The first edition of Christina Stead's 795-page novel, ‘House of All Nations,’ published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1938, did not sell out. It was reissued in ’66, in anticipation of a Christina Stead revival that didn't happen. Her novels are not exciting – the crises and turning points aren't emphasized much more than the mundane situations that lead to and ensue from them. She can dream people up and drop them off anywhere in time.
Stead was born near Sidney, Australia, in 1902. Her mother died when she was two-and-a-half. She was raised by her father, a naturalist. From high school on she was a prolific, ambitious writer. She worked as a teacher, moved to London in 1928, and got a clerical job at a bank. The man who hired her, William Blech, was an American leftist/businessman who became the love of her life. He was a writer, too, publishing under the name William Blake.
‘House of All Nations,’ Stead's fourth book, describes the operation and collapse of a private Paris bank, The Banque Mercure. The mercurial chief of the bank is Jules Bertillon, 39, a decorated aviator married to an heriess. He is generous with money because he thinks he can always make it. Along comes Henri Leon, a great grain merchant and womanizer who has a scheme to sell sterling short. The plan is explained to Jules by Michel Alphendery, a Marxist who handles the important clients' stock accounts. He is modeled on William Blake.
Leon is impressed by Alphendery's precision and Jules's interior decorating. Idlers fill the lobby following the market quotations. An unsuccessful swindler and an American writer discuss the likelihood that the bank engages in contrapartie operations (betting against its clients by not actually placing their stock orders). Aristide Raccamond, a broker who had been involved with a bank that failed, insinuates himself into the Banque Mercure by offering to work only for a commission. His ambitious wife, Marianne, instructs him to investigate the bank with an eye towards blackmailing his way to power. “Money, money, Marianne; there is something else in life besides money,” complains Raccamond, a sentimental jackass. “Not to pay the rent with,” she replies.
Raccamond badgers Jules for a balance sheet to show his clients. Jules refuses. “Anything in black and white commits you, even if it's the truth. The more mysterious the business, the handsomer it seems.” He regrets having employed Raccamond. “The best people for me are dopes and communists. Dopes are grateful to you for keeping them because they're dopes and communists because you know they're communists. But the ambitious dull guy that’s found you out and wants to punish you for the good years he wasted learning a game that didn't exist…” This is prophetic. Raccamond keeps snooping and striving, but he is not taken seriously. “A swindler with no sense of humor is lost,” someone comments.
Henri Leon returns to discuss another scheme: a board of grain merchants to make all of Britain’s wheat purchasees. “The English public will love it,” he predicts. “It looks like a lukewarm amateurish stab at nationalization.” His real goal is a decoration of some kind, a badge of nobility. He courts the Spanish Republicans and all the socialist leaders of Western Europe in the hope of getting medals and decorations at bargain rates if and when they come to power.
Jules tells Leon, “You and I both believe in altruisum Henri, because altruism is selfishness out with a pair of field glasses and imagination.” Jules frequently talks straight. “No rich man is a patriot,” he says, “no rich man a friend. They all have only got one fatherland — the Ritz-Carlton; and one friend — the mistress they're promising to divorce their wife for.” He toys with the idea of taking all the loot and vanishing. His adviser, Alphendery, begins arranging for a neat bankruptcy, but Jules says he means to abscond with all or nothing. Jules teases Alphendery about Russia: “Did you hear the latest, eh? Piecework is paid for! Al, they're wonderful advertisers. They've got the Genghis Khan technique. You know: glory… Stalin’s a smart one. He runs the state and lets the workers get tired out building dynamos and then he teaches them to sing songs about Lenin… I wouldn't go and shoot the Russian worker. His mouth’s stopped for 50 years.”
The workaday life of the bank continues. A clerk takes a collection to buy a wedding present for the head bookkeeper. Two pushy German emigres are allowed to claim an association with the bank, which is a help in shifting their commodities business to France. Clients and petty blackmailers ask for overdrafts, letters to help evade taxes and other favors. With a retailer about to open a chain of bargain basements, Jules dreams up best-selling items. His droodles are money-making ideas. A drunken countess complains that the bank owes her 239 francs. Alphendery examines the account and finds that she actually owes the bank some money; but Jules makes the adjustment in her favor. Police pursue a young Chilean grandee — a rapist — and Jules assigns Raccamond to whisk him onto the Brussels-bound train.
Against the urging of Alphendery, Jules enters into a bet with Jacques Carriere, who is making payments on a brewery he inherited. Jules consents to make the future payments in francs at the going rate of exchange (so that if the pound is devalued he will be paying the difference). Carriere had an unrequited prep school crush on Jules. The bet is a “modern duel,” and news of it spreads in financial circles.
Raccamond is upset because a high-class client has lost money to some American gamblers she met at the bank. He wants Jules to close the doors to “gangsters,” but Jules explains, “every banker is a poker shark but the Eddie McCaheys are the poor fellows who don't get away with it.”
Leon springs into the bank with an intricate scheme to make $10 million in wheat. It involves forming several consortiums, convincing Russia — which has a wheat surplus — to buy instead of selling, and arranging for American bankers to discount Russian bills. Leon, who has always “feared partnership with the mercurial Gentile and, as a result, been mulcted entirely by Jews,” now wants the bank to front for him. Jules goes in reluctantly. “No great swag was ever made out of commodities,” he feels. “To make a fortune you've got to steal it, with nothing honest at the back of it. All great fortunes are financial… come out of the air.” Jules assigns several incompetent flatterers to pursue the wheat scheme, and they blow it entriely. Leon is heartbroken.
On September 18, 1931, the pound goes off. “People talked of a foreign conspiracy and ‘attacks from abroad’ on the pound, Englishmen always having the strange illusion that (far from their living coming from abroad), happy nations and bandit races are always trying to rifle the boundless treasure of the little island.” Carriere begins collecting on the bet and needling Jules with gossip-column items.
Aristide Raccamond installs a man loyal to him as accountant in the bank's Brussels branch. A solemn hysteric, he can't help spreading rumors of fraud, mismanagement and impending bankruptcy. He lines up a position for himself at another bank “to keep a door open.” At last he confronts Jules with the contrapartie books (stolen by his agent in Brussels) and demands a virtual partnership “to safeguard the clients.” Jules faces him down, but Raccamond is recharged by his wife, “the real Raccamond.” He panics and starts a run on the bank by urging his clients to withdraw their accounts. He tells the police that Jules is about to abscond. They swoop down on the bank, only to find that everything is business-as-usual.
Jules makes two last unsuccessful gambles, then he decides to skip for Estonia, leaving nothing for the employees (whom he had always intended to give six months pay). “Some of the clients tried to sue the employees for knowing the state of affairs and not immediately reporting it to the police; but this, it was explained, would only result in the world being turned upside down and the complaints were dismissed.”
Alphendery goes to work for Leon as private secretary (mascot, sounding board, beard). Leon informs him that he was never a real insider at the Banque Mercure. “No, no, my boy. You don’t know the whole story… No one tells the whole story. Only Jules knows it.”
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