Tono-Bungay

DE TONO-B

ncluding the Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people. All that my uncle promised me proved t

uated Encyclopedia. That alluring, button-holing, let-me -just-tell-you-quite-soberly-something-you-ought-to-know style of newspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of some attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. "Many people who are MODERATELY well think they are QUITE well," w

ou bored with your Dinner. Are you bored with your Wife?"-that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both these we had in our first campaign when we worked London south central, and west; and then, too, we had our first poster-the HEALTH, BEAUTY, AND ST

germ of the well-known "Fog" poster; the third was d

only incidental

le had had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertising manager of the Daily Regulator about the amount

ometimes helping very shrewdly, and then, with a steadily improving type of cigar and older and older whisky, in

make a man rich, that fortunes can be made without toil. It's a dream, as every millionaire (except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify; I doubt if J.D. Rockefeller in the early days of Standard Oil, worked harder than we did. We worked far into the night-and we also wor

le, to translate my uncle's great imaginings into the creation of case after case of labelled bottles of nonsense, and the punctual discharge of them by railway, road and steamer towards their ultimate goal in the Great Stomach of the People. By all modern standards the business was, as my uncle would say, "absolutely bona fide." We sold our stuff and got the money, and

resh sections of the local press and our consignments invaded new areas, f

his hands together and drawing in air through his teeth. "The romanc

tion containing eleven per cent. of absolute alcohol; "Tono-Bungay: Thistle Brand.

ubject, I remember, in a little catechism beginning: "Why does the hair fall out? Because the follicles are fagged. What are the follicles?..." So it went on to the climax that the Hair Stimulant contained all "The essential principles of that most reviving tonic, Tono-Bungay, together with an emollie

aged in Aix-to-Ghent rides, soldiers lying out in action under a hot sun. "You can GO for twenty-four hours," we declared, "on Tono-Bungay Chocolate." We didn't say whether you could return on the same commodity. We also showed a dreadfully barristerish barrister, wig, side-whiskers, teeth, a horribly life-like portrait of all existing barristers, talking at a table, and beneath, this legend: "A Fo

ad a lot of trouble finding our travelers; in the end at least half of them were Irish-Americans, a wonderful breed for selling medicine. We had still more trouble over our factory manager, because of the secrets of the inner room, and in the end we got a very capable woman, Mrs. Hampton Diggs, who had formerly managed a large millinery workroom

hwash. The reader has probably read a hundred times that inspiring inquiry

can lines that worked in with our own, and could be handled with it

e all this last chapter on a scroll coming out of the head of my uncle, show it all the time as unfolding and pouring out from a short, fattening, small-legged man with stiff cropped hair, disobedient glasses on a perky little nose, and a round stare behind them. I wish I could show you

l would indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting on either side of the fire, I with a pipe, my uncle with a cigar or cigarette. There would be glasses standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions would be ve

nk of T.B. for sea-si

that I ca

RYING, George.

d our stuff specially at the docks. Might do a speci

'em confide

glasses reflecting the r

light under a Bush

ion of his own assertions. I think that his average attitude was one of kindly, almost parental, toleration. I remember saying on one occasion, "But you don

ou're too ready to run things down. How can

cruing from this shortening of the process or that, and to weigh it against the capital cost of the alteration. I made a sort of machine for sticking on the labels, that I patented; to this day there is a little trickle of royalties to me from that. I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated,

he slide whenever either had sunk too low. Another girl stood ready with my machine to label the corked bottles and hand them to the three packers, who slipped them into their outer papers and put them, with a pad of corrugated paper between each pair, into a little groove from which they could be made to slide neatly into position in our standard packing-case. It sounds wild, I know, but I believe I was the first man in the city of London to pack patent medicines through the side of the packing-case, t

e snatching-to the days when my uncle went to the public on behalf of himself and me (one-tenth share) and our silent partners, the drug wholesalers and the printing people and the owner of that group of magazines and newspapers, to ask with honest confidence

hink I should have had an inkling of the wonderfulness of this development of my fortunes; I should have grown accustomed to it, fallen in with all its delusions as completely as my uncle presently did. He was immensely proud of the flotation. "They've never been given suc

hings," he remarked; "only more so. You ne

ate Capitol, and he needed help. Ewart had returned with his hair cut en brosse and with his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I remember, a bicycling suit of purplish-brown, baggy beyond ageing-the only creditable thing about it was that it had evi

project of mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable di

y bottle things, but would he stick a label round 'em and sell 'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I'll admit, him and his dams, but after all there's a sort of protection about 'em, a kind of muddy practicality! They

f footle go! (I'm calling it footle, Ponder

.. People, in fact, overstrained.... The real trouble of life, Ponderevo, isn't that we exist-that's a vulgar error; the real trouble is that we DO

silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn't existing! That's-sus-substratum. None of us want to be what we are, or to do what we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? You know. I know. Nobody confes

eptible listening han

interrupted, "we ca

better here,

implacable face of Mrs. Hampton Diggs ap

" he said,

alert. His presence sent Ewart back to the theme of modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my un

rt, putting both elbows on the table, "was the poetry o

y. "Whad I tell 'im," h

rchant used to tote about commodities; the new one creates values. Doesn't need to tote. He takes something that isn't worth anything-or something that isn't particularly worth anything-and he makes it worth something. He takes

ubbily and with a dreamy

You know what horseradish is-grows like wildfire-spreads-spreads. I stood at the end of the platform looking at the stuff and thinking about it. 'Like fame,' I thought, 'rank and wild where it isn't wanted. Why don't the really good things in life grow like horseradish?' I thought. My mind went off in a peculiar way it does from that to the idea that mustard cost

e, nodding his head. "

nd a quarter mustard-give it a fancy name-and sell it at twice the mustard price. See? I ve

le. He looked at me. "That real

ellow's, sir, that sounds exactly like the first d

gurgled some quota

George," he said

m. They might be anything. Soak 'em in jipper,-Xylo-tobacco! Powder'em and get a little tar and turpentinous smell in,-wood-packing for hot baths-a Certain

s far as I can find out it's really grain,-

ommerce is no more buying and selling than sculpture. It's mercy-it's salvation. It's rescue work! It takes a

my uncle, suddenly grave. "We

d; he's a Calvinist of Commerce. Offer him a dustbin full of stuff; he calls it ref

for a moment. But there was a

t of sanitary brick," he r

ir food perfectly! Why do they digest their food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn't

in a shout, with his hairy h

I should say. But that only makes some chap brighter. If he WANTS to do that poster, he can. Zzzz. That

e bottling rows and rows of Tono-Bungay, with the legend "Modern commerce." It certainly wouldn't have sold a case, though he urged it on me one cheerful evening on the ground that it would "arouse curiosity." In addition he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively and needlessly nude, but, so far as I was able to judge, an ad