WORK IN LONDON
know whether they possessed his tremendous energy, his industry, his nerve, his knowledge of the market—whether they possessed even a shade of his temperament. It is obvious, however, that the great majority do not, that the chance against any average young man is a "thousand to one". I used to know rather intimately a talented and in that sense romantic young man, whom I will call X. X. had several irons in the fire: that meant that he had several Napoleons he could imitate. He had a very reasonable competence: he invested it in a certain wholesale business, of which he knew little more than that fortunes were rapidly made in it. He occupied certain offices which looked down on Aldgate Pump.
The rooms appealed to his romanticism: he found it extremely picturesque to see women, actually with pails, in London, in the twentieth century, really fetching water. It was interesting, too, to look at the Trade Papers, and his office had lockers all round it. They were meant to contain samples of the raw material he traded in. I happened once to open one; it revealed rather astonishingly the tinfoil necks of champagne bottles.
X. sanguinely and amiably explained. Strauss, an awfully sharp man, the Napoleon of the . . . Trade, had his lockered office just round the corner: he always offered his clients—perhaps "suitors" would be the right word—that particular brand of wine. He kept it in just such a receptacle.
That part of the business X. attended to with amia-
81
