Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [13]
Some New Bedford whaling men, attached to the city and to their way of life, would ride the industry down to its bitter end in the early 1900s, sending fewer and fewer ships out to hunt ever more elusive whales, for an oil that the world no longer wanted. But sentimentality was never one of Edward Robinson’s traits. To him, whaling had been nothing more than the best way to make money, and New Bedford the best place to do it. When the time came, he cast them both off with the brisk indifference with which another man discards a worn-out pair of shoes. In New York, he joined the New York shipping firm of William T. Coleman and Company, where he found new success in merchant shipping and real estate. Hetty moved to New York with her father, but she returned frequently to New Bedford to keep an eye on things.
Each time she came, Hetty blew into and through the insular, sequestered, quiet world of Aunt Sylvia like a fresh gale. She stayed with Sylvia on Eighth Street or at Round Hill. Hetty had acquired a home of her own, the house on Second Street where Edward and Abby had lived, after her mother’s death. Her father let her have it as a sort of consolation prize, after assuming control of all of Abby’s money. But Hetty preferred to stay with Sylvia. Whether this preference was born of a fondness for her aunt and a desire to be the dutiful niece, or a self-centered desire to keep tabs on the cash cow, depends on who was telling the story.
Though she had as yet no legal claim on any of Sylvia’s money, she felt no compunction about monitoring Sylvia’s spending habits. However unattractive and at times irrational Hetty’s behavior toward Sylvia was, personal greed did not seem to be among her motivations, at least, not greed in the conventional sense. She did not lust after Sylvia’s money in order to one day shower herself with luxury. Indeed, the miserly habits for which she would become famous later in life point to the opposite extreme, an abject unwillingness to enjoy the indulgences that other wealthy people (or even members of the middle class) took for granted. Her concern with Sylvia’s money grew instead out of her own obsession to protect the family fortune at all costs, and from her belief that the money would not be safe until it was in her hands.
What is clear, though, is that Aunt Sylvia’s staff, and Sylvia herself, increasingly came to dread Hetty’s visits. Physically and emotionally, Aunt Sylvia was no match for her energetic, assertive niece. Sitting in a wheelchair or in her bed, her small body curved by the disfiguring spinal condition, she felt at times helpless in Hetty’s presence. And yet it is clear that Sylvia held her own in this complex relationship. Hetty hectored her aunt about expenses she felt were unnecessary. Particularly galling was Sylvia’s plan to add a new section to her Eighth Street house. Hetty believed that the staff was brainwashing Sylvia into adding extra rooms solely for their own comfort.
“There’s plenty of room in this house!” she cried. “You don’t need to add on just to accommodate some old nurses!”
When Sylvia said she planned to go ahead with the addition regardless, Hetty threw a tantrum, sitting on the floor in front of her aunt, sobbing. When that approach failed, she marched dramatically upstairs to the room where she usually stayed, a spacious bedroom directly over the kitchen. She grabbed her belongings from the closet