The Shuttle | Page 5

pay
with a skin of value. The first Mrs. Vanderpoel was as wonderful as her
husband. They were both wonderful. They were the founders of the
fortune which a century and a half later was the delight--in fact the
piece de resistance--of New York society reporters, its enormity being
restated in round figures when a blank space must be filled up. The
method of statement lent itself to infinite variety and was always
interesting to a particular class, some elements of which felt it
encouraging to be assured that so much money could be a personal
possession, some elements feeling the fact an additional argument to be
used against the infamy of monopoly.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel transmitted to his son his accumulations
and his fever for gain. He had but one child. The second Reuben built
upon the foundations this afforded him, a fortune as much larger than
the first as the rapid growth and increasing capabilities of the country
gave him enlarging opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessary

to deal with savages: his powers were called upon to cope with those of
white men who came to a new country to struggle for livelihood and
fortune. Some were shrewd, some were desperate, some were dishonest.
But shrewdness never outwitted, desperation never overcame,
dishonesty never deceived the second Reuben Vanderpoel. Each
characteristic ended by adapting itself to his own purposes and qualities,
and as a result of each it was he who in any business transaction was
the gainer. It was the common saying that the Vanderpoels were
possessed of a money-making spell. Their spell lay in their entire
mental and physical absorption in one idea. Their peculiarity was not so
much that they wished to be rich as that Nature itself impelled them to
collect wealth as the load-stone draws towards it iron. Having
possessed nothing, they became rich, having become rich they became
richer, having founded their fortunes on small schemes, they increased
them by enormous ones. In time they attained that omnipotence of
wealth which it would seem no circumstance can control or limit. The
first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, the second could, the third
was as well educated as a man could be whose sole profession is
money-making. His children were taught all that expensive teachers
and expensive opportunities could teach them. After the second
generation the meagre and mercantile physical type of the Vanderpoels
improved upon itself. Feminine good looks appeared and were made
the most of. The Vanderpoel element invested even good looks to an
advantage. The fourth Reuben Vanderpoel had no son and two
daughters. They were brought up in a brown-stone mansion built upon
a fashionable New York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the
farthest point of the Rocky Mountains the number of dollars this
"mansion" (it was always called so) had cost, was known. There may
have existed Pueblo Indians who had heard rumours of the price of it.
All the shop-keepers and farmers in the United States had read
newspaper descriptions of its furnishings and knew the value of the
brocade which hung in the bedrooms and boudoirs of the Misses
Vanderpoel. It was a fact much cherished that Miss Rosalie's bath was
of Carrara marble, and to good souls actively engaged in doing their
own washing in small New England or Western towns, it was a distinct
luxury to be aware that the water in the Carrara marble bath was
perfumed with Florentine Iris. Circumstances such as these seemed to

become personal possessions and even to lighten somewhat the burden
of toil.
Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part of the
story of her married life forms my prologue. Hers was of the early
international marriages, and the republican mind had not yet adjusted
itself to all that such alliances might imply. It was yet ingenuous,
imaginative and confiding in such matters. A baronetcy and a manor
house reigning over an old English village and over villagers in
possible smock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to
people whose intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the
novels of Mrs. Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little
anecdotes in which vicarages, gamekeepers, and dowagers figured,
were exciting in these early days. "Sir Nigel Anstruthers," when
engraved upon a visiting card, wore an air of distinction almost
startling. Sir Nigel himself was not as picturesque as his name, though
he was not entirely without attraction, when for reasons of his own he
chose to aim at agreeableness of bearing. He was a man with a good
figure and a good voice, and but for a heaviness of feature the result of
objectionable living, might have given the impression of being better
looking than he really was. New York laid amused and at the same