THE KING IS DEAD.
Enormous wealth, power in the world of finance, every luxury that is at
the command of man except health, that Jay Gould possessed. On Friday
morning, December 3, 1892, at 9:15 o’clock, his wonderful career was
ended. It was a perfect December morning when the soul of the magnate
went to the undiscovered country, whither it had been trending for so
many months. He died, not as he had feared to die, by the hand of the
assassin or the dynamite crank, but as peacefully as any babe whose
lamp of life has dwindled to a spark ere it flickers and goes out. He
died surrounded by his children, in the plain, rear-extension bedroom,
with its window looking down upon the conservatory. It was the room
in which his wife died before him, and which he had since occupied
whenever he was in the city. It led to the little study where only
his most intimate friends were admitted. Here the last remnant of his
strength ebbed away, and even while an attendant turned him, he was
gone, and $100,000,000 were without a master. All the members of his
family were at his bedside. There were George J. Gould and his wife,
who was Edith Kingdon. There were Edwin Gould and the young woman,
Dr. Shrady’s daughter, to whom he was so lately married. There was
Miss Helen Miller Gould, named after her mother, who had taken her
mother’s place as head of her father’s household. There were Miss Anna
and Howard and Frank Gould, the younger children, and there, too, was
Dr. John P. Munn, Jay Gould’s medical adviser. Mr. Gould’s sons and
daughters had remained by his side until one o’clock the previous
morning. Then he fell asleep, and his children, worn out, went to bed.
They were around his bed again very early. There lay the Alexander of
speculation, the man who sought new financial worlds to conquer, who
founded possessions on ruins and wrecks--there lay that man, helpless,
weak as a baby. Always physically frail, the wasting disease with which
he had suffered had greatly emaciated him. His nose was pinched, his
face, half hidden by his grey-black beard, was almost as white as the
pillow on which it rested. His hands were like wax, and his languid
eyes, dimmed by the shadows that were falling across his brain, moved
lazily here and there. For although he had fallen into a stupor during
the night, Jay Gould was conscious in the morning. He knew he was about
to die. He knew the moment was near that he had fought to delay, fought
not through fear of death, but with a mighty pride that abhorred the
thought that even death should overthrow him.
For two years or more the great financial manipulator had been battling
with the knowledge that in his system lurked the seeds of man’s most
insidious foe--consumption. He had phthisis pulmonaris in both lungs.
He battled with the knowledge, and he took no man into his confidence
besides his private physician, who became a sort of trained body
servant to him, and was always within easy call to watch him when
he had acute attacks, and his two elder sons, George J. Gould and
Edwin. A very master of silence himself, he imposed silence upon these
confidants, and it became their bounden duty to deceive all others as
to the giant which had laid its grip upon his life.
And so the story went forth that Jay Gould was afflicted with nervous
dyspepsia merely, and every now and then he had a bilious attack which
“was not dangerous,” a cry which was repeated even when he had entered
the shadow of the dark valley. Up to within twelve hours of his death
the same cry was repeated. And even after death there were strenuous
efforts made for some inexplicable reason to shroud the cause in
mystery--a mystery which could have wrought no good to the dead man’s
peace and that of his surviving family.
But it was not dyspepsia which sent him to the South of France, in the
Atalanta, under the watchful eye of his medical guardian, Dr. John P.
Munn, whose occupation is gone indeed. It was not dyspepsia which sent
him to Florida and Southern California, and El Paso, and the grand
resorts of Colorado, nor which caused him not less than two weeks ago
to plan a trip to Mexico--for he did not think he was going to die,
even then, and no man ever clung to life more fiercely than this frail
and silent embodiment of intellect.
He knew the truth, but he bit his teeth upon it. He would not let men
into the secret, and sometimes put himself to actual pain in order to
conceal the truth, as when, only a few weeks ago, on October 26, he
appeared among the guests at Dr. Shrady’s house and took a quiet part
in the Gould-Shrady wedding, which had been somewhat hurried at his
request.
This was his last appearance in public, unless you can count a visit or
two to his office in the Western Union building, to which he went from
his home in a closed carriage, and dodged in by way of the basement
office before any one could see him. No one who saw him at the wedding
would have suspected that he was so near death, and perhaps he would
not have been had not an injudicious ride, in company with Dr. Munn, on
the day before Thanksgiving, caused a cold which settled on his lungs,
brought on a hemorrhage and paved the way to death.
The story of Mr. Gould’s last night on earth is one easily told. It was
as simple as any tale could be. He was prepared, and so were all the
members of his family. His going off was merely a question of time. All
understood how it would be. He had laid his earthly house in order, had
explained to his older sons exactly what his property was, how he had
made it, and what he should do to develop it if he lived.
He had passed the distressing stage of his disease and he coughed
but little, and that weakly. The beard upon his face hid to some
extent the terrible emaciation, but the chalky pallor of the swarthy
skin was sharp and startling. He dozed at times, but never seemed to
lose consciousness. He did not suffer physically. There was nothing
to fight against now but the lassitude of utter exhaustion, and this
the doctors--Munn and Janeway--did with the most powerful stimulants,
thus prolonging life by a few hours, but doing no good that could be
measured.
Several times during the night it was thought that he was going, and
the family were hastily summoned to the bedside. But he rallied each
time with wonderful vitality, and his will remained strong and under
control to the last.
Those in the house besides the medical attendants and nurses were the
children--George J. Gould, who is already enthroned as his father’s
successor in business; Edwin, the second son; Helen Miller Gould, the
young heiress, who was the apple of her father’s eye; Howard, who is
just coming into manhood; the schoolgirl daughter Anna and the youthful
Frank, with Mrs. George Gould, Mrs. Edwin Gould and a lady intimately
connected with the family.
Daylight brought an apparent renewal of the lease of life. It was not
much of a rally, but it was enough to give hope that the invalid would
struggle along through a great part of the day. Windows were raised and
curtains drawn in parts of the house, giving it an animated and lively
look which it had not worn when all the shades were down.
Shortly after the night-watch of newspaper men had gone away young
Mrs. Gould appeared and drove away, in her carriage for a brief stay.
She said that her father-in-law was much the same as he had been and
perfectly conscious. An early caller was General Manager Hain, of the
“L” road system. He stayed but a moment, and when he resumed his trip
down town he little realized that the message of death, which was to be
followed by the draping of all the “L” road engines, would reach the
office almost as soon as he.
The December sun came up and gilded the roof of the extension in which
the multi-millionaire lay gasping out the remnant of his life. It
caught in the glass of the conservatory and sent baffling lights into
the eyes of passers gazing curiously up at the windows which shrouded
the drama of life and death within. Audacious, it trickled in between
the shutters until a hand closed them tight, and it saw, what few have
seen, the great magician of Wall street bent low by a power greater
than his own.
Just then, as if moved by some sympathetic force, all of the raised
shades were lowered and the great house assumed a somber aspect. This
was just after nine o’clock in the morning. A few moments later a
messenger boy came out of the house bearing a telephone message from
Dr. Munn to his wife, stating that Mr. Gould had died at a quarter past
nine o’clock. And thus the news that a king was dead trickled out
unwillingly, as it were, through the massive oaken doors that front his
palace. If Jay Gould’s secret could have been longer kept it doubtless
would have been, but Death sounds a tocsin which even a master of
silence cannot muffle.
In all the spacious palace where this rich man died there was no
room more plain and simple than his own. There was nothing garish,
nothing to attract or astonish the eye, none of the rare and beautiful
bric-a-brac or articles of toilet which have made Miss Helen’s boudoir
famous in the social world. The furniture was massive, but simple; the
colors were subdued. Through the open door the railroad manipulator
could see his beloved study--a study, indeed, where he has pored with
such relentless zeal by day and night over law books and other weighty
tomes, planning the campaigns which made him a Napoleon in his line,
and which were so disastrous to those who opposed him. They were fading
now from his sight. He should plan no more.
He indicated with a whisper and a gesture that he was glad his children
were all there. And then he showed a wish to change his position, and
as the attendant turned him over, the spark of his life went out as if
some breath had blown it.
With the slightest echo of a rattle in his throat Jay Gould was dead.
As soon as all was over George and Edwin took charge of matters and
began to prepare for the funeral. Messages were sent to Mrs. Palm, of
Camden, N. J., and Mrs. Harris, of Philadelphia, Mr. Gould’s sisters,
and to other friends, apprising them of the death; and a telephone
message summoned the undertaker and his assistants who had been waiting
the word from their headquarters in Forty-fourth street. Vice-President
Clark, of the Union Pacific road, who had been waiting for a week at
the Windsor to confer with his chief, dropped over to the hotel and
sent a number of messages.
Then a huge cravat of black crape was placed upon the door-bell to warn
passersby that Death had entered at the door. One by one the flags on
the hotels of the city, on the Western Union and some other buildings
were raised to half mast. The “L” road engines were draped in black,
and soon the voices of the newsboys crying their extras spread the
tidings through the city.
Persons loitered about the house where death was master and gazed up
curiously at the windows. There was but one Jay Gould, and in his going
out lay an infinity of food for curiosity and comment.
During the day carriages continued to stop at the mansion and at the
house of Edwin Gould, 1 East Forty-seventh street. The Rev. Dr. Paxton
called again in the afternoon, and Chancellor MacCracken was among
those admitted. The members of the family were, however, entirely
inaccessible to any except their most intimate friends. Cards presented
at the house or at the houses of either of the sons, with a view to
seeing members of the family, met with the answer that they could not
be seen.
In the afternoon, when the usual parade of carriages was moving up and
down the avenue, there was quite a jam in front of the Gould house.
Ladies would order their coachmen to stop and would peer inquisitively
out of their carriage windows. Pedestrians, too, would linger on the
corners for a few minutes to look at the house and comment with each
other.
As might have been expected, the “cranks” were on hand. Whenever
they began to air their ideas too freely a policeman made them move
on. One of these cranks started to expound at length on the singular
coincidence that it was on the first Friday in December, one year ago,
that the bomb thrower Norcross blew up Russell Sage’s office, and that
on the first Friday of December Jay Gould had died.
The Rev. Dr. Paxton, in speaking of Mr. Gould’s last hours, said: “He
had been unconscious for a number of hours, but as the end approached
consciousness returned. He opened his eyes, and they wandered around
the room where the family was gathered. He clearly recognized them,
and at his whispered request they went to his bedside. To each of them
in turn he whispered a few words of farewell. Vitality enough for
this was vouchsafed him. When he had spoken to the last one he became
unconscious again, and in a few minutes more he passed away.”
The mystery as to the nature of the ailment which wrecked Mr. Gould’s
health was one of the features of his last illness. It may be stated as
a peculiar fact that his most trusted friends, and even the members of
his family, were not aware of the disease from which he was suffering
until it became evident that he could only a little longer withstand
its ravages.
Mr. Gould was variously reported as a victim of neuralgia, of nervous
dyspepsia, and of severe bilious attacks, and the announcement that
what caused his death was consumption will be received with a great
deal of surprise. But the statement is true.
It is further said, that the disease was of several years’ standing;
that Mr. Gould was aware that he had it, and that his instructions to
his physician, Dr. Munn, were that it should be kept a secret between
them as long as possible. When, therefore, inquiries, no matter by
whom, were made of Dr. Munn as to Mr. Gould’s ailment, he replied that
it was nervous dyspepsia, and truthfully, for all consumptives suffer
more or less from that complaint.
To aid his physician in concealing all signs of the disease, the
somewhat extravagant assertion is made that Mr. Gould was able to
prevent himself, by an effort, from coughing.
The secret was well kept, and until a couple of weeks ago Mr. Gould
is said to have had confidence that Dr. Munn’s efforts to delay the
progress of the disease would be attended with some measure of success,
and that he would be able to keep up and get around for some years.
But when he came down from Irvington some weeks ago he was not so
confident. A slight hemorrhage was followed by several more severe.
Mr. Gould attended the wedding of his son and Miss Shrady, at Dr.
Shrady’s house on November 26, and that was the last time he went
out. He became so weak that he took to his plain oak bed in his plain
bedroom in the extension over the conservatory, where he died.
Dr. John P. Munn, Mr. Gould’s physician, is probably the one man in the
world who knew Mr. Gould really well. He is about forty-five years old
and stoutly built. He wears long, black side whiskers.
There is a story that Dr. Munn’s acquaintance with Mr. Gould was
the result of accident. He had come to this city to practice after
graduating from a medical school in the interior of the state, and put
up his sign near Mr. Gould’s house. One day Mr. Gould was taken ill,
and, his family physician not being at home, the young Dr. Munn was
called in. His treatment was quickly efficacious, and Mr. Gould, liking
him, a few months later made him a flattering offer to look after his
physical welfare all the time. The doctor agreed, and has not now,
therefore, a very extensive general practice. But as compensation for
that loss, he has seen many parts of the world from the bridge of Mr.
Gould’s yacht, and by following hints dropped from the lips of the
great manipulator he has acquired a beautiful home on West Fifty-eighth
street and a handsome income to keep it going.
Mr. Gould had every confidence in Dr. Munn, and liked him personally,
and, by way of showing his esteem for him, he had him made, a few years
ago, a director in the Western Union Telegraph Company.
[Illustration: FUNERAL OF JAY GOULD FROM HIS NEW YORK RESIDENCE.]