Well, you begin to understand my breakdown now, I have been copious
enough with these apologia. My work got more and more spiritless, my
behaviour degenerated, my punctuality declined; I was more and more
outclassed in the steady grind by my fellow-students. Such supplies of
moral energy as I still had at command shaped now in the direction of
serving Marion rather than science.
I fell away dreadfully, more and more I shirked and skulked; the humped
men from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent,
hard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen
rivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the
lists. Then indeed I made it a point of honour to show by my public
disregard of every rule that I really did not even pretend to try.
So one day I found myself sitting in a mood of considerable
astonishment in Kensington Gardens, reacting on a recent heated
interview with the school Registrar in which I had displayed more
spirit than sense. I was astonished chiefly at my stupendous falling
away from all the militant ideals of unflinching study I had brought up
from Wimblehurst. I had displayed myself, as the Registrar put it, “an
unmitigated rotter.” My failure to get marks in the written examination
had only been equalled by the insufficiency of my practical work.
“I ask you,” the Registrar had said, “what will become of you when your
scholarship runs out?”
It certainly was an interesting question. What _was_ going to become of
me?
It was clear there would be nothing for me in the schools as I had once
dared to hope; there seemed, indeed, scarcely anything in the world
except an illpaid assistantship in some provincial organized Science
School or grammar school. I knew that for that sort of work, without a
degree or any qualification, one earned hardly a bare living and had
little leisure to struggle up to anything better. If only I had even as
little as fifty pounds I might hold out in London and take my B.Sc.
degree, and quadruple my chances! My bitterness against my uncle
returned at the thought. After all, he had some of my money still, or
ought to have. Why shouldn’t I act within my rights, threaten to ‘take
proceedings’? I meditated for a space on the idea, and then returned to
the Science Library and wrote him a very considerable and occasionally
pungent letter.
That letter to my uncle was the nadir of my failure. Its remarkable
consequences, which ended my student days altogether, I will tell in
the next chapter.
I say “my failure.” Yet there are times when I can even doubt whether
that period was a failure at all, when I become defensively critical of
those exacting courses I did not follow, the encyclopaedic process of
scientific exhaustion from which I was distracted. My mind was not
inactive, even if it fed on forbidden food. I did not learn what my
professors and demonstrators had resolved I should learn, but I learnt
many things. My mind learnt to swing wide and to swing by itself.
After all, those other fellows who took high places in the College
examinations and were the professor’s model boys haven’t done so
amazingly. Some are professors themselves, some technical experts; not
one can show things done such as I, following my own interest, have
achieved. For I have built boats that smack across the water like
whiplashes; no one ever dreamt of such boats until I built them; and I
have surprised three secrets that are more than technical discoveries,
in the unexpected hiding-places of Nature. I have come nearer flying
than any man has done. Could I have done as much if I had had a turn
for obeying those rather mediocre professors at the college who
proposed to train my mind? If I had been _trained_ in research—that
ridiculous contradiction in terms—should I have done more than produce
additions to the existing store of little papers with blunted
conclusions, of which there are already too many? I see no sense in
mock modesty upon this matter. Even by the standards of worldly success
I am, by the side of my fellow-students, no failure. I had my F.R.S. by
the time I was thirty-seven, and if I am not very wealthy poverty is as
far from me as the Spanish Inquisition. Suppose I had stamped down on
the head of my wandering curiosity, locked my imagination in a box just
when it wanted to grow out to things, worked by so-and-so’s excellent
method and so-and-so’s indications, where should I be now?
I may be all wrong in this. It may be I should be a far more efficient
man than I am if I had cut off all those divergent expenditures of
energy, plugged up my curiosity about society with more currently
acceptable rubbish or other, abandoned Ewart, evaded Marion instead of
pursuing her, concentrated. But I don’t believe it!
However, I certainly believed it completely and was filled with remorse
on that afternoon when I sat dejectedly in Kensington Gardens and
reviewed, in the light of the Registrar’s pertinent questions my first
two years in London.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE DAWN COMES, AND MY UNCLE APPEARS IN A NEW SILK HAT
I
Throughout my student days I had not seen my uncle. I refrained from
going to him in spite of an occasional regret that in this way I
estranged myself from my aunt Susan, and I maintained a sulky attitude
of mind towards him. And I don’t think that once in all that time I
gave a thought to that mystic word of his that was to alter all the
world for us. Yet I had not altogether forgotten it. It was with a
touch of memory, dim transient perplexity if no more—why did this thing
seem in some way personal?—that I read a new inscription upon the
hoardings:
THE SECRET OF VIGOUR,
TONO-BUNGAY.
That was all. It was simple and yet in some way arresting. I found
myself repeating the word after I had passed; it roused one’s attention
like the sound of distant guns. “Tono”—what’s that? and deep, rich,
unhurrying;—“_bun_—gay!”
Then came my uncle’s amazing telegram, his answer to my hostile note:
“_Come to me at once you are wanted three hundred a year certain
tono-bungay._”
“By Jove!” I cried, “of course!
“It’s something—. A patent-medicine! I wonder what he wants with me.”
In his Napoleonic way my uncle had omitted to give an address. His
telegram had been handed in at Farringdon Road, and after complex
meditations I replied to Ponderevo, Farringdon Road, trusting to the
rarity of our surname to reach him.
“Where are you?” I asked.
His reply came promptly:
“192A, Raggett Street, E.C.”
The next day I took an unsanctioned holiday after the morning’s
lecture. I discovered my uncle in a wonderfully new silk hat—oh, a
splendid hat! with a rolling brim that went beyond the common fashion.
It was decidedly too big for him—that was its only fault. It was stuck
on the back of his head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt
sleeves. He welcomed me with a forgetfulness of my bitter satire and my
hostile abstinence that was almost divine. His glasses fell off at the
sight of me. His round inexpressive eyes shone brightly. He held out
his plump short hand.
“Here we are, George! What did I tell you? Needn’t whisper it now, my
boy. Shout it—_loud!_ spread it about! Tell every one! Tono—TONO—,
TONO-BUNGAY!”
Raggett Street, you must understand, was a thoroughfare over which some
one had distributed large quantities of cabbage stumps and leaves. It
opened out of the upper end of Farringdon Street, and 192A was a shop
with the plate-glass front coloured chocolate, on which several of the
same bills I had read upon the hoardings had been stuck. The floor was
covered by street mud that had been brought in on dirty boots, and
three energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps,
were packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw
and confusion. The counter was littered with these same swathed
bottles, of a pattern then novel but now amazingly familiar in the
world, the blue paper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude
giant, and the printed directions of how under practically all
circumstances to take Tono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side
opened a staircase down which I seem to remember a girl descending with
a further consignment of bottles, and the rest of the background was a
high partition, also chocolate, with “Temporary Laboratory” inscribed
upon it in white letters, and over a door that pierced it, “Office.”
Here I rapped, inaudible amid much hammering, and then entered
unanswered to find my uncle, dressed as I have described, one hand
gripping a sheath of letters, and the other scratching his head as he
dictated to one of three toiling typewriter girls. Behind him was a
further partition and a door inscribed “ABSOLUTELY PRIVATE—NO
ADMISSION,” thereon. This partition was of wood painted the universal
chocolate, up to about eight feet from the ground, and then of glass.
Through the glass I saw dimly a crowded suggestion of crucibles and
glass retorts, and—by Jove!—yes!—the dear old Wimblehurst air-pump
still! It gave me quite a little thrill—that air-pump! And beside it
was the electrical machine—but something—some serious trouble—had
happened to that. All these were evidently placed on a shelf just at
the level to show.
“Come right into the sanctum,” said my uncle, after he had finished
something about “esteemed consideration,” and whisked me through the
door into a room that quite amazingly failed to verify the promise of
that apparatus. It was papered with dingy wall-paper that had peeled in
places; it contained a fireplace, an easy-chair with a cushion, a table
on which stood two or three big bottles, a number of cigar-boxes on the
mantel, whisky Tantalus and a row of soda syphons. He shut the door
after me carefully.
“Well, here we are!” he said. “Going strong! Have a whisky, George?
No!—Wise man! Neither will I! You see me at it! At it—hard!”
“Hard at what?”
“Read it,” and he thrust into my hand a label—that label that has now
become one of the most familiar objects of the chemist’s shop, the
greenish-blue rather old-fashioned bordering, the legend, the name in
good black type, very clear, and the strong man all set about with
lightning flashes above the double column of skilful lies in red—the
label of Tono-Bungay. “It’s afloat,” he said, as I stood puzzling at
this. “It’s afloat. I’m afloat!” And suddenly he burst out singing in
that throaty tenor of his—
“I’m afloat, I’m afloat on the fierce flowing tide,
The ocean’s my home and my bark is my bride!
“Ripping song that is, George. Not so much a bark as a solution, but
still—it does! Here we are at it! By-the-by! Half a mo’! I’ve thought
of a thing.” He whisked out, leaving me to examine this nuclear spot at
leisure while his voice became dictatorial without. The den struck me
as in its large grey dirty way quite unprecedented and extraordinary.
The bottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that
dear old apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patiently
“on the shelf” than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. I saw
nothing for it but to sit down in the chair and await my uncle’s
explanations. I remarked a frock-coat with satin lapels behind the
door; there was a dignified umbrella in the corner and a clothes-brush
and a hat-brush stood on a side-table. My uncle returned in five
minutes looking at his watch—a gold watch—“Gettin’ lunch-time, George,”
he said. “You’d better come and have lunch with me!”
“How’s Aunt Susan?” I asked.
“Exuberant. Never saw her so larky. This has bucked her up something
wonderful—all this.”
“All what?”
“Tono-Bungay.”
“What is Tono-Bungay?” I asked.
My uncle hesitated. “Tell you after lunch, George,” he said. “Come
along!” and having locked up the sanctum after himself, led the way
along a narrow dirty pavement, lined with barrows and swept at times by
avalanche-like porters bearing burthens to vans, to Farringdon Street.
He hailed a passing cab superbly, and the cabman was infinitely
respectful. “Schäfer’s,” he said, and off we went side by side—and with
me more and more amazed at all these things—to Schäfer’s Hotel, the
second of the two big places with huge lace curtain-covered windows,
near the corner of Blackfriars Bridge.
I will confess I felt a magic charm in our relative proportions as the
two colossal, pale-blue-and-red liveried porters of Schäfers’ held open
the inner doors for us with a respectful salutation that in some manner
they seemed to confine wholly to my uncle. Instead of being about four
inches taller, I felt at least the same size as he, and very much
slenderer. Still more respectful—waiters relieved him of the new hat
and the dignified umbrella, and took his orders for our lunch. He gave
them with a fine assurance.
He nodded to several of the waiters.
“They know me, George, already,” he said. “Point me out. Live place!
Eye for coming men!”
The detailed business of the lunch engaged our attention for a while,
and then I leant across my plate. “And NOW?” said I.
“It’s the secret of vigour. Didn’t you read that label?”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s selling like hot cakes.”
“And what is it?” I pressed.
“Well,” said my uncle, and then leant forward and spoke softly under
cover of his hand, “It’s nothing more or less than...”
(But here an unfortunate scruple intervenes. After all, Tono-Bungay is
still a marketable commodity and in the hands of purchasers, who bought
it from—among other vendors—me. No! I am afraid I cannot give it away—)
“You see,” said my uncle in a slow confidential whisper, with eyes very
wide and a creased forehead, “it’s nice because of the” (here he
mentioned a flavouring matter and an aromatic spirit), “it’s
stimulating because of” (here he mentioned two very vivid tonics, one
with a marked action on the kidney.) “And the” (here he mentioned two
other ingredients) “makes it pretty intoxicating. Cocks their tails.
Then there’s” (but I touch on the essential secret.) “And there you
are. I got it out of an old book of recipes—all except the” (here he
mentioned the more virulent substance, the one that assails the
kidneys), “which is my idea! Modern touch! There you are!”
He reverted to the direction of our lunch.
Presently he was leading the way to the lounge—sumptuous piece in red
morocco and yellow glazed crockery, with incredible vistas of settees
and sofas and things, and there I found myself grouped with him in two
excessively upholstered chairs with an earthenware Moorish table
between us bearing coffee and Benedictine, and I was tasting the
delights of a tenpenny cigar. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in an
habituated manner, and he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious
and most unexpectedly a little bounder, round the end of it. It was
just a trivial flaw upon our swagger, perhaps that we both were clear
our cigars had to be “mild.” He got obliquely across the spaces of his
great armchair so as to incline confidentially to my ear, he curled up
his little legs, and I, in my longer way, adopted a corresponding
receptive obliquity. I felt that we should strike an unbiased observer
as a couple of very deep and wily and developing and repulsive persons.
“I want to let you into this”—puff—“George,” said my uncle round the
end of his cigar. “For many reasons.”
His voice grew lower and more cunning. He made explanations that to my
inexperience did not completely explain. I retain an impression of a
long credit and a share with a firm of wholesale chemists, of a credit
and a prospective share with some pirate printers, of a third share for
a leading magazine and newspaper proprietor.
“I played ’em off one against the other,” said my uncle. I took his
point in an instant. He had gone to each of them in turn and said the
others had come in.
“I put up four hundred pounds,” said my uncle, “myself and my all. And
you know—”
He assumed a brisk confidence. “I hadn’t five hundred pence. At least—”
For a moment he really was just a little embarrassed. “I _did_” he
said, “produce capital. You see, there was that trust affair of yours—I
ought, I suppose—in strict legality—to have put that straight first.
Zzzz....
“It was a bold thing to do,” said my uncle, shifting the venue from the
region of honour to the region of courage. And then with a
characteristic outburst of piety, “Thank God it’s all come right!
“And now, I suppose, you ask where do YOU come in? Well, fact is I’ve
always believed in you, George. You’ve got—it’s a sort of dismal grit.
Bark your shins, rouse you, and you’ll go! You’d rush any position you
had a mind to rush. I know a bit about character, George—trust me.
You’ve got—” He clenched his hands and thrust them out suddenly, and at
the same time said, with explosive violence, “Wooosh! Yes. You have!
The way you put away that Latin at Wimblehurst; I’ve never forgotten
it.
“Wo-oo-oo-osh! Your science and all that! Wo-oo-oo-osh! I know my
limitations. There’s things I can do, and” (he spoke in a whisper, as
though this was the first hint of his life’s secret) “there’s things I
can’t. Well, I can create this business, but I can’t make it go. I’m
too voluminous—I’m a boiler-over, not a simmering stick-at-it._You_
keep on _hotting up and hotting up_. Papin’s digester. That’s you,
steady and long and piling up,—then, wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. Come in and
stiffen these niggers. Teach them that wo-oo-oo-oo-osh. There you are!
That’s what I’m after. You! Nobody else believes you’re more than a
boy. Come right in with me and be a man. Eh, George? Think of the fun
of it—a thing on the go—a Real Live Thing! Wooshing it up! Making it
buzz and spin! Whoo-oo-oo.”—He made alluring expanding circles in the
air with his hand. “Eh?”
His proposal, sinking to confidential undertones again, took more
definite shape. I was to give all my time and energy to developing and
organising. “You shan’t write a single advertisement, or give a single
assurance” he declared. “I can do all that.” And the telegram was no
flourish; I was to have three hundred a year. Three hundred a year.
(“That’s nothing,” said my uncle, “the thing to freeze on to, when the
time comes, is your tenth of the vendor’s share.”)
Three hundred a year certain, anyhow! It was an enormous income to me.
For a moment I was altogether staggered. Could there be that much money
in the whole concern? I looked about me at the sumptuous furniture of
Schäfer’s Hotel. No doubt there were many such incomes.
My head was spinning with unwonted Benedictine and Burgundy.
“Let me go back and look at the game again,” I said. “Let me see
upstairs and round about.”