The opulence of Emilie Drexel’s 1872 wedding to Edward Biddle, like that of many another society marriage of the Gilded Age, soon proved inversely proportional to the rapture of the couple involved. Within a few years of their marriage Edward had abandoned any pretense of regard for business in general or for his arriviste in-laws in particular. The mere acquisition of wealth—especially by men like Tony Drexel, who already had far more money than they needed—was genuinely repugnant to a Philadelphia gentleman of taste and breeding, as Edward fancied himself. The fact that Edward was financially dependent on the Drexels merely compounded his resentment.
Although the Biddles’ house at 3915 Locust Street (which Tony and Ellen had given them as a wedding present) was just a block from Tony’s, Edward made a point of closing his house to Drexel influences. Here Edward reigned like a martinet over his forlorn wife and their three small sons. At dinner, when the conversation displeased him, he peremptorily ordered the subject dropped. He arranged all the parties and played the imperturbable host. He even performed the family’s marketing, on the theory that only superior man could thwart the swindling grocer and butcher.
Tony and Ellen Drexel were not amused. Although they were cultured people themselves, they believed that Edward’s intellectual and social interests should not be ends in themselves but accoutrements of business success. Tony had worked long, tedious hours at the bank in his youth without sacrificing his artistic education, and he couldn’t imagine why Edward would not embrace the same career path. Although Tony harbored hopes that Edward would become a partner, thus assuring the family’s business continuity for a third generation, Edward instead became a negative influence within the firm. He made no secret of his contempt for his colleagues at Drexel & Co., and they responded in kind.
One day early in 1878, by which time Edward had worked at Drexel & Co. for nearly ten years, a junior clerk bumped into Edward within the narrow confines of the bank’s vault. “Look where you’re going, you clumsy ox,” the clerk muttered. Edward, who prided himself on his boxing skills, promptly knocked the clerk down and strode, unruffled, back to his desk, leaving others to pick up their dazed colleague.
Such behavior, Edward well knew, was anathema to Tony. From Tony’s earliest days as an apprentice, the Drexels had always demanded more from themselves and their family than from other employees. Edward waited until Tony had received a full account of the fight. Then he strode into Tony’s office, where, according to the surviving accounts, he was received solemnly.
“Are you here to give me a report of the incident, Edward?” Tony asked.
“I have no report to make,” Edward replied unapologetically. “The man offended me and I knocked him down. I think now it is a question of his going or my going.”
“Edward,” Tony replied, “I think you had better leave. I’m afraid you’re not cut out for a banker.”
“I’m certain I’m not,” Edward agreed. The two men stared at each other for a few moments more until Tony suggested that he could arrange for Edward to study law with Logan Bullitt, Tony’s lawyer.
This was fine with Edward. The law—at least as practiced in the 19th century—offered Edward the leisure time he needed to pursue his true calling as a gentleman of letters. Tony further eased the transition by purchasing Edward’s $150,000 interest in Drexel & Co., which Tony had given him as a wedding present. At the same time, Tony furnished Emilie with an allowance of her own.
Edward promptly took Emilie and their three sons to Europe for a long trip. The year 1880 found him studying law at 32 South Third Street, next door to Drexel & Co. In 1881 he was admitted to the Philadelphia bar. In this manner Tony eased his obstreperous son-in-law out of Drexel & Co.
Other family firms, embracing the ancient maxim that blood is thicker than water, routinely turned a blind eye to the failings of family members. Tony was unusual for his day in his refusal to practice this kind of nepotism. As he had done in the conflict between his brother Joe and Pierpont Morgan, Tony refused to side with his relatives when they were wrong. For better or worse, he was creating the outlines of a modern American business— one based not on bloodlines but on merit.
Tony’s truce with his son-in-law did not last long. Edward’s despotic treatment of Emilie continued. She was a fine pianist, and in a household where she seems to have known little pleasure, she lost no chance to invite her friends over for the afternoon: With Edward away, the mice could play.
On one such occasion in January 1883 they played too hard. Emilie had been something of a tomboy in her youth and prided herself on her physical strength. On a dare from one of her friends, she proceeded to lift up the end of her grand piano. The strain was too much for her heart: She died shortly afterward, at the age of 31.
Emilie’s death was devastating emotionally to her father and financially to her husband. Nine days after she died, Tony and Edward sat down to review their relationship.
“If my daughter hadn’t died,” Tony said, as the conversation was later reconstructed, “you would probably have had seven million dollars. But she did die, and I know you’re too much of a gentleman to expect anything further.”
Edward agreed that he wanted no part of the Drexel fortune.
“You are still young and will probably marry again,” Tony told him. “But with three boys, it will be difficult for you and difficult for them.” The oldest son, Anthony, was eight—“old enough to know you and love you,” Tony reasoned. Livingston and Craig, on the other hand, were only five and three. “Let them come to live with me,” Tony suggested. Tony promised to create three trusts of $1 million each that would generate income for Edward’s three sons when they reached the age of 21.
Edward had little choice but to acquiesce. But since the Drexels’ allowance to Emilie had stopped with her death, Edward found himself with no income other than his earnings from his law practice. His house technically belonged to Emilie’s estate (although he retained a life interest in it)—a precaution Tony had taken precisely to guard against a gold-digging son-in-law—so Edward could live in it but not sell it. Small wonder that, within the droll circles of the Biddle family, the blow that Edward had so impulsively administered to his fellow clerk subsequently became known as the “million-dollar punch.”
Excerpted with permission from University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (www. upenn.edu/pennpress).