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Two and Three the atmosphere of her lonely life in New Bedford and at Round Hill, and the tumultuous impact that Hetty had when she visited. Given the animosity between Hetty and the servants, it is not surprising that much of their testimony casts Hetty in a negative light. Hetty’s own testimony mainly concerns the making of the wills rather than domestic details. The servants also had a financial interest in seeing Hetty lose the case, because the will Hetty was contesting included bequests to them. Still, the servants’ testimony comes off by and large as plain, straightforward, consistent, and believable. Many of the scenes of Sylvias domestic life are re-created from their testimony.

The account of Hetty dancing with the Prince of Wales on page 19 is adapted from the unpublished memoirs of Walter Marshall (see notes for Chapter Fifteen).

CHAPTER THREE: A TEST OF WILLS

Information on the capitalists who became known collectively as the robber barons came from various biographies of the men, and from Webster’s American Biographies. Another good source was Gustavus Myers’s polemical classic, History of the Great American Fortunes, first published in 1907. Myers’s book is an unabashed, 700-page slam against big money in all forms, and must be read as such. He can find barely a redeeming quality in any of the people he writes about. Still, his research was enormous, and the book sheds fascinating light on the origins of the wealth of some of America’s richest families.

CHAPTER FOUR: ALONE IN A CROWD

The two letters from Edward Green I cite are in the collection of the New-York Historical Society. The description of the trial came almost entirely from the voluminous court records. The expert testimony of Agassiz, Holmes, and others represents one of the most exhaustive scientific examinations of the issue of forgery. Although the judge ironically never considered forgery in rendering his decision, the case was studied closely by attorneys in subsequent forgery cases because of its clinical treatment of this emerging science.

CHAPTER FIVE: SELF-IMPOSED EXILE

When I was looking for a description of the London neighborhood where Hetty and Edward lived, the Internet paid off. I found a copy of The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland for 1868, offering detailed descriptions of St. Marylebone. Thanks to British genealogist Colin Hinson, who painstakingly transcribed the Gazetteer onto his Web site, and who gave me permission to quote from it.

CHAPTER SIX: PRIDE AND PAIN

Bellows Falls, Vermont, is a village within the town of Rockingham. Among several local histories I consulted, Lyman Simpson Hayes’s 1907 History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont was especially helpful in providing information on the village as well as on the Green family. Even better was an unpublished paper by Hayes, called “Hetty Green at Home: Reminiscences of Her Neighbors at Bellows Falls, Vermont,” on file in the Rockingham Free Public Library. Hayes interviewed many town residents and recorded their impressions of her as well as some of the more delightful and colorful stories from her times there. The Arthur Lewis papers at Temple University contained a typescript of memoirs by Mary Nims Bolles, the lifelong friend of Hetty’s daughter, Sylvia. These memoirs contained many interesting details about Hetty, Edward, and the children.

CHAPTER SEVEN: HETTY STORMS WALL STREET

The Cisco bank failure was widely covered by the New York newspapers, and Hetty figures largely in the stories. The New York World and the New York Daily Tribune were especially exhaustive in their coverage, and for much of the information for this chapter I owe thanks to those un-bylined reporters of yesterday.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE VIEW FROM BROOKLYN

The New-York Historical Society was an excellent resource for information on the extraordinary wealth accumulating in New York during the Gilded Age—the lives the wealthy led and the homes they built. Robert Stern’s New York 1900 offered detailed description of the fabulous pleasure palaces these lightly