Chapter 7
A Will to Win
Hetty’s calling card announced she would be at home on Thursdays at 19 West Twenty-sixth Street. There, in the brownstone she shared with her father, Mr. Edward “Ned” Green arrived like a burst of fresh air. Well over six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes, he had a robust personality and a generous bent. Fluent in several languages, Edward Henry Green was a businessman who had ventured far and wide, a conversationalist who amused his audience with fantastical anecdotes, a gourmand who feasted on life.
Born and brought up in Vermont, he had trained in business in Boston and lived abroad for twenty years, representing firms in the Far East. He had worked for Solon Goodridge in Hong Kong and was a partner with Russell Sturgis & Company, a major merchant firm in China and Manila. Trading in tea, silk, and opium in China, and in sugar in the Philippines, Russell Sturgis used William T. Coleman & Company to carry some of its cargo.
Edward Green’s travels had taken him across the Pacific and tested his personal skills. On a voyage with a colleague from Hong Kong to Macao and Canton, he came face-to-face with pirates and major storms, the common dangers of Chinese waters. Caught in a typhoon, with their boat forced to anchor close to an island, they found themselves surrounded by seven pirate ships. As the two American men looked out from their boat, they could see the cold eyes of a dozen men, the ugliest ruffians they had ever encountered, staring straight at them. While his friend shivered nervously at the sight, Edward Green sat in front of the window, his legs stretched out on the table, making faces at the wretched-looking crew. “He was the coolest man I ever saw. Nothing moved him out of his imperturbable calm,” his friend later recalled.
In Canton, the two men received so many invitations to dinner, they didn’t know which to choose. Never perturbed, Edward Green solved the problem by walking in the alleyways behind the kitchens of their acquaintances’ homes. He surveyed the duck, the quail, the pheasants, and fish laid out by the cooks and chose the house that had the most tempting food. “He had a great way of taking care of himself,” said his friend. He also took care of his family, and sent magnanimous gifts to his mother.
After two decades of overseas adventure, EH Green, as he signed his name, accumulated a fortune. A millionaire at the age of forty-four, he had decided recently to come home. It was time to marry, have a family, and settle down. He had taken up residence at the fashionable Union Club and found New York, as he wrote to a friend, “rather a pleasant place for a stranger. Lots of balls, dinners, parties going on all the time.”
His money, ensured by his bankers, his background, vouched for by Mr. Goodridge, and his affiliation with the Union Club, where Henry Grinnell and William Coleman were also members, struck the right chord. Although his religion was Episcopalian and his attitude was extravagant, his heritage as a New Englander and his reputation for hard work held him in good stead. He may have indulged in too much good food and wine, but he had a keen sense for business and a proper respect for wealth. In the eyes of Edward Robinson, he was a suitable beau for thirty-year-old Hetty.
With her father’s encouragement, Edward courted her. At the parties and dinners they attended and in conversations everywhere, they could not escape the latest news of the war. When the Union captured Richmond and the Confederate army withdrew in April 1865, New York went wild in celebration. Even as the fighting sputtered on, the war that had torn the country apart, destroyed the lives of more than 600,000 people, and shredded the South to bits was coming to an end. The city cheered with a sea of flags, bursts of cannon fire, and hundred-gun salutes.
How quickly the joy disappeared. Only a few days later, the headlines shrieked, LINCOLN ASSASSINATED. The flags that had waved so brilliantly were now lowered to half mast. The crowds that had cheered so noisily were now eerily quiet. The city that glittered in gold was now shrouded in black crepe.
Death was descending, too, in the Robinson household. As he lay in bed growing weaker, Edward Robinson worried over his daughter’s spinster state and the state of her finances. When her suitor asked permission for marriage, Hetty’s father eagerly agreed. He had told his associates he did not believe Hetty was capable of taking care of her money herself. His daughter needed a clever man to advise her and he was satisfied that Edward Green could do the job. Along with his shrewdness and abilities, the man had plenty of money to support her, and, Edward Robinson felt sure, Hetty’s fortune was not his aspiration. Just to be certain, he made a stipulation in his will that the couple would have to live on her husband’s money.
Edward Green would have no claim to Hetty’s inheritance, her father said. That would be hers alone: “separate and apart from any husband she married and free from the debts, control or interference of any such husband,” he wrote. In addition, his advisers informed Hetty, while he was dictating his will at home in March 1865, that he was leaving his daughter an amount equal to Edward’s, but placing the rest of his estate for her in the hands of trustees. Two months later, as Edward Robinson’s health declined, the couple announced their engagement.
Ordinary fetes were forgotten as Hetty watched her once-vigorous father waste away. Their relationship had been as tangled as a sailor’s knot: wounded by his early rejection of her as a female, she felt healed somewhat by his reliance on her in his illness. As he lay dying and delirious, he told her he had been poisoned and warned her that she might be next. On June 14, 1865, she bade him an ambivalent farewell. The sixty-five-year-old man who made the bulk of his money from the Howland whaling business was buried beside his wife and father-in-law in the fading light of New Bedford’s fortunes.
Edward Mott Robinson died rich by any standard, worth almost $6 million, but Hetty was as tense as a harpooner taking aim as she listened to the reading of her father’s will. He bequeathed to his daughter $1 million: $919,000 in cash plus ownership of a San Francisco waterfront warehouse. The rest was to be kept in trust. She would receive the income but would have no control of the principal. Upon her death, all of the principal would go to her children. Hetty was crushed, diminished by the sweep of a pen. The prior knowledge of her father’s will did not prepare her for the lightning bolt of reality: her father was dead and most of her money would be managed by others. Once again she felt betrayed.
For years she had apprenticed at her father’s side. For years she had shown her father how skillful she was at finance. For years she had proved she was as smart as any man. Yet, gone was the respect she thought she had earned. Gone was the confidence. Gone was the proof of love.
This time, at least, she had her fiancé to give her comfort; she had confidence in him and was content to take his advice. The following day she dispatched a letter to her father’s associates announcing that any financial decisions would have to be made with the consent of Mr. Green.
Gentlemen:
I have to request that you will answer any questions that Mr. E. H. Green may ask you on all matters about my father’s business affairs. I wish you gentlemen to consult with Mr. Green on all matters of importance where advice is required.
Hetty H. Robinson.
Years later, they would show the note as evidence that she was crazy.
Grieving over the loss of her father, angry at her lack of control over the money, and enraged over his lack of confidence in her, Hetty was taken aback when, less than three weeks later, on Sunday, July 2, she received a summons to come to New Bedford. Aunt Sylvia was dying. Stunned by the news of the double deaths, and facing a battle over another will, she girded herself and made the trip once more.
The family and friends assembled at the Howland house on Eighth Street hardly welcomed Hetty. The physician William Gordon transfixed her with a stare and said, “Really, Miss Robinson, I am very sorry to see you looking so miserable. At best, you cannot hold out longer than a year.”
Standing alone in the parlor after the funeral, she noticed a painting that now belonged to her. The Hunt for an Honest
Man, an eighteenth-century painting of Diogenes attributed to the Italian artist Guido Reni, was one of her favorite pictures. But someone else had already claimed it and tagged it with their name.
Hours later, silent, swathed in black, Hetty listened as Sylvia’s will was read aloud. Her aunt was the richest woman in New Bedford, and she was the only direct heir to the family fortune. Now she learned that Sylvia Ann Howland had assets of over $2 million that would be distributed around the town. Among those included were several widows and friends to whom she left $10,000 each; her employees Eliza and Fally, to whom she gave $3,000 each, and Electa, $5,000. Others were given trusts of $10,000 each. The city of New Bedford benefited in several ways: the Orphans’ Home was given $20,000; the not-yet-completed National Sailors’ Home received $20,000; the poor, aged, and infirm women of the city were to share in a trust of $50,000. Sylvia left $100,000 to the town so it could bring in water and increase its manufacturing; another $100,000 was to be shared between “liberal education,” assumed by town officials to mean access to literature, science, and art, and the public library.
To specific individuals she left the following: to Thomas Mandell, the executor of her will, $200,000; to the three trustees of her will, including Dr. William Gordon, $50,000 each, plus yearly fees for overseeing the estate. In addition, to pacify Edward Robinson she left him $100,000. But in a codicil she revoked the gift to him, thanked Dr. Gordon for his professional and other services, and left him another $50,000, plus $10,000 to his wife and $5,000 to his daughters.
The rest, $1 million, would go to Hetty. But the money would be in trust, not cash; Hetty would receive the income on the investments. The man who would be in charge of the investments was Dr. Gordon. Furthermore, upon her death, the money would not go to Hetty’s children but would revert to the Howland family. The will was signed by Sylvia, witnessed by three people, including a friend of William Gordon’s, and dated September 1863, a year and a half after the agreement Hetty and Sylvia had written. The codicil, conceived soon after Edward Robinson wrote to Thomas Mandell in 1864, was drawn up by Judge John Williams, the father-in-law of Dr. Gordon.
Devastated, Hetty rested near the piano in the parlor. Close by, she heard two distant relatives snicker, “When Hetty dies we will have a whole greenhouse built onto our house.”
As soon as the house was cleared of guests, she called for Fally, the housekeeper, and demanded the key to her aunt’s private trunk. Rifling through the jewels, the clothes, and the papers, she found two envelopes, one yellow, one white, and pulled them out. Inside the yellow one, she found a copy of her own will; in the other was the will written by Sylvia in 1862. Downstairs, she showed Edward the copy of Aunt Sylvia’s will with a second page attached.
Next, she met with her family’s attorney, William Crapo, and raged like the child he had heard years ago in the dentist’s chair. It was Dr. Gordon, she pointed out, who had drugged her aunt with laudanum and then helped her draw up the deceitful will. Indeed, Hetty would soon discover that William Gordon had actually dictated the codicil.
The money Hetty had been told she had to manage was now being managed by others. Her very self-worth was at stake. Over the course of several weeks she approached members of Sylvia’s staff and tried to persuade them to contest the will. She traveled to the town of Taunton to see the probate judge and, in an act of desperation, tried to bribe him to cancel the will. On all accounts, she lost. Like the great Leviathan, the will would not be harpooned.
Wherever she went, ladies whispered, children pointed, men stared. She was the rich heiress trying to steal New Bedford’s newfound wealth. Gossips snickered and the town’s skunks sprayed her path with ugly rumors. Shopkeepers charged her more, or so it seemed; lawyers’ fees kept mounting; newspapers shouted her name in large print. Shaken by the deaths and the turn of events, and recalling her father’s warning, she worried that someone would try to kill her.
Edward was back in New York and she was afraid to be alone in the house. She offered a floor to a friend and his wife, who accepted and stayed there. Others came to visit, but at night she climbed the stairs to the fourth-floor attic and, like a frightened animal searching for safety, she crawled under a bed. “For days I did not leave my room and lived on crackers and raw eggs,” she said. “All the time those schemers were trying to get my money.”
In November, after a trial that made headlines from Boston to Chicago, the will was approved in probate court in New Bedford. One of her father’s sayings rang in her ears: “The poor can’t sue, and if the rich won’t, who is to bring rogues to justice?” One month later, in December 1865, with William Crapo as her leading lawyer and Edward Green at her side, Hetty brought her case against the executors and trustees to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
“Strange how these millionaire families quarrel among themselves about money,” wrote George Templeton Strong. “Brother alienated from brother, sisters at daggers down with sisters—and all about property, of which everyone of them has more than enough.” He was referring to his clients, the Astors, whose family feuds still continue today. But they were not the first family to find themselves in court, nor would they would be the last. From the continuing saga of the Astor heirs to Henry Ford, who sued his family over his trust fund, to four generations of Pritzkers skirmishing over the family estate, to Curtis Nelson combating his mother and Sumner Redstone’s daughter suing her father, relatives have fought bitter public battles for control of their family fortunes.
Unlike most of the others, Hetty’s turned into a landmark case. Her suit against the trustees claimed that she was the lawful heir and that her aunt had always wanted her to inherit the money. In fact, Hetty learned, Sylvia had even told her own lawyer that she did not want to write a new will without notifying her niece. It was the deceitful Dr. Gordon, Hetty believed, who had dulled her aunt’s mind and persuaded her to draw up a will against her own wishes. The proof was in the letter, clearly dictated by Hetty, that she had kept attached to Sylvia’s will:
Be it remembered that I, Sylvia Ann Howland, of New Bedford in County of Bedford, do hereby make, publish and declare this the second page of this will and testament made on the eleventh of January in manner following, to wit: Hereby revoking all wills made before or after this one—I give this will to my niece to shew if there appears a will made without notifying her, and without returning her will to her through Thomas Mandell as I have promised to do. I implore the judge to decide in favor of this will, as nothing would induce me to make a will unfavorable to my niece, but being ill and afraid if any of my care-takers insisted on my making a will to refuse, as they might leave or be angry, and knowing my niece had this will to shew—my niece fearing also after she went away—I hearing but one side, might feel hurt at what they might say of her, as they tried to make trouble by not telling the truth to me, when she was here even herself. I give this will to my niece to shew if absolutely necessary, to have it, to appear against another will found after my death. I wish her to shew this will, made when I am in good health for me, and my old torn will made on the fourth of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to show also as proof that it has been my lifetime wish for her to have my property. I therefore give my property to my niece as freely as my father gave it to me. I have promised him once, and my sister a number of times, to give it all to her, all excepting about one hundred thousand dollars in presents to my friends and relations.
Sylvia Ann Howland
The problem was the signature. It was identical to the one on the will.
Nearly everyone associated with Sylvia Howland and Hetty Robinson was asked to give a deposition, and their recollections, along with the testimony of the trial, filled a thousand pages of transcripts. Accusations flew back and forth, as Hetty charged the household staff with being covetous and conspiratorial, and they attacked her for being hostile and cruel. But the defendants’ challenge turned the case around. The question they asked was: Who actually
signed the letter? They claimed it was forged.
Sylvia’s signature on the second page was identical with the one on the will. In order to prove that this was impossible, the trustees’ three lawyers brought in major experts. To prove that it was entirely possible, Hetty’s seven attorneys brought in authorities of equal weight: doctors, lawyers, bankers, surveyors, engravers, and experts in penmanship. The courtroom became a platform for speeches of excruciating length, and a class in mathematical proportions.
When the penmanship expert Mr. Crossman testified on Hetty’s behalf, he said that after many months of painstaking research, he was completely convinced that the signature of Sylvia Ann Howland was genuine. But when the trustees’ witness, Mr. Southworth, took the stand, he said that after many months of painstaking evidence, he was completely convinced that the signature was forged.
At the request of Hetty’s lawyers, the noted Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz, chairman of the Department of Natural History and founder of a Harvard museum, was one of the experts to testify. He had examined the signature with his “naked eye,” “with spectacles,” and with low- and high-powered microscopes, he said, and there were no indications it had been traced.
Again, at the request of her counsel, the celebrated Harvard lawyer and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was called upon. Professor of anatomy and physiology, poet, philosopher, and renowned figure in the arts, he had studied the signature with compound microscopes and declared it definitely had not been traced. The third person they asked to testify, John Quincy Adams, vouched that his grandfather, the sixth American president, had penned his name many times and often the signatures were identical.
The Richest Woman in America Page 8