Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [75]
Hetty, who opened the door, asked sharply, “Who are you and what do you want?” Hodges identified himself, expecting to be thrown unceremoniously out on his ear. Instead, Hetty invited him into her parlor. She respected his doggedness. Once they were seated, the genial reporter thawed her frosty suspicions. She patiently sat and spoke with him for more than two hours, recalling her childhood education in business at the knee of her grandfather and father, her time at finishing school in Boston, and her theories on investments and money.
During the course of the interview, Hodges sat on the couch—“a shabby haircloth sofa”—with Dewey sitting between him and Hetty. Hetty stroked Dewey affectionately during the interview, calling him “dearie.”
Hodges was clearly enamored of Hetty and, like others aware of her fearsome reputation, surprised to find not the dour, sharp-faced woman he had expected, but an oddly youthful woman with a quick sense of humor and, when she let her guard down, a warm smile. “Her face is strong—quite masculine in its character—but her voice is low and womanly,” Hodges reported. “Her deep sunken eyes are of steel gray, with a tinge of blue, and penetrate one as if they were sharpened points of metal. They lose nothing within range, and twinkle with a keen sense of humor that asserts itself more boldly in her conversation. They are as bright as the eyes of a child, and her cheeks are as rosy. If time and care had not drawn deep lines across her forehead and around her mouth one would not believe she was sixty-five years old.”
Hodges asked Hetty why she avoided society when she might have been its queen. “As for society, I believe in it,” she said. “When a young woman, I went out a good deal myself. I don’t think society means what some rich people would have us believe. I’d get very tired of living in one of those great houses in New York, going all night and sleeping all day. They don’t have any real pleasure. It’s intercourse with people that I like.”
While Hetty could be ruthless with her financial enemies, she developed a reputation among many in Hoboken as a friendly neighbor. When a German woman living in the next apartment became ill, Hetty sat up with her at night and nursed her. She gave children in the neighborhood toy banks with a dollar inside. If, after a few weeks, the children brought the banks back with more than a dollar, proof that they were saving rather than spending their money, she would chip in another dollar. When a young couple wrote to her, saying that they had named their baby Hetty in her honor, she mailed the newborn as a gift a toy savings bank with a dollar inside.
She made friends with some prominent Hoboken citizens, including James and Michael Smith, Irish immigrants who had prospered as storekeepers. James Smith was city treasurer, and in time would serve as a witness to the signing of Hetty’s will. Hetty in turn was willing to aid Michael Smith, who had a taste for expensive living. Michael outfitted his brownstone town-house on Hudson Street with inlaid floors, engraved brass fittings, and molded plaster walls and ceilings. Exquisitely carved woodwork covered the length and breadth of the house, reaching a peak of opulence in the dining room, where a massive, hand-carved china cabinet covered an entire wall, and the ceiling was covered in carvings more exquisite still. Even in Hoboken, where there was a steady supply of inexpensive and skilled European labor, Michael Smith’s spending habits left him in need of cash. Smith’s checking records, found decaying in the attic by the current residents of the house, indicate that Smith repaid Hetty at least $1,600