Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [8]
While baby Isaac’s physical presence was brief and tenuous, his death would have a huge and lasting impact on the family, on Hetty, and on this story. For Abby, weakened both physically and emotionally by the birth and the loss, there was no question of having more children. Isaac’s death effectively removed whatever affection there had been between Abby and Edward. For Edward, the loss reinforced his belief that the world was a hard place where only the strongest survived; he became harder. But the greatest impact would be on Hetty, still too young to mourn her brother’s death. Had Isaac survived, it is difficult to imagine her evolving into the larger-than-life figure who dominated newspaper headlines for decades. His death left her as the lone direct heir to the fortune—which not only increased her wealth but intensified the sense of isolation that she carried throughout her life. She could not help but see the disappointment and bitterness in her father’s eyes.
Hetty did not return immediately to that unhappy household following Isaac’s death. She remained at her grandfather’s home. Abby, though not absent entirely from Hetty’s life, receded as the central female figure in her life. Undoubtedly the happiest times of Hetty’s young life were spent not in New Bedford proper but at Round Hill, an ancestral family farm located seven miles away at the seashore at South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The centerpiece of Round Hill was a large farmhouse, the first sections of which dated to the early eighteenth century. The house, added to by subsequent generations, sat on high land with excellent views of Buzzards Bay and the Elizabeth Islands. The house was in many ways the heart of the Howland clan. It had been the site of many Quaker meetings.
When Hetty was a girl, the extended Howland family held yearly reunions at Round Hill. These formal events drew a hundred or more relatives. The group gathered under a large tent near the farmhouse in the afternoon. After a reading from Scripture, the company enjoyed a large feast, then took a collection to pay for the meal, usually around $60. Hetty may have attended these meetings, with Sylvia or Abby. She loved the open spaces at Round Hill, the walks down to the sea, and especially, the horses. By six she was learning to drive a carriage, and all of her life she prided herself on her knowledge of horses.
She was also, in the absence of a strong, consistent mother figure, and with a father whose attentions were at best uncertain, developing into a willful and headstrong child. When Hetty was six or seven, her family instructed a servant to take her to see a dentist on the upper floor of a building on Union Street. William Crapo, a New Bedford schoolboy, was visiting the office at the same time. Crapo (pronounced CRAY-po) would grow up to become one of New Bedford’s leading citizens—attorney, industrialist, banker, and three-term United States congressman. As an attorney for Hetty’s father, Aunt Sylvia, and for Hetty herself, Crapo would find himself inextricably intertwined in her personal and legal affairs. Crapo, four years her senior, understood Hetty as few others did; he was able to speak to her with a directness and irreverence that few others dared—and Hetty liked and respected him for it. Even in their later years when Hetty would make Crapo the subject of one of her innumerable lawsuits, they never lost their mutual affection and their ability to tease one another.
Crapo had not yet met Hetty when he sat in the dentist’s office. But he never forgot what he saw. As the dentist approached