No single class can be pointed to in the present day as the first
favourite of fortune. The loan-monger is still powerful, and so is the
speculator; but bankers accumulate fortunes like those of the highest
nobles, and a linen-draper left the other day cash which would purchase
the fee-simple of the Woburn estates. The rate of fortunes has
enormously increased. Pitt thought it useless to tax fortunes above a
million, and now men die every day whose heirs chuckle over the saving
produced by this want of foresight. A “plum” has ceased to be even a
citizen’s goal, and there are tradesmen in London whose incomes while in
trade exceed “a great fortune” of the time of the second George. Very
enormous realised fortunes, properties that are producing 50,000_l._
a-year, are, however, still very scarce. Only fifty-seven are returned
to the English income-tax; and though that is a palpably erroneous
account, it may be doubted if there are a dozen individuals with that
amount in the world. There are none in France or Italy beyond a few
working capitalists, a few remaining in Germany, a considerable number
in Russia, and perhaps thirty individuals in America. There are perhaps
ten private incomes in India of that amount, as many in South America,
and a few officials in the Eastern world accumulate very considerable
sums; but there the list ends.[103] Yet, how often are large fortunes
wrecked by those who succeed to them!
Many a Londoner past middle age may recollect Thomas Clark, “the King of
Exeter ’Change,” who was long one of the most singular characters in the
metropolis. He took a stall in the ’Change in 1765, with 100_l._ lent
him by a stranger. By parsimony and perseverance he so extended his
business as to occupy nearly one-half of the entire building with the
sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. He grew rich, and once returned his income
at 6000_l._ a-year. He was penurious in his habits: he dined with his
plate on the bare board, and his meal, with a pint of porter, never cost
him a shilling; after dinner he took a glass of spirits-and-water at the
public-house opposite the end of the ’Change, and then returned to his
business. He resided in Belgrave-place, Pimlico; and morning and evening
saw him on his old horse, riding into town and home again—and thus he
figured in the print-shops. He died in 1817, in his eightieth year, and
left nearly half a million of money. His daughter was married to Hamlet,
the celebrated goldsmith of Coventry-street who, however, met with sad
reverses; and, among other unsuccessful speculations, built the Bazaar
and the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford-street.
The wealth of the celebrated Mr. Beckford, the son of the demagogue
Alderman, and Lord Chatham’s god-child, proved the shoal upon which his
happiness was wrecked. He succeeded to his father’s enormous fortune at
ten years of age. He was educated at home: he was quick and lively, and
had literary tastes; he had a great passion for genealogy and heraldry;
studied Oriental literature: in his seventeenth year he wrote a history
of extraordinary painters. His father had left him, principally in
Jamaica estates, a property which, on the conclusion of his minority,
furnished him with a million of ready money and an income of 100,000_l._
a-year. He travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year,
when he wrote _Vathek_, a work of startling beauty. At twenty-four he
married; but the lady died in three years. He passed many years in
travelling, principally in Spain and Portugal, before he got
sufficiently settled in mind to return to his family-seat, Fonthill in
Wiltshire. He began to reside there in 1796, and immediately commenced
the great squandering of his money. He had always a hundred, and often
two hundred, workmen engaged in carrying out his wayward fancies. But he
was haughty and reserved; and because some of his neighbours followed
game into his grounds, he had a wall, twelve feet high and seven miles
long, built round his home-estate, in order to shut out the world. He
then began the third house at Fonthill, considering the second too near
a piece of water. The new house was built in a sham monastic style, was
called the Abbey, and cost a quarter of a million; but never put to any
use, except on one occasion, to receive Lord Nelson. While Beckford was
indulging these gigantic follies, he lost, by an adverse decision in a
Chancery-suit, a considerable portion of his Jamaica property; he was
also cheated out of large sums of money, and in the end was obliged to
sell Fonthill; the purchaser was Mr. Farquhar, a rich but penurious
merchant. In a few years the lofty tower of the Abbey fell down. The
estate is now the property of the Marquis of Westminster. Mr. Beckford
removed to Bath, and there built, on Lansdowne Hill, an Italian villa,
with a lofty prospect-tower. While residing here he wrote an account of
the travels which he had made half a century before; and having got
through large sums of money in planting and building, he died in 1844,
in his eighty-fourth year; and upon his tomb a passage from _Vathek_ is
inscribed.
Mr. Beckford was unquestionably a man of genius and rare
accomplishments. “But his abilities were overpowered, and his character
tainted, by the possession of wealth so enormous. At every stage of life
his money was like a millstone round his neck. He had taste and
knowledge; but the selfishness of wealth tempted him to let these gifts
of the mind run to seed in the gratification of extravagant freaks. He
really enjoyed travelling and scenery, but he felt it incumbent on him,
as a millionnaire, to take a French cook with him wherever he went; and
he found that the Spanish grandees and ecclesiastical dignitaries who
welcomed him so cordially valued him as the man whose cook could make
such wonderful omelettes. From the day when Chatham’s proxy stood for
him at the font till the day when he was laid in his pink granite
sarcophagus, he was the victim of riches. Had he had only 5000_l._ a
year, and been sent to Eton, he might have been one of the foremost men
of his time, and have been as useful in his generation as, under his
unhappy circumstances, he was useless.”[104] It may be added, that he
was worse: for he so threw about his money at Fonthill as to corrupt and
demoralise the simple country-people. We remember three of his London
residences: one on the Terrace, Piccadilly, on the site of the
newly-built mansion of Baron Rothschild; another of Beckford’s town
residences was No. 1 Devonshire-place, New-road; and the third, No. 27
Charles-street, May Fair, a very small house, looking over the garden of
Chesterfield-house.
The vanity of wealth is exemplified in the following anecdote, which
Mrs. Richard Trench had from an ear-witness:
The late Duke of Queensberry, leaning over the balcony of his
beautiful villa near Richmond, where every pleasure was collected
which wealth could purchase or luxury devise, he followed with his
eyes the majestic Thames, winding through groves and buildings of
various loveliness, and exclaimed, “Oh, that wearisome river! Will
it never cease running, running, and I so tired of it?” To me this
anecdote conveys a strong moral lesson, connected with the
well-known character of the speaker, a professed voluptuary, who
passed his youth in pursuit of selfish pleasures, and his age in
vain attempts to elude the relentless grasp of _ennui_.
Now let us turn to some better uses of wealth earned by well-directed
industry. Old Mr. Strahan, the printer (the founder of the typarchical
dynasty), said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man
can be more innocently employed than getting money;” and he added, that
“the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed
with him. Boswell also relates that Mr. Strahan once talked of launching
into the great ocean of London, in order to have a chance of rising into
eminence; and observing that many men were kept back from trying their
fortunes there because they had been born to a competency, said, “Small
certainties are the bane of men of talents;” which Johnson confirmed.
Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon
Johnson’s recommendation. Johnson, having inquired after him, said, “Mr.
Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I’ll give this boy
one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it’s sad
work. Call him down.” Boswell followed Johnson into the courtyard behind
Mr. Strahan’s house, and there he heard this conversation:
“Well, my boy, how do you go on?” “Pretty well, sir; but they’re afraid
I a’n’t strong enough for some parts of the business.” _Johnson._ “Why,
I shall be sorry for it; for, when you consider with how little mental
power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a
very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear; take all the pains you
can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life
for you. There’s a guinea.”
Here was one of the many instances of Johnson’s active benevolence. At
the same time, says Boswell, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which,
while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged
boy, contrasted with the boy’s awkwardness and awe, could not but excite
some ludicrous emotions.
Johnson appears to have been generally alive to the policy of getting
money: we all remember when, as one of the executors of Mr. Thrale, he
was assisting in taking stock of the brewery in Southwark, how its
vastness impressed the doctor with “the potentiality of growing rich.”
William Strahan, a native of Edinburgh, came to London when a very young
man, and worked as a journeyman printer, having Dr. Franklin for one of
his fellow-workmen. Strahan, industrious and thrifty, prospered, and
purchased, in 1770, a share of the patent for King’s printer; and he
obtained considerable property in the copyrights of the works of the
most celebrated authors of the time. He was a great friend to Johnson,
and kept up his intimacy with Franklin. He died rich, bequeathing
munificent legacies. He was succeeded in his business by his third son,
Andrew Strahan, who inherited his father’s excellent qualities, and died
in 1831, aged eighty-three, leaving property to the amount of more than
a million of money. Among his many generous acts, he presented to James
Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_, the munificent
gift of 1000_l._
The vicissitudes of the Buckinghams, political as well as fiscal, can be
traced through the long lapse of eight centuries. In our own times, two
dukes have fallen from their high estate into neglect and poverty.
Richard, first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, lived at Stowe, with
princely magnificence: his expenditure in rare books and works of art
was enormous; and his entertainment of the Royal Family of France and
their numerous retinues, upon one of his estates, not only drained his
exchequer, but burdened him with debt. Neither Louis XVIII. nor Charles
X., however, took the slightest notice of the obligation they had
incurred,—apparently regarding such imprudent generosity as the natural
acknowledgment of their exceeding merit. The Duke was, in 1827,
compelled to shut up his house and go abroad, till his large estates
could be nursed, so as to meet the heaviest and most pressing
demands.[105] While abroad, he had a dream, which he has recorded in his
_Private Diary_, published in 1862. He dreamed that he was at Stowe, his
dear and regretted home: all was deserted—not a soul appeared to receive
him. His good dog met him, licked his hand, and accompanied him through
all the apartments, which were desolate and solitary,—every room as he
had left it. He met his wife, who told him all his family were gone, and
she alone was left. He awoke with the distress of the moment, and slept
no more that night.
Mr. Rumsey Forster, in his piquant historical notice of Stowe, prefixed
to the _Priced and Annotated Catalogue_, relates that, Louis Philippe
being present when the Royal Family of France were enjoying the
hospitality of the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, as they were seated
together in the library, the conversation turned on events then enacting
on the other side of the Channel; upon which Louis Philippe,
recollecting his own position with the Revolutionists, threw himself
upon his knees, and begged pardon of his royal uncle for having ever
worn the tricoloured cockade. The anecdote is curious, when the
subsequent career of the ex-monarch is borne in mind.
The Duke died Jan. 17, 1839, and was succeeded by his only son, Richard
Plantagenet, who, though crippled in fortune by the paternal tastes,
celebrated the coming of age of his son with profuse hospitality at
Stowe, in 1844; and in 1845, entertained Queen Victoria and the Prince
Albert with great sumptuousness. The mansion at Stowe was partly
refurnished for the occasion, when the cost of the new carpets was
5000_l._ In 1848, the dream of the first Duke was strangely realised by
the dismantling of Stowe, and the compulsory dispersion of the whole of
the costly contents; the sale occupying forty days, and realising
75,562_l._ 4_s._ 6_d._ The Duke subsequently resided in the
neighbourhood; and he often indulged his sadness at his fallen fortunes
by walking to Stowe; and there, in one of the superb saloons in which
kings and princes had held courts and been feasted with regal
magnificence,—seated in a chair before a small table—the only furniture
in the room—would Richard Plantagenet pass many an hour of “bitter
fancy.” He died July 30, 1861, at the age of sixty-four. Sir Bernard
Burke, Ulster, writes of the Duke’s lineage: “Of all native-born British
subjects, his Grace was, after the present reigning family, the senior
representative of the Royal Houses of Tudor and Plantagenet.”[106]
“Day and Martin’s Blacking,” one of the inventions of the present
century, realised a large fortune, which was mostly appropriated to
beneficent purposes. Day is related to have been originally a
hair-dresser; and, as the story goes, one morning a soldier entered his
shop, representing that he had a long march before him to reach his
regiment; that his money was gone, and nothing but sickness, fatigue,
and punishment awaited him unless he could get a lift on a coach. The
worthy barber, who, with his small means, was a generous man, presented
him with a guinea, when the grateful soldier exclaimed, “God bless you,
sir! how can I ever repay you this? I have nothing in this world except”
(pulling a dirty piece of paper from his pocket) “a receipt for
blacking: it is the best ever was seen; many a half-guinea have I had
for it from the officers, and many bottles have I sold.” Mr. Day, who
was a shrewd man, inquired into the truth of the story, tried the
blacking, and finding it good, commenced the manufacture and sale of it,
and realised the immense fortune of which he died possessed in 1836;
bequeathing 100,000_l._ for the benefit of persons who, like himself,
suffered the deprivation of sight. The rebuilding of the Blacking
Factory, in High Holborn, cost 12,000_l._
Pianoforte-making has led to great money-making results. About the year
1776, Becker, a German, undertook to apply the pianoforte mechanism to
the harpsichord, assisted by John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, then
workmen in the employ of Burckhardt Tschudi, of Great Pulteney-street,
London. After many experiments, the grand-pianoforte mechanism was
contrived by these three. Messrs. Broadwood, from 1824 to 1850, made on
an average 2236 pianofortes per annum; and employed in their manufactory
573 workmen, besides persons working for them at home. In 1862 died the
head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Broadwood, sen., at the age of
seventy-five, leaving 350,000_l._ personal property, besides realty.
James Morison, who styled himself “the Hygeist,” and was noted for his
“Vegetable Medicines,” was a Scotchman, and a gentleman by birth and
education. His family was of the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire, his
brother being “Morison of Bognie,” an estate worth about 4000_l._ a
year. In 1816 James Morison, having sold his commission, for he was an
officer in the army, lived in No. 17 Silver-street, Aberdeen, a house
belonging to Mr. Reid, of Souter and Reid, druggists. He obtained the
use of their pill-machine, with which he made in their back-shop as many
pills as filled two large casks. The ingredients of these pills, however
he may have modified them afterwards, were chiefly oatmeal and bitter
aloes. With these two great “meal bowies” filled with pills, he started
for London; with the fag-end of his fortune advertised them far and
wide, and ultimately amassed 500,000_l._
Such is the statement of a Correspondent of the _Athenæum_. Morison’s
own story was, that his own sufferings from ill-health, and the cure he
at length effected upon himself by “vegetable pills,” made him a
disseminator of the latter article. He had found the pills to be “the
only rational purifiers of the blood;” of these he took two or three at
bedtime, and a glass of lemonade in the morning, and thus regained sound
sleep and high spirits, and feared neither heat nor cold, dryness nor
humidity. The duty on the pills produced a revenue of 60,000_l._ to
Government during the first ten years. Morison died at Paris, in 1840,
aged seventy.
The Denisons, father and son, accumulated two of the largest fortunes of
our time. About 120 years ago, Joseph Denison, who was the son of a
woollen-cloth merchant at Leeds, anxious to seek his fortune in London,
travelled thither in a wagon, being attended on his departure by his
friends, who took a solemn leave of him, as the distance was then
thought so great that they might never see him again. He at first
accepted a subordinate situation; but being industrious, parsimonious,
and fortunate, he speedily advanced himself in the confidence and esteem
of his employers, bankers in St. Mary Axe, and married successively two
wives with property. He continued to prosper; and by joining the
Heywoods, eminent bankers of Liverpool, his wealth rapidly increased. In
1787 he purchased the estate of Denbies, near Dorking in Surrey. By his
second wife he had one son, William Joseph Denison; and two
daughters—Elizabeth, married, in 1794, to Henry, first Marquis
Conyngham; and Maria, married, in 1793, to Sir Robert Lawley, Bart.,
created, in 1831, Baron Wenlock.
Mr. Denison died in 1806; his son, succeeding to the banking business,
continued to accumulate; and, at his death in his seventy-ninth year, in
August 1849, left two millions and a half of money. He had sat in
Parliament for Surrey from 1818. He was a man of cultivated tastes,
possessed a knowledge of art and elegant literature; he feared to be
thought ostentatious, and could with difficulty be prevailed on to have
a lodge erected at the entrance to a new road which he had just formed
on his estate, near Dorking. The Marchioness Conyngham was left a widow
in 1832; she died in 1861, having attained the venerable age of
ninety-two, and lived to see both her sons peers of the realm,—the one
in succession to his father; the second, Albert Denison, as heir to her
own brother’s great fortune and estates, with the title of Baron
Londesborough.
The career of George Hudson, ridiculously styled “the Railway King,” was
one of the _ignes fatui_ of the railway mania. He was born in a lowly
house in College-street, York, in 1800; here he served his
apprenticeship to a linendraper, and subsequently carried on the
business as principal, amassing considerable wealth. His fortune was
next increased by a bequest from a distant relative, which sum he
invested in North-Midland Railway shares; and, under his chairmanship,
they gradually rose from 70_l._ discount to 120_l._ premium. This led to
the creation of new shares in branch and extension lines, often
worthless, which were issued at a premium also: Hudson soon found
himself chairman of 600 miles of railway, extending from Rugby to
Newcastle; and he is stated in a single day to have cleared 100,000_l._
He was also elected M.P. for Sunderland; and served twice Lord Mayor of
York. The sum of 16,000_l._ was subscribed and presented to him as a
public testimonial; with which he purchased a mansion at Albert-gate,
Hyde-park; here he lived sumptuously, and went his round of visits among
the peerage. But the speculation of 1845 was followed by a sudden
reaction: shares fell, the holders sold to avoid payment of calls, and
many were ruined; then followed the unkingship of Hudson, who was hurled
down like the molten calf, and he lost a vast fortune in the general
wreck of the railway bubbles.
The most beneficial fortunes made in business are those by which, at the
same time, permanent advantages are secured to the public. Henry
Colburn, the well-known publisher, “was a man of much ability and
extraordinary enterprise. His public career connected him intimately
with the literature of the present century, and few are the
distinguished writers, during the last forty years, whose names were not
associated with that of Mr. Colburn. In one of Mr. Disraeli’s novels a
handsome tribute is paid to his acuteness of judgment and generosity of
dealing. The publication of the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn will rank
among many sterling contributions to literature due in the first
instance to his enterprise. He originated those weekly literary reviews
which have since been so successful; he established more than one
newspaper, and conducted for a great many years the Magazine which still
bears his name; and was the original publisher of Sir Bernard Burke’s
_Peerage_. In private life he was known as a friendly, hospitable, kind
man, and acts of the greatest liberality marked his course through
life.”[107] He died at an advanced age.
Mr. James Morrison, the wealthy warehouseman of Cripplegate, started in
life as foreman to Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married; and succeeding
to his large property, distinguished himself as a sound political
economist, and for some years sat in Parliament. He obtained, by
purchase, the fine estates of Basilden, in Berkshire, and Fonthill, in
Wiltshire: at Basilden, in 1846, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, upon
the View of the Thames, were entertained by Mr. Morrison, who then
referred with much gratification to his having been brought up in the
City of London, “connected with it in a mercantile point of view, and
having, by his own industry, obtained every thing he could desire.” He
was a man of high commercial character; to which Mr. Edwin Chadwick, at
the Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, in 1862, bore this
interesting testimony: “I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Chadwick, “of the
acquaintance of perhaps the most wealthy and successful merchant of the
last half-century,—a distinguished member of our political economy club,
the late Mr. James Morrison,—who assured me, that the leading principles
to which he owed his success in life, and which he vindicated as sound
elements of economical science, were—always to consult the interests of
the consumer, and not, as is the common maxim, to buy cheap and sell
dear, but to sell cheap as well as to buy cheap; it being to his
interest to widen the area of consumption, and to sell quickly and to
the many. The next maxim is involved in the first principle—always to
tell the truth, to have no shams: a rule which he confessed he found it
most difficult to get his common sellers to adhere to in its integrity,
yet most important for success, it being to his interest as a merchant
that any ship-captain might come into his warehouse and fill his ship
with goods of which he had no technical knowledge, but of which he well
knew that only a small profit was charged upon a close ready-money
purchasing price, and that go where he would he would find nothing
cheaper; it being, moreover, to the merchant’s interest that his bill of
prices should be every where received from experience as a truth, and
trustworthy evidence so far of a fair market-value. I might cite
extensive testimony of the like character to show that the very labour
and risks of continued deceits, however common, are detrimental to the
successful operation of economic principles, and that sound economy is
every where concurrent with high public morality.”
With this brilliant exception before us, we must, however, admit the
general truth of this experience: “The nobility of trade usually ends
with the second generation. A thrifty and persevering man falls into a
line of business by which he accumulates a large fortune, preserving
through life the habits, manners, and connexions of his trade; but his
children, brought up with expectations of enjoying his property,
understand only the art of spending. Hence, when deprived of fortune,
without industry or resources, they die in beggary, leaving a third
generation to the same chances of life as those with which their
grandfather began his career fourscore years before.”[108]
---------------------
Footnote 103:
_Spectator_ newspaper, 1862.
Footnote 104:
_Saturday Review._
Footnote 105:
When the Duke and Duchess, in taking farewell of Stowe, had reached
the flower-garden, they both burst into a violent fit of tears. They
went through the two gardens, and left them in silent sorrow: as he
passed along, the Duke gave the Duchess a rose, which she treasured as
the last gift.
Footnote 106:
See Ulster’s _Vicissitudes of Families_, in three volumes, for many
impressive narratives of the same class as the above.
Footnote 107:
The _Examiner_.
Footnote 108:
_Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_, by Sir Richard Phillips.
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