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Just the Thing. The wealthiest man who ever twitched a professional baton, Sir Thomas has lost more money conducting orchestras than any ten of his contemporaries have made. The money (a fortune estimated at $140,000,000) was amassed by the amateur Lancashire horse doctor, Joseph Beecham, who invented Beecham's Pills. Joseph Beecham was one of the first British businessmen to grasp the power of modern advertising. He even circulated a hymn book edited with an eye to furthering his product. Most famous edited hymn:
Hark! the herald angels sing,
Beecham's Pills are just the thing.
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
Two for man and one for child.
When Tommy Beecham was born, in 1879, the elaborate Beecham home, in St. Helens near Liverpool, already contained an assortment of pianos and pipe organs. Beecham père soon added the latest gadget in mechanical music, a reed orchestrion, which made Wagner sound like a merry-go-round. Tommy listened to it by the hour, vowed he would devote his life to music. Beecham's Pills made possible a musical education at home and abroad. Tommy learned much as accompanist to the late great French baritone Victor Maurel. But the pills were not always an unmixed blessing. When, after an inconclusive term studying law at Oxford, Tommy Beecham cut loose and bought himself his first symphony orchestra, he called it the Beecham Philharmonic. British wags dubbed it the "Pillharmonic" and laughed him off the podium.
The law had been Joseph Beecham's idea, but he was finally converted to his son's music, began to back him. In 1914 Joseph Beecham's long passion for theatrical properties reached a climax when (in a syndicate) he bought no less an item than London's Covent Garden Opera House, complete with the vast Covent Garden vegetable market that adjoins it. When World War I broke, Beecham pere's colleagues backed out, left him holding the bag. In the bag was nominal ownership of the Opera House, the adjoining market, nine other theaters, and an unpaid bill for $15,000,000. Having achieved this stroke of financial wizardry, Joseph Beecham died and left the magic to Tommy. The bequest kept Thomas Beecham in & out of English bankruptcy courts for nearly 20 years. But he kept producing opera in Covent Garden, managing the vegetable market on the side. His near bankruptcies in real estate deterred his musical expenditures not a whit. He soon lost a good $5,000,000 producing opera.
Economic Dither. He got something for his losses. Sir Thomas is often referred to as the greatest amateur in musical history. He is probably the only figure in that history who has been angel, impresario and artist all at the same time. He hired the finest operatic artists he could find, supervised their operas, conducted in the pit—and ended by reinvigorating the whole art of opera in England. On the side, he conducted symphony concerts in Queen's and Royal Albert Halls, introduced England to compositions by Sibelius, Strauss, Stravinsky, Delius and many other contemporaries.