Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 2 - Parts 7-10

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Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 2 - Parts 7-10 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, third chapter, second parts seven to ten of Tono Bungay.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coe. Tono
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Speaker 1: Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book, third chapter, second parts
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Speaker 1: seven to ten. Seven. It seems to me now but
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Speaker 1: a step from the buying of Lady Grove to the
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Speaker 1: beginning of Crest Hill, from the days when the former
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Speaker 1: was a stupendous achievement to the days when it was
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Speaker 1: too small and dark and inconvenient altogether for a great
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Speaker 1: financier's use. For me, there was a period of increasing
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Speaker 1: detachment from our business and the great world of London.
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Speaker 1: I saw it more and more in broken glimpses, and
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Speaker 1: sometimes I was working in my little pavilion above Lady
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Speaker 1: Grove for a fortnight together. Even when I came up,
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Speaker 1: it was often solely for a meeting of the Aeronautical Society,
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Speaker 1: or for one of the learned societies, or to consult
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Speaker 1: literature or employ searchers, or some such special business. For
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Speaker 1: my uncle, it was a period of stupendous inflation Each
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Speaker 1: time I met him, I found him more confident, more comprehensive,
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Speaker 1: more consciously a factor in great affairs. Soon he was
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Speaker 1: no longer an associate of merely business men. He was
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Speaker 1: big enough for the attention of greater powers. I grew
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Speaker 1: used to discovering some item of personal news about him
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Speaker 1: in my evening paper, or to the sight of a
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Speaker 1: full page portrait of him in a sixpenny magazine. Usually
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Speaker 1: the news was of some munificent act, some romantic peace
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Speaker 1: of buying or giving, or some fresh rumor of reconstruction
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Speaker 1: he saved you will remember the Parbury Reynolds for the country.
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Speaker 1: Or at times it would be an interview or my
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Speaker 1: uncle's countrytribution to some symposium on the secret of success
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Speaker 1: or suchlike topic, or wonderful tales of his power of work,
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Speaker 1: of his wonderful organization to get things done, of his
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Speaker 1: instant decisions and remarkable power of judging his fellow men.
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Speaker 1: They repeated his great mo eight hour working day, I
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Speaker 1: want eighty hours. He became modestly but resolutely public. They
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Speaker 1: cartooned him in Vanity Fair one year. My aunt, looking
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Speaker 1: indeed a very gracious, slender lady, faced the portrait of
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Speaker 1: the King in the great room at Burlington House, and
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Speaker 1: the next year saw a medallion of my uncle by Ewart,
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Speaker 1: looking out upon the world, proud and imperial, but on
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Speaker 1: the whole a trifle too prominently convex from the walls
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Speaker 1: of the new gallery. I shared only intermittently in his
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Speaker 1: social experiences. People knew of me, it is true, and
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Speaker 1: many of them sought to make thruit me a sort
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Speaker 1: of flank attack upon him. And there was a legend
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Speaker 1: owing very reasonably partly to my growing scientific reputation and
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Speaker 1: partly to an element of reserve in my manner, that
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Speaker 1: I played a much larger share in planning his operations
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Speaker 1: than was actually the case. This led to one or
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Speaker 1: two very intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one
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Speaker 1: or two house parties, and various odd offers of introductions
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Speaker 1: and services that I didn't for the most part. Except
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Speaker 1: among other people who sought me in this way was
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Speaker 1: Archie Garvell, now, a smart, impecunious soldier of no particular distinction,
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Speaker 1: who would I think have been quite prepared to develop
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Speaker 1: any sporting instincts I possessed, and who was beautifully unaware
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Speaker 1: of our former contact. He was always offering me winners,
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Speaker 1: no doubt, in a spirit of anticipatory exchange for some
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Speaker 1: really good thing, in our more scientific and certain method
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Speaker 1: of getting something for nothing. Quite of my preoccupation with
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Speaker 1: my experiments work I did, I found now that I
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Speaker 1: come to ransack my impressions, see a great deal of
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Speaker 1: the great world. During those eventful years, I had a
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Speaker 1: near view of the machinery by which an astounding empire
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Speaker 1: is run. Rubbed shoulders and exchanged experiences with bishops and statesmen,
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Speaker 1: political women and women who were not political, physicians and soldiers,
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Speaker 1: artists and authors, the directors of great journals, philanthropists, and
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Speaker 1: all sorts of eminent significant people. I saw the statesmen
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Speaker 1: without their orders, and the bishops with but a little
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Speaker 1: purple silk left over from their canonicals, inhaling not incense
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Speaker 1: but cigar smoke. I could look at them all the
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Speaker 1: better because for the most part they were not looking
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Speaker 1: at me, but at my uncle, and calculating, consciously or unconsciously,
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Speaker 1: how they might use him and assimilate him to their system.
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Speaker 1: The most unpremeditated, subtle, successful, and aimless plutocracy that ever
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Speaker 1: encumbered the destinies of mankind. Not one of them, so
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Speaker 1: far as I could see, until disaster overtook him. Resented
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Speaker 1: his lies, his almost naked dishonesty of method, the disorderly
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Speaker 1: disturbance of this trade, and that caused by his spasmodic operations.
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Speaker 1: I can see them now about him, see them, polite, watchful, various,
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Speaker 1: his stiff, compact little figure, always the center of attention,
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Speaker 1: his wiry hair, his brief nose, his under lip, electric
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Speaker 1: with self confidence, wandering marginally through distinguished gatherings. I would
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Speaker 1: watch the whispers that's mister Ponderevo, the little man, yes,
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Speaker 1: the little bounder, with the glasses they say he's made.
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Speaker 1: Or I would see him on some parterre of a platform,
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Speaker 1: beside my aunt's hurrying hat, amidst titles and costumes, holding
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Speaker 1: his end up, as he would say, subscribing heavily to
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Speaker 1: obvious charities, even at times making brief, convulsive speeches in
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Speaker 1: some good cause, before the most exalted audiences, mister Chairman,
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Speaker 1: your Royal Highness, my lords, ladies and gentlemen. He would begin,
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Speaker 1: amidst subsiding applause, and adjust those obstinate glasses, and thrust
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Speaker 1: back the wings of his frock coat and rest his
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Speaker 1: hands upon his hips, and speak his fragment with ever
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Speaker 1: and again an incidental z. His hands would fret about
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Speaker 1: him as he spoke, fiddle his glasses, feel in his
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Speaker 1: waistcoat pockets. Ever and again he would rise slowly to
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Speaker 1: his toes as a sentence, unwound jerkily like a clockwork snake,
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Speaker 1: and drop back on his heels at the end. They
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Speaker 1: were the very gestures of our first encounter, when he
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Speaker 1: had stood before the empty fireplace in his minute draped parlor,
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Speaker 1: and talked of my future to my mother. In those
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Speaker 1: measurelessly long hot afternoons in the little shop at Wimblehurst,
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Speaker 1: he had talked and dreamt of the romance of modern commerce. Here,
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Speaker 1: surely was his romance come true. Eight people say that
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Speaker 1: my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes.
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Speaker 1: But if one may tell so much truth of a
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Speaker 1: man one has in a manner loved, he never had
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Speaker 1: very much head to lose. He was always imaginative, erratic, inconsistent,
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Speaker 1: recklessly in exact, and his inundation of wealth merely gave
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Speaker 1: him scope for these qualities. It is true, indeed, that
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Speaker 1: towards the climax he became intensely irritable at times, and
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Speaker 1: impatient of contradictions. But that I think was rather the
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Speaker 1: gnawing uneasiness of sanity than any mental disturbance. But I
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Speaker 1: find it hard either to judge him or convey the
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Speaker 1: full development of him to the reader. I saw too
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Speaker 1: much of him. My memory is choked with disarranged moods
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Speaker 1: and aspects. Now he is distended with megalomania. Now he
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Speaker 1: is deflated. Now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self satisfied.
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Speaker 1: But always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic, and in
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Speaker 1: some subtle fundamental way that I find difficult to define, absurd.
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Speaker 1: There stands out because of the tranquil beauty of its setting,
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Speaker 1: perhaps a talk we had in the veranda of the
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Speaker 1: little pavilion near my work sheds behind Crest Hill, in
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Speaker 1: which my aeroplanes and navigable balloons were housed. It was
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Speaker 1: one of many similar conversations, and I do not know
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Speaker 1: why it in particular should survive its fellows. It happened
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Speaker 1: so he had come up to me after his coffee
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Speaker 1: to consult me about a certain chalice which, in a
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Speaker 1: moment of splendor and under the importunity of a countess.
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Speaker 1: He had determined to give to a deserving church in
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Speaker 1: the East End. I, in a moment of even rasher generosity,
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Speaker 1: had suggested Ewart as a possible artist. Ewart had produced
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Speaker 1: at once an admirable sketch for the sacred vessel surrounded
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Speaker 1: by a sort of wreath of Milly's with open arms
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Speaker 1: and wings, and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength
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Speaker 1: of it. After that came a series of vexatious delays.
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Speaker 1: The chalice became less and less of a commercial man's chalice,
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Speaker 1: acquired more and more the elusive quality of the holy Grail,
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Speaker 1: and at last even the drawing receded. My uncle grew restive.
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Speaker 1: You see, George, They'll begin to want the blasted thing.
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Speaker 1: What blasted thing? That chalice? Dammit, They're beginning to ask questions.
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Speaker 1: It isn't business, George, it's art, I protested and religion.
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Speaker 1: That's all very well, but it's not a good ad
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Speaker 1: for us, George, to make a promise and not deliver
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Speaker 1: the goods. I'll have to write off your friend Ewart
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Speaker 1: as a bad debt, That's what it comes to, and
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Speaker 1: go to a decent firm. We sat outside on deck
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Speaker 1: chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whiskey,
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Speaker 1: and the chalice disposed of meditated. His temporary annoyance passed.
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Speaker 1: It was an altogether splendid summer night following a blazing,
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Speaker 1: indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of
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Speaker 1: the receding hills, one wave beyond another far beyond were
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Speaker 1: the pinpoint lights of leather Head, And in the foreground
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Speaker 1: the little stage from which I used to start upon
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Speaker 1: my gliders gleamed like wet steel. The season must have
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Speaker 1: been high June, for down in the woods that hid
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Speaker 1: the lights of the Lady grow windows. I remember the
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Speaker 1: nightingales thrilled and gurgled. We got here, George, said my uncle,
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Speaker 1: ending a long pause. Didn't I say, say when I
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Speaker 1: asked in that hole in the Tonham Court Road, Eh,
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Speaker 1: it's been a straight square fight and here we are,
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Speaker 1: I nodded, Remember me telling you Tono Bungay. Well, i'd
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Speaker 1: just that afternoon thought of it. I've fancied at times,
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Speaker 1: I admitted. It's a great world, George, nowadays, with a
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Speaker 1: fair chance for everyone who lays hold of things. The
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Speaker 1: career overt in the tolones eh tono bungay, think of it.
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Speaker 1: It's a great world and a growing world, and I'm
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Speaker 1: glad we're in it and getting a poll. We're getting
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Speaker 1: big people, George. Things come to us, eh, this Palestine thing.
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Speaker 1: He meditated for a time and z'd softly. Then he
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Speaker 1: became still. His theme was taken up by a cricket
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Speaker 1: in the grass, until he himself was ready to resume it.
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Speaker 1: The cricket, too, seemed to fancy that, in some scheme
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Speaker 1: of its own, it had got there. Cheerer up, it said,
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Speaker 1: Cheer up, Lord, What a place that was at Wimblehurst.
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Speaker 1: He broke off. If ever I get a day off,
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Speaker 1: we'll motor there, George, and run over that dog that
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Speaker 1: sleeps in the high street. Always was a dog asleep there,
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Speaker 1: always always. I like to see the old shop again,
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Speaker 1: I dare say. Old ruck still stands between the sheep
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Speaker 1: at his door, grinning with all his teeth and marble.
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Speaker 1: Silly beggar comes out with his white apron on and
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Speaker 1: a pencil stuck behind his ear, trying to look awake.
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Speaker 1: Wonder if they know it's me? I like him somehow
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Speaker 1: to know it's me. They'll have had the International Tea Company,
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Speaker 1: and all sorts of people cutting them up, I said,
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Speaker 1: And that dog's been on the pavement this six years.
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Speaker 1: Can't sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor
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Speaker 1: horns and its shattered nerves movin everywhere, said my uncle.
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Speaker 1: I expect you're right. It's a big timer in George.
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Speaker 1: It's a big progressive oncoming imperial time. This Palestine business
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Speaker 1: of it, it's it's a process, George. And we got
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Speaker 1: our hands on it. Here, we sit with our hands
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Speaker 1: on it, George, and trusted. It seems quiet tonight. But
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Speaker 1: if we could see and hear. He waved a cigar
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Speaker 1: towards Leatherhead and London. There are millions, George. Just think
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Speaker 1: of what they've been up to today, those ten millions,
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Speaker 1: each one doing his own particular job. You can't grasp it.
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Speaker 1: It's like old Whitman says, what is it? He says, Well, anyway,
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Speaker 1: it's like old Whitman, Fine Chap Whitman, fine, old chap queer.
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Speaker 1: You can't quote him. And these millions aren't anything. There's
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Speaker 1: the millions overseas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, Morocco, Africa, generally America.
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Speaker 1: Well here we are with power, with leisure picked out,
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Speaker 1: because we've been energetic, because we've seized opportunities, because we've
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Speaker 1: made things hum when other people have waited for them
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Speaker 1: to hum. See here we are with our hands on it.
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Speaker 1: Big people, big growing people in a sort of way. Forces.
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Speaker 1: He paused. It's wonderful, George, he said, Anglo Saxon Energy,
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Speaker 1: I said, softly to the knight, that's it, George Energy.
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Speaker 1: It's put things in our grip, threads, wires, stretching out
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Speaker 1: and out, George, from that little office of ours, out
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Speaker 1: to West Africa, out to Egypt, out to India, out east, west,
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Speaker 1: north and south, running the world, practically, running it faster
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Speaker 1: and faster, creative. There's that Palestine canal affair, marvelous. I
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Speaker 1: d suppose we take that up. Suppose we let ourselves
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Speaker 1: in for it, us and the others, and run that
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Speaker 1: water sluice from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea valley.
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Speaker 1: Think of the difference. It will make, all the desert
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Speaker 1: blooming like a rose, Jericho lost forever, all the holy
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Speaker 1: places under water, very likely destroy Christianity, he mused. For
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Speaker 1: a space, cutting canals, murmured, my uncle making tunnels new countries,
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Speaker 1: new centers, z finance, not only Palestine. I wonder where
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Speaker 1: we shall get before we done, George. We got a
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Speaker 1: lot of big things going, We got the investing public sound,
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Speaker 1: and sure, I don't see why in the end we
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Speaker 1: shouldn't be very big. There's difficulties, but I'm equal to them.
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Speaker 1: We're still a bit soft in our bones, but they'll
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Speaker 1: harden all right. I suppose after all, I'm worth something
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Speaker 1: like a million. George cleared up and settled if I
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Speaker 1: got out of things now. It's a great time, George,
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Speaker 1: a wonderful time. I glanced through the twilight at his convexity,
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Speaker 1: and I must confess it struck me that on the
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Speaker 1: whole he wasn't particularly good value. We got our hands
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Speaker 1: on things, George, us big people. We got to hang together, George.
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Speaker 1: Run the show, join up with the old order. Like
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Speaker 1: that mill wheel of Kipling's finest thing he ever wrote. George,
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Speaker 1: I've just been reading it again. Made me buy Lady Grove. Well,
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Speaker 1: we got to run the country, George. It's ours. Make
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Speaker 1: it a scientific, organized business enterprise, put ideas into it,
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Speaker 1: electrify it, run the press, run all sorts of developments,
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Speaker 1: all sorts of developments. I've been talking to Lord Boom.
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Speaker 1: I've been talking to all sorts of people. Great things
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Speaker 1: progress the world on business lines, only just beginning. He
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Speaker 1: fell into a deep meditation. He z for a time
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Speaker 1: and ceased, Yes, he said at last, in the tone
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Speaker 1: of a man who has at last emerged with ultimate
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Speaker 1: solutions to the profoundest problems. What I said, after seemly pause,
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Speaker 1: my uncle hung fire for a moment, and it seemed
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Speaker 1: to me the fate of nations trembled in the balance.
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Speaker 1: Then he spoke as one who speaks from the very
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Speaker 1: bottom of his heart, and I think it was the
17:12
Speaker 1: very bottom of his heart. I'd just like to drop
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Speaker 1: into the Eastry Arms, just when all those beggars in
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Speaker 1: the parlor are sitting down to whist rock and marble
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Speaker 1: and all, and give him ten minutes of my mind, George,
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Speaker 1: straight from the shoulder, just exactly what I think of them.
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Speaker 1: It's a little thing, but I like to do it
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Speaker 1: just once before I die. He rested on that for
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Speaker 1: some time, zing, Then he broke out at a new
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Speaker 1: place in a tone of detached criticism. There's Boom, he reflected,
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Speaker 1: It's a wonderful system. This old British system, George, it
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Speaker 1: stayed and stable, and yet it has a place for
17:52
Speaker 1: new men. We come up and take our places. It's
17:55
Speaker 1: almost expected we take a hand. That's where our democracy
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Speaker 1: differs from America. Over there, a man succeeds. All he
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Speaker 1: gets is money. Here there's a system open to everyone. Practically,
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Speaker 1: chaps like Boom come from nowhere. His voice ceased. I
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Speaker 1: reflected upon the spirit of his words. Suddenly I kicked
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Speaker 1: my feet in the air, rolled on my side, and
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Speaker 1: set up suddenly on my deck chair with my legs down.
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Speaker 1: You don't mean it, I said, Mean what, George? Subscription
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Speaker 1: to the party fund's reciprocal advantage? Have we got to that?
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Speaker 1: What you driving at, George? You know they'd never do it.
18:37
Speaker 1: Man do what he said feebly, and why shouldn't they.
18:44
Speaker 1: They'd not even go to a baronetcy. No, And yet
18:48
Speaker 1: of course there's Boom and Colling's head and go over.
18:54
Speaker 1: They've done beer, they've done snippets after all, Tono Bungay.
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Speaker 1: It's not like a turf commissi agent or anything like that.
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Speaker 1: There have, of course been some very gentlemanly commissioned agents.
19:06
Speaker 1: It isn't like a fool of a scientific man who
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Speaker 1: can't make money. My uncle grunted. We'd differed on that
19:12
Speaker 1: issue before a malignant humor took possession of me. Why
19:17
Speaker 1: would they call you? I speculated the vicar would like
19:21
Speaker 1: Duffield too much like Duffer, difficult thing a title. I
19:26
Speaker 1: ran my mind over various possibilities. Why not take a
19:30
Speaker 1: leaf from a socialist track I came upon yesterday? Chap says,
19:34
Speaker 1: we're all getting delocalized, beautiful word delocalized. Why not be
19:39
Speaker 1: the first delocalized peer that gives you Tono Bungay. There
19:44
Speaker 1: is a Bungay, you know, Lord Tono of Bungay in
19:48
Speaker 1: bottles everywhere. Eh. My uncle astonished me by losing his temper.
19:54
Speaker 1: Damn it, George, you don't seem to see I'm serious.
19:57
Speaker 1: You're always sneering at Tono Bungay as though it was
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Speaker 1: some sort of swindle. It was perfectly legitimate trade, perfectly legitimate,
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Speaker 1: good value and a good article. When I come up
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Speaker 1: here and tell you plans and exchange ideas, you sneer
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Speaker 1: at me. You do, you don't see it's a big thing.
20:17
Speaker 1: It's a big thing. You got to get used to
20:20
Speaker 1: new circumstances. You got to face what lies before us.
20:24
Speaker 1: You got to drop that tone. Nine. My uncle was
20:30
Speaker 1: not altogether swallowed up in business and ambition. He kept
20:33
Speaker 1: in touch with modern thought. For example, he was I know,
20:37
Speaker 1: greatly swayed by what he called this overman id Nietzschee.
20:42
Speaker 1: All that stuff he mingled those comforting suggestions of a potent,
20:46
Speaker 1: an exceptional human being emancipated from the pettier limitations of integrity.
20:52
Speaker 1: With the Napoleonic legend. He gave his imagination a considerable outlet.
20:58
Speaker 1: That Napoleonic legend. The real mischief of Napoleon's immensely disastrous
21:03
Speaker 1: and accidental career began only when he was dead and
21:07
Speaker 1: the romantic type of mind was free to elaborate his character.
21:11
Speaker 1: I do believe that my uncle would have made a
21:13
Speaker 1: far less egregious smash if there had been no Napoleonic
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Speaker 1: legend to misguide him. He was in many ways better
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Speaker 1: and infinitely kinder than his career. But when in doubt
21:25
Speaker 1: between decent conduct and a base advantage, that cult came
21:29
Speaker 1: in more and more influentially. Think of Napoleon. Think what
21:33
Speaker 1: the inflexibly wilful Napoleon would have done with such scruples
21:37
Speaker 1: as yours. That was the rule, and the end was
21:41
Speaker 1: invariably a new step in dishonor. My uncle was, in
21:46
Speaker 1: an unsystematic way a collector of Napoleonic relics. The bigger
21:50
Speaker 1: the book about his hero, the more readily he bought it.
21:54
Speaker 1: He purchased letters and tinsel and weapons that bore, however remotely,
21:59
Speaker 1: upon the manner destiny, and he even secured in Geneva,
22:03
Speaker 1: though he never brought home an old coach in which
22:06
Speaker 1: Buonaparte might have ridden. He crowded the quiet walls of
22:10
Speaker 1: Lady Grove with engravings and figures of him, preferring, my
22:15
Speaker 1: aunt remarked, the more convex portraits with a white vest,
22:19
Speaker 1: and those statuettes with the hands behind the back, which
22:22
Speaker 1: threw forward the figure. The Durgans watched him through it
22:26
Speaker 1: all sardonically, and he would stand after breakfast at times
22:31
Speaker 1: in the light of the window at Lady Grove, a
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Speaker 1: little apart, with two fingers of one hand stuck between
22:37
Speaker 1: his waistcoat buttons, and his chin sunken, thinking the most
22:41
Speaker 1: preposterous little fat man in the world. It made my
22:45
Speaker 1: aunt feel, she said, like an old field marshal knocks
22:49
Speaker 1: me into a cocked hat, George. Perhaps this Napoleonic bias
22:54
Speaker 1: made him a little less frequent with his cigars than
22:56
Speaker 1: he would otherwise have been, but of that I can
23:00
Speaker 1: not be sure. And it certainly caused my aunt a
23:03
Speaker 1: considerable amount of vexation after he had read Napoleon and
23:07
Speaker 1: the fair Sex, because for a time that roused him
23:10
Speaker 1: to a sense of a sign of life he had
23:13
Speaker 1: in his commercial preoccupations very largely forgotten. Suggestion played so
23:18
Speaker 1: great a part in this field. My uncle took the
23:21
Speaker 1: next opportunity and had an affair. It was not a
23:25
Speaker 1: very impassioned affair, and the exact particulars never, of course
23:28
Speaker 1: reached me. It is quite by chance I know anything
23:32
Speaker 1: of it at all. One evening I was surprised to
23:35
Speaker 1: come upon my uncle in a mixture of bohemia and
23:37
Speaker 1: smart people and an at home in the flat of
23:41
Speaker 1: Robert the r, a who painted my Aunt. And he
23:45
Speaker 1: was standing a little apart in a recess, talking, or
23:48
Speaker 1: rather being talked to in undertones by a plump, blond
23:52
Speaker 1: little woman in pale blue, a Helen Scrimgore, who wrote
23:57
Speaker 1: novels and was organizing a weekly magazine. I elbowed a
24:01
Speaker 1: large lady who was saying something about them, But I
24:04
Speaker 1: didn't need to hear the things she said to perceive
24:07
Speaker 1: the relationship of the two. It hit me like a
24:10
Speaker 1: placard on a hoarding. I was amazed. The whole gathering
24:13
Speaker 1: did not see it. Perhaps they did. She was wearing
24:17
Speaker 1: a remarkably fine diamond necklace, much too fine for journalism,
24:22
Speaker 1: and regarding him with that quality of questionable proprietorship of
24:26
Speaker 1: least but straining intimacy that seems inseparable from this sort
24:30
Speaker 1: of affair. It is so much more palpable than matrimony.
24:34
Speaker 1: If anything was wanted to complete my conviction, it was
24:37
Speaker 1: my uncle's eyes, when presently he became aware of mine
24:41
Speaker 1: a certain embarrassment and a certain pride and defiance. And
24:46
Speaker 1: the next day he made an opportunity to praise the
24:48
Speaker 1: lady's intelligence to me concisely, lest I should miss the
24:52
Speaker 1: point of it all. After that, I heard some gossip
24:56
Speaker 1: from a friend of the ladies. I was much too
24:59
Speaker 1: curious to do anything thing but listen. I had never
25:02
Speaker 1: in all my life imagined my uncle in an amorous attitude.
25:06
Speaker 1: It would appear that she called him her God in
25:09
Speaker 1: the car after the hero in a novel of Anthony Hope's.
25:13
Speaker 1: It was essential to the convention of their relations that
25:16
Speaker 1: he should go relentlessly whenever business called, and it was
25:19
Speaker 1: generally arranged that it did call to him. Women were
25:23
Speaker 1: an incident. It was understood between them. Ambition was the
25:27
Speaker 1: master passion a great world called him, and the noble
25:31
Speaker 1: hunger for power. I have never been able to discover
25:35
Speaker 1: just how honest Missus Scriggore was in all this, but
25:39
Speaker 1: it is quite possible the immense glamor of his financial
25:42
Speaker 1: largeness prevailed with her, and that she did bring a
25:46
Speaker 1: really romantic feeling to their encounters. There must have been
25:49
Speaker 1: some extraordinary moments. I was a good deal exercised and
25:54
Speaker 1: distressed about my aunt. When I realized what was afoot,
25:58
Speaker 1: I thought it would prove a terrible he humiliation to her.
26:01
Speaker 1: I suspected her of keeping up a brave front with
26:04
Speaker 1: the loss of my uncle's affections, fretting at her heart.
26:07
Speaker 1: But there I simply underestimated her. She didn't hear for
26:11
Speaker 1: some time, and when she did hear, she was extremely
26:14
Speaker 1: angry and energetic. The sentimental situation didn't trouble her for
26:18
Speaker 1: a moment. She decided that my uncle wanted smacking. She
26:23
Speaker 1: was accentuated herself with an unexpected new hat, went and
26:27
Speaker 1: gave him an inconceivable talking to at the Hartingham, and
26:30
Speaker 1: then came round to blow up me for not telling
26:33
Speaker 1: her what was going on before. I tried to bring
26:37
Speaker 1: her to a proper sense of the accepted values in
26:40
Speaker 1: this affair. But my aunt's originality of outlook was never
26:43
Speaker 1: so invincible. Men don't tell on one another in affairs
26:48
Speaker 1: of passion, I protested, and such like worldly excuses women,
26:53
Speaker 1: she said, in high indignation. And men. It isn't women
26:58
Speaker 1: and men, it's him and me, George, Why don't you
27:01
Speaker 1: talk sense old passions? All very well, George in its way.
27:07
Speaker 1: And I'm the last person to be jealous, But this
27:09
Speaker 1: is old nonsense. I'm not going to let him show
27:12
Speaker 1: off what a silly old lobster he is to other women.
27:16
Speaker 1: I'll mark every scrap of his underclothes with red letters,
27:19
Speaker 1: ponderevo private, every scrap going about making love, indeed in
27:26
Speaker 1: abdominal belts. At his time of life. I cannot imagine
27:31
Speaker 1: what passed between her and my uncle, but I have
27:34
Speaker 1: no doubt that for once her customary badinage was laid aside.
27:39
Speaker 1: How they talked then, I do not know, for I,
27:42
Speaker 1: who knew them so well, had never heard that much
27:45
Speaker 1: of intimacy between them. At any rate, it was a
27:48
Speaker 1: concerned and preoccupied god in the car I had to
27:52
Speaker 1: deal with in the next few days. Unusually, Zizzi had
27:56
Speaker 1: given to slight, impatient gestures that had nothing to do
27:59
Speaker 1: with the current conversation, and it was evident that in
28:03
Speaker 1: all directions he was finding things unusually difficult to explain.
28:08
Speaker 1: All the intimate moments in this affair were hidden from me.
28:11
Speaker 1: But in the end my aunt triumphed. He did not
28:15
Speaker 1: so much throw as jerk over missus Scrimgore, and she
28:19
Speaker 1: did not so much make a novel of it as
28:21
Speaker 1: upset a huge pailful of attenuated and adulterated female soul.
28:26
Speaker 1: Upon this occasion, my Aunt did not appear in that
28:30
Speaker 1: even remotely, so that it is doubtful if the lady
28:33
Speaker 1: knew the real causes of her abandonment. The Napoleonic hero
28:37
Speaker 1: was practically unmarried, and he threw over his lady as
28:41
Speaker 1: Napoleon threw over Josephine. For a great alliance. It was
28:45
Speaker 1: a triumph for my aunt, but it had its price.
28:49
Speaker 1: For some time it was evident things were strained between them.
28:53
Speaker 1: He gave up the lady, but he resented having to
28:56
Speaker 1: do so deeply. She had meant more to his imagination
29:00
Speaker 1: than one could have supposed. He wouldn't for a long
29:03
Speaker 1: time come round. He became touchy and impatient and secretive
29:08
Speaker 1: towards my Aunt, and she, I noted, after an amazing
29:12
Speaker 1: check or so stopped that stream of kindly abuse that
29:15
Speaker 1: had flowed for so long, and had been so great
29:18
Speaker 1: a refreshment in their lives. They were both the poorer
29:22
Speaker 1: for its cessation, both less happy. She devoted herself more
29:26
Speaker 1: and more to Lady Grove and the humors and complications
29:30
Speaker 1: of its management. The servants took to her, as they say,
29:34
Speaker 1: she god mothered three Susans during her rule, the Coachman's,
29:38
Speaker 1: the gardeners, and the up Hill gamekeepers. She got together
29:43
Speaker 1: a library of old household books that were in the
29:45
Speaker 1: vein of the place. She revived the still room and
29:49
Speaker 1: became a great artist in jellies an Elder and cowslip wine.
29:55
Speaker 1: Ten And while I neglected the development of my uncle's
29:58
Speaker 1: finances and my in my scientific work, and my absorbing
30:02
Speaker 1: conflict with the difficulties of flying. His schemes grew more
30:06
Speaker 1: and more expansive and hazardous, and his spending wilder and laxer.
30:12
Speaker 1: I believe that a haunting sense of the intensifying unsoundness
30:16
Speaker 1: of his position accounts largely for his increasing irritability and
30:20
Speaker 1: his increasing secretiveness with my aunt and myself. During these
30:25
Speaker 1: crowning years, he dreaded, I think having to explain. He
30:29
Speaker 1: feared our jests might pierce unwittingly to the truth. Even
30:33
Speaker 1: in the privacy of his mind, he would not face
30:36
Speaker 1: the truth. He was accumulating unrealizable securities in his safes
30:42
Speaker 1: until they hung a potential avalanche over the economic world.
30:46
Speaker 1: But his buying became a fever, and his restless desire
30:49
Speaker 1: to keep it up with himself that he was making
30:51
Speaker 1: a triumphant progress to limitless wealth gnawed deeper and deeper.
30:57
Speaker 1: A curious feature of this time with him was his
31:00
Speaker 1: buying over and over again of similar things. His ideas
31:04
Speaker 1: seemed to run in series. Within a twelvemonth, he bought
31:08
Speaker 1: five new motor cars, each more swift and powerful than
31:11
Speaker 1: its predecessor, and only the repeated prompt resignation of his
31:15
Speaker 1: chief chauffeur at each moment of danger prevented his driving
31:19
Speaker 1: them himself. He used them more and more. He developed
31:23
Speaker 1: a passion for locomotion for its own sake. Then he
31:27
Speaker 1: began to chafe at Lady Grove, fretted by a chance
31:31
Speaker 1: jest he had overheard at a dinner. This house, George,
31:35
Speaker 1: he said, it's a misfit. There's no elbow room in it.
31:39
Speaker 1: It's choked with old memories. And I can't stand all
31:42
Speaker 1: these damned durgins. That chap in the corner, George. No,
31:47
Speaker 1: the other corner, the man in a cherry colored coat.
31:50
Speaker 1: He watched you. He'd looked silly. If I stuck a
31:54
Speaker 1: poker through his gizzard, he'd look I reflected, much as
31:58
Speaker 1: he does now, as though he were amused. He replaced
32:02
Speaker 1: his glasses, which had fallen at his emotion, and glared
32:05
Speaker 1: at his antagonists. What are they? What are they? All?
32:10
Speaker 1: The lot of em dead as mutton. They just stuck
32:13
Speaker 1: in the mud. They didn't even rise to the Reformation,
32:17
Speaker 1: the old, out of date Reformation move with the times.
32:20
Speaker 1: They moved against the times. Just a family of failure.
32:25
Speaker 1: They never even tried. They're just, George, exactly what I'm
32:30
Speaker 1: not exactly. It isn't suitable, all this living in the past.
32:36
Speaker 1: And I want a bigger place, too, George. I want
32:39
Speaker 1: air and sunlight and room to move about and more service,
32:44
Speaker 1: a house where you can get a move on things. Zs.
32:47
Speaker 1: Why it's like a discord. It jars even to have
32:51
Speaker 1: the telephone. There's nothing, nothing except the terrace that's worth
32:55
Speaker 1: a rap. It's all dark and old and dried up
32:59
Speaker 1: and full of old fashioned things, musty old iy ds,
33:03
Speaker 1: fitter for a silverfish than a modern man. I don't
33:06
Speaker 1: know how I got here. He broke out into a
33:10
Speaker 1: new grievance that damned vicar, he complained, thinks I ought
33:14
Speaker 1: to think myself lucky to get this place. Every time
33:17
Speaker 1: I meet him, I can see him think it. One
33:20
Speaker 1: of these days, George, I'll show him what a modern
33:23
Speaker 1: house is like. And he did. I remember the day
33:27
Speaker 1: when he declared, as Americans say, for Crest Hill, he
33:31
Speaker 1: had come up to see my new gas plant, for
33:33
Speaker 1: I was then only just beginning to experiment with auxiliary
33:36
Speaker 1: collapsible balloons, and all the time the shine of his glasses,
33:40
Speaker 1: was wandering away to the open down beyond. Let's go
33:44
Speaker 1: back to Lady Grove over the hill. He said something.
33:47
Speaker 1: I want to show you something fine. It was an
33:51
Speaker 1: empty sunlit place, that summer evening sky and earth warm
33:55
Speaker 1: with sundown and a peewit or so, just accentuating the
34:00
Speaker 1: pleasant stillness that ends a long clear day. A beautiful piece.
34:04
Speaker 1: It was to wreck forever. And there was my uncle,
34:08
Speaker 1: the modern man of power, in his gray top hat
34:11
Speaker 1: and his gray suit and his black ribbon glasses, short,
34:15
Speaker 1: thin legged, large stomached, pointing and gesticulating, threatening this calm.
34:21
Speaker 1: He began with a wave of his arm. That's the place, George,
34:25
Speaker 1: he said. See ay, I cried for I had been
34:30
Speaker 1: thinking of remote things. I got it. Got what for
34:35
Speaker 1: a house, a twentieth century house, that's the place for it.
34:39
Speaker 1: One of his characteristic phrases was begotten in him. Four
34:43
Speaker 1: square to the winds of Heaven, George, he said, ay,
34:47
Speaker 1: four square to the winds of heaven. You'll get the
34:50
Speaker 1: winds up here, I said. A mammoth house. It ought
34:54
Speaker 1: to be, George, to suit these hills quite, I said,
34:58
Speaker 1: great galleries and running out there and there see I've
35:04
Speaker 1: been thinking of it, George, looking out all this way
35:07
Speaker 1: across the wheeld, with its back to Lady Grove, and
35:11
Speaker 1: the morning sun in its eye, like an eagle. George,
35:15
Speaker 1: like an eagle. So he broached to me what speedily
35:19
Speaker 1: became the leading occupation of his culminating years, Crest Hill.
35:23
Speaker 1: But all the world has heard of that extravagant place,
35:27
Speaker 1: which grew and changed its plans as it grew and
35:30
Speaker 1: bubbled like a salted snail, and burged and bulged, and
35:34
Speaker 1: evermore grew. I know not what delirium of pinnacles and terraces,
35:39
Speaker 1: and arcades and corridors glittered at last upon the uplands
35:43
Speaker 1: of his mind. The place, for all that its expansion
35:47
Speaker 1: was terminated abruptly by our collapse, is wonderful enough as
35:51
Speaker 1: it stands, that empty, instinctive building of a childless man.
35:55
Speaker 1: His chief architect was a young man named Westminster, whose
35:59
Speaker 1: work he had picked out in the architecture room of
36:02
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage
36:05
Speaker 1: in it. But with him he associated from time to
36:09
Speaker 1: time a number of fellow professionals, stonemasons, sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes,
36:17
Speaker 1: metal workers, wood carvers, furniture designers, ceramic specialists, landscape gardeners,
36:24
Speaker 1: and the man who designs the arrangement and ventilation of
36:27
Speaker 1: the various new houses in the London Zoological Gardens. In addition,
36:32
Speaker 1: he had his own ideas. The thing occupied his mind
36:36
Speaker 1: at all times, but it held it completely from Friday
36:40
Speaker 1: night to Monday morning. He would come down to Lady
36:43
Speaker 1: Grove on Friday night in a crowded motor car that
36:46
Speaker 1: almost dripped architects. He didn't, however, confine himself to architects.
36:51
Speaker 1: Everyone was liable to an invitation to weekend and Viewcrest Hill,
36:56
Speaker 1: and many an eager promoter, unaware of how napoleonically and
37:00
Speaker 1: completely my uncle had departmentalized his mind, tried to creep
37:04
Speaker 1: up to him by way of tiles and ventilators and
37:08
Speaker 1: new electric fittings. Always on Sunday mornings, unless the weather
37:13
Speaker 1: was vile, he would so soon as breakfast and his
37:16
Speaker 1: secretaries were disposed of visit the site with a considerable
37:19
Speaker 1: retinue and altar, and developed plans, making modifications, zingh giving
37:26
Speaker 1: immense new orders verbally and unsatisfactory. Way as Westminster and
37:32
Speaker 1: the contractors ultimately found. There he stands in my memory,
37:37
Speaker 1: the symbol of this age for me, the man of
37:40
Speaker 1: luck and advertisement, the current master of the world. There
37:44
Speaker 1: he stands, upon the great outward sweep of the terrace,
37:47
Speaker 1: before the huge main entrance, a little figure ridiculously disproportionate
37:51
Speaker 1: to that forty foot arch, with the granite ball behind him,
37:55
Speaker 1: the astronomical ball brass coopered that represented the world, with
38:00
Speaker 1: a little adjustable tube of lenses on a gun metal
38:03
Speaker 1: arm that focus the sun upon just that point of
38:06
Speaker 1: the Earth on which a chance to be shining vertically.
38:09
Speaker 1: There he stands, napoleonically, grouped with his retinue men in
38:13
Speaker 1: tweeds and golfing suits, a little solicitor whose name I forget,
38:17
Speaker 1: in great trousers and a black jacket, and Westminster in
38:21
Speaker 1: jager underclothing, a floriferous tie and peculiar brown cloth of
38:25
Speaker 1: his own. The downland breeze flutters my uncle's coat tails,
38:30
Speaker 1: disarranges his stiff hair, and insists on the evidence of
38:33
Speaker 1: undisciplined appetites in face and form, as he points out
38:37
Speaker 1: this or that feature in the prospect to his attentive collaborator.
38:42
Speaker 1: Below are hundreds of feet of wheeling planks, ditches, excavations,
38:47
Speaker 1: heaps of earth, piles of garden stone from the wild
38:50
Speaker 1: and ridges. On either hand, the walls of his irrelevant,
38:54
Speaker 1: unmeaning palace rise. At one time he had working in
38:57
Speaker 1: that place, disturbing the economic balance of the whole countryside
39:01
Speaker 1: by their presence upwards of three thousand men. So he
39:06
Speaker 1: poses for my picture. Amidst the raw beginnings that were
39:09
Speaker 1: never to be completed, he did the strangest things about
39:12
Speaker 1: that place, things more and more detached from any conception
39:16
Speaker 1: of financial scale, things more and more apart from sober humanity.
39:21
Speaker 1: He seemed to think himself at last released from any
39:25
Speaker 1: such limitations. He moved a quite considerable hill, and nearly
39:30
Speaker 1: sixty mature trees were moved with it, to open his
39:33
Speaker 1: prospect eastward. Moved at about two hundred feet to the south.
39:37
Speaker 1: At another time he caught a suggestion from some city
39:40
Speaker 1: restaurant and made a billiard room roofed with plate glass,
39:44
Speaker 1: beneath the waters of his ornamental lake. He furnished one
39:47
Speaker 1: wing while its roof still awaited completion. He had a
39:51
Speaker 1: swimming bath thirty feet square next to his bedroom upstairs,
39:55
Speaker 1: and to crowd at all, He commenced a great wall
39:58
Speaker 1: to hold all his dominions to together free from the
40:01
Speaker 1: invasion of common men. It was a ten foot wall,
40:05
Speaker 1: glass surmounted, and had it been completed as he intended it,
40:09
Speaker 1: it would have had a total length of nearly eleven miles.
40:12
Speaker 1: Some of it towards the last was so dishonestly built
40:15
Speaker 1: that it collapsed within a year upon its foundations, but
40:19
Speaker 1: some miles of it still stand. I never think of
40:22
Speaker 1: it now, But what I think of the hundreds of
40:25
Speaker 1: eager little investors who followed his star, whose hopes and lives,
40:29
Speaker 1: whose wives, security, and children's prospects are all mixed up
40:33
Speaker 1: beyond redemption with that flaking mortar. It is curious how
40:38
Speaker 1: many of these modern financiers of chance and bluff have
40:41
Speaker 1: entered their careers by building It was not merely my uncle.
40:46
Speaker 1: Sooner or later, they all seem to bring their luck
40:48
Speaker 1: to the test of realization, try to make their fluid
40:51
Speaker 1: opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar bring moonshine into
40:56
Speaker 1: relations with a weekly wages sheet. Then the whole fabric
41:00
Speaker 1: of confidence and imagination totters and down they come. When
41:05
Speaker 1: I think of that despoiled hillside, that colossal litter of
41:09
Speaker 1: bricks and mortar, and crude roads and paths, the scaffolding
41:14
Speaker 1: and sheds, the general quality of unforeseeing outrage upon the
41:18
Speaker 1: peace of nature. I am reminded of a chat I
41:21
Speaker 1: had with a vicar one bleak day, after he had
41:24
Speaker 1: witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aeronautics as
41:27
Speaker 1: I stood in jersey and shorts beside my machine, fresh
41:31
Speaker 1: from alighting, and his cadaverous face failed to conceal a
41:34
Speaker 1: peculiar desolation that possessed him. Almost you convinced me, he said,
41:40
Speaker 1: coming up to me against my will. A marvelous invention,
41:44
Speaker 1: But it will take you a long time, sir, before
41:47
Speaker 1: you can emulate that perfect mechanism, the wing of a bird.
41:52
Speaker 1: He looked at my sheds. You've changed the look of
41:54
Speaker 1: this valley too, he said, temporary defilements. I remarked, guess
42:00
Speaker 1: what was in his mind? Of course, things come and go,
42:04
Speaker 1: Things come and go. But hum, I've just been up
42:08
Speaker 1: over the hill to look at mister Edward Ponderevo's new house.
42:12
Speaker 1: That that is something more permanent, a magnificent place, in
42:17
Speaker 1: many ways, imposing I've never somehow brought myself to go
42:21
Speaker 1: that way. Before things are greatly advanced, we find the
42:26
Speaker 1: great number of strangers introduced into the villages about here
42:29
Speaker 1: by these operations, working men, chiefly a little embarrassing. It
42:34
Speaker 1: put us out. They bring a new spirit into the place,
42:38
Speaker 1: betting ideas, all sorts of queer notions. Our Republicans like it,
42:44
Speaker 1: of course, and they come and sleep in one's outhouses
42:47
Speaker 1: and make the place a little unsafe at nights. The
42:50
Speaker 1: other morning, I couldn't sleep a slight dyspepsia, and I
42:54
Speaker 1: looked out of the window. I was amazed to see
42:57
Speaker 1: people going by on bicycles, a silent procession. I counted
43:02
Speaker 1: ninety seven in the dawn, all going up to the
43:05
Speaker 1: new road for Crest Hill. Remarkable, I thought it, And
43:09
Speaker 1: so I've been up to see what they were doing.
43:12
Speaker 1: They would have been more than remarkable thirty years ago,
43:15
Speaker 1: I said, Yes, indeed, things change. We think nothing of
43:20
Speaker 1: it now at all comparatively. And that big house, he
43:25
Speaker 1: raised his eyebrows, really stupendous, stupendous, all the hill side,
43:31
Speaker 1: the old turf cut to ribbons. His eye searched my face.
43:35
Speaker 1: We've grown so accustomed to look up to Lady Grove,
43:38
Speaker 1: he said, and smiled, in search of sympathy. It shifts
43:42
Speaker 1: our center of gravity. Things will readjust themselves, I lied.
43:48
Speaker 1: He snatched at the phrase. Of course, he said, they'll
43:52
Speaker 1: readjust themselves. Settle down again, must in the old way.
43:57
Speaker 1: It's bound to come right again. A comforting thought. Yes,
44:01
Speaker 1: After all, Lady Grove itself had to be built once
44:04
Speaker 1: upon a time was to begin with artificial. His eye
44:10
Speaker 1: returned to my aeroplane. He sought to dismiss his graver preoccupations.
44:15
Speaker 1: I should think twice, he remarked, before I trusted myself
44:19
Speaker 1: to that concern. But I suppose one grows accustomed to
44:22
Speaker 1: the motion. He bade me good morning, and went his way,
44:27
Speaker 1: bowed and thoughtful. He had kept the truth from his
44:30
Speaker 1: mind a long time, but that morning it had forced
44:34
Speaker 1: its way to him, with an aspect that brooked no denial.
44:37
Speaker 1: That this time it was not just changes that were
44:40
Speaker 1: coming in his world, but that all his world lay
44:43
Speaker 1: open and defenseless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as
44:48
Speaker 1: he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike
44:52
Speaker 1: to change. End of book, third chapter, second parts seven
45:01
Speaker 1: recording by William tom Coe