attempt to “corner” the market, his hope being that, with the advance in price of gold, wheat would advance to such a price that western farmers would sell, and there would be a consequent great movement of breadstuffs from West to East, which would result in increased freight business for the Erie road. His speculations in gold, during which he attempted through President Grant’s brother-in-law, A. H. Corbin, to influence the president and his secretary General Horace Porter, culminated in the panic of “Black Friday,” on the 24th of September 1869, when the price of gold fell from 162 to 135.
Gould gained control of the Union Pacific, from which in 1883 he withdrew after realizing a large profit. Buying up the stock of the Missouri Pacific he built up, by means of consolidations, reorganizations, and the construction of branch lines, the “Gould System” of railways in the south-western states. In 1880 he was in virtual control of 10,000 miles of railway, about one-ninth of the railway mileage of the United States at that time. Besides, he obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union Telegraph Company, and after 1881 in the elevated railways in New York City, and was intimately connected with many of the largest railway financial operations in the United States for the twenty years following 1868. He died of consumption and of mental strain on the 2nd of December 1892, his fortune at that time being estimated at $72,000,000; all of this he left to his own family.
His eldest son, George Jay Gould (b. 1864), was prominent also as an owner and manager of railways, and became president of the Little Rock & Fort Smith railway (1888), the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railway (1893), the International & Great Northern railway (1893), the Missouri Pacific railway (1893), the Texas & Pacific railway (1893), and the Manhattan Railway Company (1892); he was also vice-president and director of the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was under his control that the Wabash system became transcontinental and secured an Atlantic port at Baltimore; and it was he who brought about a friendly alliance between the Gould and the Rockefeller interests.
The eldest daughter, Helen Miller Gould (b. 1868), became widely known as a philanthropist, and particularly for her generous gifts to American army hospitals in the war with Spain in 1898 and for her many contributions to New York University, to which she gave $250,000 for a library in 1895 and $100,000 for a Hall of Fame in 1900.
GOUNOD, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1818–1893), French
composer, was born in Paris on the 17th of June 1818, the son of
F. L. Gounod, a talented painter. He entered the Paris
Conservatoire in 1836, studied under Reicha, Halévy and Lesueur,
and won the “Grand Prix de Rome” in 1839. While residing
in the Eternal City he devoted much of his time to the study
of sacred music, notably to the works of Palestrina and Bach.
In 1843 he went to Vienna, where a “requiem” of his composition
was performed. On his return to Paris he tried in vain to
find a publisher for some songs he had written in Rome. Having
become organist to the chapel of the “Missions Étrangères,”
he turned his thoughts and mind to religious music. At that
time he even contemplated the idea of entering into holy
orders. His thoughts were, however, turned to more mundane
matters when, through the intervention of Madame Viardot,
the celebrated singer, he received a commission to compose an
opera on a text by Émile Augier for the Académie Nationale
de Musique. Sapho, the work in question, was produced in
1851, and if its success was not very great, it at least sufficed to
bring the composer’s name to the fore. Some critics appeared
to consider this work as evidence of a fresh departure in the
style of dramatic music, and Adolphe Adam, the composer,
who was also a musical critic, attributed to Gounod the wish
to revive the system of musical declamation invented by Gluck.
The fact was that Sapho differed in some respects from the
operatic works of the period, and was to a certain extent in
advance of the times. When it was revived at the Paris Opéra
in 1884, several additions were made by the composer to the
original score, not altogether to its advantage, and Sapho once
more failed to attract the public. Gounod’s second dramatic
attempt was again in connexion with a classical subject, and
consisted in some choruses written for Ulysse, a tragedy by
Ponsard, played at the Théâtre Français in 1852, when the
orchestra was conducted by Offenbach. The composer’s next
opera, La Nonne sanglante, given at the Paris Opéra in 1854,
was a failure.
Goethe’s Faust had for years exercised a strong fascination over Gounod, and he at last determined to turn it to operatic account. The performance at a Paris theatre of a drama on the same subject delayed the production of his opera for a time. In the meanwhile he wrote in a few months the music for an operatic version of Molière’s comedy, Le Médecin malgré lui, which was produced at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1858. Berlioz well described this charming little work when he wrote of it, “Everything is pretty, piquant, fluent, in this ‘opéra comique’; there is nothing superfluous and nothing wanting.” The first performance of Faust took place at the Théâtre Lyrique on the 19th of March 1859. Goethe’s masterpiece had already been utilized for operatic purposes by various composers, the most celebrated of whom was Spohr. The subject had also inspired Schumann, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, to mention only a few, and the enormous success of Gounod’s opera did not deter Boito from writing his Mefistofele. Faust is without doubt the most popular French opera of the second half of the 19th century. Its success has been universal, and nowhere has it achieved greater vogue than in the land of Goethe. For years it remained the recognized type of modern French opera. At the time of its production in Paris it was scarcely appreciated according to its merits. Its style was too novel, and its luscious harmonies did not altogether suit the palates of those dilettanti who still looked upon Rossini as the incarnation of music. Times have indeed changed, and French composers have followed the road opened by Gounod, and have further developed the form of the lyrical drama, adopting the theories of Wagner in a manner suitable to their national temperament. Although in its original version Faust contained spoken dialogue, and was divided into set pieces according to custom, yet it differed greatly from the operas of the past. Gounod had not studied the works of German masters such as Mendelssohn and Schumann in vain, and although his own style is eminently Gallic, yet it cannot be denied that much of its charm emanates from a certain poetic sentimentality which seems to have a Teutonic origin. Certainly no music such as his had previously been produced by any French composer. Auber was a gay trifler, scattering his bright effusions with absolute insouciance, teeming with melodious ideas, but lacking depth. Berlioz, a musical Titan, wrestled against fate with a superhuman energy, and, Jove-like, subjugated his hearers with his thunderbolts. It was, however, reserved for Gounod to introduce la note tendre, to sing the tender passion in accents soft and languorous. The musical language employed in Faust was new and fascinating, and it was soon to be adopted by many other French composers, certain of its idioms thereby becoming hackneyed. Gounod’s opera was given in London in 1863, when its success, at first doubtful, became enormous, and it was heard concurrently at Covent Garden and Her Majesty’s theatres. Since then it has never lost its popularity.
Although the success of Faust in Paris was at first not so great as might have been expected, yet it gradually increased and set the seal on Gounod’s fame. The fortunate composer now experienced no difficulty in finding an outlet for his works, and the succeeding decade is a specially important one in his career. The opera from his pen which came after Faust was Philémon et Baucis, a setting of the mythological tale in which the composer followed the traditions of the Opéra Comique, employing spoken dialogue, while not abdicating the individuality of his own style. This work was produced at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1860. It has repeatedly been heard in London. La Reine de Saba, a four-act opera, produced at the Grand Opéra on the 28th of February 1862, was altogether a far more ambitious work. For some reason it did not meet
