The Great Pierpont Morgan by Frederick Lewis; Allen

hung at crazy angles, and the stairs and floors were gone. Outside, the long grass of the one-time lawn—half overgrown now—was matted and unkempt. Even so, one’s mind’s eye could reconstruct the Cragston of old: a very commodious though unpretentious country house, surrounded by rolling acres of field and grove, with the river glittering below it; a place that would commend itself to a man who enjoyed exercising a substantial hospitality and appreciated the English countytradition.) Here the growing Morgan family now spent a good part of the year.
    Still Pierpont’s health troubled him. He had frequent colds and headaches, and to his humiliation the recurring inflammation of the skin of his face began to settle in his nose; this was the beginning of the unending affliction of acne rosacea which was destined to disfigure him increasingly as time went on. But there were compensations. He was a rich man now, and life was beginning to expand. The Morgans went on frequent trips abroad, and now when they were in England they would find themselves either in Junius Morgan’s fine city house at Prince’s Gate, facing Hyde Park, or at his agreeable country estate, Dover House, at Roehampton in the western outskirts of London. In 1877 they spent almost a year abroad; in Egypt they chartered a steamer to go up the Nile and had their pictures taken in front of the ruins of Karnak in a group of eighteen—family, friends, doctor, maid, dragoman, waiter, and consular agent—Pierpont standing very straight and solid looking, with pith helmet, knickerbocker suit, wing collar, and a long walking stick.
    When they were at Cragston, Pierpont liked to entertain guests a dozen at a time, sending them up the river to Highland Falls on the punctual steamer, Mary Powell , while he, who was usually too rushed for such a leisurely jaunt, would go up the Hudson by train and be met on the eastern shore by his tidy steam launch, the Louisa , which would ferry him across the river. At Cragston he would go for long walks with his mastiff Hero, when his recurring headaches were not too troublesome; sometimes he would go riding, or driving in the surrey; or he would take his guests to inspect the cattle that he was beginning to breed. On Sunday mornings he piled everybody into a big wagon like an omnibus, climbed up on the high front seat in his frock coat and straw hat, and drove them all to church, where he handed over the reins to the coachman; and of course hymn singing was obligatory every Sunday evening that he was there. He loved parties and expeditions, and ran them to the last detail; when you were with Pierpont Morgan, you found yourself doing just about what he had planned for you to do. On the evening of the Fourth of July, when he put on a majestic show of fireworks, the guests and neighbors would sit quietly on theporch and gasp with satisfaction at the flares of brilliance against the night sky which arched above the black shapes of the hills across the river—but it was Pierpont who managed the whole exhibit.
    He was beginning to think of breeding collies in addition to cattle, and wondering whether he might not acquire, in addition to the pair of smart horses which drew Fanny’s carriage, a pair of really fast trotters. And might not the launch Louisa soon be superseded by a real steam yacht? The depression which followed the financial and industrial follies of the post-Civil War years was slow to depart, and it was a hungry time for a great number of Americans; but he was a coming man with an ample income, and it would be fun to use it amply.
    7
    Still, however, he was essentially his father’s son. Still his success was due primarily to his foreign connections. In a day when American railroads and American industry depended largely upon Europeans to provide them with capital, he was—in financial terms—a sort of colonial administrator: a representative in America of the financial