Perhaps there is no Old Lady who has attained to such great distinction
in the world, as this highly respectable female. Even the Old Lady who
lived on a hill, and who, if she’s not gone, lives there still; or that
other Old Lady who lived in a shoe, and had so many children she didn’t
know what to do—are unknown to fame, compared with the Old Lady of
Threadneedle Street. In all parts of the civilised earth the
imaginations of men, women, and children figure this tremendous Old Lady
of Threadneedle Street in some rich shape or other. Throughout the
length and breadth of England, old ladies dote upon her; young ladies
smile upon her; old gentlemen make much of her, young gentlemen woo her;
everybody courts the smiles, and dreads the coldness, of the powerful
Old Lady in Threadneedle Street. Even prelates have been said to be fond
of her; and Ministers of State to have been unable to resist her
attractions. She is next to omnipotent in the three great events of
human life. In spite of the old saw, far fewer marriages are made in
Heaven, than with an eye to Threadneedle Street. To be born in the good
graces of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, is to be born to fortune:
to die in her good books, is to leave a far better inheritance, as the
world goes, than “the grinning honour that Sir Walter hath,” in
Westminster Abbey. And there she is, for ever in Threadneedle Street,
another name for wealth and thrift, threading her golden-eyed needle all
the year round.
This Old Lady, when she first set up, carried on business in Grocers’
Hall, Poultry; but in 1732 she quarrelled with her landlords about a
renewal of her lease, and built a mansion of her own in Threadneedle
Street. She reared her new abode on the site of the house and garden of
a former director of her affairs, Sir John Houblon. This was a modest
structure, somewhat dignified by having a statue of William the Third
placed before it; but not the more imposing from being at the end of an
arched court, densely surrounded with habitations, and abutting on the
churchyard of St. Christopher le Stocks.
But now, behold her, a prosperous gentlewoman in the hundred and
fifty-seventh year of her age; “the oldest inhabitant” of Threadneedle
Street! There never was such an insatiable Old Lady for business. She
has gradually enlarged her premises, until she has spread them over four
acres; confiscating to her own use not only the parish church of St.
Christopher, but the greater part of the parish itself.
We count it among the great events of our young existence, that we had,
some days since, the honour of visiting the Old Lady. It was not without
an emotion of awe that we passed her Porter’s Lodge. The porter himself,
blazoned in royal scarlet, and massively embellished with gold lace, is
an adumbration of her dignity and wealth. His cocked hat advertises her
stable antiquity as plainly as if she had written up, in imitation of
some of her lesser neighbours, “established in 1694.” This foreshadowing
became reality when we passed through the Hall—the tellers’ hall. A
sensation of unbounded riches permeated every sense, except, alas! that
of touch. The music of golden thousands clattered in the ear, as they
jingled on counters until its last echoes were strangled in the puckers
of tightened money-bags, or died under the clasps of purses. Wherever
the eye turned, it rested on money; money of every possible variety;
money in all shapes; money of all colours. There was yellow money, white
money, brown money; gold money, silver money, copper money; paper money,
pen and ink money. Money was wheeled about in trucks; money was carried
about in bags; money was scavengered about with shovels. Thousands of
sovereigns were jerked hither and thither from hand to hand—grave games
of pitch and toss were played with staid solemnity; piles of bank
notes—competent to buy whole German dukedoms and Italian
principalities—hustled to and fro with as much indifference as if they
were (as they had been) old rags.
This Hall of the Old Lady’s overpowered us with a sense of wealth;
oppressed us with a golden dream of Riches. From this vision an
instinctive appeal to our own pockets, and a few miserable shillings,
awakened us to Reality. When thus aroused we were in one of the Old
Lady’s snug, elegant, waiting-rooms, which is luxuriously
Turkey-carpeted and adorned with two excellent portraits of two ancient
cashiers; regarding one of whom the public were warned:—
“Sham Abraham you may,
I’ve often heard say:
But you mustn’t sham ‘Abraham Newland.’”
There are several conference-rooms for gentlemen who require a little
private conversation with the Old Lady—perhaps on the subject of
discounts.
It is no light thing to send in one’s card to the Foster-Mother of
British commerce; the Soul of the State; “the Sun,” according to Sir
Francis Baring, around which the agriculture, trade, and finance of this
country revolves; the mighty heart of active capital, through whose
arteries and veins flows the entire circulating medium of this great
country. It was not, therefore, without agitation that we were ushered
from the waiting-room, into that celebrated private apartment of the Old
Lady of Threadneedle Street—the Parlour—the Bank Parlour, the inmost
mystery—the _cella_ of the great Temple of Riches.
The ordinary associations called up by the notion of an old lady’s
comfortable parlour, were not fulfilled by this visit. There is no
domestic snugness, no easy chair, no cat, no parrot, no japanned
bellows, no portrait of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in the
Royal Box at Drury Lane Theatre; no kettle-holder, no worsted rug for
the urn, no brass footman for the buttered toast, in the parlour in
Threadneedle Street. On the contrary, the room is extensive—supported by
pillars; is of grand and true proportions; and embellished with
architectural ornaments in the best taste. It has a long table for the
confidential managers of the Old Lady’s affairs (she calls these
gentlemen her Directors) to sit at; and usually, a side table fittingly
supplied with a ready-laid lunch.
The Old Lady’s “Drawing” Room is as unlike—but then she is such a
peculiar Old Lady!—any ordinary Drawing-room as need be. It has hardly
any furniture, but desks, stools, and books. It is of immense
proportions, and has no carpet. The vast amount of visitors the Old Lady
receives between nine and four every day, would make lattice-work in one
forenoon of the stoutest carpet ever manufactured. Everybody who comes
into the Old Lady’s Drawing-room delivers his credentials to her
gentlemen-ushers, who are quick in examining the same, and exact in the
observance of all points of form. So highly-prized, however, is a
presentation (on any grand scale) to the Old Lady’s Drawing-room,
notwithstanding its plainness, that there is no instance of a
Drawing-room at Court being more sought after. Indeed, it has become a
kind of proverb that the way to Court often lies through the Old Lady’s
apartments, and some suppose that the Court Sticks are of gold and
silver in compliment to her.
As to the individual appearance of the Old Lady herself, we are
authorised to state that the portrait of a Lady (accompanied by eleven
balls on a sprig, and a beehive) which appears in the upper left-hand
corner of all the Bank of England Notes, is NOT the portrait of _the_
Lady. She invariably wears a cap of silver paper, with her yellow hair
gathered carefully underneath. When she carries any defensive or
offensive weapon, it is not a lance, but a pen; and her modesty would on
no account permit her to appear in such loose drapery as is worn by the
party in question—who we understand is depicted as a warning to the
youthful merchants of this country to avoid the fate of George Barnwell.
In truth, like the Delphian mystery, SHE of Threadneedle Street is
invisible, and delivers her oracles through her high priests: and, as
Herodotus got his information from the priests in Egypt, so did we learn
all we know about the Bank from the great officers of the Myth of
Threadneedle Street. All of them are remarkable for great intelligence
and good humour, particularly one MR. MATTHEW MARSHALL; for whom the Old
Lady is supposed to have a sneaking kindness, as she is continually
promising to pay him the most stupendous amounts of money. From what
these gentlemen told us, we are prepared unhesitatingly to affirm in the
teeth of the assertions of Plutarch, and Pliny, and Justin, that
although Crœsus might have been well enough to do in the world in his
day, he was but a pettifogger compared with the Great Lady of St.
Christopher le Stocks. The Lydian king never employed nine hundred
clerks, or accommodated eight hundred of them under one roof; and if he
could have done either, he would have been utterly unable to muster one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year to pay them. He never had
bullion in his cellars, at any one time, to the value of sixteen
millions and a half sterling, as our Old Lady has lately averaged; nor
“other securities”—much more marketable than the precious stones Crœsus
showed to Solon—to the amount of thirty millions. Besides, _all_ his
capital was “dead weight;” that in Threadneedle Street is active, and is
represented by an average paper currency of twenty millions per annum.
After this statement of facts, we trust that modern poets when they want
a hyperbole for wealth will cease to cite Crœsus, and draw their future
inspirations from the shrine and cellars of the Temple opposite the
Auction Mart; or, as the late Mr. George Robins designated it when
professionally occupied, “The Great House over the way.”
When we withdrew from the inmost fane of this Temple, we were ushered by
the priest, who superintends the manufacture of the mysterious Deity’s
oracles, into those recesses of her Temple in which these are made. Here
we perceived, that, besides carrying on the ordinary operations of
banking, the Old Lady is an extensive printer, engraver, bookbinder, and
publisher. She maintains a steam-engine to drive letter-press and
copper-plate printing machines, besides the other machinery which is
employed in various operations, from making thousand pound notes to
weighing single sovereigns. It is not until you see three steam-printing
machines—such as we use for this publication—and hear that they are
constantly revolving, to produce, at so many thousand sheets per hour,
the printed forms necessary for the accurate account-keeping of this
great Central Establishment and its twelve provincial branches, that you
are fully impressed with the magnitude of the Old Lady’s transactions.
In this one department no fewer than three hundred account-books are
printed, ruled, bound, and used every week. During that short time they
are filled with MS. by the eight hundred subordinates and their chiefs.
By way of contrast we saw the single ledger which sufficed to post up
the daily transactions of the Old Lady on her first establishment in
business. It is no bigger than that of a small tradesman’s, and served
to contain a record of the year’s accounts. Until within the last few
years, visitors to the Bullion Office were shown the old box into which
the books of the Bank were put every night for safety during the Old
Lady’s early career. This receptacle is no bigger than a seaman’s chest.
A spacious fire-proof room is now nightly filled with each day’s
accounts, and they descend to it by means of a great hydraulic trap in
the Drawing Office; the mountain of calculation when collected being too
huge to be moved by human agency.
These works are, of course, only produced for private reference; but the
Old Lady’s publishing business is as extensive as it is profitable and
peculiar. Although her works are the reverse of heavy or erudite—being
“flimsy” to a proverb—yet the eagerness with which they are sought by
the public, surpasses that displayed for the productions of the greatest
geniuses who ever enlightened the world: she is, therefore, called upon
to print enormous numbers of each edition,—generally one hundred
thousand copies; and reprints of equally large impressions are demanded,
six or seven times a year. She is protected by a stringent copyright; in
virtue of which, piracy is felony, and was, until 1831, punished with
death. The very paper is copyright, and to imitate even that entails
transportation. Indeed its merits entitle it to every protection, for it
is a very superior article. It is so thin that each sheet, before it is
sized, weighs only eighteen grains; and so strong, that, when sized and
doubled, a single sheet is capable of suspending a weight of fifty-six
pounds.
The literature of these popular prints is concise to terseness. A
certain individual, duly accredited by the Old Lady, whose autograph
appears in one corner, promises to pay to the before-mentioned Mr.
Matthew Marshall, or bearer on demand, a certain sum, for the Governor
and Company of the Bank of England. There is a date and a number; for
the Old Lady’s sheets are published in Numbers; but, unlike other
periodicals, no two copies of hers are alike. Each has a set of
numerals, shown on no other.—It must not be supposed from the utter
absence of rhetoric in this Great Woman’s literature, that it is devoid
of ornament. On the contrary, it is illustrated by eminent artists: the
illustrations consisting of the waves of a watermark made in the paper;
a large black blot, with the statement in white letters of the sum which
is promised to be paid; and the portrait referred to in a former part of
this account of the Wonderful Old Lady.
She makes it a practice to print thirty thousand copies of these works
daily. Everything possible is done by machinery,—engraving, printing,
numbering; but we refrain from entering into further details of this
portion of the Old Lady’s Household here, as we are preparing a review
of her valuable works, which shall shortly appear, in the form of a
History of a Bank note. The publication department is so admirably
conducted, that a record of each individual piece of paper launched on
the ocean of public favour is kept, and its history traced till its
return; for another peculiarity of the Old Lady’s establishment is, that
every impression put forth comes back—with few exceptions—in process of
time to her shelves; where it is kept for ten years, and then burnt.
This great house is, therefore, a huge circulating library. The daily
average number of notes brought back into the Old Lady’s lap—examined to
detect forgeries; defaced; entered upon the record made when they were
issued; and so stored away that they can be reproduced at any given
half-hour for ten years to come,—is twenty-five thousands. On the day of
our visit, there came in twenty-eight thousand and seventy-four of her
picturesque pieces of paper, representing one million, one thousand, two
hundred and seventy pounds sterling, to be dealt with as above,
preparatory to their decennial slumber on her library shelves.
The apartment in which the notes are kept _previous_ to issue, is the
Old Lady’s Store-room. There is no jam, there are no pickles, no
preserves, no gallipots, no stoneware jars, no spices, no anything of
that sort, in the Store-room of the Wonderful Old Lady. You might die of
hunger in it. Your sweet tooth would decay and tumble out, before it
could find the least gratification in the Old Lady’s Store-room. There
was a mouse found there once, but it was dead, and nothing but skin and
bone. It is a grim room, fitted up all round with great iron-safes. They
look as if they might be the Old Lady’s ovens, never heated. But they
are very warm in the City sense; for when the Old Lady’s two
store-keepers have, each with his own key, unlocked his own one of the
double locks attached to each, and opened the door, Mr. Matthew Marshall
gives you to hold a little bundle of paper, value two millions sterling;
and, clutching it with a strange tingling, you feel disposed to knock
Mr. Matthew Marshall down, and, like a patriotic Frenchman, to descend
into the streets.
No tyro need be told that these notes are representatives of weightier
value, and were invented partly to supersede the necessity of carrying
about ponderous parcels of precious metal. Hence—to treat of it
soberly—four paper parcels taken out, and placed in our hands—consisting
of four reams of Bank notes ready for issue, and not much more bulky
than a thick octavo volume—though they represent gold of the weight of
_two tons_, and of the value of two millions of pounds sterling, yet
weigh not quite one pound avoirdupois each, or nearly four pounds
together. The value in gold of what we could convey away in a couple of
side pockets (if simply permitted by the dear Old Lady in Threadneedle
Street, without proceeding to extremities upon the person of the Chief
Cashier) would have required, but for her admirable publications, two of
Barclay and Perkins’s strongest horses to draw.[1]
Footnote 1:
One thousand sovereigns weigh twenty-one pounds, and five hundred and
twelve Bank-notes weigh exactly one pound.
We have already made mention of the Old Lady’s Lodge, Hall, Parlour,
Store-room, and Drawing-room. Her Cellars are not less curious. In these
she keeps neither wine, nor beer, nor wood, nor coal. They are devoted
solely to the reception of the precious metals. They are like the caves
of Treasures in the Arabian Nights; the common Lamp that shows them
becomes a Wonderful Lamp in Mr. Marshall’s hands, and Mr. Marshall
becomes a Genie. Yet only by the power of association; for they are very
respectable arched cellars that would make dry skittle-grounds, and have
nothing rare about them but their glittering contents. One vault is full
of what might be barrels of oysters—if it were not the Russian Loan.
Another is rich here and there with piles of gold bars, set cross-wise,
like sandwiches at supper, or rich biscuits in a confectioner’s shop.
Another has a moonlight air from the presence of so much silver. Dusky
avenues branch off, where gold and silver amicably bide their time in
cool retreats, not looking at all mischievous here, or anxious to play
the Devil with our souls. Oh for such cellars at home! “Look out for
your young master half a dozen bars of the ten bin.” “Let me have a
wedge of the old crusted.” “Another Million before we part—only one
Million more, to finish with!” The Temperance Cause would make but slow
way, as to such cellars, we have a shrewd suspicion!
Beauty of colour is here associated with worth. One of these brilliant
bars of gold weighs sixteen pounds troy, and its value is eight hundred
pounds sterling. A pile of these, lying in a dark corner—like neglected
cheese, or bars of yellow soap—and which might be contained in an
ordinary tea-chest, is worth two hundred and ten thousand pounds.
Fortune herself transmuted into metal seems to repose at our feet. Yet
this is only an _eightieth_ part of the wealth contained in the Old
Lady’s cellars.
The future history of this metal is explained in three sentences; it is
coined at the Mint, distributed to the public, worn by friction (or
“sweated” by Jews) till it becomes light. What happens to it then we
shall see.
By a seldom failing law of monetary attraction nearly every species of
cash, “hard” or soft, metallic or paper, finds its way some time or
other back to the extraordinary Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. All the
sovereigns returned from the banking-houses are consigned to a secluded
cellar; and, when you enter it, you will possibly fancy yourself on the
premises of a clock-maker who works by steam. Your attention is speedily
concentrated to a small brass box not larger than an eight-day pendule,
the works of which are impelled by steam. This is a self-acting weighing
machine, which with unerring precision tells which sovereigns are of
standard weight, and which are light, and of its own accord separates
the one from the other. Imagine a long trough or spout—half a tube that
has been split into two sections—of such a semi-circumference as holds
sovereigns edgeways, and of sufficient length to allow of two hundred of
them to rest in that position one against another. This trough thus
charged is fixed slopingly upon the machine over a little table as big
as that of an ordinary sovereigns-balance. The coin nearest to the
Lilliputian platform drops upon it, being pushed forward by the weight
of those behind. Its own weight presses the table down; but how far
down? Upon that hangs the whole merit and discriminating power of the
machine. At the back, and on each side of this small table, two little
hammers move by steam backwards and forwards at different elevations. If
the sovereign be full weight, down sinks the table too low for the
higher hammer to hit it; but the lower one strikes the edge, and off the
sovereign tumbles into a receiver to the left. The table pops up again,
receives, perhaps, a light sovereign, and the higher hammer having
always first strike, knocks it into a receiver to the right, time enough
to escape its colleague, which, when it comes forward, has nothing to
hit, and returns to allow the table to be elevated again. In this way
the reputation of thirty-three sovereigns is established or destroyed
every minute. The light weights are taken to a clipping machine, slit at
the rate of two hundred a minute, weighed in a lump, the balance of
deficiency charged to the banker from whom they were received, and sent
to the Mint to be re-coined. Those which have passed muster are
re-issued to the public. The inventor of this beautiful little detector
was Mr. Cotton, a former governor. The comparatively few sovereigns
brought in by the general public are weighed in ordinary scales by the
tellers. The average loss upon each light coin, on an average of
thirty-five thousands taken in 1843, was twopence three farthings.
The business of the “Great House” is divided into two branches; the
issue and the banking department. The latter has increased so rapidly of
late years, that the last addition the Old Lady was constrained to make
to her house was the immense Drawing-room aforesaid, for her customers
and their payees to draw cash on checks and to make deposits. Under this
noble apartment is the Strong Room, containing private property,
supposed to be of enormous value. It is placed there for safety by the
constituents of the Bank, and is concealed in tin boxes, on which the
owners’ names are legibly painted. The descent into this stronghold—by
means of the hydraulic trap we have spoken of—is so eminently
theatrical, that we believe the Head of the Department, on going down
with the books, is invariably required to strike an attitude, and to
laugh in three sepulchral syllables; while the various clerks above
express surprise and consternation.
Besides private customers, everybody knows that our Old Lady does all
the banking business for the British Government. She pays the interest
to each Stock-holder in the National Debt, receives certain portions of
the revenue, &c. A separate set of offices is necessary, to keep all
such accounts, and these Stock Offices contain the most varied and
extensive collection of autographs extant. Those whom Fortune entitles
to dividends, must, by themselves or by their agents, sign the Stock
books. The last signature of Handel, the composer, and that upon which
Henry Fauntleroy was condemned and executed, are among the foremost of
these lions. Here, standing in a great long building of divers stories,
looking dimly upward through iron gratings, and dimly downward through
iron gratings, and into musty chambers diverging into the walls on
either hand, you may muse upon the National Debt. All the sheep that
ever came out of Northamptonshire, seem to have yielded up their skins
to furnish the registers in which its accounts are kept. Sweating and
wasting in this vast silent library, like manuscripts in a mouldy old
convent, are the records of the Dividends that are, and have been, and
of the Dividends unclaimed. Some men would sell their fathers into
slavery, to have the rummaging of these old volumes. Some, who would let
the Tree of Knowledge wither while they lay contemptuously at its feet,
would bestir themselves to pluck at these leaves, like shipwrecked
mariners. These are the books to profit by. This is the place for X. Y.
Z. to hear of something to his advantage in. This is the land of Mr.
Joseph Ady’s dreams. This is the dusty fountain whence those wondrous
paragraphs occasionally flow into the papers, disclosing how a labouring
thatcher has come into a hundred thousand pounds—a long, long way to
come—and gone out of his wits—not half so far to go. Oh, wonderful Old
Lady! threading the needle with the golden eye all through the labyrinth
of the National Debt, and hiding it in such dry hay-stacks as are
rotting here!
With all her wealth, and all her power, and all her business, and all
her responsibilities, she is not a purse-proud Old Lady; but a dear,
kind, liberal, benevolent Old Lady; so particularly considerate to her
servants, that the meanest of them never speaks of her otherwise than
with affection. Though her domestic rules are uncommonly strict; though
she is very severe upon “mistakes,” be they ever so unintentional;
though till lately she made her in-door servants keep good hours, and
would not allow a lock to be turned or a bolt to be drawn after eleven
at night, even to admit her dearly beloved Matthew Marshall himself—yet
she exercises a truly tender and maternal care over her family of eight
hundred strong. To benefit the junior branches, she has recently set
aside a spacious room, and the sum of five hundred pounds, to form a
library. With this handsome capital at starting, and eight shillings a
year subscribed by the youngsters, an excellent collection of books will
soon be formed. Here, from three till eight o’clock every lawful day,
the subscribers can assemble for recreation or study; or, if they prefer
it, they can take books to their homes. A member of the Committee of
Management attends in turn during the specified hours—a self-imposed
duty, in the highest degree creditable to, but no more than is to be
expected from, the stewards of a Good Mistress; who, when any of her
servants become superannuated, soothes declining age with a pension. The
last published return states the number of pensioners at one hundred and
ninety three; each of whom received on an average 161_l._, or an
aggregate of upwards of 31,000_l._ per annum.
Her kindness is not unrequited. Whenever anything ails her, the
assiduous attention of her people is only equalled by her own bounty to
them. When dangerously ill of the Panic in 1825, and the outflow of her
circulating medium was so violent that she was in danger of bleeding to
death, some of her upper servants never left her for a fortnight. At the
crisis of her disorder, on a memorable Saturday night (December the
seventeenth) her Deputy-Governor—who even then had not seen his own
children for a week—reached Downing Street “reeling with fatigue,” and
was just able to call out to the King’s Ministers—then anxiously
deliberating on the dear Old Lady’s case—that she was out of danger!
Another of her managing men lost his life in his anxiety for her safety,
during the burning of the Royal Exchange, in January, 1838. When the
fire broke out, the cold was intense; and although he had but just
recovered from an attack of the gout, he rushed to the rescue of his
beloved Old Mistress, saw everything done that could be done for her
safety, and died from his exertions. Although the Old Lady is now more
hale and hearty than ever, two of the Senior Clerks sit up in turn every
night, to watch over her; in which duty they are assisted by a company
of Foot Guards.
The kind Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has, in short, managed to
attach her dependants to her by the strongest of ties—that of love. So
pleased are some with her service, that when even temporarily resting
from it, they feel miserable. A late Chief Cashier never solicited but
one holiday, and that for only a fortnight. In three days he returned
expressing his extreme disgust with every sort of recreation but that
afforded him by the Old Lady’s business. The last words of another old
servant when on his death-bed, were, “Oh, that I could only die on the
Bank steps!”