It had been found difficult to estimate the actual savings of fuel, and the settlement of the accounts was a constant source of cavil. There was so much temptation on the one side to evade the payments according to the tables prepared by Watt, and so much occasion for suspicion on the other that they had been evaded by unfair means, that it appeared to Boulton that the only practicable method was to agree to a fixed annual payment for each engine erected, according to its power and the work it performed. Watt was very averse to giving up the tables which had cost him so much labour to prepare; but Boulton more wisely urged the adoption of the plan that would work most smoothly, and get rid of the heartburnings on both sides. Boulton accordingly sent down to Watt a draft agreement with the Wheal Virgin adventurers, who were prepared to pay the large sum of 2500l. a year in respect of five new engines erected for their firm; and urged him to agree to the terms. “You must not be too rigid,” said he, “in fixing the dates of payment. A hard bargain is a bad bargain.” Watt replied in a long letter, urging the accuracy of his tables, and intimating his reluctance to depart from them. To this Boulton responded, “Now, my dear Sir, the way to do justice to our own characters, and to trample under our feet envy, hatred, and malice, is to dispel the doubts, and to clear up the minds of the gentlemanly part of this our best of all kingdoms; for if they think we do wrong, it operates against us although we do none, just as much as if we really did the wrong. Patience and candour should mark all our actions, as well as firmness in being just to ourselves and others. A fair character and standing with the people is attended with great advantage as well as satisfaction, of which you are fully sensible, so I need say no more.”[192]
Watt did not give up his favourite tables without further expostulation and argument, but at length he reluctantly gave his assent to the Wheal Virgin agreement, by which the annual payment of 2500l. was secured. Though this was really an excellent bargain, Watt seemed to regard it in the light of a calamity. In the letter intimating his reluctant concurrence, he observed: “These disputes are so very disagreeable to me, that I am very sorry I ever bestowed so great a part of my time and money on the steam-engine. I can bear with the artifices of the designing part of mankind, but having myself no intention to deceive others, I cannot brook the suspicions of the honest part, which I am conscious I never merited even in intention, far less by any actual attempt to deceive;”[193] Two days later Watt again wrote, urging the superiority of his tables, concluding thus: “I have been so much molested with headaches this week, that I have perhaps written in a more peevish strain than I should have done if I had been in better health, which I hope you will excuse.” Boulton replied, expressing regret at his lowness of spirits and bad health, advising him to cheer up. “At your leisure,” said he, “you may amuse yourself with a calculation of what all the engines we shall have in eighteen months erected in Cornwall will amount to; you will find it good for low spirits.” “I assure you,” he said at another time, “you have no cause for apprehension as to anything in this country; all is going on well.” Boulton seemed to regard his partner in the light of a permanent invalid, which he was; and on writing to his various correspondents on matters of business at Soho, he would abjure them not to cross Mr. Watt. To Fothergill he wrote respecting the execution of an order, “the matter must be managed with some delicacy respecting Mr. Watt, as you know that when he is low-spirited he is vexed at trifles.”
Another important part of Boulton’s business in Cornwall, besides settling the engine agreement, was to watch the mining adventures themselves, in which by this time Boulton and Watt had become largely interested. In the then depressed state of the mining interest, it was in many cases found difficult to raise the requisite money to pay for the new engines; and the engineers must either go without orders or become shareholders to prevent the undertakings dropping through altogether. Watt’s caution impelled him at first to decline entering into such speculations. He was already in despair at what he considered the bad fortunes of the firm, and the load of debts they had incurred in carrying on the manufacture of engines. But there seemed to be no alternative, and he at length came to the conclusion with Boulton, that it was better “not to lose a sheep for a ha’porth of tar.”[194]
Rather than lose the orders, therefore, or risk the losses involved by the closing of the mines worked by their engines, the partners resolved to incur the risk of joining in the adventures, and in course of time they became largely interested in them. They also induced friends in the North to join them, more particularly Josiah Wedgwood and John Wilkinson, who took shares to a large amount.
Boulton now made it his business to attend the meetings of the adventurers, in the hope of improving their working arrangements, which he believed were very imperfect. He was convinced of this after his first meeting with the adventurers of the Wheal Virgin mine. He found their proceedings conducted without regard to order. The principal attention was paid to the dining, and after dinner and drink little real business could be done. No minutes were made of the proceedings; half the company were talking at the same time on different subjects; no one took the lead in conducting the discussions, which were disorderly and anarchical in the extreme. Boulton immediately addressed himself to the work of introducing order and despatch. He called upon his brother adventurers to do their business first, and dine and talk afterwards. He advised them to procure a minute-book in which to enter the resolutions and proceedings. His clear-headed suggestions were at once agreed to; and the next meeting, for which he prepared the agenda, was so entirely different from all that had preceded it, in respect of order, regularity, and the business transacted, that his influence with the adventurers was at once established. “The business,” he wrote to Watt, “was conducted with more regularity, and more of it was done, than was ever known at any previous meeting.” He perceived, however, that there was still room for great improvements, and added, “somebody must be here all next summer ... I shall be here myself the greater part of it, for there will want more kicking than you can do.... Grace au Dieu! I neither want health, nor spirits, nor even flesh, for I grow fat.”[195]
To increase his influence among the adventurers, and secure the advantages of a local habitation among them, Boulton deemed it necessary to take a mansion capable of accommodating his family, and which should serve the same purpose for his partner when sojourning in the neighbourhood. Boulton’s first idea was to have a portable wooden house built and fitted up in the manner of a ship’s cabin, which might readily be taken to pieces and moved from place to place as business required. This plan was, however, eventually abandoned in favour of a residence of a more fixed kind. After much searching, a house was found which promised to answer the intended purpose,—an old-fashioned, roomy mansion, with a good-sized garden full of fruit trees, prettily situated at Cosgarne, in the Gwennap valley. Though the United Mines district was close at hand, and fourteen of Boulton and Watt’s engines were at work in the immediate neighbourhood, not an engine chimney was to be seen from the house, which overlooked Tresamble Common, then an unenclosed moor. Here the partners by turns spend much of their time for several successive years, travelling about from thence on horseback from mine to mine to superintend the erection and working of their engines.
COSGARNE HOUSE.
By this time the old Newcomen engines had been almost completely superseded, only one of that construction remaining at work in the whole county of Cornwall. The prospects of the engine business were, indeed, so promising, that Boulton even contemplated retiring altogether from his other branches of business at Soho, and settling himself permanently in Cornwall.[196]
Notwithstanding the great demand for engines, the firm continued for some time in serious straits for money, and Boulton was under the necessity of resorting to all manner of expedients to raise it, sometimes with Watt’s concurrence, but oftener without. Watt’s inexperience in money matters, conjoined with his extreme timidity and nervousness, made him apprehend ruin and bankruptcy from every fresh proposition made to him on the subject of raising money. He was kept so utterly wretched by his fears as to be on occasions quite unmanned, and he would brood for days together on the accumulation of misery and anxiety which his great invention had brought upon him. His wife was kept almost as miserable as himself, and as Matthew Boulton was the only person, in her opinion, who could help him out of his troubles, she privately appealed to him in the most pathetic terms:—