Money-making men; or, how to grow rich

by J. Ewing Ritchie

I knew a lad, born in the village in which I was born, in the humblest rank of life. I found him one day one of the churchwardens of a city parish, and a man of substance. I expressed my surprise, as even he could not read. “Ah, sir,” was his reply, “I came to London determined to be a man or a mouse; and here I am.” It is so all over London. The great warehouses in Cheapside and Cannon Street, and Victoria Street and elsewhere, are mostly owned by men who began life without a rap. Go to the “beautiful” villas around London, and ask who live there, and you will find that they are inhabited by men whose wealth is enormous; whose fathers were beggars; and whose career has been a marvellous success.

In one of his songs, Barry Cornwall tells us, that when he was a little boy, he was told that the streets of London were paved with gold; and it must be admitted that, to the youthful mind in general, the metropolis is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, where gold and silver are to be picked up in handfuls any day. There is a good deal, it is hardly necessary to say, of exaggeration in this. To many, London is dark and dismal as one of its fogs, and cold and stony as one of its own streets. It is difficult to estimate the number of persons, in the lowest stage of pauperism, who rise every morning not knowing where to earn their daily broad. Wonderful are the shifts and ingenuities of this unfortunate class. One summer day a lady friend of the writer was driving in one of the pleasant green lanes of Hornsey, when she saw a poor woman gathering the leaves of a horse-chestnut. She asked her why she did so. The reply was, that she got a living by selling them to the fruiterers in Covent Garden, who lined their baskets of fruit with them. One day it came out in evidence at a police-court, that a mother and her children earned a scanty subsistence by rising early in the morning, or rather late at night, and selling, as waste paper, the broad sheets and placards with which the waste walls of the metropolis were adorned. It seems to me, one of the worst sights of the outskirts of London, is that of women, all black and grimy, sifting the cinders and rubbish collected by the wandering dustmen. Perhaps that is as dirty a way for a woman to make money as possible; and yet it seemed to me that their hands were clean, compared with those of certain stock and money-brokers, and promoters of public companies, to whom it is needless more particularly to allude.

Fortunes in London are made by trifles. I knew a man who kept a knacker’s yard, who lived out of town in a villa of exquisite beauty, and who drove horses which a prince or an American millionaire would have envied. Out of the profits of his vegetable pills, Morrison bought himself a nice estate. Mrs. Holloway used to be seen riding in one of the handsomest carriages to be met with in the Strand, and the princely liberality of Mr. Holloway astonished all England a little while since; and as to the keepers of dining-rooms and City taverns, how well they live, and in what good style, most of us know well. Before suburban railways had become developed, in the City was to be seen more than one proprietor of a dining-room, who drove daily a handsome mail phaeton and pair to town in the morning to do his business, and back at night. Thackeray had a tale, if not founded on fact, at any rate not improbable, of a gentleman who married a young lady, drove a swell cab, and lived altogether in great style. The gentleman was dumb as to his daily occupation. He would not impart even the secret to his wife. Even the prying mother-in-law was unable to solve the mystery. All that she knew was, what everyone else knew, that her son-in-law went out in his cab, with his tiger mounted behind, in the morning, and returned home in the same style at night. At length, one day, the wife, going with her dear mamma into the City shopping, recognised her lord and master in the person of a street-sweeper, clothed in rags, and covered with dirt. The discovery was too much for him. He was never heard of more.

In one of his pleasant letters, Mortimer Collins wrote—“The modern millionaire’s beneficence is ostentatious. A thousand pounds to a charity is as good a way of saying, ‘See, I am rich,’ as the same sum spent on a horse or a picture.” The same idea has occurred to the writer of a modern play. The hero calls for his secretary, and asks him to bring him the book which contains a list of his donations. “Ah,” he says, after looking at it, “double my subscriptions to all the charities that advertise, and put it down to our advertising account.” It is to be feared a good deal of that charity, which covers a multitude of sins in the City, is due to a similar desire for publicity. A good deal of ostentatious expenditure is simply put down under the head of advertising expenditure, and very often it is the only way by means of which a rich tradesman or ambitious merchant can draw attention to himself and his proceedings. This ostentation is a little annoying occasionally. For instance, it was particularly unpleasant to Sara Coleridge, the gifted daughter of a gifted sire. At Broadstairs she lodged in a house where there were some children belonging to a London shopkeeper and his wife. “These children,” the lady writes, “live on the stairs, or in the kitchen, and never take a book or a needle in their hands, and yet their parents are overburdening Mrs. Smith with attendance, dressing well, and living for many weeks by the sea in commodious lodgings. The extravagance and recklessness that go on in the families of tradesmen in London, is beyond what the rank above them ever dream of.” Sara Coleridge, as the wife of a clergyman, and daughter of the great philosopher, I dare say found it hard to make both ends meet, and perhaps was needlessly severe on the London tradesmen, and the way in which they spend their money. Such sharp censure as she penned was natural under the circumstances. Refined, genteel people, of limited means, are sadly vexed at the riotous abundance of the prosperous and well-to-do. As to ostentation, Morrison, the pill man beat every one when he gave a grand banquet to all that was fashionable in society at Paris, and to each parting guest presented his card, with an advertisement of his far-famed pills.

“Two causes led,” writes Mr. Page, “to the accumulation of the wealth which Mr. Brassey realised. One was the small extent of his personal expenses. He hated all show, luxury, and ostentation. He kept but a moderate establishment, which the increase of his means never induced him to extend. He was wont to say—‘It requires a special education to be idle, or to employ the twenty-four hours in a rational way, without any particular calling or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman one must have been brought up to it. It is impossible for a man who has been engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life to retire; if he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a mistake. I shall not retire; but if for some good reason I should be obliged to do so, it would be to a farm. There I should bring up stock, which I should cause to be weighed every day, ascertaining at the same time their daily cost, as against the increasing weight. I should then know when to sell, and start again with a fresh lot.’” The second and far more important cause which led to Mr. Brassey’s wealth, was the extent of his business. “He knew the value of money as well as any one,” wrote a friend, “and how far a pound would go; but he had no greediness to acquire wealth, and he was always willing to give away a portion of his profits to any one who was instrumental in making them, and that to a remarkable extent. At no time did he realise more than three per cent. on the money turned over by him. He laid out seventy-eight millions of other people’s money on works, every one of which was of public utility; and upon that outlay he retained two millions and a-half. Mr. Brassey’s financial management was very simple; on each contract the agent was responsible for the money he received; he relied upon the cashier to keep the accounts.”

The money-making men have, some of them, done good service in their day and generation. To the latter class emphatically belongs George Grote, the historian, whose grandfather came over to this country from Bremen, and established the banking-house of Grote, Prescott, and Co., on the 1st of January, 1766. At the early age of sixteen he was placed in the banking-house in Threadneedle Street, and commenced a business career, which he carried on thirty two years; when, having enough to live on, he retired, to devote himself more particularly to historical studies. And to his house in Threadneedle Street came the Mills (father and son), Mr. David Ricardo, Mr. John Smith, M.P., Dr. Black, of the Morning Chronicle, and Mr. Charles Austin, whom Mrs. Grote describes as the most brilliant conversationalist of his time.

Some of our greatest lawyers became moneyed men by habits of extreme economy in their young days. Lord Kenyon commenced his London career by lodging in Bell Yard, Carey Street, and paying for the accommodation six shillings a-week. His friends at this time were Dunning and Horne Tooke. They used generally to dine, in vacation time, at a small eating-house near Chancery Lane, where their meal was supplied to them at the charge of 7½d. a-head. Tooke, in giving an account of these repasts many years after, used to say, “Dunning and myself were generous, for we gave the girl who waited upon us a penny a-piece; but Kenyon, who knew the value of money, rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes a promise.”

In Addison’s club, as wittily described in the Spectator, the City merchant who has made his fortune figures in a very favourable light. “His notions of trade are,” we are told, “noble and generous; and as every rich man usually has some sly way of jesting, which would make no great figure were he not a rich man, he calls the sea the British common. He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms, for that power is to be got by arts and industry. He will often argue, that if this part of our trade was well cultivated, we should gain from one nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valour, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, among which the greatest favourite is, ‘A penny saved is a penny gained.’” Londoners must ever feel grateful to Addison for his genial sketch of Sir Andrew Freeport.

Money-making men, even in their charities, have an eye to the main chance. In the “Greville Memoirs,” we read that Southey told an anecdote of Sir Massey Lopes, which is a good story of a miser. A man came to him and told him he was in great distress, and that £200 would save him. He gave him a draft for the money. “Now,” said he, “what will you do with this?” “Go to the bankers and get it cashed.” “Stop,” said he, “I will cash it.” So he gave him the money, but first calculated and deducted the discount—thus at once exercising his benevolence and his avarice.

Money-making has its disadvantages. There was a Lord Compton, who ran away with a rich citizen’s daughter—I refer to Sir John Spencer, to whom there is such a fine monument in St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate. When the nobleman became, by the death of Sir John, possessor of his fortune, it is reported that for the time his lordship became stark staring mad, and had to be confined. And this reminds me, that City men, who are considered “warm” in a worldly point of view, are apt to make great mistakes as to getting their daughters married. It is not unfrequently that they allow cash considerations too much to interpose, and thus many an advantageous marriage is frustrated. It is not what a man has, but what a man is, that is the true test of character; and a citizen who has well feathered his nest, and who thinks of the store laid up in his barn, and of his cattle, and sheep, and other substance, is too apt to overlook the fact, that a clever man, even if he be poor, may become rich and great. In the life of the Claytons we have a case in point relating to the late Lord Truro. “When a young man, and beginning his honourable career, he formed a strong attachment to an amiable and elegant lady, the daughter of a merchant in the City, and a member of Mr. Clayton’s church. His offer, as a suitor, would have been responded to by the lady, but met with a stern and inflexible opposition from her father, on the ground of the pecuniary inequality that there appeared between them; and thus the City merchant lost a lord for a son-in-law.” One money-making City man is to be specially remembered as a warning to rich capitalists as to how they make their wills. I refer to Mr. Peter Thellusson, the banker. At the age of threescore-and-ten, Mr. Thellusson found that he was the owner of £6,000,000 in hard cash, besides an annual rent-roll of £9,500. This was not enough for the ambitious Peter; and hence that wonderful will, which was such a fortune to the lawyers. He left about £100,000 to his wife and his three sons and daughter; and the rest of his fortune, amounting to more than £6,000,000, was conveyed to trustees, who were to let it accumulate till after the deaths, not only of his children, but of all the male issue of his sons and grandsons. After that event, the vast property, with its accumulations at compound interest, was to be given to the nearest male descendant who should bear the family name of Thellusson, and then the great mountain of accumulated wealth was to be divided into three portions. It was a fine will for the lawyers. In two years after Peter Thellusson was gathered to his fathers; two bills had been filed in Chancery impeaching the will—the one by his wife and children, the other by his trustees; and the litigation lasted for sixty years. The wife of the millionaire died, it is said, of a broken heart; and the Court of Chancery so clipped and pollarded Peter Thellusson’s oak, that when they had done with it, it was not much larger than when he left it. Nor was this all. Parliament took the matter up; and though they would not set aside the will, they enacted that the power of devising property for the purpose of accumulation should be restricted to twenty-one years after the death of the testator.