until
he finally got his degree. Barnato left school at the age of fourteen,
and it is not recorded that he ever expressed regret at having done so.
Rhodes was tall and fair, Barnato short and dark—the differences could
be catalogued for pages, but there were similarities, too, and the
chief of these—unbounded ambition—resulted in a battle that still
lives vividly in South African legend.
Barnato
arrived at the Fields in 1873, having come out, like Rhodes, to join an
elder brother; he was twenty-one years old and possessed something less
than £60 to start out with. His real name was Barnett Isaacs, but with
his brother Harry he had adopted the name Barnato as being more exotic
and thus suitable for the stage. For both the Isaacs boys had appeared
on the boards of London music halls.
In
the year of Barnato's arrival a brief depression hit the world's luxury
trades. In addition, there was an overproduction of big stones. There
were too many diamonds on the market, and the price had sunk to below
what the sellers considered a normal level. Like Rhodes, Barnato turned
his hand to anything that would earn him a living. "There is nothing
this country produces that I have not traded in," he said, after he had
become a diamond king, "from diamonds and gold right away through wool,
feathers, and mealies, to garden vegetables. I have always found that I
was as good a hand at buying and selling as most people." That was
blatant understatement. Barney was a wizard at buying and selling. He
was quickwitted, and he had much more zest and vitality than the
average man. Inevitably he settled on diamonds as his best bet —that
is, until gold was discovered on the Rand—but he had many side lines in
the early days before diamonds paid. He
