EPUB paragraph 41 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller and daughter Alta at Ormond Beach, 1931. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Rockefeller Archive Center · Ormond Beach
EPUB paragraph 42 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller, in trademark goggles, smacks a ball down the fairway at Ormond Beach, December 24, 1932. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Rockefeller Archive Center · Ormond Beach
EPUB paragraph 43 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Abby and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., tour the Grand Tetons in October 1931. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Rockefeller Archive Center · Grand Teton National Park
EPUB paragraph 44 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Junior bashfully greets the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, December 30, 1937. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Rockefeller Archive Center · Radio City Music Hall
EPUB paragraph 45 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Junior and Senior pose with Nelson and his first son, Rodman. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Nelson Rockefeller · Rockefeller Archive Center · Rodman
EPUB paragraph 46 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
The sons of Abby and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in their Eton collars. Left to right: David, Winthrop, Laurance, Nelson, and John 3rd. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · John D. Rockefeller III · Nelson Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · David Rockefeller · Rockefeller Archive Center · Eton
EPUB paragraph 47 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
A formal family dinner party at 740 Park Avenue in Manhattan, March 1949. Standing, from left to right: Irving H. Pardee, David, Nelson, Winthrop, and Laurance Rockefeller. Seated: John 3rd and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · John D. Rockefeller III · Nelson Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · David Rockefeller · Rockefeller Archive Center · Manhattan · Park Avenue · Irving H. Pardee
EPUB paragraph 48 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
The wives at the same dinner party. From left to right: Abby (Babs) Rockefeller Pardee, Peggy McGrath Rockefeller, Mary “Tod” Rockefeller, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Barbara “Bobo” Sears Rockefeller, and Mary French Rockefeller. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Abby Rockefeller Mauzé · Rockefeller Archive Center · Mary French Rockefeller · Barbara “Bobo · Peggy McGrath Rockefeller · Mary “Tod” Rockefeller · Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller · Sears Rockefeller
EPUB paragraph 49 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
A photo taken on December 17, 1931, that shows the seamed, leathery face of John D. Rockefeller in his final decade. (Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center)
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Rockefeller Archive Center
EPUB paragraph 50 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Even before the federal government filed formal charges against Standard Oil, a rash of state suits broke out, the most aggressive one being in Missouri, where Herbert S. Hadley was elected attorney general in 1905. As a reform-minded prosecuting attorney in Kansas City, he had developed a reputation for battling corruption. No sooner did he become attorney general than he set out to prove that both Waters-Pierce and Republic Oil were secret marketing subsidiaries of Standard Oil that had fixed prices and carved up the state into exclusive sales territories with Standard Oil of Indiana. In serving subpoenas upon Standard executives in Manhattan, Hadley’s men proved to be agile daredevils. “The gentlemen are following their daily avocation in town here but moving cautiously,” Junior reported to his father from 26 Broadway. One morning, Henry Rogers strode rapidly from his Manhattan town house to his chauffeured car. As it pulled away from the curb, a process server named M. E. Palemdo sprang from a hiding spot and landed on the running board. “Is this Mr. Henry H. Rogers?” he asked. While a speechless Rogers stared at this impudent interloper, Palemdo flung the subpoena at him, flashed his court order, then leaped from the speeding vehicle.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Henry H. Rogers · Herbert S. Hadley · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of Indiana · 26 Broadway · Manhattan · M. E. Palemdo · Rogers · Waters-Pierce · Missouri · Republic Oil · Kansas City
EPUB paragraph 51 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Even with such acrobatics, Hadley’s minions could not catch Rockefeller, and the press joined in the national manhunt. Tracing a welter of rumors, reporters erroneously placed the titan aboard Henry Rogers’s yacht, anchored off Puerto Rico, or in a hideaway with Flagler in Key West. As he decamped from one estate to the next, Rockefeller was reduced to the degrading life of a fugitive. Then his whereabouts were betrayed by the telltale cheese. Every day at Pocantico, Rockefeller received a shipment of his favorite cheese aboard the New York Central. One day, a local hack driver, Henry Cooge, informed the press that suspicious cheeses were again entering Pocantico. “Them cheeses,” he said, “I would recognize anywhere, no matter whether it is day or night.… Rockefeller, in my opinion, is somewhere on his estate.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Henry M. Flagler · Henry H. Rogers · Herbert S. Hadley · New York Central · Pocantico Hills · Key West · Puerto Rico · Henry Cooge
EPUB paragraph 52 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Cooge’s nose was correct: Rockefeller had retreated to Pocantico, turning it into his fortress, flanked on every side by detectives. Waves of process servers flung themselves against the battlements to no effect. “Time and again,” said one newspaper, “process-servers in various disguises have succeeded in passing the pickets, but never have they penetrated beyond the inner guard of detectives. When discovered they have been handled roughly and promptly ejected by the oil king’s minions.” Afraid that his phone was being tapped, Rockefeller advised Cettie not to telephone him. He also advised his secretary at 26 Broadway to forward letters to him in plain envelopes without return addresses.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Pocantico Hills · 26 Broadway · Time · Henry Cooge
EPUB paragraph 53 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
At a convenient moment, via a backdoor route, Rockefeller fled by boat from Tarrytown to Golf House in Lakewood, where he set up conditions worthy of a maximum-security prison. Floodlights were trained on people approaching the estate at night, and delivery wagons were searched thoroughly, lest they conceal crouching servants of the law. When Abby gave birth to John D. Rockefeller III in March 1906, the newspapers gloated that because of Hadley’s marauding agents Rockefeller could not visit his first male grandson bearing the Rockefeller name. The New York World taunted him with the headline, “Grandson Born to John D. Rockefeller And He, Mewed Up in His Lakewood Fort, Could Only Rejoice by Phone.” This artful dodger urged relatives to keep his location secret. He advised brother-in-law William Rudd: “Confidentially I prefer not to have it known where I am. It often saves me much annoyance. My correspondence has been cut down fifty or seventy-five per cent since the autumn. I say this because some curious people might be asking you if you heard from me or if you were writing me, etc. I do not wish to have it known now or at any time.” During the first round of testimony in New York, Hadley failed to get Rockefeller on the stand, but the humiliating pursuit had made an impression on him. After Hadley returned to Missouri, Rockefeller inquired of Archbold, “Would it be well for us to see how we could settle the Missouri cases without further litigation or trouble? I am not prepared to say, but suggest that we give it careful thought.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · John D. Rockefeller III · John D. Archbold · Herbert S. Hadley · William Rudd · New York · Lakewood · Missouri · Tarrytown · Golf House · New York World · Lakewood Fort
EPUB paragraph 54 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
No sooner had he finished evading Hadley’s men than Rockefeller’s testimony was sought in a Philadelphia suit against the Pennsylvania Railroad. Instructed by his lawyers not to venture within one hundred miles of the city, he had George Rogers draw a hundred-mile radius around Philadelphia on a map, and he did not penetrate that ring. Slowly, his life was being tied into knots by court cases. In March 1906, when Junior wanted him to attend his class reunion at Brown or at least to write a congratulatory note, Rockefeller declined, explaining that “if the location from which I wrote was not given it would cause comment. If the letter was dated from 26 Broadway, that would cause comment, especially in connection with the statement that I had not been in my office for many years.… Possibly if no reference was made to me on this occasion, it might be better.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Herbert S. Hadley · Pennsylvania Railroad · George D. Rogers · Brown University · Philadelphia · 26 Broadway
EPUB paragraph 55 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
As lawsuits kept appearing, Rockefeller reacted with the indignation of a man who felt wronged, and he cynically dismissed the politicians behind them as sensation-mongers. Nevertheless, he was being held hostage to Standard Oil’s legal travails and expressed frustration with his nominal title of honorary president, which made him a lightning rod for attacks against the trust. When he sounded out Gates and Junior about resigning, he recalled that when Standard Oil of New Jersey was formed, he had allowed his name to be used “at the solicitation of my associates, though I earnestly requested them to name my successor.” Both Gates and Junior pressed him to drop the unwanted title, which they thought a handicap to the conduct of his philanthropies.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Frederick T. Gates · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of New Jersey
EPUB paragraph 56 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
In August 1906, amid great secrecy, Rockefeller quietly dictated a letter to George Rogers, resigning as president of Standard Oil and asking for speedy board approval—a request he renewed several times over the next few years. As he told Archbold, “I am placed in a false position and subjected to ridicule for not knowing about the affairs as one should know to be in the official relation; and I shall not be surprised to hear of stringent legislation to punish people for occupying positions in this way.” Every time that Rockefeller made this plea, Archbold resisted, afraid that his departure might appear to repudiate the organization at a vulnerable moment and undermine shareholder confidence. As far as Archbold was concerned, Rockefeller was now in too deep to back out. “We told him that he had to keep” the title of president, Henry Rogers had earlier told Ida Tarbell. “These cases against us were pending in the courts; and we told him that if any of us had to go to jail, he would have to go with us!”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Henry H. Rogers · Ida M. Tarbell · Standard Oil · George D. Rogers
EPUB paragraph 57 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller and his colleagues had been slow to grasp the power of the growing newspaper chains and mass-circulation magazines, which could now saturate the country with a story. Rockefeller’s image was suddenly everywhere. One cartoonist pictured him approaching a newsstand where his face was featured on the cover of every publication and dolefully asking the vendor: “Do you have any that aren’t about me?” In another cartoon, Rockefeller shoveled coins into one side of a scale, with a scrap of paper saying “A Few Kind Words” on the other side; the caption wondered: “What Would He Give for Them?” This most secretive of men saw his most obscure designs exposed everywhere. Wanting to forget the past, he now had to confront it at every turn.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 58 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
In retrospect, it seems clear that Rockefeller’s press critics profited from a fleeting transitional moment when corporations had not adapted to the new media and lacked any public-relations apparatus. For nearly three years, Standard Oil was assailed by Ida Tarbell and made only halfhearted responses. When editorials appeared impugning the McClure’s series, for instance, Rockefeller had copies circulated widely. And for years, Standard Oil clandestinely paid $15,000 per annum to an English economist named George Gunton who edited a magazine that with telltale regularity disputed Lloyd and Tarbell. (For fear of the political consequences, Rockefeller and his descendants always balked at outright ownership of major news properties.) The trust also financed a sympathetic history, The Rise and Supremacy of the Standard Oil Company by Gilbert H. Montague, which began as his thesis as a Harvard undergraduate. Yet these were random efforts, not a coordinated counterattack.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Ida M. Tarbell · Henry Demarest Lloyd · S. S. McClure · Standard Oil · Harvard University · George Gunton · Gilbert H. Montague · Rise and Supremacy of the Standard Oil Company
EPUB paragraph 59 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
The real publicity watershed for Standard Oil came after the tainted-money controversy. Feeling impotent in the face of misinformation, Gates badgered Rockefeller with plans for a literary bureau, and Rockefeller encouraged him to speak to Archbold. According to Gates, Archbold was “overjoyed” by Rockefeller’s change of heart, and the upshot was that the trust hired its first publicist, Joseph I. C. Clarke, an editor of the New York Herald. Although Ivy Lee was already handling publicity for the Pennsylvania Railroad, such a step was still a novelty in corporate America. Most businesses did not concede the legitimacy of journalists poking into their affairs and consequently had no full-time publicist on the payroll. A jovial, outgoing poet and playwright, Clarke would greet reporters with a quip and a cigar to warm up the trust’s image. Before long, he was lining up reporters for breezy, lighthearted interviews with Rockefeller, featuring a game of golf with the mogul, who obligingly delivered pithy observations on topical subjects. Articles began to appear with titles like “The Human Side of John D. Rockefeller,” as if its existence wasn’t taken for granted.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Frederick T. Gates · Ivy Lee · Standard Oil · Pennsylvania Railroad · United States · Joseph I. C. Clarke · New York Herald · Clarke
EPUB paragraph 60 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
At first, Junior doubted the efficacy of even favorable stories. But as early as 1903, he and Parmalee Prentice beseeched Senior to publish an authorized biography to rebut Tarbell’s work before it formed the basis of future histories. Sure that history would vindicate him, Rockefeller at first temporized, then compromised to appease his son—setting a pattern for the next three decades. In 1904, he began dictating answers to biographical questions posed by Starr Murphy, yet his heart was not in it, and the project soon expired. Work on an official Standard Oil history fared only marginally better. In 1906, a special executive committee of Standard Oil of New Jersey hired the Reverend Leonard Woolsey Bacon to write a history, and Rockefeller vetted his chapter on the South Improvement Company. Then Bacon got sick and only a pamphlet appeared.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · E. Parmalee Prentice · Ida M. Tarbell · Starr J. Murphy · Standard Oil · South Improvement Company · Standard Oil of New Jersey · Leonard Woolsey Bacon
EPUB paragraph 61 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller imagined that the press’s muckraking ardor would cool shortly. He took comfort from the fact that the new mass media exemplified the big-business capitalism they deplored and so could not very well tolerate radical critiques for long. How could big newspaper barons such as Joseph Pulitzer crusade against their own interests? As Rockefeller assured Gates, “The owner of the World is also a large owner of property, and I presume that, in common with other newspaper owners who are possessed of wealth, his eyes are beginning to be opened to the fact that he is like Samson, taking the initiative to pull the building down upon his head.” By 1905, Rockefeller and his entourage were picking up hints that investigative zeal was ebbing among the editors at McClure’s, where, Starr Murphy reported, “the thing has now gone so far that they themselves are getting disgusted and heartily wish they were out of it.” In March 1906, Teddy Roosevelt delivered his famous speech at Washington’s Gridiron Club in which he borrowed a term from Pilgrim’s Progress and denounced the new investigative reporters as muckrakers who kept their eyes fixed on lowly matters instead of occasionally lifting them up to heaven. The muckrakers were now on the wane, but the trustbusters were not.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · S. S. McClure · Joseph Pulitzer · Theodore Roosevelt · Frederick T. Gates · Starr J. Murphy · World · Washington · Gridiron Club · Samson · Pilgrim
EPUB paragraph 62 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Hounded by government and the press, Rockefeller found little solace in family affairs. In May 1906, he provided one cousin with a somber litany of problems that had beset the family since the Tarbell series. Edith had returned from her therapeutic travels in Europe, which were supposed to alleviate her depression, but she was sick and recuperating only slowly; Junior was making progress after his breakdown but was still weak; Alta had been in bed for several weeks after surgery; and Cettie was laid low with pneumonia and grippe. “So I think we will agree,” Rockefeller summed up, “that no one family has a monopoly of the ills of life.” At sixty-six, he was the healthiest specimen in the family.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Ida M. Tarbell · Europe
EPUB paragraph 63 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Of all the family medical problems, the most worrisome was that of Bessie. She and her husband, Charles Strong, had moved to Cannes in May 1904 to confer with neurological experts, especially a Dr. Bourcart. Now, two years later, she was also suffering from heart trouble and was too debilitated to return home. While Rockefeller applauded her for seeking rest in a warm, sunny climate, he was distressed by her two-year absence abroad. Sensitive to her delicate psychological state, he sent her gently whimsical letters. “I weigh nearly two hundred pounds, without my five wigs,” he wrote in December 1905. “You should see them! They are real works of art, and most satisfactory. I sleep in one, and do not know how I got along all these years without the hair.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · Charles Strong · Bourcart
EPUB paragraph 64 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
In spring 1906, frustrated by Bessie’s absence, Rockefeller and Cettie decided to spend seven weeks with the Strongs in France—an eternity abroad for these two provincials—at their summer residence in Compiègne, northeast of Paris. That May, Charles had reported that Bessie “you will be glad to hear, is in better condition at the present than at any time since we came abroad, though we shall hardly be able to cross the ocean this summer.” Rockefeller might have seen a sudden chance to deliver a timely plea for Bessie’s return to America. In commenting on the trip, George Santayana said of the Rockefellers, “they are going to travel under an assumed name, to protect themselves from begging letters and indiscreet curiosity.” But Rockefeller might also have wanted to travel incognito to foil efforts to serve him with subpoenas.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · George Santayana · Rockefeller family · Compiègne · Paris · United States · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · France
EPUB paragraph 65 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
In June 1906, the Rockefeller party—including Cettie, Lute, Alta, and Dr. Biggar—sailed for France aboard the Deutschland, with the Rockefeller name discreetly omitted from the passenger list. When it was learned that Rockefeller was aboard, the press busied itself with speculation about his motives. Some reporters stressed his desire to avoid testimony and others his supposedly broken health. Perhaps the most outrageous theory came from a New York American reporter, William Hoster, who conjectured luridly that Rockefeller’s stomach was ruined, that he was going to consult a renowed European specialist, and that he might never return alive. Hoping to observe Rockefeller at close range, Hoster purchased a ticket for the crossing, intending to file a series entitled “How the Richest Man in the World Plays.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Hamilton F. Biggar · Lucy Spelman · William Hoster · World · France · Deutschland · New York American
EPUB paragraph 66 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
During the voyage, as he stalked his quarry, Hoster was amazed at how different Rockefeller was from the stereotype that he himself had foisted on readers. For one thing, Rockefeller had an excellent appetite and wolfed down three meals a day. “It was a distinct shock to me,” he later wrote, “when Mr. Rockefeller strolled up the plank to find him, instead of the hopeless dyspeptic that he had been painted, a tall, broad-shouldered, robust man, with ruddy complexion, clear eyes, alert step and altogether vigorous manner.” Far from being aloof, Rockefeller fairly cavorted around the ship: bursting into a dance when he bested Dr. Biggar at shuffleboard; donning a harlequin’s costume the night of the captain’s dinner; and delighting small children with his antics. “One sturdy little fellow one afternoon produced two pennies, which he insisted upon sharing with his playmate Rockefeller,” Hoster later wrote. “The man of millions gravely accepted the copper and carefully placed it in his pocket, then, with his face turned seaward impulsively took up the child and folded his arms about it.” This warmhearted man was a revelation to Hoster.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Hamilton F. Biggar · William Hoster
EPUB paragraph 67 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
One part of Hoster’s assignment was to land an exclusive interview with Rockefeller. When the boat docked at Cherbourg, he knew that the Rockefeller party would shortly roar off in a touring car and that he had to confront the mogul at once. While Rockefeller wandered in an arbor, Hoster accosted him and introduced himself. Though he pretended that he never read his critics, Rockefeller evidently knew Hoster’s byline and expressed bitterness at the absurd treatment of his health. Hoster meekly confessed his error. Then, with a reporter’s cheek, he asked, “Mr. Rockefeller, have you ever reflected that perhaps you yourself may be in a measure responsible for the way that you have been treated by the newspapers?” He recounted how, dozens of times, he had gone to Rockefeller’s homes to try to interview him but had never been admitted or even allowed a glimpse, which seemed to verify the reports of ill health. Turning to another canard that Hoster had swallowed, Rockefeller noted that he had not been involved in Standard Oil management for many years. “Is it possible that is not known?” he asked. “I have made no concealment of it. All my friends know it.”Yet Hoster insisted that he and other reporters were genuinely ignorant of that, and he implored him to make it public.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · William Hoster · Cherbourg
EPUB paragraph 68 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
For a time, Rockefeller gazed stonily at Hoster and dug his walking stick into the gravel path. Then his face relaxed and a faint smile crossed his lips. “So it is all my fault,” Rockefeller said, with a touch of sarcasm. Then, after a pause, he added more seriously, “I suppose there may be something in what you say, though I had never thought of it in that way before.” Since Rockefeller had demonized reporters, much as they had demonized him, he was surprised to find that Hoster was sincere and invented stories for lack of accurate information.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Hoster
EPUB paragraph 69 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller’s attitude toward the press had already begun to evolve with Standard’s hiring of Joseph I. C. Clarke, which might have predisposed him to talk more freely with Hoster. When Hoster asked if he was worth a billion dollars, Rockefeller shot back, “Nothing like it—not by one-third of that amount. I want to make clear to you the injury that is done to me by these persistent stories that I am worth a billion dollars. They provoke in the minds of thousands thoughts which lead to great unhappiness.” Gradually opening up as they walked along, Rockefeller told Hoster how grieved he was to be transformed into a monster. “Is it not patent that I have been made into a sort of frightful ogre, to slay which has become a favorite resource of men seeking public favor?” As always, Rockefeller blamed business rivals and demagogic politicians for his troubles. Yet however self-serving his remarks, he was at least now talking to a reporter. Then, to Hoster’s extreme amazement, Rockefeller invited him to accompany the party to Compiègne. How could he possibly resist?
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Standard Oil · Compiègne · Joseph I. C. Clarke · William Hoster
EPUB paragraph 70 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Charles and Bessie were renting the Château des Avenues at the edge of the forest of Compiègne for the summer. Once the summer home of Queen Isabella of Spain, it was now owned by the Duc de l’Aigle. Despite his wife’s illness, Charles was winding up a new book called The Origin of Consciousness. The Rockefellers were heartened to find the forty-year-old Bessie in improved health, though her mental faculties remained gravely impaired. When George Santayana visited during the Rockefellers’ stay, he wrote to a friend, apropos of Charles, “It is a terrible life he leads as his wife is like a child, hopelessly ill, yet apparently not going to die for the present.” Unlike Hoster, Santayana was shocked at how poorly Rockefeller looked, old and wrinkled and wearing a “pepper and salt wig decidedly too small for him.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong · George Santayana · Rockefeller family · Compiègne · William Hoster · Pratt. Charles, Sr. · Spain · Château des Avenues · Queen Isabella · Duc de l’Aigle
EPUB paragraph 71 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
After a lifetime spent escaping reporters, Rockefeller now converted William Hoster into his bosom companion. They rambled through the forest, golfed, and dined together in local hotels. After teaching Hoster how to ride a bike, he took him cycling down the main street of Compiègne, along with his adored nine-year-old granddaughter, Margaret. Hoster was struck by Rockefeller’s strong populist streak, how he was intrigued by common people but indifferent to the highborn. In discussing Napoleon, Rockefeller said, “He was a human being and virile because he came direct from the ranks of the people. There was none of the stagnant blood of nobility or royalty in his veins.” Rockefeller was entranced by Joan of Arc. “Where did she get her wisdom, if it was not inspired of Heaven?” he asked. Sight-seeing with Hoster, Rockefeller might have begun to taste, for the first time, the pleasures of confession. “They will know me better when I am dead, Mr. Hoster,” Rockefeller said one day. “There has been nothing in my life that will not bear the utmost scrutiny.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Compiègne · William Hoster · Margaret · Napoleon · Joan of Arc
EPUB paragraph 72 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c26_r1.htm
Rockefeller found it impossible during this European idyll to banish thoughts of his tribulations at home. Around the time of his departure from New York, Attorney General Moody had announced the preliminary antitrust investigation of Standard Oil. Then, in early July, Rockefeller received word that a probate court in Hancock County, Ohio, had brought an antitrust action against Standard Oil and issued a warrant for Rockefeller’s arrest. The local sheriff had bragged to reporters that he would be on the dock to greet Rockefeller when he sailed back from Europe. George Rogers relayed a message from Archbold, who called the Ohio suit frivolous but advised Rockefeller to extend his European stay. Rogers also reported a new suit in the works in Arkansas. “There seems to be a perfect wave of attacks all along the line,” he warned from New York. By late July, the Standard lawyers, reversing their earlier position, pressed Rockefeller to return, assuring him that the Ohio case was targeted against Standard Oil companies in the state, not individuals. As it turned out, Rockefeller was not arrested at the dock, since his lawyers had arranged for him to testify voluntarily in the Ohio case.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Archbold · Standard Oil · George D. Rogers · New York · Europe · Ohio · Rogers · Arkansas · Moody · Hancock County
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