Ah! Manager Number One out—
Gone fishing, no doubt!
At the next office, whether the manager happened to be in or not, he would enter with the same assumption of his absence, and say—
Manager Number Two
Nothing to do—
Of course, gone fishing also!
To his especial aversion David Stevenson, the goods manager, whom he considered to have usurped many of his firm’s rights and privileges, he would enter tragically with—
Aha! Manager Stevenson—
Gone about his private theatricals!
and fix the enraged Stevenson with the haughty stare common to the transpontine drama of the time. The sting of it lay in the fact that Stevenson belonged to an amateur dramatic society.
The goods department at Camden was taken over by the London and North-Western Railway in Benjamin Worthy Horne’s time, long before the general parcels and receiving-office branch was absorbed. The decision to terminate the contract was a source of much annoyance to him, on account of the reason given, which was that the business was not efficiently conducted. Although he was a man who in general had a horror of going to law, this stigma upon his business methods so stung him that he brought an action against the railway company for breach of contract, in order to vindicate his position. This was going to law for an idea, and as the company had a perfect right to terminate the contract, the action of course failed; but it was made abundantly evident that the business was efficiently carried on, and that the railway was only proposing to take it over because the time was ripe for such a development. His heavy costs, amounting to £1200, were afterwards very handsomely refunded to Mr. Horne by the railway.
It remains to say that although there was no keener or more ruthless man of business than Benjamin Worthy Horne, he was privately a considerate and kindly man, helpful and charitable to those less successful than himself.
He had a pretty estate at Highlands, Mereworth, and a town residence at 33, Russell Square. He died at the latter place, April 14th, 1870, aged sixty-six, leaving property valued at £250,000.