EMMANUEL BURDEN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A SKETCH OF MR BURDEN—FROM MEMORY

EMMANUEL BURDEN

MERCHANT

OF THAMES ST., IN THE CITY OF LONDON, EXPORTER OF HARDWARE A RECORD OF HIS LINEAGE, SPECULATIONS, LAST DAYS AND DEATH

BY

HILAIRE BELLOC

WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. K. CHESTERTON THIRD AND CHEAPER EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON

First Published

September 1904

Second Edition

December 1904

Third Edition (2s. net)

April 1915

TO HERBERT A. L. FISHER

[Pg vii]

INTRODUCTION

Though no prominent citizen is now-a-days permitted to pass “beyond the veil” without an account of him being drawn up for posterity, yet books of this sort have recently grown so common that some warrant for the publication of a new biography may well be demanded.

Mr Burden’s public position, combined with his sterling piety and considerable wealth, would alone merit such recognition: to these must be added the fact that he was a Justice of the Peace for the County of Surrey. His connection, moreover, with Imperial Finance has, through the medium of the Press, lent a very general interest to his name even in those parts of London with which he was personally unfamiliar.

[Pg viii]

I am well aware that the task of writing this history could have fallen into abler hands, but it could have been achieved by no one more devoted to his subject, or more familiar with the final catastrophe of this singularly beautiful and modest life. That I possessed the qualifications necessary for a work of this kind, was so evident to writers like Charles Egton, T. T. Batworthy, George K. Morrel, and Mrs Hooke as to cause them to withdraw voluntarily from a field in which they had already—I regret to say—laboured with some assiduity.

If, in the face of such a testimony, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke persist in issuing their ill-informed and prejudiced version of the last sad months, I fear I am powerless to dissuade them.

I had at first intended my notes for the perusal of friendly eyes alone: to my astonishment, I find them praised almost enthusiastically by two powerful critics (—journalists; valued friends; men whose fingers are ever upon the pulse of the nation), and a little later I learnt[Pg ix] that the Directors of the M’Korio Delta Development Company would not be displeased to see printed such a vindication of their methods as my pen had produced. I was assured by Lord Benthorpe, in person, that no salaried agent upon the daily press, nor any professional author they had employed—not even “Ultor”—had given them the full satisfaction they had received from my manuscript. I, therefore, reluctantly consented to rewrite and publish the whole, with such added embellishments of style and fancy, as a wider public deserves.

It has eagerly been enquired by many clergymen and others whether I had before me a moral purpose in the compilation of this work.

I cannot pretend that I had intended it at the outset to convey any great religious or political lesson to the world, but I will confess that long before my monograph was perfected a conscious meaning inspired my pen. Rather let me put it more humbly, and say that I became vividly sensitive to a Guiding[Pg x] Power of which I was but the Instrument. Each succeeding phrase, though intended for nothing but a statement of fact, pointed more and more to the Presence of some Mysterious Design, and I arose from the Accomplished Volume with the certitude that more than a mere record had been achieved. The very soul of Empire rose before me as I re-read my simple chronicle. I was convinced of the Destiny of a People; I was convinced that every man who forwarded this Destiny was directly a minister of Providence. I was convinced that the Intrepid Financier, the Ardent Peer—nay, the Soldier of Fortune, whom twenty surrenders cannot daunt—had in them something greater than England had yet known.

To such convictions the reader owes those snatches of hymns, those citations from the sermons of eminent divines, and those occasional ethical digressions which diversify and enliven the pages now before him.

[Pg xi]

Of the form of the book I have little to say. Type, paper, and binding I left to the choice of specialists, as did I also the impagination, the size of the margin, the debate as to whether the leaves should be uncut, and the proportion of public advertisement requisite to a merited fame.

The proofs I read myself.

The question of illustration was discussed at some length. An excellent photograph of Mr Burden was unfortunately discovered to be the property of a firm who had flattered him by making it a complimentary portrait during the last short period of his public fame. They demand for its reproduction a sum I have certainly no intention of paying. No other picture of him exists save a faded daguerreotype taken many years ago on the occasion of a fancy dress ball. It represents Mr Burden in the character of Charles I., and seemed to me wholly unsuitable.

The principal characters connected with the M’Korio have, however, consented[Pg xii] to sit to a mutual friend, and his sharp if rapid impressions of their strong features coupled with a few sketches of Mr Burden, drawn from memory, will aid my readers to a fuller comprehension of my work.

My thanks are due to Messrs Marian, solicitors, who procured for me the best advice of counsel upon passages since omitted; to Mr Banks, Lord Benthorpe’s butler, who has provided me with much of my material. To the anonymous author of “A History of Upper Norwood”; to Mr English, sometime editor of The Patriot, now manager of “The Feathers” Tavern, Greenwich; to the Master of St Barnabas College, Oxford; to the chaplain and especially to the porter of the same college; to Mr Carey employed at St Catherine’s College, long a servant of Mr Cosmo Burden’s; to Lord Garry, to Mr Tammin, to Mrs Gough, to Charles Parker, Henry Grimm, Peter Cowdrey, C. T. Knowles, T. Cummins, Loring, Gibbs, Hepton, Rubble and Tuke, and to many others[Pg xiii] of lesser note who will, I trust, accept this general recognition in place of a more personal expression of gratitude.

The MSS. and correspondence which have reached me from all parts of the world have been of the utmost service. I cannot congratulate myself too warmly on the receipt of Mr Barnett’s blotting-pad which his office-keeper had the courtesy to retain for me. The autograph letters from Prince Albert and Baron Grant to the first Lord Benthorpe have proved most useful material; his grandson, the present peer, who figures so prominently in these pages, was good enough to sell them at an astonishingly cheap rate to a gentleman who was my agent.

Such notes, memoranda of obligations and short agreements as have reached Mr Cosmo Burden through me, he is indeed happy to have received, and he begs me to render thanks for him most heartily in this place. I am further to assure all who read these lines that any further scraps in his handwriting that[Pg xiv] may be received—especially any letters addressed to Miss Capes—will be warmly and substantially acknowledged.

It will be noticed that I have alluded throughout these pages to Lord Lambeth under his original name as Mr Barnett. The public are more familiar with him in this form, for Barnett is and remains the name he has rendered famous; and, moreover, his acceptance of the Peerage was not announced till half this edition had been struck off. I have his permission for the retention of his simple English surname. Similarly I speak throughout my work of the Right Rev. the Right Honourable,[1] the Lord Mauclerc, Bishop of Shoreham, as “the Rev. the Honourable Peregrine Mauclerc.” The death of his lordship’s[Pg xv] brother, and his own induction to the See of Shoreham, occurred too late for me to make the requisite alteration.

One word more.

I trust I have nowhere forgotten that delicacy in mentioning the private affairs of others which is the mark of the gentleman.

If I have spoken strongly of Mr Abbott, it must be remembered that a patriotic duty has claims superior to those of convention: moreover, Mr Abbott has himself made a verbal declaration of the strongest kind, accompanied with an oath, that he is indifferent to my opinions.

It may be mentioned in this connection that the unhappy difficulties of the Benthorpe family, on which I was compelled (however reluctantly) to touch, are of no further moment, since young Mr Benthorpe has wooed and won Antigua, the only daughter of the Count Brahms de la Torre de Traicion y[Pg xvi] Crapular, a Spanish nobleman of immense resources.

For the rest, I have throughout striven earnestly—and I believe successfully—to avoid giving the slightest pain to any sentient being.

Or words to that effect.

Chelsea, 1904

[Pg xvii]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The phrase used by “Asterisk” in the Daily American of April 9th has no meaning. Very Rev., Very Honourable, are titles that cannot exist in combination. As to the “Most”: “Most Honourable, Most Rev.,” of “Clara,” in the Evenudg German, it is not impossible, but is here inaccurate. His Lordship is not a marquis, nor has he any intention of ascending the steps of the Archiepiscopal throne.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 1]

CHAPTER I

It is remarkable, and a little saddening, to find how few people have heard of Mr Burden, who recently died at his residence, Avonmore, 37 Alexandrovna Road, Upper Norwood. He was, all his life, a man whose influence, though indirect, was considerable; a man certainly not without weight in the foreign policy of this country, and one that affected still more profoundly its social structure.

The assiduity and the regularity of his demeanour forbade him, perhaps, the notoriety that is so prized by many lesser men. His ambitions, where they were not domestic, regarded his business and the preservation of the fortune he had honestly acquired. His judgment, which was excellent, he exercised upon problems connected with the commercial interests into which he had been born, and from which he had never, during a useful life of sixty-four years, desired to dissociate himself.

To the administration of the suburb in which his villa was situated he was far from indifferent;[Pg 2] but he had never attempted to enter the House of Commons, though his station, means, and connections would have afforded him ample opportunities in middle age for a career which Englishmen justly regard as among the most honourable, lucrative and eminent.

Such men, happily, exercise, under the orderly conditions of modern England, a far deeper influence upon the fortunes of our great empire than their lack of public fame might argue in less favoured communities. It would be an impertinence to insist upon the many friendships which bound Mr Burden by the closest ties to men who direct no small part of our national fortunes. To those who knew him well it would appear redundant, and, to those who had not heard of him, beside the mark, were an account of all his financial, philanthropic, or religious activity to occupy any part of the following pages. Those pages were called forth under the strong and painful impression of his recent death, and it is their only object to trace a rapid sketch of his family and social position, to make some mention of the last few days of his life, and at the same time to leave some permanent record, lest the memory of such a character and of its trials should perish.

The name of Burden is first seen in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when a[Pg 3] Henry Burden appears in the court rolls of Beccles, in Suffolk, in connection with sundry sales of wool to Ghent.

It is not certain whether this Henry was an ancestor or no; but within ten years the name twice reoccurs, once in the form of Burdyn, and once in that of Bird.

A receipt presented at Bungay, dated in the year 1616, when our Shakespeare died, and acknowledging payment for wood used in burning a witch, bears the signature Barton: and a deed of 1638 conveys and devises 47 hogsheads of mild ale to Zachary Pyorden, who is later known for a zealous defender of the public liberties.

It is interesting to note that a Master Barreden sailed for Holland from Yarmouth, in company with some fifteen or twenty of “God’s servants,” shortly afterwards, with a large and very valuable cargo of wool. He was presumably a nephew of the foregoing. There is a family of Bourdons in Bradford, Mass., who, though claiming a Canadian origin, are very possibly descended from this early champion of religious liberty.

No mention of the Burdens during the Civil Wars remains. We may imagine them, if we will, following the Parliamentary cause; whether passively—as did so many of the[Pg 4] sturdy East-Anglian stock—or actively; accepting the wage, and loyally fighting the battles of the great Protector. However that may be, the name reappears with another John Burden in 1672, a religious enthusiast who preached the Word to the people of Saxmundham during the hot summer of that year.

He seems to have been an honest God-fearing man, devoted to the cause of true religion in the first period of his ministry.

A government which could permit the entry of the Dutch into the Medway, and produce the infamous shorthand notes of a Pepys, did not tolerate the mystical zeal of Bunyan’s contemporary. He was thrown into Ipswich gaol, on his release from which place he proceeded to Aldeburgh, and declared himself the Messiah—at some time between April and June 1684.

Few believed him, but he suffered nothing further from the authorities, and died peacefully in the occupation of cobbling, at Orford, on the 5th or 6th of January 1701/1700.

The race of Burden is then lost sight of for nearly a century. There is almost certainly some connection between Mr Burden’s ancestry and that of Sir Algernon Burden, of Pelham Thorpe, near Norwich, for Mr Cosmo Burden[Pg 5] (Mr Burden’s surviving son) has recently borne the same crest as the baronet.

The College of Heralds, who, under the able direction of Lion d’Or, have accumulated these details at a considerable expense, trace continuous filiation from John Burden, whose mother may have boasted gentle birth, and who established himself as a corn chandler at Colchester in the year 1785. John Burden, confining himself strictly to the wheat market, drove a prosperous business in Colchester during the Napoleonic wars. His subscriptions to the charities which were so necessary in those times of high prices and public famine appear no less than six times between 1801 and 1815. He was an Alderman of his town, and died in 1833, leaving a son, George Burden, whom he had established as a large ironmonger at 106 Thames Street, in the City of London, and who was the father of the remarkable Englishman this memoir commemorates.

Mr George Burden, of Thames Street, married on March 8th, 1835, at his parish church of St Catherine’s, Jane Elizabeth, the daughter of Ezechiel Cranby, a shipmaster of Wapping. The union was blessed with two still-born and eleven living children, of whom my own friend, the Mr Burden with whom[Pg 6] these pages deal, was the third, born on January 19th, 1841, and baptised the next day under the scriptural name of Emmanuel.

As is so often mysteriously the case with even numerous families, the name of the Burdens survived in but a single member. Of the three other sons, James, Thomas, and Cranby, the first died while yet a child; the second was drowned at sea as first mate of one of his grandfather’s vessels; and the third, whose intellect had always been deficient, did not long survive his thirtieth year, but passed away, unmarried, in Dr Milford’s private home at Reading. Two of the sisters also perished in tender years. Of the five that survived, Charlotte and Victoria remained unmarried, Patience was early left a childless widow and retired to Bournemouth, while Esther, who wedded a wealthy Australian in June 1865, sailed with him to Melbourne some months later, and has never since been heard of by her family.

MR BURDEN’S NEPHEW, HILDEBRAND WORTHING, WHOSE INHERITANCE OF GENTLE BLOOD SADLY UNFITTED HIM FOR A COMMERCIAL LIFE

The youngest, however, who was christened Maria, but was known in the family as “Baby,” made, when barely twenty-six, an alliance with the younger son of Mr Arthur Worthing, of Worthing Court, Bucks. This marriage, whatever social attractions it may have offered to the younger members of the household, proved unfortunate. Her husband was dissipated and [Pg 7]improvident and encountered repeated difficulties in the society of Boulogne sur Mer, in France, where his father-in-law supported him on a small pension for some years. After the premature death of his young wife in 1873, he returned to England, led a random and useless life among his old associates, but had upon his deathbed the satisfaction of knowing that his brother-in-law (Emmanuel) had paid the greater part of his debts, and had renovated his wife’s grave in the Protestant cemetery of the French seaport town where she lay at rest in God’s acre. Hildebrand, the only fruit of this marriage, was placed as a clerk in the office of Bowler & Co., by Mr Burden—for he was ever solicitous of the honour of his blood.

At the suitable age of thirty-one, Emmanuel Burden, who was thus destined to centre in himself the greater part of his father’s fortune, married a lady for whom he had felt an unvarying attachment, and to whom he had indeed been engaged for some eight years.

She was a person of modest but engaging demeanour, the fourth daughter of the Rev. Harward Sefton of Hagden Courtney, in the county of Huntingdon, and of Miriam Davis, his wife; from whom, perhaps, Mrs Burden inherited her power of rapid calculation and[Pg 8] her acute judgment of human weakness. Mr Burden’s father, while fully accepting his son’s choice of Eliza (for such was the lady’s name), was wisely opposed to an improvident marriage, and deemed it prudent to make the young people wait until his son had thoroughly learnt and taken on the business he was to inherit in Thames Street.

Their courtship, though protracted, was peaceable and happy. They learnt to know each other fully in the long walks which they would take together over Hampstead or Putney heaths. Their families even permitted sometimes a more intimate intercourse. Young Mr Burden (as he then was) would receive his affianced wife in the social evenings of his father’s house (they then resided above the shop in Thames Street) or, in turn, would appear as an honoured guest from Saturday to Monday at the Rev. Mr Sefton’s vicarage: taking the train from Liverpool Street at 1.15 on the former and returning to town by the 9.20 from Hagden Courtney upon the latter day.

They were married, as his father had been, at St Catherine’s. Miss Sefton had accepted the hospitality of her aunt for the occasion. Rice was thrown;—and a shoe. Jests were exchanged. The honeymoon was spent in Wales.

[Pg 9]

Mr Burden, senior, judged it well that the newly-married couple should take, on their return, a house at some distance from London. His business had largely increased; the first floor had already been invaded for some years by the wares necessary to a show-room, and the whole premises should properly have long been given up to the storage of his goods and the accommodation of his offices. Mrs Burden, senior, had died during the engagement of her son, and so at last it was arranged that a new household should be formed on the heights to the south of London, where the fresh air and larger spaces of the country could be combined with the exigencies of a daily train to town.

Mr Burden’s father decided therefore upon Norwood.