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Tono-Bungay Book 1 Chapter 2 - Parts 5-8 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, first chapter, second parts five to eight 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. Ton
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Speaker 1: O Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book, first chapter, second
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Speaker 1: parts five to eight. Five. As they talked, I gave
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Speaker 1: my attention pretty exclusively to my uncle. I noted him
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Speaker 1: in great detail. I remember now his partially unbuttoned waistcoat,
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Speaker 1: as though something had occurred to distract him as he
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Speaker 1: did it up, and a little cut upon his chin.
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Speaker 1: I liked a certain humor in his eyes. I watched
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Speaker 1: two with the fascination that things have for an observant boy.
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Speaker 1: The play of his lips. They were a little oblique,
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Speaker 1: and there was something slip shod if one may strain
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Speaker 1: a word so far about his mouth, so that he
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Speaker 1: lisped and scibilated over and again, and the coming and
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Speaker 1: going of a curious expression triumphant in quality it was
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Speaker 1: upon his face as he talked. He fingered his glasses,
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Speaker 1: which did not seem to fit his nose, fretted with
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Speaker 1: things in his waistcoat pockets, or put his hands behind him,
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Speaker 1: looked over our heads, and ever and again rose to
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Speaker 1: his toes and dropped back on his heels. He had
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Speaker 1: a way of drawing air in at times through his
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Speaker 1: teeth that gave a whispering zest to his speech. It's
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Speaker 1: a sound I can only represent as a soft z.
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Speaker 1: He did most of the talking. My mother repeated what
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Speaker 1: she had already said in the shop. I have brought
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Speaker 1: George over to you, and then desisted for a time
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Speaker 1: from the real business in hand. You find this a
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Speaker 1: comfortable house, she asked, and being affirmed, it looks very convenient,
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Speaker 1: not too big to be a trouble. No, you like Wimblehurst,
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Speaker 1: I suppose, my uncle retorted with some inquiries about the
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Speaker 1: great people of blades Over, and my mother answered in
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Speaker 1: the character of a personal friend of Lady Drew's. The
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Speaker 1: talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked
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Speaker 1: upon a dissertation upon Wimblehurst. This place, he began, isn't,
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Speaker 1: of course, quite the place I ought to be in.
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Speaker 1: My mother nodded, as though she had expected that. It
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Speaker 1: gives me no scope. He went on, It's dead and alive.
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Speaker 1: Nothing happens he's always wanted something to happen, said my
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Speaker 1: aunt Susan. Some day you'll get a shower of things
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Speaker 1: and they'll be too much for him. Not they said
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Speaker 1: my uncle buoyantly. Do you find business slack? Asked my mother. Oh,
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Speaker 1: one rubs along, but there's no development, no growth. They
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Speaker 1: just come along here and buy pills when they want em,
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Speaker 1: and a horseball or such. They've got to be ill
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Speaker 1: before there's a prescription. That sort they are. You can't
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Speaker 1: get em to launch out, You can't get em to
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Speaker 1: take up anything new. For instance, I've been trying lately
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Speaker 1: induce them to buy their medicines in advance and in
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Speaker 1: larger quantities, but they won't look for it. Then I
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Speaker 1: try to float a little notion of mine, sort of
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Speaker 1: an insurance scheme for coals. You pay so much a week,
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Speaker 1: and when you've got a cold, you get a bottle
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Speaker 1: of cough linctis, so long as you can produce a
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Speaker 1: substantial sniff. See. But lord, they've no capacity for ideas.
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Speaker 1: They don't catch on, no jump about the place, no
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Speaker 1: life live. They trickle, and what one has to do
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Speaker 1: here is to trickle too, z Ah, said my mother.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't suit me, said my uncle. I'm the cascading sort.
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Speaker 1: George was that, said my mother. After a pondering moment,
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Speaker 1: my aunt Susan took up the parable with an affectionate
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Speaker 1: glance at her husband. He's always trying to make his
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Speaker 1: old business jump, she said, always putting fresh cards in
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Speaker 1: the window, or getting up to something you'd hardly believe.
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Speaker 1: It makes me jump sometimes, but it does no good,
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Speaker 1: said my uncle. It does no good, said his wife.
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Speaker 1: It's not his millew. Presently they came upon a wide pause.
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Speaker 1: From the beginning of their conversation, there had been the
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Speaker 1: promise of this pause, and I pricked my ears. I
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Speaker 1: knew perfectly what was bound to come. They were going
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Speaker 1: to talk of my father. I was enormously strengthened in
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Speaker 1: my persuasion when I found my mother's eyes resting thoughtfully
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Speaker 1: upon me in the silence, and then my uncle looked
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Speaker 1: at me, and then my aunt. I struggled unavailingly to
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Speaker 1: produce an expression of meek stupidity. I think, said my uncle,
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Speaker 1: that George will find it more amusing to have a
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Speaker 1: turn in the market place than to sit here talking
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Speaker 1: with us. There's a pair of stocks there George, very interesting,
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Speaker 1: old fashioned stocks. I don't mind sitting here, I said.
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Speaker 1: My uncle rose, and, in the most friendly way, led
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Speaker 1: me through the shop. He stood on his doorstep and
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Speaker 1: jerked amiable directions to me. Ain't it sleepy, George, Eh,
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Speaker 1: there's the butcher's dog over there asleep in the road.
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Speaker 1: Half an hour from midday. If the last trump sounded,
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Speaker 1: I don't believe it would wake nobody would wake the
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Speaker 1: chaps up there in the churchyard. They'd just turn over
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Speaker 1: and say, Nah, you don't catch us, you don't see well, well,
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Speaker 1: you'll find the stocks just around that corner. He watched
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Speaker 1: me out of sight, so I never heard what they
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Speaker 1: said about my father. After all. Six when I returned,
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Speaker 1: my uncle had, in some remarkable way, become larger and central.
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Speaker 1: That's you, George, he cried. When the shop door bell sounded.
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Speaker 1: Come right through, and I found him, as it were,
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Speaker 1: in the chairman's place before the draped grate. The three
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Speaker 1: of them regarded me. We have been talking of making
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Speaker 1: you a chemist, George, said my uncle. My mother looked
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Speaker 1: at me. I had hoped. She said that Lady Drew
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Speaker 1: would have done something for him. She stopped in what
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Speaker 1: way said my uncle. She might have spoken to some
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Speaker 1: one got him into something. Perhaps she had the servant's
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Speaker 1: invincible persuasion that all good things are done by patronage.
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Speaker 1: He is not the sort of boy for whom things
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Speaker 1: are done, she added, dismissing these dreams. He doesn't accommodate himself.
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Speaker 1: When he thinks Lady Drew wishes a thing, he seems
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Speaker 1: not to wish it towards mister Redgrave too. He has
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Speaker 1: been disrespectful. He is like his father, who's mister Redgrave
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Speaker 1: the vicar. A bit independent, said my uncle, briskly disobedient,
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Speaker 1: said my mother. He has no idea of his place.
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Speaker 1: He seems to think he can get on by slighting
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Speaker 1: people and flouting them. He'll learn, perhaps before it is
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Speaker 1: too late. My uncle stroked his cut chin and me.
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Speaker 1: Have you learnt any Latin? He asked abruptly. I said
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Speaker 1: I had not. He'll have to learn a little Latin,
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Speaker 1: he explained to my mother. To qualify hum. He could
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Speaker 1: go down to the chap at the grammar school here
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Speaker 1: it's just been routed into existence again by the charity commissioners,
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Speaker 1: and have lessans what me learn Latin? I cried with
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Speaker 1: emotion a little, he said. I've always wanted, I said,
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Speaker 1: and Latin. I had long been obsessed by the idea
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Speaker 1: that having no Latin was a disadvantage in the world,
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Speaker 1: and arch Garvell had driven the point of this pretty
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Speaker 1: earnestly home. The literature I had read at Bladesover had
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Speaker 1: all tended that way. Latin had had a quality of
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Speaker 1: emancipation for me that I find it difficult to convey.
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Speaker 1: And suddenly, when I had supposed all learning was at
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Speaker 1: an end for me, I heard this. It's no good
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Speaker 1: to you, of course, said my uncle, except to pass
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Speaker 1: exams with. But there you are. You'll have to learn
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Speaker 1: Latin because you have to learn Latin, said my mother,
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Speaker 1: not because you want to. And afterwards you'll have to
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Speaker 1: learn all sorts of other things. The idea that I
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Speaker 1: was to go on learning, that to read and master
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Speaker 1: the contents of books was still to be justifiable as
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Speaker 1: a duty, overwhelmed all other facts. I had had it
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Speaker 1: rather clear in my mind for some weeks that all
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Speaker 1: that kind of opportunity might close to me forever. I
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Speaker 1: began to take a lively interest in this new project.
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Speaker 1: Then shall I live here, I asked with you, and
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Speaker 1: study as well as work in the shop. That's the
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Speaker 1: way of it, said my uncle. I parted from my
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Speaker 1: mother that day in a dream. So sudden and important
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Speaker 1: was this new aspect of things to me. I was
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Speaker 1: to learn Latin, now that the humiliation of my failure
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Speaker 1: at Bladesover was past. For her, now that she had
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Speaker 1: a little got over her first intense repugnance at this
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Speaker 1: resort to my uncle and contrived something that seemed like
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Speaker 1: a possible provision for my future. The tenderness natural to
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Speaker 1: a parting far more significant than any of our previous partings,
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Speaker 1: crept into her manner. She sat in the train to return,
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Speaker 1: I remember, and I stood at the open door of
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Speaker 1: her compartment, and neither of us knew how soon we
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Speaker 1: should cease forever to be a trouble to one another.
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Speaker 1: You must be a good boy, George, she said. You
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Speaker 1: must learn, and you mustn't set yourself up against those
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Speaker 1: who are above you and better than you, or envy them. No, mother,
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Speaker 1: I said, I promised, carelessly. Her eyes were fixed upon me.
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Speaker 1: I was wondering whether I could, by any means begin Latin.
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Speaker 1: That night something touched her heart, then, some thought, some memory,
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Speaker 1: perhaps some premonition, the solitary porter began slamming carriage doors. George,
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Speaker 1: she said, hastily, almost shamefully, kiss me. I stepped up
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Speaker 1: into her compartment. As she bent downward, she caught me
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Speaker 1: in her arms. Quite eagerly. She pressed me to her,
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Speaker 1: a strange thing for her to do. I perceived her
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Speaker 1: eyes were extraordinarily bright, and then this brightness burst along
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Speaker 1: the lower lids and rolled down her cheeks. For the
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Speaker 1: first and last time in my life, I saw my
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Speaker 1: mother's tears. Then she had gone, leaving me discomforted and
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Speaker 1: perplexed forgetting for a time even that I was to
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Speaker 1: learn Latin, thinking of a mother as of something new
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Speaker 1: and strange. The thing recurred. Though I sought to dismiss it,
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Speaker 1: It stuck itself into my memory against the day of
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Speaker 1: fuller understanding, poor proud, habitual, sternly narrow soul, poor, difficult
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Speaker 1: and misunderstanding son. It was the first time that ever
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Speaker 1: it dawned upon me that my mother also might perhaps
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Speaker 1: feel seven. My mother died suddenly, and it was thought
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Speaker 1: by Lady Drew inconsiderately. The following spring, her ladyship instantly
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Speaker 1: fled to Folkestone with Miss Somerville and Phison until the
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Speaker 1: funeral should be over and my mother's successor installed. My
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Speaker 1: uncle took me over to the funeral. I remember there
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Speaker 1: was a sort of prolonged crisis in the day's preceding this,
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Speaker 1: because directly he heard of my loss. He had sent
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Speaker 1: a pair of checked trousers to the Judkins people in
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Speaker 1: London to be dyed black, and they did not come
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Speaker 1: back in time. He became very excited on the third
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Speaker 1: day and sent a number of increasingly fiery telegrams without
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Speaker 1: any result whatever, and succumbed next morning with a very
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Speaker 1: ill grace to my aunt Susan's insistence upon the resources
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Speaker 1: of his dress suit. In my memory, those black legs
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Speaker 1: of his in a particularly thin and shiny black cloth,
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Speaker 1: for evidently his dress suit dated from adolescent and slenderer days.
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Speaker 1: Straddle like the Colossus of Rhodes over my approached my
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Speaker 1: mother's funeral. Moreover, I was inconvenienced and distracted by a
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Speaker 1: silk hat. He had bought me my first silk hat,
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Speaker 1: much ignoble as his was also by a deep mourning band.
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Speaker 1: I remember, but rather indistinctly, my mother's white paneled housekeeper's
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Speaker 1: room and the touch of oddness about it that she
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Speaker 1: was not there, and the various familiar faces made strange
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Speaker 1: by black, and I seemed to recall the exaggerated self
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Speaker 1: consciousness that arose out of their focussed attention. No doubt,
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Speaker 1: the sense of the new silk cat came and went
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Speaker 1: and came again in my emotional chaos. Then something comes
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Speaker 1: out clear, and sorrowful rises out clear, and sheer from
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Speaker 1: among all these rather base and inconsequent things. And once
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Speaker 1: again I walked before all the other mourners, close behind
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Speaker 1: her coffin as it is carried along the churchyard path
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Speaker 1: to her grave, with the old vicar's slow voice saying
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Speaker 1: regretfully and unconvincingly above me triumphant solemn things. I am
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Speaker 1: the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord, he that
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Speaker 1: believeth in me, though he were dead, Yet shall he live.
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Speaker 1: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die,
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Speaker 1: never die. The day was a high and glorious morning
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Speaker 1: in spring, and all the trees were budding and bursting
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Speaker 1: into green. Everywhere there were blossoms and flowers, the pear
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Speaker 1: trees and cherry trees. In the sexton's garden were sunlit snow.
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Speaker 1: There were nodding daffodils and early tulips. In the graveyard beds,
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Speaker 1: great multitudes of daisies, and everywhere the birds seemed singing.
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Speaker 1: And in the middle was the brown coffin and tilting
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Speaker 1: on men's shoulders, and half occluded by the vicar's oxford hood.
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Speaker 1: And so we came to my mother's waiting grave. For
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Speaker 1: a time I was very observant, watching the coffin lowered,
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Speaker 1: hearing the words of the ritual. It seemed a very
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Speaker 1: curious business altogether. Suddenly, as a service drew to its end,
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Speaker 1: I felt something had still to be said which had
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Speaker 1: not been said, realized that she had withdrawn in silence,
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Speaker 1: neither forgiving me nor hearing from me those now lost assurances.
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Speaker 1: Suddenly I knew I had not understood. Suddenly I saw
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Speaker 1: her tenderly, remembered, not so much tender or kindly things
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Speaker 1: of her as her crossed wishes and the ways in
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Speaker 1: which I had thwarted her. Surprisingly, I realized that behind
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Speaker 1: all her hardness and severity, she had loved me, that
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Speaker 1: I was the only thing she had ever loved, and
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Speaker 1: that until this moment I had never loved her, and
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Speaker 1: now she was there and deaf and blind to me,
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Speaker 1: pitifully defeated in her designs for me, covered from me
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Speaker 1: so that she could not know. I dug my nails
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Speaker 1: into the palms of my hands. I set my teeth,
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Speaker 1: but tears blinded me, sobs would have choked me had
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Speaker 1: speech been required of me. The old vicar read on.
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Speaker 1: There came a mumbled response, and so on to the end.
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Speaker 1: I wept, as it were internally, and only when we
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Speaker 1: had come out of the churchyard could I think and
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Speaker 1: speak calmly again. Stamped across this memory are the little
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Speaker 1: black figures of my uncle and rabbits, telling Avebury, the
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Speaker 1: sexton and undertaker that it had passed off very well,
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Speaker 1: very well. Indeed. Eight that is the last I shall
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Speaker 1: tell of Bladesover. The drop scene falls on that, and
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Speaker 1: it comes no more as an actual presence into this novel.
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Speaker 1: I did indeed go back there once again, but under
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Speaker 1: circumstances quite immaterial to my story. But in a sense,
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Speaker 1: Bladesover has never left me. It is, as I said
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Speaker 1: at the outset, one of those dominant explanatory impressions that
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Speaker 1: make the framework of my mind. Bladesover illuminates England. It
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Speaker 1: has become all that is spacious, dignified, pretensious and truly
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Speaker 1: conservative in English life. It is my social datum. That
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Speaker 1: is why I have drawn it here on so large
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Speaker 1: a scale. When I came back at last to the
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Speaker 1: real bladesover on an inconsequent visit, everything was far smaller
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Speaker 1: than I could have supposed possible. It was as though
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Speaker 1: everything had shivered and shriveled a little. At the Liechtenstein
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Speaker 1: Dutch the harp was still in the saloon, but there
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Speaker 1: was a different grand piano with a painted lid and
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Speaker 1: a metro style pianola, and an extraordinary quantity of artistic
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Speaker 1: litter and bric a brac scattered about. There was the
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Speaker 1: trail of the Bond Street show room over at all.
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Speaker 1: The furniture was still under chintz, but it wasn't the
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Speaker 1: same sort of chintz, although it pretended to be, and
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Speaker 1: the luster dangling chandeliers had passed away. Lady Liechtenstein's books
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Speaker 1: replaced the brown volumes I had browsed among. They were
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Speaker 1: mostly presentation copies of contemporary novels, and the National Review
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Speaker 1: and the Empire Review, and the nineteenth Century and after
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Speaker 1: jostled current books on the tables, English new books in
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Speaker 1: gaudy catchpenny artistic covers, French and Italian novels, and yellow
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Speaker 1: German art handbooks of almost incredible ugliness. There were abundant
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Speaker 1: evidences that her Ladyship was playing with the Celtic Renaissance,
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Speaker 1: and a great number of ugly cats made of china.
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Speaker 1: She collected china, and stoneware cats stood about everywhere, in
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Speaker 1: all colors and all kinds of deliberately comic, highly glazed distortion.
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Speaker 1: It is nonsense to pretend that finance makes any better
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Speaker 1: aristocrats than rent. Nothing can make an aristocrat but pride, knowledge, training,
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Speaker 1: and the sword. These people were no improvement on the
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Speaker 1: drus none whatever. There was no effect of a beneficial
19:17
Speaker 1: replacement of passive, unintelligent people by active intelligent ones. One
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Speaker 1: felt that a smaller but more enterprising and intensely undignified
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Speaker 1: variety of stupidity had replaced the large, dullness of the
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Speaker 1: old gentry. And that was all bladesover. I thought had
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Speaker 1: undergone just the same change between the seventies and the
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Speaker 1: new century that had overtaken the dear old times. And
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Speaker 1: heaven knows how much more of the decorous British fabric.
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Speaker 1: These Liechtensteins and their like seemed to have no promise
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Speaker 1: in them at all of any fresh vitality for the Kingdom.
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Speaker 1: I do not believe in their intelligence or their power.
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Speaker 1: They have nothing new about them at all, nothing creative
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Speaker 1: nor rejuvenescent, no more than a disorderly, instinctive acquisition. And
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Speaker 1: the prevalence of them and their kind is but a
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Speaker 1: phase in the broad, slow decay of the great social
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Speaker 1: organism of England. They could not have made Blades over.
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Speaker 1: They cannot replace it. They just happen to break out
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Speaker 1: over it saprophytically. Well, that was my last impression of
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Speaker 1: Blades Over. End of book, first chapter, second parts five
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Speaker 1: to eight. Recording by William tom Coe