My grandfathers’ fortunes

Written as part of Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks” challenge. This week’s topic: Fortune

Both my grandfathers were spendthrifts who frittered away their fortunes – in one case his wife’s money.  Both were businessmen with a penchant for the good life.  I know very little about all this, but I have garnered a few odds and ends that add up to two not very nice men. 

On an April evening in 1959, I was watching “This is Your Life” on tv with my mother.  As the guest of the evening was announced my mother exclaimed: “that’s the man who cheated my father of his fortune.”  The man was Captain ‘Tiger’ SARLL.  Described as ‘a big game hunter, war correspondent, actor, journalist and photographer’  Sarrl was good at getting people to invest in his exotic exploits.  The one that ensnared my grandfather was an ostrich farm in central Africa, poorly timed since the demand for ostrich feathers was dealt a fatal blow by the passage of bird protection laws and changes in women’s fashion.  Later my mother admitted that this was not the only way in which her father lost money.  

Francis Cecil Harley

1885-1961

Cecil Harley fancied himself a playboy in London in the 1930s.  He was a merchant with a business, “C.F. Harley Ltd., Cutlers and Silversmiths,” on Holborn Viaduct in Central London, a trade that gave him access to people with money.  He liked to consort with the rich and famous and reputedly these included the Prince of Wales.  But he used his contacts to advantage, for he secured the Royal Warrant as Cutlers and Silversmiths to King George V, in 1930, for the Viners Company.  In return, I was told by a company spokesperson, Viners named a line of silverware ‘Harley’.  

Grandfather’s expensive lifestyle eventually led to his separation from my grandmother.  Granny Harley was left with 4 children and a house, but very little else, and no chance of receiving the alimony she had been awarded by the courts when in 1931 Cecil escaped England for the antipodes.  By 1946 Cecil had settled in New Zealand. Many years passed but then in 1960 he wrote to Granny Harley asking her to grant him a divorce.  As I heard it, he told her that he wished to marry a rich New Zealand widow, and when he did so he would pay Granny all the alimony he owed her.  I wasn’t around to hear her response, but I gathered it was in the negative, in no uncertain terms.  Within a short time after that exchange of letters, both of them died.

Grandfather #2 was Robert Hamilton Macnee.  He was an accountant who helped other people manage their money. But it seems he too liked the good life.  He lived for 2 years as an “expat” in Argentina where he worked for the River Plate Electricity Company.  It is there that he married his first wife, Jeannie Williamina Simpson from Greenock in 1892.  Three years later they moved to Mexico City, where Jeannie died in May 1898.  

Robert Hamilton Macnee

1859-1940

This passport photo is the only one I have of my Macnee grandfather

Robert moved to New York, in 1900, and eventually became a naturalized US citizen in 1906.  He was a partner in a business with an office in London and on Broad Street, Manhattan: “Thos R. Morley (London), Robt H. Macnee, Geo H Hansel accts.”  Like Cecil Harley, Robert Macnee enjoyed an expensive lifestyle and developed an interest in sailing, perhaps for the social connections it provided. I had been told as a child that he had been accountant for the New York Yacht Club, most famous as sponsors of the Americas Cup Yacht Race. I have no evidence that Robert had any association with that club. But he was a member of the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club in New York and was elected the club’s secretary in January 1909.  And Robert was a first-class traveler, in both senses.   He crossed the Atlantic 24 times from 1890 to 1914, mostly first class. Later came round-the-world trips, and holiday cruises.

Manhasset Bay Yacht Club, New York, 1920s

A few years after the death of his first wife Robert married again, in 1901, to Emma Jane Carr from Birmingham, England.  By 1910 the marriage was to all extents and purposes over and  Emma was living in England with and their only son, Douglas.  The reason, I have always understood, was that Robert was frittering away her money.  They were never divorced, but she somehow managed to retain control of her fortune.  Robert, however, did not give up.  When Emma died, in 1935, Robert turned up at her cremation to inform Douglas that he would contest Emma’s will, in which she had left everything to Douglas.  Douglas agreed rather than face a long court battle just as he was about to leave the country for an overseas assignment.  

Both my grandfathers, it seems, were happy to exploit the women in their lives in pursuit of high-flown lifestyles.  I never met either of them, but I don’t think I would have admired them.