The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of stories of thrift and enterprise.Throughout his hard-working life he had been irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere exchange and barter.An alert power to perceive the potential value of things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances, had stood him in marvellous good stead.He had bought at low prices things which in the eyes of the less discerning were worthless, but, having obtained possession of such things, the less discerning had almost invariably awakened to the fact that, in his hands, values increased, and methods of remunerative disposition, being sought, were found.Nothing remained unutilisable.The practical, sordid, uneducated little man developed the power to create demand for his own supplies.If he was betrayed into an error, he quickly retrieved it.He could live upon nothing and consequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as he desired.He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was daring and astute.His untaught brain was that of a financier, his blood burned with the fever of but one desire--the desire to accumulate.Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such small or large properties as could be resold at profit in the near or far future.The future held fascinations for him.He bought nothing for his own pleasure or comfort, nothing which could not be sold or bartered again.He married a woman who was a trader's daughter and shared his passion for gain.She was of North of England blood, her father having been a hard-fisted small tradesman in an unimportant town, who had been daring enough to emigrate when emigration meant the facing of unknown dangers in a half-savage land.She had excited Reuben Vanderpoel's admiration by taking off her petticoat one bitter winter's day to sell it to a squaw in exchange for an ornament for which she chanced to know another squaw would 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.