The great deeds for human betterment must be done by
individuals--they can never be done by the many.
--_George Peabody_
[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY]
George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker. He was born in
the village of Danvers, Massachusetts, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five.
He died in London in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine.
In childhood, poverty was his portion. But he succeeded, for he had the
persistent corpuscle, and he had charm of manner--two things which will
make any man a winner in the game of life.
He gave away during his lifetime eight million dollars. When he died he
had four million dollars left, which was distributed, by his will,
largely for the betterment of society. The fact that Peabody left so
much money was accidental. He intended to give this money away, under
his own personal supervision, but Death came suddenly.
Has the world made head the past forty years? Listen, Terese; it has
made more progress during the past forty years than in the two thousand
years preceding.
The entire fortune of George Peabody, including what he gave away during
his life and what he left, was twelve million dollars. This is just the
income of Andrew Carnegie for six months. We scarcely realize how much
civilization smells of paint until we remember that George Peabody was
the world's first philanthropist. No doubt there were many people before
him, with philanthropic impulses, but they were poor. It's easy to
sympathize with humanity when you have nothing to give but advice. The
miracle comes in when great wealth and great love of mankind are
combined in one individual.
In the Occident, giving to the poor is lending to the devil. The plan
has always been more or less of a pastime to the rich, but the giving
has usually been limited to sixpences, with absolute harm to the poor.
All any one should ask is opportunity. Sailors just ashore, with three
months' pay, are the most charitable men on earth--we might also say
they are the most loving and the least lovable. The beggars wax glad
when Jack lumbers their way with a gay painted galley in tow; but, alas,
tomorrow Jack belongs to the poor. Charity in the past has been prompted
by weakness and whim--the penance of rogues--and often we give to get
rid of the troublesome applicant.
Beggary and virtue were imagined to have something akin. Rags and
honesty were sort of synonymous, and we spoke of honest hearts that beat
'neath ragged jackets. That was poetry, but was it art? Or was it just a
little harmless exercise of the lacrimal glands? Riches and roguery were
spoken of in one breath, unless the gentleman was present--and then we
curtsied, cringed or crawled, and laughed loudly at all his jokes.
These things doubtless dated back to a time when the only mode of
accumulating wealth was through oppression. Pirates were rich--honest
men were poor. To be poor proved that you were not a robber. The heroes
in war took cities, and all they could carry away was theirs. The
monasteries were passing rich in the Middle Ages, because their valves
opened only one way--they received much and paid out nothing. To save
the souls of men was a just equivalent for accepting their services for
the little time they were on earth.
The monasteries owned the land, and the rentals paid by the fiefs and
villeins went into the church treasuries. Sir Walter Scott has an abbot
say this: "I took the vow of poverty, and find myself with an income of
twenty thousand pounds a year."
But wealth did not burden the monks forever. Wealth changes hands--that
is one of its peculiarities. War came, red of tooth and claw, and the
soldiery, which heretofore had been used only to protect the religious
orders, now flushed with victory, turned against them. Charges were
trumped up against churchmen high in authority, and without doubt the
charges were often true, because a robe and a rope girdle, or the
reversal of haberdashery, do not change the nature of a man. Down under
the robe, you'll sometimes find a man frail of soul--grasping, sensual,
selfish.
The monasteries were looked upon as contraband of war. "To the victors
belong the spoils," was the motto of a certain man who was President of
the United States, so persistent was the war idea of acquiring wealth.
The property of the religious orders was confiscated, and as a reward
for heroic services, great soldiers were given great tracts of land. The
big estates in Europe all have their origin in this well-established
custom of dividing the spoils. The plan of taking the property of each
or all who were guilty of sedition, treason and contumacy was well
established by precedents that traced back to Cain. When George
Washington appropriated the estate of Roger Morris, forty centuries of
precedent looked down upon him.
Also, it might be added that if a man owned a particularly valuable
estate, and a soldier desired this estate, it was easy for this soldier
to massage his conscience by listening to and believing the report that
the owner had spoken ill of the king and given succor to the enemy.
Then the soldier felt it his "duty" to punish the recreant one by taking
his property. And so the Age of the Barons followed the Age of the
Monasteries. And now the Barons have given way to the Age of the
Merchant.
The Monks multiplied the poor by a monopoly on education. Superstition,
poverty and incompetence formed the portion of the many. "This world is
but a desert drear," was the actual fact as long as priests and soldiers
were supreme. The Reign of the Barons was merely a transfer of power
with no revision of ideals. The choice between a miter and a helmet is
nil, and when the owner converses through his head-gear, his logic is
alike vulnerable and valueless.
So enter the Merchant, whose business it is to carry things from where
they are plentiful to where they are scarce. And comes he so quietly and
with so little ostentation that men do not realize the change.
And George Peabody, an American, gives three million dollars to the poor
of London. This money was not tossed out to purchase peace, and to
encourage idleness, and to be spent in strong drink and frills and
finery, and the ways that lead to Nowhere, but to provide better homes
for men, women and children.
"Lay hold on eternal life," said Paul, writing to Timothy. The proper
translation we now believe should be, "Lay hold on the age to come."
Philanthropy now seeks to lay hold on the age to come. We are building
for the future.
The embryo has eyes, ears and organs of speech. But the embryo does not
see, nor hear, nor speak. It is laying hold on the age to come--it is
preparing to live--it is getting ready for the future. The past is dead,
the present is dying, and only that which is to come is alive.
The life of George Peabody was not in what he gave, but in what he
taught the millionaires that are to be. He laid hold on the age to
come.
* * * * *
George Peabody is another example of a boy who succeeded in spite of his
parents. The rigors of climate and the unkindness of a scanty soil may
be good things. They are good, like competition, very excellent,
provided you do not get more than your constitution requires.
New England has her "white trash," as well as the South. The Peabodys of
Danvers were good folks who never seemed to get on. They had come down
from the mountains of New Hampshire, headed for Boston, but got stuck
near Salem. If there was anything going on, like mumps, measles,
potato-bugs, blight, "janders" or the cows-in-the-corn, they got it.
Their roof leaked, the cistern busted, the chimney fell in, and although
they had nothing worth stealing the house was once burglarized while the
family was at church. The moral to little George was plain: Don't go to
church and you'll not get burgled. Life was such a grievous thing that
the parents forgot how to laugh, and so George's joke brought him a cuff
on the ear in the interests of pure religion and undefiled. A couple of
generations back there was a strain of right valiant heroic Peabody
blood.
Among the "Green Mountain Boys" there was a Peabody, and another Peabody
was captain of a packet that sailed out of Boston for London. To run
away and join this uncle as cabin-boy was George's first ambition.
People in the country may be poor, but in America such never suffer for
food. If hunger threatens, the children can skirmish among the
neighbors. The village of Danvers was separated by only a mile or so of
swale and swamp from Salem, a place that once rivaled Boston
commercially, and in matters of black cats, and elderly women who
aviated on broomsticks by night, set the world a pace. Fish, clams,
water-lilies, berries, eels, and other such flora and fauna were
plentiful, and became objects of merchandising for the Peabody boys,
bare of foot and filled with high emprise.
Parents often bestow upon their progeny the qualities which they
themselves do not possess, so wonderful is this law of heredity.
George was the youngest boy in the brood, and was looked after by his
"other mother," that is to say, by an elder sister. When this sister
married, the boy was eleven years old. To the lad this marriage was more
like a funeral. He could read and write and count to a hundred, having
gone to school for several months each Winter since he was seven. He
could write better than his father or mother--he wrote like copperplate,
turning his head on one side and chewing his tongue, keeping pace with
his lips, as the pen glided gracefully over the paper. His ambition was
to make a bird with a card in its bill, and on this card, written so
small no one could read it, the proud name, G. Peabody.
This ability to write brought him local fame, and Sylvester Proctor, who
kept a general store in the village, offered to take him on a four
years' apprenticeship and teach him the trade of green grocer and dealer
in W. I. Goods. The papers were duly made out and signed, the boy being
consulted afterward. What the consideration was, was not stated, but
rumor has it that the elder Peabody was paid twenty-five dollars in
"W. I. Goods" and also wet goods.
Proctor was a typical New England merchant of the Class B type. He was
up at daylight, shaved his upper lip, and swept off the sidewalk in
front of his store. At night he put up the shutters with his own hands.
He remembered every article he had on his shelves and what it cost. He
bought nothing he could not pay for. There was one clerk besides the
boy. After George came, the merchant and his clerk made all the
memoranda on brown paper, and the items were duly copied into the ledger
by George Peabody.
I have been told that a man who writes pure Spencerian can never do
anything else. This, however, is a hasty generalization, put forth by a
party who wrote a Horace Greeley hand.
A country store is the place for a boy to learn merchandising. In such a
place he is never swallowed up by a department. He learns everything,
from shaking down the ashes in the big stove to buying and selling
fadeless calico. He becomes an expert with a nail-puller, knows
strictly fresh eggs from eggs, and learns how to adapt himself to the
whims, caprices and notions of the customers who know little and assume
much.
George Peabody slept in the attic over the store. He took his meals with
the Proctor family, and used to wipe the dishes for Mrs. Proctor. He
could wait on store, tend baby, wash a blue wagon, drive a "horse and
team" and say "backsshe!" in a way that would throw you off the front
seat when the horse stopped, if you didn't look out.
That is to say, he was a New England village boy, alive and alert to
every phase of village life--strong, rapid, willing, helpful. The
villager who knows too much gets "fresh" and falls a victim of arrested
development. The boy in a village who works, and then gets out into a
wider sphere at that critical period when the wanderlust strikes him, is
in the line of evolution.
George Peabody remained at Proctor's store until nine o'clock in the
evening of the day that marked the close of his four years of
apprenticeship. He was fifteen, and all tempting offers from Mr. Proctor
to pay him wages thereafter in real money were turned aside. He had a
new suit of clothes, five dollars in his pocket, and ambition in his
heart. He was going to be a draper, and eliminate all "W. I. Goods."
* * * * *
Over at Newburyport, George had a brother, David Peabody, who ran a
"draper's shop." That is to say, David Peabody was a drygoods merchant.
This was a comparatively new thing in America, for a "store," at that
time, usually kept everything that people wanted. The exclusive draper
idea came from London. It seemed to work in Boston, and so Newburyport
tried it.
David and George had talked it over together, and a partnership was in
mind. In the meantime George was only fifteen years old, and David
thirty. "I am twice as old as you," once said David to George, with
intent to make the lad know his proper place. "Yes, I know; but you will
not be twice as old as I very long," replied George, who was up in
mathematics.
The brothers did not mix very well. They were tuned to a different
vibration. One had speed: the other was built for the plow.
And when the store caught fire and burned, and almost all of Newburyport
was burned up, too, it was a good time for George to strike for pastures
new. He walked down to Boston, and spent all his money for a passage on
a coaster that was about to sail for Washington, in the District of
Columbia. This was in the latter part of the year Eighteen Hundred
Eleven.
Washington was the capital of the country, and there was an idea then
that it was also going to be the commercial metropolis--hence the desire
to get in on the ground floor. Especially was the South to look to
Washington for her supplies. George Peabody, aged sixteen, looked the
ground over, and thought he saw opportunity nodding in his direction.
He sat down and wrote to a wholesale drygoods-dealer by the name of Todd
in Newburyport, ordering draperies to the amount of two thousand
dollars. Blessed is that man who knows what he wants, and asks for it.
Todd remembered the boy who had given him orders in Proctor's, and at
once filled the order. In three months Todd got his money and an order
for double the amount. In those days the plan of calling on the
well-to-do planters, and showing them the wares of Autolycus, was in
vogue. English dress-goods were a lure to the ladies. George Peabody
made a pack as big as he could carry, tramped, smiled and sold the
stuff. When he had emptied his pack, he came back to his room where his
stock was stored and loaded up again. If there were remnants he sold
them out to some crossroads store.
The fact that the Jews know a few things in a worldly way, I trust will
not be denied. George Peabody, the Yankee, adopted the methods of the
Chosen People. And at that early date, it comes to us as a bit of a
miracle that George Peabody said, "You can't afford to sell anybody
anything which he does not need, nor can you afford to sell it at a
price beyond what it is worth." Also this, "When I sell a woman
draperies, I try to leave the transaction so I can go back next week
and sell her more." Also this: "Credit is the sympathetic nerve of
commerce. There are men who do not keep faith with those from whom they
buy, and such last only a little while. Others do not keep faith with
those to whom they sell, and such do not last long. To build on the rock
one must keep his credit absolutely unsullied, and he must make a friend
of each and all to whom he sells."
The Judaic mental processes have been sharpened by migration. To carry a
pack and peddle is better than to work for a Ph. D., save for the social
usufruct and the eclat of the unthinking. We learn by indirection and
not when we say: "Go to! Now watch us take a college course and enlarge
our phrenological organs." Our knobs come from knocks, and not from the
gentle massage of hired tutors. Selling subscription-books, maps,
sewing-machines or Mason and Hamlin organs, has given thousands of
strong men their initial impulse toward success. When you go from house
to house to sell things you catch the household in their old clothes and
the dog loose. To get your foot in the front door and thus avoid the
slam, sweetening acerbity by asking the impatient housewife this
question, "Is your mother at home?" and then making a sale, is an
achievement. "The greatest study of mankind is man," said Pope, and for
once he was right, although he might have said woman.
From fifteen to nineteen is the formative period, when the cosmic cement
sets, if ever. During those years George Peabody had emerged from a
clerkship into a Businessman.
What is a Businessman? A Businessman is one who gets the business, and
completes the transaction. Book-keepers, correspondents, system men,
janitors, scrub-women, stenographers, electricians, elevator-boys,
cash-girls, are all good people and necessary and worthy of sincere
respect, but they are not Businessmen, because they are on the side of
expense and not income. When H. H. Rogers coupled the coalmines of West
Virginia with tidewater, he proved himself a Businessman. When James J.
Hill created an Empire in the Northwest, he proved his right to the
title. The Businessman is a salesman. And no matter how great your
invention, how sweet your song, how sublime your picture, how perfect
your card-system, until you are able to convince the world that it needs
the thing, and you get the money for it, you are not a Businessman.
The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the
world, and collects from the world for the goods. Taffy, guff and
oxaline are all well and good in their way, but they have the great
disadvantage of not being legal tender.
* * * * *
In migrating from New England to the District of Columbia, George
Peabody had moved into a comparatively foreign country, and in the
process had sloughed most of his provincialism. It is beautiful to be a
New Englander, but to be nothing else is terrible.
George had proved for himself the most valuable lesson in
Self-Reliance--that he could make his way alone. He had kept his credit
and strengthened it.
He had served as a volunteer soldier in the War of Eighteen Hundred
Twelve, and done patrol duty on the banks of the Potomac. And when the
war was over, no one was quite so glad as he. Serving in the volunteer
ranks with him was one Elisha Riggs, several years his senior, and also
a draper. They had met before, but as competitors and on a cold business
basis. Now they were comrades in arms, and friends. Riggs is today
chiefly remembered to fame because he built what in its day was the most
palatial hotel in Washington, just as John Jacob Astor was scarcely
known outside of his bailiwick until he built that grand hostelry, the
Astor House. Riggs had carried a pack among the Virginia plantations,
but now he had established a wholesale drygoods house in Georgetown, and
sold only to storekeepers. He had felt the competitive force of
Peabody's pack, and would make friends with it. He proposed a
partnership. Peabody explained that his years were but nineteen, and
therefore he was not legally of age. Riggs argued that time would
remedy the defect. Riggs was rich--he had five thousand dollars, while
Peabody had one thousand six hundred fifty dollars and forty cents. I
give the figures exact, as the inventory showed.
But Peabody had one thing which will make any man or woman rich. It is
something so sweetly beneficent that well can we call it the gift of the
gods. The asset to which I refer is Charm of Manner. Its first requisite
is glowing physical health. Its second ingredient is absolute honesty.
Its third is good-will.
Nothing taints the breath like a lie. The old parental plan of washing
out the bad boy's mouth with soft soap had a scientific basis. Liars
must possess good memories. They are fettered and gyved by what they
have said and done. The honest man is free--his acts require neither
explanation nor apology. He is in possession of all of his armament.
The outdoor work of tramping Maryland and Virginia highways had put the
glow of high health on the cheek of George Peabody. He was big in body,
manly, intelligent and could meet men on a basis of equality. If I were
president of a college, I would certainly have a Chair devoted to
Psychic Mixability, or Charm of Manner. Ponderosity, profundity and
insipidity may have their place, but the man with Charm of Manner keeps
his capital active. His soul is fluid. I have never been in possession
of enough of this Social Radium to analyze it, but I know it has the
power of dissolving opposition, and melting human hearts. But so
delicate and illusive is it that when used for a purely selfish purpose,
it evaporates into thin air, and the erstwhile possessor is left with
only the mask of beauty and the husk of a personality. George Peabody
had Charm of Manner from his nineteenth year to the day of his death.
Colonel Forney crossed the Atlantic with him when Peabody was in his
seventy-first year, and here is what Forney says: "I sat on one side of
the cabin and he on the other. He was reading from a book, which he
finally merely held in his hands, as he sat idly dreaming. I was melted
into tears by the sight of his Jove-like head framed against the window.
His face and features beamed with high and noble intellect, and his eyes
looked forth in divine love. If ever soul revealed itself in the face,
it was here. He was the very King of Men, and I did not at all wonder
that in the past people had worked the apotheosis of such as he."
* * * * *
The firm of Riggs and Peabody prospered. It outgrew its quarters in old
"Congress Hall" in Georgetown, and ran over into a house next door,
which it pre-empted.
Moreover, it was apparent by this time that neither Georgetown nor
Washington would ever be the commercial metropolis of America. The city
of Baltimore had special harbor advantages that Washington did not have;
the ships touched there according to natural law. And when Riggs and
Peabody found themselves carting consignments to Baltimore in order to
make shipment to Savannah and Charleston, they knew the die was cast.
They packed up and moved to Baltimore. This was in the year Eighteen
Hundred Fifteen.
In order to do business you had better go where business is being done.
Trade follows the lines of least resistance. The wholesale dealer saw
the value of honesty as a business asset, long before the retailer made
the same unique discovery.
Doctor Algernon S. Crapsey says that truth is a brand-new virtue, and
the clergy are not quite sure about it yet. To hold his trade the jobber
found he had to be on the dead level: he had to consider himself the
attorney for his client. Peabody was a merchant by instinct. He had good
taste, and he had a prophetic instinct as to what the people wanted.
Instead of buying his supplies in Newburyport, Boston and New York, he
now established relations with London, direct. And London was then the
Commercial Center of the world, the arbiter of fashion, the molder of
form, the home of finance--frenzied and otherwise. Riggs and Peabody
shipped American cotton to London, and received in return the
manufactured production in its manifold forms.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine Riggs withdrew from the firm, retaining
a certain financial interest, merely, and Peabody forged to the front,
alone, as a financier. For many years Peabody dealt largely with Robert
Owen, and thus there grew up a close and lasting friendship between
these very able men. Both were scouts for civilization. No doubt they
influenced each other for good. We find them working out a new policy in
business--the policy of reciprocity, instead of exploitation. Robert
Owen always had almost unlimited credit, for he prized his word as the
immediate jewel of his soul. It was exactly the same with Peabody.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven Peabody visited England. He was then
thirty-two years old. The merchants from whom he bought discovered a
surprising thing when they met Peabody--he was not the bounding,
bragging, bustling, hustling American. He hustled, of course, but not
visibly nor offensively. He had the appearance of a man who had all the
time there was. He was moderate in voice and gentle in manner, and we
hear of a London banker paying him the somewhat ambiguous compliment of
saying, "Why, you know, he is a perfect gentleman--he does not seem
like an American, at all, you know!" Peabody had the rare gift of never
defeating his ends through haste and anxiety.
The second trip Peabody made to London was in Eighteen Hundred
Thirty-five, and it was on a very delicate and important errand.
The State of Maryland was in sore financial distress. She had issued
bonds, and these were coming due. Certain Southern States had repudiated
their debts, and it looked as if Maryland was going to default. Peabody
issued an open letter calling on the citizens of Maryland to preserve
their commercial honor. The State bonds were held mostly in New York and
Philadelphia, and these were rival cities. Baltimore was to be tabu.
Stephen Girard had loaned money to Maryland, and in Eighteen Hundred
Twenty-nine had declined to renew, and this some said had led to the
stringency which reached its height in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five.
Then it was that the State of Maryland empowered George Peabody to go to
London and negotiate a loan. The initiative was his own. He went to
London, and floated a loan of eight million dollars. Robert Owen said
that Peabody borrowed the money "on his face."
He invited a dozen London bankers to a dinner, and when the cloth was
removed he explained the matter in such a lucid way that the moneybags
loosened their strings and did his bidding without parley. Peabody
sailed back to Baltimore with the gold coin. Another case of Charm of
Manner.
Peabody knew the loan was a good thing to both borrower and lender. And
the man who knows what he is going to do with money, and when and how he
is going to pay it back, is never at a loss for funds.
In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three Andrew Carnegie called upon the banks
of Pittsburgh for a million-dollar loan. The bankers said, "Why, Mr.
Carnegie, this is unprecedented!" The reply was: "Well, I am a man who
does unprecedented things. If you believe that I know what I am doing,
get this money together for me--life is too short for apologies--I'll be
back in an hour."
Three of the bankers coughed, one sneezed, but they got the money and
had it ready when Andy called in an hour. In this transaction Andy held
the whip-hand. The Carnegie Mills were already owing the Pittsburgh
banks a tidy million or so, and they were compelled to uphold and
support the credit of their clients, or run the risk of having
smokestacks fall about their ears. It was so, in degree, with Peabody
and the London bankers. A considerable portion of Maryland's old bond
issue had been hypothecated by the Philadelphia and New York bankers
with merchants in London. It was now Peabody's cue to show London that
she must protect her own. His gracious presence and his logic saved the
day. It is a great man who can flick a fly on the off-leader's ear, when
occasion demands.
As a commission for securing the London loan, the State of Maryland gave
Peabody a check for sixty thousand dollars. He endorsed the check,
"Presented to the State of Maryland with the best wishes of G. Peabody,"
and gave it back. Peabody's success with Threadneedle Street tapped for
him a reservoir of power. To bring Great Britain and America into closer
financial and industrial relationship now became his life-work. In
Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five he moved his principal office to London.
This was for the purpose of facilitating the shipment of English goods
to America. The English manufacturers were afraid to sell to American
merchants. "Capital is timid," said Adam Smith, the truth of which many
of us can attest.
Peabody knew the trade of America; and his business now was to make
advances to English jobbers on shipments going to "the States." Thus did
he lubricate the wheels of trade.
London bankers had been trying to show English manufacturers that
trading with the "American Colonies" was very risky, inasmuch as these
"Colonies" were "rebels," and entertained a hate and jealousy toward the
Mother Country which might manifest itself in repudiation almost any
time. This fanning of old embers was to keep up the rate of discount.
The postage on a letter carried from England to America, or America to
England, was twenty-five cents when Peabody first went to England. He
saw the rate reduced to ten cents, and this largely through his own
efforts.
Now we send a letter to Great Britain for two cents, or as cheaply as a
letter can be sent from New York City to Yonkers. Through the influence
of George Peabody, more than any other man of his time, the two great
countries grew to understand each other.
The business of Peabody was to maintain the credit of America. To this
end he made advances on shipments to the States. Where brokers had
formerly charged ten per cent, he took five. And moreover, where he knew
the American importer, he advanced to the full amount of the invoice.
He turned his money over four times a year, and thus got an interest on
it of twenty per cent. His losses averaged only one-half of one per
cent. When he wanted funds he found no difficulty in borrowing at a low
rate of interest on his own paper. The business was simple, easy, and
when once started yielded an income to Peabody of from three hundred
thousand to a half-million dollars a year. And no one was more surprised
than George Peabody himself, who had once worked for a certain Sylvester
Proctor of Danvers for four years, and at the end of that time had been
paid five dollars and given a suit of clothes!
* * * * *
Peabody lived and died a bachelor. Bachelors are of two kinds: There is
the Rara Avis Other Sort; and the common variety known as the Bachelorum
Vulgaris. The latter variety may always be recognized by its proclivity
to trespass on the preserve of the Pshaw of Persia, thus laying the
candidate open to a suit for the collection of royalties. Besides that,
the Bachelorum Vulgaris is apt to fall into the poison-ivy, lose his
hair, teeth, charm and digestion, and die at the top. The other sort is
wedded to his work; for man is a molecule in the mass and must be wedded
to something. To be wedded to your work is to live long and well.
For a man to wed a woman who has no interest in his work, and thus live
his life in an orbit outside of hers, often causes the party to
oscillate into the course followed by the Bachelorum Vulgaris and the
Honorable Pshaw, known as the Devil and the Deep Sea, and thus he
completes the circle, revealing the Law of Antitheses, that the
opposites of things are alike. The ideal condition is to be a bigamist,
and wed a woman and your work at the same time. To wed a woman and be
weaned from your work is a tragedy; to wed your work and eliminate the
woman may spell success. If compelled to choose, be loyal to your work.
As specimens of those who got along fairly well without either a
feminine helpmeet or a sinker, I give you Michelangelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Titian, Sir Isaac Newton, Herbert Spencer and George Peabody.
George Peabody was the true apostolic predecessor of Harry G. Selfridge,
of Chicago and the round world, who has inaugurated American
Merchandising Methods in London, selling to the swells of Piccadilly the
smart suits created by Stein-Bloch.
Unlike most men of wealth and position, Peabody never assumed unusual
importance nor demanded favors. In London, where he lived for thirty
years, he resided in simple apartments, with no use for a valet nor the
genus flunkey. He was grateful to servants, courteous to porters,
thankful to everybody, always patient, never complaining of inattention.
He grew to be a favorite among the bus men who came to know him and
sought to do him honor. The poor of London blessed him as he walked
by--with reasons, probably, not wholly disinterested.
He used no tobacco, never touched spirituous liquors, and at banquets
usually partook of but a single dish.
His first great gift was three million dollars to erect model tenements
for the poor of London. The Peabody Apartments occupy two squares in
Islington and are worth a visit today, although they were built about
Eighteen Hundred Fifty. The intent was to supply a home for working
people that was sanitary, wholesome and complete, at a rental of exact
cost. Peabody expected that his example would be imitated by the rich
men of the nobility, and that squalor and indigence would soon become
things of the past.
Alas, the Peabody Apartments accommodate only about a thousand people,
and half a million or more of human beings live in abasing poverty and
misery in London today.
Except in a few instances, the nobility of London are devoid of the
Philanthropic Spirit. In New York, the Mills Hotels are yet curiosities,
and the model tenements exist mostly on paper. Trinity Church with its
millions draws an income today from property of a type which Peabody
prophesied would not exist in the year Nineteen Hundred. One thing which
Peabody did not bank on was the indifference of the poor to their
surroundings, and the inherent taste for strong drink. He thought that
if the rich would come to the rescue, the poor would welcome the new
regime and be grateful. The truth seems to be that the poor must help
themselves, and that beautiful as philanthropy is, it is mostly for the
philanthropist. The poor must be educated to secrete their surroundings,
otherwise if you supply them a palace they will transform it into a slum
tomorrow.
"The sole object of philanthropy," said Story the sculptor, "is to model
a face like George Peabody's."
When the news reached America of what George Peabody, the American, was
doing for London, there were many unkind remarks about his having
forsaken his native land. To equalize matters Peabody then gave three
million dollars, just what he had given to London, for the cause of
education in the Southern States. This money was used to establish
schoolhouses. Wherever a town raised five hundred dollars for a school
Peabody would give a like sum. A million dollars of the Peabody fund was
finally used for a Normal School at Nashville. The investment has proved
a wise and beneficent one. He next gave a million and a half dollars to
found the Peabody Institute of Baltimore. That this gift fired the heart
of Peter Cooper to do a similar work, and if possible a better work,
there is no doubt.
At the first World's Fair held in London in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one,
Peabody gave fifteen thousand dollars toward the exhibition of American
inventions, the chief of which at this time were the McCormick Reaper,
Eli Whitney's Cotton-Gin, and Colt's Revolver.
Peabody backed Doctor Kane with a gift of twenty thousand dollars in his
search for Franklin. He established various libraries; and gave a
quarter of a million dollars to his native town for a Peabody Institute.
Danvers can yet be found on the map, but Peabody is a place of
pilgrimage for those who reverence that American invention--a new
virtue--the Art of Giving Wisely.
Joshua Bates, through whose generosity Boston secured her Free Library,
was an agent of Peabody's, and afterward his partner. Later, Bates
became a member of the house of Baring Brothers, and carried on a
business similar to that of George Peabody. There is no doubt that Bates
got his philanthropic impulse from Peabody. In Eighteen Hundred
Fifty-six Peabody visited his native town of Danvers after an absence of
more than forty years. There were great doings, in which all the
school-children, as well as the Governor of the State, had a part.
At Washington, Peabody was the guest of the President. The House of
Representatives and the Senate adjourned their regular business to do
him honor, and he made an address to them. The Judges of the Supreme
Court invited him to sit on the bench when he entered their Chamber. For
twenty years he was America's unofficial chief representative in London,
no matter who was Consul or who Ambassador.
Every year on July Fourth he gave a dinner to the principal Americans
who happened to be in London. To be invited to this dinner was an event.
Peabody himself always presided, and there was considerable oratory
sometimes of the brand known as Southwestern, which Peabody tolerated
with gentle smiles. On one occasion, however, things did not go
smoothly. Daniel Sickles was Consul to London and James Buchanan,
afterwards our punkest President, was Ambassador. Sickles was a good
man, but a fire-eater, and a gentleman of marked jingo proclivities.
Sickles had asked that Buchanan preside, in which case Buchanan was to
call on Sickles for the first toast, and this toast was to be, "The
President of the United States." At the same time Sickles intended to
give the British lion's tail a few gratuitous twists. Peabody declined
to accede to Sickles' wish, but he himself presided and offered the
first, "To the Queen of England!" Thereupon Sickles walked out with
needless clatter, and Buchanan sat glued to his seat. The affair came
near being an international episode.
Peabody was always an American, and better, he was a citizen of the
world. He loved America, but when on English soil, really guest of
England, he gave the Queen the place of honor. This seems to us proper
and right, and at this distance we smile at the whole transaction, but
we are glad that Peabody, who paid for the dinner, had his way as to the
oratorical guff.
The Queen offered Peabody a knighthood, but he declined, saying, "If Her
Majesty write me a personal letter endorsing my desire to help the poor
of London, I will be more than delighted." Victoria then wrote the
letter, and she also had a picture of herself painted in miniature and
gave it to him. The letter and portrait are now in the Peabody Institute
at Peabody, Massachusetts.
When Peabody died, in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine, Queen Victoria
ordered that his body be placed in Westminster Abbey. The Queen in
person attended the funeral, the flags on Parliament House were lowered
to half-mast, and the body was attended to Westminster Abbey by the
Royal Guard. Gladstone was one of the pallbearers.
Later, it was discovered that Peabody had devised in his will that his
body should rest by the side of his father and mother, in Harmony Grove,
the village cemetery at Danvers, and in a spot over which his boyish
feet had trod. The body was then removed from the Abbey and placed on
board the British man-of-war "Monarch," in the presence of the Prime
Minister, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and many distinguished
citizens. The "Monarch" was convoyed to America by a French and an
American gunboat. No such honors were ever before paid to the memory of
a simple American citizen.
Well did the Reverend Newman Hall say, in his funeral oration: "George
Peabody waged a war against want and woe. He created homes; he never
desolated one.
"He sided with the friendless and the houseless, and his life was guided
by a law of love which none could ever wish to repeal. His was the task
of cementing the hearts of Briton and American, pointing both to their
duty to God and to humankind."