Ghetto Comedies. Israel Zangwill

      CHAPTER IV

      I BECOME A SORTER

      As the weeks went by, my satisfaction with the progress I was making was largely tempered by the knowledge that after the completion of my picture my model would be thrown again on the pavement, and several times I fancied I detected him gazing at it sadly as if watching its advancing stages with a sort of hopeless fear. My anxiety about him and his family grew from day to day, but I could not see any possible way of helping him. He was touchingly faithful, anxious to please, and uncomplaining either of cold or hunger. Once I gave him a few shillings to purchase a second-hand pair of top-boots, which were necessary for the picture, and these he was able to procure in the Ghetto Sunday market for a minute sum, and he conscientiously returned me the balance—about two-thirds.

      I happened to have sold an English landscape to Sir Asher Aaronsberg, the famous philanthropist and picture-buyer of Middleton, then up in town in connection with his Parliamentary duties, and knowing how indefatigably he was in touch with the London Jewish charities, I inquired whether some committee could not do anything to assist Quarriar. Sir Asher was not very encouraging. The man knew no trade. However, if he would make application on the form enclosed and answer the questions, he would see what could be done. I saw that the details were duly filled in—the ages and sex of his five children, etc.

      But the committee came to the conclusion that the only thing they could do was to repatriate the man. 'Return to Russia!' cried Israel in horror.

      Occasionally I inquired if any plan for the future had occurred to him. But he never raised the subject of his difficulties of his own accord, and his very silence, born, as it seemed to me, of the majestic dignity of the man, was infinitely pathetic. Now and again came a fitful gleam of light. His second daughter would be given a week's work for a few shillings by his landlord, a working master-tailor in a small way, from whom he now rented two tiny rooms on the top floor. But that was only when there was an extra spasm of activity. His half-blind daughter would do a little washing, and the landlord would allow her the use of the backyard.

      At last one day I found he had an idea, and an idea, moreover, that was carefully worked out in all its details. The scheme was certainly a novel and surprising one to me, but it showed how the art of forcing a livelihood amid impossible circumstances had been cultivated among these people, forced for centuries to exist under impossible conditions.

      Briefly his scheme was this. In the innumerable tailors' workshops of his district great piles of cuttings of every kind and quality of cloth accumulated, and for the purchase of these cuttings a certain competition existed among a class of people, known as piece-sorters. The sale of these cuttings by weight and for cash brought the master-tailors a pleasant little revenue, which was the more prized as it was a sort of perquisite. The masters were able to command payment for their cuttings in advance, and the sorter would call to collect them week by week as they accumulated, till the amount he had advanced was exhausted. Quarriar would set up as a piece-sorter, and thus be able to employ his daughters too. The whole family would find occupation in sorting out their purchases, and each quality and size would be readily saleable as raw material, to be woven again into the cheaper woollen materials. Through the recommendation of his countrymen, there were several tailors who had readily agreed to give him the preference. His own landlord in particular had promised to befriend him, and even now was allowing his cuttings to accumulate at some inconvenience, since he might have had ready money for them. Moreover, his friends had introduced him to a very respectable and honest sorter, who would take him into partnership, teach him, and allow his daughters to partake in the sorting, if he could put down twenty pounds! His friends would jointly advance him eight on the security of his silver candlesticks, if only he could raise the other twelve.

      This promising scheme took an incubus off my mind, and I hastened, somewhat revengefully, to acquaint the professional philanthropist, who had been so barren of ideas, with my intention to set up Quarriar as a piece-sorter.

      'Ah,' Sir Asher replied, unmoved. 'Then you had better employ my man Conn; he does a good deal of this sort of work for me. He will find Quarriar a partner and professor.'

      'But Quarriar has already found a partner.' I explained the scheme.

      'The partner will cheat him. Twenty pounds is ridiculous. Five pounds is quite enough. Take my advice, and let it all go through Conn. If I wanted my portrait painted, you wouldn't advise me to go to an amateur. By the way, here are the five pounds, but please don't tell Conn I gave them. I don't believe the money'll do any good, and Conn will lose his respect for me.'

      My interest in piece-sorting—an occupation I had never even heard of before—had grown abnormally, and I had gone into the figures and quantities—so many hundredweights, purchased at fifteen shillings, sorted into lots, and sold at various prices—with as thorough-going an eagerness as if my own livelihood were to depend upon it.

      I confess I was now rather bewildered by so serious a difference of estimate as to the cost of a partnership, but I was inclined to set down Sir Asher's scepticism to that pessimism which is the penalty of professional philanthropy.

      On the other hand, I felt that whether the partnership was to cost five pounds or twenty, Quarriar's future would be safer from Kazelias under the auspices of Sir Asher and his Conn. So I handed the latter the five pounds, and bade him find Quarriar a guide, philosopher, and partner.

      With the advent of Conn, all my troubles began, and the picture passed into its third and last stage.

      I soon elicited that Quarriar and his friends were rather sorry Conn had been introduced into the matter. He was alleged to favour some people at the expense of others, and to be not at all popular among the people amid whom he worked. And altogether it was abundantly clear that Quarriar would rather have gone on with the scheme in his own way without official interference.

      Later, Sir Asher wrote to me direct that the partner put forward by the Quarriar faction was a shady customer; Conn had selected his own man, but even so there was little hope Quarriar's future would be thus provided for.

      There seemed, moreover, a note of suspicion of Quarriar sounding underneath, but I found comfort in the reflection that to Sir Asher my model was nothing more than the usual applicant for assistance, whereas to me who had lived for months in daily contact with him he was something infinitely more human.

      Spring was now nearing; I finished my picture early in March—after four months' strenuous labour—shook hands with my model, and received his blessing. I was somewhat put out