LORD LAMBETH (MR BARNETT)
FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SIR HENRY MOSELEY, R.A., K.V.O.
The young man is shown supported by a small pilaster, in the German manner of the period. The right hand is thrust negligently into the pocket of the trousers; the left grasps, in fingers of a certain obesity, a book which we believe to be an English Bible.... There is something further—something which a written description can hardly convey, but which carries one away as one gazes at the magnificent coloured enlargement which hangs to-day in the hall of Mr Barnett’s house in Charles Street.... It is an impression—a conviction rather—that this man is in some inscrutable way linked with the fate of England. Such an assertion in cold print means little; made in the presence of the man or his emblem, it has the force of prophecy.
To-day the figure and the face are changed. Forty-five years do not pass without leaving their mark, even upon the Heroes of our strenuous epoch. An increasing stoutness—the hereditary enemy of his family—has affected the gait and figure of Mr I. Z. Barnett. His once luxuriant black curls are fallen. His head is surrounded by a short ring of reverend grey hairs, still crisp, however, and still admirably barbered. The clean-shaven face of the Mayence photograph boasts the whiskers of later middle age that meet above the mouth in a manner luxuriant, but quaintly foreign still. The chins are heavier and more rumpled, and the whole face softer and more drooping. Failing eyesight, coupled with a keen regard for dignity, have compelled Mr Barnett to the use of plain gold eye-glasses held by a simple tape. These, with a couple of rings upon the left hand, a heavy signet, a bunch of curious old family seals at his watch chain, some large pin or other, a well-chosen stud, and two cuff links of Russian opals, comprised the whole of his ornament. In dress, however, he is careful and even scrupulous—a habit that accompanies the excessive personal self-respect which is an only, and a most forgivable, weakness. In colour he affects the maroon; in pattern, a quiet check; and he is careful to hide the ungainly join between the trouser and the boot by a pair of snowy spats. Gloves he rarely wears. His hat is modish.
His philosophy and manner are perhaps of greater import. Himself an agnostic, he has ever extended his religious sympathies beyond the narrow boundary of creed. His spiritual outlook from of old was frank and tedious at times, yet always genial and always helpful in intention. His deeper conviction was best expressed by the phrase he invariably used upon completing the complicated formulæ of some legal document: “My word,” he would say upon such occasions, “is as good as my bond.” At some considerable distance one would have recognised the man who had succeeded and who had deserved success.
But that success had not come easily. Indeed, until the last magnificent piece of daring upon the M’Korio it could not be said to have come permanently at all.
His birth was a continual drawback: the change of name necessary to his career in England was another: the slight accent which he retained throughout his career a third. We are a conservative and jealous people, and it is with difficulty that we will admit the genius of an alien, even when that genius flatters or would enrich us.
That Mr Barnett should suffer from such a prejudice was in his case a peculiar hardship. His mother, the daughter of an Englishman settled in Lisbon, was related in some way to Admiral Sir J. Cowen. His father, though technically a German, was one to whom our fullest sympathy should extend. A patriot and idealist of the noblest type, he saw in the occupation of Frankfort in 1866, the advent at once of militarism and of foreign rule. He determined to abandon a town still dear to him, but intolerable since it supported an oppressor. Too just, however, to enforce this decision upon his two sons, he gave them the choice: he that remained should continue the business subject to a half-charge upon all discount and advances, the other might accompany him to freedom and to England. David elected, with reluctance, to accept the Prussian domination; Mr I. Z. Barnett, the younger son, departed with his father to this country, to the no small delight of his mother, who intended, if possible upon their arrival to renew the family ties with Admiral Sir J. Cowen.
This legitimate purpose she did not live to fulfil. She died soon after her establishment in London, and her husband did not long survive her.
Mr Barnett has often pointed out to me the little room in the Albany where he began his long and difficult struggle with fortune. He spent little, he lived laboriously; within ten years he had accumulated a sufficient capital to devise and launch the Haymarket Bank. The scheme of this speculation, risked by a comparatively poor man, yet in the early thirties, should be enough to stamp the genius of its creator. The Bank depended upon a principle which, had it but proved successful, would have revolutionised the financial world. All depositors were paid interest yearly upon the average of their current accounts at the rate of eight per cent. At first it was difficult to persuade a public wedded, wherever money was concerned, to formal routine; but when, at the end of the first year, the eight per cent. was duly paid (for Mr Barnett would accept no more than his original capital could meet), timidity gave place to enthusiasm, for eighteen months the institution increased as though by magic. If ever the ordinary operations of the bank failed, on occasion, to earn the stipulated interest, fresh depositors could always be depended on: their accounts furnished the funds necessary for the satisfaction of the yearly dividend. These in turn received at the end of twelve months, the eight per cent., which yet another band of new investors had delightedly furnished.
Upon lines so original and so daring, a new system of banking seemed destined to arise. No limit threatened the expansion of the business, till a venomous article, inspired perhaps wholly by political hatred, suggested that the interest already paid could only come out of the new capital daily furnished to the concern. A panic followed this abominable insinuation (the scoundrel had not the courage to set it down for a fact), and within twenty-four hours, the Haymarket Bank was ruined.