Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [42]
And yet the suggestion that Hetty stood by cavalierly while Ned’s leg withered away is both inaccurate and unfair. In fact, Hetty did seek medical care, repeatedly. Her son was the principal love of her life. Looking across the broad canvas of their odd but loving relationship, their devotion to one another until the day Hetty died, it is inconceivable that Hetty would have endured Ned’s suffering in order to save money. It is equally inconceivable that Edward, for all of his acquiescence to Hetty in other matters, would have allowed Hetty to neglect Ned’s condition. Without knowing the exact nature of the injury it is impossible to say whether this treatment or that might have saved the leg. But the Greens did try. When not seeking formal medical opinions, Hetty, who always fancied herself a nurse, tried innumerable home remedies in her futile effort to make her son whole again. The first time Mary Nims met the Greens, Hetty was on just such a mission.
“We heard much gossip about the fabulous Mrs. Green and her peculiar way of living, so when the Greens in their ancient carriage drove into our yard, there was considerable excitement,” she recalled in memoirs written decades later. “It was a warm day and the blinds on the south side of the living room were closed. From behind this screen a little girl friend and I, with our maid, had a good view of the visitors and made appreciative comments. Mr. Green, who was driving, did not get out of the carriage. His wife did, and attended to the errand on which they came, while two children, a girl my age and a very lame boy, played about the yard.
“My father raised tobacco and Mrs. Green had heard that tobacco leaves bound on Edward’s leg would loosen the contracted ligaments,” Mary recalled. “He furnished Mrs. Green liberally with the dry tobacco leaves and had an interesting talk with Mr. Green about Manila and his experiences with earthquakes.”
Hetty’s homegrown tobacco remedy failed to correct Ned’s condition, as did all of the other cures suggested by laypeople and physicians alike. Ned was tall, like his father, and as he grew his weight put added strain on the weakened leg.
For all of the oddities that others saw in Hetty and her family, these years in Vermont were the most outwardly conventional of her life. Edward traveled frequently to New York on business by train, leaving Hetty behind with the children. Hetty was still a relatively obscure figure on Wall Street in comparison with her husband. He was an active trader in railroad stocks and bonds, and for a time served on the board of directors of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, in which he was a heavy holder. He conducted his transactions through John J. Cisco and Son, a prominent Wall Street financial house. When Edward traded, he did so with his own money. Hetty had laid down the law in no uncertain terms that he was not to use her principal in his transactions. Hetty did her banking with Cisco as well. She had a little over a half-million dollars in cash deposits with the bank, a fraction of her overall wealth but enough to make her Cisco’s largest depositor. The rest of her fortune, now totaling more than $26 million in mortgages, bonds, and other securities, and growing all the time, was stashed safely in Cisco vaults, away from the hands of