Henrietta Howland Green; Another Look at the “Witch of Wall Street”
Henrietta Howland Green; Another Look at the “Witch of Wall Street”
Henrietta Howland Green aka the “Witch of Wall Street” (Wikipedia)by Joe Silvia Separating the chaff
Generally speaking there are two groupings of folks when the name Hetty
Green is uttered. One side – the most common one – can be summed up in
the quip “Ah….the Witch of Wall Street.” The other is the “I know the
name. Just unsure about who she was.” group.
Some will bring up her son Colonel Green, perhaps a mention of a
“dish” on an island, and almost always what follows are a few anecdotes;
a mixture of truth and urban legend, none of which paints her in a
decent light. Here are the most memorable:
“Isn’t that the rich lady that spent a a night trying to find a 2 cent stamp?”
“That’s the mean bitch that tried to have her son Ned admitted to a
free clinic, to save money, and his leg ended up being amputated!”
“She refused to use heat or hot water.”
“That’s the lady that saved money on laundry detergent by only having the soiled portions of her clothing washed.”
“Hetty Green is the tight-fisted lady that was once carrying
$200,000 in bonds on an omnibus, yet when a passenger mentioned that she
would have better been served with a personal coach she replied with ‘Perhaps you can afford to ride in a carriage—I cannot.’“
Funny how people are remembered for the mundane things. The appearance that contributed to her infamous moniker (N.B. Whaling Museum)
I bring these things up first to clear them out of the way, so we can
get to some real “meat.” There is a wealth of literature out there
discussing these stories. Volumes have been written. Wikipedia, YouTube,
and Google cover the same old ground: Hetty Green the miser, the witch,
the shrew. If you grew up in the region, and have clicked on this
article, you likely have read up on our “antagonist” Henrietta Howland
Robinson.
You’ve heard the anecdotes and urban legends. To cover what is
readily available is to insult the readers and practice redundancy. So,
perhaps we can cover those things less oft mentioned. Not unavailable.
Not unknown, or secret. Just rarely focused upon.
I won’t take a revisionist angle and try to paint Hetty as a
misunderstood, philanthropic angel. Those ill words aren’t untrue ones.
They’re pretty accurate for the most part – urban legends excluded. The
truth about many historical figures -excepting the Hitlers, Pol Pots,
and Stalins of the world – is somewhere in the middle. Rarely are the
highlights the genuine article. I’d like to drag her somewhere closer to
the middle. Not dead center – because that would be overcompensation
and false – but somewhere else beside the extreme right. Let’s focus on a
different element of the bouquet.
An unusual upbringing
The woman Henrietta Howland Robinson, was born to Edward Mott Robinson
and Abby Howland right here in New Bedford in 1834. This was a time,
where a male-led society deemed women incapable of a business mind-set,
or financial matters. There was no shortage of men that simply felt
women just couldn’t handle math, especially within the context of
economics. Some men were downright hostile to the idea of a woman
holding a higher position within a company, let alone having a major
presence in the larger regional or national economy.
This historical context is often left out of the recounting of
Henrietta’s life. How was a woman to gain rank within a business
environment with the societal obstacles of the day? Certainly, politely
pussy-footing about wouldn’t be sufficient. Asking nicely would get one
nowhere. Having a special knack, high intelligence, or high academic
degree wasn’t enough. Liquid capital wouldn’t even suffice.
What the
time needed was a pit-bull, a Godzilla, a witch. Only this “monster”,
stoically and steadfastly, could break these rigid barriers down. Only a
Witch of Wall Street could set a precedent in a male dominated society.
Armed with finances, a woman with a specific disposition and traits,
born in a family with financial leanings created a “perfect storm” of
sorts. She may have been the “Witch of Wall Street”, but she was also
the boon for feminine societal progress. Here’s our Henrietta dragged
slightly closer to center. Green Counting House – Union & Front Streets (Spinner Pub.)
She didn’t start out as a “witch.” In fact, there is quite a bit of
mention about her rather attractive appearance in her younger years. She
had fair skin, “angelic blue eyes”, and was referred to as “…a good-looking woman.”
Further illustrating a personage that isn’t accurately portrayed as a
wretched miser, she would earn the moniker “the pride and pain” of
Bellows Falls, Vermont the hometown of her eventual husband Edward Henry
Green.
By age 20 there were attempts by her father to “present” her to
society armed with the finest wardrobe to attract suitors. Showing the
frugality and shrewdness that she would be legendary for, she sold those
clothes and invested the money in the stock market. So how did an “angelic” attractive woman turn into a “witch”?
Henrietta Robinson was raised by her grandfather Gideon Howland and
father, the aforementioned, Edward Mott Robinson. This Quaker family
owned a rather large whaling fleet and made substantial profits in trade
with China. She was surrounded by financiers and businessmen. It was an
environment saturated with investments, deals, and accounting and it
left a indelible mark on her. Indeed, by the time she was eight years of
age, she had already established her own personal bank account.
History shows that her mother, Abby Howland, was sick on a relatively
constant basis. When her father’s eyesight began to fail, and because
illness made her mother incapacitated, Henrietta by the age of 6 began
reading financial papers to her father. Surely there was a soaking up
his experience and wisdom. By age 13, she rose within the family’s
business and attained official rank as the bookkeeper. At 15 years of
age, she gained schooling in Boston.
In 1864, at age 30, her father passed away. He left her between
6-$7.5 million dollars in liquid assets, equivalent to $100 million
dollars today. According to the times, the inheritance should be placed
into a trust fund and managed by – get ready for it – a male. Preferably
someone trusty, like a relative. So cemented was this idea, that even
Henrietta’s own family fought her to make her abide. Here was some more
“fertilizer” to grow a witch. Henrietta had to battle the standards of
the day and her own family to get what was rightfully hers.
The setting
was molding Henrietta and pressuring her into a set direction. She
eventually procured a portion of her inheritance and began to
immediately invest in Civil War war bonds.
A few years later, in 1867 she wed wealthy Vermonter Edward H. Green
on the terms that their finances were kept separate, even in case of
divorce. Having full control over her own finances, Henrietta was now
positioned within history and ready to earn her name the “Witch of Wall
Street.” She would have been named the “Miser of Wall Street” or
colloquially (and perhaps chauvinistically) called the “Bitch of Wall
Street”, if it were not for her general appearance. Hetty Green at 18 years old (Whaling Museum)
She commonly wore the Quaker garb that her family was brought up in.
Outdated long black dresses, which were said to actually be so worn and
unkempt that they began to turn a shade of green. Her personal hygiene
was so poor and her body odor so foul, that her desk had to be
maintained at a distance from others. Henrietta was sailing her own boat
and simply wasn’t concerned with other people’s opinions of how she
carried herself.
One has to wonder if her appearance and hygiene was partly due to her
frugality and shrewdness and partly because of its intimidation factor
as a woman among men in a male dominated business environment.
Wicked Witch of the East?
Being a “witch” worked within the historical context. She then would
pursue a variety of careful, conservative, long-term investments in real
estate (New York, St. Louis, & Chicago), railroad industry and
government bonds. She would also float loans. She purchased movie
theaters, office buildings, hotels, railroads, even cemeteries and
churches. She was extremely calculated in her approach to determine what
to invest her money on or what to purchase. Every investment was
heavily researched. In spite of what many men thought, this woman
excelled at math and economics. She was as capable if not more capable
then her peers. Stereotype be damned.
Through a number of economic crashes, particularly those of 1857,
1873, 1893, and 1907, she was at her most frugal. This is when she would
float her loans and snatch up any buying opportunity that presented
itself because of the economic hardship. When it came to nearly all her
financial dealings her general policy was to buy low and cash out when
they reached a relative high. In 1905 she was quoted in the New York
Times as saying “I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep
them until they go up and people are anxious to buy.”
Through this manner of dealing, her frugal disposition, and over the
course of 50 years, she turned that early inheritance of a few million
dollars into over $100 Million dollars. Historians have estimated that
to be anywhere from half a billion to $4 billion dollars today. She was
financially involved and networked across 48 states at some level making
her the richest women on the planet.
Henrietta’s Family Life and Legacy
Henrietta bore two children, a son Edward Howland Robinson “Ned” Green
on August 23, 1868, and daughter Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Green on
January 7, 1871. In spite of keeping their finances separate, her
husband Edward was given special privileges and even loaned money based
on who he was married to. His financial house John J. Cisco & Son
benefited not only by who he was married to, but also because Henrietta
was one of those who actually invested in the company. Investors thought
that the husband of the richest woman on earth who also had a financial
interest, wasn’t someone you would have to be concerned about
defaulting on a loan on. When the house began to collapse, it was
learned that the firm had actually loaned Edward money based on who he
was wed to. Her primary bank tried to recover some of Edward’s debts by
seizing some of her assets. They certainly didn’t know who they were
dealing with! Wedding Portrait of Hetty Green, new husband Matthew Astor Wilks, and daughter Sylvia
Henrietta withdrew her money immediately and deposited it in Chemical
Bank, a leading consolidator of the banking industry. This economic
fiasco, caused them to separate and Edward to move out. However, as I
mentioned earlier, we’re here to cover the lesser highlighted aspects of
Henrietta’s life; she reconciled with him later in life and personally
took care of him in the last years of his life when his health failed.
Not good press for a “witch.”
Henrietta passed away at age 81, in 1916 after a lengthy period of
strokes. She willed her entire massive fortune to her children. Her
children did not inherit her shrewdness and frugality. Her son Ned did
work under her managing some of her properties in Chicago, but liked to
spend money and amassed one of the largest and finest stamp collections
in the world at that time. History records him as living rather
lavishly, but it appears he lifted off of the interest of his $100
million dollar inheritance, which hovered somewhere around $1 million
dollars per year. Daughter Sylvia married minor heir to the Astor
fortune, Matthew Astor Wilks. Her mother of course, made her force a
prenuptial agreement on Matthew.
Both children maintained their inheritances and finances through the
Great Depression, surely using the tactics, and conservative methods of
their matriarch. Ned, of course, owned the Round Hill estate with its
famous WMAF radio transmitters and prototype atom smasher. Sylvia left
her $200 million (excepting $1.3 Million) to 64 different charities
primarily involving churches, hospitals, and universities.
Henrietta Howland Green was the “Witch of Wall Street.” That will
never change, but she also paved the way for women in the world of
finance, or in the workforce period for that matter. She showed that a
woman was more than capable to do the job of a man and even do it
better. She was a loving wife and in spite of being a miser, left her
children her entire fortune. She employed thousands, supporting an
untold number of families. This is the other element of the bouquet that
is the Hetty Green personage. Perhaps “witch” is too harsh a word. How
about “Honey Badger of Wall Street”?
Nah. “Witch of Wall Street” has a nice ring to it.
Born:
August 3rd, 1959. Nuneaton, England PiL:
Drums & Percussion 1979/80 & 1982-85 Bio:
After a short succession of drummers Atkins finally joined PiL in September
1979; in order to complete sessions for 'Metal Box' (he was their
6th drummer in 18 months). His audition for the band is the studio
recording of 'Bad Baby' as included on 'Metal Box'.
Atkins twice previously tried to join PiL: “I tried to join
when John first left the Pistols. I came down from Durham for the auditions,
but I had to go back early and so I fluffed that one. I tried again
when Richard Dudanski joined. Then when he left, I called Keith who
said come along. It was just me pestering them really…"
Atkins is probably PiL's best known drummer, and also regarded by many
as their best. He had three separate stints with the band 1979-85 and
contributed to 'Flowers of Romance', 'Commercial Zone' and 'This is What
You Want...'. His live debut
was the 'Paris Au Printemps' live album in 1980. He also toured 1982/3
and 1984/5 before leaving in June 1985. Atkins later claimed Lydon wrote
'FFF' directly about his departure: "Farewell
my fairweather friend…"
Prior to PiL, Atkins had played in local covers band's in the North
of England. He then moved to London forming The Hots along with (future
PiL bassist) Pete Jones. Previous to Atkins first departure from PiL in
June 1980 he formed his own band Brian
Brain – again with
bassist Pete Jones – which would continue in various forms
until 1987: releasing two albums and several singles.
Post PiL, Atkins set up his own
Plaid Records to release Brian Brain records. He then decided
to quit the music business and start a construction company in New York. However,
he soon returned to music and 1987 saw him found Invisible Records in
Chicago. The label continues to the present day releasing Atkins own
projects; along with a variety of industrial and experimental bands.
Spring 2002 also saw him found Underground Inc, a network of independent
record labels which runs in conjunction with Invisible.
Since Atkins disbanded Brian Brain in 1987 he has played in a variety
of groups including Killing Joke, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Revolting Cocks
and Murder Inc. He also fronts his own ever-changing industrial band Pigface.
In 1999/2000 he teamed up with former PiL colleague Jah Wobble
to form the short lived "supergroup" The
Damage Manual; along
with long term collaborator Chris Connelly and Killing Joke's Geordie
Walker. The band released a self-titled album preceded by an EP via Invisible.
The line-up also toured the UK in summer 2000. However, tensions simmered
over Atkins proposed US Tour schedule – and his mixing of the
album – and the line-up acrimoniously
split…
In 2007 Atkins published his own book on touring
entitled 'Tour:Smart'. He
now teaches college
classes on the music business; and conducts seminars around the world. Atkins
is also still involved in the creative side of the business releasing Pigface records
and producing Invisible / Underground Inc artists. Fodderstompf Links: Fodderstompf
Interview Collaborations
Discography (Damage Manual, Brian Brain etc) Brian
Brain Gig List External Links: www.myspace.com/martinatkins
Underground
Inc / Invisible
Records
Hang on the Box, mainland China’s first all-girl
punk unit, was a glorious mess of contradictions and extremes. Their
first live performance, for a small but fanatical crowd of fellow
Beijing punks, was met with boos, laughter and jeering; six months later
they were on the cover of the local edition of Newsweek, serving
as poster girls for an entire generation of Chinese youth. Lauded by
critics for politicizing gender through their empowered, femme-forward
lyrics, they were famously scornful of Cobra, the only other all-girl rock group before them on the mainland.
Despite Hang on the Box’s cult status in Japan and
the United States, the band constantly struggled to get gigs, record
deals and respect at home in China, where—because of the Newsweek
cover, because they were the first Chinese band of any kind to sing
exclusively in English, because they were women—the scene never fully
embraced them. Yet, by the time they disbanded, increasing numbers of
bands coming out of the movement—great bands, like Queen Sea Big Shark, Subs and Hedgehog—seemed to have at least one prominent female member and were singing most, if not all, of their songs in English.
Hang on the Box, often referred to as HOTB, was founded in the summer of 1998 by Wang Yue (aka Gia Wang, vocals) and Yilina (bass), who were classmates, and Li Yan Fan
(guitar), who had approached the two friends in a bootleg music store,
asking for a cigarette. According to their Japanese label’s website,
Yilina, who was born in inner Mongolia, had a dream one night in which a
god told her that, if she ever formed a band, she must call it Hang on the Box.
Jonathan Campbell recounts Wang and Yilina’s punk conversion in his book Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll.
“Their lives were changed the moment they saw their first show,”
Campbell writes. “The Mohawks, the dyed hair, the sunglasses (inside!);
they’d never seen anything like it.” Wang told Campbell that, “You
didn’t know what made [the punks] special but you knew that, in
comparison, you were a jackass. …I called Yilina and said, ‘Our entire
life before was completely stupid. We need to become like them: our
taste in music, our attitude, our lives.’”
According to Campbell, not long after Wang’s conversion, she received a phone call from Shen Yue of Anarchy Jerks,
inviting her to a gig at Beijing’s first all-punk venue, Scream, which
had just opened a few months before. After bragging about the
awesomeness of his band, Shen asked Wang what she was up to. She told
him that she, too, had just formed a band. It was only sort of true. He
politely asked if her band would like to open for his. “I said yes,”
Wang recalls. “I didn’t even think about it.”
Licking their wounds after the initial disaster at Scream, HOTB’s
members made a pact to work their asses off and become the greatest
all-girl punk band in the world. In 1999, they enlisted Shen Jing (aka Shenggy)
to play drums. After two years of gigging and recording, unable find a
mainland label to take them on, they finally found a home for their
first CD, Yellow Banana, through Audrey Kimura’s
Sister Records + Benten label in Tokyo, Japan. (Benten, or Benzeiten,
is a goddess of love, music and happiness.) “This is not a political
statement that we are making about the sickening system of the music
business or the all too passive attitude of the general listening
population,” Kimura says, referring to her label’s female-centric focus,
“we just want to have fun.” It was a match made in heaven. Scream
Records, the Beijing venue’s newly launched label, released the album
for mainlanders the following year.
Yellow Banana, released in 2001, is by any standards one of
the most rock-solid debuts ever burned into optical discs of
polycarbonate plastic. In addition to Ramones-y/riot
grrrl-esque instant classics like “Asshole, I’m Not Your Baby,” “No
Sexy,” “Heroin and Cocaine” and “For Some Stupid Cunts at BBS,” there is
the inexplicably dreamy “Red Comet,” which sounds a bit like Portishead channeled through the Cowboy Junkies,
and the bizarrely sweet “Your Everything Kills Me,” a scratchy, springy
near-ballad, flatly sung and which almost sounds like it’s being
performed underwater. Most remarkable, given the shock-to-the-system
assault of most of the cuts on this album, is how gorgeously melodic
everything is: There isn’t a song on this record, however thrashing and
abrasive, that won’t give even a mildly sensitive listener goose bumps.
The lyrics, despite being in English, are often indecipherable, even
in the rare instances when the English-speaking listener can clearly
make out each of the words Wang is singing. “Kill Your Belly”—perhaps a
rejoinder to the Sex Pistols’ chilling “Bodies”?—is
reputedly about abortion; yet one is left wondering who’s speaking to
whom in the repeated chorus, “Fuu-uuhck you, I don’t neeeed
you!”—China’s One Child Policy to Developing Fetus X?
In 2002, Yilina, for reasons that remain mysterious and despite having named the band, quit, and was replaced by Liu Bao.
HOTB continued to record and tour, at home and abroad, then, just as
mysteriously, the day after the release of their second album, 2003’s Di Di Di, Yilina rejoined.
Di Di Di is nearly as thrilling as Yellow Banana.
Though less abrasive, songs like “I’m Mine” and “Now I Wanna Say
Apologies to You” have all of the stripped-down, frenzied, fuzz-tone
energy of anything on the first disc, while tracks like “Summertime,” a
slow, bluesy cover of the Gershwin classic, expand HOTB’s range even
further. In the title song Wang Yue wears her personal heroes on her sleeve: “Every day I listen to the Cibo Matto,” she insists in a delightfully strained falsetto, “I’ma listen to Bikini Kill, Bikini Kill…
”
Over the next year, two more HOTB releases emerged: For Every Punk Bitch & Arsehole (2003), a compilation of the first two albums for European distribution, and Foxy Lady (2004), another compilation, this time including two new songs—a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s
“Foxy Lady,” featuring Wang screaming the lyrics through a megaphone,
and a live version of “Shanghai,” a song that would later get them into a
bit of hot water with the Shanghai press. The band continued to tour,
adding new songs to their repertoire.
In an interview conducted in 2004 by Andrea Benvenuto of Women Rock,
Wang was asked about the group’s feminist message and whether
“addressing sexism fit[s] in with whatever desire you have to just be in
a band and have fun.” She responded:
“There’re many things I’m not satisfied with in life, also about the
relationship between the female and male. Because I’m not pleased with
it, then I take my lyrics to reflect that rage. I think that will
influence many people. In a new song I cite a part from the movie A Clockwork Orange:
‘What kind of world is it at all? Man on the moon, man spinning around
the earth, and there is no attention paid to earthly law and all the
normal.”
During this same interview, when asked about what it means to be
punk, Wang’s response was: “We’re not punk! NO!!!” No further
explanation beyond that is given.
But HOTB was changing. If Yellow Banana was the trio’s Velvet Underground and Nico, their 2007 album, No More Nice Girls, was their Loaded. It’s a beautiful, often dreamy album, with a sound much closer to more recent Beijing bands like The Gar and Carsick Cars, both of whom HOTB most likely influenced. But not everyone welcomed it. Berwin Song, the Cleveland, Ohio-born deputy editor of Time Out Shanghai, trashed it upon its release:
“In their tumultuous near-decade of existence, Hang on the Box may have, at one point, captured a genuine punk aesthetic with their disdain and anger. As the cover to No More Nice Girls shows, their final era is better represented by baby-doll dresses and pigtails—and music that’s just as soft.”
Song then focused his critique on Wang: “After ten years, she still
can’t play her guitar (the album’s guitar tracks are handled by guest
players), and it’s clear she’s in it just for the style. She thinks
she’s hot, and wants you to think so too. In the song ‘Shanghai,’ she
croons, in that Chinglishy love-you-long-time sing-song of hers, ‘We can
to keep such great white cock.’ Who gets off on that, I wonder?”
So, what of Song’s assertions? First of all, there is not a single
track on any of HOTB’s albums where Wang sounds anything remotely
“sing-song” nor “love-you-long-time.” Even at her most brazen—for
example, on Yellow Banana’s “Motorcycle Boy,” where she belts out “Yes I like you, oh I want to fuck you!”—there is not even a hint
of seduction in her voice. Rather, she sounds like she (and her wall of
guitar noise) is going to rape, and then possibly murder, the object of
her lust.
Secondly, it’s immaterial how much Wang may or may not have played
her guitar in the studio. For one thing, she’s the lead singer, not the
guitarist. Even if she was, no one has ever thought less of “While My
Guitar Gently Weeps” because non-Beatle Eric Clapton, rather than George Harrison, played the lead.
Finally, I would argue, “Shanghai” is not intended, as Song implies,
to incite yellow fever; most likely, it’s a slam against author Wei Hui and the hype around her international bestseller Shanghai Baby, in which the Joni Mitchell-listening, Henry Miller-reading protagonist Nikki/Coco carries on with the BMW-driving German, Mark:
What is Shanghai?
Rich white cock and hungry yellow chick
What is Shanghai?
Stupid white cock and hungry yellow chick Oh, our Shanghai is international Oh, our Shanghai is A-1, A-1, A-1 We can to keep such great white cock We can to sell such great yellow chick
No More Nice Girls does reveal more of the band’s softer side than previous recordings, but the album is unmistakably Hang on the Box, like the shadow of the cherry tree in the album’s third track, “You Hate Me But I Love You”:
the spring water nested in a hole in a rock
shimmers softly when disturbed
the vibrations of the ground
have given birth to strong waves
which crash together in an irregular swell
on the surface without cresting if there’s
a verb meaning “to move harmoniously”
it must be used here the cherry tree
gripped in shadows spread out and curl up
sway and twist, to the rhythm of the water
but the interesting thing is that however much
they change they keep the shape of a cherry tree
Since the release of No More Nice Girls, HOTB has broken up
and reformed (with different lineups) several times. It’s doubtful,
however, that they’ll ever record again. The disappointment of their
many fans around the world aside, it almost doesn’t matter: their place
in the short but robust history of Chinese rock ’n’ roll will forever be
prominent and secure.
—Gary Sullivan
Poet and cartoonist Gary Sullivan runs bodegapop.com.
Born:
