“Thus lived and died,” writes his biographer, “unpitied and unlamented, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, and possessed of a property of £127,205 Three per Cent. Consolidated Bank Annuities, a man whose life was chequered with as few good actions as ever fell to the share of any person that has lived to an advanced age.”
It is not often that money is made by gambling; yet now and then this is the case. General Scott, the father-in-law of George Canning and the Duke of Portland, was known to have won at White’s £200,000, thanks to his notorious sobriety and knowledge of the game of whist. The general possessed a great advantage over his companions by avoiding those indulgences at the table which used to muddle other men’s brains. He confined himself to dining off a boiled chicken, with toast-and-water. By such a regimen he came to the whist-table with a clear head, and possessing, as he did, a remarkable memory, with great coolness of judgment, he was enabled honestly to win the sum of £200,000. If the general was not an eccentric money-getter, he evidently got his money in an eccentric way.
Equally successful was the millionaire Crockford, who was originally a fishmonger, keeping a shop near Temple Bar. His fortune was all made at his gambling-house in fifteen or sixteen years. A vast sum, perhaps half a million, was sometimes due to him; but as he won all his debtors were able to raise, and gave credit, it was hard for men of fashion, fond of play, to keep out of his lures. He retired in 1840, much as an Indian chief retires from a hunting country when there is not game enough left for his tribe; and the club, which bore his name, tottered to its fall. It really seems that at that time there were no more very high players visiting the place. It was said that there were persons of rank and station who had never paid their debts to Crockford up to 1844.
Morissey, the well-known American gambler, has passed away. At one time he kept a small drinking-saloon of the lowest character. So disreputable was the place that it was closed by the authorities. Morissey was also a prize-fighter. Drunken, brutal, without friends or money, he came from Troy to New York to see what would turn up. At that time an election was in progress; and elections were carried by brute force. There was no registry law; and the injunction to vote early and vote often was literally obeyed. In such a city, and at such a time, Morissey was in his element. Having acquired a little money, he opened a place for play. He became thoroughly temperate. He resolved to behave well, to be sober, and not gamble. Those resolutions he carried out. His house in New York was the most elegantly furnished of any of the kind in the State; the table, the attendants, and the cooking, were of the first order. He followed his patrons to Saratoga, and opened there what was called a club-house; judges, senators, merchants, bankers, millionaires, became his guests: the disguise was soon thrown off, and the club-house assumed the form of a first-class gambling-house at the Springs. Horse-racing and attendant games followed, all bringing custom and profit to Morissey’s establishment; and thus he amassed a large fortune, and died in the odour of respectability which wealth confers. Morissey, as Congress man, was not exactly a working member. When he first went to Washington, Mr. Colfax hardly knew on which of the committees of the House it would be best to put him; so he said, in a very apologetic tone, “Well, Mr. Morissey, I should be very glad to oblige in regard to a great many old members, and all the best places belong by right to them. Still, I will see what I can do for you.” “Well, Mr. Speaker,” said the new member, “I am pretty particular; but 1 will, at any rate, tell you what I want. If there is a committee that has no committee-room, never has any business sent to it, and never meets, I should like to be put on the tail-end of that committee. How does it strike you?” “You relieve me wonderfully,” said Mr. Colfax. “I will put you on the Committee of Revolutionary Pensions.”
Another case of that rarity, a successful gambler, is thus described in “Sunshine and Shadow,” in New York:—“A man lives in the upper part of this city, and in fine style. He is reputed to be worth 500,000 dollars. He came to New York penniless. He decided to take up play as a business; not to keep a gambling-house, but to play every night as a trade. He made certain rules which he has kept over thirty years. He would avoid all forms of licentiousness, would attend church regularly on Sunday, would avoid all low, disreputable company, would drink no kind of intoxicating liquors, wine or ale, would neither smoke nor chew, would go nightly to his play as a man would go to his office or his trade, would play as long as he won, or until the bank broke, would lose a certain sum and no more; when he lost that he would stop playing, and leave the room for the night; if he lost ten nights, he would wait till his luck changed;” and this system he followed exactly, while tens of thousands around him were carried away into irretrievable ruin.
As I write I see the report of a peculiar case heard in Dublin, before Chief Justice Morris and a special jury; and, as the Times’ correspondent informs us, some very curious revelations were made in the course of the hearing. The action was brought by a Mr. Kavanagh to recover £7,000 on account of work and labour alleged to have been done by the plaintiff in his capacity of manager to the defendant, a Mr. Henry Lindsay, a bill-discounter, who, it was stated, did business to the extent of £20,000 to £30,000 a month, and who lived alone in a large house in a respectable street, sleeping on a stretcher, and having bills on the house announcing it as to be let, in order that he might avoid, as he actually succeeded in avoiding, the payment of rates, on the plea that he was merely caretaker of the house. It also came out that defendant, who was advanced in years, had recently paid £5,000 to compromise an action for breach of promise of marriage. So the old gentleman had a soft side after all!
One of the great millionaires of France was Ouvrard, the financier—a man sprung from a very humble origin, but of great financial capacity. During his long career of success, which lasted from the latter part of the last century till 1830, he made and spent millions of money. He was ruined by making large sales in the funds, under the expectation that the government of Louis Philippe could not stand. He was born in 1770; and his first operation, which consisted in buying up all the paper made in Poitou and Angoumois, and retailing it at an immense profit to the Paris booksellers, laid the foundation of his fortune. He soon afterwards made a contract for provisioning the Spanish fleet, which had joined the French squadron in 1797, and made a net profit of £600,000. In 1800, he was supposed to possess a million and a-half of English money. Soon after he had the contract for supplying the French army in the campaign which closed with the battle of Marengo. His prosperity continued for many years; and in 1812, the government owed him, for enormous advances made by him, nearly three millions of English money. He was Munitionnaire-Général for the Waterloo campaign; and, in 1828, contracted to supply the Duc d’Angoulême with everything necessary for the entry of the French army into Spain; but the misfulfilment of his contract entailed heavy losses on him, and in 1830 he was completely ruined.
No man was more reckless in his expenditure, nor more magnificent in his manner of living. At the time of the Directory, the fêtes given by him were the theme of the whole of Parisian society at that time. At his splendid villa near Rueil, during the Empire, he was in the habit of giving suppers to all the corps de ballet of the opera twice a-week, and he used to send several carriages, splendidly equipped, to bear away the principal performers when the performance was over. There an enormous white marble bath, as large as an ordinary-sized saloon, was prepared for such of the ladies as, in the summer, chose to bathe on their arrival. There a splendid supper was laid out, of which the fair bathers and many of the pleasure-seekers of the day partook; and, besides every luxury of the culinary art, prepared by the best cooks in Paris, each lady received a donation of fifty louis, and the one fortunate enough to attract the especial notice of the wealthy host a large sum of money. Mademoiselle Georges, the celebrated tragedian of that day, cost him, as he was fond of relating, a large sum of money. He had invited her to sup with him at his villa; but the very day she was to come, a note informed him that she was compelled to give up the pleasure of supping with him, as the Emperor Napoleon had given her a rendezvous for the same time, which she dared not refuse. Ouvrard was furious at this contretemps, and he could not bear to yield the pas to le petit Bonaparte, whom he had known as a young captain of artillery, too happy to be invited to his house in the days of the Directory; and under this feeling, with a hint to the lady that she would find 100,000 francs served up at supper, he prevailed on the actress to give the emperor the slip. The following day the great financier received a summons forthwith to appear at the Tuileries, and was ushered into the emperor’s presence. After walking once or twice up and down the room, the great man turned sharp round on his unwilling guest, and, with his eagle eye riveted on Ouvrard’s face, sternly demanded, “Monsieur, how much did you make by your contract for the army at the beginning of the year?” The capitalist knew it was vain to equivocate, and replied, “4,000,000 francs, sire.” “Then, sir, you made too much; so pay immediately 2,000,000 francs into the treasury.” And Ouvrard, says old Captain Gronow, who tells the story, immediately did—much, probably, to his vexation and disgust.
Before the French Revolution, the largest fortunes in France were possessed by the farmers of the revenue, or fermiers généraux. Their profits were enormous, and their probity was very doubtful. It is related, that one evening at Ferney, when the company were telling stories of robbers, they asked their host, Voltaire, for one on the same subject. The great man, taking up his flat candlestick, as when about to retire, began—“There was once upon a time a fermier général—I have forgotten the rest.”
In the Bagot will case we see another illustration of the way in which money is made, and the dissipation and extravagance to which it leads. Mr. Bagot, a colonial adventurer, returned to Ireland with the reputation of enormous wealth, and married the daughter of a baronet. Paralysed as he was, a son was born to him, which he disowned. The Bagot case ended in a verdict setting aside the late Mr. Bagot’s will, and disinheriting the infant son, and thus Mrs. Bagot was in a measure legally rehabilitated. The disclosures at the trial, however, revealed a panorama of years of extravagance, folly, and riot, which is, we trust, exceptional. The whole story of the Australian millionaire, Mr. Bagot, is fraught with details that can only disgust; and it would have been much better if the public had been spared recitals which, however entertaining to frivolous persons, can hardly serve any good purpose by the extraordinary publicity they have now gained. Should a new trial take place, a good deal of the money must pass into the lawyers’ hands.