His unstinted liberality in all philanthropic and missionary work was wholly unaffected by denominational or party limits; and hence he was liable to be preyed upon by genteel foreigners claiming to be in temporary pecuniary distress, and still more by clerical impostors. When he had reason to think he was imposed upon, he would search into the matter with the utmost keenness; though rather, as it seemed, with a desire to satisfy himself of the truth, than with any purpose of stinting his liberality in the future.
One morning, as the family sat at breakfast, a servant came into the room, and alarmed Mrs. Nelson by whispering to her that there were two detectives at the door who wished to see her. Her manner must have betrayed her apprehensions, for one of them laughed and said, “Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Nelson; we have only come to ask you to use your influence with your husband, and try to get Mr. Nelson to give up giving money to respectable-looking beggars. There is a register kept by a man in the High Street of all the ‘giving people’ in Edinburgh. That is the first resort of this class of beggars. By paying half-a-crown, they are allowed to take a note of the names and addresses, and Mr. Nelson’s stands at the head of the list!” He undertook to look more sharply after the smooth-tongued gentry in black, though, it is to be feared, with only partial success. He manifested a sensitive repugnance to wealthy people whose riches were of no use to any one but themselves; but he protested, to the amusement of his friends, that he strongly disapproved of promiscuous charity. He had his own rules of action. A maimed or deformed person, the blind, the deaf-mute, or any one incapacitated in the struggle for life, he conceived could never be wrongly helped. A poor widow, an old employé, or the widow or orphan of any of his old work-people, had an irresistible claim on his liberality; and other pleas were readily forthcoming to justify the deed of charity to his conscience. But he took pains to search out genuine objects of commiseration; and many of his charities were unknown even to members of his own family. One Saturday afternoon, when walking home with Mrs. Nelson, he asked her to wait while he went in to a humble dwelling. When interrogated as to the object of his visit, it was ascertained that he had been giving a poor widow money to pay her rent; and on further inquiry it turned out that he had been paying it regularly for years. Nor was this a solitary case, as became known when death closed the liberal hand that had so often made the widow’s heart leap for joy. Charity was in him a spontaneous impulse of kindly sympathy which, while exercised not only unobtrusively but with a sensitive shrinking from recognition, was carried out on too great a scale to escape observation. The difficulty of his biographer is to select from the varied instances at his disposal. “I saw him once,” writes a lady, “as he was walking along Clerk Street, pause at a confectioner’s window, where a poor little ragged urchin was standing gazing wistfully at the cakes inside. One kindly hand was laid on the boy’s shoulder; the other took a silver piece from his pocket. A few words were spoken, and Mr. Nelson passed on, while the boy darted into the shop; and I had the pleasure of seeing him come out a moment later already devouring one of the cookies of which he had become the delighted possessor.” He was never known to refer to such acts. They were, indeed, of too frequent occurrence to seem to him worthy of note. The poor and needy had learned to regard him as their unfailing resort; and if his charity was abused, he would say in reply to prudent remonstrants that it was better a few impostors should succeed, than one genuine claim be rejected.
The traders on his benevolence were wont, as already noted, to watch for him on his way to Parkside; and Mr. Gray notes of such claimants: “Mr. Nelson would sometimes say to me, ‘The printing trade must be in a dreadful state,’ for in his walk thither he had been met by half-a-dozen printers pleading for help. He inquired at times into the state of the trade, with the view, I suppose, to guide him in his charities; for it offended his guileless trustfulness in others to find he had been imposed upon, though it never led to any stint in his liberality.” Another who had been many years in his service writes: “He had an almost child-like confidence in some folks; but if his suspicions were once aroused as to anything wrong, he ferreted out the matter to the bottom, and in case of any betrayal of trust, he would speak of it with a keen sense of wrong. But if you responded with any denunciation of the offender, his manner changed, and he generally found some apology or some reason for pitying the delinquent. Nor did the fact that a claimant had wronged him affect his consideration of the case if it proved to be a necessitous one, especially if he had a wife and children.” When an action was raised by the contracting engineer who undertook the repairs of the machinery, against the widow of his predecessor, to enforce the completion of some work for which her late husband had been responsible, William Nelson opposed it, declaring that no good ever came of prosecuting a widow, and he ultimately repaid £130 of law expenses incurred in the suit.
Under the system which such a spirit naturally developed, the relation between master and servants assumed a very different aspect from that of the mere hireling. The workers in his employment cordially sympathized in his success, and took a pride in contributing to the prosperity of the firm. A gentleman, whose intimate relations with it for many years made him familiar with its internal economy, thus writes: “The claims of his own work-people at Hope Park or Parkside were never disregarded. He had, as the firm still has, a host of pensioners: aged employés, and the widows and children of former workmen, who were mainly dependent on his charity for their daily bread. Groups of them, or of their representatives, still assemble in the entrance hall at Parkside on the pay-day, by whom his name is revered. They tell their own tale of satisfaction and gratitude.” The charity which thus began at home did not end there. The difficulty, indeed, is to select from the examples communicated to me. One characteristic instance I owe to a fellow-traveller, who found himself in company with William Nelson in an Italian town during a festive season. It was a scene of holiday rejoicings; but it did not escape Mr. Nelson’s notice that while the mass of the people were enjoying themselves, there were a number of uncared-for poor whose misery was made the more apparent by the festive scenes that surrounded them. This so impressed him that he forthwith made arrangements with a hosteller for the entertainment of the ragged lazaroni. Another gentleman who passed some weeks with him at one of the German spas tells this story:—“At the little English church there was a clergyman stationed, entirely dependent on the freewill offerings of the ever-changing congregation. There were no resident members to act as churchwardens or vestrymen; so, after the service, the poor clergyman himself went round and collected the offertory. This was too much for Mr. Nelson. He volunteered his services, which were accepted. To the clergyman’s agreeable surprise, the collection increased amazingly; and he only learned where the increase came from by a return to the old scale after Mr. Nelson’s departure.”
It was a curious study to note the guilelessness and child-like simplicity which William Nelson retained unchanged to the close of his life, along with rare shrewdness and sagacity as a man of business. Whenever any transaction assumed a business aspect, however trifling might be the amount involved, he was prompt, clear-sighted, and acute, detecting and with quiet firmness resisting any attempt at overreaching or fraud. On one occasion, when I was his fellow-traveller, a knavish newsboy to whom he had intrusted a sixpence decamped without returning the change. This breach of faith provoked a display of indignation so entirely disproportionate to the value of the loss, as obviously suggested to our wondering fellow-travellers in the railway carriage that they witnessed another Shylock bemoaning his lost ducats. They little knew that the rogue, by the invention of a pitiful tale, might have transmuted the stolen coppers into gold. This transparent naturalness of character revealed itself equally in his intercourse with high and low. Alike at home and abroad he was often brought into familiar relations with men of rank and distinction, and his engaging manners and wide culture made him a welcome addition to any company. But there was no change in his manner towards the nobleman or the skilled artisan. An old friend notes of him what many will recall:—“Reverence was part of his nature. However intimate he might be with a friend, he scarcely ever addressed him, personally or by letter, except by full name as Mr. or Dr.; and it was the same with his own employés. The Dick or Tom of his fellows in the workroom was Richard or Thomas, if not Mr. ——, when spoken to by him.” His circle of friends included men of the most dissimilar social positions; and his intercourse with some of his old workmen whose integrity and worth had been proved by long experience was of the most intimate and confidential nature. No wonder that he was faithfully served. He practically demonstrated his belief that,—
“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”
He entertained at his table the publishers, booksellers, and others with whom he had business relations. Mr. David Douglas thus notes his recollections of him and of his kindly hospitalities: “He was the one to whom any of us would have gone in difficulties or doubtful trade questions, feeling sure that he would not only give sound advice but kindly sympathy. Many such cases occur to me. He used to gather round his table annually the various members of the printing and publishing trades; and I used to admire his true hospitality in making every one, from the youngest guest to the oldest, as much at home as possible, gently drawing out their best stories, and exchanging with genial humour some pleasant talk with all.” In his Saturday visits to the Castle of Edinburgh in connection with his restorations, referred to in a subsequent chapter, the most eminent archæologists, artists, and literary men, along with his choice personal friends, responded to his welcome invitations. At times the company included such distinguished additions as Lord Rosebery or Lord Napier and Ettrick, who took a special interest in the work. But it would never occur to him that any spirit of social caste could influence such a gathering, and his own list of friends always included some of his trusted workmen from Parkside.
A lady whose services as an authoress brought her into frequent contact with Mr. Nelson, after noting his liberality in all business transactions with herself, adds a little incident of her personal experience. His love of dogs has already been noted; but it might have been assumed that however welcome their companionship might be at Salisbury Green, the intrusion of stranger dogs into his room at Parkside in business hours could hardly fail to be resented. Her own experience, however, is thus narrated: “I had taken my dog with me one morning; a large brown spaniel, Rover by name. He is not a general favourite among my friends, being rather boisterous in his greetings, to say nothing of his muddy paws in wet weather. His place therefore was generally without, and his intrusion into Mr. Nelson’s room was undesigned on my part. Contrary, however, to his usual experience, Rover obtained a most cordial reception. A messenger was sent out for biscuits for him; and I rarely afterwards received a note from Mr. Nelson asking me to call which did not end with the invitation, ‘Please bring doggie when you come.’ It was no wonder therefore that Rover soon learned to feel himself at home there, and never willingly passed the door when we walked in the direction of Parkside.” After noting acts of kindness and liberality to herself, she thus proceeds: “My intercourse with Mr. Nelson was only that of a business acquaintance, yet I can truly say, when I saw him carried to his grave that September day, I felt that I had lost a friend. And this, I am sure, was no rare feeling among those thus brought into business relations with him. One trait often struck me—the kindly manner in which he always spoke of his large staff, as one name or another might come up in conversation. ‘The right man in the right place,’ he would say, or some other hearty term of appreciation; and it was evidently no taskmaster who was over them, but rather a sort of patriarch dwelling among his own people, sure of their loyalty and affection.”
Testimonies of a like kind have reached me from very diverse sources, all pointing to kindly relationships between this true captain of industry and his employés, such as seem, without exaggeration, to have realized in these days of mere trading rivalry something akin to the fealty of knightly service in the olden time. The golden rule of ever doing the right was carried out with unconscious simplicity. Mr. Gray, who, as cashier at Hope Park and Parkside, was familiar during many years with all the financial details of the business, thus sums up his testimony to the habitual business life of his old master and friend: “He was eager to avoid anything that could possibly bear the aspect of sharp practice, or allow the faintest breath of suspicion of unfairness or shabby dealing; and his generous, large soul won for the place a reputation of uprightness and honour.”