All of these qualities were characteristic of Elizebeth Smith, who in 1916 was a restless midwesterner with a strong desire to get beyond the horizons of her own small known world and no field of endeavor, yet, that she had latched onto to her satisfaction. The youngest of nine children, she grew up in Indiana and as a young woman had hoped her father, a Quaker, might facilitate her admission to a renowned Quaker college like Swarthmore. Her father, however, was “uninterested in my going to college,” as Elizebeth later put it, so “by my own efforts” she gained admittance to the College of Wooster in Ohio, borrowing the tuition money from her father, who charged her 6 percent interest. After two years she transferred to Hillsdale College in Michigan, majoring in English and studying Latin, Greek, and German. Elizebeth, whose mother chose an unusual spelling for her first name to ensure that her daughter was never called “Eliza,” spent a year teaching and serving as principal at a small country school, and decided to seek a more “congenial way of earning my living.” In the summer of 1916 she traveled to Chicago and stayed with friends on the South Side. Dispirited after breaking off an engagement with “a handsome young poet and musician,” she had no clear idea what she wanted to do and knew only that it should not be “run of the mill.”
A visit to a Chicago employment agency proved fruitless. But the agency did suggest she visit the Newberry Library, where there might be some sort of job involving a 1623 folio of one of Shakespeare’s plays. Elizebeth was “stunned” to learn that such a thing as an original folio of Shakespeare’s work existed, and she resolved to see it, regardless of whether there was a job attached. She took the L—Chicago’s rapid transit—to the Newberry. Her first sight of a Shakespearean manuscript, she later wrote, prompted the kind of thrill that an archaeologist might feel at stumbling upon the tomb of a pharaoh. She was smitten and began chatting up a friendly librarian to see if there was in fact a position that might permit her to work around magnificent original documents like that.
As luck would have it, there was. It wasn’t at the Newberry, but rather at the estate of a wealthy man named George Fabyan, who was looking for someone to “carry on research” on a literary project involving Sir Francis Bacon. He specifically wanted a woman who was “young, personable, attractive and a good talker.” The librarian called up Fabyan then and there. He had an office in the city, and before long a limousine pulled up, “and in came this whirlwind, this storm, this huge man and his bellowing voice could be heard all over the library floor,” Elizebeth later recalled. Her potential employer was a textile merchant whose family had made a fortune in cotton goods—a hyperactive, wild-eyed person of myriad scientific enthusiasms and no scientific training. Thanks to his wealth, Fabyan was able to indulge his many curiosities. He was incubating any number of so-called research projects at a place he called Riverbank Laboratories, a suburban “think tank” located on an estate in Geneva, Illinois.
At the library, George Fabyan asked Smith if she would be willing to go out to Riverbank and spend the night. She protested that she did not have a change of clothes, and he told her he’d lend her some. When she agreed, he swept her into the limo, which drove them to the Chicago and North Western railroad station. Before she knew it, Elizebeth was sitting on a commuter train wondering, “Where am I? Who am I? Where am I going?”
Smith was fascinated and slightly repelled by Fabyan, who was large, bearded, and unkempt. Despite having a reputation at college for “volubility,” she feared he must think her a “demure little nobody” and resolved to correct that impression. Aware that she was in the company of a multimillionaire, she resolved to be well-spoken and proper, and her idea of well-spoken and proper seems to have been lifted out of a Gothic romance. When Fabyan asked, “What do you know?” she leaned her head against the train window, looked at him “quizzically” through half-lidded eyes, and replied in her best Jane Eyre: “That remains, sir, for you to find out.” Fabyan roared with laughter; he seemed to consider it an ideal answer. Another car was waiting at their destination, and presently Elizebeth Smith found herself installed in a guest bedroom at Riverbank, where there was a full fruit bowl and a pair of men’s pajamas. She proceeded downstairs to a formal dinner whose attendees included her new boss: Elizabeth Wells Gallup, another former schoolteacher, who was living at the Riverbank estate and was a crank of the first order.