Tono-Bungay

ROM CAMDEN TOW

leau. And the odd thing is that as I come to this nearer part of my story I find it much more difficult to tell than the clear little perspective memories of the earlier days. Impressions crowd upon one another and overlap one another; I was presently to fall in love again, to be seized by a passion to which I still faintly respond, a passion that still clouds my mind. I came and went between Ealing and my aunt and un

ntral position. We drove the car and sustained the car, she sat in it with a magnificent variety of headgear poised upon her d

s. There they lived when I married. It was a compact flat, with very little for a woman to do in it In those days my aunt, I think, used to find the time heavy upon her hands, and so she took to books and reading,

mind, George,

E

soul. It's jolly lucky for Him and you it's a mind. I've joined the London Library, and I'm going in for

in late one evening with

en, Susan?"

es. "You're just glass to me," she sighed, and then in a note of grave re

ime, a reasonably large place by the standards of the early years of Tono-Bungay. It was a big, rather gaunt villa, with a conservatory and a shrubbery, a tennis-lawn, a quite conside

ic, on a little Elba of dirt, in an atmosphere that defies print. He also, I remember, chose what he considered cheerful contrasts of colours for the painting of the woodwork. This exasperated my aunt extremely-she called him a "Pestilential old Splosher" with an unusual note of earnestness-and he also enraged her into novelti

d this done, she found great joy in the garden and became an ardent rose grower and herbaceous borderer, leaving her Mind, indeed, to damp evenings and the winter months. When I think of her at Beckenham, I always think first of he

herry tree and the need of repairing the party fence. So she resumed her place in society from which she had fallen with the disaster of Wimblehurst. She made a partially facetious study of the etiquette of her position, had cards engraved and retaliated calls. And then she received a

r superintending the loading of two big furniture vans. "Go up and say g

haviour of which I was guilty on that occasion. It's like a scrap from another life. It's all set in what is for me a kind of cutaneous feeling, the feeling of rather ill-cut city clothes, frock coat and grey trousers, and of a high collar and tie worn in sunshine among flowers. I have still a quite vivid memory of the little trapezoidal lawn, of the gathering, and particularly of the hats and feathers of the gathering, of the parlour-maid and the blue tea-cups, and of the magnificent presence of Mrs. Hogber

essed rather elaborately for the occasion, and when she saw me prepared to accompany her in, I think it was a grey suit, she protested that silk hat and frock coat were imperative. I was recalcitrant, she quoted an illustrated paper showing a garden party with the King present, and finally I

es were giving their energies to produce, with the assistance of novels and the illustrated magazines, a moralised version of the afternoon life of the aristocratic class. They hadn't the intellectual or moral enterprise of the upper-class woman, they had no political interests, they had no views about anything, and consequently they

she had recently received from her former nurse at Little Gossdean. Followed a loud account of Little Gossdean and how much she and her eight sisters had been looked up to there. "My poor mother was quite a little Queen there," she said. "And such NICE Common people! People say the country labourer

idge floated through my mi

o a tete-a-tete with a lady whom my aunt introduced as Mrs. Mumble-but then she intr

I began by criticising the local railway service, and that at the third sentence or thereabouts Mrs.

it was I said th

Beckenham, which he assured me time after time was "Quite an old place. Quite an old place." As though I had treated it as new and he meant to be very patient but very convincing. Then we hung

revo," said the clergyman, becoming fearfully e

e housemaid was behind us in a suitable position

amused; "excellent expression!" And I just

tea for

Helps 'em to talk, George. Always talk best after a little n

with a predominant blue eye

," she said in an underto

e success," I sa

en minutes. Stiffer and stiffer. Brittle. He's beginning a dry cough-always

xt door, a pensive, languid-looking little woman with a low voice, and

ittle woman, "that there's somethin

g with great enthusiasm, "ther

ething about a cat, too

" I admitted; "but s

h a differen

sinu

h mo

so muc

he difference,

I said,

and sighed a long, deepl

t to a stale-mate. Fear came in

drowning man. "Those roses-don't you t

re seems to be something in roses-some

," I said

d, "something.

ee it," I said;

aid again very s

dreamily. The drowning sensation returned, the fear and enfeeblemen

of deserting my aunt. But close at hand the big French window of the drawing-room yawned inviting and suggestive. I can feel

breathless, convinced there was no return for me. I was very glad and ashamed of myself, and desperate. By means of a penknife I contrived to break open his cabinet of cigars, drew a chair

, I thought,

I

The Chiselhurst mansion had "grounds" rather than a mere garden, and there was a gardener's cottage and a little lodge

a fly from a dinner at the Runcorns. (Even there he was nibbling at Runcorn with the idea of our great Amalgamation budding in his mind.) I got down there, I suppose, about eleven. I found the two

e, after my first greetings. "I j

E

Fay! S

e means, Ge

ne never knows where to have h

was a bit confused by olives; and-well, I didn't know which wine was which. Had to say THAT each time. It puts your talk

ere right," I said,

tries to pass it off as humorous"-my aunt pulled a grimace-"it isn't humorous! See! We're on the up-g

t you," said my a

e," said my uncle, glancing at hi

rows slightly, swung he

the rest of it. They give themselves airs and expect us to be fish-out-of-water. We aren't going to be. They think we've no Style. Well, we give them Style fo

him the c

aid, truncating one lovingly. "We beat h

garded him, full

d darkly to the cigar

cigar-cutter a

p. Stern, Smoor, Burgundy, all of 'em! She took Stern to-night-and when she tasted it first-you pulled a face, Susan, you did. I saw you. It

t of my clothes," said my aunt. "Howeve

n my uncle so i

ything. Dine every night in evening dress.... Get a brougham or something. Learn up gol

" I

hery, if

unt. "But I'M not ol' Gooch

Style. See! Style! Just all right and one better. T

ed for a space, leaning forwa

about drinking. Clothes. How to hold yourself, and not say jes' the few

up from the horizontal towards the zenith

re cheerful. "Ah, Susan? Beat it out! George, you in particular oug

me the chance of Latin. So far we don't seem to have h

French," said m

Bluff.-It's all a Bluff. Life's a Bluff-practically. That's why it's so important, Susan, for us to attend to Style. Le Steel Say Lum. The Style it's the man. Whad you laughing at, Susan

ink of it, Geor

calmest of its lords. On the whole, I think he did it-thoroughly. I have crowded memories, a little difficult to disentangle, of his experimental stages, his experimental proceedings. It's hard at times to say which memory comes in front of which. I re

t the numerous bright red-shaded tables, at the exotics in great Majolica jars, at the shining ceramic columns and pilasters, at the impressive portraits of Liberal statesmen and heroes, and all that contributes to the ensemble of that palatial spectacle. He was betrayed into a whisper to me, "This is all Right, George!" he said. That artless comment

ry costly, but highly instructive cook, they tried over everything they heard of that roused their curiosity and had any reputation for difficulty,

the fire in the drawing-room confessing once unsuspected pretty arms with all t

ectively, "must feel like

hink, some commo

stcoat and with his hands in his trouser poc

painted, standin' at the fire like that. Sargent! You look-spirited, somehow

on must be altering its habits, giving up high-tea for dinner and taking to evening dress, using the week-end hotels as a practise-ground for these new social arts. A swift and systematic conversion to gentility has been going on, I am convinced, throughout the whole commercial upper-middle class since I was twenty-one. Curiously mixed was the personal quality of the people one saw in these raids. There were conscientiously refined and low-voiced people reeking with proud bashfulness; there were aggressively smart people using pet diminutive

table red-shaded lights and the unsympathetic, unskillful waiters, and the choice of "Thig or Glear, Sir?" I've not dined in

til the gong should gather them; and my aunt is there, very marvelously wrapped about in a dust cloak and a cage-like veil, and there are hotel porters and under-porters very alert, and an obsequious manager; and the tall young lady in black from the office is surprised into

are learning how to spend money. It is made up of financial people, the owners of the businesses that are eating up their competitors, inventors of new sources of wealth, such as ourselves; it includes nearly all America as one sees it on the European stage. It is a various multitude having only this in common: they are a

r; as a class, they talk, think, and dream possessions. Their literature, their Press, turns all on that; immense illustrated weeklies of unsurpassed magnificence guide them in domestic architecture, in the art of owning a garden, in the achievement of the sumptuous in motor-cars, in an elaborate sporting equipment, in the purchase and control of their estates, in travel and stupendous hotels. Once they begin to move they go far a

e bought much furniture. Then he plunged into art patronage, and began to commission pictures and to make presents to churches and institutions. His buying increased with a regular acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes that came to him in the wild excitements of the last four years of his ascent. Towards the climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with large unexpected purchases, he shopped like a mind seeking expression, he shopped to astonish and dismay; shopped crescendo, shopped fortissimo, con molto espressione until the magnificent smash of Crest Hill eroded his shopping for ever. Always it was he who shopped. My aunt did not shine as a purchaser. It is a curious thing, due to I know not w

ver th

women at the Imperial Cosmic Club. She came round to my rooms on the chance of finding me there

"the Things women are

ing?"

no

ratic l

es

ntal

ssessions.... They feel you. They feel your

s I could. "They ARE Go

drinking tea; and then in infinite disgust, "The

ther women's furs, scrutinising their lace, even demanding to handle jewelry, appraising, envying, testing. They have a kind of etiquette. The woman who feels says, "What beautiful sables?" "What lovely lace?" The woman

S the old pawnsh

rmer illusions about aristocracy and the State. Perhaps always possessions have been Booty, and never anywhere has

ntryside. The transaction was Napoleonic; he was told of the place; he said "snap"; there were no preliminary desirings or searchings. Then he came home and said what he had done. Even my aunt was for a day or so measurably awestricken by this exploit in purchase, and we both went down

very wide, broad lawn it is, bordered by a low stone battlement, and there is a great cedar in one corner under whose level branches one looks out across the blue distances of the Weald, blue distances that are made extraordinarily Italian in quality by virtue of the dark masses of that single tree. It is a very high terrace; southward one looks down upon the tops of wayfaring trees and spruces, and westward on a steep slope of beechwood, through which the road comes. One turns back to the still old house, and sees a grey and li

ade him n

" I speculated, "wore ar

it inside still

g present bowed down to us, the past did not. We stood up to the dark, long portraits of the extinguished race-one was a Holbein-and looked them in their sidelong eyes. They looked back at us. We all, I know, felt the enigmatical quality in them. Eve

romantic quest in history, to Palestine. Dreams, loyalties, place and honour, how utterly had it all evaporated, leaving, at last, the final expression of its spirit, these quaint painted smiles, these smiles of triumphant completion! It had evaporated, indeed, long before

cle. "They hadn't much idea of v

retiring a family as the Durgans, so old and completely exhausted a family as the Durgans, was likely to haunt anybody. What living thing now had any conc

, outside the restricted limits of the present Duffield church, and half buried in nettles. "Ichabod," said my uncle. "E

d my aunt, quoting one of the less su

think my unc

pared for the substitution of new lords for old. We were pill vendors he knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul; but then it might have been some polygamous Indian rajah, a great strain on a good man's tact, or some Jew with an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were English, and neither Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully prepared to do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us. He might have preferred Americans for some reasons; they are not so obviously taken from one part of the social system and dumped down in another, and they are more teachable; but in this world we cannot always be chooser

and economical in their costume, the younger still with long, brown-stockinged legs, and the eldest present-there were, we discovered, one or two hidden away-displaying a large gold cross and other aggressive ecclesiastical symbols; there were two or three fox-terriers, a retrieverish mongrel, and an old, bloody-eyed and very evil-smelling St. B

a mixture of conventional scorn and abject respect, and talked to her in a languid, pe

pinched faces of the daughters and the cross upon the eldest's breast. Encouraged by my aunt's manner, the vicar's wife grew patronisi

trade-quite a lady though. And after that he fell off his horse and cracked his brain pan and took to fishing and farming. I'm sure you'll li

and things she brought b

difference, and they thought that as they'd been massacring people, THEY'D

they've had i

t and was quite

examination and had to

s hard as ever she co

his ribs am

is and was carri

wants to talk he puts his finger on it. It makes him so interesting, I

y, and there they are in his study, though

ung it wide. Meanwhile we men conversed, one of the more spirited daughters listened brightly, and the youths lay on the grass at our feet. My uncle offered them cigars, but they both de

mind had soared beyond the limits of the district. "T

s country for that sort of nonsense," he said "Everybody's

said the vicar, "writers and so forth. Quite a distinguished

e Unrest of the Age.... But, as you say, the spirit of the people is against it. In the country, at any r

some attractive casualty in his wife's discourse. "People have always looked up to the house and considering all things, old

duty by the Paris

e influence. An English village isn't complete-People get out o

cigar gingerl

u to liven things up

s cigar and remove

k the place wa

ngs one might do. Cricket-a good English game-sports. Build the chaps a pa

Provided, of course, there

British colour. Then there's a Union Jack for the church and the village school. Pain

ld take up that sort of

aid my uncle. "Merrymakings. Lads and lasses dancing on the vill

May Queen?" asked one of the sons

with the huge virile guffaw of a young

ound is well-a young lady of extremely generous proportions. And no

said the eldest son, and

have something to do with it. And the liberty to wear finery. And generally-freedom from restraint. So that there might be a little difficulty perhaps

just as the Established Church-if you'll excuse me saying it, is a going concern. Just as Oxford is-or Cambridge. Or any of those old, fine old things

smay. Perhaps he was thinking of his countr

"to be done on Mod'un lines with Villag

omes you can imagine; thatch still lingered on a whitewashed cottage or two, pyracanthus, wall-flowers, and daffodils abounded, and an unsystematic orchard or so was white with blossom above and gay with bulbs below. I noted a row of straw beehives, beehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since

and looking back with great satisfaction. The black glare of his goggles rest

dered. "Then one could show when one is in re

" I said. "They're used

e! He sails through the village swelling like an old turkey. And who'll have to scoot the butler? Me! Who's got to forget all she ever knew and start a

o her. "Ah! THIS time it is h

I

nd the great world of London; I saw it more and more in broken glimpses, and sometimes I was working in my little pavilion above Lady Grove for a fortnight together; even when I came up it was often solely for a meeting of the aeronautical society or for one of the learned societies or to consult literature or employ s

g or some fresh rumour of reconstruction. He saved, you will remember, the Parbury Reynolds for the country. Or at times, it would be an interview or my uncle's contribution to some symposium on the "Secret of Success," or such-like topic.

der lady, faced the portrait of the King in the great room at Burlington House, and the next year saw a medallion of my uncle by Ewar

ng his operations than was actually the case. This led to one or two very intimate private dinners, to my inclusion in one or two house parties and various odd offers of introductions and services that I didn't for the most part accept. Among other people who sought me in this way was Archie Garvell, now a smart, impecunious soldier of no particul

ple. I saw the statesmen without their orders and the bishops with but a little purple silk left over from their canonicals, inhaling, not incensen but cigar smoke. I could look at them all the better because, for the most part, they were not looking at me but at my uncle, and calculating consciously or unconsciously how they might use him and assimilate him to their system, the most unpremeditated, subtle, successful and aimless plutocracy that ever encumbered the destinies of mankind. Not one of them,

littl

le bounder wit

y he's m

s, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen," he would begin amidst subsiding applause and adjust those obstinate glasses and thrust back the wings of his frock-coat and rest his hands upon his hips and speak his fragment with ever and again an incidental Zzzz. His hands would fret about him as he spoke, fiddle his glasses, feel in h

op at Wimblehurst he had talked and dreamt of the Romance o

I

ies. It is true, indeed, that towards the climax he became intensely irritable at times and impatient of contradiction, but that, I think, was rather the gnawing uneasiness of sanity than any mental disturbance. But I find it hard either to judge him or convey the full development of him to the reader. I saw too

had come up to me after his coffee to consult me about a certain chalice which in a moment of splendour and under the importunity of a countess he had determined to give to a deserving church in the east-end. I, in a moment of even rasher generosity, had suggested Ewart as a possible artist. Ewart had produced at once an admirable sketch for

ou see, George, they'll begi

lasted

re beginning to ask questions

protested, "

romise and not deliver the goods.... I'll have to write off your friend E

lazing, indolent day. Full moonlight brought out dimly the lines of the receding hills, one wave beyond another; far beyond were the pin-point lights of Leatherhead, and in the foreground the little stage from whic

aid my uncle, ending a l

hen?" I

t Road, eh? It's been a Straight

odd

Bungay?.... Well.... I'd just

d at times;"

ouvert to the Talons-eh? Tono-Bungay. Think of it! It's a great world and a growing world, and I'm glad we'r

me and Zzzzed softly.

ready to resume it. The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some sch

a dog asleep there-always. Always... I'd like to see the old shop again. I daresay old Ruck still stands between the sheep at his door, grinning with all his teeth, and Marbel

them up," I said. "And that dog's been on the pavement this six years-can't sl

s a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time. This Palestine business-the daring of it.... It's, it's

could see and hear." He waved his

hap, Whitman! Fine old chap! Queer, you can't quote him. ... And these millions aren't anything. There's the millions over seas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, M'rocco, Africa generally, 'Merica.... Well, here we are, with power, with leisure, pic

s wonderful, Ge

rgy," I said sof

g the world practically. Running it faster and faster. Creative. There's that Palestine canal affair. Marvellous idee! Suppose we take that up, suppose we let ourselves in for it, us and the others, and run that water slui

uncle. "Making tunnels.... New countries.... New c

end we shouldn't be very big. There's difficulties but I'm equal to them. We're still a bit soft in our bones, but they'll harden all right.... I suppose,

ity and I must confess it struck me that on

' been reading it again. Made me buy Lady Grove.) Well, we got to run the country, George. It's ours. Make it a Scientific Organised Business Enterprise. Put idees into it. 'Lectrify it. Run the Press.

to a deep

for a time

man who has at last emerged with ultimat

id after a s

s trembled in the balance. Then he spoke as one who speaks from the ve

o whist, Ruck and Marbel and all, and give 'em ten minutes of my mind, George. Straight from the shoulder.

that for some

a new place in a tone

Boom," he

p and take our places. It's almost expected. We take a hand. That's where our Democracy differs from America. Over there a ma

s. Suddenly I kicked my feet in the air, rolled on my sid

t mean it

what,

y funds. Reciprocal advan

driving at

hey'd never

d feebly; and, "W

eer, they've done snippets! After all Tono-Bungay-it's not like a turf commission agent or anything like that!... There h

we'd differed on

." I ran my mind over various possibilities. "Why not take a leaf from a socialist tract I came upon yesterday. Chap says we're all getting delocalised. Beautiful

ished me by lo

imate trade, perfec'ly legitimate. Good value and a good article.... When I come up here and tell you plans and exchange idees-you sneer at me. You do. Y

ept in touch with modern thought. For example, he was, I know, greatly

dental career began only when he was dead and the romantic type of mind was free to elaborate his character. I do believe that my uncle would have made a far less egregious smash if there had been no Napoleonic legend to misguide him. He was in many ways better and infinitely kinder than his c

the Man of Destiny, and he even secured in Geneva, though he never brought home, an old coach in which Buonaparte might have ridden; he crowded the quiet walls of Lady Grove with engravings and figures of him,

ers of one hand stuck between his waistcoat-buttons and his chin sunken, thinking,-the most preposterous little fat

used my aunt a considerable amount of vexation after he had read Napoleon and the Fair Sex, because for a time that roused him to a sense of a side of life he ha

n Scrymgeour who wrote novels and was organising a weekly magazine. I elbowed a large lady who was saying something about them, but I didn't need to hear the thing she said to perceive the relationship of the two. It hit me like a placard on a hoarding. I was amazed the whole gathering did not see it. Perhaps they did. She was wearing a remarkably fine diamond necklace, much too fine for journalism, and regarding him with that quality of question

l to the convention of their relations that he should go relentlessly whenever business called, and it was generally arranged that it did call. To him women were an incident, it was understood between them; Ambition was the master-passion. A great world called him and the noble hunger for Power.

fretting at her heart, but there I simply underestimated her. She didn't hear for some time and when she did hear she was extremely angry and energetic. The sentimental situation didn't trouble her for a moment. She decided that

ut my aunt's originality of outlook was never so invincible. "Men don't tell on

and men! It isn't women and men-it's him

is old nonsense.... I'm not going to let him show off what a silly old lobster he is to other wome

indeed,-in abdominal be

so well had never heard that much of intimacy between them. At any rate it was a concerned and preoccupied "God in the Car" I had to deal with in the next few days, unusually Zzzz-y an

ke a novel of it as upset a huge pailful of attenuated and adulterated female soul upon this occasion. My aunt did not appear in that, even remotely. So that it is doubtful if

towards my aunt, and she, I noted, after an amazing check or so, stopped that stream of kindly abuse that had flowed for so long and had been so great a refreshment in their lives. They were both the poorer for its cessation, both less happy. She devoted herself more and more to Lady Grove and the humours and complications of its m

ng years. He dreaded, I think, having to explain, he feared our jests might pierce unwittingly to the truth. Even in the privacy of his mind he would not face the truth. He was accumulating unrealisable securities in his safes until they hung a potential avalanche over the economic world. But his buying became a fever, and his restless desire to keep it up with himself that he was making a triumphant progress to limitless wealth gnawed deeper and

t a dinner. "This house, George," he said. "It's a misfit. There's no elbow-room

! The man in a cherry-coloured coat. He watched you! H

, "much as he does now.

? What are they all, the lot of 'em? Dead as Mutton! They just stuck in the mud. They didn't even rise

f Failure,-they

t I'm not. Exactly. It isn't suita

Zzzz. Why! it's like a discord-it jars-even to have the telephone.... There's nothing, nothing except the terrace, that's worth a Rap. It's all dar

ught to think myself lucky to get this place! Every time I meet him I can see him

he

ly just beginning to experiment with auxiliary collapsible balloons, and all the time the shine of his glasses was wandering awa

s that ends a long clear day. A beautiful peace, it was, to wreck for ever. And there was my uncle, the modern man of power, in his grey top-

is arm. "That's the place

I had been thinkin

got

t w

eth Century house! Tha

eristic phrases wa

ven, George!" he said. "Eh? Four

he winds up h

ought to be, George-

e," I

e-See? I been thinking of it, George! Looking out all

rning sun i

e, George,-li

ecture room of the Royal Academy on account of a certain grandiose courage in it, but with him he associated from time to time a number of fellow professionals, stonemasons, sanitary engineers, painters, sculptors, scribes, metal workers, wood carvers, furniture designers, ceramic specialists, landscape gardeners, and the man who designs the arrangement and ventilation of the various new houses in the London Zoological Gardens. In addition he had his own ideas. The thing occupied his mind at all times, but it held it completely from Friday night to Monday morning. He would come down to Lady Grove on Friday night in a crowded motor-car that almost dripped arc

at forty-foot arch, with the granite ball behind him-the astronomical ball, brass coopered, that represented the world, with a little adjustable tube of lenses on a gun-metal arm that focussed the sun upon just that point of the earth on which it chanced to be shining ver

and insists on the evidence of undisciplined appetites in face and form, as he

Wealden ridges. On either hand the walls of his irrelevant unmeaning palace rise at one time he had working in tha

the south. At another time he caught a suggestion from some city restaurant and made a billiard-room roofed with plate glass beneath the waters of his ornamental lake. He furnished one wing while its roof still awaited completion. He had a swimming bath thirty feet square next to his bedroom upstairs, and to crown it all he commenced a great wall to hold all his dominions together, free from the invasion of common men. It was a ten-foot wall, glass surmounted, and had i

r or later they all seem to bring their luck to the test of realisation, try to make their fluid opulence coagulate out as bricks and mortar,

nforeseeing outrage upon the peace of nature, I am reminded of a chat I had with the vicar one bleak day after he had witnessed a glide. He talked to me of aerona

l.... A marvellous invention! But it will take you a long time, sir

ed at m

e look of this val

," I remarked, guessin

number of strangers introduced into the villages about here by these operations, working-men chiefly, a little embarrassing. It put us out. They bring a new spirit into the place; betting-ideas-all sorts of queer notions. Our publicans like it, of course. And they come and sleep in one's outhouses-and make the place a little

ore than remarkable thi

think nothing of it now at all-c

rows. "Really stup

de-the old turf

to look up to Lady Grove," he said, and smiled in s

eadjust themse

he phrase. "Of c

s bound to come right again-a comforting thought. Yes. After all, Lady Gr

cupations. "I should think twice," he remarked, "before I trusted mysel

g and went his way, bo

ked no denial that this time it was not just changes that were coming in his world, but that all his world lay open and