Sir Richard Tangye

Front matter

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The date shows when this volume was taken.

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Preface

I HAVE written this book in order to show, as far as in me lies, what manner of man was Sir Richard Tangye. I have done so in order that those who come after may know, to such extent as is still possible, the qualities even more than the achievenients which explain the wide appeal of his character. The book is written of set purpose simply, for simplicity, in the most worthy acceptation of the term, was the most conspicuous trait in his nature. He was transparently open and artless.. But simplicity in itself does not carry one far in the interpretation of such a man, so to it, I add other qualities to the great endowment of a sunny, unspoilt temperament the possession, to a rare degree, of courage, sympathy, and common sense. His moral courage stood revealed at every crisis of his public and private life. His sympathy, it was at once delicate and practical, ran like a golden thread through all his intercourse with other people. His common viii PREFACE

sense leaped forth, even in casual talk, as well as dominated all the activities of a strenuous career.

The aim of this book is to describe the man exactly as I.knew^ him in the genial leisure of his closing years. We came to know each othe. almost by chance ; but we quickly fqvind that we had many common interests, and mere acquaintance ripened swiftly into a friendship, close and confidential, which deepened into tenderness in the las^ anxious months before the end. I have known many men of all ranks and conditions, but I never met any one who possessed a more exquisite genius for friendship. He was not a man who wore his heart upon his sleeve. On the contrary, in spite of his affluent talk, his intensely human temperament, and his power — it was a quite unconscious gift — of drawing the best out of every one who met him frankly in hearty speech, he was shy. All who knew him recognised more or less vividly the qualities on which I have just laid stress. But exceedingly few people, for at the heart of him he was reserved^ suspected the depths and heights of a nature which was so finely poised that self-revelation was difficult. In many close talks at Glendorgal, in the Nursing Home in London, after his last critical operation,

PREFACE ix

and in the final months of his life at Combe Bank, when it was only too clear to us both that recovery was impossible — that knowledge was not denied me, or this book would never have been written.

Few things impressed me more than his unfailing vivacity and the almost boyish delight which he took in doing little acts of kindness. One instance of the latter, slight though it is, may perhaps be mentioned. He was my guest in the last year of his life. I had shown him a number of small treasures I prized — medals, autograph letters, political and literary. Civil War Tracts, various books in which former owners had written their names, notably, Oliver Goldsmith and Napoleon Bonaparte ; an armchair which once belonged to Sydney Smith, a quaint mirror which was the property of Charlotte Bronte at Haworth, and other decorative spoil of a bookish man. But, to my amusement, the thing which seemed to attract him most was a little silver-mounted meerschaum pipe given to me by a niece of R. D. Blackmore, in memory of my friend. Sir Richard was both a teetotaler and a non-smoker, but, oddly enough, he seemed fascinated with the pipe and asked for the loan of it. In a few days it came back with a neat little silver plate on it, inscribed " R. D.

X PREFACE

Blackmore, Lorna Doone." That was a small thing in itself, but it reveals the man.

It only remains to add, first, that this book is based on his own letters and papers which were placed at my unfettered discretion. Next, that many of his friends, both in business and private life— one or two of them could go back to his boyhood — have given me hints and reminiscences, and foremost amongst them his nearest relatives. I wish to add my sense of indebtedness to Dr. Guinness Rogers for his interesting contribution to the final chapter, and also to Mr, Chambers, of Edinburgh, for allowing me to make use of articles on the begging fraternity contributed — by Sir Richard Tangye — to the famous " Journal " which bears

his name.

STUART J. REID.

Blackwell Cliff,

East Grinstead, SxresEX.

Nov. 5, 1908.

Chapter I Early Days

Leading traits of character — Humble environment — Wesleyanism in Cornwall — Old Cornish customs — A long-lived race — " Pick your heels up " — Ancestry and parentage — A warning that had effect — Church Rates — The Tangye family — At the British School — Boyish characteristics — A night with Elihu Burritt — Apothegms of old newspapers — Prejudices of youth — Favourite books Pp, 1-14

Chapter II At Sidcot School

Leaving home — First experiences at Sidcot — Condition of the School in 1837 — Charles Feinaigle — New system of mnemonics — "Shearing the flock" — Schoolboy gardeners — Counsels of perfection — The School Magazine — Richard Tangye's reminiscences of school-life — An archaeological collection — Experience as pupil teacher — The school newspaper — Franklin's Autobiography — Kicking against school limitations — Free to face the world — William Tallack — A text that shot home — First visit to London — Wonders of the Great Exhibition Pp. 15-31

Chapter III His Start In Life

Waiting for an opening — Indebtedness to Sidcot — Bed-rock convictions — The post of stationmaster — " Fit for something xi xii CONTENTS

better " — Obtains clerkship in Birmingham — The Midland capital in 1852 — Joseph Sturge befriends Richard — The first and last master — The young clerk's first public service — Life in lodgings — George Tangye comes to Birmingham — Death of Joseph Tangye, senior Pp. 32-4S

Chapter IV His Own Master

Leaves the firm of Evans and Worsdell — " R. Tangye, General Merchant " — Working up a business — The first vrorkshop — Joins in partnership with his brothers— Rehtions with Mr. Worsdell — Beginnings of a great industry — Qualities of the five brothers-7— The "driving-belt" of the business — Richard's dilemma in London — A tramp towards Birmingham and notes of the journey — The " inconvenience " of poverty — A struggle that made for success Pp. 46-58

Chapter V The Rising Tide Of Fortune

A turning point — Isambard Brunei — Hydraulic jacks for launching the Great Eastern — " She launched us " — " Great events from little causes " — A new workshop — ^At the Friends' Adult School — Masters and men — Anxious moments — Hardening effect of prosperity — A clear view of responsibility — Litigation over the differential pulley block — Building new premises— His marriage, and the charm of his home

Chapter VI Stress And Progress

Statesmen after Tangye's own heart — Twenty invitations to enter Parliament — Services to the Liberal Party — Contribution to Cobden's Commercial Treaty with France — Encountering prejudices against new machines — An experience in a bank parlour — Hydraulic shearing-machine — The " Cornubia " —

CONTENTS xiii

Learning at the feet of public men — " Victory and Sebastopool " — ^Tactful management of customers — Not enslaved by business — Quick decisions — Magnanimous judgments of men Pp. 72-85

Chapter VII The Cornwall Works

New works at Soho — An effective advertisement — The Special Steam Pump — Results of incivility — Opening of works in Belgium— British and Belgic workmen compared — London warehouse — Branches in the north and the colonies — Richard Tangye's administrative powers — Relations with workpeople — Dr. Dale's testimony — Richard Tangye's humour

Chapter VIII Consideration For Workpeople

Tyneside struggle between capital and labour — Richard Tangye averts a strike in Birmingham — Nine-hours day granted unasked — Holding wealth as a trust — Conscience and kindness in the workshop — Dining-hall for the workmen — Evening classes — Benefit fund — Dr. Langford's addresses — Lifting Cleopatra's Needle — Rapid progress in methods of weight-raising — Results achieved by the Hydraulic Jack

Chapter IX Educational Reform

Excuses of the wealthy — Richard Tangye's municipal and social services — Advocacy of technical education — Broadcloth versus Fustian — Language classes at Cornwall Works — A fair start for the children of the people — Results of Board Schools — Science teaching — " Study and work together " — Essentials for skilled labour — Self reliance — No mercy on the loafer — Going forward — " Good advice, and nothing more "

xiv CONTENTS

Chapter X Political Interests

Richard Tangye in society — Family bonds — Recreations and hobbies — L'bve of books — Some of his friends — Refusal to enter Parliament — Wit and power of retort — Fidelity to the Liberal Party — The Daily Argus — Gladstone asks him to stand for Birmingham — Admiration for John Bright — First election of Bright for Birmingham — Hints on public speaking — Bright's defence of the north in the American Civil War — Tangye's shortest speech — Honour to Sir Josiah Mason — Incident in a railway carriage — Relations with Mr. Chamberlain — Gladstone and Home Rule — Working men in Parliament Pp. 127-148

Chapter XI Public Spirit

First Art Gallery in Birmingham — A project for technical instruction deferred — Gifts of Richard and George Tangye to the new Art Gallery and the School of Art and Design — Great value of the School — Ungenerous criticism and a powerful retort — Richard Tangye's resignation of official positions — Changes in the firm — Public honour to Richard and George Tangye — Limitations of " immortality "

Chapter XII Notes Of Travel

Richard Tangye's visits to Australia — Impressions of places and people — The waters of the Mediterranean — ^Backsheesh in Egypt — The great pyramid — Heliopolis, Memphis, Bulak, and Alexandria — Traffic in the Suez Canal — A mine " twelve miles deep" — Trade and institutions of Melbourne — Colonial affinity to the Tory Party — The great need of Australia — Attractions of Sydney — Drawbacks in Tasmania

CONTENTS XV

— Possibilities of New Zealand — Honolulu — San Francisco compared with Melbourne — ^English gold at Utah—Comparison of economic conditions between the United States and England — ^American factories Pp. 165-185

Chapter XIII Why Laughter Reigned At Glendorgal

Richard Tangye in mixed company — Salvation Lass and "soft heads " — " Sweeps " — Unfriendly criticism of Radicals — Attack on John Bright — Limitations of coasting-vessels — Sermons " dearer than life " — A member of the Self-Help Society — A cheat detected — Adventure of a lightning-conductor — Ready wit of a negro — Ex-pugilist missionary — A vicar and his dog — " Ten thousand blessings " — " No wages for a fortnight " — Society of the White Rose and a portrait of Cromwell Pp. 186-200

Chapter XIV The Cromwell Collection

Richard Tangye's admiration of Cromwell, and the reasons for it — Begins to collect memorials of the Commonwealth — Acquires the collection of Mr. J. de Kewer Williams — Bids for Benjamin Franklin's letters — Visitors to Glendorgal to view the collection — Its main features — ^Tangye's " Notes " on his Gromwellian Treasures — ^The executioner of Charles I. — Tangye's "Two Protectors" — Cromwell and the "Twelve Apostles " Pp. 201-215

Chapter XV Amongst His Own People

Cornish traits of character — Glendorgal — Generous hospitality and kindness — Stories of Cornish life — " Vain sports " — Quaker Meeting-Houses — " Tall talkers " — " Divine and Moral songs " — A question of corns — Easy way of cancelling debts — " We've usually sot ! " — A Wesleyan minister's sendxvi CONTENTS

off—" You're gooen down 'ill fast "—An extraordinary text — Result of " eddication " — Definition of a vineyard — A sick man and a grave-digger—" In the flesh still " Pp. 216-229

Chapter XVI The Open Hand

The penalty of kindliness — Varieties of beggars — Fruitless appeals for aid — An unredeemed promise — Unreal poverty — Curious petitions — Requests that went home — " An extraordinarily wonderful discovery" — " Victoria Crown Minstrels" — Pleas of Cornishmen — Beggars of all nationalities — A punster — Gaelic not wanted — Short and to the point — A widower's request — Distressed authors — Helping "lame dogs " — An audacious appeal — Tangye's discrimination in bestowing charity — Money as a trust — Compounding with pensioners Pp. 230-244

Chapter XVII "twilight And Evening Bell"

Growing old gracefully — At Kingston Vale — " Keep the flag of honour flying " — Lifelong service to others — " Keeping his friendships in repair " — Knighthood — Peaceful days at Glendorgal — Illness — Letter from William Tallack — " Cornish apprentices " at Sidcot — " A trail of sunshine " — A mind broad and generous — Last days and death — Tribute of Dr. Guinness Rogers — " The high breeding of the spiritual life " — A bit of English oak Pp. 245-263

Chapter I Early Days

Leading traits of character — Humble environment — Wesleyanism in Cornwall — Old Cornish customs^— A long-lived race — " Pick your heels up " — Ancestry and parentage — A warning that had eflfect — Church Rates — The Tangye family — ^At the British School — Boyish characteristics — ^A night with Elihu Burritt — ^Apothegms of old newspapers — Prejudices of youth — Favourite books.

It is a great mark of quality when, looking back, it can be claimed with truth for any man that, in his character, simplicity was linked with strength, and chivalrous regard for others with a lowly estimate of self. The story of any life great or small can never be perfectly told, since so much that is significant and vital lies in a region with which neither stranger nor friend can intermeddle. But it is surely possible to trace the ruling motive, as well as to record the words and deeds which were its outward manifestation, and that is the aim of the present volume.

Although Richard Tangye had many gifts, he was the most unassuming of men, and it would be alien to the whole spirit of his life to attempt a portraiture which opened with any words of exaggeration. His career was one of ever broadening success, but its real claim to abiding remembrance has its basis in moral, rather than intellectual, qualities, and, beyond all else, in a certain fe;arless courage of conviction, a high sense of duty, and a sympathy — at once practical and delicate — only possible to an imaginative temperament, loyal to the behests of a sensitive heart. Let it not be supposed, even for a moment, that this estimate, winning and significant though it is, gathers into a few words all that might be advanced in such directionSjbut to say more now would be to anticipate the story, which has yet to be told — a story, so rich in golden deeds, that it may well be left to make its own impression, and all the more, since so much of it can happily be told in the words — eloquent with sincerity — of the man himself.

He owed nothing to the gifts of fortune. He was born in lowly surroundings, and at every toU-bar on the road of life he had to make good his claims. But, like thousands of other men who have risen to distinction, he had good, honest blood in his veins. When he grew rich and famous he never dipped his flag, and, far from being ashamed of his humble start in life, was proud, in a right worthy manner, of the home of his childhood, to which he owed nothing in the material sense, but

BIRTH IN CORNWALL 3

more than can ever be told in directions which are noble, subtle, and abiding. His home — as a training ground for character — ^gave him, in spite of its austere and modest limitations, as excellent a start as any self-reliant lad could desire.

He was born at lUogan, near Redruth in Cornwall, on November 24, 1833, when the echoes of the Reform Bill stiU lingered in the Duchy, then a remote part of the country, where people took politics, as they took religion, seriously. If Cornwall in those days was severed from much of the life of the nation, its people, because of that circumstance, led their own life and grew up self-reliarit, and, so far as the best of them were concerned, with a real sense of the dignity of life, and, what is more, with a deep response to the uplifting appeal of the Methodist Revival. Richard Tangye was not associated, either early or late, with this aspect of spiritual enthusiasm. His character was formed and his career developed on other and less emotional lines, but even the Society of Friends, with its widely different worship and its more tranquil outlook on life, could not escape, in Cornwall at least, from that intensity of feeling, which found expression in the genius and self-denying work of Wesleyanism, when it took by storm, in well nigh every parish of the county, the hearts of the people.

There was a great deal of lawlessness and superstition in Cornwall in the last decades of the eighteenth century, and both lingered, to some extent.

to a much later period. Richard Tangye could recall many traditions of the countryside, some of which made for righteousness, whUst others betrayed a rough and almost barbarous phase of civilisation. The pixies were supposed to haunt lonely places.* It was still reckoned an evil thing to whistle after nightfall. Bull-baiting and cockfighting, ending usually in brutal horseplay, were already a tradition. But the old animosity between people of different parishes survived, and the boys of one village indulged in fisticuffs with those of another, as a matter of course, in the days when the little fellow first went to school. Bonfires were always lighted on Midsummer Eve, and the children, joining hands, would dance around them, until, as the fun became fast and furious, the bolder would jump through the flames. Other old customs, some of them quaint and picturesque, were common. He could remember the performance of sacred plays on the village greens, and once saw "Joseph and his Brethren " acted with startling realism on a stage in the open air, on a Sunday.

The Tangyes were a long-lived, sturdy race. Richard could recall his great-grandmother, who died at the age of eighty-eight, just after Queen Victoria came to the throne, and was born in the reign of George II. His grandfather lived to ninetyfive. He was a tall, active man, over 6 ft. in height, alert almost to the last and nimble on his feet. The old man greatly disliked the lazy habit, which some young people have, of walking carelessly, and shuff-

HOME ENVIRONMENT 5

ling their feet along the ground. Richard was guilty of this habit, and many a time he found his grandfather behind him, calling out in sharp tones, " Pick your heels up." Often, in after life, when things went badly and his energies flagged, he used to say that the words came back to him as a spur to fresh exertion.

This old worthy, who was his mother's father, led the simple life in the most strenuous fashion. He was in charge of a pumping-engine in one of the mines at night, and he cultivated his little plot of land by day, and for a long term of years worked, not eight hours a day, but seventeen — " wasting," as he put it, the other seven hours in sleep. He lived on his labour, and never needed, until the end, the services of a doctor. He was an old-fashioned Methodist, and cut quite a smart figure on Sundays when he went to chapel, dressed in a blue coat with high collar and gilt buttons. It was Richard's duty in his childhood to read to the old man on Sunday afternoon, and he invariably selected the most depressing of Wesley's hymns, and was particularly fond of those which were commonly sung at funerals. He was not satisfied unless the verses were repeated in what he regarded as becoming accents of solemnity ; but sometimes he apparently fell asleep, and then the young reader would skip along in a much more lively fashion, only to be pulled up sharply by the stern admonition to read seriously.

Richard's father, Joseph Tangye, was a native of Redruth, a little town, where William Murdock lived, long before he became famous as an engineer. It was at Redruth that his inventive genius made its first experiment with gas as an illuminant, and, in the lane in front of the Tangye cottage, he set the first locomotive in motion that ever ran in England. Many years afterwards Richard Tangye and one of his brothers placed a granite slab on the wall of Murdock's house, which bears this inscription: " William Murdock lived in this house 1 78 2-1 789 ; invented the first Locomotive here, and tested it in 1784; invented gas-lighting and used it in this house 1792." When Murdock's clumsy hissing machine first began to move about, even the vicar of the parish recoiled from it, with superstitious dread- Richard Tangye was always proud that his father was the neighbour of one of the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution. In early life old Joseph Tangye had worked in a mine. He was a quiet, thoughtful man, and fond of books, though in those days there were, not many within reach of the poorer classes of the community. At the time of Richard's birth he was a Wesleyan, and a class-leader at the local chapel. He became a total abstainer, his son used to say, long before the word teetotaler was invented. He afterwards joined the Society of Friends, and remained a respected member of that community to the end of his life.

The children, in such a home, simple and even straitened as it was, caught glimpses of the meaning

HIS MOTHER'S CHARACTER 7

of life in other than a material sense, for they had not merely an upright, seriously-minded father, but a mother who was both quick-witted and deeply religious. Richard Tangye always spoke of his mother in terms of grateful and affectionate reverence. She was a shrewd, tender-hearted, comely woman, ever on the alert to help her children and never more so than when she saw them making efforts to help themselves. During an alarming visitation of cholera to the village, she stood at the post of danger, when other people fled. Her religion consisted in looking and lifting up, in meditation in the simple Quaker meeting, and in good deeds to those with whom life went even more hardly than with herself. She died in the summer of 1 851, when her son Richard was eighteen, and she told him just before the end that, if her life had not been an example to him, nothing she said then could be of any avail. He was only a poor young usher at the time, with no prospects of advancement, but he said his mother somehow seemed to believe that he had a career before him, for she said, " Richard, if you ever get money, never let money get you." There were times of prosperity when he felt the need of that warning, and he used to say that at such moments, his mother's white face and earnest accents flashed upon him, and were his salvation. " Make straight paths to thyself " were her last words to him.

In Richard's early days his father kept the village shop at lUogan, and it returned the compliment by keeping him and his large family. He farmed ten acres, moreover, and always followed the plough in Quaker dress and broad-brimmed hat. He possessed an unaccommodating Nonconformist conscience, and steadily refused to pay the Church rates. The family cow used therefore to be distrained in summer, and the disappointed children went with scanty milk to their porridge. In winter the flitch of bacon which hung on the rafters of the kitchen was also carried off. It turned one of those children, at least, into a most uncompromising opponent of the State Church. Richard Tangye, looking back, in the mellow light of his closing years, declared that he could never forgive the Established Church for putting people under the harrow who could not, on principle, consent to such payments. It stirred the note of revolt in him, and made him ever a fighter on behalf of religious liberty.

Plain Joseph and Anne Tangye gave names of the same sort to their six sons and three daughters. They were called respectively, James, Joseph, John, Edward, Richard, George, Anne, Alice and Sarah ; of the nine, seven grew up to manhood and womanhood and five still survive.

The eldest, James, now an octogenarian, and living in retirement in the county of his birth, was from boyhood a clever mechanic, with a marked aptitude, even then, for invention. He was in this respect the genius of the family, and no one was more ready to recognise the fact that his clever

HANDICAPPED 9

brain was the foundation of the family fortunes than his brother Richard. At the same time, James Tangye was too timid in practical affairs and , had so little business ability that, like a good many other people, he would have "missed his market," to borrow a homely saying in the great world of engineering activity, if it had not been for the enterprise, prescience, and energy of Richard.

The elder boys attended a dame school, but the younger ones were sent to the British School, where one master, with the help of monitors, did his best to instil the rudiments of learning into sixty or seventy scholars. Richard, as a child of eight, was appointed a monitor, and he used to laugh over the incident which led to his promotion. It seems that a five-syllabled word embarrassed the pupils, and when the little fellow spelt it promptly and correctly he was lifted straightway out of the ranks. Class distinctions came into play rather curiously in village schools in those days. Some of the parents at lUogan were in a position to pay extra fees, and the schoolmaster, in consequence, gave special heed to their children — a select coterie in which Richard was not included.

He had not been a monitor twelve months before, in the rough play of the place, he broke his arm. It was a bad fracture of the right arm just at the joint. It seemed, not to himself alone but to the whole household, a heavy calamity. What chance in life was there for this little son of the soil if, as the doctor said, he could never earn his living lo SIR RICHARD TANGYE

by manual labour. When the doctor gave that verdict he took a good look at the lad, and then, turning to his mother, remarked, " He has a goodsized head ; try what a little extra schooling will do for him." James and his other big brothers were by thk time beginning to earn their living, so the extra schooling for Richard was not out of the question. He always declared that the broken arm was a blessing in disguise, for his father sent him to Redruth for two or three years, where he received an education which, though not wonderful, was quite beyond the power of the village master at lUogan to impart. This school was kept by William Bellows, the father of John Bellows, of Gloucester, a life-long friend of Richard Tangye, and the author of a pocket French Dictionary which is still widely known. George Tangye was also a pupil at Redruth.

Unlike his brothers, Richard was little and delicate, a dreamy, imaginative boy, though with plenty of pluck and no lack of ambition, and beginning, moreover, to realise, in the intellectual sense, that he was alive, and must beat his music out. Sensitive he was then and always ; inquisitive too, mischievous, perhaps a little moody, for he did not relish having to stand aside when play grew boisterous. Still less did he like to be regarded as the undersized, ailing member of a robust brotherhood, and being independent, even then, pity over the limitations imposed by a broken arm was not at all to his mind. He seems to have

AS A CHILD II

been rather a solitary^ little chap, standing aloof, of necessity, from a great deal of what other boys enjoyed, and, in consequence, thrown much upon himself and the companionship of books. The truth was, his mind was growing more quickly than his body, and if he had not possessed modesty and humour, which never left him, he might have developed at Redruth in the direction of conceit. But he thought soberly of himself as he ought to think, and, keeping an open mind, was sensible enough soon to discover his own limitations.

Cornwall in those days was strangely isolated from the rest of the kingdom. Its warm-hearted, out-spoken people saw so little of the great world that they were delightfully confident about their own dpinions, and were apt to cherish a sleepy disdain of new ideas. One of the best things that can happen to an alert, impressionable boy is to come into contact, even for an hour or two, with a man able to lift him out of the rut of his usual environment. One memorable night Elihu Burritt, a philosopher in homespun as well as an American blacksmith, appeared at the Friends' Meeting House at Redruth, two miles from lUogan, and Richard Tangye felt for the first time that strange thrill which is the response to the magic of oratory. Elihu Burritt's theme that night was the necessity of linking together the Old World and the New by a system of Ocean Penny Postage. The enthusiasm of humanity was in that speech as weU as the vision of concord and peace between two nations of one blood. The lad in the little Meeting House caught his first glimpse of a great public question, which stirred his imagination and made his heart beat fast. The orator went his way, rich, doubtless, with local congratulations. He did not know until nearly thirty years afterwards, when United States Consul at Birmingham, that he had helped to shape the aspirations of an unknown lad. It was then that Richard Tangye, at the height of distinction, as a leader of public opinion in the capital of the midlands, grasped his hand and told him of the incident.