To him that hath shall be given: Hilaire Belloc's Mr Petre

Our leaders' appetite for the good things in life, and getting them for free, has put me in mind of a satirical novel I read years ago - Hilaire Belloc's Mr Petre, which was published in 1925.

My hazy recollection was that the hero was taken to be a rich man and so was never asked to pay for anything. Showered with gifts, soon he really was rich.

A contemporary review from the Manchester Guardian fleshes out the plot:

The story begins in 1953 with the return of Mr Peter Blagden from New York, and for a page or two the irony seems to be held in reserve; we have time to think that Mr Belloc could, if he would, give us a very interesting "ordinary" novel. But Mr Blagden loses his memory completely, and from no particular cause; chances combine to identify him with Mr Petre, the great American millionaire. 

So he becomes involved in enormous transactions, and on the strength of an occasional "Exactly" or "I quite understand" his reputation as the most astute man of his time becomes assured. He puts up at the Splendide (or, as the proof-reader leaves it on one occasion the Savoy), and so courted is he that he must bolt to the country sometimes for breathing space.

If he buys everybody follows, and his chance expression of opinion breaks up a luncheon party, everybody rushing for the telephone. Perhaps the loss of memory is a little arbitrary in its working, but it is a good device for the display of Mr Belloc's scornful irony. 

For, of course, everything that Mr Petre says and does is idiotic. A man reputed to have fifty million pounds must be a master-mind, and financiers feel that they must crawl before him or be ruined.

Belloc was Liberal MP for Salford South between 1906 and 1910. Though he was a raving antisemite, his book of political theory The Servile State is worth seeking out. I think of it when I read that the government is to give itself powers to investigate the bank accounts of people receiving welfare benefits.

Another feature of Mr Petre is that, according to that review, it was illustrated by Belloc's great friend G.K. Chesterton.

These days we think of illustrations as suitable for children's books but not fiction written for adults. Yet some of the greatest 19th-century novels were illustrated.

And in Vanity Fair, where the text says one thing and Thackeray's own drawings suggest something more sinister is taking place, we instinctively trust the picture over the words.