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Tono-Bungay Book 3 Chapter 1 - Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book third Chapter, first parts one to three 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, first parts
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Speaker 1: one to three, Book the third, The Great Days of
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Speaker 1: Tono Bungay, Chapter the first The Hartingham Hotel and How
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Speaker 1: we became Big People. One. But now that I resume
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Speaker 1: the main line of my story, it may be well
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Speaker 1: to describe the personal appearance of my uncle as I
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Speaker 1: remember him during those magnificent years that followed his passage
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Speaker 1: from trade to finance. The little man plumped up very
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Speaker 1: considerably during the creation of the Tono Bungay property. But
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Speaker 1: with the increasing excitements that followed that first flotation came
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Speaker 1: dyspepsia and a certain flabbiness, and falling away his abdomen,
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Speaker 1: If the reader will pardon my taking his features in
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Speaker 1: the order of their value, had at first a nice,
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Speaker 1: full roundness, but afterwards it lost tone, without however, losing sighs.
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Speaker 1: He always went as though he was proud of it,
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Speaker 1: and would make as much of it as possible to
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Speaker 1: the last. His movements remained quick and sudden. His short,
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Speaker 1: firm legs as he walked seemed to twinkle rather than
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Speaker 1: display the scissor's stride of common humanity, and he never
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Speaker 1: seemed to have knees, but instead a dispersed flexibility of limb.
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Speaker 1: There was I seem to remember a secular intensification of
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Speaker 1: his features. His nose developed character became aggressive, stuck out
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Speaker 1: at the world more and more. The obliquity of his mouth,
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Speaker 1: I think, increased from the face that returns to my memory,
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Speaker 1: projects a long cigar that is sometimes cocked jauntily up
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Speaker 1: from the higher corner, that sometimes droops from the lower.
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Speaker 1: It was as eloquent as a dog's tail, and he
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Speaker 1: removed it only for the more emphatic modes of speech.
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Speaker 1: He assumed a broad black ribbon for his gosses, and
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Speaker 1: wore them more and more askew. As time went on.
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Speaker 1: His hair seemed to stiffen with success, but towards the
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Speaker 1: climax it thinned greatly over the crown, and he brushed
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Speaker 1: it hard back over his ears, where however, it stuck
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Speaker 1: out fiercely. It always stuck out fiercely over his forehead
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Speaker 1: up and forward. He adopted an urban style of dressing
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Speaker 1: with the onset of Tono Bungay, and rarely abandoned it.
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Speaker 1: He preferred silk hats with ample, rich brims, often a
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Speaker 1: trifle large for him by modern ideas, and he wore
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Speaker 1: them at various angles to his axis. His taste in
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Speaker 1: trouserings was towards fairly emphatic stripes, and his trouser cut
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Speaker 1: was neat. He liked his frock coat long and full,
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Speaker 1: although that seemed to shorten him. He displayed a number
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Speaker 1: of valuable rings, and I remember one upon his left
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Speaker 1: little finger with a large red stone bearing gnostic cymbals.
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Speaker 1: Clever chaps, those gnostics, George, he told me, means a
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Speaker 1: lot lucky. He never had any but a black mohair
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Speaker 1: watch chair in the country. He affected gray and a
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Speaker 1: large gray cloth top hat, except when motoring, then he
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Speaker 1: would have a brown deer stalker cap and a first
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Speaker 1: suit of eskimo cut with a sort of boot end.
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Speaker 1: To the trousers. Of an evening, he would wear white
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Speaker 1: waistcoats add plain gold studs. He hated diamonds, flashy, he
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Speaker 1: said they were might as well wear an income tax
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Speaker 1: re seat. All very well for park Lane unsold stock
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Speaker 1: not my style, sober financier George so much for his
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Speaker 1: visible presence. For a time it was very familiar to
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Speaker 1: the world, For at the crest of the boom he
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Speaker 1: allowed quite a number of photographs and at least one
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Speaker 1: pencil sketch to be published in the sixpenny papers. His
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Speaker 1: voice declined during those years, from his early tenor to
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Speaker 1: a flat, rich quality of sound that my knowledge of
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Speaker 1: music is inadequate to describe. His zingh inrush of air
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Speaker 1: became less frequent as he ripened, but returned in moments
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Speaker 1: of excitement throughout his career. In spite of his increasing
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Speaker 1: and at last astounding opulence, his more intimate habits remained
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Speaker 1: as simple as they had been at Wimblehurst. He would
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Speaker 1: never avail himself of the services of a valet. At
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Speaker 1: the very climax of his greatness, his trousers were folded
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Speaker 1: by a housemaid and his shoulders brushed as he left
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Speaker 1: his house or hotel. He became wary about breakfast as
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Speaker 1: life advanced, and at one time talked much of doctor
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Speaker 1: Haig and uric acid. But for other meals, he remained
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Speaker 1: reasonably omnivorous. He was something of a gastronome, and would
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Speaker 1: eat anything he particularly liked in an audible manner, and
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Speaker 1: perspire upon his forehead. He was a studiously moderate drinker,
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Speaker 1: except when the spirit of some public banquet or some
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Speaker 1: great occasion caught him and bore him beyond his wariness.
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Speaker 1: There he would, as it were, drink inadvertently and become
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Speaker 1: flushed and talkative about everything but his business projects. To
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Speaker 1: make the portrait complete, one wants to convey an effect
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Speaker 1: of sudden, quick bursts of movement, like the jumps of
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Speaker 1: a Chinese cracker, to indicate that his pose, whatever it is,
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Speaker 1: has been preceded and will be followed by a rush.
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Speaker 1: If I were painting him, I should certainly give him
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Speaker 1: for a background that distressed uneasy sky that was popular
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Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century and at a convenient distance, a
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Speaker 1: throbbing motor car very big and contemporary, a secretary hurrying
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Speaker 1: with papers, and an alert chauffeur. Such was the figure
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Speaker 1: that created and directed the great property of Tono Bungay,
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Speaker 1: and from the successful reconstruction of that company, passed on
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Speaker 1: to a slow crescendo of magnificent creations and promotions until
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Speaker 1: the whole world of investors marveled. I have already I
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Speaker 1: think mentioned how long before we offered Tono Bungay to
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Speaker 1: the public, we took over the English agency of certain
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Speaker 1: American specialties. To this was presently added our exploitation of
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Speaker 1: Magg's domestic soap, and so he took up the domestic
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Speaker 1: convenience campaign that, coupled with his equatorial rotundity and a
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Speaker 1: certain resolute convexity in his bearings, won my uncle his
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Speaker 1: Napoleonic title. Two. It illustrates the romantic element in modern
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Speaker 1: commerce that my uncle met young Moggs at a city dinner.
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Speaker 1: I think it was the bottle Maker's company, when both
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Speaker 1: were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety of the occasion.
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Speaker 1: This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a
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Speaker 1: very typical instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His
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Speaker 1: people had taken him about in his youth as the
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Speaker 1: Ruskins took their John, and fostered a passion for history
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Speaker 1: in him, and the actual management of the MoG's industry
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Speaker 1: had developed upon a cousin and a junior partner mister Moggs,
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Speaker 1: being of a studious and refined disposition, had just decided,
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Speaker 1: after a careful search for a congenial subject in which
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Speaker 1: he would not be constantly reminded of soap, to devote
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Speaker 1: himself to the history of the Thebaid. When this cousin
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Speaker 1: died suddenly and precipitated responsibilities upon him in the frankness
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Speaker 1: of conviviality, Mogg's bewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into
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Speaker 1: his hands, and my uncle offered to lighten him burden
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Speaker 1: by a partnership. Then and there they even got to terms,
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Speaker 1: extremely muzzy terms, but terms. Nevertheless, each gentleman wrote the
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Speaker 1: name and address of the other on his cuff, and
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Speaker 1: they separated in a mood of brotherly carelessness. And next
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Speaker 1: morning neither seems to have thought to rescue his shirt
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Speaker 1: from the wash, until it was too late. My uncle
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Speaker 1: made a painful struggle. It was one of my business
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Speaker 1: mornings to recall name and particulars. He was an aquarium faced,
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Speaker 1: long blond, sort of chap George, with glasses and a
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Speaker 1: genteel accent. He said, I was puzzled. Aquarium faced. You
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Speaker 1: know how they look at you his stuff was soap,
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Speaker 1: I'm pretty nearly certain, and he had a name, and
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Speaker 1: the thing was the straightest bit of all right you ever,
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Speaker 1: I was clear enough to spot that. We went out
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Speaker 1: at last with knitted brows and wandered up into Winsbury,
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Speaker 1: seeking a good, well stocked looking grocer. We called first
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Speaker 1: on the chemist for a pick me up for my uncle,
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Speaker 1: and then we found the shop we needed. I want,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle, half a pound of every sort of
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Speaker 1: soap you got. Yes, I want to take them. Now,
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Speaker 1: wait a moment, George, Now what sort of soap do
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Speaker 1: you call that? At the third repetition of that question,
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Speaker 1: the young man said Mogg's domestic, right, said my uncle,
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Speaker 1: you needn't guess again. Come along, George. Let's go to
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Speaker 1: a telephone and get on to Mogg's. Oh the order, certainly,
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Speaker 1: I confirm it. Send it all, Send it all to
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Speaker 1: the Bishop of London. He'll have some good use for it.
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Speaker 1: First rate man, George, he is charities and all that.
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Speaker 1: And put it down to me. Here's a card, Ponderavo
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Speaker 1: tono bungay. Then we went on to Mogg's and found
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Speaker 1: him in a camel hair dressing jacket in a luxurious bed,
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Speaker 1: drinking china tea, and got the shape of everything, but
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Speaker 1: the figures fixed. By lunch time, young Moggs enlarged my
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Speaker 1: mind considerably. He was a sort of thing I hadn't
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Speaker 1: met before. He seemed quite clean and well informed, and
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Speaker 1: he assured me to never read newspapers nor used soap
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Speaker 1: in any form at all. Delicate skin, he said. No
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Speaker 1: objection to our advertising. You wide and free, said my uncle.
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Speaker 1: I draw the line at railway stations, said Moggs, South
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Speaker 1: Coast cliffs, theater programs, books by me, and poetry generally scenery.
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Speaker 1: Oh and the Mercueur de France. We'll get along, said
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Speaker 1: my uncle. So long as you don't annoy me, said Moggs,
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Speaker 1: lighting a cigarette. You can make me as rich as
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Speaker 1: you like. We certainly made him no poorer. His was
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Speaker 1: the first firm that was advertised by a circumstancial history.
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Speaker 1: We even got to illustrated magazine articles telling of the
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Speaker 1: quaint past of Mogg's. We concocted Moggsiana, Trusting to our
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Speaker 1: partner's preoccupation with the uncommercial aspects of life, we gave
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Speaker 1: graceful history of MoG's. The first Mogg's the second, Moggs
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Speaker 1: the Third, and MoG's the fourth. You must, unless you
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Speaker 1: are very young, remember some of them, and our admirable
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Speaker 1: block of a Georgian shop window. My uncle brought early
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Speaker 1: nineteenth century memoirs, soaked himself in the style, and devised
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Speaker 1: stories about Old Moggs the First, and the Duke of Wellington,
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Speaker 1: George the third, and the soap Dealer, almost certainly Old MoG's.
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Speaker 1: Very soon we had added to the original MoG's primrose
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Speaker 1: several varieties of scented and superfadded especial nurseries used in
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Speaker 1: the household of the Duke of Kent and for the
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Speaker 1: old Queen in infancy, a plate powder, the Paragon, and
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Speaker 1: a knife powder. We roped in a good little second
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Speaker 1: rate black lead firm and carried their origins back into
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Speaker 1: the mists of antiquity. It was my uncle's own unaided
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Speaker 1: idea that we should associate that commodity with the black Prince.
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Speaker 1: He became industriously curious about the past of black lead.
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Speaker 1: I remember his button holing of the president of the
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Speaker 1: Peep's Society. I say, is there any black lead in peeps?
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Speaker 1: You know? Black lead for greats? Or does he pass
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Speaker 1: it over. As a matter of course. He became in
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Speaker 1: those days the terror of eminent historians. Don't want your
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Speaker 1: drum and trumpet history, no fear, he used to say,
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Speaker 1: don't want to know who was whose mistress and why
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Speaker 1: so and so devastated such a province that's bound to
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Speaker 1: be all lies and upside down anyhow, not my affair,
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Speaker 1: nobody's affair. Now, Chaps who did it didn't clearly know.
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Speaker 1: What I want to know is in the Middle Ages,
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Speaker 1: did they do anything for housemaid's knee? What did they
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Speaker 1: put in their hot baths after jousting? And was the
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Speaker 1: black prince? You know, the black Prince? Was he enameled
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Speaker 1: or painted or what I think myself? Black leaded very
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Speaker 1: likely like pipe clay. But did they use blacking so early?
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Speaker 1: So it came about that in designing and writing those
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Speaker 1: mogs soap advertisements that brought a revolution in that department
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Speaker 1: of literature, my uncle was brought to realize not only
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Speaker 1: the lost history, but also the enormous field for invention
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Speaker 1: and enterprise that lurked among the little articles, the dust
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Speaker 1: pans and mincers, the mouse traps and carpet sweepers that
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Speaker 1: fringe the shops of the oil man and domestic ironmonger.
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Speaker 1: He was recalled to one of the dreams of his youth,
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Speaker 1: to his conception of the ponderevo patent flot that had
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Speaker 1: been in his mind so early as the days before
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Speaker 1: I went to serve him at Wimblehurst. The home, George,
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Speaker 1: he said, once, straightening up, silly muddle things that get
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Speaker 1: in the way. Got to organize it for a time.
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Speaker 1: He displayed something like the zeal of a genuine social
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Speaker 1: reformer in relation to these matters. We've got to bring
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Speaker 1: the home up to date. That's my id, George. We
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Speaker 1: got to make a civilized domestic machine out of these
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Speaker 1: relics of barbarism. I'm going to hunt up inventors and
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Speaker 1: make a corner in domestic ideas. Everything balls of string
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Speaker 1: that won't dissolve into a tangle, and gum that won't
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Speaker 1: dry into horn. See then after conveniences, beauty, beauty, George,
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Speaker 1: all these few things ought to be made fit to
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Speaker 1: look at. It's your aunt's idea that beautiful jampots get
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Speaker 1: one of those new art chaps to design all the
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Speaker 1: things they make ugly now, patent carpet sweepers by these
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Speaker 1: greenwood chaps, housemaids boxes. It'll be a pleasure to fall
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Speaker 1: over rich colored house flannels, pails, for instance, hang them
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Speaker 1: up on the walls like warming pans. All the polishes
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Speaker 1: and things in such tins. You'll want to cuddle em.
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Speaker 1: George see the nocean. Instead of all the silly, ugly
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Speaker 1: things we got, we had some magnificent visions. They so
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Speaker 1: affected me that when I passed ironmongers and oil shops,
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Speaker 1: they seemed to me as full of promise as trees
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Speaker 1: in late winter, flushed with the effort to burst into
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Speaker 1: leaf and flour. And really we did do much towards
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Speaker 1: that very brightness these shops display. They were dingy things
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Speaker 1: in the eighties compared to what our efforts have made
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Speaker 1: them now gray quiet displays. Well. I don't intend to
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Speaker 1: write down here the tortuous financial history of Mogs Limited,
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Speaker 1: which was our first development of Mogs and Sons, nor
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Speaker 1: will I tell very much of how from that we
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Speaker 1: spread ourselves with a larger and larger conception throughout the
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Speaker 1: chandlery and minor iron mongery. How we became agents for
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Speaker 1: this little commodity partners in that got a tentacle around
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Speaker 1: the neck of a specialized manufacturer, or so secured a
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Speaker 1: pull upon this or that supply of raw material, and
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Speaker 1: so prepare the way for our second flotation. Domestic utilities
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Speaker 1: do it. They reordered it in the city, and then
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Speaker 1: came the reconstruction of Tono Bungay, and then household services
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Speaker 1: and the boom. That sort of development is not to
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Speaker 1: be told in detail in a novel. I have indeed
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Speaker 1: told much of it elsewhere. It is to be found
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Speaker 1: set out at length, painfully, at length in my uncle's
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Speaker 1: examination and mine in the bankruptcy proceedings, and in my
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Speaker 1: own various statements after his death. Some people know everything
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Speaker 1: in that story. Some know it all too well. Most
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Speaker 1: do not want the details. It is the story of
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Speaker 1: a man of imagination among figures, and unless you are
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Speaker 1: prepared to collate columns of pounds, shillings and pence, compare
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Speaker 1: dates and check editions, you will find it very unmeaning
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Speaker 1: and perplexing. And after all, you wouldn't find the early
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Speaker 1: figure so much wrong as strained in the matter of
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Speaker 1: mogs and dou ut as in the first Tono Bungi
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Speaker 1: promotion and in its reconstruction. We left the court by
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Speaker 1: city standards without a stain on our characters. The Great
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Speaker 1: Amalgamation of Household Services was my uncle's first really big
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Speaker 1: scale enterprise and his first display of bolder methods. For this,
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Speaker 1: we bought back doot Mogs, going strong with the seven
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Speaker 1: percent dividend, and acquired Skinnerton's Polishes and riff Shaw properties
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Speaker 1: and the run Corn's mincer and coffee mill business. To
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Speaker 1: that amalgamation. I was really not a party. I left
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Speaker 1: it to my uncle because I was then beginning to
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Speaker 1: get keen upon the soaring experiments I had taken on
18:11
Speaker 1: from the results then to hand of Lilienthal Pilcher and
18:15
Speaker 1: the Wright brothers. I was developing a glider into a flyer.
18:19
Speaker 1: I meant to apply power to this glider as soon
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Speaker 1: as I could work out one or two residual problems
18:25
Speaker 1: affecting the longitudinal stability. I knew that I had a
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Speaker 1: sufficiently light motor in my own modification of Bridger's light turbane.
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Speaker 1: But I knew too that until I had cured my
18:37
Speaker 1: aeroplane of a tendency demanding constant alertness from me, a
18:41
Speaker 1: tendency to jerk up its nose at unexpected moments and
18:45
Speaker 1: slide back upon me. The application of an engine would
18:48
Speaker 1: be a little short of suicide, but that I will
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Speaker 1: tell about later. The point I was coming to was
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Speaker 1: that I did not realize until after the crash how
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Speaker 1: recklessly my uncle had kept his promise of paying a
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Speaker 1: dividend of over eight percent on the ordinary shares of
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Speaker 1: that hugely over capitalized enterprise household services. I drifted out
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Speaker 1: of business affairs into my research much more than either
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Speaker 1: I or my uncle had contemplated. Finance was much less
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Speaker 1: to my taste than the organization of the Tono Bungay factory.
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Speaker 1: In the new field of enterprise, there was a great
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Speaker 1: deal of bluffing and gambling, of taking chances and concealing
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Speaker 1: material facts, and these are hateful things to the scientific
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Speaker 1: type of mind. It wasn't fear I felt so much
19:36
Speaker 1: as an uneasy inaccuracy. I didn't realize dangers. I simply
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Speaker 1: disliked the sloppy, relaxing quality of this new sort of work.
19:46
Speaker 1: I was at last constantly making excuses not to come
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Speaker 1: up to him in London. The latter part of his
19:52
Speaker 1: business career recedes therefore beyond the circle of any particular life.
19:57
Speaker 1: I lived more or less with him. I talked, I advised,
20:02
Speaker 1: I helped him at times to fight his Sunday crowd
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Speaker 1: at Crest Hill, but I did not follow nor guide
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Speaker 1: him from the douot time onward. He rushed up the
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Speaker 1: financial world like a bubble in water and left me
20:15
Speaker 1: like some busy water thing down below in the deeps. Anyhow,
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Speaker 1: he was an immense success. The public was, I think,
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Speaker 1: particularly attracted by the homely familiarity of his field of work.
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Speaker 1: You never lost sight of your investment, they felt with
20:32
Speaker 1: a name on the house flannel and shaving strop, and
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Speaker 1: its allegiance was secured by the Egyptian's solidity of his
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Speaker 1: apparent results. Tono Bungay, after its reconstruction paid thirteen. Mogg's
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Speaker 1: seven domestic utilities had been a safe looking nine. Here
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Speaker 1: was household services with eight on such as showing he
20:54
Speaker 1: had merely to buy and sell Roeburns at a septic
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Speaker 1: fluid razor, soaks and bath crystals in three weeks to
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Speaker 1: clear twenty thousand pounds. I do think that, as a
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Speaker 1: matter of fact, Roeburn's was good value at the price
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Speaker 1: at which he gave it to the public, at least
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Speaker 1: until it was strained by ill conserved advertisement. It was
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Speaker 1: a period of expansion and confidence. Much money was seeking investment,
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Speaker 1: and industrials with a fashion. Prices were rising all round.
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Speaker 1: There remained a little more for my uncle to do therefore,
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Speaker 1: in its climb to the high, unstable crest of financial greatness.
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Speaker 1: But as he said, to grasp the cosmic oyster George
21:35
Speaker 1: while it gaped, which, being translated, meant for him to
21:39
Speaker 1: buy respectable businesses confidently and courageously at the vendor's estimate,
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Speaker 1: add thirty or forty thousand to the price, and seldom again.
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Speaker 1: His sole difficulty, indeed, was the tactful management of the
21:53
Speaker 1: load of shares that each of these transactions left upon
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Speaker 1: his hands. But I thought so little of these later
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Speaker 1: things that I never fully appreciated the peculiar inconveniences of
22:04
Speaker 1: that until it was too late to help him. Three.
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Speaker 1: When I think of my uncle near the days of
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Speaker 1: his great boom, and in connection with the actualities of
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Speaker 1: his enterprises, I think of him as I used to
22:18
Speaker 1: see him in the suite of rooms he occupied in
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Speaker 1: the Hardingham Hotel, seated at a great old oak writing table, smoking, drinking,
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Speaker 1: and incoherently busy. That was his typical financial aspect, our evenings,
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Speaker 1: our mornings, our holidays, our motor car expeditions. Lady Grove
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Speaker 1: and Crest Hill belonged to an altogether different set of memories.
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Speaker 1: These rooms in the Hardingham were a string of apartments
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Speaker 1: along one handsome, thick carpeted corridor. All the doors upon
22:52
Speaker 1: the corridor were locked except the first, and my uncle's bedroom,
22:56
Speaker 1: breakfast room, and private sanctum were the least accessible, and
23:00
Speaker 1: served by an entrance from the adjacent passage, which he
23:03
Speaker 1: also used at times as a means of escape from
23:06
Speaker 1: importunate callers. The most eternal room was a general waiting
23:11
Speaker 1: room and very businesslike in quality. It had one or
23:15
Speaker 1: two uneasy sofas, a number of chairs, a green baized table,
23:20
Speaker 1: and a collection of the very best mogs and tone posters,
23:24
Speaker 1: and the plush carpets normal to the Hardingham had been
23:27
Speaker 1: replaced by a gray, green cork linoleum. Here I would
23:31
Speaker 1: always find a remarkable miscellany of people, presided over by
23:35
Speaker 1: a peculiarly faithful and ferocious looking commissioner Ropper, who guarded
23:41
Speaker 1: the door that led a step nearer my uncle. Usually
23:45
Speaker 1: there would be a parson or so and one or
23:47
Speaker 1: two widows. Harry eyeglassy, middle aged gentleman, some of them
23:52
Speaker 1: looking singularly like Edward Ponderevo's who hadn't come off. A
23:57
Speaker 1: variety of young and youngish men, more or less attractively dressed,
24:02
Speaker 1: some with papers protruding from their pockets, others with their
24:05
Speaker 1: papers decently concealed and wonderful, incidental frowsy people. All these
24:12
Speaker 1: persons maintained a practically hopeless siege, sometimes for weeks together.
24:17
Speaker 1: They had better have stayed at home. Next came a
24:20
Speaker 1: room full of people who had some sort of appointment.
24:23
Speaker 1: And here one would find smart looking people, brilliantly dressed,
24:27
Speaker 1: nervous women hiding behind magazines, nonconformist divines, clergy engaiters, real
24:34
Speaker 1: business men, these latter, for the most part, gentlemen in
24:38
Speaker 1: admirable morning dress, who stood up and scrutinized my uncle's
24:42
Speaker 1: taste in water colors manfully, and sometimes by the hour. Together.
24:47
Speaker 1: Young men again were here of various social origins, young Americans,
24:52
Speaker 1: treasonable clerks from other concerns, university young men, keen looking,
24:58
Speaker 1: most of them resolute reasons deserved, but on a sort
25:01
Speaker 1: of hair trigger, ready at any moment, to be most voluble,
25:05
Speaker 1: most persuasive. This room had a window, too, looking out
25:09
Speaker 1: into the hotel courtyard with its fern set fountains and
25:13
Speaker 1: mosaic pavement, and the young men would stand against this,
25:16
Speaker 1: and sometimes even mutter. One day I heard one repeating
25:21
Speaker 1: in all urgent whisper as I passed. But you don't
25:24
Speaker 1: quite see, mister ponderevo the full advantages, the full advantages.
25:30
Speaker 1: I met his eye, and he was embarrassed. Then came
25:34
Speaker 1: a room with a couple of secretaries, no typewriters because
25:38
Speaker 1: my uncle hated the clatter, and a casual person or
25:41
Speaker 1: two sitting about projectors whose projects were being entertained. Here
25:46
Speaker 1: and in a further room nearer the private apartments. My
25:49
Speaker 1: uncle's correspondence underwent an exhaustive process of pruning and digestion
25:54
Speaker 1: before it reached him. Then the two little rooms in
25:58
Speaker 1: which my uncle talked, my magic uncle, who had got
26:01
Speaker 1: the industing public, to whom all things were possible. As
26:06
Speaker 1: one came in, we would find him squatting with a
26:08
Speaker 1: cigar up and an expression of dubious beatitude upon his face,
26:13
Speaker 1: while someone urged him to grow still richer by this
26:16
Speaker 1: or that that jew George. He used to say, come in,
26:21
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Tell him mister over again, have a drink, George,
26:27
Speaker 1: no wise man. Listen. I was always ready to listen.
26:34
Speaker 1: All sorts of financial marvels came out of the Hardingham More,
26:37
Speaker 1: particularly during my uncle's last great flurry, but they were
26:41
Speaker 1: nothing to the projects that passed in. It was a
26:43
Speaker 1: little brown and gold room he sat in. Usually, he
26:47
Speaker 1: had had it redecorated by boardingly, and half a dozen
26:50
Speaker 1: Sussex pictures by Webster hung about it. Latterly, he wore
26:55
Speaker 1: a velveteen jacket of a golden brown color in this
26:58
Speaker 1: apartment that I think over emphasized this esthetic intention, and
27:03
Speaker 1: he also added some gross Chinese bronzes. He was, on
27:07
Speaker 1: the whole a very happy man throughout all that wildly
27:10
Speaker 1: enterprising time he made, and as I shall tell, in
27:14
Speaker 1: its place, spent great sums of money. He was constantly
27:18
Speaker 1: in violent motion, constantly stimulated mentally and physically, and rarely tired.
27:24
Speaker 1: About him was an atmosphere of immense deference. Much of
27:28
Speaker 1: his waking life was triumphal, and all his dreams I
27:32
Speaker 1: doubt if he had any dissatisfaction with himself at all
27:35
Speaker 1: until the crash bore him down. Things must have gone
27:39
Speaker 1: very rapidly with him. I think he must have been
27:42
Speaker 1: very happy. As I sit here writing about all these things,
27:47
Speaker 1: jerking down notes and throwing them aside in my attempt
27:50
Speaker 1: to give some literary form to the tale of our promotions,
27:54
Speaker 1: the marvel of it all comes to me as if
27:56
Speaker 1: it came for the first time. The supreme unreason of
27:59
Speaker 1: it at the climax of his boom, My uncle, at
28:03
Speaker 1: the most sparing estimate, must have possessed, in substance and
28:06
Speaker 1: credit about two million pounds worth of property to set
28:09
Speaker 1: off against his vague, colossal liabilities, And from first to
28:14
Speaker 1: last he must have had a controlling influence in the
28:17
Speaker 1: direction of nearly thirty millions. This irrational model of a
28:21
Speaker 1: community in which we live gave him that paid him
28:25
Speaker 1: at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming
28:28
Speaker 1: and telling it lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing,
28:33
Speaker 1: he economized nothing. I cannot claim that a single one
28:37
Speaker 1: of the great businesses we organized added any real value
28:40
Speaker 1: to human life at all. Several, like Tono Bungay, were
28:44
Speaker 1: unmitigated frauds by any honest standard. The giving of nothing
28:49
Speaker 1: coated in advertisements for money. And the thing the Hardinghams
28:53
Speaker 1: gave out, I repeat, were nothing to the things that
28:56
Speaker 1: came in. I think of the long procession of people
29:00
Speaker 1: who sat down before us and propounded this and that.
29:04
Speaker 1: Now it was a device for selling bread under a
29:07
Speaker 1: fancy name, and so escaping the laws as to wait.
29:11
Speaker 1: This was afterwards floated as the decorticated Health Bread Company,
29:15
Speaker 1: and bumped against the law. Now it was a new
29:18
Speaker 1: scheme for still more strident advertisement. Now it was a
29:22
Speaker 1: story of unsuspected deposits of minerals, now a cheap and
29:26
Speaker 1: nasty substitute for this or that common necessity. Now the
29:30
Speaker 1: treachery of a too well informed employee anxious to become
29:34
Speaker 1: our partner. It was all put to us tentatively, persuasively.
29:39
Speaker 1: Sometimes one had a large, pink, bolsterous person trying to
29:43
Speaker 1: carry us off our feet by a pseudo boyish frankness.
29:47
Speaker 1: Now some dyspeptically yellow whisperer. Now some earnest, specially dressed
29:53
Speaker 1: youth with an eye glass and a button hoole. Now
29:56
Speaker 1: some homely speaking shrewd Manchester man, or some scotchmen eager
30:01
Speaker 1: to be very clear and full. Many came in couples
30:05
Speaker 1: or trios, often in tow of an explanatory solicitor. Some
30:10
Speaker 1: were white and earnest, some flustered beyond measure at their opportunity.
30:15
Speaker 1: Some of them begged and prayed to be taken up.
30:18
Speaker 1: My uncle chose what he wanted and left the rest.
30:21
Speaker 1: He became very autocratic to these applicants. He felt he
30:25
Speaker 1: could make them, and they felt so too. He had
30:28
Speaker 1: but to say no, and they faded out of existence.
30:32
Speaker 1: He had become a sort of vortex to which wealth
30:34
Speaker 1: flowed of its own accord. His possessions increased by heaps,
30:39
Speaker 1: his shares, his lease holds, and mortgages and debentures. Beyond
30:44
Speaker 1: his first line things. He found it necessary, at last,
30:48
Speaker 1: and sanctioned by all the precincts, to set up three
30:50
Speaker 1: general trading companies, the London and African Investment Company, the
30:55
Speaker 1: British Traders Loan Company, and Business Organizations Limited. This was
31:00
Speaker 1: in the culminating time when I had least to do
31:03
Speaker 1: with affairs. I don't say that with any desire to
31:07
Speaker 1: exculpate myself. I admit I was a director of all three,
31:11
Speaker 1: and I will confess I was wilfully incurious in that capacity.
31:15
Speaker 1: Each of these companies ended its financial year solvent by
31:19
Speaker 1: selling great holdings of shares to one or other of
31:22
Speaker 1: its sisters and paying a dividend out of the proceeds.
31:26
Speaker 1: I sat at the table and agreed this was our
31:29
Speaker 1: method of equilibrium at the iridescent climax of the bubble.
31:34
Speaker 1: You perceive now, However, the nature of the services for
31:37
Speaker 1: which this fantastic community gave him unmanageable wealth and power
31:41
Speaker 1: and real respect, it was all a monstrous payment for
31:45
Speaker 1: courageous fiction, a gratuity in return for the one reality
31:49
Speaker 1: of human life illusion. We gave them a feeling of
31:53
Speaker 1: hope and profit. We sent a tidal wave of water
31:56
Speaker 1: and confidence into their stranded affairs. We meant faith, George
32:01
Speaker 1: said my uncle one day. That's what we do. And
32:04
Speaker 1: by Jove, we got to keep minting. We've been making
32:09
Speaker 1: human confidence ever since I drove the first cork of
32:12
Speaker 1: Tono Bungay. Coining would have been a better word than minting.
32:17
Speaker 1: And yet you know, in a sense he was right.
32:20
Speaker 1: Civilization is possible only through confidence, so that we can
32:24
Speaker 1: bank our money and go unarmed about the streets. The
32:28
Speaker 1: bank reserve, or a policeman keeping order in a jostling
32:31
Speaker 1: multitude of people, are only slightly less impudent bluffs than
32:35
Speaker 1: my uncle's prospectuses. They couldn't for a moment make good
32:40
Speaker 1: if the quarter of what they guarantee was demanded of them.
32:44
Speaker 1: The whole of this modern mercantile investing civilization is indeed
32:48
Speaker 1: such stuff as dreams are made of a mass of
32:52
Speaker 1: people's swelters and toils. Great railway systems grow, cities arise
32:57
Speaker 1: to the skies and spread wide, and far mines are opened.
33:01
Speaker 1: Factories hum founderies roar, ships plow the seas. Countries are
33:06
Speaker 1: settled about this busy, striving world. The rich owners go controlling,
33:12
Speaker 1: all enjoying, all confident, and creating the confidence that draws
33:16
Speaker 1: us altogether into a reluctant, nearly unconscious brotherhood. I wonder
33:22
Speaker 1: and plan my engines. The flag's flutter, the crowds cheer,
33:26
Speaker 1: the legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me, indeed, at times,
33:31
Speaker 1: that all this present commercial civilization is no more than
33:34
Speaker 1: my poor uncle's career. Writ large a swelling, thinning bubble
33:39
Speaker 1: of assurances that its arithmetic is just as unsound its
33:43
Speaker 1: dividends as ill advised, its ultimate aim as vague, and
33:46
Speaker 1: forgotten that it all drifts on, perhaps to some tremendous
33:50
Speaker 1: parallel to his individual disaster. Well, so it was we boomed,
33:56
Speaker 1: and for four years and a half we lived a
33:58
Speaker 1: life of mingled substance and moonshine, until our particular unsoundness
34:04
Speaker 1: overtook us. We went about in the most magnificent of
34:07
Speaker 1: motor cars upon tangible high roads, made ourselves conspicuous and stately,
34:12
Speaker 1: in splendid houses, ate sumptuously, and had a perpetual stream
34:17
Speaker 1: of notes and money trickling into our pockets. Hundreds of
34:20
Speaker 1: thousands of men and women respected us, saluted us, and
34:24
Speaker 1: gave us toil and honor. I asked, and my worksheets rose,
34:29
Speaker 1: My aeroplanes swooped out of nothingness to scare the downland
34:32
Speaker 1: pe wits. My uncle waved his hand, and Lady Grove
34:36
Speaker 1: and all its associations of chivalry and ancient peace were
34:39
Speaker 1: his waved again, and architects were busy planning the great
34:43
Speaker 1: palace he never finished at Crest Hill, and an army
34:46
Speaker 1: of folkmen gathered to do his bidding. Blue marble came
34:50
Speaker 1: from Canada and timber from New Zealand, and beneath it
34:55
Speaker 1: all you know there was nothing but fictitious values, as
34:59
Speaker 1: evanescent as rainbow gold. End of book, third chapter, first
35:06
Speaker 1: parts one to three. Recording by William tom Coe