Review: Mr. Petre

Mr. Petre by Hilaire Belloc
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an odd one from Hilaire Belloc. It's arguably science fiction, set about 20 years in the future from when it was published (in the year of Belloc's death, coincidentally, 1953), but that doesn't make a huge amount of difference. It's mainly so that he can introduce a vaguely described technology named the "rotor" which powers things (ships, cars, civic infrastructure), as far as I can tell because he needed a character to have made a lot of money from something and that's what he picked. He also, without fanfare or anyone discussing it at all, has women holding several high offices such as Prime Minister and Chancellor, which makes absolutely no difference to how anything operates, and this is probably the point.

Nothing else has really changed in the world; the closest there is to a reference to anything relating to World War II is a mention that a newspaper has printed a story about how the Poles are oppressing the German-speaking minority in Poland. Let's not forget that in 1932, when this book was published, Adolf Hitler was a new figure on the German political landscape, and the Nazis weren't yet in power.

So any claim to be science fiction is fairly thin. It's mostly a satire, mostly on the financial system and those who run it, but the legal system, politicians and civil servants, doctors, and newspapers come in for their share of mockery too.

A man - a man, we're told, who isn't doing very well financially, though he's from a landowning background - gets off a boat from the US and, in the train on the way to London, falls asleep and wakes up with no memory of who he is. He vaguely thinks his name might be Petre (pronounced Peter), and when a cabbie takes him to the Hotel Splendide based on how he's dressed, he registers under that name. The clerk assumes he's the eccentric American millionaire of that name, John K. Petre, who would, in today's terms, be a billionaire (his quoted fortune of 50 million pounds translates to 250 million USD at the 1932 exchange rate, which today would be getting on for six billion, assuming we are talking 1932 values). This man's eccentricities include bullying newspapers who dare to print his whereabouts, and he also doesn't allow pictures of him to be published, so nobody knows what he looks like unless they've met him, and it's not surprising that nobody knows he's in London.

A rising young stockbroker gets hold of the amnesiac, and uses the power of the Petre name to pull off several large financial transactions, netting the presumed Petre about two million pounds - close to 180 million in 2025 pounds - without him having to put up any actual money (of which he has almost none) or prove his identity (which he cannot do). It's all done on bluff and assumptions and people's fear and greed, manipulated through rumour both by word-of-mouth and through a Press that is for sale and easily fooled, and the money... just appears somehow through financial wizardry, though ultimately, as Belloc reflects, it probably comes from the collective pockets of the British taxpayer.

There's a farcical series of appointments with different doctors in Harley Street who are no use whatsoever with helping the amnesiac regain his memory; they mostly make him angry by not listening to him and then chiding him for not telling them things.

(view spoiler)[Eventually, the man is recognized by an old friend and regains his memory, whereupon it is clear - if it wasn't already - that he isn't Petre; his first name is Peter. The real Petre gets to know of the whole business and sues him, but is defeated in court because of complicated legal principles going back to Edward III, which Belloc makes up and gives convincing names. Peter is left with the difficult problem of how to dispose of the money that he doesn't want and thinks is probably going to be harmful to whoever possesses it, but he doesn't manage to come up with an answer. (hide spoiler)]

It's amusing more than laugh-out-loud funny, and was probably funnier in 1932 than it is today, but I did enjoy the read.

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