The Lost Prince (4 page)

In Boston, Eleanor knew what had to be done, the double life she was destined to pursue. On the one hand, she busied herself establishing the beginnings of a life of social prominence, not just marrying the very respectable Frank Burden but also joining activities in cultural life and the arts expected of her class. All of that working to preserve what Frank called “the valued status quo,” the sacred social practice in that city of, as he said, “keeping the world exactly as we inherited it for the next generation.” At the same time she was mindful of the secret world she was meant to pursue, the world of change.

Eleanor was expected to make extraordinary investments during her lifetime. She knew that from the beginning. And all those investments were laid out for her, all prescribed on one single page of the journal she had brought from Vienna, a description from the end of her life of all she had accomplished, would accomplish, the details written out with care on that one page. She knew what needed to be done the moment she first read the journal and when she brought it back with her. That was the uniqueness of her destiny, what was to be the long span of her adult life. That was the blessing and the curse. She was going to be living out her life and taking actions based on the details recorded in 1897 from knowledge of her life from now until its end. The whole long journal was filled with prescribed actions, many of them in just one simple handwritten line. Even if she were inclined to share her Vienna knowledge with someone, which she was not, she knew that no one could understand her position, and she would be labeled gullible or deluded, just as Dr. Freud had labeled her years earlier. But of course Eleanor knew that the journal, unbelievable as it might appear, was accurate—it simply was the truth and her destiny, and that’s all there was to it.

Some of the changes were within her control, some, especially general world events, well outside of her doing. But the one page in particular
concerned itself exclusively with the investments she would make, all spectacular ones, it seemed. And it all began with the simple mention of investment in Cincinnati Soap and Candle, a firm she had never heard of but had recently uncovered in, of course, Cincinnati. She assumed that she was intended to invest all of her funds there. And that was that.

Again, alone and uncertain of the wisdom of what she was doing, and still without a business helper and uncertain what role her future husband was to play in her business ventures, she consulted Frank Burden. In financial matters at least, Frank was nothing if not thorough.

“A hypothetical investment,” she had told him by way of an introduction.

“I am glad it is only hypothetical,” Frank said, and then told with skepticism what he could find about the company and its history, none of it with much enthusiasm, and none with any knowledge of what she had planned. “It is out west,” he said dismissively, as if for a Bostonian that explained all that one needed to know. “A very shaky investment.”

Afterward, without telling anyone, she planned a trip by train alone to Cincinnati to meet with the president of the company, Homer Smith, with her bank draft for five thousand dollars in hand.

Eleanor found herself on the long train ride to southern Ohio, content to have this time to herself, solitude having become in no way troubling to her since her time in college. She had been accustomed to riding the train while at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. “Smith women are very familiar with trains,” her roommate from Philadelphia had observed. “We are all escaping from the strictures of some other world.” Her roommate was escaping Main Line Philadelphia. Eleanor believed she fit into that truism, having felt a blessed release every time she traveled “out west,” as her Winsor School classmates called it, at the beginning of each school year, always by train. “Boston women feel comfortable traveling to Europe,” her grandmother Putnam had observed many times, “but we have never been west of Worcester.” Northampton, Massachusetts, the home of Smith College, was west of Worcester and so was New York City, but even Eleanor, as venturesome as she was, in good Bostonian fashion had never traveled west of New York. So now she felt she was headed off to the territory that only a century previous had been the western extremity of the nation. She knew from her experience in
Vienna and from the journal that California with all its boundless freedom figured significantly in her life, but she knew she was not going to travel there. So Cincinnati was as far out as she was going to go, and she had to admit a certain anxiousness as she passed the long hours alone on the train hurtling westward.

She had never minded traveling alone, and she paid no heed to people who turned up noses realizing that she was. And of course back home she told no one and no one seemed to notice; she was after all still single and without immediate family.

On her long train rides she enjoyed being “alone with her thoughts,” as William James called it, and of course she enjoyed reading, often the long involved European novels of Zola or Flaubert or those of Henry James, whom she adored, and always when she was not reading her mind wandered. It was on those long train rides, she told her famous godfather, that she thought her most profound thoughts and, as her roommate from Philadelphia also observed, she found herself “contemplating her place in the universe outside Boston.” Her roommate, a thoroughly practical and commonsense woman, was always amused by hearing what Eleanor had been thinking on her train rides to and from her provincial home. And so on this long train ride to the western extremity of her universe, Eleanor found herself thinking about her life over the past two years and wondering how it all was going to fit together. She was on a mission she did not fully understand, determined to return home having converted the monies gained from her rather miraculous sale of a piece of jewelry into part ownership of a company she knew nothing about. She was doing it all because she knew she had to, and she admitted that the raw feeling in her stomach came from far more than just her heading out into unfamiliar territory. It came from her fear that she did not know what she was doing and that she might fail. She might not end up with what she needed, and then what?

Eleanor, who always prided herself on being a woman of independent spirit, now found herself acting on instructions she did not understand written in a journal whose literal authenticity she chose to believe in. She found herself asking the question she would ask herself many times over the succeeding years: Was she doing all this as a matter of free will or in order to fulfill some predetermined destiny? Was this a noble mission or simply a fool’s errand, a blind adherence to some fantastic writings of a madman and the deluded dream of meeting again the love of her life?

She planned to stay the night at a hotel in Pittsburgh, then catch an early train and be in Cincinnati by early afternoon. From the train station in Cincinnati she learned that a considerable tram ride and a short run by cab would deliver her to the door of Cincinnati Soap and Candle, where the owner would be waiting for her, she hoped, because of a cable she had sent announcing very naïvely her intention of having a meeting and providing financing for his company, Frank’s words “all businesses want investors” echoing in her head.

The company office was in the original and formidable pre–Civil War brick factory building, and inside a compound with a large wrought iron gate and the company’s initials welded in, in a style familiar from the company’s printed materials.

She tried her best to appear totally self-possessed as she approached the imposing edifice and walked through the heavy oak door. She announced herself at the large front desk, and a studious-looking woman, tall and slender and, Eleanor could see from the absence of a wedding band, a spinster, with her gray hair pulled up in a bun, greeted her formally. “My brother is expecting you, Miss Putnam,” she said, making it clear that Cincinnati Soap and Candle prided itself on being a family company. “He says you have come at a good time.”

Homer Smith, an older man in his late sixties, reminded her, in his robustness and hardy vigor, of Teddy Roosevelt. He had headed the family company since his early adulthood, she knew, and had a reputation as something of a hothead, but a fierce competitor and a demon for details and numbers. “Cincinnati Soap and Candle Company has been successful,” he said, “because my family has a long-standing cultivation of the hardworking factory families. They think of us as a vital part of their lives. That is a position and a prestige we are not willing to give up.” There was a fierce defiance in his eyes, as if he was looking into the face of a competitor.

“I am here only to invest,” Eleanor said quickly. “My fund knows of this area’s history and your company’s fine place in it, and would like to help.”

Early in the century, with the advent of railroads in the Midwest, Cincinnati had been a center for hog slaughter, and the consequent abundance of tallow as a by-product made it a center for the production of
candles, and soap as well. In Homer Smith’s grandfather’s day, the company was formed, first distinguished by candle manufacture and then by soap. By something of an accident, employees began experimenting with the addition of air to the soap bars, which were already large and pure white, making them—quite inadvertently—buoyant. “The floating bars did not sink into the dirty water of coal miners’ baths,” Homer Smith explained, “and hence a tradition grew and Workman’s Soap became a family necessity.” The soap appeared in time for the American Civil War, which called for a great volume of both soap and candles, and the company’s reputation spread, leading to wide popularity among soldiers, coal miners, and factory workers.

Homer Smith seemed to accept Eleanor’s conciliatory offering. “Workman’s Soap is not scented or fancy. It is simply inexpensive and pure. It is just what the people know and respect. It has been a solid and dependable product. And now the giant octopus Procter and Gamble wishes to take us over. And you know what?” He slammed down his palm on the rolltop desk. “They’re not going to do it. Thousands of small companies, good companies, are being swallowed up by giants all over the country. It is all part of Mr. J. P. Morgan’s vision. Big and giant is efficient and good, he says. Well, those big eastern trusts are not efficient and not good for the average American citizen, and I personally am not going to allow it. I’ll sell to the Colgate people before I let the giants run us over.” There was a fierceness in his eyes beyond what Eleanor thought reasonable and a ruddiness to his complexion that suggested he might explode.

“Then I am here to help.”

“Help?” he asked dismissively. “What degree of help can you offer?” He did not refer to her being a woman alone, but Eleanor had no trouble hearing that implication in his voice.

“I have five thousand dollars,” she said, doing her best to hide how much she felt out beyond her depth.

He stared at her for a long uncomfortable moment, obviously disappointed. “Pooh,” he said. “In your telegram you mentioned the word ‘significant.’ I misinterpreted.”

“You expected more,” Eleanor said.

“Yes, we need a lot more, and we need it right now,” he said. “I assumed that one presumptuous enough to send such a telegram would know that.” He seemed ready to end the conversation as it was for Eleanor
just beginning, and without hesitation, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she took a deep breath and spoke.

“As I told you before, I wish to invest. All companies need investment.”

Her assertiveness, she could see, caught the irascible owner off guard, and he eyed her for a long moment. “I appreciate your interest, dear lady, I really do, but there is nothing you can offer this company.” He stood to usher her to the door. Immediately she felt regret at not having done more research on this difficult man. Surely there would have been a way to avoid this dismissive impasse.

“Wait,” she said suddenly, aware that her moment was slipping away. “What
can
I offer you?”

“Nothing,” Homer Smith snapped abruptly. “There is nothing you can offer me.” He continued ushering her out, signaling with every ounce of energy in his fierce eyes and ruddy face that as far as he was concerned the meeting was over.

Mr. Smith’s spinster sister was conciliatory as she ushered her to the door. “Now you have met my brother,” she said. “He either loves you or hates you. I hope his reaction was not too fierce. He finds our company in a predicament and he was perhaps hoping for a rescuer.”

“Which he did not find in me.”

“Please do not take it personally. I doubt that anyone could help him right now.” She smiled benignly as she opened the door. “We all try.”

And soon riding the tram back to the train station, alone in an unfamiliar city, very much out of sorts, she was certain that she had lost the contact and the investment she knew from the journal she was required to make. She had come to a dead end, she thought, most definitely, a dead end and a disaster. What a weakling she had been. During the whole first encounter with Homer Smith, an intense one, she had to admit, she had allowed herself to be intimidated, dominated entirely by his pugnacious personality. As swept up as she was by the urgency of the need to buy Cincinnati Soap and Candle stock and the fear of being overrun by this strong, obviously quick-tempered man, she had been barely able to hold herself steady, struggling to see in this man a peculiar but worthy adversary rather than a bully to be avoided.