As yet, however, his wealth was very moderate, for in 1790, at the dissolution of a partnership he had formed with his brother who had come to America, his own share of the business amounted to only thirty thousand dollars. And yet, forty years later, he died leaving a fortune of ten millions.
It is sad; but may be profitable to know, that his happiness did not increase with his possessions. While his balance-sheets recorded increasing assets, his hearth-stone echoed louder and wilder echoes of discordant voices. He was jealous, arbitrary, and passionate; his unfortunate wife was resentful, fiery, and finally so furious that, in 1790, she was admitted as a maniac to an insane hospital, which she never left until she was carried to her grave, unwept and unregretted, twenty-five years after. Their only child had gone to an early grave. Girard's nature must have been strangely perverted if he counted, as he seems to have done, the pleasure of making money a compensation for the absence of true womanly love from his cheerless fireside. His heart, no doubt, was as unsentimental as the gold he loved to hoard.
The terrible retribution which about this time overtook the slave-holders of St. Domingo, when their slaves threw off their oppressive yoke, added considerably to his rising fortunes. He happened to have two vessels in that port when the tocsin of insurrection rang out its fearful notes. Frantic with apprehension, many planters rushed with their costliest treasure to these ships, left them in care of their officers, and went back for more. But the blood-stained hand of massacre prevented their return. They and their heirs perished by knife or bullet, and the unclaimed treasure was taken to Philadelphia, to swell the stream of Girard's wealth. He deemed this a lucky accident, no doubt; and smothered his sympathies for the sufferers in the satisfaction he felt over the addition of fifty thousand dollars to his growing estate. It stimulated, if it did not beget, the dream of his life, the passion which possessed his soul, which was to acquire wealth by which his name might be kept before the world forever. "My deeds must be my life. When I am dead my actions must speak for me," he said to an acquaintance one day, and thus gave expression to his plan of life. There was nothing intrinsically noble in it. If the means he finally adopted bore a philanthropic stamp on their face, his motive was purely personal, and therefore low and selfish. What he toiled for was a name that would never die. He was shrewd enough to perceive that this end could be most surely gained by linking it with the philanthropic spirit of the Christianity which he detested. And hence arose his idea of founding Girard College.
Shortly after plucking the golden fruit which fell into his hands from the St. Domingo insurrection Girard enlarged his business by building several splendid ships and entering into the China and India trade. His operations in this line were managed with a spirit that indicated a true mercantile genius, and contributed greatly to the enlargement of his fortune.
He made these ships the visible expressions of his thoughts on religion and philosophy by naming them, after his favorite authors, the Montesquieu, the Helvetius, the Voltaire, and the Rousseau. He thus defiantly assured the world that he was not only a skeptic, but that he also gloried in that by no means creditable fact.
Girard's life was filled with enigmas. He really loved no living soul. He had no sympathies. He would not part with his money to save agent, servant, neighbor, or relation from death. Nevertheless, when the yellow fever spread dismay, desolation, and death throughout Philadelphia, in 1793, sweeping one-sixth of its population into the grave in about sixty days, he devoted himself to nursing the sick in the hospital with a self-sacrificing zeal which knew no bounds, and which excited universal admiration and praise. His biographer accounts for this conduct, repeated on two subsequent visitations of that terrible fever, by supposing that he was naturally benevolent, but that his early trials had sealed up the fountains of his human feeling. A great public catastrophe broke the seal, the suppressed fountain flowed until the day of terror passed, and then with resolute will he resealed the fountain, and became a cold-hearted, selfish man again.
His selfish disregard for the claims of his dependents was shown, one day, when one of his most successful captains, who had risen from the humble position of apprentice to the command of a fine ship, asked to be transferred to another ship. Girard made him no reply, but, turning to his desk, said to his chief clerk:
"Roberjot, make out Captain Galigar's account immediately."
When this order was obeyed and the account settled, he coolly said to the faithful officer:
"You are discharged, sir. I do not make the voyage for my captains, but for myself."