High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  IX

  There was a third reason, beyond doing God’s work or seeking to keep the poor docile, why philanthropy happened: it was a useful means for humble or even dodgy businessmen to buy respectability and esteem, something that would set a standard for much twentieth-century practice. During the mid-Victorian period it was difficult to open a newspaper or periodical without seeing this advertisement, or a version of it:

  Holloway’s Pills and Ointment

  By a steady and searching trial in all parts of the World for upwards of Half a Century

  Have earned the reputation of being the

  MOST RELIABLE CURES FOR ALL DISEASES

  They are particularly recommended in cases of

  Liver and Stomach Disorders, Gout, Rheumatism, &c; also for all Complaints of the Throat and Lungs.80

  It is doubtful whether Thomas Holloway’s pills and ointment were of the slightest use, although the former were claimed to ease digestion and any other internal difficulties the mid-nineteenth-century hypochondriac might feel, and the latter professed itself the ideal ameliorative for gout and rheumatism. Although the composition of both apparently remained unchanged throughout the rest of the nineteenth century – scientific developments held no attraction for Holloway – the range of ailments they could conquer continued to expand. Late Victorian advertising claims the pills will deal with ‘indigestion, biliousness, sick headache, loss of appetite, nervousness, palpitation, heartburn, sleeplessness, want of energy, languor etc’. As for the ointment, that will also be ‘a blessing’ for ‘lumbago, sciatica, pleurisy, cramp, stiff joints, glandular swellings, bronchitis, asthma, sore throat, quinsy, hoarseness etc’, not to mention its indispensability for ‘sores, old wounds, bad legs, piles, fistulas, chaps, chilblains, burns, scalds, scurvy and all skin eruptions’.81 Armed with these products, one required nothing else, it seemed, for the Victorian medicine cabinet. In an early manifestation of the consumer society, many people (especially of the lower-middle and middle classes) suspended (or never encountered) disbelief about the properties of these substances, and bought them in vast quantities. As a result Holloway became immensely rich.

  Holloway was born in Devon in 1800, the son of a baker who moved to Cornwall and became a publican. After a basic education in Penzance he assisted his mother in her grocery business until he was twenty-eight, when he left for France to work as a general merchant. He moved to London in 1836 and set himself up as a commercial agent. After meeting a Torinese quack and leech-seller, Felix Albinolo, he sought a partnership with him in his ointment business. He introduced Albinolo to a doctor at St Thomas’s Hospital who, examining his ointment, found it was a similar oil and wax mixture to that already used at the hospital. The business opportunity Holloway thought he had sniffed out suddenly seemed less attractive.

  However, an idea took root. By the autumn of 1837 Holloway had manufactured his own ointment, in his mother’s kitchen, and was advertising it in the London newspapers. ‘The first ointment that I made’, he recalled in a letter towards the end of his life, ‘was in my mother’s saucepan, which held about six quarts, an extra jump was in a long fish kettle, and after that her little copper, which would hold about 40lbs.’82 He endured first a volley of abuse from Albinolo for breaking what had hitherto been his monopoly, and then the threat of legal action for stealing the Italian’s formula and using testimonials that Albinolo had believed were his. The two men embarked on an advertising war that bankrupted both of them, and ended with Holloway’s being imprisoned for debt in Whitecross Street jail until his mother bailed him out. He made it an iron rule thereafter that he would pay all debts on the day they were incurred.

  He began to produce digestive pills too. He sold these – laxatives of castor oil and ginger – from a shop in the Strand, demolished in the late 1860s to make way for Street’s Law Courts. He married in 1840 and his wife worked with him, he claimed for eighteen hours a day. They had no children, an influential factor in his philanthropy. He struggled at first: he resorted to sending his brother Henry around shops to ask for the pills and the ointment, and to express shock that the shopkeepers hadn’t heard of them. Later in the day Holloway himself would call as a commercial traveller, and sell them his goods.

  He rapidly grasped the link between advertising and sales, and ran a substantial advertising budget. His strategy worked, and was not confined just to the domestic press. He researched the press of his overseas markets, and advertised there too, building up a massive export business. He would visit the docks and sell his pills to people about to embark on voyages, and hoped word of them would travel around the world. It did. At home and abroad people became more aware of their aches and pains, and sought remedies. He was spending £5,000 a year on advertising by 1842 and by the end of his life, in 1883, about £50,000. With the money from his patent medicines he became a serious investor in other businesses, and spent much time managing his own portfolio.

  By the 1860s he was a millionaire – so rich that in 1871 he offered a loan to the French, rebuilding after their war with Prussia – but lived simply. To be fair to Holloway, he did seem to develop a sense of social obligation that took his philanthropy beyond self-service. He had offered to establish a charitable foundation in Devonport, his birthplace: but the citizens did not want the money of a purveyor of quack medicines. A notice was placed in the Builder inviting suggestions for how his philanthropic impulse might be realised. Holloway had started to examine lunatic asylums, visiting twenty in fifteen counties in the winter of 1871. He began to develop the idea of building better and more humane ones. He had once attended a meeting addressed by Shaftesbury about the need for such institutions for the respectable classes. He decided he wanted to spend half a million pounds: and he would rather spend it on one or two grand projects than on many small ones. As was later reported: ‘He had been guided by the consideration that rich people so unfortunate as to suffer from cerebral disease needed no monetary assistance, and the poor are already cared for in public asylums.’83 Holloway became distinct among major Victorian philanthropists in seeking to help the middle rather than the working classes; and rare among them in having absolutely no religious motivation to do so.

  Having consulted Shaftesbury, he decided to build on his estate at Egham in Surrey ‘The Holloway Sanatorium for Mental Disorders for Males and Females of the Middle Class’, which he emphasised would be ‘self supporting’ and would accommodate 240 patients.84 Only curable cases would be admitted, and no one would be allowed to stay beyond twelve months. Once opened, people from the upper-middle classes and the aristocracy had to be admitted too, to ensure the finances remained sound, as Holloway had not endowed it. The building cost £300,000, grand in scale not least because of his insistence that every patient should have his or her own room. To avoid delays in building, he bought his own brickworks. Apart from its architectural distinction, the sanatorium also precipitated a revolution in care for the mentally ill by introducing standards that would not be routine in Britain until the mid-twentieth century.

  The benefaction brought Holloway’s name before the highest in the land. Mrs Gladstone arranged for him to come to meet her and the Prime Minister on 17 June 1873. As Gladstone recorded in his diary: ‘We had a long conversation with Mr Holloway (of the Pills) on his philanthropic plans: wh are of great interest.’85 Whether Gladstone was responsible for a shift in Holloway’s intentions one does not know: but his second great philanthropic plan, to build a big convalescent home and hospital, was not pursued, but supplanted by another, even more ambitious idea. Holloway announced in December 1874 that he intended to build a ‘Ladies University’ at Egham that would cost more than £200,000 (in the end the bill was nearer £700,000), and which he did not intend to endow.86 He said there would be rents from some building land on the estate that the university could use to maintain its fabric for the first few years, until money accrued from fees. Those fees would be ‘at the lowest scale commensurate with high efficiency’.87
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br />   He also announced that ‘the Clerical influence usually so prominent will be limited to a minimum’. Holloway had a lifelong prejudice against parsons (he had ordered that no chaplain be attached to the sanatorium), lawyers and, unsurprisingly given his line of business, doctors. None was to be allowed on the governing body of his college. He wanted twenty professors for 400 ladies, and had a clear idea of the curriculum: ‘Modern Languages, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek, Algebra, Geometry, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Music, Drawing, Mill’s Logic, Mill’s Political Economy, Green’s English History, English Composition, Physiology, Natural Science, and such other subjects as may be suggested by Professor Fawcett and other competent advisers’. His Ladies would have to pass the Cambridge examination to get in, after which they would be prepared for the ordinary BA degree. He had the matter of scholarships ‘under consideration’ when he drew up his initial plan in 1874–5.88 ‘My ambition’, he said, ‘is to leave it so complete that its equal cannot be found in Europe or America.’

  Holloway was keen to ensure his foundation would be in keeping with the grandeur and permanence apparent in so many other Victorian establishments, and of a standard familiar from the older universities. His ‘Ladies College’ would be constructed ‘at a cost and in a manner that may in some measure be worthy [of] the acceptance of the nation to which I intend to dedicate it.’89 He pledged ‘whatever sum may be necessary to accomplish this object’ and stated that he wanted it built in the Renaissance style. ‘This may be somewhat expensive, but for a public building I do not regret it.’ Modestly, he added: ‘This building may hereafter serve as a starting point for someone else to do a great deal better.’ His architect for the college, as for the sanatorium, was William Henry Crossland, a pupil of Scott and the architect of the town hall at Rochdale. The inspiration for the latter was the Cloth Hall at Ypres, which exhibited the Gothic influence central to Scott’s work, and for the former the Chateau de Chambord, on the Loire (which he had visited with Holloway), which did not.

  He wanted his ladies to be able ‘to obtain either MA or BA or even a Double First’. To advertise his plan and call for support for it he convened a public meeting on 10 February 1875 to which many of the leading women of the day were invited: notably Millicent Fawcett, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Emily Davies. Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth and David Chadwick, Holloway’s principal friend in politics, were also present. Crossland laid preliminary, outline plans for the institution on the table, that everyone might see the grandeur Holloway intended for his college.

  Holloway was ambitious for the institution. He told Chadwick before the public meeting that he hoped it ‘could be considered as a sister college say to Cambridge’, and hoped Cambridge itself might recognise the quality of the degrees his ladies took and, where they were worthy, confer degrees on them.90 The Cambridge comparison extended to the architecture. Crossland had told James Beal, Holloway’s builder, that ‘the founder intends that there shall be nothing like it in Europe.’91 Holloway and Crossland met Kay-Shuttleworth, who suggested the college be split into four divisions, one a training college for teachers and another a high school where those being trained could try out their skills. This was not Holloway’s vision. He told Chadwick that ‘he must leave it to some other person who can conveniently part with a quarter of a million to do that, but as for himself, he shall either carry out his plan of making it a college for the Higher Education of women, and in all respects similar to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, or do nothing of the kind.’

  Holloway expressed the fear to John Morley that unless degrees were conferred by Oxford or Cambridge, women would not feel encouraged to attend.92 He told Morley: ‘To say that a young woman was at college may mean but little – but if she could say she had taken a degree – how many mothers would say to their daughters “now you must endeavour to do the same”? Should he find this plan of his meet with public disfavour, then he would abandon the whole scheme and devote his money to other purposes.’93

  In keeping with his anti-parsonical prejudice, Holloway wanted a secular institution. ‘It shall not either now or hereafter, if my deed can prevent it, be of the religious teaching of the Church of England, and I should therefore wish that this point be settled definitely.’94 He wanted no church or meeting house built on the land. ‘I have provided for a very beautiful chapel where a doctrine that can offend no-one may be preached.’ Crossland visited Cambridge with Holloway in April 1875 to look for ideas, and then, on his return to Virginia Water, started to draw up plans. Holloway’s brother made an exploratory visit to Vassar College in New York, and reported back.

  He took enormous interest in the most minute architectural details and corresponded frequently with Crossland about them, on both the sanatorium and the college. ‘Boilers,’ he wrote on 11 November 1874. ‘Should they be 16 or 18 feet long?’95 His descriptions of what he wanted Crossland to do often include the adjective ‘magnificent’.96 He had bought the Mount Lee estate at Egham for £25,000, and told Crossland he had a budget of £150,000 to do the job properly. To inspire him, he told Crossland that ‘it will be larger than Wellington College and where young Ladies will receive a classical education . . . there will be nothing like it in Europe.’

  Holloway called Chadwick ‘one of the godfathers or sponsors of the Ladies College, the duties of which you are fulfilling in a manner more like a father than a Godfather’.97 Holloway made contact with Emily Davies at Girton and asked for advice. She told him not to admit any girl under seventeen, to ensure they passed a stiff examination at the end, and not to bother to teach music. He agreed with all three points. Then the inevitable happened: he wrote to her on 4 June 1875 and asked: ‘I presume you could not be tempted hereafter to leave Girton to become the Lady Principal of the “Holloway College”?’98

  The foundation stone – or rather brick – was laid in September 1879. Gladstone admired what Holloway was doing, referring in a letter to Chadwick in 1881 to his act of ‘so much munificence’.99 He was worried, though, by Holloway’s zeal against religion being framed in the charter, since he feared it would end up excluding those of faith. While grasping Holloway’s desire for his institution to break the mould of the older universities, he advised against the charter repudiating ‘old traditions’, without it saying what those ‘old traditions’ were. Holloway’s final act of philanthropy was to spend £83,000 on an art gallery in his college.

  A week before Holloway’s death The Times wrote a respectful article on his college and his sanatorium. ‘The mere money expended upon them surpasses in amount anything hitherto done by private means, for upon them considerably more than a million has been spent, including an endowment fund of £300,000 for the college.’100 ‘Both these institutions are especially designed by the founder for the benefit of the middle classes,’ the paper explained, and they were designed to be ‘self supporting’ so they would not have to rely further on charity. The sanatorium was described as ‘very large and handsome’ with ‘all the comforts of home’ and ‘the ulterior view of forming a valuable and profitable school for the special study of mental ailments.’ The sanatorium was due to open the following year: and had ‘walls ornamented in compartments with cheerful pictures of rural life, all painted by lady artists’ among its other facilities.

  It said the college ‘is a building much larger than any college in this country, being considerably larger than Trinity College, Cambridge’. It described the facilities: 1,000 rooms, with the 250 students each having a separate study and bedroom – and the ‘dining hall, music room, library, museum, chapel and picture gallery all of magnificent proportions’. The founder now waited for the Act of Parliament or Royal Charter that would allow the college to award degrees. The Lady Principal was empowered to arrange whatever religious worship in it might from time to time be deemed necessary, ‘but no arrangement shall be made which would identify the college in any way with any particular sect or denomination of Christians.’ Finally, there would be a
system of Founder’s Scholarships.

  Dying on Boxing Day 1883, Holloway did not see his college completed and opened by the Queen on 30 June 1886: she proclaimed it ‘Royal Holloway College’. The Times devoted a leader to him on his death, saying he was ‘best known to the world as a manufacturer of patent medicines, and better deserving to be known for other qualifications less frequently and less obtrusively thrust before the public eye.’101 It added: ‘It will be by these princely foundations that Mr Holloway’s name will be remembered among generations yet to come. By men of the present day it will be associated chiefly with the manufacture and advertisement and sale of ointments and pills. On the intrinsic merits of these much vaunted drugs we cannot pretend to be informed. If they possessed one-tenth part of the wonderful virtues which have been assigned to them, their discovery may safely be set down as marking an era of no small importance in the progress of the curative art.’ The best it could say was that in the many years they had been before the public ‘no bad consequences have been proved to follow from their use’.

  John Betjeman called Holloway’s college and sanatorium ‘two of the most amazing buildings in Britain . . . they have to be seen to be believed, and once seen they haunt the mind like a recurring and exalting dream.’102 The college is the leading physical monument to Victorian philanthropy in Britain: a memorial not only to the scale of one man’s generosity, but also to the ambition of an entire era.