pleasing to him. He loved to polish the marble; the sight of the
numerous models was a pleasure to him; even wetting the cloths and
cleaning the model tools were pleasant tasks. His cheerfulness and
industry soon made him a favorite; and when his work was done, he
employed his leisure in gaining skill in carving and cutting marble. In
this he had such success, that, when in after life he became himself an
artist, he would sometimes execute his idea in marble without modeling
it in clay.
When he had been in this studio about a year, his employer was
commissioned to execute two colossal figures in bronze, and the young
man was obliged to spend much of his time in erecting the foundry, and
other duties which he felt to be foreign to his art. Impatient at this,
he resigned his place, and visited his home, where he executed medallion
portraits, first of his own relations, and afterwards of public men,
such as the Mayor of Bristol, and the member of Parliament for his
county. These medallions gave him some reputation, and it was a favorite
branch with him as long as he lived.
Returning to London, he had no difficulty in gaining employment at good
wages in a studio of a sculptor. Soon we find him competing for the
prizes offered by the Royal Academy of London to young sculptors; the
chief of which is a gold medal given every two years for the best group
in clay of an historical character. A silver medal is also given every
year for the best model from life.
At the exhibition of 1851, when he was twenty-four years of age, he was
a competitor for both these prizes. For the gold medal he executed a
group which he called Mercy interceding for the Vanquished. For the
silver medal he offered a bust of a living person. He had the singular
good fortune of winning both, and he received them in public from the
hands of the President of the Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake. Cheer upon
cheer greeted the modest student when he rose and went forward for the
purpose. He was a young man of great self-control. Instead of joining in
the usual festivities of his fellow-students after the award, he walked
quietly to his lodgings, where his father and brother were anxiously
waiting to hear the result of the competition. He threw himself into a
chair without a word, and they began to console him for the supposed
disappointment. In a few minutes they sat down to supper; whereupon,
with a knowing smile, he took his medals out of his pocket, and laid one
of them on each side of his plate.
From this time he had no difficulties except those inherent in the
nature of his work, and in his own constitution. His early struggle with
life had made him too intense. He had scarcely known what play was, and
he did not know how to recreate himself. He had little taste for reading
or society. He loved art alone. The consequence was that he worked with
an intensity and continuity that no human constitution could long
endure. Soon after winning his two medals his health was so completely
prostrated that he made a voyage to Australia to visit a brother who had
settled there. The voyage restored him, and he soon resumed the practice
of his art at Melbourne. The people were just building their Houses of
Parliament, and he was employed to execute the artistic work of the
interior. He lived many years in Australia, and filled the colony with
his works in marble and bronze.
In due time he made the tour of Europe, and lingered nine years in Rome,
where he labored with suicidal assiduity. He did far more manual labor
himself than is usual with artists of his standing, and yet, during his
residence in Rome he had twenty men in his service. It was in Rome, in
1876, that he received from Melbourne the commission to execute in
marble the four colossal statues mentioned above. These works he
completed in something less than eighteen months, besides doing several
other minor works previously ordered.
It was too much, and Nature resented the affront. After he had packed
the statues, and sent them on their way to the other side of the globe,
he set out for Melbourne himself, intending to take England by the way
for medical advice. At Paris he visited the Exhibition, and the next
day, at his hotel, he fell senseless to the floor. In three weeks he was
dead, at the age of fifty-one years, in the very midst of his career.
"For him," writes one of his friends, "life consisted of but one
thing--_art_. For that he lived; and, almost in the midst of it, died.
He could not have conceived existence without it. Always and under every
circumstance, he was thinking of his work, and gathering from whatever
surrounded him such information as he thought would prove of service.
In omnibuses, in railway carriages, and elsewhere, he found
opportunities of study, and could always reproduce a likeness from
memory of the individuals so observed."
I do not copy these words as commendation, but as warning. Like so many
other gifted men of this age, he lived too fast and attempted too much.
He died when his greatest and best life would naturally have been just
beginning. He died at the beginning of the period when the capacity for
high enjoyment of life is naturally the greatest. He died when he could
have ceased to be a manufacturer and become an artist.
WILLIAM B. ASTOR.
HOUSE-OWNER.
In estimating the character and merits of such a man as the late Mr.
Astor, we are apt to leave out of view the enormous harm he might have
done if he had chosen to do it.
The rich fool who tosses a dollar to a waiter for some trifling service,
debases the waiter, injures himself, and wrongs the public. By acting in
that manner in all the transactions of life, a rich man diffuses around
him an atmosphere of corruption, and raises the scale of expense to a
point which is oppressive to many, ruinous to some, and inconvenient to
all. The late Mr. Astor, with an income from invested property of nearly
two millions a year, could have made life more difficult than it was to
the whole body of people in New York who are able to live in a liberal
manner. He refrained from doing so. He paid for everything which he
consumed the market price--no more, no less--and he made his purchases
with prudence and forethought. As he lived for many years next door to
the Astor Library, the frequenters of that noble institution had an
opportunity of observing that he laid in his year's supply of coal in
the month of June, when coal is cheapest.
There was nothing which he so much abhorred as waste. It was both an
instinct and a principle with him to avoid waste. He did not have the
gas turned down low in a temporarily vacated room because he would save
two cents by doing so, but because he justly regarded waste as wicked.
His example in this particular, in a city so given to careless and
ostentatious profusion as New York, was most useful. We needed such an
example. Nor did he appear to carry this principle to an extreme. He was
very far from being miserly, though keenly intent upon accumulation.
In the life of the Old World there is nothing so shocking to a
republicanized mind as the awful contrast between the abodes of the poor
and the establishments of the rich. A magnificent park of a thousand
acres of the richest land set apart and walled in for the exclusive use
of one family, while all about it are the squalid hovels of the peasants
to whom the use of a single acre to a family would be ease and comfort,
is the most painful and shameful spectacle upon which the sun looks down
this day. Nothing can make it right. It is monstrous. It curses
_equally_ the few who ride in the park and the many who look over its
walls; for the great lord who can submit to be the agent of such
injustice is as much its victim as the degraded laborer who drowns the
sense of his misery in pot-house beer. The mere fact that the lord can
look upon such a scene and not stir to mend it, is proof positive of a
profound vulgarity.
Nor is it lords alone who thus waste the hard earned wealth of the
toiling sons of men. I read some time ago of a wedding in Paris. A
thriving banker there, who is styled the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild,
having a daughter of seventeen to marry, appears to have set seriously
to work to find out how much money a wedding could be made to cost. In
pursuing this inquiry, he caused the wedding festivals of Louis XIV's
court, once so famous, to seem poverty-stricken and threadbare. He began
by a burst of ostentatious charity. He subscribed money for the relief
of the victims of recent inundations, and dowered a number of
portionless girls; expending in these ways a quarter of a million
francs. He gave his daughter a portion of five millions of francs. One
of her painted fans cost five thousand francs. He provided such enormous
quantities of clothing for her little body, that his house, if it had
not been exceedingly large, would not have conveniently held them. For
the conveyance of the wedding party from the house to the synagogue, he
caused twenty-five magnificent carriages to be made, such as monarchs
use when they are going to be crowned, and these vehicles were drawn by
horses imported from England for the purpose. The bridal veil was
composed of ineffable lace, made from an original design expressly for
this bride.
And then what doings in the synagogue! A choir of one hundred and ten
trained voices, led by the best conductor in Europe--the first tenor of
this generation engaged, who sang the prayer from "Moses in Egypt"--a
crowd of rabbis, and assistant-rabbis, with the grand rabbi of Paris at
their head. To complete the histrionic performance, eight young girls,
each bearing a beautiful gold-embroidered bag, and attended by a young
gentleman, "took up a collection" for the poor, which yielded seven
thousand francs.
Mr. Astor could, if he had chosen, have thrown his millions about in
this style. He was one of a score or two of men in North America who
could have maintained establishments in town and country on the
dastardly scale so common among rich people in Europe. He, too, could
have had his park, his half a dozen mansions, his thirty carriages, his
hundred horses and his yacht as big as a man-of-war. That he was above
such atrocious vulgarity as this, was much to his credit and more to our
advantage. What he could have done safely, other men would have
attempted to whom the attempt would have been destruction. Some
discredit also would have been cast upon those who live in moderate and
modest ways.
Every quarter day Mr. Astor had nearly half a million dollars to invest
in the industries of the country. To invest his surplus income in the
best and safest manner was the study of his life. His business was to
take care of and increase his estate; and that _being_ his business, he
was right in giving the necessary attention to it. "William will never
make money," his father used to say; "but he will take good care of what
he has." And so it proved. The consequence was, that all his life he
invested money in the way that was at once best for himself and best for
the country. No useless or premature scheme had had any encouragement
from him. He invariably, and by a certainty of judgment that resembled
an instinct, "put his money where it would do most good." Political
economists demonstrate that an investment which is the best for the
investor must of necessity be the best for the public. Here, again, we
were lucky. When we wanted houses more than we wanted coal, he built
houses for us; and when we wanted coal more than we wanted houses, he
set his money to digging coal; charging nothing for his trouble but the
mere cost of his subsistence.
One fault he had as a public servant--for we may fairly regard in that
light a man who wields so large a portion of our common estate. He was
one of the most timid of men. He was even timorous. His timidity was
constitutional and physical. He would take a great deal of trouble to
avoid crossing a temporary bridge or scaffolding, though assured by an
engineer that it was strong enough to bear ten elephants. Nor can it be
said that he was morally brave. Year after year he saw a gang of thieves
in the City Hall stealing his revenues under the name of taxes and
assessments, but he never led an assault upon them nor gave the aid he
ought to those who did. Unless he is grossly belied, he preferred to
compromise than fight, and did not always disdain to court the ruffians
who plundered him.
This was a grave fault. He who had the most immediate and the most
obvious interest in exposing and resisting the scoundrels, ought to have
taken the lead in putting them down. This he could not do. Nature had
denied him the qualities required for such a contest. He had his
enormous estate, and he had mind enough to take care of it in ordinary
ways; but he had nothing more. We must therefore praise him less for the
good he did in his life, than for the evil which he refrained from
doing.
[Illustration: PETER COOPER.]
PETER COOPER.
On an April morning in 1883 I was seated at breakfast in a room which
commanded a view of the tall flag-staff in Gramercy Park in the city of
New York. I noticed some men unfolding the flag and raising it on the
mast. The flag stopped mid-way and dropped motionless in the still
spring morning. The newspapers which were scattered about the room made
no mention of the death of any person of note and yet this sign of
mourning needed no explanation. For half a lifetime Peter Cooper had
lived in a great, square, handsome house just round the corner, and the
condition of the aged philanthropist had been reported about the
neighborhood from hour to hour during the previous days; so that almost
every one who saw the flag uttered words similar to those which I heard
at the moment:--
"He is gone, then! The good old man is gone. We shall never see his
snowy locks again, nor his placid countenance, nor his old horse and gig
jogging by. Peter Cooper is dead!"
He had breathed his last about three o'clock that morning, after the
newspapers had gone to press; but the tidings spread with strange
rapidity. When I went out of the house two hours later, the whole city
seemed hung with flags at half-mast; for there is probably no city in
the world which has so much patriotic bunting at command as New York.
Passengers going north and west observed the same tokens of regard all
along the lines of railroad. By mid-day the great State of New York,
from the Narrows to the lakes, and from the lakes to the Pennsylvania
line, exhibited everywhere the same mark of respect for the character of
the departed. A tribute so sincere, so spontaneous and so universal, has
seldom been paid to a private individual.
It was richly deserved. Peter Cooper was a man quite out of the common
order even of good men. His munificent gift to the public, so strikingly
and widely useful, has somewhat veiled from public view his eminent
executive qualities, which were only less exceptional than his moral.
I once had the pleasure of hearing the story of his life related with
some minuteness by a member of his own family, now honorably conspicuous
in public life, and I will briefly repeat it here. More than ninety
years ago, when John Jacob Astor kept a fur store in Water Street, and
used to go round himself buying his furs of the Hudson River boatmen and
the western Indians, he had a neighbor who bought beaver skins of him,
and made them into hats in a little shop near by, in the same street.
This hat-maker, despite his peaceful occupation, was called by his
friends Captain Cooper, for he had been a good soldier of the
Revolution, and had retired, after honorable service to the very end of
the war, with a captain's rank. Captain Cooper was a better soldier than
man of business. Indeed, New York was then a town of but twenty-seven
thousand inhabitants, and the field for business was restricted. He was
an amiable, not very energetic man; but he had had the good fortune to
marry a woman who supplied all his deficiencies. The daughter of one of
the colonial mayors of New York, she was born on the very spot which is
now the site of St. Paul's Church at the corner of Broadway and Fulton
Street, and her memory ran back to the time when the stockade was still
standing which had been erected in the early day as a defense against
the Indians.
There is a vivid tradition in the surviving family of Peter Cooper of
the admirable traits of his mother. She was educated among the Moravians
in Pennsylvania, who have had particular success in forming and
developing the female character. She was a woman in whom were blended
the diverse qualities of her eminent son, energy and tenderness, mental
force and moral elevation. She was the mother of two daughters and seven
sons, her fifth child being Peter, who was born in 1791.
To the end of his life, Peter Cooper had a clear recollection of many
interesting events which occurred before the beginning of the present
century.
"I remember," he used to say, "that I was about nine years old at the
time when Washington was buried. That is, he was buried at Mount Vernon;
but we had a funeral service in old St. Paul's. I stood in front of the
church, and I recall the event well, on account of his old white horse
and its trappings."
A poor hatter, with a family of nine children, must needs turn his
children to account, and the consequence was that Peter Cooper enjoyed
an education which gave him at least great manual dexterity. He learned
how to use both his hands and a portion of his brain. He learned how to
do things. His earliest recollection was his working for his father in
pulling, picking, and cleaning the wool used in making hat-bodies, and
he was kept at this work during his whole boyhood, except that one year
he went to school half of every day, learning a little arithmetic, as
well as reading and writing. By the time he was fifteen years old he had
learned to make a good beaver hat throughout, and a good beaver hat of
that period was an elaborate and imposing structure.
Then his father abandoned his hat shop and removed to Peekskill on the
Hudson, where he set up a brewery, and where Peter learned the whole art
and mystery of making beer. He was quick to learn every kind of work,
and even as a boy he was apt to suggest improvements in tools and
methods. At the age of seventeen, he was still working in the brewery, a
poor man's son, and engaged in an employment which for many and good
reasons he disliked. Brewing beer is a repulsive occupation.
Then, with his father's consent, he came alone to New York, intending to
apprentice himself to any trade that should fake his fancy. He visited
shop after shop, and at last applied for employment at a carriage
factory near the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. He remembered,
to his ninetieth year, the substance of the conversation which passed
between him and one of the partners in this business.
"Have you room for an apprentice?" asked Peter.
"Do you know anything about the business?" was the rejoinder.
The lad was obliged to answer that he did not.
"Have you been brought up to work?"
He replied by giving a brief history of his previous life.
"Is your father willing that you should learn this trade?"
"He has given me my choice of trades."
"If I take you, will you stay with me and work out your time?"
He gave his word that he would, and a bargain was made--twenty-five
dollars a year, and his board. He kept his promise and served out his
time. To use his own language:--
"In my seventeenth year I entered as apprentice to the coach-making
business, in which I remained four years, till I became 'of age.' I made
for my employer a machine for mortising the hubs of carriages, which
proved very profitable to him, and was, perhaps, the first of its kind
used in this country. When I was twenty-one years old my employer
offered to build me a shop and set me up in business, but as I always
had a horror of being burdened with debt, and having no capital of my
own, I declined his kind offer. He himself became a bankrupt. I have
made it a rule to pay everything as I go. If, in the course of business,
anything is due from me to any one, and the money is not called for, I
make it my business oh the last Saturday before Christmas to take it to
his business place."
It was during this period of his life, from seventeen to twenty-one,
that he felt most painfully the defects of his education. He had
acquired manual skill, but he felt acutely that this quality alone was
rather that of a beaver than of a man. He had an inquisitive, energetic
understanding, which could not be content without knowledge far beyond
that of the most advanced beaver. Hungering for such knowledge, he
bought some books: but in those days there were few books of an
elementary kind adapted to the needs of a lonely, uninstructed boy. His
books puzzled more than they enlightened him; and so, when his work was
done, he looked about the little bustling city to see if there was not
some kind of evening school in which he could get the kind of help he
needed. There was nothing of the kind, either in New York or in any city
then. Nor were there free schools of any kind. He found a teacher,
however, who, for a small compensation, gave him instruction in the
evening in arithmetic and other branches. It was at this time that he
formed the resolution which he carried out forty-five years later. He
said to himself:--
"If ever I prosper in business so as to acquire more property than I
need, I will try to found an institution in the city of New York,
wherein apprentice boys and young mechanics shall have a chance to get
knowledge in the evening."
This purpose was not the dream of a sentimental youth. It was a clear
and positive intention, which he kept steadily in view through all
vicissitudes until he was able to enter upon its accomplishment.
He was twenty-one years of age when the war of 1812 began, which closed
for the time every carriage manufactory in the country. He was therefore
fortunate in not having accepted the proposition of his employer. During
the first months of the war business was dead; but as the supply of
foreign merchandise gave out an impulse was given to home manufacture,
especially of the fabrics used in clothing. There was a sudden demand
for cloth-making machinery of all kinds, and now Peter Cooper put to
good use his inventive faculty. He contrived a machine for cutting away
the nap on the surface of cloth, which answered so well that he soon had
a bustling shop for making the machines, which he sold faster than he
could produce. He found himself all at once in an excellent business,
and in December, 1813, he married Miss Sarah Bedel of Hempstead, Long
Island; he being then twenty-two and she twenty-one.
There never was a happier marriage than this. To old age, he never sat
near her without holding her hand in his. He never spoke to her nor of
her without some tender epithet. He attributed the great happiness of
his life and most of his success to her admirable qualities. He used to
say that she was "the day-star, the solace, and the inspiration" of his
life. She seconded every good impulse of his benevolence, and made the
fulfillment of his great scheme possible by her wise and resolute
economy. They began their married life on a scale of extreme frugality,
both laboring together for the common good of the family.
"In early life," he used to say, "when I was first married, I found it
necessary to rock the cradle, while my wife prepared our frugal meals.
This was not always convenient in my busy life, and I conceived the idea
of making a cradle that would be made to rock by mechanism. I did so,
and enlarging upon my first idea, I arranged the mechanism for keeping
off the flies, and playing a music-box for the amusement of the baby!
This cradle was bought of me afterwards by a delighted peddler, who gave
me his 'whole stock in trade' for the exchange and the privilege of
selling the patent in the State of Connecticut."
This device in various forms and modifications is still familiar in our
households. They had six children, of whom two survive, Mr. Edward
Cooper, recently mayor of New York, and Sarah, wife of Hon. Abram S.
Hewitt, member of Congress from the city of New York. For nearly
sixty-five years this couple lived together in happy marriage.