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By Root 833 0

proceeded to build for himself a sort of backwater Xanadu. He threw frequent parties with women and drinking, and it was the sort of place that might well not have been tolerated in conservative Terrell if not for his prominent position and bankroll. During his early days in Texas, Hetty had kept Ned living on wages as slender as those he had drawn in Chicago. With his improvements the railroad prospered, and Ned was in a position to indulge and invest in his pleasures. At about the same time, a flame from the past—Mabel Harlow, the prostitute who had taught Ned the ways of life in Chicago—appeared, evidently by chance, in Texas. It was to lead to a long and colorful relationship.

About a year after moving to Terrell, Ned moved to Dallas. Dallas was close enough for him to keep tabs on the Texas Midland, but far enough away and in a large enough city that his arrangement with Mabel Harlow wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. He took rooms on the second and third floors of a brick building known as the Cullem and Boren Store, at the corner of Elm and Griffin Streets, in a business section of town. He outfitted the rooms as living quarters and installed Mabel Harlow as his “housekeeper” at $200 per month. While her skills with a duster and mop remain undocumented, Ned seemed satisfied with the arrangement, which they kept for years. It’s not clear when Hetty became aware of Mabel Harlow. She disapproved of the relationship, but as it became obvious that Mabel was not going to be just some passing fancy, Hetty grew to tolerate her—coldly—referring to her as “Mabel Harlot.” At least, Hetty reasoned, this extended fling would keep Ned away from the altar. Hetty may not have liked the idea of her son living with a prostitute, but it was better than having him married off to some respectable girl from Chicago or Dallas and giving her a legal claim on the fortune.

In the 1890s, the Texas Midland Railroad counted among its directors one somewhat surprising name—Edward Henry Green, Hetty’s husband. Though Hetty had separated from Edward, the couple never divorced. From time to time, Sylvia and Ned visited him in New York and Bellows Falls and Hetty and Edward shared some holiday meals together. The Texas Midland directorship was a small bone for a man whose financial activities had once been so robust, and it probably served to help keep him paid up at the Union Club. Certainly, Edward had no money of his own left to invest with. He was broke, living out his once-grand life reading books in quiet studies and enduring one small humiliation after the next.

In September of 1893, at the time that Hetty and Ned were brawling with Huntington, Edward might have picked up a copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and learned of his own demise. “Mrs. Green has been a widow for many years and her daughter is about 20 years old,” the article stated. “Since the death of her husband Hetty Green has become a financier of unusual shrewdness. She has indicated by her actions that she has small faith in brokers and that if she wants anything done the best way is to do it for herself.”

Even those who knew she wasn’t a widow knew that Edward was out of the picture financially. In March 1889, the World noted that Edward “lost all his fortune in the crash of 1884, and since then he has received no assistance from his wife to rehabilitate himself. He is still 6 feet and 6 inches in height, but his financial figure has dwindled almost to nothing. He comes down on the Street two or three times a week, but his flyers are of the most modest description.” Five years later, little had changed, except perhaps for girth, age, and lack of mobility. “Her husband sometimes assists her in a purely advisory capacity,” the Times reported on Christmas Day in 1894. “He is seventy years old, weighs more than 250 pounds, and it is exceedingly difficult for him to get about. He spends most of his time at the Union Club.”

While Edward sank ever deeper into obscurity, Hetty continued her surge into national prominence, aligning her fortunes with one of the nation’s most powerful