Things must have gone very rapidly
with him.... I think he must have been very happy.
As I sit here writing about all these things, jerking down notes and
throwing them aside in my attempt to give some literary form to the tale
of our promotions, the marvel of it all comes to me as if it came for
the first time the supreme unreason of it. At the climax of his Boom, my
uncle at the most sparing estimate must have possessed in substance and
credit about two million pounds'-worth of property to set off against
his vague colossal liabilities, and from first to last he must have had
a controlling influence in the direction of nearly thirty millions.
This irrational muddle of a community in which we live gave him that,
paid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling
it lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing, he economised
nothing. I cannot claim that a single one of the great businesses
we organised added any real value to human life at all. Several like
Tono-Bungay were unmitigated frauds by any honest standard, the giving
of nothing coated in advertisements for money.
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