most of the marked steps of his rise of fortune and power I heard from his own lips. In 1882 his De Beers Company only paid three per cent on the capital of?. 200,000; in 1888 it paid twentyfive per cent on a capital of over two millions and a quarter. It paid, that is,?. 6,000 in 1882 and six years later?. 600,000. Then he told me of his long fight with Barnato and how at length he incorporated Kimberley Central with De Beers. I shall never forget how summarily he treated it and how differently it all sounded when I heard it from Beit later and then from Barnato and Woolfie Joel. They went, it appeared, to a final meeting one evening in Kimberley, Rhodes and Beit on one side, Barnato and Woolfie Joel on the other. Beit had made it up with Rhodes to let him do the bargaining: 'I'm not a Jew for nothing; I'll get it cheaper than you can!' Rhodes consented.
Barnato and Woolfie were nearing the place when Barnato said suddenly,
'What should we get?'
Woolfie said, 'Half a million, I hope.'
'Bah!' cried Barney, 'I'm going to be a millionaire tonight, you'll see. Rhodes doesn't value money,' and he smacked his lips.
When the four met, Rhodes, forgetting all that he had promised Beit, began at once, 'I hate bargaining: I'll give you, Barnato, more than your holding in Kimberley's worth. I'll give you a cool million cash!'
Beit cried, 'Oh my God, my God, Rhodes! You'll ruin us.'
Barnato got up at once and reached for his hat: 'We may as well go, Woolfie, if they think one million can buy us. I thought we were going to get a square deal,' and he turned to the door.
'Sit down, sit down,' cried Rhodes. 'Here, Beit, you talk to them.'
The quartette spent the whole night talking, bargaining, disputing, but at length Rhodes and Beit bought Kimberley Central for over five million sterling; yet the amalgamation was a good deal for De Beers and left Rhodes free to make even more out of the gold fields of the Rand than he had made out of diamonds in Kimberley.
When he got the promise of the charter for his exploring company, he went about London with a sheaf of many coloured application forms in his breast pocket. Long before this I had introduced him to Arthur Walter of The Times.
Strange to say, Arthur Walter did not take to Rhodes at first. 'He's a boor,' he said. 'He forgets common civilities in his haste to push his own ideas.'
'True enough,' I replied, 'but you'll get to like him, Walter; he has no malice in him, nothing petty,' and soon my forecast proved true.
On a certain evening Rhodes outstayed Walter and then handed me a coloured form. 'Write your application for shares in the Chartered Company on that,' he said, 'and up to a thousand shares you'll get the allotment.'
I handed him back the paper, shaking my head; at once he selected another color and pushed it across to me. 'That's the biggest I'm giving, Harris; that goes in thousands.'
'I don't want it,' I said. 'I don't gamble.'
'Gamble be d… d!' he cried. 'This is a certainty: these shares will be dealt in on the stock exchange at a premium of?. 5; you can make?. 40,000 in a week by using that form. I'll give you?. 20,000 for it when you please!'
'No, no, Rhodes,' I said. 'You mustn't misunderstand me. I believe Chartered Shares will go to a big premium (within a week they went to?. 8 each), but I like you and what I've done I've done to help you and the cause we both have at heart, and I don't want any pay for it.'
He held out his hand to me, saying simply, 'I understand, still I wish…' I shook my head. 'D'ye know there's only one other man in England besides yourself who has refused? Look at this list,' and he handed it to me. One of the first names to catch my eye was that of the Duchess of Abercorn; the next that struck me in turning the pages was that of Schradhorst, the brother of the Liberal agitator who was always against Rhodes's schemes: he was down for 100 shares. 'He asked me for 'em,' was Rhodes's comment.
'Who's that?' I asked, pointing to a name which had only five shares opposite to it.
'Oh,' exclaimed Rhodes after some thought, 'that must be the name of the midshipman who took me out in his gig to the flagship in Simon Bay.'
We both laughed: from duchess to midshipman, enemy as well as friend, all held out their hands. And Rhodes persisted with me. 'You're too careless about money, Harris! You'll see; you'll be sorry for it yet. Take 10,000; put it away in Consols and forget it. Before you die, you'll say my advice was the best you've ever had.'
Winston Churchill gave me the very same advice twenty years later, said that the money I got him for his Life of his father had made him free from care and fear. Rhodes and Winston Churchill were right. I should have taken the money offered me and put it away in Consols and have forgotten about it; I'd have been happier if I had followed their advice.
For a good many years about this time I spent the worst of the winter months in Monte Carlo and at first used to gamble a good deal, though I never lost my head or did myself any serious harm.
One evening at Monte Carlo I became aware that the Prince of Wales was standing just behind me. Almost at the same moment Sir Algernon Borthwick, whom I knew fairly well, touched my shoulder and bending down told me in a low voice that the Prince wished me to be presented to him. Of course I got up and turned round at once, and the Prince, shaking my hand said, with a strong German accent, 'I've heard a great deal about you from my uncle, the Duke of Cambridge. He calls you the best storyteller he has ever met. I hope I may hear you tell some stories one of these days, but now I see you are playing with great luck and I wish you'd put these on for me,' and he handed me a bundle of bank notes.
His accent was that of a German Jew and 'the' was a stumbling block: 'that' was 'dat' and 'these' 'dese.' There had been a run of red and I had backed it, so I placed the Prince's pile beside mine and won a couple of times, when I took off a couple of maximums for each of us. I was well inspired, for black won the next coup and the Prince was as delighted as a child. What he said about the story-telling came into my head as he stuffed the notes in his pockets. It suddenly occurred to me that probably no one had ever ventured to tell him a naughty story. So I told him a naughty rhyme to his huge amusement.
Here's to the game of twenty toes,
It's known all over the town;
The girls play it with ten toes up
And the boys with ten toes down.
'Tell me another, tell me another,' he cried. So nothing loath, I told him a story that always seemed to me supremely amusing. An old actor found himself one evening on the Thames embankment. Out of work and out at elbows he sat brooding, when one of the female night birds sank onto the bench beside him. He made room for her, bowing courteously, so she began to talk, and finally asking him what he was.
'An actor, Madame, merely an old actor. And you?' he added courteously.
'Oh,' was the bitter reply. 'I'm only a prostitute!'
The broken down actor turned to her earnestly; 'Two great professions, Madame, ours, cursed by the competition of amateurs!'
The Prince knit his brow for a moment and then the humour struck him and he laughed heartily.
'Another story, Sir,' I began, and told of Lady Hawkins. Sir Henry Hawkins, the famous 'hanging' judge, so- called, had married his cook in later life and she used English like a common cockney woman and soon became the notorious Mrs. Malaprop of the last decades of the nineteenth century in London. Sir Henry Hawkins loved beautiful oriental carpets and had got a splendid one for his sitting-room. At a reception once, a young lord complimented Lady Hawkins on the splendid carpet. 'I don't know how many men have copulated me upon that carpet,' the lady is said to have replied.
The Prince was so delighted and laughed so heartily that I told him the story of the English servant girl who came to her mistress at the end of the first week, saying, 'Mum, I'll have to leave.'
'Why, Mary,' said the mistress, 'you've only been here just over a week and we've tried to make it comfortable for you. What's wrong?'
'Well, mum, it's them 'orrid texts in my bedroom. I can't abear 'em.'
'Horrid texts, Mary? What texts?' asked the old Puritan lady in astonishment.
'Well, Mum, there's one just over my bed: 'Be ye also ready, for you know not the day nor the hour when the Master cometh.' '
'Well,' said the old lady, 'what do you object to in that, Mary?'
'Well, mum,' said Mary setting her jaw. 'I've been ready over a week and he ain't come yet. I can't
