Fifty years in Wall Street
artist with unbounded gratitude for rescuing the picture from
Germany and bringing it to America.
Mr. Vanderbilt’s taste for music, especially operatic music, was
refined, and he had a keen sense of the humorous.
Neither Mr. Vanderbilt nor any of his family ever displayed any
anxiety to hobnob with those people who are known as the leaders
of society, although possessed of more wealth than the greatest
of them. The celebrated fancy dress ball, given by Mrs. Wm. K.
Vanderbilt, at the suggestion of Lady Mandeville, in March,
1883, seemed to have the effect of levelling up among the social
ranks of upper-tendom, and placing the Vanderbilts at the top of
the heap, in what is recognized as good society in New York. So
far as cost, richness of costume and newspaper celebrity were
concerned, that ball had, perhaps, no equal in history. It may
not have been quite so expensive as the feast of Alexander the
Great at Babylon, some of the entertainments of Cleopatra to
Augustus and Mark Antony, or a few of the magnificent banquets
of Louis XIV., but when viewed from every essential standpoint,
and taking into account our advanced civilization, I have no
hesitation in saying that the Vanderbilt ball was superior to
any of those grand historic displays of festivity and amusement
referred to, and more especially as the pleasure was not cloyed
with any excesses like those prevalent with the ancient nobility
of the old world and frequently exhibited among the modern “salt
of the earth” in the mother country. The ball had the effect of
drawing the Astors and the Vanderbilts into social union. The
_entente cordiale_ was brought about in this way, as the story
goes:
Several weeks before the ball Miss Carrie Astor, daughter of
Mrs. William Astor, organized a fancy dress quadrille, to be
danced at the ball. Mrs. Vanderbilt, it seems, heard of this and
said, in the hearing of some friends, that she was sorry Miss
Astor was putting herself to so much trouble, as she could not
invite her to the ball, for the reason that Mrs. Astor had never
called on her. This was carried to Mrs. Astor, who immediately
unbent her stateliness, called on Mrs. Vanderbilt, and in a very
ladylike manner made the _amende honorable_ for her former
neglect. So the Astors were cordially invited to the ball, where
Miss Astor presented a superb appearance with her well trained
quadrille.
All Mr. Vanderbilt’s other attachments vanished in presence of
his love for his horses. When any company, of which he formed a
part, began to talk horse his tongue was immediately loosened
and he became eloquent. Although generally a man of few words
and diffident as a talker, he could throw the eloquence of
Chauncey M. Depew in the shade when the subject was horse. He
not alone admired the speed of his horses; he seemed possessed
of the fondness of an Arabian for them, and, like old John
Harper of Kentucky, would probably have slept with them only
through fear of the newspapers criticising his eccentricity. It
was he who introduced the custom of fast driving teams, first
with Small Hopes, purchased by his father, and Lady Mac,
purchased by himself. With this team, in a top road wagon, he
made the then remarkable time of 2.23¼.
A host of rivals immediately sprang up, of whom Mr. Frank Work
was the most formidable. Mr. Vanderbilt procured faster teams,
and with Aldine and Early Rose, under the spur of competition,
reduced the time to 2.16½. Mr. Work, however, was a daring and
persistent rival, and soon beat this record, although only by a
fraction of a minute, which in trotting or racing counts just
the same as if it were an hour. Mr. Vanderbilt then purchased
the famous Maud S. in Kentucky for $21,000, and with her and
Aldine made the mile in Fleetwood Park in June, 1883, in 2.15½.
He afterwards reduced this time to 2.08¾, leaving Mr. Work and
all other rivals hopelessly in the distance. Eventually he sold
Maud S. to Mr. Robert Bonner for the comparatively small amount
of $40,000, on condition that she should never be trotted for
money. Other men would have given $100,000 for her without this
condition.
On the 12th of August, this year, Murphy, the famous jockey,
drove Maud S. in single harness, at Tarrytown, a mile in 2.10½,
and declared he did not push her. He said he was confident he
could make her do the mile in 2.06 or 2.07 if Mr. Bonner would
permit him, thus smashing all trotting records.
It has been said by experts in driving that Mr. Vanderbilt was
the best double-team driver in America, either amateur or
professional.
Mr. Vanderbilt’s bequests were liberal and numerous. He added
$300,000 to the million which his father gave, through the wife
of the Commodore and Dr. Deems, to the Nashville University. He
gave half a million to the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
and his sister, Mrs. Sloane, added a quarter of a million to
this generous donation. It cost him over $100,000 to remove
Cleopatra’s Needle from Egypt to Central Park. He offered to
cancel the $150,000 check which he gave to General Grant to
relieve him from the Ward-Fish embarrassment, and his munificent
gift to the waiter students in the White Mountains will long be
remembered.
Although Mr. Vanderbilt was very courageous, as was proved by
the fact that no matter how many threatening letters he may have
received—and their name was legion—from cranks, socialists and
others, he never made any change in his programme or his routine
of business for the day, and never absented himself from the
place where he was expected at any particular hour on account of
such letters. Yet he was peculiarly sensitive to public opinion,
and sought in various ways to correct its hasty judgment in
regard to himself and his enormous wealth.
It was this sensitive feeling, together with his profound
respect for popular opinion against monopolies, which induced
him to sell a controlling interest, 300,000 shares out of
400,000, at from 120 to 130, ten points below the market price,
of New York Central stock in 1879 to a syndicate, the chief
members of which were Drexel, Morgan & Co., Morton, Bliss & Co.,
August Belmont & Co., Winslow, Lanier & Co., L. Von Hoffman &
Co, Cyrus W. Field, Edwin D. Morgan, Russell Sage, Jay Gould and
J. S. Morgan & Co. of London. The amount paid for the stock was
$35,000,000. As the syndicate largely represented the Wabash
system, the stock of that property, as well as New York Central,
had an important advance.
The reasons assigned for this stupendous and unprecedented stock
transaction are briefly condensed by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew as
follows: “Mr. Vanderbilt, because of assaults made upon him in
the Legislature and in the newspapers, came to the conclusion
that it was a mistake for one individual to own a controlling
interest in a great corporation like the New York Central, and
also a mistake to have so many eggs in one basket, and he
thought it would be better for himself and better for the
company if the ownership were distributed as widely as possible.
The syndicate afterwards sold it, and the stock became one of
the most widely-distributed of the dividend-paying American
securities. There are now about 14,000 stockholders. At the time
he sold there were only 3,000.”
That hasty expression, “The public be damned,” which Mr.
Vanderbilt used in an interview with a reporter for a Chicago
newspaper, has received wide circulation, various comment and
hostile criticism. Although the expression is literally correct,
the public at first, and many of them to this day, received a
wrong impression in regard to the spirit in which it was
applied. It was represented as if Mr. Vanderbilt was a
tyrannical monopolist, who defied public opinion. A true and
simple relation of the interview is a sufficient answer to this.
The subject was the fast mail train to Chicago. Mr. Vanderbilt
was thinking of taking this train off, because it did not pay,
and did not appear to him therefore to be a necessity, and he
did not propose to run trains as a philanthropist. As part of
the interview which relates to this point has become so widely
historic, I think it will bear reproduction here, literally:
“Why are you going to stop this fast mail train?” asked the
reporter.
“Because it doesn’t pay,” replied Mr. Vanderbilt; “I can’t run a
train as far as this permanently at a loss.”
“But the public find it very convenient and useful. You ought to
accommodate them,” rejoined the reporter.
“The public,” said Mr. Vanderbilt. “How do you know, or how can
I know that they want it? If they want it why don’t they
patronize it and make it pay? That’s the only test I have as to
whether a thing is wanted or not. Does it pay? If it doesn’t pay
I suppose it isn’t wanted.”
“Are you working,” persisted the reporter, “for the public or
for your stockholders?”
“The public be damned!” exclaimed Mr. Vanderbilt, “I am working
for my stockholders. If the public want the train why don’t they
support it.”
This, I think, was a very proper answer from a business
standpoint, and the expression, when placed in its real
connection in the interview, does not imply any slur upon the
public. It simply intimates that he was urging a thing on the
public which it did not want and practically refused. The
“cuss” word might have been left out, but the crushing reply
to the reporter would not have been so emphatic, and that
obtrusive representative of public opinion might have gone
away unsquelched. As it was, however, he and his editor
exhibited considerable ingenuity in making the best
misrepresentation possible out of the words of Mr. Vanderbilt,
thus giving them a thousand times wider circulation than the
journal in which they were first printed, and affording that
paper a big advertisement. This is the correct account of that
world-renowned expression, “The public be damned!”
The mausoleum at New Dorp, Staten Island, is another outcome of
the genius of Wm. H. Vanderbilt. Mr. Richard M. Hunt was the
architect. Pursuant to the instructions of Mr. Vanderbilt, it
was built without any fancy work, but at the same time on such a
grand and substantial scale that it is said there is nothing
among the tombs of either European or Oriental royalty to excel
it, in solidity of structure and grandeur of design. It is forty
feet in height, sixty in breadth and about 150 in depth. It is
situated on an eminence commanding the largest prospect of the
bay, and one of the finest views all around in the State of New
York. The tomb and the twenty-one acres of land, upon the
highest part of which it stands, cost nearly half a million
dollars, and when the grounds are finished, in the style
intended, beautiful roads and walks made, flower gardens planted
with the requisite adornments, the entire expense of the
mausoleum and its surroundings will not fall far short of a
million dollars.
The precautions taken by the family against resurrectionists is
one of the best that has ever been adopted. There is a guard at
the tomb night and day. Each of these must put on record his