AND ANOTHER THING
No swanking from today's anonymous billionaires, alas
PAUL JOHNSON
To me the true millionaire is a person apart, with a different tone of voice, more confident visions and expectations of life than my own. The first millionaire I saw was Mr Barber, and he was unique among the townsfolk of Tunstall, in the Potteries, where we then lived. He was self-made, fierce, outspoken, commanding; a true Arnold Bennett card. He was pointed out in the street. 'That man has been to Russia. He has met Stalin.' That man has shaken hands with Hitler.' The Prince of Wales has noticed him.' He had various businesses and investments but he was chiefly known for owning Barber's Picture Palace, an old music-hall turned into a cinema, a far from Babylonian place of brass rails and dirty red plush, where, much against my mother's wishes — she believed it to harbour fleas and to smell of tobacco — I was occasional- ly allowed to go on Saturday afternoons. The seats cost one penny, the 'Better Seats' tuppence, and there was also an enclosure with fourpenny and sixpenny places of grandeur, out of spitting-range from the dark hole where the poor, smelly boys sat.
On these afternoons, Mr Barber took up his station in the foyer to see that justice his justice — was done. He regarded boys with suspicion — 'imps of Satan' was his term. They were too many of them: boys whose speech was barely intelligible, who could throw a malicious stone 50 yards. Mr Barber would say, 'I don't like the look of that boy. Refuse him admission.' Or: 'That boy spits, I know him. He is not to come into my Palace.' On the other hand, he would also say, 'That's a smart boy. He is well brushed and well washed. Put him in the Better Seats.' It happened that several times I did catch his hawk eye and was so rewarded. I don't recall Mrs Barber ever being present on these public occasions. She may not have been 'well spoken' enough Mr Barber had married her during his early life and hard times — and she was hidden away in his mansion overlooking Victoria Park. She drove out in a landau or a Daim- ler, and was said to have 'at least 40 blous- es'. Folk did not know exactly how rich Mr Barber was — people were very secretive about money in the Five Towns — but wise heads said, 'When that man dies his funeral procession will be more than a mile long.' A mile meant a million.
Up to the first world war, and even after it, you could tell a really rich man by his dress. In mid-winter he wore a huge fur coat almost down to his heels. Sometimes the fur was dis- creet, and merely lined the garment. But it was usually ostentatious on the outside. A man thus garbed, with a high silk hat and a silver-topped ebony cane, was Walking Money. Eyes turned. Men not so protected shivered the more. When F.E. Smith was earning a fortune at the Bar and behaved like a millionaire, he met a parliamentary colleague, a poor Labour MP, in the street, without an overcoat at all and blue with cold. The MP said, 'I wouldn't mind your coat, F.E."Well, have it,' said Smith crossly; took it off, draped it over the diminutive figure and marched away before the little man could say no. But of course F.E. was not a millionaire — far from it. He hoped to become one; for a Liverpool shipping mag- nate, for whom Smith had won a decisive case, said that he was leaving him 'a cool mil- lion'. Alas, Smith was rude to the magnate's tiresome wife, who talked her husband into making a new will. So F.E., by now the Earl of Birkenhead, got nothing and died in debt.
Today the really rich are not distinguished by dress — if they are male, that is. The late Jimmy Goldsmith was a huge man who exuded wealth but there was nothing unusu- al about his clothes. It is the same with Con- rad Black, owner of this journal and many `Say your postcode.' others. Rupert Murdoch is not even big, and is marked out merely by the large number of acolytes buzzing round him. With women it is different. I am often paid to give what is termed the 'keynote speech' at annual gath- erings of vast corporations. At one such, for the Mellon Bank in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, I inquired about the lady I was placed next to at the grand dinner which followed. 'Pro- fessor Johnson,' they said — they always call me professor — 'you are sitting next to the Bank!' Indeed, I usually find myself on these occasions entertaining the principal share- holder, nearly always a woman. I discuss her dress and baubles, and the rival merits of couturiers and joailliers — safe ground. Sometimes we get on to scents. If conversa- tion flags, I ask 'Mrs Rhinelander- Stuyvesant, what are your views on ser- vants?' That opens the verbal floodgates.
Once, pottering about at a conference at the southern end of Lake Como, my com- panion and I noticed a perturbation on the vast stone terrace of the grand hotel where our jabberfest was taking place. Waiters scurried about. Men in aprons rearranged furniture. Junior managers, then senior managers, fussed. A sort of mayoral person arrived. Sinister men who looked as if they carried guns began to hang about. Eventual- ly, a speedboat appeared on the lake, came nearer, and the whole comic-opera set came to frenzied life. They should, by rights, have burst into a Puccini chorus, but all they man- aged was an expectant buzzing, Ecco, eccoP etc. 'Who is it?' I asked. 'A most distin- guished person of the highest importance,' I was told. The boat docked, a young man in glasses climbed up the stone steps and was bowed to by the dignitaries now lined up to receive him. There was nothing to mark him out from hundreds of millions of creatures in his age group. However, this turned out to be my first, and so far, only, glimpse of Bill Gates, the superbillionaire nerd-anorak.
Mr Gates has since been demoted from his position as the world's richest person by an envious federal judge anxious to exercise his forensic muscle. So enough of him. But I think that were I so rich I would feel it incumbent on me to show a bit of style, a flash of Croesus, a Rothschild flourish, to give the public an excuse to ooh and aah. It's nothing to be a millionaire today, but having billions still imposes obligations. So, as our company sergeant used to say before the march, 'Now, lads, bags of swank!'
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