Philadelphia. It were indeed a grim and dreary world in which should
prevail the principles of Girard. But see what this man has done for
the city that loved him not! Vast and imposing structures rise on the
banks of the Schuylkill, wherein, at this hour, six hundred poor
orphan boys are fed, clothed, trained, and taught, upon the income of
the enormous estate which he won by this entire consecration to the
work of accumulating property. In the ample grounds of Girard College,
looking up at its five massive marble edifices, strolling in its shady
walks or by its verdant play-grounds, or listening to the cheerful
cries of the boys at play, the most sympathetic and imaginative of men
must pause before censuring the sterile and unlovely life of its
founder. And if he should inquire closely into the character and
career of the man who willed this great institution into being, he
would perhaps be willing to admit that there was room in the world for
one Girard, though it were a pity there should ever be another. Such
an inquiry would perhaps disclose that Stephen Girard was endowed by
nature with a great heart as well as a powerful mind, and that
circumstances alone closed and hardened the one, cramped and perverted
the other. It is not improbable that he was one of those unfortunate
beings who desire to be loved, but whose temper and appearance combine
to repel affection. His marble statue, which adorns the entrance to
the principal building, if it could speak, might say to us, "Living,
you could not understand nor love me; dead, I compel at least your
respect." Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career,
"Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."
Girard's recollections of his childhood were tinged with bitterness.
He was born at Bordeaux in 1750. He was the eldest of the five
children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of substance and
respectability. He used to complain that, while his younger brothers
were taught at college, his own education was neglected, and that he
acquired at home little more than the ability to read and write. He
remembered, too, that at the age of eight years he discovered, to his
shame and sorrow, that one of his eyes was blind,--a circumstance that
exposed him to the taunts of his companions. The influence of a
personal defect, and of the ridicule it occasions, upon the character
of a sensitive child, can be understood only by those whose childhood
was embittered from that cause; but such cases as those of Byron and
Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the crime it is
to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. Girard also early
lost his mother, an event which soon brought him under the sway of a
step-mother. Doubtless he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible boy,
since we know that he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible man.
Before he was fourteen, having chosen the profession of his father, he
left home, with his father's consent, and went to sea in the capacity
of cabin-boy. He used to boast, late in life, that he began the world
with sixpence in his pocket. Quite enough for a cabin-boy.
For nine years he sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies,
returning at length with the rank of first mate, or, as the French
term it, lieutenant of his vessel. He had well improved his time. Some
of the defects of his early education he had supplied by study, and it
is evident that he had become a skilful navigator. It was then the law
of France that no man should command a vessel who was not twenty-five
years old, and had not sailed two cruises in a ship of the royal navy.
Girard was but twenty-three, and had sailed in none but
merchant-vessels. His father, however, had influence enough to procure
him a dispensation; and in 1773 he was licensed to command. He appears
to have been scarcely just to his father when he wrote, sixty-three
years after:
"I have the proud satisfaction of knowing that my conduct,
my labor, and my economy have enabled me to do one hundred
times more for my relations than they all together have ever
done for me since the day of my birth."
In the mere amount of money expended, this may have been true; but it
is the _start_ toward fortune that is so difficult. His father,
besides procuring the dispensation, assisted him to purchase goods for
his first commercial venture. At the age of twenty-four, we find him
sailing to the West Indies; not indeed in command of the vessel, but
probably as mate and supercargo, and part owner of goods to the value
of three thousand dollars. He never trod his native land again. Having
disposed of his cargo and taken on board another, he sailed for New
York, which he reached in July, 1774. The storm of war, which was soon
to sweep commerce from the ocean, was already muttering below the
horizon, when Stephen Girard, "mariner and merchant," as he always
delighted to style himself, first saw the land wherein his lot was to
be cast. For two years longer, however, he continued to exercise his
twofold vocation. An ancient certificate, preserved among his papers,
informs the curious explorer, that,
"in the year 1774, Stephen Girard sailed as mate of a vessel
from New York to [New] Orleans, and that he continued to
sail out of the said port until May, 1776, when he arrived
in Philadelphia commander of a sloop,"
of which the said Stephen Girard was part owner.
Lucky was it for Girard that he got into Philadelphia just when he
did, with all his possessions with him. He had the narrowest escape
from capture. On his way from New Orleans to a Canadian port, he had
lost himself in a fog at the entrance of Delaware Bay, swarming then
with British cruisers, of whose presence Captain Girard had heard
nothing. His flag of distress brought alongside an American captain,
who told him where he was, and assured him that, if he ventured out
to-sea, he would never reach port except as a British prize. "_Mon
Dieu_!" exclaimed Girard in great panic, "what shall I do?" "You have
no chance but to push right up to Philadelphia," replied the captain.
"How am I to get there?" said Girard; "I have no pilot, and I don't
know the way." A pilot was found, who, however, demanded a preliminary
payment of five dollars, which Girard had not on board. In great
distress, he implored the captain to be his security for the sum. He
consented, a pilot took charge of the sloop, the anchor was heaved,
and the vessel sped on her way. An hour later, while they were still
in sight of the anchorage, a British man-of-war came within the capes.
But Dr. Franklin, with his oared galleys, his _chevaux de frise_, his
forts, and his signal-stations, had made the Delaware a safe harbor of
refuge; and Girard arrived safely at Philadelphia on one of the early
days of May, 1776. Thus it was a mere chance of war that gave Girard
to the Quaker City. In the whole world he could not have found a more
congenial abode, for the Quakers were the only religious sect with
which he ever had the slightest sympathy. Quakers he always liked and
esteemed, partly because they had no priests, partly because they
disregarded ornament and reduced life to its simplest and most obvious
utilities, partly because some of their opinions were in accord with
his own. He had grown up during the time when Voltaire was sovereign
lord of the opinions of Continental Europe. Before landing at
Philadelphia, he was already a republican and an unbeliever, and such
he remained to the last. The Declaration of Independence was
impending: he was ready for it. The "Common Sense" of Thomas Paine had
appeared: he was the man of all others to enjoy it. It is, however,
questionable if at that time he had English enough to understand it in
the original, since the colloquy just reported with the American
captain took place in French. He was slow in becoming familiar with
the English language, and even to the end of his life seemed to prefer
conversing in French.
He was a mariner no more. The great fleet of Lord Howe arrived at New
York in July. Every harbor was blockaded, and all commerce was
suspended. Even the cargoes of tobacco despatched by Congress to their
Commissioners in France, for the purchase of arms and stores, were
usually captured before they had cleared the Capes. Captain Girard now
rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for
nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer
and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a
taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own
age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the
most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and
general appearance of a sailor. Though but twenty-six years of age, he
was called "old Girard." He seemed conscious of his inability to
please, but bore the derision of his neighbors with stoical
equanimity, and plodded on.
War favors the skilful and enterprising business-man. Girard had a
genius for business. He was not less bold in his operations than
prudent; and his judgment as a man of business was well-nigh
infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever he
thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cordage to a
pipe of old port; and he labored incessantly with his own hands. He
was a thriving man during the first year of his residence in
Philadelphia; his chief gain, it is said, being derived from his
favorite business of bottling wine and cider.
The romance, the mystery, the tragedy of his life now occurred.
Walking along Water Street one day, near the corner of Vine Street,
the eyes of this reserved and ill-favored man were caught by a
beautiful servant-girl going to the pump for a pail of water. She was
an enchanting brunette of sixteen, with luxuriant black locks curling
and clustering about her neck. As she tripped along with bare feet and
empty pail, in airy and unconscious grace, she captivated the
susceptible Frenchman, who saw in her the realization of the songs of
the forecastle and the reveries of the quarter-deck. He sought her
acquaintance, and made himself at home in her kitchen. The family whom
she served, misinterpreting the designs of the thriving dealer,
forbade him the house; when he silenced their scruples by offering the
girl his hand in marriage. Ill-starred Polly Lumm! Unhappy Girard! She
accepted his offer; and in July, 1777, the incongruous two, being
united in matrimony, attempted to become one.
The war interrupted their brief felicity. Philadelphia, often
threatened, fell into the hands of Lord Howe in September, 1777; and
among the thousands who needlessly fled at his approach were "old
Girard" and his pretty young wife. He bought a house at Mount Holly,
near Burlington, in New Jersey, for five hundred dollars, to which he
removed, and there continued to bottle claret and sell it to the
British officers, until the departure of Lord Howe, in June, 1778,
permitted his return to Philadelphia. The gay young officers, it is
said, who came to his house at Mount Holly to drink his claret, were
far from being insensible to the charms of Mrs. Girard; and tradition
further reports that on one occasion a dashing colonel snatched a
kiss, which the sailor resented, and compelled the officer to
apologize for.
Of all miserable marriages this was one of the most miserable. Here
was a young, beautiful, and ignorant girl united to a close,
ungracious, eager man of business, devoid of sentiment, with a violent
temper and an unyielding will. She was an American, he a Frenchman;
and that alone was an immense incompatibility. She was seventeen, he
twenty-seven. She was a woman; he was a man without imagination,
intolerant of foibles. She was a beauty, with the natural vanities of
a beauty; he not merely had no taste for decoration, he disapproved it
on principle. These points of difference would alone have sufficed to
endanger their domestic peace; but time developed something that was
fatal to it. Their abode was the scene of contention for eight years;
at the expiration of which period Mrs. Girard showed such symptoms of
insanity that her husband was obliged to place her in the Pennsylvania
Hospital. In these distressing circumstances, he appears to have
spared no pains for her restoration. He removed her to a place in the
country, but without effect. She returned to his house only to render
life insupportable to him. He resumed his old calling as a mariner,
and made a voyage to the Mediterranean; but on his return he found his
wife not less unmanageable than before. In 1790, thirteen years after
their marriage, and five after the first exhibition of insanity, Mrs.
Girard was placed permanently in the hospital; where, nine months
after, she gave birth to a female child. The child soon died; the
mother never recovered her reason. For twenty-five years she lived in
the hospital, and, dying in 1815, was buried in the hospital grounds
after the manner of the Quakers. The coffin was brought to the grave,
followed by the husband and the managers of the institution, who
remained standing about it in silence for several minutes. It was then
lowered to its final resting-place, and again the company remained
motionless and silent for a while. Girard looked at the coffin once
more, then turned to an acquaintance and said, as he walked away, "It
is very well." A green mound, without headstone or monument, still
marks the spot where the remains of this unhappy woman repose. Girard,
both during his lifetime and after his death, was a liberal, though
not lavish, benefactor of the institution which had so long sheltered
his wife.
Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the
Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the West Indies, in
partnership with his brother John; and he is described in an official
paper of the time as one who "carried on an extensive business as a
merchant, and is a considerable owner of real estate." But on the
dissolution of the partnership in 1790, when he had been in business,
as mariner and merchant, for sixteen years, his estate was valued at
only thirty thousand dollars. The times were troubled. The French
Revolution, the massacre at St. Domingo, our disturbed relations with
England, and afterwards with France, the violence of our party
contests, all tended to make merchants timid, and to limit their
operations. Girard, as his papers indicate, and as he used to relate
in conversation, took more than a merchant's interest in the events of
the time. From the first, he had formally cast in his lot with the
struggling Colonists, as we learn from a yellow and faded document
left among his papers:--
"I do hereby certify that Stephen Girard, of the city of
Philadelphia, merchant, hath voluntarily taken the oath of
allegiance and fidelity, as directed by an act of the
General Assembly of Pennsylvania, passed the 13th day of
June, A.D. 1777. Witness my hand and seal, the 27th day of
October, A.D. 1778.
"JNO. ORD.
No. 1678."
The oath was repeated the year following. When the French Revolution
had divided the country into two parties, the Federalists and the
Republicans, Girard was a Republican of the radical school. He
remembered assisting to raise a liberty-pole in the Presidency of John
Adams; and he was one of Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents
at a time when men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the
Democrats. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jefferson
in veneration.
We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungracious man
in a new character. We are to see that a man may seem indifferent to
the woes of individuals, but perform sublime acts of devotion to a
community. We are to observe that there are men of sterling but
peculiar metal, who only shine when the furnace of general affliction
is hottest. In 1793, the malignant yellow-fever desolated
Philadelphia. The consternation of the people cannot be conceived by
readers of the present day, because we cannot conceive of the
ignorance which then prevailed respecting the laws of contagion,
because we have lost in some degree the habit of panic, and because no
kind of horror can be as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the
people of Philadelphia in 1793. One half of the population fled. Those
who remained left their houses only when compelled. Most of the
churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. Of four
daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people
constantly smoked tobacco,--even women and children, did so; others
chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or
sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within
their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of
camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a
handkerchief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one
ventured to shake hands. Friends who met in the streets gave each
other a wide berth, eyed one another askance, exchanged nods, and
strode on. It was a custom to walk in the middle of the street, to get
as far from the houses as possible. Many of the sick died without
help, and the dead were buried without ceremony. The horrid silence of
the streets was broken only by the tread of litter-bearers and the
awful rumble of the dead-wagon. Whole families perished,--perished
without assistance, their fate unknown to their neighbors. Money was
powerless to buy attendance for the operation of all ordinary motives
was suspended. From the 1st of August to the 9th of November, in a
population of twenty-five thousand, there were four thousand and
thirty-one burials,--about one in six.
Happily for the honor of human nature, there are always, in times like
these, great souls whom base panic cannot prostrate. A few brave
physicians, a few faithful clergymen, a few high-minded citizens, a
few noble women, remembered and practised what is due to humanity
overtaken by a calamity like this. On the 10th of September, a notice,
without signature, appeared in the only paper published, stating that
all but three of the Visitors of the Poor were sick, dead, or missing,
and calling upon all who were willing to help to meet at the City Hall
on the 12th. From those who attended the meeting, a committee of
twenty-seven was appointed to superintend the measures for relief, of
whom Stephen Girard was one. On Sunday, the 15th, the committee met;
and the condition of the great hospital at Bush Hill was laid before
them. It was unclean, ill-regulated, crowded, and ill-supplied. Nurses
could not be hired at any price, for even to approach it was deemed
certain death. Then, to the inexpressible astonishment and admiration
of the committee, two men of wealth and importance in the city offered
personally to take charge of the hospital during the prevalence of the
disease. Girard was one of these, Peter Helm the other. Girard appears
to have been the first to offer himself. "Stephen Girard," records
Matthew Carey, a member of the committee,
"sympathizing with the wretched situation of the sufferers
at Bush Hill, voluntarily and unexpectedly offered himself
as a manager to superintend that hospital. The surprise and
satisfaction excited by this extraordinary effort of
humanity can be better conceived than expressed."
That very afternoon, Girard and Helm went out to the hospital, and
entered upon their perilous and repulsive duty. Girard chose the post
of honor. He took charge of the interior of the hospital, while Mr.
Helm conducted its out-door affairs. For sixty days he continued to
perform, by day and night, all the distressing and revolting offices
incident to the situation. In the great scarcity of help, he used
frequently to receive the sick and dying at the gate, assist in
carrying them to their beds, nurse them, receive their last messages,
watch for their last breath, and then, wrapping them in the sheet they
had died upon, carry them out to the burial-ground, and place them in
the trench. He had a vivid recollection of the difficulty of finding
any kind of fabric in which to wrap the dead, when the vast number of
interments had exhausted the supply of sheets. "I would put them," he
would say, "in any old rag I could find." If he ever left the
hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and assist in
removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying without
help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant, who was
hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth,
affords us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime
vocation. A carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence
of the deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame
house; and the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his
mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the
box. A short, thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the
house. In a minute or two, the observer, who stood at a safe distance
watching the proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and
soon saw the stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a
tall, gaunt, yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held
round the waist the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his
own; his long, damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet
dragging helpless upon the pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage
door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far from
offering to assist. Partly dragging, partly lifting, he succeeded,
after long and severe exertion, in getting him into the vehicle. He
then entered it himself, closed the door, and the carriage drove away
towards the hospital.
A man who can do such things at such a time may commit errors and
cherish erroneous opinions, but the essence of that which makes the
difference between a good man and a bad man must dwell within him.
Twice afterwards Philadelphia was visited by yellow-fever, in 1797 and
1798. On both occasions, Girard took the lead, by personal exertion or
gifts of money, in relieving the poor and the sick. He had a singular
taste for nursing the sick, though a sturdy unbeliever in medicine.
According to him, nature, not doctors, is the restorer,--nature, aided
by good nursing. Thus, after the yellow-fever of 1798, he wrote to a
friend in France:
"During all this frightful time, I have constantly remained
in the city; and, without neglecting my public duties, I
have played a part which will make you smile. Would you
believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as
fifteen sick people in a day? and what will surprise you
still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who
would drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have
cured one single person; but you will think with me, that in
my quality of Philadelphia physician I have been very
moderate, and that not one of my _confrères_ has killed
fewer than myself."
It is not by nursing the sick, however, that men acquire colossal
fortunes. We revert, therefore, to the business career of this
extraordinary man. Girard, in the ancient and honorable acceptation of
the term, was a merchant; i.e. a man who sent his own ships to foreign
countries, and exchanged their products for those of his own.
Beginning in the West India trade, with one small schooner built with
difficulty and managed with caution, he expanded his business as his
capital increased, until he was the owner of a fleet of merchantmen,
and brought home to Philadelphia the products of every clime.
Beginning with single voyages, his vessels merely sailing to a foreign
port and back again, he was accustomed at length to project great
mercantile cruises, extending over long periods of time, and embracing
many ports. A ship loaded with cotton and grain would sail, for
example, to Bordeaux, there discharge, and take in a cargo of wine and
fruit; thence to St. Petersburg, where she would exchange her wine and
fruit for hemp and iron; then to Amsterdam, where the hemp and iron
would be sold for dollars; to Calcutta next for a cargo of tea and
silks, with which the ship would return to Philadelphia. Such were the
voyages so often successfully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the
Helvetius, and the Montesquieu; ships long the pride of Girard and the
boast of Philadelphia, their names being the tribute paid by the
merchant to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to
make very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship.