Carnegie
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Louise appreciated Lucy’s unyielding personality. Lucy, who understood all too well the pressures Carnegie placed on her husband, became known for her tart tongue and frequent spats with her overbearing brother-in-law. There was no estrangement, though. When Tom bought twenty thousand acres on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, Carnegie often accompanied his brother’s family there for vacations. Although he unwittingly placed an inordinate amount of pressure on his brother, Carnegie was extremely protective of his immediate and extended family. He continued to handle investments for his relatives in Scotland and the United States. Learning that his cousin Maria Hogan needed new eyeglasses, he made sure McCandless sent her a pince-nez by the best maker. He sent most relatives $300 cash Christmas gifts, a substantial sum at the time.23 In 1883, when death struck down another Original Six member, James R. Wilson, who was survived by a wife and several children, Carnegie stepped into the fold, providing financial aid and advising Wilson’s widow Callie: “Now my dear Friend put away the notes & draw interest & you have plenty upon which to maintain & educate your children.” His reason for helping her, he explained, was that there were “no friends like those of boyhood Callie—later acquaintances never can take their place & now if there is ever anything about which you wish to see me, don’t fail to send for me for surely you know there is nothing which I do not wish to do for you.”24 Carnegie would later buy her shares in Frick’s company, another unnecessary act of kindness.25
When with Carnegie, Louise saw a millionaire man-about-town who acted with such grand motions and exaggerated emotions he appeared almost superficial; she was not privy to his little acts of kindness for family and friends that said more about him than did his radical pronouncements and large bestowals. Lost within his inflated legend was the fact that he was a sensitive, intensely loyal family man, but because he was hard to pin down for an extended period, it was difficult for Louise to perceive any depth to Carnegie’s emotional substance.
He was again elusive in 1883 when he spent the summer season in Britain, attending to his newspapers, agitating the upper class, and participating in the grand opening of the Dunfermline Carnegie Library. The ceremonial opening was presided over by Lord Rosebery, whose conservative ancestors had been relentlessly attacked by Carnegie’s Grandfather Morrison. Two generations later found Lord Rosebery to be a Liberal with whom Carnegie could share a table, and it was Rosebery who introduced the rapacious steel master to William Gladstone. While cavorting with such politicos, he wrote Louise frequently, including one July letter she considered memorable enough to note in her diary as lovely.26 From the Tremper House in the Catskills, she returned his favor: “Oh how glad your letter made me! for I was really afraid this year you would forget all about writing. . . . What a delightful time you must be having in the society of such congenial people, but I hope you won’t get to like them too well. Rumors are constantly reaching us of the stir you are creating—and on this side, everybody is talking about your book, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain.” The stir was the result of an uninhibited Carnegie denouncing the aristocracy to dukes and attacking the parliamentary system to members of Parliament.
Louise also wrote, “We are all very proud of you, and love to think that you are our friend. I don’t like to hear, however, that you have neglected your health. After a winter in New York, to have a season in London, is more than anyone could stand. I am afraid you have missed your riding! You must certainly take a good long rest before coming home, or else you will not be able to ride as much in the fall, and that would be a dreadful disappointment to me, especially when I expect to have my new riding habit, too!”27 This last line was as close as Louise could come to saying she wanted to be physically appealing to him. She then concluded her letter with this line: “I almost hope that Scotland may not be quite as kind as usual, in order that you may hasten your return home.” This was as close as she could come to saying she loved him.
Still emotionally stunted and struggling with how to make a commitment to Louise, Carnegie gave her a book that meant much to him to express how much he cared for her. It wasn’t Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, but Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia. The full title given by Arnold was The Light of Asia; or, The Great Renunciation, Being the Life and Teaching of Gautama, Prince of India and Founder of Buddhism (As Told in Verse by an Indian Buddhist). In this 238-page-long poem, he depicted the life of Siddhartha Guatama, who founded Buddhism, and his path to Nirvana.
Diametrically opposed to Carnegie’s harsh business philosophy, survival of the fittest, Buddhism is based on four noble truths: existence is suffering; the cause of suffering is craving and attachment; cessation of suffering is achieved through Nirvana; Nirvana is attained through the Eightfold Path, consisting of proper views, resolve, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. Buddhism was not an option in the land of the Philistines. Could Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, or even Carnegie truly comprehend Arnold’s words? Was Carnegie prepared to renounce pleasures, ambitions, wealth, praise, fame, and conquest? So how could he, who counted Spencer as his sole master, be interested in the pacifist life of a spiritual leader? Foremost, Arnold’s Light of Asia was a story of enlightenment that Carnegie believed he had attained, albeit within a different framework. Also, Arnold’s work was in vogue.
The Light of Asia did serve to bring Carnegie and Louise closer together as the two lovers struggled through the story of Siddhartha, searching for meaning and sharing their thoughts. Watching Louise mark her favorite passages, noting her enthusiasm for the book, Carnegie realized she was the girl for him. In September 1883, Carnegie—tentatively—asked Louise for her hand in marriage. He then argued ardently that she could have a meaningful life with him, that managing a large estate and directing munificence could do the world far more good than her nurturing along a young man just starting in business. Filled with doubt, she consulted her mother, who insisted she accept. She didn’t want her ill health to restrain Louise, and she did want to see her daughter, now age twenty-six, married. Carnegie’s mother, on the other hand, was hardly so gracious. She made it very difficult for her son, complaining that he was abandoning her. Further complicating matters, Carnegie insisted they keep their engagement secret from friends and acquaintances because he didn’t want the newspapers to drag their lives through the mud. This condition of the engagement was difficult for Louise to accept and an emotional strain: one day she would write in her diary, “Had a delightful horseback ride with Mr. Carnegie,” and the next she would write, “Am so unhappy, so miserable.”
By December, it appeared Louise had accepted the terms and was finally content: “Went shopping in the morning and in afternoon went riding with Mr. C. Glorious sunset. Rode home in the gloaming. Happy at last. . . . Mr. C. came and we went to matinee at the opera. It was Mephistofeles. Very grand and lovely. Red letter day.” But then, on Christmas Eve, doubts began to surface: “My Christmas task is done. The tree is dressed, the presents set in order. Oh! is this the last time I am to perform this loving labor in my old home? Had a loving note from Mr. C. which made me very happy, but the old ties will pull.” On New Year’s Eve, her doubts strengthened: “And now we come to the last night of the old year again. What a changed girl it finds me! Life seems so hard. I feel so old and strange. Nothing is certain, nothing is sure. I am striving so hard to do what is right, but I cannot see the light yet.”28 Carnegie, who was under the impression their relationship was evolving into something special and yearned for her, was unaware of Louise’s misgivings.
Notes
1. Carnegie, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, p.17.
2. Quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 263–264.
3. AC to Samuel Storey, October 18, 1884, ACLOC, vol. 8.
4. Interview in Philadelphia Bulletin, August 27, 1884, ACLOC, vol. 265.
5. AC to Colonel Thomas Higginson, December 10, 1884, ACWPHS, General Correspondence.
6. AC to Samuel Storey, January
3, 1883, quoted in Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 267–268.
7. Frances Wentworth Cutler Knickerbocker, Free Minds: John Morley and His Friends (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), pp. 59, 268.
8. Carnegie, Autobiography, pp. 310–311.
9. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 239–240; Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1904), pp. 423–424.
10. Ibid., p. 240.
11. Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1904), p. 468.
12. John Morley, Recollections: Book IV (New York: Macmillan, 1917), pp. 110–112.
13. Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 286.
14. Matthew Arnold to AC, September 15, 1883, ACNYPL.
15. Matthew Arnold to Frances Arnold, n.d. (October 1883), quoted in Clinton Machann and Forrest D. Burt, eds., Selected Letters of Matthew Arnold (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 262–263.
16. Hendrick, Carnegie, vol. 1, pp. 244–245.
17. Ibid., p. 242.
18. AC to Miss Louise Whitfield, n.d. (1883), ACWPHS, General Correspondence.
19. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 44.
20. Burton J. Hendrick interview, quoted in Wall, Carnegie, p. 404.
21. Burton J. Hendrick interview with William L. Abbott, August 1929, ACLOC, vol. 239.
22. Ibid.
23. Maria C. Hogan to Gardner McCandless, December 5, 1879, ACWPHS, General Correspondence; S. E. Moore to AC, December 8, 1888, ACWPHS, Letterbook, 1888–1892.
24. AC to Mrs. Jas. R. Wilson, November 22, 1883, ACWPHS, Carnegie Company Papers.
25. See H. C. Frick Memorandum dated March 10, 1885, ACWPHS, Frick Papers.
26. Hendrick and Henderson, p. 62.
27. Louise Whitfield to AC, July 23, 1883, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 62–63.
28. Louise Whitfield, diary entries, quoted in Hendrick and Henderson, pp. 64–65.
CHAPTER 15
Bleeding Hearts and Bleeding Newspapers
On New Year’s Day in 1884, a forty-eight-year-old Carnegie made his customary visit to the Whitfield residence, but his feelings this winter day were dramatically different than four years before. This was no social call beginning and ending with gay salutations and in between filled with pleasant observations and reflections; tension between Louise and him made for an uncomfortable situation. Carnegie’s stories and jokes did lighten the mood eventually, and that night Louise noted in her diary: “Very happy time. Let me record it for it is probably the last.”1 Unable to share Carnegie with his demanding business, let alone his mother, Louise argued in the ensuing days that the relationship was not going to work, that the engagement should be called off. He was not so willing to let go, however, and countered that more time together and a recommitment to each other would permit them to evolve. After hearing him out, on January 6 she agreed to a “cessation of hostilities.”2
Frequent invitations followed in which Carnegie’s desires couldn’t have been more transparent: “Miss Florence, Mr Phipps and I going to Theatre tonight. Can we call for you. Want you very much. Answer.”3 What he didn’t know, however, was that for three months there was no mention of his name in Louise’s diary until finally, on April 1, she wrote, “Mr. C. sent for me to ride—went to painting lesson and then to ride with A.C. Very nice but so tired—quite used up in the evening.”4 The covert relationship, Carnegie’s threats to live abroad, his business commitments, and his dynamic, restless personality exhausted Louise. Finally, on April 23, she insisted they break off their engagement. Symbolic of the seriousness of their break, they returned all the letters they had written to each other.5
Failure was not something Carnegie was accustomed to and the broken engagement made him miserable. He had wanted her to share in his success, to help manage his affairs, the philanthropy, to be at his side when that spring he donated $50,000 to Bellevue Hospital Medical College of New York.6 Only now the chance to have the woman who had passed his supreme test was slipping away.
Louise Whitfield’s suspicion that their relationship was not of primary concern to Carnegie was apparently confirmed when he departed for Britain in May with the intention of spending the next five to six months overseas. The summer highlight was to be a six-week coaching trip through England’s southern counties that would strengthen Carnegie’s friendships with his British literary and radical comrades. There were no Gay Charioteers this time as a more serious, contemplative set joined Carnegie, including Edwin Arnold, Matthew Arnold, his wife and his daughter, William Gladstone’s son and daughter, Samuel Storey, William Black, and Edwin Abbey, an American illustrator. Upon this arrival in London, Carnegie’s first order of business was to extend a lunch invitation to Spencer. Never seduced by the Carnegie charm, Spencer responded wryly with a meticulous, handwritten note in purple pen: “I was glad to get your note, implying your safe arrival. You must excuse me from coming to lunch with you, for it would involve more talking than I just now wish to undertake; but I shall take my chance of finding you when I call in the afternoon.”7
On June 2, the coaching trip assembled in front of the Grand Hotel and boarded a four-in-hand, their itinerary to cover an average of thirty-five miles a day as they looped toward the rugged, rockbound coast of Ilfracombe. Carnegie, who’d been keeping in touch with Louise, gave her an update: “Many thanks, my dear friend for your kind notes. Here we are coaching once more. Have been out from London for about ten days. Started with William Black, Matthew Arnold, the two charming Misses Arnold, Mr. Edwin A. Abbey, who illustrates for Harper’s. How delightful it all has been! . . . I hope your summer will be a happy one. I am very sincerely gratified that your picture is voted good [she was taking a painting class]. Keep at work but don’t forget that after all literature, good literature, is the most important possession for old age. . . .”8
On this coaching trip, Carnegie, who declared if he wasn’t an ironmaster he’d be a gypsy, quickly discovered his companions were quite intense. While he was apt to exclaim, “By golly boys, there’s a great deal in store for us here” when visiting picturesque villages, cathedrals, and castles, he observed that no irreverent word came from Matthew Arnold. Deeply meditative, Arnold’s public edicts during the trip included, “The case against miracles is closed. They do not happen.”9 On the lighter side, he was partial to claret and whiskey, even at their midday picnics. Another severe character was William Black, who grew weary of Carnegie and Storey plotting their radical agenda and “proclaiming the glories of the United States.”10 Yet, despite occasional tension, the coaching trip was a success, and Carnegie returned bronzed by the wind and weather.11
By the end of the trip, Carnegie had developed a strong friendship with both Arnold families (he placed them on his Christmas list, which meant they would now receive a turkey along with his other friends and close associates), and Edwin Arnold went so far as to present Carnegie with the original manuscript of the Light of Asia. He loved to have gifts bestowed upon him, always reacting as though he was deprived boy from a Dickens novel who had just been bequeathed a treasure. Unable to contain his excitement, Carnegie had to share this triumph with someone who would appreciate it— Louise—and the gift gave him the perfect excuse to write her. To his relief, she responded: “My dear Mr. Carnegie, Just a few lines tonight before retiring, to tell you how much I rejoice with you in the possession of your treasure. . . . I always carry the copy of the Light of Asia you gave me, around with me every place I go. I love to pick it up, even if only to read but a few lines, and it always refreshes me, and does me good. I wish I had it, as you have, at my tongue’s end, but I have committed a few of the loveliest bits to memory. . . . So now, Good night, my friend; won’t you be surprised to receive this! But I hope as well pleased as I was to get yours this morning.”12 Her enthusiastic response gave him hope that their relationship wasn’t quite finished.
Plans for an extended stay in Scotland were curtailed in mid-July when Carnegie received reports that his mot
her’s health was poor. Intending to take her to Cresson for some fresh air, he returned promptly. On passing through New York, he walked to the Whitfield’s house on Forty-eighth Street, hoping they had come home from their summer house. The windows were dark. From Cresson, he wrote Louise, “Did you see Miss Arnold is engaged to a New York lawyer? Her younger sister is the cleverer, but she isn’t pretty. Too bad clever young ladies are rarely beautiful. There are exceptions; I think of one. I spent a night at the Windsor, walked past your house to see it all closed but boasting a span new awning over the door. Not a soul in town I knew, or cared to know that night except did want to find you, and you were gone, too. Just as well, better no doubt, I said, and walked back to the hotel.”13 The image of Carnegie standing before Louise’s home offered a glimpse of him as a man, not a legend of mythical proportions. In spite of his extensive network of family, friends, and associates, not to mention his mother’s constant companionship, he was a lonely man. Even though Margaret was very ill, once at Cresson she perceived her son’s growing desire for Louise, and, realizing she had only a few years remaining at most, she wasn’t willing to relinquish him. So, frail and clinging to the life she knew, she exacted a promise from Andrew: do not marry until I pass on.14
When Carnegie returned to New York in early October, Louise and he socialized only sporadically, although he did introduce her to James Blaine, the powerful Maine politician who was the Republican candidate for the presidency. In this election year, his opponent was Democrat Grover Cleveland, who did not pander to big business and was considered the antithetical candidate to the ethically dubious Blaine. Whereas Cleveland was indeed a straight shooter who had fought New York City’s powerful Tammany Hall as governor of New York, Blaine, in the mid-1870s, had been implicated in railroad corruption that had tarnished his reputation for years. But because he was recognized as the party’s most charismatic politician, the Republicans had rehabilitated his image. As for Carnegie, it seemed he always had an attraction to such flamboyant characters who walked a fine ethical line, beginning with his mentor, Tom Scott, which reflected on his own flawed character. “While one is known by the company he keeps,” Carnegie wrote in his autobiography (cryptically perhaps), “it is equally true that one is known by the stories he tells. Mr. Blaine was one of the best story-tellers I ever met. His was a bright sunny nature with a witty, pointed story for every occasion.”15 They were good friends until Blaine’s death in 1893.