“But great as Mr. Gould was as a financier and railway manager, he would, if bred to the bar, have made a greater lawyer. That is a fact. I have seen him greatly provoked, but never saw him lose his temper or utter a threat. Nevertheless, he had a good memory, both for benefits received and injuries done. He was probably, in the language of Dr. Johnson, ‘a good hater without loquacity and pomposity.’”
A popular error about Jay Gould is the notion that he was invincible. In 1866 a promissory note for $500 with his name went a-begging round Wall street at a heavy discount, yet he left a fortune estimated at $100,000,000. If Gould had died poor, what would have been the general verdict on his career? And yet, only eight years ago he was on the verge of failure. This was after the panic of May, 1884, one of the few times that he was tempted into the stock market as a speculator in order to hold up the price of stocks with which he was burdened.
The late Charles F. Woerishoffer, Henry N. Smith, and other operators were united in a combined effort to bear the securities which Gould was carrying. He had supported them for a time by obtaining sterling bills, giving his securities as collateral and then converting the bills into cash. But sterling loans, like all others, come to maturity; the bears were as unscrupulous as himself, bold and skillful and persistent. Gould’s Western Union fell to 49 and his Missouri Pacific to 62. He was beaten. One morning he had his lawyers execute an assignment of his property, and on the following day—a beautiful Sunday morning—his yacht went down to Long Branch, where the bear operators were summering. Gould’s emissaries landed and held a conference with his foes. They bore his ultimatum—a copy of the assignment and the statement that unless the bears made terms with him he would on the following morning file the assignment and give public notice that he was unable to meet his engagements.
At that time he was supposed to be borrowing some $20,000,000, and his failure would create a bigger panic than the one the street had just passed through. Many of the firms with which the bear combine had “short” contracts outstanding would doubtless fail, and in the general crash the successful bears themselves might be heavy losers. After a protracted conference the bears agreed to “let up” on Gould on condition that he should turn over to them 50,000 shares of Western Union at the current market price, $50 per share. This enabled them to make delivery of the shares they had sold at high prices. In speaking of this “deal” the following day, one of the bears expressed his confidence that Gould would have to fail anyhow—the help he received would be transient in its effect as a glass of brandy given to a dying man.
He was wrong. He underestimated the fertility of resource in Gould and his associates.
Many of the men in the financial quarter of New York City the day of his death devoted their time to forming estimates of Mr. Gould’s character as a man and relating anecdotes of his life. In reference to the general subject under discussion, Col. Henry T. Chapman, the art connoisseur of the Stock Exchange, said:
“Gould’s art collection was little known, for he rarely ever figured personally in buying pictures, and went so little into social life that the public had no knowledge of his gallery. It is very choice, however, consisting of about one hundred paintings. Many of them are representative works of the Barbizon and modern French school. He has one of the finest examples of Corot in the country, and masterpieces by Rousseau, De Neufville and others.
“I purchased for him at the Stewart sale the finest example of Knaus in the country. It is a famous work known as ‘Knaus Children,’ and cost $25,000. Works by that artist have brought higher prices in this country, but no one has a finer example. This illustrates one thing that I would like to say about Mr. Gould. He did not buy a painting on account of its price, but because he appreciated its beauties. He had a fine, a highly cultivated artistic sense, and showed a wonderful appreciation of color, tone and treatment in a picture.
“He knew the inspirational works of an artist from the mediocre productions, and showed a nice discrimination in his selections. He never bought a picture for a household decoration nor to fit a recess in the wall, but for the love of the art it displayed and the enjoyment it gave him. His was the true artistic spirit.”
“The quality for which I most greatly respected Mr. Gould,” said an acquaintance, “was his consideration for others. This may seem a strange quality to attribute to a man who is esteemed a ‘wrecker’ by nine-tenths of Wall street men, but it was the thing that I often remarked in a long personal acquaintance with the man.