THE official opening of the shop on Revoluční třída was anything but gay. Novotný, Milada and I tried to pretend that everything was fine and that we were going to make a success of it, but no one came. We rattled around among the cases and tables, watching streetcars go by the door and almost nobody go by on foot, even to look in our windows. It was only Milada’s brave smile that kept us from losing hope.

Four days later, a surprising thing happened. While I was working in my office at the rear of the shop, Milada came to tell me that we had three distinguished visitors. When I followed her into the salesroom I found Chief of Protocol Strimpl with two women. He introduced me first to Madame Hana Benešová, the wife of Dr. Edvard Beneš, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and then to his own wife. I was deeply embarrassed to be found on Revoluční třída surrounded by inferior glass and china. I assumed that Strimpl had made a mistake in bringing the wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to this shop instead of to the branch on Příkopy, but I tried to cover my dismay by showing the best pieces of crystal and china we had.

Madame Benešová is a shy, disarmingly gracious person. In a few moments I was talking to her naturally, forgetting my surroundings. She said she had heard a great deal about my glass from members of the diplomatic corps. She had asked Minister Strimpl to bring her here, to see the new shop and to meet me in person.

As though she were reading my thoughts, Milada handed me the plate and cup with the fine platinum band which we had brought from the Bohemian Works. There was no question of a sale. Madame Benešová examined the two pieces with interest and we talked about their understatement of design. We went on to discuss the part china and glass were playing in Czechoslovak industry as a whole. After an hour or so the party left.

Two days later Stretti-Zamponi, a noted Czech painter who served as artistic advisor to the Foreign Office, appeared in the shop, asking to see the pieces of china mentioned by Madame Benešová. I brought out the plate and bouillon cup once more. He examined them carefully and then told me that the Černín Palace on Hradčany was being remodeled for the use of the Foreign Office. He thought this china set would be appropriate for state banquets.

So administrative red tape began to unwind. Eventually not only the china, but also a set of crystal designed by Lorentz Meyer at my request was purchased by the Foreign Office for their new quarters. Shortly afterwards I was informed that every Czechoslovak Legation in the world was to be furnished with a complete set of the same china and crystal; in the future they were to be considered state tableware of the republic.

From then on the tempo of our days began to increase rapidly. An international convention of Rotary Clubs was held in Prague that summer of 1931, and while it lasted our shop was crowded with customers. New salesgirls were hired and I found it necessary to engage a personal secretary.

There was a wide variety of names on our order blanks during the next six months. I recall Dr. Morris Fishbein of the American Medical Association; His Excellency Abdel Fattah Yehia Pasha, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Egypt; Robert Igoe, an American politician who bought two crystal decanters for Mayor Cermak of Chicago; Jarmila Novotná, Feodor Chaliapin, and Emil Ludwig; Count Karszo-Sidlewski, the most charming of the Polish diplomats; Minister Charles-Roux of France and Madame Charles-Roux, a fanatic collector of ruby-gold flacons; Lord and Lady Selsdon, those two good people who later became great personal friends as a result of this chance visit to our shop; Principe San Severino and the principessa, who brought the whole Italian colony with them from time to time to share their passion for glass; Lord Nevil Fairhaven in his Rolls Royce and his insouciance that made the girls sigh in his wake; Minister Roberto Blasquez of Mexico, who countermanded whatever his wife ordered with a different choice of his own; Francis Marion from Hollywood; and Mrs. Helen Burton, whose antique shop in Peiping was known to the world of travelers.

Our staff was enlarged to seven. And now it was fashionable to find one’s way to this unfashionable street to buy glass and china. Limousines bearing the flags of every country represented in Prague drove up before our door. Shiny black motors of the rich found ample space to park in the vicinity. We were far busier than we had ever dreamed of being in the shop on Příkopy. I had proved to Antonín Hardt that his words were true. A shop could make a street.

It was not that Bohemian glass was a new fad. It was a folk-craft centuries old. Now I watched it begin to circulate throughout the world, to become ever more widely recognized for its artistic merit. I felt as a musician must feel when he discovers lost manuscripts from a forgotten period in the culture of his people, and through his own direction is able to bring them to life again. Perhaps I even knew a measure of the kind of excitement that was Diaghilev’s when he took the design of the ballet which had been used by nameless people in his own country for centuries, and showed it forth for the delight of the whole world through the conscious art of Nijinsky. The relationship between music and glass, in its rhythm as well as in its forms, kept growing in my mind.

Unlike music and the ballet, which can be enjoyed by anyone with the price of admission to a concert, glass must be possessed, by the very nature of its function. And to possess the finest glass, a good deal of money is necessary. So the public which became familiar with our products was relatively small, limited by income. And that made me sad. Not once, not a dozen times, but hundreds of times during the next years I was impelled to quote a lower price on a piece of glass or china when someone who could obviously not afford what they wanted came into the shop just to look, and then remained to admire. I could never quite forget the shopgirls in Smichov who had made sacrifices in their own small way in order to buy some of Mother’s handwork, and the manner in which she had invariably convinced them that her prices were lower than they had expected them to be.

It was partially due to the fame of our customers that the renown of our products spread, but partially only. In a large measure it was the potential of the glass itself which formed a ground where I could meet our customers, a meeting ground out of which grew relationships that were commercial in a secondary sense only.

Some nine or ten months after we opened, Jiří Mašek came to see me. It was our first encounter since my return to Prague from London. He announced his decision to give up any further hope of competing with me. His resignation had already gone to the bank and to the Carlsbad Crystal Factories. He had scarcely left the shop when a call came through from Carlsbad. Rudolf Meyer informed me that the Příkopy branch was now under my orders; I could go back there as manager if I liked, or I could hire a new one to succeed Mašek and stay where I was. In either event, both shops would be under my control.

All that night I stayed awake making plans, and the next day I asked Milada to take over the management of the Příkopy branch. Much as I would miss her help and the comfort of her presence on Revoluční třída, I wanted her to have wider experience on her own, and I believed we could make both branches pay.

We went back to Příkopy together that same afternoon. When we entered the tiny shop I felt as though we were returning home after a long journey. The shelves of beautiful crystal still sparkled along the walls, taking all the light in the room unto themselves. A salesgirl I had not seen before mistook us for customers, and a man was partially visible in the back room, probably Novotný’s successor. And there was also beautiful Božena Krásná.

Her smile was as wide and extravagantly lovely as ever, and her sang-froid was unimpaired, quite as though there had been no question of her disloyalty less than a year before. Because she had received nothing but admiration from men all her life, she expected nothing else under any circumstance. One could only take her on her own terms. If she wasn’t ashamed, there was no need for me to be. I told her and the rest of the staff that Beranová was the new manager of the shop, under my orders. They could stay on if they chose, but loyalty would be demanded of them all and I would accept nothing less.

They agreed to stay, but within a few months Božena turned in her notice, telling us she expected to marry a wealthy hotel proprietor. I saw her once or twice after that riding in his fine car, and I heard her mentioned as one of Prague’s beauties. Then one day Milada told me that Božena was dead. She had been rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation a week before her marriage and she had never regained consciousness.