Is a harder matter to fight.”
True, Blucher had been repulsed at Ligny. The Duke had an awkward squad, with the exception of the English, the Irish, and the Scotch Greys, to marshal in fighting order, but he “got there all the same.” Nathan’s secret point soon oozed out, and in less than an hour after the opening there was a perfect panic on the London Stock Exchange. Nathan had his brokers at work, first selling “short,” and then, when the market reached bed rock, buying on the long side. He bought everything that he could raise, borrow or beg the money for—consols, notes and bills. When the news of Wellington’s victory arrived, forty-eight hours after Nathan had begun to manipulate the market, and when he was “long” of everything that he had money or credit to purchase, securities went up with a boom. Nathan realized six million dollars, and it is said that a large number of the great operators flocked around him to congratulate him. It was lucky for Nathan that the scene of his operations was in London instead of Wall Street, otherwise Judge Lynch might have had something to say before the settlements had been made.
The career of Nathan Rothschild in England was remarkable, and his success from the very start phenomenal. He began his speculations and money-lending operations in Manchester with $500, being the limited amount which he was permitted to draw from the family treasury on taking his departure from Frankfort to seek his fortune in Great Britain. In five years he had augmented the $500 to a million. He then removed to London. There he married a daughter of Levi Cohen, one of the wealthiest Hebrews of the great metropolis, well known by the pseudonym of Pound-Adoring Cohen. His father-in-law was afraid that Nathan would soon ruin himself, so reckless did he seem in his speculations, estimated by the conservative standard of old Cohen.
Nathan was very fortunate in his speculative ventures in the public funds, and managed to get himself introduced so as to do considerable business for the Government in its transactions on the Continent. His first introduction to the Government was through the Duke of Wellington, who during his peninsular campaigns had made drafts that the Treasury of Great Britain was dilatory in meeting. Nathan purchased these drafts at a large discount. He afterwards renewed them to the Government, and they were eventually redeemed at par. This was the means of bringing him into confidential relations with the ministry of Great Britain, and he was entirely trusted as their chief agent in all their financial matters on the Continent. This gave him immense advantage in speculating, and enabled him to give his brothers in the other great capitals of Europe a large amount of valuable and inside information, which put them in a position to speculate with success in the funds of their respective Governments. Nathan had made arrangements to get the very latest information from Frankfort, then the centre of European financiering, by well trained carrier pigeons. He had also several boats of his own by which to send personal messages across the channel in cases where these were requisite, and a boat always in readiness at a moment’s notice in case his presence should be indispensable at the great money centre, and the central counting and clearing house of the family.
Nathan Rothschild was a strange and inconsistent compound of liberality, avariciousness, and penuriousness. He entertained his guests in a princely style, and often princes were mingled with those guests, but he was miserably mean with his clerks and employees generally. Unlike A. T. Stewart, who followed the very opposite rule, and had his place filled with bankrupt dry goods men as employees, the Rothschilds would never engage anybody who had been unfortunate in business. They had a superstitious feeling that misfortune is contagious, and they carefully avoided coming in contact with any of its victims. Nathan was even more precise than Wm. H. Vanderbilt in calculating the pennies in his lunch bill; but while Vanderbilt did this as a mere whim to illustrate his business precision and correctness, Rothschild really loved the pennies with ardent devotion. But Baron Nathan, even when he had accumulated $70,000,000 or $80,000,000, was not happy. He was tortured by the fear of enemies, who, he believed, intended to murder him. Like Vanderbilt, he received many threatening letters; but unlike the New York millionaire, who paid no attention to threats, but walked and drove out defiantly, Rothschild was still in mortal terror, and believed that the threats were intended to be executed. Nathan made one of his biggest piles out of the Almaden quicksilver mines in Spain. The Spanish Government wanted a loan, which he granted, receiving the mines as security for several years. He got up a “corner” in quicksilver, and raised the price 100 per cent. He realized almost $6,000,000 out of this transaction. It was as good for him as the Waterloo deal, only the returns did not come in so quickly. Nathan died in Frankfort, at the age of 59, in 1836. His last words were, “He is trying to kill me. Quick, quick, give me the gold.” His death created a panic on the London Stock Exchange, and the Continental Bourses were greatly embarrassed by the event. The news was conveyed by a carrier pigeon, which was shot by a boy near Brighton. The message was briefly, Il est mort-“He is dead.” The interests of the house of Rothschild are now scattered over the globe, and it is probable that the aggregate wealth of all the branches of the firm, including the possessions of the various members of their families, exceeds $1,000,000,000.
W R Travers
CHAPTER XXXIX.
TRAVERS.
The Unique Character of Travers—His Versatile Attainments—Although of a Genial and Humorous Disposition, He Has Always Been a Bear—How He Was the Means of Preserving the Commercial Supremacy of New York—He Squashes the English Bravado, and Saves the Oratorical Honor of Our Country—Has the Oyster Brains?—It Must Have Brains. For it Knows Enough to Sh-sh-shut Up—The Dog and the Rat—I D-d-don’t Want to Buy the D-d-dog; I Will Buy the R-r-rat—Travers on the Royal Stand at the Derby—How He Was Euchred by the Pool-Seller—My Proxy in a Speech at the Union Club.—If You are a S-s-self-made Man, Wh-wh-y the D-devil Didn’t You Put More H-Hair on the Top of Your Head? Other Witticisms, &c.