and I'll give you a cheque for?. 10,000.'
'Big pay,' I ejaculated, 'and I love big figures. But tell me, what have you paid for all the companies you're going to amalgamate and what is the capitalization?' Without demur and with astonishing exactitude he gave me all the figures. I took notes and afterwards I said, 'Practically, you are buying all the businesses for?. 200,000 and are selling them to the company for a million?'
'I may add a quarter of a million debentures,' he rejoined coolly. Needless to say, he added, the quarter of a million alone left him a swinging profit. Next day I put the thing before Folkestone. He said, 'If you advise it, Frank, I'll do it: why not?' I told him that in my opinion the venture was overcapitalised and must fail, and he said at once, 'That finishes it, Frank, so far as I am concerned; but tell me what Coleridge Kennard says.' Coleridge Kennard, when I put the matter before him, said that the capitalization mattered nothing to him: everyone knew that one sold at a profit, if one could. I gave Bottomley Coleridge Kennard's name but refused to take any money for it.
In a couple of years what I foresaw happened. At first the amalgamated companies paid large dividends-if I recollect aright, two in the very first year-and then the whole thing fell into bankruptcy and people spoke of it as 'Bottomley's swindle.' The failure came too soon, the ruin was too big; it shocked business people. Very soon it was brought before the courts and The Queen vs. Bottomley was the chief event of the day. I went to hear the criminal trial and was never more amused in my life or more interested. It came before Mr. Justice Hawkins, who was known as the 'hanging judge,' certainly the severest judge in half a century in London. What chance did Bottomley stand before such a tribunal? I was to learn what brains could do.
At first the case went badly for Bottomley. It was very clear that the business had been overcapitalised and hundreds of thousands of pounds must have gone into Bottomley's pocket. But as soon as he stood up to address the court, all this faded to irrelevance. From the beginning by sheer genius he took the bull by the horns. 'I'm glad,' he began, 'heart-glad that I'm before Mr. Justice 'awkins. He has the name of being a severe judge, but his ability was never questioned; it's his ability I rely on today in my hour of need, his power of getting to the bottom of a complicated business.'
From such compliments he went on to a detailed history of the purchase of the various companies. Time and again when he told of acquiring a new company, he drew the attention of the Judge pointedly to the fact that, though the price might seem high, this new business helped to complete and sustain the larger fabric he had in mind. 'I want to make my idea clear to you, my Lud!' was the burden of his long, quiet and eminently persuasive exposition. His show of frankness was as wonderful as his detailed knowledge.
Before he had finished, even the barristers in the court were won over to admiration: a Q.C. said, 'I've never listened to so complete a statement.' One and all forgot that Bottomley had lived for months with every business he had to describe; nothing was astonishing to me, save the point-blank compliments to the Judge he lavished in and out of season. Long before the end of the trial he had converted one of the strongest judges on the bench into his advocate and assistant. Bottomley not only won his case, but turned the judge into his personal friend, who believed not only in his ability but in his integrity. Some time afterwards Mr. Justice Hawkins gave Bottomley the wig and gown he had worn all his life as a Judge. The whole incident is unique in the history of the English bench and proves Bottomley's astounding cleverness as nothing else could. Clearly, he was a man of genius.
But if the lights were high, the shadows were heavy. If he had guided the amalgamated businesses for five years, he might have earned the half million or so he made out of the amalgamation, but to drop his bantling almost as soon as it came to the birth showed cynical contempt, I thought, for public opinion, and indeed for anything but money. Moreover, his long speech at the trial discovered time and again an ignorance of grammar and a cockney incapacity to pronounce the letter h, which was astonishing in so able a man.
The same Q.C. who had praised his long exposition turned to me at the end with the remark, 'A d… d clever outsider!'
I always thought that if Bottomley had gone for a couple of years to Germany or to France for hard serious study he might have been one of the masters and guides of the new time, but his ignorance kept his appeal always on a low level and directed it to the all but lowest class.
He wasn't much more ignorant than Lord Randolph Churchill, but Churchill didn't drop his h's, and if he had, the English would have taken it as an amiable eccentricity in the son of a Duke.
Look at Horatio Bottomley! What is the characteristic of that short, stout, broad figure, that heavy jowl and double chin? Surely greed. He was greedy of all the sensual pleasures, intensely greedy; even at thirty he ate too much and habitually drank too much. To see him lunching at Romano's with two or three of his intimates, usually subordinates, with a pretty chorus girl on one side and another siren opposite, while the waiter uncorked the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne, was to see the man as he was. He was greedy, too, of power, and vain as a peacock, wanted always to have a paper at his command, and of the half dozen he owned never brought one to success, save John Bull, which was a success simply through the blind patriotism excited by the World War.
He went into Parliament, and I remember that he told me once in a moment of expansion that he would yet be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rhodes a little later made much the same confession to me, and Rhodes had a better chance by far than Bottomley, for he had founded himself upon a great fortune, and though nearly as ignorant as Bottomley, he didn't drop his h's and had all the outward marks of a better class education. I told Rhodes he would hardly succeed, and I didn't disguise from Bottomley that he had no earthly chance. 'There are half a dozen men of real ability in the House of Commons,' I said, 'of ability to be compared to yours; Hicks-Beach, for example, is of high character and has besides a touch of genius; Balfour has extraordinary charm of person and mind and much reading to boot;
Chamberlain, too, has real ability and a great fortune acquired within ordinary rules: these three will all be against you with a savage injustice of antagonism, for they all look on the prizes of a political life as their appanage.
On the other side, you have Gladstone, who is an aristocrat at heart, and Dilke ditto, and Parnell, and Redmond, and Healy: all will be down on you, for you neither represent nor care for their democratic gospel or their personal ambitions. Then there are John Burns and Cunninghame Graham, who will hate you because of your indifference to ideal causes. In fact, all the leaders of all the parties will turn the cold shoulder to you, and to get to the top from your stand-point seems to me utterly impossible.'
'You think you could do it?'
'I have not so many handicaps,' I retorted, 'but I'm beginning to doubt whether the driving power of desire is there.'
'That's in me,' he said smiling, and set his great jaw; and I could not but agree.
CHAPTER XVIII
All this while I've said nothing of my love affair with Laura, though it didn't slacken in any way; on the contrary, it grew with indulgence and frequent meetings. My passion for her is the explanation of a great part of my sex-life, so I must tell it here as honestly as I can.
Love, they say, is blind, and if they mean thereby that the secrets of attraction lie too deep for discovery, they are right enough; but love sees many things, virtues as well as faults, unimagined by the ordinary observer.
For years I used to take Laura to lunch twice a week in a private room; why I didn't marry her, I can hardly say. Again and again I was on the point of proposing it when something would come to check me. For example, I met a broker on the stock exchange who put me in one or two good things, while I got certain articles published that did him good. In 1886 already I had made some thousands, and as soon as I had banked it, I told Laura I would give her?. 10 a week; and of course I paid regularly, often supplementing the weekly sum with a check for?. 50. Once she asked me for?. 300. I gave it at once.
And then Laura or her mother took it into their hands to go to the United States, and Laura sent me back photos of herself in bathing costume on Long Island that drove me crazy with jealousy and revived all my suspicions. But worse happened!
On their return, while looking for rooms they stayed for a short time in the Charing Cross Hotel. It has always
