LARGE FORTUNES.
No single class can be pointed to in the present day as the first favourite of fortune. The loan-monger is still powerful, and so is the speculator; but bankers accumulate fortunes like those of the highest nobles, and a linen-draper left the other day cash which would purchase the fee-simple of the Woburn estates. The rate of fortunes has enormously increased. Pitt thought it useless to tax fortunes above a million, and now men die every day whose heirs chuckle over the saving produced by this want of foresight. A “plum” has ceased to be even a citizen’s goal, and there are tradesmen in London whose incomes while in trade exceed “a great fortune” of the time of the second George. Very enormous realised fortunes, properties that are producing 50,000l. a-year, are, however, still very scarce. Only fifty-seven are returned to the English income-tax; and though that is a palpably erroneous account, it may be doubted if there are a dozen individuals with that amount in the world. There are none in France or Italy beyond a few working capitalists, a few remaining in Germany, a considerable number in Russia, and perhaps thirty individuals in America. There are perhaps ten private incomes in India of that amount, as many in South America, and a few officials in the Eastern world accumulate very considerable sums; but there the list ends.[[103]] Yet, how often are large fortunes wrecked by those who succeed to them!
Many a Londoner past middle age may recollect Thomas Clark, “the King of Exeter ’Change,” who was long one of the most singular characters in the metropolis. He took a stall in the ’Change in 1765, with 100l. lent him by a stranger. By parsimony and perseverance he so extended his business as to occupy nearly one-half of the entire building with the sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. He grew rich, and once returned his income at 6000l. a-year. He was penurious in his habits: he dined with his plate on the bare board, and his meal, with a pint of porter, never cost him a shilling; after dinner he took a glass of spirits-and-water at the public-house opposite the end of the ’Change, and then returned to his business. He resided in Belgrave-place, Pimlico; and morning and evening saw him on his old horse, riding into town and home again—and thus he figured in the print-shops. He died in 1817, in his eightieth year, and left nearly half a million of money. His daughter was married to Hamlet, the celebrated goldsmith of Coventry-street who, however, met with sad reverses; and, among other unsuccessful speculations, built the Bazaar and the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford-street.
The wealth of the celebrated Mr. Beckford, the son of the demagogue Alderman, and Lord Chatham’s god-child, proved the shoal upon which his happiness was wrecked. He succeeded to his father’s enormous fortune at ten years of age. He was educated at home: he was quick and lively, and had literary tastes; he had a great passion for genealogy and heraldry; studied Oriental literature: in his seventeenth year he wrote a history of extraordinary painters. His father had left him, principally in Jamaica estates, a property which, on the conclusion of his minority, furnished him with a million of ready money and an income of 100,000l. a-year. He travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year, when he wrote Vathek, a work of startling beauty. At twenty-four he married; but the lady died in three years. He passed many years in travelling, principally in Spain and Portugal, before he got sufficiently settled in mind to return to his family-seat, Fonthill in Wiltshire. He began to reside there in 1796, and immediately commenced the great squandering of his money. He had always a hundred, and often two hundred, workmen engaged in carrying out his wayward fancies. But he was haughty and reserved; and because some of his neighbours followed game into his grounds, he had a wall, twelve feet high and seven miles long, built round his home-estate, in order to shut out the world. He then began the third house at Fonthill, considering the second too near a piece of water. The new house was built in a sham monastic style, was called the Abbey, and cost a quarter of a million; but never put to any use, except on one occasion, to receive Lord Nelson. While Beckford was indulging these gigantic follies, he lost, by an adverse decision in a Chancery-suit, a considerable portion of his Jamaica property; he was also cheated out of large sums of money, and in the end was obliged to sell Fonthill; the purchaser was Mr. Farquhar, a rich but penurious merchant. In a few years the lofty tower of the Abbey fell down. The estate is now the property of the Marquis of Westminster. Mr. Beckford removed to Bath, and there built, on Lansdowne Hill, an Italian villa, with a lofty prospect-tower. While residing here he wrote an account of the travels which he had made half a century before; and having got through large sums of money in planting and building, he died in 1844, in his eighty-fourth year; and upon his tomb a passage from Vathek is inscribed.
Mr. Beckford was unquestionably a man of genius and rare accomplishments. “But his abilities were overpowered, and his character tainted, by the possession of wealth so enormous. At every stage of life his money was like a millstone round his neck. He had taste and knowledge; but the selfishness of wealth tempted him to let these gifts of the mind run to seed in the gratification of extravagant freaks. He really enjoyed travelling and scenery, but he felt it incumbent on him, as a millionnaire, to take a French cook with him wherever he went; and he found that the Spanish grandees and ecclesiastical dignitaries who welcomed him so cordially valued him as the man whose cook could make such wonderful omelettes. From the day when Chatham’s proxy stood for him at the font till the day when he was laid in his pink granite sarcophagus, he was the victim of riches. Had he had only 5000l. a year, and been sent to Eton, he might have been one of the foremost men of his time, and have been as useful in his generation as, under his unhappy circumstances, he was useless.”[[104]] It may be added, that he was worse: for he so threw about his money at Fonthill as to corrupt and demoralise the simple country-people. We remember three of his London residences: one on the Terrace, Piccadilly, on the site of the newly-built mansion of Baron Rothschild; another of Beckford’s town residences was No. 1 Devonshire-place, New-road; and the third, No. 27 Charles-street, May Fair, a very small house, looking over the garden of Chesterfield-house.
The vanity of wealth is exemplified in the following anecdote, which Mrs. Richard Trench had from an ear-witness:
The late Duke of Queensberry, leaning over the balcony of his beautiful villa near Richmond, where every pleasure was collected which wealth could purchase or luxury devise, he followed with his eyes the majestic Thames, winding through groves and buildings of various loveliness, and exclaimed, “Oh, that wearisome river! Will it never cease running, running, and I so tired of it?” To me this anecdote conveys a strong moral lesson, connected with the well-known character of the speaker, a professed voluptuary, who passed his youth in pursuit of selfish pleasures, and his age in vain attempts to elude the relentless grasp of ennui.
Now let us turn to some better uses of wealth earned by well-directed industry. Old Mr. Strahan, the printer (the founder of the typarchical dynasty), said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than getting money;” and he added, that “the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed with him. Boswell also relates that Mr. Strahan once talked of launching into the great ocean of London, in order to have a chance of rising into eminence; and observing that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes there because they had been born to a competency, said, “Small certainties are the bane of men of talents;” which Johnson confirmed.
Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon Johnson’s recommendation. Johnson, having inquired after him, said, “Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I’ll give this boy one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it’s sad work. Call him down.” Boswell followed Johnson into the courtyard behind Mr. Strahan’s house, and there he heard this conversation:
“Well, my boy, how do you go on?” “Pretty well, sir; but they’re afraid I a’n’t strong enough for some parts of the business.” Johnson. “Why, I shall be sorry for it; for, when you consider with how little mental power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear; take all the pains you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There’s a guinea.”
Here was one of the many instances of Johnson’s active benevolence. At the same time, says Boswell, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy’s awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions.
Johnson appears to have been generally alive to the policy of getting money: we all remember when, as one of the executors of Mr. Thrale, he was assisting in taking stock of the brewery in Southwark, how its vastness impressed the doctor with “the potentiality of growing rich.”
William Strahan, a native of Edinburgh, came to London when a very young man, and worked as a journeyman printer, having Dr. Franklin for one of his fellow-workmen. Strahan, industrious and thrifty, prospered, and purchased, in 1770, a share of the patent for King’s printer; and he obtained considerable property in the copyrights of the works of the most celebrated authors of the time. He was a great friend to Johnson, and kept up his intimacy with Franklin. He died rich, bequeathing munificent legacies. He was succeeded in his business by his third son, Andrew Strahan, who inherited his father’s excellent qualities, and died in 1831, aged eighty-three, leaving property to the amount of more than a million of money. Among his many generous acts, he presented to James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses, the munificent gift of 1000l.
The vicissitudes of the Buckinghams, political as well as fiscal, can be traced through the long lapse of eight centuries. In our own times, two dukes have fallen from their high estate into neglect and poverty. Richard, first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, lived at Stowe, with princely magnificence: his expenditure in rare books and works of art was enormous; and his entertainment of the Royal Family of France and their numerous retinues, upon one of his estates, not only drained his exchequer, but burdened him with debt. Neither Louis XVIII. nor Charles X., however, took the slightest notice of the obligation they had incurred,—apparently regarding such imprudent generosity as the natural acknowledgment of their exceeding merit. The Duke was, in 1827, compelled to shut up his house and go abroad, till his large estates could be nursed, so as to meet the heaviest and most pressing demands.[[105]] While abroad, he had a dream, which he has recorded in his Private Diary, published in 1862. He dreamed that he was at Stowe, his dear and regretted home: all was deserted—not a soul appeared to receive him. His good dog met him, licked his hand, and accompanied him through all the apartments, which were desolate and solitary,—every room as he had left it. He met his wife, who told him all his family were gone, and she alone was left. He awoke with the distress of the moment, and slept no more that night.
Mr. Rumsey Forster, in his piquant historical notice of Stowe, prefixed to the Priced and Annotated Catalogue, relates that, Louis Philippe being present when the Royal Family of France were enjoying the hospitality of the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, as they were seated together in the library, the conversation turned on events then enacting on the other side of the Channel; upon which Louis Philippe, recollecting his own position with the Revolutionists, threw himself upon his knees, and begged pardon of his royal uncle for having ever worn the tricoloured cockade. The anecdote is curious, when the subsequent career of the ex-monarch is borne in mind.
The Duke died Jan. 17, 1839, and was succeeded by his only son, Richard Plantagenet, who, though crippled in fortune by the paternal tastes, celebrated the coming of age of his son with profuse hospitality at Stowe, in 1844; and in 1845, entertained Queen Victoria and the Prince Albert with great sumptuousness. The mansion at Stowe was partly refurnished for the occasion, when the cost of the new carpets was 5000l. In 1848, the dream of the first Duke was strangely realised by the dismantling of Stowe, and the compulsory dispersion of the whole of the costly contents; the sale occupying forty days, and realising 75,562l. 4s. 6d. The Duke subsequently resided in the neighbourhood; and he often indulged his sadness at his fallen fortunes by walking to Stowe; and there, in one of the superb saloons in which kings and princes had held courts and been feasted with regal magnificence,—seated in a chair before a small table—the only furniture in the room—would Richard Plantagenet pass many an hour of “bitter fancy.” He died July 30, 1861, at the age of sixty-four. Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster, writes of the Duke’s lineage: “Of all native-born British subjects, his Grace was, after the present reigning family, the senior representative of the Royal Houses of Tudor and Plantagenet.”[[106]]
“Day and Martin’s Blacking,” one of the inventions of the present century, realised a large fortune, which was mostly appropriated to beneficent purposes. Day is related to have been originally a hair-dresser; and, as the story goes, one morning a soldier entered his shop, representing that he had a long march before him to reach his regiment; that his money was gone, and nothing but sickness, fatigue, and punishment awaited him unless he could get a lift on a coach. The worthy barber, who, with his small means, was a generous man, presented him with a guinea, when the grateful soldier exclaimed, “God bless you, sir! how can I ever repay you this? I have nothing in this world except” (pulling a dirty piece of paper from his pocket) “a receipt for blacking: it is the best ever was seen; many a half-guinea have I had for it from the officers, and many bottles have I sold.” Mr. Day, who was a shrewd man, inquired into the truth of the story, tried the blacking, and finding it good, commenced the manufacture and sale of it, and realised the immense fortune of which he died possessed in 1836; bequeathing 100,000l. for the benefit of persons who, like himself, suffered the deprivation of sight. The rebuilding of the Blacking Factory, in High Holborn, cost 12,000l.
Pianoforte-making has led to great money-making results. About the year 1776, Becker, a German, undertook to apply the pianoforte mechanism to the harpsichord, assisted by John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, then workmen in the employ of Burckhardt Tschudi, of Great Pulteney-street, London. After many experiments, the grand-pianoforte mechanism was contrived by these three. Messrs. Broadwood, from 1824 to 1850, made on an average 2236 pianofortes per annum; and employed in their manufactory 573 workmen, besides persons working for them at home. In 1862 died the head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Broadwood, sen., at the age of seventy-five, leaving 350,000l. personal property, besides realty.
James Morison, who styled himself “the Hygeist,” and was noted for his “Vegetable Medicines,” was a Scotchman, and a gentleman by birth and education. His family was of the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire, his brother being “Morison of Bognie,” an estate worth about 4000l. a year. In 1816 James Morison, having sold his commission, for he was an officer in the army, lived in No. 17 Silver-street, Aberdeen, a house belonging to Mr. Reid, of Souter and Reid, druggists. He obtained the use of their pill-machine, with which he made in their back-shop as many pills as filled two large casks. The ingredients of these pills, however he may have modified them afterwards, were chiefly oatmeal and bitter aloes. With these two great “meal bowies” filled with pills, he started for London; with the fag-end of his fortune advertised them far and wide, and ultimately amassed 500,000l.
Such is the statement of a Correspondent of the Athenæum. Morison’s own story was, that his own sufferings from ill-health, and the cure he at length effected upon himself by “vegetable pills,” made him a disseminator of the latter article. He had found the pills to be “the only rational purifiers of the blood;” of these he took two or three at bedtime, and a glass of lemonade in the morning, and thus regained sound sleep and high spirits, and feared neither heat nor cold, dryness nor humidity. The duty on the pills produced a revenue of 60,000l. to Government during the first ten years. Morison died at Paris, in 1840, aged seventy.
The Denisons, father and son, accumulated two of the largest fortunes of our time. About 120 years ago, Joseph Denison, who was the son of a woollen-cloth merchant at Leeds, anxious to seek his fortune in London, travelled thither in a wagon, being attended on his departure by his friends, who took a solemn leave of him, as the distance was then thought so great that they might never see him again. He at first accepted a subordinate situation; but being industrious, parsimonious, and fortunate, he speedily advanced himself in the confidence and esteem of his employers, bankers in St. Mary Axe, and married successively two wives with property. He continued to prosper; and by joining the Heywoods, eminent bankers of Liverpool, his wealth rapidly increased. In 1787 he purchased the estate of Denbies, near Dorking in Surrey. By his second wife he had one son, William Joseph Denison; and two daughters—Elizabeth, married, in 1794, to Henry, first Marquis Conyngham; and Maria, married, in 1793, to Sir Robert Lawley, Bart., created, in 1831, Baron Wenlock.
Mr. Denison died in 1806; his son, succeeding to the banking business, continued to accumulate; and, at his death in his seventy-ninth year, in August 1849, left two millions and a half of money. He had sat in Parliament for Surrey from 1818. He was a man of cultivated tastes, possessed a knowledge of art and elegant literature; he feared to be thought ostentatious, and could with difficulty be prevailed on to have a lodge erected at the entrance to a new road which he had just formed on his estate, near Dorking. The Marchioness Conyngham was left a widow in 1832; she died in 1861, having attained the venerable age of ninety-two, and lived to see both her sons peers of the realm,—the one in succession to his father; the second, Albert Denison, as heir to her own brother’s great fortune and estates, with the title of Baron Londesborough.
The career of George Hudson, ridiculously styled “the Railway King,” was one of the ignes fatui of the railway mania. He was born in a lowly house in College-street, York, in 1800; here he served his apprenticeship to a linendraper, and subsequently carried on the business as principal, amassing considerable wealth. His fortune was next increased by a bequest from a distant relative, which sum he invested in North-Midland Railway shares; and, under his chairmanship, they gradually rose from 70l. discount to 120l. premium. This led to the creation of new shares in branch and extension lines, often worthless, which were issued at a premium also: Hudson soon found himself chairman of 600 miles of railway, extending from Rugby to Newcastle; and he is stated in a single day to have cleared 100,000l. He was also elected M.P. for Sunderland; and served twice Lord Mayor of York. The sum of 16,000l. was subscribed and presented to him as a public testimonial; with which he purchased a mansion at Albert-gate, Hyde-park; here he lived sumptuously, and went his round of visits among the peerage. But the speculation of 1845 was followed by a sudden reaction: shares fell, the holders sold to avoid payment of calls, and many were ruined; then followed the unkingship of Hudson, who was hurled down like the molten calf, and he lost a vast fortune in the general wreck of the railway bubbles.
The most beneficial fortunes made in business are those by which, at the same time, permanent advantages are secured to the public. Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher, “was a man of much ability and extraordinary enterprise. His public career connected him intimately with the literature of the present century, and few are the distinguished writers, during the last forty years, whose names were not associated with that of Mr. Colburn. In one of Mr. Disraeli’s novels a handsome tribute is paid to his acuteness of judgment and generosity of dealing. The publication of the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn will rank among many sterling contributions to literature due in the first instance to his enterprise. He originated those weekly literary reviews which have since been so successful; he established more than one newspaper, and conducted for a great many years the Magazine which still bears his name; and was the original publisher of Sir Bernard Burke’s Peerage. In private life he was known as a friendly, hospitable, kind man, and acts of the greatest liberality marked his course through life.”[[107]] He died at an advanced age.
Mr. James Morrison, the wealthy warehouseman of Cripplegate, started in life as foreman to Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married; and succeeding to his large property, distinguished himself as a sound political economist, and for some years sat in Parliament. He obtained, by purchase, the fine estates of Basilden, in Berkshire, and Fonthill, in Wiltshire: at Basilden, in 1846, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, upon the View of the Thames, were entertained by Mr. Morrison, who then referred with much gratification to his having been brought up in the City of London, “connected with it in a mercantile point of view, and having, by his own industry, obtained every thing he could desire.” He was a man of high commercial character; to which Mr. Edwin Chadwick, at the Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, in 1862, bore this interesting testimony: “I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Chadwick, “of the acquaintance of perhaps the most wealthy and successful merchant of the last half-century,—a distinguished member of our political economy club, the late Mr. James Morrison,—who assured me, that the leading principles to which he owed his success in life, and which he vindicated as sound elements of economical science, were—always to consult the interests of the consumer, and not, as is the common maxim, to buy cheap and sell dear, but to sell cheap as well as to buy cheap; it being to his interest to widen the area of consumption, and to sell quickly and to the many. The next maxim is involved in the first principle—always to tell the truth, to have no shams: a rule which he confessed he found it most difficult to get his common sellers to adhere to in its integrity, yet most important for success, it being to his interest as a merchant that any ship-captain might come into his warehouse and fill his ship with goods of which he had no technical knowledge, but of which he well knew that only a small profit was charged upon a close ready-money purchasing price, and that go where he would he would find nothing cheaper; it being, moreover, to the merchant’s interest that his bill of prices should be every where received from experience as a truth, and trustworthy evidence so far of a fair market-value. I might cite extensive testimony of the like character to show that the very labour and risks of continued deceits, however common, are detrimental to the successful operation of economic principles, and that sound economy is every where concurrent with high public morality.”
With this brilliant exception before us, we must, however, admit the general truth of this experience: “The nobility of trade usually ends with the second generation. A thrifty and persevering man falls into a line of business by which he accumulates a large fortune, preserving through life the habits, manners, and connexions of his trade; but his children, brought up with expectations of enjoying his property, understand only the art of spending. Hence, when deprived of fortune, without industry or resources, they die in beggary, leaving a third generation to the same chances of life as those with which their grandfather began his career fourscore years before.”[[108]]
[103]. Spectator newspaper, 1862.
[104]. Saturday Review.
[105]. When the Duke and Duchess, in taking farewell of Stowe, had reached the flower-garden, they both burst into a violent fit of tears. They went through the two gardens, and left them in silent sorrow: as he passed along, the Duke gave the Duchess a rose, which she treasured as the last gift.
[106]. See Ulster’s Vicissitudes of Families, in three volumes, for many impressive narratives of the same class as the above.
[107]. The Examiner.
[108]. Golden Rules of Social Philosophy, by Sir Richard Phillips.