登陆注册
15489700000028

第28章 CHAPTER THE THIRD HOW WE MADE TONO-BUNGAY HUM(1)

I

So I made my peace with my uncle, and we set out upon this bright enterprise of selling slightly injurious rubbish at one-and-three-halfpence and two-and-nine a bottle, including the Government stamp. We made Tono-Bungay hum! It brought us wealth, influence, respect, the confidence of endless people.

All that my uncle promised me proved truth and understatement;

Tono-Bungay carried me to freedoms and powers that no life of scientific research, no passionate service of humanity could ever have given me....

It was my uncle's genius that did it. No doubt he needed me,--I was, I will admit, his indispensable right hand; but his was the brain to conceive. He wrote every advertisement; some of them even he sketched. You must remember that his were the days before the Time took to enterprise and the vociferous hawking of that antiquated Encyclopedia. That alluring, button-holing, let-me -just-tell-you-quite-soberly-something-you-ought-to-know style of newspaper advertisement, with every now and then a convulsive jump of some attractive phrase into capitals, was then almost a novelty. "Many people who are MODERATELY well think they are QUITE well," was one of his early efforts. The jerks in capitals were, "DO NOT NEED DRUGS OR MEDICINE," and "SIMPLY A PROPER

REGIMEN TO GET YOU IN TONE." One was warned against the chemist or druggist who pushed "much-advertised nostrums" on one's attention. That trash did more harm than good. The thing needed was regimen--and Tono-Bungay!

Very early, too, was that bright little quarter column, at least it was usually a quarter column in the evening papers:

"HILARITY--Tono-Bungay. Like Mountain Air in the Veins." The penetrating trio of questions: "Are you bored with your Business?

Are you bored with your Dinner. Are you bored with your Wife?"

--that, too, was in our Gower Street days. Both these we had in our first campaign when we worked London south central, and west; and then, too, we had our first poster--the HEALTH, BEAUTY, AND

STRENGTH one. That was his design; I happen still to have got by me the first sketch he made for it. I have reproduced it here with one or two others to enable the reader to understand the mental quality that initiated these familiar ornaments of London.

(The second one is about eighteen months later, the germ of the well-known "Fog" poster; the third was designed for an influenza epidemic, but never issued.)

These things were only incidental in my department.

I had to polish them up for the artist and arrange the business of printing and distribution, and after my uncle had had a violent and needless quarrel with the advertising manager of the Daily Regulator about the amount of display given to one of his happy thoughts, I also took up the negotiations of advertisements for the press.

We discussed and worked out distribution together first in the drawing-room floor in Gower Street with my aunt sometimes helping very shrewdly, and then, with a steadily improving type of cigar and older and older whisky, in his smuggery at their first house, the one in Beckenham. Often we worked far into the night sometimes until dawn.

We really worked infernally hard, and, I recall, we worked with a very decided enthusiasm, not simply on my uncle's part but mine, It was a game, an absurd but absurdly interesting game, and the points were scored in cases of bottles. People think a happy notion is enough to make a man rich, that fortunes can be made without toil. It's a dream, as every millionaire (except one or two lucky gamblers) can testify; I doubt if J.D. Rockefeller in the early days of Standard Oil, worked harder than we did. We worked far into the night--and we also worked all day. We made a rule to be always dropping in at the factory unannounced to keep things right--for at first we could afford no properly responsible underlings--and we traveled London, pretending to be our own representatives and making all sorts of special arrangements.

But none of this was my special work, and as soon as we could get other men in, I dropped the traveling, though my uncle found it particularly interesting and kept it up for years. "Does me good, George, to see the chaps behind their counters like I was once," he explained. My special and distinctive duty was to give Tono-Bungay substance and an outward and visible bottle, to translate my uncle's great imaginings into the creation of case after case of labelled bottles of nonsense, and the punctual discharge of them by railway, road and steamer towards their ultimate goal in the Great Stomach of the People. By all modern standards the business was, as my uncle would say, "absolutely bona fide." We sold our stuff and got the money, and spent the money honestly in lies and clamour to sell more stuff. Section by section we spread it over the whole of the British Isles; first working the middle-class London suburbs, then the outer suburbs, then the home counties, then going (with new bills and a more pious style of "ad") into Wales, a great field always for a new patent-medicine, and then into Lancashire.

My uncle had in his inner office a big map of England, and as we took up fresh sections of the local press and our consignments invaded new areas, flags for advertisements and pink underlines for orders showed our progress.

"The romance of modern commerce, George!" my uncle would say, rubbing his hands together and drawing in air through his teeth. "The romance of modern commerce, eh? Conquest. Province by province. Like sogers."

We subjugated England and Wales; we rolled over the Cheviots with a special adaptation containing eleven per cent. of absolute alcohol; "Tono-Bungay: Thistle Brand." We also had the Fog poster adapted to a kilted Briton in a misty Highland scene.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 爆宠小萌妃:邪帝,别乱来

    爆宠小萌妃:邪帝,别乱来

    “你被冰封了那么久,早就成老冰棍了吧?”她手持凶器卖萌。他眯起寒眸,邪肆一笑:“那就用你的爱意来融化我,可好?”穿越之后解开了某只妖孽的封印,从此脚踩渣男手撕白莲花,御灵兽,傲苍穹,却被妖孽纠缠不已——“嘤,我一代天才怎么会栽在你身上!”他轻叹:“能不能先从我肩膀上起来,我跪榴莲跪得好痛……”【新书《邪帝宠上瘾:萌妃,太娇羞!》】
  • 外星公主难伺候

    外星公主难伺候

    他,是权倾A国的商界翘楚,在A国,他的名字就代表着权和钱。她,是姜姜星球的公主,一人之下万人之上,却因一次意外,和他遇上。俩人从一开始就斗得水火不容。终于有一天,她实在忍不住了,直接炸毛,“沐凌云,你给本公主有多远滚多远。”男人玩味地勾起女人的下巴,唇角邪气的笑肆无忌惮地蔓延了开,“怎么,白天就想和我滚了?”
  • 衡山禅师语录

    衡山禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 这个警察有点坏

    这个警察有点坏

    韩阳从来就不认为自己是个好人,即使他自己是个警察也是这么认为的。所以他不止一次的把枪顶在自己上司的后脑勺然后毫不犹豫的开枪,也毫不犹豫的不止一次砸了交警队的大门......群众叫他韩队长,黑道叫他韩老虎,富婆叫他韩哥哥,美女叫他韩欧巴.....唯有他的小萝莉称呼他为——大叔!正义,只在我的心里和我的枪口下!如果法律不能给你正义,我来给你!——韩阳语。
  • 唐末征途

    唐末征途

    路,已经是安排好的了,走到了一半,才知道,这安排好的路,并不是他想要走的!以后的路又该何去何从……
  • 帝国十二支

    帝国十二支

    所有感情和故事都是从相遇开始。一个拥有不死之身的青年,一个行侠仗义的美女,还有一只猩猩,他们偶然相遇,结伴而行,破迷信、打恶霸,开始与帝国恶势力的机智斗争之旅。更新稳定,请放心阅读。
  • 死灵学院

    死灵学院

    作为道家的一脉传承,刘伟可以说非常不负责任,老爸教的不好好学,爷爷气的胡子乱翘,不过有老妈这道附身符在,刘胖子可谓尾巴都翘上天了,现在可好了,估计他那得意劲老天都看不顺眼,让他揣着自己的那本家传秘谱,噗通,扔进了死灵学院里头,这下好了,刘胖子这回可遭灾了,每次考试,都被折腾的死去活来,用性命游走在及格线的边缘。。。(不种马,不后宫,小命要紧。。。)
  • 汤姆·索亚历险记

    汤姆·索亚历险记

    故事发生在19世纪上半叶密西西比河畔的一个普通小镇上。汤姆·索亚是一个调皮的孩子,他和同父异母的弟弟希德一起接受姨妈波莉的监护。他总是能想出各种各样的恶作剧,让波莉姨妈无可奈何,而他也总能想尽办法来躲避惩罚。一天,汤姆见到了可爱的姑娘贝琪·撒切尔,她是撒切尔法官的女儿。汤姆一见到她就对她展开了攻势。而他的爱似乎也得到了回应。镇上有一个孩子叫哈克贝利·费恩。他的父亲总是酗酒,父母一直打架,因此他跑出来自己生活。他看起来和文明社会格格不入,大人们都不喜欢他,可汤姆和他却是好朋友,故事是由此展开情节的。全书充满着童真,童趣;成年人看着,也能重新体验一下童年的生活。
  • 人妖行天下

    人妖行天下

    这是《英雄联盟之破晓黎明》谷天行的番外篇,可是从网络上流行程度来看,没敢写成都市文,只好写成仙侠文,希望大家看得开心吧。
  • 福妻驾到

    福妻驾到

    现代饭店彪悍老板娘魂穿古代。不分是非的极品婆婆?三年未归生死不明的丈夫?心狠手辣的阴毒亲戚?贪婪而好色的地主老财?吃上顿没下顿的贫困宭境?不怕不怕,神仙相助,一技在手,天下我有!且看现代张悦娘,如何身带福气玩转古代,开面馆、收小弟、左纳财富,右傍美男,共绘幸福生活大好蓝图!!!!快本新书《天媒地聘》已经上架开始销售,只要3.99元即可将整本书抱回家,你还等什么哪,赶紧点击下面的直通车,享受乐乐精心为您准备的美食盛宴吧!)