Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [21]
The truth remains enigmatic.
What is not in doubt is that the duel and the events surrounding it formed a template for the rest of John Law’s life. His blinkered high principles and refusal to compromise, his willingness to wager everything—life itself—in a matter of honor landed him in similar dire predicaments, when he had to rely on prominent friends to propel him to safety. It is possible, too, that while it was the dueling convention as much as reckless courage that induced him to respond to Wilson’s challenge in the first place, the violence of the encounter, his brush with death, and the horrific experience of prison unsettled him more than he revealed. Years afterward, it may have been these disturbing memories that spurred the loss of control that surfaced in similarly stressful situations.
Certainly, too, the inscrutable John Law had resolved that the duel’s full story should be left untold. As he stood on the deck of the packet ship crossing to the Continent and savored his freedom, he forgot his past and prepared for a new life.
6
THE EXILE
Flushed with success and skill at all manner of play, he goes from Genoa to Venice, where his good fortune continues so, that he was worth twenty thousand pounds sterling.
With this foundation he began to look about him, and consider how to improve this stock in a solid way of trade . . . having made himself entirely master of these things he frames a paper scheme of his own, and resolves with it to make himself happy and great in his own native country.
W. Gray, The Memoirs, Life and Character of the
Great Mr. Law and His Brother at Paris (1721)
WHAT EXACTLY LAW DID AFTER LEAVING LONDON REMAINS mysterious. As if deliberately to separate himself from his past, the trail of documentary evidence he has left of his life during the next two decades is sparsely and confusingly scattered throughout Europe. He appears in France, where predictably the gambling salons of Paris prove a magnet. He is noted in prison in Caen—his papers were apparently not in order. There was also a lengthy stay in Holland and visits to various cities in Italy. Everywhere he went, his life followed a familiar pattern, with gaming and perilous romance recurring themes. But there are also signs that the lure of the gaming salon and boudoir were not alone in absorbing him: John Law quickly rekindled his fascination with economics.
His growing obsession is underlined by the places he visited: Amsterdam, Venice, Genoa, and Turin offered tantalizing cultural and social attractions. All were cities well stocked with rich tourists and residents, where a gamester of Law’s superior ability knew that there would be ample scope to supplement his income. More tellingly, all were key financial centers. Amsterdam, his home for several years, offered idyllic countryside resembling “a large garden, the roads all well paved, shaded on each side with rows of trees and bordered with large canals full of boats”; it had fine civic buildings, immaculate houses, and women “more nicely clean” than their English counterparts. But Law was attracted to it chiefly because the city was the commercial capital of Europe, and its success was due to a bank.
Amid the monetary confusion of the time, the Bank of Amsterdam had achieved the seemingly impossible: it had brought economic stability to the country, boosted trade, and, for a time, made the Netherlands the commercial superpower of the world. Founded in 1609, the bank had simple governing principles. Adulterated coins were the same scourge in mainland Europe as they were in England, and a vast variety—some eight hundred different denominations of gold and silver coins—circulated. Currency could be exchanged in every town and at every fair throughout Europe, but in Amsterdam the bank took deposits in local and foreign coinage, weighed and assessed them for their purity, and in return issued credit notes or bank money—a form of paper money—representing the intrinsic value of the metal content of the coins rather than their nominal face