SILSOE AND LEIGHTON BUZZARD 137 



been formally apprenticed to him ; and if he had gone into the 

 city business afterwards, I should either have been passed 

 over to his successor at Leighton, or my training would have 

 been completed in London. This latter, though perhaps bet- 

 ter financially, would have been far worse for me mentally 

 and physically, since this wholesale business was the most 

 monotonous and mechanical possible, as I learned some years 

 afterwards when I visited the London office. To my surprise 

 I then found that the business, which brought in a clear profit 

 of about £1200 a year, had no factory, no machinery, no sign 

 of watchmaking except in a very small room behind the office, 

 where a single workman examined and tested the various 

 portions of the watches as they were brought in by outside 

 piece-workers, the whole business being thus carried on in 

 two small rooms in Bunhill Row. The movements of the 

 watches dealt in were purchased in Coventry, where the various 

 kinds in general use were designed, the separate parts cast, 

 machine-cut, and filed to their proper gauges, and put together. 

 The mainsprings and balance-springs, chains, hands, dials, 

 and cases were usually purchased separately; and for each 

 class of watch a fitter was employed, whose business it was to 

 put the parts together, find out any small defects, and correct 

 them by hand, while any larger defect in any particular part 

 was sent back to the workman or manufacturer responsible 

 for it. The man at the office made a final examination of the 

 completed watches, tested their performance, corrected any 

 minute defect that was discoverable, and finally, in consulta- 

 tion with one of the firm, determined the grade or quality of 

 the watch and the consequent price. What I should have 

 learnt there would have been how to fit a watch together, how 

 to test it for definite defects, how to judge of the design and 

 workmanship, how to keep accounts, pay the workmen, and 

 probably to act as a traveller for the firm. But even if my 

 health would have stood the office-work I should never have 

 succeeded as a man of business, for which I am not fitted by 

 nature. I rather think that this particular firm was the last 

 which carried on business in so old-fashioned a way, as the 

 good-will was, I believe, sold some thirty years later, when 



