Business: Sublimed Gould

Sublimed GouldIn Oyster Bay, L. I. one evening last week Edwin Gould, 67, after a quiet game of bridge with wife and friends, went to his room, began to undress, suddenly cried out. Thus, as it must to all men, Death came—before his wife could reach his side —to the second son of famed Jason (Jay) Gould. Day later an announcement was inserted in the Manhattan Press: “With those ‘forces for good’ grief stricken at the death of Edwin Gould stands the Harlem Eye & Ear Hospital, thanking God for the life of this patron saint of children. … In memory of such a man all must doubly strive to give to children as he did—service sublimed by love.” Apple-cheeked, fuzzy-bearded, benign, Edwin Gould unlike a dozen other descendants of his famed father made no copy for Hearst’s sensational Sunday pages. Yet he was distinguished for more than benefactions to the Harlem Eye & Ear Hospital. At 20, his father’s son, he incurred paternal wrath by leaving Columbia University, marching down to speculate in Wall Street. At 21, again his father’s son, he had made his first million in speculation, regained his father’s favor and become secretary of a Gould railroad, the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas (later St. Louis Southwestern). Thus he started strongly in the Gould tradition. Three years later when his father died, he, his elder brother George, his younger brother Howard, and his sister Helen became the trustees of Jay Gould’s $80,000,000 estate (left to all six of Jay Gould’s children, two of them, Anna and Frank J., being minors at the time). Thus at 26, Edwin’s fortune was estimated at $20,000,000—$12,000,000 inherited from his father, $8,000,000 made by himself. The millions made by Jay Gould in manipulating the stock of Erie and other railroads were managed chiefly by the elder brother George, and none too well managed. Edwin organized Continental Match Co. (later merged with Diamond Match), became president of Manhattan’s Bowling Green Trust Co. (later merged with Equitable Trust) and stuck for years to his own railroad interests. He became president and chairman of the St. Louis Southwestern. When he sold it in 1925 to the Rock Island (which was later forced by the I. C. C. to turn it over to the Kansas City Southern) the last Gould railroad disappeared from the map. Meantime he had led a quiet, model life —played polo in his youth, joined Troop A of New York’s socialite 71st regiment, risen from private to captain, become an ardent marksman. (During the War. although already in military retirement, he volunteered, became a supply sergeant, later a major in the Ordnance Department.) He married Sarah Cantine Shrady, daughter of a doctor, had two children, Edwin Jr. (killed in a hunting accident, 1917) and Frank Miller Gould. In later life he became like his equally conservative sister Helen (Mrs. Finley J. Shepard) a generous charitarian, particularly towards children. Yet for all the model, industrious life he led, his years were troubled by the vagaries of the many persons in whose veins flowed the blood of his famed father. His brothers and sisters, save for Helen, all insisted on marrying actresses or noblemen —generally more than once. His sister Anna divorced Count Boni de Castellane and married the Due de Talleyrand. His brother Howard (now living abroad) married Actress Viola Kathrine Clemmons and separated from her. His brother Frank Jay (now settled on the Riviera as owner of Nice’s unprofitable Casino) married Margaret Kelly, a banker’s daughter, then British Actress Edith Kelly, then French Actress Florence La Caze. His elder brother George had married Actress Edith Kingdon, by whom he had seven children, and after her death in 1921 married British Actress Guinevere Sinclair, legitimatizing three other children he had had by her. Not only the publicity of these affairs rose to trouble Edwin Gould but the legal entanglements arising from them. In 1916, Younger Brother Frank and Younger Sister Anna sued the four trustees for mismanagement of their father’s estate. For eleven years this suit, to which there were innumerable parties, children, strange grandchildren, stranger great grandchildren,* dragged on. Finally the law decided that Brother George had mismanaged the estate and a judgment for $50,000,000 was entered against the four trustees—settlement for which was made by compromise at $20,000,000. Meantime, however. Brother George had died, leaving an estate of $15,000,000 which was whittled down to $5,000,000 and promptly became the source of another legal battle between his seven legitimate and three legitimatized children— and their diverse children by numerous marriages. All this was as distressing to Edwin Gould as the unanimity with which historians described his father as the greatest and most wicked pirate of the buccaneering age in U. S. industry. But he modestly went his wray, made and gave away his modest millions, died without ostentation, of a sudden heart attack.

*Including Marie Louise Jean Jay Georges Paul Ernest Boniface de Castellane, Georges Gustave Marie Antoine Boniface Charles de Castellane (Anna’s children by her first marriage), Helene Violette de Talleyrand (Anna’s daughter by her second marriage): Anna Eleanor Marie Raymonde de Castellane, Pauline Beatrix Yvonne Helene Flourida de Castellane (Anna’s grandchildren); Francoise Florence de Montenach, Rolande Dorothy de Graffenried de Villiers (grandchildren of Frank Gould): Eileen Vivien de la Poer Beresford O’Brien, Arthur George Marcus Douglas de la Poer Beresford (children of George’s daughter, Vivien, Lady Decies): not to mention several dozen others of less distinguished names such as Anthony J. Drexel III, Caroline de Peyster Wainright, Gioia Bishop (various other grandchildren of George).