Tono-Bungay - H. G. Wells (my reading book txt) 📗

Tono-Bungay

By H. G. Wells.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Book I: The Days Before Tono-Bungay Was Invented I: Of Bladesover House, and My Mother; and the Constitution of Society I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX II: Of My Launch Into the World and the Last I Saw of Bladesover I II III IV V VI VII VIII III: The Wimblehurst Apprenticeship I II III IV V VI VII Book II: The Rise of Tono-Bungay I: How I Became a London Student and Went Astray II III IV V VI II: The Dawn Comes, and My Uncle Appears in a New Silk Hat I II III IV V VI III: How We Made Tono-Bungay Hum I II IV: Marion I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI Book III: The Great Days of Tono-Bungay I: The Hardingham Hotel, and How We Became Big People I II III IV V VI II: Our Progress from Camden Town to Crest Hill I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X III: Soaring I II III IV V VI VII IV: How I Stole the Heaps of Quap from Mordet Island I II III IV V VI VII Book IV: The Aftermath of Tono-Bungay I: The Stick of the Rocket I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX II: Love Among the Wreckage I II III IV III: Night and the Open Sea I II III IV List of Illustrations Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Book I The Days Before Tono-Bungay Was Invented I Of Bladesover House, and My Mother; and the Constitution of Society I

Most people in this world seem to live “in character”; they have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with another and true to the rules of their type. You can speak of them as being of this sort of people or that. They are, as theatrical people say, no more (and no less) than “character actors.” They have a class, they have a place, they know what is becoming in them and what is due to them, and their proper size of tombstone tells at last how properly they have played the part. But there is also another kind of life that is not so much living as a miscellaneous tasting of life. One gets hit by some unusual transverse force, one is jerked out of one’s stratum and lives crosswise for the rest of the time, and, as it were, in a succession of samples. That has been my lot, and that is what has set me at last writing something in the nature of a novel. I have got an unusual series of impressions that I want very urgently to tell. I have seen life at very different levels, and at all these levels I have seen it with a sort of intimacy and in good faith. I have been a native in many social countries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, my cousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten illegal snacks⁠—the unjustifiable gifts of footmen⁠—in pantries, and been despised for my want of style (and subsequently married and divorced) by the daughter of a gasworks clerk; and⁠—to go to my other extreme⁠—I was once⁠—oh, glittering days!⁠—an item in the house-party of a countess. She was, I admit, a countess with a financial aspect, but still, you know, a countess. I’ve seen these people at various angles. At the dinner-table I’ve met not simply the titled but the great. On one occasion⁠—it is my brightest memory⁠—I upset my champagne over the trousers of the greatest statesman in the empire⁠—Heaven forbid I should be so invidious as to name him!⁠—in the warmth of our mutual admiration.

And once (though it is the most incidental thing in my life) I murdered a man.⁠ ⁠…

Yes, I’ve seen a curious variety of people and ways of living altogether. Odd people they all are great and small, very much alike at bottom and curiously different on their surfaces. I wish I had ranged just a little further both up and down, seeing I have ranged so far. Royalty must be worth knowing and very great fun. But my contacts with princes have been limited to