The driving force behind this place, Isabella Stewart Gardner, was a turn-of-the-century woman who had extraordinary vision and the formidable will (and the fortune) to match it.
He practiced law for the succeeding four decades, amassing a considerable fortune and establishing a formidable reputation, more for his abrasive courtroom tactics than for his legal expertise.
Apart from having a personal fortune he is a formidable money-raiser: on a single day in May he raked in more than $10m of contributions via a phone-bank appeal.
But with neither facing challenges that look as formidable as they did 12 months ago, their fortunes — and reputations — may eventually turn.
Then Cathy marries the local swell, Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff goes off to make his fortune, returning to Yorkshire as a formidable gentleman, played by James Howson.
If money is power, then Jemima Stanbury, the eccentric aunt who controls the Stanbury family fortune, should be one of the most formidable figures in the story.
"The Alamo," which opens nationwide today, lacks the telling ruggedness of William C. Davis's roiling and formidable tome "Road to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis" -- though the book must have inspired much of this picture's tone.
The party bosses who engineered Mr Rudd's overthrow as Labor leader and prime minister, before his first term was out, hoped that Ms Gillard's fresh appeal, and formidable parliamentary debating skills, would arrest the government's sliding fortunes.
Beyond bloodlines and Dollase's good fortune, Ten Most Wanted was assisted mightily by a wicked speed duel by two formidable front-runners, the Haskell Invitational winner Peace Rules and the Jim Dandy victor Strong Hope.
Even friends of Mr. Mikati, a former prime minister who made his fortune in telecommunications and ranks as one of the world's richest men, acknowledge just how formidable his task is.
