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Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Israel Rank
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
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Title: Israel Rank

The autobiography of a criminal

Author: Roy Horniman

Release date: March 5, 2024 [eBook #73104]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Chatto & Windus, 1907

Credits: Brian Raiter

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ISRAEL RANK ***

 ISRAEL RANK

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CRIMINAL

by

ROY HORNIMAN
Contents
A Preliminary Note
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
 A Preliminary Note
There is an old saying, ‘Murder will out.’ I am really unable to see
why this should be so. At any rate, it is a statement impossible of
proof, and one which must always remain a matter of opinion.
Because certain clumsy criminals have placed themselves in full view
of that dull dog, the Law, we are asked to believe that crime is
invariably awkward. The logic is not very obvious. I am convinced
that many a delightful member of society has found it necessary at
some time or other to remove a human obstacle, and has done so
undetected and undisturbed by those pangs of conscience which
Society, afraid of itself, would have us believe wait upon the sinner.
Israel Rank.
 Chapter I
It was the close of a bleak, autumnal afternoon. All day long in
the chill and windy atmosphere the dust had been driven helter-
skelter along the shabbier streets of Clapham, whirling with it the
leaves which had fallen from the depressed trees in the gardens of
the innumerable semi-detached villas. Here and there, fragments of
torn paper rustled spasmodically along the gutter as the driving gust
caught them, or—now that the dusk had fallen—floated spectrally
for a few moments in mid-air, like disembodied spirits, essaying an
upward flight, only to be baulked by a lull in the wind and to come
suddenly to earth again, where they lay until the next gust of wind
caught them.
Among the dismal streets not one was more depressing than
Ursula Grove. As if to deprive it of the least trace of individuality it
was but a connecting link between two more important residential
roads running parallel with each other, and even these were not very
important; hence it is obvious that Ursula Grove was humble indeed.
Each house had a yard or two of front garden entered through
cheaply varnished wooden gate-lets, which announced in faded gold
lettering that should anyone enter he would find himself in Seaview,
or on The Riviera, as the case might be. Provided the name was
inappropriate there appeared to have been no initial objection to its
being anything. In fact, those responsible for the christening of
these desirable residences appeared to have acted on the same
principle as the small builder, who, erecting houses at too great a
rate to be able to waste time in seeking appropriate names, was
accustomed to choose them haphazard out of the newspapers, and
thus christened two small stucco atrocities joined together in semi-
detached matrimony, the Vatican and the Quirinal, because these
two names appeared in the course of the same leading article.
 Each house had a little bow window which belonged to the
drawing-room. If these bow windows could have been removed and
all the little drawing-rooms placed, as it were, on exhibition they
would have presented an extraordinary likeness. There were the
same three or four saddle-bag chairs, the same saddle-bag sofa, the
same little bamboo occasional table, and the same little gilt mirror;
all luxuries that were rewarded, apparently, by their own virtue and
a sense of their own unique beauty, for it was seldom that their
owners enjoyed them. In the summer the blinds were kept down for
fear the sun should spoil the carpet, which it certainly would have
done if it had been allowed a fair field and no favour with the gaudy
little stiff squares of cheap Kidderminster. These front rooms,
although infinitely the largest and most convenient in the house,
were never degraded to the level of living rooms, however large the
family. Sometimes in the winter a fire was lighted on Sundays and
the inhabitants sat round it, but by Monday morning at breakfast
time all traces of this revel had disappeared, and the fire ornaments
were back again, trailing their gilded and tawdry finery over a highly
polished grate, glittering out on the darkened, frosty room, that
suggested nothing so much as the laying out of a corpse.
These chilly arcadias were the pride of their owners’ hearts, and
if, when about their household work, they heard the door of the
sacred apartment open they were immediately on the alert.
“Willie, what are you doing in the drawing-room?”
“Nuffin’, mama, I was only havin’ a look.”
“Then come out and shut the door immediately.”
Willie, old enough to be troublesome, but not old enough to go
to school, would do as he was bid, at the same time impressed by
his mother’s admonition with a sense of the splendour of the
mansion in which it was his privilege to dwell.
The family always lived in the smaller sitting-room—an apartment
rendered oblong by the exigencies of the staircase. These rooms
were invariably furnished, as were the drawing-rooms, with a
depressing similarity: two horse-hair arm chairs with the springs in a
state of collapse; six ordinary dining-room chairs to match; some
framed Graphic Christmas numbers on the wall, an untidy bookcase,
and the flooring a waste of linoleum with a little oasis of moth-eaten
rug before the fire.
I mention these facts because the atmosphere of my childhood is
important in view of my after development.
It was on such an evening as I have described—at least, I am
credibly informed that it was so—that my father descended from his
’bus two or three streets off, and, after threading his way through
the intervening maze of semi-detached villadom, entered the
depressing length of Ursula Grove.
An unusual though not astonishing sight met his eyes. The blinds
of the first-floor-front of his own house were drawn down and a
bright light from within glowed against them and streamed from
under them. It could not be his wife dressing for dinner, for they did
not have dinner, and had they been in the habit of dining neither of
them would have thought of dressing. Their evening meal was tea; it
might be with an egg or it might be with ham, but it was certainly
tea.
My father hastened his footsteps. The cause of this phenomenon
had suddenly dawned on him. He opened the wooden gate-let with
unwonted gentleness and without letting it swing to, which was the
usual signal that he had come home. Then he went round to the
back and softly let himself in.
He walked along the passage and paused at the foot of the
stairs. There was borne down to him from above the wail of an
infant. He was obliged to catch hold of the bannisters, for his heart
leapt into his mouth and nearly suffocated him.
He sat down on the stairs to recover himself, while the tears of
joy and pride welled into his tired eyes and flowed down his faded
cheeks.
The doctor on his way downstairs nearly fell over him.
“Come, come, Mr. Rank, you must bear up. ‘In the midst of life
we are in death.’ ”
Apparently the doctor was condoling from force of habit. The
speech was certainly alarming, and my father whitened.
“But my wife?”
“Mother and child, Mr. Rank, both doing well. It’s a boy.”
 The alarm disappeared from his face. He was a father at last. “An
Isaac was born unto him.”
“May I go up?” he asked timidly.
“Most certainly, but be careful not to excite the patient.”
My father went upstairs and knocked nervously. The nurse
opened the door holding me in her arms. It is to my father’s credit,
however, that he hardly cast a look at the desire of their married life,
but crossed at once to the bed.
My poor mother looked up tenderly and lovingly at the dowdy
little figure bending over her, and smiled.
“It’s a boy,” she whispered, and then added: “We wanted a boy.”
My father pressed her hand gently, but remembering the doctor’s
instructions not to excite the patient kissed her lips and stole gently
out to look at his first, though somewhat late, born. A puckered
face, to which the blood rushed spasmodically, clouding it almost to
the suggestion of apoplexy, was all he could see. My father looked
down at me and saw that I was dark. I could not well have been
otherwise if he were to believe himself my father, for he was Jewish
from the crown of his well-shaped head to the soles of his rather
large feet.
If my mother is to be credited, he was when she fell in love with
him a singularly handsome little man, but at the time of my birth the
physical blight which falls on nearly all men of our race towards
middle age was upon him.
She possessed a small cabinet photograph of him, taken when
such things were a novelty. In early years I was accustomed—misled
by the out-of-date clothes—to regard it as a very frumpish affair
indeed. When I grew up I came to think otherwise: for one day,
placing my hand over the offending clothes, there looked out at me
a face which, granting the wonderful complexion which my mother
always insisted he possessed, was singularly handsome and very like
my own.
I only remember him as a faded little creature, who had run to
stomach to an extent which was absurd, especially when it was
contrasted with the extreme thinness of the rest of his body. He was
a commercial traveller, and always attributed this inharmonious
excrescence on an otherwise slim form to the amount of aerated
waters he was obliged to mix with those drinks the taking of which
was indispensable to his calling.
My mother was dark too, so it was little wonder that such hair as
I had when I was born was of the blackest imaginable hue, as
likewise were my eyes.
“He’s a beautiful baby; a bit small, but beautiful,” said the nurse.
My father, who could not at the moment dissociate my
appearance from Mr. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species, tried to
believe her, and stole downstairs, where he made his own tea and
boiled himself a couple of eggs. A meat pie with the unbaked crust
lying beside it suggested that I had arrived quite unexpectedly, as
indeed had been the case. This perhaps accounted for the fact that
as a baby I was weakly.
Before the first year of my life was over, my doting parents had
gone through many an agony of suspense, and my father had more
than once slackened his steps on returning home after his day’s
work, fearing to enter the house lest my mother should meet him
and weeping inform him that the tiny thread of life, by which I was
alone prevented from flying away and becoming a little angel, had
snapped.
But by dint of the greatest care from a mother, who, whatever
may have been her coldness to the outside world, possessed a
burning affection for her husband and child, I was brought safely to
my first birthday.
Sitting here during the last few unpleasant days with nothing to
entertain me but the faces of ever-changing warders—whose
personalities seem all to have been supplied from one pattern—I
have had time to think over many things, and I have more than once
reflected whether I would not rather my mother had been less
careful and had allowed the before mentioned tiny thread to snap.
My present nervousness, which even my worst enemy will find
excusable, tempts me to regret that her extreme care was so well
rewarded. My intellect, however, which has always shone brightly
through the murk of my emotions, tells me—and supports the
information with irrefutable logic—that I am an ignoble fool to think
anything of the kind. I question whether Napoleon would have
foregone his triumphant career to escape St. Helena. The principle
involved in his case and my own is the same. I have had a great
career; I am paying for it—only fortunately the public are asking an
absurdly low price. It is only when I have smoked too many
cigarettes that I feel nervous about Monday’s ceremony.
One thing I trust, however, and that is that my mother will not in
any way be made unhappy, for should her spirit have the power of
seeing my present condition, and of suffering by reason of it, it
would give me the greatest concern.
But to resume. My arrival must have been an immense comfort
to my mother even more than to my father. His business frequently
took him away from home for a week at a time, and although he
rarely failed to be with us from Saturday till Monday the shabby little
Clapham house had been very dull till my shrill baby cries broke the
silence of his absence.
Until I arrived to keep her company my mother had been thrown
almost entirely on her own resources, and the reason of this
loneliness is also the reason of my strange career. They are
inseparable one from the other.
My mother had married beneath her. Her father had been a
solicitor in a fair way of business, blessed with one son and one
daughter. They were not rich but they were gentlefolk, and by
descent something more. In fact, only nine lives stood between my
mother’s brother and one of the most ancient peerages in the United
Kingdom.
My mother’s maiden name was Gascoyne, and her father was the
great-grandson of a younger son. Her father’s family had for the last
two generations drifted away from, and ceased to have any
acquaintance with, the main and aristocratic branch of the family.
Beyond a couple of ancestral portraits, the one of Lord George
Gascoyne, my mother’s great-grandfather, and the other of that
spendthrift’s wife, there was no visible evidence that they were in
any way of superior social extraction to their well-to-do but suburban
surroundings.
 My father and mother were brought together in this way. My
mother’s brother belonged to a cricket club of which my father was
also a member. The two struck up a friendship, although at a first
glance there could appear to be very little in common between the
successful solicitor’s heir and the junior clerk in a wholesale city
house. My father, however, had a gift of music which recommended
him strongly to his new friend, and, as my mother always said, a
natural refinement of manner which made him a quite possible guest
at the quasi-aristocratic house of the Gascoynes.
“Perhaps I was sentimental and foolish,” my mother would say,
with that quiet, unemotional voice of hers which caused strangers to
doubt whether she could ever be either, “but he had such beautiful
eyes and played in such an unaffected, dreamy way. And he was so
good,” she would add, as if this were the quality which in the end
had impressed her most. “He might have been much better off than
he was, only he never could do anything underhand or mean. I don’t
think such things ever even tempted him. He was simply above
them.”
My father became a great favourite with the household till he
committed the intolerable impertinence of falling in love with Miss
Gascoyne. From the position of an ever welcome guest he
descended to that of a “presuming little Jewish quill-driver,” as my
uncle—whose friendship for him had always been of a somewhat
patronising order—described him.
In fact, my uncle was considerably more bitter in denouncing his
presumption than my grandfather, who, his first irritation over, went
so far as to suggest that the best should be made of a bad job, and
that they should turn him into a lawyer, urging his nationality as a
plea that his admission into the firm was not likely to do any harm.
But my uncle was certainly right in receiving such a proposal with
derision.
“He hasn’t even got the qualities of his race,” he said—although
this very fact had been, till their quarrel, a constantly reiterated
argument in my father’s favour.
My father and mother were forbidden to meet, and so one
Sunday morning—Sunday being the only day on which my father
could devote the whole day to so important an event—my mother
stole out of the house and they were married before morning
service, on a prospective income of a hundred a year. As mad a
piece of sentimental folly as was ever perpetrated by a pair of foolish
lovers.
The strange thing was that they were happy. They loved one
another devotedly, and my grandfather—though quite under the
thumb of my uncle—surreptitiously paid the rent of the small house
where they spent the whole of their married life, and which after a
time, still unknown to my uncle, he bought for them. My uncle,
whom even when I was a child I thought a singularly interesting
man—and the estrangement was certainly one of the griefs of my
mother’s life—had a great opinion of himself on account of the
family from which he was derived.
He made a point of having in readiness all proofs of his claim to
the title in case the extraordinary event should happen of the
intervening lives going out one after the other like a row of candles.
His researches on the subject enabled him to show a respectable
number of instances in which an heir even as distant as himself had
succeeded.
My mother’s unequal marriage caused him to make all haste in
choosing a wife. He might not have betrayed nearly so much
antipathy to my father as a brother-in-law had not the Gascoyne
earldom been one of the few peerages capable of descending
through the female line. Thus, till he should have an heir of his own,
his sister and any child of hers stood next in succession.
He chose his wife with circumspection. She was the daughter of
a baronet, not so reduced as to have ceased to be respectable; and
the main point was that the match would look well on the family
tree. To his infinite chagrin his first child died an hour after birth,
and Mrs. Gascoyne suffered so severely that a consolation was
impossible. It thus became inevitable that should the unexpected
happen the title would pass after himself to his sister and her
children.
He drew some comfort from the fact that so far my father and
mother had no child.
 Whether it was the disappointment of his own childlessness, or a
natural disposition to ostentation, I do not know, but from this time
my uncle’s mode of living grew more extravagant.
Through the death of my grandfather he became the head of the
firm. He left the suburbs where he had been born, and he and his
wife set up house in the West End, where they moved in a very
expensive set, so expensive, in fact, that in less than five years my
uncle, to avoid criminal proceedings—which must have ensued as
the result of a protracted juggling with clients’ money—put a bullet
through his brains.
He was much mourned by my father and mother, who had both
loved him. He was a fine, handsome fellow, good-natured at heart,
and they had always deemed it certain that one day a reconciliation
would take place.
Inasmuch as my parents had never met my aunt she could not
become less to them than she had been, but evidently to show how
little she desired to have anything to do with them, she allowed their
letter of condolence to remain unanswered. Those who were
responsible for winding up my uncle’s affairs forwarded to my
mother, in accordance with his wishes, the portrait of my ancestor,
Lord George Gascoyne, together with an envelope containing a full
statement of her claim to the Gascoyne peerage. My father, who was
certainly more interested than ever my mother was in the
documents that constituted this claim, took charge of them, and I
believe that at my birth not a little of his elation was due to the fact
that he was the parent of a being so exalted as to be only nine
removes from an earldom. In time he came to regard himself as a
sort of Prince Consort whose claims as father of the heir-apparent
could not fail to be substantial.
I don’t think there ever was a child more devotedly tended than I
was. Arriving late, and being the only one, my parents were able to
afford positive extravagances in the way of extra-quality
perambulators and superfine toys, and in my earliest years it would
have been quite impossible for me to guess that I was other than
the child of affluence.
 I was christened Israel Gascoyne Rank. From my earliest years,
however, I cannot remember being called anything but Israel, and in
my childhood if I were asked my name I was sure to answer “Israel
Rank,” and equally sure to supplement the information by adding,
“and my other name is Gascoyne—Israel Gascoyne Rank.”
I suppose that it is due to my sense of humour—which has never
deserted me and which I trust will not do so even at the last trying
moment—that I cannot help feeling just a trifle amused at the idea
of my saintly mother and my dear, lovable little father carefully
bringing up—with all the love and affection which was in them—me.
It must be admitted to have its humorous side.
I played about the dingy house at Clapham during my happy
childhood and was strangely contented without other companionship
than my mother’s. I certainly betrayed no morbid symptoms, but
was, on the contrary, noted for a particularly sunny disposition. My
mother declared that my laugh was most infectious, so full was it of
real enjoyment and gaiety.
I have always attributed my psychological development along the
line it afterwards took to a remark made to my mother by a woman
who used to come in and sew for her.
I was playing just outside the room with a wooden horse, when
Mrs. Ives remarked as she threaded the needle preparatory to
driving the machine: “Lord, mum, I do believe that boy of yours gets
handsomer every time I come. I never see such a picture, never.”
I was quite old enough to grasp the remark, and for it to sink
deep into my soul, planting there the seeds of a superb self-
consciousness. From that moment I was vain. I grew quite used to
people turning to look at me in the streets, and saying: “What a
lovely child!” and in time felt positively injured if the passers-by did
not testify openly to their admiration. My mother discouraged my
being flattered—I suppose from the point of view of strict morality,
with which I cannot claim acquaintance. Flattery is bad, and yet at
the same time it always seems an absurd thing to talk to and bring
up a child of exceptional personal attractions as if he or she were
quite ordinary. If he be a boy, he is told that personal attractions are
of no consequence, things not to be thought of and which can on no
account make him better or worse, and then, whether girl or boy,
the child finds on going out into the world that it is as valuable a
weapon as can be given to anybody, that to beauty many obstacles
are made easy which to the plain are often insuperable, and that
above all his moral direction and his looks stand in very definite
relation.
It was of no use telling me that I was not exceptionally good-
looking; I grasped the fact from the moment of Mrs. Ives’ flattering
little outburst.
My father was immensely proud of my appearance; I suppose the
more so because he could claim that I was like him and that I did
not resemble the Gascoynes in any way.
I was dark and Jewish, with an amazingly well-cut face and an
instinctive grace of which I was quite conscious. I have never known
from my childhood what it was to be ill at ease, and I have certainly
never been shy. I inherited my father’s gift of music. With him it had
never developed into more than what might give him a slight social
advantage; with myself I was early determined it should be
something more, and was quick to see the use it might be in
introducing me into good society.
 Chapter II
When I was about seven years of age my father died. I think the
cause was aerated waters, although I remember that on being
shown his body after death it looked so small that my mind hardly
established any very definite relation between it and the weary,
kindly little man with the abnormal waist whom I had known as my
father.
My mother must, I am sure, have sorrowed greatly, but she
spared my tender years any harrowing spectacle of grief and set
herself courageously to the task of keeping our home together.
My father had been insured for some five hundred pounds, which
brought my mother in a tiny income. The house fortunately was her
own. She immediately dismissed her one servant and let the front
rooms, so that we were not so badly off after all. My mother, who
had hitherto superintended my education, was now no longer able to
do so, as the house took up most of her time. Certainly, the school I
was sent to was a very much better one than a boy circumstanced
as I was could have expected to attend. It was patronised by a great
many sons of the comparatively wealthy in the neighbourhood, and
was by no means inexpensive. I went right through it from the
lowest form to the highest.
My masters pronounced me quick, but not studious. Personally, I
don’t think highly imaginative people are ever very studious in
childhood or early youth. How is it possible? The imaginative
temperament sets one dreaming of wonderful results achieved at a
remarkably small outlay of effort. It is only the dull who receive any
demonstration of the value of application.
My mother was careful that I should not be dressed so as to
compare unfavourably in any way with my schoolfellows, and
managed that I should always have a sufficiency of pocket-money,
advantages which I hardly appreciated at the time. How she
accomplished this I do not know, but I can honestly say that I never
knew what want meant, and although my mother did all the work of
the house herself, and cooked for the gentleman to whom our front
rooms were let, we never lived in the kitchen or descended to a
slovenly mode of life. We had our meals in quite a well-bred manner
in the dining-room, which was also our living-room.
Our lodger was a mysterious creature who always brought me a
handsome birthday and Christmas present and declined to be
thanked. The first time he saw me he pronounced me to be too
good-looking for a boy.
He was gruff and abrupt in manner, but the incarnation of
deferential courtesy to my mother, whom I truly think he
worshipped. I believe that his prolonged residence in our front
rooms was not entirely due to their comfort or to my mother’s
cooking.
I am sure he embarrassed her by his chronic efforts to spare her
trouble. By degrees he took to dining out nearly every evening,
although his arrival immediately after the dinner hour showed that
he had no engagement anywhere else.
I have every reason to believe that he made her an offer of
marriage, but if it were so he did not allow her refusal to drive him
away. He remained, and continued to treat her with even greater
deference than before.
Apart from the memory of my father, which she held sacred, her
devotion as a mother would, I think, have kept her from the
remotest contemplation of a second marriage. She lived entirely for
me.
I was early made acquainted with the story of the Gascoyne
succession, and it was with a quiet smile of indulgence that my
mother told me of the interest with which my father would watch the
ebb and flow of the heirs that stood between his wife and the
peerage.
The idea, however, seized my vivid imagination. I got my mother
to bring out all the papers and I set to work at once to see how far
my claims had advanced or receded since my father’s death.
 I was obliged before I could completely determine my position to
have recourse to a Peerage. I was surprised to discover that I had
come appreciably nearer to the succession. There were still six lives
between myself and the peerage, but two branches which had
formerly barred the way had become extinct. Perhaps it will be as
well to give a tree of the succession from the point where the branch
to which I belong came into existence. It must be understood that I
do not give those branches which had died out, or the names of
individuals who did not affect the succession.

It will thus be seen that there was by no means a lack of male

heirs and that my chance was remote indeed. In fact, on going into
the question, so little prospect did there seem of my ever standing
near to the succession that I gave up taking an interest in the
matter, at least for the time being.
In looking back at the development of my character, I am not
conscious of a natural wickedness staining and perverting all my
actions. My career has been simply the result of an immense desire
to be somebody of importance. My chief boyish trait was a love of
beauty, whether in things animate or inanimate. People who have
possessed that intangible something which is known as beauty—that
degree of attraction made up of always varying proportions of line,
colour and intelligence—have invariably done something more than
merely attract me; they have filled me with a burning desire to be
obviously in their outlook, to move for a time within their
circumference, to feel that I had left an indelible impress on their
memory, and it was my early appreciation of a capacity to do this
that perhaps fostered my egotism, till it had become an article of
faith with me that I must be someone. I looked upon the possession
of rank or renown as a useful weapon for drawing attention to
myself, of increasing the number of individuals brought under my
personal influence.
I was greedy of importance, because of the beauty it might bring
into life. Naturally the beautiful things in life vary according to
temperament. Romance was to me the chief thing. After all, it is the
salt of existence. Not that I believe romance to be necessarily
conditioned by rank and wealth. A real artist may create it for
himself out of very humble materials. One of the most complete
romanticists I ever met was a coal-heaver, who had a list of
experiences that sounded in the telling like the Arabian Nights
entertainment. At the same time, rank and wealth fascinate the Jew
as much as precious stones. They glitter, and they have value. The
Israelite is probably less of a snob in these matters than the average
Englishman, but as an Oriental he appreciates their decorative
effect. Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether he is ever so far
dazzled by them as to forget his own interests. I most certainly was
not. I should have liked to be Earl Gascoyne. It would have meant
grasping the lever to so many things, and this fact dawned on me
more and more as I grew up.
My distant relationship to the Gascoynes was the cause of some
humiliation to me at school. There was a boy whose father had just
been made an Alderman of the City of London, and he was rather
boastful of the fact.
“Bah! what’s an Alderman?” I asked.
Instinctively the other boys felt that it was not right that one of
Hebraic extraction should make such a remark. They had the
intuition of their race that a Jew is after all a Jew.
“Shut up, Sheeny,” said one.
 “Now then, old clo’,” said another.
I was not the possessor of Jewish blood for nothing. Where an
English boy would have struck out I remained Orientally
contemptuous of insult. I merely wondered if the time would ever
come when I should be able to remind Lionel Holland—the last boy
who had spoken—of his insult.
“If six people were to die I should be Earl Gascoyne,” I said
grandly.
There arose a shout of laughter.
“Pigs might fly,” said Lionel Holland.
I flushed. The only impression produced by my grandiloquent
speech was that I was a stupid liar. Even my bosom friend Billy
Statham shrank away from me. Such a useless lie offended his sense
of propriety.
I was only twelve and had some difficulty in keeping back my
tears.
“It’s true,” I asserted.
“How can it be true?” demanded Holland. “You are a Jew and
your name is not Gascoyne.”
“It is—my name is Israel Gascoyne Rank. My mother’s name was
Gascoyne.”
But whatever I said they declined to believe in the possibility of
such a thing. The incident taught me, however, to hold my tongue
on the subject of my noble extraction, and that was a point gained.
I don’t think I was unpopular at school, but I suffered the penalty
of all marked personalities; that is to say, I was very much liked or
very much detested. I was not in one sense of great importance in
the school life. I should have been untrue to myself if I had been.
There is perhaps nothing more remarkable than the false estimate
held by boys of character. Their giants are as often as not the
pigmies of after life. Our school captain at the time I am speaking of
was a boy called Jim Morton. He had a pleasant face bordering on
good looks, and the body, so we thought, of a young Hercules. The
basis of his popularity was a sense of justice and a reticence in the
display of his physical strength. He was most certainly worshipped
by the entire school, including myself, although I was by no means
prone to idealise those in authority. For Jim Morton I had a veritable
respect, although in any case my Jewish blood would have taught
me to simulate deference until I was in a position to betray my true
estimate without danger to my own interests. To my imagination as
a small boy he seemed to possess something Titanic, to tower above
everybody else in the school immeasurably. I met him in after years,
an insignificant looking man with a ragged moustache and a slouch.
It was quite a shock, and I waited for him to open his mouth, sure
that his power over my juvenile imagination must have been a
question of intellect. I talked to him for a long time, hoping for some
echo at least of a lost magic. I can safely say I never met anyone
more destitute of ideas, and it seemed impossible that he could ever
have had any. Perhaps had he lived among savages the primitive
virtues which had made him supreme among boys—and boyish
communities are psychologically similar to savage races—would have
developed, and he would have remained a force. It may be so; I
give him the benefit of the doubt. I am inclined to think, however,
that there never had been any personality in the true sense of the
word.
Billy Statham, a boy a year older than myself, I loved. Where my
affections are roused—and I have very strong affections, however
much people may feel inclined to doubt it—I cling like a leech. I am
supremely indifferent to defects in those I love, even when they
affect myself. The only thing I ask is marked characteristics; I am
incapable of concentrating myself on the colourless.
Billy Statham was certainly not colourless. He was gay,
emotional, and beautiful as morning. He was brilliant and indolent.
In many ways he seemed to be the most backward boy in the
school, but to accuse him of being ignorant would have been
preposterous. I never knew him tell a lie, and I never knew him do a
dishonest thing; and yet once when a boy in the school who had
been discovered in a flagrant piece of dishonesty was by general
agreement sent to Coventry, Billy Statham was the one person who
treated him as if nothing had happened. I really think his was the
most Christ-like nature I have ever met. He always seemed to hold
on to the intangible something in people which is above earthly
stains. Evil had at times a bewildering effect on him. I have seen him
look quite blank—when a curious look of wonder did not come into
his face—as other boys were discussing matters which properly
belonged to a more adult stage. The impending complexities of sex
into which the other lads were always taking surreptitious peeps
attracted him not at all. It seemed as if he must have possessed
some inward consciousness that his body would never be called
upon to take part in the sterner struggle. When he was fourteen he
contracted rheumatic fever, and was returned to us after a few
months with the roses blanched from his cheeks and the
consciousness of a weak heart. One day he told me that he had
heard the doctor say to his parents that if he had rheumatic fever
again he would die. On a damp afternoon in late autumn we were
caught in a heavy downpour and I left him at his front door
shivering. I did not see him alive again, and I have never known
boys so profoundly moved by the death of one of their number. It
seemed as if they realised that something spiritual and valuable had
gone from them in their corporate capacity. He left behind him the
recollection of a nature entirely unspoilt.
To me his death was a profound grief. I have never experienced
so great a friendship for anyone since. At the time, I was unable to
understand why he chose me as his Jonathan, excepting that, as I
have already said, he had the instinct of great minds for grasping
the essentials in human nature and allowing a man’s actions to
remain a matter of opinion. He seldom argued with me. He was
content to influence, and in this he displayed another trait of great
natures, which let fall here and there a truth, but are not prone to
discussion. I have often thought that he might have been the
remnant of a great consciousness, having somewhat, but not a great
deal, to expiate in human form. His goodness seemed to stretch out,
invisible, beyond himself.
When he died I was fourteen, and the firmest of friendships are
not at that age sufficiently strong to leave an inconsolable grief. My
next great friend was a boy of very different character. Grahame
Hallward was the son of a fairly well-to-do City man. They lived in
comfortable style, albeit they were a somewhat uncomfortable
family. Wherein their uncomfortableness lay it would have been
difficult to say. They all had a more than usual share of good looks,
and this possibly was their first attraction for me. Indeed, two of
them, Grahame and Sibella, were quite beautiful to look upon. The
family constituted a very aristocracy of physical gifts, and, despite
their peculiar natures, I was always at my ease among them. It is
true that they were inclined to patronise me, but the qualities of my
race enabled me to endure this without resentment, and even with
dignity. It was, however, only natural; for although I was always
neatly dressed, the position of my mother was well known, and had
it been otherwise, the house and street in which we lived would
sufficiently have revealed the truth. In matters of this sort I was not
a snob; besides, I had too quick an instinct for things well-bred not
to realise that my mother was gentlewoman enough to hold her own
with the very best.
One day I took Grahame Hallward home to tea. I think he felt a
little nervous, wondering if tea in the house of such poor people
would be a very uncomfortable affair. I realised from the way in
which he accepted that he was a little surprised at the invitation. He
always had beautiful manners, and he said that of course he would
be delighted to come. The two words “of course!” were a mistake,
however, and I resented them, although I was secretly amused.
He came one day after school, and when we reached the house
my mother was already seated before the urn. There were flowers
on the table, and the linen was spotless. There was a silver teapot
and sugar-basin given to my mother by our lodger on the occasion
of his having completed two years’ residence in the house. His
ingenuity in finding occasions whereon it might be considered
suitable to make my mother and myself presents was quite
remarkable. I was entrusted with the task of calling him in the
morning. Hence it became necessary for me to have a watch,
entirely, as he explained, to suit his convenience. In the same way a
piano arrived one day—our own had been sold at my father’s death
—and our lodger explained that it had been left to him by a distant
relation. I gazed at it longingly as it disappeared into his sitting-
room. After a day or two he said that he believed it would be spoilt
unless it were played upon, and asked me as a favour to do so.
Then, having come home once or twice as I was practising hard, he
declared almost irritably that it was inconvenient and that he really
thought considering the time he had been with us we might oblige
him by having it in our sitting-room, but that of course if my mother
objected there was nothing more to be said. He would have sold it
had it not been in his cousin’s house for so many years. Needless to
chronicle that the piano stood henceforward in our sitting-room. Our
suspicions were somewhat aroused when the man who came to
tune it gave as his opinion that the instrument could not be more
than two years old, if that; in fact, he should have said it was brand-
new.
My mother was pleased for my sake that she was able to greet
my friend from behind a silver teapot and sugar-basin. I was secretly
conscious of the effect she produced on Grahame. He had, I am
sure, believed—despite all my assurances to the contrary—that my
mother was a Jewess, and he was not a little surprised to find a
well-bred Englishwoman with a reserved and quite distinguished
manner. Tea being over my mother kept us seated, whilst, almost
unobserved, she placed every article from the table on the tray. She
was full of manœuvres for minimising the bustle consequent on the
want of a servant. I was rather nervous of the moment when she
would rise and bear forth the tray. I had set her on such a pinnacle
before my friend that I could not bear that he should see her
otherwise than enthroned. I was painfully conscious that there is no
snob like a boy. My mother, however, had foreseen everything.
“Israel dear, Mr. Johnson has brought home a beautiful old
Chinese cabinet. I am sure Mr. Hallward would like to see it.”
Mr. Hallward—barely fifteen and a half and very flattered at being
referred to as Mr. Hallward—expressed himself as most anxious, and
we adjourned to the front room.
Short as was the time we were gone, on our return all signs of a
meal had disappeared, and my mother was seated before the fire as
if she possessed ten servants instead of her own ten fingers.
Then I played. This was not entirely a novelty; I had often been
shown off at the Hallwards’ house. Indeed, my musical abilities
were, I fancied, often made an excuse when the Hallwards felt that
the presence of my humble self in their mansion occasioned
surprise. In Clapham, residence was everything, and the leading
families were a little suspicious of anyone who lived in a house as
small as our own. Had they been generally aware of the lodger they
would have considered themselves entirely justified in deciding that I
was not socially eligible!
I walked part of the way home with Grahame Hallward.
“I say,” he burst out, “your mother is rippin’.”
If Grahame Hallward said so I knew he meant it. His chief enemy
in life was his tongue. He always had an uncontrollable habit of
speaking his mind.
Sibella Hallward exercised an irresistible fascination over me from
the first moment I saw her. She was undeniably lovely even at an
age when most girls are at their worst. Her hair was deliciously silky
and golden. Her eyes were large and blue, with dark-brown brows
and lashes. Her cheeks were the petals of a blush rose. Her mouth
was perfect and petulant, and the one imperfection with which
Nature invariably salts the cream of the correct was her nose; it was
a little tip-tilted, and seemed to have been made to match her voice,
which was curiously childish and treble, with an acerb complaint in it
that was indescribably delightful. She allowed me to play at sweet-
hearting with her, and then one day when we quarrelled called me a
horrid little Jew. I was possessed by my love for her from that day.
My obsession has never been defensible. She was no excuse for any
man’s love excepting that she was beautiful, and I loved her because
such beauty would confer distinction on the man who won her.
She was vain and shallow, but with a will of her own which was
somewhat remarkable, combined with her other characteristics.
I was constantly at the Hallwards’ house. I was always
quarrelling with Sibella and declaring that I would never visit them
any more, but she invariably managed to lure me back without in
any way apologising or admitting herself to be in the wrong.
At this time she was a shameless little flirt and permitted me to
make love to her, which I did with all the precocity of my semi-