William Nelson A Memoir 18

William Nelson A Memoir 18

The calamity seemed to be overwhelming. The splendid results of

intelligent industry and rare aptitude for business had vanished, like

the gourd of Jonah, in a night. The insurance on the buildings was

trifling compared with the amount of property destroyed. But his

brother’s comment on being shown the above letter reveals a

characteristic trait of William’s sympathetic and unselfish nature.

“Willie’s letter about the fire recalls very distinctly that terrible

morning. Poor fellow! it was most touching to see him come up to me

before all the people and hold out his hand and say, ‘O Tom, I am so

sorry for you.’ He did not speak or seem to think of himself at all.”

 

An onlooker has preserved this little, appreciative incident: “A few of

the girls who worked in the establishment were noticed standing together

and weeping bitterly, when one of them, looking up, was overheard to

say, as she saw Mr. William Nelson surveying the conflagration, ‘Eh,

there’s our dear maister. I’m thinking he’ll be thinking mair o’ us the

day than o’ himsel’.’” The remark was abundantly justified; for a friend

who was near him noted that his first thoughts were of sympathy for the

work-people who would be thrown out of employment; and the feeling found

practical form in his exertions on their behalf. This was characteristic

of the spirit that animated him in all his relations with his

work-people, and which helped to make of him an example of the very

highest type of the true captains of industry. “The liberal deviseth

liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.”

 

The Rev. Dr. Alison, the clergyman of Newington parish, in which the

Hope Park works were situated, remarked, when paying a just tribute to

his memory: “I have often had occasion to remark, in visiting employés

of the firm pastorally, as well as in my intercourse with heads of

departments, how beautifully the idea of the Christian employer seemed

to have been realized in him. The affectionate terms in which he was

always spoken of were obviously the natural return for the fairness,

consideration, and generosity for which he had become known. Being more

than a payer of wages, he got more than hirelings’ service. He was a

member of another outward communion; but there is a unity of spiritual

life that ignores outward separations. There is a Church which includes

the faithful of all churches.” To one so unselfish, it was almost

inevitable that he should realize keenly the sufferings which his own

great loss must inflict on others; and this very sympathy was his own

best protection against the blow. Nevertheless, the equanimity displayed

under such trying circumstances was peculiarly notable in one whose

emotional sensibilities were intense. The same calm composure was

characteristic of him under any imposition or personal wrong, if

practised on him by a stranger. It was indeed a common saying that

nothing could anger him. One who knew him well writes: “He had a rare

power of keeping his temper. I never saw him angry. I never heard him

utter a harsh word, except to reprobate some mean or unworthy action.

The only hard words I can recall were in denouncing the conduct of one

whom he had regarded as a friend, and who had grossly abused his

misplaced confidence.” But his equanimity gave way when during the

conflagration, in which it seemed as if the work of a life-time was

being destroyed, some one asked him if he did not suspect it to be the

work of an incendiary. The passionate emotion with which he resented the

suggestion showed how keenly he was moved by the possibility that any

one could be found capable of entertaining the thought of such a

dastardly purpose.

 

The loss which the fire involved amounted to little short of £100,000;

but Mr. Nelson, in describing the event in a letter to a friend, added:

“I am happy, however, to state that our stereotype plates and our

wood-cuts and electrotypes are all to the fore, they having been in two

strong stone-built safes alongside a part of the back wall of the

building, and though covered with masses of burning timber, etc., they

escaped quite uninjured. With all this valuable property intact, and it

forming the back-bone of our business, we will ere long be able to rear

our heads again as publishers; there being no difficulty in getting all

the printing and bookbinding done that we will require in various

offices in town here and in London. In the meantime the _débris_ of the

old building is being cleared away rapidly, and a new Hope Park will

by-and-by appear on the site of the old one.”

 

The new Hope Park did not, however, rise from the ashes of the old. The

energy of its originators was indeed unabated. While William Nelson was

contemplating, amid its smoking ruins, the suffering to be entailed on

their hundreds of work-people, his brother was telegraphing to London,

Paris, and other centres of industry, ordering fresh printing-presses

and all other newest machinery to replace what had perished. By the

favour of the city authorities temporary buildings were erected on the

neighbouring Meadows. As the new machinery arrived it was set up under

what was designed for mere temporary shelter at Parkside, on the

outskirts of St. Leonard’s Hill. But speedily the superior advantages of

the new site, and the arrangement of the works over an extended area,

instead of occupying successive floors of a quadrangle, became so

manifest that the Parkside Works were completed, with an effective

architectural façade in the favourite Scottish style of the sixteenth

century. Hope Park was accordingly finally abandoned; but a graceful

memorial of the old works remains. When bidding good-bye to the site,

two beautiful pillars--the one surmounted by the lion and the other by

the unicorn--were erected at the cost of the two brothers, at the

eastern entrance to the Meadows, as their acknowledgment to the city of

the timely favour extended to them in their hour of need.

 

It was while the prosperous career of the great publishing firm was

arrested by this disastrous event that a more dire calamity extended its

effects far and wide. A leading Edinburgh publisher, writing to me

shortly after the death of William Nelson, remarked: “I need not say to

you what a true, large-hearted man he was. Do you remember when their

printing-house was totally destroyed, and one would have thought his own

immense losses would have frozen his sympathy for other sufferers? Yet

he was one of the earliest subscribers of £1,000 to the victims of the

Glasgow Bank; and so far did his kindly nature long to help them, he

even refused at first to discountenance the project of a state lottery

on their behalf!” Their sufferings had been brought home to him in the

most moving form. A letter found among his papers after his death,

endorsed in touching simplicity, “Poor fellow!” is the plea of an old

schoolmate for failing to appear at a High School anniversary dinner. “I

have to ask you to accept my apology,” he writes, “which you will

readily do when I mention that I am one of the unfortunate victims of

the City of Glasgow Bank; and _to-day_ I have received the liquidator’s

final call for payment on the 22nd inst., which, I fear, will be total

ruin to me.”

 

William Nelson’s local associations were strong; they attached him with

passionate love to his native city. Its very stones were dear to him.

Every nook and corner of it associated with his own early years, with

school and schoolmates, or with the later incidents of his business

career, retained a hold on his sympathies. “I send you a photograph of

Edinburgh from the Castle,” he writes to an old friend beyond the

Atlantic, “that it may keep you in mind of the dear old city.” Hence the

abrupt close of the Hope Park epoch, and the transfer to the new

quarters at Parkside, awoke feelings wholly apart from those which the

pecuniary loss involved. The sense of strangeness in the new locality is

noticeable in more than one of his private memoranda, as in the

following record of time and place: “This is the first memorandum I have

written in the new room in Parkside. I came to it at a quarter to eleven

o’clock on Friday, July 16, 1880. Dr. and Mrs. Wilson are at present

staying with us.” Curiously, it is not till upwards of two years later

that the memorandum occurs of the kindling of the Parkside hearth, thus:

“Fire lighted in grate in my room here for the first time, November 13,

1882.”

 

There Mr. Nelson had to be visited to see how promptly and skilfully he

administered the affairs of the great printing and publishing business

which he had developed into such proportions; and, happily, notes

furnished by an authoress, who did considerable literary work for the

firm in those later years, enable us to catch a glimpse of him in

business hours. “My first visit to his office,” she writes, “was, I

think, in the spring of 1883. Several persons were in attendance,

waiting for orders or interviews. Owing to this circumstance, and my

having formed the impression that Mr. Nelson was a very formidable sort

of a man to approach, I made my proposals in an abrupt and hurried

manner. I was by no means surprised at a hasty, ‘No, no; quite

unnecessary at present,’ and made my retreat at once. But as I was

passing out, he turned from another to whom he had given some

instructions in an equally concise fashion, and rising suddenly from his

chair with some apologetic words, he inquired what I had published, and

then said, ‘I have been wishing to see you.’ After this we had a long,

pleasant chat, and he at once explained to me certain literary work that

he wished me to undertake. This was my introduction to him. I went to

him a stranger, but though my acquaintance with him was only of some

four years’ duration, and was mostly a business acquaintance, I soon

learned to regard him as a friend. The kindness and encouragement he

gave helped me greatly, because it was not the mere kindness of a ‘big’

publisher to a ‘little’ author. He was always business-like in insisting

that the work done should be just as he liked it. There could be no

‘scamping’ work under his keen eyes. But he took infinite trouble in

procuring books of reference and helping my work, and was most generous

in all his dealings. On one occasion, after having undertaken some work,

and having given him much trouble regarding books of reference, I found

the task beyond me, and had to tell him so. I expected a scolding, and

instead received a cheque ‘in payment for what you have done of the

book.’ What I had done was merely to indicate the lines upon which the

book might run. A fortnight before his death he sent me a copy of the

book I ‘was to have written,’ with a very kind note, which I value much.

The publisher’s office is a terrible place to a not-confident

lady-writer. Sometimes I have had to wait while Mr. Nelson was

‘interviewing,’ directing, correcting, and so forth; and my courage has

not been strengthened by the spectacle of faulty work being overhauled

in a most careful manner, and ruthlessly condemned or sharply

criticised. Yet I have always gone out of that office with a light

heart. Some kindly word about my children or my old home, some chat

about the foreign lands he had visited, the gift of a book, a fatherly

caution ‘not to work too much’--these made me feel that Mr. Nelson took

his large heart into the publisher’s office. Would that all publishers

did like him.”

 

But the critical sharpness, and the abrupt manner of the man of

business, preoccupied with the responsibilities of so large an

establishment with endless claims on its directing head, all disappeared

so soon as he had satisfied himself that his instructions were being

rightly carried out. The new Parkside Works were within easy distance

of Salisbury Green; and the claimants on his ever-ready charity speedily