Finance was much less to my taste
than the organisation of the Tono-Bungay factory. In the new field of
enterprise there was a great deal of bluffing and gambling, of taking
chances and concealing material facts--and these are hateful things to
the scientific type of mind. It wasn't fear I felt so much as an uneasy
inaccuracy. I didn't realise dangers, I simply disliked the sloppy,
relaxing quality of this new sort of work. I was at last constantly
making excuses not to come up to him in London. The latter part of his
business career recedes therefore beyond the circle of any particular
life. I lived more or less with him; I talked, I advised, I helped him
at times to fight his Sunday crowd at Crest Hill, but I did not follow
nor guide him. From the Do Ut time onward he rushed up the financial
world like a bubble in water and left me like some busy water-thing down
below in the deeps.
Anyhow, he was an immense success. The public was, I think, particularly
attracted by the homely familiarity of his field of work--you never lost
sight of your investment they felt, with the name on the house-flannel
and shaving-strop--and its allegiance was secured by the Egyptian
solidity of his apparent results.
Pages:
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373