Hetty (3 page)

Isaac’s land-based pursuits also met with great success. He was a founder and director of the city’s first bank, the New Bedford Commercial Bank, as well as the Bedford Commercial Insurance Company. He was a founder of the First Aqueduct Association, started in 1805 to supply the city with water. Privately, Isaac became one of the city’s predominant moneylenders, foreshadowing one of the crucial methods that his granddaughter Hetty would one day use, on a much larger scale, to build her fortune.

In this tight-knit Quaker community, Isaac Howland’s daughter, Mehitable, married her second cousin, Gideon Howland Jr., in 1798. In 1806, Mehitable gave birth to a daughter, Sylvia. Mehitable died in 1809, shortly after giving birth to a second daughter, Abby. By the early 1830s, when Edward Robinson arrived in town, Isaac had passed on much of the operation of Isaac Howland Jr. and Company to his son-in-law Gideon. Sylvia and Abby were by now of marrying age. With
their mother dead, the girls were the sole direct heirs to Isaac Howland’s fortune, worth more than $270,000, or, nearly $6 million by today’s standards. Sylvia, ill her entire life with spinal ailments and numerous other health problems, was an invalid. An ambitious young man determined to marry into the wealthiest family in town had one choice: Abby.

Robinson’s hard work and business instincts alone would probably have been enough to ensure his rise in business. But he left nothing to chance. He began to woo Abby right away. He had been in New Bedford less than a year when he solidified his position in the whaling company by marrying the boss’s daughter. It would be difficult to envision a couple more extremely opposite than the headstrong Robinson and the delicate, retiring Abby. Abby, while physically stronger than her sister, was almost preternaturally shy and unassertive. Hetty herself rarely spoke of her mother in her later years. William Emery, the Howland family’s official genealogist, provided one of the few available descriptions: “Mrs. Robinson is recalled as a lady of a most pleasant and kindly disposition.” It does not require a cynical nature to divine that these were not the attributes in Abby that Edward Robinson found most appealing.

Edward and Abby were married on December 29, 1833. From a financial perspective, Robinson’s timing could not have been better. Just two weeks later, Isaac Howland, the founder, suffered a massive stroke and died. With Sylvia and Abby as Isaac’s only direct heirs, Robinson immediately became a major force in Isaac Howland Jr. and Company. Isaac left a total estate of $271,527.21. Edward assumed control of $90,000 (almost $2 million today) as manager of his wife’s interest in the estate. Thomas Mandell, a partner in the firm, took over another $40,000 to handle in trust for Abby. The balance of the estate, some $130,000, went to Abby’s sister, Sylvia.

In the summer of 1834, Abby and Edward moved into a large, leased house at 43 Seventh Street, on the corner of Seventh and Walnut. The house became available through the sudden
and tragic demise of a happy family in a manner that would be astonishing in modern times but was all too familiar in the early nineteenth century. Captain Moses Gibbs, partial owner of two whaling ships, secretary of the Mechanics Insurance Company, and well on his way to becoming a pillar of the business community, had built the home for his bride, Mary. Then suddenly, within the space of two months in the spring of 1834, illness swept through the house, taking Moses, Mary, and a two-year-old son. A daughter, the lone survivor, went to live with her grandparents. On June 25, an auctioneer sold off the family’s possessions. The now-empty house was put up for lease and a short time later Edward and Abby moved in.

For all of New Bedford’s prosperity, 1834, the year of Hetty’s birth, had been a difficult one all around. In New Bedford as around the nation, a short supply of hard currency was driving otherwise healthy businesses into bankruptcy. New Bedford sent a delegation to petition Congress to liberalize the money supply, saying “trade and confidence are in a great measure destroyed and business stopped.” In August and September cholera swept through New Bedford, carrying away several dozen residents (the Gibbs family may have suffered from an earlier outbreak) and making scores more seriously ill. This swift-moving and often fatal bacterial disease, native to Asia, periodically ravaged ports such as New Bedford, where each incoming ship might bear a new round of infection. Doctors, as yet unaware of bacteria, attributed cholera in part to “suppressed perspiration” caused by drinking too much cold water on hot days. They slathered mustard poultices on the afflicted, prescribed laudanum, and restricted water intake—a treatment that only intensified suffering and hastened death since the primary danger from cholera and its related diarrhea and vomiting is dehydration.

The coup de grace of this miserable year came at five-thirty on the chilly Tuesday morning of November 18, when a fire broke out in a shoe dealer’s Water Street warehouse. A light rain hardly checked the flames. The fire, refreshed by a breeze
blowing from the east, spread quickly to surrounding buildings. Captain Caleb Thaxter watched in dismay as his uninsured store next door was consumed by the blaze. Captain William Blackmer lost his house, barns, and shed, but fared better than his neighbor, having had the foresight to insure his property for $5,000. The fire shifted hungrily toward First Street, consuming several houses in its path.

Among the townsfolk roused by the clatter of fire wagons and shouting voices was surely Edward Robinson, whose new home was only a few blocks north of the blaze. Robinson must have hurried down to the scene, like other residents, to do what he could to help the fire company. It would have been in his famously domineering nature not just to help but to marshal forces and begin giving orders. By 8:30 A.M., crews had the fire under control. Robinson would have noted with satisfaction that no buildings or property belonging to Isaac Howland Jr. and Company had been damaged. And as New Bedford residents, soot-streaked and exhausted, staggered home to breakfast or perhaps a brief rest before the start of another workday, Robinson would have made his way back to the house at the corner of Seventh and Walnut to calm the nerves of his bride, Abby. Frail by nature, Abby was by now confined to bed, nine months pregnant and ready to give Edward Mott Robinson the only thing as valuable to him as his fortune; an heir to perpetuate the name of Robinson: a son.

Two or three days later, on November 21, 1834, Abby gave birth to a healthy girl, Hetty Howland Robinson.
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Robinson spent little time doting over a daughter he had not wanted and a wife who had disappointed him. He poured his energies into the business. By the following summer, he moved his family to
a home he considered more worthy of his rising status in New Bedford, a granite, Greek Revival mansion at the corner of Pleasant and Campbell streets, in the northern end of New Bedford. The house, which he leased for $920 per year, was a large square structure, with six fireplaces and three full floors, flanked on either side by large porches. It was big and institutional enough in its appearance that in later incarnations it would serve as New Bedford’s first hospital, St. Joseph’s, and, after that, as a convent.

Hetty would remain in this house only a short while. She was a lively child, with a pretty face and blue eyes, and much too robust for her mother. Before her second birthday, with Abby pregnant again, Hetty’s parents shunted her off to the home of her grandfather, Gideon. Gideon shared the home with Sylvia, as well as Ruth Howland, the late Isaac Howland’s second wife. Although Hetty would return to her natural parents from time to time, her grandfather’s house would be her principal home through much of her childhood. The elderly Ruth and the invalid Sylvia shared mothering duties as best they could so that the energies of the frail Abby could be spared for childbirth. On May 20, 1836, Abby gave birth to a son, whom the couple named Isaac Howland Robinson. Here was the heir that Robinson had so desired. Young Isaac had only to survive in order to grow into a fortune that, as the sole male heir, he would one day rule uncontested. Robinson would mold the lad, shape him—teach him to be thrifty and tough, to avoid debt, to demand a hard day’s work from employees, to value financial gain over sentimentality, to prosper, to trust no one. But it was not to be. The baby lacked Hetty’s strength and vigor and died in infancy.

While baby Isaac’s physical presence was brief and tenuous, his death would have a huge and lasting impact on the family, on Hetty, and on this story. For Abby, weakened both physically and emotionally by the birth and the loss, there was no question of having more children. Isaac’s death effectively removed
whatever affection there had been between Abby and Edward. For Edward, the loss reinforced his belief that the world was a hard place where only the strongest survived; he became harder. But the greatest impact would be on Hetty, still too young to mourn her brother’s death. Had Isaac survived, it is difficult to imagine her evolving into the larger-than-life figure who dominated newspaper headlines for decades. His death left her as the lone direct heir to the fortune—which not only increased her wealth but intensified the sense of isolation that she carried throughout her life. She could not help but see the disappointment and bitterness in her father’s eyes.

Hetty did not return immediately to that unhappy household following Isaac’s death. She remained at her grandfather’s home. Abby, though not absent entirely from Hetty’s life, receded as the central female figure in her life. Undoubtedly the happiest times of Hetty’s young life were spent not in New Bedford proper but at Round Hill, an ancestral family farm located seven miles away at the seashore at South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The centerpiece of Round Hill was a large farmhouse, the first sections of which dated to the early eighteenth century. The house, added to by subsequent generations, sat on high land with excellent views of Buzzards Bay and the Elizabeth Islands. The house was in many ways the heart of the Howland clan. It had been the site of many Quaker meetings.

When Hetty was a girl, the extended Howland family held yearly reunions at Round Hill. These formal events drew a hundred or more relatives. The group gathered under a large tent near the farmhouse in the afternoon. After a reading from Scripture, the company enjoyed a large feast, then took a collection to pay for the meal, usually around $60. Hetty may have attended these meetings, with Sylvia or Abby. She loved the open spaces at Round Hill, the walks down to the sea, and especially, the horses. By six she was learning to drive a carriage, and all of her life she prided herself on her knowledge of horses.

She was also, in the absence of a strong, consistent mother figure, and with a father whose attentions were at best uncertain, developing into a willful and headstrong child. When Hetty was six or seven, her family instructed a servant to take her to see a dentist on the upper floor of a building on Union Street. William Crapo, a New Bedford schoolboy, was visiting the office at the same time. Crapo (pronounced CRAY-po) would grow up to become one of New Bedford’s leading citizens—attorney, industrialist, banker, and three-term United States congressman. As an attorney for Hetty’s father, Aunt Sylvia, and for Hetty herself, Crapo would find himself inextricably intertwined in her personal and legal affairs. Crapo, four years her senior, understood Hetty as few others did; he was able to speak to her with a directness and irreverence that few others dared—and Hetty liked and respected him for it. Even in their later years when Hetty would make Crapo the subject of one of her innumerable lawsuits, they never lost their mutual affection and their ability to tease one another.

Crapo had not yet met Hetty when he sat in the dentist’s office. But he never forgot what he saw. As the dentist approached her chair, Hetty screamed and yelled, flailing her arms and legs. The dentist tried different approaches, but each time Hetty beat him back. At last, the servant produced a silver half-dollar from his pocket and told Hetty the money was a gift from her mother, so long as she behaved herself and allowed the dentist to do his work. The girl stopped screaming and looked at the silver piece. After a moment she reluctantly allowed the wary dentist to proceed. When he was finished, Hetty snatched the half-dollar from the servant’s hand and, still smoldering, walked out the door.

Only later did Crapo meet Hetty and make the connection; but the scene stayed with him for the rest of his life as representing two of Hetty’s defining characteristics: her fiery stubbornness and her love of money. If most children’s natural inclination is to spend any booty immediately on candy or
toys, Hetty showed no such urges, even as a child. Chances are that the half-dollar she earned at the dentist’s office went into a box in her room for safekeeping. She received an allowance of $1.50 per week, but, unlike other children with money in their pockets, she showed no desire to spend it. When she was eight, she later claimed, she marched down to a local bank, savings in hand, and opened her first account.

Her guardians sent Hetty away to school twice. The first time, when she was about eleven, she was sent to a Quaker school at Sandwich on Cape Cod, run by a woman named Eliza Wing. It was an austere, unforgiving, humorless place, where Hetty and the other girls were given simple food, plain rooms, and copious readings in the Bible, and were generally drilled in the virtues of self-denial. She spent a year at Friends Academy, a Quaker School in New Bedford, when she was sixteen, but missed most of the spring term with illness. Not long after that, she was sent to an altogether different school, run by Mrs. James Lowell in Boston. This was a sort of finishing school for young ladies from good Boston families. It was Aunt Sylvia who pushed for Mrs. Lowell’s school, in the hopes that it would rub off some of Hetty’s rough edges and make her a lady.

But none of these institutions made as much of an impression on Hetty as did the education she received in the area where well-brought-up girls were not expected to spend much time at all, the center of New Bedford business, the waterfront. As an older woman, Hetty told journalist Leigh Mitchell Hodges the origins of her interest in commerce: “My grandfather’s eyesight was failing and my father’s, too. And as soon as I learned to read it became my daily duty to read aloud to them the financial news of the world. In this way I came to know what stocks and bonds were, how the markets fluctuated, and the meaning of ‘bulls’ and ‘bears.’”