Fifteen years ago Wall Street was Arcady for Richard D. Wyckoff. He had a good name—editor and financier. He had a magazine, a big bank book, a glass-topped desk. And he had a pretty brunette for stenographer.
Last week he crawled into court and confessed that the pretty brunette has everything that once was his: name, magazine, bank book, glass-topped desk, stenographers aplenty of her own. He wanted some of it back again.
The story is familiar enough in the financial district of New York, where the memory of Wyckoff hovers ghostlike in many an office corner, and the name of Cecelia G. Wyckoff is flaunted fortnightly at the masthead of the Magazine of Wall Street. The chapters of it fall into the following sequence:
In 1888 Wyckoff made his debut in the district, getting a job as messenger for a firm of brokers. Clever lad, apt student, he was in due course a broker on his own, functioning in a number of partnerships, promoting innumerable enterprises, among them the Emerson Phonograph Co. By 1907 when he started to publish the Ticker Magazine he had acquired a reputation for smartness and a considerable fortune.
Shortly thereafter came scintillant Cecelia Gertrude Shere, waving dark locks, out of the West in quest of fame.
Grand opera was the dream of this girl from Detroit. Between vocalizings, however, she found it necessary to get a job, and she got one in the office of blithe, clever Editor Wyckoff. She became his stenographer and secretary.
Now even more sunny than ever he-came Wall Street to Wyckoff. A sympathetic understanding blossomed quickly between the onetime phonograph promoter and the would-be prima donna. It might have been music. At any rate it grew and grew, until the then Mrs. Wyckoff thought best to inquire.
Sweet and Low. In her subsequent suit for divorce, Mrs. Aleminia Wyckoff alleged that she had hired a private detective to follow her husband to the source of his happiness. The detective traced him one evening to a house at Patchogue, L. I., where Cecelia Shere had an apartment. Gaining admission to the apartment in the morning, in the role of gasman, the detective found Wyckoff still there.
Mrs. Wyckoff named Cecelia Shere corespondent in her suit, which was granted in 1913.
About this time, Wyckoff said, his stenographer tenderly wooed 25% of the stock in the Ticker Publishing Co. from him. And when, in August of 1913, he and Cecelia Shere were wed, on the very day of the happy nuptials, with arms twined about his neck, she graciously accepted 25% more.
More and more gallant did Wyckoff become. He bought nine and a half acres at Great Neck, L. L, and built a $250,000 home, all of which at his young wife's gentle suggestion he put in her name. In 1916 he assigned to her the balance of the stock of the Ticker Publishing Co., except for i% which he kept.
Finally he agreed with her that she should be manager of the magazine, which by now had taken its present name, at a salary of $25,000 a year, while he would be editor, at $18,000. It was stipulated that if she should ever ask him to resign, he would do so. His resignation came soon.