I did not chose that train hung with purple and black draperies! Neither did I choose the TAZARA-Express. But we are indeed on the way into the heart of Africa, but not as a rolling loony bin, Mr. Rhodes — and I am someone who can judge it!

In this hall full of dust and rust ... I took over from the controller, who ...

... came by train from Durban when twelve years before him, in September 1870, another young man had arrived, son of a clergyman in Britain’s Bishop’s Stortford. At that time, he had been seventeen years of age, just one year older than the controller was when he arrived in Africa.

But other than the boy, who was no controller then, the first one had been no dreamer … it was you, Cecil John Rhodes.

… The journey by rail from Durban to that place of future life close to the edge of Africa’s wilderness made the second boy aware that limits are to be overcome only if ambition is combined with inventiveness.
When it was too late, he became aware that inventiveness which knows no limit may create limitless ambition for development — and that, at the end, development will have to accept its limits …

... I took over from that second boy who became a controller in this hall full of dust and rust which was his last refuge — I took over from my Father, Harry J. Filmer Esqu. …

I, Harry Filmer Jr., took on the task to finalize his tale, the story of his final ruin, of the fifth and last effort to win back his personal fortune … and I shall do it with my own words.

¹ 1919: My brother Bob had been killed in action in France. After the Armistice I brought home with me a lovely Irish bride. The ranch that I had purchased in Swaziland on advice of my father was now too far away; from Mbabane it would still be over forty miles by ox-wagon. Mother hated the idea of Helen living down there in the hot low-veld, isolated from any other white woman and so far from town. So before long I decided to give the ranch up. I sold it for £15,000 and handed the cheque over to my Father with a general power of attorney.

I had plunged again into the uncertain world of mining speculation with Father. It was all diamonds now. Before the war he had become interested in an alluvial proposition known as New Greig Diamonds. His friend Tommy Greig was the founder. But with the outbreak of war the shares slumped down. However, in 1919 when I gave up the ranch and began to look round for a new career, Greig Diamonds were again coming into their own. The world market was crying out for the lovely stones, which seemed to symbolise all the grace and beauty life had lacked for so long.

Helen, my wife and in the meantime mother of our first baby, lived with me in a hut on Klipspruit-farm in the middle of the Maquassie and Wolmaransstad diamond diggings of the Western Transvaal. The farm, like several others nearby, was owned by the Greig Diamond Company in which my Father as a managing director, held the controlling interest.
Father’s life had reached its crescendo of activity. In town, he conducted endless ex-servicemen’s meetings, and continued his legal advice to countless soldier friends. After a gruelling day in town, I would motor him down to Wolmaransstad at dead of night so that he could see for himself the progress at the diggings. At one time it was estimated there were 17,000 Europeans and non-Europeans on the Company’s property.
In some ways the place resembled Kimberley before Rhodes amalgamated the big interests. Like him, father was dealing with thousands of individuals and only very small claims. Greig Diamond Shares had sprung up to nearly £2 each, and Father had bought 12,000 in my name. He was buying and selling in thousands — selling 10,000 and depressing the market, then buying them back again. It was a mad, exciting game, one at which Father was adept. It was the game that all great financiers played, and to those who were lucky, cool-headed and skilful enough it brought millions and lasting fame. It was a game that gave the players a reckless sense of power.
In the midst of it, when every card of fortune already seemed to be in Father’s hand, there occurred one of those breathtaking deals of Fate which through the ages have held men under the spell of diamonds.
A great stone was found in the diggings at Kamelpan. When Father heard the news he cried: „It‘s the missing half of the Cullinan!“
Years before, when the greatest diamond the world has ever seen, the fabulous Cullinan, was found in the Premier Mine not far from Pretoria, many believed that it was a portion of a still larger stone, and it became the dream of every digger in Africa to find the missing half.

At once a fresh wave of frenzied buying of Greig Diamonds broke out. The shares leapt to up to £8 10s. My own holdings soared in value to £103,000, and no one ever knew what Father’s amounted to. It was a dizzy peak of fortune, greater than anything he had reached before in such a short space of time. He now had complete control of the share market, and options over more shares than existed.
The stone was brought to Johannesburg for testing. And then — the crash. What he had thought to be a lovely gem was proved a worthless crystal. No company could survive such a blow. From £8 10s. the shares slumped to 7s. 6d.
Then outside forces took a hand in the avalanche of disaster. America, the country on whose interest the strength of the market depended, began to lose interest in diamonds less than three-quarters of a carat in weight. That meant the bulk of stones found in all mines were practically worthless.
Holder of diamond shares became nervous and began to offload. Then Father made his greatest, most disastrous gamble. In a frantic effort to recoup his own fortune and those of others who had suffered with him, he went on buying all the shares he could.
Now he needed help and sought it desperately. Sir Abe Bailey, our neighbour, Ernest Oppenheimer, the banks … Bailey wanted to take complete control and that Father would not accept. Bailey was one of the most powerful men on the Rand by virtue of his ownership of newspapers as well as his mining interests. He ordered the SUNDAY TIMES and the RAND DAILY MAIL to warn the public of a possible recession. Oppenheimer did not help, and the banks refused to lend Father any more capital.
Father was forced to start selling for what he could get.

The day came when he went home a broken man. „I‘m finished,“ he told Mother. „And I have ruined Harry too … I must go and tell him.“
I sold up our little home and the mining gear. Our lives changed rapidly and completely. The first big step was to move into a small house. Father’s legal office was closed down, and the creditors took all his furniture and library of law books from both house and office — even his great Chubb safe. It stood seven feet high and was one of the first to have the combination word lock. Something quaked in me when I saw it go, for it had been the impregnable citadel of our prosperity …
Financial ruin in itself did not crush the spirit of my mother. She had seen fortunes come and go and come again so often. Always before there had been a resigned drawing of the purse-strings, and self-denial and stoic endurance till the tide turned again. For there had never been the last doubt that it would turn.
But this time things were different, and the difference lay in Father. Something had happened to the tireless, ever-confident man who had been our tower of strength for so long. His speech was slurred and incoherent; he talked delirious nonsense like a sick man. Doctors soon made up our minds for us.
That was the first time that he was sent to West Koppies Mental Hospital in Pretoria.
There, Father wandered like a carefree child through the grounds, picking up pieces of glass and quartz and exclaiming to everyone, „They‘re diamonds!“

…

Once I switch off this computer, its dark monitor will mirror my own features, ageless … then I am going to bend over my notebook and dot down …

„Oh no, sir. I don‘t summarise. That‘s for the editor. I just take down what the speaker says and write it out in longhand afterwards.“

Valid is the spoken word!




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