William I. Russell’s 1913 autobiography The Romance and Tragedy of a Widely Known Business Man of New York uses pseudonyms almost exclusively. Some people’s identities may be figured out based on the proximity of their houses in Short Hills, New Jersey. Others depend on characterization:
[Manufacturing jeweler “Ned Banford”] said his own capital was very small and a wealthy friend, a Mr. Viedler, was backing him, and at that time had ten thousand dollars in his business. He enlarged on the liberality of this friend, saying, amongst other things, that when he went to him for money he never asked anything further than, “How much do you want, Ned”? and then writing a cheque would hand it to him.
He also told me that his business was very profitable and the only disadvantage he labored under was Mr. Viedler’s frequent absence. . . .
It was with our New York friends that most of our social life was passed. The circle there had been enlarged by the addition of many pleasant people, although the close intimacy still rested where it had started, with, however, the addition of Mr. and Mrs. William Viedler.
Mr. Viedler, a multi-millionaire at that time, has since largely increased his fortune and is now the controlling interest in a prominent trust of comparatively recent formation. They had been Brooklynites but bought a fine house on Fifth Avenue. We first met them on the occasion of a dinner given in their honor by Mr. and Mrs. Curtice, to welcome them to New York. Mr. Curtice is a nephew of Mrs. Viedler. . . . [The inner circle] comprised Mr. and Mrs. Curtice, Mr. and Mrs. Todd, Mr. and Mrs. Banford, Mr. and Mrs Viedler, and ourselves Curtice was our poet laureate[.]
Russell, 157-161.
It seems likely that:
- “Viedler” is George Frederick Vietor (1839-1910);
- his wife, the former Miss “Curtice,” is Anna Margaretha (Achelis) Veitor (1847-1927); and
- her “nephew” “Will Curtice” is actually her brother Fritz Achelis, with his wife Bertha.
- Anna Vietor’s real nephew was Frederic George Achelis, who married Helen Bruff Achelis, but he was a child in the early 1890s when the book’s events are taking place.
It is not clear who “Ned Banford” was.
[Update 09.18.2011: Thanks to a generous reader, “Ned Banford” has been identified as Edward F. Sanford of E.F. Sanford & Co., jewelers or diamond dealers. His wife Anna M. Sanford was a prominent golfer during the early 1900s.]