Gorer v Lever - National Museums Liverpool

prejudices that ran through British society in it widest sense. They representedboth rising talent and business and they also served it, feeding off andencouraging its growing excess. H. G. Wells caught the mood of the periodperfectly in his commentary upon the fall of traditional English Society, Tono­Bungay, ‘We became part of what is nowadays quite an important element in theconfusion of our world, that multitude of economically ascendant people who arelearning how to spend money. It is made up of financial people, the owners of thebusinesses that are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources ofwealth such as ourselves; it includes nearly all America as one sees it on theEuropean stage. It is a various multitude having only this in common; they are allmoving, and particularly their womenkind are moving, from conditions in whichmeans were insistently finite, things were few and customs simple, towards alimitless expenditure and the sphere of attraction of Bond Street, Fifth Avenue,and Paris. Their general effect is one of progressive revelation, of limitlessrope.’ 72As Meryle Secrest has written of Sir Joseph Duveen’s son, Joseph Joel (laterLord Duveen of Millbank), he did not pretend he was not a Jew. ‘His father hadtranscended his origins and social handicaps and been accepted in the highestcircles, and so would he’. 73 She also notes that although he had been married ina synagogue, there was no evidence that he was observant. 74 Gorer mirroredDuveen as much in his life as he did in his career. Edgar was actually born727374H.G. Wells, Tono­Bungay, London, 1909 (reprinted 1964), p.212.Meryle Secrest, Duveen: A Life in Art, Chicago, 2004, p.350.Secrest, Duveen, p.151.25