Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [14]
Heading up the attic steps, she declared, “I’ll never sleep in that old chamber over the kitchen again! I would rather sleep in a cemetery.”
Electa stared evenly at Hetty.
“If you want to sleep in the cemetery, go there.”
“I shan’t go there,” Hetty replied, “until I’m carried.”
With that, Hetty stormed up the steps. She took a mattress from the bedroom and laid it out across her grandfather’s old sea chest and a storage trunk. Hetty’s strike lasted precisely one night. When the house failed to be swayed by her display, she quietly moved her belongings and mattress back to her old room the next morning.
One day, Hetty visited the home of a cousin in New Bedford during a snowstorm. Sylvia sent a carriage to bring her home. Hetty refused the ride as wasteful—she insisted on walking. Another time, Hetty decided to have a party for some New Bedford friends and relatives. Sylvia agreed to host the party, but only on the condition that Hetty would agree not to pinch pennies on the food and decorations. But the two were soon arguing over the number of chickens and the quantity of ice cream required to adequately entertain guests. “That’s too much!” Hetty shouted. Sylvia wanted expensive lace doilies; Hetty put out cheap cotton ones. Instead of hiring a waiter for the occasion, Hetty wanted to borrow a servant girl from another family. Mortified, Sylvia declared that she would never again allow Hetty to entertain in her home.
For her part, Sylvia carped at Hetty over her unbecoming clothes, and her less than astute attention to her appearance. If Hetty paid half the attention to her appearance that she did to financial matters, Sylvia reasoned, her niece would be a charming young lady. As it was, Sylvia complained to her nurses, to Hetty herself, and to Pardon Gray, the driver, who was raising daughters of his own. Once, Sylvia said wistfully to Gray, “I’d give a great deal if Hetty was like other young ladies, like your girls, or a great many others. Her dress plagues me, going down the street looking so. It’s the talk of the town.”
Letters from Electa to Hetty, written in rough grammar and spelling when Hetty was in New York in early 1864, reveal both Sylvia’s concern over Hetty’s hygiene and a genuine love sometimes overlooked in accounts of their relationship: “Dear Hetty, your not[e] cam[e] safe. Very glad to hear of your safe arrival your Aunt is so very glad that you have got such nice rooms[,] to have them warm to[o] we can talk about you almost see you made comfortable it gives us great joy. She thinks of that nice warm quilt you have to[o] it is [a] great pleasure to think of you and to have you dress nice and clean.”
Four months later, Electa wrote another letter, expressing Sylvia’s concern that Hetty had neglected to take with her a cashmere shawl that Sylvia had hoped would spruce up Hetty’s wardrobe:
“Your Aunt gave you that bleak [sic] Cashmere shall [sic] that you wore last fall, expected you to take it, found you had not[;] it is such nice suitable shall for you to wear, she wants you to have it and wear it and look like a lady in your place not keep it she says she never shall wear it. She has not been as quite well since you left nearly the same. I hope to carry her out doors soon. She sends her love to you with all the rest of us and hope you are getting house cleaning setting down your things finely write soon and very often.”
The letter included a postscript that constitutes one of the few hints that this insular, self-absorbed world was even aware of events raging beyond their doors: “O this awful war Oh how many are killed.”
Hetty’s letters, which would emerge years later as evidence in a court battle over Sylvia’s estate, profess love for Sylvia, Electa, and Eliza Brown, another nurse. But they also show the conflicts and bitterness seething