Chapter 11, Hearth Notes
1.
Galt's overthrow of Valentine was an episode of business which need not have concerned the outside world.
But the conditions of the struggle were dramatic and personal, and the papers made big news of it.
The consequences were beyond control. Henry M. Galt was publicly discovered.
That, of course, was inevitable then or later.
The other consequences were abnormal, becoming social and political, and followed him to
the end of his career.
Valentine was not a man to be smudged out of the picture.
He was a person of power and influence.
The loss of his historic position was of no pecuniary moment, for he was very rich.
It was a blow at his prestige and a hurt to his pride, inflicted in the limelight.
His grievance against Galt was irredressable.
Honestly, too, he believed Galt to be a dangerous man.
But he was a fair fighter within the rules, and would perhaps never himself have carried
the warfare outside of Wall Street where it belonged.
Mrs. Valentine was the one to do that.
She was the social tyrant of her time, ruling by fear and might that little herd of human
beings who practice self-worship and exclusion as a mysterious right, import and invent manners,
In the supercilious gesture which means, one does not know them, and in short, get the
goat of Vulgas.
Her favor was the one magic passport to the inner realm of New York society.
Her disfavor was a writ of execution.
She was a turbulent woman, whose tongue knew no inhibitions.
Whom she liked, she terrified.
Whom she disliked, she sacrificed.
Now she took up the fight in two dimensions.
Galt she slandered outrageously, implanting distrust of him in the minds of men who would
carry it far and high, to the Senate, even to the heart of the administration.
Then, as you would expect from her position as social dictator, she struck at the Galt
women.
That was easy.
With one word, she cast them into limbo.
Mrs. Galt had inalienable rights of caste.
She belonged to a family that had been of the elect for three generations.
Her aunt once held the position, now occupied by Mrs. Valentine.
Galt's family, though not at all distinguished, was yet quite acceptable.
Marriage therefore did not alter Mrs. Galt's social status.
She had voluntarily relinquished it, without prejudice, under pressure of forbidding circumstances.
These were a lack of wealth, a chronic sense of insecurity, and Galt's unfortunate temperament.
Gradually she sank into social obscurity, morose and embittered.
She made no effort to introduce her daughters into the society she had forsaken, and as
she was unwilling for them to move on a lower plane, the result was that they were nurtured
in exile.
Vera at a certain time broke through these absurd restraints and began to make her own
She had known contacts with the world. They were irregular. She spent weekends with people whom nobody knew, went about with casual acquaintances, got in with a musical set, and then took up art. Not seriously for art's sake, but because some rebellious longing of her nature was answered in the free atmosphere of studios and art classes. In her wake appeared maleness in various aspects, eligible and ineligible.
Natalie, who was not yet old enough to follow Vera's lead, nor so bold as to contemplate
it for herself, looked on with shy excitement.
The rule is that the younger sister may have what caroms off.
Vera's men never caromed off.
They called ardently for a little while and then sank without trace to Natalie's horror
and disappointment.
What Vera did with them, or to them, nobody ever knew.
She kept it to herself.
You torpedo them, said Natalie, accusing her.
Mrs. Galt watched the adventuring Vera with anxiety and foreboding, which gradually gave
way to a feeling of relief, not unmingled with a kind of awe.
Thank heaven I don't have to worry about Vera, she said one day, relevantly to nothing
at all.
She was thinking out loud.
Why not, mama? ask Natalie.
Don't ask me, child, and don't try to be like her.
2.
Then all at once they were rich.
For a while they hardly dared to believe it.
The habit of not being rich is something to break.
Galt's revenge for their unbelief, past and present, was to overwhelm them with money.
First, he returned to them, severally, all that he had borrowed or taken from them to
put into Great Midwestern.
This, he said, was not their principal back.
It was the profit.
It was only the beginning of their profit.
Their investments were left whole.
Presently, they began to receive dividends.
Besides, he settled large sums upon them as gifts and kept increasing them continually.
What shall we do with it? asked Natalie.
Do with it? said Galt.
What do people do with money?
Anything they like. Spend it.
He encouraged them to be extravagant, especially Natalie.
She had a passion for horses.
He gave her a stable full on her birthday.
All show animals, one of which, handled by Natalie,
took first prize in its class at Madison Square Garden the next month.
Month.
Galt, strutting about the ring, was absurd with wonder and excitement.
He wished to clap the judge on the back.
Mrs. Galt restrained him as much as she could.
She could not keep him from shouting when the ribbon was handed out.
It was more a victory for Natalie than for the horse.
She was tremendously admired.
People looked at their cards to find her name, then at her again, asking, Who is she?
She was nobody.
In the papers the next morning her name was mentioned and that was all, except that one
paper referred to her as the daughter of a Wall Street broker.
Other girls, neither so beautiful nor so expert as Natalie, were daintily praised.
Galt was furious, yet he had no suspicion of what was the matter.
There was gloom in his household when he expected gaiety.
His efforts to discover the reasons were met with evasive, cryptic sentences.
What have you been doing today?
He asked Natalie one hot June evening at dinner.
Nothing, she answered.
This exchange was followed, as usual, by a despondent silence, which always contained
an inaudible accusation of galt.
Everyone would have denied it sweetly.
He couldn't turn it on them.
He could only take it out in irritability.
All fuss and feathers and nothing to do, he said. You make me sick. I can't see why you
don't do what other girls do. There's nothing they've got that you can't have. Go someplace.
Go to Newport. That's where they all go, ain't it?
Papa dear, said Natalie, what should we do at Newport? Do? Do? How the—how do I know?
Swim, dance, flirt, whatever the rest of them do. Take a house, make a splurge, cut in with
Oh, but you don't understand, said Natalie. We'd not be taken in. Mother does know.
What does that mean? Galt asked. You can't just dress up and go where you want to go,
said Natalie. You have to be asked. We'd look nice at Newport with a house, wouldn't we?
Go on, said Galt, in a dazed kind of way.
I mean, said Natalie, oh, you know, Papa dear, don't be an old stupid.
Why go on with it?
Of course you can always do things with people of a sort.
They ask you fast enough.
But Mother says if we do that, we'll never get anywhere.
So we have to wait.
Wait for what?
I don't know, said Natalie, on the verge of tears.
Ask Mother.
So ho, said Galt, beginning to see.
I'll ask her.
Mrs. Galt and Vera were in a state of crystal passivity. They heard without listening. Galt
pursued the matter no further at dinner. Later, he held a long interview with Mrs. Galt and
she told him the truth. Social ostracism was the price his family paid for the enemies
he had made and continued to make in Wall Street. She had tried, she had knocked, but
3.
Mises was unable to get his mind down to work the next day.
He would leave it and walk about in a random manner, emitting strange, intermittent sounds,
grunts, hissings and shrewd whistlings.
Then he would sit down to it again, but with no relief, and repeat the absent performance.
Come on, Coxie, he said, taking up his hat, we'll show them something.
We went uptown by the L train, got off at 42nd Street, took a cab, and drove slowly
up Fifth Avenue.
That's Valentine's house, he said, indicating a beautiful old brick residence.
He called to the cabbie to put us down and wait.
We walked up and down the block.
Almost directly opposite the Valentine house was a brownstone residence in ill repair,
doors and windows boarded up, marked for sale.
Having looked at it several times, measuring the width of the plot with his eye, he crossed
He marched over to the valentine house, squared his heels with the line of its wall and stepped
off the frontage, counting, three, six, nine, etc.
It stretched him to do an imaginary yard per step.
He was as unconscious as a mechanical tin image and resembled one, his arms limp at
his sides, his legs shooting out in front of him with stiff angular movements.
He wore a brown straw hat, his hair flared out behind, his tie was askew and fallen away from the collar button. Returning he stepped off in the same way the frontage of the property for sale. About what I thought he said, twenty feet more. He wrote down the number of the house and the name and address of the real estate firm from the sign and we were through. An agent was sent immediately to buy the property. He telephoned before the end of the day.
We've got it, Coxie, said Galt. The transfer will be made in your name. This is all a dead secret, not a word. Find the best architect in New York and have him down here tomorrow.
As luck was, the architect had a set of beautiful plans that had been abandoned on account of cost. With but few modifications, they suited Galt perfectly.
He could hardly wait until everything was settled, not only as to the house itself, but as to its equipment, decorations and furnishings, complete, even pictures, linen and plate.
When it's done, he said, I want to walk in with a handbag and stay there.
Having signed the contracts, he added an extra cumulative per diem premium for completion in advance of a specified date.
Then he put it away from his mind and returned, I had almost said, to his money-making.
That would not be true.
His mind was not on money, primarily, he thought in terms of creative achievement.
There are two regnant passions in the heart of man.
One is to tear down, the other is to build up.
Galt's passion was to build.
In his case, the passion to destroy, which complements the other, was satisfied in removing
obstacles.
Works enthralled him in right of their own magic.
To see a thing with the mind's eyes as a vision in space, to give orders, then in a little
while to go and find it there, existing durably in three dimensions.
That was power.
No other form of experience was comparable to this.
His theory, had he been able to formulate one, would have been that any work worth
doing must pay.
That was the ultimate test.
If it didn't pay, there was something wrong.
But profit was what followed as a vindication or a conclusion in logic.
First was the thing itself to be imagined.
The difference between this and the common attitude may be subtle.
It is hard to define, yet it is fundamental.
He did not begin by saying, How can the Great Midwestern be made to earn a profit of 10%?
No.
He said, How shall we make the Great Midwestern system the greatest transportation machine
in the world?
If that were done, the profit would mind itself.
He could not have said this himself.
He never troubled his mind with self-analysis.
I think he never knew how or why he became the greatest moneymaker of his generation
in the world.
4.
Nothing happened to betray the secret of the house that rose in Fifth Avenue opposite Valentine's.
The real estate news reporters all went wild in their guesses as to its ownership.
Galt never interfered about details, but if the chart of construction progress which he
The Theory of Money and Credit
installed a new kind of pontoon, raised and lowered by a simple hydraulic principle.
As the time drew near, Galt swelled with mystery.
He could not help dropping now and then at dinner a hint of something that might be coming
to pass.
He addressed it always to Natalie, for the benefit of the others.
He looked at her solemnly one evening and contorted a nursery rhyme.
Who got them in? Little Johnny Quinn. Who got them out? Big John Stout.
Old silly, said Natalie, you've got it wrong. It goes, now let me alone, he said. I've got it the way I want it.
What do you know about it? Poor little outcast. No place to go. Nobody to take her in.
He leaned over to pet her consolingly.
Stop it, she said, attacking him. They scuffled. Some dishes were overturned.
5.
The momentous evening came at last.
It had been a particularly hard day in Wall Street.
It was cross and easily set off.
So the omens were bad to begin with.
Natalie read them from afar and gently left him alone.
He bolted his food, became restless, and asked Mrs. Galt to order the carriage around.
Which one? she asked.
Who will be going?
She did not ask where.
All of us, said Galt.
Grandma too, Natalie asked.
He nodded.
Come on, he said, pushing back his dessert.
He went into the hall, got into his coat, and walked to and fro with his hat on, fuming.
He helped Grandma down the steps and handed her into the carriage.
Then Mrs. Galt, then Vera, Natalie Last.
Go there, he said to the coachman, handing him a slip of paper.
The house, with not a soul inside of it, was brilliantly lighted.
Galt, in a fever of anticipation, crossed the pavement with his most egregious cock-like
The entrance was level with the street, screened with two tall iron gates on enormous hinges.
Before inserting the key, he looked around, expecting to see the family at his heels.
What he saw instead threw him into a violent temper.
I was still standing at the carriage door, waiting to hand them out.
Natalie stood on the curb with her head inside, arguing with her mother.
Mrs. Galt would have to know whom they were calling on.
Natalie went to find out.
Nobody, said Galt, nobody tell her.
When Natalie returned with this answer, Mrs. Galt construed it in the social sense.
She was rigid with horror at the thought that Galt, by one mad impulse, might frustrate all her precious plans.
For all she knew, he was about to launch them upon a party of upstart nobodies
In the very sight of Mrs. Valentine, Vera now joined with Natalie.
They added force to persuasion and slowly brought her forth.
We went straggling across the pavement toward Galt, who by this time was in a fine rage.
As he unlocked the gates and pushed them open, Mrs. Galt had a flash of understanding.
Oh, she exclaimed in a bewildered, contrite tone.
It was almost too late.
There were two sets of doors after the gates.
We stood in a vaulted hallway.
There was a retiring room on either side.
Further in, where the width of these two rooms was added to that of the hallway, a grand
impression of the house began.
We were then in a magnificently arched space, balanced on four monolith columns.
At the right was a carpeted stone staircase.
At the left was a great fireplace and in front of it a very large velvet covered divan.
Logs were burning lazily on the andirons.
On a table at one side was a cut glass service and iced water.
Beyond, straight ahead, was a view of the dining room.
As we walked in that direction there was a sound of tinkling water.
This issued from a fountain suddenly disclosed in an unsuspected space.
A fire was burning in the dining room. The table was decorated. The sideboard was furnished.
Galt, silently leading the way, brought us back to the grand staircase. God knows why.
Women must weep in a new house. Possibly it makes them feel more at home. All the feminine
eyes in that party, Vera's alone accepted, were red as we mounted the stairs.
As Galt's satisfaction increased, he began to talk.
This, he said, is where we live.
That was a room the whole width of the house and half its depth, second floor front, full
of soft light reflected from the ceiling, dedicated to complete human comfort.
Everything had been thought of.
Trifles of convenience were everywhere at hand.
There were flowers on the table, books in the bookcases, current magazines lying about,
pillows on the rug in front of the fireplace, and an enormous divan, in which six might
lie at once.
On the same floor was a music room, then a ballroom.
The chambers were next above, arranged in suites.
This was Mother's, meaning Mrs. Galt.
That was Grandma's.
That one Vera's.
That one Natalie's.
To the right was his apartment.
And this, he said, opening a door to the left, is Coxie's when he wants it.
Two rooms and bath like mine.
On the roof, under glass, was a tennis court.
The view of the city from there at night was apparitional.
Galt led us to the front ostensibly that we might see it to better advantage, but for
another reason really.
That's Valentine's House down there, he said, that roof.
We are three stories higher and twenty feet wider.
You could almost spit on it.
Mrs. Galt shuddered.
Well, that was all to see.
She's built like a locomotive, said Galt, trying here and there a door to show how perfectly
it fitted.
There was no higher word of praise.
We went down an automatic electric elevator and were again in that vaulted formal space
on the ground floor.
Words would not come.
Mrs. Galt stood gazing into the fire, overwhelmed, wondering perhaps how this would affect her
campaign to propitiate Mrs. Valentine.
Natalie sat on the stairway with her chin in her hands.
Vera helped herself to some iced water.
Grandma Galt sat far off in the corner on a stone bench.
Galt surveyed them with incredulous disgust.
This was a kind of situation for which he had no intuition at all.
His emotions and theirs were diametrically different.
For him, the moment was one of realization.
That which was realized had existed in his thoughts whole, just as it was for nearly
a year.
For them, it was a terrific shock, overturning the way of their lives, and women, moreover,
do not make their adjustments to a new environment in the free, canine manner of men, but with
a kind of feline diffidence.
It is very rash to surprise them so without elaborate preparation.
The tension became unbearable.
I was expecting Galt to break forth in weird sounds.
Instead, without a word, but with his teeth set and his hands clenched, he leaped into
the middle of the divan with his feet and bounced up and down like a man in a circus
net until I thought he should break the springs.
That seemed to be what he was trying to do.
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Lazy Lace Counter-Pane, lined with pink silk, a forlorn and shabby figure.
Presently, Mrs. Galt timidly appeared at the door, followed by Vera and Natalie.
They were a little out of breath, having walked up, not knowing how to manage the elevator.
It's lovely, perfectly splendid, said Mrs. Galt, sitting on the bed and taking his hand.
I'm only sorry I haven't words to tell you.
And she began to weep again.
Don't, said Galt. How does Grandma like it?
Hadn't we better start home now? said Mrs. Galt.
Home, said Galt. What's this, I'd like to know. Not a bolt missing. She's all fueled,
steam up, ready to have her throttle pulled open. Go downstairs and hang up your hat. Telephone
over for the servants. How does Grandma like it?
We haven't anything here, you know, Mrs. Galt protested gently. The girls haven't and neither
I'm here for good, said Galt. I want my breakfast in that dining room tomorrow morning. How does Grandma like it? What's the matter?
They couldn't evade it any longer, Natalie told him. Grandma says she won't live here. Why not? She won't say why not. Just says she won't.
All right, all right, said Galt. Being a woman is something you can't help. Tell her we'll
give her a deed to the old house, all for her own. We'll play company when we come to
see her. That reminds me. He brought a large folded document out of his pocket and handed
it to Mrs. Galt. What's this? Deed to this house, he said. It's from Coxie. Thank him.
We kept it all in his name until today. Now, it's in your name.