Part 6. Lipton woos high society

Tommy Lipton, sprung from Scottish Irish stock knew how to tell a good joke and an intriguing story. Edward Prince of Wales was not much of a conversationalist and sought out companions who could readily amuse him; a woman must be beautiful and amusing, a man rich and amusing. Lipton the man was both and an ideal companion – twinkling eyed Irish humour, devoid of class consciousness, his own master all his life, a millionaire who had never owed a penny, no chip on his shoulder – and full of lively charm. Added to this Lipton came with no encumbrances; no skeletons in his cupboard. He had no wife, no divorce, no relatives and no old friends. He was rich, he was friendly, a raconteur, good company and generous, and as he was beginning to show through his ocean racing, a “jolly good sport”.

Friendship with Bertie gave him open invitations to Buckingham Palace and Balmoral, Sandringham and Windsor, and the royal yacht at Cowes. He also became a friend of Princess Henry of Battenberg, ex Empress Eugenie, the King of Italy and Alfonso of Spain – who proposed to Princess Ena aboard Lipton’s steam yacht Erin. Lipton routinely put the Erin at the disposal of his royal and titled friends for cruises and parties, high jinks and trysts. Lipton as a favour to the Prince of Wales discretely created a job in his American business for George Keppel, husband of Bertie’s last and most glamorous mistress, Mrs Alice Keppel, so effectively providing her with an income and keeping her husband safely out of England. Thus, as friend and confidant of the Prince and subsequently the King, and through his business connections, Sir Thomas enjoyed the cream of English and American society throughout the remarkable Edwardian era.

Nevertheless, the Grocer did not let his business slide. His UK company paid shareholders good yearly dividends of 15% and he continued to expand his US business with shrewd dealings that impressed even the hard-nosed Americans. One deal in the Chicago stockyards where Lipton had cornered the pork futures market made him a cool $300,000. A local newspaper printed “Sir Thomas, you’re a bird. You don’t roar when we beat your sailboat, so we won’t chew the rag when you get even in a commercial way”. Lipton took a 20 year lease on a large six storey property in New York that became his US headquarters. It was to house his first complete tea packing plant there and became a launching pad for similar operations across the country. The Thomas J Lipton & Co business in America, unlike Lipton Ltd in the UK, remained under his sole control and all its profits were his own wealth.

At home Lipton was however already planning another ocean racing bid and soon launched Shamrock II as the challenger for the 1901 America’s Cup. Lipton lavishly entertained celebrities aboard the Erin and Alice Keppel was his hostess. Socialite Mrs Dana Gibson wrote to a friend “I took a real fancy to Lipton. He is so good natured and such a boy.” Columbia beat Shamrock II in all three races, but narrowly, in the total of ninety miles there was only three and a half minutes between their times.

Undaunted, and reminding listeners that “the shamrock has three leaves” Lipton soon laid the keel of Shamrock III for the 1903 series. At 14,000 square feet of sail she was to be his fastest boat yet, and the most expensive. Before the first race Sir Thomas lunched with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and acted as judge in a beauty contest – cleverly avoiding making a final choice (and thereby increasing his admirers) by saying of the final two contenders “It’s impossible for me to arrive at a decision as to which is the more beautiful lady – the one is perfectly charming, while the other is delightfully bewitching.” and presented each with a small golden shamrock. Unfortunately the race went badly for Shamrock III with Reliance easily winning every heat, but Lipton though privately deeply disappointed, took defeat lightly in public – where he jokingly complained that he had to drink his tea from a saucer as he was “unable to lift the cup.”

The death from pneumonia of Edward VII in 1910 marked the end of a glorious era – auspicious display, gaiety and frivolity. His son, now George V, was a different man and unlikely to surround himself with men of commerce such as the Rothschilds, the Sassoons, and Sir Thomas. Lipton however continued to serve his former royal friend Bertie by inviting Alice Keppel to stay at Dambatenne Estate in Ceylon as a refuge from publicity. Although Alexandra had invited his mistress to see Edward as he lay dying she was no longer welcome after his death. Mrs Keppel and her daughter Violet stayed in Dambatenne for three months while the press interest declined. Violet wrote later: “I shared a room with a tame snake and a wild governess.”

In the seven years since the inglorious rout of Shamrock III Lipton had taken up ocean racing with a vengeance and very successfully performed at English regattas and abroad. In 1910 he won six cups which were presented to him by Kaiser Wilhelm at the Kiel Regatta – and he had the Kaiser, noted for his ill humour, roaring with laughter over stories of his Glasgow youth. Diplomats were stunned at Lipton’s ability to put people at their ease but Lipton was now 60 and was beginning to be at odds with British politics. He felt that, unlike the USA, Britain’s prosperity was dependant on loans (even then!) and that she had imports far outweighing her exports. Lipton was starting to think more as an American as the First World War began.

Shamrock IV was built in early 1914 and was towed by Erin to Bermuda and thence to her wartime berth in Brooklyn. The Erin was painted white with a large red cross and kitted out as a hospital ship. In Yugoslavia she came under enemy fire, with Lipton on the bridge. Lipton’s presence in Serbia, bringing in a hundred doctors and nurses plus medical supplies to fight typhus, had through the publicity he inevitably attracted, the result of drawing public attention and funding to aid the appalling conditions in Serbia. Lipton was made a Grand Commander of the Order of St Sava and dubbed by the people “Tchika (Uncle) Tom”. The Erin was less successful – requisitioned and in the hands of the Admiralty she was renamed the Argusa – and was in 1916 sunk by a U-boat in the Mediterranean, steaming to help a torpedoed minesweeper, the Nasturtium. Six of Lipton’s former crew now serving on the Argusa were killed.

Next Part – Lipton’s later years – another two Shamrocks race for the America’s Cup – and the foundations are laid for a tea company that 100 years on still sells more packed tea than any other.

Reclusive and work obsessed though Lipton may have been in his earlier life, his knighthood made him very much persona grata in the best of England’s drawing rooms. At leisure, Sir Thomas had a quick wit and was an excellent raconteur. Introduced through his charity contact with Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, his natural charm endeared him to Queen Victoria’s wayward son, Bertie. Soon his life was transformed: from diligent daily toil at the office, to high society parties, ocean going yachts, and endless newspaper gossip columns. To appreciate how a working man, even a recently knighted one, could metamorphose into the friend of princes and the nobility one must first know that, after a lifetime of building and running his grocery empire as a sole proprietor, in 1898 Lipton unaccountably floated his company. The flotation was accomplished in typical Lipton style: the resultant frenzied buying of shares was dubbed by the London Evening News ‘The Lipton Scramble.’ Cleverly managed publicity and the choice of the eccentric dandy but brilliant broker Panmure Gordon resulted in the sale of the business for two and a half million pounds. Equal today to a fortune of £150 million.

While he retained nominal control of Thomas J Lipton Ltd., the transition from sole personal ownership to working on behalf of shareholders through the medium of a board of directors was an uneasy one for Lipton the entrepreneur. Now however, on his own merit he was fabulously rich, and had no pressing need to continually plough his hard won profits back into the business. Who could be surprised that, like many a lottery jackpot winner, his new found wealth would bring about a profound change in behaviour? Perhaps today we might say a ‘mid-life crisis.’ Sir Thomas was 50 years old and had built his business for 33 years – long years where his sole concern was to promote his company. Now that it was publicly owned and managed by his fellow directors, his skills turned to publicising Sir Thomas Lipton the man.

Lipton’s first foray into well-heeled society was to enter a yacht in competition for the America’s Cup. This had been contended since 1851 when a US built yacht, the America, sailed to England and challenged fifteen British yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes for a prize of 110 guineas and a cup. The America thrashed the British boats, sailing 8 miles ahead at one stage, and finally winning by 24 minutes with only three British yachts completing the course. Taking home the prize money and the cup, the latter was presented to the New York Yacht Club as a challenge trophy – the America’s Cup.

The green hulled Shamrock, Sir Thomas’s first America’s Cup challenger, was built on the Thames at Millwall by Scottish yacht builder William Fife. Ever the patriot, Lipton had wanted her to be built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast but their expertise was with steel hulled steam ships. The guideline budget was agreed at £100,000 – this would be £10 million today – and ultimately she would cost Sir Thomas double this price before she crossed the Atlantic. Fife designed a boat that pushed hull and sail design to the limits of contemporary technology. A gaff-rigged cutter, she had a 130 foot steel mast and was 190 feet from bowsprit to stern. While she displaced only 156 tonnes her sail area was 14,000 square feet – compare that to the 6,000 that the original America carried – and her main sails were woven from Egyptian cotton and silk, with a massive pure silk spinnaker.

Edward, Prince of Wales, who was commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron and owner of the sleek royal yacht Britannia, took a keen interest in Lipton’s project and had undoubtedly backed his challenge which had to be formally issued through the Royal Yacht Squadron. Just two weeks after the American boat Columbia was launched, Prince Edward visited the Thames side shipyard to urge the builders to hasten completion. Columbia was owned by Nathanael Herreshoff, the designer of the previous Valkyrie defenders, but he was a dour, difficult man and no hero for the US press who went overboard in enthusiasm for Sir Thomas. His rags to riches history, his Irish forbears, even the simple patriotic name of his boat, after the difficult classical names of previous English contenders – Valkyrie, Galatea, Livonia and Atalanta – all endeared him to the common man on both sides of the pond.

Of course, none of this publicity did any harm to the grocery sales of Thomas J Lipton, Ltd., and for the while shareholders were content with the new hobby of their managing director. Come October 4th, 1899 and Shamrock was sailing well ahead when the first heat ran out of time in a flat calm, four miles from the finish. The second heat too was abandoned for lack of wind. The next attempt coincided with a thick fog shrouding the 30 mile course off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and was again abandoned. Lipton declared encouragingly to the despairing press: ‘I can only say, that either boat may win.’ When the weather broke unexpectedly the second heat was run in a stiff breeze and Columbia finished a clear two miles ahead of Shamrock. The third race commenced next day in a bitter 15 to 20 knot north wind and just five minutes after the starting gun Shamrock’s topmast failed, bringing down spars, rigging and sail. Columbia sailed ahead and was declared the winner. In the next race the two boats were evenly matched but Columbia once more came in ahead of Shamrock and Lipton conceded defeat. ‘The better boat has won, but I have in mind to challenge again.’ Thus the yachting obsession of recently wealthy Sir Thomas Lipton commenced. Around eighty years later another notable ocean racer, British Prime Minister Ted Heath, neatly summed up the sport: ‘It’s like standing under a cold shower tearing up five-pound notes.’

Next Part – Celebrity intensifies at home and abroad; some Royal intrigue; and another three Shamrocks are launched as Lipton’s America’s Cup contenders.