Hetty (26 page)

During the ceremony, Hetty sat in the front pew, near the center, wearing a black silk gown with white point lace. Sylvia did not wear a traditional white wedding gown. Instead, she wore a rather plain brown dress, festooned with a white feather boa wrapped around her neck, and a hat with a sheer black lace veil, and a white flower and feathers on top.

After the ceremony, there was a reception at the Morristown Inn.

“Mrs. Green, despite the many stories to the effect that she did not altogether approve of the match, seemed in excellent spirits,” the
Times
reported on February 24. “Even though she would not make any statement about the marriage, she did not seem to object when newspaper photographers shot the wedding party in front of the hotel. She stood in the front line with Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Astor Wilks.”

A formal picture from the wedding survives. It appears to have been taken outdoors, perhaps on the porch of the inn. Except for the bridal bouquet gripped in Sylvia’s white-gloved left hand, it might have been taken at any function. Little about the clothing bespeaks the nuptials that have just taken place; but more, the camera betrays almost no trace of emotion, of joy, at the occasion. Hetty, to the left of the camera, sits straight-backed and fully upright, her hands by her side, her head thrown back and chin raised, a stony expression on her face. Wilks stands in the background, wearing his formal dark coat, a hand on the back of either chair, his distinguished-looking
face framed by a bald dome on top and bushy mustache hanging over his unsmiling mouth, and the only pictorial evidence that he is the groom rather than the father of the bride is the slight tilt of his head toward Sylvia. Sylvia is the only one who betrays any emotion, but barely; there is a ghost of a smile on her face. Under the veil and her spectacles one sees, not a full smile, but something in the eyes that indicates a sort of happiness. The picture seems a symbolic as well as actual portrait of this odd family—Hetty, proud, stoic, strong; Sylvia, wan, with some emotion struggling to escape, an expression not of outright joy on her wedding day, but of contentment.

For Sylvia, the transformation from Miss Green to Mrs. Wilks would mean an end to the cheap flats of Hoboken and Brooklyn, listening to her mother’s carpings on the foolish expenditures of others, an end to day coaches, pinching nickels, suffering through her mother’s hagglings, and empty hours at the Chemical National Bank. She had missed several stages of marriage—the happy optimism of newlyweds, when the whole world is bright and full of promise; the chaos of children; and the solidification of a marriage from a giddy romance into a partnership. Instead, Sylvia and Wilks entered into matrimony by going straight into the comfortable if slightly dowdy stage of marriage, where long silences are tolerated without worry, a time when retiring comfort displaces romantic expectations. For Sylvia, still two years shy of forty, the marriage to the fifty-seven-year-old Wilks would always be middle-aged. There was no question of children.

When asked on her daughter’s wedding day whether the marriage made her happy, Hetty replied: “I am happy if my daughter is happy.” Only on Hetty’s death seven years later would a final piece of the puzzle regarding this marriage be put in place. The revelation came through her will, which bestowed $5,000 on Wilks for having agreed to sign a prenuptial agreement disavowing any claim on the fortune.

FOURTEEN
THE HAT WAS “HETTY” GREEN

H
etty never minded being alone. In a way she had lived her entire life courting solitude. Independence was her pride and her strength. She had distanced herself from New Bedford, from Fifth Avenue, and for many years from her own husband. But that had been her choice. Now, in her mid-seventies, she found that she was not simply alone, but lonely. By 1908, Edward had been dead for eight years and Ned had been living in Texas for fifteen. Now Sylvia, her constant companion, had moved across the river to Manhattan and a life of quiet comfort with her new husband.

Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Astor Wilks lived at 440 Madison Avenue, his home, and spent their summers in Newport, Saratoga, or Bar Harbor. Their names appeared frequently in society columns; generally in lengthy roundups of the seasonal comings and goings of the rich. Hetty, long accustomed to the dominant hand in her relationship with Sylvia, now missed her company more than she would have guessed. In the months following the wedding, Hetty took rooms at the Plaza and the
St. Regis Hotels, prompting speculation in the newspapers that she planned to move to Manhattan to be close to Sylvia. But each time, after a brief stay, she returned restlessly to Hoboken and her modest flat. In 1910, she suffered another loss with the death of her Skye terrier, Dewey. Dewey had been her companion for years—it was one of the few relationships in her life in which love could be freely given and accepted without the looming specter of money. The loss of this companion sent her into a tailspin of sadness that lasted for weeks.

At about the same time, Hetty began to acknowledge that she was growing old. All of her life she had considered herself physically indestructible, and her remarkable constitution generally supported this conceit. She attributed her ability to function into her seventies with the energy and sharpness of someone half her age to her prudent habits—moderation, frugality, and self-denial. Illness and health to Hetty had always carried a moral component—people who were sick were probably overindulging their desires, becoming soft, or else spending money they did not have and driving themselves to an early grave over worry. But maintaining her customary work pace was getting to be more and more of a challenge. In the spring of 1910, she turned to her son, asking him to tie up his affairs in Texas and come back to New York to help her with the business.

In Texas, Ned had become a big man in his own right. He had started with huge advantages, of course—but he had prospered, with imagination and style. A couple of thousand miles away from Hetty’s watchful eyes, Ned had developed into one of the most colorful characters in a state that never lacked for colorful characters. In fifteen years, his influence and persona had spread far beyond the relatively minuscule strip of track that constituted the Texas Midland, far beyond the town boundaries of tiny Terrell, or even Dallas. He was famous in
Texas, not simply as Hetty Green’s son, but as Ned Green. He was a civic booster, political wheeler-dealer, playboy, businessman, and world-class sportsman. If he could never escape entirely from the shadow of his mother, Texas was the one place he could come closest.

In politics, he had thrown himself into the state’s Republican Party. In Texas as across most of the South, Republicans were vastly outnumbered by Democrats and were still widely resented as the party of Lincoln. Much of the white population viewed Republicans with a combination of disdain and suspicion, as the party of Yankees and blacks. It was the only party open to African Americans, who formed a large faction known as the Black and Tans. In opposition to them stood an all-white faction known as the Lily Whites, and power struggles within the Republican Party could be raucous. But the very underdog nature of the Republican Party created a perfect opportunity for an ambitious, affable young man with money to rise quickly within its ranks. He could circumvent the years of dues-paying and back-scratching that might be required to make his mark as a Democrat.

Ned aligned himself with the Black and Tan faction. In 1896, at twenty-eight, having been in Texas just three years, Ned was named state chairman of the Republican Party. Despite the party’s poor reputation in Texas, the position gave him a chance to flex his muscles nationally at political conventions, at which he arrived in style aboard his private railroad car. With a Republican, William McKinley, in the White House, the association with Republicans gave him the opportunity to rub shoulders with national forces in politics. “Texans at the Waldorf-Astoria say there is no more popular man in the Lone Star State than Edward H.R. Green, son of Mrs. Hetty Green, who is accounted the richest woman in America,” the
New York Times
reported on August 29, 1899, during a national Republican gathering at the New York hotel. “Mr. Green, who is one of the
Texas contingent at the Waldorf, is reported to have high political ambitions, and people from that state say he is spending money liberally in the hope of reaching the United States Senate via the gubernatorial chair.”

To help grease the skids of his political ambitions, Ned built a lavish and exclusive fishing club on the Gulf Coast, known as the Tarpon Club, around 1898. The club was situated on a flat, sandy island a few miles from Corpus Christi, one of a string of islands that forms a natural bank with one side facing open sea and the other forming a narrow, shallow inland waterway. A grand clubhouse rose off the flat sand on pilings and, at night, was a beacon that boaters could see for miles around. The house sat high enough that windblown sand would whip under the house rather than into the faces of members enjoying cocktails on the verandah after a day of hunting or fishing.

Guests shot ducks in the winter, and fished for tarpon, channel bass, jackfish, alligator gars, and kingfish year-round. If they didn’t feel energetic enough to venture out for their sport, members might simply sit on the verandah of the spacious clubhouse and pick off crabs with a .22 rifle. The large common rooms were decorated with a 175-pound trophy tarpon and other game fish, ducks, and game birds. The club was an immediate success, counting among its three hundred members President McKinley, ex-president Grover Cleveland, a host of senators and other politicians, and millionaires from as far away as New York, St. Louis, and Ohio.

Ned served on the board of directors of the Texas World’s Fair Commission in 1903, assigned with devising the state’s entries for the St. Louis fair. Ned and another commissioner abruptly resigned in protest when the commission decided on a star-shaped building for the Texas pavilion, which Ned considered tacky and playing to the stereotype that outsiders held of Texans. Ned said he could not be part of “a building that portrays Texas as a freak,” according to an article in the
Times
April
13. He added, “I want a building that will impress those who see it with the idea that Texas has dignity. This state has outgrown its shooting and cutting and sombreros and high-heeled boots. Caricaturists have hurt us by their exaggerated picturings. Stars belong in the heavens, to be looked up to, not on the ground, to be walked around in order to see what they are. It is a waste of money to erect such a building.”

In 1899, Ned had made what is widely considered to be the first car trip in Texas—a rugged trip across dusty horse trails from Dallas to Terrell. By 1905, he was an enthusiastic promoter, financier, and participant in the rapidly growing sport of auto racing. He had poured thousands of dollars into racing cars and was widely regarded as the most avid racer in Texas. On a cold, raw day in early 1905, three thousand spectators turned out, despite the weather, to watch five cars battling in the first 100-mile automobile race in history. Green was not just an organizer of the event—he was one of the five drivers. Using his one good leg to operate the pedals, he held a lead through much of the race. At the seventieth mile, with Green and competitor A. B. Wharton running neck and neck, a bolt on Wharton’s car broke and Ned cruised to victory. Two weeks later, the American Automobile Association recognized Ned’s time of 2 hours, 6 minutes as a new record for 100 miles. Crowds flocked to him at a car show at Madison Square Garden in New York that same month. He had attended the show in part to meet with a manufacturer to make a custom racer he hoped would be among the lightest and fastest in the world. “I want a racing car that will weigh within 1,400 pounds,” he told reporters. “What horse power? Well, that is immaterial to me. If the car is built for me I shall only stipulate that it be made to go fast, the faster the better, and I will leave the horse power entirely to the manufacturers.”

Ned’s crowning honor came when Governor B. B. Colquitt bestowed on him the honorary title of colonel. Ned wore the
title proudly for the rest of his life. Colquitt was a Democrat, but he was a Terrell native and he and Ned had become good friends. At Colquitt’s inauguration, Ned proudly appeared in a uniform adorned with gold braid. Wherever he traveled, people called him Colonel Green or, simply, “The Colonel.”

And, finally, there was the rather sticky situation of Ned’s live-in “housekeeper,” Mabel Harlow. Mabel’s true role in Ned’s household was an open secret that Ned’s friends and associates accepted with equanimity because of his overall affability and his generosity to the state and its citizens. Hetty had long known about Mabel, but as long as Ned remained in Texas he and his mother could quietly avoid the subject. For Ned, returning to New York meant the added headache of trying to keep Hetty and Mabel separated. He would not risk his mother’s wrath by marrying Mabel, but neither could he break with Mabel and end a relationship that had mellowed with the approach of middle age from one of purely sexual attraction (on Ned’s part, at least) to one based on mutual affection and need.