This is a “Did He Do It?” Book, David Chandler's The Binghams of Louisville.
Did Robert Worth Bingham drug his wife, Mary Lily Keenan Flagler, to get her to sign a last-ditch codicil to her will—38 days before her July 27, 1917 death—leaving him with $5 million (a staggering sum in 1917)? Mary Lily, the widow of Henry Flagler, inherited his vast fortune when he died in 1913, making her one of the richest women in America.
This is the second book of this type I’ve read recently. The other was Mary’s Mosaic, which dealt with the question: Did the CIA kill Mary Meyer, JFK’s favorite love interest, while she was taking her afternoon walk along the C&O Towpath in Georgetown in the fall of 1964? The author didn’t convince me that it did.
Likewise, despite the author's best efforts to persuade me otherwise, I’m not sure Mr. Bingham did what the author suggests. I’m a “show me” guy and not one to believe the latest gossip. Too often, while reading a book and smoking a cigar on the front porch, I’d have one ear tuned into the conversation my ex-wife was having with her friends. Unbeknownst to them, I’d pick up on the inconsistencies in the story at hand—how an unverified fact, paired with a specious assumption, topped off with a sprinkle of innuendo, would get passed to the next participant, and then her innate prejudices would transform the fragmented jumble of misallocated meanings into something more emotionally satisfying and damning. Before you knew it, it was an absolute “fact” that the most standup guy in town was an axe murderer with a tiny pee-pee.
The author paints a similar picture of Robert Worth Bingham—somewhat a schemer, a user, spendthrift, climber, and pettifogging, sleazy politician and scoundrel. He moved to Louisville to make his fortune, and was not very successful, but once he inherited Mary Lily’s money, he bought Louisville’s Courier Journal and created a national publishing giant. There’s plenty of evidence that Bingham may well have done something crooked to get Mary Lily’s will changed. However, I’m in the business of money management and estate work, and I can tell you: people redo their wills shortly before they die all the time. I also know that women often change their minds, sometimes hourly depending on ever-changing mood swings and whether the particular lady thought that you thought something that you didn’t think and therefore was furious at you for thinking what you didn’t know you didn’t think. In most instances (unless done by a lawyer to benefit himself), influencing someone to name you in a will is not unlawful. It might be kind of cheesy or even unethical, but in some instances, it could be a perfectly justifiable request.
The legal term for unlawful conduct is “undue influence,” which is generally present when the testator possesses weakness of mind or is otherwise so dependent on the beneficiary making the request that it’s difficult to refuse. Mary Lily was frequently bedridden and was administered healthy doses of morphine prior to signing the aforementioned codicil. This might shock modern readers who assume our ancestors were all virtuous Victorians, but just like SSRI coping drugs are widespread today, many a wealthy matron was addicted to morphine a hundred years ago.
Mary Lily was a North Carolina socialite, so to all you southerners who believe that our women folk, especially our esteemed grandmothers, paragons of purity, beautiful gardenias and the embodiment of all feminine virtues, you may want to put your earmuffs on! There was speculation that Mary may have been suffering from a recurring bout of syphilis, which would explain the morphine, a common treatment at the time. In my view, the world of human frailty is never black and white.
Like Mary’s Mosaic, I enjoyed the background noise as much—or more—than the detective story. This is a tale with distinctive Southern roots. The principal families in this saga are the Keenans, the Worths, and the Binghams, all North Carolinians. My Tarheel buddies aren’t very good at picking up women and many have to take the shoes off to count to 20, they cheat in basketball, and they think their barbecue is better than ours, but other than these deficiencies, they are all nice people. North Carolina is my second favorite state.
For some inexplicable reason—one I’ve given a good bit of thought to—we Southerners seem to all be connected to one another. Instead of six degrees of separation, it’s more like one or two. Contemporaries of mine are members of all three of these families.
The author traces their roots from their arrival in the Old North State from Great Britain, their achievements in law, business and politics, the formation of the Bingham School and their service to the University of North Carolina, all quite interesting.
Then there was “The War,” where all three families fought heroically for the South. I’ve always found it fascinating how quickly the country healed after the War Between the States and the horror that was Reconstruction. In Ireland, the natives are still a bit pissy over Cromwell and his New Model Army’s 1649 invasion. Yet just a few years after Reconstruction, these successful North Carolina families, who had risen from the ashes of the South’s destruction, were part of the Gilded Age New York elite. Everybody seemed to get along!
My grandmother, born ten years after Reconstruction, wrote a book of memoirs. She attended the Spence School in New York, again at a time when one would think there would be raw sensitivities and animosities between Northerners and Southerners. In it, she remarked that she always thought Yankees to be “a strange breed of people, quite different from us,” but acknowledged that growing up, she never heard “any talk about hating Yankees.” Indeed, she wrote she never heard the term “damn Yankee” until she was much older. I find this quick reconciliation a fascinating topic—indicating something good and noble about these late 19th-century Americans. Perhaps there was such abundant economic opportunity that it made no sense to focus on the past, but I’m also quite sure there was an abiding Christian ethic that facilitated reconciliation and denounced bitterness.
Although the book was not about Henry Flagler, without him and his money, there wouldn’t be a story. He was one of the most fascinating men of his age. Flagler was John D. Rockefeller’s business partner at Standard Oil. He began to step back from active participation in the 1890s when he developed an interest in building up the Florida coastline. He died in 1913. My God, what he accomplished in a span of 20 years is simply incredible! He developed the entire coastline of Florida, built fabulous hotels (architectural gems), developed small towns, roads, bridges, water systems, churches, schools, houses—and his most incredible feat was building a railroad all the way to Key West before he died, at a time when there was virtually no heavy machinery.
I’m not sure there’s a greater engineering feat in American history than what he accomplished in those two decades. And while doing this, he still had time to partake in all the enrichments of a Gilded Age lifestyle; travel, entertaining, being a patron of the arts. Contrast Flagler with Gavin Newsom’s “Railroad to Nowhere,” begun in 2008 with a budget of $133 billion. To this day, it has no operating track and no trains! I’d love to read an extensive tome on how Flagler did it all.
Finally, my last impression is how quickly wealth can fade away from extremely wealthy families. In my business, I see it all the time: people born with every privilege and advantage living destructive and unhappy lives, spending money frivolously, often without caution and under the influence of drugs and alcohol. I’m in the business of forming structures to prevent these things from happening and letting the 8th wonder of the world—compounding returns—form generational dynasties. However, our desirous human nature often places demands on us that are at odds with good stewardship.
Funny how an entertaining book gives one insight to things the author likely never intended.
