Before World War I, Edgar Speyer headed the London branch of the German-based Speyer banking conglomerate. Among other things, he was a great lover of music. His mansion on Grosvenor Square was a cynosure for composers— Debussy, Elgar, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg—all of whom availed themselves of the luxuries of the house, playing or conducting their work in private performances. “We live even more elegantly than kings and emperors,” Grieg wrote, referring to the mansion’s suite of rooms for visitors.
Not all of Edgar Speyer’s interests were so ethereal. The British Speyer branch was a key source of railroad finance, and Edgar himself was best known for creating—in partnership with Charles Yerkes, a Chicago entrepreneur—the London tube system, with its innovative “deep-tube” design. Edgar persisted in expanding the system despite its precarious finances and for many years functioned as its chief executive.
Although Edgar Speyer was a baronet and a member of the king’s Privy Council, he would become a target of the McCarthy-style attacks that were directed at Germans in England during World War I. The attacks grew to such an intensity—Speyer was accused of signaling to German submarines—that he resigned his official positions, over the protests of the king and prime minister. He soon liquidated the British branch of the firm and joined his elder brother, James, in New York. James was then running the Speyers’ branch in America, but it too would succumb before the next war broke out. It is this arc of centuries-long success and sudden diminishment that George W. Liebmann describes in “The Fall of the House of Speyer,” a solid work of financial and social history. They don’t make bankers like this anymore.