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"It wasn't proper fighting," snapped Archie, with accusing eyes on me. "It's Mrs. Ponderevo's George!" said Miss Somerville, so adding a conviction for ingratitude to my evident sacrilege. "How could he DARE?" cried Lady Drew, becoming very awful. "He broke the rules" said Archie, sobbing for breath. "I slipped, and he hit me while I was down. He knelt on me."
Ponderevo's wife the inimitable Aunt Susan called him "Teddy" and his nephew endorses the appropriateness of that diminutive; he affirms that there was a characteristic "teddiness" about Uncle Ponderevo. He failed as a retail chemist in Wimblehurst. He was not naturally dishonest, but he had windy ideas about finance, and he was careless in the matter of certain trust monies.
I became therefore a student of theory and literature for a time; I hit upon the string of considerations that led me to what is called Ponderevo's Principle and my F.R.S., and I worked this out in three long papers. Meanwhile I made a lot of turn-table and glider models and started in upon an idea of combining gas-bags and gliders. Balloon work was new to me.
The framework of the book is provided by the life history of the narrator from early boyhood to middle age, matter interesting enough in itself even if it had not provided the means for revealing the inwardness of Edward Ponderevo's character and career.
He looked at my sheds. "You've changed the look of this valley, too," he said. "Temporary defilements," I remarked, guessing what was in his mind. "Of course. Things come and go. Things come and go. But H'm. I've just been up over the hill to look at Mr. Edward Ponderevo's new house. That that is something more permanent. A magnificent place! in many ways. Imposing.
There was a plaster of Paris horse to indicate veterinary medicines among these breakables, and below were scent packets and diffusers and sponges and soda-water syphons and such-like things. Only in the middle there was a rubricated card, very neatly painted by hand, with these words Buy Ponderevo's Cough Linctus NOW. NOW! WHY? Twopence Cheaper than in Winter.
But there are many threads in George Ponderevo's life that were not immediately intertwined with the Tono-Bungay career, and his love for Beatrice Normanby touches in quite another manner on the sex problem opened in Ann Veronica. In both these books the story is the essential thing, and the attack upon social conditions is relatively indirect.
"Might make 'em into a sort of sanitary brick," he reflected over his cigar end. "Or a friable biscuit. Why NOT? You might advertise: 'Why are Birds so Bright? Because they digest their food perfectly! Why do they digest their food so perfectly? Because they have a gizzard! Why hasn't man a gizzard? Because he can buy Ponderevo's Asphalt Triturating, Friable Biscuit Which is Better."
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