Tono-Bungay

BOOK THE FIRST
THE DAYS BEFORE TONO-BUNGAY WAS INVENTED

CHAPTER THE FIRST
OF BLADESOVER HOUSE, AND MY MOTHER; AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY

I

Most people in this world seem to live “in character”; they have abeginning, a middle and an end, and the three are congruous one with anotherand true to the rules of their type. You can speak of them as being of thissort of people or that. They are, as theatrical people say, no more (and noless) than “character actors.” They have a class, they have aplace, they know what is becoming in them and what is due to them, and theirproper 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 amiscellaneous 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 ofthe 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 seenit with a sort of intimacy and in good faith. I have been a native in manysocial countries. I have been the unwelcome guest of a working baker, mycousin, who has since died in the Chatham infirmary; I have eaten illegalsnacks—the unjustifiable gifts of footmen—in pantries, and beendespised for my want of style (and subsequently married and divorced) by thedaughter of a gasworks clerk; and—to go to my other extreme—I wasonce—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, acountess. I’ve seen these people at various angles. At the dinner-tableI’ve met not simply the titled but the

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