Julius (37 page)

More useful still were factories where women stood for several hours a day to make munitions. Women who must be fed, too, who must queue up to meals in their hundreds and in their thousands if their endurance was to last.

Never should it be said that the women of England failed their native land because of empty bellies.

Rather let there be depôts in their hundreds and canteens in their thousands to satisfy this tide of hungry women. And what could be better for them, what more likely to put muscle into their honest English sinews and health into their stout hearts than Lévy’s Bully Beef?

Those boys who marched on Salisbury Plain, those children who waved their caps at Waterloo Station, weren’t they all trained on Lévy’s Bully Beef?

That line of trenches silent and black in the early dawn, the bunch of grey-faced men waiting for a signal, the officer with his eyes on his watch, the scramble and the shouting, the wild desperate run and the last limb kicking. Victory or Defeat? No matter, these men were fed on Lévy’s Bully Beef.

Kitchener wants you. Yes, but you can’t serve your King and Country until you fill up with Lévy’s Bully Beef.

Why is Fritz frightened? Because Tommy has that Lévy look.

And that poster on every hoarding, of the Emperor of Germany caricatured as though in terror, his spiked helmet awry, his moustache twisted up in fear, his hands upraised in a gesture of surrender while towards him advance a regiment of red-faced smiling tin-hats - ‘When Kaiser Bill said Kammerad - He learnt that British Troops were Fed on Lévy’s Bully Beef.’

There was the song on everybody’s lips, first sung at the Empire, and afterwards yelled and whistled on route marches:

A household word, born in a night, started by nobody knew whom, and made of nobody knew what - horse, dog, cat - it scarcely mattered - the full flavour, the rich stout blood-making quality of Lévy’s Bully Beef.

The originator of the boom moved amongst the munition workers and the land girls and the raw recruits, the wounded Tommies, the departing troops, and the W.A.A.C.s, and as he watched them he smiled and thought of a boy in Paris forty-five years back who had sold rats in the street for two francs the piece.

Something for nothing - Something for nothing. ‘It is men like you, Mr Lévy, who are helping England to win through.’ The warm handshake, the bright eye, the excited cheers of five hundred munition workers.

Then 1916, 1917, the dreary hammering monotony of war, and Julius Lévy wondering whether Bully Beef had played itself out, and turning his mind to another vital necessity - Boots.

‘Given time,’ he decided, ‘this war could be won on boots alone.’

It was easy enough to flood the market with an unending supply of strong army boots - but they had to be cheap, and they had to look light. They had to have just that extra touch that would make them the smallest bit different from any other boot. The Lévy Boot. Wear Lévy leather and march to Berlin. Could the British Army wearing Lévy leather and eating Bully Beef fail to win the war?

‘I tell you, sir, it’s wartime that brings out the best in everybody. That fellow Lévy is a patriot. He may be a foreigner and a Jew but he’s putting all the brains God gave him into this business. He’s showing up these chaps in the War Office and in the Government. He knows what the men in the trenches want. Three cheers, all of you, for Mr Julius Lévy.’

Take Granby Hall. Granby was a full-blown Military Hospital, the gallery and the drawing-rooms had been turned into wards, the terrace and the gardens were sprinkled with bath chairs and men in blue. Julius Lévy, the millionaire, had given up his beautiful country seat for the wounded sons of England. The house in Cowes was a convalescent home. The hunting box at Melton Mowbray was shuttered up, furniture in dust sheets. Surely there was no end to the sacrifice made by Julius Lévy and his daughter for England.They lived in only half of the big house in Grosvenor Square, their brief holidays were spent at Brighton. No racing now, no yachting in the Solent. Gabriel appeared in a bewildering array of uniforms. At first she was a V.A.D., she scrubbed the floors of hospital wards, she carried bloodied refuse from operating-rooms. Then she went on the land, she wore breeches for a brief period and lifted hoes on her shoulder and bundles of hay, she milked cows, she fed pigs. Her next appearance was to serve in one of her father’s canteens, in cap and apron, pouring tea (Lévy Tea) into cups and cutting slices of beef (Lévy Beef) on to plates. Breeches once more, she drove vans and lorries, this new occupation coinciding so well with a suddenly developed passion for cars. Then the organisation of bazaars for the blind, and entertainments for the wounded, and concerts for men home on leave. Her picture appearing endlessly in the weekly papers - ‘Gabriel Lévy, one of our most ardent War Workers.’

And finally, when all these exertions began to pall, the realisation that the war work most appreciated and most satisfactory personally, was to take for lingering drives in Richmond Park, officers who were not too badly wounded, and then to change one’s dress and to dance somewhere with officers home on leave who were not wounded at all.

‘That girl of yours is doing splendid work, Lévy. So noble of her, giving up all her fun, her yachts and her horses. Aren’t you proud of her?’

Julius, shrugging his shoulders, making a vague gesture with his hands as though none of this counted.

‘Nonsense - we must all do something to help the country,’ winking at Gabriel over somebody’s shoulder, and later driving back to Grosvenor Square in the one Rolls that had not been commandeered, glancing out of the window as they passed the big café in Oxford Street, the basement of which had been turned into a vast cellar to accommodate frightened crowds during an air raid, and Gabriel said yawning, resting her head against his shoulder: ‘Oh, darling, what a hectic life we lead. How on earth did we manage to amuse ourselves before the war?’

Julius Lévy was made a baronet in 1918.

‘Such a waste, a baronetcy. I ought to have been a boy. Why on earth did they give you it, anyway?’ said Gabriel.

‘How the devil should I know?’

Buy Lévy Leather - Buy Lévy Bully Beef. Three cheers for Sir Julius Lévy.

‘I tell you what, Gabriel. We’ll get rid of the
Wanderer
if this war ever finishes, and buy a steam yacht about a thousand tons. The
Wanderer
is a bit cramped.’

‘I know. I’ve been thinking about that, too.’

Three cheers for Sir Julius Lévy, one of the most patriotic and powerful men in England to-day.

Who’ll buy rats, big plump rats,
deux francs la pièce - deux francs la pièce?

Something for nothing!

 

By the time the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Julius Lévy, baronet, had augmented his fortune by exactly three-quarters of a million. The profits that had come to him from Bully Beef and Boots, in addition to the colossal sums he had gleaned from his cafés throughout the country and from his private speculations in the markets of the world, had made him probably the wealthiest man in England. The four years that had passed, bringing misery and horror to most people, had merely doubled his success.

The Great War had been an interlude to him, a passage of time fraught with keen interest and excitement. He had lived intensely during these last years, every moment had served a purpose, and had been used by him as a fresh experience.

In his blood always had run the desire for action, and now he had been able to give vent to this desire to its fullest extent.

For years he had lived ahead of his generation, and with the swift changes brought about by the war it was as though he stepped into his own time. This new restless way of existing at high tension was his way, this nerve-racked atmosphere of rapid movement, sudden destruction and startling creation was his atmosphere. He understood mushroom growth and the craze for speed, he loved all things born in a night. This past war could be no nightmare to him who had no brothers, no sons and no friends. England was not his country, France was not his country, the sufferings of many millions of people would never be able to touch him.

The actual monetary value of his gains meant little to him. He accepted the knowledge of the added three-quarters of a million with a shrug of his shoulder, it was the fight that had counted with him, the satisfaction he had gained in using his brains, and seizing his advantage where others had failed. He had nothing but contempt for those men who had allowed themselves to be broken by the war, who gave way and were beaten morally, who appeared now as shadows of their former selves. So many of his contemporaries had proved unequal to the strain. So many had been bewildered, and had shrunken and grown old. They had not possessed the intelligence to progress; in their curious timidity and super-sensibility to the horrors of war they had weakened and stood aside, they had not made the slightest effort to reach out for the prizes that lay close within hand of every thinking man.

Now they were pushed and shouldered out of the way, they were good for nothing but their morning papers in their fusty clubs. His contemporaries, old fellows, shrinking from noise, disapproving, muddle-headed fools. In two years’ time Julius would be sixty, and he still felt forty-five. This war had made no mark upon him. Like Gabriel, he wondered how he had lived before. Nothing would ever be the same again, not in the old way. Interests had changed, people too. One no longer wanted the same things. Racing, yachting, hunting, the parties at Grosvenor Square and down at Granby, would they be able to take them up again in the old way? Did they not seem slightly wearisome now, out of date? Four years back he had been on that tour round Europe with Gabriel, and he had said to himself he would never want anything more than that. Then the war came. And now that the war was over he knew that neither he nor Gabriel would enjoy these things in the same way again. Something had gone because of the four years. A little seed of dissatisfaction had sprung into being. It was as though a voice unnamed whispered inside him: What now - what next? The war had stopped too soon for him, his energy was baulked. His power and his vitality had been arrested half-way. Now that there was no direction for this to find an outlet the stream would turn inwards towards himself. He would be at a loose end, he would look about him with uncertainty.

Gabriel had a new passion. She was dance-mad like most of her generation. She thought of nothing else. At first Julius went with her and was her partner, she taught him the new steps. Then he found he became bored, there was something absurd about jigging round a room hour after hour.

It seemed to him there must be an appalling waste somewhere to have used his brains for four years and then at the end merely to arrive at this jigging round a room.

Gabriel laughed at him: ‘You’re lazy,’ she said, ‘you’re getting fat.’ And she was whirled off in some young fellow’s arms while Julius watched, faintly irritated, drumming his fingers on the table, yawning, his mind a blank. Something to do, to do, to do ... Of course there were politics. He wondered vaguely if there was anything to be gained from politics. There seemed to be a glimmer of light in this thought. Politics. A Coalition Government was in power. On a sudden impulse he resolved to stand as Liberal at the next by-election.

‘Why Liberal, darling?’ said Gabriel.

‘Why not?’ he said.

He didn’t care.When Commander Ainsworth, a Conservative, resigned his seat of West Stockport, for reasons of ill-health, Julius Lévy, baronet, contested his successor and won the seat by a majority of twelve thousand. He liked the fight. For the short space of time preceding his election he enjoyed the same sensation as he had experienced during the early years of the war. He was up against something, it was a little battle of its own. He made a good speaker. He took all the shine out of the other fellow, an honest, thick-headed Tory, with a mind like a cabbage. The other fellow was nowhere. Because of his work in the war, Julius Lévy was popular; no one doubted for a moment that he would win his fight.

‘It’s men like you the Government want, sir.’ The same old story. It was easy enough to go around amongst the working classes of West Stockport and tell them how he had worked his way up from a baker’s apprentice down in Holborn. They liked that, they cheered him, they shook him by the hand. ‘Good old Ikey,’ they said. He was familiar with them, his coarse humour was received with roars of ribald laughter. ‘I’m a plain man,’ he told them, ‘no airs about me. You won’t get any long speeches, I warn you. Want a tip for the two-thirty at Newmarket to-morrow? ’ His tip was luckily correct, and gained him probably a thousand extra votes.

Then he left them, waving his hat, throwing the red carnation he wore in his buttonhole to a woman standing on the top of her area steps (another vote) and he walked to where the Rolls was parked discreetly several blocks away, and drove off to address a meeting for the benefit of the West Stockport gentry; different methods then, different gestures.

Lucky business that West Stockport was an important ship-building centre, he was able to have the new steam yacht
Gabriel
of eleven hundred tons built there. The keel was laid during the election fight and invitations were broadcast for anyone who cared to see the first bolt driven.The champagne was free. Never before nor since had West Stockport known such exquisite extravagance. The streets were hilarious that night, and the lock-ups were full. The invitation cost Julius an unmentionable sum and probably won him his majority.The Conservative candidate could not afford champagne. When the result of the poll was known, Julius Lévy appeared on the balcony of the Queen’s Hotel, and smiled down upon the crowd gathered in the square. The balcony was draped in the colours of his racing stable, an unpardonable piece of vulgarity which delighted him intensely.