Tono Bungay

People say that my uncle lost his head at the crest of his fortunes, but if one may tell so much truth of a man one has in a manner loved, he never had very much head to lose.  He was always imaginative, erratic, inconsistent, recklessly inexact, and his inundation of wealth merely gave him scope for these qualities.  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 much of him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects.  Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic, and—­in some subtle fundamental way that I find difficult to define—­absurd.

There stands out—­because of the tranquil beauty of its setting perhaps—­a talk we had in the veranda of the little pavilion near my worksheds behind Crest Hill in which my aeroplanes and navigable balloons were housed.  It was one of many similar conversations, and I do not know why it in particular should survive its fellows.  It happens so.  He 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 the sacred vessel surrounded by a sort of wreath of Millies with open arms and wings and had drawn fifty pounds on the strength of it.  After that came a series of vexatious delays.  The chalice became less and less of a commercial man’s chalice, acquired more and more the elusive quality of the Holy Grail, and at last even the drawing receded.

My uncle grew restive….”You see, George, they’ll begin to want the blasted thing!”

“What blasted thing?”

“That chalice, damn it!  They’re beginning to ask questions.  It isn’t Business, George.”

“It’s art,” I protested, “and religion.”

“That’s all very well.  But it’s not a good ad for us, George, to make a promise and not deliver the goods….  I’ll have to write off your friend Ewart as a bad debt, that’s what it comes to, and go to a decent firm.”...

We sat outside on deck chairs in the veranda of the pavilion, smoked, drank whisky, and, the chalice disposed of, meditated.  His temporary annoyance passed.  It was an altogether splendid summer night, following a blazing, 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 which I used to start upon my gliders gleamed like wet steel.  The season must have been high June, for down in the woods that hid the lights of the Lady Grove windows, I remember the nightingales thrilled and gurgled….

“We got here, George,” said my uncle, ending a long pause.  “Didn’t I say?”

“Say!—­when?” I asked.

“In that hole in the To’nem Court Road, eh?  It’s been a Straight Square Fight, and here we are!”

I nodded.

“’Member me telling you—­Tono-Bungay?....  Well….  I’d just that afternoon thought of it!”

“I’ve fancied at times;” I admitted.

“It’s a great world, George, nowadays, with a fair chance for every one who lays hold of things.  The career ouvert to the Talons—­eh?  Tono-Bungay.  Think of it!  It’s a great world and a growing world, and I’m glad we’re in it—­and getting a pull.  We’re getting big people, George.  Things come to us.  Eh?  This Palestine thing.”...

He meditated for a time and Zzzzed softly.  Then he became still.

His theme was taken up by a cricket in the grass until he himself was ready to resume it.  The cricket too seemed to fancy that in some scheme of its own it had got there.  “Chirrrrrrup” it said; “chirrrrrrup.”

“Lord, what a place that was at Wimblehurst!” he broke out.  “If ever I get a day off we’ll motor there, George, and run over that dog that sleeps in the High Street.  Always was 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, silly beggar! comes out with his white apron on and a pencil stuck behind his ear, trying to look awake…  Wonder if they know it’s me?  I’d like ’em somehow to know it’s me.”

“They’ll have had the International Tea Company and all sorts of people cutting them up,” I said.  “And that dog’s been on the pavement this six years—­can’t sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor-horns and its shattered nerves.”

“Movin’ everywhere,” said my uncle.  “I expect you’re right….  It’s a big time we’re in, George.  It’s a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time.  This Palestine business—­the daring of it….  It’s, it’s a Process, George.  And we got our hands on it.  Here we sit—­with our hands on it, George.  Entrusted.

“It seems quiet to—­night.  But if we could see and hear.”  He waved his cigar towards Leatherhead and London.

“There they are, millions, George.  Jes’ think of what they’ve been up to to-day—­those ten millions—­each one doing his own particular job.  You can’t grasp it.  It’s like old Whitman says—­what is it he says?  Well, anyway it’s like old Whitman.  Fine chap, 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, picked out—­because we’ve been energetic, because we’ve seized opportunities, because we’ve made things hum when other people have waited for them to hum.  See?  Here we are—­with our hands on it.  Big people.  Big growing people.  In a sort of way,—­Forces.”

He paused.  “It’s wonderful, George,” he said.

“Anglo-Saxon energy,” I said softly to the night.

“That’s it, George—­energy.  It’s put things in our grip—­threads, wires, stretching out and out, George, from that little office of ours, out to West Africa, out to Egypt, out to Inja, out east, west, north and south.  Running 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 sluice from the Mediterranean into the Dead Sea Valley—­think of the difference it will make!  All the desert blooming like a rose, Jericho lost for ever, all the Holy Places under water….  Very likely destroy Christianity.”...

He mused for a space.  “Cuttin’ canals,” murmured my uncle.  “Making tunnels….  New countries….  New centres….  Zzzz….  Finance….  Not only Palestine.

“I wonder where we shall get before we done, George?  We got a lot of big things going.  We got the investing public sound and sure.  I don’t see why in the end we shouldn’t be very big.  There’s diffculties but I’m equal to them.  We’re still a bit soft in our bones, but they’ll harden all right….  I suppose, after all, I’m worth something like a million, George, cleared up and settled.  If I got out of things now.  It’s a great time, George, a wonderful time!”...

I glanced through the twilight at his convexity and I must confess it struck me that on the whole he wasn’t particularly good value.

“We got our hands on things, George, us big people.  We got to hang together, George run the show.  Join up with the old order like that mill-wheel of Kipling’s. (Finest thing he ever wrote, George; I jes’ 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.  Run all sorts of developments.  All sorts of developments.  I been talking to Lord Boom.  I been talking to all sorts of people.  Great things.  Progress.  The world on business lines.  Only jes’ beginning.”...

He fell into a deep meditation.

He Zzzzed for a time and ceased.

“Yes,” he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with ultimate solutions to the profoundest problems.

“What?” I said after a seemly pause.

My uncle hung fire for a moment and it seemed to me the fate of nations trembled in the balance.  Then he spoke as one who speaks from the very bottom of his heart—­and I think it was the very bottom of his heart.

“I’d jes’ like to drop into the Eastry Arms, jes’ when all those beggars in the parlour are sittin’ down to whist, Ruck and Marbel and all, and give ’em ten minutes of my mind, George.  Straight from the shoulder.  Jes’ exactly what I think of them.  It’s a little thing, but I’d like to do it jes’ once before I die.”...

He rested on that for some time Zzzz-ing.

Then he broke out at a new place in a tone of detached criticism.

“There’s Boom,” he reflected.

“It’s a wonderful system this old British system, George.  It’s staid and stable and yet it has a place for new men.  We come up and take our places.  It’s almost expected.  We take a hand.  That’s where our Democracy differs from America.  Over there a man succeeds; all he gets is money.  Here there’s a system open to every one—­practically….  Chaps like Boom—­come from nowhere.”

His voice ceased.  I reflected upon the spirit of his words.  Suddenly I kicked my feet in the air, rolled on my side and sat up suddenly on my deck chair with my legs down.

“You don’t mean it!” I said.

“Mean what, George?”

“Subscription to the party funds.  Reciprocal advantage.  Have we got to that?”

“Whad you driving at, George?”

“You know.  They’d never do it, man!”

“Do what?” he said feebly; and, “Why shouldn’t they?”

“They’d not even go to a baronetcy.  No!....  And yet, of course, there’s Boom!  And Collingshead and Gorver.  They’ve done beer, they’ve done snippets!  After all Tono-Bungay—­it’s not like a turf commission agent or anything like that!...  There have of course been some very gentlemanly commission agents.  It isn’t like a fool of a scientific man who can’t make money!”

My uncle grunted; we’d differed on that issue before.

A malignant humour took possession of me.  “What would they call you?” I speculated.  “The vicar would like Duffield.  Too much like Duffer!  Difficult thing, a title.”  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 word—­delocalised!  Why not be the first delocalised peer?  That gives you—­Tono-Bungay!  There is a Bungay, you know.  Lord Tono of Bungay—­in bottles everywhere.  Eh?”

My uncle astonished me by losing his temper.

“Damn it.  George, you don’t seem to see I’m serious!  You’re always sneering at Tono-Bungay!  As though it was some sort of swindle.  It was perfec’ly legitimate 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.  You don’t see—­it’s a big thing.  It’s a big thing.  You got to get used to new circumstances.  You got to face what lies before us.  You got to drop that tone.”