Transcribed from the [1886] Brain and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: George Peabody]
THE LONDON LIBRARY.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
MONEY-MAKING
MEN;
OR,
HOW TO GROW RICH.
* * * * *
BY
J. EWING RITCHIE,
_Author of the_ “_Explorations of Livingstone_, _Cameron_, _and
Stanley_,” _the_
“_Life and Times of Lord Palmerston_,” “_Modern Statesmen_,”
“_Life of the Prince Consort_,” _&c._, _&c._
* * * * *
BRAIN & CO., 26, PATERNOSTER ROW.
* * * * *
ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
IN THE CITY 7
CHAPTER II.
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 35
CHAPTER III.
CHARLES BIANCONI, THE IRISH CAR-MAN 68
CHAPTER IV.
A FORTUNE MADE BY A VEGETARIAN 75
CHAPTER V.
A FORTUNE MADE BY TEETOTALISM 93
CHAPTER VI.
MONEY-MAKING PUBLISHERS 102
CHAPTER VII.
MONEY-MAKING MEN IN THE PROVINCES 120
CHAPTER VIII.
ECCENTRIC MONEY-MAKERS 132
CHAPTER IX.
MORE MONEY-MAKING M.P.’s 145
CHAPTER X.
GEORGE MOORE, CITIZEN AND PHILANTHROPIST 155
CHAPTER XI.
ARTISTS AND WRITERS 167
CHAPTER XII.
REFLECTIONS ON MONEY-MAKING 179
CHAPTER I.
IN THE CITY.
I FEAR City people are very mercenary in their views and habits. It is
natural that they should be so; they come into the City to make money,
and that is all they are thinking of while they are there. They do not
all succeed in their attempt, I know. Some are idle and improvident, and
do not deserve to win in the battle of life. They are failures from
their birth, and go mooning about like the immortal Micawber, expecting
something to turn up, till death comes and puts an end to their
expectations. Some men are unlucky, and lose by every adventure; others
are born lucky, and, from no merit of their own, everything they touch
turns to gold. The other day a poor costermonger was run-over in the
street and killed, and it was found that he was worth several hundreds of
pounds. It would be interesting to know how a costermonger could have
made all that money by the sale of apples, oranges, and greens. A few
weeks since I heard a distinguished judge tell an audience, consisting of
school-boys, that in his own person he was an illustration of the fact
that, in this happy England, any one, however destitute of rank and
wealth and connections he might be, would rise to the position to which
his worth entitled him; and he ended with the recommendation of the wise
man of old, “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy
paths.” Only a month since I heard of the death of a Jew, who had
commenced with selling pencils in the street, and had died worth a
million of money. How was it done? Ah! that’s the question. It is not
done, as a rule, by the speculators; nor is it done by the rogues who
forget that honesty is the best policy. Many of the men who have
succeeded, it has been remarked, have generally achieved success by the
application of some very simple principle which they have established as
the general rule of their proceedings.
Ricardo said that he had made his money by observing that, in general,
people greatly exaggerated the importance of events. If, therefore,
dealing, as he dealt, in stocks, there was reason for a small advance, he
bought, because he was certain that an unreasonable advance would enable
him to realise; and when stocks were falling he sold, in the conviction
that alarm and panic would produce a decline not warranted by
circumstances.
Let us take another case—that of Rothschild, the third son of the
Frankfort banker, who came to England with £2,000, which he soon turned
into £60.000. “My success,” he said to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, “all
turned on one maxim: I said, I can do what another man can. Another
advantage I had, I was an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When
I was settled in London, the East India Company had £800,000 worth of
gold to sell. I went to the sale and bought it all. I knew the Duke of
Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a
discount. The government sent for me, and said they must have it. When
they had got it, they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I
undertook all that, and I sent it through France; and that was the best
business I ever did.” Another rule of his was never to have anything to
do with unlucky men. “I have seen,” said he, “many clever men—very
clever men—who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them.
Their advice sounds very well, but fate is against them; they cannot get
on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do
good to me?” His advice to Sir Thomas’s son was sound: “Stick to your
business, young man; stick to your brewery, and you may be the great
brewer of London. Be a brewer and a banker, and a merchant and a
manufacturer, and you will soon be in the _Gazette_.” How true this is,
any one who has the slightest acquaintance with City life can at once
understand. The advice should be printed in gold in every counting-house
in London. If it were, and were acted on as well, we should hear of
fewer commercial failures.
Let me give another anecdote of the Rothschilds. It is related of Baron
Nathan de Meyer, that on one occasion he gave a lady the following pithy
piece of advice. Seated at the dinner-table, she informed him she had an
only son, whom she was anxious to see placed well in business, and begged
him to give her a hint on the subject. For a long time the baron
hesitated; and at length, when urged by the lady, half good-naturedly and
half worried, he turned round and said—“_Well_, _madam_, _I will tell
you_. _Selling lucifer-matches is a very good business if you have
plenty of it_.”
In his “Autobiographical Recollections,” Sir John Bowring thus speaks of
the celebrated Morrison, the founder of the great commercial house in
Fore Street:—“Morrison told me that he owed all his prosperity to the
discovery that the great art of mercantile traffic was to find out
sellers, rather than buyers; that if you bought cheap and satisfied
yourself with only a fair profit, buyers—the best sort of buyers, those
who have money to buy—would come of themselves. He said he found houses
engaged, with a most expensive machinery, sending travellers about in all
directions to seek orders and to effect sales; while he employed
travellers to buy instead of to sell; and if they bought well, there was
no fear of his effecting advantageous sales. So, uniting this theory
with another, that small profits and quick returns are more profitable in
the long run than long credits with great gains, he established one of
the largest and most lucrative concerns that has ever existed in London,
and was entitled to a name which I have often heard applied to him, ‘the
Napoleon of Shopkeepers.’” Mr. James Morrison, the founder of the Fore
Street warehouse, certainly deserves further record. He was a native of
Hants, and born of Scotch parents. Early transplanted to the metropolis
at the end of the last century, the country youth first set foot in
London, unaided in search of fortune. His first employment was a very
menial one in a warehouse, and procured him a bare maintenance; but his
industry and trustworthiness soon secured him a partnership in the Fore
Street business of the late Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married. So far
it may be said that his rise was accidental; but his constant rise was no
accident. His enormous wealth was the result of his own natural
sagacity, perseverance, and integrity. During the long course of his
devotion to trade and commerce, Mr. Morrison’s mind never stood still.
Every social change in business, in demand and supply, he keenly
discerned, and promptly acted on. Thus his great business at once became
the first of its class. After the close of the great continental wars,
and the consequent rapid increase of population and wealth, Mr. Morrison
was one of the first English traders who reversed his system of
management by an entire departure from the old exaction of the highest
prices. His new principle was the substitution of the lowest
remunerative scale of profit, and more rapid circulation of capital, and
the success of the experiment speedily created his wholesale trade
pre-eminence. “Small profits and quick returns” was his motto, and other
houses quickly followed in his wake; but the genius which originated the
movement, notwithstanding active competition, maintained its supremacy.
The result was, that, in middle age, Mr. Morrison found himself in
possession of an enormous fortune. At the time of his death, his English
property was said to be of the value of three or four millions; and,
besides, he was possessed of large investments in the United States. He
was a lover of art, an advanced politician and M.P., and, to the last
almost, a man of study and thought.
In our own day, as much as in earlier times, the same rule applies to
City life. The linendrapers, it seems to me, are, as a rule, the most
successful. Since fig-leaves went out of fashion, the ladies—God bless
them!—have always supported the linendrapers and the silk-mercers. The
founder of the great house of Shoolbred & Co., in Tottenham-court Road,
was originally educated at the Orphan Working School—then in the City
Road, but now at Haverstock Hill. The will of the late Mr. Tarn, whose
shop was near the Elephant and Castle, was proved a little while since
under a million. He was only about sixty years old when he died, and
commenced business some thirty years ago in a little shop, being his own
shopman. Mr. Meeking, whose premises in Holborn are a series of palaces,
rose, I am told, from very small beginnings. A writer in a newspaper
says—“Not long ago I was at a meeting where there were six men, of whom
the poorest, who could scarcely write, was worth £100,000; and the
richest, who never read a book of information through in his life, was
making £50,000 a-year. They had all begun as working-men except one, who
is an M.P., and he had commenced life as a shopman, and had made £10,000
a-year. Such are the chances for money-makers in England, where credit
is easy. But then money-making is an art—like poetry, a born gift.” So
says the writer: I differ from him. A tradesman who lives within his
income, and who sells that for which there is a yearly increasing demand,
such as beef or shoes, or butter and cheese, however stupid he may be,
however dense his ignorance, cannot but prosper. He has only to shut his
eyes and open his mouth, and take what Heaven will send him. With trade
ability, good health, and frugality, a man cannot help making a fortune.
People fail because they want to have their cake and eat it at the same
time; because they like to discount their good fortune; because they
prefer to enjoy from day to day rather than to accumulate capital; and,
lastly, because when they have money, in their eagerness to make more,
they go into some rotten company and lose all.
Once upon a time I was at a grand party at the house of a West-end swell
and M.P. As I left I said to a friend, “How did Mr. — make his money?”
“Why,” was the reply, “by borrowing ten shillings.” On the strength of
that _recipe_ the writer of this article borrowed twenty; but, alas! the
experiment in his case did not answer.
But to return to money-making men. “The Fludyers had begun their
career,” wrote Sir Samuel Romilly, “in very narrow circumstances; but by
extraordinary activity, enterprise, and good fortune, they had acquired
inordinate wealth, and were every day increasing it by the profits of a
most extensive commerce. Sir Samuel was an alderman of the City of
London, and a member of parliament. He had been created a baronet, and
had served the office of Lord Mayor, in a year very memorable in the
history of City honours, for it was that in which the king, upon his
marriage, made a visit to the corporation and dined in Guildhall.
Notwithstanding, however, the great elevation at which fortune had placed
these opulent relatives beyond my father, they always maintained a very
friendly intercourse with him, and professed, perhaps sincerely, a great
desire to serve him. Sir Samuel, too, was my godfather.” He died of
apoplexy, and Sir Thomas did not long survive him.
But instances of money-making men in the City are as plentiful as
blackberries, and I merely refer to a few of them. We all have heard of
Sir Peter Laurie, who had such a wonderful way of putting down suicide,
and other evils. He came to London in early life, and worked, it is
said, as a journeyman saddler at a house in the neighbourhood of
Charing-cross, with the late Sir Richard Birnie.
The late Mr. Thomas Tegg, who, at one time, was one of the largest
booksellers in the kingdom, acquired his fortune solely through the force
and energy of his character as a man of business. When he first came to
London, he called on Mr. Newman, a bookseller in Leadenhall Street, to
ask for employment. “What can you do, young man?” “Anything you please,
sir; I shall be willing to make myself generally useful.” “Then,” said
Mr. Newman, “go and see if you can tie up that parcel,” pointing to a
quantity of books, in a loose state, which were lying on the floor.
“That,” said Mr. Tegg at a public meeting, “was the first employment I
was ever engaged in as a bookseller.” And thus he made his money.
Sir John Pirie, who, in 1841, was elected Lord Mayor, on returning thanks
in the Guildhall for the honour done him, said—“I little thought, forty
years ago, when I came to the City of London a poor lad from the banks of
the Tweed, that I should ever arrive at such a distinction.”
Gentlemen learned in the law are occasionally money-making men. One of
these was John Campden Neild, M.A., barrister-at-law. He was the son of
a wealthy gold and silversmith in St. James’s Street, and who bequeathed
a large property to his miserly son, which he, in turn, considerably
enlarged, and bequeathed to her Majesty. It appeared that, since his
father’s death in 1814, he had allowed his money to accumulate, and had
scarcely allowed himself the common necessaries of life. He usually
dressed in a blue coat with metal buttons, which he prohibited being
brushed, as it would take off the nap and deteriorate its value. He was
never known to wear a great-coat; he was always happy to receive an
invitation from his tenantry in Kent and Berks to visit them, which he
occasionally did, often remaining a month at a time, as he was thus
enabled to add to his savings. His appearance and manners led people to
imagine that he was in the lowest state of poverty. Just before the
introduction of the railway system of travelling, he had been on a visit
to some of his estates, and was returning to London, when the coach
stopped at Farningham. With the exception of our miser, the passengers
all entered the inn. Missing their companion, and recollecting his
decayed appearance, they conceived he was in distressed circumstances,
and, accordingly, a sum was subscribed for the purchase of a thumping
glass of brandy and water for the benefit of the poor gentleman, which he
thankfully accepted. Many instances of a similar character may be
related.
Alderman Harmer was the son of a Spitalfields weaver, and was left to
work his way as an orphan at the age of ten. Alderman Wire was the son
of a baker at Colchester. Alderman Kelly, who died in his 80th year, was
the architect of his own fortune. He was originally an assistant in the
employ of Mr. John Cooke, of Paternoster Row. The business chiefly
consisted in publishing works in numbers, which were sold up and down the
country by means of book-hawkers. Mr. Kelly succeeded to this business,
and so won fame and fortune. In 1836 he was Lord Mayor of London.
Thomas Cubitt, the well-known builder, born near Norwich in 1788, at an
early period in life was thrown upon his own resources, and soon learned
to trust in them. At the death of his father, when he was in his
nineteenth year, he was working as a journeyman carpenter. He shortly
afterwards, with a view to improve his circumstances, took a voyage to
India and back as captain’s joiner. On his return to London, then about
21 years of age, with the savings he had put by, he commenced a small
business in London as carpenter. After about six years, appearances of
success manifesting themselves, he took a piece of ground from Lord
Calthorpe in the Gray’s Inn Road, upon which he erected large buildings
and carried on a very large business, which business he handed over to
his brother, Mr. Alderman Cubitt, while he built what is known as
Belgravia, and, when he died, had accumulated property to the amount of a
million sterling. He was a man of most estimable qualities,
clear-headed, energetic, of unswerving integrity, kind to his family,
generous and considerate to his workpeople and dependents.
But there are money-making men who are better than mere money-grubs. Mr.
Gompertz, born in London in 1799, the son of a Dutch diamond merchant,
was a self-taught mathematician of very high attainments, who had
distinguished himself early in life by the publication of new logarithms.
At the age of thirty, having married Miss Abigail Montefiore, sister of
Sir Moses Montefiore, Mr. Gompertz entered his name as a member of the
Stock Exchange, doing a large amount of business, but without
relinquishing his mathematical pursuits, which gradually turned to tables
connected with life insurance. After working out a new series of tables
of mortality, the subject took such a hold of his mind that he decided to
quit the Stock Exchange and to devote himself entirely to actuarial
science. Appointed actuary of the Alliance Company under its deed of
settlement, he became, both in virtue of his position and through his
high connections, its chief manager, doing his work to the satisfaction
of the directors. Mr. Benjamin Gompertz, however, aimed to be nothing
more than a man of science; his ambition being to make the best actuarial
investigations, and not to do the largest amount of business. Another
illustration we have of this higher life is afforded in the case of Mr.
Grote. Mr. Samuel Rogers may also be quoted as another illustration. It
is well to feel that, after all, there is something better than
money-making—that man does not live by bread alone.
The great lesson of London life is, that perseverance, industry, and
integrity will win the day. In the City, daily, we see the poorest rise
to the possession of great wealth and honour. Poor lads have come to
town friendless and moneyless; have been sober, and steady, and true to
themselves. They have been firm in their opposition to London
allurements and vices; have improved the abilities God has given them,
and the opportunities placed within their reach, and become, in their
way, men of note and mark. Many a Lord Mayor has been an office-lad in
the firm of which he grew to be the head. Mr. Herbert Ingram, the
founder of the _Illustrated London News_—the tale is an old one, but none
the less true—blackened the shoes of some of the men he afterwards
represented in parliament. Mr. Anderson, of the Oriental Steam
Navigation Company, and formerly M.P. for the Orkneys, rose in a similar
manner. Mr. Dillon, of the great house of Dillon, Morrison, & Co., also
rose in a similar way. Lord Campbell, when employment was scarce, and
money ditto, held a post as reporter and theatrical critic on the
_Morning Chronicle_. Mr. Chaplin, who at one time represented Salisbury
in parliament was an extraordinary instance of a man rising from the
humblest rank. Before railways were in operation he had succeeded in
making himself one of the largest coach proprietors in the kingdom. His
establishment, from small beginnings, grew till just before the opening
of the London and North-western line. He was proprietor of sixty-four
stage-coaches, worked by 1,500 horses, and giving yearly returns of more
than half a million sterling. Sir William Cubitt, when a lad, worked at
his father’s flour-mills. Michael Faraday was the son of a poor
blacksmith; and J. W. Turner, of a hairdresser in Maiden Lane. Mr. W.
Johnson Fox, at one time M.P. for Oldham—the great orator of the
Anti-Corn-Law League, and the “Publicola” of the _Weekly Dispatch_, when
that paper could afford ten guineas a-week for a good article—was a
Norwich factory lad.
I knew a lad, born in the village in which I was born, in the humblest
rank of life. I found him one day one of the churchwardens of a city
parish, and a man of substance. I expressed my surprise, as even he
could not read. “Ah, sir,” was his reply, “I came to London determined
to be a man or a mouse; and here I am.” It is so all over London. The
great warehouses in Cheapside and Cannon Street, and Victoria Street and
elsewhere, are mostly owned by men who began life without a rap. Go to
the “beautiful” villas around London, and ask who live there, and you
will find that they are inhabited by men whose wealth is enormous; whose
fathers were beggars; and whose career has been a marvellous success.
In one of his songs, Barry Cornwall tells us, that when he was a little
boy, he was told that the streets of London were paved with gold; and it
must be admitted that, to the youthful mind in general, the metropolis is
a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, where gold and silver are to be picked up
in handfuls any day. There is a good deal, it is hardly necessary to
say, of exaggeration in this. To many, London is dark and dismal as one
of its fogs, and cold and stony as one of its own streets. It is
difficult to estimate the number of persons, in the lowest stage of
pauperism, who rise every morning not knowing where to earn their daily
broad. Wonderful are the shifts and ingenuities of this unfortunate
class. One summer day a lady friend of the writer was driving in one of
the pleasant green lanes of Hornsey, when she saw a poor woman gathering
the leaves of a horse-chestnut. She asked her why she did so. The reply
was, that she got a living by selling them to the fruiterers in Covent
Garden, who lined their baskets of fruit with them. One day it came out
in evidence at a police-court, that a mother and her children earned a
scanty subsistence by rising early in the morning, or rather late at
night, and selling, as waste paper, the broad sheets and placards with
which the waste walls of the metropolis were adorned. It seems to me,
one of the worst sights of the outskirts of London, is that of women, all
black and grimy, sifting the cinders and rubbish collected by the
wandering dustmen. Perhaps that is as dirty a way for a woman to make
money as possible; and yet it seemed to me that their hands were clean,
compared with those of certain stock and money-brokers, and promoters of
public companies, to whom it is needless more particularly to allude.
Fortunes in London are made by trifles. I knew a man who kept a
knacker’s yard, who lived out of town in a villa of exquisite beauty, and
who drove horses which a prince or an American millionaire would have
envied. Out of the profits of his vegetable pills, Morrison bought
himself a nice estate. Mrs. Holloway used to be seen riding in one of
the handsomest carriages to be met with in the Strand, and the princely
liberality of Mr. Holloway astonished all England a little while since;
and as to the keepers of dining-rooms and City taverns, how well they
live, and in what good style, most of us know well. Before suburban
railways had become developed, in the City was to be seen more than one
proprietor of a dining-room, who drove daily a handsome mail phaeton and
pair to town in the morning to do his business, and back at night.
Thackeray had a tale, if not founded on fact, at any rate not improbable,
of a gentleman who married a young lady, drove a swell cab, and lived
altogether in great style. The gentleman was dumb as to his daily
occupation. He would not impart even the secret to his wife. Even the
prying mother-in-law was unable to solve the mystery. All that she knew
was, what everyone else knew, that her son-in-law went out in his cab,
with his tiger mounted behind, in the morning, and returned home in the
same style at night. At length, one day, the wife, going with her dear
mamma into the City shopping, recognised her lord and master in the
person of a street-sweeper, clothed in rags, and covered with dirt. The
discovery was too much for him. He was never heard of more.
In one of his pleasant letters, Mortimer Collins wrote—“The modern
millionaire’s beneficence is ostentatious. A thousand pounds to a
charity is as good a way of saying, ‘See, I am rich,’ as the same sum
spent on a horse or a picture.” The same idea has occurred to the writer
of a modern play. The hero calls for his secretary, and asks him to
bring him the book which contains a list of his donations. “Ah,” he
says, after looking at it, “double my subscriptions to all the charities
that advertise, and put it down to our advertising account.” It is to be
feared a good deal of that charity, which covers a multitude of sins in
the City, is due to a similar desire for publicity. A good deal of
ostentatious expenditure is simply put down under the head of advertising
expenditure, and very often it is the only way by means of which a rich
tradesman or ambitious merchant can draw attention to himself and his
proceedings. This ostentation is a little annoying occasionally. For
instance, it was particularly unpleasant to Sara Coleridge, the gifted
daughter of a gifted sire. At Broadstairs she lodged in a house where
there were some children belonging to a London shopkeeper and his wife.
“These children,” the lady writes, “live on the stairs, or in the
kitchen, and never take a book or a needle in their hands, and yet their
parents are overburdening Mrs. Smith with attendance, dressing well, and
living for many weeks by the sea in commodious lodgings. The
extravagance and recklessness that go on in the families of tradesmen in
London, is beyond what the rank above them ever dream of.” Sara
Coleridge, as the wife of a clergyman, and daughter of the great
philosopher, I dare say found it hard to make both ends meet, and perhaps
was needlessly severe on the London tradesmen, and the way in which they
spend their money. Such sharp censure as she penned was natural under
the circumstances. Refined, genteel people, of limited means, are sadly
vexed at the riotous abundance of the prosperous and well-to-do. As to
ostentation, Morrison, the pill man beat every one when he gave a grand
banquet to all that was fashionable in society at Paris, and to each
parting guest presented his card, with an advertisement of his far-famed
pills.
“Two causes led,” writes Mr. Page, “to the accumulation of the wealth
which Mr. Brassey realised. One was the small extent of his personal
expenses. He hated all show, luxury, and ostentation. He kept but a
moderate establishment, which the increase of his means never induced him
to extend. He was wont to say—‘It requires a special education to be
idle, or to employ the twenty-four hours in a rational way, without any
particular calling or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman one
must have been brought up to it. It is impossible for a man who has been
engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life to retire; if
he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a mistake. I shall not
retire; but if for some good reason I should be obliged to do so, it
would be to a farm. There I should bring up stock, which I should cause
to be weighed every day, ascertaining at the same time their daily cost,
as against the increasing weight. I should then know when to sell, and
start again with a fresh lot.’” The second and far more important cause
which led to Mr. Brassey’s wealth, was the extent of his business. “He
knew the value of money as well as any one,” wrote a friend, “and how far
a pound would go; but he had no greediness to acquire wealth, and he was
always willing to give away a portion of his profits to any one who was
instrumental in making them, and that to a remarkable extent. At no time
did he realise more than three per cent. on the money turned over by him.
He laid out seventy-eight millions of other people’s money on works,
every one of which was of public utility; and upon that outlay he
retained two millions and a-half. Mr. Brassey’s financial management was
very simple; on each contract the agent was responsible for the money he
received; he relied upon the cashier to keep the accounts.”
The money-making men have, some of them, done good service in their day
and generation. To the latter class emphatically belongs George Grote,
the historian, whose grandfather came over to this country from Bremen,
and established the banking-house of Grote, Prescott, and Co., on the 1st
of January, 1766. At the early age of sixteen he was placed in the
banking-house in Threadneedle Street, and commenced a business career,
which he carried on thirty two years; when, having enough to live on, he
retired, to devote himself more particularly to historical studies. And
to his house in Threadneedle Street came the Mills (father and son), Mr.
David Ricardo, Mr. John Smith, M.P., Dr. Black, of the _Morning
Chronicle_, and Mr. Charles Austin, whom Mrs. Grote describes as the most
brilliant conversationalist of his time.
Some of our greatest lawyers became moneyed men by habits of extreme
economy in their young days. Lord Kenyon commenced his London career by
lodging in Bell Yard, Carey Street, and paying for the accommodation six
shillings a-week. His friends at this time were Dunning and Horne Tooke.
They used generally to dine, in vacation time, at a small eating-house
near Chancery Lane, where their meal was supplied to them at the charge
of 7½_d._ a-head. Tooke, in giving an account of these repasts many
years after, used to say, “Dunning and myself were generous, for we gave
the girl who waited upon us a penny a-piece; but Kenyon, who knew the
value of money, rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes a promise.”
In Addison’s club, as wittily described in the _Spectator_, the City
merchant who has made his fortune figures in a very favourable light.
“His notions of trade are,” we are told, “noble and generous; and as
every rich man usually has some sly way of jesting, which would make no
great figure were he not a rich man, he calls the sea the British common.
He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that
it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms, for that
power is to be got by arts and industry. He will often argue, that if
this part of our trade was well cultivated, we should gain from one
nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove that
diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valour, and that sloth has
ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims,
among which the greatest favourite is, ‘A penny saved is a penny
gained.’” Londoners must ever feel grateful to Addison for his genial
sketch of Sir Andrew Freeport.
Money-making men, even in their charities, have an eye to the main
chance. In the “Greville Memoirs,” we read that Southey told an anecdote
of Sir Massey Lopes, which is a good story of a miser. A man came to him
and told him he was in great distress, and that £200 would save him. He
gave him a draft for the money. “Now,” said he, “what will you do with
this?” “Go to the bankers and get it cashed.” “Stop,” said he, “I will
cash it.” So he gave him the money, but first calculated and deducted
the discount—thus at once exercising his benevolence and his avarice.
Money-making has its disadvantages. There was a Lord Compton, who ran
away with a rich citizen’s daughter—I refer to Sir John Spencer, to whom
there is such a fine monument in St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate. When the
nobleman became, by the death of Sir John, possessor of his fortune, it
is reported that for the time his lordship became stark staring mad, and
had to be confined. And this reminds me, that City men, who are
considered “warm” in a worldly point of view, are apt to make great
mistakes as to getting their daughters married. It is not unfrequently
that they allow cash considerations too much to interpose, and thus many
an advantageous marriage is frustrated. It is not what a man has, but
what a man is, that is the true test of character; and a citizen who has
well feathered his nest, and who thinks of the store laid up in his barn,
and of his cattle, and sheep, and other substance, is too apt to overlook
the fact, that a clever man, even if he be poor, may become rich and
great. In the life of the Claytons we have a case in point relating to
the late Lord Truro. “When a young man, and beginning his honourable
career, he formed a strong attachment to an amiable and elegant lady, the
daughter of a merchant in the City, and a member of Mr. Clayton’s church.
His offer, as a suitor, would have been responded to by the lady, but met
with a stern and inflexible opposition from her father, on the ground of
the pecuniary inequality that there appeared between them; and thus the
City merchant lost a lord for a son-in-law.” One money-making City man
is to be specially remembered as a warning to rich capitalists as to how
they make their wills. I refer to Mr. Peter Thellusson, the banker. At
the age of threescore-and-ten, Mr. Thellusson found that he was the owner
of £6,000,000 in hard cash, besides an annual rent-roll of £9,500. This
was not enough for the ambitious Peter; and hence that wonderful will,
which was such a fortune to the lawyers. He left about £100,000 to his
wife and his three sons and daughter; and the rest of his fortune,
amounting to more than £6,000,000, was conveyed to trustees, who were to
let it accumulate till after the deaths, not only of his children, but of
all the male issue of his sons and grandsons. After that event, the vast
property, with its accumulations at compound interest, was to be given to
the nearest male descendant who should bear the family name of
Thellusson, and then the great mountain of accumulated wealth was to be
divided into three portions. It was a fine will for the lawyers. In two
years after Peter Thellusson was gathered to his fathers; two bills had
been filed in Chancery impeaching the will—the one by his wife and
children, the other by his trustees; and the litigation lasted for sixty
years. The wife of the millionaire died, it is said, of a broken heart;
and the Court of Chancery so clipped and pollarded Peter Thellusson’s
oak, that when they had done with it, it was not much larger than when he
left it. Nor was this all. Parliament took the matter up; and though
they would not set aside the will, they enacted that the power of
devising property for the purpose of accumulation should be restricted to
twenty-one years after the death of the testator.
At the head of the money-making men, I suppose, are to be placed “Plum
Turner” and “Vulture Hopkins.” The former, who was a Turkey merchant,
died in 1793. When possessed of £300,000 he laid down his carriage
because interest was reduced from five to four per cent. Vulture
Hopkins, as Pope, in his satire, calls him, I fancy has been abused much
more than he deserved. He was a wealthy merchant; the architect of his
own fortune; and resided in Broad Street. That he was a very economical
man there can be no doubt. We are told he paid an evening visit to Guy,
the founder of the hospital in Southwark, and the story is too
characteristic to be omitted. Guy lighted a farthing candle for the
reception of his guest, who explained that he had come to learn from him
the art of frugality. “And is that all you come about?” replied Guy.
“Why, then, we can talk the matter over in the dark.” Another man of
money was Sir John Cutler, a member of the Grocers’ Company, to whom the
physicians had erected a statue in Warwick Lane, but from which they
erased the subscription which adorned it when the executors claimed the
cash which they considered given. Some of these men had pompous
funerals. That of Sir John Cutler cost no less than £7,000. Cooke, the
great sugar-baker, who died in 1811 at Pentonville, had a grand funeral;
but the mob pelted the procession with cabbage-stalks. He, however,
atoned in some degree for his avarice by leaving £10,000 to four
charitable institutions. There is little virtue in being liberal with
one’s money when one has no further need of it; but society gains, and
such men as Guy, in spite of all their meanness, are public benefactors.
At any rate, the study of the lives of these men is interesting. It is
no great art, that of money-making; but it is natural that a City man
should try to make money, and that he should be interested in the lives
of those who have succeeded by their industry, or their luck, or their
talent, in this respect. I find that in this, as in other matters, a man
may be too clever by half, and that, as a rule, honesty is the best
policy. “I have tried them both,” said the Yorkshireman to his sons on
his death-bed. And the testimony of the Old Bailey is equally
conclusive. Among the Jews, success in business was believed to be a
blessing; but in our more critical age we can see that, to gain wealth,
much of the charm of life has to be sacrificed, and that gold may be
bought too dear. It is the opinion of most people that it is easier to
make a fortune than to keep it.
Entered in “Memoirs” and “Diaries,” it is really wonderful what a volume
of recollections and statements there are relating to City ways and City
life. Every one, of course, comes to London, and is more or less
connected with that great hive of industry and enterprise known as “the
City.” One of the latest anecdotes is the following, relating to the
origin of a great City house, to which in these scraps we have before
adverted:—“On the 1st of January, 1818,” writes Mr. Macaulay, “a new
tragedy was produced at Covent Garden. The author, John Dillon, a very
young man, was the librarian of Dr. Simmons, of Paddington, famous for a
very splendid collection of valuable books. With great promise of
dramatic power, as evinced in this his first essay, he wisely left the
poet’s idle trade for the more lucrative pursuits of commerce, and became
partner in the well-known firm of Morrison, Dillon, and Co. This play
was called _Retribution_, and the chief weight of which—in a very
powerful character, Varanes—was on the shoulders of O’Neill. Charles
Kemble and Terry were his supporters—the villain of the story being well
represented.” In the person of Mr. Frank Dillon the artistic taste of
the father has proved itself to be hereditary.
Another money-making man was the founder of the Baring family. The
origin of them in England is to be traced to Johan Baring, son of a
Lutheran pastor in Bremen. Johan, when still a lad of sixteen or
seventeen, came to England, engaged for a few years in clerkly duties,
studied hard, amassed a little money, and finally settled down as a cloth
merchant and manufacturer, in a little village near Exeter. He had four
sons; and the third of them, Francis, born 1740, came to London, where,
after finishing his education at Mr. Fuller’s academy in Lothbury, he set
up in business as an importer of wool and dye-stuffs, also acting as
agent for the original family cloth factory. “Starting,” writes Mr.
Frederick Martin, “with a fixed determination to become rich, and having
a fair amount of money to begin with, he was uniformly successful in all
his designs. Nothing failed that he undertook, and whatever he touched
became gold. Having amassed a fortune by dealing in cloth, wool, and
dye-stuffs, he resolved to quintuple the fortune by dealing in money
itself—that is, to be a banker.” As was natural, the successful man
became also the honoured man—a leading director of the East India
Company, and the friend and adviser of the premier, Lord Shelburne, who
invariably followed his counsels in matters of finance. After obtaining
a seat in parliament for Exeter, the son of Johan Baring was made a
baronet, under patent of May 29th, 1793, by William Pitt, Shelburne’s
successor in the government, after the short interregnum of the Duke of
Portland. Valuing the friendship of the shrewd man of finance, William
Pitt, as much as the Earl of Shelburne, listened to the counsel of Sir
Francis Baring, both statesmen delighting to style the reputed possessor
of two millions, on all occasions, “the prince of merchants.”
There is another great house now flourishing in the City, of whose origin
a still more extraordinary tale is told. One of the family is now a
baronet and an M.P.; and yet the first of the line, he who laid the
foundation of the fortune of his descendants, was a ragged street boy.
A curious anecdote relative to Nathan Rothschild and Mr. Gompertz, not
many years ago, found its way into print. Nathan (so the story runs) was
leaning one day, early in the spring of 1824, against his favourite
pillar in the Royal Exchange—long known as “the Rothschild pillar”—his
hands in his pockets, when his relative, Gompertz, ran up to him in a
high state of excitement. “Vat ish de matter?” queried Rothschild.
Thereupon the other recounted, in gasps, how he had been applying for the
vacant actuaryship of a large insurance company, and had been beaten in
the competition. Though being admittedly the best candidate, on account
of his religion, the directors declared they would have no Jew. Now
Nathan, too, got excited. “Vat!” he cried, disengaging his hands from
his pockets, and laying hold of his brother-in-law by the shoulders, “Not
take you pecause of your religion! Mein Gott! Den I will make a bigger
office for you than any of ’em.” And Nathan was as good as his word,
founding not only a bigger company than any other, but appointing Mr.
Gompertz actuary under the deed of settlement.
Let me remark here, by way of parenthesis, that it is seldom, however,
this kind of thing succeeds. A man who starts a business in a passion,
merely to injure another, generally comes to grief. A remarkable
illustration of this occurred, a few years since, in the case of the
_Illustrated News of the World_. It was started by a gentleman who had
long coveted the _Illustrated London News_, and had agreed, on one
occasion, to purchase that paper of its original proprietor, the late Mr.
Herbert Ingram. Negotiations had been carried on for that purpose, the
price was named, and almost every detail was settled, when Mr. Ingram
wrote to say that, on reconsidering the matter, he was determined not to
part with the journal in question. The result was the establishment, in
opposition, of the _Illustrated News of the World_, and the bankruptcy of
the proprietor, who died hardly better off than a pauper. If Nathan
Rothschild’s new venture succeeded, it was, under the circumstances, an
exception to the general rule.
Next to making a business for one’s-self, the best way of growing rich
undoubtedly is to purchase the business of one who has done well for
himself, but who leaves a few ears of corn for his successors to glean.
When Mr. Barclay, who purchased the property of Mr. Thrale’s brewery,
&c., asked Dr. Johnson, who was one of the executors, what it was that he
was going to purchase—how many were the brewing-tubs, drays, horses, and
so forth—the latter replied, “Sir, I cannot enumerate them; but it is of
more consequence to you to know that you have the potentiality of growing
rich beyond the dreams of avarice.” And, as it turned out, Johnson was
correct in his surmise.
The name of Gideon is now little heard; but at one time, most assuredly,
he was one of our merchant princes. I refer to Simeon Gideon, who knew
how to make himself the friend of Robert Walpole, who was tolerant enough
to avail himself of the help of a Jew in those financial complications in
which he was necessarily concerned. One of the principal sources of
revenue for the State were lotteries, and it was thus Gideon made his
money. But he made his masterstroke in 1745, when the great Jacobite
insurrection threw the British world, and the mercantile public
especially, into the wildest consternation. The panic on ’Change was
universal. The funds fell with incredible rapidity, and men wanted to
sell at any price. Simeon Gideon was almost the only man who did not
lose his head. Instead of selling, he spent every penny he had, or could
borrow, in buying. This was in the month of November. During the
following month, the public mind oscillated between hope and fear. At
length, at the end of April, 1746, the news arrived of the battle of
Culloden, of the complete defeat of the insurgent army, of the flight of
the Pretender, and of the triumphant suppression of the rebellion by the
Duke of Cumberland. It was then Simeon Gideon began to sell, and found
himself in possession of something like a quarter of a million—a sum
which, in the course of fourteen or fifteen years, quadrupled itself.
Gideon’s ambition was to found an English house. He was too old, he
said, to change his religion, but he had his children baptized; and
through Walpole’s instrumentality, his eldest son was made a baronet when
in his eleventh year. It was hard work for Gideon _père_ to make a
Christian of the lad. “Who made thee?” on one occasion he asked the boy.
“God,” was the proper reply. “Who redeemed thee?” was the next question,
to which the boy replied, “Jesus Christ.” Then came a third question,
which the father had unfortunately forgotten. “Who—who,” he stammered;
and then, nothing better occurring to him, he asked, “Who has given you
this hat?” The young catechumen is reported to have confidently replied,
“The Holy Ghost.” Gideon, senior, died in the faith of his fathers in
1762. He left behind him, as heirs of his immense fortune, a son and a
daughter, and legacies amounting to about 100,000 thalers, which were to
be divided equally between Jewish and Christian benevolent societies and
the poor. We read in a letter of a contemporary—“Gideon is dead, and his
whole inheritance is worth more than the whole of Canaan.”
Another star which dawned in the commercial world about the same time,
was Aaron Goldsmid. He came from Hamburg, and established himself in
London, as a merchant, in the middle of the last century. The house
arrived at its highest prosperity after his death, under his four sons.
At the head of the business were then two brothers, Abraham and Benjamin,
men of acknowledged integrity, and allied in friendship with Newland, the
head cashier of the Bank of England. He was also a self-made man, who
had risen from a baker’s shop to his enormously influential position. By
means of Newland, the brothers Goldsmid were brought into connection with
the government, which, since the year 1793, had been compelled to have
recourse to continual loans, in consequence of the Continental war. But
it was not only through this that they made their money. It was their
cleverness and knowledge that saved them from losing money, when all over
Europe great mercantile houses were breaking. One of the most notable
characteristics of Benjamin was, we are told, his astonishing knowledge
of firms, which was not confined merely to England, but embraced the
whole money-market in or out of England. He valued, with a certainty
bordering on the marvellous, every name on the back of a bill. In the
panic year of 1790, the house only lost £50, when ruin swept away many of
the chief firms of England and abroad. At the beginning of the present
century, there was no house greater, or more universally esteemed; and
yet the end was tragic in the extreme. One morning in April, 1808,
Benjamin Goldsmid hung himself in his bed-room. In 1810, the elder
brother, Abraham, in conjunction with the house of Baring, embarked in a
government loan of £14,000,000. The business failed; the house of Baring
survived the crash; but Abraham Goldsmid shot himself when he found how
true it was that riches take to themselves wings, and fly away.
Here is a story of an alderman, extracted from _Maloniana_. When the
late Mr. Pitt, or Alderman Beckford, made a strong attack on the late Sir
William Baker, alderman of London, charging him with having made an
immense sum by a fraudulent contract, he got up very quietly, and gained
the House to his side by this short reply: “The honourable gentleman is a
great orator, and has made a long and serious charge against me. I am no
orator, and shall therefore only answer it in two words—Prove it.”
Having thus spoken, he sat down; but there was something in his tone and
manner that satisfied the House the charge was a calumny.
In 1736, there was—as I dare say there is now—an old Mr. Collier in the
City. He lived in Essex, and his daughter—as is generally the case with
rich City men—soon got married. It was thus the Rev. Dr. Taylor, of
Isleworth, in 1788, described the wedding;—“Old Mr. Collier was a very
vain man, who had made his fortune in the South Sea year: and having been
originally a merchant, was fond, alter he had retired to live upon his
fortune, of a great deal of display and parade. On his daughter’s
wedding, therefore, he invited nearly fifty persons, and got two or three
capital cooks from London to prepare a magnificent entertainment in
honour of the day. When other ceremonies had concluded, the young couple
were put to bed, and every one of the numerous assemblage came into the
room to make these congratulations to the father and mother, who sat up
in bed to receive them: ‘Madame, I wish you a very good-night. Sir, all
happiness to you, and a very good-night,’ and so on through the whole
party. My father, who hated all parade, but was forced to submit to the
old gentleman’s humour, must have been in a fine fume; and my mother, who
was then but seventeen or eighteen, sufficiently embarrassed.” It is as
well rich citizens don’t indulge in such a display on the occasion of a
marriage in the family in our time. I don’t fancy even a Lord Mayor,
however fond of antiquity, would feel himself justified in attempting
anything so ridiculous now. But then it was the fashion for a well-bred
youth to address his father as “honoured sir,” and not as now, as
“governor.”
Another money-making family was that of the Hopes, originally from
Holland. “Mr. William Hope,” says old Captain Gronow, “inherited, on
coming of age, £40,000 a-year. He exhibited, alternately, extreme
recklessness in expenditure, and the stinginess of a miser. He would one
day spend thousands of pounds on a ball or supper, and then keep his
servants for days on cold meat and stale bread. His large fortune
enabled him to give the most splendid entertainments to the _beau monde_
of Paris. At his balls and parties all the notables of the day were to
be seen, and no expense was spared to make them the most sumptuous
entertainments then given. It was his custom, when the invitations were
issued, not to open any letters till the party was over, to save him the
mortification of refusing those who had not been invited.”
If we are to believe the great poet, who mostly spent his life in London,
and whose name still graces a street very much reduced from what it was
in his day, Mammon-worship must have a very bad moral effect, for Mammon
was the least erected spirit that fell from heaven; and even there we are
told—
“His looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beautiful.”
Nevertheless, some of Mammon’s worshippers have found time and money for
better things, and have consecrated their wealth to noble ends. In Roman
Catholic times this was to be expected. A princely bequest, at the
dictation of the priest, was a fitting atonement for ill-gotten wealth or
an ill-spent life; but Protestantism has been equally conspicuous—and, it
is to be believed, from better motives—for good works, and that charity
which covereth a multitude of sins. In illustration of this, there is,
perhaps, no brighter name than that of Joseph Hardcastle, of whom it is
well known that, amid all his varied and extensive engagements, he
maintained a character for spotless honour and unsullied integrity, which
even calumny itself never ventured to assail. To him, from the very
outset, belonged the reputation of the English merchant of the old
school, and years served only to augment that weight of character which
he bore on the Exchange, as well as in the missionary and other
societies. He was one of the founders of the Sierra Leone Company, along
with Wilberforce and Thornton. Also he was treasurer of the Missionary
Society. In 1799, the Religions Tract Society was founded under his
roof. And at his offices, Old Swan Stairs, the Bible Society was first
launched into existence. The Hibernian Society and the Village Itinerary
Society were aided by his purse and presence. Of the latter society he
was treasurer sixteen years. As he came of an old Nonconformist
stock—one of his ancestors was an ejected clergyman—Mr. Hardcastle, who
lived mainly at Hatcham, was buried in Bunhill Fields.
In Plough Court, Lombard Street, there was a firm well-known and highly
respected. It was a firm long remarkable for the extraordinary
philanthropic activity of its practices, and for the excellence of its
chemicals. Mr. Allen, the senior partner, was a lecturer in chemistry at
Guy’s Hospital, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a personal and intimate
friend of the Duke of Kent, the Duke of Sussex, Lord Brougham, Sir Fowell
Buxton, the Gurneys, Thomas Clarckson, and many other of the leading
philanthropic and public characters of the past generation. He was also
a minister among the Quakers, and a prime mover in founding a host of
schools, asylums, and benevolent institutions. Another partner in the
firm was the late Luke Ronard, F.R.S., the eminent meteorologist, who was
also a preacher among the Quakers till the last portion of his life, when
he joined the communion of the Plymouth Brethren, with whom also he was
an active labourer in good efforts of various kinds. A third partner of
the firm was the late Mr. John Thomas, who, after his very accurate and
skilful scientific researches had gained him a competency, retired from
business, and devoted the remainder of his life to an extraordinary
series of efforts, in conjunction with Mr. William Ewart, M.P., Mr.
Barret Lennard, M.P., Mr. John Sydney Taylor, the editor of the _Morning
Herald_, the Right Hon. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., and the late Mr.
Peter Bedford, of Croydon, for the removal of the punishment of death
from the numerous offences, some of them very trivial, for which it was
at one time inflicted. A writer in the _Sunday at Home_, in the year
1866, remarks, that it is no exaggeration to say, that the splendid
triumphs of mercy, which have rendered the reign of King William IV. for
ever illustrious in history, were, either directly or indirectly, largely
owing to the strenuous, continuous, and truly wonderful labours of Mr.
Barry and this small group of his philanthropic coadjutors. Such were
the partners in the firm at Plough Court, a house frequented by all
classes of men—by princes of the blood-royal, by peers and statesmen, by
scientific discoverers and professors, by missionaries and preachers, by
schoolmasters and authors, by reformed criminals and escaped slaves. It
became a centre of conference and movement for much of the metropolitan
philanthropy during the reigns of George IV. and William IV.
It is to the credit of the City that some of these money-making men have
been amongst the most earnest supporters of every religious and
philanthropic enterprise. Here we get a pleasant glimpse of one of them.
Heard writes to Wilberforce, in 1790, of the death of John Thornton:—“He
was allied to me by relationship and family connection. His character is
so well known that it is scarcely necessary to attempt its delineation.
It may be useful, however, to state, that it was by living with great
simplicity of intention and conduct in the practice of Christian life,
more than of any superiority of understanding or of knowledge, that he
rendered his name illustrious in the view of all the respectable part of
his contemporaries. He had a counting-house in London, and a handsome
villa at Clapham. He anticipated the disposition and pursuits of the
succeeding generation. He devoted large sums annually to charitable
purposes, especially to the promotion of the cause of religion, both in
his own and other countries. He assisted many clergymen, enabling them
to live in comfort, and to practise a useful hospitality. His personal
habits were remarkably simple. His dinner-hour was two o’clock; he
generally attended public worship at some church or Episcopalian chapel
several evenings in the week, and would often sit up to a late hour in
his own study, at the top of the house, engaged in religious exercises.
He died without a groan or a struggle, and in the full view of glory.
Oh, may my end be like his!” He was the Sir James Stephen in the
_Edinburgh Review_ for 1844, “a merchant renowned in his generation for a
munificence more than princely.” Mr. Thornton was an Episcopalian, and
it was owing to him that the venerable John Newton became pastor of St.
Mary Woolnoth. His benevolence was as unsectarian as his general habits;
and he stood ready, said Mr. Cecil, to assist a beneficent design in any
party, but would be the creature of none. It was thus he was mainly
instrumental in founding, and supporting for a while, a Dissenting
academy at Newport-Pagnell, which was placed under the care of the Rev.
Josiah Bull. Also he extended his patronage and pecuniary assistance to
the institution at Marlborough, under the direction of the Rev. Cornelius
Winter, and was thus brought into connection with Mr. Jay, towards whose
support he contributed while passing through his academic course. Mr.
Thornton spent myriads of pounds in the purchase of livings for
evangelical preachers, in the erection and in enlargement of places of
worship, both in the Church of England and among Dissenters, in sending
out Bibles and religions books by his ships to various parts of the
world, and in numerous other ways. Nor was his beneficence exclusively
confined to religious objects. Mr. Newton says—“Mr. Bull told my father,
that while he (Mr. Newton) was at Olney, he had received from Mr.
Thornton more than £2,000 for the poor of that place. He not only,”
continued Mr. Bull, “gave largely, but he gave wisely. He kept a regular
account—not for ostentation, or the gratification of vanity, but for
method—of every pound he gave in a ledger, which he once showed me. I
was then a boy, and, I remarked, on every page was an appropriate text.
With him giving was a matter of business.” Cowper, in an elegy he wrote
upon him, said truly—
“Thou hadst an interest in doing good,
Restless as his who toils and sweats for food.”
It is needless to add that he lived at Clapham, and had Wilberforce for a
nephew. His son, Henry Thornton, M.P. for Southwark, followed in his
father’s steps to a certain extent. One day, when he was at Bath, he
desired Jay to bring with him Foster, the essayist, to dinner. The
attempt was a failure. Jay writes—“Mortifyingly he (Foster) again showed
his indisposition to talk; and our most excellent entertainer was not
much favoured to make his company easy and free and communicative, for
his manner was particularly cold, distant, and reserved. Foster said—yet
I think very untruly—that he sat as if he had a bag of money under his
arm; but at this time Mr. Foster had a silly kind of prejudice against
persons of affluence, however their wealth had been obtained.”
Let us recall the memory of Mr. John Poynder. As an East Indian
proprietor he spoke much in favour of the abolition of Sutteeism, and
against the monstrous tax arising from the idolatrous worship of
Juggernaut. His publications were numerous, and chiefly on religious
subjects—the evangelisation of our East Indian dominions, the paganism of
popery, the sanctification of the Lord’s day. He was a staunch Tory and
churchman; “but,” writes Jay, of Bath, “never was there a warmer advocate
of evangelical truth and the doctrines of the Reformation; never was
there a more determined enemy to popery and its half-sister, Puseyism;
never did man more strive to serve his generation by the will of God.” A
name that should be dear to Dissenters is that of Mr. William Coward, who
was the friend of Doddridge, and who supplied the funds for his college
for the training of Congregational ministers, first at Daventry, and
afterwards at Wymondley, and now in Torrington Square, when the students
were entered at University College. Coward College is now incorporated
in the New College, St. John’s Wood. Mr. Coward was rather an eccentric
in 1732, Dr. Jennings first intimated Mr. Coward’s idea to Doddridge, and
recommended him not to comply with Mr. Coward’s idea to come and live at
Walthamstow, where the latter lived; adding, “that the likeliest way to
keep it in the worthy old gentleman’s good graces, is perhaps, not to be
quite so near him.” In a note, the editor of the Doddridge
correspondence adds—“William Coward, Esq., was a zealous Nonconformist,
having accumulated a large fortune as a merchant. It may be said,” adds
the editor, “that Mr. Coward still continues a generous benefactor to the
cause of Nonconformity, as he left about £20,000, the interest of which
is, in accordance with the provisions of his will, distributed in its
service by four trustees, whose number must always be maintained, and who
have hitherto conducted their important duties with so much propriety
that their conduct has not in any instance been questioned.” Mr. Coward
seems to have defrayed the expenses of a volume of sermons published by
Dr. Doddridge. Mr. Coward had a will of his own, and some of his
regulations may seem to us not a little whimsical. One was to receive no
guest at his mansion after the hour of eight. The Rev. Hugh Farmer had a
comical experience of this when, about that hour, he knocked for
admission in vain. Mr. Farmer, after repeated raps at the floor, began
to feel uncomfortable. While involved in this dilemma he was observed by
a footman of Mr. Snell’s, who was passing near on his way home, and who
reported to his master that a strange gentleman was trying to gain
admittance at Mr. Coward’s beyond the hour. The hospitable Mr. Snell
immediately sent to say that his door was open; and from that evening the
celebrated Mr. Farmer—he was a favourite pupil of Dodderidge, and was
thought in many respects to resemble him—became a permanent member of Mr.
Snell’s family circle. Mr. Coward seems to have had a keen eye for
orthodoxy, and complained of Dr. Watts that he was a Baxterian. He is
also reported as growing cold to Dr. Guyse and Dr. Jennings, and falling
most passionately in love with Dr. Taylor. Mr. Coward seems to have died
in 1738. In 1818, there was a wealthy stock-broker—the late Mr. Thomas
Thompson, of Pondsfort Park, who was deeply grieved with the destitute
condition of the seamen in the port of London. In the February of that
year a meeting on the subject was held in the London Tavern, to form a
provisional committee to purchase and prepare a ship. At a subsequent
meeting, it was announced that the _Speedy_, an old sloop-of-war, had
been purchased of the government, and fitted up at a cost of nearly
£3,000, to seat 750 hearers. The opening services on board the floating
chapel were held on May 4th, when three sermons were preached—that in the
morning by the Rev. Rowland Hill. Mr. Thompson called on the reverend
gentleman, stated the neglected condition of sailors, and the plans in
contemplation, and begged him to consent to preach the opening sermon on
board the floating chapel. Mr. Hill heard all, rang the bell in silence,
and his old servant appeared. “John,” he said, “fetch my pocket-book.”
Mrs. Hill, who had hitherto been a quiet listener, now interposed,
asserting that his engagements were already too numerous, and that he
would wear himself out. Stroking his chin and shaking his head, with his
characteristic habit, he replied, “My dear, I must preach for poor Jack.”
Thus was the first floating chapel for sailors happily launched, and the
Port of London Society for the Spiritual Benefit of Sailors brought into
active operation. To the ship, and the general objects of the society,
Mr. Smith contributed, from first to last, about £3,000. Another
society, called into existence by Mr. Thompson’s activity and Christian
devotedness and liberality, was the Home Missionary Society, which was
inaugurated at the London Tavern on August 11th, 1819. At that time Mr.
Thompson resided at Brixton Hill, and on week-day evenings held religious
meetings amongst the neglected poor of that district and of Streatham.
Gas-lights and police being then unknown, Mr. Thompson’s family were
thankful when he came home from these charitable peregrinations safe and
sound. It must be remarked here that Mr. Thompson was one of the
founders, in 1827, of the Merchant Seamen’s Orphan Asylum. The first
election was for five boys only, but it soon became a large and
flourishing institution. Though a Dissenter, the Pastoral Aid and
Special Services Aid Societies owed him much. As his daughter truly
writes of him—“Mr. Thompson was one of those who helped to mould the
benevolent character of the age in which he lived.”
Another name, well known in religious circles, was that of the late Mr.
Thomas Wilson, who was the first to begin chapel-building on a large
scale in London. Even in our more ostentatious day, Mr. Wilson’s
charities would be considered princely.
And here, for the present, we take leave of the Christian merchant
princes of London—the righteous men who possibly may have preserved it
from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
In the great mediæval cities of the continent, it was the men who had
made money by trade who were the first to spend it liberally for the
promotion of art, and the benefit of charity and religion. It has been
so in London. Our Norman barons, our men with pedigrees running up to
the time of the Conqueror, have done little for the welfare of the
people, compared with the men of humble birth, who, as they have grown in
wealth, have also grown in their estimate of its power to help those
lower in the social scale than themselves.