King Richard
A LEONINE roar was the first I heard of Dick Wilkins. I was being towed around by the gentle Donald Constant of the Times, who, putting his head round the door of the partners' room at Wedd's, would be greeted fortissimo with `Aha! It's John the Baptist!' The senior partner was robust and rotund — he peaked at 23 stone — with the strong nerve and swift reaction which he had brought to racing his power-boats or tearing round Brooklands in his Ferrari. Cars were a passion of his, steeplechasing was another, and the story is that the was driving back from Cheltenham with the Queen Mother when the Rolls-Royce sput- tered to a halt. 'Perhaps, Dick', said his royal passenger, 'we should have come in one of your other Rollers?' He dominated the stock markets — merging his firm, the leading jobbers in Government stock, with Durlachers, the leaders in shares, and himself leading by example and from the front. No one could be ruder to the great, or kinder to the lowly. In retirement he roosted at the Savoy (he was a director, and they understood his frustrating diet)— snorting at events, and missing the excite- ment. The market floor which he ruled has gone, and now Dick has gone too. No one will ever thus dominate the new, dispersed, electronic markets; King Richard was the last of his line.
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