Ritz and Escoffier by Luke Barr

Author:Luke Barr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2018-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

10

RITZ MAKES a MOVE

Alfred Beit, the South African gold and diamond magnate who was a regular at the Savoy, would regale Ritz with stories of his exploits, always encouraging him to think big. There was a dearth of great hotels the world over, Beit said. Why, with the right backing, a man of Ritz’s quality could open a luxury hotel in every capital in Europe—and in Africa, too. Johannesburg, for example, where Beit and the other mining investors had made their fortunes, was sorely in need of a grand hotel. And what about Cairo? Everyone was going to Cairo these days. And New York City, of course. And Madrid, and Paris, and London, too. Yes, London could always use another luxury hotel, and so what if that meant competing with the Savoy?

It was exhilarating to imagine the possibilities, the conversations fueling Ritz’s ambitious dreams and his persistent sense that he was undervalued by the Savoy.

What had started as idle talk soon became more than that. Ritz’s contract with D’Oyly Carte had always left him free to pursue his own business dealings, as long they took place abroad. He had made sure of that. The Savoy was running like a Swiss clock; now was the time to expand his portfolio, to reassert himself. His dealings over the past year with other hoteliers and hotel companies in Europe had only galvanized his determination. He was far and away the most respected hotel manager in Europe, yet he did not have a hotel of his own.

In early 1896, Ritz began approaching some of the wealthy businessmen who frequented the Savoy about the idea of forming a new company. It would be called the Ritz Hotel Syndicate Ltd. Some of these potential investors were shareholders in the Savoy, and they knew firsthand how talented Ritz was, that he’d been instrumental in making the hotel a success. Ritz’s arrangement with D’Oyly Carte, they knew, allowed him his independence. He worked at the Savoy for only six months of the year.

Ritz hosted a series of small lunches and dinners in the restaurant’s small private dining rooms, at which he described his plans to open luxury hotels in numerous cities. Beit was an early supporter, as were the Neumann brothers, Ludwig and Sigismund. Sigismund, like Beit, had made his fortune in the mining business in South Africa; his brother was a stockbroker at Leopold Hirsch and Company. This would turn out to be a fruitful connection, for soon some of the other partners at the bank, including the Russian baron Jacques de Gunzbourg and Leopold Hirsch himself, also invested in the new company. So did iron and steel magnate Robert Crawshay (a principal Savoy shareholder); Calouste Gulbenkian, a British-Armenian oil trader; Sir Joseph Duveen, a Dutch importer and antiques dealer; and A. G. Brand of Lazard Bank in London. Two Savoy insiders, Lord de Grey and Henry Higgins, were also investors.

They were a colorful and uniquely modern cast of characters, most of them Jewish, many of them immigrants or sons of immigrants, all of them exceedingly wealthy.

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