Tono-Bungay, H. G. Wells [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

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 everyone! Tono⁠—Tono⁠—, Tono-Bungay!”

Raggett Street, you must understand, was a thoroughfare over which someone 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 wallpaper 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