Why the American People Like Helen Gould

MISS HELEN GOULD has won a place for herself in the hearts of Americans such as few people of great wealth ever gain. Her strong character, commonsense, and high ideals, have made her respected by all, while her munificence and kindness have won for her the love of many.

Upon my arrival at her Tarrytown home, I was made to feel that I was welcome, and everyone who enters her presence feels the same. The grand mansion, standing high on the hills overlooking the Hudson, has a home-like appearance. Chickens play around the little stone cottage at the grand entrance, and the grounds are not unlike those of any other country house, with trees in abundance, and beautiful lawns. There are large beds of flowers, and in the gardens all the summer vegetables were growing.

Miss Gould takes a very great interest in her famous greenhouses, the gardens, the flowers, and the chickens, for she is a home-loving woman. It is a common thing to see her in the grounds, digging and raking and planting, like some farmer’s girl. That is one reason why her neighbors all like her; she seems so unconscious of her wealth and station.

A FACE FULL OF CHARACTER

When I entered Lyndhurst, she came forward to meet me in the pleasantest way imaginable. Her face is not exactly beautiful, but has a great deal of character written upon it, and it is very attractive. She held out her hand for me to shake in the good old-fashioned way, and then we sat down in the wide hall to talk. Miss Gould was dressed very simply. Her gown was of dark cloth, close-fitting, and her skirt hung several inches above the ground, for she is a believer in short skirts for walking. Her entire costume was very becoming. She never over-dresses, and her garments are neat, and naturally of excellent quality.

HER AMBITIONS AND AIMS

In the conversation that followed, I was permitted to learn much of her ambitions and aims. She is ambitious to leave an impression on the world by good deeds well done, and this ambition is gratified to the utmost. She is modest about her work.

“I cannot find that I am doing much at all,” she said, “when there is so very much to be done. I suppose I shouldn’t expect to be able to do everything, but I sometimes feel that I want to, nevertheless.”

A MOST CHARMING CHARITY

One of her most charming charities is “Woody Crest,” two miles from Lyndhurst, a haven of delight where some twoscore waifs are received at a time for a two weeks’ visit.

Years before Miss Gould’s name became associated throughout the country with charity, she was doing her part in trying to make a world happier. Every summer she was hostess to scores of poor children, who were guests at one of the two Gould summer homes; little people with pinched, wan faces, and crippled children from the tenements, were taken to that home and entertained. They came in relays, a new company arriving once in two weeks, the number of children thus given a taste of heaven on earth being limited only by the capacity of the Gould residence. This was her first, and, I am told, her favorite charity.

Little children do things naturally. It was when a child that Helen Gould commenced the work that has given her name a sacred significance. When a little girl, she could see the less fortunate little girls passing the great Gould home on Fifth avenue, and she pitied them and loved them, and from her own allowance administered to their comfort.

“My father always encouraged me in charitable work,” she writes a friend. How much the American people owe to that encouragement. A frown from that father, idolized as he was by his daughter, would have frosted and killed that budding philanthropy which has made a great fortune a fountain of joy, and carried sunshine into many lives.

“Woody Crest” is a sylvan paradise, a nobly wooded hill towering above the sumptuous green of Westchester, a place with wild flowers and winding drives, and at its crest a solid mansion built of the native rock. One can look out from its luxuriant lawns to the majestic Hudson, or turn aside into the shadiest of nooks among the trees. What a place for the restful breezes to fan the tired brows from the tenements. Do the little folks enjoy it? Ask them, and their eyes will sparkle with gladness for answer. Ask those, too, who are awaiting their turn in hot New York, and watch the eagerness of their anticipation. For two long and happy weeks they become as joyous as mortals are ever permitted to be.

Miss Gould has a personal oversight of the place, and, by her frequent visits, makes friends with the wee visitors, who look upon her as a combination of angel and fairy godmother. Every day, a wagonette drawn by two horses takes the children, in relays, for long drives into the country. Amusements are provided, and some of those who remain for an entire season at Woody Crest are instructed in different branches. Twice a month some of the older boys set the type for a little magazine which is devoted to Woody Crest matters. There are several portable cottages erected there, one for the sick, one for servants’ sleeping rooms, and a third for a laundry.

And the munificent hostess of these children of the needy gets her reward in eyes made bright, in cheeks made ruddy, in the “God bless you,” that falls from the lips of grateful parents.

All winter long, instead of closing “Woody Crest” and waiting for the summer sunshine to bring about a return of her charitable opportunities, Miss Gould has kept the place running at full expense. During the winter she herself occupies her town residence. Ordinarily she would not keep “Woody Crest” open longer than Thanksgiving Day, but in the past winter fifteen small boys were entertained for six months. Six of these were cripples, and nine were sound of limb. Though it required many servants, I am told that the little guests were given as much consideration as the same number of grown people would have received. They had nurses and physicians for those who needed them, governesses and instructors for those who were well.

HER PRACTICAL SYMPATHY FOR THE LESS FAVORED

When, one day, I was privileged to meet Miss Gould at Woody Crest, I saw a hundred children scattered around the lawn in front of the stately mansion. It had been an afternoon of labor and anxiety on her part, for she felt the responsibility of entertaining and caring for so many little ones. As she finally cooled herself on the piazza and looked at her little charges romping around on the lawn, I asked her if she thought any of the little ones before her would ever make their mark in the world.

“That’s hard to say,” she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, “but no one can tell what may be in children until they have grown up and developed. But the hardest thing to me is to see genius struggling under obstacles and in surroundings that would discourage almost anybody. I do not see, for my part, how any child from the poorest tenements could ever grow up and develop into strong, successful men or women. Many of them, of course, have no gifts or endowments to do this, but even if they had, the surroundings are enough to stifle every spark of ambition in them. It is a mystery to me how they can preserve such bright and eager faces. What would we do if we were brought up in such environments! I know I should never be able to survive it, and would never succeed in rising above my surroundings. And it is harder on the girls than the boys! The boys can go forth into the world and probably secure a position which in time will bring them different companionship and surroundings; but the poor girls have so few opportunities. They must drudge and drag along for the bare necessities of life. My heart aches sometimes for them, and I wish I had the power to lighten the burdens of everyone.”

“The hardest thing, I suppose, is to see real ability fighting against odds, with no one to help and encourage?”

“Yes, that seems the worst, and I think we all ought to make it possible for such ones to get a little encouragement and help. When a boy is deserving of credit it should be given unstintedly. It goes a long way toward making him more hopeful for the future. We don’t as a rule receive enough encouragement in this world. Certainly not the poor. Everybody seems so busy and intent upon making his own way in the world that he forgets to drop a word of cheer for those who have not been so fortunate by birth or surroundings.”^[1]

For a number of years, Miss Gould has supported certain beds in the Babies’ Shelter, in connection with the Church of the Holy Communion, New York, and the Wayside Day Nursery, near Bellevue Hospital, has always found in her a good friend. Once a year she makes a tour through the day nurseries of New York, noting the special needs of each, and often sending money or materials for meeting those needs.

PERSONAL ATTENTION TO AN UNSELFISH SERVICE

Her charities, says Mr. Walsh, in the article above cited, are probably the most practical on record. She does not go “slumming,” as so many fashionable girls do, but she does go and investigate personal charities herself and apply the medicine as she thinks best. She puts herself out in more ways to relieve distress around than she would to accommodate her wealthiest friend. Not only has she always pitied the sufferers in the world less fortunate than herself, but she has always had a great desire to help those struggling for a living in practical ways to get along. It is this side of her noble work that stands out most conspicuously to-day. The public realizes for the first time that this young woman, who first came into actual fame at the time of our war with Spain, has been supporting and encouraging young people in different parts of the country for years past. These protÉges are all worthy of her patronage, and they have been sought out by her. Not one has ever approached Miss Gould for help, and in fact such an introduction would undoubtedly operate against her inclination to help them. She has discovered them; and then through considerable tact and discretion obtained from them their ambitious desires and hopes. Through equally good tact and sense she has then placed them in positions where they could work out their own destinies without feeling that they were accepting charity. This is distinctly what Miss Gould wishes to avoid in helping her little protÉges. She does not offer them charity or do anything to make them dependent upon her if it can be helped. By her money and influence she obtains for them positions which will give them every chance in the world to rise and develop talents which she thinks she has discovered in them.

Some of her protÉges, continues Mr. Walsh, have been sent away to schools and colleges. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to offer a scholarship in some institution and then place her young protÉge in such a position that he or she can win it, and in this way have four years of tuition free. Fully a dozen different scholars are now enjoying the benefits of Miss Gould’s kindness in this and other respects. Four others have been enabled to attend art schools, and two are studying music under the best teachers through the instrumentality of this young woman. Two of these scholars were literally rescued from the tenement dregs of New York, and they showed such aptitude for study and work that Miss Gould undertook to give them a fair start in the world. Unusual aptitude, brightness, or kindness on the part of children always attract Miss Gould, and she has become the patron saint of more than a hundred. When her name is mentioned they show their interest and concern, not by looks of awe and fear but of eagerness and happiness. Those of their number who have been lifted from their low estate and put in high positions to carve out a life of success through their common patron saint, bring back stories of her kindness and consideration that make the children look upon her as they would the Madonna. But she is a youthful Madonna, and the very idea of posing as such, even before the poor and ignorant of her little friends, would amuse her. Nevertheless, that is the nearest that one can interpret their ideas concerning her.

Miss Gould’s beneficiaries have been sometimes aided in obtaining the most advanced schooling in the land; and she visits with equal interest the industrial classes of Berea and the favored students of the College Beautiful.

HER VIEWS UPON EDUCATION

Miss Gould is well educated, and a graduate of a law school. I tried to ascertain her views regarding the education of young women of to-day, and what careers they should follow. This is one of her particular hobbies, and many are the young girls she has helped to attain to a better and more satisfactory life.

“I believe most earnestly in education for women,” she said; “not necessarily the higher education about which we hear so much, but a good, common-school education. As the years pass, girls are obliged to make their own way in the world more and more; and to do so, they must have good schooling.”

“And what particular career do you think most desirable for young women?”

“Oh, as to careers, there are many that young women follow, nowadays. I think, if I had my own way to make, I should fit myself to be a private secretary. That is a position which attracts nearly every young woman; but, to fill it, she must study hard and learn, and then work hard to keep the place. Then there are openings for young women in the fields of legitimate business. Women know as much about money affairs as men, only most of them have not had much experience. In that field, there are hundreds of things that a woman can do.

THE EVIL OF IDLENESS

“But I don’t think it matters much what a girl does so long as she is active, and doesn’t allow herself to stagnate. There’s nothing, to my mind, so pathetic as a girl who thinks she can’t do anything, and is of no use to the world.”

HER PATRIOTISM

The late Admiral Philip, he of the “Texas” in the Santiago fight, regarded Miss Gould as an angel, and the sailors of the Brooklyn navy yard fairly worship her. A hustling Y. M. C. A. chap, Frank Smith by name, started a little club-house for “Jack Ashore,” near the Brooklyn navy yard. Miss Gould heard of this club, and visited it. At a glance she grasped the meaning, and, on her return home she wrote a letter and a check for fifty thousand dollars, and there sprang from that letter and check, a handsome building in which there are sixty beds, a library, a pipe organ, a smoking-room, and a restaurant. Do you wonder that the “Jackies” adore her, and that the gale that sweeps over the ship out in the open sea is often freighted with the melody of her name?

“When I visited Cuba and Porto Rico,” says Congressman Charles B. Landis, of Indiana,—to whom I am greatly indebted in preparing this article,—“I talked with officers and privates everywhere along the journey, visited camps and hospitals in cities and isolated towns, and everywhere it seemed that the sickness and suffering and heart yearning of the American soldier had been anticipated by Helen Gould. Voices that quivered and eyes that moistened at the mention of the name of this young American girl were one continuous tribute to her heart and work. She cannot fully realize how far-reaching have been her efforts.”

A business man looks for results. What impressed me most with Miss Gould’s work was the visible, tangible results. Every dollar spent by her seemed to go, straight as a cannon-ball, to some mark. Miss Gould has a business head, and is not hysterical in her work. She gives, but follows the gift and sees that it goes to the spot. She has studied results and knows which charity pays a premium in smiles, and tears, and joy, and better life, and very little of her money will be wasted in impracticable schemes. She has a happy faculty of getting in actual touch with conditions, realizing that she cannot hit an object near at hand by aiming at a star.

Miss Gould’s practical business sense was beautifully exemplified at Montauk Point. Hundreds of soldiers from the hospitals in Cuba and Porto Rico were suddenly unloaded there. Elsewhere were government supplies—tents and cots and rations,—but there the sick soldiers were without shelter, were hungry, had no medicine, and were sleeping on the ground.

Why? Because of red tape. This young lady appeared in person and amazed the strutters in shoulder-straps and the slaves to discipline by having the sick soldier boys made comfortable on army cots, placed in army tents, and fed on army rations,—and this, too, without any “requisition.” She grasped a situation, cut the ropes of theory and introduced practice. From her own purse she provided nurses and dainties, and bundled up scores of soldier boys and sent them to her beautiful villa on the Hudson.

The camp rang with this refrain:—

“OUR HELEN”

On the day of the Dewey parade in New York, Miss Gould was in front of her house, on a platform she had erected for the small children of certain Asylums. Mayor Van Wyck told Admiral Dewey who she was, and the Admiral stood up in his carriage and bowed to her three times. Then the word went down the line that Miss Gould was there, and every company saluted her as it passed.

But it was when a body of young recruits stopped for a moment before her door that the real excitement began.

“She shan’t marry a foreign prince,” they cried, tossing their hats and stamping their feet. “She’s Helen, our Helen, and she shall not marry a foreign prince.”

“AMERICA”

Miss Gould’s patriotism is very real and intense, and is not confined to times of war. Two years ago, she caused fifty thousand copies of the national hymn, “America,” to be printed and distributed among the pupils of the public schools of New York.

“I believe every one should know that hymn and sing it,” she declared, “if he sings no other. I would like to have the children sing it into their very souls, till it becomes a part of them.”

She strongly favors patriotic services in the churches on the Sunday preceding the Fourth of July, when she would like to hear such airs as “America,” “Hail Columbia,” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” and see the sacred edifices draped in red, white, and blue.

UNHERALDED BENEFACTIONS

Miss Gould has a strong prejudice against letting her many gifts and charities be known, and even her dearest friends never know “what Helen’s doing now.” Of course, her great public charities, as when she gives a hundred thousand dollars at a time, are heralded. Her recent gift of that sum to the government, for national defense, has made her name beloved throughout the land; but, had she been able, she would have kept that secret also.

The place Helen Gould now holds in the love and esteem of the republic exemplifies how quickly the nation’s heart responds to the touch of gentleness, and how easy it is for wealth to conquer and rise triumphant, if only it be seasoned with common sense and sympathy.

I will not attempt to specify the numerous projects of charity that have been given life and vigor by Miss Gould. I know her gifts in recent years have passed the million-dollar mark.

“It seems so easy to do things for others,” said Miss Gould, recently. It is easy to do good, if the doing is natural and without thought of self-glorification.

Miss Gould’s views upon “How to Make the Most of Wealth,” are well set forth in her admirable letter to Dr. Louis Klopsch, as published in the Christian Herald:—

“The Christian idea that wealth is a stewardship, or trust, and not to be used for one’s personal pleasure alone, but for the welfare of others, certainly seems the noblest; and those who have more money or broader culture owe a debt to those who have had fewer opportunities.

“And there are so many ways one can help. Children, the sick and the aged especially, have claims on our attention, and the forms of work for them are numerous; from kindergartens, day-nurseries and industrial schools, to ‘homes’ and hospitals. Our institutions for higher education require gifts in order to do their best work, for the tuition fees do not cover the expense of the advantages offered; and certainly such societies as those in our churches, and the Young Woman’s Christian Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association, deserve our hearty cooperation. The earnest workers who so nobly and lovingly give their lives to promote the welfare of others, give far more than though they had simply made gifts of money, so those who cannot afford to give largely need not feel discouraged on that account. After all, sympathy and good-will may be a greater force than wealth, and we can all extend to others a kindly feeling and courteous consideration, that will make life sweeter and better.

“Sometimes it seems to me we do not sufficiently realize the good that is done by money that is used in the different industries in giving employment to great numbers of people under the direction of clever men and women; and surely it takes more ability, perseverance and time to successfully manage such an enterprise than to merely make gifts.”

HER PERSONALITY

Miss Gould’s life at Tarrytown is an ideal one. She runs down to the city at frequent intervals, to attend to business affairs; but she lives at Lyndhurst. She entertains but few visitors, and in turn visits but seldom. The management of her property, to which she gives close attention, makes no inconsiderable call upon her time. “I have no time for society,” she said, “and indeed I do not care for it at all; it is very well for those who like it.”

Would you have an idea of her personality? “If so,” replies Landis, “you will think of a good young woman in your own town, who loves her parents and her home; who is devoted to the church; who thinks of the poor on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas; whose face is bright and manner unaffected; whose dress is elegant in its simplicity; who takes an interest in all things, from politics to religion; whom children love and day-laborers greet by reverently lifting the hat; and who, if she were graduated from a home seminary or college, would receive a bouquet from every boy in town. If you can think of such a young woman, and nearly every community has one (and ninety-nine times out of a hundred she is poor), you have a fair idea of the impression made on a plain man from a country town by Miss Gould.”

Helen Miller Gould is just at the threshold of her beautiful career. What a promise is there in her life and work for the coming century?

She has pledged a Hall of Fame for the campus of the New York University, overlooking the Harlem river. It will have tablets for the names of fifty distinguished Americans; and proud will be the descendants of those whose names are inscribed thereon.

The human heart is the tablet upon which Miss Gould has inscribed her name, and her “Hall of Fame” is as broad and high as the republic itself.