And my uncle's gestures and promises filled me with doubt and a sort of
fear for him. He seemed to me a lost little creature, too silly to be
silent, in a vast implacable condemnation. I was full of pity and a sort
of tenderness for my aunt Susan, who was doomed to follow his erratic
fortunes mocked by his grandiloquent promises.
I was to learn better. But I worked with the terror of the grim
underside of London in my soul during all my last year at Wimblehurst.
BOOK THE SECOND
THE RISE OF TONO-BUNGAY
CHAPTER THE FIRST
HOW I BECAME A LONDON STUDENT AND WENT ASTRAY
I came to live in London, as I shall tell you, when I was nearly
twenty-two. Wimblehurst dwindles in perspective, is now in this book a
little place far off, Bladesover no more than a small pinkish speck
of frontage among the distant Kentish hills; the scene broadens
out, becomes multitudinous and limitless, full of the sense of vast
irrelevant movement. I do not remember my second coming to London as I
do my first, for my early impressions, save that an October memory of
softened amber sunshine stands out, amber sunshine falling on grey house
fronts I know not where.
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