A Spectator's Notebook
For five brothers to be equal partners in a City business must be exceptional; for them also to share a bachelor house is unique.
The quintet I have in mind were the grandsons of Henry Leggatt who in 1820 founded the firm of print sellers and picture dealers which has been in my family ever since. On their father's untimely and bizarre death — he expired after swallowing a nail in a bowl of soup on Crewe railway station — they jointly inherited the business. Ernest, the eldest son, was Still at school. He was, however, far from unwilling to cut short his education. With the help of £6,000 his mother extracted from the railway company as compensation for her husband's death, he, too, went into the fine art trade. So successful was he that within a few Years he had shops in Cheapside, Cornhill and fenchurch Street. There he was eventually joined by his four younger brothers whose education he had personally paid for.
The entire band of brothers shared Ernest's flair for business; but they were all very, very eccentric, When Frank, my grandfather, left their joint home to get married — the only brother to do so — the others thought it the most extraordinary thing in the world. But they became so devoted to their erring brother's Wife, my grandmother, that they secretly commissioned her portrait from John Sargent as a Present to my grandfather. When, however, the Picture was delivered they could not bear to part with it, but gave it pride of place on the wall of their own drawing room. It is now among my most treasured possessions.
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