it seemed indisputable
that as they were living then so they must go on--and at the same time I
was angry with the garrulous vanity and illness that had elipped all
my chance of independent study, and imprisoned her in those grey
apartments. When I got back to Wimblehurst I allowed myself to write
him a boyishly sarcastic and sincerely bitter letter. He never replied.
Then, believing it to be the only way of escape for me, I set myself far
more grimly and resolutely to my studies than I had ever done before.
After a time I wrote to him in more moderate terms, and he answered
me evasively. And then I tried to dismiss him from my mind and went on
working.

Yes, that first raid upon London under the moist and chilly depression
of January had an immense effect upon me. It was for me an epoch-making
disappointment. I had thought of London as a large, free, welcoming,
adventurous place, and I saw it slovenly and harsh and irresponsive.

I did not realise at all what human things might be found behind
those grey frontages, what weakness that whole forbidding facade might
presently confess. It is the constant error of youth to over-estimate
the Will in things. I did not see that the dirt, the discouragement, the
discomfort of London could be due simply to the fact that London was
a witless old giantess of a town, too slack and stupid to keep herself
clean and maintain a brave face to the word. No! I suffered from the
sort of illusion that burnt witches in the seventeenth century. I
endued her grubby disorder with a sinister and magnificent quality of
intention.

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