London - Edward Rutherfurd [495]
Eugene’s response drew from the Earl of St James a single word. “Remarkable.”
Eugene had talked himself into a job.
1822
Lucy was four when her brother was born, one cold December dawn. At first they thought he would die.
“We’ll call him Horatio,” her father said. “After Nelson.” Perhaps, they all hoped, the great hero’s name would give the baby strength to live, and it seemed to have worked. Lucy would always remember the day, a month later, when her mother, judging that the child would live, told her: “This baby is yours too. You’ll always look after him, won’t you?” He had been hers ever since.
Death and hardship were no strangers to the Doggets. The children’s father William had been only three when his father, old Sep Dogget the fireman had been killed when a blazing house collapsed. Will’s mother had been Sep’s second wife and she had done her best to bring him up alone. Will’s elder half-brother had helped, but not much, since he had his own children, including Silas, to care for. By the time he was a young man, Will had drifted into the huge parish of St Pancras where he occupied three rooms with his wife and Lucy and sickly Horatio, the only two of his five children to survive. Infant mortality was an urban curse. Fewer than half of London’s children reached the age of six.
He shouldn’t worry, Penny told himself. After all, it was only a shot in the dark. Meredith undoubtedly knew what he was doing. Eugene had asked his godfather what he thought, but Fleming had advised him not to concern himself.
Meanwhile, his life at Meredith’s was delightful. The first two years, he lived in Meredith’s house, visiting Fleming or sometimes his parents in Rochester on Saturdays and Sundays. He was like an elder brother to Meredith’s four boisterous children; secretly he was in love with pretty Mrs Meredith – of course, she and her husband were well aware of this – and if one day he could live as they did, he thought, he would be a lucky man indeed.
Though it held balances for a number of country gentlemen, the business of Meredith’s, like most private banking houses, was in making commercial loans mostly to merchants in the import and export trade. None were made to manufacturers: “For then I should have to understand what they do,” Meredith said. The manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution raised their capital from friends or sometimes from aristocratic backers, hardly ever from banks. Short-term loans for cargoes, letters of credit, the discounting of bills – this was the bread and butter of small banks like Meredith’s.
Business was not easy; the City’s fears about the gold standard had been partly justified. There was less money about, credit was tight, stock prices were down, and everyone was jittery. “We need new clients. Look for specialist merchants; they often survive,” Meredith told his clerks. Eugene had found several, including a trader who specialized in Indian dyes, and in tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl. But the huge growth, in which he dreamed of involving Meredith’s, came from the great foreign loans.
These were massive: loans to governments like France, Prussia and, most lately, the South American countries. Far too big for any one bank, this lucrative business was syndicated, numerous banks each taking a share, including Meredith’s.
“But it’s the agent banks, the ones who put the deal together, who really make a fortune,” Meredith explained, “because they get fees as well.” Baring’s and Rothschild’s were the leaders here because with their international connections they could arrange for banks all over Europe to participate. “Baring’s are slipping, though,” Meredith would say. By 1820, it was common knowledge that the younger generation of Barings with their grand country estates were not paying enough attention to the details of their business.
Some people, Eugene knew, felt that sending money out of the country like this was somewhat unpatriotic. But the banker explained: