Hetty (7 page)

The new will was certainly far more catholic in its dispersal of Aunt Sylvia’s estate. She took the opportunity to thank with money those who had cared for her and been her friends. She left money for indigent widows—including some who were strangers to her.

Sylvia left $10,000 each to New Bedford widows Hannah Mc-Cofftry, Hepsa Sherman, Sylvia H. Almy, and Phebe Allen and several other women who were relations or friends. One widow, Elizabeth A. Wood, received $20,000 in the will.

Fally Brownell, the beleaguered housekeeper, was to receive $3,000, on top of the generous gifts Sylvia had already given her to compensate for putting up with Hetty’s tirades. Electa Montague, the loyal nurse and confidante, was to receive $5,000 outright. Eliza Brown, the night nurse, was remembered with $3,000.

For those employees who didn’t get outright payments,
Sylvia set up trusts of $10,000 each. The trusts would ensure an income, and ensure that the recipient didn’t waste all of the money foolishly. Aunt Sylvia apparently made the decisions based on her judgment of the personal responsibility of each recipient. Those receiving trusts included Frederick Brownell, her handyman (and husband of Fally), and Pardon Gray, her driver and livery keeper. “I supposed Miss Howland thought she did it all for the best, as I generally spent all the money I made,” Pardon Gray recalled years later. “And I finally concluded myself it was for the best.”

She left money to New Bedford for a variety of works. To an outside observer, this was a particularly enlightened document, compared with the earlier will that left everything to Hetty. Among her general bequests, Sylvia left $20,000 to the New Bedford Orphans’ Home and $50,000 in trust “to be divided among the poor, aged and infirm women of New Bedford.”

The will also called for a total of $200,000 in bequests to the city of New Bedford. These included $100,000 for the city treasury, to be used toward bringing water into the city, for manufacturing purposes. This bequest was particularly prescient, as it anticipated the importance of steam power. “I give this legacy to my city, because I believe that its prosperity depends much upon the establishment and encouragement of manufactures within the city.” The other $100,000 would be given to the city council, half “to promote liberal education” and the other half for enlargement of the New Bedford Free Public Library.

She also set aside large sums for certain individuals. Among these was Thomas Mandell, the partner in the whaling firm, manager of her money, and the designated executor of her will, who would receive $200,000. She provided $100,000 to Edward Robinson, whom she detested—a bequest most likely included to discourage Hetty’s father from trying to break the will. Sylvia, like any other objective observer in September 1863, would have assumed that the hearty, aggressive Robinson would outlive her. And Sylvia had always felt cowed by her
brother-in-law. She also provided a $50,000 outright gift to each of the three trustees to the will, one of whom was Dr. William A. Gordon. The gifts were intended “as a token of my esteem and regard.” In addition, the trustees would receive “a reasonable amount”—thousands of additional dollars each year for as long as they handled the estate.

The remaining million dollars—about half of what Hetty had expected to receive—would go into a trust, of which Hetty (after taxes, commissions, trustee’s fees, and other payments) would receive the income. It was enough money to make her a wealthy woman, with around $65,000 a year in income. But if she had any inkling of what was being done in that farmhouse bedroom on that September night, it would have confirmed all of her worst fears. Hetty herself would have no control over the bulk of the money. It’s direction would be in the hands of others—and one of the guiding hands, reaping rewards for himself all the while, would be the detested interloper, Dr. Gordon. Even if the arrangements were entirely Sylvia’s idea, the doctor emerges as a dubious character, if not an outright cad. He was, after all, prescribing mind-altering medication to a dying woman whose last-minute financial decisions stood to make him rich.

And there was another feature of the will guaranteed to infuriate Hetty. Upon Hetty’s death, the remainder of the trust was to be divided among the multitudinous heirs of Gideon Howland Sr., Sylvia’s paternal grandfather.

The breadth of Sylvias new will, promising to scatter manna into so many hands, did more than just increase the number of beneficiaries of her goodwill. It also severely isolated Hetty and even, in a way, put a price on her head. Dozens of people stood to inherit money when Hetty died. Even if Hetty was not aware of Aunt Sylvia’s plans, she was extremely suspicious. Banned from Round Hill, she seethed in New York. Hetty would later claim that she knew nothing of the new will until after Sylvia’s death. According to their agreement, Sylvia had to
inform Hetty of the new will, a point that would become a central argument in Hetty’s case to have the will overturned. There is, however, compelling evidence that Hetty soon learned about the existence, if not the details, of the new will.

On August 1, 1864, Edward Robinson wrote to Thomas Mandell a letter that, introduced as evidence in the trial, would severely weaken Hetty’s claims to have been in the dark about Sylvia’s new will:

If Edward was indifferent to the existence of Sylvia’s new will, it is safe to say he would have been less so about Sylvia’s next step, which she took four months after he wrote that letter. On November 28, 1864, she signed a codicil to her will. Some of the provisions were unremarkable: trusts of $2,500 to $10,000 were made to a few relatives, and $20,000 toward the establishment of a National Sailors’ Home, to care for indigent seamen. But then the codicil (like the will, dictated to Dr. Gordon) gets interesting. First, it revoked the $100,000 bequest to Robinson, “for reasons which I think sufficient.” Sylvia had never cared for Robinson, but she had been intimidated by him. But she felt increasingly confident in the strength of her will. “I have made it good and strong,” she told a servant one day. “I have made it so strong that Edward M. Robinson cannot break it.”

The primary beneficiary of Sylvia’s codicil was Dr. Gordon.
In addition to the $50,000 and perpetual trustee fees awarded in the will, he would now receive an additional $50,000, “in grateful acknowledgment of his professional and other services and kindnesses rendered to me by him.” In addition, Maria Gordon, Dr. Gordon’s wife, would receive $10,000. His daughters would split another $5,000. In all, Dr. Gordon and his family stood to earn $115,000 outright, none of it tied up in the sort of trusteeships that Dr. Gordon and the other trustees would be managing for
other
heirs. And he would be earning a healthy income besides, simply for acting as a trustee. The man who drafted the codicil was Judge John M. Williams, of Taunton, former chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas—and father-in-law of Dr. William A. Gordon.

In the spring of 1865, Edward Robinson, the hale, blustering fellow whom it seemed might live forever out of simply being too stubborn to die, suddenly fell ill. He held on for a few short months, and died on June 14, 1865.

Hetty had spent so much time worrying about her aunt’s will, in part because she assumed it would be years until she saw much from her father. An inventory made after his death showed an estate of nearly $5.7 million. Of that, only $163,350 remained invested in whaling ships, showing the extent to which he had succeeded in extricating himself from the business that had made him rich. The rest was in stocks, bonds, cash, interest in merchant ships, and outstanding claims considered good. Robinson left virtually his entire estate to his only heir, his daughter. Five months shy of her thirty-first birthday, Hetty Robinson found herself a rich woman.

But there was a catch. Robinson had arranged to leave Hetty a little over $900,000 outright, along with some property in California that he owned. The rest, almost $5 million, would be bound up in a trust, with Hetty as beneficiary, but with two associates of her father’s, Henry A. Barling and Abner Davis, as managers.

On one level, Hetty had little to complain about. The bequest was beyond the imaginings of most Americans of her time, ensuring a life of ease and comfort, should she want that. And, certainly, Robinson was free to distribute the estate as he saw fit. And yet Robinson had been wholly aware of Hetty’s consuming interest in money and finances. She had been his eager student, reading to him, following him around the docks, soaking up any and all of his financial wisdom. Had she been a young man, she would without question have been groomed to take over his money and his business concerns. But she was a woman, and Robinson followed the conventions of the day and kept some 80 percent of his fortune in trust for her, so that she would not fritter it away. Hetty could interpret the will as nothing other than a deep and burning insult. She would carry anger over her father’s will throughout her life, transferring her rage from her father to the men he had selected to administer the trust.

Just two weeks after Robinson was laid to rest next to Abby in New Bedford’s Oak Grove Cemetery, Sylvia took a turn for the worse. She lay in her bed in the house on Eighth Street. Her last days underscored the poignant irony of her life. She was rich—probably the richest woman in town—and her fortunes were steadily increasing as her health declined. In just the last year of her life, she earned some $200,000 from her investments. Yet her physical ailments had confined her travels, outside of the well-worn seven-mile path between New Bedford and Round Hill, to the pages of romance novels. Her closest companions in these final days, however sincere they may have been in their affection for her, were largely her paid staff. Even discounting their financial interest in Sylvia Ann, their affection for her seems to have been quite genuine. Electa Montague, the nurse, recalled after Sylvia’s death: “I regarded her as my sincere friend, and felt to love her, and respect her, and do for her, and would do for her anything in my power to comfort her, and relieve
her sufferings and her long confinement.” And yet the sad reality of this arrangement seems to have haunted Sylvia right to her deathbed. Nobody knew better than she that her companions were bought and paid for. A few months before her death, she called Fally Brownell to her bedside and confided, “I have remembered you in my will. I want you to make yourself comfortable with the money I have left you. You will miss me when I am gone, for Hetty will never treat you as I have treated you.” It was not a point that Fally, with memories of being shoved down the stairs, was likely to dispute.

In the days just before her death, she lay in bed in a laudanum-induced haze, courtesy of Dr. Gordon. In the stillness of one evening, Eliza Brown, the night nurse, was at her bedside. Filled suddenly with a fear of being alone, a fear that dogged her all of her life but intensified in her final days, she said to Eliza, “You know that I have given you so much money, and I want you to stay with me as long as I live.”

Eliza could think of nothing to say besides, “Yes, Miss Howland, I will.” Sylvia held on for a few days longer, with Electa or Eliza Brown always by her side. It must have taken some fortitude to serve this mistress, particularly toward the end. If one of them so much as left the room, she would ask nervously where they were going and when they would be back. Dr. Gordon stayed in the next room. Sylvia frequently called for him; other times she simply asked Electa or Eliza to reassure her that he was still nearby, in case she should need him. But for all of her fears, and her desperate need for companionship, nothing could forestall the journey that she would soon have to take all alone. On July 2, Sylvia Ann Howland died. She was so worn down by her inactive life, so frail, so thin, so withered, so unfulfilled—it seems difficult to imagine that she was only fifty-nine years old.

FOUR
ALONE IN A CROWD

H
etty was just getting herself settled in New York when she received news of Sylvia’s death, news that beckoned her back to New Bedford for the second time in three weeks to bury a close relative. Her grief over Sylvia’s death was tempered on her northbound journey by the knowledge that she was steeling for a fight. At last, Sylvia’s death promised to force the secretive drama of her will to a very public conclusion.

New Bedford was, suddenly, a different place for Hetty, home only to ghosts. Every member of that extended cast of relatives who had taken a hand in raising her was dead. Among the living residents of New Bedford she had hardly a friend whom she felt she could trust. Rumors regarding Sylvia’s will swirled around the town, visions of dollars dancing in one parlor, parsonage, and counting house after another, from Hard Dig to the top of the hill. Anticipation rippled through not just those expecting direct bequests, but a much larger stratum of distant Howland relatives who learned that, upon Hetty’s death, the remainder of the trust would be distributed among them.