He was, and no surprise to find that he had hit the roller coaster like the rest of us. Having snowed Joe under with the buildup I had given Bill’s ability as an investigator in securities, there was no problem in getting Bill to come over to 50 Broad Street and get hired, which in turn would assure the safety of my own job (or jump off Brooklyn Bridge). Joe was quite satisfied with him, because I overheard him tell a broker friend what a ‘schmaltz’ guy he picked up — ‘an Einstein, and he came in the mail.’
“Times became a little more cheerful now as the market commenced to recover, and when Bill felt a lot more affable being on the payroll, he invited me for lunch to talk about the shape of things to come. Naturally, we gravitated toward the well-known gentlemen’s bar, Eberlin’s, Bill saying as we went in, ‘Clint, a little mild sherry will clear our vision.’ He still wore that same sad brown hat and did not jar it once while we cleared our vision. The midday wore on, and a high point I recall, after a short sermon on economics, [was] his predicting what big things we were about to do for our pal Joe. ‘Why, Clint, this man can become a Rothschild.’ The fact that this man did just that in the years since seemed to have little relation to our kind intentions at Eberlin’s saloon.
“I never did know exactly what work Bill did at our office; but he traveled extensively, I think, investigating properties in which Joe had large financial interests. For my part, in 1933 I stayed comparatively sober, making a tough living with little spare cash for booze.
“If Bill was taking a snort now and then at the beginning of this job, I didn’t notice. However, there were some dangerous moments, such as the garden party our boss threw at his Great Neck estate. It was a charity affair to raise money for his new temple, and his business friends and other guests were getting their arms twisted real hard. Crates of champagne were being pushed on the crowd at an awful price, for a good purpose, of course. Although it was costly philanthropy in those hard times, Joe was a kind person at heart and wouldn’t let Bill or me pay for anything. His wife sat with our wives, Lois and Kay, most of the evening. We sipped a little of the free bubbly in a dignified way, then sipped a little more, and then for real! Lois and Kay didn’t look comfortable until it was time to go home.
“On a trip to the cloakroom, Bill and I discovered the storage pantry for the champagne. What a sight! Bill said something like ‘Heavens to Betsy, look at this!’ We each tucked away as many bottles as we could hide in our coats, and decided as an emergency to open a couple of extras. We busted the necks over the plumbing in the men’s room and choked the stuff down like crazy. There was broken glass and wet sparkles all over the place and us. We tried to hurry back to join the others saying good night to our loving host, but we both got hit the same time.
“My wife grabbed my arm, but I couldn’t speak or hear anymore. Lois got in front of Bill, who was slowly spinning and trying to say something to Joe. Kay said he was breathing blessings on the new temple. The fog closed in. Kay got Bill and Lois back to Brooklyn in a borrowed car. Somehow, with great effort, Bill and I got into the office the next day. We were much younger then. Joe greeted us and commented, ‘Can you beat it? Some bum from the people we invited swiped some champagne and broke some bottles all over the bathroom. Imagine our own people acting like that.’
“Bill had the faculty of carrying on his work and talking to people without revealing that sometimes he was real loaded. He never staggered, although I sometimes saw him sway a bit like [in] a gust of wind.
“Before Prohibition went out, we would collect in a variety of saloons called speakeasies, such as the Steam Club, Busto’s, and a host of others now forgotten. Nearly half a century has passed, but I can still see Bill coming into Ye Old Illegal Bar on a freezing afternoon with a slow stride — he never hurried — and looking over with lofty dignity the stack of bottles back of the bar, containing those rare imported beverages right off the liner from Hoboken. One time at the Whitehall subway station, not far from Busto’s, Bill took a tumble down the steps. The old brown hat stayed on; but, wrapped up in that long overcoat, he looked like a collapsed sailboat on the subway platform. I recall how his face lit up when he fished out of the heap of clothes an unbroken quart of gin.
“Another time [later, in 1934], we made a few rounds and found we were short of money. That is, Bill was short — I had none. As a result of spending all the paper currency, he had accumulated a pocketful of nickels, dimes, and quarters. This was serious, being early in the afternoon, so we took a cab to Brooklyn and stopped at Loeser’s department store. There, Bill’s ever- devoted wife, Lois, was holding down a job, the same as my weary wife at Macy’s, while he and I were getting on our feet, so to speak.
“It was a little awkward paying off the cabby in nickels, dimes, and quarters, and after dropping several on the sidewalk, Bill dumped a shower of coins into the taxi and orated something about it being more blessed to receive than to give. Lois saw us coming down the aisle, and her face dropped a mile. After some whispered exchange, Lois went back somewhere and returned with her pocketbook. I never felt more insolvent — first Bill’s last buck, now probably hers. We went to their apartment in Brooklyn Heights, closing a hard day, and plowed into a fresh bottle with emotional overtones. I sat down at their piano and pounded out the first line of something in A flat major. Never played it as well before, I thought, while Bill pulled a violin off the wall somewhere and joined me in a clatter of noise until Lois came home and quieted things down.
“However, by now the pretense of sobriety gradually crumbled. The office, especially Joe, commenced to eye Bill with concern. His final assignment was an important one in Canada. He took off with his usual self-assurance via rail to Montreal, and the next we know, Bill telegraphs that he is in jail at the Canadian border. Joe went straight through the ceiling. His secretary went up to the border to square matters with the law — something about ‘very drunk and disorderly.’ ‘There must be some mistake,’ I said. ‘It can’t be the same man. He might have taken a glass of beer now and then at lunch. But publicly intoxicated? Never!’ I looked for a new job.
“Months later, I received a couple of rambling letters from Green River, Vermont, where Bill had now gone native like Thoreau. He was camped out in a tent on his brother-in-law’s place and starting a crusade against the then New Deal administration and F. D. Roosevelt. I cannot say that there was any apple cider involved in this undertaking, but it didn’t sound like good whiskey thinking.’’
Joe Hirshhorn remembered both Bill and Clint with great appreciation. He described Clint as “a smart boy and a nice man’’ and did not remember his having a drinking problem. Bill was another matter.
“He was awful; he was an alcoholic; but I liked him. He was one of the brightest stock analysts on Wall Street. There were a lot of analysts around, but they didn’t know what in hell they were doing. Bill was a very thorough man. I admired him and liked him; he was brilliant; and I helped him along. You know, he used to get awfully drunk in front of [our office at] 50 Broad, and a couple of boys and myself would go down and pick him up. I had a big office, and we’d put him on the couch and let him dry out.”
Said Hirshhorn, others on Wall Street were down on Bill because of his drinking — because of his making promises to lots of people and then, after a few days, getting cockeyed again. “He would fall in the street or fall in the lobby of a building. It was very embarrassing to them.’’
By 1933, Hirshhorn said, he was probably one of the few people on Wall Street who would still have anything to do with Bill. But his dealings with Bill were profitable: “He gave me a report on one stock that went from $20 to about two hundred and some odd dollars,” Hirshhorn said.
Their association finally came to an end that year, when Bill followed Hirshhorn to Toronto, where Hirshhorn was launching the mining ventures that would make him one of the country’s richest men. After some difficulty at the border for being drunk (probably the incident described by Clint), Bill did finally arrive in Toronto, where he stayed in Hirshhorn’s suite at
