Wells!  I have heard that significant monosyllable pronounced in various European countries, and with various bizarre accents.  And always there was admiration, passionate or astonished, in the tone.  But the occasion of its utterance which remains historic in my mind was in England.  I was, indeed, in Frank Richardson’s Bayswater.  “Wells?” exclaimed a smart, positive little woman—­one of those creatures that have settled every question once and for all beyond reopening, “Wells?  No!  I draw the line at Wells.  He stirs up the dregs.  I don’t mind the froth, but dregs I—­will—­not have!” And silence reigned as we stared at the reputation of Wells lying dead on the carpet.  When, with the thrill of emotion that a great work communicates, I finished reading “Tono-Bungay,” I thought of the smart little woman in the Bayswater drawing-room.  I was filled with a holy joy because Wells had stirred up the dregs again, and more violently than ever.  I rapturously reflected, “How angry this will make them!” “Them” being the whole innumerable tribe of persons, inane or chumpish (this adjective I give to the world), who don’t mind froth but won’t have dregs.  Human nature—­you get it pretty complete in “Tono-Bungay,” the entire tableau!  If you don’t like the spectacle of man whole, if you are afraid of humanity, if humanity isn’t good enough for you, then you had better look out for squalls in the perusal of “Tono-Bungay.”  For me, human nature is good enough.  I love to bathe deep in it.  And of “Tono-Bungay” I will say, with solemn heartiness:  “By God!  This is a book!”

* * * * *

You will have heard that it is the history of a patent medicine—­the nostrum of the title.  But the rise and fall of Tono-Bungay and its inventor make only a small part of the book.  It is rather the history of the collision of the soul of George Ponderevo (narrator, and nephew of the medicine-man) with his epoch.  It is the arraignment of a whole epoch at the bar of the conscience of a man who is intellectually honest and powerfully intellectual.  George Ponderevo transgresses most of the current codes, but he also shatters them.  The entire system of sanctions tumbles down with a clatter like the fall of a corrugated iron church.  I do not know what is left standing, unless it be George Ponderevo.  I would not call him a lovable, but he is an admirable, man.  He is too ruthless, rude, and bitter to be anything but solitary.  His harshness is his fault, his one real fault; and his harshness also marks the point where his attitude towards his environment becomes unscientific.  The savagery of his description of the family of Frapp, the little Nonconformist baker, and of the tea-drinkers in the housekeeper’s room at Bladesover, somewhat impairs even the astounding force of this, George’s first and only novel—­not because he exaggerates the offensiveness of the phenomena, but because he unscientifically fails to perceive that these people are just as deserving of compassion