Books: Of Wealth & Power

THE BARONS (579 pp.)—Charles Werfenbaker—Random House ($3.50).

The Barons are a clannish French family that fled the French Revolution, settled in Delaware, and rose to great wealth and power from a small gunpowder mill on Rising Sun Creek, near the small town of Susquehanna. “Neither the setting nor any of the characters ever existed,” says an author’s note at the beginning of this novel. But that will prevent few readers from noting a more than surface resemblance between the Barons and the Du Ponts, another clannish French family that fled the French Revolution, settled in Delaware, and rose to great wealth and power from a small powder mill on Brandywine Creek, near Wilmington.

Balance for Baron. At the opening of the novel in 1906, the older Barons are tired of carrying on the business and the company is about to be sold to a competitor. Impetuous young Stuart Baron, who has been managing the mills, maneuvers the elder clansmen into agreeing to sell to the highest bidder, then makes the highest bid himself. The elders agree to the coup, provided he will take two cousins into the business as balance wheels. The three of them—headstrong Stuart, flamboyant Raoul, a promoter and organizer, and cautious David, a slick man with figures—proceed to gobble small powder companies by the dozens and build Baron into a giant U.S. powder trust.

An incident no less dramatic actually happened in Wilmington in 1902. In that instance it was headstrong young Alfred Iréneé du Pont who proposed to buy the company, and Cousins Thomas Coleman, the promoter, and Pierre Samuel, the financial brain—still, at 80, a member of Du Pont’s finance committee—who joined him to build the business and to expand it into the fields of peace. Shortly before World War I, E. I. du Pont de Nemours, like Baron, was found in violation of the antitrust laws and split into three separate companies. The parallels go deeper. The Barons is largely the story of Stuart. His divorce, which rocked Susquehanna society, his long and tragic attempt to marry his third cousin, Philippa, his law suit and feud with his family over disposal of Raoul’s 40,000 shares of Baron common that forced him out of the company, all find their counterparts in Wilmington fact or legend.

Pending Balzac. Whether the fictional Barons catch the flavor and character of the Du Ponts is another question. Many attempts have been made to mine the raw drama of America’s industrial titans. So far, these tremendous themes are still awaiting a Balzac. Author Wertenbaker, sometime resident of Delaware, longtime member of the editorial staffs of TIME and FORTUNE who now writes novels in the south of France, knows his milieu. He has a long memory for the provincial feel, the sights, sounds, and faded scandals of the Delaware country. If there is a bit too much historical lumber and corn in The Barons, he has managed to infuse enough animal vigor into his story to make it absorbing and as close to Balzac as any modern author may get.