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

Eastern traders and opium dealers that became the far Pacific's most
princely hong, and later the model forJames Clavell's Noble House and
Taipan. The Keswichs have run it ever since, and Sir William himself was
a director and chairman of Matheson's, the London affiliate, for
thirty-two years.

WETALK INTO THE AYFFRNOON, and several cups of tea have grown cold between
us when Keswick starts rambling on about his great heroes-Hannibal, the
Carthaginian general whose army used elephants to cross the Alps, and Sir
Edward Peacock, the Canadianborn financial Merlin with whom he sat on the
board of the t4BC-then briefly switches to his favourite villains: Moses
and Cromwell. "They were such negative boysalways telling us not to do
things."

*Not only a romantic but a nuschicvous romantic, Sir XNilliam named hi,,
middle son John Chippendale Keswick because the boy was conceived in ~i
Chippendale bed. The husband of Lady Sarah Ramsay and a successful
merchant adventurer in his own right (he is chairman of l4ambros Bank),
the vounger Keswick is still known as Chip.
 Xill

I bring the conversation around to the Hudson's Bay Company and remind
him that I have come to see The Chair. No outsider has ever seen it.
Keswick hesitates, then motions me to follow. We climb to a small room
on the priory's top floor. Sturdy and slightly oversized with a straigiit
back, The Chair has a large upholstered seat. We stand very still,
looking at it and at one another. On The Chair's seat, Keswick has
reproduced in perfect needlepoint the Governor's Flag of the Hudson's Bay
Company, with its intricate design that includes a fox, four beavers and
twin elk rearing up on their hind legs. I can't resist looking at the
former Governor's hands. They are ham-like, his fingers so thick that he
cannot close them in repose; the joints are swollen and bent by
arthritis. Embroidering that seat must have been excruciatingly awkward
and required angelic patience, ~1 quality not usually associated with
merchant adventurers.
Keswick breaks the silence. "I'd never done anything like this before,
but found gros-point needlework very soothing," he says. "One can think
while working, with no ulterior motive ... I used to do it after hunting,
have tea, then come up here ... Took me a year ... Soothing, what?"
We both know he's fibbing. There are easier hobbies to soothe the soul
But not the soul of this Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, one of its
greatest, who was so upset about leaving his post (because he chose not
to preside over the Company's departure from England) that he spent most
of a year stitching this chair, working out his sorrow and his
frustration. "I was and am in love with the old Company," he admits, as
he leads me downstairs. "I don't know why one is so sentimental, really."
We part. "You're talking to a fanatical son of a gun," he shrugs.
 Xiv

I would never have guessed.