Many of the people here were his relations, inevitably. His father, Tobias, and Edward's father, Joseph, had been brothers. But Hugh's father had withdrawn his capital from the family business, started his own enterprise, gone bankrupt, and killed himself. That was why Hugh had left the expensive Windfield boarding school and become a day boy at the Folkestone Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; it was why he started work at nineteen instead of doing a European tour and wasting a few years at a university; it was why he lived with his aunt; and it was why he did not have new clothes to wear to the party. He was a relation, but a poor one; an embarrassment to a family whose pride, confidence and social standing was based on its wealth.
It would never have occurred to any of them to solve the problem by giving him money. Poverty was the punishment for doing business badly, and if you started to ease the pain for failures, why, there would be no incentive to do well. "You might as well put feather beds in prison cells," they would say whenever someone suggested helping life's losers.
His father had been the victim of a financial crisis, but that made no difference. He had failed on 11th May 1866, a date known to bankers as Black Friday. On that day a bill broker called Overend & Gurney Ltd had gone bankrupt for five million pounds, and many firms were dragged down, including the London Joint Stock Bank and Sir Samuel Peto's building company, as well as Tobias Pilaster & Co. But there were no excuses in business, according to the Pilaster philosophy. Just at present there was a financial crisis, and no doubt one or two firms would fail before it was over; but the Pilasters were vigorously protecting themselves, shedding their weaker clients, tightening credit, and ruthlessly turning down all but the most unquestionably secure new business. Self-preservation was the highest duty of the banker, they believed.
