Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 26–30. Wayne Larsen
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life he considered himself a champion swimmer, claiming “few can overmatch me in the water.”
The Highlands are prized for trekking and hill-climbing today, as they were in Simpson’s day. George’s cousins, Thomas and Alexander, later spoke of “the sports and exercises of that wild and remote highland district,” as they trekked the mountains together as summer exercise. Many opportunities exist near Dingwall to tax the energies of the intrepid climber. Hills surround Dingwall, and beyond looms the whale-back of Ben Wyvis, nine miles northwest of Dingwall, rising to 3,432 feet. George must have climbed this and other mountains, as later he could compare the heather of Scotland’s mountaintops with that found in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.
Before leaving his schooling, we might consider what education Simpson did not get in Dingwall. There was nothing that might be called learning in a higher sense. This lack of sophistication was to serve Simpson well, as it helped to make him a plain-spoken man, without airs and graces. In this he was as one with the men of the Northwest, those straightforward fur-trade factors and traders with whom Simpson later worked. Distinguished historian E.E. Rich makes the astute point that much of Simpson’s success in the leadership of men lay exactly here:
There was little of the high flown idealist about George Simpson. His lack of airs probably goes as far to explain his success as do his determination and vision. Certainly he shared to the full the ordinary life and pleasures among whom he worked; his creature comforts mattered to him, his enjoyment of them put him on the same level as the other fur traders.
These traits, then — the handwriting, the bookkeeping, the suavity of manners instilled by his grandmother, the friendliness of manner of the father, the steady intelligence and physical health of the mother — were all well-suited to the future success of George Simpson.
As his energies, intelligence, and abilities became evident as he grew out of childhood, George’s family may have decided that he should join his uncles in London. It was commonplace in the mercantile world to take relatives into apprenticeships. Judging from our later knowledge, George’s handwriting was distinct, his arithmetic exact, his mind precise and clear. He was taller than average, with a fine athletic build, and was in the bloom of health. He was personable and agreeable and handsome, with fine features, a head of wavy red hair, and intense blue eyes. His energies were indefatigable.
In 1808, Simpson, aged about sixteen, left for London. He likely travelled by the London smack, a coastal sailing ship that left from Dingwall each month for the capital, making the run in about four days.
We may imagine Simpson’s first voyage, along the east coast of Scotland and England, turning into the Thames Estuary, the gradual filling of the channel with shipping, the appearance of sturdy English houses along the shore, the great shipping docks along the Thames, the masts of hundreds of ships piercing the horizon. Then, rising ominously on his right, the Tower of London, and just beyond it the vast, ornate Custom House with its crowds of ships, sea captains, customs officers, rumbling lorries, and labourers of all sorts.
Across Thames Street, a short walk up Dunstan Hill brings the traveller to the tall-spired church of St. Dunstan in the East, where the Simpsons worshipped. A few steps farther, the narrow street opens onto the broad avenue of Great Tower Street. Across the street, at the corner of Great Tower and Mincing Lane, stood the offices and residence of George’s uncle, Geddes Mackenzie Simpson. There George would live and work for the next twelve years.
The High Street of Dingwall in the nineteenth century, much as George Simpson would have known it.
Courtesy of Dingwall Museum and Archives.
2
London: This Youth Is Just Come
from the Highlands
In the end … it will always pay to be fortunate in one’s friends.
— HAROLD CLUNN
While in London, Simpson lived in the part of the City immediately west of the Tower of London, called Tower Ward. The main thoroughfare there, Great Tower Street, ran at a diagonal, northwest from the tower. The third street branching from it on the north side was Mincing Lane, and it was on that corner that Simpson lived and worked, at 73 Great Tower Street. Because ocean-going vessels could not pass beyond London Bridge, ships were crowded along the Ward’s riverbank and served by a vast ornate Custom House. For this reason, the Ward was crammed with dozens of businesses doing an overseas trade. Uncle Geddes’s sugar supply company was one of those. So was the Hudson’s Bay Company.
In those days, Tower Ward was full of “stinking Allies, dark, gloomy Courts and suffocating yards,” all teeming with, “brutal, insolent and quarrelsome” labourers, where “pickpockets … make no scruple to knock people down with bludgeons.”
Mincing Lane, “like any minor street, was a close, dank thoroughfare, paved with cobblestones and strewn with straw, food, and feces; the smell of burning coal and the deafening noise of coaches, carts, horses, and dogs pushing their way through the slop was often overwhelming, even to the hardiest citizen.”
The Custom House on the riverside below Great Tower Street unloaded wares from around the world. According to Nicholas Garry, the customs officers were “uncivil and intolerant,” and “extraordinarily clever at finding anything contraband, a share going into their own pockets.” The river filled with an astonishing number of ships, the wharves and streets teemed with sailors from around the world — rough, tough, and often drunk. The bargemen, complained one visitor, “use singular and even quite extraordinary terms, and generally very coarse and dirty ones, and I cannot explain them to you.” Inside the Custom House, “the hall on the first floor was so crowded with merchants, captains of vessels, and other applicants that you have difficulty in making your way in.”
Next to the Custom House stood Billingsgate Fish Market, where the “smell of whelkins, red-herrings, sprats, and a hundred other sorts of fish [was] almost unbearable.” Here, a billingsgate — “a scolding, impudent slut” — could serve up “a dish of billingsgate” — an outpouring of the coarsest obscenities in London. Business was carried on in a half-drunken state. Beer, porter, ale, and gin were the drinks of the working classes, while the wealthier consumed quantities of port and Bordeaux claret.
It was in this beehive of roiling energy and activity that Simpson spent the next twelve years, a period vital for his future as governor of the HBC.
The building at 73 Great Tower Street contained business space on the ground floor and living quarters on the second. Apprentices like George slept in the attic. Geddes — “a nice-looking old man,” a visitor later said — had married in 1805 and was starting a family, which eventually grew to fifteen children. His wife, Frances, “is a very pleasant-looking woman,” said the same visitor, “and it is melancholy to see her, she is nothing but a clocking hen running after her family to make them take care of themselves.” Letitia Hargrave, the visitor who saw them in 1840, called them all “delicate” with “a sort of simplicity.”
In 1808, when George arrived, the business was run by Geddes and his partner, John Scott. Scott’s son William — “a great fat good-humoured man” — was also beginning his apprenticeship that year and became a lifelong friend of George’s. Also living nearby were three brothers of Geddes — Duncan, John, and Thomas — all described as sugar brokers.
There were others in this family group who were of higher social standing. There was, for instance, James Webster, who had a mansion in West Ham and another in Scotland. James Graham, in partnership with Geddes Simpson and after whom Geddes named a daughter, was his son. Family friend Sir Augustus D’Este was the grandson of George the Third, after whom George would name a daughter. And then there was Andrew Wedderburn —who would change his name to Andrew Colvile in 1812— from the great mercantile house of Wedderburn, who was to take Simpson under his wing and foster his career.