The Rise of Henry Morcar

by Phyllis Bentley

“Take a look at these, Harry,” said Mr. Butterworth.

  Morcar took the folds in his hand. They were patterns of very fine soft dress cloths in elegant light-hued designs—delicate checks and stripes in subtle colourings. Morcar studied them admiringly. Their charming clear colours, in fresh and unexpected combinations, were just what he liked—old Mr. Lucas, he thought smiling, would have dubbed them far too bright—and the fine flexible tissue, soft to the touch as thistledown, was a pleasure to handle.

  “French,” he said.

  “French,” agreed Mr. Butterworth. “Dresses for women and children.”

  “I’ve seen a good many of these just recently.”

  “You may well—the French are importing plenty.”

  “They’re really very pretty,” said Morcar, continuing to examine them. “There’ll be quite a big vogue for them, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Mr. Butterworth watched him, flipping his thumbnails. “Can you make me something like that?” he said suddenly.

  “Well—they’re woollen and I’m a worsted manufacturer. They’re twice as fine as anything I’ve had to do with in the woollen line before. And look at the colourings! We should need an enormous number of yarn dyes—simply enormous,” said Morcar thoughtfully. “It would be a big job altogether.”

  “Pah!” snorted Mr. Butterworth, enraged. “That’s what you all say, you manufacturers. Bradford, Annotsfield, Hudley—you’re all alike. I didn’t expect you to say that to me though, Harry Morcar.”

  “I’m much obliged to you for your good opinion,” said Morcar, laughing. “But I should need a mill-ful of fresh machinery to make cloth like this.”

  “And why not? What’s another mill to Harry Morcar?” said Mr. Butterworth smoothly.

  “What indeed? But trade’s bad, you know.”

  “And going to be worse. We’ve finished the post-war boom, my lad, you can take it from me. Overseas they’re repudiating their orders as fast as they can cable.”

  “And yet you urge me to begin a big job like this?”

  “When trade’s bad it’s the time to think of something fresh.”

  “You’re right,” said Morcar thoughtfully.

  “Of course I’m right. I spend my life being right—except about the number of threads in a stripe,” said Mr. Butterworth. “Listen, Harry: if you want to do anything or get anywhere in the textile trade, I strongly advise you to tackle cloths of this type. I’m sure there’s a big market coming for them. With your feeling for colour, you’re the man to go into it. The West Riding can make these cloths as well as the French, surely?”

  “I shan’t give you the same designs. I never copy other folks’ designs—or even imitate them at a distance,” said Morcar.

  “Well, something similar,” urged Mr. Butterworth.

  “And I shan’t make them as well as the French. I shall make them better, or I shan’t make them at all.”

  “Get along with you,” snorted Mr. Butterworth.

  Morcar pretended to take him literally and rose. “Right,” he said. “I shall have to tackle the spinning end first. I’ll take these patterns with me, shall I?”

  Mr. Butterworth nodded. “Let me know how you get on,” he said.

  For the next four years Morcar worked from seven in the morning till just on midnight, five days a week. After experiments, difficulties and disappointments which seemed endless, he succeeded in spinning a very fine woollen yarn—of pure white, soft and light—and proving to his own satisfaction and Mr. Butter-worth’s that he could weave it into a soft fine fabric. It was necessary then to arrange for the dyeing of nearly fifty special shades of this new yarn and to evolve scores of different designs in which to use it. The last process was sheer pleasure to Morcar; to play with the pure clear delicate colours was his weekend treat. During this period of experiment he had to keep some of his ordinary products going in order to pay his way, but this business naturally dropped for lack of his keen attention, and there came a period of inevitable changeover when Daisy Mills seemed to produce almost no cloth at all. There was indeed one frightful moment when the real money in Morcar’s possession amounted to only thirty pounds. Mercifully he was by this time doing his own spinning, having acquired the millful of machinery for this purpose which he had prophesied as necessary to Mr. Butterworth; but when he reflected on his employees going about their work, calmly certain of their wages on Friday, when he reflected on the three households he supported, and on his involvements at the bank, which held debentures on everything he apparently possessed, he felt undecided whether to throw up his hands with a shriek of despair and vanish, or laugh, steel his nerves and carry on.

  As it chanced the day was Thursday, market day in Bradford; he dressed in a new suit just come from his London tailors, with harmonising shirt and tie, grey-blue to match his eyes, drove to Bradford and lunched at the Midland hotel amongst a group of textile acquaintances, with whom he was the life and soul of the party, sparkling and full of fun. Most of the party went on to the Wool Exchange, so Morcar accompanied them in order to appear normal, wondering however as he passed by the effigy of Bishop Blaize (patron of woolcombers) and between the pink marble pillars, whether he would ever see these familiar sights again. It was High ‘Change and the floor was crowded, but as luck would have it he bumped at once into his main creditor, a wool merchant with the long flat roll beneath his arm which indicated a sample of wool. The wool was unrolled and displayed. Morcar considered it with his usual keen eye. It was exactly what he wanted, and if he bought none he feared it might look odd. Smiling cheerfully, and saying to himself: “You’re daft, lad,” Morcar made a considerable purchase. The wool merchant was pleased; the contrast between his present affability and his probable expression if he knew the real state of his customer’s finances amused Morcar. His reflections on his drive to Denbridge, which he accomplished in record time, were lurid; but after all, what did he care, what had he to lose? When he reached Daisy Mills he found that a couple of overdue cheques had come in, so his weekly wages bill was safe—and a section range of the new Thistledown cloth was at last ready for his inspection. He drove to Annots-field at once to show it to Mr. Butterworth. The merchant confirmed Morcar’s own judgment by approving the cloth warmly. The bright charming fabrics were on the market the following season, and enjoyed a striking and complete success.

  Henceforward Morcar was regarded as an expert in this type of cloth, and orders poured in upon him from all directions. Mr. Butterworth became merely one—though the one who received first attention—of his many customers. He rushed from Daisy Mills to his other place up Booth Bank on the other side of Annotsfield, and back again to Denbridge; he rushed to Bradford, to Leeds, to London, pursued always by telegrams and telephone calls; he employed an agent in Paris, he was represented in New York; he sold cloths in South America, New Zealand, China. He made eight or nine hundred pieces a week; he paid off the bank and owed no man anything; he grew rich—a warm man, in the West Riding phrase.

  There were difficulties, of course. The world seemed in a wretchedly insecure, treacherous and disappointing state—but then, that was what Morcar expected of the world which held his wife. Strikes abounded. There were miners’ strikes—but Morcar had laid in a good stock of coal. There were railway strikes—but Morcar had good contracts with road transport. There was a textile strike which was maddening when one reflected how eager foreign competitors were to capture British markets—but Morcar employed the time in putting in fresh machinery and making fresh designs. There were occasional private rows at Daisy and Booth. These were not numerous; out of respect for himself Morcar was a good employer, he paid Union wages of course and work with him was plentiful, whereas in too many other textile mills it was growing scarce. There was a general strike—Morcar thought this too much of a good thing, and drove a large coal lorry back and forth between Annotsfield and Manchester with success and some enjoyment. The shadow of the post-war depression, spreading continually across the world, reached the
West Riding sky and hung there, continually deepening and darkening; Morcar fought it off from Booth Bank and Daisy with cool tenacity. In fact when his colleagues at the Annotsfield Club, to which he had recently been elected, were not calling him a warm man they spoke of him as a cool hand. Why should he not be cool, thought Morcar with contempt when he heard this; he had nothing to lose, everything to gain.

  Nothing to lose, indeed. Though he kept three households he had no home. His wife still remained his wife, but he had not seen her since 1919. He had supplied her lawyer with evidence on which she might bring a suit for divorce against him—a gross and disgusting task which he had carried through with savage determination—but she had laid no such suit. He had increased the income he allowed her as his own increased; she should now be reasonably comfortable, he hoped, in a small way—she and her child—on ten or eleven pounds a week. He had heard no word from her since he left her on the Hurstcote stairs; he had heard no word from her father since his message on the day following Morcar’s return from the War. He had seen nothing, indeed, of any Shaw, and it was now no longer very likely that he would see much of them, for his financial stratum lay far above that of a small manufacturer in a back street. He never thought of the Shaws if he could help it, and struck savagely at anything which brought them to mind.

  As for his mother, she still remained at Number 102. When Morcar, in his “room and power” days, removed to small mean lodgings near Denbridge, Mrs. Morcar refused to accompany him, though he invited her to do so and the economy would have been welcome. Speaking with her usual calm dignity, Mrs. Morcar observed that it was her son’s duty to make a home for his wife and child—she would not delay this, make it less obvious and easy, by assuming Winnie’s duties, Winnie’s place. “Neither of us will have much to live on if we live apart,” said Morcar grimly. His mother set her lips and was silent, then suddenly flashed out that she did not intend to run away from the Shaws, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case. With this simple pride Morcar sympathised; accordingly he did not press her again to come to Denbridge. When after some years of Daisy and Thistledown he returned to Annotsfield he broached again, as a matter of decency and duty, the proposal that she should come to live with him, but he did not now wish for this, his tone was perfunctory and he accepted her refusal with relief. He supplied her generously with money and gave her handsome presents. But Mrs. Morcar stubbornly saved most of the income, and made little use of the luxuries, he proffered. The truth was that she had preserved her original impression, that Harry and his wife had parted because Winnie had discovered some immorality on Harry’s part, in France. (A good many people in Annotsfield thought the same, he found, and Morcar did nothing to contradict this natural—as he bitterly termed it to himself—supposition.) Accordingly Mrs. Morcar disapproved of her son’s conduct, and no amount of worldly success could make her waver from this disapproval. She disapproved, too, of his present way of life; always rushing about in cars and eating in restaurants, no proper home, no quiet, no family affection. He smoked too many cigars—why could he not be content with a modest pipe, like his father? She spoke in these terms to her son whenever he came to see her. Morcar, revealed now in the mirror over his mother’s sideboard as a powerfully built, sophisticated-looking man in his later thirties, well-groomed, wearing a London-tailored suit, handsome shoes, expensive cuff-links, a shirt made to measure, a Bond Street tie, maintained his easy lounging posture with difficulty as he listened, and the moment she gave him an opening looked at his admirable wrist-watch and announced that he must be off; for her words flicked him on the raw. He knew the disadvantages of his way of life quite as well as his mother.

  When he had first decided to return to Annotsfield and looked about for accommodation Jessopp had turned up and suggested that Morcar should employ him and his wife to keep house for him. But Morcar had no desire to remember any of the events of the day of Charlie’s death, of which Jessopp emphatically formed one; besides, the Jessopps had young children, and Morcar felt that he should find young children intolerable. He therefore rejected the timid suggestions of Jessopp—who as a partially disabled soldier was unemployed at the time—brusquely, and took the ground floor of a solid house in the Hudley Road where it debouched into Annotsfield. This portion of the road, once the abode of wealthy merchants, was now a town street, occupied chiefly by doctors and dentists. If Morcar had been living with a wife and family, such a site would not have been compatible with his present financial standing, but for a man alone the place did very well. It was handy for the Annotsfield Club, in any case, where Morcar spent a good deal of his leisure time. The house was owned by an elderly couple, reputable but somewhat declined from their original status; the man was a semi-invalid in an unobtrusive way, the woman cooked and cleaned with the aid of an elderly maid of the well-trained, old-fashioned kind. The furniture was a trifle dingy, but solid and in good repair. All this was of little importance, in any case, because Morcar hardly ever ate or sat there; he used it as a sleeping apartment only.

  His life outside his mills was at that time a procession of hotel dining-rooms, waiters, large cigars, plates containing the change from massive bills, drinks on trays, tables bearing the wreckage of elaborate meals above which the smoke from many cigars thickly hung and curled, glances at his watch, hurried departures and arrivals by car, golf clubs, music-hall shows, evening dress, carnations in the buttonhole. He was able now to give himself all the swift and strident pleasures of the age, and because of their contrast with his restricted youth, his sojourn in the trenches, his postwar years of incessant work, because too of a deep relief in being like other men in these at least and because he did not want to have time to think, he drank them avidly, and soon could not do without them, though fully conscious of the bitter and unsatisfying quality of the draught. He usually stopped short, however, of pleasure with women, and in any case never allowed himself to become too deeply committed in such affairs, turning a cool and derisive eye on other men’s excursions on that stormy and uncertain sea. Bought favours bored him—“I’ve had enough of them with my wife,” thought Morcar sardonically, for he considered he had bought Winnie’s embraces by the protection of his name—while he should never have either the confidence or the wish again, he thought, to try for honest love—if indeed such a thing existed. Occasional Sunday luncheons in business colleagues’ houses gave him glimpses of other men’s home lives; wives who seemed fond of their husbands, children with curls and smiles who leaned against their father’s knees and gazed wonderingly at Morcar. But such affairs were business occasions disguised; after the silver, the polished table, the lace mats, the expensive out-of-season food, the coffee, the liqueurs had played their part, the cigars were lighted, the wives vanished and the host began to talk about textiles.

  For Morcar had no friends, only business associates whose hospitality he returned, lavishly enough, in hotels and clubs. Friends implied private confidences, and these Morcar was not prepared to make. He was not a member nowadays, either, of any of the associations with which northern England abounds. He did not go in for politics, national or municipal—why should he? What good had municipal service done his father? What good had his country’s service done to him? He gave to charities when he was asked, but with a cool smile which discouraged further application. He had no artistic hobby, for he had never learned one. He never entered a church or chapel or any building which his mother would have called a “house of worship”; for since that moment on the stairs at Hurstcote, all religious practice was hypocrisy to him and all religious belief antiquated nonsense, mythology falsified by the experience of life.

  In a word, his attitude at this time was typically that of the 1920’s.

  22. Christina

  “Take a look at this, Harry,” said Mr. Butterworth, holding out a fold of cloth.

  “What, another five-year plan?” said Morcar, laughing.

  Mr. Butterworth’s face remained grave, however, and Morcar’s face changed
too as the pattern came into his own hand. The cloth was a crude imitation of one of his own earlier designs. The yarns were coarser, the colours fewer and less delicate; nevertheless the resemblance existed and might deceive those inexperienced buyers, the general public, into the belief that they were obtaining a cloth equal to Morcar’s at a much lower price.

  “Well, it can’t be helped,” said Morcar distastefully. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say, and there’s no law against it in our trade. It’s a dirty trick, but nothing can be done. If people are fools enough to think this is as good as mine, more fools they, that’s all. They’ll find the difference in the wear.”

  “Aye, but look here,” said Mr. Butterworth. He turned to a corner of the pattern bearing a small adhesive label of the familiar type, oval, jimped at the edge. The label was marked in writing with various figures and letters to identify the cloth, and printed in the centre: Soft as Thistledown.

  “What the devil!” exclaimed Morcar, colouring violently. “Thistledown! That’s an infringement of my trademark, Butterworth!” That this travesty should bear the name of his own beautiful cloths enraged his every instinct, whether of art or trade.

  “It doesn’t actually call the cloth Thistledown,” pointed out the merchant.

  “No—but the intention’s plain,” said Morcar. “Whoever made this cloth and labelled it intended to deceive the buyer into thinking he was getting one of my Thistledowns. By God, I’ll sue him!” he exclaimed, his anger mounting as the scope and probable consequences of the trick came home to him. “Who is it? I’ll make him rue the day he printed those labels. Soft as Thistledown! Printed! I’ll sue him, I’ll show him up properly, I promise you!”

  “There’s a bit of a difficulty, you see, Harry,” said Mr. Butterworth in a soothing tone.

  “Nonsense. It’s a clear case. If the law doesn’t think so, the law’s a fathead. I’ll bring the case anyway—I’ll show him up—I’ll let the trade know the rights of the matter, choose how,” said Morcar firmly.