Carnegie (15 page)

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 editions
⁸
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.

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

Andrew Carnegie, July 1881

C
arnegie 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.

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.

On 16 June they set off for Brighton and the Grand Hotel, an entourage of ‘coach, horses and servants’ having preceded them.
⁷
Next morning they set off on their 831-mile trip to Inverness, in a shiny black and red coach drawn by four horses, with Perry the coachman and Joe the footman both wearing smart silver and blue uniforms. A series of complicated arrangements ensured that their luggage preceded them for their convenience, and hotel accommodation was booked ahead by telegraph.

Over the Weald of Sussex and via various watering stops they went to Guildford (The White Lion), and then put up at the Castle Hotel, Windsor, during 18–20 June. ‘Windsor is nothing unless royal,’ observed Carnegie, although Queen Victoria was elsewhere; nonetheless they did see Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and W.E. Gladstone at a Windsor church service. Carnegie was shocked to see how ‘careworn’ Gladstone looked. Margaret Carnegie celebrated her 71st birthday at Windsor on 19 June and partied with great vigour. They found the service at St George’s Chapel impressive, but Carnegie remarked that the castle was not, adding ‘as royalty itself, [the castle] should be [viewed] at a safe distance’.
⁸

At Windsor they were joined for dinner by Sidney Gilchrist-Thomas, an amateur chemist with an interest in metallurgy. His invention, the ‘Thomas Basic Process’, allowed phosphorus to be removed from iron ore, a boon to Bessemer steel production. Shortly before the tour Carnegie had sold the US franchise on the Thomas patent for $250,000, creaming off $50,000 in commission for himself.
⁹
Gilchrist-Thomas had collaborated with his cousin on the process, and Carnegie remarked: ‘These young men have done more for England’s greatness than all her kings and queens and aristocracy put together.’
¹⁰
At the dinner, where Gilchrist-Thomas was joined by his family, all were invited by Carnegie to join them on the trip to Scotland. Gilchrist-Thomas declined, and his sister Lilian left this comment on Margaret Carnegie: ‘[Carnegie’s] devotion to his mother, a trenchant old lady who called a spade a spade with racy Scottish wit, was delightful to see.’
¹¹

From Windsor they detoured to Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire so that Carnegie – who generally avoided graveyards – could view the grave of the poet Thomas Gray, whose poem ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (1751) was one of his favourites. In his twopenny jotter Carnegie recorded these lines from Gray’s tomb:

One morn I missed him on the accustomed hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came, nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.

Much moved, the party lunched by the Thames at the Old Swan Inn, picnicking under the trees. This was followed by a row on the river and then it was on to Reading and the Queen’s Hotel, and thence to Oxford. Their route across the Isis and up the High Street brought them to the Claremont Hotel, but as the university term was to begin the next day they had to be accommodated in nearby houses. A comprehensive tour of the principal colleges, the Sheldonian Theatre and the martyrs’ monument (to the Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley, burned at the stake opposite Balliol College on 16 October 1555) filled their day, yet Carnegie still found time on 21 June to write to Louise – who had never left his thoughts. He urged her to write to him care of his agents J.S. Morgan & Co. at London.

Then it was on to Banbury Cross and Blenheim Palace, Woodstock. At the palace, given by a grateful nation to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), Carnegie vented his spleen on the likes of John Churchill and the Duke of Wellington as Britain’s ‘most successful murderers’ and ridiculing the nation’s penchant for honouring ‘butchers’.
¹²
He calmed down when he viewed Blenheim’s gardens and library, but began to seethe again as his coach clattered down the drive and he recalled ‘the bad [British] men who did the dirty work of miserable kings . . . no man should be born to honours, but that these should be reserved for those who merit them. . . . The days of rank are numbered.’
¹³
His republican blood had ceased to boil by the time he settled down at Banbury’s White Lion Hotel, where he enjoyed a long talk on railways with the constituency’s Liberal MP (later Sir) Bernhard Samuelson, a Manchester engineer and ironmaster at Middlesbrough.