Tono-Bungay

D MY UNCLE APPEARS

ed a sulky attitude of mind towards him. And I don't think that once in all that time I gave a thought to that mystic word of his that was to alter all the world for us. Yet I had not a

RET OF

-BUN

peating the word after I had passed; it roused one's attention like the soun

to my hostile note: "Come to me at once you are

I cried,

ent-medicine! I wonder

been handed in at Farringdon Road, and after complex meditations I replied to

re you?"

y came p

ggett Str

n fashion. It was decidedly too big for him-that was its only fault. It was stuck on the back of his head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt sleeves. He welcomed me with a forgetfulne

t whisper it now, my boy. Shout it-LOUD! spread i

amazingly familiar in the world, the blue paper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude giant, and the printed directions of how under practically all circumstances to take Tono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side opened a staircase down which I seem to remember a girl descending with a further consignment of bottles, and the rest of the background was a high partition, also chocolate, with "Temporary Laboratory" inscribed upon it in white letters, and over a door that pierced it, "Office." Here I rapped, inaudible amid much hammering, and then entered unanswered to find my uncle, dressed as I have described, one hand gripping a sheath of letters,

ngly failed to verify the promise of that apparatus. It was papered with dingy wall-paper that had peeled in places; it contained a fireplace, an easy-chair with a cushio

g! Have a whisky, George? No!-Wise man! Ne

at w

ed bordering, the legend, the name in good black type, very clear, and the strong man all set about with lightning flashes above the double column of skilful lies in red

ierce flowing tide, The ocean's

unprecedented and extraordinary. The bottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that dear old apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patiently "on the shelf" than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. I saw nothing for it but to sit down in the chair and await my uncle's explanat

nt Susan?

larky. This has bucked her up

l w

o-Bu

ono-Bungay

t times by avalanche-like porters bearing burthens to vans, to Farringdon Street. He hailed a passing cab superbly, and the cabman was infinitely respectful. "Schafer's," he said, and off we went

respectful salutation that in some manner they seemed to confine wholly to my uncle. Instead of being about four inches taller, I felt at least the same size as he, and very

several of

y," he said. "Point me out. L

ed our attention for a while, and then I

f vigour. Didn't y

s,

ing like h

is it?"

ward and spoke softly under cover of his

still a marketable commodity and in the hands of purchasers, who bought

(here he mentioned two very vivid tonics, one with a marked action on the kidney.) "And the" (here he mentioned two other ingredients) "makes it pretty intoxicating. Cocks their tails. Then there's" (but I touch on the ess

the direction

I was tasting the delights of a tenpenny cigar. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in an habituated manner, and he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly a little bounder, round the end of it. It was just a trivial flaw upon our swagger, perhaps that we both were clear our cigars had to be "mild."

"George," said my uncle round the e

n. I retain an impression of a long credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit and a p

cle. I took his point in an instant. He had gone to

ds," said my uncle, "myself

idence. "I hadn't five

"produce capital. You see, there was that trust affair of yours-I ought

om the region of honour to the region of courage. And then with a

you, and you'll go! You'd rush any position you had a mind to rush. I know a bit about character, George-trust me. You've got-" He clenched his hands and thrust the

luminous-I'm a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it. You keep on HOTTING UP AND HOTTING UP. Papin's digester. That's you, steady and long and piling up,-then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and stiffen these niggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are! That's what I'm aft

han't write a single advertisement, or give a single assurance" he declared. "I can do all that." And the telegram was no flourish; I was to have three hun

altogether staggered. Could there be that much money in the whole concern? I looked abou

with unwonted Bened

e game again," I said. "Let me

di

of it all?" my un

ently ventilated room? Apart from any other consideration, they'd work twice as

said my

a mucker of the cork job, a

r "Come here and make a machine of it. You can. Make it all sli

er, I know, but back it comes at last like justice on circuit, and calls up all my impression, all my illusions, all my willful and passionate proceedings. We came downstairs again into that inner room which pretended to be a scientific laboratory through its high glass lights, a

t had been, his skin less fresh and the nose between his glasses, which still didn't quite fit, much redder. And just then he seemed much laxer in his muscles and not qui

ily unconscious of my silent critic

the first place-it

cle. "It's as straight

worse for tra

-and it may do good. It might do a lot of good-giving people confidence, f'rins

s a thing you eithe

de is selling something common on the strength of saying it's uncommon. Look at Chickson-they made him a bar

n bottles and swearing it's the quintessence of streng

it mayn't be the quintessence to

and shrugged

ce, really. No good setting people against the medicine. Tell me a solitary trade nowadays that

ther better, if all this stuff of yours

an bark, but the point is, George-it MAKES TRADE! And the world lives on trade. Commerce! A romantic exchange of commodities and property. Romance. 'Magination. See? You must look a

g," I said, "Without e

opose to do? Go as chemist to some one who IS running a business, and draw a salary without a sha

anyhow; supply a sound article that is re

the times. The last of that sort

's scientifi

have a bit of science going on, they want a handy Expert ever and again, and there you are! And what do you get for research when y

can t

ion of his is!) See what the world pays teachers and discoverers and what it pays business men! That shows the ones it really wants. There's a justice in the

ddenly rose

perty-though I've always said and always will, that twenty-five shillings in the pound is what I'll pay you and interest up to the nail. And think it over. It isn't me I ask you to help. It's yourself. It's your aunt Susan. It's the

miled en

he said, ending the smile, an

I

d, I held out for a week while I contemplated life and my prospects.

scovery of the hopeless futility of my passion for Marion, had combi

phases of my inde

thought to go home by Holborn and Oxford Street would be too crowded for thinking.... That pi

fective kidneys. It would cost about sevenpence the large bottle to make, including bottling, and we were to sell it at half a crown plus the cost of the patent medicine stamp. A thing that I will confess deterred me from the outset far more than the sense of dishonesty in this affair, was the supreme silliness of the whole concern. I still clung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane and just organisation, and the idea that I should set myself gravely, ju

r him I felt in his presence, I think, in part, and in part an instinctive feeling that I must consider him as my host. But much more was it a curious persuasion he had the knack of inspiring-a persuasion not so much of his integrity and capac

I, "I'll th

man in a dirty back street, sending off a few hundred bottles of rubbish to foolish buyers. The great buildings on the right of us, the Inns and the School Board place-as it was then-Somer

ll's Ferric Wine," very bright and prosperous signs, illuminated at night, and I realised h

ed his helmet to him-with a hat and a bearing astonishingly like

it cried out again upon me in Kensington High Street, and burst into a perfect clamour; six or seven t

no more than such men, fine now only because they are distant; perhaps after all this Socialism to which I had been drawn was only a foolish dream, only the more foolish because all its promises were conditionally true. Morris and these others played with it wittingly; it gave a zest, a touch of substance, to their aesthetic pleasures. Never would there be good faith enoug

uncle's master-stroke, his admirable touch of praise: "Make it all s

n it was said. I asked him to come and eat with me in an Italian place near Panton Street where one could get a curious, interesting, glutting sort of dinner for eighteen-

u with the sa

de, or stick to teaching in view of my deepening socialist proclivities; and he, warming with the unaccus

es roved wid

o. The Socialist will tell you one sort of colour and shape is right, the Individualist another. What does it all amount to? What DOES it all amount to? NOTHING! I have no advice to give anyone,-except to avoid regrets. Be

ed impr

after a confused atte

e; take it or leave it."... He put down the nut-crackers out of my reach and lugged a g

ses of rem

design. I've got to d

d pots. I dare say he'd be glad of a mustard plaster now t

f mind was Marion. I lay composing statements of my problem and imagined myself deliverin

agined myself saying in good Socialist jargon; "it's surrendering all one's b

ay, "No! That wo

ternative i

h arms held out. "No," she would say, "we love one another. Nothing ignoble shall ever touch us. We love o

es altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door of the Parsian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked home with her the

ay of opening; and she smiled

n undertone, as we jostle

ddingly, but she still s

nd crowded for conversation and we were

ant you, Marion. Don't yo

e cried w

e shot with a gleam of positive hatred. Such a gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of that

ling matter to me. I love you; I wou

at is t

" I cried. "You

't-If I didn't like you very much, should I

said, "promis

t difference

men carrying a ladder who

ot together again, "I tell

ca

y n

marry-in t

take our

go on talking like th

e seen other girls. When one's alone one has a little pocket-money anyhow, one can go about

rky uncompleted sentences, with knitted brows, with discontented eyes t

I said abruptly, "wha

he good?"

ry on three hu

aid. "One could manage on that, easily. Smithie's brother-No, he

me if I get thre

again, with a cur

she

ooked her in the eyes. "

nstant. "It's silly," she remarked as she

?" s

e to wait years. Wha

ny years."

ment she

le, half-sweet, half-wistful, tha

id. "I shall like to

writing this down my memory passed over all that intervened and I feel it all again, an

e had given me in Gower Street, and f

ere larger and finer than the sort of thing I had grown accustomed to in London. And I was shown in by a real housemaid with real tails to her cap, and great quantities of reddish hair. There was my aunt too looking bright and pretty, in a blue-patterned tea-wrap with bows that seemed to me the quintessence of fashion. She was sitting in a chair by the open windo

aunt as I appeare

em?" said the real housemaid,

aunt, and grimaced with extraordinary swiftnes

aunt as the door closed, and left me

g very jolly,

ll this old Business he

omising thi

re is a busine

t you s

ding he was and writing letters and sizzling something awful-like a chestnut going to pop. Then he ca

, I'm afloat

we had champagne, stuff that blows up the back of your nose and makes you go SO, and he said at last he'd got things worthy of me

d at me d

or smash," I s

nt mutely with our eyes. My aunt sla

h a Go of reading, Ge

ink of the busi

money," she said, and thou

of hope-talks of when we're going to have a carriage and be in society-makes it seem so natural and topsy-turvy, I hardly know whether my old heels aren't up here listening to him, and my

d and loo

el

say you won

"do you understand quite?... It

said my aunt. She thought for a minute and became unusually grav

lowing from the next apartment through the foldin

e!" She raised her voice. "Don't sing tha

ding doors opened a

along at last? Goss

er George?" he

," s

ing

last moment a

hy couldn't you sa

"Oh! they don't matter now! Yes, I'll come, I'll

k to that resolution