Chapter IX: Part 9

Such were the emphatic words of Mr. Hawkshaw, F.R.S., in opening his Address on his election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, session 1861-62. It would not be difficult to illustrate the President’s data by many bright instances of their truth. But we remember too well the sad story of Myddleton bringing the New River to our metropolis, a very early engineering labour, who, although he died not so poor as is usually represented, yet his family fell into decay. Almost equally familiar is the story of the life of George Stephenson, the maturer of the locomotive engine; and the career of his son, Robert Stephenson, the constructor of the London and Birmingham Railway, and second only to his father as a railway engineer. George learned to read and write at night-schools, and “figuring” by the engine-fires. As Robert grew up, his father was enabled to send him to Edinburgh University, where he acquired some knowledge in mathematics and geology: these acquisitions afforded subjects for comment and discussion between him and his father, and were of valuable use to both in their future joint avocations; and when the father had retired, in the sphere of railways Robert was recognised as the foremost man, the safest guide, and the most active worker. In the great railway mania of 1844, he was engineer for thirty-three new schemes; and his income was large, beyond any previous instance of engineering gain. His other great railway achievements were, the High-level Bridge at Newcastle; the Chester and Holyhead line; he constructed the Britannia and Conway tubular bridges, and designed the tubular bridges for Canada and Egypt. These intense labours brought him to his grave in his fifty-sixth year. It has been truly said of Robert Stephenson:

“He almost worshiped his father’s memory, and said he owed all to
his father’s training, his example, and his character; and he
declared in public: ‘It is my great pride to remember that, whatever
may have been done, and however extensive may have been my own
connexion in the railway development, all I owe, and all I have done
is primarily due, to the parent whose memory I cherish and revere.’
Like his father, he was eminently practical, and yet always open to
the influence and guidance of correct theory.

“In society Robert Stephenson was simple, unobtrusive, and modest;
but charming, and even fascinating, in an eminent degree. Sir John
Lawrence has said of him, that he was, of all others, the man he
most delighted to meet in England, he was so manly, yet gentle, and
withal so great.

“His great wealth enabled him to perform many generous acts in a
right noble and yet modest manner, not letting his right hand know
what his left hand did.”[99]

In the life of Thomas Telford, we have another striking instance of a man who, by the force of natural talent, unaided save by uprightness and persevering industry, raised himself from low estate to take his stand among the master-spirits of the age. He was born in 1757, in Dumfriesshire, sent to the parish-school, and employed as a shepherd-boy; in his leisure, delighted to read the books lent him by his village friends. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a stone-mason, and for several years worked on bridges and stone-buildings, village-churches, and manses, in his native district. In 1780 he went to Edinburgh, and for two years closely attended to architecture and drawing. He then removed to London, and worked upon the quadrangle of Somerset House, under Sir William Chambers, as architect. His next practice was in the construction of graving-docks, wharf-walls, and similar engineering works; and he built above forty bridges in Shropshire. His greatest works are, the Ellesmere Canal, 103 miles in length, with its wonderful aqueduct-bridges; the Caledonian Canal, which cost a million of money; the Bedford Level, and other important drainage works; 1000 miles of Highland roads and 1200 bridges; St. Katherine’s Docks, London, constructed with unexampled rapidity; and the great road from London to Holyhead, and the works connected with it. The Menai Suspension Bridge is a noble example of his boldness in designing, and practical skill in executing a novel and difficult work; and it is related of him that, just previous to the fixing of the last bar, he knelt in private prayer to the Giver of all good for the successful completion of the great work. Telford left an account of his labours of more than half a century; yet he found time to teach himself Latin, French, Italian, and German. He was the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in whose theatre is a noble portrait of him; and in Westminster Abbey, where he is interred, is a marble statue of the Eskdale shepherd-boy, whose works, in number, magnitude, and usefulness, are unrivalled.

John Rennie, who designed three of the noblest bridges in the world, in addition to other great engineering works, was born in 1761, in the county of East Lothian. He learned his first lessons in mechanics in the workshop of a millwright; before he was eleven years old he had constructed a windmill, a pile-engine, and a steam-engine; he next learned elementary mathematics and mechanics, and drawing machinery and architecture, and attended lectures on mechanical philosophy and chemistry. His greatest works are the Plymouth Breakwater; Waterloo, Southwark, and London bridges; the London, East and West India Docks; and great steam-engines; his principal undertakings having cost forty millions sterling. He was rarely occupied in business less than twelve hours a day; he seldom illustrated his information with any other instrument than a two-foot rule, which he always carried in his pocket. He owed his good fortune to talent, industry, prudence, perseverance, boldness of conception, soundness of judgment, and habits of untiring application: his works were indeed executed for posterity.

Sir Edward Banks, who built Rennie’s three stupendous bridges, was a labourer at Chipstead on the Merstham railway, some sixty years since: by his own natural abilities, which had not been cultivated to any extent, and by his integrity and perseverance, he became contractor for public works, and acquired great wealth: and it shows the simplicity of his nature, that, struck with the retired picturesqueness of Chipstead churchyard, he chose it for the depository of his remains, where the tablet to his memory bears his bust, and an arch and the three great bridges,—the goal of his remarkable career.

The history of the life of the elder Brunel is strangely tinged with romance. He was born in Normandy in 1769, was early intended for the priesthood; but when at the college of Gisors, he would steal away to the village carpenter’s shop, and draw faces and plans, and learn to handle tools; and one day, seeing a new tool in a cutler’s window, he pawned his hat to purchase it. He was next sent to the ecclesiastical seminary of St. Nicaise at Rouen; there, in his play-hours, he loved to watch the ships along the quay; and seeing some large iron castings landed from an English ship, he inquired, Where had they come from? and on being told from England, the boy exclaimed, “Ah, when I am a man, I will go and see the country where such grand machines are made.” On his return home, he continued his mechanical recreations; made musical instruments; and invented a nightcap-making machine, which is still used by the peasantry in that part of Normandy. His father now gave up all hope of his son for the priesthood, and had him qualified to enter the navy, and at seventeen he was nominated to a royal corvette; but while serving there he continued his mechanical pursuits, and made for himself a quadrant in ebony. His ship having been paid off in 1792, Brunel went to Paris, where he nearly fell a victim to the fury of the Revolution; but he escaped to Rouen, and thence fled to the United States, where he landed in 1793. While at New York, the idea of his block-machinery occurred to him. He now executed canal surveys, and designed the Park Theatre, and superintended its erection; he was next appointed chief engineer for New York, and there erected a cannon-foundry, with novel contrivances for casting and boring guns. He left New York in January 1799, and landed at Falmouth in the following March: there he met his early love, Sophia Kingdom, and the pair were shortly after united for life.

Brunel brought with him to England a duplicate writing and drawing machine; a machine for twisting cotton-thread and forming it into balls; a machine for trimmings and borders for muslins, lawns, and cambrics. The famous block-machinery was Brunel’s next invention; then various wood-working machinery, and machines for manufacturing shoes; and next the Battersea saw-mills; but the failure of the two latter speculations brought Brunel into difficulties, from which he was extricated by a government grant of 5000_l._, in consideration of the savings by the use of his block-machinery. He then improved the stocking-knitting machine and steam-engine; metallic paper and crystallised tinfoil; improvements in stereotyping and the treadmill. In engineering, he designed suspension, swing, and other bridges, and machines for boring cannon. He next experimented with a boat on the Thames, fitted with a double-action engine, and made his first voyage in it to Margate in 1814, when he narrowly escaped personal violence from the proprietors of the sailing-boats. Marine engines and paddle-wheels were next improved by Brunel; and these were followed by his carbonic-acid gas engine, which proved too costly a machine. Then came the crowning event of his life, the construction of the Thames Tunnel, taking the idea of his excavating-machine from the boring operations of the _Teredo navalis_. In this formidable work he was assisted by his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then only nineteen years of age; and after most perilous operations, the tunnel was completed, and opened March 25th, 1843. This was the engineer’s last work: as a commercial adventure it proved disastrous, which preyed on the mind of Brunel; though he lived six years longer, until he had attained his 81st year.

The younger Brunel’s first great work was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, followed by docks at Bristol and Sunderland, and several colliery tramways. In 1835, he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, being then only about twenty-eight years of age, but skilful and ingenious, and anxious to strike out an entirely new course in railway engineering. He adopted the broad-gauge, then a great and novel enterprise, but now ascertained to be unnecessary: the works were unusually costly, and so novel that the line was called the Grand Experimental Railway; while it rendered Brunel famous as a railway engineer. He next attempted the atmospheric principle; but this proved unsuccessful, and the loss exceeded half a million of money. His last and greatest railway engineering achievements were his “bowstring-girder” bridges at Chepstow and Saltash: the latter has two wrought-iron tubes, each weighing upwards of 1000 tons, and the viaduct and bridge are nearly half a mile, or 300 feet longer than the Britannia bridge. The central Saltash pier foundations, upon solid rock, 90 feet below the surface of the river, were laid within a wrought-iron cylinder 37 feet in diameter and 100 feet high, and the whole work involved six years’ toil, anxiety, and peril.

Next, Brunel devised an iron-plated armed ship capable of withstanding the fire of the Sebastopol forts; but his grand triumphs as a naval engineer were, the _Great Western_, steam-ship, propelled by paddle-wheels; and the _Great Britain_, propelled by a screw; but these were thrown into the shade by his _Great Eastern_, combining the powers of the paddle-wheel and the screw; and which, with the aid of Mr. Scott Russell, its builder, was completed and launched,—the largest ship that has ever floated. But this stupendous labour had undermined Mr. Brunel’s health; he was seized with paralysis, and died at the comparatively early age of fifty-three.[100]

Of Brunel’s great engineering skill there can be no question; he loved difficulties and engineering perils: he has been styled “the Michael Angelo of Railways;” and his victory in “the Battle of the Gauges” gained him extraordinary prominence in the railway world. His ruling passion was magnitude, without regard to cost: “he was the very Napoleon of engineers, thinking more of glory than of profit, and of victory than of dividends.” Capitalists subscribed to his projects freely, and he put his own savings into the same risks; if shareholders suffered, he suffered with them; and it must be conceded that both railway travelling and steam navigation have been greatly advanced by the speculative ability of Mr. Brunel’s Titanic labours.

The career of Joseph Locke, civil engineer, though less brilliant than that of Brunel, was one of more sterling worth. He was born in Yorkshire, in 1805, the son of a fellow-workman with George Stephenson at the pit. Locke had little schooling, and failing in two or three humble services, at the age of nineteen he became George Stephenson’s pupil, and then his assistant, taking charge of the survey of railway lines; he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the Grand Junction and South-Western lines; and next initiated the Continental Railway system, promoting the rapid communication between London and Paris. He was made a chevalier and officer of the Legion of Honour, and sat in the British Parliament for Honiton. He died at the early age of fifty-five, leaving great wealth to his widow (a daughter of Mr. M‘Creery, the literary printer), to form in the North a public park, and found a scholarship.

The high celebrity of Mr. Locke was not due to the fact of his
making railways. It was, that he made them within the estimated
cost,—an achievement which would sooner or later have been attained
by the ordinary operations of capital. The Grand Junction Railway
was eventually constructed for a sum within the estimate, and at an
average cost of less than 15,000_l._ a mile. The heavy works on the
Caledonian line were completed at less than 16,000_l._ a mile. This
economical success was in a great measure owing to the adoption of a
bold system of steep gradients—an expedient which Stephenson, it
appears, disliked to the last, and which was a prevailing feature in
his active rival’s designs. Locke hated a tunnel, and with
embankments and inclines would encounter any difficulty.[101]

Thomas Cubitt, the great metropolitan builder and contractor, was another remarkable man of this class. He was born at Buxton, near Norwich, in 1788. At the time of his father’s death he was nineteen years old, and working as a journeyman carpenter. He next took a voyage to India and back, as captain’s joiner; and, on his return to the metropolis, with his savings began business as a master-carpenter. Within six years he erected large workshops in Gray’s-inn-road. One of his earliest works was building the London Institution in Moorfields. About 1824, he began to build Tavistock-square, Gordon-square, Woburn-place, and the adjoining streets; and next engaged to cover with houses large portions of the Five Fields, Chelsea, of which engagement Belgrave-square, Lowndes-square, and Chesham-place are the results.[102] He subsequently contracted to build over the large open district between Eaton-square and the Thames, now known as South Belgravia. He had completed most of his large engagements, and had just built for himself a mansion at Denbies, where he died in his sixty-seventh year, possessed of great wealth. Through life he constantly promoted the intellectual and moral improvement of his work-people. One of his brothers, and partner in business, is Mr. William Cubitt, M.P., who has twice served the office of Lord Mayor, and was, like his relative, originally a ship’s carpenter.

Thomas Brassey, the railway contractor, is another remarkable instance of colossal labour. Born at Buerton in 1805, and educated at Chester, he commenced life as a surveyor at Birkenhead; and his first railway work was a contract to supply the stone for a viaduct of the Liverpool and Manchester line. From this period to the present hour, he has constructed, upon his own responsibility and credit, many hundred miles of railway in England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Canada, at the cost of millions of money. A striking instance of his energy and enterprise occurred in one of his French contracts. When the Barentine viaduct, of twenty arches, on the Rouen and Havre Railway, was nearly completed, the work gave way, and the casualty involved a loss of 30,000_l._ Mr. Brassey was neither morally nor legally responsible—he had repeatedly protested against the material used in the structure; but the viaduct was rebuilt entirely at Mr. Brassey’s cost.

Mr. George Bidder, the engineer, presents one of the few examples of early habits of calculation being matured to advantage. When about six years of age, he was first introduced to the science of figures. His father was a working man; his elder brother commenced instructing him to count up to 10, then to 100, and there he stopped. He repeated the process, and found that by stopping at 10, and repeating that every time, he counted up to 100 much quicker than by going straight through the series: he counted up to ten, then ten again = 20, 3 times 10 = 30, 4 times = 40, and so on. At this time he did not know one written or printed figure from another, nor did he know there was such a word as “multiply;” but, having acquired the power of counting up to 100 by ten and by 5, he set about, in his own way, to acquire the multiplication-table: he got a small bag of shot, which he arranged into squares of 8 on each side, and then, on counting them, found they amounted to 64; which fact once established, remained undisturbed in Mr. Bidder’s mind until this day; and in this way he acquired the whole multiplication-table up to 10 times 10, which was all he needed. In a house opposite his father’s lived an aged blacksmith, who allowed young Bidder to run about his workshop and blow the bellows for him, and on winter-evenings to listen to the old man’s stories by the forge-hearth. By practice his powers of numeration were drawn forth, he was rewarded with halfpence, and thus he became more attached to arithmetic. The “Calculating Boy” has now matured as an eminent engineer; the process of reasoning, or action of the mind, by which, when a boy, he trained himself in Mental Arithmetic, having laid the basis of sound professional skill, which he has most beneficially exercised in various great engineering works.

James Walker, civil engineer, who died in 1862, aged eighty-one, was the oldest member of the profession. He was one of the earliest members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, succeeded Telford as President, and filled the chair fourteen years. Mr. Walker, through his long life, was associated with many of the greatest hydraulic works in England and Scotland, including lighthouses, harbours, bridges, embankments, and drainage. He had accumulated in personalty 300,000_l._, which he took great pains to distribute by his will; for he was a kind-hearted, generous man, and considerate and liberal to those associated with him in his profession.

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Footnote 99:

Smiles’s _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. iii.

Footnote 100:

He had more perilous escapes from violent death than fall to the lot
of most men. He had two narrow escapes from drowning by the river
suddenly bursting in upon the Thames-Tunnel works. During the Great
Western Railway inspection, he was one day riding a pony rapidly down
Boxhill, when the animal stumbled and fell, pitching the engineer on
his head; he was taken up for dead, but eventually recovered. One day,
when driving an engine through the Box-tunnel, he discerned some light
object standing on the same line of road along which his engine was
travelling; he turned on the full steam and dashed the object (a
contractor’s truck) into a thousand pieces. When on board the _Great
Western_ steam-ship, he fell down a hatchway into the hold, and was
nearly killed. But the most extraordinary accident which befel him
was, in showing a sleight-of-hand trick to his children, his
swallowing a half-sovereign, which dropped into his windpipe, remained
there for six weeks, when it was removed through an incision in the
windpipe, by Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Key; his body was inverted,
and after a few coughs, the coin dropped into his mouth. Mr. Brunel
used afterwards to say, that the moment when he heard the gold piece
strike against his upper front teeth was perhaps the most exquisite in
his whole life.—Abridged from the _Quarterly Review_, No. 223.

Footnote 101:

_Saturday Review._

Footnote 102:

This district was originally a clayey swamp; but Mr. Cubitt finding
the strata to consist of gravel and clay of inconsiderable depth, the
clay he removed and burned into bricks; and by building upon the
substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from one of the most
unhealthy to one of the most healthy—a singular adaptation of the
means to the end.

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SCIENTIFIC FARMING.

Southey, in _The Doctor_, remarks: “It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most intelligent farmers in the neighbourhood of London are persons who have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong inclination for rural employments: one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey of that county was published by the Board of Agriculture, had been a tailor.”

Scientific farming has of late years largely multiplied these amateur farmers; but, long before rural economy had taken this turn, we remember a curious instance. Some five-and-forty years since, when Davy’s _Agricultural Chemistry_ was the only work of its class, there lived in a town of Surrey a gentleman-tradesman, who loved to relieve the monotony of his own business by flying off to experimental pursuits. In politics he was a disciple of Cobbett, and year after year foretold a revolution in England,—an alarm which he raised throughout his household. He took extreme interest in new mechanical projects; and kept a chronological record of the progress of the Thames Tunnel. In wine-making he was a very experimentalist, and knew by heart every line of Macculloch on Wine from unripe fruit. Next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analysed the soil _à la Davy_, and _salted_ all his growing crops, as well as the soil. But he soon flew from horticultural chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road-making and macadamisation, and became surveyor of the highways. He next bought the lease of a house in the neighbourhood for the sake of the large garden attached to it; and here he passed much of his time in its experimental culture. Had he lived to the days of Liebig, how he would have revelled in his theories!

We have a strong confirmation of Southey’s remark in the present day in the case of Alderman Mechi, who has become a memorable man in this kind of experimental agriculture, and has transferred the _magic_ of his Razor-Strop (by the sale of which, in ten years he realised a handsome fortune) to the barren heath-land of Essex. In 1840 he commenced his bucolic experiments by purchasing a small unproductive farm at Tiptree-heath; and here he tried what could be effected by deep drainage and the application of steam-power. The Essex farmers laughed at him as an enthusiast, and the country gentlemen kept aloof from him. Mechi, however, persevered, and brought his farm into such high productiveness that he realises annually an average handsome profit. We have seen his balance-sheet impugned: however, if public opinion is worth any thing, he has rendered great service to agricultural science by the exhibition of processes upon his model farm, Tiptree, which is known all over the European continent; for the Alderman has been presented with a 500_l._ testimonial of plate by noblemen and gentlemen interested in science and agriculture at home and abroad.

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LARGE FORTUNES.

No single class can be pointed to in the present day as the first favourite of fortune. The loan-monger is still powerful, and so is the speculator; but bankers accumulate fortunes like those of the highest nobles, and a linen-draper left the other day cash which would purchase the fee-simple of the Woburn estates. The rate of fortunes has enormously increased. Pitt thought it useless to tax fortunes above a million, and now men die every day whose heirs chuckle over the saving produced by this want of foresight. A “plum” has ceased to be even a citizen’s goal, and there are tradesmen in London whose incomes while in trade exceed “a great fortune” of the time of the second George. Very enormous realised fortunes, properties that are producing 50,000_l._ a-year, are, however, still very scarce. Only fifty-seven are returned to the English income-tax; and though that is a palpably erroneous account, it may be doubted if there are a dozen individuals with that amount in the world. There are none in France or Italy beyond a few working capitalists, a few remaining in Germany, a considerable number in Russia, and perhaps thirty individuals in America. There are perhaps ten private incomes in India of that amount, as many in South America, and a few officials in the Eastern world accumulate very considerable sums; but there the list ends.[103] Yet, how often are large fortunes wrecked by those who succeed to them!

Many a Londoner past middle age may recollect Thomas Clark, “the King of Exeter ’Change,” who was long one of the most singular characters in the metropolis. He took a stall in the ’Change in 1765, with 100_l._ lent him by a stranger. By parsimony and perseverance he so extended his business as to occupy nearly one-half of the entire building with the sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. He grew rich, and once returned his income at 6000_l._ a-year. He was penurious in his habits: he dined with his plate on the bare board, and his meal, with a pint of porter, never cost him a shilling; after dinner he took a glass of spirits-and-water at the public-house opposite the end of the ’Change, and then returned to his business. He resided in Belgrave-place, Pimlico; and morning and evening saw him on his old horse, riding into town and home again—and thus he figured in the print-shops. He died in 1817, in his eightieth year, and left nearly half a million of money. His daughter was married to Hamlet, the celebrated goldsmith of Coventry-street who, however, met with sad reverses; and, among other unsuccessful speculations, built the Bazaar and the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford-street.

The wealth of the celebrated Mr. Beckford, the son of the demagogue Alderman, and Lord Chatham’s god-child, proved the shoal upon which his happiness was wrecked. He succeeded to his father’s enormous fortune at ten years of age. He was educated at home: he was quick and lively, and had literary tastes; he had a great passion for genealogy and heraldry; studied Oriental literature: in his seventeenth year he wrote a history of extraordinary painters. His father had left him, principally in Jamaica estates, a property which, on the conclusion of his minority, furnished him with a million of ready money and an income of 100,000_l._ a-year. He travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year, when he wrote _Vathek_, a work of startling beauty. At twenty-four he married; but the lady died in three years. He passed many years in travelling, principally in Spain and Portugal, before he got sufficiently settled in mind to return to his family-seat, Fonthill in Wiltshire. He began to reside there in 1796, and immediately commenced the great squandering of his money. He had always a hundred, and often two hundred, workmen engaged in carrying out his wayward fancies. But he was haughty and reserved; and because some of his neighbours followed game into his grounds, he had a wall, twelve feet high and seven miles long, built round his home-estate, in order to shut out the world. He then began the third house at Fonthill, considering the second too near a piece of water. The new house was built in a sham monastic style, was called the Abbey, and cost a quarter of a million; but never put to any use, except on one occasion, to receive Lord Nelson. While Beckford was indulging these gigantic follies, he lost, by an adverse decision in a Chancery-suit, a considerable portion of his Jamaica property; he was also cheated out of large sums of money, and in the end was obliged to sell Fonthill; the purchaser was Mr. Farquhar, a rich but penurious merchant. In a few years the lofty tower of the Abbey fell down. The estate is now the property of the Marquis of Westminster. Mr. Beckford removed to Bath, and there built, on Lansdowne Hill, an Italian villa, with a lofty prospect-tower. While residing here he wrote an account of the travels which he had made half a century before; and having got through large sums of money in planting and building, he died in 1844, in his eighty-fourth year; and upon his tomb a passage from _Vathek_ is inscribed.

Mr. Beckford was unquestionably a man of genius and rare accomplishments. “But his abilities were overpowered, and his character tainted, by the possession of wealth so enormous. At every stage of life his money was like a millstone round his neck. He had taste and knowledge; but the selfishness of wealth tempted him to let these gifts of the mind run to seed in the gratification of extravagant freaks. He really enjoyed travelling and scenery, but he felt it incumbent on him, as a millionnaire, to take a French cook with him wherever he went; and he found that the Spanish grandees and ecclesiastical dignitaries who welcomed him so cordially valued him as the man whose cook could make such wonderful omelettes. From the day when Chatham’s proxy stood for him at the font till the day when he was laid in his pink granite sarcophagus, he was the victim of riches. Had he had only 5000_l._ a year, and been sent to Eton, he might have been one of the foremost men of his time, and have been as useful in his generation as, under his unhappy circumstances, he was useless.”[104] It may be added, that he was worse: for he so threw about his money at Fonthill as to corrupt and demoralise the simple country-people. We remember three of his London residences: one on the Terrace, Piccadilly, on the site of the newly-built mansion of Baron Rothschild; another of Beckford’s town residences was No. 1 Devonshire-place, New-road; and the third, No. 27 Charles-street, May Fair, a very small house, looking over the garden of Chesterfield-house.

The vanity of wealth is exemplified in the following anecdote, which Mrs. Richard Trench had from an ear-witness:

The late Duke of Queensberry, leaning over the balcony of his
beautiful villa near Richmond, where every pleasure was collected
which wealth could purchase or luxury devise, he followed with his
eyes the majestic Thames, winding through groves and buildings of
various loveliness, and exclaimed, “Oh, that wearisome river! Will
it never cease running, running, and I so tired of it?” To me this
anecdote conveys a strong moral lesson, connected with the
well-known character of the speaker, a professed voluptuary, who
passed his youth in pursuit of selfish pleasures, and his age in
vain attempts to elude the relentless grasp of _ennui_.

Now let us turn to some better uses of wealth earned by well-directed industry. Old Mr. Strahan, the printer (the founder of the typarchical dynasty), said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than getting money;” and he added, that “the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed with him. Boswell also relates that Mr. Strahan once talked of launching into the great ocean of London, in order to have a chance of rising into eminence; and observing that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes there because they had been born to a competency, said, “Small certainties are the bane of men of talents;” which Johnson confirmed.

Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as an apprentice, upon Johnson’s recommendation. Johnson, having inquired after him, said, “Mr. Strahan, let me have five guineas on account, and I’ll give this boy one. Nay, if a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it’s sad work. Call him down.” Boswell followed Johnson into the courtyard behind Mr. Strahan’s house, and there he heard this conversation:

“Well, my boy, how do you go on?” “Pretty well, sir; but they’re afraid I a’n’t strong enough for some parts of the business.” _Johnson._ “Why, I shall be sorry for it; for, when you consider with how little mental power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear; take all the pains you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There’s a guinea.”

Here was one of the many instances of Johnson’s active benevolence. At the same time, says Boswell, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy’s awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions.

Johnson appears to have been generally alive to the policy of getting money: we all remember when, as one of the executors of Mr. Thrale, he was assisting in taking stock of the brewery in Southwark, how its vastness impressed the doctor with “the potentiality of growing rich.”

William Strahan, a native of Edinburgh, came to London when a very young man, and worked as a journeyman printer, having Dr. Franklin for one of his fellow-workmen. Strahan, industrious and thrifty, prospered, and purchased, in 1770, a share of the patent for King’s printer; and he obtained considerable property in the copyrights of the works of the most celebrated authors of the time. He was a great friend to Johnson, and kept up his intimacy with Franklin. He died rich, bequeathing munificent legacies. He was succeeded in his business by his third son, Andrew Strahan, who inherited his father’s excellent qualities, and died in 1831, aged eighty-three, leaving property to the amount of more than a million of money. Among his many generous acts, he presented to James Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_, the munificent gift of 1000_l._

The vicissitudes of the Buckinghams, political as well as fiscal, can be traced through the long lapse of eight centuries. In our own times, two dukes have fallen from their high estate into neglect and poverty. Richard, first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, lived at Stowe, with princely magnificence: his expenditure in rare books and works of art was enormous; and his entertainment of the Royal Family of France and their numerous retinues, upon one of his estates, not only drained his exchequer, but burdened him with debt. Neither Louis XVIII. nor Charles X., however, took the slightest notice of the obligation they had incurred,—apparently regarding such imprudent generosity as the natural acknowledgment of their exceeding merit. The Duke was, in 1827, compelled to shut up his house and go abroad, till his large estates could be nursed, so as to meet the heaviest and most pressing demands.[105] While abroad, he had a dream, which he has recorded in his _Private Diary_, published in 1862. He dreamed that he was at Stowe, his dear and regretted home: all was deserted—not a soul appeared to receive him. His good dog met him, licked his hand, and accompanied him through all the apartments, which were desolate and solitary,—every room as he had left it. He met his wife, who told him all his family were gone, and she alone was left. He awoke with the distress of the moment, and slept no more that night.

Mr. Rumsey Forster, in his piquant historical notice of Stowe, prefixed to the _Priced and Annotated Catalogue_, relates that, Louis Philippe being present when the Royal Family of France were enjoying the hospitality of the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, as they were seated together in the library, the conversation turned on events then enacting on the other side of the Channel; upon which Louis Philippe, recollecting his own position with the Revolutionists, threw himself upon his knees, and begged pardon of his royal uncle for having ever worn the tricoloured cockade. The anecdote is curious, when the subsequent career of the ex-monarch is borne in mind.

The Duke died Jan. 17, 1839, and was succeeded by his only son, Richard Plantagenet, who, though crippled in fortune by the paternal tastes, celebrated the coming of age of his son with profuse hospitality at Stowe, in 1844; and in 1845, entertained Queen Victoria and the Prince Albert with great sumptuousness. The mansion at Stowe was partly refurnished for the occasion, when the cost of the new carpets was 5000_l._ In 1848, the dream of the first Duke was strangely realised by the dismantling of Stowe, and the compulsory dispersion of the whole of the costly contents; the sale occupying forty days, and realising 75,562_l._ 4_s._ 6_d._ The Duke subsequently resided in the neighbourhood; and he often indulged his sadness at his fallen fortunes by walking to Stowe; and there, in one of the superb saloons in which kings and princes had held courts and been feasted with regal magnificence,—seated in a chair before a small table—the only furniture in the room—would Richard Plantagenet pass many an hour of “bitter fancy.” He died July 30, 1861, at the age of sixty-four. Sir Bernard Burke, Ulster, writes of the Duke’s lineage: “Of all native-born British subjects, his Grace was, after the present reigning family, the senior representative of the Royal Houses of Tudor and Plantagenet.”[106]

“Day and Martin’s Blacking,” one of the inventions of the present century, realised a large fortune, which was mostly appropriated to beneficent purposes. Day is related to have been originally a hair-dresser; and, as the story goes, one morning a soldier entered his shop, representing that he had a long march before him to reach his regiment; that his money was gone, and nothing but sickness, fatigue, and punishment awaited him unless he could get a lift on a coach. The worthy barber, who, with his small means, was a generous man, presented him with a guinea, when the grateful soldier exclaimed, “God bless you, sir! how can I ever repay you this? I have nothing in this world except” (pulling a dirty piece of paper from his pocket) “a receipt for blacking: it is the best ever was seen; many a half-guinea have I had for it from the officers, and many bottles have I sold.” Mr. Day, who was a shrewd man, inquired into the truth of the story, tried the blacking, and finding it good, commenced the manufacture and sale of it, and realised the immense fortune of which he died possessed in 1836; bequeathing 100,000_l._ for the benefit of persons who, like himself, suffered the deprivation of sight. The rebuilding of the Blacking Factory, in High Holborn, cost 12,000_l._

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]

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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.

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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]