The Duke died Jan. 17, 1839, and was succeeded by his only son, Richard Plantagenet, who, though crippled in fortune by the paternal tastes, celebrated the coming of age of his son with profuse hospitality at Stowe, in 1844; and in 1845, entertained Queen Victoria and the Prince Albert with great sumptuousness. The mansion at Stowe was partly refurnished for the occasion, when the cost of the new carpets was 5000l. In 1848, the dream of the first Duke was strangely realised by the dismantling of Stowe, and the compulsory dispersion of the whole of the costly contents; the sale occupying forty days, and realising 75,562l. 4s. 6d. The Duke subsequently resided in the neighbourhood; and he often indulged his sadness at his fallen fortunes by walking to Stowe; and there, in one of the superb saloons in which kings and princes had held courts and been feasted with regal magnificence,—seated in a chair before a small table—the only furniture in the room—would Richard Plantagenet pass many an hour of “bitter fancy.” He died July 30, 1861, at the age of sixty-four. Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster, writes of the Duke’s lineage: “Of all native-born British subjects, his Grace was, after the present reigning family, the senior representative of the Royal Houses of Tudor and Plantagenet.”[[106]]
“Day and Martin’s Blacking,” one of the inventions of the present century, realised a large fortune, which was mostly appropriated to beneficent purposes. Day is related to have been originally a hair-dresser; and, as the story goes, one morning a soldier entered his shop, representing that he had a long march before him to reach his regiment; that his money was gone, and nothing but sickness, fatigue, and punishment awaited him unless he could get a lift on a coach. The worthy barber, who, with his small means, was a generous man, presented him with a guinea, when the grateful soldier exclaimed, “God bless you, sir! how can I ever repay you this? I have nothing in this world except” (pulling a dirty piece of paper from his pocket) “a receipt for blacking: it is the best ever was seen; many a half-guinea have I had for it from the officers, and many bottles have I sold.” Mr. Day, who was a shrewd man, inquired into the truth of the story, tried the blacking, and finding it good, commenced the manufacture and sale of it, and realised the immense fortune of which he died possessed in 1836; bequeathing 100,000l. for the benefit of persons who, like himself, suffered the deprivation of sight. The rebuilding of the Blacking Factory, in High Holborn, cost 12,000l.
Pianoforte-making has led to great money-making results. About the year 1776, Becker, a German, undertook to apply the pianoforte mechanism to the harpsichord, assisted by John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, then workmen in the employ of Burckhardt Tschudi, of Great Pulteney-street, London. After many experiments, the grand-pianoforte mechanism was contrived by these three. Messrs. Broadwood, from 1824 to 1850, made on an average 2236 pianofortes per annum; and employed in their manufactory 573 workmen, besides persons working for them at home. In 1862 died the head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Broadwood, sen., at the age of seventy-five, leaving 350,000l. personal property, besides realty.
James Morison, who styled himself “the Hygeist,” and was noted for his “Vegetable Medicines,” was a Scotchman, and a gentleman by birth and education. His family was of the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire, his brother being “Morison of Bognie,” an estate worth about 4000l. a year. In 1816 James Morison, having sold his commission, for he was an officer in the army, lived in No. 17 Silver-street, Aberdeen, a house belonging to Mr. Reid, of Souter and Reid, druggists. He obtained the use of their pill-machine, with which he made in their back-shop as many pills as filled two large casks. The ingredients of these pills, however he may have modified them afterwards, were chiefly oatmeal and bitter aloes. With these two great “meal bowies” filled with pills, he started for London; with the fag-end of his fortune advertised them far and wide, and ultimately amassed 500,000l.
Such is the statement of a Correspondent of the Athenæum. Morison’s own story was, that his own sufferings from ill-health, and the cure he at length effected upon himself by “vegetable pills,” made him a disseminator of the latter article. He had found the pills to be “the only rational purifiers of the blood;” of these he took two or three at bedtime, and a glass of lemonade in the morning, and thus regained sound sleep and high spirits, and feared neither heat nor cold, dryness nor humidity. The duty on the pills produced a revenue of 60,000l. to Government during the first ten years. Morison died at Paris, in 1840, aged seventy.
The Denisons, father and son, accumulated two of the largest fortunes of our time. About 120 years ago, Joseph Denison, who was the son of a woollen-cloth merchant at Leeds, anxious to seek his fortune in London, travelled thither in a wagon, being attended on his departure by his friends, who took a solemn leave of him, as the distance was then thought so great that they might never see him again. He at first accepted a subordinate situation; but being industrious, parsimonious, and fortunate, he speedily advanced himself in the confidence and esteem of his employers, bankers in St. Mary Axe, and married successively two wives with property. He continued to prosper; and by joining the Heywoods, eminent bankers of Liverpool, his wealth rapidly increased. In 1787 he purchased the estate of Denbies, near Dorking in Surrey. By his second wife he had one son, William Joseph Denison; and two daughters—Elizabeth, married, in 1794, to Henry, first Marquis Conyngham; and Maria, married, in 1793, to Sir Robert Lawley, Bart., created, in 1831, Baron Wenlock.
Mr. Denison died in 1806; his son, succeeding to the banking business, continued to accumulate; and, at his death in his seventy-ninth year, in August 1849, left two millions and a half of money. He had sat in Parliament for Surrey from 1818. He was a man of cultivated tastes, possessed a knowledge of art and elegant literature; he feared to be thought ostentatious, and could with difficulty be prevailed on to have a lodge erected at the entrance to a new road which he had just formed on his estate, near Dorking. The Marchioness Conyngham was left a widow in 1832; she died in 1861, having attained the venerable age of ninety-two, and lived to see both her sons peers of the realm,—the one in succession to his father; the second, Albert Denison, as heir to her own brother’s great fortune and estates, with the title of Baron Londesborough.
The career of George Hudson, ridiculously styled “the Railway King,” was one of the ignes fatui of the railway mania. He was born in a lowly house in College-street, York, in 1800; here he served his apprenticeship to a linendraper, and subsequently carried on the business as principal, amassing considerable wealth. His fortune was next increased by a bequest from a distant relative, which sum he invested in North-Midland Railway shares; and, under his chairmanship, they gradually rose from 70l. discount to 120l. premium. This led to the creation of new shares in branch and extension lines, often worthless, which were issued at a premium also: Hudson soon found himself chairman of 600 miles of railway, extending from Rugby to Newcastle; and he is stated in a single day to have cleared 100,000l. He was also elected M.P. for Sunderland; and served twice Lord Mayor of York. The sum of 16,000l. was subscribed and presented to him as a public testimonial; with which he purchased a mansion at Albert-gate, Hyde-park; here he lived sumptuously, and went his round of visits among the peerage. But the speculation of 1845 was followed by a sudden reaction: shares fell, the holders sold to avoid payment of calls, and many were ruined; then followed the unkingship of Hudson, who was hurled down like the molten calf, and he lost a vast fortune in the general wreck of the railway bubbles.
The most beneficial fortunes made in business are those by which, at the same time, permanent advantages are secured to the public. Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher, “was a man of much ability and extraordinary enterprise. His public career connected him intimately with the literature of the present century, and few are the distinguished writers, during the last forty years, whose names were not associated with that of Mr. Colburn. In one of Mr. Disraeli’s novels a handsome tribute is paid to his acuteness of judgment and generosity of dealing. The publication of the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn will rank among many sterling contributions to literature due in the first instance to his enterprise. He originated those weekly literary reviews which have since been so successful; he established more than one newspaper, and conducted for a great many years the Magazine which still bears his name; and was the original publisher of Sir Bernard Burke’s Peerage. In private life he was known as a friendly, hospitable, kind man, and acts of the greatest liberality marked his course through life.”[[107]] He died at an advanced age.
Mr. James Morrison, the wealthy warehouseman of Cripplegate, started in life as foreman to Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married; and succeeding to his large property, distinguished himself as a sound political economist, and for some years sat in Parliament. He obtained, by purchase, the fine estates of Basilden, in Berkshire, and Fonthill, in Wiltshire: at Basilden, in 1846, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, upon the View of the Thames, were entertained by Mr. Morrison, who then referred with much gratification to his having been brought up in the City of London, “connected with it in a mercantile point of view, and having, by his own industry, obtained every thing he could desire.” He was a man of high commercial character; to which Mr. Edwin Chadwick, at the Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, in 1862, bore this interesting testimony: “I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Chadwick, “of the acquaintance of perhaps the most wealthy and successful merchant of the last half-century,—a distinguished member of our political economy club, the late Mr. James Morrison,—who assured me, that the leading principles to which he owed his success in life, and which he vindicated as sound elements of economical science, were—always to consult the interests of the consumer, and not, as is the common maxim, to buy cheap and sell dear, but to sell cheap as well as to buy cheap; it being to his interest to widen the area of consumption, and to sell quickly and to the many. The next maxim is involved in the first principle—always to tell the truth, to have no shams: a rule which he confessed he found it most difficult to get his common sellers to adhere to in its integrity, yet most important for success, it being to his interest as a merchant that any ship-captain might come into his warehouse and fill his ship with goods of which he had no technical knowledge, but of which he well knew that only a small profit was charged upon a close ready-money purchasing price, and that go where he would he would find nothing cheaper; it being, moreover, to the merchant’s interest that his bill of prices should be every where received from experience as a truth, and trustworthy evidence so far of a fair market-value. I might cite extensive testimony of the like character to show that the very labour and risks of continued deceits, however common, are detrimental to the successful operation of economic principles, and that sound economy is every where concurrent with high public morality.”