Carnegie

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  It is probable that the coastline around Skibo estate was well known to the invading Norsemen who had anchorages here; at Ospisdale House nearby is a monument said to commemorate the death in battle of the Danish chief Ospis. And some etymologists say the Norsemen even contributed to the castle’s name, from a root of ‘skif’, a word describing a ‘place of ships’. Certainly by the thirteenth century the extant castle on the site was called Schytherbolle, and was gifted to St Gilbert de Moravia,9 Bishop of Caithness, in 1225 by William, Earl of Sutherland. A loyal servant of the secular state as well as a distinguished cleric, Bishop Gilbert used the castle on the site of Skibo as his primary episcopal residence; just as Carnegie would lavish time and money on the terraces and flower beds, so the bishop’s retainers had planted orchards and vegetable gardens. From here too, Bishop Gilbert oversaw the building of his new cathedral at Dornoch, which was restored in the year of Carnegie’s birth by Elizabeth, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland. Carnegie himself paid for the reconditioning of the organ in 1906 and the cathedral’s concealed lighting system was funded in 1950 by Margaret Carnegie in memory of her mother.10

  In 1545 Bishop Robert Reid of Caithness gave Skibo to one John Gray in perpetuity. The Grays held the property until 1745, when Lieutenant Robert Gray surrendered the castle, estate and appurtenances to his importuning creditors (he died in 1776 a major in the Hanoverian 55th Foot Regiment based at Staten Island, New York).11 The property then passed through the hands of various creditors and owners until in 1882 one Ewen Sutherland-Walker filed for bankruptcy and the castle and estate he had enlarged and restored fell into the hands of trustees.

  On that day in June 1897, as he surveyed the woodland planted by Bishop Gilbert, Carnegie knew that despite his initial reservations Skibo was exactly what he was looking for. In his usual single-minded way, he swamped Louise with his enthusiasm for Skibo. She had not seen it; could she make a home there? She recommended caution, and Carnegie agreed to dampen his enthusiasm until Louise had seen the property. Instead, Carnegie took out a lease of Skibo with an option to purchase.

  Soon after he had viewed Skibo, Carnegie embarked on a yacht tour of the coasts of Harris and Lewis, in the Hebrides, but somehow these mountainous islands with their sandy shores did not raise his spirits. The last visit to Cluny had affected him more than he realised and the melancholy moors and lochs of the Western Isles were more in tune with his feelings. Yes, Skibo would be a new adventure but Carnegie was experiencing a weariness that he had never felt before, and then he caught a severe cold. He was advised by London consultants not to go back to New York’s wintry chills, so the Carnegies rented Villa Allerton at Cannes. They remained there until February 1898, making plans to return to New York. It was not just the severe cold that debilitated Carnegie at this time; he was unsettled and anxious about the whole role of businessman. Communications from Charles Schwab about steel matters irritated him and he jibbed at proposed additions and renovations to the plants at Homestead and Duquesne. Suffering from overwhelming ennui, he somehow bestirred himself to return to America.

  Carnegie was also disturbed by what he read in the papers. American chauvinists were becoming more anti-Hispanic by the week. Since the early sixteenth century the island of Cuba had remained under Spanish rule; now separatist agitation was brewing against the Spain of Hapsburg-Bourbon King Alfonso XIII and his Cuban administration. As dusk fell on 15 February 1898 an explosion ripped apart the US ‘good-will mission’ battleship Maine in Havana harbour; 266 of the 354 men aboard died. The government of Republican President William McKinley, who had been elected on a platform supporting Cuban independence, was split; American investments in sugar plantations and other forms of trade with Cuba were at risk. McKinley’s Secretary of the Navy, Senator Long, believed the Maine incident was an accident, while Assistant Secretary for the Navy Theodore Roosevelt thought otherwise. Many Americans were stirred to retribution by the newspapers of such men as William Randolph Hearst, and McKinley was pushed towards war.

  Carnegie monitored the US blockade of Cuba, and as the war swelled his profits from armour plate his pacifism remained dormant. His own research showed Carnegie that both the US army and the navy were short on firepower and he signalled to his board of managers instructions to establish a plant for making guns. It seemed that his patriotism was engulfing his pacifism. Back in America Cousin Dod suggested that there would be more profit in bullets and shells than would follow from a huge investment in arms founding. Carnegie agreed. Soon US troops landed on Cuba and by 26 July 1898 the Spanish were negotiating for peace. For the Carnegies Skibo beckoned.

  From Cannes the Carnegies and Louise’s sister Stella, who now lived with them almost permanently, travelled through France and England to arrive at Skibo in June 1898. Louise liked what she saw. Carnegie contacted his Dunfermline lawyer John Ross and negotiations were set in motion to buy Skibo and its 22,000 acres for £85,000.

  Almost immediately Carnegie set about expanding his new Scottish fiefdom, engaging the prominent Inverness firm of architects Ross & Macbeth to prepare plans to transform the delapidated mansion into the castle he had in mind. A new list of employees and tenants was drawn up and local contractors were hired to refurbish the estate grounds, roads, bridges and ancillary buildings. Louise took a leading role in planning the contracted work. Within the new wings and reconstructed rooms would be two focal points, a pipe organ in the front hall and a library to house 70,000 volumes – some of which were selected for him by Lord Acton; the bookcases were carved with the coats-of-arms of the cities that had awarded Carnegie their freedoms. Carnegie liked carved mottoes and his large golden oak mantelpiece would display the dictum he copied from Colonel Niles A. Stokes’s library mantel back in Greensburg:

  He that cannot reason is a fool

  He that will not is a bigot

  He that dare not is a slave.12

  As well as a flurry of decorations – Carnegie was as fussy about these as Queen Victoria had been at Balmoral – he added portraits of his heroes from poet Robert Burns to Scottish engineer and inventor James Watt. Whimsy also took over with the naming of the new suites and bedrooms after regional place names, with others named after Carnegie-selected heroes from Gilbert de Moravia to Sigurd the Viking whose ships had entered the Dornoch Firth and whose cadaver Carnegie believed was buried somewhere in the grounds of Skibo.

  Before they returned to New York in October 1898 Louise wrote to her friend and pastor the Revd Charles Eaton:

  We are all very pleased with our new home. The surroundings are more of the English type than Scotch. The sweet pastoral scenery is perfect of its kind. A beautiful undulating park with cattle grazing, a stately avenue of fine old beeches, glimpses of the Dornoch Firth, about a mile away, all seen through the picturesque cluster of lime and beech trees. All make such a peaceful picture that already a restful home feeling has come. The Highland features to which our hearts turn longingly are not wanting, but are more distant.

  To show you the unique range of attractions, yesterday Mr Carnegie was trout fishing on a wild moorland loch surrounded by heather while I took Margaret to the Sea and she had her first experience of rolling upon white sand and digging her little hands in it to her heart’s content, while the blue waters of the ocean came rolling in at her feet and the salt breeze brought the roses to her cheeks. She is strong and hearty and so full of mischief – a perfect little sunbeam. With all our fullness of life before we have never really lived till now. . . .13

  In all, the period 1900–3 saw Carnegie spend another £100,000 transforming his purchase. Near the mansion a large marble and glass swimming pool was constructed; its facilities included the latest pumps and heaters for the seawater which filled it.14 The swimming pool also doubled as a ballroom:

  Huge electric arc lamps and chandeliers glittered overhead. . . . Tubs of evergreens were spread along the walls, and festoons of coloured paper chains and bunting hung overhead . . . Mrs Logan’s dance band from Inverness playe
d in the balcony, varied by bagpipe music for Scottish reels and so forth, Highland Scottische . . . played so harmoniously by the castle piper.15

  Historically Skibo was one of the last prominent Scottish baronial houses ever built.

  On his return to New York Carnegie was eager to play a role in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War. Spanish colonial rule in the New World was coming to an end following two major defeats. Commodore George Dewey, commander of the US Asiatic Squadron, had destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Philippines at the Battle of Manila Bay on 1 May 1898, thus establishing the US as a major naval power. Then General William Shafter led an army of regulars and volunteers (including Theodore Roosevelt and his ‘Rough Riders’) to destroy Spain’s Caribbean Fleet near Santiago, Cuba, on 17 July 1898. By the Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 December 1898, Spain renounced her claims to Cuba and ceded Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to America, thus helping the US to emerge as a world power.

  What was all this to do with Carnegie? He was unhappy with America’s new international stance, and as a member of the New England Anti-Imperialist League believed that America should repeal the Treaty of Paris; he decided to use his wealth and his pen in what he saw as the saving of ‘American democracy’. With the help of his secretary James Bertram he put together a piece for the North American Review decrying the US policy of ‘Triumphant Despotism’ in the Philippines. Carnegie’s rhetoric left President McKinley unmoved and America did not withdraw from her new territories. Carnegie, though, contemplated withdrawing from his.

  At 63 Carnegie knew that he was coming to an important intersection in his business life. A crucial decision would have to be made. His steel company, for example, needed to encompass new markets. The great epoch of railway construction was ending, and steel was entering the domestic construction industry more and more as the buildings dubbed ‘skyscrapers’ began to dominate the horizons from Chicago to St Louis. Carnegie Steel would need to diversify into a whole new range of products from tubes to wires. But Carnegie had no stomach for vigorous new enterprises. Was it time to sell out?

  Carnegie owned 58 per cent of the total capital value of Carnegie Steel, his partners holding the rest. Among the partners too, there was a sense of unease. By the standards of the age Carnegie was an old man and the partnership agreement – the Iron Clad Agreement – hung over them menacingly. Should Carnegie die, for instance, then according to the terms of the agreement his partners would have to buy his share – it could not be sold outwith their ranks. And realistically they could not afford to buy him out. So pressure was gradually building up on Carnegie to agree to selling the whole company, perhaps to one of the syndicated steel trusts.

  Up to now Carnegie had baulked at such an idea, but recently he was paying it more attention. It is a matter of speculation as to why he changed his mind. Was he now ready to be the bountiful philanthropist unfettered by commercial cares? Was he wishing to enter completely into his ‘heaven on earth’ at Skibo? Whatever the reason, during the cold winter of 1898–9 Carnegie instructed Henry Clay Frick and Henry Phipps to look into the sale of the company. At first they found a group of financiers – who wished to remain anonymous in the initial stage – willing to pay $250 million for the company on a 90-day option. Just as he would have loathed shareholders of a floated company, Carnegie did not trust ‘nameless’ financiers and insisted on a ‘deposit in trust’ of $2 million with 58 per cent in his name. The deposit would be forfeit if the option was not taken up in the 90 days. The nameless men agreed and so the matter rested.

  Meanwhile Carnegie and Louise were involved in a new housing project. Their residence at West 51st Street was now inadequate. Through a broker, and with careful timing to give him maximum advantage, Carnegie bought options on pieces of land at 5th Avenue, at 90th and 91st Streets. Here he constructed a Scottish-Georgian mansion to the designs of architects Babb, Cook and Willard for $1.5 million. It was full of what might be called Carnegie embellishments – an Aeolian organ, a his-and-hers gymnasium, an Otis lift (the first private residence to install one), oak panelling, sixty-four rooms on six levels, an extensive secure garden (the Carnegies were targets for peeping toms and the deranged) and a study-library.16 The address was logged as No. 2, East 91st Street, New York, and very soon it ‘became one of the most famous addresses in America’.17

  During late April 1899 the Carnegies left New York for Britain for a sojourn in London and southern England, and then they were off to Skibo. By this time the estate tenants and workers were fully conversant with the identities of their new laird and his lady and gave them a rousing welcome. After the oldest tenant, a nonagenarian, offered a welcoming address at Skibo’s gates, Carnegie turned and pointed to his wife, saying: ‘Here is an American who loves Scotland.’ Then he pointed to himself and said: ‘And here is a Scotchman [sic] who loves America.’ Finally he pointed to little Margaret: ‘And here is a little Scottish-American who is born of both and will love both; she has come to enter the fairyland of childhood among you.’18 Despite his Americanisation Carnegie could still offer a touch of Victorian sentimentality when he wished.

  From the early days at Skibo Carnegie developed a special rapport with his staff and tenants and treated them with generosity. Not for him the traditional Scottish laird’s patriarchal spirit; he was more the beneficent employer. Every time the Carnegies returned to Skibo after significant jaunts away they would visit each tenant’s cottage, and would say goodbye to everyone before every departure. After all, Queen Victoria did the same at Balmoral. On such occasions each tenant’s child would be given a golden sovereign (since 1817 this had represented a golden £ in British currency).19 Although not religious, Carnegie also appeared at the local church on the first and last Sundays of residence at Skibo and recognised the ‘Presbyterian Sunday’ of only necessary husbandry and estate routine. From time to time family, friends and staff would gather for Sunday evening prayers at Skibo with Carnegie supervising the proceedings and choice of hymns; every one of the latter was a Carnegie favourite often introduced by a soliloquy from him on its history and meaning. Highlights of any Carnegie Skibo residence were the ‘fêtes’, with a prominent one being held near or on 4 July.

  By now work at Skibo was so advanced that the cornerstone for the new south elevation was ready for the official laying. At Carnegie’s behest 2-year-old Margaret did the honours, giving the traditional tap with a silver trowel. The cornerstone inscription reads:

  FOUNDATION STONE OF THE NEW FART OF SKIBO CASTLE

  BUILT BY ANDREW AND LOUISE W. CARNEGIE

  LAID BY MARGARET CARNEGIE 23 JUNE 1899

  As the months passed the guest-book at Skibo was steadily filled with signatures representing the good and the great from both sides of the Atlantic. Rudyard Kipling signed his name, as did prime ministers like H.H. Asquith, together with a whole host of bishops, diplomats, scientists and musicians. Many prominent Liberals visited Skibo; since the resignation of Conservative Prime Minister A.J. Balfour, the Liberals had come to power and would retain it for the rest of Carnegie’s life. They were now in charge of the glittering prizes of office; ever the opportunist, Carnegie made sure that he was on nodding terms at least with those who held the reins of government.

  Among the guests were particular favourites whom Andrew and Louise Carnegie referred to as ‘Old Shoes’: ‘They came when they chose, stayed as long as they wished, went when they pleased and did precisely as they liked. Year after year they occupied the same rooms, which in time seemed to take on the aura of their presence.’20 Such folk included Uncle George Lauder (‘Dean of the Family Old Shoes’) and assorted relations from Dunfermline, a few ‘locals’ like the Revd Robert L. Ritchie, the Gaelic-speaking minister at Bonar Bridge, and a clutch of peers from Sir Henry Hartley Fowler, Viscount Wolverhampton (a Liberal cabinet minister) to the poet and antiquary James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk, all under the ‘Old Shoe in Chief’ John Morley.

  Two of the castle’s first guests were H
enry Clay Frick and Henry Phipps, bearing a request from the nameless financiers for an extension of the 90-day option on Carnegie Steel. Carnegie said no, and pocketed his share of the option deposit when the option expiry date passed. The deposit almost covered what he had spent to date on Skibo. Later Carnegie would boast that his Scots home was ‘just a nice little present from Frick’.21

  Although often lampooned in the press as a truculent, greedy Highland poseur with his hands in the pockets of the working class, with kilt and glengarry, and dressed in a mixture of tartan and stars and stripes, only once did Carnegie appear in (borrowed) Highland dress. Usually he greeted his guests, golfed, fished, yachted or walked his acres in ‘a light grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers . . . with a corresponding peaked cap’.22 Carnegie was easy to lampoon as his Skibo routine was as predictable as Queen Victoria’s ‘Balmorality’. Like the monarch, he began his day with a piper to waken him, and resounding organ music to carry him to breakfast. While his guests took to the hills to slaughter the wildlife, Carnegie would retire to his study or take solitary walks in the hills. ‘The Sunset Walk’ was an especial favourite.23 Even before the initial euphoria over Skibo had worn off, Carnegie was plunged into a disagreeable situation. During his business life Carnegie proved himself a very good judge of men – except in his assessment of Henry Clay Frick. Although Frick had become chairman of Carnegie Steel in 1893, it is important to realise that in no sense was he one of Carnegie’s ‘boys’ – as were Henry Phipps or Charles Schwab – although Carnegie considered him an employee more than a partner. Frick, as the founder of a separate company which always had his first loyalty, considered himself an independent associate of Carnegie.

  Frick and Carnegie were very different characters, with totally dissimilar interests. Frick was not concerned with dabbling in politics, and had little interest in intellectual pursuits or in being a social animal, but was a keen collector of rare medieval and Renaissance art; even so, these took third place to his family and business. Ever since Frick had joined the Carnegie board of managers there had been growing friction between them; Frick considered Carnegie’s public pronouncements on labour relations, politics and philosophy, and his enmity towards such entities as the Pennsylvania Railroad, to be ludicrous at best and hypocritical at worst. Further he was quickly irritated by Carnegie’s ‘meddling’ memos from abroad. Initial resentment had been sparked off by Carnegie’s behaviour during the Frick Coke Co. strike of 1887, wherein Carnegie countermanded Frick’s labour policies, and the Homestead strike of 1892, when Carnegie continued to make snide comments in public and private saying that the violence was all Frick’s fault. So by 1899–1900 a serious confrontation between them was inevitable, and Carnegie now regarded Frick as a ‘malignant force’24 within the company, who wanted to deconstruct what Carnegie had set up and pollute his business philosophy.