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UP WEST - CHAPTER I
CLIMBING THE LADDER
Exit aristocracy, enter plutocracy—Old estates in new
hands—A gambling establishment a hundred years ago — Mordecai Morris —
His earliest recollections — His marriage — His death in harness — His
will—A worthy successor—Keenness in pursuit of riches—Change of name by
deed-poll—Herbert Maurice, Esq.—Cannot look the gentleman—His son not a
success at Eton—Peculiar in his dress.
Go back some fifty years, and ascertain who then resided in
Eaton Square, Belgrave Square, Grosvenor Square, and Park Lane. Compare the
names with those of the present residents, and you will be considerably
astonished at the change that time has brought about. A few of the old
aristocracy remain, but the majority have been eliminated, and their places
taken by nouveaux riches, Jews, and plutocrats. And this is not true.
merely of the fashionable quarter of London alluded to. Country seats and
estates—especially those situated within an easy distance from the
metropolis—have also changed hands in, a great many instances. In point of
fact, England is rapidly becoming a plutocracy; and the reason for this is not
very far to seek.
In a number of cases the aristocracy has become very much
poorer. The depression in the value of land has had a good deal to do with this;
while the reckless extravagance, gambling, and luxurious habits of men who, at
an early age, came into their inheritance, have brought practical ruin on those
who succeeded them. During the melting process these individuals have not
enjoyed life, and have done but little if any good. The principal persons to be
benefited by them have been usurers, bookmakers, stockbrokers, and professional
gamblers. Mortgage after mortgage has been executed, entails have been cut off,
absolute sales have been effected—and the end of it all [-116-] has been that ancient
estates and old family properties have passed into new hands. Who have become
possessed of them? Those who have made fortunes with great rapidity, by speculation
or otherwise, in the City or in manufacturing districts, in England or the
colonies.
The object of this paper is to sketch one of these
fortunate individuals — to describe his general habits, his family surroundings,
and the efforts he has put forth to obtain a position in society.
I must, in the first place, go back a generation or two in
the family of my subject.
Towards the end of the last century, in one of the
principal thoroughfares of the West End, stood a house of somewhat dingy
exterior, and of an appearance calculated to arouse the curiosity of any
passer-by who happened to be ignorant of what, day by day—or, rather, night by
night—was passing within its walls. During the daytime the blinds were drawn
down, the doors were closed, and the whole building presented an appearance most
funereal. At midnight, and for an hour or two before and after, a great change
was apparent. The whole house was full of light and animation; carriages were
constantly arriving; and men-servants in gorgeous liveries foregathered at and
about the doorway. The house was a gambling establishment, and the visitors
were the fashionable young bloods of the period.
Gaming-houses were permitted in those days, and this was
par excellence the first in all London. Here for years fortunes were won and
lost, and the place was responsible for much human misery. Lives had here been
rendered intolerable, and ruin of the most rapid and remorseless description had
been sown broadcast.
Next door to this pandemonium was a shop displaying the
glittering stock of a West End jeweller. As you entered from the Street you
found yourself in a narrow passage, with the door of the shop on the right and a
staircase at the further end leading up to the first floor. On the wall of the
staircase, painted in large gilt letters, was the name “Mordecai Morris.”
Mordecai was a very remarkable man. For years he had
pursued the calling of a money-lender and bill discounter. He had a keen eye to
business, as he had shown by pitching upon these particular premises. But he had
not been content with merely planting himself next door to the gaming-house. He
had entered into an arrangement with the proprietor thereof [-117-] whereby, for a
certain consideration, he was permitted to occupy ~ seat in one of the corridors
of that establishment. The corridor led directly into the room where play was
carried on. There he was to be seen transacting business night after night all
the year round.
Mordecai, so it was said, was a foreign Jew; but it may be
doubted whether he himself had the remotest idea what part of the world he had
originally hailed from. As a boy he had received little, if any, education.
His earliest recollections were of the lowest part of the East End of London,
where, during the week, he did odd jobs for his co-religionists. On Saturday,
the Jewish Sabbath, he picked up a few coppers by blacking the boots of the
inhabitants of Petticoat Lane and its vicinity, who tarried for the purpose on
their way to the synagogue.
The shoe-black rose in the world by leaps and bounds. He
married above him, and as a comparatively young man was left a widower with two
sons and three daughters. After the death of his wife he resided in a remote
street in Bloomsbury. He was an excellent father, and he had been a good
husband. He. had no friends, and said he did not want any. I should add that he
was a strict observer of all the rites and ceremonies of his ancient religion.
Mordecai lived and prospered next door to the gaming-house
for a long spell of years. The late hours and the strain of business, however,
told upon him at last, and one morning his old clerk entered the office to find
him seated at his desk— his head fallen on his chest and a bunch of bank-notes
in his right hand—cold and dead.
Upon his will being read, it was found that he had not left
all his money to his family, but a good portion of it to various Jewish
institutions. To his two sons he had bequeathed fifty thousand pounds apiece,
and to each of his daughters a suns sufficient to make them more than
comfortable for life. The elder son did not long survive his father; he died in
less than a year, leaving all his money to his brother.
The latter inherited his father’s business qualities.
Already he had employed his capital to good purpose. He had put a considerable
portion of it into some colliery property in the north of England, which had
turned out a veritable El Dorado. Fortune showered favours on him as years went
on, and indeed he used laughingly to say that whenever he went out the sun was
sure to shine. He put out his money here, there, and everywhere, and always with
the same result—everything he [-118-] touched turned to gold. So prosperous had his
collieries become, and so many thousand hands did they employ, that a town grew
up around his property. Yet so keen was he in the pursuit of riches that he
frequently travelled all night from the north of England, so as to be early at
his broker’s in the City on the following morning. In fact, wherever there was
money to be made he did not allow himself a moment’s rest. In due time he
died, leaving behind him, besides four daughters, one son, to whom he bequeathed
the bulk of his enormous fortune.
The young man, by deed-poll, obtained Her Majesty’s
permission henceforth to assume the name of Maurice in lieu of Morris. Thus he
was known to the world as Herbert Maurice, Esq., of Maurice Town, Lancashire; of
Broadstone Hall, Northamptonshire; and of —, Belgrave Square, London.
Let us pass over a number of years, and make his acquaintance
as a man of forty five, with an income of some eighty thousand pounds per annum.
As a young man he had been a light-hearted, genial, and
fairly generous fellow; but the acquisition of his enormous wealth changed all
that. He exhibits twice as much chest and shirt-front as any ordinary person,
and, in fact, is as puffed out as the toad in the well-known fable. The poor
fellow is really too large for anything but elastic clothing. Early in life he
married the only daughter of a large manufacturer, who, by reason of his having
been several times mayor of his native town, had received at the hands of Her
Majesty the honour of knighthood. At his death Sir Jacob left the whole of his
property to his daughter.
Mr. Herbert Maurice is short, slightly stout, and has
bright red hair. In dress he is showy and loud of colour, and, though his
garments are turned out by the very best clothes artist in London, he never
seems altogether at his ease in them. Mr. Maurice rides the best cobs and
horses, and, during the season, is to be seen every morning in the Park on
horseback. Though his get-up in the saddle is of the most sporting description,
and similar to that of all the fashionable young men of the day, there is always
something outré about it—either his yellow riding-boots come up higher, or
are of a brighter hue than is usual, or the cords that he wears are of a more
shiny material than those of other frequenters of the Row. In a word, there is
always something about his dress to cause the casual passer-[-119-] by to single him out
from among the mounted crowd. He seldom or never walks. His brougham is the
smartest fn London, and the same may be said of all his carriages. Their number
is great, for each member of the family has his or her own private equipage. The
Maurices’ carriages, which are to be seen day by day driving about the West
End, bear, in rather large form, the crest of a palm-leaf underneath the motto
“Virtute “—armorial bearings of course adopted since the passing of the
Disabilities Act.
Mrs. Maurice is not unlike her husband, save that she is
very fine and large. She is fair, with prominent features, and a profusion of
hair which originally, I believe, was brown, but which by some process has been
changed to an extraordinary kind of chestnut.
There are three children—two girls and one boy. The
latter is just of age, while one of his sisters is eighteen and the other
sixteen. The son and heir is shorter than his father. He is thinner, but his
hair is of even a brighter red. The lad has been to Eton. His father thought it
the correct thing to send him there, and so perhaps it was. But Gerald was anything
but a success at this school of schools, he was neither a “wet bob” nor a
“dry bob”; was no good at cricket; hated the river; never took to fives,
football, or hockey; and at the request of his tutor, was removed by his father
earlier than had been intended.
On arriving at man’s estate Gerald became a member of one
or two second-rate clubs. He smokes an enormous number of cigarettes, and passes
a great portion of his time at the billiard-table. He is very peculiar in his
dress, and has apparently correctly studied a picture gallery containing portraits
of old veterans of a hundred or two hundred years ago.
He wears collars that reach half-way up Isis cheek, a black
satin stock, a gorgeous pin, a tight-fitting frock coat, and trousers that cling
so closely to his thin legs as to suggest difficulties in the way of getting
them on, and still greater difficulties in the way of getting them off. He has
been brought up to no particular business; his health is not good; he is
extremely irritable; and, to those who put up with it, purse-proud to such a
degree that I really believe his size is the only thing that protects him from
utter annihilation, lie is not given to saying very much, but a remark he is
very fond of making at the Rockingham Club, of which he is a constant habitué,
is [-120-] “Hang it all, I think I ought to know a gentleman when I see one.”
The girls, Bessie and Jessie, are buxom and extremely self.
assertive. When perched in the magnificent barouche, vis-a-vis to their
mamma, they seem to say to passers-by: “Now, my friends, be good enough to
look at this and say what you think of it.”
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