11
South
Africa Again : Metamorphosis at Luton Hoo
|
Nikolaus
Pevsner in the 1960s thought the interior of Luton Hoo the finest
work of its date and style anywhere in England. Certainly there
are few grand houses that so perfectly evoke the sumptuous taste
of Edwardian new wealth with its festoons, gilded ribbons, rich
panelling and almost overwhelming marble fireplaces. Inevitably
some of the house's original furnishings have disappeared, partly
as a result of the vicissitudes of the Second World War, when Luton
Hoo became the headquarters of Eastern Command, but the vision and
cosmopolitan taste of the Julius Wernhers are still much in evidence.
The
favourite style of Mewès and his English partner Arthur Davis
was Louis XVI, but at Luton Hoo one also detects the influence of
Jacques-Ange Gabriel, the creator of the Petit Trianon. Mewès,
originally from Strasbourg and of Baltic Jewish extraction, had
been one of the architects of the 19OO Paris Exhibition. He has
been described as having had a "magnetic" personality, and was known
in the architectural world as "Le Patron". His debut in London had
been the decorating of the Interior of the Carlton Hotel, where
New Zealand House now stands, and this gorgeous affair so impressed
Albert Ballin of the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line that he was forthwith
commissioned to design and decorate those great "floating palaces",
the Imperator, the Amerika, the Vaterland and
the Kaiserin Augusta-Viktoria. Mewès, having been
awarded the Légion d'honneur, quickly built up an international
reputation, with representatives in Germany, Spain and South America,
as well as in England. Arthur Davis ("bon viveur, elegant")
had been associated with Mewès since 1898, when he was aged
only twenty. He too was Jewish , and had been a prize-winning student
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Later he was to design the interiors
of the Queen Mary, the Aquitania and the Franconia.
Plans
for the Ritz in London and another in Madrid were under discussion
when work began at Luton Hoo at the end of 19O3. At Luton Hoo the
original exterior was to be mostly retained, but in the case of
the London Ritz an entire new building had to be designed and erected,
Parisian in style with a mansard roof and a pedestrian arcade like
the Rue de Rivoli. As with the Corner House in Johannesburg, a steel
frame was to be used, the first in London. Mewès and Davis's
next important building was for the Morning Post, at the
Strand end of the Aldwych: Inveresk House is still in existence,
though spoilt by later additions and alterations.
Luton
Hoo was the firm's first major private project in England. In due
course it made alterations for a score or more houses in Mayfair
and Belgravia, notably 88 Brook Street for Mrs Henry Coventry, 16
Charles Street for Mrs Ronald Greville, later to become the Guards
Club, 38 Hill Street for Carl Meyer of Rothschilds, and 49 Belgrave
Square for Otto Beit. It also put on extensions to the Cavalry Club
in Piccadilly (not considered a great success), and alterations
were made to country houses such as Polesden Lacey, Leeds Castle,
Combe Court, Norbury Park and possibly Tewin Water. Mewès's
work for Hamburg-Amerika led to commissions from Cunard. One of
the firm's most spectacular remaining monuments in London is the
Royal Auto- mobile Club in Pall Mall, completed in 1911, with a
medley of styles (not improved since by over-painting), and including
in the basement a magnificent swimming-pool, supposedly "Byzantine"
in conception, but reminiscent of sets for the great Hollywood epics
and vying with the "Pompeian" pool on the Imperator.
The
building firm used by Mewès and Davis at Luton Hoo was George
Trollope and Son, but much of the main and most elaborate decorative
work was to be done by Hoentschel of Paris, who had previously been
employed at Bath House. Under the circumstances it could seem odd
that Julius Wernher should decide to undertake a four-month journey
to South Africa just as reconstruction at the house was about to
begin. But he had urgent and worrying decisions ahead, with huge
fortunes at stake.
A
slight market recovery had inevitably followed the war, but as Julius
himself told Samuel Evans towards the close of 1902, people were
already losing "pots of money". This applied particularly in France,
where small investors had had their hopes mercilessly raised about
prospects on the Rand by Johannesburg operators. Then there were
the worries about black African labour. Wages had been raised, but
made little difference towards attracting more workers, and the
controversy about importing Chinese labour had become increasingly
strident. The London partners were also becoming uneasy about the
state of management at the Corner House; as Julius put it, there
was not enough "pulling together". Percy FitzPatrick, of whom he
was fond, was often suffering from his ulcer, and much preoccupied
by public work. Evans and Schumacher had "no sense of vision". There
were complaints about Reyersbach's tactlessness, put down in Julius's
words to his "not being a gentleman". It was of course acknowledged
that pressure of work in the Corner House was immense, and that
periods of rest for partners were vital, not to mention occasional
"refresher" trips to London. The trouble was that there were simply
not enough competent people to hold the fort during these absences.
Worst
of all, Beit had had a stroke and for a while had been partially
paralysed. This had actually happened at Johannesburg in January
1903 - some people unkindly saying that it was because of the shock
of seeing Thomas Cullinan's rival new diamond mine near Pretoria.
Others blamed the great heat, which seems just as probable. Luckily,
"Dr Jim" had been to hand to look after Beit.
Rumours
about the Premier had suggested that its potential was far greater
than anything at Kimberley, but Francis Oats, on behalf of De Beers,
and Reyersbach had been sceptical, believing that the mine had been
"salted -that diamonds had been fraudulently introduced from elsewhere.
Beit evidently thought quite the opposite, and according to FitzPatrick
actually lost his temper, a rare event. "He burst out with: "Do
not talk damn nonsense... Look here, Oats, you always were a damn
fool. You are a damn fool now."
The
Premier certainly was not salted, and Oats's attitude was to prove
an expensive mistake, for -as a joint enterprise with the Transvaal
government- it was to prove an unfriendly rival to De Beers for
many years, with its own selling organization in London. Blue ground
was discovered in April 1903. The diamonds tended to be small, with
at least one notable exception, namely the famous Cullinan diamond
of 3,025 3/4 carats, the largest ever, which was found in 1905 and
later presented to Edward VII, two of the largest gems from it forming
part of the Imperial State Crown and the Royal Sceptre.
Beit
never quite recovered from the stroke. On 20 February Friedrich
Eckstein wrote to Samuel Evans to say that Beit had, "thank God",
left for Hamburg. "If he had stayed much longer he would have been
dead in a fortnight." On Beit's return Julius found him markedly
less interested in the business, and knew that his own load of work
would thus be increased. Julius now was suffering from indigestion
and had developed eczema, which involved having to take an "oil
treatment" and was to recur for the rest of his life.
However
much Julius was determined to keep out of politics, he was frequently
consulted by the major politicians of the day, Conservative Unionist
and Liberal, many of whom became his friends. He also saw Milner
when in London, but was sceptical about the results of his promoting
agriculture in the northern states. On the question of colour, he
was fairly open-minded. On 13 May he wrote to Evans, making one
of his rare comments on the subject:
Our
struggle and difficulty are in the present and near future, and
I think with you that the ever-increasing Kaffir population will
present many difficulties. But surely the best way to prepare
for them is to get them to work in good time and settled with
regular wants. I consider the Chinese necessary as a stopgap to
be got rid of when it suits. I cannot understand the objections
to a trial at least. We all feel [that] for some years to come
we must have outside help and the problem has to be faced. If
we go on as at present topheavy, in every respect, there must
be a fall and as we and others have been the channel to convey
millions [of pounds] to South Africa we cannot stand by and see
the confidence go because the agitators object.
On
4 July Julius told Evans that Chamberlain had denied any possibility
of an election that year. A change of government might lead to unrest
re South Africa, and first and foremost the resignation of H. E.
[Milner]. Here he was primarily referring to the great new topic
in Britain, that of Tariff Reform and Imperial Preference, proposed
by Chamberlain on 15 May at Birmingham in what has been described
as one of the most sensational speeches in modern politics. To question
the efficacy of Free Trade was to many Britons like disputing a
religion. Julius was to be strongly in favour of Tariff Reform during
the debates of 1904 and 1905, and it was the one political subject
on which he felt he could not keep his silence.
In
October he launched his £2 million African Ventures syndicate, "with
a view to steadying the market and regaining the confidence of the
Transvaal mines". Old friends subscribed - Porgès,
Kann, Carl Meyer, the Rothschilds, Max Michaelis, Ernest Cassel,
Jim Taylor - as did members of the Diamond Syndicate in London and
various Swiss, German and French banks, including the new Banque
Rouvier, which had absorbed the Banque Française after it
had got into difficulties as a result of the Anglo-Boer War. The
president of the new bank, Maurice Rouvier, was a politician as
well as banker, and soon left the post to become Minister of Finance
in the French government: a useful contact for all concerned. Wernher,
Beit also arranged for stock options to be made available to twenty-two
leading French journals, "on the understanding that they must write
first of all in favour of the importation of unskilled Asiatic labour
being allowed in the Transvaal". Other "Goldbugs" on the Rand, such
as the Albus, Neumann, and the directors of Gold Fields, followed
suit with subsidies to these papers.
[
.]
|