Morgan

by Jean Strouse

  Walter and Mary Burns were summoned from London by cable. They crossed to Paris and took the train rapide to Monte Carlo, where they found Junius still unconscious. Though he had a concussion, a broken left hand, and cuts on his forehead, nose, and lips, his skull had not been fractured, his pulse was strong, and he showed no sign of paralysis. Three physicians, two nurses, and his valet-butler, Thomas Hand, took turns tending him. The doctors thought there was no permanent brain damage.

  Pierpont at sea knew nothing of these events. When the Teutonic reached Queenstown, Ireland, on April 8, a White Star agent came on board with two cables from Walter Burns. The first, dated April 6, told of the accident but held out hope—“symptoms improving general strength maintained.” The second, sent on the seventh, was bleaker: “Father had very restless night and has lost ground since yesterday feel very anxious but not hopeless.”

  “Papa bore the shock wonderfully,” Louisa told Fanny. “He came to me as we were leaving Queenstown, and he was crying and sobbing poor Papa! But I think it was a little relief. He did not sleep much of course.”

  As soon as the Teutonic docked at Liverpool on April 9, another agent handed Pierpont a telegram from Burns: “Your father passed away at quarter before one on morning of April eighth he never recovered consciousness and doctors say was never aware of pain there is no need your coming Monte Carlo unless you specially desire Mary myself Hand will do everything necessary am having remains embalmed do you know whether your father left any directions about burial if not wire your wishes they will be strictly complied with by us warmest love and profound sympathy in the great loss.”

  Later that day Burns cabled again to say he had learned from London that Junius wanted his remains taken to Hartford for burial, along with those of Juliet and little “Doctor.”

  Father and daughter spent a night at the Charing Cross Hotel, then went straight through Paris to Monte Carlo. “Papa was wonderfully calm on the journey,” wrote Louisa, “and though he broke down when he met Aunt Mary—still I think the being able to cry has been a great thing for him.” His sister Juliet came from Paris. Sarah was in the United States.

  Almost thirty years earlier, in another seaside villa nearby, Pierpont had suffered his first great loss. Now he had to relinquish the man who had dominated his existence for fifty-three years—much of that time with reproach, recently with overwhelming pride, always with fierce concentration.

  The body had been embalmed and kept at the Villa Henrietta in an open coffin until Pierpont could take his final leave. The fall had damaged the lower part of Junius’s face, but the cuts in his handsome forehead were superficial.

  Two clergymen came from Menton to read a short service. Afterward, Alice Mason and Juliet left for Paris. The full funeral would take place in Hartford. Pierpont and Louisa stayed on with Mary and Walter Burns, arranging for Hand to accompany the body by special train to Le Havre, then home on a French steamer.

  America had received the news by cable on April 8. Anne, now sixteen, sent her father a loving note: “My own dearest Papa, How, oh how I wish we were all together today, the ocean does seem such a big thing to have between one and the people one loves. We all did so long not to have the end come until you arrived there, so as not to have the dreadful shock all at once.”

  Fanny wrote: “I do so long to be with you in this terrible trial, and find myself going over and over and over again the different things that I would like to say and do to help you if I were only there.” She wanted to join him at once, with the younger girls, and then “all come home together, when you are ready.” Aware that he might not like this plan, she added, “Still I want to do the thing that will really be the best help to you, and if that is to stay on quietly here I will do that cheerfully as I may.”

  Many friends had called at 219 with offers of help and love. Fanny named them, then went on: “I feel how much heavier is this than any loss that has come to you since I have known you—and how vain are all attempts to make it less. It means the turn quite out of youth, and that, too, while losing your wisest friend out of your sight. It must be a comfort to you to realize your Father’s loving pride in you. I think no son ever more fully satisfied his Father’s ambition than you!” In closing, she repeated, “Remember that I want to help you in your own way—by going to you—or by staying here—only let me know.”

  Later that day, she sent another urgent offer: “These times of sorrow draw closer those that are left, and now, if ever, the girls and I can help you bear the burden of grief. You know how truly we share it with you—the loss for me is greater than I can put into words—and there will be a certain moral support to you in our presence I think. But do just what seems best to you, and I will carry out your wishes as perfectly as I can. Always your loving Frances.”

  Pierpont did not ask his wife to join him. He sailed for New York with Louisa on April 20, and planned to bring her back alone after the funeral in mid-May, when he would take the cure at Aix and see to his London business. Fanny begged to be included. Louisa had to explain: “I am afraid dear Mother that he won’t be able to arrange it. He shrinks from looking after so big a party, when he has so much business on hand.”

  Letters from relatives and friends told of the extraordinary pleasure Junius had taken in his son’s accomplishments. S. Endicott Peabody, who had long ago worked with the London bank, wrote: “Your chief solace will be the consciousness that for many years you have been to him the one upon [whom] he relied above all others, that no son could have been more loving and devoted than you, that no act of yours has ever caused him pain”—which was not true—“and that his affection was rewarded by a confidence and pride in you that few sons could inspire.”

  Abram S. Hewitt, former congressman and mayor of New York, reported that Junius had recently spoken with “pardonable pride” of all his son’s achievements—“you seemed to be the chief subject of his conversation and hopes for the future.” An English friend described Junius as having been “overjoyed at the prospect of seeing you.… What a bond it was between you. He was so proud of you: over and over again he has said to me ‘that’s a son to be proud of’—or words to that effect.”

  Pierpont arrived in New York at the end of April. George MacCulloch Miller, who had known him since the sixties, called at 219 a few days later. Having watched his old friend grow into a reserved middle age in which he was “much less accustomed than in the early days to outward manifestations of his feelings,” Miller was surprised and moved by his “deep, almost uncontrolled grief,” his evident “tenderness [and] very deep sense of loss.”

  The funeral took place at Hartford’s Christ Church on May 6 in a warm rain. The Morgan family brought dozens of friends by special train from New York—among them Chauncey Depew, William C. Whitney, Oliver Hazard Payne, William Butler Duncan, the George Bowdoins, and the George MacCulloch Millers. A train coming the other way brought more friends from Boston. Bishop Williams of Connecticut performed the service, assisted by Bishop Potter and Dr. Rainsford. The honorary pallbearers included Anthony Drexel, Levi Morton, Cyrus Field, Charles Lanier, Jacob Rogers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and Roland Mather. Flags all over Hartford flew at half-mast.

  White roses and lilies of the valley covered Junius’s casket, and floral tributes filled the church—one, made entirely of roses, was a huge cross of red set in a crown of white encircled with crimson. The choir sang hymns chosen by Pierpont—“Asleep in Jesus, Blessed Sleep,” “Lead Kindly Light,” and “For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest.” The clergymen preceded the coffin out into the gray morning. A tent stood over the Morgan plot at Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery to protect the mourners from rain. The bodies of Junius’s wife and younger son were reburied alongside him.

  The next day, The Hartford Courant wondered whether “half so much wealth was ever before gathered under one roof in Connecticut as was represented in the audience at Christ Church yesterday.”

  In his will, Junius left legacies to rela
tives, servants, and friends. To his daughters, Sarah and Mary, he gave several works of art, £100,000 each, and another £600,000 (about $3 million) each in trust, from which they could draw income for life. He left nothing outright to the prodigal Juliet; she would have the income from £400,000 held in trust, and the “use and enjoyment” of paintings that would go to her children after her death. For Alice Mason he had set up a fund, to be managed by Pierpont, which would yield £1,000 a year for the rest of her life. His total estate was worth about $23 million.

  Most of it went to his son. Pierpont received £600,000 outright, as well as the capital Junius had in J. S. Morgan & Co., the houses in London and Roehampton, investments (primarily American securities), personal effects, and several paintings—including Gainsborough’s Miss Wilbraham, a Romney portrait of Emma Hamilton, and Turner’s Italian landscape. Excluding the art, his inheritance amounted to nearly £3 million ($15 million), equivalent to roughly $225 million in the 1990s. Neither the United States nor England taxed inheritance in 1890.

  Junius’s death severed the most powerful emotional bond of Pierpont’s life. Unlike Memie’s death, however, it did not violate the natural order of things. The elder Morgan had lived long and well, enjoyed a distinguished career, retired voluntarily, and bequeathed his work and sense of high calling to his son. In his youth, Pierpont had chafed under paternal restraints. In his thirties, finding sense in the homilies about “character” and “reputation,” he had curbed some of his impulses, but continued to propose ventures Junius was loath to accept. Slowly, over the course of three decades, the younger Morgan had demonstrated his own ability and integrity as banker to the federal government and “doctor” to the nation’s railroads, and in the process had gained the unqualified respect of his harshest critic. For the rest of his life he carried the assurance of that hard-won benediction, and maintained reverent attachments to everything connected with his father.

  In the fall of 1890 he ordered an immense red granite monument representing the Ark of the Covenant to mark the Morgan family plot at the Cedar Hill Cemetery. He carried out all of Junius’s professional and philanthropical commitments, bought books, paintings, manuscripts, jewelry, and cigars for which his father had contracted, and continued the lease of the Villa Henrietta for three years. In 1901 he gave $1 million for three buildings at the Harvard Medical School in honor of Junius, and several years later $1 million to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford for a Junius Morgan Memorial Wing. He hung Frank Holl’s picture of Junius in his office at 23 Wall Street and another portrait in his library at home.

  In May of 1890, at fifty-three, Pierpont took his father’s place as the head of J. S. Morgan & Co. The firm still did not have the international stature of Rothschilds and Barings—“Morgans” was seen in London financial circles as essentially an American bank—but Junius had long predicted that America would dominate the economic future. Tony Drexel, who turned sixty-four in 1890, had for some time served his New York partner more as colleague and consultant than supervising sentinel. On both sides of the Atlantic, Pierpont was now “the Senior” at the house of Morgan.

  * To put this change in broader perspective, Americans in the eighties directed a large share of the country’s gross national product into capital formation—the creation of wealth in the form of goods such as buildings, machinery, and equipment that produce other goods and services, sustaining a high rate of economic growth. Before the Civil War, about 15 percent of GNP went into capital formation; in the 1870s the figure rose to 25 percent, and in the eighties to 28 percent.

  † Surgeons could shave away the rhinophymous growth of sebaceous tissue during Morgan’s lifetime (it is now correctable by laser surgery). Satterlee suspected that his father-in-law did not seek surgery because he feared something worse, such as a return of his infantile seizures; others said Morgan wanted to avoid public ridicule (see Chapter 26).

  ‡ The Savile Club now occupies the former Burns house.

  § Both were purchased from the estate of department store magnate A. T. Stewart, the Meissonnier by Judge Henry Hilton for $66,000, the Bonheur by Cornelius Vanderbilt for $53,000. In making his gift to the Met, Vanderbilt said the painting ought to be “permanently accessible to the public.”

  ‖ White soon decided that this Diana was too large, and commissioned a smaller one. The original went on exhibition at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair—after a noisy controversy over whether or not to dress her.

  PART III

  SENIOR

  [New York] is a place where things “hum,” and they have been humming a good deal … since I have been over here.… It is extremely interesting to find oneself in the very heart of Wall Street excitement and combinations, and to note the prodigious amount of nervous excitement and energy the Americans throw into their work.… Few of them live through it to advanced years except physical and intellectual giants like Morgan who has something Titanic about him when he really gets to work.

  Morgan’s British partner Clinton Dawkins to Alfred Milner, July 13, 1901

  Chapter 15

  IN PRIVATE

  Pierpont had intended to return to Europe with Louisa for the cure at Aix immediately after his father’s funeral, but Fanny persuaded him that she, too, needed a dose of foreign waters. He sent her off with Anne and a hired companion to the spa at Royat in the Auvergne in mid-May. He would leave two weeks later. At Royat, Fanny noted that her “poor elderly legs” could barely manage the prescribed walks.

  The Morgans’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary passed on May 31, 1890, with Fanny ailing in France while Pierpont crossed the Atlantic with Louisa, Juliet, and a beautiful young widow named Edith Sybil Randolph. He was fifty-three years old, she thirty-six—ages and circumstances much like those of Junius and Alice Mason.

  It is not clear when Pierpont met the willowy, dark-haired Edith Randolph, but he had probably known about her for a long time. Her father, a Washington surgeon named John Frederick May, had removed a tumor from the neck of John Wilkes Booth, and in 1865 identified the actor’s body by the scar. Edith’s mother, the former Sarah Mills, was related to New York’s socially prominent Oelrichs, Jays, Winthrops, and Kanes, and the Mays had moved from Washington to New York in the late sixties. As Edith came of age she moved easily into Manhattan’s “smart set.”

  In 1878, at twenty-four, she married Arthur B. Randolph, a British military captain. The couple settled on an estate belonging to friends in Douglaston, Queens, about twenty miles east of New York City. They had two children, Arthur, Jr., and Adelaide, before Randolph died in the late eighties. The society gossip sheet Town Topics described the marriage as “not over happy, and as [the Captain] resigned his commission soon after and had comparatively little means, she was obliged to lead almost a retired life in a little country cottage at Douglaston.” The widowed Edith moved to Manhattan, slowly resumed an active social life, and spent summers with her parents in Maine.

  “The sauciest of the lively set sped out over the Riverside Drive last Thursday with spring colors flying,” reported Town Topics in April 1890, “and flocked through Mr. Edward Stokes’ tavern with the feathery fairness of young birds.” Among those who “ornamented” Claremont Avenue that afternoon were Mrs. Arthur Randolph, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mrs. Elliot Roosevelt, and the Chicago heiress Mary Leiter. Edith appeared in the first listing of the New York “400,” where beauty ranked second to gold as a qualification.

  Pierpont Morgan called on her after her husband died. He brought her to Cragston in the summer of 1889, while Fanny traveled abroad, and that fall sent her flowers, jewelry, and cases of his favorite whiskey. His courtly attentions had probably begun earlier in the year: as he prepared to leave for Europe in March, his private secretary wrote to the fashionable New York florist J. E. Thorley that Mr. Morgan wanted his regular order of violets continued in his absence: “See that there are plenty—among others four bunches of white violets for Easter Sunday.” The secretary would pay all bills, and conclu
ded discreetly, “He [Morgan] said you’d understand what he meant. I beg you’ll see his instructions faithfully carried out.”

  Edith joined St. George’s Church when she moved into the city, and worked on charitable committees with Pierpont’s wife and daughters. As soon as she learned of Junius’s death in April 1890 she called on Fanny at 219, and sent messages of condolence to Pierpont in Monte Carlo. She was among the friends who accompanied the Morgans to Hartford for the funeral.

  A month later she and her children traveled with Pierpont, Louisa, and Juliet to Europe. Fanny, still at Royat, told Louisa she was “ready to jump with joy” at the idea of a family reunion: “Oh it is too delicious to think of seeing you all three so soon!”

  On landing, Edith went off with other friends. Pierpont stopped briefly to see his wife, then took Louisa and Juliet for a separate cure at Aix-les-Bains, 140 miles away. Fanny, learning that Mrs. Randolph would join the Morgans to tour Scotland in July, hoped this plan would help her husband “give up the idea of going home until he has had a restful pleasure trip.” She was used to his attentions to beautiful women, and probably told herself he was simply being kind to a lonely widow.

  In early July a party of six—Louisa, Juliet, Pierpont, Edith, and her children—met in London and went by train to the Lake District, arriving at Windermere Station several days before Fanny was due. Louisa at twenty-four observed her father and Edith with a cognizant eye. She took Juliet (called Laily) off each morning to see towns, churches, and meadows, and noted in her diary, with an eloquent pair of quotation marks: “Papa & Mrs. Randolph too ‘tired’ to go for a drive this morning. Laily and I spent an hour on the lake rowing. This afternoon we all drove down the east side of the lake. Mother and Annie arrived this p.m.”