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Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 3 - Parts 1-2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, second chapter, third, Parts one to two 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, second chapter, third, parts one
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Speaker 1: to two, Chapter the third. How we made Tono Bungay Hum. One.
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Speaker 1: So I made my peace with my uncle, and we
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Speaker 1: set out upon this bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious
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Speaker 1: rubbish at one and three halfpence and two and nine
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Speaker 1: a bottle, including the government stamp. We made Tono Bungay hum.
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Speaker 1: It brought us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people.
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Speaker 1: All that my uncle promised me proved truth and understatement.
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Speaker 1: Tono Bungay carried me to freedoms and powers that no
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Speaker 1: life of scientific research, no passionate service of humanity, could
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Speaker 1: ever have given me. It was my uncle's genius that
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Speaker 1: did it. No doubt he needed me. I was, I
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Speaker 1: will admit, his indispensable right hand, but his was the
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Speaker 1: brain to conceive. He wrote every advertisement, some of them
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Speaker 1: even he sketched. You must remember that his were the
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Speaker 1: days before the time took to enterprise, and the vociferous
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Speaker 1: hawking of that antiquated encyclopedia, that alluring button holing. Let
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Speaker 1: me just tell you, quite soberly something you ought to
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Speaker 1: know style of newspaper advertisement, with every now and then
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Speaker 1: a convulsive jump of some attractive phrase into capitals was
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Speaker 1: then almost a novelty. Many people who are moderately well
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Speaker 1: think they are quite well was one of early efforts.
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Speaker 1: The jerks and capitals were do not need drugs or medicine,
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Speaker 1: and simply a proper regiment to get you in tone.
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Speaker 1: One was warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed
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Speaker 1: much advertised nostrums on one's attention, that trash did more
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Speaker 1: harm than good. The thing needed was regimen and tono bungay.
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Speaker 1: Very early too, was that bright little quarter column. At
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Speaker 1: least it was usually a quarter column in the evening papers.
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Speaker 1: Hilarity tono bungay, like mountain air in the veins. The
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Speaker 1: penetrating trio of questions, are you bored with your business?
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Speaker 1: Are you bored with your dinner? Are you bored with
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Speaker 1: your wife? That too was in our gowered street days.
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Speaker 1: Both these we had in our first campaign when we
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Speaker 1: worked London South, Central and West, and then too we
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Speaker 1: had our first poster, the Health, Beauty and Strength one
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Speaker 1: that was design I happened still to have got by
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Speaker 1: me the first sketch sheet made for it. I have
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Speaker 1: reproduced it here with one or two others, to enable
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Speaker 1: the reader to understand the mental quality that initiated these
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Speaker 1: familiar ornaments of London. The second one is about eighteen
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Speaker 1: months later, the germ of the well known fog poster.
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Speaker 1: The third was designed for an influenza epidemic, but never issued.
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Speaker 1: These things were only incidental in my department. I had
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Speaker 1: to polish him up for the artist and arrange the
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Speaker 1: business of printing and distribution. And after my uncle had
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Speaker 1: had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertising manager
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Speaker 1: of the Daily Regulator about the amount of display given
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Speaker 1: to one of his happy thoughts, I also took up
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Speaker 1: the negotiations of advertisements for the press. We discussed and
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Speaker 1: worked out distribution together, first in the drawing room floor
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Speaker 1: in Gower Street, with my aunt sometimes helping very shrewdly,
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Speaker 1: and then with a steadily improving type of cigar and
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Speaker 1: older and older whiskey and his smuggery at their first house,
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Speaker 1: the one in Beckenham. Often we worked far into the night,
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Speaker 1: sometimes until dawn. We really worked infernally hard, and I
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Speaker 1: recall we worked with a very decided enthusiasm, not simply
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Speaker 1: on my uncle's part but mine. It was a game,
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Speaker 1: an absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were
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Speaker 1: scored in cases of bottles. People think a happy notion
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Speaker 1: is enough to make a man rich, that fortunes can
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Speaker 1: be made without toil. It's a dream, as every millionaire
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Speaker 1: except one or two lucky gamblers can testify. I doubt
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Speaker 1: if J. D. Rockefeller in the early days of standard
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Speaker 1: oil worked harder than we did. We worked far into
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Speaker 1: the night, and we also worked all day. We made
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Speaker 1: a rule to be always dropping in at the factory unannounced,
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Speaker 1: to keep things right. For at first we could afford
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Speaker 1: no properly responsible underlings, and we traveled London, pretending to
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Speaker 1: be our own representatives and making all sorts of special arrangements.
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Speaker 1: But none of this was my special work, and as
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Speaker 1: soon as we could get other men in, I dropped
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Speaker 1: the traveling, though my uncle found it particularly interesting and
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Speaker 1: kept it up for years. Does me good, George to
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Speaker 1: see the chaps behind their counters like I was. Once
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Speaker 1: he explained, my special and distinctive duty was to give
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Speaker 1: tono bungay substance and an outward and visible bottle. To
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Speaker 1: translate my uncle's great imaginings into the creation of case
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Speaker 1: after case of labeled bottles of nonsense, and the punctual
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Speaker 1: discharge of them by railway, road and steamer towards their
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Speaker 1: ultimate goal in the great stomach of the people. By
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Speaker 1: all modern standards, the business was, as my uncle would say,
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Speaker 1: absolutely bonafide. We sold our stuff and got the money,
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Speaker 1: and spent the money honestly in lies and clamor to
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Speaker 1: sell more stuff. Section by section, we spread it over
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Speaker 1: the whole of the British isles, first working the middle
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Speaker 1: class London suburbs, then the outer suburbs, then the Home counties,
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Speaker 1: then going with new bills and a more pious style
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Speaker 1: of ad into Wales, a great field always for a
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Speaker 1: new patent medicine, and then into Lancashire. My uncle had
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Speaker 1: in his inner office a big map of England, and
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Speaker 1: as we took up fresh sections of the local press
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Speaker 1: and our consignments invaded new areas, flags for advertisements and
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Speaker 1: pink underlines for orders showed our progress. The romance of
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Speaker 1: modern commerce, George, my uncle would say, rubbing his hands
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Speaker 1: together and drawing in air through his teeth, the romance
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Speaker 1: of modern commerce. A conquest province by province. Like Saugers,
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Speaker 1: we subjugated England and Wales. We rolled over the Cheviots
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Speaker 1: with a special adaptation containing eleven percent of absolute alcol
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Speaker 1: Tono Bungay thistle brand. We also had the fog poster
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Speaker 1: adapted to a kilted Britain in a misty highland scene.
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Speaker 1: Under the shadow of our great leading line. We were
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Speaker 1: presently taking subsidiary specialties into action. Tono Bungay hair stimulant
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Speaker 1: was our first supplement. Then came concentrated Tono Bungay for
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Speaker 1: the eyes. That didn't go, but we had a considerable
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Speaker 1: success with the hair stimulant. We broached the subject I
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Speaker 1: remember in a little catechism beginning, why does the hair
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Speaker 1: fall out because the follicles are fagged? What are the follicles?
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Speaker 1: So it went on to the climax that the hair
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Speaker 1: stimulant contained all the essential principles of that most reviving
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Speaker 1: tonic Tono Bungay, together with an emollient and nutritious oil
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Speaker 1: derived from crude Neat's foot oil by a process of refinement, separation,
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Speaker 1: and deodorization. It will be manifest any one of scientific
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Speaker 1: attainments that in Neat's foot oil derived from the hoofs
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Speaker 1: and horns of beasts, we must necessarily have a natural
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Speaker 1: skin and hair lubricant. And we also did admirable things
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Speaker 1: with our next subsidiaries, Tono Bungay Lousenges and Tono Bungay Chocolate.
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Speaker 1: These we urged upon the public for their extraordinary nutritive
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Speaker 1: and recuperative value in cases of fatigue and strain. We
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Speaker 1: gave them posters and illustrated advertisements showing climbers hanging from
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Speaker 1: marvelously vertical cliffs, cyclist champions upon the track, mounted messengers
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Speaker 1: engaged in aches to ghent rides, soldiers lying out in
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Speaker 1: action under a hot sun. You can go for twenty
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Speaker 1: four hours, we declared on Tono Bungay Chocolate. We didn't
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Speaker 1: say whether you could return on the same commodity. We
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Speaker 1: also showed a dreadfully baristerish barrister wig side whiskers teeth,
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Speaker 1: a horribly lifelike portrait of all existing barristers talking at
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Speaker 1: a table, and beneath this legend a four hour speech
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Speaker 1: on Tono bungay lousnges, and as fresh as when he began,
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Speaker 1: then brought in regiments of school teachers, revivalist ministers, politicians
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Speaker 1: and the like. I really do believe there was an
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Speaker 1: element of kick in the strict nine in these louzenges,
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Speaker 1: especially in those made according to our earlier formula. For
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Speaker 1: we altered all our formulae, invariably weakening them enormously as
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Speaker 1: sales got ahead. In a little while, so it seems
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Speaker 1: to me now we were employing travelers and opening up
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Speaker 1: Great Britain at the rate of a hundred square miles
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Speaker 1: a day. All the organization throughout was sketched in a crude, entangled,
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Speaker 1: half inspired fashion by my uncle, and all of it
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Speaker 1: had to be worked out into a practicable scheme of
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Speaker 1: quantities and expenditure by me. We had a lot of
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Speaker 1: t finding our travelers. In the end at least half
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Speaker 1: of them were Irish Americans, a wonderful breed for selling medicine.
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Speaker 1: We had still more trouble over our factory manager because
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Speaker 1: of the secrets of the inner room, and in the
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Speaker 1: end we got a very capable woman, missus Hampton Diggs,
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Speaker 1: who had formerly managed a large millinery work room, whom
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Speaker 1: we could trust to keep everything in good working order
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Speaker 1: without finding out anything that wasn't put exactly under her
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Speaker 1: loyal and energetic nose. She conceived a high opinion of
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Speaker 1: Tono Bungay and took it in all forms and large quantities.
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Speaker 1: So long as I knew her, it didn't seem to
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Speaker 1: do her any harm, and she kept the girls going
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Speaker 1: quite wonderfully. My uncle's last addition to the Tono Bungay
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Speaker 1: group was the Tono Bungay Mouthwash. The reader has probably
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Speaker 1: read a hundred times that inspiring inquiry of his. You
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Speaker 1: are young yet, but are you sure nothing has aged
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Speaker 1: your gums? And after that we took over the agency
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Speaker 1: for three or four good American lines that worked in
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Speaker 1: with our own and could be handled with it. Texan
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Speaker 1: imbrocation and twenty three to clear the system were the
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Speaker 1: chief I set down these bare facts to me. They
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Speaker 1: are all linked with the figure of my uncle. In
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Speaker 1: some of the old seventeenth and early eighteenth century prayer
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Speaker 1: books at bladesover there used to be illustrations with long
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Speaker 1: scrolls coming out of the mouths of the woodcut figures.
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Speaker 1: I wish I could write all this last chapter on
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Speaker 1: a scroll coming out of the head of my uncle,
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Speaker 1: show it all the time as unfolding and pouring out
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Speaker 1: from a short, fattening, small legged man with stiff cropped hair,
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Speaker 1: disobedient glasses on a pricky little nose, and a round
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Speaker 1: stair behind them. I wish I could show you him
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Speaker 1: breathing hard and a little through his nose, as his
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Speaker 1: pen scrabbled out some absurd inspiration for a post or
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Speaker 1: a picture page, and make you hear his voice, charged
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Speaker 1: with solemn import like the voice of a squeaky prophet, saying,
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Speaker 1: George Listen, I got an idea. I got a notion, George,
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Speaker 1: I should put myself into the same picture. Best setting
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Speaker 1: for us, I think, would be the Beckenhem Snuggery, because
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Speaker 1: there we worked hardest. It would be the lamp lit
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Speaker 1: room of the early nineties, and the clock upon the
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Speaker 1: mantel would indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting
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Speaker 1: on either side of the fire, I with a pipe,
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Speaker 1: my uncle with a cigar or cigarette. There would be
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Speaker 1: glasses standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions would be
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Speaker 1: very grave. My uncle used to sit right back in
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Speaker 1: his arm chair. His toes always turned in when he
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Speaker 1: was sitting down, and his legs had a way of
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Speaker 1: looking curved, as though they hadn't bones or joints, but
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Speaker 1: were stuffed with sawdust. George, what do you think of
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Speaker 1: tea be for sea sickness? He would say, No good
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Speaker 1: that I can imagine. Hm, no harm trying, George, We can,
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Speaker 1: but try. I would suck my pipe hard to get
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Speaker 1: at unless we sold our stuff specially at the docks.
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Speaker 1: Might do a special at Cook's office or in the
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Speaker 1: Continental Bradshaw it had give him confidence, George, he would
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Speaker 1: zzz with his glasses, reflecting the red of the glowing coals.
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Speaker 1: No good hiding our light under a bushel, he would remark.
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Speaker 1: I never really determined whether my uncle regarded Tono Bungay
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Speaker 1: as a fraud or whether he didn't come to believe
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Speaker 1: in it in a kind of way by the mere
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Speaker 1: reiteration of his own assertions. I think that his average
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Speaker 1: attitude was one of kindly, almost parental toleration. I remember
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Speaker 1: saying on one occasion, but you don't suppose this stuff
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Speaker 1: ever did a human being the slightest good at all,
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Speaker 1: and how his face assumed a look of protest, as
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Speaker 1: of one reproving harshness and dogmatism. You've a hard nature, George,
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Speaker 1: he said, You're too ready to run things down? How
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Speaker 1: can one tell? How can one venture to tell? I
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Speaker 1: suppose any creative and developing game would have interested me
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Speaker 1: in those years At any rate, I know I put
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Speaker 1: as much zeal into this Tono Bungay as any young
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Speaker 1: lieutenant could have done who suddenly found himself in command
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Speaker 1: of a ship. It was extraordinarily interesting to me to
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Speaker 1: figure out the advantage accruing from the shortening of the
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Speaker 1: process or that, and to weigh it against the capital
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Speaker 1: cost of the alteration. I made a sort of machine
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Speaker 1: for sticking on the labels that I patented to this day.
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Speaker 1: There is a little trickle of royalties to me from that.
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Speaker 1: I also contrived to have our mixture made concentrated, got
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Speaker 1: the bottles, which all came sliding down a guarded slant way,
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Speaker 1: nearly filled with distilled water at one tap, and dripped
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Speaker 1: our magic ingredients in at the next. This was an
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Speaker 1: immense economy of space for the inner sanctum for the bottling.
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Speaker 1: We needed special taps and these too, I invented and patented.
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Speaker 1: We had a sort of endless band of bottles sliding
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Speaker 1: along an inclined glass trough made slippery with running water.
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Speaker 1: At one end, a girl held them up to the light,
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Speaker 1: put aside any that were imperfect, and placed the others
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Speaker 1: in the trough. The filling was automatic. At the other end,
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Speaker 1: a girl slipped in the cork and drove it home
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Speaker 1: with a little mallet. Each tank, the little one for
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Speaker 1: the vivifying ingredients and the big one for distilled water,
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Speaker 1: had a level indicator, and inside I had a float
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Speaker 1: arrangement that stopped the slide whenever either had sunk too low.
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Speaker 1: Another girl stood ready with my machine to label the
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Speaker 1: corked bottles and hand them to the three packers, who
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Speaker 1: slipped them into their outer papers and put them with
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Speaker 1: a pad of corrugated paper betwe between each pair into
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Speaker 1: a little groove from which they could be made to
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Speaker 1: slide neatly into position in our standard packing case. It
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Speaker 1: sounds wild, I know, but I believe I was the
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Speaker 1: first man in the city of London to pack padded
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Speaker 1: medicines through the side of the packing case. To discover
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Speaker 1: there was a better way in than by the lid.
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Speaker 1: Our cases packed themselves practically had only to be put
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Speaker 1: into position on a little wheeled tray, and when full,
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Speaker 1: pulled to the lift that dropped them to the men downstairs,
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Speaker 1: who patted up the free space and nailed on top
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Speaker 1: and side. Our girls, moreover packed with corrugated paper and
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Speaker 1: matchbook wood box partitions, when everybody else was using expensive
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Speaker 1: young men to pack through the top of the box
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Speaker 1: with straw, many breakages, and much waste and confusion. Two.
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Speaker 1: As I look back at them now, those energetic years
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Speaker 1: seem all compacted to a year or so from the
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Speaker 1: days of our first hazardous beginning in Farringdon Street, with
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Speaker 1: barely a thousand pounds worth of stuff or credit all told.
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Speaker 1: And that got by something perilously like snatching to the
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Speaker 1: days when my uncle went to the public on behalf
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Speaker 1: of himself and me one tenth share, and our silent partners,
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Speaker 1: the drug wholesalers and the printing people and the owner
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Speaker 1: of that group of magazines and newspapers, to ask, with
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Speaker 1: honest confidence, for one hundred fifty thousand pounds. Those silent
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Speaker 1: partners were remarkably sorry. I know that they had not
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Speaker 1: taken larger shares and given us longer credit. When the
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Speaker 1: subscriptions came pouring in, my uncle had a clear half
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Speaker 1: to play with, including the one tenth understood to be
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Speaker 1: mine one hundred fifty thousand pounds. Think of it for
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Speaker 1: the good will in a string of lies and a
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Speaker 1: trade in bottles of mitigated water. Do you realize the
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Speaker 1: madness of the world that sanctions such a thing? Perhaps
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Speaker 1: you don't. At times, use and want certainly blinded me.
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Speaker 1: If it had not been for Ewart, I don't think
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Speaker 1: I should have had an inkling of the wonderfulness of
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Speaker 1: this development of my fortunes. I should have grown accustomed
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Speaker 1: to it, fallen in with all its delusions as completely
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Speaker 1: as my uncle presently did. He was immensely proud of
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Speaker 1: the flotation. They've never been given such value, he said,
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Speaker 1: for a dozen years. But Ewart, with his gesticulating hairy
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Speaker 1: hands and bony wrists, his single handed chorus to all
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Speaker 1: this as it played itself over again in my memory,
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Speaker 1: and he kept my fundamental absurdity illuminated for me during
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Speaker 1: all this astonishing time. It's just on all fours with
18:43
Speaker 1: the rest of things, he remarked, Only more so you
18:46
Speaker 1: needn't think you're anything out of the way. I remember
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Speaker 1: one disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had
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Speaker 1: been to Paris on a mysterious expedition to rough in
18:59
Speaker 1: some word for a rising American sculptor. This young man
19:03
Speaker 1: had a commission for an allegorical figure of truth, draped,
19:06
Speaker 1: of course, for his state capital, and he needed help.
19:10
Speaker 1: Ewart had returned with his hair cut on brosse and
19:14
Speaker 1: with his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I
19:18
Speaker 1: remember a bicycling suit of purplish brown baggy beyond aging.
19:23
Speaker 1: The only creditable thing about it was that it had
19:26
Speaker 1: evidently not been made for him, A voluminous black tie,
19:30
Speaker 1: a decadent soft felt hat, and several French expletives of
19:35
Speaker 1: a sinister description. Silly clothes, aren't they, he said, at
19:40
Speaker 1: the sight of my startled eye. I don't know why
19:43
Speaker 1: I got him. They seemed all right over there. He
19:47
Speaker 1: had come down to our ragged street place to discuss
19:50
Speaker 1: a benevolent project of mine for a poster by him,
19:53
Speaker 1: and he scattered remarkable discourse over the heads. I hope
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Speaker 1: it was over the heads of our bottler's What I
20:01
Speaker 1: like about it all, Ponderevo is its poetry. That's where
20:06
Speaker 1: we get the pull of the animals. No animal would
20:09
Speaker 1: ever run a factory like this. Think one remembers the beaver.
20:13
Speaker 1: Of course, he might very possibly bottle things, but would
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Speaker 1: he stick a label round him and sell him The
20:20
Speaker 1: beaver is a dreamy fool. I'll admit him and his dams.
20:24
Speaker 1: But after all, there's a sort of protection about him,
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Speaker 1: a kind of muddy practicality. They prevent things getting at him.
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Speaker 1: And it's not your poetry only, it's the poetry of
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Speaker 1: the customer too. Poet answering to poet, soul to soul, health, strength,
20:42
Speaker 1: and beauty in a bottle, the magic filter, like a
20:46
Speaker 1: fairy tale. Think of the people to whom your bottles
20:50
Speaker 1: of footle go. I'm calling it footle ponderevo out of praise,
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Speaker 1: he said in parenthesis, Think of the little clerks and
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Speaker 1: jaded women and overworked people, people overstrained with wanting to do,
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Speaker 1: people overstrained with wanting to be, people in fact, overstrained.
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Speaker 1: The real trouble of life, Ponderevo, isn't that we exist.
21:15
Speaker 1: That's a vulgar error. The real trouble is that we
21:18
Speaker 1: don't really exist, and we want to. That's what this,
21:22
Speaker 1: in the highest sense, just stands for the hunger to
21:26
Speaker 1: be for once really alive to the finger tips. Nobody
21:32
Speaker 1: wants to do and be the things people are. Nobody.
21:36
Speaker 1: You don't want to preside over this, this bottling. I
21:40
Speaker 1: don't want to wear these beastly clothes and be lit
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Speaker 1: about by you. Nobody wants to keep on sticking labels
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Speaker 1: on silly bottles at so many farthings of gross that
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Speaker 1: isn't existing. That's us substratum. None of us want to
21:56
Speaker 1: be what we are or to do what we do,
21:59
Speaker 1: except as a sort of basis, what do we want?
22:03
Speaker 1: You know, I know nobody confesses. What we all want
22:08
Speaker 1: to be is something perpetually young and beautiful, Young Joe's,
22:13
Speaker 1: Young Jove's ponderevo. His voice became loud, harsh and declamatory,
22:20
Speaker 1: pursuing coy half willing nymphs through everlasting forests. There was
22:26
Speaker 1: a just perceptible listening hang in the work about us.
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Speaker 1: Come downstairs, I interrupted, we can talk better there, I
22:34
Speaker 1: can talk better here, he answered. He was just going on.
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Speaker 1: But fortunately the implacable face of missus Hampton Diggs appeared
22:42
Speaker 1: down the aisle of bottling machines. All right, he said,
22:47
Speaker 1: I'll come in the little sanctum below. My uncle was
22:52
Speaker 1: taking a digestive pause after his lunch, and by no
22:55
Speaker 1: means alert his presence sent Eward back to the theme
22:58
Speaker 1: of modern commerce. Over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him.
23:03
Speaker 1: He behaved with the elaborate deference due to a business
23:06
Speaker 1: magnet from an unknown man. What I was pointing out
23:09
Speaker 1: to your nephew, Sir, said Ewart, putting both elbows on
23:13
Speaker 1: the table, was the poetry of commerce. He doesn't, you know,
23:17
Speaker 1: seem to see it at all. My uncle nodded brightly.
23:22
Speaker 1: When I tell him, he said, round his cigar. We
23:26
Speaker 1: are artists. You and I, Sir, can talk if you
23:29
Speaker 1: will permit me, as one artist to another. Its advertisement
23:33
Speaker 1: has done it. Advertisement has revolutionized trade and industry. It
23:39
Speaker 1: is going to revolutionize the world. The old merchant used
23:43
Speaker 1: to tote about commodities. The new one creates values. Does
23:47
Speaker 1: it need to tote? He takes something that isn't worth anything,
23:51
Speaker 1: or something that isn't particularly worth anything, and he makes
23:54
Speaker 1: it worth something. He takes mustard that is just like
23:58
Speaker 1: anybody else's mustard. And he goes about saying, shouting, singing,
24:02
Speaker 1: chalking on walls, writing inside people's books, putting it everywhere.
24:06
Speaker 1: Smith's mustard is the best. And behold it is the best. True,
24:12
Speaker 1: said my uncle, chubbly, and with a dreamy sense of mysticism. True.
24:18
Speaker 1: It's just like an artist. He takes a lump of
24:21
Speaker 1: white marble on the verge of a lime kiln. He
24:24
Speaker 1: chips it about, he makes He makes a monument to
24:27
Speaker 1: himself and others, a monument the world will not willingly
24:30
Speaker 1: let die. Talking of mustard, Sir, I was at Clapham
24:35
Speaker 1: Junction the other day, and all the banks are overgrown
24:39
Speaker 1: with horse radish that's got loose from a garden somewhere.
24:42
Speaker 1: You know what horse radish is, grows like wildfire, spreads spreads.
24:49
Speaker 1: I stood at the end of the platform, looking at
24:51
Speaker 1: the stuff and thinking about it like fame. I thought,
24:55
Speaker 1: rank and wild where it isn't wanted. Why don't there
24:59
Speaker 1: really good thing in life grow like horse radish? I thought.
25:03
Speaker 1: My mind went off in a peculiar way. It does.
25:05
Speaker 1: From that to the idea that mustard costs a penny
25:08
Speaker 1: a tin. I bought some the other day for a ham.
25:11
Speaker 1: I had it came into my head that it would
25:13
Speaker 1: be ripping good business to use horse radish to adulterate mustard.
25:18
Speaker 1: I had a sort of idea that I could plunge
25:20
Speaker 1: into business on that, get rich and come back to
25:23
Speaker 1: my own proper monumental art again. And then I said,
25:27
Speaker 1: but why adulterate? I don't like the idea of adulteration shabby,
25:34
Speaker 1: said my uncle, nodding his head, bound to get found out,
25:39
Speaker 1: and totally unnecessary too. Why not do up a mixture
25:43
Speaker 1: three quarters pounded horse radish and a quarter mustard, give
25:46
Speaker 1: it a fancy name, and sell it at twice the
25:49
Speaker 1: mustard price. See, I very nearly started the business straight away.
25:53
Speaker 1: Only something happened. My train came along. Jolly good idea,
26:00
Speaker 1: said my uncle. He looked at me. That really is
26:03
Speaker 1: an idea, George, he said, take shavens again. You know
26:08
Speaker 1: that poem of longfellows, Sir, that sounds exactly like the
26:12
Speaker 1: first declension. What is it, mars a maker, men say?
26:18
Speaker 1: My uncle nodded and gurgled some quotation that died away.
26:21
Speaker 1: Jolly good poem, George, he said, in an aside to me, Well,
26:26
Speaker 1: it's about a carpenter and a poetic Victorian child, you know,
26:30
Speaker 1: and some shavens. The child made no end out of
26:33
Speaker 1: the shavens. So might you powder um? They might be anything.
26:39
Speaker 1: Soak em in jipper silo, tobacco, powder um, and get
26:43
Speaker 1: a little tar and turpentitous smell in wood packing for
26:48
Speaker 1: hot baths, a certain cure for the scourge of influenza.
26:52
Speaker 1: There's all these patent grain foods, what Americans call cereals.
26:57
Speaker 1: I believe I'm right, sir, in saying they're sawdust. No,
27:01
Speaker 1: said my uncle, removing his cigar. As far as I
27:04
Speaker 1: can find out, it's really grain, spoilt grain. I've been
27:08
Speaker 1: going into that. Well, there you are, said Ewart, say
27:13
Speaker 1: it's spoilt grain. It carried out my case just as well.
27:18
Speaker 1: Your modern commerce is no more buying and selling than sculpture.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's mercy, it's salvation. It's rescue work. It takes all
27:26
Speaker 1: sorts of fallen commodities by the hand and raises them.
27:30
Speaker 1: Cana isn't in it? You turn water into tono bungay.
27:35
Speaker 1: Tono Bungay's all right, said my uncle, suddenly grave, We
27:39
Speaker 1: aren't talking of tono bungay. Your nephew sir is hard.
27:44
Speaker 1: He wants everything to go to a sort of predestinated end.
27:48
Speaker 1: He's a calvinist of commerce. Offer him a dust binful
27:51
Speaker 1: of stuff. He calls it refuse. Passes by on the
27:54
Speaker 1: other side. Now you, sir, you'd make cinders respect themselves.
28:01
Speaker 1: My uncle regarded him dubiously for a moment, but there
28:05
Speaker 1: was a touch of appreciation in his eye. Might make
28:08
Speaker 1: him into a sort of sanitary brick, he reflected over
28:11
Speaker 1: his cigar, and or a friable biscuit. Why not, you
28:16
Speaker 1: might advertise, Why are birds so bright because they digest
28:21
Speaker 1: their food perfectly? Why do they digest their food so
28:24
Speaker 1: perfectly because they have a gizzard? Why has it man
28:29
Speaker 1: a gizzard? Because he can buy Ponderevo's asphalt triturating friable biscuit?
28:36
Speaker 1: Which is better? He delivered the last words in a shout,
28:39
Speaker 1: with his hairy hand flourished in the air. Damn clever, fellow,
28:44
Speaker 1: said my uncle after he had one. I know a
28:47
Speaker 1: man when I see one. He'd do but drunk, I
28:51
Speaker 1: should say, But that only makes some chap brighter if
28:55
Speaker 1: he wants to do that, poster he can z that.
28:59
Speaker 1: I'd dear of his about the horse Radish. There's something
29:03
Speaker 1: in that, George, I'm going to think over that. I
29:07
Speaker 1: may say at once that my poster project came to
29:10
Speaker 1: nothing in the end, though Ewart devoted an interesting week
29:14
Speaker 1: to the matter, he let his unfortunate disposition to irony
29:17
Speaker 1: run away with him. He produced a picture of two
29:20
Speaker 1: beavers with a subtle likeness. He said to myself and
29:24
Speaker 1: my uncle. The likeness to my uncle certainly wasn't half bad,
29:29
Speaker 1: and they were bottling rows and rows of Tono bungay.
29:32
Speaker 1: With the legend modern commerce, it certainly wouldn't have sold
29:36
Speaker 1: a case, though he urged it on me one cheerful evening,
29:40
Speaker 1: on the ground that it would arouse curiosity. In addition,
29:44
Speaker 1: he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively
29:47
Speaker 1: and needlessly nude, but so far as I was able
29:51
Speaker 1: to judge, an admirable likeness, engaged in feats of strength
29:55
Speaker 1: of a gargantuan type before an audience of debauched and
29:58
Speaker 1: shattered ladies. The legend health, beauty strength below gave a
30:05
Speaker 1: needed point to his parody. This he hung up in
30:09
Speaker 1: the studio over the oil shop with a flap of
30:12
Speaker 1: brown paper by way of a curtain over it to
30:15
Speaker 1: accentuate its libelous offense. End of book, second chapter, third
30:23
Speaker 1: parts one to two. Recording by William tom Coe