"Newman, Peter C. - Company of Adventures 03 - Merchant Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Peter C)

connecting the building to the nearby abbey. Every Sunday morning the
priory's owner still makes the subterranean journey to read the lesson for
local parishioners. The priorys furnishings are a decorator's nightmare of
crossed Zulu swords, narwhal tusks, abandoned harps, boulle cabinets,
overstuffed sofas (which Queen Victoria might have envied), George Chinnery
canvases of early trading sequences in Canton, Shanghai and Hong Kong, plus
the obligatory hunting scenes (hounds, foxes, splashes of blood) that
decorate almost every upper-class Englishman's hearth.

X
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This is the home of Sir William "Tony 11 Keswick, the Hudson's Bay
Company's last merchant adventurer.
An imposing presence, Keswick (pronounced Kezzick) turns out to be more
than six feet tall, with a ruddy complexion and the commanding air of an
Imperial Army brigadier, which lie was. He appears to be the ideal British
aristocrat-a cross between a Puncb cover and a bulldog. Although he is
eighty-four and his periwinkle eyes have grown watery, he retains an aura
of authority.*
"Look here," Sir William exclaims by way of introduction, showing me his
passport, "I'm the only Englishman who officially lists his occupation as
'Merchant Adventurer.' Gets me into awful trouble crossing borders,
particularly in the Orient. 'Merchant' is easy; that means someone prepared
to lay his hands on anything. But 'Adventurer'-the customs people have
trouble with that. Still, I love being an adventurer-the romance of it, to
risk everything, to make things go."
Three decades (1943-72) a director of the Hudson's Bay Company and for
nearly thirteen years its Governor, Keswick regards his tit-ne with the
Canadian trading giant as the highlight of a crowded and audacious life. "I
adored the HBC," he sighs. "I'd have done anything for the Company, within
reason-or without reason. It was a wonderfully romantic concern, and its
people would have cut off their hands to help. We British are fanatically
romantic about our history. The magnificent Prince Rupert was the Company's
first governor, our great Duke of Marlborough the third. The

I keep trying to forget the briefing b) a mutual friend that while Sir Wil
liam is indeed a distinguished merchant adventurer, he is also a very
careful man. So careful, I was told, that he has buttons on the flies of
his trousers-just in case the zipper sticks.
 second-the Duke of York-gave it up only to become King of England. I've
seen the minute book in which the Duke apologizes for not being at the
next board meeting because he has just taken on the throne. I mean, that's
absolutely honey to a Briton. You'd pay a dollar more for your twenty
-dollar share if you could get that thrown in-even if it has no practical
merit!"
Keswick's claim to being a merchant adventurer is not entirely based on
his time with the HBC. In 1886, his Scottish grandfather took over the
firm founded by Dr William Jardine, who with his partner, James Matheson,
had in 1832 established Jardine, Matheson, the company of piratical Far