Carnegie

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  On 12 July 1877 Carnegie received ‘the greatest honour’ of his life when he was accorded the freedom of Dunfermline. He glowed with pride that his name was thus associated with Sir Walter Scott, whom his parents remembered sketching in the grounds of Dunfermline Abbey during one of his visits to Fife.24 In all, Carnegie was to beat William Ewart Gladstone’s record of fourteen municipal freedoms.25 And once again Carnegie’s feet itched to travel.

  TEN

  ROUND THE WORLD

  It is therefore only a matter of time when the Chinese will drive every other race to the wall. No race can possibly stand against them . . .

  Andrew Carnegie, December 1878

  During mid-October 1878 Carnegie left the management of the Edgar Thomson Steel Co. in the hands – he thought capable – of William P. Shinn. He was now bound for the greatest tour of his life, this time to the Orient. Settling his mother with brother Tom at Pittsburgh, Carnegie packed his bags – including a 13-volume pigskin-bound Works of William Shakespeare a gift from his mother to while away the long hours at sea – and met up with John ‘Vandy’ Vandervort on the first leg of the journey to San Francisco. This was the realisation of an undertaking they had made on their Grand Tour, while at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, that they would tour ‘around the Ball’. This was no modern package tour with each booking made in advance; Carnegie was entering lands of which he had little or no knowledge, to meet people whose languages and writings were a mystery to him. But it would be the commencement of a new epoch of his life away from the luxuries of his New York habitat and the fussings of his mother.

  They set sail on 24 October 1878 aboard the SS Belgic and on 15 November they reached Japan’s main island of Honshu. For Carnegie it was a complete culture shock. They based themselves in Tokyo, which had been the capital of Japan only since 1868. Here they were introduced to the bustling metropolis, the imperial capital of Emperor Meiji (r. 1867–1912) who had seized the reins of government from the Shoguns (generalissimos) who had ruled Japan for centuries. Carnegie was able to observe how the emperor was beginning to raise the status of his nation from an obscure, insular and little-known country to a first-class power. Even so he observed much that had not changed from Japan’s medieval past, from the tera (temples) to the chamise (tea-houses), while the modern warships at Yokohama – part of Emperor Meiji’s developing fleet – depressed Carnegie as a symbol of Japan’s developing militarism.

  Traditional dress was being replaced by Western costume, but as the jinrikshas (man-powered carriages) weaved in and out of the traffic Carnegie saw their women passengers sporting the fashions, hairstyles and make-up of an ancient era – and he was not impressed: ‘How women can be induced to make such disgusting frights of themselves I cannot conceive.’1 Despite the great changes being wrought by Emperor Meiji, Carnegie was not enamoured of Japanese culture: ‘the odour of the toyshop pervades in everything, even their temples’.2

  From Japan Carnegie and Vandervort sailed on 27 November 1878 to Shanghai, via Nagasaki. The port of Nagasaki was a complete contrast to Tokyo. Here Westerners had set up shop from the days when the first Portuguese merchant ships arrived in 1571, to spew out guns, goods and Christianity. The steep streets, the vistas, the gardens impressed Carnegie, who caught the magic of the place that would inspire Giacomo Puccini to site his opera Madame Butterfly (1904) in the city.

  Setting up base at the Astor House in the American Settlement at the treaty port of Shanghai, in the fertile delta of the Chang Jiang River, Carnegie and Vandervort obtained their first view of China. They were to spend nine days in the port, before taking a mail steamer to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong for Christmas Day. Carnegie voiced his opinion of China as the year came to a close. For him China outshone Japan, for the Dragon Empire had forged a depth of civilisation that impressed him and he liked the fact that it was the scholars who held pride of place in society. He believed that the rapid Westernisation of Japanese society would lead it to disaster, but not so for the Chinese:

  Here in Asia the survival of the fittest is being fought out. . . . In this struggle we have no hesitation in backing the Heathen Chinese against the field. Permanent occupation by any western race is of course out of the question. An Englishman would inevitably cease to be an Englishman in a few, a very few, generations, and it is therefore only a question of time when the Chinese will drive every other race to the wall. No race can possibly stand against them anywhere in the East.3

  From Hong Kong they travelled across the South China Sea to Saigon (modern Ho Chi Minh City) and thence to Singapore, part of the British colony of the Straits Settlements, which Sir Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company had leased from the Sultan of Johor. Apart from the heat making their bulky clothes uncomfortable, Carnegie was unimpressed by what he saw in this part of South East Asia.

  An English mail steamer from Singapore on 14 January 1879 carried them across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), a British possession since 1796. Coffee plantations had been widely devastated by disease in the 1870s and Ceylon tea was now the great export commodity. As Carnegie sipped the flavoured brew, which had been a luxury in his Dunfermline childhood, he reflected more on the Buddhism he had first encountered in Japan and which had marched alongside the national religion of Shintoism. In Ceylon too, he absorbed the concept of making happy discoveries by accident – serendipity. The Arab traders had called Ceylon ‘Serendip’, a name which English author Horace Walpole adapted for the adjective in 1754.

  A three-day journey by mail steamer along the Coromandel coast brought them to Madras, once a centre for the British East India Company as Fort George, with the oldest town charter in India (1688) and the oldest English church (1678). From here they sailed across the Bay of Bengal to the port of Calcutta. Here, in the capital city of West Bengal, they saw British India in all its magnificence, now two years into its role as the imperial capital after the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India. Trade in cotton, silks, indigo and opium interested Carnegie, though he found India’s public bathing and open-air cremation of the dead disturbing.

  A train journey to Benares (Varanasi), the ancient and holy Hindu city, on 6 February introduced the travellers to the real culture of the Ganges, with its bathing ghats and cremations, and the mazes of narrow city streets and hundreds of temples. They moved on to the Mogul city of Agra, with its Red Fort and most famous neighbour the white marble Taj Mahal, the mausoleum of 1630–48 built to honour and inter Mumtaz-i-Mahal, wife of Shah Jahan, the great patron of Indian engineering and architecture. Up to this point Carnegie’s favourite monument was that to Sir Walter Scott in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, but the Taj Mahal now pushed it into second place. At last he caught the great spirit of the country, and although he considered that India could never outstrip China in cultural or economic potential, he believed that the development of Christianity in India would be to its great advantage, with one directive god supplanting a whole pantheon. He felt too, that India would ultimately rebel against her imperial rulers, although he had glowing words to say about the British administration:

  The more I see of the thoroughness of the English Government in the East – its attention to the minutest details, the exceptional ability of its officials as evinced in the excellence of the courts, jails, hospitals, dispensaries, schools, roads, railways, canals, etc, – the more I am amazed.4

  Ten days after arriving at Agra they journeyed on to Delhi on the Yumuna River, not yet proclaimed the capital of India by the British (this did not take place until 1911). Thence they went to Bombay (Mumbai), the Gateway to India since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Carnegie described Bombay as the ‘Rome of India’, and settled back in its relaxed atmosphere to catch up with his correspondence. It was not all good news. He opened a letter from W.P. Shinn dated 1 December 1878 informing him of the death of David McCandless, chairman of the Edgar Thomson Steel Company. Carnegie was deeply upset. His friendship with the McCandless family had
dated from his first days at Allegheny; indeed, his father William, his aunt Annie Aitken and David McCandless had together founded the first Swedenborgian church and McCandless had opened many doors for Carnegie. He grieved that he had not been able to say a final goodbye to his old friend. On 22 February 1879 Carnegie wrote to William P. Shinn one of the most heartfelt letters that he ever composed:

  It does seem too hard to bear, but we must bite the lip & go forward I suppose assuming indifference – but I am sure none of us can ever efface from our memories the images of our dear, generous, gentle & unselfish friend – To the day I die I shall never be able to think of him without a stinging pain at the heart – His death robs my life of one of its chief pleasures, but it must be borne, only let us take from his loss one lesson as the best tribute to his memory. Let us try to be as kind and devoted to each other as he was to us. He was a model for all of us to follow. One thing more we can do – attend to his affairs & get them right that Mrs McCandless & Helen may be provided for – I know you will all be looking after this & you know how anxious I shall be to cooperate with you.5

  The next stop on the world tour was Egypt and the mosques and bustling streets of Cairo, under the country’s new ruler Khedive Tawfiq of the dynasty of Muhammad Ali. The usual tourist round was enjoyed, with Carnegie being hauled rather unceremoniously up the Great Pyramid of Khufu, King of Memphis. After two weeks in Egypt a four-day cruise brought them to Sicily, Naples, Rome and Florence, and thence by other means to Paris and London. As he left the Orient behind, Carnegie began to distil his thoughts about what he had seen there; it would become important to him shortly. But first, on their arrival in London, Carnegie was joined by his mother and four weeks were spent visiting friends and family in Scotland. They sailed for home on 14 June 1879 arriving at New York on the 24th – the world tour had taken eight months.

  In his luggage Carnegie had placed ‘several pads suitable for penciling’ and had jotted in them each day throughout the trip.6 It had not been his intention to write a book, but rather a sort of informal publication to circulate to friends and colleagues. In due course his notes were produced; the publishers Charles Scribner’s Sons saw mention of the notes in a newspaper and made a bid for them for the wider commercial market. The book of the tour was published in 1884 as Round the World, and Carnegie was delighted: ‘I was at last “an author”.’7 The volume sold around 5,000 copies in nine editions8 and rekindled the idea of a writing career in Carnegie’s mind.

  The voyage, reflected Carnegie, ‘quite changed my intellectual outlook’.9 He delved more into Herbert Spencer’s works on evolution, contrasting the various races he had seen in the East. He also studied the works of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist whose book The Origin of Species had appeared in 1859, to be followed by several titles on orchids and other plants and works on human and animal emotions. Carnegie’s readings of Confucius, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, he said, gave him ‘a philosophy at last’.10 His world tour had shown him that no culture had all the answers regarding the true religion and philosophy. He found himself quoting Matthew Arnold:

  Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye

  For ever doth accompany mankind

  Hath looked on no religion scornfully

  That men did ever find.

  Which has not taught weak wills how much they can?

  Which has not fall’n in the dry heart like rain?

  Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man,

  Thou must be born again.11

  Carnegie also relived his experiences in the East by dipping into the poet Sir Edwin Arnold’s work on Buddhism, The Light of Asia (1879).

  However, during his trip to the world’s most populous nations, and even though he was with Vandervort, Carnegie felt alone. At 44 he could look forward to a solitary life; Margaret Carnegie was almost 70 and he began to realise that he required a supplementary emotional rock, someone who would eventually replace her. He resolved to look about him.

  ELEVEN

  ROMANCE AND THE CHARIOTEER

  What Benares is to the Hindoo, Mecca to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that Dunfermline is to me!

  Andrew Carnegie, July 1881

  Carnegie enjoyed horse-riding; he looked taller in the saddle, and always cut a dash in his tailored suits while out riding in New York’s Central Park among the well-to-do. It also offered him a welcome respite from the multitude of business projects now administered from his new office at 19 Broad Street. By 1 January 1880 Carnegie and his mother were well ensconced in their new accommodation at the Windsor Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Junketing was an important part of Carnegie’s life, mixing business with pleasure on both sides of the Atlantic. When New York and Pittsburgh sweltered in the summer heat, Carnegie and his mother decamped to Cresson in the Allegheny mountains to the gothic residence they dubbed Braemar Cottage. Here they invited a whole range of visitors – putting them up at the Mountain Inn – during their usual vacations from June to October. Margaret Carnegie was happy here as she had more of her son’s attention; her other son Tom was busy rearing a family of nine and had little time, or inclination, to indulge his mother.

  Carnegie enjoyed a widespread acquaintanceship with the good and the great of New York. Some could not stand his arrogance and apparent self-centredness and returned his tipped hat salutes in the park with frostiness, while others appreciated his ebullience and enthusiasm for life. Despite his flirtations with the pretty girls he met riding in the park, Margaret Carnegie was solidly sure that her son would not stray from her affections or her domination. After all, did he not believe that he owed his success to her? The emotional umbilical cord was strong, but as 1879 gave way to 1880 a threat to her dominance began to loom. As was the custom he had established for New Year’s Day, Carnegie strolled out to visit friends – but this was a walk that would alter the whole course of his life. On this occasion he was joined as usual by fellow Scots Alexander and Agnes King, whose prosperity had derived from the thread industry; together they visited the home of the Kings’ friends, the Whitfields of West 48th Street.

  John W. Whitfield, a wholesaler of fine material, had died two years earlier leaving an ailing widow and three children. Carnegie had been introduced to the Whitfields by the Kings as far back as 1870, and was charmed to see that the eldest daughter Louise was no longer a schoolgirl. She had blossomed into a well-educated, confident young woman of 22 who now ran her mother’s household. Louise Whitfield was not one of the New York society beauties; she was taller than Carnegie, and her portrait by Sarah MacKnight of the 1880s shows her with dark hair and eyes and a strong face. Soon Louise was to join Carnegie, with Alex King as chaperon, on his rides in Central Park; a short while later Carnegie received Mrs Whitfield’s permission to ride out à deux with her daughter. Louise looked back on this occasion as a turning point in her life: ‘After my first ride, I decided, whatever the future might hold in store, that would remain the greatest experience of my life.’1 Her diaries now became full of Carnegie and horse-riding: ‘Went riding with Mr Carnegie. Glorious time! . . . In afternoon Mr Carnegie came and took me horseback riding. Splendid time!’2 Similarly Carnegie wrote:

  We were both very fond of riding. Other young women were on my list. I had fine horses and often rode in the Park and around New York with one or other of the circle. In the end the others all faded into ordinary beings. Miss Whitfield remained alone as the perfect one beyond any I had met.3

  Carnegie was certainly smitten but he was no Lothario; his courting, if he ever thought of it as that, was peripatetic because of his business commitments and was largely conducted on horseback. Nevertheless he began to include Louise in family outings and recruited his mother as chaperone. Margaret Carnegie was not discomfited; her hold on her son was absolute . . . or so she thought. Theatre trips en famille became somewhat regular and a romance was certainly blooming.4 But Carnegie’s ‘gypsy spirit’ was at work again and the hills of Scotland were calling him.
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br />   For a while he had been contemplating a coach trip around Britain, and thought it would be a great idea for Louise to come too. Mrs Whitfield was not sure that it was ‘proper’; stirred up by her son’s passion Margaret Carnegie went to discuss the matter with Mrs Whitfield, her demeanour making it clear that she thought that it would be ‘improper’. Louise, who had already been informally invited by Carnegie, was saddened by the decision that she should not go, but attended the farewell dinner at the Windsor Hotel for Carnegie’s travelling party – whom he called the Gay Charioteers – but wished she hadn’t. She wrote in her diary: ‘Was very sorry I went, but did not know how to get out of it . . . I must learn to be satisfied with what I have and not long for more.’5

  When he had travelled around Britain back in 1865 with his cousin Dod and ‘Vandy’ Vandervort, Carnegie had vowed that ‘when my “ships come in” I should drive a party of my dearest friends from Brighton to Inverness’.6 He saw his new adventure as an ‘air castle’ and ‘idyllic’, just as had been described in his reading of Scots novelist William Black’s, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton (1872); Carnegie was to meet Black at Brighton, having discussed the book at dinner a week before the trip with President James A. Garfield at the home of Senator James G. Blair, Secretary of State. (On 19 September Garfield was to be fatally shot by a crazed office-seeker as he waited for a train at the Washington depot.)

  Carnegie and his party set off for Liverpool on 1 June 1881, aboard the Cunard liner SS Bothnia. The party included Margaret Carnegie, Jeannie Johns, Alice French, Mr and Mrs David McCargo, Mr and Mrs Alex King, Benjamin F. Vandervort, Harry Phipps Jr and Gardner McCandless. They arrived at Liverpool on Saturday 11 June and departed straight away for London’s Westminster Hotel to spend five days sightseeing in the capital. At the House of Commons they were hosted by Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1842–1911), then Under-Secretary to the Foreign Office in Gladstone’s Liberal government, and heard John Bright (1811–89), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, address the House; Carnegie remembered Bright speaking at Dunfermline in 1842 when Carnegie was just 7 years old. He glowed with pride when the statesman remembered the occasion. At Stafford House (now Lancaster House) in St James’s they were entertained by George Granville, Marquis of Stafford.