_PARKSIDE._
On the evening of Tuesday, the 10th of April 1878, as at the close of
many a previous day, the hundreds of industrious workers in the Hope
Park establishment welcomed the return of the hour of rest. The whirr of
the busy machinery was stilled, and the buildings were left untenanted
till the toilers with brain and hand should resume the work of a new
day. The site to which the works had been transferred from the Castle
Hill thirty-five years before was now crowded to its utmost limits with
the warehouses, engine and work rooms of the prosperous firm. Everything
seemed to give assurance of continuous success. Yet the workers were
then leaving for the last time. Within a few hours the building was a
pile of smoking ruins. The circumstances of this calamitous event were
thus concisely narrated by William Nelson in response to a letter of
sympathy: “In reference to the destruction of our printing and
publishing works at Hope Park, never did fire do its work more speedily
or more thoroughly. It broke out about three o’clock on the morning of
Wednesday, the 10th inst., and in little more than an hour the whole
building was in flames. I was aroused about a quarter past four, and I
hurried as fast as I could to the scene; but I found when I arrived that
the roof all round had fallen in, and that flames were bursting forth
from all the windows in the very front of the building. The fire broke
out somewhere in the back part of it; there was a strong east wind
blowing at the time, and this fanned the flames and made them rush along
the various flats as they successively caught fire with extraordinary
rapidity. Not a book or sheet of printed paper was saved!”
The calamity seemed to be overwhelming. The splendid results of
intelligent industry and rare aptitude for business had vanished, like
the gourd of Jonah, in a night. The insurance on the buildings was
trifling compared with the amount of property destroyed. But his
brother’s comment on being shown the above letter reveals a
characteristic trait of William’s sympathetic and unselfish nature.
“Willie’s letter about the fire recalls very distinctly that terrible
morning. Poor fellow! it was most touching to see him come up to me
before all the people and hold out his hand and say, ‘O Tom, I am so
sorry for you.’ He did not speak or seem to think of himself at all.”
An onlooker has preserved this little, appreciative incident: “A few of
the girls who worked in the establishment were noticed standing together
and weeping bitterly, when one of them, looking up, was overheard to
say, as she saw Mr. William Nelson surveying the conflagration, ‘Eh,
there’s our dear maister. I’m thinking he’ll be thinking mair o’ us the
day than o’ himsel’.’” The remark was abundantly justified; for a friend
who was near him noted that his first thoughts were of sympathy for the
work-people who would be thrown out of employment; and the feeling found
practical form in his exertions on their behalf. This was characteristic
of the spirit that animated him in all his relations with his
work-people, and which helped to make of him an example of the very
highest type of the true captains of industry. “The liberal deviseth
liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.”
The Rev. Dr. Alison, the clergyman of Newington parish, in which the
Hope Park works were situated, remarked, when paying a just tribute to
his memory: “I have often had occasion to remark, in visiting employés
of the firm pastorally, as well as in my intercourse with heads of
departments, how beautifully the idea of the Christian employer seemed
to have been realized in him. The affectionate terms in which he was
always spoken of were obviously the natural return for the fairness,
consideration, and generosity for which he had become known. Being more
than a payer of wages, he got more than hirelings’ service. He was a
member of another outward communion; but there is a unity of spiritual
life that ignores outward separations. There is a Church which includes
the faithful of all churches.” To one so unselfish, it was almost
inevitable that he should realize keenly the sufferings which his own
great loss must inflict on others; and this very sympathy was his own
best protection against the blow. Nevertheless, the equanimity displayed
under such trying circumstances was peculiarly notable in one whose
emotional sensibilities were intense. The same calm composure was
characteristic of him under any imposition or personal wrong, if
practised on him by a stranger. It was indeed a common saying that
nothing could anger him. One who knew him well writes: “He had a rare
power of keeping his temper. I never saw him angry. I never heard him
utter a harsh word, except to reprobate some mean or unworthy action.
The only hard words I can recall were in denouncing the conduct of one
whom he had regarded as a friend, and who had grossly abused his
misplaced confidence.” But his equanimity gave way when during the
conflagration, in which it seemed as if the work of a life-time was
being destroyed, some one asked him if he did not suspect it to be the
work of an incendiary. The passionate emotion with which he resented the
suggestion showed how keenly he was moved by the possibility that any
one could be found capable of entertaining the thought of such a
dastardly purpose.
The loss which the fire involved amounted to little short of £100,000;
but Mr. Nelson, in describing the event in a letter to a friend, added:
“I am happy, however, to state that our stereotype plates and our
wood-cuts and electrotypes are all to the fore, they having been in two
strong stone-built safes alongside a part of the back wall of the
building, and though covered with masses of burning timber, etc., they
escaped quite uninjured. With all this valuable property intact, and it
forming the back-bone of our business, we will ere long be able to rear
our heads again as publishers; there being no difficulty in getting all
the printing and bookbinding done that we will require in various
offices in town here and in London. In the meantime the _débris_ of the
old building is being cleared away rapidly, and a new Hope Park will
by-and-by appear on the site of the old one.”
The new Hope Park did not, however, rise from the ashes of the old. The
energy of its originators was indeed unabated. While William Nelson was
contemplating, amid its smoking ruins, the suffering to be entailed on
their hundreds of work-people, his brother was telegraphing to London,
Paris, and other centres of industry, ordering fresh printing-presses
and all other newest machinery to replace what had perished. By the
favour of the city authorities temporary buildings were erected on the
neighbouring Meadows. As the new machinery arrived it was set up under
what was designed for mere temporary shelter at Parkside, on the
outskirts of St. Leonard’s Hill. But speedily the superior advantages of
the new site, and the arrangement of the works over an extended area,
instead of occupying successive floors of a quadrangle, became so
manifest that the Parkside Works were completed, with an effective
architectural façade in the favourite Scottish style of the sixteenth
century. Hope Park was accordingly finally abandoned; but a graceful
memorial of the old works remains. When bidding good-bye to the site,
two beautiful pillars--the one surmounted by the lion and the other by
the unicorn--were erected at the cost of the two brothers, at the
eastern entrance to the Meadows, as their acknowledgment to the city of
the timely favour extended to them in their hour of need.
It was while the prosperous career of the great publishing firm was
arrested by this disastrous event that a more dire calamity extended its
effects far and wide. A leading Edinburgh publisher, writing to me
shortly after the death of William Nelson, remarked: “I need not say to
you what a true, large-hearted man he was. Do you remember when their
printing-house was totally destroyed, and one would have thought his own
immense losses would have frozen his sympathy for other sufferers? Yet
he was one of the earliest subscribers of £1,000 to the victims of the
Glasgow Bank; and so far did his kindly nature long to help them, he
even refused at first to discountenance the project of a state lottery
on their behalf!” Their sufferings had been brought home to him in the
most moving form. A letter found among his papers after his death,
endorsed in touching simplicity, “Poor fellow!” is the plea of an old
schoolmate for failing to appear at a High School anniversary dinner. “I
have to ask you to accept my apology,” he writes, “which you will
readily do when I mention that I am one of the unfortunate victims of
the City of Glasgow Bank; and _to-day_ I have received the liquidator’s
final call for payment on the 22nd inst., which, I fear, will be total
ruin to me.”
William Nelson’s local associations were strong; they attached him with
passionate love to his native city. Its very stones were dear to him.
Every nook and corner of it associated with his own early years, with
school and schoolmates, or with the later incidents of his business
career, retained a hold on his sympathies. “I send you a photograph of
Edinburgh from the Castle,” he writes to an old friend beyond the
Atlantic, “that it may keep you in mind of the dear old city.” Hence the
abrupt close of the Hope Park epoch, and the transfer to the new
quarters at Parkside, awoke feelings wholly apart from those which the
pecuniary loss involved. The sense of strangeness in the new locality is
noticeable in more than one of his private memoranda, as in the
following record of time and place: “This is the first memorandum I have
written in the new room in Parkside. I came to it at a quarter to eleven
o’clock on Friday, July 16, 1880. Dr. and Mrs. Wilson are at present
staying with us.” Curiously, it is not till upwards of two years later
that the memorandum occurs of the kindling of the Parkside hearth, thus:
“Fire lighted in grate in my room here for the first time, November 13,
1882.”
There Mr. Nelson had to be visited to see how promptly and skilfully he
administered the affairs of the great printing and publishing business
which he had developed into such proportions; and, happily, notes
furnished by an authoress, who did considerable literary work for the
firm in those later years, enable us to catch a glimpse of him in
business hours. “My first visit to his office,” she writes, “was, I
think, in the spring of 1883. Several persons were in attendance,
waiting for orders or interviews. Owing to this circumstance, and my
having formed the impression that Mr. Nelson was a very formidable sort
of a man to approach, I made my proposals in an abrupt and hurried
manner. I was by no means surprised at a hasty, ‘No, no; quite
unnecessary at present,’ and made my retreat at once. But as I was
passing out, he turned from another to whom he had given some
instructions in an equally concise fashion, and rising suddenly from his
chair with some apologetic words, he inquired what I had published, and
then said, ‘I have been wishing to see you.’ After this we had a long,
pleasant chat, and he at once explained to me certain literary work that
he wished me to undertake. This was my introduction to him. I went to
him a stranger, but though my acquaintance with him was only of some
four years’ duration, and was mostly a business acquaintance, I soon
learned to regard him as a friend. The kindness and encouragement he
gave helped me greatly, because it was not the mere kindness of a ‘big’
publisher to a ‘little’ author. He was always business-like in insisting
that the work done should be just as he liked it. There could be no
‘scamping’ work under his keen eyes. But he took infinite trouble in
procuring books of reference and helping my work, and was most generous
in all his dealings. On one occasion, after having undertaken some work,
and having given him much trouble regarding books of reference, I found
the task beyond me, and had to tell him so. I expected a scolding, and
instead received a cheque ‘in payment for what you have done of the
book.’ What I had done was merely to indicate the lines upon which the
book might run. A fortnight before his death he sent me a copy of the
book I ‘was to have written,’ with a very kind note, which I value much.
The publisher’s office is a terrible place to a not-confident
lady-writer. Sometimes I have had to wait while Mr. Nelson was
‘interviewing,’ directing, correcting, and so forth; and my courage has
not been strengthened by the spectacle of faulty work being overhauled
in a most careful manner, and ruthlessly condemned or sharply
criticised. Yet I have always gone out of that office with a light
heart. Some kindly word about my children or my old home, some chat
about the foreign lands he had visited, the gift of a book, a fatherly
caution ‘not to work too much’--these made me feel that Mr. Nelson took
his large heart into the publisher’s office. Would that all publishers
did like him.”
But the critical sharpness, and the abrupt manner of the man of
business, preoccupied with the responsibilities of so large an
establishment with endless claims on its directing head, all disappeared
so soon as he had satisfied himself that his instructions were being
rightly carried out. The new Parkside Works were within easy distance
of Salisbury Green; and the claimants on his ever-ready charity speedily
learned to know the time when he could be waylaid in his walk to or from
the counting-room, and beguiled with a piteous tale. Mr. Gray, for many
years the faithful head of the financial department, thus writes: “To
old servants in the works he opened his purse freely. Women who had been
employed in early days at the Castle Hill were held by him in special
favour, and I have often seen him give them a pound note, sometimes when
it was doubtful if they would make the best use of it. The plea that
they had worked at one time at Hope Park was a frequent claim of
beggars; and many is the silver piece that has been given away to such
folks. One adept at begging came to him, her tatters soaked and leaky
slippers dripping with rain. She told a piteous tale, and pleaded she
was the widow of a machineman in the firm’s employment thirty years
before. The plea was irresistible; but the voluble manner in which the
woman overacted her part aroused his suspicions after he had responded
to her appeal. ‘What sort of a man was your husband?’ asked he. ‘Oh, a
good, a very good man!’ ‘Ay; was he tall or short?--as tall as that
man?’ pointing to a man about six feet high who had just entered. ‘Yes!’
responded the woman, ‘he was a braw, tall man.’ ‘Give me back the
money!’ he exclaimed with unwonted severity of tone, as he recalled the
fact that the old machinist was much below the ordinary stature; and the
impostor was ordered to the door.”
His unstinted liberality in all philanthropic and missionary work was
wholly unaffected by denominational or party limits; and hence he was
liable to be preyed upon by genteel foreigners claiming to be in
temporary pecuniary distress, and still more by clerical impostors. When
he had reason to think he was imposed upon, he would search into the
matter with the utmost keenness; though rather, as it seemed, with a
desire to satisfy himself of the truth, than with any purpose of
stinting his liberality in the future.
One morning, as the family sat at breakfast, a servant came into the
room, and alarmed Mrs. Nelson by whispering to her that there were two
detectives at the door who wished to see her. Her manner must have
betrayed her apprehensions, for one of them laughed and said, “Don’t be
frightened, Mrs. Nelson; we have only come to ask you to use your
influence with your husband, and try to get Mr. Nelson to give up giving
money to respectable-looking beggars. There is a register kept by a man
in the High Street of all the ‘giving people’ in Edinburgh. That is the
first resort of this class of beggars. By paying half-a-crown, they are
allowed to take a note of the names and addresses, and Mr. Nelson’s
stands at the head of the list!” He undertook to look more sharply
after the smooth-tongued gentry in black, though, it is to be feared,
with only partial success. He manifested a sensitive repugnance to
wealthy people whose riches were of no use to any one but themselves;
but he protested, to the amusement of his friends, that he strongly
disapproved of promiscuous charity. He had his own rules of action. A
maimed or deformed person, the blind, the deaf-mute, or any one
incapacitated in the struggle for life, he conceived could never be
wrongly helped. A poor widow, an old employé, or the widow or orphan of
any of his old work-people, had an irresistible claim on his liberality;
and other pleas were readily forthcoming to justify the deed of charity
to his conscience. But he took pains to search out genuine objects of
commiseration; and many of his charities were unknown even to members of
his own family. One Saturday afternoon, when walking home with Mrs.
Nelson, he asked her to wait while he went in to a humble dwelling. When
interrogated as to the object of his visit, it was ascertained that he
had been giving a poor widow money to pay her rent; and on further
inquiry it turned out that he had been paying it regularly for years.
Nor was this a solitary case, as became known when death closed the
liberal hand that had so often made the widow’s heart leap for joy.
Charity was in him a spontaneous impulse of kindly sympathy which,
while exercised not only unobtrusively but with a sensitive shrinking
from recognition, was carried out on too great a scale to escape
observation. The difficulty of his biographer is to select from the
varied instances at his disposal. “I saw him once,” writes a lady, “as
he was walking along Clerk Street, pause at a confectioner’s window,
where a poor little ragged urchin was standing gazing wistfully at the
cakes inside. One kindly hand was laid on the boy’s shoulder; the other
took a silver piece from his pocket. A few words were spoken, and Mr.
Nelson passed on, while the boy darted into the shop; and I had the
pleasure of seeing him come out a moment later already devouring one of
the cookies of which he had become the delighted possessor.” He was
never known to refer to such acts. They were, indeed, of too frequent
occurrence to seem to him worthy of note. The poor and needy had learned
to regard him as their unfailing resort; and if his charity was abused,
he would say in reply to prudent remonstrants that it was better a few
impostors should succeed, than one genuine claim be rejected.
The traders on his benevolence were wont, as already noted, to watch for
him on his way to Parkside; and Mr. Gray notes of such claimants: “Mr.
Nelson would sometimes say to me, ‘The printing trade must be in a
dreadful state,’ for in his walk thither he had been met by
half-a-dozen printers pleading for help. He inquired at times into the
state of the trade, with the view, I suppose, to guide him in his
charities; for it offended his guileless trustfulness in others to find
he had been imposed upon, though it never led to any stint in his
liberality.” Another who had been many years in his service writes: “He
had an almost child-like confidence in some folks; but if his suspicions
were once aroused as to anything wrong, he ferreted out the matter to
the bottom, and in case of any betrayal of trust, he would speak of it
with a keen sense of wrong. But if you responded with any denunciation
of the offender, his manner changed, and he generally found some apology
or some reason for pitying the delinquent. Nor did the fact that a
claimant had wronged him affect his consideration of the case if it
proved to be a necessitous one, especially if he had a wife and
children.” When an action was raised by the contracting engineer who
undertook the repairs of the machinery, against the widow of his
predecessor, to enforce the completion of some work for which her late
husband had been responsible, William Nelson opposed it, declaring that
no good ever came of prosecuting a widow, and he ultimately repaid £130
of law expenses incurred in the suit.
Under the system which such a spirit naturally developed, the relation
between master and servants assumed a very different aspect from that
of the mere hireling. The workers in his employment cordially
sympathized in his success, and took a pride in contributing to the
prosperity of the firm. A gentleman, whose intimate relations with it
for many years made him familiar with its internal economy, thus writes:
“The claims of his own work-people at Hope Park or Parkside were never
disregarded. He had, as the firm still has, a host of pensioners: aged
employés, and the widows and children of former workmen, who were mainly
dependent on his charity for their daily bread. Groups of them, or of
their representatives, still assemble in the entrance hall at Parkside
on the pay-day, by whom his name is revered. They tell their own tale of
satisfaction and gratitude.” The charity which thus began at home did
not end there. The difficulty, indeed, is to select from the examples
communicated to me. One characteristic instance I owe to a
fellow-traveller, who found himself in company with William Nelson in an
Italian town during a festive season. It was a scene of holiday
rejoicings; but it did not escape Mr. Nelson’s notice that while the
mass of the people were enjoying themselves, there were a number of
uncared-for poor whose misery was made the more apparent by the festive
scenes that surrounded them. This so impressed him that he forthwith
made arrangements with a hosteller for the entertainment of the ragged
lazaroni. Another gentleman who passed some weeks with him at one of the
German spas tells this story:--“At the little English church there was a
clergyman stationed, entirely dependent on the freewill offerings of the
ever-changing congregation. There were no resident members to act as
churchwardens or vestrymen; so, after the service, the poor clergyman
himself went round and collected the offertory. This was too much for
Mr. Nelson. He volunteered his services, which were accepted. To the
clergyman’s agreeable surprise, the collection increased amazingly; and
he only learned where the increase came from by a return to the old
scale after Mr. Nelson’s departure.”
It was a curious study to note the guilelessness and child-like
simplicity which William Nelson retained unchanged to the close of his
life, along with rare shrewdness and sagacity as a man of business.
Whenever any transaction assumed a business aspect, however trifling
might be the amount involved, he was prompt, clear-sighted, and acute,
detecting and with quiet firmness resisting any attempt at overreaching
or fraud. On one occasion, when I was his fellow-traveller, a knavish
newsboy to whom he had intrusted a sixpence decamped without returning
the change. This breach of faith provoked a display of indignation so
entirely disproportionate to the value of the loss, as obviously
suggested to our wondering fellow-travellers in the railway carriage
that they witnessed another Shylock bemoaning his lost ducats. They
little knew that the rogue, by the invention of a pitiful tale, might
have transmuted the stolen coppers into gold. This transparent
naturalness of character revealed itself equally in his intercourse with
high and low. Alike at home and abroad he was often brought into
familiar relations with men of rank and distinction, and his engaging
manners and wide culture made him a welcome addition to any company. But
there was no change in his manner towards the nobleman or the skilled
artisan. An old friend notes of him what many will recall:--“Reverence
was part of his nature. However intimate he might be with a friend, he
scarcely ever addressed him, personally or by letter, except by full
name as Mr. or Dr.; and it was the same with his own employés. The Dick
or Tom of his fellows in the workroom was Richard or Thomas, if not
Mr. ----, when spoken to by him.” His circle of friends included men of
the most dissimilar social positions; and his intercourse with some of
his old workmen whose integrity and worth had been proved by long
experience was of the most intimate and confidential nature. No wonder
that he was faithfully served. He practically demonstrated his belief
that,--
“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.”
He entertained at his table the publishers, booksellers, and others with
whom he had business relations. Mr. David Douglas thus notes his
recollections of him and of his kindly hospitalities: “He was the one to
whom any of us would have gone in difficulties or doubtful trade
questions, feeling sure that he would not only give sound advice but
kindly sympathy. Many such cases occur to me. He used to gather round
his table annually the various members of the printing and publishing
trades; and I used to admire his true hospitality in making every one,
from the youngest guest to the oldest, as much at home as possible,
gently drawing out their best stories, and exchanging with genial humour
some pleasant talk with all.” In his Saturday visits to the Castle of
Edinburgh in connection with his restorations, referred to in a
subsequent chapter, the most eminent archæologists, artists, and
literary men, along with his choice personal friends, responded to his
welcome invitations. At times the company included such distinguished
additions as Lord Rosebery or Lord Napier and Ettrick, who took a
special interest in the work. But it would never occur to him that any
spirit of social caste could influence such a gathering, and his own
list of friends always included some of his trusted workmen from
Parkside.
A lady whose services as an authoress brought her into frequent contact
with Mr. Nelson, after noting his liberality in all business
transactions with herself, adds a little incident of her personal
experience. His love of dogs has already been noted; but it might have
been assumed that however welcome their companionship might be at
Salisbury Green, the intrusion of stranger dogs into his room at
Parkside in business hours could hardly fail to be resented. Her own
experience, however, is thus narrated: “I had taken my dog with me one
morning; a large brown spaniel, Rover by name. He is not a general
favourite among my friends, being rather boisterous in his greetings, to
say nothing of his muddy paws in wet weather. His place therefore was
generally without, and his intrusion into Mr. Nelson’s room was
undesigned on my part. Contrary, however, to his usual experience, Rover
obtained a most cordial reception. A messenger was sent out for biscuits
for him; and I rarely afterwards received a note from Mr. Nelson asking
me to call which did not end with the invitation, ‘Please bring doggie
when you come.’ It was no wonder therefore that Rover soon learned to
feel himself at home there, and never willingly passed the door when we
walked in the direction of Parkside.” After noting acts of kindness and
liberality to herself, she thus proceeds: “My intercourse with Mr.
Nelson was only that of a business acquaintance, yet I can truly say,
when I saw him carried to his grave that September day, I felt that I
had lost a friend. And this, I am sure, was no rare feeling among those
thus brought into business relations with him. One trait often struck
me--the kindly manner in which he always spoke of his large staff, as
one name or another might come up in conversation. ‘The right man in the
right place,’ he would say, or some other hearty term of appreciation;
and it was evidently no taskmaster who was over them, but rather a sort
of patriarch dwelling among his own people, sure of their loyalty and
affection.”
Testimonies of a like kind have reached me from very diverse sources,
all pointing to kindly relationships between this true captain of
industry and his employés, such as seem, without exaggeration, to have
realized in these days of mere trading rivalry something akin to the
fealty of knightly service in the olden time. The golden rule of ever
doing the right was carried out with unconscious simplicity. Mr. Gray,
who, as cashier at Hope Park and Parkside, was familiar during many
years with all the financial details of the business, thus sums up his
testimony to the habitual business life of his old master and friend:
“He was eager to avoid anything that could possibly bear the aspect of
sharp practice, or allow the faintest breath of suspicion of unfairness
or shabby dealing; and his generous, large soul won for the place a
reputation of uprightness and honour.”