Carnegie (18 page)

Drives in Central Park, invitations and receptions to meet the leaders of American art, finance, letters and politics swept Arnold along, preparing him and calming his nerves for the first lecture at Chickering Hall on 30 October on ‘Numbers’. It must be said that Matthew Arnold was no orator and the Carnegies sat through the lecture with growing embarrassment. Present among the audience of 2,000 was impresario Major P.B. Pond who reported:

Matthew Arnold came to this country and gave one hundred [
sic
] lectures. Nobody ever heard any of them, not even those sitting in the front row. . . . We had just heard the last few sentences of Mr Depew’s introduction when Matthew Arnold stepped forward, opened out his manuscript, laid it on the desk and his lips began to move. There was not the slightest sound audible from where I stood. After a few minutes General Grant said to Mrs Grant, ‘Well, wife, we have paid to see the British Lion; we cannot hear him roar, so we had better go home.’
¹⁶

Back at the Windsor Hotel a post-mortem was held on the performance. All present agreed that it was not successful. On being asked for her opinion, Margaret Carnegie, remembering the dirge-like Presbyterian sermons of her girlhood, remarked: ‘Too meenesteerial, Mr Arnold, too meenesteerial.’
¹⁷

Arnold was now of the opinion that he should cut his losses, abandon the rest of the lecture tour and make his way home. Carnegie, anxious lest his star guest’s quick departure would harm his social reputation, persuaded him otherwise. How about some tutoring in public speaking? Carnegie’s suggestion was accepted and he produced the very man to help, one Professor Churchill of Boston. All was arranged and Arnold went to Boston. He reported his progress to his sister:

I could not half make myself heard at first, but I am improving. A Professor Churchill, said to be the best elocutionist in the United States, came twice from Andover to Boston on purpose to try and be of use to me, because, he said, he had got more pleasure from [Frederick William] Robertson, [John] Ruskin and me than from any other men. He went twice for twenty minutes to the hall with me when it was empty, heard me read, and stopped me when I dropped my voice at the end of sentences, which was the great trouble. I get along all right now and have never failed to draw for a moment.
¹⁸

Arnold was now a success, and his lectures appeared in print as
Discourses in America
(1885); a holiday was enjoyed at Cresson during July 1886, with country walks and visits to the Pittsburgh works. During the trip Arnold suffered heart problems with chest pain which he knew would ‘do for me as it did for my father’, as he told a concerned Carnegie; he died two years later.
¹⁹

Since the days when his grandfather Tom Morrison had written for William Cobbett’s
Political Register
, Carnegie had hankered after owning a newspaper as his 1868 memorandum indicated, wherein he could promoted his own radicalism and republicanism. Already his pro-republican circle of British friends included the jurist Frederick Harrison and royalty-baiter Henry Labouchere, but Carnegie was encouraged to further his political stance by the radical Newcastle MP Samuel Storey – a 6ft tall bully-boy to whom Carnegie gave funds – who published the halfpenny (Sunderland)
Echo
and (Tyneside)
Echo
. Carnegie was fired up by Storey’s republicanism and warmed to the MP’s denunciation of Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales and their network of European relatives. Carnegie closely monitored the British press for signs of developing republicanism. As a financier he considered that the theme of royalty draining the public purse like financial leeches was worth promoting. He was particularly interested of late in the financial shenanigans surrounding the marriage of Queen Victoria’s youngest son and eighth child Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, to Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882. This was the year that Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, produced a particularly stringent budget; the marriage arrangements provoked this comment from the
Reynolds’s News
: ‘We might usefully inquire how much royal and aristocratic personages take out of the present budget and how much comparatively royalty and aristocracy contribute to taxation.’
²⁰
This was exactly the kind of sentiment Carnegie wished to promote.

Helped by Carnegie’s brainwashed childhood, Storey convinced Carnegie that his money and influence, combined with Storey’s rhetoric and political influence, could bring about an end to Britain’s hereditary privilege. Together they formed a newspaper syndicate to promote the cheap radical press. From its owner and editor, the philanthropist John Passmore Edwards, Carnegie bought two-thirds interest in the daily (London)
Echo
in 1884. The paper was an ardent supporter of all ‘progressive movements’. Thus Carnegie and Storey obtained a network of seven daily newspapers and ten weeklies, which covered the areas where the majority of Liberal/radical supporters could be found: from the
Midland Counties Guardian
at Wolverhampton to the
Echo
at Birmingham. At the Wolverhampton-based
Evening Express & Star
, editor (and Scotsman) Thomas Graham – who had met Carnegie during the coach trip of 1881 – turned a Tory paper into a radical one, much to Carnegie’s glee.

In the north of England in particular Carnegie and Storey hoped to incite the working classes to whatever local rebellion was necessary, with Queen Victoria, her family, the House of Lords and aristocrats in general, the Tory Party and the Church of England as the main targets. They supported Liberal candidates at elections and campaigned for the Reform Bill of 1884. Carnegie liked to give his employees pep talks, so he would arrive, for instance, at the offices of the
Evening Express & Star
to pontificate:

He made no pretence of dictating policy, still less of writing leading articles himself, but he liked to assemble the entire editorial force and give little talks on the great issues then pending in England. The new franchise bill, extending the vote to agricultural labourers, the great popular mass still left outside the breastworks, was the measure on which Carnegie grew most eloquent, though the fierceness with which the Gordon campaign in the Sudan was assailed left a permanent impression.
²¹

In everything in which he had a financial stake, Carnegie had a penchant for interfering.

In Queen Victoria’s Britain attempts to undermine the Establishment did not sell papers. Carnegie’s publishing ventures were soon piling up losses, but his enthusiasm and cash kept things going – Carnegie was never one to give way under adversity and he encouraged his editors to persist. Nevertheless the Tory press was winning the circulation race and Carnegie saw that his cash simply could not buy reader interest or loyalty. As with all his failures, Carnegie blamed others, and the reasons for the newspapers’ decline were placed at the doors of such men as Thomas Graham. It must be said too, that Carnegie’s dealings with Storey were not all sweetness and light. Storey baulked at Carnegie’s efforts to influence his political opinions. In terms of managing newspapers, Carnegie was out of his depth.

‘Harmony did not prevail among my British [newspaper] friends and finally I decided to withdraw,’ wrote Carnegie.
²²
Carnegie and Storey sold back the controlling share in the London
Echo
to John Passmore Edwards at a profit, but Carnegie was unable to pull out entirely from the other papers as Storey and Graham wished to continue; Carnegie accepted ‘notes’ against his shares as security, a holding he had to retain for many years. He never again backed publications, but used those of others to promote his ideas in articles. In the future too, he would use newspapers as propaganda outlets, and he was not against using his money and influence to have stories against himself and his projects suppressed – using precisely the methods he had openly despised in his younger radical days.

The newspaper interests brought Carnegie negative publicity from some quarters. There were those who were unhappy about Carnegie using his money in the ‘task of transforming Great Britain into a republic’.
²³
In particular the Tory press was annoyed that ‘an American citizen, with a great fortune made in the United States, [was] fanning the flames of English revolution’.
²⁴
The
St James’s Gazette
made its position clear:

. . . the present agitation originated in America, and is an attempt to infuse republican sentiments into English politics. The movement, with all its paraphernalia of banners, processions, monster meetings and other factious machinery which American politicians know so well how to handle, is entirely foreign to English sentiment, and is the result of American influence and paid for by American dollars. Mr Carnegie is at the head of a conspiracy which is more subtle and dangerous than that of the dynamiters and which seeks to destroy both the Crown and the House of Lords.
²⁵

Carnegie replied that he would, if it were in his power, totally destroy both ‘Crown and House of Lords’, and any ‘vestige of privilege throughout the world’, carefully sidestepping the issue that he was using the privilege bought by his wealth and influence to do so. In a letter to Storey, who had suggested that Carnegie’s outspokenness was not helping the cause, Carnegie said that he was ‘no conspirator’ and eschewed violence: ‘The first duty of a Republican is to bow to the decision of the ballot box. The weapon of Republicanism is not the sword but the pen.’
²⁶

Many accused Carnegie of trying to curry favour in order to win himself a seat in the House of Commons; it was even suggested that he intended to replace the Liberal barrister Charles Pelham Villiers as MP for Wolverhampton. Carnegie hotly denied any such thing, although the charge was repeated for several years. Incidentally, in his own cognisance Carnegie was an American, although it could be argued that technically he was not as no naturalisation papers existed; again emigration had not stripped him of his British nationality, so he could have stood for the British parliament . . . certainly his wealth and influence with the Liberals could have brought about such a state of affairs if he had really wanted it.

Carnegie’s newspapers failed to provoke a workers’ revolution in Britain. Yet the issues they did support, like universal suffrage, payment for MPs and Home Rule for Ireland, did come about. Just as Carnegie’s newspaper ventures were failing the Liberals suffered a blip. On 8 June 1885 the Liberal budget was defeated by an alliance of Tories and Irish nationalists, and Gladstone’s administration fell at the subsequent general election. Tory Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquis of Salisbury, became Prime Minister.

While all these opportunities and friendships were being pursued and exploited by Carnegie, another more significant relationship was simmering back home in America.

Till death, Louise, yours alone.

Andrew Carnegie, November 1886

A
fter years of shilly-shallying on his part, Carnegie and Louise Whitfield became engaged during September 1883. It was an arrangement made in secret, and biographers have speculated that at the moment of betrothal neither party really knew what the other wanted in terms of marriage; and, in the case of Carnegie, whether marriage was what he wanted at all. Louise’s mother was delighted that her 26-year-old daughter was to be married; Mrs Whitfield’s health was not of the best and she feared that her daughter’s concern about her would cause her to remain unmarried. Margaret Carnegie received the news of the engagement in her usual self-centred way when it came to her son’s activities. She considered that he was abandoning her. Although Margaret Carnegie was a selfish, rather unpleasant woman, Carnegie’s devotion to her need not be overplayed when it came to his possible marriage; he was 48, and although the umbilical cord to his mother was still emotionally attached, it was very long and Carnegie was largely free to go where he liked and do what he wished. Perhaps this was why he wanted the engagement to be a secret outside the respective families. Louise confided in her diary: ‘Had a delightful horseback ride with Mr Carnegie. . . . Am so unhappy, so miserable.’
¹
She was to slip in and out of happiness with the arrangement, never knowing how secure she was: ‘Nothing is certain, nothing is sure. I am striving so hard to do what is right, but I cannot see the light yet. . . .’
²

During the spring of 1884 Carnegie took another coaching trip. Before he set off, he had a serious talk with Louise and the engagement was broken off. It was clear that Carnegie was unable to accept the commitment of marriage. On 23 April Louise wrote in her diary: ‘In the afternoon, took the last sad step [to break the engagement]. Felt it was best. . . .’
³

Carnegie’s coaching trip differed from his tour of 1881 as this time he intended to hobnob with the famous. He assembled a travelling group made up of John Morley; William Black, whose volume
Adventures in a Phaeton
had inspired the 1881 trip; Edwin Austin Abbey, an American artist, who illustrated the works of Shakespeare and Herrick as well as American magazines; (later Sir) Edwin Arnold, author of
The Light of Asia
, a book Carnegie had recently gifted to Louise; Arnold presented to Carnegie the original manuscript of the book; Matthew Arnold, his wife Flu and daughter Lucy, who were picked up en route at Pains Hill Cottage, Cobham; and two of William Ewart Gladstone’s eight children. The party was completed by MP Samuel Storey. The prospective route was from Charing Cross in London to Ilfracombe in the south-west; it would take six weeks and encompass stops in Surrey, Hampshire, Dorset and Devon.

Because of his current involvement in radical newspapers and Liberal politics Carnegie was in high political mood. His conversation as they travelled was peppered with his republican and anti-monarchal opinions and he repeatedly engaged the company in his pro-American comparison with all the English things he saw. William Black found this somewhat wearing; having observed Carnegie closely as they travelled in the four-in-hand, he dubbed him ‘the Star-Spangled Scotchman’.
⁴
Carnegie delighted in his new nickname.