Again unmoved, knowing well in advance from a simple journal entry what she was meant to do, Eleanor said simply, “That may be so, but we are backing Mr. Buick. You may do what you wish with your allotted ten percent. That is yours to gamble with, as intended.” Again, she gave no further explanation, and Will Honeycutt knew it was pointless to argue.
“We will travel there,” Eleanor said, and she told her husband, Frank Burden, that she would be visiting a Smith College friend in the Midwest.
Their trip to Detroit representing the newly empowered Hyperion Fund was a first manifestation of the style that would be serving them, she thought, for the next fifty years. They would be traveling alone together and no one back home would know it. It was decided that when traveling overnight by train she would reserve a first-class sleeper compartment and that he, entirely by his own choosing, would sit up in the coach car. “It reminds me of my student days. I enjoy mixing with the other travelers,” he said. “One always learns a great deal.”
When they arrived at the hotel, they would engage separate rooms, sometimes in separate hotels, again, he preferring to associate with what he called “the great social mix,” she preferring the peace and quiet and security of the best hotels. “We will dine separately or together,” she said, “depending on our moods.” On this trip, as on trips in the future, their mood and business needs usually dictated that they dine together.
When they arrived in Detroit, she found, as her associate described, a wide variety of businesses relating to the production of automobiles. Separate companies had sprung up producing items that only a few decades before had been unheard of. There were separate plants now for spark plugs and batteries and carburetors and headlights. “This is the place where automobiles are being invented,” Will Honeycutt said, “piece by piece. It is extraordinary.”
“Why Detroit?” Eleanor said. “Why not Cleveland or Akron or a New England city?”
“Mr. Buick,” he said, “Buick and Mr. Ford. They are both from here originally.”
And then as they were traveling to meet this David Dunbar Buick she had sent Will Honeycutt to find, she asked him, “Are you absolutely certain that this is our man and that there is not another somewhere in the country?”
“I know why you ask,” he said, thinking of his own situation. “But I am as certain as one can be in such circumstances. My investigations turned up no other name even close. And what are the odds that there would be another associated with motorcars with the unusual combination of ‘Dunbar’ and ‘Buick’?”
“You have a point,” she said simply, not mentioning that “Williams” and “Honeycutt” seemed similarly unusual in combination.
Buoyed by the sudden infusion of funds from Boston, Mr. Buick and his company began producing automobiles, the Model 17 eventually becoming at one point the highest selling in America, one of which he had shipped to Boston, but neither Will nor Eleanor ever was seen in it. “What we wish for our fund above all else is anonymity,” Eleanor declared, and Will Honeycutt at least on this point concurred.
The crisis appeared to them imminent in 1906, when rumor spread that David Dunbar Buick would be separating from his own company. Will Honeycutt returned to Michigan on an emergency trip to investigate and found the rumor to be true. The Hyperion Fund was at a decision point. “Do we stay with the departing Mr. Buick himself?” he asked, this time by telephone, “or do we stay with the company he leaves behind?”
“Oh my,” Eleanor said, confronted with a contingency not covered in the journal. “That is a problem. You will have to give me time to think that through.”
Moments like this were a test of her conviction, Eleanor conjectured. She knew of this challenge from the journal only in the simple mention that she would find a specific person—David Dunbar Buick—and invest in his company. Now, at this moment, she had no guidelines. What an odd circumstance that the founder and namesake would separate himself and go in his own direction. A similar departure had taken place a few years before, Will Honeycutt pointed out to her, when in 1902 Henry Ford left the company named after him. The original company went its separate way, eventually forming the Cadillac company, and Henry Ford went on to become one of the giants and Buick’s main rival. So now what was she to do?
“What do you suggest?” Eleanor asked.
“I still say we should back Mr. Le Champ and his spark plugs, but if that is not a possibility, we should roll the dice,” Will said.
“Then we go with the Buick company,” she said, after only a moment’s pause, “not the man.”
“Intuition?” Will asked.
“Intuition,” she responded confidently, this time, without guidance from the journal, having made the decision on her own.
Will Honeycutt, as director of the Hyperion Fund, arranged for all their monies to be transferred to the new Buick Motor Company, parting ways with the erratic founder David Dunbar Buick himself, who went on to pursue investments with his son, ventures that would amount to very little, especially compared to the company he had founded and now abandoned.
“Once again,” Will Honeycutt said to her one day, back in Boston, as the reports from the new Buick Motor Company came in as very positive, “it appears that you have made the opportune choice.”
“That one,” Eleanor said with a relieved sigh, “was a major part luck.”
“And what are the others?” Will asked. Eleanor did not answer.
Some years later, after David Dunbar Buick had been bought out and moved on to other projects, a man named William C. Durant led a move to form a holding company to enfold the Buick Motor Company and then acquire others in quick succession, including Oldsmobile, Cadillac, the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of nearby Pontiac, Michigan, and Mr. Le Champ’s spark plug company.
When the consolidations began, Eleanor and Will both became concerned enough that he traveled once again to Detroit to investigate. “I greatly favor consolidation,” Will said on the telephone, “but I fear that this new merged company goes too far. It is too great a risk, and Jesse Livermore advises that we remove our invested funds.”
“This new move is as it should be, Mr. Honeycutt,” she said decisively. “We will back it.”
“We are in a very dangerous position,” Will Honeycutt said, objecting, as if she had not heard his advice from Jesse Livermore. “We have no means for judging the wisdom of what we are doing.”
“We shall back Mr. Durant’s move,” she repeated, refusing to give in to the uncertainty she was feeling. “We shall let our investment ride.” Things were not as they should be, she knew.
She brooded for most of an afternoon. Things had spun out of control again, way beyond anything the skimpy instructions of the Vienna journal could help with. David Dunbar Buick had failed them and had now disappeared, and Will Honeycutt was a thousand miles away, trying to make order out of their mangled investment plans. She wanted him back home in their office, comfortably in control of things, and she wanted an end to this preoccupying uncertainty and worry. So she took a deep breath and accompanied her children on their daily walk around Louisburg Square, hoping that by the time she returned to the comfort of her own parlor, a way would open up. But as she began the walk, that possibility seemed remote.
As she sat on a bench in the square, watching her children and envying the simplicity of their play, her mind began to drift back to her time in Vienna and the conversations she had there with the man who had become the love of her life. The exercise, when she allowed it, often brought clarity and peace of mind. All her fortunes now at sea, she could find no solution. But as she sat, letting her mind drift, rather miraculously an answer began to form, a way to bring all this complexity in Detroit into alignment with the details in the Vienna journal. At first it seemed much too simple, but as she stayed with it in her mind, the idea began to penetrate the layers of uncertainty. On her walk back home, she realized that she had what she needed.
She was able to reach Will Honeycutt on the telep
hone. “What name have they chosen?” she asked.
“Name?” he said, as if that one detail had little significance at the moment, with all that was whirring around him. “They are calling the new conglomeration General Automotive Company.”
“Unacceptable,” she snapped suddenly. “Tell them we will back the move completely, one hundred percent,” she said, and then paused. “But we insist that the name be changed.”
“Those are your only instructions? Change the name?” he said. “That is it?”
“That is what I wish,” she said. “And that alone.”
“And if they balk at that?” he said, thinking no doubt of the stubborn, prideful men he was dealing with. “These are powerful men,” he added, as if she did not know this fact.
“If they do not agree, we shall pull out all our money,” she said, her confidence fully restored.
“Why?” he asked. “Why is a name of such importance?”
“It just is, Mr. Will Honeycutt. It just is.”
“And what, pray tell, would that precious new name be?” he asked, amazed once again by her sudden burst of certitude. She told him the name, and they hung up.
At the end of the day, he cabled her. “Resistance to name change. How important?”
“Essential,” she cabled in return. “Our name, or we are out.” It was, she knew now, the only way to make things work out, to bring about agreement with the details of the journal. “Close deal and come home.”
And once again Will Honeycutt knew that he had no choice in the matter. After a long agonizing delay, he wired back, “Our name accepted.”
And so, after all the twists and turns with Mr. David Dunbar Buick and his whimsies, the Hyperion Fund would become, as predestined, a major stockholder in the new combined company exactly aligned now because of her insistence on the change of name with the minimal instructions from the one line of the Vienna journal. The value of the new company was to expand—Eleanor knew from that one fateful handwritten line—tenfold between then and 1929, at which time the fund’s monies were to be withdrawn to avoid another great market crash. Everything was in place.
The new combined motorcar company where the entirety of Hyperion Fund monies now rested would bear the name General Motors.
12
STEADY ROSE
It was in 1906, during the time of her second pregnancy, that she sent Will Honeycutt to Vienna, and at the time of the culmination of that pregnancy, the birth of her second daughter, Jane, that she found Rose.
The idea of sending Will to Vienna came about because of a simple inspiration. Before the General Motors negotiations, when there was little to do with the Hyperion Fund, she approached Will. “I think it would be good for you to travel to Europe,” she said.
“Still worried about the bucket shops?” he said, this time with a wry smile.
“To broaden your mind, Mr. Will Honeycutt,” she said, this time returning the smile.
“Who will manage the fund,” he said, “when you are in the hospital giving birth?”
“I think the birth and the fund will do well without your attentions,” she said. “And there is someone I wish you to meet.” The thought of encouraging a budding friendship between Will and Arnauld Esterhazy had come to her in a moment’s inspiration. “Increased hormones,” Dr. Ballantine had said, “often lead to flashes of inspiration.”
So she set about planning a trip to Vienna for Will Honeycutt and she wrote to Arnauld, knowing that he would serve as a congenial host, hoping that the curious Will would like what he found there. The plan was successful beyond her expectations. Shortly before she went to the hospital, she received this very satisfying letter.
My dear Eleanor,
I write this letter from a table at the Café Central, in the heart of Vienna, your friend Arnauld having just left me here to my own devices. He has been the most accommodating of hosts, giving generously of his time, and when his duties at the university call, arranging for one friend or another to serve in that host role. He has introduced me to all manner of friends, poets, and philosophers. Once, he even arranged for us to be the guests of his friend Alma Mahler at her husband’s performance at the opera.
One embellishment of our time here is the entry of Arnauld’s cousin Miggo. He is the opposite of Arnauld in many ways, and he is forever taking us around and trying to “enhance our experience,” as he says. Miggo, as you may remember, is an Esterhazy cousin, through Arnauld’s aunt, son of an Italian count, and grandson of the Vanderbilts. He has three cultures, as he is proud to say, and he benefits from the best traits of all three. In private Arnauld quips that he has also the worst traits of the three—decadence, arrogance, and craftiness. But that summary, humorous as it is, slights the fact that he is absolutely great company.
Arnauld and I have discussed many times the possibility of his coming to Boston, and I have reinforced the idea that he would enjoy it there greatly, while privately wondering if any city in America could match the stimulation of what he has grown up with and become accustomed to.
Your faithful servant,
Will
As for the fateful addition of a new housekeeper, one of the reasons Eleanor was able to conduct her complicated life with such seeming grace and calm, both the public and highly secret parts, was the presence of Rose Spurgeon. She had met Rose in 1906, at the time of the birth of her second daughter, Jane. Eleanor had elected to have her children at the Boston Lying-In Hospital, the institution where she had given so much of her energy over the years. “With the common folk,” Frank Burden had said of the decision.
Among the women who had given birth were those who were recovering from the loss of their child. And as Eleanor walked the halls sharing a good word and good cheer with these women, she encountered a young woman sitting in a chair by her bed doubled up in what looked like grief and pain. In talking with her, Eleanor learned that the young woman was an unwed factory worker from Fall River, one of the poor who benefited from the hospital’s welfare. Her name was Rose Duffy, and having given up her baby for adoption, she had seen it whisked away from the delivery room before she could do more than hold it for an instant. “It is painful, ma’am,” she said finally as Eleanor remained at her side, determined to have a conversation.
“And your people at home,” Eleanor asked, “are they able to accept?”
The young woman only looked up with sad eyes. “My father will perhaps recover from it someday,” she said,” but right now—” She stopped and shook her head.
Eleanor noticed the young woman’s careful diction and remarked on a copy of Pride and Prejudice beside the bed. “I read, ma’am,” the young woman said. “It’s my tenth time through. Dreams of a more perfect world, I fear.”
“You could come to Acorn Street,” Eleanor said. Mrs. Thomas, the Burdens’ aged housekeeper, had recently become, as Frank said, a bit questionable of mind. “I shall need help with the baby,” Eleanor said with great conviction. “If you could bear it, your services would be invaluable to me and to the household.”
Rose came to work in the Burden home, caring for the infant and her two-year-old sister, and a year later took over the housekeeper role and soon after that married Tom Spurgeon, who came into the house as gardener and handyman, then responsible driver and mechanic when the Burdens acquired their first auto car.
One day, Eleanor, shortly after the wedding, asked if she and Tom might someday wish to move on. “We all shall understand if a young couple would wish to leave and start a life of their own somewhere.”
Rose looked startled. “Oh, no, ma’am,” Rose said with the firm determination of hers that matched well that of her mistress. “Tom and I shall never wish to leave you and Acorn Street.”
So Eleanor had Rose as a permanent presence. “Steady Rose,” Frank Burden called her. “We shall always have Rose.”
13
“WE ARE NOT GAMBLERS”
In early 1906, when Will Honeycutt had returned from Detroit with
the General Motors decision, he had expressed vociferously one objection. “I do not think it wise to have so much money tied up in this one source,” he said, arguing vainly.
Eleanor listened as she always did, then delivered the message she had long known she would have to deliver. “Next year, 1907, will be a disastrous one in the stock market.”
“And how, pray tell, do we know this?” Will asked.
“I just know,” she said, as she always said, with no further explanation. “We shall be removing all our funds.”
Long past asking what on earth she was thinking, Will Honeycutt did ask, “And where now do we put them?”
She knew she would be relying on her partner’s ability to learn yet another financial complexity. Without hesitation she replied, “Chicago real estate. You must travel to Chicago at once and establish a home base for investment.”
When a more thorough explanation was required, she elaborated that investments in Chicago would serve them well over the long haul, the city being one of the fastest-growing in the country and a very safe place to store funds while the stock market appeared vulnerable.
“And how do you know the stock market might be vulnerable?” Will asked.
“I just know,” she said. “And now is the time to make this move. And besides,” she said, “you will be closer to Detroit. We will keep some of our investments there, as they will not be affected by the market fall.”
“You want out of the market,” Will said, still incredulous.
“We,” she said. “We will need to be out of the stock market as 1907 begins.”
“And just when will this calamity take place?”
As with so many other events, she did not know the exact timing, just that the journal entry cited sometime in 1907 as the time for a calamitous crash. “We do not know when, Mr. Honeycutt, just sometime in the year. That is good enough for action, is it not?”
The Lost Prince Page 10
