One
of his brothers, he told me, had gone out to British Columbia, and
another to New Zealand, while a third had not "gone" but had
"emigrated" to Ireland; and all of them, not to mention numerous
cousins, second cousins and nephews, were engaged in the fishing fly
and tackle business.
When
I first thought of writing this book I cast my mind back to that chance
meeting on the bank of the Coquet and thought that I and this old chap
were in much the same case in the way we had inherited our
occupations. He had inherited artificial fly making. I for my part had
inherited gem dealing. I had, in other words, inherited the
prescriptive right to risk all I had on the dubious chance of earning a
living from a somewhat fickle trade.
My
great-grandfather on my mother's side was a pearl merchant, and my
grandfather, his son, and at least one of his brothers also took to the
trade. My mother's two brothers, one resident in Vienna and the other
in London, followed in their father's footsteps, and my mother herself,
first as a wife of a man more student than business man and then as a
widow, brought up a family of eight children on what she made as a
shrewd dealer in gems.
My
uncle who stayed in Vienna had no sons by any of the three wives who
had sweetened his days, so he adopted a boy when he was nearing seventy
and trained him in his ways to make a pearl man of him before the breed
die out and leave humanity with no one to supply it with expert
knowledge about gems. For he took the métter of our
