Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [55]
Judging by the plain, unfashionable clothes Sylvia wore as a child, Hetty spared her daughter the developmental problems associated with pretty ribbons. But neither did she encourage her daughter to “go out and play” in the sense of discovering the world and making her own decisions and mistakes. Sylvia did get a financial education—nobody spent more time with Hetty over the years; nobody had a better view of Hetty’s methods; nobody endured as many of Hetty’s homilies and maxims on the value of thrift and avoiding waste. But Sylvia remained a half-formed person, painfully shy, socially stunted, and lacking any great curiosity about the world and its inhabitants. When in Hetty’s presence, as she was most of the time, Sylvia was as unremarkable as a shadow.
Ned was different. Though Hetty intended for her children to share equally in the money she left behind, she expected Ned to act as shepherd of the fortune. And so as Ned entered adulthood Hetty prepared for him a trial by experience, thrusting him into positions where he could make business decisions, without jeopardizing too much real money, at least at the beginning. But before Ned could enter the adult world, he would have to face one particularly difficult and punishing trial, the matter involving his bad left leg.
The limp, the legacy of that childhood sledding accident, was now a defining feature of Ned’s life. Well over six feet tall, and stout, he moved about awkwardly—his one good leg bearing most of the pressure of carrying his large frame. Periodically, he reinjured the leg in falls, only adding to his troubles. In addition to experimenting with any number of poultices and other home remedies, Hetty took him to see a number of specialists. One, Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, recalled that a woman arrived at his office in New York with her son in tow, wearing old clothes and presenting themselves as charity cases. Dr. Sayre was a respected orthopedic surgeon who would leave his mark—quite literally—on untold millions of males in succeeding generations by being the first American physician to promote the idea of routine circumcisions of infant boys. Dr. Sayre said he took the boy to Bellevue Hospital and exhibited his mangled leg to medical students. But when someone recognized the boy’s mother and pointed out to Dr. Sayre that his charity case was in fact the son of a woman worth tens of millions of dollars, he refused to see either of them again unless she paid in advance. Hetty and the boy left and never returned.
She clearly loved her son with greater intensity than she hated doctors. Nevertheless, she preferred to pose as a pauper, a tactic she would use not just for Ned, but for her own care as well. On January 19, 1898, a prominent physician used Hetty as his primary example in a speech titled “The Abuses in Medical Charity,” given before the Medico-Legal Society at New York’s Hotel Marlborough. The physician, J. H. Brudenshaw, said Hetty, this time seeking treatments for herself rather than her son, arrived one day at the offices of an unnamed physician. The next day the New York Times, under a provocative headline reading, in part, “The Case of Hetty Green,” quoted at length from Brudenshaw’s speech. “That woman put on an old gown and worked upon the sympathies of the attending physician to such an extent that out of sheer pity he advised her to come to his private office, where he could give her better treatment and save her the trouble of the long waits. She gladly accepted, and for a considerable time came to the physician’s house, where he gave her the best of treatment absolutely free of charge.”
A friend of the physician visiting the office one day recognized her as “Hetty Green, the richest woman in all this land.”
“The physician could hardly believe his own ears,” Brudenshaw continued according to the Times. “He went out and questioned Mrs. Green. At first she totally denied her identity, but when confronted with the man who knew her, she was compelled