The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (46 page)

Stoking a fire, though, was no mere unskilled labor; keeping the heat under a boiler at just the right level required experience. And the untrained firemen Vanderbilt had plucked off the wharf when he fired the strikers had no experience. After the first day passed, Vanderbilt wrote, “I was somewhat astonished.” Instead of 250 miles, the ship made 272. He went to the engine room to investigate, and found the green hands stoking away heedlessly, the great pistons and beams of the engines pounding up and down, turning the wheels at fourteen and a half revolutions per minute.

He complained about the firemen, but he found that his guests were, in fact, delighted by the ship's speed. And so the man who always knew better than everyone else did something unusual: he indulged them.

The party were so elated and pressed so hard to let her make one day's run, that I finally told the engineer that he might let her engines make 14½ revolutions per minute for twenty-four hours, but no higher would I permit him to go. Whenever it rated a particle above this I compelled him to shut the throttle valve and confine her to the 14½ To my astonishment, at the end of twenty-four hours, she had made three hundred and forty-four miles, a greater distance, by twenty-four miles, than ever was made from New York to Europe.

It ran as fast as eighteen knots, a remarkable speed in 1853.
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Vanderbilt referred to his group as a party, and a party they had. Even the ignorance of the raw sailors amused them. At one point, the mate ordered one of the green hands to ring two bells, a traditional mark of time at sea. The mate grew annoyed when nothing happened. “He again called for two bells,” Rev. Choules chortled in a letter home, “and the novice innocently said, ‘Please, sir, I can't find but one.’” Most evenings, the guests—attired in their heavy broadcloth suits and elaborate dresses, and tended by a squad of Irish maids—gathered in the main saloon, where one of the men played a piano and the ladies sang. Sometimes the crew joined in. Some of the sailors were black, and, Choules claimed, “were decidedly fond of negro melody. One of them, who answered to the euphonious name of ‘Pogee,’ was, I think, quite the equal of the Christy Minstrels [a famous musical group that performed in blackface].”
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Now began the hour of Vanderbilt's glory. Southampton, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg; Le Havre, Málaga, and Naples; Malta, Constantinople, and Gibraltar: the
North Star
sailed around Europe in triumph over the course of four months. The triumph was technical; at each port, marine experts pored over the ship. Commanders of the Royal Navy inspected its beam engines; officers of the tsar's fleet sketched its lines; pashas of the sultan's forces browsed through its cabins. And the triumph was patriotic: American newspapers published accounts of the
North Star
's progress, reporting its speed and fuel efficiency, describing the thousands of spectators who lined up at each port to visit the gigantic yacht. Editors across the United States reprinted lengthy articles from the English press. “In this magnificent trip to England by Mr. Vanderbilt,” the
Chicago Tribune
quoted the
Southampton Daily News
as writing, “Brother Jonathan has certainly gone ahead of himself.” (“Brother Jonathan” was a nickname for America in the 1850s, as common as “Uncle Sam” later would be.)
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And the triumph was social. When the
North Star
docked in Southampton, Vanderbilt, with his wife and guests, took the train to London, where the prestigious expatriate American banker George Peabody played host—tendering his box at the opera, for example, to the Commodore and his family. The U.S. minister to Great Britain, Joseph R. Ingersoll, held a formal reception for Vanderbilt. “The attendance was large,” Choules wrote, “and the party a very fashionable one. The display of diamonds was very brilliant. General attention was directed to Mr. Vanderbilt, who was quite the man of the occasion; and all seemed desirous to obtain an introduction.”
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Lords and squires and millionaires crowded around the man from Staten Island, pressing him to bring his yacht up the Thames “and enable the fashionable world—then, of course, in London—to visit the
North Star,”
Choules added. Vanderbilt begged off, lest he “take a step which might appear like ostentation”—as if anything could be more ostentatious than crossing the Atlantic in such a yacht. More likely he wished to save coal.

The lord mayor of London invited Vanderbilt to a soirée, where the Commodore and Sophia mingled with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Thomas Carlyle. Vanderbilt went away with a party to the races at Ascot, the most fashionable racetrack in the world. In St. Petersburg came chats with Grand Duke Constantine, second son of the tsar, and a visit to the Winter Palace. In Florence came a session with Hiram Powers, perhaps the most famous American artist of the age, who sculpted a bust of Vanderbilt's proud head (for $1,000) and then accompanied him around Italy. In Naples the royal government turned the
North Star
away, for fear that the ship carried antimonarchical arms or rebels, but Vanderbilt and his wife paid calls on the British governors of Malta and Gibraltar.
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On May 27, less than a week after the
North Star's
departure from New York, the Mercantile Agency recorded its scathing judgment of Vanderbilt as “illiterate & boorish,” not to mention “offensive.” This judgment was wrong—or, at least, incomplete. Though he could still manifest a brutal demeanor when locked in combat, he had learned by 1853 to affect the sort of polish expected of a man of wealth and accomplishment. Men ranging from Hiram Powers to Lord Palmerston were struck by his confident, commanding air, an impression reinforced by his erect posture and neat appearance. Though Choules was no disinterested observer, he spoke for many when he reflected on Vanderbilt's “dignified reserve” and “dignified self-control.” (After the journey, he would broadcast these judgments in a popular book on the trip.)
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Vanderbilt even came to terms with his old rival, the English language. Not that he conquered it; as Lambert Wardell later recalled, he “abominated papers of every description.” The phonetic spelling and careless punctuation that marked the letters of his youth remained in those few notes he chose to write in his own hand. Usually he dictated to Wardell, who smoothed out the sentences.
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More significant was the change in his speaking. Among cronies and underperforming subordinates, he still would spout profanity with fluency and enthusiasm; but he had learned to speak on something like equal terms with men of refinement. This was reflected in Vanderbilt's comments at a grand municipal dinner given to him in Southampton, which were articulate, if brief. After a very few remarks, he said, “Were I able to express the gratification we have experienced in passing through the country and your town… I am fearful you would construe it into an attempt to make a speech.” Then he sat down.

Perhaps self-conscious of his lack of education, he avoided public speaking—a significant fact in that great era of oratory, when men and women passed the hours listening to long, elaborate speeches from politicians and ministers, lecturers and poets. But his recorded remarks show that he was capable of keeping his errant grammar under control in conversation. A more likely explanation for his reticence was given by those who knew him best: that he detested circuitousness, viewed loquacity as a kind of vanity and distrusted the rhetorical flourishes expected in this culture of the word upon word. When dictating letters, for example, he expected Wardell to preserve the brevity, the concentrated force, of his language. As Vanderbilt said in his terse Southampton toast, “He had been accustomed, all his life, to go direct to a point.”
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When he plumped back into his seat at that dinner, another of his party rose: Horace Clark. At the Commodore's request, the ambitious lawyer gave precisely the sort of speech expected on this occasion, the kind that Vanderbilt loathed, larded with such passages as, “a few days of unalloyed pleasure, passed in contemplation of the Great Creator in his broadest and most glorious field—a few nights of calm repose, undisturbed by danger or fear—and lo! your magnificent shores burst upon our view.” Now that Vanderbilt was most emphatically a public man, he needed someone like Clark. He had thought he had found such an ally in Joseph White; but White's treachery had taught him to look within his own circle for someone more trustworthy.

Clark wanted to be more than Vanderbilt's mouthpiece, but others stood in his way. His most serious rival was Daniel Allen, who had shown himself to be a quiet, shrewd businessman more like the Commodore himself. But Allen's split with his father-in-law over the steamship sale to Accessory Transit continued to fester. So he and his wife, Ethelinda, decided to spend a year in Europe. They had a son and a brother-in-law currently residing on the continent, and perhaps they hoped the time abroad might improve Ethelinda's health. “Mrs. Allen came on board the yacht from a sick bed,” Rev. Choules wrote, “and in a condition of extreme debility.” The months at sea seem to have helped immensely, and she and her husband said their good-byes at Gibraltar.
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More ominous for Clark's future (though there is no sign that he thought of matters this way) was the thaw in Vanderbilt's relationship with Billy. The two had never spent so much time together; more than that, they socialized in a holiday setting overseen by Billy's eternally patient and kindhearted mother. Overshadowed by her domineering husband, Sophia's personality rarely flowers in the historical record, though a few suggestive comments come from Rev. Choules (however prone he may have been to praising everything and everyone, apart from the pope, whom he reviled). “Every day, everyone on board was made to see and feel the excellent qualities” of Sophia Vanderbilt, Choules wrote, “whose uniform amiable spirit was the regulator of the circle.”
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Amiable patience marked William's manner as well. A story would later circulate that depicted father and son on the
North Star's
deck as it churned toward home, both of them puffing on cigars. Vanderbilt cocked an eye at Billy and said, “I wish you wouldn't smoke, Billy; it's a bad habit. I'll give you $10,000 to stop it.” The young man pulled the cigar out of his mouth and said, “You needn't hire me to give it up. Your wish is enough. I will never smoke again.” With a flick of his wrist, Billy tossed the cigar over the rail and into the waves below
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The tale is utterly apocryphal, but it survived because it reflected two truths: Cornelius's relentless testing of his son, and William's steady display of loyalty—a dutifulness that slowly affected his father.

Onward the
North Star
sailed toward New York, cutting through clouds of flying fish, dredging through green Sargasso Sea islands of seaweed, and steaming into view of Staten Island. Back through the Narrows it went—firing another salute as it passed the home of Vanderbilt's mother—up to the Allaire Works, where the journey had begun. “On the dock were kind friends and beloved relatives,” Choules wrote, “and I almost felt that the entire four months of absence was but a dream! But I soon learned a painful fact… that the sweetest joys of life are dashed with bitter waters.”
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FOR THE FIRST SUMMER IN TWO DECADES
, Cornelius Vanderbilt did not go to Saratoga Springs. He was, of course, on the far side of the Atlantic, so Saratoga went on without him. “Senators and members of Congress are abundant,” the
New York Times
reported on August 12. Other notables included George Law; Thurlow Weed, the Albany newspaper editor and titan of the Whig Party; Edward K. Collins, head of a federally subsidized transatlantic steamship line; and Charles Morgan.
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In the summer of 1853, it was Morgan, not the Commodore, who went each morning to the little temple erected over the Congress Spring, inside the hollow square of the Congress Hall hotel, where a boy lowered a staff to dip tumblers full of mineral water, three at a time. It was Morgan who played hands of whist with other Wall Street warriors, or sat in the evening in the colonnade of the Congress or the United States Hotel, smiling at the passing girl in white muslin and a pink sash, daringly wearing no bonnet, who made her way to a fashionable ball or a more casual “hop.”
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It was Morgan who took a carriage up to the lake to eat a dinner of wild game at the Lake House restaurant, famous for its crispy fried potatoes (or potato chips, as they would come to be known), a wildly popular dish invented by “Eliza, the cook,” in the 1840s.
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By September 23, Morgan was back in New York, where he could not have missed Vanderbilt's return in the
North Star
. Every newspaper published the news, as if it were a matter of national import to announce (as the headline in the
Times
read), “Com. Vanderbilt's Pleasure Party at Home Again.” The
New York Herald
went further, notifying the Commodore that during his absence the Accessory Transit Company had fired him as agent and kept his money. It reprinted a letter from the corporation that had run on July 29. “It is quite true that since the departure of Mr. Vanderbilt the company have not paid him the twenty percent on the gross receipts of the transit route,” the company had stated, “for the plain and simple reason that, in their belief, he is largely indebted to the company, it having found it impossible to obtain a statement of the accounts of the agency during the time he had acted as agent for the steamers of the company.” The
Herald
added, “As soon as Commodore Vanderbilt gets fairly located again among us, it is expected he will furnish some exculpatory reply”
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