The Conscience of the Rich (7 page)

The dining-room was no more clearly lit than usual when we went in; the table had been lengthened to contain the party. Mr March placed Philip on his left hand, and Philip’s wife on his right: then the brothers and sisters in order of seniority: Charles at the far end of the table, and the younger people near him. I sat a place or two from Charles between Florence Simon and one of the Herbert March girls.

Voices rose and blared as, looking down the table, I saw faces coming out of the shadows: I felt a glow because these Friday nights had gone on for so long. It was the warm romantic glow, the feeling of past time: the glow which made one of those dead and gone Friday nights become more enchanted in our minds than it ever was to sit through. I felt exactly as I sometimes did at dinner at the Inn, or when I was Francis’ guest at his High Table. The chain of lives – odd glimmers ran through my head, the fragments of information which had come down about the first English Marches sitting round their dinner-table in the City, just over their bank. The two original March families dined together on the Friday in the week they arrived in London from Deventer.

How they had first got established in Holland, where they had come from before that, there was no record nor any tradition – not even of how they derived their name. In Spain March could have been a Jewish name, but there was no evidence that these Marches ever lived there. The first mention of them in the archives was mid-seventeenth-century: they were already in Holland, already one of the leading families of the Ashkenazim (the Northern group of Jews, as opposed to the Sephardim who lived in Spain and round the Mediterranean coasts).

They were well-off when they left Deventer. During the last half of the eighteenth century, Friday night by Friday night, these parties went on, families walking to each other’s houses across the narrow City streets; their friends and relatives, the family of Levi Barend Cohen, the Rothschilds, the Montefiores, lived close by.

The nineteenth century came in; all those families, like those of the Gentile bankers, moved westward; and the Marches’ dinners took place now round Holborn. It was already the fourth generation since Deventer; the children were no longer given Jewish first names. A honeymoon couple travelled in post-chaises along the French roads as soon as the war was over, and Charlotte March wrote in 1816: ‘it must be admitted that in the arts of the toilette and the cuisine France excels our country: but we can hearten ourselves as English people that in
everything
essential we are infinitely superior to a country which shows so many profligacies that it is charitable to attribute them to their infamous revolution.’ This though they stayed with their Rothschild uncle in Paris; that pair thought of themselves as English, differing as little from their acquaintances as the Roman Catholic families who, when Charlotte wrote, were still hoping to be emancipated.

Victoria’s reign began. Round the dinner-table, the Marches were sometimes indignant at Jewish disabilities; David Salomons was not allowed to take his seat in Parliament. There was also talk, even in the forties, of liberalizing themselves; one March became a Christian. Apart from him, no March had married ‘out of the faith’: nor indeed out of their own circle of Anglo-Jewish families. That was still true down to the people round this table; except for one defection, by a woman cousin of Mr March’s, thirty years before.

The March bank flourished; many of the families moved to the neighbourhood of Bryanston Square; by the seventies, one of Mr March’s uncles was holding Friday dinners at No. 17. The universities and Parliament became open, and Mr March’s father went into the House. England was the least anti-Semitic of countries; when the news of the pogroms arrived from Russia in 1880, the Lord Mayor opened a fund for Jewish relief. Half the University of Oxford signed a protest. The outrages seemed an anachronistic horror to decent prosperous Englishmen. The Marches sent thousands of pounds to the Lord Mayor’s fund. Yet that news was only a quiver, a remote quiver, in the distant world.

By then the Marches had reached their full prosperity; on Friday nights cabs made their way under the gaslight to the great town houses. The Marches were secure, they were part of the country, they lived almost exactly the lives of other wealthy men.

The century passed out: its last twenty years, and the next fourteen, were the best time for wealthy men to be alive. The Marches developed as prodigally as the other rich.

Those were the heroic days of Friday nights. A whole set of stories collected round them, most of which originated when Mr March was a young man. Of Uncle Henry March, who owned race-horses and was a friend of the Prince of Wales; how he regretted all his life his slowness in repartee, and after each Friday night used to wake his wife in bed so that she should jot down answers which had just occurred to him. Of his brother Justin, who, to celebrate a Harrow victory, rode to his house on one of the horses that drew the heavy roller at Lord’s; and who, when only nine people attended one of his Friday nights, took hold of the tablecloth and pulled the whole dinner service to the ground. Of their cousin, Alfred March Hart, the balletomane who helped sponsor Diaghilev’s first season in London: who as an old man, hearing someone at a Friday night during the war hope for a Lansdowne peace, rose to his feet and began: ‘I am a very old man: and I hope the war will continue for many years after my death.’

They were the sort of stories that one finds in any family that has been prosperous for two hundred years. For me they evoked the imaginary land which exists just before one’s childhood. Often as I heard them I felt something like homesick – homesick for a time before I was born, for a society which would have thought my father’s home about as primitive as a Trobriand Islander’s.

The dinner began. At the head of the table, Philip and Mr March were talking about expectations for the Budget. Mr March suggested that supertax would be applied at a lower limit.

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Philip. ‘That’s on a par with your idea for the new trust, Leonard.’

Mr March chuckled.

‘I should like to remind you that your last idea didn’t bring in sufficient for your requirements. Also that you made an exhibition of yourself over that same trust. That was the time your husband wrote a letter so precipitately–’ He turned to his sister-in-law and began to tell the story which I heard on my first visit to Bryanston Square.

‘It’s fantastic to imagine Winston doing anything of the kind,’ Philip interrupted him. ‘After what he said to the unfortunate George. I wouldn’t believe it if George weren’t much too incompetent to invent the story.’

The table quietened down. Philip gave the actual words. It was the first time I had heard behind-the-scenes gossip at that level: Philip endowed it with a special authority.

The elder Marches listened with satisfaction as Philip settled the question of supertax. Most of them were not only academically interested; there was a great deal of wealth in the room. Exactly how much, I should have liked very much to know, but about their fortunes they were more reticent than about anything else. None of the younger generation, at our end of the table, could do more than guess. Apparently no individual March had ever been enormously rich. There had probably never been a million pounds at any one man’s disposal. So far as one could judge from wills, settlements, and their style of life, most of the fortunes at this dinner-table would be between £100,000 and £500,000.

Philip was talking about the next election: ‘We’ve left it too late. We’re a set of bunglers. Our fellows had better stick it out until they’re bound to go.’

‘What’s going to happen?’ said Caroline.

‘We shall get the sack,’ said Philip.

‘Does that mean a Socialist Government?’ asked Florence Simon of Charles.

‘What else do you think it can mean?’ Mr March exclaimed down the table. ‘Now that your Aunt Winifred’s wretched party has come to the end that they’ve always richly deserved.’

He was chuckling at Winifred, Herbert March’s wife, who was the only Liberal of the older generation. The Marches had been Conservatives for a hundred years; when they stood for Parliament, it was as supporters of Salisbury, Balfour, Bonar Law; their political attitudes were those of other rich men.

At our end of the table, opinion moved a good way to the left. Herbert March’s daughter Margaret, who had not long since graduated at Oxford, was working as secretary to a Labour member. She was the most practical of them, the only professional: Charles took her side in argument, was more radical than she was, and Katherine followed suit. Most of the others had undertaken to vote against Sir Philip’s party. Of course, many other Marches had passed through a liberal phase in their youth – but to them that night, to me watching them, this seemed something harder, more likely to last.

We had finished the pheasant. Philip and Mr March put politics aside, and began talking about one of their nieces by marriage, who was reported to be living apart from her husband. She had always possessed a reputation for good looks: ‘the best-looking girl in the family, Herbert said, though I never knew why he was specially competent to judge,’ said Mr March. She had stayed unmarried until she was over thirty.

She was said to have had a good many offers, ‘but no one ever established where they came from,’ said Mr March. ‘The only reason I believed in them was that Hannah didn’t.’ And then, to everyone’s surprise, she had married someone quite poor, unattractive and undistinguished. ‘She married him,’ Philip announced, ‘because he was the only man who didn’t look when she was getting over a stile.’ His grin was caustic; but his dignity had broken for a moment, and there was a randy glitter in his eyes.

They were arguing about what had gone wrong with the marriage, when their sister Caroline, who was deaf, suddenly caught a word and said: ‘Were you talking about Charles?’ Mr March shook his head, but she went on: ‘I hope he realizes he’s making an ass of himself. Albert Hart won’t hear of his giving up the Bar.’

‘It’s all unsettled, there’s nothing whatever to report,’ said Mr March quickly.

Mr March had been compelled to speak loudly, even for a March, to make her understand. His voice silenced everyone else, and the entire table heard Caroline’s next question.

‘Why is it unsettled? Why has he taken to bees in his bonnet just when he might be becoming some use in the world?’

‘The whole matter’s been exaggerated,’ said Mr March. ‘Albert always was given to premature discussion–’

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ said Philip.

‘I mentioned it to you. She’s not made a discovery. I mentioned that my son Charles was going through a period of not being entirely satisfied with his progress at the Bar. Nothing has been concealed.’

Katherine was looking at Charles with a frown of distress. ‘I expect he’s got over it now. You’re all serene, aren’t you, Charles?’ Philip asked down the table: his tone was dry but friendly.

‘I’m quite happy, Uncle Philip.’

‘You’re getting down to it properly now, aren’t you?’

‘The whole matter’s been grossly exaggerated,’ Mr March broke in, rapidly, as though signalling to Charles.

‘I expect I can take it that your father’s right,’ said Philip.

There was a pause.

‘I’m sorry. I should like to agree. But you’d find out sooner or later. It’s no use my pretending that I shall work at the Bar.’

‘What’s behind all this? They tell me you’ve made a good start. What’s the matter with you?’

Charles hesitated again.

‘You’ve got one nephew at the Bar, Uncle Philip.’ Charles looked at Robert. ‘Do you want all your nephews there too? Cutting each other’s throats–’

He seemed to be passing it off casually, his tone was light; but Caroline, who was watching his face without hearing the words, broke out: ‘I didn’t mean to turn you into a board meeting. This comes of being so abominably deaf. Leonard, do you remember the day when Hannah thought I was deafer than I am?’

We went back to our pudding. Katherine had flushed: Charles smiled at her, but did not speak. He stopped the footman from filling his glass again. Most of us, after the questions ceased, had been glad of another drink, including Francis, who had been putting down his wine unobtrusively but steadily since dinner began.

The table became noisier than at any time that evening; the interruption seemed over; Charles’ neighbours were laughing as he talked.

Florence Simon plucked at my sleeve. She was a woman of thirty, with abstracted brown eyes and a long sharp nose; all through dinner I had got nowhere with her; whatever I said, she had been vague and shy. Now her eyes were bright, she had thought of something to say.

‘I wish you’d been at the dinner last Friday. It was much more interesting then.’

‘Was it?’ I said.

‘Oh, we had some really good general conversation,’ said Florence Simon. She relapsed into silence, giving me a kind, judicious, and contented smile.

By half past eleven Katherine could speak to Charles at last. She had just said some goodbyes, and only Francis and I were left with them in the drawing-room.

‘It was atrociously bad luck,’ she burst out.

‘I was glad it didn’t go on any longer,’ said Charles.

‘It must have been intolerable,’ she cried.

‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘I was just coming to the state when I could hear my own voice getting rougher.’

‘The family have never heard anyone put Uncle Philip off before.’

‘I thought he was perfectly good-tempered,’ Charles replied. He was being matter-of-fact in the face of the excitement. ‘He’s merely used to being told what he wants to know.’

‘He’s still talking to Mr L in his study. There are several of them still there, you know,’ she went on.

‘Didn’t you expect that?’ Charles smiled at her.

‘It’s absolutely maddening,’ she broke out again, ‘this fluke happening just when Mr L was ready to accept it.’

Charles was silent for a moment. Then he said: ‘I’m not certain that he was.’