Grand Dukes and Diamonds by Raleigh Trevelyan

Author:Raleigh Trevelyan [Raleigh Trevelyan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571290307
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Phillips wrote on this letter: ‘Advised drastic punishment but not attitude that past cannot be wiped out.’

Four days later Julius was again writing that: ‘The Lemoine business took it out of me considerably but this is a bigger blow … Now I have nothing to wait for and I feel extremely tired … One cannot detach one’s mind, day or night, from this cruel blow and I decided to give it up.’

Those last words meant that he had irrevocably decided about the future of the partnership of Wernher, Beit and H. Eckstein & Company, and that both would be totally merged in the Central Mining and Investment Corporation.

He was writing on the eve of the birth of the Union of South Africa, and could hardly turn his mind to that great event. It took place on 31 May 1910, eight years to the day since the Peace of Vereeniging. Pretoria would be the executive capital, Cape Town the legislative capital and Bloemfontein the judicial capital. A triumph for the Boer negotiators of 1908–9, it was a union of peoples bitterly divided, yet caught in the legacy of history, a legacy of fear and suspicion: whites were faced with an ever-growing population of blacks, coloureds and Indians, biding their time. Whites of British origin were drawing together in opposing their Afrikaner co-citizens. The Afrikaners were themselves divided, some hankering after the days of the old republics.

On 6 May 1910 the King died suddenly – he had been dining quietly the night before with Sister Agnes. The Speaker therefore found the situation about his sons and Derrick all the more embarrassing, because of his official duties and attendances at the Lying in State. Having received another upsetting letter from Julius, he wrote to say that his wife was making herself ill with worry and was unable to rest. Julius agreed to see her.

Birdie, as she had done at Queen Victoria’s funeral, arranged for some fifty people, including Prime Minister Asquith’s children, to watch the funeral procession of Edward VII from the balcony of Bath House. The King’s gun carriage was immediately followed by his fox terrier Caesar, and then by King George V, Kaiser William II of Germany, eight kings, and royal princes such as the Duke of Connaught and Grand Duke Michael.

After a visit from both Derrick and Arthur, Julius had told Derrick that he now had a complete list of debts, amounting to some £35,000, plus a promissory note in Arthur’s name from Westbrooke the bookmakers. Of this, £14,000 was owed to Sir Charles Friswell, ‘that unmitigated blackguard’, and £10,000 to Eric Fitzwilliam, both friends of the Lowthers. All the bills had been endorsed by Arthur, some by Christopher as well.

The next blow was the revelation that Arthur had actually had the audacity to visit Harold at Eton, ‘to try to put him against his father’, and had even introduced him to a moneylender’s tout. The Speaker attempted to soften this by saying that Arthur had only been trying to

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