The Mr Kean alluded to in this letter is, of course, the great actor. But, as Edmund Kean was at the zenith of his power and success in 1814-15, we may indeed readily believe that "there was not a word of truth" in the rumour that "Mrs Coutts visited Kean and made him a gift of fifty pounds," which was circulated at the time. Moreover, it was not until March 2, 1815, that the marriage of Thomas Coutts to Harriot Mellon was announced. Miss Mellon was the second wife of the banker, and her marriage was a romantic one. Before dealing with it, however, it is necessary to refer to the first Mrs Coutts, about whom a good deal of mystery has been made. The simple truth is that she came of "poor but honest parents" in Lancashire. Her name was Susan Starkie, and we have it on the authority of the Earl of Dundonald (1775-1860) that she was "a most respectable, modest, handsome young woman." Another writer says that, even near the day of her death, although she was then an old woman, with grown-up grandchildren, "she exhibited traces of having possessed some personal advantages in her youth, her large black eyes retaining their brightness, although rather stern and wild in their expression." She is interesting, as far as this story is concerned, inasmuch as Thomas Coutts met her in the house in the Strand, where she was in charge of his brother's daughter. After the marriage, Mr and Mrs Thomas Coutts resided in St Martin's Lane, and there "my brother and myself have frequently called to visit" them, wrote the Earl of Dundonald, who added that "her good sense, amiable disposition, and exemplary good conduct endeared her to all her husband's family, and commanded the respect of everyone who knew her." Of this union there were three daughters, who were known as "the Three Graces." The first, Susan, married the third Earl of Guildford; the second, Frances, was the second wife of John, first Marquis of Bute; while Sophia was married to Sir Francis Burdett, Bart., M.P., the well-known politician, and hero of reform. Sir Francis and Lady Burdett had six children, a son and five daughters, the youngest of whom, Angela Georgina, born on April 21, 1814, became the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, whose death, on December 30, 1906, has been so greatly deplored. This lady received, on the death of the Duchess of St Albans—Harriot Mellon, the second wife of Thomas Coutts—the entire estate which the banker had, by his will, placed at the disposal of the Duchess.
The Duchess of St Albans, who, as Mrs Coutts, must have been a frequent visitor at No. 59 Strand, made her first appearance on the stage as Lydia Languish in The Rivals, on January 31, 1795, at Covent Garden, she being then twenty years of age. Her first husband died on February 24, 1822, and was buried at Wroxton Abbey, Oxfordshire, "his funeral being attended by many of the nobility and gentry of the district, while the carriages of their royal highnesses the Dukes of York, Clarence, and Sussex accompanied the procession." She was then importuned by William Aubrey de Vere, the ninth Duke of St Albans, to whom she was married on June 16, 1827. The story of this courtship has been told by Sir Walter Scott: "Mrs Coutts, with the Duke of St Albans and Lady Charlotte Beauclerk, called to take leave of us. When at Abbotsford his suit throve but coldly. She made me, I believe, a confidant in sincerity. She had refused him twice, and decidedly: he was merely on the footing of friendship. I urged it was akin to love. She allowed she might marry the Duke, only she had at present not the least intention that way. It is the fashion to attend Mrs Coutts' parties, and to abuse her. I have always found her a kind, friendly woman, without either affectation or insolence in the display of her wealth; most willing to do good if the means be shown her. She can be very entertaining too, and she speaks without scruple of her stage life. So much wealth can hardly be enjoyed without ostentation." In Lockhart's Life of Scott there is a long account of a visit paid to Sir Walter by Mrs Coutts, who arrived at Abbotsford with a train of three carriages each drawn by four horses. Her retinue consisted of her future lord, the Duke of St Albans, one of his grace's sisters, a sort of lady-in-waiting, two physicians, and besides other menials of every grade, two bed-chamber women for Mrs Coutts' own person—she requiring to have this article also in duplicate, because in her widowed condition she was fearful of ghosts. There were already assembled at Abbotsford several ladies of high rank, who, witnessing this ostentation on the part of an actress who, when a girl, had been chased from her home by a vulgar virago of a mother, took it into their heads to snub her. "The good-natured Sir Walter, pained at the conduct of his noble guests, took the youngest and prettiest of them aside, and lectured her on her manners. The beautiful peeress thanked him for treating her as his daughter; and one by one the other ladies being made to run the gauntlet of Sir Walter's rebukes, Mrs Coutts was speedily set at ease. The narrative is curious as a typical illustration of the sentiments with which the society to which Harriet Mellon claimed to belong regarded her."[48]
The anecdotes which have been related of Thomas Coutts are innumerable and—unreliable. One of the most extraordinary of them is the following:—"In the early part of his career, Mr Coutts, anxious to secure the cordial co-operation of the heads of the various banking-houses in London, was in the habit of frequently inviting them to dinner. On one of these occasions the manager of a City bank, in retailing the news of the day, accidentally remarked that a certain nobleman had applied to his firm for the loan of £30,000, and had been refused. Mr Coutts listened, and said nothing; but the moment his guests had retired, about ten o'clock in the evening, he started off to the house of the nobleman mentioned, and requested the honour of an interview with his lordship next day. On the following morning, the nobleman called at the bank. Mr Coutts received him with the greatest politeness, and taking thirty one-thousand pound notes from a drawer, presented them to his lordship. The latter, very agreeably surprised, exclaimed, 'But what security am I to give you?' 'I shall be satisfied with your lordship's note of hand,' was the reply. The 'I.O.U.' was instantly given, with the remark, 'I find I shall only require for the present £10,000; I therefore return you £20,000, with which you will be pleased to open an account in my name.' This generous, or, as it may more truly be called, exceedingly well-calculated, act of Mr Coutts was not lost upon the nobleman, who, in addition to paying in within a few months £200,000 to his account, the produce of the sale of an estate, recommended several high personages to patronise the bank in the Strand. Among new clients who opened accounts there was King George III."
This absurd story had its origin in the financial adventures of one Alexander Trotter, Paymaster of the Navy, who, despite the facts that his salary was a mere five hundred a year and that he had no other means, passed some fifteen million pounds through Coutts' Bank and speculated hugely on the Stock Exchange, his transactions amounting in one day to £300,000. In giving evidence in the trial of Lord Melville, the treasurer of the Navy, in 1806, he said: "I certainly made use of that part which was not likely to be claimed for my own benefit, generally by lending it at interest, and at times by investing it in Exchequer or Navy Bills, or other Government securities. The whole profit and emolument derived from that mode of laying out the money were entirely my own." He gave as his reason for passing the money through his private account, instead of through the Bank of England, that, after the removal of the Navy Office from Broad Street to Somerset Place, it was "safer and more convenient to give orders on a bank in the Strand." He also affirmed that he never drew for a million of money but once in his life, "And that money went into the hands of Coutts, for I drew a draft, as usual, upon the Bank of England, but instead of giving the draft to Coutts, I gave it to a clerk, who carried it to the bank, and, the notes being divided into a great number of small notes, he took them to Coutts"—a very singular proceeding. Lord Melville stated that, to the best of his recollection, "He never authorised the application of any of the Navy money for his own benefit or advantage, but that, owing to the way in which the pay-master had blended his own money and the public money, it was impossible to ascertain with precision whether the advances he had made to the treasurer were from one source or the other." An important point in the trial turned upon the disposal of a certain sum of £30,000, and it could not be determined as to whether the money came from the Navy, or, as a loan, from Messrs Coutts. Hence arose the apocryphal story of the staid banker, to whom caution was second nature, wishing to lend this large amount on the frail security of an I.O.U.
As for the stories about people who are supposed to have given Thomas Coutts a guinea, as a consequence of his shabby appearance, they are too numerous for repetition. The most circumstantial is the following:—"Mr Coutts used to make periodical visits to a town in the vicinity of the country seat of one of his married daughters. On one of these occasions he had attracted the attention of a benevolent old gentleman, who, noticing the neat but somewhat worn apparel of the eminent banker, imagined that he had most probably seen better days, but that his actual financial condition was not very flourishing. The last time they met was Christmas time; and the benevolent old gentleman, no doubt warmed up with the prospects of the festivities of the season, dropped a guinea into the hand of Mr Coutts as he passed quickly by him, bidding him get a good dinner. Having discovered the name of his benefactor, Mr Coutts soon after invited him to his house, where he made himself known to him, and related the anecdote to his guests, letting them know how he had the guinea given to him, and saying he intended keeping it." This story of the guinea gathered strength with the years, one of the versions being that when the banker was in Brighton, visiting the Prince Regent, to whom he occasionally acted as financial adviser, he was sitting on the front when a lady, observing "his dejected appearance and shabby apparel, gave him a crown with which to get some breakfast, and promised to get her friends to help to buy him a dinner. The crown, of course, proved to be a crown token piece issued from the Coutts' Bank at the sign of 'The Three Crowns in the Strand,' but when the lady returned with her friends, and was just about to give the poor man his dinner money, the Prince Regent ran out from the pavilion, and slapping him on the back, called out, 'Tom Coutts, my boy, we have fined you a bottle for leaving your glass!'"
NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE, FROM THE GARDENS.
According to Mrs Cornwall Baron-Wilson, Thomas Coutts was "a tall, thin, spare figure, and his clothes, always ill-fitting, bore that appearance of being rubbed at the seams, which reveals the 'business coat' of an office. He was often mistaken for an indigent person, and used to enjoy the mistake of all things." There is probably some little exaggeration in this, but the banker, most certainly, was not extravagant in his dress. Even if the following anecdote is not strictly accurate, there is, no doubt, some truth in it:—"Mr Coutts, from his too strict attention to the bank, felt his appetite diminished; and, in order to afford him a little exercise, his physician ordered him to walk daily after the bank closed to a chemist's, who resided at some distance from the Strand, to have some tonic preparation made up. So quiet and unassuming was he in his manners, that he always made way for everyone who came while he was at the shop, so that they might be served before him; and, with his fair, delicate countenance, spare frame, and very simple dress, no strangers guessed that they were pushing aside the opulent Mr Coutts. A kind-hearted, liberal man, a merchant—who used to quit his counting-house about the same time that Mr Coutts left the bank, and who had chanced to be in the chemist's shop two or three times at the hour when the latter came there—had remarked him, and from his retiring, gentle appearance and actions, concluded he was a reduced gentleman whose mind was superior to his means. Accordingly, this charitable merchant resolved to administer to the necessities of the shrinking, modest individual; and, one day, having sealed up a sum of money for the purpose, he went to the chemist's shop, where he remained a length of time, waiting anxiously for the appearance of the latter, who, however, on that day did not come for the tonic, being probably too much engaged in distributing thousands. The stranger, being at length tired of waiting, and feeling ashamed of occupying a place in the shop so long, told the chemist how the absence of the pale, indigent, elderly gentleman had prevented his intended donation. The chemist, in amazement, said: 'And you really meant to offer pecuniary aid to that person, sir? Have you no idea who he is?' 'None,' said the other, 'but I conclude he is some gentlemanly man in distressed, or, at least, reduced circumstances.' 'You shall judge, sir, as to his circumstances—that unassuming, quiet individual is Thomas Coutts!'"[49]