that
annoyed him. He knew the club members said unkind things about him. "I
thought that was the trouble," he said simply, when Rhodes reported
that one man in particular was holding out against him. He told Rhodes
that he had never lunched at the Kimberley Club and that he would like
to. Rhodes promptly took him, more than once. Other members complained.
Rhodes's reaction was quick: he forced Barnato on the club as a member,
and that settled that.
The
strange alliance led next to the affair of the bucket of diamonds.
Rhodes remarked to Barney that he had never seen such a collection, and
that he had a fancy to do so. Barnato thereupon produced a bucketful
and allowed the great man to dabble in it and play with the pretty
things. That's all there is to the story, or all there would be if it
weren't well known that Rhodes had a special way of looking at diamonds
and reckoning up what he called "the power" contained in them. Without
that knowledge the anecdote is meaningless; yet there is usually a
reason when stories persist. Rhodes hasn't been dead such a long time
that every scrap of his history is precious. Plenty of people who are
still living remember him, and though hero worship plays a large part
in the legend (I was rebuked in Kimberley because I had neglected to
go and look at the stone he used for a mounting block) such hero
worship could hardly be the explanation for the story of the bucketful
of diamonds. I think it is remembered chiefly not because of Rhodes or
Barnato, but because of the mental picture itself: the thought of that
fabulous lot of diamonds. It was a symbol. It was treasure. It was
South Africa. I caught myself gawking at the things in the top-story
office in Johannesburg, and for the first time felt I could sympathize
with Cecil Rhodes.
