Fifty years in Wall Street
devised for a Southern Education Fund two million one hundred thousand.
In addition to these he left five millions to various relatives. J. S.
Morgan, who was Mr. Peabody’s partner in the banking business, became,
at his death, his successor, and is now supposed to be a richer man than
Mr. Peabody ever was.
Johns Hopkins, who died at Baltimore in 1873, at the age of 78, was one
of the most eccentric millionaires and philanthropists. Very few
expected that he would bequeath the great university and the hospital
which are called by his name. He was so wretchedly penurious that he
hardly afforded himself the means of subsistence. His benefactions to
these two institutions, however, exceed eight million dollars.
Alexander T. Stewart, the great dry goods merchant, who was reputed to
be one of the three wealthiest men in the United States, Commodore
Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor being the other two, died in 1876. He
had no legitimate heirs, and his estate, estimated at one time between
twenty and thirty millions, was left to his wife, with the exception of
a million to Judge Hilton and $325,000 to his employes.
Mr. Stewart’s two great benefactions were failures, as he left nobody
able and willing to carry out his intentions in regard to their
arrangement.
They would probably have been failures in any event, as they seemed to
the majority of people to be in a large measure Utopian. One was Garden
City on Long Island, intended to be homes for industrious mechanics on a
higher and more comfortable scale than the majority of the dwelling of
these sons of physical and intellectual toil. A grand cathedral was
built there in memory of the merchant prince, and a beautiful crypt for
his mortal remains, which were stolen from St. Mark’s churchyard shortly
after the interment.
The mechanics and laborers were not attracted to Garden City, and it is
now making slow progress with tenants whose avocations are generally in
the higher walks of life.
The other great enterprise was a home for girls and women at moderate
expense. This was in the shape of a hotel on a large scale at Park
Avenue and Thirty-third street. The restrictions and the prices were
such that the home also failed to attract the class it was intended for.
The public gift, therefore, reverted to the Stewart estate, or rather
was taken forcible possession of by the trustees and transformed into
the Park Avenue Hotel. To carry out the rather indefinite terms of the
bequest would probably have involved the expenditure of a very large
amount of the Stewart estate, and, perhaps, the enterprise would even
then have been a failure. It is more than probable that if Mr. Stewart
had lived a few years longer, he himself would have been satisfied with
the impracticability of both his semi-philanthropic schemes.
There were great things expected in the shape of benefactions from Mr.
Stewart at the time of his death. He had done so little in that respect
while living that the public indulged the hope that he would make up for
his charitable shortcomings when he found that his worldly accumulations
could no longer be of any service or gratification to him, and that he
could not take any of them away with him.
Hence, it was a considerable disappointment to the public when the will
revealed the fact that nothing had been devised, out of the immense
hoard of nearly half a century’s savings, to charitable purposes.
On the day of his death I had an engagement with my dentist, Mr.
Dwinell, in Thirty-fourth street, and while I was seated in the chair
Mr. Wilson MacDonald, the well known sculptor, came in to pay a visit to
the dentist, with whom he was well acquainted. Having been introduced by
the sculptor, we immediately entered into conversation on the prominent
local topic of the day, the death of Mr. Stewart and the probable
distribution of his wealth.
Mr. MacDonald invited me to go to his studio to see a bust in clay of
Mr. Stewart that he had just about finished. He said, “I knew Mr.
Stewart’s aversion to having any portraits or photographs taken of
himself during his lifetime, so I provided for the emergency some time
ago by taking close observation of him at various intervals. During the
past two years I have frequently come in contact with him, going into
his store and getting a good look at him from various points of view, so
as to impress his likeness upon my mind. I have thus succeeded in
getting a pretty good bust of him in clay.”
Mr. MacDonald was very anxious that I should call and see this bust,
because, as I knew Mr. Stewart so well, he inferred that my judgment
would be worth something, and he expressed a desire that I should
criticise his work. I promised him I would call and see the bust as soon
as I could spare the time.
On leaving the dentist’s office I made another engagement to go back the
following week, and in the meantime I had been unable to call at the
studio of the artist, but the latter happened to be in the office of the
dentist when I called there again. The will of Mr. Stewart had been
published in the interim, and in it all reference to charities and
benevolent institutions had been carefully omitted.
Mr. MacDonald reminded me that I had not called to see the bust, and
added, “If you had called that time you would hardly recognize any
resemblance between what it is now and what it was then.” “How is that?”
I inquired. “Because,” he replied (facetiously), “as soon as I saw the
will published in the newspapers and none of that immense pile left to
the public, from whom it had been collected, I set to work and toned
down the bumps of benevolence, conscientiousness, sublimity, veneration
and ideality, making those of acquisitiveness, inhabitiveness,
amativeness and all the selfish and animal propensities prominent. I
naturally concluded, if phrenology is not a fraud, that Stewart’s will
was a manifestation of the non-existence of the higher and more humane
organs in his cranium. There certainly could be nothing there indicative
of any generous emotions.”
I think everybody who knew the great dry goods merchant will be inclined
to say that the judgment of the sculptor was neither rash nor
uncharitable.
STEPHEN GIRARD.
Stephen Girard was another of the great millionaires who arose from
penury, and whose eccentricity took a philanthropic turn. Mr. Girard was
a Frenchman, born near Bordeaux in 1750, who made his home in later
years in Philadelphia. He bequeathed over two million dollars to found
and endow Girard College in that city.
There is a good story told, which seems to be well authenticated, of the
manner in which Mr. Girard rewarded the ingratitude of a sister. When he
was a boy about ten he manifested very little disposition for hard work,
and his family treated him harshly. One morning a rumpus arose about his
idleness, and having said something that aroused the ire of his sister,
she clutched the broom and flew at him in a rage. He retreated,
receiving a few hard blows over the shoulders as he passed for the last
time over the threshold of his paternal home. He went to sea, his father
having been a seaman, and through various vicissitudes of fortune
eventually turned up as a millionaire in Philadelphia.
After young Girard had gone through the preliminary course as cabin boy,
trading between France, the West Indies and New York, he had saved up
some money and became part owner of a small trading vessel. This was in
1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. His trading was
suspended by the war with Great Britain. He then speculated in the
renting of a number of stores in Philadelphia, and sub-let them at a
large profit. Afterward he purchased a controlling interest in the stock
of the old U. S. Bank in 1812, and became a private banker with a
capital of more than a million. Subsequently he loaned five millions to
the Government to help defray war expenses.
In the meantime fortune, however, had not favored his irate sister, who
had chastised him with the broom. She remained poor. She had heard of
her brother’s wealth, however, but did not have money enough to pay her
passage to this country. In this extremity she went to the captain of a
Philadelphia vessel in a French port and told him that she was a sister
of Stephen Girard, without money, and desired to go and see her brother,
who was well known to the captain. She received the best accommodation
that the vessel could afford. Having arrived in Philadelphia the gallant
captain escorted her to the house of her wealthy brother. Leaving her in
the hallway he went in to see Mr. Girard and told him that a lady
outside wished to see him. The benevolent captain was prepared to behold
a demonstration of joy, which he thought would be exhibited as soon as
the long lost brother and sister should recognize each other. He was not
kept long in suspense. Mr. Girard knew his sister instantly. “_C’est
vous._” “It is you,” he said. “Oui,” she replied. These were all the
words that passed. There was no rushing into each others arms, but on
the contrary, Mr. Girard plunged at the captain in a lively mood. “What
authority had you to bring that woman here?” he said. The captain was
dumbfounded and hardly knew what to answer. “Take her back again at your
own expense,” he added.
The captain did not stand a minute on the order of his going, and the
millionaire’s sister, without receiving one kind adieu, was conducted
from the palatial mansion of her brother to the vessel, and thence to
her pauper home in France.
This shows that the great philanthropist had a good memory and was
resentful of injuries, yet it also betrays a narrowness from some taint
of which the greatest minds are not entirely free. The Girard sister was
unable to comprehend the higher aspirations of her young brother and his
intelligent convictions, which had, no doubt, taken form at that early
period of his life, that a man can never become wealthy by hard manual
labor. He was wrong, however, in giving her the cold shoulder. She was
correct in one sense, from her point of view, although a narrow view,
and his large charity should have condoned an error arising from her
superficial conception of his early designs.
His narrow-mindedness, with all his genuine greatness, and his
eccentricity were exhibited in a remarkable degree in some of the
restrictions of his will regarding the college. Although he was
exceedingly generous in his gifts to religious denominations, without
distinction, as well as to charitable institutions generally, he was,
though illiterate, a free thinker of the school of Voltaire and
Rousseau. He, therefore, had inserted in his will a prohibitory clause
to the effect that no clergyman should be permitted to have anything to
do with Girard College, nor even be admitted as a visitor. The college
is for orphans between six and ten years of age, who are put to a trade
when they are sixteen, all expenses being defrayed until they are able
to earn a living. There are now over 500 beneficiaries. Girard died in
1831, at the ripe age of four score and one. He was worth nine million
dollars, of which but a very small pittance went to a few of his
relatives, the great bulk of the estate having been distributed among
charitable institutions. This great philanthropist was exceedingly close
in money matters with men generally, and it is said that he never had a
friend, except the friend in the pocket, which is by all odds the most
genuine.
The late James Lenox takes rank with the great philanthropists of the
age, in attempting to devote a large portion of his surplus wealth to
the good of humanity. When he died, in 1880, at the age of eighty, he
was supposed to be one of the five wealthiest men in New York. He spent