The Financier a novel by Theodore Dreiser

 
 

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Chapter LIV 
Those who by any pleasing courtesy of fortune, accident of birth, 
inheritance, or the wisdom of parents or friends, have succeeded in avoiding 
making that anathema of the prosperous and comfortable, "a mess of their 
lives," will scarcely understand the mood of Cowperwood, sitting rather 
gloomily in his cell these first days, wondering what, in spite of his great 
ingenuity, was to become of him. The strongest have their hours of 
depression. There are times when life to those endowed with the greatest 
intelligence—perhaps mostly to those—takes on a somber hue. They see so 
many phases of its dreary subtleties. It is only when the soul of man has 
been built up into some strange self-confidence, some curious faith in its 
own powers, based, no doubt, on the actual presence of these same powers 
subtly involved in the body, that it fronts life unflinchingly. It would be too 
much to say that Cowperwood's mind was of the first order. It was subtle 
enough in all conscience—and involved, as is common with the executively 
great, with a strong sense of personal advancement. It was a powerful mind, 
turning, like a vast searchlight, a glittering ray into many a dark corner; but 
it was not sufficiently disinterested to search the ultimate dark. He realized, 
in a way, what the great astronomers, sociologists, philosophers, chemists, 
physicists, and physiologists were meditating; but he could not be sure in 
his own mind that, whatever it was, it was important for him. No doubt life 
held many strange secrets. Perhaps it was essential that somebody should 
investigate them. However that might be, the call of his own soul was in 
another direction. His business was to make money—to organize something 
which would make him much money, or, better yet, save the organization he 
had begun. 
But this, as he now looked upon it, was almost impossible. It had been too 
disarranged and complicated by unfortunate circumstances. He might, as 
Steger pointed out to him, string out these bankruptcy proceedings for 
years, tiring out one creditor and another, but in the meantime the 
properties involved were being seriously damaged. Interest charges on his 
unsatisfied loans were making heavy inroads; court costs were mounting 
up; and, to cap it all, he had discovered with Steger that there were a 
number of creditors—those who had sold out to Butler, and incidentally to 
Mollenhauer—who would never accept anything except the full value of their 
claims. His one hope now was to save what he could by compromise a little 
later, and to build up some sort of profitable business through Stephen 
Wingate. The latter was coming in a day or two, as soon as Steger had made 
some working arrangement for him with Warden Michael Desmas who came 
the second day to have a look at the new prisoner. 
Desmas was a large man physically—Irish by birth, a politician by training—
who had been one thing and another in Philadelphia from a policeman in his 

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early days and a corporal in the Civil War to a ward captain under 
Mollenhauer. He was a canny man, tall, raw-boned, singularly muscular-
looking, who for all his fifty-seven years looked as though he could give a 
splendid account of himself in a physical contest. His hands were large and 
bony, his face more square than either round or long, and his forehead high. 
He had a vigorous growth of short-clipped, iron-gray hair, and a bristly iron-
gray mustache, very short, keen, intelligent blue-gray eyes; a florid 
complexion; and even-edged, savage-looking teeth, which showed the least 
bit in a slightly wolfish way when he smiled. However, he was not as cruel a 
person as he looked to be; temperamental, to a certain extent hard, and on 
occasions savage, but with kindly hours also. His greatest weakness was 
that he was not quite mentally able to recognize that there were mental and 
social differences between prisoners, and that now and then one was apt to 
appear here who, with or without political influences, was eminently worthy 
of special consideration. What he could recognize was the differences 
pointed out to him by the politicians in special cases, such as that of 
Stener—not Cowperwood. However, seeing that the prison was a public 
institution apt to be visited at any time by lawyers, detectives, doctors, 
preachers, propagandists, and the public generally, and that certain rules 
and regulations had to be enforced (if for no other reason than to keep a 
moral and administrative control over his own help), it was necessary to 
maintain—and that even in the face of the politician—a certain amount of 
discipline, system, and order, and it was not possible to be too liberal with 
any one. There were, however, exceptional cases—men of wealth and 
refinement, victims of those occasional uprisings which so shocked the 
political leaders generally—who had to be looked after in a friendly way. 
Desmas was quite aware, of course, of the history of Cowperwood and 
Stener. The politicians had already given him warning that Stener, because 
of his past services to the community, was to be treated with special 
consideration. Not so much was said about Cowperwood, although they did 
admit that his lot was rather hard. Perhaps he might do a little something 
for him but at his own risk. 
"Butler is down on him," Strobik said to Desmas, on one occasion. "It's that 
girl of his that's at the bottom of it all. If you listened to Butler you'd feed 
him on bread and water, but he isn't a bad fellow. As a matter of fact, if 
George had had any sense Cowperwood wouldn't be where he is to-day. But 
the big fellows wouldn't let Stener alone. They wouldn't let him give 
Cowperwood any money." 
Although Strobik had been one of those who, under pressure from 
Mollenhauer, had advised Stener not to let Cowperwood have any more 
money, yet here he was pointing out the folly of the victim's course. The 
thought of the inconsistency involved did not trouble him in the least. 

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Desmas decided, therefore, that if Cowperwood were persona non grata to 
the "Big Three," it might be necessary to be indifferent to him, or at least 
slow in extending him any special favors. For Stener a good chair, clean 
linen, special cutlery and dishes, the daily papers, privileges in the matter of 
mail, the visits of friends, and the like. For Cowperwood—well, he would 
have to look at Cowperwood and see what he thought. At the same time, 
Steger's intercessions were not without their effect on Desmas. So the 
morning after Cowperwood's entrance the warden received a letter from 
Terrence Relihan, the Harrisburg potentate, indicating that any kindness 
shown to Mr. Cowperwood would be duly appreciated by him. Upon the 
receipt of this letter Desmas went up and looked through Cowperwood's iron 
door. On the way he had a brief talk with Chapin, who told him what a nice 
man he thought Cowperwood was. 
Desmas had never seen Cowperwood before, but in spite of the shabby 
uniform, the clog shoes, the cheap shirt, and the wretched cell, he was 
impressed. Instead of the weak, anaemic body and the shifty eyes of the 
average prisoner, he saw a man whose face and form blazed energy and 
power, and whose vigorous erectness no wretched clothes or conditions 
could demean. He lifted his head when Desmas appeared, glad that any 
form should have appeared at his door, and looked at him with large, clear, 
examining eyes—those eyes that in the past had inspired so much 
confidence and surety in all those who had known him. Desmas was stirred. 
Compared with Stener, whom he knew in the past and whom he had met on 
his entry, this man was a force. Say what you will, one vigorous man 
inherently respects another. And Desmas was vigorous physically. He eyed 
Cowperwood and Cowperwood eyed him. Instinctively Desmas liked him. He 
was like one tiger looking at another. 
Instinctively Cowperwood knew that he was the warden. "This is Mr. 
Desmas, isn't it?" he asked, courteously and pleasantly. 
"Yes, sir, I'm the man," replied Desmas interestedly. "These rooms are not as 
comfortable as they might be, are they?" The warden's even teeth showed in 
a friendly, yet wolfish, way. 
"They certainly are not, Mr. Desmas," replied Cowperwood, standing very 
erect and soldier-like. "I didn't imagine I was coming to a hotel, however." He 
smiled. 
"There isn't anything special I can do for you, is there, Mr. Cowperwood?" 
began Desmas curiously, for he was moved by a thought that at some time 
or other a man such as this might be of service to him. "I've been talking to 
your lawyer." Cowperwood was intensely gratified by the Mr. So that was the 
way the wind was blowing. Well, then, within reason, things might not prove 
so bad here. He would see. He would sound this man out. 

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"I don't want to be asking anything, Warden, which you cannot reasonably 
give," he now returned politely. "But there are a few things, of course, that I 
would change if I could. I wish I might have sheets for my bed, and I could 
afford better underwear if you would let me wear it. This that I have on 
annoys me a great deal." 
"They're not the best wool, that's true enough," replied Desmas, solemnly. 
"They're made for the State out here in Pennsylvania somewhere. I suppose 
there's no objection to your wearing your own underwear if you want to. I'll 
see about that. And the sheets, too. We might let you use them if you have 
them. We'll have to go a little slow about this. There are a lot of people that 
take a special interest in showing the warden how to tend to his business." 
"I can readily understand that, Warden," went on Cowperwood briskly, "and 
I'm certainly very much obliged to you. You may be sure that anything you 
do for me here will be appreciated, and not misused, and that I have friends 
on the outside who can reciprocate for me in the course of time." He talked 
slowly and emphatically, looking Desmas directly in the eye all of the time. 
Desmas was very much impressed. 
"That's all right," he said, now that he had gone so far as to be friendly. "I 
can't promise much. Prison rules are prison rules. But there are some 
things that can be done, because it's the rule to do them for other men when 
they behave themselves. You can have a better chair than that, if you want 
it, and something to read too. If you're in business yet, I wouldn't want to do 
anything to stop that. We can't have people running in and out of here every 
fifteen minutes, and you can't turn a cell into a business office—that's not 
possible. It would break up the order of the place. Still, there's no reason 
why you shouldn't see some of your friends now and then. As for your 
mail—well, that will have to be opened in the ordinary way for the time 
being, anyhow. I'll have to see about that. I can't promise too much. You'll 
have to wait until you come out of this block and down-stairs. Some of the 
cells have a yard there; if there are any empty—" The warden cocked his eye 
wisely, and Cowperwood saw that his tot was not to be as bad as he had 
anticipated—though bad enough. The warden spoke to him about the 
different trades he might follow, and asked him to think about the one he 
would prefer. "You want to have something to keep your hands busy, 
whatever else you want. You'll find you'll need that. Everybody here wants to 
work after a time. I notice that." 
Cowperwood understood and thanked Desmas profusely. The horror of 
idleness in silence and in a cell scarcely large enough to turn around in 
comfortably had already begun to creep over him, and the thought of being 
able to see Wingate and Steger frequently, and to have his mail reach him, 
after a time, untampered with, was a great relief. He was to have his own 

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underwear, silk and wool—thank God!—and perhaps they would let him 
take off these shoes after a while. With these modifications and a trade, and 
perhaps the little yard which Desmas had referred to, his life would be, if 
not ideal, at least tolerable. The prison was still a prison, but it looked as 
though it might not be so much of a terror to him as obviously it must be to 
many. 
During the two weeks in which Cowperwood was in the "manners squad," in 
care of Chapin, he learned nearly as much as he ever learned of the general 
nature of prison life; for this was not an ordinary penitentiary in the sense 
that the prison yard, the prison squad, the prison lock-step, the prison 
dining-room, and prison associated labor make the ordinary penitentiary. 
There was, for him and for most of those confined there, no general prison 
life whatsoever. The large majority were supposed to work silently in their 
cells at the particular tasks assigned them, and not to know anything of the 
remainder of the life which went on around them, the rule of this prison 
being solitary confinement, and few being permitted to work at the limited 
number of outside menial tasks provided. Indeed, as he sensed and as old 
Chapin soon informed him, not more than seventy-five of the four hundred 
prisoners confined here were so employed, and not all of these regularly—
cooking, gardening in season, milling, and general cleaning being the only 
avenues of escape from solitude. Even those who so worked were strictly 
forbidden to talk, and although they did not have to wear the objectionable 
hood when actually employed, they were supposed to wear it in going to and 
from their work. Cowperwood saw them occasionally tramping by his cell 
door, and it struck him as strange, uncanny, grim. He wished sincerely at 
times since old Chapin was so genial and talkative that he were to be under 
him permanently; but it was not to be. 
His two weeks soon passed—drearily enough in all conscience but they 
passed, interlaced with his few commonplace tasks of bed-making, floor-
sweeping, dressing, eating, undressing, rising at five-thirty, and retiring at 
nine, washing his several dishes after each meal, etc. He thought he would 
never get used to the food. Breakfast, as has been said, was at six-thirty, 
and consisted of coarse black bread made of bran and some white flour, and 
served with black coffee. Dinner was at eleven-thirty, and consisted of bean 
or vegetable soup, with some coarse meat in it, and the same bread. Supper 
was at six, of tea and bread, very strong tea and the same bread—no butter, 
no milk, no sugar. Cowperwood did not smoke, so the small allowance of 
tobacco which was permitted was without value to him. Steger called in 
every day for two or three weeks, and after the second day, Stephen 
Wingate, as his new business associate, was permitted to see him also—
once every day, if he wished, Desmas stated, though the latter felt he was 
stretching a point in permitting this so soon. Both of these visits rarely 

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occupied more than an hour, or an hour and a half, and after that the day 
was long. He was taken out on several days on a court order, between nine 
and five, to testify in the bankruptcy proceedings against him, which caused 
the time in the beginning to pass quickly. 
It was curious, once he was in prison, safely shut from the world for a 
period of years apparently, how quickly all thought of assisting him departed 
from the minds of those who had been most friendly. He was done, so most 
of them thought. The only thing they could do now would be to use their 
influence to get him out some time; how soon, they could not guess. Beyond 
that there was nothing. He would really never be of any great importance to 
any one any more, or so they thought. It was very sad, very tragic, but he 
was gone—his place knew him not. 
"A bright young man, that," observed President Davison of the Girard 
National, on reading of Cowperwood's sentence and incarceration. "Too bad! 
Too bad! He made a great mistake." 
Only his parents, Aileen, and his wife—the latter with mingled feelings of 
resentment and sorrow—really missed him. Aileen, because of her great 
passion for him, was suffering most of all. Four years and three months; she 
thought. If he did not get out before then she would be nearing twenty-nine 
and he would be nearing forty. Would he want her then? Would she be so 
attractive? And would nearly five years change his point of view? He would 
have to wear a convict suit all that time, and be known as a convict forever 
after. It was hard to think about, but only made her more than ever 
determined to cling to him, whatever happened, and to help him all she 
could. 
Indeed the day after his incarceration she drove out and looked at the grim, 
gray walls of the penitentiary. Knowing nothing absolutely of the vast and 
complicated processes of law and penal servitude, it seemed especially 
terrible to her. What might not they be doing to her Frank? Was he suffering 
much? Was he thinking of her as she was of him? Oh, the pity of it all! The 
pity! The pity of herself—her great love for him! She drove home, determined 
to see him; but as he had originally told her that visiting days were only 
once in three months, and that he would have to write her when the next 
one was, or when she could come, or when he could see her on the outside, 
she scarcely knew what to do. Secrecy was the thing. 
The next day, however, she wrote him just the same, describing the drive 
she had taken on the stormy afternoon before—the terror of the thought 
that he was behind those grim gray walls—and declaring her determination 
to see him soon. And this letter, under the new arrangement, he received at 
once. He wrote her in reply, giving the letter to Wingate to mail. It ran: 

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My sweet girl:—I fancy you are a little downhearted to think I cannot be with 
you any more soon, but you mustn't be. I suppose you read all about the 
sentence in the paper. I came out here the same morning—nearly noon. If I 
had time, dearest, I'd write you a long letter describing the situation so as to 
ease your mind; but I haven't. It's against the rules, and I am really doing 
this secretly. I'm here, though, safe enough, and wish I were out, of course. 
Sweetest, you must be careful how you try to see me at first. You can't do 
me much service outside of cheering me up, and you may do yourself great 
harm. Besides, I think I have done you far more harm than I can ever make 
up to you and that you had best give me up, although I know you do not 
think so, and I would be sad, if you did. I am to be in the Court of Special 
Pleas, Sixth and Chestnut, on Friday at two o'clock; but you cannot see me 
there. I'll be out in charge of my counsel. You must be careful. Perhaps 
you'll think better, and not come here. 
This last touch was one of pure gloom, the first Cowperwood had ever 
introduced into their relationship but conditions had changed him. Hitherto 
he had been in the position of the superior being, the one who was being 
sought—although Aileen was and had been well worth seeking—and he had 
thought that he might escape unscathed, and so grow in dignity and power 
until she might not possibly be worthy of him any longer. He had had that 
thought. But here, in stripes, it was a different matter. Aileen's position, 
reduced in value as it was by her long, ardent relationship with him, was 
now, nevertheless, superior to his—apparently so. For after all, was she not 
Edward Butler's daughter, and might she, after she had been away from him 
a while, wish to become a convict's bride. She ought not to want to, and she 
might not want to, for all he knew; she might change her mind. She ought 
not to wait for him. Her life was not yet ruined. The public did not know, so 
he thought—not generally anyhow—that she had been his mistress. She 
might marry. Why not, and so pass out of his life forever. And would not 
that be sad for him? And yet did he not owe it to her, to a sense of fair play 
in himself to ask her to give him up, or at least think over the wisdom of 
doing so? 
He did her the justice to believe that she would not want to give him up; and 
in his position, however harmful it might be to her, it was an advantage, a 
connecting link with the finest period of his past life, to have her continue to 
love him. He could not, however, scribbling this note in his cell in Wingate's 
presence, and giving it to him to mail (Overseer Chapin was kindly keeping a 
respectful distance, though he was supposed to be present), refrain from 
adding, at the last moment, this little touch of doubt which, when she read 
it, struck Aileen to the heart. She read it as gloom on his part—as great 
depression. Perhaps, after all, the penitentiary and so soon, was really 
breaking his spirit, and he had held up so courageously so long. Because of 

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this, now she was madly eager to get to him, to console him, even though it 
was difficult, perilous. She must, she said. 
In regard to visits from the various members of his family—his mother and 
father, his brother, his wife, and his sister—Cowperwood made it plain to 
them on one of the days on which he was out attending a bankruptcy 
hearing, that even providing it could be arranged he did not think they 
should come oftener than once in three months, unless he wrote them or 
sent word by Steger. The truth was that he really did not care to see much of 
any of them at present. He was sick of the whole social scheme of things. In 
fact he wanted to be rid of the turmoil he had been in, seeing it had proved 
so useless. He had used nearly fifteen thousand dollars thus far in 
defending himself—court costs, family maintenance, Steger, etc.; but he did 
not mind that. He expected to make some little money working through 
Wingate. His family were not utterly without funds, sufficient to live on in a 
small way. He had advised them to remove into houses more in keeping with 
their reduced circumstances, which they had done—his mother and father 
and brothers and sister to a three-story brick house of about the caliber of 
the old Buttonwood Street house, and his wife to a smaller, less expensive 
two-story one on North Twenty-first Street, near the penitentiary, a portion 
of the money saved out of the thirty-five thousand dollars extracted from 
Stener under false pretenses aiding to sustain it. Of course all this was a 
terrible descent from the Girard Avenue mansion for the elder Cowperwood; 
for here was none of the furniture which characterized the other somewhat 
gorgeous domicile—merely store-bought, ready-made furniture, and neat 
but cheap hangings and fixtures generally. The assignees, to whom all 
Cowperwood's personal property belonged, and to whom Cowperwood, the 
elder, had surrendered all his holdings, would not permit anything of 
importance to be removed. It had all to be sold for the benefit of creditors. A 
few very small things, but only a few, had been kept, as everything had been 
inventoried some time before. One of the things which old Cowperwood 
wanted was his own desk which Frank had had designed for him; but as it 
was valued at five hundred dollars and could not be relinquished by the 
sheriff except on payment of that sum, or by auction, and as Henry 
Cowperwood had no such sum to spare, he had to let the desk go. There 
were many things they all wanted, and Anna Adelaide had literally purloined 
a few though she did not admit the fact to her parents until long afterward. 
There came a day when the two houses in Girard Avenue were the scene of a 
sheriffs sale, during which the general public, without let or hindrance, was 
permitted to tramp through the rooms and examine the pictures, statuary, 
and objects of art generally, which were auctioned off to the highest bidder. 
Considerable fame had attached to Cowperwood's activities in this field, 
owing in the first place to the real merit of what he had brought together, 

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and in the next place to the enthusiastic comment of such men as Wilton 
Ellsworth, Fletcher Norton, Gordon Strake—architects and art dealers 
whose judgment and taste were considered important in Philadelphia. All of 
the lovely things by which he had set great store—small bronzes, 
representative of the best period of the Italian Renaissance; bits of Venetian 
glass which he had collected with great care—a full curio case; statues by 
Powers, Hosmer, and Thorwaldsen—things which would be smiled at thirty 
years later, but which were of high value then; all of his pictures by 
representative American painters from Gilbert to Eastman Johnson, 
together with a few specimens of the current French and English schools, 
went for a song. Art judgment in Philadelphia at this time was not 
exceedingly high; and some of the pictures, for lack of appreciative 
understanding, were disposed of at much too low a figure. Strake, Norton, 
and Ellsworth were all present and bought liberally. Senator Simpson, 
Mollenhauer, and Strobik came to see what they could see. The small-fry 
politicians were there, en masse. But Simpson, calm judge of good art, 
secured practically the best of all that was offered. To him went the curio 
case of Venetian glass; one pair of tall blue-and-white Mohammedan 
cylindrical vases; fourteen examples of Chinese jade, including several 
artists' water-dishes and a pierced window-screen of the faintest tinge of 
green. To Mollenhauer went the furniture and decorations of the entry-hall 
and reception-room of Henry Cowperwood's house, and to Edward Strobik 
two of Cowperwood's bird's-eye maple bedroom suites for the most modest of 
prices. Adam Davis was present and secured the secretaire of buhl which 
the elder Cowperwood prized so highly. To Fletcher Norton went the four 
Greek vases—a kylix, a water-jar, and two amphorae—which he had sold to 
Cowperwood and which he valued highly. Various objects of art, including a 
Sevres dinner set, a Gobelin tapestry, Barye bronzes and pictures by 
Detaille, Fortuny, and George Inness, went to Walter Leigh, Arthur Rivers, 
Joseph Zimmerman, Judge Kitchen, Harper Steger, Terrence Relihan, 
Trenor Drake, Mr. and Mrs. Simeon Jones, W. C. Davison, Frewen Kasson, 
Fletcher Norton, and Judge Rafalsky. 
Within four days after the sale began the two houses were bare of their 
contents. Even the objects in the house at 931 North Tenth Street had been 
withdrawn from storage where they had been placed at the time it was 
deemed advisable to close this institution, and placed on sale with the other 
objects in the two homes. It was at this time that the senior Cowperwoods 
first learned of something which seemed to indicate a mystery which had 
existed in connection with their son and his wife. No one of all the 
Cowperwoods was present during all this gloomy distribution; and Aileen, 
reading of the disposition of all the wares, and knowing their value to 
Cowperwood, to say nothing of their charm for her, was greatly depressed; 

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yet she was not long despondent, for she was convinced that Cowperwood 
would some day regain his liberty and attain a position of even greater 
significance in the financial world. She could not have said why but she was 
sure of it.