Part 21

Pianoforte-making has led to great money-making results. About the year 1776, Becker, a German, undertook to apply the pianoforte mechanism to the harpsichord, assisted by John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, then workmen in the employ of Burckhardt Tschudi, of Great Pulteney-street, London. After many experiments, the grand-pianoforte mechanism was contrived by these three. Messrs. Broadwood, from 1824 to 1850, made on an average 2236 pianofortes per annum; and employed in their manufactory 573 workmen, besides persons working for them at home. In 1862 died the head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Broadwood, sen., at the age of seventy-five, leaving 350,000_l._ personal property, besides realty.

James Morison, who styled himself “the Hygeist,” and was noted for his “Vegetable Medicines,” was a Scotchman, and a gentleman by birth and education. His family was of the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire, his brother being “Morison of Bognie,” an estate worth about 4000_l._ a year. In 1816 James Morison, having sold his commission, for he was an officer in the army, lived in No. 17 Silver-street, Aberdeen, a house belonging to Mr. Reid, of Souter and Reid, druggists. He obtained the use of their pill-machine, with which he made in their back-shop as many pills as filled two large casks. The ingredients of these pills, however he may have modified them afterwards, were chiefly oatmeal and bitter aloes. With these two great “meal bowies” filled with pills, he started for London; with the fag-end of his fortune advertised them far and wide, and ultimately amassed 500,000_l._

Such is the statement of a Correspondent of the _Athenæum_. Morison’s own story was, that his own sufferings from ill-health, and the cure he at length effected upon himself by “vegetable pills,” made him a disseminator of the latter article. He had found the pills to be “the only rational purifiers of the blood;” of these he took two or three at bedtime, and a glass of lemonade in the morning, and thus regained sound sleep and high spirits, and feared neither heat nor cold, dryness nor humidity. The duty on the pills produced a revenue of 60,000_l._ to Government during the first ten years. Morison died at Paris, in 1840, aged seventy.

The Denisons, father and son, accumulated two of the largest fortunes of our time. About 120 years ago, Joseph Denison, who was the son of a woollen-cloth merchant at Leeds, anxious to seek his fortune in London, travelled thither in a wagon, being attended on his departure by his friends, who took a solemn leave of him, as the distance was then thought so great that they might never see him again. He at first accepted a subordinate situation; but being industrious, parsimonious, and fortunate, he speedily advanced himself in the confidence and esteem of his employers, bankers in St. Mary Axe, and married successively two wives with property. He continued to prosper; and by joining the Heywoods, eminent bankers of Liverpool, his wealth rapidly increased. In 1787 he purchased the estate of Denbies, near Dorking in Surrey. By his second wife he had one son, William Joseph Denison; and two daughters—Elizabeth, married, in 1794, to Henry, first Marquis Conyngham; and Maria, married, in 1793, to Sir Robert Lawley, Bart., created, in 1831, Baron Wenlock.

Mr. Denison died in 1806; his son, succeeding to the banking business, continued to accumulate; and, at his death in his seventy-ninth year, in August 1849, left two millions and a half of money. He had sat in Parliament for Surrey from 1818. He was a man of cultivated tastes, possessed a knowledge of art and elegant literature; he feared to be thought ostentatious, and could with difficulty be prevailed on to have a lodge erected at the entrance to a new road which he had just formed on his estate, near Dorking. The Marchioness Conyngham was left a widow in 1832; she died in 1861, having attained the venerable age of ninety-two, and lived to see both her sons peers of the realm,—the one in succession to his father; the second, Albert Denison, as heir to her own brother’s great fortune and estates, with the title of Baron Londesborough.

The career of George Hudson, ridiculously styled “the Railway King,” was one of the _ignes fatui_ of the railway mania. He was born in a lowly house in College-street, York, in 1800; here he served his apprenticeship to a linendraper, and subsequently carried on the business as principal, amassing considerable wealth. His fortune was next increased by a bequest from a distant relative, which sum he invested in North-Midland Railway shares; and, under his chairmanship, they gradually rose from 70_l._ discount to 120_l._ premium. This led to the creation of new shares in branch and extension lines, often worthless, which were issued at a premium also: Hudson soon found himself chairman of 600 miles of railway, extending from Rugby to Newcastle; and he is stated in a single day to have cleared 100,000_l._ He was also elected M.P. for Sunderland; and served twice Lord Mayor of York. The sum of 16,000_l._ was subscribed and presented to him as a public testimonial; with which he purchased a mansion at Albert-gate, Hyde-park; here he lived sumptuously, and went his round of visits among the peerage. But the speculation of 1845 was followed by a sudden reaction: shares fell, the holders sold to avoid payment of calls, and many were ruined; then followed the unkingship of Hudson, who was hurled down like the molten calf, and he lost a vast fortune in the general wreck of the railway bubbles.

The most beneficial fortunes made in business are those by which, at the same time, permanent advantages are secured to the public. Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher, “was a man of much ability and extraordinary enterprise. His public career connected him intimately with the literature of the present century, and few are the distinguished writers, during the last forty years, whose names were not associated with that of Mr. Colburn. In one of Mr. Disraeli’s novels a handsome tribute is paid to his acuteness of judgment and generosity of dealing. The publication of the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn will rank among many sterling contributions to literature due in the first instance to his enterprise. He originated those weekly literary reviews which have since been so successful; he established more than one newspaper, and conducted for a great many years the Magazine which still bears his name; and was the original publisher of Sir Bernard Burke’s _Peerage_. In private life he was known as a friendly, hospitable, kind man, and acts of the greatest liberality marked his course through life.”[107] He died at an advanced age.

Mr. James Morrison, the wealthy warehouseman of Cripplegate, started in life as foreman to Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married; and succeeding to his large property, distinguished himself as a sound political economist, and for some years sat in Parliament. He obtained, by purchase, the fine estates of Basilden, in Berkshire, and Fonthill, in Wiltshire: at Basilden, in 1846, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, upon the View of the Thames, were entertained by Mr. Morrison, who then referred with much gratification to his having been brought up in the City of London, “connected with it in a mercantile point of view, and having, by his own industry, obtained every thing he could desire.” He was a man of high commercial character; to which Mr. Edwin Chadwick, at the Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, in 1862, bore this interesting testimony: “I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Chadwick, “of the acquaintance of perhaps the most wealthy and successful merchant of the last half-century,—a distinguished member of our political economy club, the late Mr. James Morrison,—who assured me, that the leading principles to which he owed his success in life, and which he vindicated as sound elements of economical science, were—always to consult the interests of the consumer, and not, as is the common maxim, to buy cheap and sell dear, but to sell cheap as well as to buy cheap; it being to his interest to widen the area of consumption, and to sell quickly and to the many. The next maxim is involved in the first principle—always to tell the truth, to have no shams: a rule which he confessed he found it most difficult to get his common sellers to adhere to in its integrity, yet most important for success, it being to his interest as a merchant that any ship-captain might come into his warehouse and fill his ship with goods of which he had no technical knowledge, but of which he well knew that only a small profit was charged upon a close ready-money purchasing price, and that go where he would he would find nothing cheaper; it being, moreover, to the merchant’s interest that his bill of prices should be every where received from experience as a truth, and trustworthy evidence so far of a fair market-value. I might cite extensive testimony of the like character to show that the very labour and risks of continued deceits, however common, are detrimental to the successful operation of economic principles, and that sound economy is every where concurrent with high public morality.”

With this brilliant exception before us, we must, however, admit the general truth of this experience: “The nobility of trade usually ends with the second generation. A thrifty and persevering man falls into a line of business by which he accumulates a large fortune, preserving through life the habits, manners, and connexions of his trade; but his children, brought up with expectations of enjoying his property, understand only the art of spending. Hence, when deprived of fortune, without industry or resources, they die in beggary, leaving a third generation to the same chances of life as those with which their grandfather began his career fourscore years before.”[108]

Footnote 103:

_Spectator_ newspaper, 1862.

Footnote 104:

_Saturday Review._

Footnote 105:

When the Duke and Duchess, in taking farewell of Stowe, had reached the flower-garden, they both burst into a violent fit of tears. They went through the two gardens, and left them in silent sorrow: as he passed along, the Duke gave the Duchess a rose, which she treasured as the last gift.

Footnote 106:

See Ulster’s _Vicissitudes of Families_, in three volumes, for many impressive narratives of the same class as the above.

Footnote 107:

The _Examiner_.

Footnote 108:

_Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_, by Sir Richard Phillips.

CIVIC WORTHIES.

The state and dignity of the office of Chief Magistrate of the City of London have, during nearly centuries of its existence, pointed many a moral,—from the nursery-tale of Whittington to the accessories of Hogarth’s pictures and a homelier illustration of our own days:

Our Lord Mayor and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachman, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and great sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and girls; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased: and many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach.—_Cobbett._

This is, however, but the bright side of the picture. Civic office is often a costly honour; not only by large expenditure, but by neglect of private business to attend to the public duties of the station.

All that we propose to do here is to record a few noteworthy Mayoralties of the _present century_, to show that the office continues to be filled by men of high character and moral worth.

Among the worthy citizens should be mentioned Sir James Shaw, born in 1764, in the humblest circumstances, and educated at the grammar-school of Kilmarnock. He settled in London as a merchant, by his own perseverance and integrity amassed a fortune, served as Lord Mayor 1805-6, sat in three parliaments for the City, and was subsequently Chamberlain. He was unostentatiously charitable, encouraged industrious poor men, and succoured the indigent, because he remembered his own unpromising infancy; and he was one of the first to assist the helpless children of Robert Burns. In commemoration of these estimable qualities, a marble statue of Sir James Shaw was erected by public subscription at Kilmarnock in 1848.

Sir Matthew Wood, Bart., the most popular Lord Mayor in the present century, began life as a druggist’s traveller, and then settled in London in the ward of Cripplegate, for which he rose to be alderman: he served as Lord Mayor two successive years, and represented the City in nine parliaments; his baronetcy was the first title conferred by Queen Victoria shortly after her accession. He gained much popularity as the adviser of the ill-fated Queen Caroline; for which, and his general political conduct, a princely legacy was bequeathed to him by the wealthy banker of Gloucester of the same name. He died in his 75th year: his eldest son, the present baronet, is in holy orders; and his second son, Sir William Page Wood, is a sound equity lawyer and a Vice-Chancellor.

Alderman Birch, Lord Mayor in 1815, received a liberal education, and at an early age wrote some poems of considerable merit: he succeeded his father in business, as a cook and confectioner, in Cornhill. He produced several dramatic pieces, of which the _Adopted Child_ is a stock favourite: he was a sound scholar, and wrote the inscription for the statue of George III. in the Council-chamber at the Guildhall, and took an active part in founding the London Institution.[109]

Robert Waithman, Lord Mayor in 1823-24, was born of parents in humble life, in 1764, and, when a boy, was adopted by his uncle, a linendraper at Bath, and sent to a school where the boys were taught public and extemporaneous speaking. He was taken into his uncle’s business, and subsequently came to London, and opened a shop at the south end of Fleet-market. In 1794 he began to take an active part in City politics, and was next elected into the Common Council, where his speeches, resolutions, petitions, and addresses, would fill a large volume. He sat in five parliaments for the City, made a popular Sheriff and Lord Mayor; and after his death, in 1833, his friends and fellow-citizens erected to his memory a granite obelisk upon the site whereon he commenced business. A memorial tablet was also placed in St. Bride’s church, stating that “it was his happiness to see that great cause triumphant, of which he had been the intrepid advocate from youth to age.” Curiously enough, this tablet is placed in the vestibule of the church, directly opposite a similar memorial to Mr. Blades, of Ludgate-hill, who was a fine old Tory, and a stanch opponent to Waithman throughout his stormy political life: as in life, so in death the great leveller has laid them here.

Waithman made his first political speech at Founders’ Hall, “the caldron of sedition,” when he and his fellow-orators were routed by constables sent by the Lord Mayor, Sanderson, to disperse the meeting. When Sheriff, in 1821, Waithman, in endeavouring to quell a tumult at Knightsbridge, had a carbine presented at him by a lifeguardsman; and, at the funeral of Queen Caroline, a bullet passed through the Sheriff’s carriage, in the procession through Hyde-park. Latterly, the alderman grew too moderate for his Farringdon-ward friends, and he was defeated of being elected Chamberlain; he then withdrew to a farm near Reigate, and in this bucolic retirement passed away. He was an intrepid, upright man, but had been sparsely educated; and many of the Resolutions on the War with France, by which he gained political notoriety, were written by his friend and neighbour, Sir Richard Phillips.

In early life Waithman showed considerable genius for acting; and we once heard him relate that his success in the character of Macbeth led his friends to press upon him the stage as a profession; but he chose another sphere. He was uncle to John Reeve, the clever comic actor.

Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty in 1837, was horn at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster-row, for 10_l._ a year wages. He slept under the shop-counter for the security of the premises; but was reported to his master to be “too slow” for the situation: Mr. Hogg, however, thought him “a biddable boy,” and he remained: this incident shows _upon what apparently trifling circumstances a man’s future prospects in life depend_. Kelly succeeded Mr. Hogg in the business, became alderman of the ward, and lived upon the spot sixty years: he died in his eighty-fourth year.[110] He was a man of active benevolence, and reminded one of the pious Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney.

Sir Chapman Marshall, Lord Mayor 1839-40, was also of humble origin, as he narrated in 1831, when Sheriff, in replying to the toast of his health: “My Lord Mayor and gentlemen, you now see before you a humble individual who has been educated in a parochial school. I came to London in 1803, without a shilling—without a friend. I have not had the advantage of a classical education; therefore you will excuse my defects of language. But this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you witness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest industry; and I trust my example may induce others to aspire, by the same means, to the distinguished situation which I now have the honour to fill.” Here is a similar instance.

Sir John Pirie, Lord Mayor 1841-2, received his baronetcy on the christening of the Prince of Wales: at his inauguration dinner Sir John 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 so great a distinction.”

Alderman Wire, Lord Mayor 1858-9, was born 1801, and was one of the large family of a tradesman at Colchester; yet he had the advantage of a liberal education. He came to London and articled himself to a City solicitor, and by his intelligence and industry was advanced to be partner in the business, and ultimately became the head of the firm. He was elected Alderman of his Ward (Walbrook), served Sheriff in 1853, and then Lord Mayor. Early in his year of office he was afflicted with paralysis, of which he recovered; but died on Lord-Mayor’s-day 1860! He was an active advocate of sanitary and educational movements, a liberal politician, and a man of cultivated taste, and made an able chief magistrate.

Alderman Mechi deserves a niche among these civic worthies, by the superior enterprise of his career. He is the son of a citizen of Bologna, was brought to England by his father, and, obtaining a clerkship in a house in the Newfoundland trade, he remained there eleven years. Whilst in this service, he turned the hour allowed for dinner to profitable account by selling, among his friends and acquaintance in the City, a small and inexpensive article, of which he had bought the patent. Mainly by these exertions, when in his twenty-fifth year, he commenced business as a cutler, with the success we have already intimated. He then studied how to remedy the defects of English farming by scientific processes; rose to be Sheriff and an Alderman; took an active part in the affairs of the Society of Arts, and was specially sent by her Majesty’s Government to the Industrial Exhibition at Paris in 1854.

Addison, we know, says, “the City has always been the province for satire; and the wits of King Charles’s time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign.” Nevertheless, “the Merry Monarch” dined with the citizens no fewer than nine times in their Guildhall. Here also Whittington had feasted Henry V. and his Queen, when he threw the King’s bonds for 60,000_l._ into a fire of spice-wood. But a still more memorable feast was that in 1497, when at the table of the Lord Mayor, William Purchase, Erasmus first met Sir Thomas More; whence sprung one of the most interesting friendships in literary history.

It has been well said that a dinner lubricates business; and it does more—it fosters charity and good works. The annual banquet on Lord-Mayor’s-day, in the Guildhall, is mostly to be viewed as a festival of civic state: “the loving-cup and the barons of beef carrying the mind back to medieval times and manners.”[111] The banquets at the Mansion House—one of the most palatial edifices in the kingdom—are of a like stately description; and for the more direct benefits of civic festivity we must look to the Ward dinners, and the meetings of public officers at table, when they forget the cares and heartburnings incident to every grade of office, and enjoy with the feast the higher luxury of doing good.

Footnote 109:

Birch excelled in his art; and his _cuisine_ was unrivalled in the City. Kitchiner immortalised his soups in print, and the Mansion-House banquets and Court dinners of the Companies attested the alderman’s practical skill in his business. The shop in Cornhill was established in the reign of King George I. by Horton, who was succeeded by the father of Alderman Birch, whose successors, in 1836, were the present proprietors, Ring and Brymer. The premises present a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the early part of the last century.

Footnote 110:

See _Life of Alderman Kelly_, by the Rev. R. C. Fell. 1856.

Footnote 111:

Cunningham.

WORKING AUTHORS AND ARTISTS.

Godwin, the novelist and political writer, used to say that an author should have two heads,—one for his books, the other for worldly matters. And Holcroft, Godwin’s contemporary, made a similar remark on actors,—that they were so often filling other characters as to forget their own. These observations are, happily, of rare application in the cases of the present day.

We, however, remember the phrase of _Grub-street_ in occasional use, and we find “the poor devil of an author” in one of Washington Irving’s early works. But this species is now extinct; and authors build villas, give large parties, and keep carriages, like other successful professional men. Nor must it be forgotten that they do not receive their money for corrupt services, as did the hacks of former days; and a Grub-street Author would be now almost as great a rarity as a living gorilla.

We remember a specimen of “author and rags—author and dirt—author and gin,”—of forty years since. He lived in a garret,[112] in an old house at the top of Red Lion-court, Fleet-street: in one corner of the room, upon the floor, lay the bed; near the fire-place was an old chair; a box placed endwise served for a table; and these, with an almost spoutless coffee-pot, a maimed cup and saucer, a bottle for a candlestick, and an old chest, nearly completed the contents of the miserable apartment. The inmate was an old man turned of seventy, with shrunk shanks and loosely-fitting coat and breeches, and the conventional author’s-nightcap; his scratchwig being placed upon one of the uprights of his chair, which served as a block. Every portion of the room bore evidence of the _dirt;_ and the atmosphere was redolent of _gin_. He wrote a large black, sermon-like hand, upon paper of all sorts and sizes: his matter was as antiquated as his manner; his very talk was scholastic pedantry, and the room was strewed with scraps and shreds of his learning: but he lived within the classic shade of Valpy’s printing-office. With all his labour and learning, whatever he wrote was not half so serviceable or so interesting as a short-hand report of an occurrence of yesterday.