The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (75 page)

“I sea by the New York Times of this morning that the opposition has used my name” on their ticket of proposed directors, Vanderbilt wrote to Corning on November 20. The letter that followed constitutes a piece of found poetry, a free verse of the Commodore's approach to Wall Street's shadow warfare.

this is without athority
They do not understand how
I feal in this matter
I keep them in the dark
I in close you the two proxies
I tell Mr Banker to keep
you posted with what is
doing here & get all proxy
possible—let them say what
they will I want you to
understand I will have
nothing to do with them
in any form—over

I want you to feal that
you air at liberty to
use me in this matter
in any honorable way you
may think adviseable
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Shrewdly, Vanderbilt declined Banker's suggestion that he stand for election to the board on Corning's ticket, for he wished to avoid alienating Jerome. Indeed, one week before the election, he met with Jerome in private to propose a compromise. “I don't believe it is worthwhile to say anything more about what we talked about last night,” Jerome wrote to him the next morning. “I appreciate your views and feelings in the matter and in the main think you are perfectly correct. But you see I have been acting with other parties.… I guess we had better let the thing take its course.”
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Was that a tone of resignation? Certainly the Commodore now acted as if he were certain of Corning's victory—and of the material benefits to flow from it. On December 2, for example, he convened a special meeting of the Harlem's stockholders. They approved the sale of the unissued $2,139,950 in stock authorized by the corporation's charter to double-track and extend the line to Albany. The stated reason was to accommodate “anticipated connections with other railroads.”
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It was a dangerous game, especially now that Vanderbilt had revealed his position—dangerous because Jerome not only had taken power in the Hudson River, but also in Pacific Mail, the partner of the Commodore's steamship line. But Vanderbilt was as sure of his strength now, at sixty-nine, as he had ever been. On December 7, with the Central election two days away, he went down to his stables and ordered a fast team harnessed to his racing wagon. He drove up Broadway to where it became Bloomingdale Road, and looked for a “brush.” He found one. He and a challenger rattled their rigs alongside each other at top speed, Vanderbilt whipping his horses ahead as he tried to edge out his rival. Then the Commodore's powers failed him, and the wagons cracked into each other. “His carriage was broken,” the
Chicago Tribune
reported, “and the Commodore thrown over the dashboard to the ground”—more specifically, “head foremost and violently to the ground,” according to the
New York Times
. “He was picked up insensible, but soon recovered consciousness, and was conveyed to a house nearby, where he received every attention.”
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The Commodore overcame his injuries, but he could not go to Albany as he had intended. Corning and his party triumphed regardless. “No election of this kind has ever produced such an extended & warm excitement,” longtime Central director John V. L. Pruyn noted in his journal. “The result has been most gratifying.” Banker dined at Corning's house on December 11 as his patron's representative.
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In the first crisis of Vanderbilt's new career as a railroad president, he had displayed masterful statecraft, adroitly turning a battle between two far stronger companies to his advantage. As soon as he was able to go to his office, he addressed a letter to Corning. “In consequence of the severe fall I had I have been prevented from visiting you,” he wrote. He then specified how the Central could repay him. “It would suit the Harlem Road to have your agents… make their tickets in such a form that the holder should be entitled to pass either, at his option, over the Harlem or Hudson River Rail Road. I can see no good reason why this should not be.” Even more important, he insisted that his man Banker should have a seat on the Central's board. Corning obliged by forcing the resignation of one of his directors.
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Hardly had Vanderbilt secured Corning's hold on power than he attempted to collect the debt. But time would show how difficult that would be. The structural conflicts stemming from the fragmentation of the railroad landscape—the same problem that gave rise to this particular battle—would continue to grow. As the Commodore would learn, they had only one solution.

AT SEVEN O'CLOCK ON SATURDAY EVENING
, December 19, 1863, a visitor who stepped out of a carriage in front of 10 Washington Place naturally might have paused in the cold winter air and looked up to the windows of the second floor. Scores of well-dressed people would be seen through the glass as band music drifted down from that nearly twenty-year-old mansion, twice the width of a regular brownstone. If a visitor proceeded up the stoop to the entrance, where one of the Irish servants would open the door, into the great hall where one's coat would be taken, then up the stairs and to the right, through the small library and into a large sitting room, twenty by twenty-five feet, the reason for all the revelry could be seen.
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There, surrounded by the Commodore's milling siblings and children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews, was a table filled with gifts in celebration of Cornelius and Sophia Johnson Vanderbilt's fiftieth wedding anniversary. “There was a profusion of bracelets, porte-mounnales [sic], gold plate, exquisitely carved chess-men, superbly bound Bibles, brooches, and feminine ornaments of every kind,” wrote Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, a popular “authoress” and friend of the wealthy pair, who described the event for the
New York Tribune
. At the center perched the Commodore's gift to his wife, a miniature steamship crafted of gold, specially ordered from Europe. “It is twenty inches long and five wide, with exquisitely wrought revolving towers,” Stephens wrote, “which filled the room with fairy music whenever the delicate machinery was set in motion.” After a formal review of the ship, the bride presented the golden groom with “a collection of gold-headed canes [and] driving-whips, mounted in some costly manner.” Then the party descended to the main-floor parlors, where Stephens observed two striking sculptures: the marble bust of Vanderbilt, carved by Hiram Powers in Italy in 1853, and in the opposite corner of the room—in line with the stone Commodore's stare—a statue of the son of William Tell.
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The family swarmed around Vanderbilt—dressed “in quiet black… unpretending and gentlemanly as he is everywhere”—and his wife, who wore “a head-dress of Brussels point, wreathed with gold-tinted roses and marabout feathers,” perched on her “thick and scarcely silvered curls,” as Stephens wrote. Sons-in-law all appeared: Nicholas La Bau, who had often served as Vanderbilt's attorney; George Osgood, a rising stockbroker who handled some of Vanderbilt's trades; Daniel Torrance and James Cross, who had helped to manage Vanderbilt's steamship lines; Horace Clark, growing ever more important as a lieutenant in all capacities; and Daniel Allen, the longest-serving of Vanderbilt's daughters' husbands. R. G. Dun & Co. would deem Allen “a high minded man of 1st rate [business] qualifications,” an accurate assessment of the man who had learned how to run a shipping line in Vanderbilt's office, only to stand up to him when Allen believed he had violated the Accessory Transit Company's charter. Now, after nearly thirty years in business together, they began to sever their ties. On November 27, Allen and Cornelius Garrison had incorporated the Atlantic Mail Steamship Company, with an authorized capital of $4 million. Within a year, the new corporation would buy out the old Atlantic & Pacific Steamship Company, along with Vanderbilt's remaining stake in shipping. The Commodore was leaving the ocean behind.
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Despite the profusion and importance of sons-in-law, Vanderbilt's sons by blood—the Vanderbilt princes, as it were—stepped forward to take command of the celebration. The teeming family assembled in one of the parlors, in front of a grand floral display, and the murmur of conversation died away. “Here and there,” Stephens wrote, “half-hidden by flowing robes of gossamer, tulle, brocade, or velvet, a little fairy child would peep into the front ranks to learn why all the stillness had come on so suddenly.” Then the ceremony formally began with a speech by Cornelius Jeremiah.
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Corneil, the victim of disease and the degenerate gambler, had been the subject of concern and scorn poured out in unpredictable measure by his father. Once he collapsed in a severe seizure during a visit by his father. “While he was lying there,” recalled Corneil's servant, Margaret Massy who went to work in his Hartford house around 1862, “the Commodore came in, and, pointing his cane at the ship
Vanderbilt
, a picture in the room, said, ‘I would have given that ship to have cured Cornelius if it were possible.’” In the moneymaking frenzy that came with the war, Corneil had fallen back into his gambling habit. “Many times,” Jacob J. Van Pelt recalled, the Commodore “spoke very disrespectfully about him. He said he would lie and steal. He said, ‘I wouldn't let him go into my office if there was anything there he could lay his hands on.’” This mix of compassion and disdain—what Sophia called her husband's “stubborn inconsistency” toward his namesake—made Corneil self-conscious as he stood before the gathering. But his mother had always been his defender.
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And so, before his judge and his protector, Corneil began to speak.

“Kindred and friends,” he said, “the joyful yet solemn anniversary to which we have so long and anxiously looked forward, has at length brought us together. Let us be thankful that it finds so many links in our family circle still bright and unbroken.” After this auspicious beginning, Corneil's address took an awkward and painfully solipsistic turn. “For myself, having tested in a larger measure, perhaps, than others, the unwearying patience and unfailing love of those around whom we are gathered tonight,” he continued, “I feel sure that they will yet remain with us for many years, if only that I may be enabled to prove, by devotion and watchful care, through the long bright autumn of their days, that their long-suffering goodness was exercised in behalf of one who is neither insensible nor ungrateful.” A ripple of cringing around the room can be imagined at this wordy display of self-absorption and self-loathing.

As if to break the crust of discomfort, La Bau brought in a six-foot “tree” of ivy wrapped around a trellis that spelled out the names of Vanderbilt's children in tiny flowers. “The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season,” he said. “I insist that it is not time in which to cast away stones, because, alas for poor humanity we all dwell in glass houses.” This was an appropriate occasion for such reflections. “Could you, sir, fifty years ago, have predicted that steam would have been encased in a steel jacket, placed on wheels, and sent off, puffing fire and smoke, through this land, upon iron roads?” La Bau asked. “And could you, madam, have predicted that men of this day, thousands of miles apart, would converse by lightning?”

The Commodore declined to speak, as always. Rather, he and Sophia thanked their offspring through their oldest son, William. Billy, as Vanderbilt still called him, had earned his father's almost begrudging affection during the
North Star
excursion and its aftermath, in large part by winning his respect. “He was slow and clumsy in his movements,” the
New York Sun
later remarked. “His face was red and rough-skinnned and he had very small, dull eyes, so that he had the appearance, not justified by the facts, of a slow-witted man.” Unjustified indeed. The former treasurer of the Staten Island Railroad became the bankrupt line's receiver, revived its fortunes during the wartime boom, and now served as its president. This dull-looking farmer had emerged as a leading man of Richmond County and stood now as his parents' mouthpiece.
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At ten o'clock, after Billy spoke, the band played a march to accompany the family into the dining room, in a procession led by the Commodore and Sophia. They ate; La Bau sang; the grandchildren sang; the 7th Regiment Band marched up outside and serenaded the famous couple; and near midnight the band indoors played “Home, Sweet Home,” as arms slid into coats and coachmen drove up carriages. It was a glorious evening for the Vanderbilts and their children—except for the two who did not attend. One was Frances Lavinia. She was described as an “invalid,” a term so general and all-encompassing that it could have included anything from mental retardation to multiple sclerosis, though clearly her ailment had left her unable to care for herself since her birth in 1828. She lurked somewhere out of view, a vivid yet completely obscured fact in Vanderbilt's life.
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The other missing child was George. On September 19, the regular army had promoted him to captain of the 10th Infantry Regiment, but it appeared increasingly likely that it would be a purely honorary appointment. Soon after the horses pulling the last carriage had clopped away from the front of 10 Washington Place on the night of the golden anniversary, Billy resigned the presidency of the Staten Island Railroad to go to his brother in Nice. Whether he was prompted by news of his brother's decline is unclear. Whether he was prompted by news of his brother's death is unclear as well. George died on December 31, 1863. About the end of January, Billy returned to New York with his corpse.
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