Gorer v Lever - National Museums Liverpool

success”, he once told me, “has been courage in buying and selling. I havealways admired your late uncle, Sir Joseph Duveen; I take him as my pattern”’. 69Gorer’s emulation of Sir Joseph Duveen may also have had its roots in bothmen’s origins – they were Jewish. In Edwardian Britain and in America, being aJew placed you in an ambiguous position, made all the more so by a significantJewish representation in a growing plutocracy which was supplanting thetraditionallanded aristocracy. The internationalisation of business andopportunities for real talent brought many Jewish businessmen to the fore. KingEdward VII’s biographer, T. H. S. Escott was typical when he observed that theSocial control of London was divided ‘between the Semite and the Yankee’, buthe was quick to acknowledge that this brought advantages: ‘such humanisingelements that leaven London today largely come from the Jewish element… Saywhat you will, the Jews are the salt of smart Society’ and without their patronage‘English art and music could scarcely live in the English capital…’ 70 Othercomments were less generous, particularly when the King was seen to besurrounding himself with powerful Jewish businessmen. Lord Balcarres, from anold Scottish family, noted that ‘at Aldershot they called out “King of the Jews”…there is much dormant anti­semitism…’ 71The tightrope that both Gorer and the Duveens had to walk was that they neededto appeal to both old and new money and to steer themselves through a gamut of69Duveen, Secrets, p.261.70T.H.S. Escott, King Edward and His Court, London, 1903, p.224­5, quoted in J.Mordaunt Crook, The Rise of the Nouveau Riches, London, 1999, p.155.71Quoted in Mordaunt Crook, The Rise, p.156.24