Stone's Fall (36 page)

CHAPTER
11

Jules did turn up the next morning, and more or less from the moment he walked through the door, he transformed my life. I only ever had to tell him once about how to do any task, or where something was to be put. Anything I requested he did speedily and well. He was never late and was as tidy as I was messy. On his own account he began teaching himself English by borrowing a copy of
David Copperfield
and a dictionary, and showed a considerable flair for the language. When there was nothing for him to do, he retired to a corner and read quietly; when there was something to do, he did it without questioning.

And so, when the question of the Countess Elizabeth Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala’s shareholders began to pique me, I naturally dispatched Jules to discover who they were. As a test of his ingenuity, I did not tell him how to go about it, but rather let him discover for himself the best way of accomplishing the task.

It took him two weeks which, on the whole, was not bad going, and at the end of that time he produced a list of four names. I was impressed; professionalism in any field is something to be admired, and in a relatively short space of time Elizabeth had captured a Russian count attached to the Embassy and a banker, both married and of stupendous wealth. In addition there was a composer of a progressive hue, who made up for his limited financial success by the possession of a very wealthy wife; while the last one was an heir, that is to say the likely inheritor of a grand fortune with no personal merit of his own. By the time Elizabeth had finished with him, the fortune was considerably smaller. And that was before she had a reputation for knowing the Prince of Wales. Shortly after she got back to Paris, the composer was replaced—she was quite ruthless in these matters—with the Finance Minister, in whose company I had met her at Biarritz and a few months after that the heir, his fortune now depleted, was also cast aside. Each one of these made her wealthy. All combined rapidly made her prodigiously so; each one, for example, took on the entirety of the rent on her house, paid for her servants and gave her generous gifts of jewellery, which she kept in a safebox, each piece labelled with the name of the giver so she would not wear the wrong piece when being visited. Four-fifths of her income, after a portion of her debts were paid off, was carefully banked.

By the time I received Jules’s report, I had met three of these characters at various evenings to which she had invited me; and I must say that all of them behaved with such discretion that I would never have guessed the reasons for their presence. Each treated Elizabeth with the utmost courtesy and respect, and never gave the slightest hint of any untoward familiarity. If any suspected the role of the others, they again let no hint of it escape them, but conversed in an easy and polite manner as to any other acquaintance.

In return she was absolutely discreet, and never once caused them any embarrassment or awkwardness—although some at least would have been happy had they been known to have conquered her. Each individual was of high personal worth—I do not mean in financial terms although they obviously were that, but in terms of character. Except for Rouvier, whose position struck me as a strange lapse of taste on her part. Wherever she had learned it, Elizabeth had the art of choosing well. She gave them a sort of loyalty in addition to the other services she provided, and they responded.

She invited about a dozen people every week. All were men; if Elizabeth had a blind spot it was to have an almost total disregard for other women. Men excited in her no rivalry or jealousy; women did so often and in violent terms. I would not go so far as to say that she detested members of her own sex, but she had no high opinion of them. It must be said that many women returned this emotion in full force, instinctively disliking, suspecting or fearing her. Many would have been glad to bring her low; it was her vulnerable spot, all the more so because she was unaware of it—a surprising weakness of perception in one who in all other matters saw so clearly.

After a month or so I was promoted to the inner circle of admirers who spent every Thursday evening in her company. I was never offered, nor would I have accepted, a role as one of her shareholders. I didn’t have enough money, for one thing, and besides, I rather liked things the way they were.

She ordered her evenings well. No subject was banned from discussion; all she insisted on was that conversation was conducted in the most civilised of terms. Argument she allowed as the essence of conversation, but any heat or emotion was utterly forbidden. I have seen many a man conduct a business meeting with less skill than she ran her evenings. She managed to persuade everyone who was invited that they were members of a special group, unusually insightful, witty and sagacious, and that these qualities came, in some mysterious fashion, from being in her presence. Certainly, I thought my own conversation far more sparkling on those evenings than at other times, my jokes better, my understanding of the world stage more profound, and I was far more cautious than most of the other people there.

It was also genuinely interesting and enjoyable. The routine was unvarying: a supper of excellent food accompanied by the best wine, which she spent much of the previous day choosing so that her chef could have all ready, followed by conversation which lasted until eleven-thirty, at which point our hostess would rise and tell us, quite simply, that it was time to leave. The evening would seem to be formless; sometimes we would break up into small groups and discuss different subjects, sometimes the conversation would involve all present. Elizabeth herself rarely gave her own opinion; rather she questioned, sometimes respectfully, sometimes in fun, making her views plain by her responses to the opinions of others. Only on the subject of literature did she give her own views, and in these she demonstrated that, in French, Russian and German, she was remarkably well read. This was, you remember, when Russian Soul and Spirituality were all the rage in fashionable Europe, and everyone had to be able to quote huge chunks of
Anna Karenina
by heart. Of English Elizabeth knew all but nothing at that time.

It has been said many times both that the French are the world’s most accomplished conversationalists, and that the art of conversation is dying. The former is true, and if it is also the case that it has declined since the Revolution, then the conversation of the ancien régime must have been truly splendid. I came to look forward to those evenings as the summit of my week, my evening of pleasure after a week of often unprofitable labour. In winter they would be held in the drawing room of the house she had taken in the rue Montesquieu, with dozens of candles and a fire adding a feeling of comfort to the conversation. It was a large high-ceilinged room, some fifty feet long and thirty wide. On one side was a range of windows that gave onto a glass-enclosed veranda filled with palm trees and birds; on another a wide door opened into a smaller, more intimate sitting room. All around were china, cameos and silver, the walls hung with Gobelins tapestries and paintings, mainly Italian and French. Much of this had come with the house, which she rented from the Marquis d’Alençon, who was then living in Mexico to escape the police. But she had added her own touches, and these had been chosen with care—again, where she learned discernment in such matters, and how she avoided the vulgarity of her fellows, I could not understand.

It sounds very artificial and in a way it was so; artificial in the way that an opera or symphony is different from the cacophonous blaring of a music-hall band. Some sneer at such meetings, denouncing the formality and the lack of spontaneity; they maintain that conviction is displayed best through loud voices and violent verbal assault, that politeness ensures the triumph of the commonplace. Not so. Politeness, I learned at her salon, is a demanding discipline; to convince others without recourse to the tricks of the demagogue or bully requires a high level of intelligence, especially when the audience is learned and intelligent. Courtesy elevates thought to the highest level, especially when the subject is contentious. And the salons, which were then the principal debating chambers of the French political, financial and intellectual elites, far more important than the Chambre des Deputés, always insisted on courtesy above all other qualities.

That did not mean that the conversations were bland; far from it. Frequently they were highly charged, especially where I was concerned. This was the period—one of the many periods—in which anti-English sentiment was running high in France, and many would have been more than glad to see some sort of armed conflict to vent their frustrations at England’s habitual superiority. To convince me that my country was the main source of disorder in the world was a frequent aim and I was required on many occasions to justify my country to my friends—for friends they became, despite the differences between us.

Take, for example, the opinions of Jules Lepautre, Deputy for Caen, for whom England and the English (present company excepted,
cher Monsieur
) were the embodiment of all evil. We had not come to France’s aid in 1870 and had positively encouraged Germany to dismember the country; had lured France into a disastrous commercial treaty with the sole purpose of wrecking its industries; had bought the Suez Canal in order to strangle France’s Empire before it was even properly established; were meddling in Eastern Europe, and manoeuvring to exclude France from Egypt.

I conceded many of these points, but responded by asking: what is to be done about it? Britain and France couldn’t fight a war even if they wanted to.

“Why not?”

“Because you can only have a war if both sides are fundamentally similar. Where are the two countries to fight, and with what? France, I hope, would never be foolish enough to have a naval war; a small portion of the Royal Navy would suffice to eliminate all of the French navy in a few hours. And why would Britain wish to pit its army against France’s? That would be as unequal a struggle, and even if we could invade I cannot see any advantage to it. Nor can I see any likelihood of France invading Britain. It has not succeeded in the past nine hundred years, and I see little prospect of its fortunes changing in the near future. So how is there to be a war? Much better to recognise the impossibility of it and then become friends. Ally France’s army with Britain’s navy and who could possibly stand against us?”

I mention this conversation—which began on a cold evening in late September 1890—not because of the wisdom of my remarks, as there was little in them, nor because they accurately reflected my views, as they did not. Rather, it was because of the intervention by Abraham Netscher, then head of the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas and an infrequent visitor to Elizabeth’s house.

“I think my two friends here are shadowboxing,” he said comfortably, sipping from his glass of brandy. He was a fine man, tall and impressive in his stance, with a high-domed forehead and a piercing stare. In fact, this was because he was short-sighted and was too vain to wear his glasses in company. Accordingly he had a tendency to peer at people, and some times to stare a little above the right or left shoulder of the person he was addressing, a habit which was remarkably disconcerting as it gave the impression always that he was talking to someone else.

In many people such vanity would be undignified, but no one would ever have thought this of M. Netscher, once they knew him a little. He was a man of exceptional intelligence, and allied this capacity to great wisdom and immense experience, having lived through—and prospered through—several regimes and generations of politicians.

“You are both defining the notion of war far too narrowly,” he remarked, “and in a fashion which, if you will forgive me for saying so, is remarkably old-fashioned for people who are so young.” Netscher was somewhere near his seventieth year at this point, but still had a good decade left before his failing powers obliged him to rest.

“The marching of soldiers is usually to steal territory or money from the opponent. But in this case, as you say, neither France nor England have any such designs on the other. This is not because nations are any less greedy, I fear, but because wealth no longer lies in land or treasure. France could, perhaps, invade and annexe all of Cornwall, or Scotland and Ireland, and it would scarcely damage England in any way, except in its pride. Its power lies in its accumulated wealth, and that cannot be stolen by armies. London is the centre of the world of money. It is an empire on its own; in fact the real Empire only exists to serve the needs of London. From the incessant movement of capital comes all of England’s power.

“But it is fragile, this strength. Never in the whole of humanity has so much power been generated by such a feeble instrument. The flow of capital and the generation of profit depend on confidence. The belief that the word of a London banker is his bond. On that evanescent assurance depends all industry, all trade and the very Empire itself. A determined and sensible enemy would not waste his time and gold striking at the navy or invading the colonies. He would aim to destroy the reputation of a handful of bankers in London. Then the power of England would dissolve like mist on a warm morning.”

“I think such an enemy would discover that it is more resilient than you say, sir,” I suggested. “Just because it is a power that cannot be touched or held, does not mean that it is not real or strong. The most enduring institution in the world is the Church, which depends on faith alone to survive, and it has survived empire after empire for nearly two thousand years. I would be quite content if the influence of the City of London lasted half as long.”

“That is true,” he conceded. “Though with the Pope locked in the Vatican by Italian troops, and priests being expelled from schools across Europe, and the teaching of the Church being challenged by historians and linguists and scientists across the world, I do not find that you greatly strengthen your argument. I doubt I will live long enough to see the last church close its doors forever; but you may.”