The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1911-09-01
RICH MEN IN CARPETS
MlLLlONAlRES WHO CHOOSE TO
LIVE LIKE HERMITS.
Eccentricities Of G. e. Dering and Sir
Henry DeIves Broughton Of Eng
d-SoIodovnikoff, the Miser
King of St. Petersburg.

AA0 vanity VI IACucS Ado A0t0A
been more strikingly demonstrated
than by the story of G. E. Dering, VINO
recently died at Lockley Hall, Walwyn.
For the greater part of half cen
tury this lord Of many acres and of q
quarter of million OF money has
been content to lead the life Of a
hermit in his magnificent home sur
rounded by thousand acres Of park
land. His valuable pictures-by Hol-
bein, Fra Bartolomeo and other old
masters-have stood for a generation
stocked three deep with their faces
turned to the walls; a generation of
dust had settled undisturbed on Dres-
cen vases, gold and enamel clocks,
statuary and costly furniture.
Gorgeous carriages, rich with her
aldic painting, lay rotting in his coach
house; his front door was overgrown
with Ivy as high as the stone shield of
arms that crowned it. Not even a
lamb was allowed to bleat within hear
ing of the lord of this desolate man.
sion; and even the high road was d.
ve"ted, that no sound of traffic should
vex his ears. Thus, amid dust, decay
and desolation, lived and died the
owner of e25,0oo year, stunning the
world and scorning his wealth.
And so it has always been and al
ways will be. One man squandered
his gold; another boards or despises
1t. 1t is but few years since one of
cur wealthiest baronets-a man with
a rent roll Of 100000 a year-died
IN n miserable attic near Water
loo Bridge. His sordid room was pa
pernd with illustrations from the week
~ papers; he never crossed It's
threshold except for an occasional
Solitary ramble by night; no one was
sve' allowed to enter his dreary sane
tum, his meals being left for him out
side the door; and his long days were
speht looking through his attic win
dow on the moving panorama of the
Thames
While Sir Henry Delves Broughton
was sitting at his attic window a man
infinitely richer was walking the
streets Of st. Petersburg in the guise
OF a beggar, pocketing the aims Of
charitable passers-by, and gleefully
carrying back his spoil to his miser-
able two-storied cottage in one of the
citI's slums.
That was the only palace" Of the
musti-millionaire Solodovnikoff, where
he lived among his decrepit sticks Of
furniture with an old housekeeper.
Here he would sit shivering through
the cold winter days, too misery to
allow himself fire or even to bright
en- The dark house with the light of a
solitary candle. For 20 years he was
only known to wear one suit, thing
of shreds and patches" scarcely a
vesfige Of the original cloth remain
ing. And yet this sordid-livinS her
NIT was one of the greatest landown-
ers and railway magnates in all Rus
sia-a man who left behind him hun
drsd million roubles. Far Weather
than many kings, he led life from
which most peasants would have
shrunk
"a AO" ycdI0 d6O LuSIO was III
weather. man in all Paris than M.
Colasson, who for generation had
lived as a rauper in two rooms Of his
magnificent palace in the Rue Galilee
During all this period he never once
left his splendid prison, and no one
was ever allowed to enter it except
his one faithful attendant, who kept
him supplied with his daily food Of
bread and eggs. AS in Mr.. Dering's
case, 1t was the death of father that
consigned him to his hermit life, so
with M. Colasson it was the tragic
death by fire of loved nephew and
heir in 1874 that decided him to for
swear the world and all it's vanities.
Within few weeks of the death Of
M. Colasson there died in an attic in
a Berlin slum one Herr Schwarz, who
was known to and pitied by his neigh
bors as the poorest of the poor. He
sailed out daily into the fashionable
quarters, dressed in rags and carrying
a sack in which he collected crusts.
He lived alone and died alone, a
mere bag of bones-surrounded by
riches, for in his room was found
G8O,00O-in gold coins, stored in
scores of jars and bottles, and in bank
notes, with which his pillow and mat
tress were stuffed-Tit-Bits.