Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [96]
In May, to be closer to her mother, Sylvia, with Matthew, bought a four-story house at 7 West Eighty-first Street. When Hetty’s condition seemed to improve, attendants lifted her into Ned’s car for a drive through the park. She still met daily with Ned, who recounted for her the financial reports of the day, just as Hetty had done for her own father and grandfather decades ago.
A reporter from the New York Sun caught Ned leaving the house early in the evening on June 25.
“Does your mother attend to her own business now?” the reporter asked.
Ned chuckled. “Well, if you heard her put me over the jumps every day, you’d think so. She scolds me for the way I handle her affairs and says she surely made a mistake in my education or I would be doing things better.”
But by the time Ned uttered these words, Hetty was already bedridden, and Ned admitted that she had suffered “a slight stroke.” Dr. Painter, dutifully holding the family line that Hetty’s illness was a minor one, told the Times on June 25, “Mrs. Green is not as well as she was ten or fifteen years ago, but that is to be expected. During the last few days she had been a little worse than usual, and I advised that she remain in bed, as she had taken cold. It is not true that Mrs. Green had a stroke of paralysis, though the presence of the nurses may have given rise to the rumor.” The doctor continued, “In fact, after I saw her yesterday morning I gave Mrs. Green permission to sit up in an arm chair, and in the course of a day or so I feel sure that she will be quite well again.”
Privately, Hetty was less sanguine. Sensing that her time was drawing near, she called Sylvia and Ned together for a final talk about the subject that so defined her life—money. She assured them that each would receive an equal share of her estate.
On the morning of July 3, Hetty ceased to respond to her nurses. They immediately called for Ned and Sylvia, who, in turn, called for Dr. Painter. It was still just seven-thirty in the morning when Dr. Painter said that while Hetty’s condition was very bad, she would most likely survive through the day. The doctor left, with a promise to return. A half hour later, with her son and daughter by her side, Hetty Green died. She was eighty-one.
July 3, 1916, was a particularly heavy news day In the Great War, advancing French and British troops launched a major offensive against the Germans along the Somme River. In North America, tensions between the United States and Mexico were running at a fever pitch following alternating raids by Pancho Villa into Texas and General John Pershing into Mexico in search of Villa. Nevertheless, Hetty’s death still made front-page headlines in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Boston, St. Louis, and dozens of other cities.
The Los Angeles Times ran a large drawing, in profile, of Hetty in the top center of the front page, under the words “World’s Richest Woman Dead.” The Chicago Tribune ran a photograph of Hetty as an elderly woman, with her long black dress and her bonnet covered in a black veil. “Was Wizard of Finance,” the Tribune headline read in part. Underneath the picture was a roundup of “Anecdotes of Hetty Green” including this quote of hers on society women: “Fashionable women pass their time playing bridge, smoking cigarets, drinking pale tea and strong whiskey.”
Many of the newspapers used the same Associated Press article, a long piece that stated, in part: “Hetty Green was the World’s most remarkable mistress of finance. The fortune she has left is close to $100,000,000. The richest woman in America, she lived