The wit of Wall Street

Rescheduled due to ’ronavirus, this year’s Travers Stakes Midsummer Derby will run on August 8. Named after William Riggin Travers, co-founder of the Saratoga Race Course, this thoroughbred patrician was the most popular man in New York City. He was a successful, honest stock broker, an unpublished raconteur, and sportsman on land and sea. Equal parts man of affairs and man of leisure, he was the ace of 27 clubs. Ward McCallister drafted him into the 25 ‘Patriarchs’ who formed the seed corn of his famous Four Hundred, the cream of the crop of New York society. His death in 1887 marked the decline of the Gilded Age as the city lost a virtuoso of the art of conversazione.

‘The conversazione,’ writes Nathaniel Parker Ellis, the dandy editor of Home Journal, ‘is the antipode of mere small talk, without being necessarily heavy. In fact, it ought to bristle with true persiflage.’ Ellis praised Travers’s unrivaled  ‘capacity for saying witty things on light subjects’ without the use of street slang; Travers was ‘effervescent enough without it’. Travers was unable to speak more than three words without stammering. He achieved his reputation as a great wit despite, or perhaps because of, his stutter.  If he could not eliminate his speech impediment, he would use it with precision. ‘His halt had a purpose,’ writes a contemporary in Harper’s Weekly. His listeners heard it like ‘the click of the lock as he cocked his gun but there was no use in dodging; the shot was at the mark before you could escape. But it was kindly sped, and, unenvenomed, rankled never in the wound.’

Born in Baltimore in 1819, Travers was the classmate of William Tecumseh Sherman at West Point Military Academy but transferred to Columbia College. He began his career like Bob Cratchit as a junior clerk perched on a tall stool with his nose buried in the dusty ledger of a New Jersey manufacturer. He returned to Baltimore to join a shipping merchant business and to marry Miss Louisa Johnson, the fourth daughter of Reverdy Johnson, former US attorney general, senator, and ambassador to England. When he moved to New York City to seek a greater fortune in finance, an old friend remarked: ‘Why, Bill, you stutter worse now than you did in Baltimore.’ Travers answered: ‘H-h-h-have to…bigger city.’

With his business partner, Leonard W. Jerome, he made his fortune in the stock market as a notorious bear. He paired an amiable disposition and a generous philanthropic spirit with intense cynicism toward the purported value of many companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. During a market bubble, a friend asked him if he was joining in the exuberance at the Exchange. ‘N-n-no,’ Travers replied, ‘there are f-fools enough in without m-m-me.’ When a young investor asked if Travers could help him learn how to make money, Travers replied: ‘N-n-no, but I c-c-can t-tell you how to k-keep what you’ve g-g-got.’ Perhaps his stammer resulted from his tongue’s struggle to keep pace with his mind on the market. Wall Street lawyer William Worthington Fowler recalls that Travers was constantly calculating stock charts in his head. ‘His lips move as he walks the street. When he sits down in the circle of his family, he is still figuring, ⅛, ¼, 187, Central Consolidated 96…’ In his business memoir, Ten Years in Wall Street, or Revelations of Inside Life and Experience on ‘Change, Fowler records one of Travers’s short bets. Before the Civil War, Old Southern railway stock was the darling of the Street bid up to $140 a share by sloppy speculators. Jerome and Travers discovered a large over-issue of the stock. ‘With the utmost secrecy and dispatch, they put out all the short contracts they could arrange for, and then sprung the mine.’ When they shared their discovery of the over-issue, the stock fell 60 percent and the partners cleared over $1.5 million on the trade.

While Travers made, lost, and rebuilt his fortune on Wall Street, he made his fellow financiers the target of his golden wit. A Wall Street lawyer known for his exorbitant fees crossed the street near Travers and friends. ‘Look across the way, boys,’ shouted Travers in mock alarm, ‘th-th-there’s B-B-Barlow with his hands in his own p-p-pockets at last.’ Henry Clews, whose firm was one of the largest sellers of federal bonds financing the Union army, recalls a visit to Travers’s office. As they scanned the stock ticker, Clews made small talk: ‘The market is pretty stiff, Travers.’ He replied: ‘Y-y-yes, it is th-the st-st-stiffness of d-d-death” and his prognosis proved correct when the market took a dive two days later. After Clews published a series of letters on financial policy in the New York Times, a fellow broker asked Travers if he had seen Clews’s last letter. Travers replied, ‘I h-h-hope so.’

Clews had raised himself up from a modest childhood to a successful career on Wall Street and while Travers admired his friend he could not allow his bald-head to get too big. ‘W-w-what did you s-say, Mr Clews?’ asked Travers in a club bar room. ‘I say with pride, Mr Travers, that I am a self-made man — that I made myself,’ answered Clews. Travers tapped the ash from his cigar as the group leaned in for the riposte. ‘Wh-while you were m-m-making yourself, why the devil d-did-didn’t you p-put some more hair on the top of y-your h-head?’

One morning Travers shared a downtown commute with Charles L. Frost, who made his living robbing the graves of foreclosed railroad companies. Scanning his old friend’s shock of white hair, a tippler’s red nose, and a banker’s blue necktie, Travers exclaimed: ‘If I had s-s-seen you as I do now in w-w-war times, I should have taken you for a p-perfect p-p-patriot, red, white, and blue.’

Travers was also a master deadpan. Upon hearing that the house of Secretary of State Thomas Bayard was overrun with rats, Travers went to buy his friend the gift of a rat terrier. To demonstrate the dog’s hunting ability, the pet shop owner released a rat into the dog’s cage. To his surprise and disappointment, the rat charged at the dog, knocking it aside with ease. Travers started for the door, paused, and turned to ask: ‘Say, Johnny, how m-much for the r-r-rat?’ Travers was introduced to Chang and Eng Bunker, the 19th century’s famous traveling conjoined twins who coined the term ‘Siamese twins’. He stared blankly for a beat, then said, ‘B-b-brothers, I presume.’

Travers enjoyed puncturing the pompous and over-inflated. Driving his buggy along a country road, he pulled up to the publisher of a New York newspaper and invited him to hop in alongside him. ‘I am afraid there isn’t room,’ the man replied. ‘D-don’t y-you think,’ Travers asked, ‘that p-p-perhaps you aren’t such a b-b-big man as you think you are?’ An Englishman arrived in Newport for the yachting season with letters of introduction from Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. From his moment of arrival, he never stopped talking, offering his opinion on every topic sacred and profane. The group silently prayed for a brief respite as oysters were served at dinner. Their prayers went unanswered; the Englishman took one mouthful and began anew. ‘It is now a debatable point among scientists as to whether or not the oyster has brains,’ he declared to the defeated dinner party. A guest recalls that ‘with the calmness of Job’ Travers interrupted the bore. ‘I think the oyster m-must have b-b-brains because it knows enough when to sh-sh-shut up.’ Travers tolerated another nobly-born but boring Englishman until he could resist temptation no longer. ‘How large was your family, Mr Travers?’ asked the Englishman. ‘There were t-t-ten of us boys, and each of us had a s-s-sister,’ answered Travers. ‘Remarkable! Then there were 20 of you.’ ‘N-n-no,’ corrected Travers with contempt. ‘L-l-leven.’

Cleveland Armory records Travers’s best bon mot in his magisterial Who Killed Society? A confrontation between two members of the Union Club nearly resulted in a duel and ended at the New York Supreme Court. ‘On passing the Union Club, he was asked if all the men who could be seen in chairs from the street outside were actually habitués of the Club. “N-n-no,” he replied, “s-s-some are s-s-sons of habitués.”’

Travers uttered his most memorable bon mot in Newport where he gathered a group of bankers and brokers to watch a squadron of yachts preparing to race. Each man pointed with prosperous pride to his yacht as each sailed into full view of the crowd. Travers listened with reverence and awe. Without taking his eyes off the squadron, he asked the affluent audience: ‘Wh-wh-where are the cu-cu-customers’ yachts?’

Travers was a good sport and a good sportsman. With John Morrissey, the former bare knuckle boxer and future congressman, he helped to found the Saratoga Race Course where the Travers Stakes Midsummer Derby still bears his name. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman knew both men and recalls a favorite racetrack rejoinder:

‘Mr Morrissy believed in the theory “like-me, like-my-dog,’ and believed every one of his friends was in duty bound to bet on his horse at the Saratoga races. One day he asked Travers to bet on his horse, and the stammering banker promised to do it. The next day Morrissey’s horse lost the race, and the man who had whipped [his horse] came up to Travers all humiliation. “I’m sorry, Mr. Travers,’ he said, ‘that you lost on my horse — very sorry.’ “W-w-why, I d-d-didn’t lose,’ said Travers. “Then you didn’t bet on him, after all,’ said Morrissey with an injured look. “Y-y-yes, I b-bet on him, b-b-but- I bet he’d lo-lo-lose!”’

Henry Adams and his wife Clover hosted Henry James and Mayor Hewitt for lunch one Sunday. Hewitt shared a story of Christmas Day at the Travers home. Mrs Travers hoped to mark the Christmas season in a special way that year by hanging an illuminated sign in their parlor: ‘God Bless Our Home’. Mr Travers approved and ‘said he felt regenerated’ by its presence in their home. Mrs Travers was horrified on St Stephen’s Day when she found a new sign in their dining room: ‘God Damn Our Cook’.

An amiable wit, Travers was willing to allow himself to be the butt of a joke. Clews recalls another Travers visit to Newport. A lady of society was horrified to hear Travers ask if she had ever been insane. ‘Why, Mr Travers, what do you mean?’ she asked indignantly. He repeated the question and she fled across the room. Her husband sped through the crowd to confront Travers and demand an explanation. ‘N-n-no!’ clarified Travers, ‘I was only trying to ask your wife if sh-sh-she had ever been in S-s-s-ain… in S-s-s-ain… in S-s-s-saint Louis!’

On a train ride together, his business partner Lawrence R. Jerome removed his ticket from his breast pocket and slipped into another row of seats while Travers dozed. Jerome pretended to be asleep as well so that the conductor was forced to shake him away to ask for his ticket. ‘I’m W-w-william R. T-t-travers, of New York. I had a p-pass; b-but I c-c-an’t find it,’ Jerome replied in a perfect impersonation of Travers. ‘I’m a b-b-rother of Mr Blank, the president of the railroad, and I assure you it’s all right.’ The conductor accepted his excuse and continued down the aisle. When he reached Travers, the conductor grew suspicious as he searched every pocket with exaggerated exasperation. ‘I’m W-w-william R. T-t-travers, of New York. I had a p-pass; b-but I c-c-an’t find it,’ he assured the skeptical conductor. ‘I’m a b-b-rother of Mr Blank, the president of the railroad, and I assure you it’s all right.’ The conductor replied, ‘You can’t fool me, even with that stutter. You’ll have to pay your fare or be put off.’ Jerome allowed his friend to fluster for another minute before stepping in with the missing ticket and a cigar for the conductor.

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One day at the stock exchange, he and another broker bid at the exact same moment for 100 shares. The other broker stated without emotion that he was entitled to the stock as he had made his bid and sat down before Travers could finish his bid. ‘Th-th-that may b-b-be so,’ Travers admitted, ‘b-b-but ev-ev-everybody r-r-round here knows that I be-be-began first.’ Even in weakness he could flash his winning wit. He walked into one of his 27 clubs one morning and announced: ‘B-b-boys I’m afraid I t-t-took m-more wine last night than a ch-church member should t-take.’ More club members gathered around as he explained: ‘This m-morning when I came to b-breakfast my wife said “William Travers what was the m-matter with you last n-n-night? You stood beside the b-bed for sometime l-looking at me and finally s-s-said- ‘Well I s-s-swear you two girls look enough alike to-to-to be sisters.’”’

When he was lost in Brooklyn, he asked a man on the corner for directions. ‘W-will you b-be k-kind enough to p-point the way?’ The man happened to share his stammer and replied, ‘Y-you are g-going the wrong w-way. Th-that is M-Montague Street there.’ Travers reproached him, ‘Are y-you m-mimicking me, m-making fun of me?’ The man replied humbly, ‘N-no, I am b-badly af-flict-flicted with an impediment in my sp-speech.’ ‘Why do-don’t you g-get cured?’ wondered Travers with a wink. ‘Go-go to Doctor—-, and y-you’ll get c-cured. D-don’t you see how well I talk. He cu-cured me.’

Travers spent his final months in 1887 seeking a rest cure for his diabetes in Bermuda. A death bed visitor remarked that Bermuda is a nice place for rest and change. “Y-y-yes,’ came the reply. ‘th-the waiters g-get the ch-change and th-the h-h-hotel k-k-keepers th-the rest.’ He died and left a fortune spread across so many partnerships that a final tally is impossible. He owned five desirable residences. At each he always met his friends at the door with a smile and a glass of Madeira ‘of which he was a perfect judge’. He lived to make his friends happy and so at this wit’s end he died with wealth beyond measure.

Stephen Schmalhofer is the author of Delightful People.