Hetty (8 page)

Decades later, when Hetty was an elderly woman, a friend of hers named
C.
W. deLyon Nicholls, described her experience at Sylvia’s funeral, in a 1913 article for
Business America
magazine:

Since the only possible source for this account was Hetty herself, it is impossible to verify this scene. It is difficult to imagine Hetty being able to appear incognito at Sylvia’s funeral. Sylvia’s maids and nurses would later recall not a niece “prostrated with grief” but a hard-eyed, calculating woman eager to get down to business. But the real value of Nicholls’s description is not the relative veracity of the details but the vivid window into Hetty’s mind as she stepped off the train in New Bedford and saw greed in every face—just as they, surely, saw greed in hers.

At the reading of the will following the funeral, Hetty sat stewing in a silent rage as she listened to each provision. The news that she would receive lifetime income on a $1 million trust did not move her. All she could hear was a litany of insults large and small. She was to receive no cash. In essence, she was to be less trusted to handle money than the assortment of widows who received direct cash payments of $10,000 or $20,000. The huge cash payments to Dr. Gordon and his family
outlined in the will and the codicil stung Hetty, but the greatest outrage was that the hated Dr. Gordon would serve as one of the trustees for her inheritance. He would be the one making financial decisions for her and reaping thousands of dollars each year in commissions.

A final insult came freighted with irony. The $100,000 that Sylvia had initially left to Hetty’s father would have been hers because of his untimely death. But the codicil had removed the gift to Edward. To whatever degree Hetty knew the specifics of Sylvia’s last will beforehand, this reading confirmed all of her worst fears. In a fever of righteous anger she set about planning ways to stop it dead.

Hetty’s New Bedford lawyer, William Crapo, recognized the strength and care with which Sylvia’s new will was drawn. He was also in the rather delicate position of having served not just Hetty and her father, but Sylvia, for a number of years. Although he would ultimately testify on Hetty’s behalf in the upcoming court case, and serve as one of a battery of seven attorneys, he had little stomach for the battle and was never more than lukewarm in the support of her cause. About the only stalwart ally she had as she entered the fray was a new figure, a wealthy man who had recently moved to New York, Edward Henry Green.

Green, a native of Bellows Falls, Vermont, had met Hetty in February, at her father’s home. Edward Mott Robinson was already ailing when he introduced his thirty-year-old daughter to the forty-four-year-old bachelor, a sometime business associate of his. The son of a prominent merchant in Bellows Falls, Green had left his hometown in 1838, at seventeen, to seek his fortune in Boston. Nine years later, having established himself as a merchant, Green left for the Philippines, where he remained for some twenty years, earning a fortune trading tea, silk, and other goods for the firm of Russell, Sturgis and Company. By the mid-1860s, he returned to the United States, and the New York office of Russell, Sturgis. His decision may have been influenced by a
large earthquake that struck Manila in 1863, killing many residents and burying others under the rubble of their homes and businesses. Green had been on a business trip in Hong Kong at the time, but the close call sobered him. “A narrow escape, to be sure,” he relayed in a letter to a friend in Pennsylvania.

There are several stories about how Hetty and Edward first came to be introduced. One suggests that Green had heard about Hetty during a gathering of American businessmen in Japan when someone offered a toast to the “richest American heiress”—Hetty Howland Robinson. Hearing this, Green is supposed to have banged his fist decisively on the table and announced, “I’m going to marry her.” The story is colorful, but probably not true. Hetty was not yet rich, let alone America’s richest heiress, nor was she yet famous enough to have her name bandied about by strangers on the other side of the world. Another story has Green hearing of Hetty at a banquet in New York. The likeliest scenario is that they were formally introduced at Edward Mott Robinson’s home in February of 1865 and within a few weeks were inseparable. By June first, two weeks before the death of Edward Mott Robinson, Edward and Hetty were engaged.

With the exception of their mutual affection for money, Edward and Hetty had little in common. They were an odd pairing, and their differences would intensify in the years to come and make them both frequently miserable. For one thing, Edward was not a Quaker, but an Episcopalian. This did not pose much of a theological barrier—neither was particularly devout. But the Quaker traditions that drove Hetty to save, scrimp, and deny herself luxuries were utterly lost on Edward Green. He was a physically large man, over six feet tall and stout, with a gentle nature and an easy laugh. Throughout his stay in the Far East, he had regularly sent money home to his widowed mother, and bought her a comfortable home in Bellows Falls. He loved fine food and wine, dressed well, and enjoyed the easy camaraderie of clubs. He was a generous tipper and a soft touch. He enjoyed the luxuries, comforts, and prestige that his
money could buy. New York, he wrote to a friend, “is rather a pleasant place for a stranger. Lots of Balls, Dinners, Parties going on all the time.” The letter was written in July 1865, and Hetty, although not mentioned, undoubtedly accompanied him to many of those balls, dinners, and parties.

The fact that Hetty and Edward thought they could find happiness together represents a considerable gap in judgment by both. They could hardly have been more different in what they wanted out of life and in the ways they defined happiness. What did they see in each other? Edward undoubtedly admired Hetty’s knowledge of business—rare in a woman. She was pretty, and possessed a sharp wit—another quality Edward admired. And, of course, there was the fortune she stood to inherit—although he had to know that getting his hands on any of her money might be more trouble than it was worth. Edward did not need her money, as he had amassed a fortune of close to a million dollars on his own. More likely, Hetty’s money simply lent her a certain glitter that in Edward’s eyes compensated for her rougher qualities.

For her part, Hetty knew that Edward liked to spend. But his self-made fortune attested to his business abilities, and her father, whose business judgment she valued above all others, liked Green. If he spent his money, what of it, so long as he didn’t try to spend hers. If Hetty had any doubts about Edward, he proved himself to her by accompanying her to New Bedford and serving as her loyal friend at a time when she needed one.

The will Hetty heard following Sylvia’s funeral was airtight. It had been witnessed by respected men and was thorough and exact. If she had any hope of reversing the inevitable, she would have to somehow establish the preeminence of the mutual wills that she and Sylvia had signed in 1860 and 1862. She would have to present some document specifically invalidating any subsequent wills. And she would have to move quickly.

Her campaign began at Sylvia’s house on Eighth Street the
evening of the funeral. Hetty summoned Fally Brownell, the aged housekeeper who guarded the keys to Sylvia’s trunk. In the dim light of an oil lamp, Fally, Electa Montague, and Hetty climbed the stairs to Sylvia’s room. Edward waited downstairs. According to Hetty, she asked Fally to open the trunk and retrieve some papers, which Fally did. One, a lemon-colored envelope, contained Hetty’s will. The other, a white envelope, contained a copy of Aunt Sylvias 1862 will. Attached to it, Hetty insisted, was a second page that had been added at Sylvia’s request shortly after she signed the will. This second page contained Sylvia’s explicit request that any subsequent will be automatically invalidated by the probate judge.

Edward corroborated Hetty’s version, although he erred in his testimony by saying the search for the papers happened in the morning, a couple of days after the funeral. Fally and Electa insisted Green wasn’t even in the house, and that it was Hetty, not Fally, who rummaged through the trunk. “Miss Montague and I stood at the door of the closet. She [Hetty] went in and went to the trunk. I did not see what she did. I went downstairs in a very few minutes,” Fally recalled. Electa said she saw Hetty retrieve some papers but had no idea what they were. The distinction was crucial. Hetty needed to establish that someone besides herself had seen this second page actually attached to the will, to counter suspicions that Hetty had fabricated the second page after Sylvia’s death and forged her aunt’s signature.

As she launched her “second page” scheme, Hetty attacked on another front: She set about trying to win support among Sylvia’s beneficiaries. She tried to convince Electa that Sylvia had slighted both of them. “We are not capable of taking care of our money,” she said. “Yours is in trust, and so is mine.” In fact, Electa had received $5,000 in cash outright.

The next day, Hetty tried another approach. “We were at Sylvia Ann’s homestead, and Miss Robinson asked me into the parlor,” Electa recalled. “She talked about the will, said her aunt had not given me as much as she ought to, and said if I would
come over on her side she would give me as much as or more.” Electa turned down the offer.

Hetty traveled frequently between New York and New Bedford that summer, with Edward by her side much of the time. One day in July, Pardon Gray, Sylvia’s former driver, saw a horse and buggy roll up to his door, bearing Hetty and the large stranger from New York. “Isn’t it strange that Dr. Gordon hasn’t come to see you since your aunt’s death?” Edward asked Hetty, in a voice loud enough for Pardon to hear.

Hetty said, “Maybe it is conscience keeps him away.”

Then the pair turned their attention directly to Pardon Gray, pointing out that his $10,000 bequest was all in trust.

“Wouldn’t you rather have the money outright?” Hetty asked.

Green added, “You will have to go to Dr. Gordon, hat in hand, and ask him for your dividend. If it is not agreeable to him, he will tell you to call again some other time.”

Hetty later testified that she had, indeed, visited Pardon Gray, but only for advice in buying a horse.

Frustrated with her lack of progress in swaying townspeople to her side, Hetty one month later boarded a train for the short ride from New Bedford to Taunton to see Edmund H. Bennett, judge of the Probate Court for Bristol County and the man who would decide whether to admit the will. Hetty had already written Bennett a letter earlier in the summer, complaining about “improper influences” brought to bear upon Aunt Sylvia, and asking him to investigate the levels of laudanum prescribed to her around the times she signed the will and the codicil. The letter invited the judge to visit her the next time he was in New Bedford. She included her name and address. Bennett ignored the letter, so Hetty decided to pay the judge a surprise visit.

She launched an attack on the cabal of men behind Aunt Sylvia’s new will, focusing particular wrath on Dr. Gordon. Then she said, “I can get somebody to serve as trustee who won’t charge any commissions. You can have the commissions for yourself.”

The judge stared at her for a long moment.

“Do I understand correctly what you just said?” Hetty repeated the offer.

Bennett looked at her coldly. “Young lady, I must decide the case upon the law and the evidence. I do not want to hear any more from you.”

Fortunate that the even-tempered judge hadn’t tossed her in jail for attempted bribery, Hetty left the office to catch the noonday train back to New Bedford. Unbowed, she had one more errand to take care of before boarding the train. When Judge Bennett arrived home for lunch, he found an envelope containing money as a gift for his child. The judge returned the money to Hetty by the next mail. A month later he approved Sylvia’s last will.

Hetty appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court, then withdrew the appeal, deciding instead to sue the trustees, filing in the United States Circuit Court in December of 1865. Hetty’s suit charged that she, as the only direct heir to the Howland fortune, was by law and nature entitled to the estate. She claimed that Dr. Gordon and others manipulated a drugged, enfeebled, and vulnerable woman into crafting a fraudulent will. When in her right mind, Sylvia had always wanted Hetty to have the full inheritance.

In their response, lawyers for the trustees painted Hetty as a bitter, coldhearted schemer. Witnesses called forth by the defense, among them Fally and Electa, described in excruciating detail Hetty’s tantrums and her single-minded persistence. It was an extremely unflattering portrait, delving even into Hetty’s wanting habits of personal hygiene. “She told me many times that she did not want to be left with Miss Robinson,” Electa said of Sylvia. The trustees, by extension, represented the interests of every widow, charity, servant, or relation Sylvia Howland had known, dozens of people waiting in the wings for their share of Sylvia’s largesse. It was Hetty against the world, or, in any case,
that corner of the world that for most of her life she had called home.

The case as it played out in court essentially became two separate trials. On the one hand was the intrigue of the rich spinster aunt and the ambitious, covetous niece, the lonely nights in the gloomy lamplight at Round Hill farm, the servants’ gossip, nurses being shoved down stairs, temper tantrums and frayed nerves, all of it reading like the precursor to some modern-day soap opera. On the other hand was a painstaking scientific case involving the signatures and allegations of forgery. This side of the case was in its own way as fascinating as the former, not the least because of the collection of famous minds assembled to offer opinions.