CHAPTER XVI.

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.