Their loyalty strained to the limit, workers of the New York Central threatened to strike and destroy the Grand Central Depot. From his hotel room at Saratoga, William Vanderbilt considered bringing in the militia as the other railroad executives had, but instead tried quite a different approach. He issued an announcement to all the workers on the Vanderbilt lines: $100,000 would be divided “among the loyal men of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad effective immediately.”5 Furthermore, he promised to restore the 10 percent cut as soon as business improved. Loyal engineers would each receive $30 in cash; passenger conductors, $20; switchmen and brakemen, $9; laborers, $7. If his employees had stopped to analyze these measures, they would have realized what a pittance $100,000 was to a man who had inherited $95 million, a man whose company was spinning off profits of millions of dollars each year, good year or bad. But it was a masterful stroke of public relations, and it worked like a charm. Of the 11,000 employees of the Central, 8,904 agreed to share in the bonus. All the lines kept running. By October, half of the wage cuts had been restored, and when good times returned, just as William Vanderbilt had promised, full wages were restored to everyone.
In this first test of his mettle, William H. Vanderbilt had proved he was no blatherskite. It was doubtful the Commodore—with his inclination to fight, rather than compromise—could have done as well.
2.
It was not only business problems that plagued William Vanderbilt.
“When I die,” the Commodore had warned time and again, “there’ll be hell to pay.”6 As usual, he was right.
Two of William’s sisters, Ethelinda Allen (the beneficiary of a $400,000 trust fund) and Marie Alicia La Bau (the recipient of $250,000 of railroad bonds), along with William’s brother, Cornelius Jeremiah Vanderbilt (who had been given only the income from a $200,000 trust fund to be controlled by William), ganged up and decided to contest their father’s will. William was able to reach a settlement of several hundred thousand dollars with his sister Ethelinda, but Marie Alicia and Corneel would hear nothing of what they considered to be the crumbs he offered to throw their way. The will was so unjust, so inequitable, they reasoned, that it would be obvious to any court that their father had been insane and clearly under the malicious influence of his son William when he made it. The will must be overturned, and the fortune divided equally among all the Commodore’s children.
On the afternoon of November 12, 1877, as the hour for the hearings to commence approached, attendants bustled about Surrogate Delano Calvin’s courtroom in the county courthouse on Chambers Street in New York City, straightening the tables and chairs and adjusting stacks of legal documents. Cornelius J. Vanderbilt was the first to arrive, accompanied by his attorneys, former congressman Scott Lord and Jeremiah S. Black, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Affecting a pale and sickly demeanor, Corneel, wrapped in a shabby brown overcoat, sat stooped in his chair, staring straight ahead.
William Vanderbilt came attired in a lavish black beaver frock coat and silk hat bound in mourning crepe. He removed his overcoat and hat, glanced indifferently around the courtroom, and settled his considerable bulk into a chair that faced away from his brother. With him came his entourage: his attorneys—Henry L. Clinton, a famed criminal lawyer, and George G. Comstock, former chief justice of the New York Court of Appeals—three of his sons, Cornelius, William, and Frederick; and the Commodore’s brother, old Captain Jacob Vanderbilt.
The four or five rows of chairs in the small courtroom were jammed with spectators eager for some excitement; latecomers stood patiently at the back of the room.
At exactly two o’clock, Surrogate Calvin entered the courtroom from a side door and took his seat on the dais.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?”
“Ready on behalf of the executors,” Mr. Clinton replied.
“We’re ready, Sir,” said Mr. Lord.
“Proceed gentlemen.”7
Corneel’s attorney Mr. Lord took a heavy manuscript from the table before him and rose to address the court. He read his opening argument slowly and deliberately, teasing the courtroom for nearly an hour with bits and pieces of the case he would try to prove. The Commodore had “offered himself to almost every marriageable woman,” he declared, and was clearly “passing into his second childhood.” He “was the slave of a vice more exhaustive than any other of the intellectual and moral faculties of the mind.” He “acted like a woman in confinement.” He was “a believer in spiritualism, not in its higher but in its lowest type.” He believed in “clairvoyance and was governed by its revelations.”8
Mr. Lord spun around to face William Vanderbilt. “This man,” he said pointing, “rolling in his nearly $100,000,000, nearly a quarter of a century ago had said that he meant to control his father, showing that he had an eye even then on the disposition of his father’s property after death. We have thought it proper to show that Commodore Vanderbilt was in a situation to be influenced, that he had terrible diseases, and that they so operated upon his mind that he might be subject probably at least to undue influence.
“When the evidence which has been collected is all in,” Mr. Lord concluded, “we shall confidently assert either that the testator executed his will under a delusion directly affecting those for whom the law provides equality of distribution, or else that his mind, although held to his railroad projects by the force of habit, was by indulgence, delusions and diseases, and the consequent sufferings or medicines, so broken and impaired that he was subjected to, and acted in making the will under, the undue influence and control of the residuary legatee.”9
William Vanderbilt’s attorney Henry Clinton jumped to his feet.
“The counsel has spread in his opening what we believe to be the grossest slanders,” he retorted to the surrogate.
“Let counsel put that in his summing up,” Mr. Lord argued. “I’ll answer him there.”
“I do not propose to pass upon the propriety or impropriety of the opening,” Surrogate Calvin ruled.
“It was such an opening as I have never heard in all my experience in courts, and hope never to hear again,” Mr. Clinton persisted.
“Because he has one hundred millions of dollars behind him the counsel should not travel so far out of his way,” Mr. Lord snapped.
“If we possess wealth of money on our side,” Mr. Clinton responded, “you possess wealth of imagination on yours.”
“I can stand that, considering the source it comes from.”
“I can hardly believe that any one outside of a lunatic asylum would credit the statements made in your opening.”
“Gentlemen,” the surrogate warned, jumping into the fray, “These side remarks had better cease. The case will not be decided upon an opening nor upon a summing up, but upon the facts as given in evidence.”10
And so began the great trial over the will, which would proceed day after day, week after week, for the next eighteen months, filling more than two hundred days with testimony, as Mr. Lord summoned an extraordinary assortment of characters to the witness stand: the doctors who had performed the autopsy on the Commodore and who chronicled, in gruesome detail that forced William to leave the room, the diseased state of each of his organs; the magnetic healers who had attended the dying man and claimed to transmit electricity and energy into his tired body by touching him; the spiritualists who had helped the Commodore communicate with ghosts from his past; even eighty-year-old Daniel Drew, Uncle Dan’l, who a year later would die a bankrupt, his fortune lost, leaving only his watch, his sealskin coat, a Bible, and his hymnbook.
(William Vanderbilt was able to save himself considerable embarrassment by paying off those two harpies sure to be called as witnesses: Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. “It would make a splendid sensational article if we gave the reasons why Commodore Vanderbilt took such an interest in a paper that expressed the most radical of radical views,” they wrote in Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, “but our lips are sealed.”11 Indeed
they were. When the two sisters expressed their disappointment that the money left to them under the Commodore’s will to advance the work of spiritualism was rather inadequate for this great purpose, William Vanderbilt gave them more than $100,000 on the condition that they make themselves scarce during the trial. Off they sailed to England, encamped in six first-class double staterooms, accompanied by a covey of newly hired servants, and there, in a fashionable suburb outside of London, rented an elegant mansion.)
Day after day, the courtroom filled with “loungers…numerous, picturesque and ill-smelling, as usual,” as the New York Daily News characterized them.12 They brought their lunches and came to be entertained with new revelations about the world’s richest family. The day’s proceedings were eagerly recounted in each of the city’s newspapers and included transcripts of much of the testimony. It was never really clear what degree of truth lay behind some of the bizarre tales the witnesses spun out, but even if there was just a little, the Boston Herald was justified in its conclusion that “the haughty house of the Vanderbilt railway king, which had its origin in a Staten Island cabbage and onion patch, is, for a parvenue race, possessed of quite a respectable collection of family skeletons.”13
Throughout the hearings, William Vanderbilt reclined in his chair, or stared placidly at the frescoed courtroom ceiling. A slight smile skated across his face when a witness recalled how the Commodore had referred to him as a “blatherskite,” a “stupid blockhead,” and a “sucker.” He laughed out loud when another witness mentioned that the Commodore had said there would be hell to pay when he died; how right he had been. But William’s composure slipped when brother Corneel was called to the witness stand. William listened intently, scribbling notes and passing them to his lawyer. Several days of testimony and cross-examination would reveal why Corneel was the black sheep of the family, and why the Commodore had been wary of leaving him anything.
“How much was necessary for the support of your family on the farm in Connecticut?” Mr. Clinton asked Corneel.
“I suppose $200 a month would have kept us from starving, but at the rate we had to live it cost $5,000 or $6,000 a year.”
“Did you think it right to live at a rate of $5,000 or $6,000 a year on an income of $2,400? Did you live at that rate?”
“I did.”
“Did you run in debt for the difference?”
“I did. I had to. My father rather forced on me that style of living. I could not turn people out of the house when they came, as it was expected of me that I should sustain my family name and my father’s honor in a decent shape, which I did.”14
“You have stated that you never contracted a debt that you did not intend to pay. Now, from what source did you expect to get this money?”
“From the same source that my brother William got his.”
“Did you expect to pay them before your father’s death?”
“Yes, I expected that he would put me in business and give me an opportunity of earning it.”15
“Do you remember anybody with whom you have become acquainted casually that you have not tried to borrow money from?”
“Yes, thousands of people.”16
“Has there ever been a month in which you did not incur indebtedness far beyond what your income was?”
“There have been several months in which I gave no notes, borrowed no money and drew no checks.”
“Can you mention any one large city in the nation in which you have not borrowed money and not paid it?”
“Yes, sir, I can mention several of them.”
When pressed, Corneel admitted that he had borrowed money (and not repaid it) in Utica, Rochester, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. In fact, he was at a loss to name a city in which he had not borrowed money.
“Of that $100,000 [Corneel’s total debts at that time], you say you owe the Greeley estate $40,000?”
Corneel testified that he had insisted on giving a note to Horace Greeley. “I told him I might die and that in that event father might be so happy that he would be willing to pay off what I owed him.”17
“Do you owe Mr. Terry, as you believe, $30,000?”
“I know I don’t owe him as much as $40,000; my indebtedness to Mr. Terry is for money advanced to me and my wife, and he has notes signed by my wife and myself; he has given me none since my wife’s death.”
“What did you use that $30,000 for—gambling?”
“I don’t think I did; for various things, for paying my debts with.”
Through cross-examination, it was revealed that Corneel had been arrested at least thirty times for forgery, writing bad checks, and indebtedness.
“Were you in charge of the criminal authorities?”
“I think I was in jail.”
“Don’t you know what is meant by criminal authorities?”
“It is hard to tell what is criminal nowadays.”
“Were you arrested on a criminal warrant and lodged in jail?”
“I don’t know whether it was civil or criminal action.”18
Corneel admitted that there had been a time when he was addicted to gambling, but claimed that he had given it up after his wife’s death in 1872.
“What brought you into the habit of gambling?” he was asked.
“It was a sort of second nature for me. I had seen so much of it in my father—it was a kind of family matter.”19
“Was not the greater part of this indebtedness caused by your gambling?”
“No, sir, nothing of any amount was caused in that way; merely a few thousand dollars.”
“During the last four years did you assign or allow any gambler or gamblers to go and draw your monthly allowance for you and did you generally assign it before it was due to some gambler or gamblers?”
“I never assigned it for that purpose; I sometimes would borrow money, and would assign my allowance as security.”
“Did you borrow money from professional gamblers?”
“I have borrowed money at times off what you might call men that played cards. I have borrowed money off different kinds of gamblers—never for gambling purposes to pay gambling debts.”
William leaned over to his lawyer. “He’s making it up as he goes along,” he whispered audibly.20
“Did you pawn your wife’s jewelry to obtain money to gamble with?”
“I don’t know that I did for that purpose.”
“Did you pawn your wife’s jewelry and dresses?”
“No, never her dresses.”
“Did you pawn her jewelry?”
“I have been in debt frequently, and she had given me her jewelry to pay her debts with and my own.”
“Did you pawn them when she was unwilling to let you take them?”
“She did not appear to be unwilling.”
“Do you remember when your brother George died?”
“I do.”
“Do you remember some sleeve-buttons belonging to him which were given to you?”
“I do. They were given to me by my mother.”
“Did you pawn them to raise money to gamble with?”
“I pawned them, and when I went to get them I found William had gone and got them and he never had given them back, although I offered him the money for them.”
“Were you charged with taking a gold cup from the house of Horace F. Clark and pawning it?”
“I don’t know that I did. I won’t swear that I did not.”21
Just when it seemed that Corneel’s own testimony about his dissolute life provided the full explanation of the unusual terms of the Commodore’s will, his lawyer introduced a theory that raised anew the question of whether William had conspired against his brother. Corner’s lawyer told Surrogate Calvin that William had instigated a conspiracy to discredit Corneel in the Commodore’s eyes.
William’s mouth dropped open.
Yes, William Vanderbilt had authorized Chauncey Depew of the New York Central to hire detective Frank Redburn and have his men follo
w Corneel and report their findings to the Commodore. Depew had met Redburn at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, at the intersection of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, to work out the details. How will my men know what Corneel looks like? Redburn had asked Depew. Why, there he is now, Depew had said, pointing to a man crossing through the lobby. How providential! Redburn set his men to work at once.
The detectives discovered that each day followed the same pattern, beginning at the Fifth Avenue Hotel right before noon when their quarry would go to the bar, meet some friends, and have a few drinks. In the afternoon the group would head to Broadway to the gambling houses that opened in the afternoon. Their return to the Fifth Avenue Hotel late in the afternoon for more drinking would precipitate the major decision of the day: whether to go to a gambling parlor for a free meal and a night of gambling, or meet some ladies of the night along West Twenty-fifth Street. Several times a week the observers saw Corneel meet such a lady on Fourteenth Street, vanish into a restaurant with private rooms above, and emerge several hours later looking somewhat the worse for wear. All of this the detectives reported to the Commodore after several weeks. He was suitably shocked. “I wish that this son of mine had never been born; that’s what I do wish.”22
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