was so called because its hundred members divided the twenty-four hours
of day and night among themselves in such a manner that the club was
always sitting, no person presuming to rise till he was relieved by his
appointed successor, so that a member of the club not on duty himself
could always find company, and have his whet or draught, as the rules
say, at any time.
The tradespeople and workmen of the past seem to have had a passion for
clubs; but there is this to be said in their favour, theirs were only
drinking clubs. Our modern patrons of low-class clubs establish them for
the worse pursuits of gambling and betting.
*IX.*
*CURIOUS STORIES OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE.*
In the _Weekly Journal_ of January 2, 1719-20, can be read: 'It was the
observation of a witty knight many years ago, that the English people
were something like a flight of birds at a barn-door. Shoot among them
and kill ever so many, the rest shall return to the same place in a very
little time, without any remembrance of the evil that had befallen their
fellows.' The pigeons at Monte Carlo, whom the cruel-minded idiots who
fire at them have missed, instead of flying at once and for ever from
the murderous spot, perch on the cage in which their fellows are kept,
and are easily caught again, to be eventually killed. 'Thus the
English,' the _Weekly Journal_ concludes, 'though they have had examples
enough in these latter times of people ruined by engaging in projects,
yet they still fall in with the next that appears.' And thus the Stock
Exchange flourishes. That desolation-spreading upastree was planted in
the mephitic morass of the national debt. It is considered deserving of
blame in an individual to get into debt, yet sometimes his doing so is
unavoidable--his means are insufficient for his wants. But a nation has
no excuse for taking credit and getting into debt. There is wealth
enough in the country to pay cash for all it requires; and if it borrows
money merely to subsidize foreign tyrants to enchain their own subjects,
it commits a criminal act. But nearly the whole of our national debt
has such an origin, and its poisonous produce is the Stock Exchange.
The word 'stock-jobber' was first heard in 1688, when a crowd of
companies sprang into existence, and it was then that the Stock Exchange
was first established as an independent institution at Jonathan's
Coffee-house, in Change Alley, in or about 1698. Before then the
brokers had carried on their business in the Royal Exchange. London at
that time abounded--at what time does it not?--with new projects and
schemes, many of them delusory, consequently the legitimate transactions
of the Royal Exchange were inconveniently interfered with by the
presence of so many jobbers and brokers--that pernicious spawn of the
public funds, as Noortbouck calls them--and they were ordered to leave
the Exchange. They just crossed the road and went to Jonathan's, 'and
though a public nuisance, they serve the purposes of ministers too well,
in propagating a spirit of gaming in Government securities, to be
exterminated, as a wholesome policy would dictate.' There, at
Jonathan's, 'you will see a fellow in shabby clothes,' as we read in the
'Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London,' 'selling L10,000 or
L12,000 in stock, though perhaps he may not be worth at the same time
10s., and with as much zeal as if he were a director, which they call
selling a bear-skin.' Thus this latter expression seems very old. The
business of stock-jobbing increased, in spite of some feeble repressive
attempts on the part of Government in 1720, the House of Commons passing
a vote 'that nothing can tend more to the establishment of public credit
than preventing the infamous practice of stock-jobbing'; and also
passing at the same time an Act enabling persons who had been sufferers
thereby to obtain an easy and speedy redress.[#] In spite of this the
brokers contrived to thrive to such an extent that they found it
necessary to take a more commodious room in Threadneedle Street, to
which admission was obtained on payment of sixpence. The Bank Rotunda
was at one period the place where bargains in stocks were made; but
there the brokers were as great a nuisance as they had been at the Royal
Exchange, and were turned out. It was then they took the room in
Threadneedle Street, and in the year 1799 they raised L12,150 in 1,263
shares of L50 each, and purchased a site in Capel Court, comprising
Mendoza's boxing-room and debating forum and buildings contiguous, on
which the present Stock Exchange was erected, and opened in 1801. Capel
Court was so called from the London residence of Sir William Capel, Lord
Mayor of London in 1504. Within the last decade the building has been
considerably enlarged and beautified.
[#] An Act passed in 1734 forbade time bargains under a penalty of L500
on brokers and their clients, and of L100 for contracting for the sale
of stock of which the person was not possessed. Both these statutes were
repealed circa 1860.
Stockbrokers are supposed to lead very harassed and restless lives--yes,
if they speculate on their own account and with their own money, a folly
which no experienced broker ever thinks of committing. He speculates
for other people, and with their money, and, well, if before the
official hour of opening--viz., eleven o'clock--a chance presents itself
of a deal with a customer's stock on the broker's account, by which a
little benefit accrues to the latter, the customer knows nothing about
it, and what you are ignorant of does not hurt. The broker is, in this
respect, very much like the lawyer. Neither the broker nor the lawyer
can be expected to share their clients' anxieties concerning investments
or disputed interests, and they don't. When either of them leaves his
office for his suburban villa or Brighton breezes, he leaves all
thoughts of business behind him in the office, considering that the
freedom from care he enjoys at home is honestly earned, and no doubt it
is--in his estimation.
Until within the first quarter of this century a singular custom
concerning the admission of Jews to the Stock Exchange was in existence.
The number of Jew brokers was limited to twelve, and these could secure
the privilege only by a liberal gratuity to the Lord Mayor for the time
being. 'During the Mayoralty of Wilkes, one of the Jew brokers was
taken seriously ill, and Wilkes is said to have speculated pretty openly
on the advantage he would derive from filling up the vacancy. The son
of the broker, meeting the Lord Mayor, reproached Wilkes with wishing
his father's death. 'My dear fellow,' replied Wilkes, with the
sarcastic humour peculiar to him, 'you are in error, for I would rather
have all the Jew brokers dead than your father.'
The funds are much affected by political events; that goes without
saying. Their rise or fall may be very rapid. It was exceptionally so
in the early period of the French revolutionary war. In March, 1792,
the Three per Cents, were at 96, in 1797 they were as low as 48, the
lowest they ever fell to. The possession of prior or exclusive
intelligence enables persons to speculate with great success. A broker
who casually became acquainted with the failure of Lord Macartney's
negotiation with the French Directory, made L16,000 while breakfasting
at Batson's Coffee-house, Cornhill, and had he not been timid, might
have gained half a million, so great was the fluctuation, owing to the
news being entirely unexpected.
But the magnates of the money market did not rely on casual
intelligence. They left no stone unturned to obtain reliable
information in advance even of Government. Thus Sir Henry Furnese, a
bank director, paid for constant despatches from Holland, Flanders,
France and Germany. He made an enormous haul by his early intelligence
of the surrender of Namur in 1695. King William gave him a diamond ring
as a reward for early information; yet he was not above fabricating
false news, and he had his tricks for influencing the funds. If he
wished to buy, his brokers looked gloomy, and, the alarm spread, they
concluded their bargains. Marlborough had an annuity of L6,000 from
Medina, the Jew, for permission to attend his campaigns. During the
troubles of 1745, when the rebels advanced towards London, stocks fell
terribly. Sampson Gideon, a famous Jew broker, managed to have the
first news of the Pretender's retreat. He hastened to Jonathan's,
bought all the stock in the market, spending all his cash, and pledging
his name for more. This stroke of business made him a millionaire.
During the last years of the French wars a difference of 8 per cent.,
and even 10 per cent., would occur within an hour, and thus great
fortunes might be won or lost within that short time. It was also a
period of gigantic frauds, but of these later on.
Of all the sons of Maier Amschel Rothschild, Nathan, born in 1777, was
undoubtedly the most prominent. Inheriting his father's spirit, he left
his home at the early age of twenty-two, and in 1798 opened a small shop
as a banker and money-lender at Manchester. He had left Frankfurt,
where his father's house had just been knocked into ruins by the
bombardment of Marshal Kleber, with only a thousand florins in his
pocket. But the cotton interest was just then beginning to develop
itself, and Nathan took such clever advantage of the opportunities this
offered him, that at the end of five years he came from Manchester to
London with a fortune of L200,000, where he became the son-in-law of
Levi Barnett Cohen, one of the Jewish City magnates. The report of his
Manchester successes had preceded him to the Capital, and he immediately
engaged largely in Stock Exchange speculations. Whilst houses of the
oldest standing were tottering or falling, owing to the State loan of
1810 having turned out a failure, and the fortunes of the Peninsular War
seemed most doubtful, some drafts of Wellington to a considerable amount
came over here, and there was no money in the Exchequer to meet them.
Nathan Rothschild, satisfied as to England's final victory, purchased
the bills at a large discount, and finally found the means of redeeming
them at par. It was a splendid speculation, which resulted in his
entering into closer intercourse with the Ministry, and he was chiefly
employed in transmitting the subsidies which England furnished--most
foolishly indeed--to the Continental Powers. The circumstance that
Nathan was supplied by his brothers at Frankfurt and elsewhere with the
earliest and most reliable intelligence, and his trustworthy connections
and arrangements in London, enabled him to turn such knowledge to
immediate and profitable account. But there being then neither railways
nor telegraphs, news was slow in coming. Nathan trained carrier pigeons,
and organized a staff of agents, whose duty it was to follow the march
of the armies, and daily and hourly to send reports in cipher, tied
under the wings of the pigeons. His agents, by means of fast-sailing
boats, taking the shortest routes, indicated by Nathan himself--the
mail-boats between Folkestone and Boulogne of the present day follow one
of these routes--carried large sums between the coasts of Germany,
France, and England. And when events on the Continent were coming to a
crisis, Nathan on more than one occasion hurried over to the Continent
to watch the course of affairs. It is said that Nathan Rothschild, on
June 18, 1815, was on the field of Waterloo,[#] and watched the battle
till he saw the French troops in full retreat, when he immediately rode
back to Brussels, whence a carriage took him to Ostend. The sea was
stormy; in vain Nathan offered 500 francs, 600 francs, 800 francs, to
carry him across; at last a poor fisherman risked his life for 2,000
francs, and his frail barque, which carried Caesar and his fortunes,
landed Nathan in the evening at Dover. When he appeared on June 20,
leaning against his usual pillar in the Stock Exchange, everything and
everybody looked gloomy. He whispered to a few of his most intimate
friends that the allied army had been defeated. The dismal news spread
like wildfire, and there was a tremendous fall in the funds. Nathan's
known agents sold with the rest, but his unknown agents bought every
scrap of paper that was to be had. It was not till the afternoon of
June 21 that the news of the victory of Waterloo became known. Nathan
was the first to inform his friends of the happy event, a quarter of an
hour before the news was given to the public. The funds rose faster
than they had fallen, and Nathan still leant against his pillar in the
southern corner of the Stock Exchange, but richer by about a million
sterling. From that day the career of Nathan was one of ever-increasing
prosperity; his firm became the agents of all European Governments; he
made bargains with the Czar of Russia and with South American Republics,
with the Pope and the Sultan. About the morality of the Waterloo
episode the less said the better, but peers and princes of the blood,
bishops and archbishops, partook of his sumptuous banquets, whilst he
calculated to a penny on what a clerk could live!
[#] To an article I wrote twenty-five years ago on this topic I find
appended the following note: 'We give the following on the authority of
Martin, but must add that a private friend, who formerly filled an
office of trust in the firm of Rothschild Brothers, declares the whole
to be a fiction.' But who this friend was we cannot now remember.
Another financier, who almost rivalled Rothschild as a speculator, was
Abraham Goldsmid, who was ruined by a conspiracy. He, in conjunction
with a banking establishment, had taken a large Government loan. The
conspirators managed to cause the omnium stock to fall to 18 discount.
The result was Goldsmid's failure and eventually his suicide, whilst the
conspirators made a profit of about L2,000,000.
Among other notable stockbrokers we must not omit Francis Bailey,
F.S.A., President of the Royal Astronomical Society, who retired from
the Stock Exchange in 1825. In 1851 he repeated at his house in
Tavistock Place, Russell Square, the Cavendish experiment of weighing
the earth, and calculating its bulk and figure, and at the same time
verifying the standard measure of the British nation, and rectifying
pendulum experiments. In the garden of the house a small observatory
was erected for those purposes, and is, we believe, still standing.
We alluded a little while ago to some gigantic frauds in Stock Exchange
operations. One of the most extraordinary and elaborate of such frauds
was that carried out by De Berenger and Cochrane-Johnstone in 1814.
Napoleon's military operations against the allies had greatly depressed
the funds. On February 21, 1814, about one o'clock a.m., a violent
knocking was heard at the door of the Ship Inn, then the chief hotel at
Dover. When the door was opened, a person in a richly-embroidered
scarlet uniform announced himself as an aide-de-camp of Lord Cathcart
(who was aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington in 1815), and as the
bearer of important news. The allies had gained a great victory, and
entered Paris; Napoleon had been captured and killed by Cossacks, who
had cut his body into a thousand pieces. Immediate peace was now
certain. The stranger ordered a post-chaise, and departed for London,
but before leaving, he sent a note containing the news to the Port
Admiral, who received it about four a.m.; but the morning being foggy,
the telegraph could not be worked. The sham aide-de-camp--really De
Berenger, an adventurer, afterwards a livery stable-keeper--dashed along
the road, throwing napoleons to the post-boys whenever he changed
horses. At Bexley Heath it was clear to him that the telegraph could
not have worked, so he moderated his pace, spreading at the same time
the news of Napoleon's defeat and death. At Lambeth he entered a
hackney-coach, telling the post-boys to spread the news, which reached
the Stock Exchange about ten o'clock, in consequence of which the funds
rose, but fell again when it was found that the Lord Mayor had had no
intelligence. But about twelve o'clock three persons, two of whom were
dressed as French officers, drove in a post-chaise over London Bridge;
their horses were bedecked with laurels. The officers scattered papers
among the crowd, announcing the death of Napoleon and the fall of Paris.
They then paraded through Cheapside and Fleet Street, passed over
Blackfriars Bridge, and drove rapidly to the Marshgate, Lambeth, got
out, changed their cocked hats for round ones, and disappeared as
mysteriously as their confederate, De Berenger, had done a few hours
earlier.
The funds now rose again, but when, after hours of anxious expectation,
it was discovered that the news, on which many bargains had been made,
was false, there was, of course, wailing and gnashing of teeth. A
committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out the
conspiracy, as on the two days before stocks to the amount of L826,000
had been purchased by persons implicated. One of the gang had, for a
blind, called on Lord Cochrane, and Cochrane-Johnstone, a relation of
his, had purchased Consols for him, that he might unconsciously benefit
by the fraud. The Tories, eager to destroy a political enemy,
concentrated all their rage on him, and he was tried, fined L1,000, and
sentenced to stand for one hour in the pillory; but this latter part of
the sentence was not carried out, as Sir Francis Burdett had declared
that if it was done he would stand beside his friend on the scaffold of
shame. Cochrane was further stripped of his knighthood, and his
escutcheon kicked down the steps of St. George's Chapel at Windsor. But
in his old age his innocence and the injustice done to him were
recognised, and his coronet restored to him unsoiled. But could this
atone for all the wrong inflicted, and all the misery endured? Those who
wish to know all the details of this remarkable fraud will find them in
the two volumes of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1814. The first
volume gives a full account of the evidence produced at the trial.
*X.*
*WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY.*
A mere beau, a 'man of dress,' as our dictionaries define him, is a
pitiful object--a walking and talking doll, painted and bedizened, and
as imbecile-looking as a wax figure. The man who chooses to go in for
being a beau should, if he does not wish to be thoroughly contemptible,
possess, besides physical beauty, a stock of brains, elegant manners,
ready wit, and moral courage. The gentleman who at the seaside dresses
altogether in white must have a personally distinguished appearance not
to be taken for his own _chef de cuisine_. Beaux are rather out of
fashion just now--mashers and fops replace them. In the last century
they were more plentiful. Perhaps the then prevailing popinjay style of
dress, with its embroidered and many-coloured coats and waistcoats,
gaudy breeches, wigs and swords, lent itself more readily to the
assumption of the character than does our more subdued costume. In
those days the aspirants to the title of beau were termed bucks,
gallants, macaronis; and one of their distinguishing features, as the
plays and portraits of those days abundantly demonstrate, was their
having small legs with slender calves--possibly to show they were not
footmen in disguise. And, as a rule, in those days the valet had more
brains than his master.
Beaux have always been a fruitful and pleasant theme for the satirist's
pen. The _Spectator_, in No. 275, describes the dissection of a beau's
head, which is found to contain no brain, but in the usual place for
one, smelling strongly of essences and orange-flower water, a kind of
horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors. Further,
a lot of ribbons, laces, and embroidery, billets-doux, love-letters,
snuff, fictions, vows, oaths, and a spongy substance, known as nonsense.
A muscle, not often discovered in dissections, was found, the _os
cribriforme_, which draws the nose upwards when by that motion it
intends to express contempt. The ogling muscles were very much worn
with use. The individual to whom this head had belonged had passed for
a man for about thirty years, and died in the flower of his youth by the
blow of a fire-shovel, he having been surprised by an eminent citizen as
he was paying some attentions to his wife. This analysis of a beau's
head, or character, was written in 1712. In 1757 an essayist described
him thus in doggerel:
'Would you a modern beau commence,
Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense.
Scorn real, unaffected worth,
Despise the virtuous, good and brave,
To ev'ry passion be a slave....
Be it your passion, joy and fame
To play at ev'ry modish game....
Harangue on fashion, point and lace....
Affect to know each reigning belle
That throngs the playhouse or the Mall.
Though swearing you detest a fool,
Be versed in Folly's ample school....
These rites observed, each foppish elf
May view an emblem of himself.'
The combination of wit and beau in one person has, nevertheless,
occasionally been seen, and the ordinary, or numskulled, beau has shared
in the reputation created by such a combination, just as all judges are
assumed to be sober. But in the days when beaux flourished wit of a
very attenuated kind tickled the fancy of the public, who haunted the
taverns patronized by the so-called wits. Even the jokes which passed
at the Mermaid between Shakspere, Ben Jonson, and other professed
jesters must appear to modern readers who are not absurdly prepossessed
in favour of all that savours of antiquity, as heavy, dull, and often
far-fetched. To justify what may appear rank heresy, let me quote one
of Tarleton's 'witty' sayings. Tarleton was Shakspere's friend and
fellow-actor, _the_ low comedian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who
probably suggested to Shakspere some of his jesters and fools. Now,
this is what is transmitted to us as a specimen of his wit: Tarleton,
keeping an ordinary in Paternoster Row, would approve of mustard
standing before his customers to have wit. 'How so?' inquired one. 'It
is like a witty scold, meeting another scold, begins to scold first.
So,' says he, 'the mustard, being licked up and knowing that you will
bite it, begins to bite you first.' 'I'll try that,' says a gull, and
the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered. 'How now?' says
Tarleton. 'Does my jest savour?' 'Ay,' says the gull, 'and bite too.'
'If you had had better wit,' says Tarleton, 'you would have bit first.
So, then, conclude with me that dumb, unfeeling mustard has more wit
than a talking, unfeeling fool, as you are.' And this was considered 'a
rare conceit' in the days of Shakspere. We are rather more exacting
now.
The beaux of the days we are speaking of were, indeed, poor specimens of
humanity. They were a noisy, swaggering lot, as we learn from the
author of 'Shakspere's England.' 'If a gallant,' he says, 'entered the
ordinary ... he would find the room full of fashion-mongers ...
courtiers, who came there for society and news; adventurers who have no
home ... quarrelsome men paced about fretfully fingering their
sword-hilts, and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a
corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, disputing over cards....
The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and
in the Low Countries.... The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his
glove, or discussing at what apothecary's the best tobacco was to be
bought.'