USURERS AND MILLIONAIRES.
WHEN “Purchase” was in full blast the chosen race had some data to go
upon as regards the “possibilities” of their clients, who for the most
part were Army men, and when the mystic P appeared after a name in the
Army List, they felt fairly safe that their investments were recoverable;
many, however, found to their cost that “charging” one’s commission was
not recognised by the Horse Guards, and that despite the production of a
sackful of mortgages, Cox dared not part with a cent of the commission
money to any one but the actual reprobate. Barely had a name appeared in
the _Gazette_ when a squad of these harpies hustled each other before the
modest portals in Craig’s Court, and “the widows of Asher were loud in
their wail” when they heard that their co-religionists had been turned
empty away. In the citadel itself they, of course, had numerous paid
spies, who “posted” them as to any imminent appearance in the _Gazette_,
and no one earned more shekels by this illicit traffic than a clerk, who
eventually had to leave, but who may still be seen shambling about
Leicester Square in the futile endeavour to raise small loans for his
shoddy clientèle. In pot-houses that he “uses” he is known as “the
Captain,” and affects the old dragoon limp. For the human species, as
everybody is aware, is composed but of two distinct races: the men who
borrow, and the men who lend; under which two original diversities may be
reduced all those impertinent classifications we are familiar with, such
as Celtic and Gothic origin, white men, black men, red men, and such
like. It is of the latter class during the sixties we propose to speak.
At the head of the list was Callisher—known in the family as Julius—then
followed Bob Morris (“Jellybelly”) and a bad third was Sam Lewis, only
then emerging from the status of a traveller in cheap jewellery, who
addressed one as “Sir,” and ready at a moment’s notice to produce a
ten-pound note and draw out a bill for £15, with which his pockets were
invariably lined.
An undoubtedly leading usurer of the sixties was Bob Morris, who—it was
no secret—was originally financed by Sir Henry De Hoghton, an eccentric
baronet referred to elsewhere. “Jellybelly,” as he was familiarly known,
transacted business in the vicinity of the Raleigh. A noiseless bell in
a blaze of brass, and a door that opened without any visible agency, were
the first objects that struck one on the threshold of the outer world.
Introduced first into an ante-room, a client—subject to satisfactory
scrutiny—was filtered into the presence of the great man.
No indecent hurry was permitted during these important preliminaries, and
one might as reasonably have hoped to enter the library of a bishop as to
approach Bob Morris without a scrupulous regard to decorum.
Numerous applicants were to be found at all hours in meek and becoming
attitudes waiting for the moving of the waters, some to be rebuffed by
deputy, and others only to be admitted and immediately bowed out.
A second waiting-room above relieved the congestion of the one below when
unusual circumstances taxed its resources; it was heavily curtained,
dark, on Turkish bath lines, and it was considered a bad sign—as the
precursor to a snub—when one was promoted to this retreat.
“Jellybelly” was strictly honourable according to his lights; if he could
get 100 per cent. he preferred it to 80, and if 80 was not forthcoming he
would accept 60 on the security of the Consols. The variety of his
transactions would have embarrassed a less brilliant mind, and at one
time or another he had found himself owner (by mortgage) of the three
first favourites for the Derby, the foundations and a partially completed
wing of a skating-rink, and two miles of a submarine tunnel on which work
had been stopped. That such multifarious responsibilities might
reasonably be supposed to tax the patience of an ordinary mortal would
have been matter of no surprise, but nothing appeared to give him the
least concern.
It was Sam Lewis’s pluck that obtained him the colossal fortune he
eventually died possessed of, and, ever ready to run the most infernal
risks, it was seldom he did not come out top. During Goodwood week he
did business in his bedroom at the “Grand,” and a telegram from the other
end of the kingdom, followed by an acceptance, invariably produced
banknotes by return post.
It was only after he began to feel his legs and to dabble in title deeds,
that he abandoned the genial habits of his youth, became _Mr._ Lewis,
could be seen only by appointment, and assumed an expression between that
of a bank director and an Egyptian sphinx.
When I “met” him first he was not above a swap, and a bill for, say, £50,
paid in £20 cash and the balance in tawdry gimcracks, was the usual style
of transaction. At the time I refer to he lived in an unpretentious
house in Gower Street; later on, as a younger generation are aware, he
possessed a mansion in Grosvenor Square; rode in the Park at daylight
during the Season, and gave dinner parties where any one from a member of
the Victorian Order upwards was always assured of a hearty welcome. So
keen, indeed, was the little man (or his wife) to be considered members
of the fringe of Society that an enterprising young man—related to the
noble House of Somerset—was unquestionably on a fixed scale of
remuneration, and given _carte blanche_ to bring any sprig of nobility at
prices ranging from a guinea upwards. In addition, a few minor
under-strappers, such as the late lamented Patty Coleman and others, had
a free hand to produce “desirables.”
The little man—as we all know—is now a matter of history, his widow not
long after again married and then followed him, though her memory is
still cherished in the Synagogue as “Lewis of the Guards.”
Of the smaller fry, Fitch of Southwark; Sol Beyfus; Finney Davis of Mount
Street; Lazarus of Dublin; Cook of Warwick Street, all assisted in
spoiling the Egyptians; whilst their sons, almost without exception, have
risen in the minor social scale as attorneys or chartered accountants,
and their sons will assuredly figure in “Debrett’s” or the “Landed
Gentry,” as instanced in a glaring case, where a railway navvy—who left
his three sons a million sterling each in the Sixties—we are now informed
in the peerage was undoubtedly descended from de—, who came over with the
Conqueror, and that his genealogy is lost in antiquity—not always an
unmixed evil.
In the old days the usurer used his own name, now they cull the peerage
for the most historical they can find. But
“Brown, Jones, or Moses
Can change their names but not their noses.”
Perhaps no more marvellous example of Nature’s constant care for the
wants of her needy creations is to be found than in the periodical
appearance above the horizon of some nobody who, having amassed a
colossal fortune, is henceforth ordained by a merciful Providence to
rescue impecunious lords from the slough of despair, level-up princes who
have exceeded their income, and to put upon their legs livery stablemen;
authorities on horseflesh and their superiors generally by birth and
education.
In the long-ago Sixties these providential phenomena were not appreciated
as much as in these more enlightened days, and, even in such sinks of
iniquity as Mott’s, an impecunious gentleman was assessed as a
considerably more desirable quantity than knighted shop-boys, “H”-less
capitalists, or promoted horse copers.
That even then they existed goes without saying; that they did not assist
in making history is equally undeniable.
Amongst these one of the most remarkable was one Hirsch—Baron of
somewhere—but whose untimely death before he attained to Debrett makes
his genealogy difficult to trace with any degree of accuracy. Suddenly
springing into prominence, he at once broke out into horseflesh; and
although probably not knowing one end of a horse from another, soon
collected a magnificent stud, and being surrounded by disinterested!
councillors of the highest attainments, soon swept the board in most of
the classic races. But the subject that brought him chiefly into
prominence was his solicitude for his co-religionists: first, he proposed
to buy Jerusalem, but meeting with obstacles that even money could not
overcome, he contemplated a “personally-conducted tour,” whereby the Holy
City should again become the habitation of the chosen race. But his
premature death, alas! nipped all these aspirations in the bud, and the
gimcrack shops in Bond Street still flourish, and the successors of
Callisher, Bob Morris, and Sam Lewis continue to batten on Christian
flesh. The sums that he expended and bequeathed on this desirable object
were not without significance, and the leaves of the Talmud were
ransacked to show that he was the undoubted 666, or some equally
unintelligible hieroglyphic that had been predicted by the Prophets; and
then death entered Bath House and snapped the various theories—_Quod erat
demonstrandum_.
Baron de Forest, whom we occasionally hear of as one of the shining
lights of modern Society, inherited a considerable portion of the
deceased “nobleman’s” fortune, and is said to be related to him.
A phenomenon of another type was Colonel North. Soldier, philanthropist,
and nitrate expert, it matters not what regiment had the privilege of
being commanded by him; it was in the latter industry that he endeared
himself to his species. Liberal, bluff, and accessible to all, his daily
free lunches at the “Woolpack” were partaken of by all the halt and the
maim—and occasionally the blind—within the four-mile radius.
Impecunious Irish lords, with ancestral bogs sadly in need of re-digging,
now saw their opportunity, and a huge industry sprang into existence,
where, for a consideration—in shares—the meteor was introduced to certain
higher lords who, holding broad theories on “meum and tuum,” in their
turn arranged dinner parties where the most exalted were to be met with.
Often did the rafters of Connaught Place rattle during these festive
gatherings, and sheaves of shares changed hands till no one was sent
empty away, and so by the aid of nitrate, “the Colonel” was wafted amid
the highest pinnacles of Society. Occasionally a false note was struck
when some over-eager recipient put his shares on the market—but even
these _faux pas_ were soon forgotten, for “the Colonel,” if not
“Plantagenet blood,” had the instincts of a gentleman. That the owner of
such vast wealth must needs own racehorses goes without saying, upon
which ’bus drivers and unsuccessful authorities on horseflesh came upon
the scene, and thus the sphere of Nature’s bountiful providence became
more extended. North, however, never attained prominence in a pursuit he
was probably utterly indifferent to, though his colours were frequently
to be seen (last) at the various race meetings.
It was a sad day in Bohemia Minor when “the Colonel” was gathered to his
fathers; and the diminution in white waistcoats and immaculate attire in
Gracechurch Street and Northumberland Avenue was lamentably apparent; the
rockets that had temporarily fizzled gradually expended themselves, their
very sticks were soon untraceable; straw hats and macintoshes (during the
dog days) gradually resumed their ascendency, and Society recovered from
the topsy-turveydom with which it was once temporarily threatened.