Stephen Girard.
Stephen Girard was another of the great millionaires who arose from penury, and whose eccentricity took a philanthropic turn. Mr. Girard was a Frenchman, born near Bordeaux in 1750, who made his home in later years in Philadelphia. He bequeathed over two million dollars to found and endow Girard College in that city.
There is a good story told, which seems to be well authenticated, of the manner in which Mr. Girard rewarded the ingratitude of a sister. When he was a boy about ten he manifested very little disposition for hard work, and his family treated him harshly. One morning a rumpus arose about his idleness, and having said something that aroused the ire of his sister, she clutched the broom and flew at him in a rage. He retreated, receiving a few hard blows over the shoulders as he passed for the last time over the threshold of his paternal home. He went to sea, his father having been a seaman, and through various vicissitudes of fortune eventually turned up as a millionaire in Philadelphia.
After young Girard had gone through the preliminary course as cabin boy, trading between France, the West Indies and New York, he had saved up some money and became part owner of a small trading vessel. This was in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. His trading was suspended by the war with Great Britain. He then speculated in the renting of a number of stores in Philadelphia, and sub-let them at a large profit. Afterward he purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the old U. S. Bank in 1812, and became a private banker with a capital of more than a million. Subsequently he loaned five millions to the Government to help defray war expenses.
In the meantime fortune, however, had not favored his irate sister, who had chastised him with the broom. She remained poor. She had heard of her brother’s wealth, however, but did not have money enough to pay her passage to this country. In this extremity she went to the captain of a Philadelphia vessel in a French port and told him that she was a sister of Stephen Girard, without money, and desired to go and see her brother, who was well known to the captain. She received the best accommodation that the vessel could afford. Having arrived in Philadelphia the gallant captain escorted her to the house of her wealthy brother. Leaving her in the hallway he went in to see Mr. Girard and told him that a lady outside wished to see him. The benevolent captain was prepared to behold a demonstration of joy, which he thought would be exhibited as soon as the long lost brother and sister should recognize each other. He was not kept long in suspense. Mr. Girard knew his sister instantly. “C’est vous.” “It is you,” he said. “Oui,” she replied. These were all the words that passed. There was no rushing into each others arms, but on the contrary, Mr. Girard plunged at the captain in a lively mood. “What authority had you to bring that woman here?” he said. The captain was dumbfounded and hardly knew what to answer. “Take her back again at your own expense,” he added.
The captain did not stand a minute on the order of his going, and the millionaire’s sister, without receiving one kind adieu, was conducted from the palatial mansion of her brother to the vessel, and thence to her pauper home in France.
This shows that the great philanthropist had a good memory and was resentful of injuries, yet it also betrays a narrowness from some taint of which the greatest minds are not entirely free. The Girard sister was unable to comprehend the higher aspirations of her young brother and his intelligent convictions, which had, no doubt, taken form at that early period of his life, that a man can never become wealthy by hard manual labor. He was wrong, however, in giving her the cold shoulder. She was correct in one sense, from her point of view, although a narrow view, and his large charity should have condoned an error arising from her superficial conception of his early designs.
His narrow-mindedness, with all his genuine greatness, and his eccentricity were exhibited in a remarkable degree in some of the restrictions of his will regarding the college. Although he was exceedingly generous in his gifts to religious denominations, without distinction, as well as to charitable institutions generally, he was, though illiterate, a free thinker of the school of Voltaire and Rousseau. He, therefore, had inserted in his will a prohibitory clause to the effect that no clergyman should be permitted to have anything to do with Girard College, nor even be admitted as a visitor. The college is for orphans between six and ten years of age, who are put to a trade when they are sixteen, all expenses being defrayed until they are able to earn a living. There are now over 500 beneficiaries. Girard died in 1831, at the ripe age of four score and one. He was worth nine million dollars, of which but a very small pittance went to a few of his relatives, the great bulk of the estate having been distributed among charitable institutions. This great philanthropist was exceedingly close in money matters with men generally, and it is said that he never had a friend, except the friend in the pocket, which is by all odds the most genuine.
The late James Lenox takes rank with the great philanthropists of the age, in attempting to devote a large portion of his surplus wealth to the good of humanity. When he died, in 1880, at the age of eighty, he was supposed to be one of the five wealthiest men in New York. He spent a million dollars to found and endow the Presbyterian Hospital at Seventieth street and Madison avenue, and over a half million in building the Lenox Library at Seventieth street and Fifth avenue.
The building and the library are both immense gifts, but admission to the latter is so hampered by red tape, forms and ceremonies that it is of little or no earthly use to the general public. As a piece of architecture the building may, according to the ideas of the famous John Buskin, help to educate the people, but in other respects they derive no benefit from it. The library, which is built on ten city lots, contains the choicest selection of books in the world, outside of the British Museum, besides valuable manuscripts and works of art, and its collection of American works is unsurpassed anywhere. That part of the collection, consisting of Mr. Lenox’s own private library of 15,000 volumes, contains books of rare value, many of which could not be duplicated. This is one reason why the general public are excluded.
In fact, there is a good deal to be said in favor of the fastidious care that is taken of some libraries and picture galleries, as a large portion of the general public don’t know how to appreciate their privileges, and therefore abuse them, some through the relic monomania and others actuated by pure mischief. Thus it was that Mr. William H. Vanderbilt was very reluctantly obliged to exclude the general public from his fine picture gallery, as certain visitors scratched the etchings with their canes and put their fingers on the pictures, while others were incessantly on the relic hunt and had to be carefully watched during their visit.