Compton Mackenzie
THE latest offence against vulgarity discovered by our egalitarians is the guinea. The guinea according to them is a snobbish anachronism and should be abolished. In future we must all of us do business in pounds. Authors may take comfort from the fact that the fee of a barrister is still reckoned in guineas; when his briefs are reckoned in pounds We shall tremble for the safety of the guinea. The guinea was struck first in the year 1663 when the country was still bathed in the light of the Glorious Restora- tion. The Royal Mint was empowered to coin gold pieces of the value of 20s. 'in the name and for the use of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England trading with Africa.' These pieces were to bear for distinction the figure Of a little elephant, and 441 of them were to contain 1 lb. troy of 'our Crowne gold.' These 20s. pieces were known popularly as guineas from the time they were first issued because they Were coinal for use in the Guinea trade and were made of gold from Guinea.
In Evelyn's Diary under the date March 9 1664 may be read : 'Now it was that the fine new-milled coin, both of white money and guineas, was established.'
From Pepys's Diary October 29 1666 we hear : . 'And so to my goldsmith to bid him look out for some gold for me, and he tells me that ginnys, which I bought 2.000 of not long ago, and cost me but 180. change will now cost me 22d. and but very few to be had at any price. .lowever, some more I will have, for they are very convenient, and of easy disposal.'
In due course the term guinea was extended to later coins of the same intrinsic value. Until 1816 silver was the sole standard and therefore the value of the guinea was subject to market fluctuations according to the condition of the silver coin. In 1695 the value of the guinea had risen to 30s., but in December 1717 it was fixed at 21s. at which it remained. The last coinage of guineas took place in 1813, and the modern sovereign, of the value of 20s., was first issued in 1817. In 1832 Babbage the economist was writing : '.The great step, that of abolishing the guinea, has already been taken without any inconvenience.'
But if now the guinea be abolished as a sum of money equal to 21s. the gravest inconvenience will be caused to professional Men. to clubs, and to charitable institutions. And would the 2.000 Guineas have the same hold over the public fancy if the race was.called the 2,100 Pounds ?
The sovereign that displaced the guinea in 1817 was a revival. The original sovereign was coined from the reign of Henry VII to that of Charles I and its nominal value was three angels or 22s. 6d. Its actual value, however, had fallen to eleven shillings by the time the guinea was being coined. The last time I was able to let sovereigns trickle through my fingers was in July 1915 when the Paymaster at GHQ Imbros gave me fifty of them for discreet expenditure on the island of Lesbos three weeks before the Suvla landing. able to think in guineas suggests the survival of a spirit of independence reprehensible in our cowardly new world of queues and chromium-Ate. So let all of us who are true and faithful Babbitts get together like regular fellows and make it a snobbish offence against the community spirit to be paid in guineas. At the same time let those of us who believe that Babbitts are as inimical to culture as rabbits are to cultivation get together like irregular fellows and form a Guinea Union the members .of which will pledge themselves not to recognise the pound as current remuneration for any individual per- formance in science, art or eloquence.
This threat to the guinea has set my fancy dreaming of other . old coins. I seem to hear Silver's parrot screaming 'Pieces of Eight ! Pieces of Eight ! '
In the middle of the last war some boxes came ashore on the western coasts of the Outer Hebrides which when opened were found to be full of sodden' paper money for Chiang Kai-shek, and they were More worthless even than dross. Whether the Spanish galleon in Toberniory Bay will yield a treasure -remains to be proved, but at any rate there will be no paper money in her hold.
Between Porthleven and the bar of the Looe Pool on the west side of the Lizard Peninsula great square coins bearing the golden arms of Spain, worth £8 10s. then, used to be found on the beach at very rare intervals some forty or fifty years ago. A little further south in the year 1801 a ship carrying a million Portuguese dollars was wrecked in the narrow cove behind Gunwalloe Church. Several attempts were made to salvage this cargo, the last one in 1907. The curious visitor may probably still see the remains of the stanchions fixed into the rocks to support the pumping apparatus which was always washed away by the equinoctial gales before it had time to get properly to work. One day in 1908 while walking along the beach of Ganwalloe Cove I was telling a friend that I had looked many a time for a silver dollar On this beach without success. Well, here's one,' he said, stooping down to pick it up.
About the same time as the dollar ship was wrecked the Susan and Rebecca transport with men of the 4th Light Dragoons returning from the Peninsula was driven ashore under Helzephron cliffs. The men had put their pay for safety in their helmets, and they were all drowned, their bodies being buried on the top of the cliff. Legend said that their money was buried with them, and some of the more daring young men decided to dig in the low mounds which marked the graves of those Light Dragoons buried over a century ago. So with picks and Cornish spades they set to work one dark night after posting a look out on the road beyond. Unfortu- nately the two watchmen thought they saw a ghost approaching and flinging away their lanterns bolted with a yell. This frightened the digging party who scattered in a panic, since when as far as I am aware nobody has tried to disturb those graves. Ducats of Venice, ducatoons of Mantua and Milan, moidores of Portugal, doubloons of Spain, angel nobles and rose nobles of England ... the sequin, the pistole and the louis d'or ... only their names ring now. Let us keep our guineas, for though the coin itself can ring no more upon the counter the name can hold its own with any of them and is still a recognised sum of money. If the egalitarian Bilibitts should be successful in banishing the guinea from their own dead level of a world the Guinea Union must demand £22 in future for what was once twenty ; guineas. That will administer a lesson to the managerial tycoons who with their aid aspire to cheapen individual. performance.
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