Gormally & Kuhn, Merchants – a short story (Pt I)

[Based on a dream I had this morning, set in the City of London in 1880.]

Joseph Gormally came to London as a young man in 1870 from the rural poverty of Co. Tyrone, finding employment as a telegraph courier for a commodities merchant named Kuhn. Gormally was fleet of foot, sharp of mind and usually of good cheer. His employer noted the speed with which the Irish youth picked up the basics of the business, despite a lack of formal education. Kuhn has been intermediating in the commodities trade between London and the continent, an enterprise set up by his late father nearly 40 years earlier. The firm specialised in salt – buying salt wholesale from Cheshire and selling it to the fish-briners of Antwerp and Hamburg. Kuhn & Co., Merchants and Commission Agents, it said on the brass plaque outside the office. Telegraphy had revolutionised the business, something the young Gormally quickly came to understand as he rushed from Kuhn's office on Mincing Lane to the telegraph office on Cornhill bearing confirmation of prices for orders for hundreds of tons of salt.

Kuhn's business had become a major player in the market after the Franco-Prussian War began; the German side, mobilising their armies, suddenly needed five hundred tons of salt to preserve fish with which to provision their troops; Kuhn had acted quickly and managed to ensure that the ships carrying the salt reached Hamburg before the French navy imposed their blockade of the North German coast. The bill of exchange was settled at Kuhn's merchant bank in good time; he made an exceptional windfall profit of £200 on that single trade.

The money went to extend his business, set up by the senior Mr Kuhn who had emigrated to London from Hamburg at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The younger Kuhn took over the company on his father's death just as the British government was about to nationalise the telegraph services. He understood the importance of this technology to profitable commodity trading; it gave his business the edge over rivals who relied more on long-standing contacts. It was around this time that Kuhn offered employment to Gormally. 

The young Irishman was regularly in the Cornhill telegraph office, making himself memorable to its employees thanks to his propensity to offer kind words and humour. He was well liked. Kuhn soon promoted the runner to clerk. Entering the texts of messages into the ledger, Gormally quickly came to understand the business; he could foresee a margin, a spread, a profit that could be made if a decision was made swiftly. His perspicacity did not go unnoticed.

Kuhn's wife, Margarite, was instrumental in Gormally's rise. She was often in the office, helping her husband. Noticing the Irish lad and his quick wit, she suggested that he be sent to night school to pick up commercial skills. 

One evening Gormally had been invited to dinner at the Kuhns' house in St John's Wood, bringing with him his fiancée, Helen, whom he'd met at the telegraph office, where she worked. The dinner was going well. Helen and Joseph shared a sense of humour, and Margarite liked her too. After the servants had cleared the table, Kuhn took Gormally into the drawing room, offered him a cigar and casually asked whether he believed in God. Gormally, who had been educated by the Sisters of Charity, replied that since coming to London he had stopped attending Holy Mass on a regular basis but still believed in a Supreme Being. 

The discussion led to Gormally being introduced by Kuhn to Freemasonry. As an outsider, more connected to the Continent than to London's cliquey networks, the younger Kuhn had been persuaded by his father to join the Freemasons, which proved a canny business move. And now Gormally – another outsider – was about to become one.

Part II tomorrow...

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