The Romance of Million-Making.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 209, 15 September 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Romance of Million-Making.

When the trans-Atlantic Croesus sets his heart on .building for himself a "lordly pleasure-house" he pours out his gold with a prodigality which might well make an Emperor gasp. He will rear a stately pile of marble or of granite, at a cost of a million or two dol lars, as lightly as another man erects his modest suburban villa; and he will fill it with the rarest and costliest treasures of art gathered from all parts of the earth at a cost still greater. He will squander half-a-million dollars on a garden inNewYork no larger than a tennis-lawn, and spend » similar siim on the sumptuous furnishing of a single room. And when he enters into proud possession of a palace which represents a rental value ot £50,000 a year, his conscience cannot accuse him of extravagance, for he knows that he couid build half-a-dozen others equally splendid, and still count his fortune in millions.

If any readers are inclined to shake doubtful heads at this statement let them be conducted, in fancy, to the world-famous Fifth-avenue, New York, where for three miles the palaces of American millionaires raise their splendours for all the world to see. There are, perhaps, half a hundred of them all told, but £20.000,000 would certainly not purchase them, and their owners count the : r aggregate fortune to at least half-a-thousand million pounds sterling—a weight of gold which sixty battalions of stalwart _soldiers would find it no easy matter to walk with This impos : ng building of white granite, which rises five stories high, is the New York home of Senator Clark, known to fame as the " Copper King of Montana." a man who was cradled on a prairie farm, and fifty years ago was "teaching school" in Missouri for tho equivalent of a pound a week. To-day his fortune is estimated at £20,000 ; 000. On the building of his Fifth-avenue mansion Mr. Clark is said to have spent £200,000, which is a mere bagatelle to the enormous sums lavished on its equipment. On Eastern furnishings and curios alone he has spent a million dollars. The Oriental hall, on which £20,000 was squandered, contains a

single rug woven in jewelled patterns of ruby, turquoise, and other precious stones, for which he paid £8,000; the rich carving of :ts walls cost £5 000. and its windows, of Damascus glass, £3,000. More splendid still is the Senator's Turkish room, furnished at a cost of £40,000, which contains two teakwood cabinets hold ng bric-a-brac purchased for £15,000; a couple of divans for which the bill was £8,000; and three rugs worth £I,OOO apiece.

If such prodigality as this amazes you, come to the neighbouring palace erected some years ago by Mr. Stephen Marchand and see a room the costliness of which may well make you gasp with wonder. The liedsted of massive ebony with elaborate ivory carving, took a couple of years to construct, and its price was £38,000.

To secure the elephant's tusk which ornaments its head, Mr. Marchand sent big-game hunters to Africa at a cost of £4,000, and the carving of the broad band of ivory which runs round the frame employed four workmen for a year and a half. Twelve thousand eight hundred pounds were paid for the wonderful carving with which the walls of the room ar<e panelled, and £3,870 for the gorgeous painting and decoration of the ceiling by Parisian artists. The window-curtains, of purple and gold Genoese velvet, with the under-curtains of Brussels lace and silk, and their rings and chains of solid gold, cost £3,200; the wardrobe, dressingtable, and wash-stand £53,000; the chairs, of solid carved ivory, inlaid with gold and ebony, added £B,OOO to the bill; and the four doors which give atcess to this room of wonders were provided at an outlay of £3,000. If we walk a little further along this avenue of milliona ; res we come to the magnificent mansion erected by Mr. Jacob Astor at a cost, for the huild'ng alone, of £300.000. On the interior decoration of. this palace, it is said 10 carvers, 200 cutters, 100 polishers, and 75 asistants were employed for nearlv a vear, and employment was g : v.on, in all, for two and a'half years, to throe hundred men, at a cost fn wages of £1 (50.000. Among the countless treasures with which the Astor house -s packed ar," a jiold dinner service valued at tin,ooo. and pictures for which nearly CIOO.OOO was paid. Even more imposing is tlte regal home built by Mr. Cornwall;? VanderI>ilt. a, stately and in.pressiw pile, modelled on the famous Cast',e of B'lois which stands at the corner of Sixtv-scventh-stroefc and Fifth-avenue, and which is said to have cost €I,OOO OfiO for the building and docoraron a'one Probably ihe most wninVrful room in this house of marvels is the ball-room on which £.">0.000. was expended. Its coiling is in the form of a double comcovered with oxqu:s : t.-> paintings 'it nymphs and cupels: round the cnniiees are delicately-modelled flowers, ea<h with an pbetro li'iht in its heart: whi'e from the centre hangs a crystal chandelier of fabulous beauty and cost. Ad.

CROESUS—HIS SPLENDOURS AND EXTRAVAGANCES.

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joining the mansion is a small garden, to make room for which a £25,000 house was pulled down, while a further sum of £70,000 was spent on making t beautiful. The mere rental of this gar«den, no larger than that of many a £SO suburban villa of London, could scarcely be less than £5,000 a year. So far we have only had a fugitive glimpse of four of these palaces of Croesus, and in this avenue alone they number half a hundred, mostly of suni Jar splendour. Heno, for example, is the pleasure-house which the late Mr. Charles T. Yerkes built for himself a few years before he died —a mansion, on the building, decoration, and furnishing of which he lavished £6oo,ooo—a sum sufficient to build and equip three hundred very comfortable homes, such as would have been Mr. Yerkes' envy and despair in the days when he was do : ng clerk's work for a miller at a pound a week. Among the many treasures in this house of wonders are pictures aud objects of art, for which the who'je world was ransacked at a cost of £400,000. A minute's walk brings us to anothei imposing pile, a reproduction of the Castle of Bio's, which was the home of the millionaire philanthropist, Mr. Eldridge T. Gerry. We have no time to inspect the splendours of which it is the shrine, but before passing on we can pause a moment to gaze on the beauties of its marble staircase, w:th sta'.rrods of gold, balustrades of exquisite and graceful ironwork, ar.d tho colossal mailed figures, each holding a spray of electric lights, which keep sentinel at its foot. Nor are w,e surprised to learn that this miracle of beauty cost Mr. Gerry £20,000, or that each step of it represents £SOO. Unfortunately we have no time to take more than a passing glance at a. | few of the more remarkable of the re- ! maining palaces in this avenue of mulv--1 millionaires—the " million-dollar home" of Mr. Havemeyer, the "Sugar King," which has almost the solidity and mas- ' s'.veness of a mediaeval fortress; the ' beautiful Renaissance mansion of Mr. C. P. Huntington, "Railway King," its entrance guarded by two enormous

bronze lions perched on twin columns of carved stone; the palatial home, which once housed " Silent Smith," and which he purchased for two million dol. lars—half its original cost, and the long row of Vanderbilt palaces, the homes of four generations of the descendants of the famous "Commodore," who as a boy was thankful to earn a few cents i clay by working on farms, running orrands, and acting as porter. Before we leave this favourite haunt of Croesus we must take n final peep at the two sumptuous buildings which are the millionaires' club-house*.-the Metropolitan and the Progress, frequented by members who count the'r combined fortunes far into the hundreds of mililons of pounds sterling. But the mere building and sumptuous furnishing of his palaces only demand a small, and often a quite insignificant portion of Croesus's riches They leave him still with many a milion to spare for the indulgence of any other taste, however extravagant. Few men have made a better use than the late Mr. J. P. Morgan of their surplus wealth. In his love of beautiful things he dedicated many years of his life to collecting some of the richest treasures of art and vertu the whole world can boast, and before he died had the gratification of knowing that h. 3 colleet:on was without a rival among those of private owners. When, a few years ago. Queen Alexandra visited his beautiful home m Kensington, her delight found expression every few moments in the ejacu-lation—-"Wonderful !" She who, all her life, had been surrounded by rare and costlv objects, had no other word to express her amazement at «H the million aire had to show her Majesty. From basement to roof this Kensington won-de.r-hfluso was—and probably to-day is —crowded with an almost priceless collection of art treasures, such as few kings could purchase. There are dozens of inlaid cabinets full of exquisitelypainted miniatures in jewelled frame? ono alone of which : s valued at £40,000 while the whole collection is said to bo worth £1,000,000. There are quaint cases of church ornaments wheh, although Ue> cua bo held in ilie palm of one's hand cost at ': :im L'M.OOO; lapoHcs of rare beauty from the looms of frame and b'landors; maivels of Oriental and Sevres pofU'lain: exquisite specimens of the work of the great Mediaeval, Renaissance, and heiieh eighteenth-Century craftsmen and sculptors; a pair Of uivque beasts bv lloudon, bought bv Mr. Morgan lor' 120.000: and a single trcture the famous " Puchesss of Devonshire." lor v. huh he paid £30,000. These are but a few of the' almost endless treasures in one of Mr Morgan's live manvon>. each of which 's packed with similar i o-tlv possession*. Tn his American homes and in variotn museums and galleries are many of tho most valuable and coveted treasures in the whole world. In his house in Madi-oii-avenue, New York, you may see the

famous Kann collection of pictures for which he paid £1,040,000. Four tapestries after Boucher cost him £80,000; a console table of the time of Louis XVI. was purchased for £70,000; three rose-coloured Coventry vases, lor £10,000; and a solitary silver ornament representing Diana seated on a stag, for the same sum. Mr. Morgan's pictures include four, the purchase price of which was £170,000. For the Raphael " Madonna of St. Anthony of Padua," he paid £100,000; for Reynolds' superb " Lady Betty Delnie and Children,'' £20,000; and for two paintings by Rubens «ind Hobbema, £50,000. Two small collections—one of 158 Rembrandt etchings, the other of antiques in marble, bronze and terra-cotta—cost him £IOO,OOO No less remarkable for their cost are many of the volumes to be found in Mr Morgan's wonderful library, half-a-dozen alone of which would keep a family in comfort, almost in luxury, for ever. There is one volume, its binding of beaten gold richly studded with gems, which he purchased from the Ashburnham library for £5,000; another the Psalmorum Codex, printed in 1459,'e05t him 5,000 guineas; while roi a third, a shabby quarto volume of only IS leaves—the original manuscript of Book I. of "Paradise Lost'"—he paid £5.000. There are, too, 34 Caxtons, four of which alone cost their owner as many thousands of pounds: and a Tie of .Jason which he bought for £2,100 What the total value of Mr. Morgan's tr.ea.sure is. who shall say? Certainly it cannot be less than £3,000,000. But while a handful of these men of millions spent fortunes in collecting costly objects of art, others are equally prodigal in indulging very different tastes. Mr. J. R. Keene the "King of the Bears," squandered immense sums on his stud of race-horses and was prouder to be known as the owner of : Foxhall winner of the Grand Prix, the Cesar.ewitch and Cambridgeshire than j of his sensational desfls in American l'o. bacoo and National Cordage stocks, j which added £1,400,000 to his already enormous "pile" within a few months. I Mr. Alfred Vanderbjlt, whose tragic I death is of recent memory, spent equally large sums on his racing and breedi ing stables, which contained hundreds of the finest horses in the world, and he lias a rival in Mr. Winans, who is said to have spent at least n million pounds at one time or another on horseflesh.

Mr. George Gould's most extravagant hobby is seafaring, and his mil-lion-dollar " yacht" is the most sumptuous floating palace to be seen on the

world's waters, approached only by th,e magnificent yachts of Mr. Morgan and Mr. Gordon'Bennett. Mr. Whitney owns a hunting-forest, half as large again as tho county of Rutland, in the Adirondat-ks; Mr. J. J. Hill, who died a few weeks ago, found his recreation in catt'.e-raising on his vast farms, one of which, in Minnesota, has an area of 55 square miles; and Mr. Julius Fleschmann is such an enthusiastic lover of baseball that he maintains a very costly team to play exclusively for his pleasure at his summer 'ionic in the Catsk lis.

Thus, in a hundred different ways Croesus has no difficulty in squandering his surplus mliions, not a few of which it is only just to say, flow into the channels of charity and philanthropy. In this direction alone it is said Mr. Carnegie and Mr. J. I). Rockefeller have disposed of at least s : xty of their accumulated millions.

Naturally when the man who counts his fortune in seven or more figures plays the host, he has no need to consider the cost, and some of his entertainments are on a scale of prodigalitv calculated to open the eyes of the man of United purse. Thus, when Mr. U. A. Kessler entertained two dozen of his friends at a lianquet at the Savoy Hotel, in London a few years, ago. he did it on a scale which Lucullus dr. Sardanapalus might have envied. For the purposes of this r,?gal feast the courtyard of the hotel was converted into a miniature Venice. "Only 24 hours' notes," said the maanger of the Savoy, "was given me for this wonderful banquet; and in that time we had to get Venetian scenery specially painted—Campanile and all This alone kept 27 painters at work. We had to arrange for al softs of wonderful lights, including an electric moon We had to bank nn the courtyard with cement and flood t. We had to build gondolas—the great white gondola lor the diners, and little gondolas for the dishes: as well as get gondolier costumes for the waiters. And then wo covered the whole place with flowers, carnations and roses chiefly. Th« flowers alone cost over £4(10. Alto getlier, 1 should reckon that more than a hundred men were employed through out the day and night preparing foi the. banquet. The whole banquet of 16 courses was prepared in a special kitchen, and 20 ehifs devoted themselve* to it, qirteapait from minor helpers all under the direction of our mastei the—the famous Thouraud. "For the banquet "M. Scrapi carved three great lions of Venice, a'.i in ice which wer« borne in upon the shoulders nf gondolier-waiters, and formed a eon Kuicuoiis feature of the culinary pageant. The lions themselves bore each a trap upon wlcch were iced peaches The otlu<r details included the wonder ful cake, over five feet high, brought unon the back of Jumbo junior, the baby clenhant. Not only was the cake lit up all over by electric lights, hut it was set upon a revolving platform and

was, indeed, a most beautiful sight " For this Lucullan feast Mr. Kessler paid £3,000—£125 a cover! When Mr. Luckmeyer gave lis famous "Swan Dinner" at Delmonico's he provided a feast which few kings have over rivalled. Covers," we are tola "were laid for 75 guests in the magnificent ball-room of the hotel. The centre of the table, loaded with silverplate, was occupied by a miniature lake, on which swans floated, rivalling in beauty and grace the most exquisite ladies there. The dinner consisted of nine courses only, but they comprised the rarest delicacies from every quarter of the globe, prepared by the finest chefs in America.'' The entire cost of the dinner was £3,500, or a little more + han £33 for each guest. Among other prodigal feasts whicK occur to the memory arc one given by a Western millionaire to 30 friends at a cost of £1,600, the chief feature of which was a "centre-piece" of 3,000 American beauty roses at a dollar and a half each; and Mr. Woolf Joel's famous "Rod Dinner," at which, we are told, "the salmon were shown to the host during the hors d ceuvres swimming in their native element." Round the wall peach-trees and vines bore the fruits which the guests plucked for themselves and ate; a fountain of rosewater splashed in the centre of the table between dwarf fruit-trees, and all the dishes were prepared with ingredients notable for their costliness. On one fancy-dress ball, some years ago, Mr. W. H. Ycnderbilt lavished £40,000; a more recent bal masque given by Mrs. Bradley Martin, cost the hostess £60,000 a sum little larger than the value of the costumes worn at it: and Mr. J. H. Hyde, not long ago, entertained 500 guests dressed in costumes of the Louis XV. and Louis XVI periods at a cost of £3soo. Nor has death jtsel power to stay the prodigal hand of the multi-millionaire, for the late Mr. Mackay spent £BO,OOO on the erection of a splendid mausoleum for his last resting-place, and Mr. W. A. Clark has prepared for his last sleep a mausoleum, splendid enough to entomb an emporor, at a cost of £35,000. —Th? " World's News "