Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [36]
Hetty continued: “‘I didn’t like to hurt her feelings by telling her I didn’t have to work for my living, so I thanked her and said I could not then accept the offer. She insisted, but I declined. As we walked home I noticed her footman following quite a way behind.’” The footman followed her and was stunned to see Hetty enter the Langham. He asked her identity at the front desk. “‘An hour or so afterward a note came from the Marchioness. She begged to apologize; she hadn’t the least idea who I was when she sent for me, and all that. A whole lot of tickets to bazaars and entertainments, of which she was a patroness, were enclosed. I sent these back with thanks, and a day or two after that called on her and told her she needn’t have offered any apology, as I indeed felt highly honored that anyone could consider me at all fitted for such a position as the one she offered me.’”
Edward spent his London years as a gentleman banker, serving on the boards of several London banks, making the rounds of clubs, and enjoying the life of a gentleman. Hetty was already busy tending to her fortune. The extent to which Hetty and Edward worked together on financial matters is unclear, and Edward may well have advised her on investments in the early stages. But she was already establishing the patterns of investment that would define her career, sticking with conservative instruments such as United States bonds, and having the cool head to stay on her course when others panicked. From the time she inherited her first lump from her father in 1865, Hetty had been buying up United States “greenback” notes.
The government had printed large quantities of these notes immediately after the Civil War, to cover its huge expenditures. The Union had won military victory, but people were still quite apprehensive about the prospects, particularly the economic prospects, of the ragged and still-fragile reunified country. Unease caused a rush to gold, and the greenbacks dropped to as low as forty or fifty cents on the dollar of gold. While others lost their nerve and sold greenbacks, Hetty bought. John T. Flynn, who wrote about Hetty’s career a few years after her death, summed it up nicely in his book, Men of Wealth:
Here was an excellent chance for any far-seeing person to pick up government securities at half their value. All it required was a little faith in the nation that had just demonstrated in a most extraordinary way its ability to come through a terrific civil war. Looking back at it now, the recovery of the country ought to have seemed a sure thing to any observer. The war had given an immense impetus to the resources of the continent—coal, iron, oil, copper, gold, and silver were just being discovered and developed. But for all that, the nation’s credit was at a low ebb and through 1865, 1866, and 1867 Hetty Robinson bought all the government bonds she could lay hold of.
She continued this strategy in England, claiming in a single year to have made $1.25 million from her bond investments alone. Her income from the two trusts was now very substantial. Her father’s estate of some $5 million, even under management she openly detested, was yielding her several thousand dollars per week in interest and dividends. She was able to put all of this money to work in U.S. bonds, and she began branching out in railroad bonds issued to finance the rapidly expanding rail network. With Edward handling the living expenses, Hetty had nothing to do with all of her money but to keep investing and reinvesting principal and income. Within a few years her fortune doubled, tripled, quadrupled.