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

madness of the world that sanctions such a thing? Perhaps you don’t. At times use and wont certainly blinded me. If it had not been for Ewart, I don’t think I should have had an inkling of the wonderfulness of this development of my fortunes; I should have grown accustomed to it, fallen in with all its delusions as completely as my uncle presently did. He was immensely proud of the flotation. “They’ve never been given such value,” he said, “for a dozen years.” But Ewart, with his gesticulating hairy hands and bony wrists, his single-handed chorus to all this as it played itself over again in my memory, and he kept my fundamental absurdity illuminated for me during all this astonishing time.

“It’s just on all fours with the rest of things,” he remarked; “only more so. You needn’t think you’re anything out of the way.”

I remember one disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had been to Paris on a mysterious expedition to “rough in” some work for a rising American sculptor. This young man had a commission for an allegorical figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State Capitol, and he needed help. Ewart had returned with his hair cut en brosse and with his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I remember, a bicycling suit of purplish-brown, baggy beyond ageing⁠—the only creditable thing about it was that it had evidently not been made for him⁠—a voluminous black tie, a decadent soft felt hat and several French expletives of a sinister description. “Silly clothes, aren’t they?” he said at the sight of my startled eye. “I don’t know why I got’m. They seemed all right over there.”

He had come down to our Raggett Street place to discuss a benevolent project of mine for a poster by him, and he scattered remarkable discourse over the heads (I hope it was over the heads) of our bottlers.

“What I like about it all, Ponderevo, is its poetry.⁠ ⁠… That’s where we get the pull of the animals. No animal would ever run a factory like this. Think!⁠ ⁠… One remembers the Beaver, of course. He might very possibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round ’em and sell ’em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I’ll admit, him and his dams, but after all there’s a sort of protection about ’em, a kind of muddy practicality! They prevent things getting at him. And it’s not your poetry only. It’s the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to poet⁠—soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty⁠—in a bottle⁠—the magic philtre! Like a fairy tale.⁠ ⁠…

“Think of the people to whom your bottles of footle go! (I’m calling it footle, Ponderevo, out of praise,” he said in parenthesis.)

“Think of the little clerks and jaded women and overworked people. People overstrained with wanting to do, people overstrained with wanting to be.⁠ ⁠… People, in fact, overstrained.⁠ ⁠… The real trouble of life, Ponderevo, isn’t that we exist⁠—that’s a vulgar error; the real trouble is that we don’t really exist and we want to. That’s what this⁠—in the highest sense⁠—just stands for! The hunger to be⁠—for once⁠—really alive⁠—to the finger tips!⁠ ⁠…

“Nobody wants to do and be the things people are⁠—nobody. You don’t want to preside over this⁠—this bottling; I don’t want to wear these beastly clothes and be led about by you; nobody wants to keep on sticking labels on silly bottles at so many farthings a gross. That isn’t existing! That’s⁠—sus⁠—substratum. None of us want to be what we are, or to do what we do. Except as a sort of basis. What do we want? You know. I know. Nobody confesses. What we all want to be is something perpetually young and beautiful⁠—young Joves⁠—young Joves, Ponderevo”⁠—his voice became loud, harsh and declamatory⁠—“pursuing coy half-willing nymphs through everlasting forests.”⁠ ⁠…

There was a just-perceptible listening hang in the work about us.

“Come downstairs,” I interrupted, “we can talk better there.”

“I can talk better here,” he answered.

He was just going on, but fortunately the implacable face of Mrs. Hampton Diggs appeared down the aisle of bottling machines.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll come.”

In the little sanctum below, my uncle was taking a digestive pause after his lunch and by no means alert. His presence sent Ewart back to the theme of modern commerce, over the excellent cigar my uncle gave him. He behaved with the elaborate deference due to a business magnate from an unknown man.

“What I was pointing out to your nephew, sir,” said Ewart, putting both elbows on the table, “was the poetry of commerce. He doesn’t, you know, seem to see it at all.”

My uncle nodded brightly. “Whad I tell ’im,” he said round his cigar.

“We are artists. You and I, sir, can talk, if you will permit me, as one artist to another. It’s advertisement has⁠—done it. Advertisement has revolutionised trade and industry; it is going to revolutionise the world. The old merchant used to tote about commodities; the new one creates values. Doesn’t need to tote. He takes something that isn’t worth anything⁠—or something that isn’t particularly worth anything⁠—and he makes it worth something. He takes mustard that is just like anybody else’s mustard, and he goes about saying, shouting, singing, chalking on walls, writing inside people’s books, putting it everywhere, ‘Smith’s Mustard is the Best.’ And behold it is the best!”

“True,” said my uncle, chubbily and with a dreamy sense of mysticism; “true!”

“It’s just like an artist; he takes a lump of white marble on the verge of a limekiln, he chips it about, he makes⁠—he makes a monument to himself⁠—and others⁠—a monument the world will not willingly let die. Talking of mustard, sir, I was at Clapham Junction the other day, and all the banks are overgrown with horse radish that’s got loose from a garden somewhere. You know what horseradish is⁠—grows like wildfire⁠—spreads⁠—spreads. I stood at the end of the platform looking at the stuff and thinking about it. ‘Like fame,’ I thought, ‘rank and wild where it