Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Three months had elapsed since our departure from London on our
piratical tour to the Spanish Main. In all nearly five months had
elapsed since Green had introduced me to the Old Lady whose impregnable
vaults we had now at last determined to loot. That in itself was a
favorable circumstance, as it would give me a chance to flourish in a
grandly indefinite way to the effect that I had "for some time" been a
customer of the bank, and none of the officials would probably take the
trouble to ascertain how very brief, in fact, my acquaintance had been.
I left London by the night mail from Victoria Station for Paris, the
first of many hurried trips I took to the Continent on the business we
had entered upon. Truly, we worked hard, spent money lavishly, brought
all our power and genius to work--for what? To have the lightning fall
on us.
Upon my arrival I drove at once to the Hotel Bristol, Place Vendome, a
swell hotel, where none but the great sirs o' the earth could afford to
stop.
Here I registered as F. A. Warren, London, and at once sent off the
following letter:
P. M. Francis, Esq., Manager Bank of England, London.
Dear Sir: I am a customer of the bank, therefore I take the liberty
of troubling you in the hope to have the benefit of your advice.
Will you kindly inform me what good 4 per cent. stocks are to be
had in the market, also if the bank will transact the business for
me? I remain very truly yours,
F. A. WARREN.
By return mail came a letter wherein I was advised to invest in India 4
per cents or London Gas. I wrote an immediate order to have the bank
purchase ten thousand pounds of India stock and sent my check for that
amount, on his own bank, payable to the order of the manager. I received
the stock, instantly sold it, and replaced the money to my credit, and
the next day sent off an order for ten thousand pounds gas stock, and
repeated the operation until I had made the impression I wanted to make
on the mind of the manager, so that when I returned to London for my
decisive interview and sent in my card he would at once recognize the
name, F. A. Warren, as the multi-millionaire American who had been
sending him ten thousand pound checks from Paris.
All the time of my stay in France I had nothing to do but enjoy myself,
and I entered upon a systematic sightseeing in and around Paris. There
are some strange contrasts in that old town. One day I made one of a
coaching party to Fontainebleau, twenty-one miles from the city. Every
foot of the road there is classic ground, and I had assiduously studied
day by day the history of France. That Paris is France is nearly a
truth, and I had in my mind a tolerably clear view of the history of the
country and of the men who made its history. I was right there on the
scene of the history-making, and I found an intensity of interest in my
excursions such as I had never experienced before. The driver of the
coach was an Englishman by the name of Nunn. I mention this here, as he
eventually became my servant, and will appear again in the narrative.
To the Parisian hotel proprietor and shopkeeper the American visitor is
truly a providence. "Mine host" looks to him for loaves and fishes, and
is never deceived. The antics of our rich countrymen in Paris are
portentous in their amazing prodigality, and I fear we are the laughing
stock of the shopkeepers there.
At the Cafe Riche and Tortoni's I have seen extravagances in ordering
expensive wines and viands by my countrymen that made me regret that the
fools who were being served were not forced to toil for the mere
necessaries of existence. Certainly they were unworthy stewards of the
wealth heaven or the other place had bestowed on them by inheritance. I
remember one boy there throwing away in vice and dissipation the fortune
his father had through years of a long life spent toilsome hours in
accumulating. I sat at a table near him on several occasions, when,
after his banquet was half over, he used to reward the waiter with a
five-hundred franc note ($100), but the proprietor was ever close at
hand and would instantly despoil the garcon of his prize. He was
companioned by a member of the demi-monde, who, when arrayed in male
attire, as she was nightly, would cut up enough monkey tricks in one
night at the Valentino or Mabille to have made the fortunes of all our
comic paper artists had they been on the spot to catch her antics with a
kodak and then lay them before an admiring public.
The fortune this boy had inherited was unfortunately too vast and too
well-invested by his overfond and madly foolish father for the son to
run through it entirely. A very few years left him an imbecile in body
and mind, to become the prey of a parcel of sharks who, dressing in
purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, held him in a
state of abject slavery and fear. One day, aboard his own yacht, off
Naples, they married him to a notorious woman. Under the guardianship of
his wife and her villain paramour he wandered like a spectre amid the
scene of his former riot.
For long at Monte Carlo he lingered like a ghost, and at last died in
Florence. The American colony attended his funeral in a body, while his
widow, dissolved in tears, refused to be comforted. Although many dark
stories were whispered, the Americans there forgave her all, for her
grief and sorrow were so overpoweringly evident that it would have
seemed a crime to doubt her tender love for the departed. After having
the body embalmed, she embarked with her dead love for America, and
to-day his ashes rest in that mighty city of the dead, Greenwood, under
a Greek cross of white marble, bearing the date of birth and death. I
went to see it last Easter week. The grave was strewn with flowers, and
the pedestal bears this inscription:
"Too good for this world,
The angels bore him to heaven,
Leaving his heartbroken wife
To mourn her unspeakable loss."
Unopposed she succeeded to her husband's estate. It was large then;
to-day it has grown to enormous proportions. She is not, but easily
might have been, one of the Four Hundred.
At Saratoga last August I saw her sitting on the balcony of the United
States Hotel--fat, wrinkled, vulgar-looking, covered with diamonds.
Nemesis appears to have postponed her visit to the lady. Her life from
her own standpoint has been a tremendous success. She has been
philosopher enough to appreciate what an immense factor mere eating and
drinking is in the sum of human enjoyment. Born with a cold heart, a
constitution of iron, and the digestion of an ostrich, happily for her
peace of mind she was absolutely without imagination.
To fill the sum of human happiness (from her own standpoint) she only
required one other thing, a good bank account, and that, she said,
heaven had put in her way, so her life has been filled full of joy, and
of the only sort she cared for or could appreciate. In her early years,
when her passions were strong, lover and paramour followed in rapid
succession. When her blood grew cold she found her delight in the
pleasures of the table, and keeping the same cook, who was an expert,
for twenty years, and exercising freely, 1894 found her at 60 with a
strong pulse, a perfect digestion and a keen enjoyment of sport, racing
in particular, and, on the whole, enjoying life as well as any woman in
the universe, with no regrets, no torturing remorse, but with a serene
faith that when done with this world she--never having done anything
very bad here--will have a pretty good time in the world to come.
CHAPTER XX.
DETAILS NECESSARY, IF TEDIOUS.
After the events narrated in the last chapter, I returned to London. I
arrived early in the morning, and, meeting my companions, we had a long
and anxious talk over my near-approaching and all-important interview
with that great Sir of the London world, the manager of the Bank of
England. Happy for us if in that interview the manager had asked for the
customary references, or had used ordinary business precaution and
investigated me, or, indeed, had acted as any ordinary business man
would have done under ordinary circumstances. Our own conclusions were
that the fact that I was already a depositor, together with the
impression made by the letters and my L10,000 checks, would put the
thing through. Yet we, of course, felt that a thousand things could
arise to block our way effectually. A look, a word too much, a shadow,
or a smile in my face might ruin all; but still, after providing so far
as possible for every contingency, after planning what was to be said or
left unsaid at the interview, after my companions filling me full of
advice, we felt after all that everything must be left to my discretion,
to say and to act as I thought best under the circumstances.
This council of war was held in my room in the Grosvenor. I had arrived
from Paris at 6 o'clock. Mac and I breakfasted together at 8. George
joined us at 9, and we talked until 10, then we set out together for the
bank. Arriving there, they remained outside, watching for my
reappearance. Entering the bank, I sent in my card (F. A. Warren) by a
liveried flunkey, and was immediately ushered into the manager's parlor.
He has long since gone over to the majority, so here I will not so much
as name or describe him. Sufficient to say, that as soon as I set eyes
upon him I thought that we would have no particular difficulty in
carrying out our plans, save only so far as details went.
The manager, who had been told that I was a railroad contractor,
expressed himself highly gratified to have me do my business through the
bank, and said they would do all in their power to accommodate me. I
told him that, of course, I was financing large sums, and would require
more or less discounts before the year was out. Then I came away, and
meeting my two friends outside of the bank, in answer to their eager
inquiries as to what had transpired, I told them that, so far as the
bank officials were concerned, our way to the vaults of the bank was
wide open.
So ended the last scene of Act I.
The next day I went to the Continental Bank, in Lombard street, and
bought sight exchange on Paris for 200,000 francs, paying for it by a
check on the Bank of England. I was given a note of identification to
the Paris agent of the bank.
That night I left Victoria Station for Paris. At 10 the next morning I
had my money, and, going to the Place de la Bourse, near the Exchange, I
commissioned a broker, who was a member of the Exchange, to purchase
bills on London for L8,000. I cautioned him to buy bills drawn only on
well-known banking houses. About 3 o'clock he had the bills ready. I
paid him the amount, along with his commission, and, examining the
paper, found that he had purchased for me about what I wanted.
I will explain, for the benefit of any reader not conversant with
financial transactions, that if John Russell, cotton broker in Savannah,
ships a thousand bales of cotton to a firm in Manchester, England, the
firm in Manchester authorizes him to draw a bill of exchange on their
firm, payable at some London bank at three or six months' time, for the
value of the cotton. We will say the price is L10,000. Russell draws ten
bills for L1,000 each, say payable at the Union Bank of London. He gives
these bills to a money broker in Savannah, who sells them on the
Exchange and gets for them whatever the rate of exchange may then be on
London. The president of the Georgia Central Railroad may have ordered a
thousand tons of steel rail in England for his road, and to pay for them