Page:Soullondonasurv00fordgoog.djvu/99

RV 82 (WORK IN LONDON) bility and success: he had also an idea that the Banks were advancing his partner money on some sort of "cover system"; the crop somewhere in the East was going to fail: his partner—X. financed this partner—had taken care to be early in the market: as soon as the season commenced they would be making a profit of £90 a week, and with a few more such lucky specs, X. would be able to clear out with £50,000.

He attended at his office thus amiably, he wrote an occasional letter on his typewriter, which was rather fun, he looked out of window at the Pump, he countersigned cheques, and genially acknowledged that the Trade was full of rogues, from ten until four.

Then he hurried westwards to his large white and ormolu house, and sat down to a rosewood Chippendale bureau. He had there another Napoleon before his eyes.

This was a celebrated novelist, who made £7,000 a year, by dictating topical novels into a phonograph. X. accordingly dictated topical novels—when the war broke out, a romance of South Africa; during the Chinese Massacres, a Chinese novel.

He displayed an astonishing industry over this speculation, and, having devoted his two or three hours a day to it, he "dressed", and with his wife, either dined out, or "dined" other amiable and fashionable persons. That, too, was part of the game, because to get on in either the Book or the other Trade, you have to "know people". Sometimes after returning from the opera X. would sit down and write a topical critique and sketch 82