MR. MILLS--A PERSONAL APPRECIATION AND A FEW ANECDOTES
I recross the Atlantic for a moment. There died lately in California
a man known on both sides of the ocean, known in more worlds than
two, one of the strongest and certainly one of the most amiable
figures in the world of business, Mr. Darius Ogden Mills.
Of late years, since Mr. Reid has been Ambassador, Mr. Mills had
become a figure in London. He interested Englishmen because he was a
new type, or, rather, because he was individual; because he was Mr.
Mills. Type implies a plurality; and not only was there but one
Mills, there was none other to whom you could compare him.
Englishmen have formed a notion of their own about Americans of the
class to which, in respect of his wealth, Mr. Mills belonged; and a
high notion. They have seen much, for example, of Mr. Pierpont
Morgan, and they seemed inclined to suppose all great financiers to
be, in manner as in fact, masterful, dominating, huge in physique,
born rulers of other men. They had never seen much, if anything, of
Mr. Harriman, who hid away his great qualities beneath a personality
{310} almost insignificant in appearance save for the ample head and
burning eyes.
Mr. Mills was perceived to be like neither of these, nor like any
third. He was much more like an Oxford professor; like the late Rev.
Mark Pattison, rector of Lincoln, the Casaubon of George Eliot's
novel. Mr. Mills had the gentleness, the refinement, the distinction
of the scholar. It must have been born with him. He went to no
college. He had little college learning. He had lived in rough
times and among rough men; had twice crossed the continent on foot
and in the saddle, with a cloud of Red Indians ever on the horizon,
and had lived in San Francisco during those stormy years when Bret
Harte's heroes, gamblers, and ruffians set up their turbulent rule.
But there was a light in Mr. Mills's pale blue eyes which kept those
gentlemen at a distance. This delicately-featured face ended in a
jaw which was an index of a character not to be trifled with.
Upon all this London remarked with some surprise, and then with great
respect and liking. They liked his simplicity of manner as much as
his sagacity of speech, and his silence almost as much as his
conversation. An American who was an American to the finger-tips but
never waved the flag; a man of affairs who seemed in the world only a
man of the world; a millionaire in whose pockets the jingle of the
dollar was never heard; such was the rare picture Mr. Mills
presented. He won their sympathies because he never tried to. These
islanders like a man who is just {311} himself, yet is absolutely
free from self-assertion. They gave him first their respect, then
their regard, and finally their affection.
I have seen all these feelings shown in the Metropolitan Club in New
York in an unusual way. Mr. Mills used to come into the card-room of
an afternoon. There would be two or three or more rubbers of bridge
going on. Bridge is a passion, but men would stop in the middle of a
rubber and ask Mr. Mills if he would not take a hand or make up a new
rubber. Bridge being not only a passion but the selfish game it
is--necessarily so, like business--the tribute was a remarkable one.
If he declined, somebody would remember suddenly he had an engagement
and beg Mr. Mills as a favour to take his place. As he moved about
in the club men rose and walked across the room to greet him, a thing
less rare in New York but unknown in London, where a club has been
defined as a place in which a man may cut his best friend and no
offence taken. The general ceremoniousness of club life in New York
would close all the clubhouses in London. So would the despotism of
New York club committees.
Men listened to him or waited for him to speak in a way which
suggested not only a desire for an opinion but an attachment to the
man. He himself was one of the best listeners ever known. When he
spoke it was briefly. He could say what he wanted to in a sentence
or a few sentences. In this he was like another and a greater Oxford
Don--I suppose the greatest of his time--Jowett, {312} the Master of
Balliol. Both sat long silent while others were talking and both
seemed to use, and Jowett certainly did use, the interval in
fashioning his thoughts into epigrams. Jowett's epigrams often
stung, and were meant to sting, for he thought presumption and
ignorance ought to be punished. Perhaps Mr. Mills did but he did not
think he had been appointed to punish them.
A group of men in the club were one day discussing great fortunes and
the men who owned them. Everybody thought and spoke in millions and
tens of millions. Finally some one appealed to the only silent man
in the company.
"What do you say, Mr. Mills?"
"I say that in all these cases, or almost all, I think it safe to
divide the figures by two."
"In your own case also?"
"Above all in my case."
We travelled up together once by the night express to the Adirondacks
on a visit to Mr. Reid's camp, arriving at the station at six in the
morning; then driving to the lake; then in a boat to the camp, which
could not be reached otherwise. After his long night journey he was
fresh and alert and not the least tired, and he talked freely. He
even discussed business, and presently remarked:
"I have been a little anxious about money matters and was not sure I
could get away from New York."
"But why?"
"Oh, but my bank balances are much larger than I like them to be."
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I made the obvious and rather foolish answer that there were plenty
of people who would be willing to relieve him from this anxiety, to
which he retorted:
"You know nothing about it. I am not speaking of myself. But a man
in my position has his duties as trustee for others to consider.
Whether I get three per cent or four per cent for my money may not
much matter, though I prefer five, but to many of those for whom I
act it does matter, and to them I am under an obligation I must
fulfil. No man who is not or has not been in business can have any
notion of the ramifications and complications of business. But it's
worth your while to consider that."
It was the longest speech I had ever heard him make, and the didactic
touch at the end was equally new. It was not his way to lecture
people. He held strong, considered opinions on many subjects, but
thought it no part of his duty to impress them on the world, though
his sure judgment was at the service of his friends. His fame and
wealth and position had come to him from what he had done, not by
sermonizing or rhetoric. Men trusted him. There was perhaps no man
more generally trusted. It is nothing to say he never betrayed a
trust. He discharged it to the utmost measure of his ability. The
money which others had put into his hands had to earn as much as
money could earn. Three per cent on deposits would seem to an
Englishman affluence, but Mr. Mills appeared to think he was unfair
to his clients to be content, {314} even temporarily, with three when
it could be invested to earn more.
At the camp he talked more freely than elsewhere. The air was tonic;
the life suited him. In the Adirondacks you do get back into closer
relations with Nature and on more intimate terms with the great
natural forces about you. This is true in spite of the luxurious
simplicity of the camps. But Mr. Mills was always happy where his
daughter was. I may not dwell on such a matter but her devotion to
him was the light of his life. He came to London to be with her.
She returned to America to be with him. If his duties and
responsibilities had permitted, his visits here would have been
longer and more frequent.
Once while I was sitting with him in his office in Broad Street his
lawyer came in with a contract for him to sign. Mr. Mills hardly
glanced at it, took up his pen to sign, stopped, and said to the
lawyer:
"I suppose it is all right?"
"Oh, yes, Mr. Mills. I think you will find your interests protected
in every way."
"That is not what I mean. I want to know whether you have drawn this
agreement so as to leave Mr. A a profit large enough to ensure his
doing his best. He must have his fair share."
A business view, perhaps, and for aught I know common in the business
world, but I had never happened to hear it put quite like that, nor
have I since.
With that may be compared another saying. A little company, all men
of business but me, were {315} discussing business methods. One or
two of them stated rather crudely what are sometimes called the
methods of Wall Street. "There is no sentiment in business," said
one. "A man who thinks of others' interests will soon have none of
his own to consider," remarked a second. And a third, whose career
was strewn with wrecks, declared: "Of course you have to crush those
who stand in your way." Said Mr. Mills:
"I have done pretty well in business but I never crushed anybody."
The Mills hotels were an expression of his sentiment toward the
society amid which he lived; to the environment which had given him
his later opportunities. He wanted to enlarge the opportunities of
other men, to sweeten their lives a little, to enable them to do more
for themselves. His scheme was derided and was a success from the
start, and the success has grown greater ever since. The success was
due to the patience with which he thought out his plans. The
afternoon before I sailed from New York, in 1906, I met Mr. Mills in
his victoria at the door of the Metropolitan Club. "Come for a drive
in the park," he said, and we went. He began at once to talk about
his new hotel. We drove for two hours and during nearly all that
time he discussed plans, estimates, details, methods of economical
working, organization, the effect on the tenants, and a hundred other
matters relating to the building, equipment, and operation of the
hotel soon to be erected.
He had all the facts and figures in his mind. He {316} talked with
an enthusiasm he rarely showed. His heart was in it.
To the last his energies seemed inexhaustible; and his interests. He
arrived one afternoon at Dorchester House at five o'clock from New
York. There was a large dinner at 8.30, then a ball which he did not
leave till toward one in the morning. I met him again at tea next
day and he told me he had been at the White City since nine that
morning, and when I suggested that he had gone about that marvellous
but very fatiguing show in a chair, he said: "Oh, no, on my legs."
Nor did he seem tired nor mind the prospect of another large dinner
that night. He was then eighty-two years old. Pneumonia had
attacked him winter after winter, but he always rallied and would
take no better care of himself than before.
In that slight, erect figure Nature had packed powers of endurance
which bigger frames had not. Everything was reduced to its essence.
There was nothing superfluous and nothing wanting. The features were
sculptured. It was the face of a man who had a real distinction of
nature; who had benignity and judgment and acute perceptions all in
equal measure. They bore the stamp of an impregnable integrity, as
his life did. Unlike qualities in him melted into harmony and a
rounded whole. For with his unyielding firmness and strength and
uncompromising convictions and invincible sense of justice went a
loving kindness which made him the most lovable of men. That was Mr.
Mills.
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