London, And So On: Low Company!

Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the gem industry.

(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:

I always think it is a pity that whereas men of such lax morals frequently prove as sympathetic and generous as H F when appealed to on behalf of their distressed fellows, many upright men in affluent circumstances show themselves as hard as flint whenever an attempt is made to lay them under contribution in a case of genuine hard luck. Not long ago one who considers himself an ornament to the trade to which I have been privileged to belong for at least twenty years longer than he, reproached me for speaking to a one-time respected dealer who a few days before had come out of gaol after serving a short sentence for having brought stolen jewelry.

‘If I had been younger man,’ I said, ‘with an unformed character and the need to proclaim my business virtue, perhaps I should have hesitated to go near him. But at my age and enjoying the reputation I do, I felt that I could risk my morals if, by talking to a man for a few minutes, I could help to re-establish him in his self-respect. Besides, wasn’t it John Wesley who said, when he saw some malefactor led to executions: ‘There but for the grace of God goes John Wesley? That was how I felt today.’

But to return to my beginnings.

I soon found my money getting low. Then came the old story, new to me, looking for a job. Numberless calls, scores of unanswered letters posted at the expense of many square meals, clean shirt and collar and a pressed suit at all costs. I gave up my boarding-house and found a room under the roof in Great Russell Street at five shillings a week. What qualifications must a man have, I asked myself in bewilderment, that would give him a living wage in this strange and mighty city of London? I was master of three languages, a fluent correspondent, a good bookkeeper, a graduate of the University of Vienna, an expert in metals, and knew as much about gems as any ordinary dealer did. And yet nobody could use my services.

Luckily, however, I had kept in with Mrs Francis my first landlady. She was a motherly person and a lady who had come down in the world. One day I called in to see her and she said: ‘I have good news for you. Father Reilly has lost his job with Pitman’s.’

Father Reilly was the unfrocked Catholic priest who was one of her boarders. His job had been teaching English to foreigners. Mrs Francis, who knew that I was a foreigner who could speak English, thought I would fit the bill. In point of fact, I got the job at a salary of two pounds fifteen shillings a week.

Most of my pupils were older than I was. I remember one, Herr Meltner, mainly because I got him into a continental new service, my intuition having enabled him to qualify as a translator of news items translated from the London dailies. He showed his appreciation by making me free of the bachelor establishment of his new boss. There his chief lived in perfect amity with his paste-and-scissors men in a kind of Bohemian communism which knew no boundary between meum and tuum. Neckties, hats, coats, umbrellas and handkerchiefs were interchangeable property in that queer house of bachelors, but you could always be sure of a good meal there if your tastes included an unvarying passion for herrings doused, herrings fried, herrings marinated, pickled herrings, or herrings stewed with potatoes boiled in their jackets. When funds were ample one feasted on jellied eels, oyster patties, liver sausages, Pomeranian goose breast and iced Munich lager fetched by the pail from a nearby German hotel. It was no uncommon thing for Herr Meltner, long after he had ceased to be my student, to send me a scribbled message by hand saying: ‘Come tonight, great eats.’

Another of my pupils was a German doctor with a liquil ozone treatment as a cure for cancer. I used to translate his lectures and pamphlets for him and on several occasions stood on a platform for him translating his message word for word before the assembled medicos. One of these doctors had a father who ran a scholastic agency in the West End, and this old gentleman was the cause of my leaving London. He got me a job as manager of a language school in Newcastle-on-Tyne.

I spent five years on Tyneside as a professional man, and they were happy years. I made friends, I studied, I met and married the mother of my children (who made an honest Britisher of me) and I discovered as few aliens discover that London is not England. To this day my English has a touch of North Country burr about it, so that I am sometimes flattered to be thought a Scot.

But gems were calling me back. I sold my language schools and was cheated of my money. Now I was a married man and had to start life all over again. Well, back to London and into the trade to which I belonged by early training and natural taste. A hundred pounds was not much money, but it furnished me an office and bought me a safe. It so happened that I made, this time, an extremely lucky start and within a matter of weeks had found my bearings.

London, And So On: Low Company! (continued)