Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 2 - Parts 4-6

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Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 2 - Parts 4-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, third chapter, second parts four to six 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 Tomko Tono Bungay
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells, Book, third chapter, second parts four
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Speaker 1: to six. Four What you think of it, George, he insisted.
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Speaker 1: When I said I thought of it, I don't now
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Speaker 1: recall only I have very distinctly the impression of meeting
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Speaker 1: for a moment my aunt's impenetrable eye. And anyhow he
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Speaker 1: started in with his accustomed energy to rip the mysteries
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Speaker 1: of the costly life and become the calmest of its lords.
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Speaker 1: On the whole, I think he did it thoroughly. I
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Speaker 1: have crowded memories, a little difficult to disentangle of his
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Speaker 1: experience and metal stages, his experimental proceedings. It's hard at
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Speaker 1: times to say which memory comes in front of which.
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Speaker 1: I recall him as presenting, on the whole a series
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Speaker 1: of small surprises, as being again and again unexpectedly a
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Speaker 1: little more self confident, a little more polished, a little
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Speaker 1: richer and finer, a little more aware of the positions
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Speaker 1: and values of things and men. There was a time,
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Speaker 1: it must have been very early, when I saw him
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Speaker 1: deeply impressed by the splendors of the dining room of
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Speaker 1: the National Liberal Club. Heaven knows who our host was
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Speaker 1: or what that particular little feed was about. Now all
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Speaker 1: that sticks is the impression of our straggling entry, a
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Speaker 1: string of six or seven guests, and my uncle looking
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Speaker 1: about him at the numerous bright red shaded tables, at
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Speaker 1: the exotics in great Majolica jars, at the shining ceramic
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Speaker 1: columns and pilasters, at the impressive portraits of liberal statesmen
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Speaker 1: and heroes, and all that contributes to the ensemble of
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Speaker 1: that palatial spectacle. He was betrayed into a whisper to me,
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Speaker 1: this is all right, George, he said. That artless comment
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Speaker 1: seems almost incredible as I set it down. There came
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Speaker 1: a time so speedily when not even the clubs of
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Speaker 1: New York could have overawed my uncle, And when he
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Speaker 1: could walk through the bowing magnificence of the Royal Grand
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Speaker 1: Hotel to his chosen table in that aggressively exquisite gallery
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Speaker 1: upon the river, with all the easy calm of one
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Speaker 1: of Earth's legitimate kings. The two of them learnt the
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Speaker 1: new game rapidly and well. They experimented abroad. They experimented
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Speaker 1: at home at Chiselhurst, with the aid of a new
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Speaker 1: very costly but highly instructive cook. They tried over everything
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Speaker 1: they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any
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Speaker 1: reputation for difficulty, from asparagus to plover's eggs. They afterwards
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Speaker 1: got a gardener who could wait at table, and he
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Speaker 1: brought the soil home to one. Then there came a butler.
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Speaker 1: I remember my aunt's first dinner, gown very brightly, and
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Speaker 1: how she stood before the fire in the drawing room,
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Speaker 1: confessing once unsuspected pretty arms with all the courage she possessed,
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Speaker 1: and looking over her shoulder at herself in a mirror
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Speaker 1: a ham she remarked, reflectively, must feel like this just
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Speaker 1: a necklace, I attempted, I think some commonplace compliment. My
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Speaker 1: uncle appeared at the door in a white waistcoat, and
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Speaker 1: with his hands in his trouser pockets. He halted and
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Speaker 1: surveyed her critically. Couldn't tell you from a duchess Susan,
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Speaker 1: he remarked, I'd like to have you painted. Standing at
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Speaker 1: the fire like that sergeant, you look spirited somehow, Lord,
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Speaker 1: I wish some of those damned tradesmen at Wimblehurst could
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Speaker 1: see you. They did a lot of weak ending at hotels,
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Speaker 1: and sometimes I went down with them. We seemed to
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Speaker 1: fall into a vast, drifting crowd of social learners. I
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Speaker 1: don't know whether it is due simply to my changed circumstances,
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Speaker 1: but it seems to me there have been immensely disproportionate
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Speaker 1: developments of the hotel frequenting and restaurant using population during
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Speaker 1: the last twenty years. It is not only I think
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Speaker 1: that there are crowds of people who, like we were,
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Speaker 1: are in the economically ascended phase, but whole masses of
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Speaker 1: the prosperous section of the population must be altering its habits,
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Speaker 1: giving up high tea for dinner and taking to evening dress.
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Speaker 1: Using the weekend hotels as a practice ground for these
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Speaker 1: new social arts. A swift and systematic conversation to gentility
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Speaker 1: has been going on. I am convinced throughout the whole
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Speaker 1: commercial upper middle class since I was twenty one. Curiously
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Speaker 1: mixed was the personal quality of the people who saw
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Speaker 1: in these raids. There were conscientiously refined and low voiced
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Speaker 1: people reeking with proud bashfulness. There were aggressively smart people,
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Speaker 1: using pet diminutives for each other, loudly and seeking fresh
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Speaker 1: occasions for brilliant rudeness. There were awkward husbands and wives
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Speaker 1: quarreling furtively about their manners and ill at ease under
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Speaker 1: the eye of the winter. Cheerfully amiable and often discrepant
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Speaker 1: couples with a disposition to inconspicuous corners, and the jolly
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Speaker 1: sort affecting and unaffected ease, plump happy ladies who laughed
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Speaker 1: too loud, and gentlemen in evening dress who subsequently got
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Speaker 1: their pipes. And nobody you knew was anybody, however expensively
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Speaker 1: they dressed, and whatever rooms they took. I look back
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Speaker 1: now with a curious remoteness of spirit to those crowded
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Speaker 1: dining rooms, with their dispersed tables and their inevitable red
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Speaker 1: shaded lights, and the unsympathetic, unskillful waiters, and the choice
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Speaker 1: of thig or glear, sir. I've not dined in that way,
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Speaker 1: in that sort of place now for five years, it
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Speaker 1: must be quite five years. So specialized and narrow is
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Speaker 1: my life becoming my uncle's earlier motor car phases work
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Speaker 1: in with these associations. And there stands out a little
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Speaker 1: bright vignette of the hall of the Magnificent Bexhill on Sea,
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Speaker 1: and people dressed for dinner and sitting about amidst the
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Speaker 1: scarlet furniture, satin and white enameled woodwork, until the gong
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Speaker 1: should gather them. And my aunt is there very marvelously
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Speaker 1: wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage like veil.
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Speaker 1: And there are hotel porters and under porters, very alert
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Speaker 1: and an obsequious manager. The tall young lady in black
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Speaker 1: from the office is surprised into admiration. And in the
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Speaker 1: middle of the picture is my uncle making his first
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Speaker 1: appearance in that Eskimo costume I have already mentioned, a
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Speaker 1: short figure compactly immense, hugely goggled, wearing a sort of
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Speaker 1: brown rubber proboscis, and surmounted by a table land of
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Speaker 1: motoring cat five. So it was we recognized our new
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Speaker 1: needs as fresh invaders of the upper levels of the
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Speaker 1: social system, and set ourselves quite consciously to the acquisition
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Speaker 1: of style and savoir faire. We became part of what
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Speaker 1: is nowadays quite an important element in the confusion of
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Speaker 1: our world, that multitude of economically ascended people who are
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Speaker 1: learning how to spend money. It is made up of
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Speaker 1: financial people, the owners of the businesses that are eating
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Speaker 1: up their competitors, inventors of new sources of wealth, such
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Speaker 1: as ourselves. It includes nearly all America, as one sees
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Speaker 1: it on the European stage. It is a various multitude,
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Speaker 1: having only this in common. They are all moving, and
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Speaker 1: particularly their womankind are moving from conditions in which means
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Speaker 1: were insistently finite, things were few and customs simple, towards
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Speaker 1: a limitless expenditure and the sphere of attraction of Bond Street,
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Speaker 1: Fifth Avenue and Parents. Their general effect is one of
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Speaker 1: progressive revolution, of limitless rope. They discover suddenly indulgences their
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Speaker 1: moral code never foresaw and has no provision for elaborations, ornaments,
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Speaker 1: possessions beyond their wildest dreams. With an immense, astonished zest,
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Speaker 1: they begin shopping, begin a systematic adaptation to a new life.
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Speaker 1: Crowded and brilliant with things shopped with jewels, maids, butlers, coachmen,
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Speaker 1: electric brooms, hired town and country houses, they plunge into
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Speaker 1: it as one plunges into a career. As a class,
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Speaker 1: they talk, think, and dream possessions. Their literature, their press
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Speaker 1: turns all on that immense illustrated weeklies of unsurpassed magnificence
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Speaker 1: guide them in domestic architecture, in the art of owning
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Speaker 1: a garden, in the achievement of the sumptuous, and motor
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Speaker 1: cars in an elaborate sporting equipment, in the purchase and
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Speaker 1: control of their estate, in travel and stupendous hotels. Once
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Speaker 1: they begin to move, they go far and fast. Acquisition
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Speaker 1: becomes the substance of their lives. They find a world
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Speaker 1: organized to gratify that passion. In a brief year or so,
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Speaker 1: they are connoisseurs. They join in the plunder of the
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Speaker 1: eighteenth century by rare old books, fine old pictures, good
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Speaker 1: old furniture. Their first crude conception of dazzling suits of
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Speaker 1: the newly perfect is replaced almost from the outset by
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Speaker 1: a jack dog dream of accumulating costly, discrepant old things.
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Speaker 1: I seem to remember my uncle taking to shopping quite
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Speaker 1: suddenly in the Beckenham days and in the early Chiselhurst days.
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Speaker 1: He was chiefly interested in getting money and except for
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Speaker 1: his onslaught on the Beckenham House, bothered very little about
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Speaker 1: his personal surroundings and possessions. I forget now. When the
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Speaker 1: change came and he began to spend, some accident must
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Speaker 1: have revealed to him this new source of power, or
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Speaker 1: some subtle shifting occurred in the tissues of his brain.
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Speaker 1: He began to spend and shop. So soon as he
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Speaker 1: began to shop, he began to shop violently. He began
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Speaker 1: buying pictures and then, oddly enough, old clocks for the
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Speaker 1: Chiselhurst house. He bought nearly a dozen grandfather clocks and
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Speaker 1: three copper warming pans. After that he bought much furniture.
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Speaker 1: Then he plunged into art patronage and began to commission
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Speaker 1: pictures and to make presents to churches and institutions. His
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Speaker 1: buying increased with the regular acceleration. Its development was a
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Speaker 1: part of the mental changes that came to him in
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Speaker 1: the wild excitements of the last four years of his ascent.
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Speaker 1: Towards the climax, he was a furious spender. He shopped
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Speaker 1: with large, unexpected purchases. He shopped like a mind seeking expression.
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Speaker 1: He shopped to astonish and dismay shopped crescendo, shopped fortissimo,
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Speaker 1: conmolto espressione unto, till the magnificent smash of Crest Hill
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Speaker 1: eroded his shopping. Forever, always it was he who shopped.
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Speaker 1: My aunt did not shine as a purchaser. It is
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Speaker 1: a curious thing, due to I know not what fine
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Speaker 1: strain in her composition, that my aunt never set any
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Speaker 1: great store upon possessions. She plunged through that crowded bazaar
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Speaker 1: of Vanity Fair during those feverish years, spending, no doubt,
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Speaker 1: freely and largely, but spending with detachment and a touch
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Speaker 1: of humorous contempt for the things, even the old things,
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Speaker 1: that money can buy. It came to me suddenly one afternoon,
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Speaker 1: just how detached she was, as I saw her going
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Speaker 1: towards her Hartingham, setting up as she always did, rather
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Speaker 1: stiffly in her electric broom, regarding the glittering world with
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Speaker 1: interested and ironically innocent blue eyes from under the brim
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Speaker 1: of a hat that defied comment. No one I thought
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Speaker 1: would sit so apart if she hadn't dreams, And what
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Speaker 1: are her dreams? I'd never thought, And I remember too
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Speaker 1: an outburst of scornful description after she had lunched with
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Speaker 1: a party of women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She
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Speaker 1: came round to my rooms on the chance of finding
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Speaker 1: me there, and I gave her tea. She professed herself
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Speaker 1: tired and cross and flung herself into my chair. George,
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Speaker 1: She cried, the things women are do, I stink of
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Speaker 1: money lunching, I asked. She nodded. Plutocratic ladies, yes, oriental type. Oh,
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Speaker 1: like a burst harem, bragging up possessions. They feel you,
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Speaker 1: They feel your clothes, George, to see if they are good.
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Speaker 1: I soothed her as well as I could. They are good,
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Speaker 1: aren't they, I said. It's the old pawnshop in their blood.
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Speaker 1: She said, drinking tea, and then, in infinite disgust, they
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Speaker 1: run their hands over your clothes. They paw you. I
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Speaker 1: had a moment of doubt, whether perhaps she had been
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Speaker 1: discovered in possession of unsuspected forgeries. I don't know. After that,
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Speaker 1: my eyes were quickened, and I began to see for
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Speaker 1: myself women running their hands over other women's furs, scrutinizing
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Speaker 1: their lace, even demanding to handle jewelry, appraising, envying testing.
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Speaker 1: They have a kind of etiquette. The woman who feels, says,
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Speaker 1: what beautiful sables, what lovely lace? The woman felt admits
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Speaker 1: proudly it's real, you know, or disavows pretension modestly and
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Speaker 1: hastily it's rot good. In each other's houses, they peer
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Speaker 1: at the pictures, handle the salvage of hangings, look at
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Speaker 1: the bottoms of China. I wonder if it is the
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Speaker 1: old pawnshop in the Blood. I doubt if Lady Drew
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Speaker 1: and the Olympians did that sort of thing. But here
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Speaker 1: I may be only clinging to another of my former
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Speaker 1: illusions about aristocracy and the state. Perhaps always possessions have
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Speaker 1: been booty, and never anywhere has there been such a
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Speaker 1: thing as house and furnishings, native and natural to the
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Speaker 1: women and men who made use of them. Six For me,
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Speaker 1: at least, it marked an epoch in my uncle's career.
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Speaker 1: When I learnt one day that he had chopped Lady Grove,
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Speaker 1: I realized a fresh, wide, unpreluded step. He took me
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Speaker 1: by surprise with a sudden change of scale, from such
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Speaker 1: portable possessions as jewels and motor cars to a stretch
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Speaker 1: of countryside. The transaction was Napoleonic. He was told of
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Speaker 1: the place he said, snap there were no preliminary desirings
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Speaker 1: or searchings. Then he came home and said what he
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Speaker 1: had done. Even my aunt was for a day or
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Speaker 1: so measurably awe stricken by this exploit in purchase, and
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Speaker 1: we both went down with him to see the house
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Speaker 1: in a mood near consternation. It struck us then as
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Speaker 1: a very lordly place. Indeed, I remembered the three of
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Speaker 1: us standing on the terrace that looked westward, surveying the
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Speaker 1: sky reflecting windows of the house, and a feeling of
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Speaker 1: unwarrantable intrusion comes back to me. Lady Grove, you know,
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Speaker 1: is a very beautiful house, indeed, a still and gracious
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Speaker 1: place whose age long seclusion was only effectively broken with
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Speaker 1: the toot of the coming of the motor car. An
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Speaker 1: old Catholic family had died out in it century by century,
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Speaker 1: and was now altogether dead. Portions of the fabric are
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Speaker 1: thirteenth century, and its last architectural revision was Tudor. Within
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Speaker 1: it is for the most part dark and chilly, save
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Speaker 1: for two or three favored rooms and its tall windowed
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Speaker 1: oak gallerried hall. Its terrace is its noblest feature, a
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Speaker 1: very wide broad lawn. It is bordered by a low
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Speaker 1: stone battlement, and there is a great cedar in one corner,
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Speaker 1: under whose level branches One looks out across the blue
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Speaker 1: distances of the wheeld blue day, distances that are made
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Speaker 1: extraordinarily Italian in quality by virtue of the dark masses
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Speaker 1: of that single tree. It is a very high terrace.
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Speaker 1: Southward one looks down upon the tops of wayfaring trees
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Speaker 1: and spruces, and westward on a steep slope of beechwood
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Speaker 1: through which the road comes. One turns back to the
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Speaker 1: still old house and sees a gray and likeness facade
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Speaker 1: with a very finely arched entrance. It was warmed by
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Speaker 1: the afternoon light and touched with the color of a
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Speaker 1: few neglected roses and a Pyracanthus it seemed to me
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Speaker 1: that the most modern owner conceivable in this serene, fine
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Speaker 1: place was some bearded scholarly man in a black cassock,
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Speaker 1: gentle voiced and white handed, or some very soft robed
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Speaker 1: gray gentlewoman. And there was my uncle, holding his goggles
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Speaker 1: in a seal skin glove, wiping the glass with a
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Speaker 1: pocket handkerchief, and asking my aunt if lady grove wasn't
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Speaker 1: a bit of all right. My aunt made him no answer.
17:02
Speaker 1: The man who built this, I speculated, wore armor and
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Speaker 1: carried a sword. There's some of it inside, still, said
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Speaker 1: my uncle. We went inside. An old woman with very
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Speaker 1: white hair was in charge of the place, and cringed
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Speaker 1: rather obviously to the new master. She evidently found him
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Speaker 1: a very strange and frightful apparition, indeed, and was dreadfully
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Speaker 1: afraid of him. But if the surviving present bowed down
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Speaker 1: to us, the past did not. We stood up to
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Speaker 1: the dark, long portraits of the extinguished race. One was
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Speaker 1: a holbind and looked them in their sidelong eyes. They
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Speaker 1: looked back at us. We all, I know, felt the
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Speaker 1: enigmatical quality in them. Even my uncle was momentarily embarrassed,
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Speaker 1: I think, by that invincibly self complacent expression. It was
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Speaker 1: just as though, after all he had not bought them
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Speaker 1: up and replaced them all together, as though that secretly
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Speaker 1: they knew better and could smile at him. The spirit
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Speaker 1: of the place was akin to bladesover, but touched with
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Speaker 1: something older and remoter. That armor that stood about had
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Speaker 1: once served in tilt yards, if indeed it had not
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Speaker 1: served in battle, and this family had sent its blood
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Speaker 1: and treasure time after time upon the most romantic quest
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Speaker 1: in history to Palestine. Dreams, loyalties, place, and honor. How
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Speaker 1: utterly had it all evaporated, leaving at last the final
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Speaker 1: expression of its spirit, these quaint painted smiles, these smiles
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Speaker 1: of triumphant completion. It had evaporated indeed, long before the
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Speaker 1: ultimate Durgan had died, And in his old age he
18:43
Speaker 1: had cumbered the place with early Victorian cushions and carpets,
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Speaker 1: and tapestry tablecloths, and invalid appliances of a type even
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Speaker 1: more extinct. It seemed to us than the Crusades. Yes,
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Speaker 1: it was different from bladesover bitste royat George, said my uncle.
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Speaker 1: They hadn't much idea of ventilation when this was built.
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Speaker 1: One of the paddled rooms was half filled with presses,
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Speaker 1: and a four poster bed. Might be the ghost room,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle. But it did not seem to me
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Speaker 1: that so retiring a family as the Durgons, so old
19:17
Speaker 1: and completely exhausted, a family as the Durgons, was likely
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Speaker 1: to haunt anybody. What living thing now had any concern
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Speaker 1: with their honor and judgments and good and evil deeds.
19:29
Speaker 1: Ghosts and witchcraft were a later innovation. That fashion came
19:33
Speaker 1: from Scotland with the Stewarts. Afterwards, prying for epitaphs, we
19:38
Speaker 1: found a marble crusader with a broken nose, under a
19:41
Speaker 1: battered canopy of fretted stone, outside the restricted limits of
19:45
Speaker 1: the present Duffield Church, and half buried in nettles Acobad,
19:49
Speaker 1: said my uncle, Eh, we shall be like that Susan
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Speaker 1: some day. I'm going to clean him up a bit
19:56
Speaker 1: and put a railing to keep off the children. Old
19:59
Speaker 1: save at the eleventh hour, said my aunt, quoting one
20:02
Speaker 1: of the less successful advertisements of Tono Bungay. But I
20:06
Speaker 1: don't think my uncle heard her. It was by our
20:09
Speaker 1: captured crusader that the vicar found us. He came round
20:13
Speaker 1: the corner at us, briskly, a little out of breath.
20:16
Speaker 1: He had an air of having been running after us
20:18
Speaker 1: since the first toot of our horn had worn the
20:21
Speaker 1: village of our presence. He was an Oxford man, clean shaven,
20:25
Speaker 1: with a cadaverous complexion and a guardedly respectful manner, a
20:29
Speaker 1: cultivated intonation, and a general air of accommodation to the
20:33
Speaker 1: new order of things. These Oxford men are the Greeks
20:37
Speaker 1: of our plutocratic empire. He was a Tory in spirit,
20:41
Speaker 1: and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress
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Speaker 1: of circumstances. That is to say, he was no longer
20:47
Speaker 1: a legitimist. He was prepared for the substitution of the
20:51
Speaker 1: new lords for old. We were pill venders, he knew,
20:55
Speaker 1: and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul. But then it
20:59
Speaker 1: might have been so some polygamous Indian rajah a great
21:02
Speaker 1: strain on a good man's tact, or some Jew with
21:05
Speaker 1: an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were English and
21:11
Speaker 1: neither dissenters nor socialists, and he was cheerfully prepared to
21:15
Speaker 1: do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us.
21:18
Speaker 1: He might have referred Americans for some reasons. They are
21:21
Speaker 1: not so obviously taken from one part of the social
21:24
Speaker 1: system and dumped down in another, and they are more teachable.
21:29
Speaker 1: But in this world we cannot always be choosers. So
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Speaker 1: he was very bright and pleasant with us, showed us
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Speaker 1: the church, gossiped informingly about our neighbors on the countryside, Tucks,
21:41
Speaker 1: the banker, Lord Boom, the magazine, and newspaper proprietor, Lord Carnaby,
21:47
Speaker 1: that great sportsman, and old lady Osprey. And finally he
21:52
Speaker 1: took us by way of a village lane. Three children
21:55
Speaker 1: bobbed convulsively with eyes of terror for my uncle through
21:59
Speaker 1: a meticulous guard garden to a big Slovenly vicarage with
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Speaker 1: faded Victorian furniture, and a faded Victorian wife, who gave
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Speaker 1: us tea and introduced us to a confusing family dispersed
22:11
Speaker 1: among a lot of disintegrating basket chairs upon the edge
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Speaker 1: of a well used tennis lawn. These people interested me.
22:18
Speaker 1: They were a common type, no doubt, but they were
22:21
Speaker 1: new to me. There were two lank sons who had
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Speaker 1: been playing singles at tennis, red eared youths growing black
22:28
Speaker 1: mustaches and dressed in conscientiously untidy tweeds and unbuttoned and
22:34
Speaker 1: ungirt Norfolk jackets. There were a number of illnarished looking daughters,
22:39
Speaker 1: sensible and economical in their costume, the younger still with
22:43
Speaker 1: long brown stocking legs, and the eldest present. There were
22:47
Speaker 1: we discovered one or two hidden away displaying a large
22:51
Speaker 1: gold cross and other aggressive ecclesiastical symbols. There were two
22:56
Speaker 1: or three fox terriers, and a Retrieverish mongrel, an old,
23:00
Speaker 1: bloody eyed and very evil smelling Saint Bernard. There was
23:05
Speaker 1: a jack doll. There was moreover, an ambiguous, silent lady
23:09
Speaker 1: that my Aunt subsequently decided must be a very deaf
23:13
Speaker 1: paying guest. Two or three other people had concealed themselves
23:17
Speaker 1: that I were coming, and left unfinished teas behind them.
23:21
Speaker 1: Ruggs and cushions lay among the chairs, and two of
23:24
Speaker 1: the latter were I noted, covered with union Jack's. The
23:29
Speaker 1: vicar introduced us sketchily, and the fated Victorian wife regarded
23:33
Speaker 1: my aunt with a mixture of conventional scorn and abject respect,
23:37
Speaker 1: and talked to her in a languid, persistent voice about
23:40
Speaker 1: people in the neighborhood whom my aunt could not possibly know.
23:45
Speaker 1: My Aunt received these personalia cheerfully, with her blue eyes
23:49
Speaker 1: flitting from point to point and coming back again and
23:52
Speaker 1: again to the pinched faces of the daughters and the
23:55
Speaker 1: cross upon the eldest's breast. Encouraged by my aunt's manner,
24:00
Speaker 1: the Vicar's wife grew patronizing and kindly, and made it
24:03
Speaker 1: evident that she could do much to bridge the social
24:06
Speaker 1: gulf between ourselves and the people of family about us.
24:10
Speaker 1: I had just snatches of that conversation. Missus Merrydew brought
24:14
Speaker 1: him quite a lot of money. Her father, I believe,
24:17
Speaker 1: had been in the Spanish wine trade. Quite a lady though,
24:21
Speaker 1: And after that he fell off his horse and cracked
24:24
Speaker 1: his brain pan and took to fishing and farming. I'm
24:27
Speaker 1: sure you'll like to know them. He's most amusing. The
24:31
Speaker 1: daughter had a disappointment and went to China as a
24:33
Speaker 1: missionary and got mixed up in a massacre. The most
24:37
Speaker 1: beautiful silks and things she brought back you'd hardly believe. Yes,
24:42
Speaker 1: they gave them to propitiate her. You see, they didn't
24:46
Speaker 1: understand the difference, and they thought that as they'd been
24:50
Speaker 1: massacring people, they'd be massacred. They didn't understand the difference.
24:54
Speaker 1: Christianity makes seven bishops they've had in the family. Carried
25:00
Speaker 1: a papist and was quite lost to them. He failed
25:03
Speaker 1: some dreadful examination and had to go into the militia.
25:07
Speaker 1: So she bit his leg as hard as ever she could,
25:10
Speaker 1: and he let go, had four of his ribs amputated,
25:14
Speaker 1: caught meningitis, and was carried off in a week had
25:18
Speaker 1: to have a large piece of silver tube let into
25:20
Speaker 1: his throat, and if he was to talk, he puts
25:23
Speaker 1: his finger on it. It makes him so interesting. I
25:27
Speaker 1: think you feel he sincere somehow, a most charming man
25:30
Speaker 1: in every way, preserved them both in spirits, very luckily,
25:35
Speaker 1: and there they are in his study, though of course
25:38
Speaker 1: he doesn't show them to everybody. The silent lady, unperturbed
25:43
Speaker 1: by these apparently exciting topics, scrutinized my aunt's costume with
25:47
Speaker 1: a singular intensity, and was visibly moved when she unbuttoned
25:51
Speaker 1: her dust cloak and flung it wide. Meanwhile, we men conversed.
25:56
Speaker 1: One of the more spirited daughters listened brightly, and the
25:59
Speaker 1: youths lay on the grass at our feet. My uncle
26:02
Speaker 1: offered them cigars, but they both declined out of bashfulness,
26:06
Speaker 1: it seemed to me, whereas the vicar, I think, accepted
26:09
Speaker 1: out of tact. When we were not looking at them directly,
26:13
Speaker 1: these young men would kick each other furtively under the
26:17
Speaker 1: influence of my uncle's cigar. The Vicar's mind had soared
26:20
Speaker 1: beyond the limits of the district. This socialism, he said,
26:24
Speaker 1: seems making great headway. My uncle shook his head we're
26:29
Speaker 1: too individualistic in this country for that sort of nonsense.
26:32
Speaker 1: He said. Everybody's business is nobody's business. That's where they
26:36
Speaker 1: go wrong. They have some intelligent people in their ranks,
26:40
Speaker 1: i am told, said the vicar, writers and so forth.
26:43
Speaker 1: Quite a distinguished playwright. My eldest daughter was telling me,
26:47
Speaker 1: I forget his name, Milly dear, Oh she's not here.
26:52
Speaker 1: Painters too. They have this socialist it seems to me,
26:57
Speaker 1: is part of the unrest of the age. But as
27:00
Speaker 1: you say, the spirit of the people is against it.
27:03
Speaker 1: In the country at any rate. The people down here
27:06
Speaker 1: are too sturdily independent in their small way, and too
27:09
Speaker 1: sensible altogether. It's a great thing for Duffield to have
27:13
Speaker 1: Lady Grove occupied again, he was saying, when my wandering
27:17
Speaker 1: attention came back from some attractive casualty in his wife's discourse,
27:22
Speaker 1: people have always looked up to the house, and, considering
27:25
Speaker 1: all things old mister Durgan really was extraordinarily good, extraordinarily good.
27:32
Speaker 1: You intend to give us a good deal of your
27:33
Speaker 1: time here. I hope I mean to do my duty
27:37
Speaker 1: by the parish, said my uncle. I'm sincerely glad to
27:40
Speaker 1: hear it. Sincerely, we've missed the house influence. An English
27:46
Speaker 1: village isn't complete. People get out of hand, life grows dull,
27:50
Speaker 1: the young people drift away to London. He enjoyed his
27:54
Speaker 1: cigar gingerly. For a moment, we shall look to you
27:57
Speaker 1: to liven things up, he said, poor man, my uncle
28:01
Speaker 1: cocked his cigar and removed it from his mouth. What
28:04
Speaker 1: you think the place wants, he asked. He did not
28:07
Speaker 1: wait for an answer. I've been thinking while you've been talking.
28:11
Speaker 1: Things one might do cricket a good English game, sports,
28:15
Speaker 1: build the chaps a pavilion. Perhaps then every village ought
28:19
Speaker 1: to have a miniature rifle range yees, said the vicar. Provided.
28:24
Speaker 1: Of course, there isn't a constant popping manage that all right,
28:29
Speaker 1: said my uncle. Think it'd be a sort of long
28:31
Speaker 1: shed painted red British color. Then there's a union jack
28:36
Speaker 1: for the church and the village school. Paint the school
28:39
Speaker 1: red too. Perhaps that enough color? About now too gray?
28:44
Speaker 1: Then a may pole? How far our people would take
28:47
Speaker 1: up that sort of thing, began the vicar. I'm all
28:51
Speaker 1: forgetting that good old English spirit back again, said my uncle.
28:55
Speaker 1: Merry makings lads and lasses dancing on the village green
28:59
Speaker 1: harvest home fairings, you log all the rest of it.
29:04
Speaker 1: How would old Sally Glue do for a may queen,
29:07
Speaker 1: asked one of the sons in the slight pause that followed.
29:10
Speaker 1: Or any glass bound, said the other, with a huge,
29:14
Speaker 1: virile guffaw of a young man whose voice has only
29:16
Speaker 1: recently broken. Sally Glue is eighty five, explained the vicar,
29:21
Speaker 1: And any glass bound is well a young lady of
29:25
Speaker 1: extremely generous proportions, and not quite right, you know, not
29:29
Speaker 1: quite right here. He tapped his brow. Generous proportions, said
29:35
Speaker 1: the eldest son, and the guffaws were renewed. You see,
29:39
Speaker 1: said the vicar. All the brisker girls go into service
29:42
Speaker 1: in or near London. The life of excitement attracts them,
29:46
Speaker 1: and no doubt the higher wages have something to do
29:49
Speaker 1: with it, and the liberty to wear finery and generally
29:53
Speaker 1: freedom from restraint, so that there might be a little difficulty,
29:57
Speaker 1: perhaps to find a may queen here just at present
30:00
Speaker 1: who was really young and er pretty. Of course, I
30:04
Speaker 1: couldn't think of any of my girls or anything of
30:07
Speaker 1: that sort. We got to attract em, back, said my uncle.
30:11
Speaker 1: That's what I feel about it. We got to buck
30:14
Speaker 1: up the country. The English country is a going concern still,
30:18
Speaker 1: just as the established church, if you'll excuse me saying
30:22
Speaker 1: it is a going concern, just as Oxford is, or
30:26
Speaker 1: Cambridge or any of those old, fine old things. Only
30:30
Speaker 1: it wants fresh capital, fresh eyed eas and fresh methods.
30:34
Speaker 1: Light railways, for instance, scientific use of drainage wire, fencing machinery.
30:40
Speaker 1: All that the vicar's face, for one moment betrayed dismay.
30:45
Speaker 1: Perhaps he was thinking of his country walks amidst the
30:48
Speaker 1: hawthorns and honeysuckle. There's great things, said my uncle, to
30:52
Speaker 1: be done on modern lines, with village jam and pickles
30:56
Speaker 1: boiled in the country. It was the reaver ration of
31:00
Speaker 1: this last sentence in my mind. I think that sharpened
31:03
Speaker 1: my sentimental sympathy. As we went through the straggling village
31:06
Speaker 1: street and across the trim Green on our way back
31:09
Speaker 1: to London, it seemed that afternoon the most tranquil and
31:13
Speaker 1: idealic collection of creeper sheltered homes you can imagine thatch
31:18
Speaker 1: still lingered on a whitewashed cottage or two pyracanthus wallflowers
31:23
Speaker 1: and daffodils abounded, and an unsystematic orchard or so was
31:27
Speaker 1: white with blossom above and gay with bulbs below. I
31:32
Speaker 1: noted a row of straw beehives, beehives shaped beehives of
31:36
Speaker 1: the type long since condemned as inefficient by all progressive minds.
31:41
Speaker 1: And in the doctor's acre of grass, a flock of
31:44
Speaker 1: two whole sheep was grazing. No doubt he'd taken them
31:47
Speaker 1: on account. Two men and one old woman made gestures
31:51
Speaker 1: of abject vassilage, and my uncle replied with a lordly
31:54
Speaker 1: gesture of his great motoring glove. England's full of bits
31:59
Speaker 1: like this, said my uncle, leaning over the front seat
32:02
Speaker 1: and looking back with great satisfaction. The black glare of
32:06
Speaker 1: his goggles rested for a time on the receding turrets
32:09
Speaker 1: of Lady Grove, just peeping over the trees. I shall
32:13
Speaker 1: have a flag staff, I think, he considered. Then one
32:16
Speaker 1: could show when one is in residence. The villagers will
32:19
Speaker 1: like to know, I reflected, they will, I said, they're
32:24
Speaker 1: used to liking to know. My aunt had been unusually silent.
32:28
Speaker 1: Suddenly she spoke, he says, snap, she remarked. He buys
32:33
Speaker 1: that place, and a nice old job of housekeeping he
32:36
Speaker 1: gives me. He sails through the village, swelling like an
32:39
Speaker 1: old turkey. And who'll have to scoot the butler? Me
32:43
Speaker 1: who's got to forget all she ever knew and start again,
32:47
Speaker 1: Me who's got a trek from Chiselhurst and be a
32:50
Speaker 1: great lady, Me, you old bother. Just when I was
32:54
Speaker 1: settling down and beginning to feel at home, my uncle
32:58
Speaker 1: turned his goggles to her. Ah, this time it is home, Susan.
33:04
Speaker 1: We got there. End of book, third chapter, second parts
33:10
Speaker 1: four to six. Recording by William tom Coe