapter 76
During the period in which the estate of Cowperwood had disintegrated and the death of Aileen had occurred, Berenice had slowly but surely embarked on a course that she felt would adjust her to society and life in any form, provided, as she reasoned from time to time, she could equip herself with the mental and spiritual data that would brush completely out of her consideration the whole Western materialistic viewpoint which made money and luxury its only god. Primarily, the desire for this change in thought had originated in a struggle against the sorrow that had seized upon her after Cowperwood’s death, and which had almost embittered her life. Then, quite accidentally, or seemingly so, she had come upon a little volume known as the Bhagavad-Gita, which seemed to condense and epitomize thousands of years of Asiatic religious thought.
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