A Prince Among Stones (7 page)

A good two or three hours later I rang Marie-Hélène for a little gossip, which centred around a discussion of her various aches and pains, ending with her enunciating – as if it was a profound truth – the platitude about good health being the most important gift one has. I saw my opening, and told her that Marella had been obliged to go to Rome to look after her poor niece, who not only was in the latter stages of a terminal cancer but had both recently been widowed when her husband had been killed in a car crash and was bereft of her father who had also died of cancer the week before.

There was a short pause. ‘Et mon dîner?'

I was also now the father of two small sons: Rudolf, who was born in 1957, very soon after we got married, and his brother Konrad, who followed a year later. When we were in London I was unable to be as close to the children as I would have liked since I was working for American stockbrokers. My hours were very difficult to blend with an active father's role. Bache had to base themselves on New York time, since the market did not close there until eight o'clock in the evening London time, and one of the wretched employees had to take down the prices and talk to the people who gave one orders late at night, all of which was extremely irritating from the point of view of my social life.

I managed to work it out reasonably well, but even so it meant I was rarely home before seven or seven thirty, and I suppose I only saw the children for any reasonable time at weekends and said goodnight to them most of the other nights. That was, of course, far from unusual for the time.

Once, when we were staying at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight, my father visited for tea. The boys were absolutely angelic. As my father left, he said, ‘So nice to see you, children.' Rudolf and Konrad said their goodbyes with immaculate politeness – any other mode of behaviour would have been inconceivable to them at that time – but Rudolf remembers he could not really bear the pretence and so burst out with, ‘Oh, Grandpa, we don't really like you, we're only pretending.' My father hooted with laughter.

He had also remarried: his second wife was Diana Gollancz, the daughter of the publisher, Victor. She died young, in her forties, from cancer of the brain, and in tribute to her he wrote
A Time to Live, A Time to Die
, a very personal and moving second book. ‘It is difficult,' he wrote, ‘ever to catch the fragrance of a human person. There are in our life a few climacteric moments when we must make a choice. We do not always recognize these moments for what they are, and only when looking back do we realize the full significance of a choice made at a particular time.'

The boys would come along on the European trips for their holidays, though in those days they stayed with their nanny in pensions close by where Josephine and I would be put up in a grand hotel. There was no question of the boys staying with their parents in their hotel – not because we asked and were refused; we wouldn't have dreamt of asking.

The lifestyle we enjoyed established itself into a pleasant seasonal pattern. Whenever I was working for Bache at the office that they opened in Milan – and of all extraordinary times they wanted me there in August, when anyone with any money deserted Milan and headed for the seaside – we were able ourselves to escape for weekends in Venice, staying at the house of my colleague Bino Cicogna, who was made manager of the Milan office, or, indeed, with other friends and fellow guests who included the novelists Maurice Druon and Nancy Mitford, Victor Cunard (Nancy's cousin and
The Times
' correspondent in Venice) and Harold Acton, a writer, poet and a witty conversationalist as original in his own way as Lord Berners had been. He was frequently thought to have been the model for the character of Anthony Blanche in
Brideshead Revisited
, but although he was friends with Evelyn Waugh at Oxford, Waugh always denied that he had been the inspiration.

One night at dinner we were discussing mutual acquaintances, and the conversation moved on to the subject of which hotel in Venice everyone preferred. One of the guests mentioned, ‘Well, my sister-in-law
hates
the Metropole.' Harold wagged his finger sternly. ‘Oh, Arthur, I never associated you with sisters-in-law' . . .

Lunch would be consumed on the Lido in the various cabanas near the Excelsior Hotel, served by footmen from the various houses in white coats and golden heraldic buttons. One scorching day I remember we were presented with an entirely cold repast. Bino's sister Marina turned to her mother with a blazing eye and pained expression. ‘No, Mamma, la colazione deve
sempre
essere calda e cremosa.' Marina insisted on her breakfasts and lunches being both warm and creamy until she embraced the delights of dieting with zealous fervour.

The Contessa Anna Maria Cicogna had a palazzo on the Grand Canal and was a great defender of the city, leading a ‘committee to save Venice' as early as the 1960s (‘Venice is dying slowly, like an old lady, without tears or laments,' she said at the time), but we also visited her in Libya. Her father had been the Italian governor of Libya and had constructed a wonderful house there. We set out on expeditions to the Roman remains at Sabratha and Leptis Magna, where, on the edge of the sea, a table had, as on the Lido, been set for a sumptuous lunch.

Spending so much time in Italy, especially in Rome, I was able to continue developing my love for and knowledge and understanding of classical music. My tastes, as at Oxford, leaned towards Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. I had less interest in twentieth-century composers, although I had records of
L'Après-midi d'un Faune
and
Le
sacre du printemps
, enjoyed Hindemith, and was familiar with the music of Les Six, partly because of the Jouves, who knew that group of composers so well. They had also introduced me to another great friend of theirs, the cellist Maurice Gendron, who used to come over for dinner, bringing his cello with him, and often played some unaccompanied Bach cello suites. I always found it fascinating to watch him perform because he smoked while playing, with a
mégot
permanently planted
in his mouth. I was riveted waiting to see what would happen as his cigarette burnt ever lower since his hands were otherwise occupied. Somehow he always managed to snatch it away just before it burnt his lips.

Nineteenth-century Italian music and operas I only really came to know after getting married, because Josephine had studied singing and knew all of the nineteenth-century repertoire extremely well, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Puccini. We often went together to Covent Garden and then to see opera in Rome, where we first heard Maria Callas in
Norma
, at the Terme di Caracalla.

I met Maria Callas later in Paris both before and after her involvement with Aristotle Onassis, and found myself sitting next to her at lunch and dinner a few times. She had become an unhappy woman. Even as a young man I could see this great genius was truly miserable. It was terribly sad. A vast talent, shaken by an unfortunate love affair. Nothing more complicated than that. Any other young man or woman who had had an unhappy love affair would eventually have moved on, but for somebody with such a highly developed and tense emotional side, it had a much more serious effect. We spoke in French, her voice low and melodic, and she in person, striking and attractive, though not classically beautiful.

On another later occasion Josephine and I were invited to a small dinner by M. et Mme Bory. He was a property developer who owned Fauchon, the grand grocer's and foie gras specialists in the Place de la Madeleine, and was very socially active. The guests included Maria Callas, Ingrid Bergman and the Duchess of Windsor . . . You would have thought this would have been one of the most fascinating dinners in the world. But not a word was spoken by any of these three great ladies – they were each so powerful that they were struck dumb in each other's company.

Bache's plan of sending me to Europe worked. As I made new acquaintances through my existing network of friends or met other guests in the hotels, I was able to bring new clients to the firm, including Stavros Niarchos, owner of the largest shipping fleet in the world: I tried to get part of his account and ended up managing some of his English securities through the London office.

I also became great friends with Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, a Chilean whose fortunes – ironically for a man who was such an aesthete – derived from the sale of guano, the phosphorus- and ammonia-rich droppings of seabirds that was highly prized, and valuable, as a natural fertiliser up to the end of the nineteenth century.

I first met Arturo at a cocktail party given by Lady Abingdon when her husband was attached to the British Embassy; my cousin Johannes Thurn und Taxis had taken me along.

Arturo modelled himself on a miniature edition of Louis XIV and was a committed collector of walking sticks with Fabergé handles and, more importantly, great Louis XIV furniture. I remember he once saw me walking very fast through the hall at the Palace Hotel at St Moritz and stopped me to say, ‘Now then, Rupert, one important lesson I must teach you: never walk fast, because it will look as if you have something to do!'

Among his many elegant possessions, Arturo had acquired a motor yacht called
Gaviota IV
, originally built in 1931 for the head of Reynolds Tobacco. Josephine and I joined the Lopez-Willshaws onboard many times. It was the most luxurious boat that one can imagine. A maximum of eight guests were looked after by a crew of twenty-six, all English, bar one French sailor, who was expected to speak all other languages. Josephine was particularly impressed by the fact that our friend Perla Mattison (wife of the banker Graham) brought along two vast cabin trunks, and that she and the other ladies on board changed for dinner into a different
haute couture
dress every single night of the voyage.

Arturo was married to a charming Chilean, Patricia, but it was widely known that theirs was an amicable marriage of convenience. When I met him, Arturo had just broken up with a young boyfriend, Tony Pawson (whom Josephine knew). Tony was an English man about town whom Arturo had put up in a grand flat in Paris. The story was that Tony's mother had said to a friend of hers, ‘It is so marvellous about my son Tony. We thought he only had about £200 a year, which is all we give him. But he must have found a marvellous job in Paris; look at all those suits he had made.' Not only was Arturo funding Tony's sartorial elegance, he had bought him a pink Rolls-Royce complete with a black chauffeur. Arturo later told me that he chose a pink Rolls-Royce because it was instantly recognisable and so he would always know what Tony was up to.

However, Tony had been superseded by a new companion, Baron Alexis de Redé. At that cocktail party Arturo, Alexis
and
Tony were all in attendance. Alexis and Arturo were key lumps of sugar in the coffee pot, or
cafetière
, of that society. Arturo had met Alexis during the war in New York, where Alexis was attached to one of the large stockbrokers. It became apparent to Arturo that Alexis was very bright and had a sound head for business and so not only did he become a loyal companion, he also looked after the Lopez fortune.

The person best placed to describe Alexis was Alexis himself. After his death in 2004 I helped publish his memoirs. ‘I dislike fervour and enthusiasm,' he said. ‘I do not like noise. Very often, I remain silent, for silence has its own dignity. I listen for the nuances that stir behind the Babylon of general conversation. I relish comfort, style and luxury. I dislike men who do not wear white shirts in the evening. Many such things I dislike.'

Alexis became a good client of mine, and it was he who first invited me to a dinner with Maria Callas. Alexis suggested, one winter in St Moritz, that I should look around for a small merchant bank to buy in London. He encouraged me by telling me both that the purchase would be interesting to him and that he thought merchant banking would be a better long-term career for me. At the time he gave me that advice he was right, and the advice sensible: stockbrokers, even in the United States, were partnerships, and there was not the opportunity to make huge amounts of money off flotations. Being a broker I didn't see myself continuing just being a broker trying to get new accounts for the firm.

However, had I in fact stayed with Bache I would probably have ended up benefiting enormously from the subsequent change in the financial climate by the public offering of Stock Exchange partnerships. But I have no regrets about accepting Alexis's advice. When I returned to London I set about looking for a merchant bank to purchase.

Within a year or so I had found a suitable answer in Leopold Joseph & Sons Ltd. It was a small merchant bank – I always considered it to be the smallest grade I bank whereas others may have felt that it was a good fish but in grade II. The brothers who owned it did not possess the ambition to channel themselves into being one of the great players although in New York their counterparty was Salomon Brothers and so they were well known internationally.

At the time the most important stockbrokers were Merrill Lynch and Bache and half a dozen other American brokers, while in England Cazenove, Panmure Gordon, and Hoare were in the same sort of business as the existing merchant banks: Rothschild, Baring's, Hambros, Philip Hill, Warburg's, Schroders.

The smaller merchant banks like Leopold Joseph were smaller simply because they did not have big clients, who were attracted to the larger banks able to raise significant sums of money. In those days the City was going through a very difficult period. Taxes, it must be remembered, were at 83 per cent above £2,000 and above £2,000 a year any unearned money – dividends or interest – carried an additional surtax of 15 per cent. Which it is easy to see adds up to 98 per cent of somebody's income. The consequence of this was that unless it was really necessary the average merchant bank director hardly worked at all on Mondays and Fridays. He would come in, dressed in tweeds, at ten, have a long, highly liquid lunch and leave at four.