Beatty, (Alfred) Chester 1875-1968

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BEATTY, (Alfred) Chester 1875-1968

PERSONAL: Born February 7, 1875 in New York, NY; died January 19, 1968, in Monte Carlo, Monaco; son of John Cuming (a banker and stockbroker) and Hetty (Bull) Beatty; married Grace Madeline (Ninette) Rickard, 1899 (died March, 1911); married Edith Dunn Stone, 1913; children: (first marriage) Chester, one daughter. Education: Attended Columbia University School of Mines; Princeton University, M.S., 1898.

CAREER: Guggenheim Exploration Company, Cripple Creek, CO, consulting engineer and assistant general manager, 1903-06; Selection Trust Limited, London, England, founder, 1913; Chester Beatty Research Institute, London, founder, 1936.

AWARDS, HONORS: Order of St. Sava, 1930; Commander of the Order of Leopold II, 1932; gold medal, Institution of Mining and Metallurgy, 1935; Egleston Medal, Columbia University, 1948, for distinguished engineering achievement; honorary degrees, Dublin University and National University of Ireland; elected member of Royal Irish Academy and Irish Arts Council, 1951; knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, 1954; Freeman of City of Dublin, 1956; named first honorary citizen of Irish Republic, 1957.

WRITINGS:

CATALOGS

A Third-Century Papyrus Codex of the Epistles of Paul, edited by Henry A. Sanders, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1935.

The Library of A. Chester Beatty: A Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures, three volumes, revised and edited by James V. S. Wilkinson, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1936.

The Chester Beatty Collections: A Collection of Paintings of the Barbizon and Contemporary Schools Presented to the Irish Nation by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty in July 1950, National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin, Ireland), 1950.

Guide to the Manuscripts Exhibited in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, on the Occasion of an Tóstal 1953, Dublin University Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1953.

Exhibition of Early Bronze Crucifixes and Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance, College of Surgeons (Dublin, Ireland), 1954.

Exhibition of Irish Bookbindings, Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), 1954.

Exhibition of Japanese Prints from the Collection of Sir Chester Beatty, Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), 1955.

The Chester Beatty Library: A Catalogue of the Batak Manuscripts, including Two Javanese Manuscripts and a Balinese Painting by P. Voorhoeve, Hodges, Figgis (Dublin, Ireland), 1961.

Selected Manuscripts from the Chester Beatty Library: Exhibited by Princeton University Library, February 28 to April 30, 1967, Princeton University Library, 1967.

Contributor to periodicals, including Mining and Metallurgy.

SIDELIGHTS: Chester Beatty made his fortune primarily in mining, and used his wealth to feed his passion for collecting. Beatty's world-class collection included carpets, furniture, paintings, snuff bottles and art objects. But he had a particular fondness for books and manuscripts, especially books on travel, topography, costume, and early printing, and those featuring engravings. He had acquired nearly 3,000 manuscripts by 1952. By his death, Beatty owned 13,000 printed books and manuscripts, the largest collection ever held by an individual. To house them, he endowed the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin in 1953. Today, the library houses many primary source materials on Beatty, including the manuscript for his memoir, voluminous correspondence, transcribed interviews, and press clippings. In his will Beatty left the library to the Irish people.

Beatty was a savvy collector from an early age. His namesake was the Rev. Alfred Chester, a distant paternal relative and himself a collector. At his death, the reverend's collection of stamps, minerals, and foreign knick-knacks was left to Beatty and his two older brothers, William Gedney and Robert Chetwood. Beatty was the only one of the brothers who took any interest in the collection and managed to secure most of it for himself. He was already an experienced collector by age ten, when he acquired a pink calcite object at auction, according to his biographer, Arthur J. Wilson.

Beatty's father, John Cuming Beatty, was a New York banker and stockbroker. Beatty attended the Westminster School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. As a teenager he began learning the tricks of the mining trade from his father's friend, John C. Randolph, a prospector for the London Exploration Company. After a year at Princeton University in 1893, Beatty transferred to the Columbia University School of Mines, where he excelled in all subjects. He went back to Princeton to complete a master's degree in engineering.

Beatty's mining career began in Boulder Canyon, Colorado, where he labored in a gold mine before taking over as manager. The experience was financially and personally rewarding: Beatty found new veins of gold that boosted the mine's profits, and he married the cousin of T. A. Rickard, the man who brought him on board.

The newlyweds moved to Cripple Creek in 1899, and four years later Beatty became chief engineer with the Guggenheim Exploration Company. His shrewd investments in mines had yielded more than one million dollars in assets by 1906. Among Beatty's accomplishments as a mining engineer was developing a method for extracting copper from low-grade ore.

In 1907 Beatty and his wife, Ninette, moved to New York City, where she gave birth to their two children. In 1911, Ninette Beatty died of typhoid fever and pneumonia. Beatty, still in mourning, sailed to Europe, where he developed a fondness for jade while perusing antique shops in London. Beatty's collection of Chinese jade books, with pages made from thin sheets of jade, was the world's largest. Two years after his wife's death, Beatty moved to London, residing in Baroda House in Kensington Palace Gardens. He remarried that same year to a divorcee who shared his passion for collecting.

Beatty quickly resumed his work in mining, founding the Selection Trust Limited mining company in 1913. He and his new wife, Edith, moved from Baroda House to Calehill Park in Kent when World War I began, and Beatty volunteered the use of Baroda House as a soldiers' hospital. After the war, Beatty remained at Calehill Park and moved his collections to Baroda House. By 1933 Baroda House employed a full-time librarian and housed paintings by renowned Impressionist and Barbizon painters.

Denver was the first of several locations, some exotic, that Beatty visited during his mining career. His mining exploits earned him honors such as the insignia of the Order of St. Sava, granted by King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1930 in recognition of Beatty's role in opening the Trepca mine. Belgium's King Albert made Beatty a commander of the Order of Leopold II for his mining work in the Congo.

A 1913 visit to Egypt marked the beginning of Beatty's interest in Islamic manuscripts. He built a home in Egypt where he sometimes stayed for health reasons. During World War II, Allied troops fighting in Egypt used the villa as a base, and Beatty again offered Baroda House for use as a hospital. Marital problems after the war led the Beattys to live separately, and Edith moved back to Baroda House. Beatty sold the house after Edith died in 1952.

Beatty had been naturalized as a British citizen in 1933, but in 1950, disgruntled with life in Britain, he moved to Dublin. As Sidney E. Berger noted in theDictionary of Literary Biography, Beatty was frustrated with "red tape and with postwar British socialism." Triggering Beatty's move was the British government's rejection of his request to exchange a large amount of money into francs so he could go to the French Riviera for health reasons.

After handing over the reins of Selection Trust Limited to Chester, his son from his first marriage, Beatty shared his treasures with the Irish people. He presented his French paintings as a gift to the Irish National Gallery, and the Trinity College Library exhibited his papyri collection. Beatty's most significant gesture was establishing the Chester Beatty Library as a single research facility for his manuscript collection. Beatty's new penchant as a collector was for Irish bindings, maps, and prints. He sought "to make his collection appealing to a local audience," according to Berger.

The Republic of Ireland rewarded Beatty with several honors. He was granted honorary degrees from Dublin University and the National University of Ireland. In 1951, both the Royal Irish Academy and the Irish Arts Council elected him as a member. Beatty was honored by Britain as well: four years after he had left, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in recognition of his contributions to the Commonwealth. Even this, however, was not as special to Beatty as two honors he would receive from Ireland. In 1956 he was declared Freeman of the City of Dublin, and in 1957 he was made an honorary citizen of the Irish Republic, the first to receive this honor. He died in 1968 in Monaco, and was returned to Ireland where he was given a state funeral—a first for someone born outside the country.

The Chester Beatty Library has continued to attract scholars from around the world who are drawn to its collection of Asian manuscripts. Beatty designated an endowment of 10,000 pounds for the library at his death, although the library battled continually for its financial health. As Berger pointed out, "The value of the treasures he bequeathed is, however, incalculable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 201: Twentieth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 12-19.

Kennedy, Brian P., Alfred Chester Beatty and Ireland 1950-1968: A Study in Cultural Politics, Glendale Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1988.

McRedmond, Louis, editor, Modern Irish Lives, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Wilson, Arthur J., The Life and Times of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, Cadogan (London, England), 1985.