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

or hotel. He became wary about breakfast as life advanced, and at one time talked much of Dr. Haig and uric acid. But for other meals he remained reasonably omnivorous. He was something of a gastronome, and would eat anything he particularly liked in an audible manner, and perspire upon his forehead. He was a studiously moderate drinker⁠—except when the spirit of some public banquet or some great occasion caught him and bore him beyond his wariness⁠—there he would, as it were, drink inadvertently and become flushed and talkative⁠—about everything but his business projects.

To make the portrait complete one wants to convey an effect of sudden, quick bursts of movement like the jumps of a Chinese-cracker to indicate that his pose whatever it is, has been preceded and will be followed by a rush. If I were painting him, I should certainly give him for a background that distressed, uneasy sky that was popular in the eighteenth century, and at a convenient distance a throbbing motorcar, very big and contemporary, a secretary hurrying with papers, and an alert chauffeur.

Such was the figure that created and directed the great property of Tono-Bungay, and from the successful reconstruction of that company passed on to a slow crescendo of magnificent creations and promotions until the whole world of investors marveled. I have already I think, mentioned how, long before we offered Tono Bungay to the public, we took over the English agency of certain American specialties. To this was presently added our exploitation of Moggs’ Domestic Soap, and so he took up the Domestic Convenience Campaign that, coupled with his equatorial rotundity and a certain resolute convexity in his bearings won my uncle his Napoleonic title.

II

It illustrates the romantic element in modern commerce that my uncle met young Moggs at a city dinner⁠—I think it was the Bottle-makers’ Company⁠—when both were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety of the occasion. This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a very typical instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His people had taken him about in his youth as the Ruskins took their John and fostered a passion for history in him, and the actual management of the Moggs’ industry had devolved upon a cousin and a junior partner.

Mr. Moggs, being of a studious and refined disposition, had just decided⁠—after a careful search for a congenial subject in which he would not be constantly reminded of soap⁠—to devote himself to the History of the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated responsibilities upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs bewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle offered to lighten his burden by a partnership then and there. They even got to terms⁠—extremely muzzy terms, but terms nevertheless.

Each gentleman wrote the name and address of the other on his cuff, and they separated in a mood of brotherly carelessness, and next morning neither seems to have thought to rescue his shirt from the wash until it was too late. My uncle made a painful struggle⁠—it was one of my business mornings⁠—to recall name and particulars.

“He was an aquarium-faced, long, blond sort of chap, George, with glasses and a genteel accent,” he said.

I was puzzled. “Aquarium-faced?”

“You know how they look at you. His stuff was soap, I’m pretty nearly certain. And he had a name⁠—And the thing was the straightest bit-of-all-right you ever. I was clear enough to spot that.⁠ ⁠…”

We went out at last with knitted brows, and wandered up into Finsbury seeking a good, well-stocked looking grocer. We called first on a chemist for a pick-me-up for my uncle, and then we found the shop we needed.

“I want,” said my uncle, “half a pound of every sort of soap you got. Yes, I want to take them now. Wait a moment, George.⁠ ⁠… Now what sort of soap d’you call that?”

At the third repetition of that question the young man said, “Moggs’ Domestic.”

“Right,” said my uncle. “You needn’t guess again. Come along, George, let’s go to a telephone and get on to Moggs. Oh⁠—the order? Certainly. I confirm it. Send it all⁠—send it all to the Bishop of London; he’ll have some good use for it⁠—(First-rate man, George, he is⁠—charities and all that)⁠—and put it down to me, here’s a card⁠—Ponderevo⁠—Tono-Bungay.”

Then we went on to Moggs and found him in a camelhair dressing-jacket in a luxurious bed, drinking China tea, and got the shape of everything but the figures fixed by lunch time.

Young Moggs enlarged my mind considerably; he was a sort of thing I hadn’t met before; he seemed quite clean and well-informed and he assured me to never read newspapers nor used soap in any form at all, “Delicate skin,” he said.

“No objection to our advertising you wide and free?” said my uncle.

“I draw the line at railway stations,” said Moggs, “south-coast cliffs, theatre programmes, books by me and poetry generally⁠—scenery⁠—oh!⁠—and the Mercure de France.”

“We’ll get along,” said my uncle.

“So long as you don’t annoy me,” said Moggs, lighting a cigarette, “you can make me as rich as you like.”

We certainly made him no poorer. His was the first firm that was advertised by a circumstantial history; we even got to illustrated magazine articles telling of the quaint past of Moggs. We concocted Moggsiana. Trusting to our partner’s preoccupation with the uncommercial aspects of life, we gave graceful history⁠—of Moggs the First, Moggs the Second, Moggs the Third, and Moggs the Fourth. You must, unless you are very young, remember some of them and our admirable block of a Georgian shop window. My uncle brought early nineteenth-century memoirs, soaked himself in the style, and devised stories about old Moggs the First and the Duke of Wellington, George the Third and the soap dealer (“almost certainly old Moggs”). Very soon we had added to the original Moggs’ Primrose several varieties of scented and superfatted, a “special nurseries used in the household of the Duke of Kent and for the old Queen