The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Men of the era seem to have been even slower to learn the rules of delicacy. One manual of the 1840’s says: “The rising generation of young elegants in America are particularly requested to observe that, in polished society, it is not quite comme il faut for gentlemen to blow their noses with their fingers, especially when in the street.” The gentlemen’s habit of chewing tobacco created no end of special problems. “A lady on the second seat of a box at the theatre,” writes a social critic of the day, “found, when she went home, the back of her pelisse entirely spoilt, by some man behind not having succeeded in trying to spit past her.” And an English visitor was surprised to see John Jacob Astor remove his chewing tobacco from his mouth and absently begin tracing a watery design with it on a windowpane. Other European visitors were startled by what appears to have been a social custom exclusively New York’s. On the horse-drawn Fifth Avenue omnibuses it was considered de rigueur, when these vehicles became crowded, for seated gentlemen to let ladies perch on their knees.

  Though much of the criticism of New York’s bad manners came from Europeans, it does appear to have been largely justified. In 1848 the New York Herald took New York society to task for “loud talking at table, impertinent staring at strangers, brusqueness of manners among the ladies, laughable attempts at courtly ease and self-possession among the men—the secret of all this vulgarity in Society is that wealth, or the reputation of wealth, constitutes the open sesame to its delectable precincts.”

  Very much a precinct leader was August Belmont. His passionate interest in high society was perhaps peculiar for men of his day (editors and cartoonists of the nineteenth century usually depicted social climbing as a woman’s occupation), but at least it was consistent. Perhaps his glimpse of Rothschild grandeur had given him his abiding urge to be a social potentate. In any case, three years after his arrival in America, we find him dashingly in Elkton, Maryland, and, “over a subject too trite to be mentioned,” fighting a duel.

  Dueling was an established social-climbing technique, and August Belmont seems to have chosen his opponent more for his publicity value than anything else. It was Edward Heyward, “one of the exquisite sons of Mr. Wm. Heyward,” a member of the ancient and noted Heyward family of Charleston. No one was killed in the duel, but both men were injured, and Belmont, who was shot in the thigh, declared his honor satisfied. And, by having chosen a Heyward as a dueling partner, he established himself with the press and the public as a gentleman of Heyward quality. The duel, in fact, did more than anything else to register the Belmont name in the annals of American society.

  What the quarrel, which took place at Niblo’s restaurant in New York, was really about is now uncertain. Belmont, naturally, always liked to leave the impression that Heyward had made some ungallant allusion to a lady in Belmont’s party. But there is also a story that Heyward had made a veiled reference to Belmont’s Jewishness—a particularly touchy subject.

  Belmont was always sorry that his dueling scar appeared in such an ignominious spot, and the wound gave him a pronounced limp which would be a permanent affliction. The wound and the limp seemed to increase his bitterness. His rolling gait heightened his threatening appearance as he entered doorways of salons. The duel and the scar seemed to add to his sinister allure, and through New York drawing rooms rumors began to circulate of certain society ladies who, for one reason or another, had been permitted to see that scar.

  In the years since his arrival Belmont had been so successful at channeling Rothschild funds into the United States Treasury in return for government securities that he was rewarded, in 1844, by being appointed United States Consul General to Austria—a move designed not only to provide Mr. Belmont with prestige but also to place him close to the Vienna House of Rothschild where he could be of further usefulness. Things, of course, did not always go smoothly. When the state of Pennsylvania defaulted on $35 million worth of state bonds held by British investors, including the Rothschilds, Belmont, in Paris trying to place another U.S. Federal Government loan, was icily told by Baron de Rothschild, “Tell them you have seen the man who is at the head of the finances of Europe, and that he has told you that they cannot borrow a dollar. Not a dollar.” Still, the United States was too good a customer of Europe’s—buying such items as railroad ties, which lack of American know-how still made difficult to produce here, in return for American cotton and wheat—for the Rothschilds to remain angry for long. Also, Belmont was too canny a trader to let such upsets damage his friendships on both sides of the Atlantic.

  In New York he was very much a man about town. He had made himself, à la the Rothschilds, a connoisseur of horseflesh and had, with his friend Leonard Jerome, founded Jerome Park Racetrack. But he had never been invited to join the Union Club, considered the best men’s club in town. He also seems to have invented a social attitude which was soon being widely copied—the attitude of indifference. When invited for dinner at eight, August Belmont rarely appeared before ten or eleven. Punctuality, he seemed to be saying, was the courtesy of peasants. It seemed very chic and “very European” to arrive at dinner with the finger bowls, and this affectation—which is still to be encountered in New York, to the bafflement of Europeans—may be blamed on August Belmont.

  Belmont did not do particularly well when it came to cultivating such old patroon families as the Van Rensselaers, nor was he admired by the Astors, the fur-trading family which, in the 1840’s, was probably the richest family in New York. He did, on the other hand, get along nicely with such Old Guard families as the Costers and the Morrises, and he was also a friend of an ex-ferryboat captain, now a millionaire, named “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt. New York society was giving up picnics and skating parties and turning to large formal subscription balls—always given in hotels or restaurants since there were still no private homes big enough to contain them—and it irked August Belmont that he was not invited to every one. There was, for instance, the great City Ball of January, 1841, so called because it was held at the old City Hotel. Eight hundred guests danced in a ballroom lighted with two thousand tapers, but August Belmont was not among them. Soon a series of Assembly balls was organized to be held at Delmonico’s, and, to make certain that he was asked, Belmont took decisive action.

  In a story told by the Van Rensselaers, Belmont went to the invitation committee and said, “I have been investigating the accounts of you gentlemen on the Street. I can assure you that either I get an invitation to the Assembly this year or else the day after the Assembly each of you will be a ruined man.” It was one of the most telling examples of the kind of power that could be wielded by one man (“a Wall Street banker, not even a native American”) in nineteenth-century New York. Belmont got his invitation, but—according to a story that sounds much more like wishful thinking than the truth—arrived at the Assembly to find himself the only person there.

  Belmont, on the other hand, though there was still some uncertainty about where he actually lived (he seemed to inhabit a series of hotels) could and did give balls of his own. Fancy-dress balls were his favorites, and he loved to put on a powdered wig and ruffled collar and appear as Louis XV or, with a tricorn hat and sword, as Napoleon. (Once, when he learned that another guest was planning to come as Louis XV, Belmont appeared in a full suit of steel armor inlaid with gold which had cost him $10,000, causing a bemused reporter from the London Chronicle to ask, “Were all the costumes ticketed with the price?”) In some ways Belmont seemed consciously trying to outdo the Astors. In 1846 John Jacob Astor, Jr., married the daughter of Thomas L. Gibbes, a South Carolina aristocrat, and the marriage was the occasion of a great reception. The Astors’ “spacious mansion in Lafayette Place was open from cellar to garret, blazing with a thousand lights,” but August Belmont once more was not invited. Then, in 1847, he made a move that forever removed doubts about his social position. He proposed to, and was accepted by, Caroline Slidell Perry.

  He had chosen her as carefully and cynically as he chose his wines, his dueli
ng opponents, the stocks for his portfolio, his name, and his religion. The Perrys were not imposingly rich, but they had all the social cachet that Belmont wanted and needed, more than he needed money. Caroline was the daughter of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, hero of the Mexican War and the officer later credited with having “opened Japan to the West,” and her uncle was another naval commander, Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812 and the Battle of Lake Erie. Caroline, furthermore, was wan, pale, and dreamily beautiful, an exquisite creature who wept bitterly when she was told that families “of wretched poor” lived south of Canal Street, which was why her coachman would not drive her there. In 1848 the elder John Jacob Astor died leaving a fortune of twenty million dollars, and was accorded a great funeral conducted by “six Episcopal clergymen.” The Belmont-Perry nuptials of that same year had only one clergyman officiating, but they were of course Episcopal. The wedding was at Grace Church, and it was an even more glittering social event than the Astor funeral. There were at the reception—in addition to a complement of Morrises, Vanderbilts, Costers, Goelets. (no Van Rensselaers), Webbs, and Winthrops—even a few Astors, come out of mourning. Even more important, as far as August Belmont was concerned, was the fact that a few weeks before his wedding he was invited to join the Union Club.

  Lower Fifth Avenue and Washington Square were already sprouting palaces of brownstone and marble. Though there was still no Central Park to give Fifth Avenue a garden view for much of its length, that wide thoroughfare running up the spine of Manhattan was already becoming the city’s best residential address. Soon after their marriage, the young Belmonts established themselves in a lower Fifth Avenue house that was grander than anything that existed in New York. It was, among other things, the first private house in the city to have its own ballroom—a room designed for nothing but the annual Belmont ball and which, as Edith Wharton commented later, “was left for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner and its chandelier in a bag.” The Belmonts were also the first to own their own red carpet, to be rolled down the marble front steps and across the sidewalk for parties, instead of renting one, along with the chairs, from a caterer.

  The Belmont house awed New York society. It was much more magnificent than the Astors’ old house in Lafayette Place, and it made everybody feel that they had been doing everything very provincially until August Belmont came along from—well, where was he from actually? people asked. The Belmont mansion was one that New Yorkers pointed out to visiting friends from other cities. When the visitors expressed curiosity about what lay within it, New Yorkers said, “We shall see whether we can get you an invitation.” And so August Belmont, the archetype social climber, had made his house the goal of every climber’s dreams. Belmont’s relationship to New York society became, according to one observer, “like a man on the back of a donkey holding out, to make the donkey move, a carrot on a stick. He manages to lead the donkey forward and yet, at the same time, the beast is obliged to bear his weight.”

  To be sure, he was guilty of some rather odd gaffes, such as having his portrait painted with his hat on. And there was no uncertainty about his father-in-law’s position in the Belmont household. Belmont used the Commodore as his butler. “There’s a good fellow,” he would say to the old gentleman, “run down to the cellar and see if there are six more bottles of the Rapid Madeira.” And, as the Commodore scurried off, Belmont would call after him, “And try not to shake them on the stairs!” But the Belmonts’ was the first house in New York to have its art gallery lighted from a skylight in the roof, and the collection of art itself was remarkable—including Madrazo, Meyer, Rosa Bonheur, Meissonier, Munkácsy, Vibert, and, to scandalize New York society, a number of the voluptuous nudes of William Bouguereau. One of the most scandalized was Belmont’s neighbor, James Lenox, who lived directly opposite him on Fifth Avenue. Lenox disapproved of nearly everything about Belmont, but the Bouguereau nudes he considered downright immoral. Belmont, learning this, hung the largest and the nudest Bouguereau in his front foyer, where it confronted the Lenox house every time the Belmont door was opened—which, with the Belmont entertaining schedule, was often. Lenox, a miserly sort, became obsessive on the subject of Belmont’s extravagance, and, according to Lucius Beebe, when Lenox was told that August Belmont spent $20,000 a month on wine alone, he collapsed of a heart attack and died.

  It was August Belmont’s reputation as a host that gave his parties priority over almost anyone’s in New York. His chef had been trained by the legendary Carême, and was given regular refresher lessons by such restaurateurs as Lorenzo Delmonico. Singlehanded, Belmont introduced gourmet food to the New York private home, which up to then had been very much on a corned-beef-and-potatoes diet. Two hundred guests could sit down at a table set with the Belmont gold service. They were waited on by an equal number of footmen, who presented them with such delicacies as aspic de canvasback and truffled ice cream. Of course it was rumored that he had not only supervised the design and interior decoration of his brownstone palace, selected all the paintings, porcelains, statuary, and objets d’art, but also interviewed and trained all the servants, did the ordering, told his gardeners what hothouse flowers to grow for the dinner table, oversaw the flower arrangements, selected the guests, planned the menus, checked the place cards, and taught his chef new dishes. He was once overheard saying that the secret of pâté de foie gras de canard de Toulouse was: “Never lift the lid of the casserole while it’s simmering.”

  It was also said that he dictated the notes his wife wrote, personally picked out all her gowns and jewelry, and could sometimes be found going over the marble table tops with a dustcloth. These details seemed odd, a little out of keeping, and not quite comme il faut. But then everyone had to admit that Caroline Perry Belmont wasn’t exactly clever. And at least he was gallant. He always gave her credit. As his guests entered his drawing room to be received by his slim, pale confection of a wife, he would murmur, “Isn’t my wife a marvel? Who but she would have the courage to wear pink this season?”

  To immigrants who were his contemporaries, such as the Seligman brothers, August Belmont became a kind of symbol of what a poor German Jew could do, with any luck at all, in the New World.

  9

  TO THE GOLD FIELDS

  In 1850 the Seligman enterprises were scattered across the East, and the brothers themselves were still, to a certain extent, nomadic. Though the boys were prospering, living was sparse and frugal. Joseph insisted on this. Joseph wanted his brothers to be able to pack up and move on a moment’s notice, whenever a new business opportunity presented itself. The boys lived in rooming houses in their respective cities, and Joseph—still the only married brother—occupied quarters that were equally unprepossessing, a two-room flat in downtown Manhattan, off Broadway. He was very much in charge of the family’s farflung operations, and made frequent trips to Watertown and St. Louis to check on things. William, the brother Joseph trusted the least, required the greatest attention, and there is evidence that the entrance of all the Stettheimers into the family—Max not only had a father but several brothers who needed jobs—was becoming a problem.

  At the same time, the general disorder affecting America had been correctly diagnosed as “gold fever,” and the first Seligman to succumb to the new disease was twenty-three-year-old Jesse in Watertown. At first, Jesse toyed with the idea of buying his own pick and shovel and going directly to the California hills to dig. Joseph, however, opposed this. Seligmans, he pointed out, knew nothing about digging. What they did know about was stores. He suggested that Jesse consider opening a Seligman store somewhere in the vicinity of where gold was being spent. Jesse agreed, and asked permission to go.

  Joseph was reluctant to have Jesse leave the profitable business in Watertown, but he had also been worried about “artistic” Leopold, the dreamy-eyed brother who had reached the advanced age of nineteen without contributing anything to the Seligman fortunes be
yond pencil sketches. Joseph decided that Jesse should take Leopold with him to San Francisco and teach him storekeeping. Henry would be left in charge of Watertown, and could, in addition, take over Jesse’s old duties of playing cards and checkers with a teetotaling Lieutenant Grant.

  Jesse and Leopold had originally planned to travel overland to San Francisco, but Joseph’s wife, Babet, made such a fuss—wailing, “But the Indians! The terrible Indians!”—that plans were changed and the boys booked steamer passage. It was a route that would take them through the Caribbean to Colon, Panama, over the Isthmus on mule-back, and then upward along the Mexican and California coast. Onto the ship with them went a staggering amount of small merchandise—$20,000 worth—which took nearly all the capital the Seligman brothers had on hand at the time. But, the boys figured, California prices, spurred by the gold rush, were bound to be inflated.

  Debarking at Colón, the two loaded their stock of goods on mules and started across the Isthmus. Soon others from the boat were ill and dying from Panama fever, but the two boys with their important cargo pushed on through the jungle. Midway across, at Gorgona, the supply of mules ran short; there were not enough to carry the Seligmans’ goods, and the boys were forced to stop. Here, young Leopold came down with fever. Two weeks later mules arrived, and Leopold had to be lashed to the back of Jesse’s mule. When they reached Panama City and the Pacific, they had missed the steamer to San Francisco. Leopold, delirious, was carried aboard the wooden side-wheeler Northerner on a stretcher. It was not until the boat reached Acapulco that he was out of danger.

  Looking over San Francisco in 1850, Jesse wrote in his ledger: “Very high winds prevail at times—there is a scarcity of water … the houses are frame structures, a few of iron.” And he saw “Great danger of a conflagration.” Fire was a major threat to a dry-goods merchant, and Jesse knew this from sorry experience. A year before, a fire in his Watertown building had destroyed $6,500 worth of merchandise, of which only $4,500 was insured. Prudently turning down several “frame structures,” Jesse managed to rent one of the few brick buildings in San Francisco, which stood next to “the gay and fashionable Tehama House, kept by a Captain Jones” at the corner of California and Sansome streets.