10
Forward
to La Belle Epoque
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Twenty
years later Belloc was still writing that the war had been "openly
and undeniably provoked by the Jewish interest in South Africa".
But he did also say, with some truth, that there was no antagonism
towards "ordinary" Jews among average citizens in Britain, only
an interest, a curiosity. All the same, the anti-Semitism that he
and others provoked did affect the public attitude towards the Randlords,
Gentile or Semite, throughout the Edwardian period, even if envy
and snobbery played a part.
Joseph
Chamberlain visited the Transvaal in January 1903 and took a tough
line with the wealthiest firms of Johannesburg. There was to be
no compensation for losses. Instead the firms were told that they
had the patriotic duty to help in post-war reconstruction. On top
of a 10 per cent tax on mining profits, he asked for a loan of £35
million. After argument this was reduced, thanks to FitzPatrick,
to £30 million, the first third being guaranteed by members of the
Chamber of Mines (J. B. Robinson excepted). Wernher, Beit would
put up £1 million, as did the other big names: Barnato Brothers,
S. Neumann & Co., Consolidated Gold Fields, G. & L. Albu,
A. Goerz & Co. The Compagnie Française would provide
£100,000.
There
was also to be an imperial loan of £35 million. Chamberlain failed
to persuade Smuts and other former Boer Commando generals to join
an enlarged Legislature, but FitzPatrick became a member of it,
as did his successor at the Chamber of Mines, George Farrar, both
men whom Milner knew could be relied upon to serve imperial interests
-but then, as Julius Wernher was to say: "What is good for the country
is good for us." Privately Julius was not so pleased about this
development in FitzPatrick's career, and remarked that he could
not understand why such a decent fellow should want to get himself
mixed up in politics.
Julius
had already offered personal loans of £5,000-£7,000 cash to the
three Boer leaders whom he felt the firm had to thank for the preservation
of the mines: Botha, De La Rey and Lucas Meyer. As it happened,
the £30 million loan was never raised, because of the continuance
of the economic depression. This was, needless to say, a fine piece
of ammunition for enemies of Wernher, Beit, when it came to be noticed
that huge sums were being spent on building schemes, both for the
firm and privately.
In
the City, near Finsbury Circus, a seven-storey headquarters for
all the W ernher, Beit interests was erected, covering an acre of
the most expensive land in the world and in a "bold and handsome
Italian Renaissance style". It cost £400,000, and the proud address
was N°.1, London Wall, ready for occupation in June 1903. In
Johannesburg the Corner House was magnificently rebuilt and in effect
finished by the end of 1904. It had six storeys and was the biggest
office block to date in all South Africa, built on a steel frame
"in the American style" and costing £218,000, not counting the Waring
and Gillow furniture and such luxuries as Bokhara carpets. Two sensational
features were its lifts, five of them, and its own electric power
supply. The ambition of every child in Johannesburg was to have
a ride in these lifts.
FitzPatrick
and other tycoons such as Abe Bailey had motor cars: another sensation.
FitzPatrick had also bought a 5,000-acre country estate, which,
however, was small compared to colleagues' acquisitions in England
and Scotland, where Michaelis had bought the Tandridge Court estate
and the Phillipses were spending "hundreds of thousands" on improving
Tylney Hall. Solly Joel and his brother Jack were launching out
into huge racing establishments, and between them were to win practically
every classic event -the Oaks, Two Thousand Guineas, Derby and Gold
Cup. Solly also had a steam yacht. Beit moved into Tewin Water,
near Welwyn, a large Regency house with Victorian additions and
7,000 acres, and a few miles away Julius Wernher at last bought
Luton Hoo, with 5,218 acres.
Beit
had been advised by doctors to slow down, and was noticeably turning
to a more bohemian circle of friends, some of whom such as the scandalous
boaster Frank Harris were abhor- rent to Julius. He was friendly
with stage celebrities like Herbert Tree and Lena Ash well, and
kept a box at the opera which was always at the disposal of friends.
He often visited his mother in Hamburg, and still relied on the
advice of Dr Bode of Berlin for his art collection. Generous as
ever, if not more so, he would hire a ship for family and friends
at the Naval Review at Portsmouth, and a house at Ascot for the
races. He was far more in the public eye than Julius. According
to Jim Taylor's autobiography, he once was featured in an American
paper as the "bachelor Diamond King". "Now watch the next mail",
Beit told him.
"You
will see that I shall receive hundreds of offers of marriage from
all sorts and descriptions of women, to say nothing of begging letters
of all kinds." And sure enough, wrote Taylor, 26 Park Lane was snowed
up with letters, "black and white women offering themselves by the
hundred". Yet the memory of Rhodes dominated Beit's remaining years,
and he was obsessed by the need to help and develop Rhodesia, which
strangely had been neglected in the will. His offer to rejoin the
board of the Chartered Company was accepted, and he became Vice-President.
The Chartered Company was given offices at N° 1, London Wall.
Most
people assumed that he had bought Tewin Water, but it was only a
furnished lease. It had belonged to a colleague who was in financial
trouble and had a good collection of Italian old masters, majolica
and Hispano-Moresque ware. Once Beit, whilst staying with his friend
at Tewin Water, had asked his host after dinner if he would let
him have the house. 'Yes, at a price,, was the answer. "I want everything",
Beit said. "Furniture, servants, horses and all." A bargain was
struck, said to be at £100,000, and only an easel portrait of the
owner's wife was allowed to be removed. Beit loved the place, and
after his death most of the art collection was bought by his family,
a pair of portraits by the Flemish artist Heemskerk finding their
way to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. His brother Otto
bought the freehold after his death.
Birdie
Wernher's impressive charity concerts, bazaars and balls during
the war had evidently given her the taste for entertaining on the
grand scale, and Florrie Phillips found it difficult to compete.
At Bath House the Wernhers, among their innumerable treasures, "set
a standard hard to attain, let alone surpass". During Coronation
year, 1902, London's grandees came there to "suppers" which were
really banquets, and guests had £1 million worth of pictures and
objets d'art to admire. Florrie comforted herself with believing
that her own houses showed better taste, not to mention charm and
comfort. If the Wernhers, like the conventional English rich, had
themselves painted by Sargent, she and Lionel were painted by the
more avant-garde Boldini. But it was the age of the Belle Epoque,
and the Wernhers, who "popped over" to Paris whenever possible,
rightly felt in the heart of it. Under the circumstances it might
seem strange that they were attracted by the formality of Luton
Hoo's architecture, let alone by its Victorianized interior. However,
they had plans for the total transformation of the latter.
Julius
had offered £200,000 for the property, but the eventual price was
£250,000. Virtually all the Leigh and De Falbe contents were sold
during a three-week auction, though there had to be a lawsuit, which
the Wernhers lost, as to whether some Gobelin tapestries which filled
panels in a reception room were fixtures.
The
plan at first was to reconstruct the entire interior in Louis XVI
style, using the French architect Charles Frédéric
Mewès, who had designed the Paris Ritz, triumphantly opened
on 1 June 1898. Now a London Ritz was being planned only a hundred
yards or so along Piccadilly from Bath House. Russian Grand Dukes,
Marcel Proust and exotic figures such as Calouste Gulbenkian had
been at the Paris opening, and so had Jules Porgès, who with
Wernher, Beit had been part of the syndicate that had put up the
money for César Ritz to launch his international chain of
hotels. Very likely the Wernhers had also been present.
Like
all the very rich, including the French financiers and Edward VII
when Prince of Wales, and beauties such as Lillie Langtry and Lady
de Grey, Julius had been a frequenter of the Savoy Hotel in London
when managed by César Ritz, with the legendary Escoffier
as chef. No doubt it was the socially ambitious Madame Porgès
who had had the idea of employing Mewès to build a gigantic
chateau at Rochefort-en- Yvelines outside Paris.
The Porges château
at Rochefort en Yvelines
(near Paris)
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For
the Porgèses were moving into the aristocracy, their only
daughter and child having married the Marquis de la Ferté-Meun
; a niece married a Prince Borghese of Rome, and other nieces a
French Count and a Belgian Viscount respectively. ( to see the
family tree, click
here)
This
extraordinary building was inspired by the Palais de la Légion
d'Honneur, with a peristyle and a cupola, and was perched above
a waterfall that tumbled through a terraced garden. It is now a
golf club. [Jules Porgès lost some of his fortune as a result
of the First World War, having deposited it in Viennese banks. This
meant selling the chateau and objets d'art. He died in 1921, aged
eighty-three.]
At
any rate the Wernhers, after seeing the plans for the Porgès
château and other work by Mewès at the houses of
Lucien Guitry and W. K. Vanderbilt in Paris, had been "totally seduced"
by the opulent style of the Belle Epoque. They also planned to add
another attic floor for staff at Luton Hoo with about thirty-odd
rooms. Madame de Falbe's overheated conservatory would be scrapped,
but her Gothic-cum-Byzantine chapel, created by G. E. Street in
1874 when she was Mrs Gerard Leigh, would probably be retained.
The
completion date for the purchase was 13 June 1903. Within months
the work of reconstruction had begun, drawing, as usual, sarcastic
comments from the Radical anti-Hoggenheimer press.
One
such comment appeared in the Clarion:
South
African gold mines are not paying so well as formerly, but the
patriotic Anglo-Saxon-cum-Semitic millionaires manage to make
ends meet. At Luton Hoo a quarter of a million is to be spent
on the work. It is not true, however, that Mr Wernher is going
to turn the mansion into a retreat for maimed and out of work
soldiers who fought for him and his brother-plutocrats in South
Africa
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