The Jews in America Trilogy Page 6

  In their earliest Alabama days their shops had been set up under tents or in the open air. In Birmingham an old spreading tree near the center of town is known as “the Seligman tree.” Today no one knows why, but it is one of many trees under which the boys spread their goods. But soon after the children arrived, the boys rented three permanent buildings in villages outside Selma and opened dry-goods stores—one in Greensboro, one in Eutaw, and one in Clinton.* Now they were small chain-store operators. They hired their first clerks. They continued to peddle a bit, but now most of their time was spent buying. In New York Babette and Rosalie ran up pairs of men’s work pants and rolled hems for handkerchiefs, and whenever a brother arrived in town, the girls presented him with armloads of handiwork for the Seligman stores.

  As a peddler Joseph had been willing to take the jeers and slurs that went with the territory. But as a proprietor of three stores he was not. Selma apparently was no freer of bigotry in the 1840’s than it is today, and when a Selma man made an anti-Semitic remark to Joseph, Joseph retaliated. Joseph was small-boned and short, and in the fight that ensued he got the worst of it. But he must have conducted himself well enough because the man pressed assault charges against him.

  When the case came to trial, it became clear that the judge was also an anti-Semite. He made repeated references to Joseph as “this Jew,” “this foreigner,” and “this member of a so-called Chosen Race.” He found Joseph guilty, and was about to pronounce a prison sentence. It was probably the bleakest moment in Joseph’s life. Then a young man who had witnessed the fight, and knew its cause, stood up in the courtroom and spoke out for Joseph. The young man happened to be the son of an Alabama Supreme Court justice, and his words had weight. The judge reversed his decision, and Joseph was released. The Alabama jurist’s son—one of a growing list of importantly placed men the Seligmans would have the good fortune to stumble upon—was to enter the Seligmans’ lives at another crucial moment, later on.

  In New York both Babette and Rosalie had met young men who now asked to marry them. Both were men of solid German Jewish stock—Babette’s was Max Stettheimer, and Rosalie’s was Morris Lehmaier (later changed to Lemaire). The girls excitedly wrote Joseph of these developments, but Joseph at first was not pleased. It seemed to him only another problem on top of all his others. Problems, in a family the size of the Seligmans, came several at a time. What would become of the other four children—Leopold, Abraham, Isaac, and baby Sarah? Joseph gave his consent only when the girls agreed to split the four smaller children between them. But when Babette’s wedding, the first of the two to occur, drew near, Joseph would send only one brother, James, North to attend it, and he gave James an additional assignment—to set up a New York store. James found a corner location in downtown Manhattan and rented it. “J. [for Joseph] Seligman & Brothers, Merchants” opened for business at No. 5 William Street in 1846.* At last the Seligmans were city folk, and right around the corner from Wall Street.

  New York, at this time, was a town that still looked and sounded like a seaport. What is now the financial district was a long way from the maze of narrow, airless canyons between towers of granite and glass and steel that it is today. Instead, a fresh salt breeze blew across Bowling Green from the bay and the Atlantic beyond, and the horizon was hectic with the masts of sailing vessels from foreign ports, and the streets were noisy with horses and wagons and men unloading cargo. The spirit of oceangoing commerce was everywhere. And—what would be a rarity today—one could actually see and smell the products that were making their way into the port: the bales of hides and fleece and sacks of wheat and flour from the opening West; cotton from the South; bars of copper from the Great Lakes; crates of poultry from upstate and New England; meats, vegetables, eggs, fish, timbers for railroad ties. Very soon bars of gold would be unloaded on the streets from California. Everything was out in the open air. Stocks were traded on street corners along with diamonds and foreign currency. New York was trade—there was virtually no other business. In this zesty atmosphere it was impossible for a young man not to smell the money to be made.

  Babette’s marriage gave Joseph his first brother-in-law, and Joseph put him promptly to use. Along with William, Max Stettheimer was sent to Saint Louis, where W. Seligman & Company was opened at 166 North Main Street. With stores in New York and Saint Louis, in addition to Greensboro, Clinton, and Eutaw, things were looking up again. Max Stettheimer’s father, Jacob, was taken in, placed in the New York store, and in a short space of time Abraham Seligman—now fifteen and ready to work†—was shipped to St. Louis to assist William; Max Stettheimer was shipped back to New York to help his father, where the firm name was changed to Seligman & Stettheimer, Dry Goods Importers; Jesse and Henry were shifted out of Alabama to upstate New York, where, in Watertown, their new firm was called J. & H. Seligman, Dry Goods. (Jesse liked to say the “J.” stood for Jesse, but anyone who knew Joseph knew that all J.’s really stood for Joseph.) In Watertown the Seligmans ran their first advertisement in the Watertown Jeffersonian, which announced:

  SHAWLS! SHAWLS!!

  200 ALL WOOL LONG SHAWLS of the Richest Colors and Latest Styles, just arrived and will be sold at prices which cannot fail to suit all purchasers. Brocha, Cashmere, and Silk Shawls we offer now at lower prices than ever heard of!

  It was a chilly October morning, and the ladies came in droves.

  In Watertown the Seligmans made another valuable friend. He was First Lieutenant Ulysses Simpson Grant of the 4th Infantry, who was stationed at Madison Barracks, eleven miles away, and who dropped into the Seligmans’ store looking for “a bit of finery” for his new bride. Jesse waited on the sad-faced young Lieutenant and, as Jesse wrote later, “On our acquaintance we immediately became friends.”

  Probably Grant was looking for a new male friend his own age at that point. Most of his friends prior to that year had been made in taverns, and already his commanding officer had begun warning him about his drinking habits. His new wife was doing her best to steer him toward other forms of sociability. At her urging, he had helped form Rising Sun Division No. 210 of the Sons of Temperance Lodges in Watertown, had become presiding officer of the lodge, and often marched militantly in local temperance parades. In his off-duty, non-temperance-meeting hours, Grant began sitting around with pleasant, sober Jesse Seligman. The two played checkers, whist, and poker, chewed tobacco and smoked cigars. Grant hated to talk politics.

  Rosalie was the sentimental Seligman sister. She doted on her husband and on married life in general, loving to perform such wifely tasks as polishing his shoes, brushing his hair, rubbing his back when he was weary, and nursing him when he was indisposed. She quickly became pregnant, bore him a daughter, wept that it wasn’t the son he’d hoped for, and longed to be pregnant again. By the spring of 1848 Babette was pregnant, and Rosalie’s world had become a rosy blur of cooking, house cleaning, medicines, motherhood, and obstetrics. She began to worry about her brothers’ unmarried state—particularly Joseph, who was approaching thirty. Joseph, meanwhile, was busily making plans for his first trip back to Germany to buy more goods for his stores.

  Rosalie began a secret correspondence with a Baiersdorf girl named Babet Steinhardt, who, Rosalie had decided, would be the perfect mate for Joseph. Babet was a first cousin—she was Fanny Seligman’s brother’s child—which made it seem all the cozier, and a match Fanny would certainly have approved. Rosalie filled her letters to Cousin Babet with rapturous details of Joseph’s good looks, gentle nature, and money. And to Joseph Rosalie began dropping references to Babet’s beauty, modesty, and housekeeping skills. She suggested that he combine his business trip to Germany with a Brautschau (bride search), and hinted that, in view of his rapidly expanding operations, a time would come when he could no longer count on brothers and brothers-in-law to help him out; he would need sons. Joseph got the point. But he was annoyed at Rosalie for hammering Babet’s virtues so tirelessly, and accused her of wanting to collect a marriage broker’s commi
ssion.

  When he got to Germany, however, he made a trip to Baiersdorf. Word of his affluence had spread, and there was a sizable welcoming committee on hand to meet him. He sought out all his father’s creditors, paid them, and insisted on adding accumulated interest. He visited his mother’s grave. And he met Babet Steinhardt. She was just twenty, and, to his surprise, Joseph found her quite as advertised. He married her in a gemütlich village ceremony and in November, 1848, started home with her—the first Seligman to travel to America in other than steerage class.

  * For many years the Seligmans, and families like them, would show a preference for renting their places of business and their homes rather than buying them. This was not a reluctance to settle down. They remembered too well the futile attempts of Jews in Germany to buy land and the many instances where Jews had been summarily expelled from land they had thought they owned. The Seligmans would display this same reticence toward parcels of real estate when, not many years later, for an astonishingly low price that they could easily have afforded, they had a chance to buy one-sixth of Manhattan Island.

  * On this corner, later renumbered One William Street, would eventually rise the ornate eleven-story headquarters of J. & W. Seligman & Company. This wedge-shaped building, topped by a Romanesque tower, is now a landmark of the financial district as—through the many ironies of financial fortune—the present home of Lehman Brothers.

  † Where was Leopold, two years older than Abraham? Leopold was a slow-starting Seligman, and would prove to be something of a trial to Joseph as the years went by. Babette used to argue that Leopold was “artistic.”

  7

  MATTERS OF STATUS

  It would become a question of some importance, later on in New York when the German Jewish crowd had crystallized around such families as the Seligmans, Lehmans, Guggenheims, Goldmans, Sachses, and Loebs, whether one’s immigrant ancestor had “started with a wagon” or started on foot. It was nearly, though not quite, as important as how far back one could trace one’s family history in Germany.

  Which means of “starting” transportation was actually “better” would become a debatable point. On the one hand, starting on foot showed a certain physical stamina. Starting with a wagon, on the other hand, might indicate superior business acumen. Most Lehmans feel strongly that the Lehmans started with a wagon. One thing is certain. By 1844, when Henry Lehman arrived in Mobile, the wagon had become the fashionable means of peddling. With his wagon, then, he started north along the Alabama River and within a year had worked his way successfully to Montgomery.

  The capital of Alabama, however, in those days was a town not much bigger than Rimpar, Bavaria, where Henry had come from—four thousand population, to which Montgomery added two thousand slaves—but it was considerably less attractive. Montgomery was approached by planked roads which disintegrated into rutted, unpaved streets in the center of town. The streets turned into rivers of red mud in rainy weather, and the buildings were hastily erected frame affairs that leaned against each other and against a variety of livery stables. The livery-stable odor, and the swarms of flies it drew, pervaded Montgomery air, and between the buildings open sewers ran down to the river and its row of rickety piers, drawing more flies. Yellow fever was endemic. Rats the size of small dogs took charge of the streets at night. The only buildings of any consequence in Montgomery were three pretentious hotels—the Exchange Hotel, the Madison House, and the Dexter House—built by speculators whose faith in Montgomery’s future as a cotton capital had been supreme. At the time of Henry Lehman’s arrival these dreams had not yet materialized and the hotels stood largely empty.

  For all its unappetizing appearance and unhealthy climate, Montgomery was a prospering town. Its location on the banks of the Alabama linked it to the ports of both Mobile and New Orleans, and made it a natural warehouse and trading center from which the flourishing cotton trade could radiate. Henry Lehman rented a small building in Commerce Street and spread his stock of merchandise on wooden shelves—crockery, glassware, tools, dry goods, bagging, and seeds. With a hand-painted shingle that read “H. Lehman,” the Lehman name entered the annals of American enterprise. Henry lived in a room behind his shop, working late at night over his account books by the light of a whale-oil lamp, doing what Joseph Seligman had done, saving money to send home for more brothers. It was a lonely, celibate existence—in Montgomery Henry became known as “our little monk”—and in the quiet hours he began to fear for his own health. “There is money to be made here,” he wrote to Germany, “if the Fever doesn’t get me first.” Within two years he was able to send for his next-younger brother, Emanuel, and by 1850 Mayer, the youngest, had joined him. The offices of the firm, now called Lehman Brothers, stood in Court Square in the heart of town, directly opposite Montgomery’s main slave-auctioning block. The Lehmans were listed in the city directory as “grocers,” but they advertised themselves as “Agents for the Sale of Leading Southern Domestics”—from which it should not be inferred that the Lehmans sold slaves (though they were eventually prosperous enough to buy a few). “Domestics,” in the cotton business, referred to “osnaburgs, sheetings, shirtings, yarn, cotton rope, and ball thread.” They were, in other words, cotton brokers.

  The Guggenheims are proud to say that they started on foot and, so doing, amassed what may have been the greatest single fortune in America. The only fortune that may outweigh the Guggenheims’ is that of John D. Rockefeller. It seems senseless to quibble. The Guggenheims became immensely rich. But one of the great “problems” with the Guggenheims, socially, in New York had less to do with their foot-borne origins and their wealth than with their curious proclivity for surrounding themselves with scandal. Several Guggenheim men have had the misfortune of dying on the doorsteps of strange ladies’ houses, or of becoming involved in spectacular breach-of-promise suits.

  Records place Guggenheims in Lengnau in Canton Aargau in German-speaking northern Switzerland, as early as 1696—a document of that year refers to “der Jud’ Maran Guggenheimb von Lengnau”—and the family had probably come to Lengnau from a German town called Guggenheimb (now Jugenheim), near Heidelberg. Whether some controversy prompted the family’s move from Germany to Switzerland is unknown, but by the 1740’s the Guggenheims of Lengnau were involved in a scandal that shook the foundations of Jewish communities in two countries.

  It started with a visit to Lengnau by a young Swiss divine named Johann Casper Ulrich, pastor of the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin in Zurich, a Protestant cathedral despite its name. An earnest, scholarly man, Ulrich had become interested in rabbinical studies and Jewish culture while a seminary student. He had come to Lengnau (this town and the neighboring village of Endingen were the ghettos of Switzerland) because he had heard of a certain Jakob Guggenheim, a parnas, or elder of the synagogue, and a lamden, or scholar. Pastor Ulrich was a great admirer of the Jews. (He later published a Collection of Jewish Narratives, one of the first books written by a Christian of the era which portrayed Jewish life with sympathy.) The pastor met the parnas, and the two got along very well. Jakob Guggenheim took the pastor into his home, and the two spent long afternoons discussing Jewish history and arguing religious theory. But it soon became apparent that Pastor Ulrich’s main interest in the Jews was in converting them.

  Ulrich made no headway with Jakob Guggenheim, who took the pastor’s proselytizing efforts with good humor, but Ulrich noticed that he had a more interested listener in Jakob’s young son, Joseph.

  Joseph was brilliant, sensitive, and high-strung. He had been educated at a Talmudic academy, and loved theological debate. Ulrich knew that in order to work on Joseph he would have to get him away from his father, and so he persuaded Jakob—and the Swiss authorities—to let Joseph come and live with him in Zurich, a city that was open to Jews only during certain hours of the day. Why did the parnas let his son go? Perhaps he was flattered by the pastor’s interest. Surely he did not think that his son was susceptible to conversion.

 
In Zurich, Ulrich flooded the boy with pamphlets from Halle, Germany, the center of Protestant missions to convert the Jews, and gave him a copy of the New Testament printed in Yiddish. As the boy began to waver, Ulrich’s pressure upon him grew more intense. When the youth burst into tears, the pastor would fling him to his knees and try to force him into an ecstasy of prayer. The atmosphere of the Ulrich home had become hysterical when Joseph Guggenheim suddenly suffered a complete mental collapse. He recovered, then suffered another.

  The Ulrich-Guggenheim conversion effort grew into one of the longest on record. It lasted sixteen years. Finally Joseph announced his decision—perhaps consent is the better word—to be baptized, and, amid much prayer and weeping by both pastor and convert, the ceremony was performed. The Christian faith had gained a soul but a sadly broken man.

  It was agreed that Joseph’s conversion should be kept a secret from the Jewish community at Lengnau, and for two years it was. Then it leaked out, and the Jews of Lengnau reacted violently. They accused their former pastor friend of conspiracy and of violating their hospitality, as, indeed, he had done. Ulrich retaliated with accusations of his own, claiming that Joseph’s mental illness had been induced by the Jews as a tactic to prevent him from accepting Christianity, and charging that the Jews now “conspired to murder” Joseph, preferring a dead Christian to a live one. The battle over Joseph Guggenheim’s soul erupted into all the Jewish and Christian journals of the day, spread across the Swiss border into Germany, where at least six rabbis issued blistering pronouncements against Ulrich. Two successive govenors of Baden and nearly all the high officials of Zurich were drawn into the controversy. Eventually, the pastor was conceded to have won, and soon after that the disputed soul departed for the heaven of its choice. It must have been the Christian heaven. The name Joseph Guggenheim was expunged from the Guggenheim family tree.