These Charming People by Michael Arlen

I

This is quite a simple story, but it is about a lord. The lord in question was John Tiberius Vincent de Guy, second Viscount Paramour, and he was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He was, in fact, so wealthy that Mr. Otto Kahn stood at attention when speaking to him and Mr. John D. Rockefeller burnt his tongue with his hot milk at the mere mention of his name. Of course, young Lord Paramour had not made the money himself; he merely decorated it. His father, the late Watt A. Guy, will be remembered as the inventor and promoter of the Paramour Safety Hairpin: which, it has been said, has made a deeper impress on contemporary life than any other invention except Beecham's Pills. It was thought pretty decent of the old man that, when one day as he lay on his death-bed the Prime Minister dropped in to hand him a Viscounty, he instantly took as his title the name which had made his millions, and died Lord Paramour; in which choice some people of the meaner sort have professed to find a particular aptness, for had not (they asked) the most famous advertisement of the Hairpins, that one which has for more than a decade been emblazoned in coloured lights across the eastern end of Piccadilly Circus and has raised advertisement to the majesty of an institution -- had not those letters of fire beseeched: "Buy Paramour, Lord of Hairpins. No Woman Should be Without"? Whereupon, to be sure, no woman was.[B]