Customer Reviews

Moreton Frewen's Western Adventures

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Moreton Frewen was an original indeed. Like Frank Harris he knew everyone that counted in Victorian England in its days as the world's banker. He made and lost fortunes so often he was known as "mortal ruin" to those who invested with him, which was almost everyone who was anyone. However, he was so charming and persuasive that they over and over sunk money into his pie in the sky schemes, coming to his rescue even on some that were obviously going down the drain. In this he was very much like his Robber Baron father-in-law, Leonard Jerome, known as the father of American thoroughbred racing. (Belmont certainly helped and his biography should be read by anyone interested in the Gilded Age.) Frewen himself was a great horseman. He also went west when he was young and founded a ranch in Wyoming, known as the castle since he decorated it, beneath its crude exterior, like an English mansion to the extent that was possible. Noblemen flocked there in droves and the parties were famous.

This merely scratches the surface of the fascinating career of a great adventurer who was as familiar with the movers and shakers of Australia, Canada, Africa and the U.S. as he was with those in the British Isles.

I can guarantee that anyone interested in men like Stanley, Burton, Gordon and Rhodes, for example, will be enchanted with this lesser known charming rascal. P.T. Barnum might even have been fleeced by him - and loved it.

He deserves a far more extensive and comprehsive review than I have time for just now, but I hope to return soon, expand on this review, and review a great many other books on which I owe reviews to Amazon.