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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15351-8.txt b/15351-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d0d96ba --- /dev/null +++ b/15351-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2339 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of H. G. Wells, by J. D. Beresford + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: H. G. Wells + +Author: J. D. Beresford + +Release Date: March 13, 2005 [EBook #15351] +[Last updated: November 10, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK H. G. WELLS *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + +[Illustration: H.G. WELLS] + + + + +H.G. WELLS +By +J.D. BERESFORD + +[Illustration] + + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + +_First Published in 1915_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTION 9 + II. THE ROMANCES 17 +III. THE NOVELS 58 + IV. SOCIOLOGY 97 + BIBLIOGRAPHY 117 + AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY 121 + INDEX 125 + + + + +[Transcriber's Notes for e-book: + +The spelling and punctuation are consistent with the original scans +with the following exceptions. If you are using this book for research, please +verify any spelling or punctuation with another source. + +I added ["] at end of phrase: "to recover the full-bodied +self-satisfaction of his early days." + +In the following sentence, I changed 'succeded' to 'succeeded': And +Bensington, the other experimenter, succeeded in separating a food +that produced regular instead of intermittent growth.] + + + + +TO +R.A.A.B. +THIS ESSAY IS FRATERNALLY +DEDICATED + + + + +I + +INTRODUCTION + +THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS + + +In his Preface to the _Unpleasant Plays_, Mr Shaw boasts his +possession of "normal sight." The adjective is the oculist's, and the +application of it is Mr Shaw's, but while the phrase is misleading +until it is explained to suit a particular purpose, it has a pleasing +adaptability, and I can find none better as a key to the works of Mr +H.G. Wells. + +We need not bungle over the word "normal," in any attempt to meet the +academic objection that it implies conformity to type. In this +connection, the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated +from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears no glasses; and +if a few happy people still exist here and there who have no need for +the mere physical assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook +is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form of bias is so +small that we regard them as inspired or criminal according to the +inclination of our own beloved predilection. And no spectacles will +correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often +a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. +That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the +confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout +life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly +flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an "oblate +spheroid" would be the physicist's brief description), seeks the +society of other men who share his illusion; and the company of them +take arms against the opposing faction, which is confirmed in the +belief that the ball is egg-shaped, that the bulge, in fact, is not +"oblate" but "prolate." + +I will not elaborate the parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in +my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a +reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his +early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent mark +upon him. His readers may infer, from certain descriptions in _Kipps_, +and _The History of Mr Polly_, that Wells himself sincerely regrets +the inadequacies of that "private school of dingy aspect and still +dingier pretensions, where there were no object lessons, and the +studies of book-keeping and French were pursued (but never effectually +overtaken) under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, who wore a +nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, +and used a cane with remarkable dexterity and gusto." But, properly +considered, that inadequate elderly gentleman may be regarded as our +benefactor. If he had been more apt in his methods, he might have +influenced the blessed normality of his pupil, and bound upon him the +spectacles of his own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might have been +born into the leisured classes, and sent to Eton and Christchurch, and +if his genius had found any expression after that awful experience, he +would probably, at the best, have written polite essays or a history +of Napoleon, during the intervals of his leisured activity as a member +of the Upper House. + +Happily, Fate provided a scheme for preserving his eyesight, and +pitched him into the care of Mr and Mrs Joseph Wells on the 21st +September 1866; behind or above a small general shop in Bromley. Mrs +Wells was the daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst and had been in +service as a lady's maid before her marriage. Joseph Wells had had a +more distinguished career. He had been a great Kent bowler in the +early sixties, and it must have been, I think, only the year before +the subject of our essay appeared at Bromley that his father took four +wickets with consecutive balls and created a new record in the annals +of cricket. The late Sir Francis Galton might have made something out +of this ancestry; I must confess that it is entirely beyond my powers, +although I make the reservation that we know little of the abilities +of H.G. Wells' mother. She has not figured as a recognisable portrait +in any of his novels. + +The Bromley shop, like most of its kind, was a failure. Moderate +success might have meant a Grammar School for young Wells, and the +temptations of property, but Fate gave our young radical another twist +by thrusting him temporarily within sight of an alien and magnificent +prosperity, where as the son of the housekeeper at Up Park, near +Petersfield, he might recognise his immense separation from the +members of the ruling class, as described in _Tono-Bungay_. + +After that came "the drapery," first at Windsor and then at Southsea; +but we have no autobiography of this period, only the details of the +trade and its circumstances. For neither Hoopdriver, nor Kipps, nor +Polly could have qualified for the post of assistant at Midhurst +Grammar School, a position that H.G. Wells obtained at sixteen after +he had broken his indentures with the Southsea draper. + +At this point we come up with Mr Lewisham, and may follow him in his +experiences after he obtained what was, in fact, a scholarship at the +Normal School of Science, South Kensington; but we drop that hero +again before his premature marriage and failure, to follow the +uncharted course of Wells obtaining his B.Sc. with first-class +honours; passing to an assistant-mastership at the Henley House +School, St John's Wood, and so coming by way of tutor, lecturer and +demonstrator to the beginnings of journalism, to the breaking of a +blood-vessel and thence, without further diversion, to the trade of +letters, somewhere in the summer of 1893. + +I have taken as my text the normality of Mr Wells, on the +understanding that I shall define the essential term as I will; and +this brief outline of his early experiences may help to show, _inter +alia_, that he viewed life from many angles before he was +twenty-seven. That he had the capacity so to see life was either a +lucky accident or due to some untraceable composition of heredity. +That he kept his power was an effect of his casual education. He was +fortunate enough to escape training in his observation of the sphere. + +Persistent repetition will finally influence the young mind, however +gifted, and if Mr Wells had been subject to the discipline of what may +be called an efficient education, he might have seen his sphere at the +age of twenty-seven as slightly flattened--whether it appeared oblate +or prolate is no consequence--and I could not have crowned him with +the designation that heads this Introduction. + +He is, in fact, normal just in so far as his gift of vision was +undistorted by the precepts and dogmas of his parents, teachers and +early companions. + + + + +II + +THE ROMANCES + + +Mr Wells' romances have little or nothing in common with those of +Jules Verne, not even that peculiar quality of romance which revels in +the impossible. The heroes of Jules Verne were idealised creatures +making use of some wonderful invention for their own purposes; and the +future of mankind was of no account in the balance against the lust +for adventure under new mechanical conditions. Also, Jules Verne's +imagination was at the same time mathematical and Latin; and he was +entirely uninfluenced by the writings of Comte. + +Mr Wells' experiments with the relatively improbable have become +increasingly involved with the social problem, and it would be +possible to trace the growth of his opinions from this evidence alone, +even if we had not the valuable commentary afforded by his novels and +his essays in sociology. But his interest in the present and future +welfare of man would not in the first place have prompted him to the +writing of romance (unless it had been cast in the severely +allegorical form of _The Pilgrim's Progress_), and if we are to +account for that ebullition, we shall be driven--like Darwin with his +confounding peacock--to take refuge in some theory of exuberance. The +later works have been so defensive and, in one sense, didactic that +one is apt to forget that many of the earlier books, and all the short +stories, must have originated in the effervescence of creative +imagination. + +Mr Wells must, also, have been slightly intoxicated by the first +effects of reaction. A passage from _The Future in America_ exhibits +him somewhat gleefully reviving thoughts of the prison-house, and I +quote it in order to account for his first exercises in prophecy by a +study of contrasts. "I remember," he writes, "that to me in my boyhood +speculation about the Future was a monstrous joke. Like most people of +my generation, I was launched into life with millennial assumptions. +This present sort of thing, I believed, was going on for a time, +interesting personally, perhaps, but as a whole inconsecutive, and +then--it might be in my lifetime or a little after it--there would be +trumpets and shoutings and celestial phenomena, a battle of +Armageddon, and the Judgment.... To talk about the Man of the year +Million was, of course, in the face of this great conviction, a +whimsical play of fancy. The year Million was just as impossible, just +as gaily nonsensical as fairyland...." + +The imprisoning bottle was opened when he became a student of biology, +under Huxley, and the liquid of his suppressed thought began to +bubble. He prefaced his romances by a sketch in the old _Pall Mall +Gazette_, entitled _The Man of the Year Million_, an a priori study +that made one thankful for one's prematurity. After that physiological +piece of logic, however, he tried another essay in evolution, +published in 1895 in book form under the title of _The Time +Machine_--the first of his romances. + +The machine itself is the vaguest of mechanical assumptions; a thing +of ivory, quartz, nickel and brass that quite illogically carries its +rider into an existing past or future. We accept the machine as a +literary device to give an air of probability to the essential thing, +the experience; and forget the means in the effect. The criterion of +the prophecy in this case is influenced by the theory of "natural +selection." Mr Wells' vision of the "Sunset of Mankind" was of men so +nearly adapted to their environment that the need for struggle, with +its corollary of the extermination of the unfit, had practically +ceased. Humanity had become differentiated into two races, both +recessive; one, the Eloi, a race of childlike, simple, delicate +creatures living on the surface of a kindly earth; the other, the +Morlocks, a more active but debased race, of bestial habits, who lived +underground and preyed cannibalistically on the surface-dwellers whom +they helped to preserve, as a man may preserve game. The Eloi, +according to the hypothesis of the Time Traveller, are the descendants +of the leisured classes; the Morlocks of the workers. "The Eloi, like +the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They +still possessed the earth on sufferance; since the Morlocks, +subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the +day-lit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I +inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs perhaps through +the survival of an old habit of service." All this is in the year +802,701 A.D. + +The prophecy is less convincing than the wonderful sight of the +declining earth some million years later, sinking slowly into the +dying fires of the worn-out sun. Man and the vertebrates have +disappeared, and the highest wonder of animal life is represented by +giant crustaceans, which in turn give way to a lower form. We have a +vision of an involution that shall succeed the highest curve of +development; of life ending where it began in the depths of the sea, +as the initial energy of the solar system is dissipated and the +material of it returns to rest at the temperature of the absolute +zero. And the picture is made more horrible to the imaginative by the +wonder whether the summit of the evolutionary curve has not already +been reached--or it may be passed in the days of the Greek +philosophers. + +_The Time Machine_, despite certain obvious faults of imagination and +style, is a brilliant fantasy; and it affords a valuable picture of +the young Wells looking at the world, with his normal eyes, and +finding it, more particularly, incomplete. At the age of twenty-seven +or so, he has freed himself very completely from the bonds of +conventional thought, and is prepared to examine, and to present life +from the detached standpoint of one who views it all from a +respectable distance; but who is able, nevertheless--an essential +qualification--to enter life with all the passion and generosity of +his own humanity. + +And in _The Wonderful Visit_--published in the same year as _The Time +Machine_--he comes closer to earth. That ardent ornithologist, the +Rev. K. Hilyer, Vicar of Siddermouth, who brought down an angel with a +shot-gun, is tenderly imagined; a man of gentle mind, for all the +limitations of his training. The mortalised angel, on the other hand, +is rather a tentative and simple creature. He may represent, perhaps, +the rather blank mind of one who sees country society without having +had the inestimable privilege of learning how it came about. His +temperament was something too childlike--without the child's +brutality--to investigate the enormous complexities of adjustment that +had brought about the conditions into which he was all too suddenly +plunged by a charge of duck-shot. He came and was filled with an +inalterable perplexity, but some of his questions were too ingenuous; +and while we may sympathise with the awful inertia of Hilyer before +the impossible task of explaining the inexplicable differences between +mortal precept and mortal practice, we feel that we might, in some +cases at least, have made a more determined effort. We might have +found some justification for chairs, by way of instance, and +certainly an excuse for raising beds above the floor. But the wounded +angel, like the metal machine, is only a device whereby the searching +examination of our author may be displayed in an engrossing and +intimate form. And in _The Wonderful Visit_, that exuberance we +postulated, that absorption in the development of idea, is more +marked; in the unfolding of the story we can trace the method of the +novelist. + +Indeed, the three romances that follow discover hardly a trace of the +social investigator. _The Island of Dr Moreau_, _The Invisible Man_ +and _The War of the Worlds_ are essays in pure fantasy, and although +the first of the three is influenced by biology I class it +unhesitatingly among the works of sheer exuberance. Each of these +books is, in effect, an answer to some rather whimsical question, and +the problem that Dr Moreau attempted to solve was: "Can we, by +surgery, so accelerate the evolutionary process as to make man out of +a beast in a few days or weeks?" And within limits he found that the +answer was: "Yes." + +In the seclusion of his island, and with the poor assistance of the +outlawed medical student, Montgomery, Dr Moreau succeeded in producing +some creditable parodies of humanity by his operations on pigs, bulls, +dogs and other animals. These cut and remoulded creatures had +something the appearance and intelligence of Homo Sapiens, and could +be maintained at that level by the exercise of discipline and the +constant recital of "the Law"; left to themselves they gradually +reverted to the habits and manners of the individual beasts out of +which they had been carved. We may infer that some subtle organic +chemistry worked its determination upon their uncontrolled wills, but +Mr Wells offers no explanation, psychic, chemical or biological, and +I do not think that he intended any particular fable beyond the +evident one that, physically, one species is as like to the next as +makes no matter. What Moreau did well another man might have done +better. It is a good story, and the adventures of the marooned +Prendick, alone, are sufficient justification for the original +conception. (I feel bound to note, however, the absurd comments of +some early reviewers who seemed to imagine that the story was a +defence of vivisection.) + +The next romance (1897) seeks to answer the question: "What could a +man do if he were invisible?" Various attempts to answer that question +had been made by other writers, but none of them had come to it with +Mr Wells' practical grasp of the real problem; the earlier romantics +had not grappled with the necessity for clothes and the various ways +in which a material man, however indistinguishable his body by our +sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. The study from +beginning to end is finely realistic; and even the theory of the +albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree his method of winning the +useless gift of invisibility, are convincing enough to make us wonder +whether the thing is not scientifically possible. As a pure romance +set in perfectly natural surroundings, _The Invisible Man_ is possibly +the high-water mark of Mr Wells' achievement in this kind. He has +perfected his technique, and the interest in the development of the +story works up steadily to the splendid climax, when the form of the +berserker Griffin returns to visibility, his hands clenched, his eyes +wide open, and on his face an expression of "anger and dismay," the +elements--as I choose to think--of man's revolt against imprisonment +in the flesh. It is worth while to note that by another statement, the +same problem is posed and solved in the short story called _The +Country of the Blind_. + +_The War of the Worlds_ (1898), although written in the first person, +is in some ways the most detached of all these fantasies; and it is in +this book that Mr Wells frankly confesses his own occasional sense of +separation. "At times," says the narrator of the history, "I suffer +from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about +me, I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere +inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and +tragedy of it all." That sense must have remained with him as he wrote +the account of the invading Martians, so little passion does the book +contain. The vision, however, is clear enough and there is more +invention than in many of the other romances. The picture of the +Martians themselves develops in one direction the theory of human +evolution expressed in _The Man of the Year Million_. The expansion +of the brain case, and the apotheosis of pure intellect, devoid, so +far as we can judge, of any emotional expression, are the steadily +biological deductions that we should expect from the Wells of this +period. The fighting machines of these incomprehensible entities, the +heat ray and the black smoke, are all excellent conceptions; and the +narrative is splendidly graphic. But only in the scenes with the +curate, when the narrator is stirred to passionate anger, and in his +later passages with the sapper, do we catch any glimpses of the +novelist intrigued with the intimate affairs of humanity. Even the +narrator's brother, in his account of the escape with two women in a +pony-carriage, has become infected with that sense of detachment. The +two women are strongly differentiated but leave little impression of +personality. + +The fact that I have made this comment on lack of passion in +describing one of these earlier romances is indicative of a particular +difference between Mr Wells' method in this sort and the method of the +lesser writer of fantasias. The latter, whatever his idea, and it may +be a brilliant idea, is always intent on elaborating the wonder of his +theme by direct description. Mr Wells is far more subtle and more +effective. He takes an average individual, identifies him with the +world as we know it, and then proceeds gradually to bring his marvel +within the range of this individual's apprehension. We see the +improbable, not too definitely, through the eyes of one who is +prepared with the same incredulity as the reader of the story, and as +a result the strange phenomenon, whether fallen angel, invisible man, +converted beast or invading Martian, takes all the shape of reality. +That this shape is convincing is due to the brilliance of Mr Wells' +imagination and his power of graphic expression; the lesser writer +might adopt the method and fail utterly to attain the effect; but it +is this conception of the means to reach the intelligence and senses +of the average reader that chiefly distinguishes these romances from +those of such writers as Jules Verne. Our approach to the wonderful is +so gradual and so natural that when we are finally confronted with it +the incredible thing has become inevitable and expected. Finally, it +has become so identified with human surprise, anger or dismay that any +failure of humanity in the chief person of the story reacts upon our +conception of the wonderful intrusion among familiar phenomena. + +Now, this power of creating the semblance of fact out of an ideal was +too valuable a thing to be wasted on the making of stories that had no +purpose beyond that of interesting or exciting the reader with such +imaginations as the Martians, whose only use was to threaten humanity +with extinction. Mr Wells' own sight of our blindness, our complacent +acceptance of the sphere as an oblate or prolate spheroid, might be, +he hoped, another of the marvels which we should come to accept +through the medium of romance. So he began tentatively at first to +introduce a vivid criticism of the futility of present-day society +into his fantasies, and the first and the least of these books was +that published in 1899 as _When the Sleeper Wakes_, a title afterwards +changed to _The Sleeper Awakes_. + +In the two opening chapters we find the same delightfully realistic +treatment of the unprecedented slowly mingling with the commonplace. +The first appearance of Graham the Sleeper, tormented then by the +spectres and doubts that accompany insomnia, is made so credible that +we accept his symptoms without the least demur; his condition is +merely unusual enough to excite a trembling interest. Even the +passing of his early years of trance does not arouse scepticism. But +then we fall with one terrific plunge into the world of A.D. 2100, +and, like Graham, we cannot realise it. Moreover this changed, +developed world has a slightly mechanical air. The immense enclosed +London, imagined by Mr Wells, is no Utopia, yet, like the dream of +earlier prophets, it is too logical to entice us into any +hallucination; and we come, fatally, to a criticism of the syllogism. + +Mr Wells himself has confessed, in a new Preface, that this is "one of +the most ambitious and least satisfactory" of his books; and explains +that it was written against time, when he was on the verge of a +serious illness. It is superfluous, therefore, to criticise it in +detail, but one or two points in relation to the sociological idea +must be emphasised. + +The main theme is the growing division between Capital and Labour. +The Giant Trust--managing the funds accumulated in Graham's name, a +trust that has obtained possession of so immense a capital that it +controls the chief activities of the world--is figured in the command +of a certain Ostrog, who, with all the dependents that profit by the +use of his wealth and such mercenaries as he can hold to himself, +represents one party in opposition to the actual workers and +producers, generically the People. The picture is the struggle of our +own day in more acute form; the result, in the amended edition, is +left open. "Who will win--Ostrog or the People?" Mr Wells writes in +the Preface referred to above, and answers: "A thousand years hence +that will still be just the open question we leave to-day." + +I am not concerned in this place to question the validity of that +answer, nor to suggest that the Wells of 1914 would not necessarily +give the same account of his beliefs as the Wells of 1909, but I must +draw attention to the attitude displayed in the book under +consideration in order to point the change of feeling recognisable in +later books. In _The Sleeper Awakes_, even in the revised version, the +sociological theory is still mechanical, the prophecy at once too +logical, and at the same time deduced from premises altogether too +restricted. The world of A.D. 2100 is the world of to-day, with its +more glaring contrasts still more glaringly emphasised; with its +social incongruities and blindness raised to a higher power. And all +that it lacked has been put into a romance called _In the Days of the +Comet_ (1906), a book to which I shall now leap, returning later to +consider the comparatively irrelevant theses of three other romances +that chronologically intervened. + +The great change wrought by the coming of the Comet might be +sentimentally described as a change of heart; I prefer to call it a +change of reason. All the earlier part of the work, which is again +told in the first person, presents the life of a Midland industrial +area as seen by one who has suffered it. The Capital-Labour problem +bulks in the foreground, and is adequately supported by a passionate +exposition of the narrowness and misery of lower-middle-class life in +the jumble of limitations, barriers and injustices that arise from the +absolute ownership of property. Also, into this romance--the only one, +by the way--comes some examination of the relations of the sexes. And +all this jumble is due, if we are to believe the remedy, to human +misunderstanding. The influence of the Comet passed over the earth, +and men, after a few hours of trance, awoke to a new realisation. We +come to a first knowledge of the change in one of the most beautiful +passages that Mr Wells has written; and although I dislike to spoil a +passage by setting it out unclothed by the idea and expectations which +have led to its expression, given it form, and fitted it to a just +place in the whole composition, I will make an exception in this case +in order to justify my metaphor of "normal sight." The supposed writer +of the description had just awakened from the trance induced by the +passing of the Comet. He says: + + "I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of those drugged, + feebly awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a + very glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and + interlaced like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, + honeysuckle, campions and ragged robin; bed straw, hops and wild + clematis twined and hung among its branches, and all along its + ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and + chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of + note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its + depths, I heard a chirrup and the whir of startled wings. + + "Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I + stood for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the + intricate delicacy before me and marvelling how richly God has + made his worlds...." + +And not only the writer but also every other person on the earth had +been miraculously cured of their myopia and astigmatism. They saw +beauty and the means to still more perfect beauty, and, seeing, they +had but to believe and the old miseries vanished. In the old days men +preached a furious denial of self that led to the fatuity of an +asceticism such as that of St Simon Stylites. The lesson--I cannot +deny that the book is didactic--of the change wrought by the comet is +that man should find the full expression of his personality in +sympathy and understanding. The egotism remains, but it works to a +collective end.... + +War is necessarily touched upon in this book as an inevitable +corollary to the problems of personal and a fortiori of national +property; but the real counterblast against wholesale fratricide was +reserved for the following romance, published in 1908. + +_The War in the Air_ definitely disclosed a change of method that was +adumbrated in its predecessor. The agent of experience is still +retained in the person of Bert Smallways, but the restrictions imposed +by the report of an eye-witness have become too limiting, and, like +Hardy in _The Dynasts_, Mr Wells alternates between a near and a +distant vision. The Welt-Politik could not be explained through the +intelligence of a "little Cockney cad," even though he was "by no +means a stupid person and up to a certain limit not badly educated"; +and the general development of the world-war, the account of the +collapse of the credit system and all such large and general effects +necessitated the broad treatment of the historian. So the intimate, +personal narrative of Smallways' adventures is occasionally dropped +for a few pages; Mr Wells shuts off his magic-lantern and fills the +interval with an analysis of larger issues. + +And the issues are so vital, the _dénouement_ so increasingly +probable, that, despite all the exaggerations necessary in a fiction +of this kind, the warning contained in this account of a world-war is +one that must remain in the minds of any thoughtful reader. Smallways' +pert reflection on the causes of the immense downfall represents the +wisdom that comes of bitter experience, and the application of it is +very pertinent to present conditions. "There was us in Europe all at +sixes and sevens with our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' +us up against each other and keepin' us apart," says Smallways, and +for the briefest analysis of causes that continually threaten us with +all the useless horrors of war, the summary could scarcely be +bettered. + +Indeed, I think that _The War in the Air_ is the greatest of Mr Wells' +achievements in fantasy that has a deeper purpose than mere amusement. +The story is absorbing and Smallways a perfectly conceived character, +recommendations that serve to popularise the book as a romance; but +all the art of the construction is relevant to the theme, and to the +logical issue which is faced unflinchingly. In the many wild +prophecies that have been incorporated in various stories of a great +European war, there has been discoverable now and again some hint of +insight into the real dangers that await mankind. But such stories as +these degenerate into some accidental, but inferentially glorious, +victory of British arms, and any value in the earlier comments is +swamped in the sentimentality of the fortuitous, and designedly +popular, sequel. In the book now under consideration the conception is +too wide for any such lapses into the maudlin. British interests play +an insignificant part in the drama. We have to consider war not as an +incident in the history of a nation, but as a horrible disgrace in the +history of humanity. + +And war is the theme also of _The World Set Free_ (1914), but it leads +here to a theory of reconstruction of which we have no sight in the +earlier work. The opening chapters describe the inception of the +means, the discovery of the new source of energy--a perfectly +reasonable conception--that led to the invention of the "atomic bomb," +a thing so terribly powerful and continuous in its action that after +the first free use of it in a European outbreak, war became +impossible. As a romance, the book fails. The interest is not centred +in a single character, and we are given somewhat disconnected glimpses +of various phases in the discovery of the new energy, in its +application, and of the catastrophes that follow its use as an +instrument of destruction. The essay form has almost dominated the +method of the novelist, and consequently the essential parable has not +the same force as in _The War in the Air_. Nevertheless, the vision is +there, obscured by reason of its more personal expression; and before +I return to consider the three less pertinent romances interposed +between those that have a more recognisable critical tendency, I wish +to sum up the distinctive attitude of the four just considered. + +And in this thing I claim that the conscious purpose of the artist is +of comparatively small account. I may be doing Mr Wells an injustice, +either by robbing him of the credit of a clearly conceived intention, +or by reading into his books a deliberation which he might wish to +disclaim. But my business is not justice to the author in this sense, +but an interpretation--necessarily personal--of the message his books +have conveyed to a particular reader. And the plain message that all +these romances--including those that follow--have conveyed to me is +the necessity for ridding the mind of traditions of the hypnotic +suggestions of parents and early teachers, of the parochial influences +of immediate surroundings, of the prejudices and self-interested +dogmatisms and hyperboles of common literature, especially of the +daily and weekly press; in order that we may, if only for an exercise +in simple reason, dissociate ourselves for a moment from all those +intimate forces, and regard life with the calmness of one detached +from personal interests and desires. No human being who has not thus +stood apart from life can claim to have realised himself; and in so +far as he is unable thus to separate himself temporarily from his +circumstances he confesses that he is less a personality than a bundle +of reactions to familiar stimuli. But given that power of detachment, +the reader may find in these four books matter for the reconsideration +of the whole social problem. Whether he accept such tentative +reconstructions as those suggested in _The World Set Free_ or _In the +Days of the Comet_ is relatively unimportant, the essential thing is +that he should view life with momentarily undistracted eyes; and see +both the failures of our civilisation and its potentialities for a +finer and more gracious existence.... + +_The First Men in the Moon_ (1901) is little more than a piece of +sheer exuberance. The theory of the means to the adventure and the +experience itself are both plausible. There are a few minor +discrepancies, but when the chief assumption is granted the +deductions will all stand examination. The invention of cavorite, the +substance that is impervious to the force--whatever it may be--of +gravitation, as other substances are impervious to light, heat, sound +or electricity, is not a priori impossible, nor is the theory that the +moon is hollow, that the "Selenites" live below the surface, or that +evolution has produced on our satellite an intelligent form which, +anatomically, is more nearly allied to the insect than to the +vertebrate type as we know it. The exposition of lunar social +conditions cannot be taken very seriously. Specialisation is the +key-note; the production by education and training, of minds, and, as +far as possible, bodies, adapted to a particular end, and incapable of +performing other technical functions. The picture of this highly +developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation. +As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the +thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete +example leaves us unambitious in that direction. + +One chapter, however, stands apart and elaborates once more that +detachment for space and time which I have so particularly emphasised +as the more important feature of these particular books. Mr Bedford, +alone in his Cavorite sphere between the Earth and the Moon, +experiences this sensation of aloofness. "I became, if I may go +express it, dissociate from Bedford," he writes. "I looked down on +Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be +connected," Bedford, unfortunately for my moral, was a poor creature +who got no benefit from his privilege, who flouted it indeed and +regretted his inability "to recover the full-bodied self-satisfaction +of his early days." Possibly the fact that in his case the knowledge +was thrust upon him may account for his failure. It is only the +knowledge we seek that has any influence upon us. + +_The Sea Lady_ (1902) stands alone among Mr Wells' romances. The +realistic method remains, but the conception is touched with a poetic +fancy of a kind that I have not found elsewhere in these books. The +Venus Annodomini who came out of the sea at Folkestone in the form of +an authentic mermaid was something more than a mere critic of our +civilised conventions. She was that, too; she asked why people walked +on the Leas "with little to talk about and nothing to look at, and +bound not to do all sorts of natural things, and bound to do all sorts +of preposterous things." But she was also the personification of +"other dreams." She had "the quality of the open sky, of deep tangled +places, of the flight of birds ... of the high sea." She represented +to one man, at least, "the Great Outside." And, if we still find a +repetition of the old statement in that last description, it is, +nevertheless, surrounded with a glamour that is not revealed in such +books as _In the Days of the Comet_. The ideal that is faintly +shadowed in _The Sea Lady_ is more ethereal, less practical; the +story, despite the naturalistic, half-cynical manner of its recountal, +has the elements of romance. The closing scene describes the +perplexity of a practical Kentish policeman "who in the small hours +before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea Lady had been wearing, just as +the tide overtook it," He stands there on the foreshore with a foolish +bewilderment, wondering chiefly "what people are up to." He is the +"simple citizen of a plain and obvious world." And Mr Wells concludes: +"I picture the interrogation of his lantern going out for a little +way, a stain of faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious vast serenity +of the night." And I make an application of the parable for my own +purposes, and wonder how far the curiosity of Mr Wells' readers will +carry them into the great mystery that lies behind the illusion of +this apparently obvious world. + +We come, finally, without any suggestion of climax, to _The Food of +the Gods_ (1904). The food was produced, casually in the first +instance, by two experimenters who served no cause but that of their +own inquisitive science. One of them, Redwood, had become intrigued by +the fact that the growth of all living things proceeded with bursts +and intermissions; it was as if they had "to accumulate force to grow, +grew with vigour only for a time, and then had to wait for a space +before they could go on growing again." And Bensington, the other +experimenter, succeeded in separating a food that produced regular +instead of intermittent growth. It was universal in its effects, +influencing vegetable as well as animal life; and in the course of +twenty years it produced human giants, forty feet high. This is a +theme for Mr Wells to revel in, and he does, treating the detail of +the first two-thirds of the book with a fine realism. Like Bensington, +he saw, "behind the grotesque shapes and accidents of the present, the +coming world of giants and all the mighty things the future has in +store--vague and splendid, like some glittering palace seen suddenly +in the passing of a sunbeam far away." The parable is plain enough, +but the application of it weakens when we realise that so far as the +merely physical development goes, the food of the gods is only +bringing about a change of scale. If we grant that this "insurgent +bigness" must conquer the world, the final result is only humanity in +the same relation to life that it now occupies, and we are left to +reflect with Bensington, after the vision had faded, on "sinister +shadows, vast declivities and darknesses, inhospitable immensities, +cold, wild and terrible things." + +The change of scale, however, so long as it was changing, presents in +another metaphor the old contrasts. The young giants, the Cossars and +Redwood, looking down on common humanity from a vantage-point some +thirty to forty feet higher than the "little people," are critical by +force of circumstances; and they are at the same time handicapped by +an inability to comprehend the thing criticised. They are too +differentiated; and for the purpose of the fable none of them is +gifted with the power to study these insects with the sympathy of a +Henri Fabre. We may find some quality of blundering stupidity in the +Cossars and in young Redwood, they were too prejudiced by their +physical scale; but the simple Caddles, born of peasant parents, +uneducated and set to work in a chalk quarry, is the true enquirer. He +walked up to London to solve his problem, and his fundamental +question: "What's it all _for_?" remained unanswered. The "little +people" could not exchange ideas with him, and he never met his +brother giants. It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether they +could have offered him any satisfactory explanation of the purpose of +the universe. Their only ambition seemed to be reconstruction on a +larger scale. + +I think the partial failure of _The Food of the Gods_ to furnish any +ethical satisfaction is due to the fact that in this romance Mr Wells +has identified himself too closely with the giants; a fault that +indicates a slight departure from normality. The inevitable contrast +between great and little lacks a sympathy and appreciation we find +elsewhere. "Endless conflict. Endless misunderstanding. All life is +that. Great and little cannot understand one another" is the true text +of the book; and it implies a weakness in the great not less than in +the little; a weakness that is hardly exonerated by the closing +sentence: "But in every child born of man lurks some seed of +greatness--waiting for the food." I find a quality of reasonableness +in the little people's antagonism to the blundering superiority of +those giants. + +To the tail of these romances I may pin the majority of Mr Wells' +short stories. The best of them are all included in the collection +published under the title of _The Country of the Blind_. In this form +Mr Wells displays nothing but the exuberance of his invention. In the +Preface to the collection he defines his conception of short-story +writing as "the jolly art of making something very bright and moving; +it may be horrible or pathetic or funny, or beautiful, or profoundly +illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from +fifteen to twenty minutes to read aloud." I can add nothing to that +description, and would only take away from it so much as is implied by +the statement that I cannot call to mind any one of these stories +which is "profoundly illuminating" in the same sense that I would +certainly apply the phrase to some of the romances. Jolly and bright +they undoubtedly are, but when they are moving, they provide food for +wonder rather than for enlightenment.... + +I cannot leave these romances without a comment on Mr Wells' +justification as preacher and prophet. Writing in the midst of the +turmoil of war, I am vividly conscious of having had my mind prepared +for it by the material I have here so inadequately described. All the +misunderstandings, the weaknesses, the noisy, meaningless ambitions, +the tepid acceptance of traditional standards, have been exposed by Mr +Wells in these fantasies of his. And in _The War in the Air_, with +just such exaggerations as are necessary for a fiction of this kind, +he has forecast the conditions which have now overtaken us. We +know--or we might know if we had the capacity for any sort of +consequent consideration of our conditions--that in a reasonably +conducted civilisation no such awful catastrophe as this senseless +conflagration could have been possible. No doubt we shall profit by +the lesson, but it is one that any individual might have learned for +himself from these romances, without paying the fearful price that is +now necessary. And because humanity is apt to forget its most drastic +punishments, to revert to its original inertia as soon as the smart is +healed, I feel that when the worst is over, these books will have a +greater value than ever before. I believe that in them may be found +just those essentials of detachment and broad vision which might serve +to promote a higher and more stable civilisation. + + + + +III + +THE NOVELS + + +I am willing to maintain that H.G. Wells is second to none as a writer +of romances of the type I have just examined. I am less certain of his +position as a novelist. He brings to his fiction the open-eyed +recognition of realities, the fine analysis of modern conditions, the +lucid consequent thought and the clean, graphic style that mark the +qualities of his other method; he has that "poetic gift, the gift of +the creative and illuminating phrase," which, he has said, "alone +justifies writing"; but he has not the power of creating characters +that stand for some essential type of humanity. On the one hand he is +inclined to idealise the engineer and the scientific researcher, on +the other to satirise and, in effect, to group into one +sloppy-thinking mass every other kind of Englishman, not excepting +philosophers, politicians and social reformers. This broad +generalisation omits any consideration of the merely uneducated, such +as Hoopdriver or Kipps, and the many women he has drawn. But the +former, however sympathetically treated, are certainly not idealised; +and among the latter, the only real creation, in my opinion, is Susan +Ponderevo in _Tono-Bungay_; although there is a possible composite of +various women in the later books that may represent the general +insurgent character of recent young womanhood. But now that I have +made this too definite statement I want to go back over it, touch it +up and smooth it out. For if I have found Mr Wells' character types +too few and too specialised; and as if, with regard to his more or +less idealised males--such as Capes, George Ponderevo, Remington, +Trafford, Stafford--he had modelled and re-modelled them in the effort +to build up one finally estimable figure of masculine ability; there +still remains an enormous gallery of subsidiary portraits, for the +most part faintly caricatured, of men and women who do stand for +something in modern life; portraits that are valuable, interesting and +memorable. Nevertheless, I submit that Mr Wells' novels will not live +by reason of their characterisation. + +The desire to write essays in this class of fiction does not seem to +have overcome Wells until the last few years. Before 1909, he had +written all his sociology and all his romances, with the exception of +_The World Set Free_, but only three novels--namely, _The Wheels of +Chance_, _Love and Mr Lewisham_ and _Kipps_; and none of them gives +any indication of the characteristic method of the later work. + +The first of the three, published in 1896, is in one respect a +splendid answer to the objection against what has been called the +episodical novel. The story deals only with ten glorious days in the +life of Hoopdriver, a callow assistant in a draper's "emporium" at +Putney. He learnt to ride a bicycle, set out to tour the south coast +for his short summer holiday and rode into romance. One section of the +book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but +underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even +saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination +without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of +his poor little dreams and poses; he sees himself momentarily in the +part of a detective, a journalist, a South African millionaire, any +assumption to disguise the horrible reality of the draper's assistant; +and yet there is fine stuff in him. (Perhaps the suggested antithesis +is hardly justified!) We leave him at the door of the Putney shop full +of resolution to read, to undertake his own education, in some way, no +doubt, to better himself, as he might have phrased it. But we doubt +the quality of his determination and of the lasting influence of the +"more wonderful desires and ambitions replacing those discrepant +dreams." We have only followed Hoopdriver through a ten-day episode, +but all his story has been told. + +We are in quite a different position with regard to Lewisham. The +history of his encounter with love and the world, published in 1900, +covers a period of four or five years, but while we leave him +down-at-heel, with a wife and a mother-in-law dependent upon him, and +the prospect of fatherhood adding to his responsibilities, we are +uncertain whither his career will take him. Lewisham is the first +sketch for the type that was to be elaborated in five subsequent +books. The allurements of his love for Ethel Henderson spoilt his +chances at the science school, but he has the quality that is so +conspicuously lacking in the Hoopdriver-Kipps-Polly succession. +Lewisham had some resolution, undoubted energy, and the beginnings of +that larger vision which was the gift of the later protagonists. But +he is not idealised; he comes nearer to the average of humanity than +the later pictures of his like; although they share with him that +tendency to sudden irascibility, to outbursts of a somewhat petty +temper against the obvious limitations of life--a common tendency +observable in nearly all Mr Wells' dominant male characters. Those few +years of Lewisham's life were so well done, so consistently developed, +that I have regretted the absence of a sequel. Indeed, I still regret +it, although I realise very well that Mr Wells' steady progress in the +conception of his own purpose as a writer has absolutely precluded +any return to an older method. Lewisham was not quite strong enough +to portray the further development of the dominant idea, not a +sufficiently tempered tool for the dissection of the modern world. + +I have said little about the story of this fragment of Lewisham's +career; I have not even mentioned that deliciously plausible and able +rogue, Chaffery, the fraudulent medium; but in this essay I am more +concerned to trace the meaning of Mr Wells' books than to criticise or +praise the detail. With regard to the latter, the reader may always +feel so perfectly safe. He need have no doubt that description of +action, of mood, or of place will be vivid and convincing, true to +life and essential to the story. I do not pass this detail by because +I have found it better done in other contemporary writers; I have not; +but because I find a pregnancy and a growing force behind these +minutić that is strangely lacking from any other works of fiction in +which I can find any comparison. + +There are, however, still two more novels to be disposed of before I +can examine the full expression of Mr Wells' purpose as I find it in +his later books. One of these novels, _Kipps_ (1905), is the next in +chronological order; the other, _The History of Mr Polly_, was +published in 1910, interpolated between _Ann Veronica_ and _The New +Machiavelli_. Both Kipps and Polly began active life in a draper's +shop. The former is explicitly labelled "a simple soul." He is at once +sillier and sharper than Hoopdriver, but, like that "dear fool" (the +phrase is Mr Wells'), Kipps has some very sterling qualities. He had +the good fortune to come into money--I cannot but count it good +fortune in his case--and was just wise enough to avoid a marriage with +Helen Walshingham--"County family. Related to the Earl of +Beauprés"--and if he shirked that match rather from sheer funk than +from any clear realisation of the futility of what he was avoiding, he +did, at least, run away with and marry that very charming little +housemaid, Ann Pornick, whom he had loved in his early boyhood. After +his marriage he lost the greater part of his money, and later +recovered it again; but all these shocks of fortune left him the same +simple soul, untroubled by any urgent problems outside the range of +his personal experience. His brief contact with the dreamer, +Masterman, and his friendship with the capable young +engineer-socialist, Sid Pornick, Ann's brother, only roused Kipps to a +momentary wonder, and his final enunciation of the great question was +representative. "I was thinking just what a Rum Go everything is," he +says. That question, to quote Mr Wells, "never reached the surface of +his mind, it never took to itself substance or form; it looked up +merely as the phantom of a face might look, out of deep waters, and +sank again into nothingness." + +Mr Polly is a third variant of the Hoopdriver-Kipps genus. He had more +initiative, although he still presents a problem in inertia, and he is +the only one of the three who had a feeling for literature, and read +persistently, if vagariously. And Mr Polly did at last take his fate +into his own hands, commit arson, desert his wife and wander off, an +"exploratious adventurer," as he might have put it, to discover some +joy and poetry in life after a heroic battle that he funked most +horribly and might have avoided. This may sound rather a criminal +record, and even so I have taken no account of his fraud on the Life +Assurance Company, but no one could ever condemn Mr Polly--or wish him +a happier employment than that he finally achieved partly by luck and +partly by his own effort. He was the sport of the forces that break +out so ungovernably in this haphazard world. As the "high-browed +gentleman living at Highbury" explains: "Nothing can better +demonstrate the collective dullness of our community, the crying need +for a strenuous, intellectual renewal, than the consideration of that +vast mass of useless, uncomfortable, under-educated, under-trained, +and altogether pitiable people we contemplate when we use that +inaccurate and misleading term, the Lower Middle Class. A great +proportion of the lower middle class should properly be assigned to +the unemployed and the unemployable." And that is the moral we may lay +to heart from the presentation of these three quite lovable and quite +futile draper's assistants. Their stories are told without +didacticism; the method displays at its brightest Mr Wells' intimate +knowledge and understanding of the life and speech of the class +portrayed; the developments are natural and absorbing enough to hold +the interest of the most idle reader; and here and there, perhaps, an +intelligent man or woman may be stirred to realise that he or she is +in part responsible for the futility of a Hoopdriver or a Kipps, or +for the jovial crimes of Mr Polly.... + +I come now to the six novels which represent most truly the striving, +persistent idealism of the mature Wells. In these books he has come to +the mastery of his own technique--so far as a man may ever master it. +He admits that there remain inexpressible visions, he is apt at times +to be overtaken by his own mannerisms (a fault that in no way affects +the enjoyment or enlightenment of the average reader), but he has +wrought and perfected a delicate instrument of style that is finely +adapted to his purpose. I cannot avoid speaking of "purpose" in +relation to these five books, and yet the word is misleading. I do not +mean by it that Mr Wells has ever sat down to write a novel with the +deliberate intention of converting an honest reader or so. But I do +mean that he has tried very deliberately to express his own attitude +in these books, and that whether or not he was intentionally a +propagandist, he has done his utmost to explain and to glorify that +attitude of his. Perhaps I shrink from that word "purpose" too +sensitively, because it is so naturally associated in the mind with +all that is clumsy and didactic in fiction. The "novel with a +purpose," as the dreadful phrase has it, is a horrible thing, and none +of this five could be so misdescribed. Nevertheless it is very plain +that Mr Wells has deliberately selected his stories and his characters +to illustrate certain points of view. The characters are consistent, +and the story growing out of their influences and reactions is never +distorted in order to score a point for the maintainer of a theory. +But the preliminary selection cannot be overlooked. It has, without +question, been made in each case to illustrate a thesis. + +_Ann Veronica_ (1909) opens an aspect of the sex question that has +been amplified in later novels. The chief person in the story +illustrates for us the revolt of young women against the limitations +of a certain, the most representative, type of home discipline. Ann +Veronica was a well-educated young woman with that leaning towards +biological science which seems an almost necessary element in the +make-up of Mr Wells' exemplars of the open mind. She came to an open +quarrel with her father on the question of attending a somewhat +Bohemian fancy-dress ball, and she had the courage and determination +to uphold her declaration of independence. She ran away, came up to +London from her father's suburb, took lodgings and essayed quite +unsuccessfully to make her own living. She failed in this endeavour +because she had not been educated or trained for any of those few and +specialised occupations that women may attempt in modern conditions. +She learned by experience various essentials that had been omitted +from any teaching she had received at home, and ended that phase of +her life by falling in love with Capes, demonstrator at the +Westminster Imperial College, a man who was living apart from his +wife. Ann Veronica's story is the first serious essay in feminism--a +term that takes a much wider meaning in Mr Wells' definition than is +commonly attributed to it. The novel presents the claim of the woman +to free herself from the restrictions that once almost necessarily +limited her sphere of action, restrictions that are ever becoming more +meaningless in a civilisation that has enforced new economic +conditions. But Mr Wells goes far beyond that elementary proposition. +He has tried in _Ann Veronica_--and again with a more delicate probe +in _Marriage_ and _The Passionate Friends_--to touch the hidden thing +that is causing all this surface inflammation. He has analysed and +diagnosed the exposed evil, always it seems with a certain +tentativeness, and we are left to carry on his line of research; many +of the difficulties of the problem are indicated, but no sovereign +specific for the malady. + +_Tono-Bungay_ (1909) touches only casually on the sex question. The +involved love affairs of George Ponderevo are less essential than the +career of his uncle, the inventor of the patent medicine that gives a +title to the book. In many ways _Tono-Bungay_ is the best novel that +Mr Wells has given us. It is written in the first person, a narrative +form that afterwards served to convey Mr Wells' interpolated +criticisms of the bodies social and politic in something nearly +approaching the shape of an essay, but in _Tono-Bungay_ there are no +important divagations from the development of the story. 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 was not a bad little man, this +plump little chemist; a Lombroso or a Ferri would have found +difficulty in classifying him as a "criminal type," however eager +those investigators might have been to confirm their pet theories. +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. He was "imaginative, erratic, +inconsistent, recklessly inexact," and his imagination led him by way +of a patent medicine to company promoting on the Hooley scale. "Do you +realise the madness of the world that sanctions such a thing?" asks Mr +Wells in the person of the supposed narrator and points that question +on a later page as follows:--"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." + +The enormous success and rapid failure of this futile, ambitious +little chemist--a success that is, unhappily, only too conceivable and +probable--are seen against the background of his nephew's life, Mr +Wells has given a greater value and credulity to the legal +criminalities of Ponderevo, by coming at him, as it were, through a +wider angle; just as he achieves all the circumstances of reality in +his romances by his postulation of an average eye-witness. 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. The +general criticism is at times quite explicit, but it is subordinated. + +In _The New Machiavelli_ (1910) these relations are nearly reversed. +The detailed exposure of the moving forces that stimulate our +political energies, occupies long sections into which the human +relations of Remington (the form is again that of an autobiography) +hardly enter, except in an occasional conversation to sharpen up a +criticism. This comment on politics (regarded in his own constituency, +Remington says, not as a "great constructive process" but as a "kind +of dog-fight") is the chief theme; subsidiary to it is the comment on +a society that could waste so valuable a life as Remington's for the +sake of a moral convention. Both comments point Mr Wells' expression +of what he calls in this book "the essential antagonism ... in all +human affairs ... between ideas and the established method--that is to +say, between ideas and the rule of thumb." And he adds: "The world I +hate is the rule-of-thumb world; the thing I and my kind exist for +primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct +it." This confession is so lucid and characteristic that I cannot +improve upon it, and yet I see that it is a statement likely to arouse +considerable resentment, "Of course we are detestable," Remington +admits in this connection; and in these later, more urgently critical +novels, we recognise a little too clearly that note of protest, almost +of defensive proclamation. And in none of them do we see it more +definitely than in the book now under consideration. In many ways _The +New Machiavelli_ stands apart from the other novels. I find it a +little bitter in places, because the thing condemned appears too small +for such unequivocal condemnation. The following superlative summary +is put into the mouth of a minor character, but I think it is fairly +representative of Remington's later attitude. "But of all the damned +things that ever were damned," says the plain-spoken Britten, "your +damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, +respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the +utterly damnedest." As a commentary, I find this exaggerated; and +although it is in the mouth of one who is not presented as a spokesman +for Mr Wells' own opinions, I feel that it comes very near to being a +text for a considerable section of the political criticism; and that +it indicates bias, a departure from normality. + +And yet, despite this occasional exhibition of temper, _The New +Machiavelli_ is a most illuminating book. It reveals with +extraordinary clearness the Wells of that period; but it also gives us +a sight of the spirit in him that does not change. All his books, +romances, novels and essays indicate a gradual process of growth; if +we were to apply any label to him, we should inevitably land ourselves +in confusion. He is nothing "in the first place" but a man with an +intense desire to understand life. As he says in this book: "A human +being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first +place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and +inevitably--though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence--a quack." +But while he may dissociate himself from any clique, and disclaim any +fixed opinion that might earn for him the offensive and fiercely +rejected label, he nevertheless presents to us one unchanging attitude +in these very refusals. "I'm going to get experience for humanity out +of all my talents--and bury nothing," says Remington; and that purpose +is implicit in every book that Wells has written. He is an empiric, +using first this test and then that to try the phenomena of life; +publishing the detail of his experiment and noting certain +deductions. But while he may offer a prescription for certain +symptoms, he gives us to understand that he is only diagnosing a phase +in human development; that he is seeking an ultimate which he never +hopes to find, and that the deductions he draws to-day may be rejected +to-morrow without a shadow of regret. He would be constant, I think, +only in his inconstancy to any criterion of present conditions as +applicable or likely to be applicable to the future; he sees life as a +dynamic thing in process of change and growth. "All the history of +mankind," he writes, "all the history of life has been and will be the +story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, +struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual +lives--an effect of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible +appeal." And it is for this reason that he is so eager to battle with, +annoy, disarrange and reconstruct that rule-of-thumb world he +censures so steadily; he is fighting the assumption of a static +condition which he knows to be impossible. + +And for a moment in _The New Machiavelli_, and again in his next book, +_Marriage_, he has a passing vision of some greater movement of which +we are but the imperfect instruments. He develops and then drops the +idea of a "hinterland," not only to the individual mind but to the +general consciousness. The "permanent reality," he calls it, "which is +never really immediate, which draws continually upon human experience +and influences human action more and more, but which is itself never +the actual player upon the stage. It is the unseen dramatist who never +takes a call." And in another place he writes in the same connection: +" ... the ideas go on--as though we are all no more than little cells +and corpuscles in some great brain beyond our understanding." + +We come again to a hint of that explanation at the end of _Marriage_, +published in 1912. The story, reduced to the barest outline, is that +of the relations of Trafford to his wife. It is not complicated by any +sexual temptations or jealousies, but it gradually evolves the +integral problem of the meaning of life. + +Trafford, before his engagement to Marjorie Pope, and for a year or +two after his marriage, was engaged in research work. His speciality +was molecular physics and he was a particularly brilliant +investigator. That research, with all the possibilities that it held +of some immense discovery of the laws that govern the constitution of +inorganic and progressively, perhaps, of organic, matter, was +sufficient to engross his mental energies, to give him a sense of +satisfaction in life; but his six hundred pounds a year proved +insufficient to satisfy the demands of Marjorie's claim to enjoyment. +She was not a mere type of the worldly-minded woman. She represents, +indeed, the claim of modern women for a distinctive interest and +employment not less urgent and necessary than the interests and +employments of men. And when she failed, as she plainly must have +failed, to find any such occupation, her sense of beauty and her +justifiable demand for life found an outlet largely in shopping, in +entertaining, in all such ephemeral attractions and amusements as +women in her class may seek and reject. That way of escape, however, +soon raised financial obstructions to Trafford's work. He had to find +a means for increasing his income, and came at last and inevitably to +the necessity for making more money and continually still more. The +road to wealth was opened for him and he took it by sacrificing his +research work, but when the economic problem had been triumphantly +solved, he could not return to his first absorption in the problems +of molecular physics. Life pressed upon him at every moment of the +day, he had been inveigled into a net. + +The manner of Trafford's escape from the thing that intrigued him has +been severely criticised. After I had first read the book I too was +inclined to deprecate the device of taking Trafford and Marjorie into +the loneliness of a Labrador winter, in order to set them right with +themselves and give them a clearer vision of life. But I have read +_Marriage_ twice since I formed that premature judgment, and each time +I have found a growing justification for what at first may seem a +somewhat whimsical solution to the difficulties of an essentially +social problem. + +But in effect this is the same specific that I upheld in my comment on +the romances; it illustrates the need felt by a certain class of mind +for temporary withdrawal from all the immediate urgencies and calls +of social life; the overwhelming desire to see the movements and +intricacies of human initiative and reactions, from a momentarily +detached standpoint. And Mr Wells has offered us a further commentary +on the difficulties of this abstraction, by withholding any vision +from Trafford until he was finally isolated from Marjorie, and even +from any physical contact with the movement of what we call reality, +by illness and fever. Only then, indeed, did he touch the vital +issues. I find the statement of this ultimate thing, vaguely phrased +in Trafford's semi-delirium, presenting another expression of the +thought quoted from _The New Machiavelli_; the conception of humanity +as an instrument. "Something trying to exist," he says, something +"which isn't substance, doesn't belong to space or time, something +stifled and enclosed, struggling to get through." And later he +repeats: "It struggles to exist, becomes conscious, becomes now +conscious of itself. That is where I come in as a part of it. Above +the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to +know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is +in life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This +Being--opening its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good +thing in man is that--looking and making pictures, listening and +making songs.... We began with bone-scratching. We're still--near it. +I'm just a part of this beginning--mixed with other things. Every +book, every art, every religion is that, the attempt to understand and +express--mixed with other things." + +I have reached something like a climax with this passage; a climax +that I would willingly maintain if it were possible, inasmuch as it +holds a representation of that unchanging influence which I find as an +inspiration and a force behind all H.G. Wells' books. Necessarily +this vital inspiration is, as he says, "mixed with other things"; he +has had to find a means to express it, and our means of expression is +limited not only by our own powers but in a large degree by the +limitations of the audience addressed. Moreover H.G. Wells' art +represents him in that it is a practical art. He is, in an +unspecialised sense, a pragmatist. He comes back from his isolations +to find in this world all the substance and potentialities of beauty +both in outward appearance and in conduct. And he is not content to +vapour of ideals. He recognises that the stuff of admiration and +desire that animates his own being is present throughout humanity. +Only the sight of it is obscured by all those stupidities and +condescensions to rule-of-thumb that he attacks so furiously. Those +are the impediments that he would clear away, and he acknowledges that +they stand between him and his own sight of beauty. He is compelled +always to struggle--and we can see the signs of it in all he +writes--with his own weakness and limitations; criticising himself as +he satirises the thing condemned, but striving without ceasing to +serve the purpose of that which he knows is "struggling to exist." +This, to me, is the spirit of H.G. Wells, and I find it a spirit that +is as admirable as it is human.... + +_The Passionate Friends_ (1913) is another experiment in exposition. +The very real and fine love of Stafford (the autobiographer in this +case) and Lady Mary Christian is spoiled, made to appear insignificant +and debased, by all the conventions and petty, unoriginal judgments +that go to the making of the rule of our society. The woman had to +make her choice between love in an undignified poverty for which all +her training had unfitted her, and a sterile ease and magnificence +that gave her those opportunities which her temperament and education +demanded. She chose for dignity and opportunity, was tempted to grasp +at love, and thus finally came into a blind alley from which death was +the only escape. It is another picture of the old conflict illustrated +in the persons of Ann Veronica and Marjorie Trafford; the constant +inability that our conditions impose on the desire to love +beautifully. The implicit demand is that for greater freedom for +women, socially and economically. Incidentally we see that the man, +Stafford, does not suffer in the same degree. His splendid love for +Lady Mary is thwarted, but he finds an outlet. It is a new aspect of +escape, by the way, for Stafford's illuminating business of spreading +and collating knowledge is a relief from the scientific research which +was in some form or another the specific of the earlier novels--if we +exclude Remington's political propaganda in _The New Machiavelli_, a +suggested solution that was, at the best, something half-hearted. And +Stafford's escape, and his version of going to the mountain apart--by +way of a sight of the East and of America--bring us back to that +integral theme which I have so insisted upon, even at the risk of +tedious repetition. "I was already beginning to see the great problem +of mankind," writes Stafford, "as indeed nothing other than a +magnification of the little problem of myself, as a problem in escape +from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, precautions and +ancient angers.... For all of us, as for each of us, salvation is +that. We have to get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a +giant's desire and an unending life, ours and yet not our own." + +The last novel published at the time I write is _The Wife of Sir Isaac +Harman_ (1914). The same theme is presented, but in other +circumstances. Ellen Sawbridge, when she married, at eighteen, the +founder and proprietor of "The International Bread Shops," was an +ingenuous schoolgirl; and for more than seven years the change from a +relatively independent poverty to the luxuries she could enjoy as the +wife of a man who had not outgrown the Eastern theory with regard to +the position of women, sufficed to keep her reasonably content. Mr +Brumley was the instrument of Fate that seriously disturbed her +satisfaction; but she must have come to much the same crisis, if Mr +Brumley had never existed. Brumley was a writer, but he was not one of +"the really imaginative people, the people with vision, the people who +let themselves go"--I quote the expression of George Wilkins, the +novelist--and Lady Harman never fell very deeply in love with him. +Nevertheless it was through Brumley's interference with her life that +she faced the crux of her position as the closely restricted occupant +of "a harem of one." She never broke out of that cage. One desperate +effort led her, by way of a suffragist demonstration on a post office +window, to a month's freedom in prison; but Sir Isaac and society were +too clever and too strong for her. When she was enlarged from the +solitude of confinement in a cell, she was tricked and bullied into +the resumption of her marital engagements. And presumably she must +have continued to act as the nurse of her now invalid husband for the +rest of her life, suffering the indignities of his abuse and the +restrictions of liberty that the paid attendant may escape by a change +of situation, if release had not come through Sir Isaac's death. By +that time Lady Harman had learnt her lesson. I am distinctly sorry for +Mr Brumley, but I should have been seriously disappointed in Ellen +Harman if she had consented to marry him. + +Thus far I have only traced an imperfect outline of what I take to be +the more important motive of the book. But there is a second pattern +hardly less essential--namely, the criticism of the management and, _ŕ +fortiori_, of the conception of principle, in relation to the +International Bread Shops. Arising out of this interwoven theme we +come to some examination of the status of the female employee in +general, and particularly in connection with the question of their +board and lodging outside business hours. But in _The Wife of Sir +Isaac Harman_ the essay manner has been abandoned. Any diversion from +the development of the story is carried out by the expressed opinions +of the characters themselves; and, as a consequence, the two essential +problems are not unduly intruded upon the reader, although for that +very reason they may remain longer in his thoughts. One more comment +should be added, which is that this is the wittiest book that Mr +Wells has yet given us. However serious the motives that give it life, +it must be classed as a comedy.... + +In concluding this brief review of Mr Wells' novels, I feel that I +must hark back to a passage in _The Passionate Friends_ in order to +indicate a spirit which, if it is not so definitely phrased in this +last book of his, is certainly upheld in the matter of the story. For +it is that spirit which seems to me the thing that should live and be +remembered. Here is one of its more characteristic expressions in the +mouth of Stafford, who writes: + +"I know that a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient +ways. The bloodstained organised jealousies of religious intolerance, +the delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred +which simple people, and young people and common people cherish +against all that is not in the likeness of themselves cease to be the +undisputed ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate +our lives from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds +and suspicions.... A spirit ... arises and increases in human affairs, +a spirit that demands freedom and gracious living as our inheritance +too long deferred...." + +And surely H.G. Wells has striven to give a freer and more vital +expression to that spirit, working through his own life, than any +other novelist of our day. Indeed I would go further and claim that no +such single and definite inspiration can be found in the works of any +other secular writer. Wells has given to the novel a new criticism +and, to a certain degree, a new form. + + + + +IV + +SOCIOLOGY + + +Mr Wells' essays in sociology are not dry treatises, based on Blue +books and the gathering together of information and statistics from a +formless and largely worthless collection of earlier sources. He has +approached this question of man in relation to the State in the same +generous spirit displayed in his works of fiction; and it is only by +using the word "sociology" in its fuller sense as conceived by Comte, +rather than in the restricted sense of "social science" with its +implication of economics, as narrowed by Herbert Spencer, that I dare +to head this last chapter with so dangerously technicalised a term. +Indeed, I would not use the word "sociology" now if I could find a +more inclusive heading. For it must be obvious, I think, to anyone who +has followed my exposition of the romances and the novels that Mr +Wells has a way of treating all such subjects as relate to the +betterment of humanity with a broad outlook, an entire disrespect for +conventional forms however hallowed by precedent, and a habit of +trenchant criticism that could hardly be fettered by an analysis of +sociological literature or continual deference to this or that +experiment in practice or theory. He approaches his subject with the +normal mind of one who sees the world, its customs and rules of +conduct, from what is, after all, the point of view of +common-sense--another term that has been so grossly misused that the +possessor of true common-sense is apt to be regarded as a most +uncommon person. It is, in fact, the least common of qualities. + +The first three books under this heading form some sort of a trilogy, +and have a definite air of consequence. Of these, _Anticipations_ was +published in 1901, and _Mankind in the Making_ and _A Modern Utopia_ +followed in 1903 and 1905 respectively. The scheme of the first two +books combines a criticism of present conditions with a growing +constructiveness that points the way to the ideal of what is called +"The New Republic." Now, one of the labels that has been most +frequently and adhesively affixed to Mr Wells is that of "Socialist," +and no doubt it would proclaim his purpose admirably enough if we +could satisfactorily define the word in its relation to him. But, +personally, I refuse so to label him, because I know that socialism +means as many things to different people as religion, and is as much a +term of reproach in the mouth of some self-labelled individualists as +the designation "Christian" might be in the mouth of the "true +believers"--as the Mohammedans call themselves. Wherefore I am +particularly anxious in approaching any description of "The New +Republic," to make it quite clear that that idealised State is not +built of the bricks that have been modelled and cast by any +recognisable group of propagandists, working to permeate, or more +forcibly to convert, a section of the public under the flags of, say, +Fabianism or Social Democracy. The essential thing about Mr Wells is +that he is not a Follower, whether of Marx, or Hyndman, or Shaw, or +Bebel; he may have learnt from any or all of them, but his theory of +social reconstruction is pre-eminently and characteristically his own. +He does not believe in the private ownership of land, for example, but +I do not remember that he has ever advocated the means of the "Single +Tax." And in these sociological essays, as in his novels, his method +is that of picturing the more desirable thing or condition, the +method of sweet persuasion rather than that of the sectarian who has +a pet specific. Nevertheless Mr Wells uses his sharpened weapon of +satire with considerable effect when he contemplates and displays for +us the world as he sees it to-day. I find no hint of sweetness or +persuasiveness on that side. + +It would be impossible in an exposition of this kind to dissect these +essays in detail, nor would it be desirable. Many of the suggestions +with regard to actual practice, suggestions that might be embodied in +modern legislation, are open to criticism in detail, and I would not +pin Mr Wells down to the letter of any one of them. He has certainly +changed his mind on many points since he wrote these essays in +constructive sociology, and the fact that he has so altered and +enlarged his opinions is the best possible evidence of his reliability +and sincerity. He is before all else devoted to the services of +growth and progress. "To rebel against instinct," he writes, "to rebel +against limitation, to evade, to trip up, and at last to close with +and grapple and conquer the forces that dominate him, is the +fundamental being of man." And no man can hope to dominate those +forces, if he is content to let his opinions crystallise at the age of +thirty-five or so. If he would retain his powers of criticism and +construction he must have the patience and the energy to maintain the +normal, receptive mind with which he is naturally endowed. +Unfortunately with that endowment commonly comes another--namely, a +tendency to avoid the irk or constant struggle by taking the line of +least resistance; by adopting an opinion and upholding it in the face +of all reason; and only a man of exceptional patience, courage and +ability can keep himself free from the prejudices and fixed opinions +which not only bring him a delusive peace and certainty but also are +the means to worldly success. + +So I would advise the readers of _Anticipations_ and _Mankind in the +Making_ to be influenced by the spirit rather than by the letter of +these two books. The spirit is definite enough; it is the spirit of +humaneness, of a passionate criticism of all the evils, miseries and +disease that are the outcome of our present haphazard civilisation; +the spirit for a desire for order, wider prospects and opportunities, +greater freedom for growth. Men are born unequal, with different +tendencies, different desires, different potentialities, but there +should be a place for every one of them in the great economy of "The +New Republic." Each has to learn the lesson--for discipline is +essential--that he is not an independent unit as regards his work, but +a factor, more or less insignificant, in the sum of individuals that +make up the greater State. The good New Republican "will seek +perpetually to gauge his quality, he will watch to see himself the +master of his habits and of his powers; he will take his brain, blood, +body and lineage as a trust to be administered for the world." + +Such, I think, is the spirit, the permanent principle of these two +books. That remains and increases. The conception of the process by +which the New Republic shall be built is less constant, and Mr Wells +will change his opinions concerning it for just so long as he +continues to grow. Should he ever adopt an inalterable policy, +subscribe to some "ism," and wear a label, he would brand himself +truly as inconsistent. Then, indeed, he would have contradicted +himself. We search for truth never hoping to find it complete and +whole; and he who is contented with a part denies God.... + +_A Modern Utopia_ (1905) is an attempt to picture "The New Republic" +in being; a very different dream of reconstruction from that +displayed in Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, and _Equality_, but +having nevertheless certain points of likeness to the former at least, +and especially in the method of marking contrasts by a form of +parallelism, by keeping the world as we know it within the circle of +attention in order to break the paralysing illusion that we are moving +in romantic and quite impossible surroundings. Mr Wells' machinery is +slightly complicated. He takes two figures from the beginning of this +twentieth century. The Owner of the Voice ("you will go with him +through curious and interesting experience. Yet, ever and again, you +will find him back at the table, the manuscript in his hand ...") and +the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor. "The +image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp," writes Mr +Wells in his preliminary explanation. "There will be an effect of +these two people going to and fro in front of the circle of a rather +defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of +focus, but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a +momentary moving picture of Utopian conditions." + +I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to avoid the all too obvious +mistake made by other Utopian builders, both romantic and practical. +He began, I feel sure, with the admirable intention of depicting the +people of the early twentieth century in new conditions, changed only +in so far as they were influenced by the presentation of finer ideals +and by more beautiful circumstance. He even introduced a contemporary +critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a +conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly +inexplicable way a most consummate ass." But once we begin to +postulate our Utopian villains, the reader's thought is distracted +from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds +every stone in the visionary city. In order to change conditions it is +necessary to change much in the present cast of human nature. In a +fiction of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, a Rockefeller, or +an ambition-swelled Imperialist. So Mr Wells is driven with various +hesitations and resentments to assume that the interactions of cause +and effect have indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, more +generous race of men and women; that the spirit which moves us now to +seek a larger liberty and a greater tolerance has been encouraged and +increased by the exercise of its own tendencies and the sight of its +own triumphs; and that those who set their minds to the building gain +an added grace in the labour. It is a perfectly fair and consistent +assumption, but Mr Wells has been warned by his predecessors, from +Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to Edward Bellamy, that the +designs for Utopia have always been flawed by an altered conception of +the humanity that walks within the city; and he has begun by trying to +avoid a fallacy and ended by begging a question that he might very +well have convincingly argued. + +By many people _A Modern Utopia_ is definitely labelled as the +"Samurai" book. That conception of a natural aristocracy of spirit and +ability did indeed return upon its creator in the form of an object +lesson that filled him with a disgust for what was really a fine +ideal, only too temptingly displayed. So many of his readers, and +particularly his younger readers, formed the wish to become "Samurai" +without more ado, a high office for which none of them, perhaps, had +the ability or the determination to fill. For Utopias take even longer +to build than Rome or London. But the plan is there--vague and +tentative as the original scheme of a Gothic cathedral, a plan to be +continually modified and changed in its most important features; and +the building has begun.... + +The last books that can strictly fall into the present category are +_The Future of America_ (1906) and _New Worlds for Old_ (1908). The +former is rather a record of impressions than the attempt at prophecy +which the title and the first chapter indicate; and the final +conclusion is too hesitating even to convince us that America has a +future. "I came to America questioning the certitudes of progress," Mr +Wells says in his Envoy. "For a time I forgot my questionings, I +sincerely believed, 'These people can do anything,' and, now I have it +all in perspective, I have to confess that doubt has taken me again." +And without question he has changed his opinion with regard to many of +the observations he made nine years ago. I sincerely hope he has. + +_New Worlds for Old_ is quite definitely a book of suggestions with +regard to certain aspects of socialism. It is the most practical of +all the sociological books, and makes so strong an appeal to the +buried common-sense of even prejudiced readers, that a devoted +Primrose Leaguer to whom I lent my copy was quite seriously disturbed +in mind for nearly a week after he had read it. Fortunately for his +own peace, he found an answer that permitted him comfortably to avoid +the perpetual burden of an active responsibility. He thought that +"Socialism would be all right in a perfect world," or words to that +effect; and it was quite evident to him that the effort to make some +small contribution towards raising the standard of human idealism was +no part of his duty. In any case he greatly preferred the solid +assurance of the Primrose League. And, speaking generally, as I have +tried to do throughout, I find that _New Worlds for Old_ presents a +clearer indication to the possible path for the idealist than any of +the other sociological essays. _Mankind in the Making_ dealt very +largely with education directed to a particular end, but in the book I +am now considering may be found certain outlets for the expression of +the less consistently strenuous. Education, whether of individual +children in the home or regarded as a function of the State, offers +continual perplexities that only the most resolute can confront day by +day with renewed zeal; the problems of collective ownership are less +confused by psychology, and the broad principles may be adopted and +the energy of the young believer directed towards the accomplishment +of minor detail. He may, for example, find good reason for the +nationalising of the milk supply without committing himself to any +broader theory of expropriation. + +Finally I come to the collection of various papers issued in 1914 +under the title _An Englishman Looks at the World_--a book that I may +pass with the comment that it exhibits Mr Wells in his more captious +moods, deliberately more captious in some instances, no doubt, +inasmuch as the various papers were written for serial +publication--and that _Confession of Faith and Rule of Life_, +published in 1907 as _First and Last Things_. The opening is +unnecessarily complicated by the exposition of a metaphysic that is +quite uncharacteristic and has little to do with the personal +exposition that follows; and, indeed, I feel with regard to the whole +work that it attempts to define the indefinable. I deprecate the note +of finality implied in the title. "It is as it stands now," I read in +the Introduction, "the frank confession of what one man of the early +Twentieth Century has found in life and himself," but that man has +found much since then, and will continue to find much as he grows +continually richer in experience. So that while no student of Wells' +writings can afford to overlook _First and Last Things_, I would warn +him against the danger of concluding that in that book he will find at +last the ultimate expression of character and belief, set out in the +form of a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit and overlook the +letter. I choose to take as representative such a passage as the +following, with all its splendid vagueness and lack of dogma, rather +than a definite expression of belief that Mr Wells does not believe in +a personal immortality. This passage runs: "It seems to me that the +whole living creation may be regarded as walking in its sleep, as +walking in the sleep of individualised illusion, and that now out of +it all rises man, beginning to perceive his larger self, his universal +brotherhood, and a collective synthetic purpose to increase Power and +realise Beauty...." + + * * * * * + +And now that I have attempted my interpretation, I look back and +confess that it is a very personal reading of my subject. I may have +sought too eagerly for all those passages in which I found a note that +roused in me the most thrilling response. I may have omitted to +display vital issues that more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the +appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies that I have found most +sympathetic and most admirable. But if I appear to have done him an +injustice in some particulars, it is rather because I have been +absorbed by the issue I sought to reveal, than because I deliberately +weighed and rejected others. This short essay can be no more than an +introduction to the works it describes. It was never intended to be +critical. I have had no intention of discussing technique, nor of +weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries in any literary scale. +But I have attempted to interpret the spirit and the message that I +have found in his books; and I have made the essay in the hope that +any reader who may consequently be stirred to read or to re-read Wells +will do so with a mind prepared to look below the surface expression. + +I feel no shade of hesitation when I say that H.G. Wells is a great +writer. His fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension of +character are gifts and abilities that certain of his contemporaries +have in equal, or in some particulars in larger measure. But he alone +has used his perfected art for a definite end. He has not been content +to record his observations of the world as he has seen it, to +elaborate this or that analysis of human motive, or to relate the +history of a few selected lives. He has done all this, but he has done +infinitely more by pointing the possible road of our endeavour. +Through all his work moves the urgency of one who would create +something more than a mere work of art to amuse the multitude or +afford satisfaction to the critic. His chief achievement is that he +has set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a more generous life +than that in which we live; an ideal that, if it is still too high for +us of this generation, will be appreciated and followed by the people +of the future. + + + + +A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF H.G. WELLS' PRINCIPAL WRITINGS + +Select Conversations with an Uncle (_Lane_). 1895. + +The Time Machine--An Invention (_Heinemann_). 1895. + +*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories (_Macmillan_). 1895. + +The Wonderful Visit (_Dent_). 1895. + +The Island of Dr Moreau (_Heinemann_). 1896. + +The Wheels of Chance (_Dent_). 1896. + +*The Plattner Story (_Macmillan_). 1897. + +The Invisible Man (_MacMillan_). 1897. + +The War of the Worlds (_Heinemann_). 1898. + +When the Sleeper Wakes (_Nelson_). 1899. + +Afterwards published (1911) in a revised and altered +edition, as "The Sleeper Awakes." + +*Tales of Space and Time (_Macmillan_). 1899. + +Love and Mr Lewisham (_Macmillan_). 1900. + +Certain Personal Matters (_Unwin_). 1901. + +Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and +Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought +(_Chapman & Hall_). 1901. + +The First Men in the Moon (_Macmillan_). 1901. + +The Discovery of the Future (A Lecture given at the +Royal Institute). 1902. + +The Sea Lady--A Tissue of Moonshine. 1902. + +Mankind in the Making (_Chapman & Hall_). 1903. + +*Twelve Stories and a Dream (_Macmillan_). 1903. + +The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(_Macmillan_). 1904. + +A Modern Utopia (_Nelson_). 1905. + +Kipps--The Story of a Simple Soul (_Macmillan_). 1905. + +In the Days of the Comet (_Macmillan_). 1906. + +The Future in America--A Search after Realities +(_Chapman & Hall_). 1906. + +First and Last Things--A Confession of Faith and +Rule of Life (_Constable_). 1907. + +The Misery of Boots (Fabian Tract). 1907. + +Socialism and Marriage (Fabian Tract). 1908. + +New Worlds for Old (_Constable_). 1908. + +The War in the Air (_Bell_). 1908. + +Tono-Bungay (_Macmillan_). 1909. + +Ann Veronica--A Modern Love Story (_Unwin_). 1909. + +The History of Mr Polly (_Nelson_). 1910. + +The New Machiavelli (_Lane_) 1910. + +The Country of the Blind and Other Stories +(_Nelson_). 1911. + +Floor Games (A book about play for children) +(_Palmer_). 1911. + +Socialism and the Great State (A contribution by +H.G. Wells. The book is written by fifteen +authors) (_Harper_). 1911. + +Marriage (_Macmillan_). 1912. + +The Passionate Friends--A Novel (_Macmillan_). +1913. + +Little Wars (A book about play for children) +(_Palmer_). 1913. + +An Englishman Looks at the World (_Cassell_). +1914. + +The World Set Free--A Story of Mankind +(_Macmillan_). 1914. + +The volumes marked * are collections of short +stories, the best of which were republished in "The +Country of the Blind," 1911. + +NOTE.--Some of these volumes have been published +under different titles in the U.S.A. (See American +Bibliography.) + + + + +AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +Island of Dr Moreau (_Duffield_). 1896. + +Invisible Man (_Harper_). 1898. + +Thirty Strange Stories (_Harper_). 1898. + +When the Sleeper Wakes [English title, "The Sleeper Awakes."] (_Harper_). 1899. + +Anticipations (_Harper_). 1902. + +Discovery of the Future (_Smithsonian Institute +Washington_). 1903. + +Discovery of the Future (_Huebsch_). 1913. + +Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(_Scribners_). 1904. + +Love and Mr Lewisham (_Stokes_). 1904. + +Mankind in the Making (_Scribners_). 1904. + +Modern Utopia (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Twelve Stories and a Dream (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Kipps (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Future in America (_Harper_). 1906. + +Time Machine--An Invention (_Holt & Company_). +1906. + +In the Days of the Comet (_Century Company_). +1906. + +First and Last Things (_Putnams_). 1908. + +New Worlds for Old (_Macmillan Company_). +1908-13. + +Socialism and the Family (_Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts_). 1908. + +This Misery of Boots (_Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts_). 1908. + +War in the Air (_Macmillan Company_). 1908. + +War in the Air (_Grosset & Dunlap_). 1910. + +Ann Veronica (_Harper_). 1909. + +Select Conversations with an Uncle (_Saalfield +Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio_). 1909. + +Tono-Bungay (_Duffield_). 1909. + +War of the Worlds (_Harper_). 1909. + +History of Mr Polly (_Duffield_). 1910. + +History of Mr Polly (_Grosset & Dunlap_). 1912. + +New Machiavelli (_Duffield_). 1910. + +Door in the Wall and Other Stories (_Mitchell +Kennerley_). 1911. + +Floor Games (_Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts_). 1912. + +Socialism and the Great State (_Harper_). +1912. (See page 119.) + +Marriage (_Duffield_). 1912. + +Little Wars (_Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts_). 1913. + +Passionate Friends (_Harper_). 1913. + +Wheels of Chance--A Bicycling Idyll (_Macmillan +Company_). 1913. Illustrated by F.A. Symington. [English title, "The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday +Adventure."] + +The Wonderful Visit (_E.P. Dutton & Company_). 1914. + +Social Forces in England and America (_Harper_). 1914. + +The World Set Free (_E.P. Dutton & Company_). 1914. + + + + +INDEX + +_Ann Veronica_, 65, 76 +_Anticipations_, 99 + +Bebel, 100 +Bellamy, Edward, 105 +Bromley, 13 + +Capital and Labour, 35 +Characterisation, 60 +Common-sense, 98 +Comte, 97 +_Country of the Blind, The_, 29, 55 + +_Dynasts, The_, 40 + +Education, 111 +_Englishman Looks at the World, An_, 112 + +Fabre, Henri, 63 +Fecundity, 115 +Feminism, 72 +_First and Last Things_, 112 +_First Men in the Moon, The_, 46 +Fixed Opinions, 102 +_Food of the Gods, The_, 51, 54 +_Future of America, The_, 109 + +Henley House, 15 +_History of Mr Polly, The_, 65, 67 +Huxley, 19 +Hyndman, 100 + +Idealism, 69 +Insurgent Bigness, 52 +_In the Days of the Comet_, 36, 46 +_Invisible Man, The_, 25, 28 +_Island of Dr Moreau, The_, 25 +Isolation, 86 + +_Kipps_, 60-65 + +_Love and Mr Lewisham_, 60-64 + +_Man of the Year Million, The_, 20, 30 +_Mankind in the Making_, 99 +_Marriage_, 73, 82-85 +Marx, 100 +Metaphysics, 112 +Midhurst Grammar School, 14 +_Modern Utopia, A_, 99, 104 + +_New Machiavelli, The_, 65, 77-79, 82, 86 +New Republic, The, 99, 103, 104 +_New Worlds for Old_, 109 + +_Passionate Friends, The_, 73, 89, 95 + +Rule of Thumb, 77, 78, 88 + +Samurai, 108 +_Sea Lady, The_, 49, 50 +Shaw, 100 +Socialism, 99, 110 +South Kensington School, 14 +Spencer, Herbert, 97 +Spirit of Freedom, 96, 103 + +_Time Machine, The_, 20, 23 +_Tono-Bungay_, 59, 73 + +Up Park, 14 +Utopias, 106-108 + +Verne, Jules, 17 + +_War in the Air, The_, 40, 42, 44, 56 +_War of the Worlds, The_, 25, 29 +Wells, Mr and Mrs Joseph, 12 +_Wheels of Chance, The_, 60 +_When the Sleeper Wakes (The Sleeper Awakes)_, 33, 36 +_Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, The_, 91, etc. +Women Employees, 92, 94 +_Wonderful Visit, The_, 23, 25 +_World Set Free, The_, 43, 46 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of H. 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G. Wells, by J. D. Beresford + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: H. G. Wells + +Author: J. D. Beresford + +Release Date: March 13, 2005 [EBook #15351] +[Last updated: November 10, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK H. G. WELLS *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h1>H.G. WELLS</h1> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>J.D. BERESFORD</h2> + + + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/wells3.jpg" +alt="H.G. WELLS" title="" /> +</div> + + + + +<h1>H.G. WELLS</h1> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>J.D. BERESFORD</h2> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/mark.png" +alt="mark" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p class="center">NEW YORK<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY<br /><br /><br /> +</p> + + + +<p class="center"><i>First Published in 1915</i> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents"> +<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><a href="#I">INTRODUCTION</a></td><td align='right'>9</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><a href="#II">THE ROMANCES</a></td><td align='right'>17</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><a href="#III">THE NOVELS</a></td><td align='right'>58</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><a href="#IV">SOCIOLOGY</a></td><td align='right'>97</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><a href="#A_BIBLIOGRAPHY_OF_HG_WELLS">BIBLIOGRAPHY</a></td><td align='right'>117</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><a href="#AMERICAN_BIBLIOGRAPHY">AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY</a></td><td align='right'>121</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td align='right'>125</td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div style="margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%;"> + +<p class="center"><b>[Transcriber's Notes for e-book:</b></p> + +<p>The spelling and punctuation are consistent with the original scans +with the following exceptions. If you are using this book for research, please +verify any spelling or punctuation with another source.</p> + +<ul><li>I added ["] at end of phrase: "to recover the full-bodied +self-satisfaction of his early days."</li> + +<li>In the following sentence, I changed 'succeded' to 'succeeded': And +Bensington, the other experimenter, succeeded in separating a food +that produced regular instead of intermittent growth.]</li> +</ul> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="center">TO</p> + +<p class="center">R.A.A.B.</p> + +<p class="center">THIS ESSAY IS FRATERNALLY<br /> +DEDICATED +</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a></p> + +<h2><a name="I" id="I" />I</h2> + +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> + +<h3>THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS</h3> + + +<p>In his Preface to the <i>Unpleasant Plays</i>, +Mr Shaw boasts his possession of +"normal sight." The adjective is the +oculist's, and the application of it is Mr +Shaw's, but while the phrase is misleading +until it is explained to suit a particular +purpose, it has a pleasing adaptability, and +I can find none better as a key to the works +of Mr H.G. Wells.</p> + +<p>We need not bungle over the word +"normal," in any attempt to meet the +academic objection that it implies conformity +to type. In this connection, the +gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated +from his million neighbours by the +<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>fact that he wears no glasses; and if a few +happy people still exist here and there who +have no need for the mere physical assistance, +the number of those whose mental +outlook is undistorted by tradition, prejudice +or some form of bias is so small that we +regard them as inspired or criminal according +to the inclination of our own beloved +predilection. And no spectacles will correct +the mental astigmatism of the multitude, +a fact that is often a cause of considerable +annoyance to the possessors of normal +sight. That defect of vision, whether congenital +or induced by the confinements of +early training, persists and increases throughout +life, like other forms of myopia. The +man who sees a ball as slightly flattened, +like a tangerine orange too tightly packed +(an "oblate spheroid" would be the +physicist's brief description), seeks the +society of other men who share his illusion; +and the company of them take arms against +<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>the opposing faction, which is confirmed in +the belief that the ball is egg-shaped, that +the bulge, in fact, is not "oblate" but +"prolate."</p> + +<p>I will not elaborate the parable; it is +sufficient to indicate that in my reading of +Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all +life from a reasonable distance. By good +fortune he avoided the influences of his +early training, which was too ineffectual to +leave any permanent mark upon him. His +readers may infer, from certain descriptions +in <i>Kipps</i>, and <i>The History of Mr Polly</i>, +that Wells himself sincerely regrets the +inadequacies of that "private school of +dingy aspect and still dingier pretensions, +where there were no object lessons, and the +studies of book-keeping and French were +pursued (but never effectually overtaken) +under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, +who wore a nondescript gown and took +snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, +<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>and used a cane with remarkable dexterity +and gusto." But, properly considered, +that inadequate elderly gentleman may be +regarded as our benefactor. If he had been +more apt in his methods, he might have influenced +the blessed normality of his pupil, +and bound upon him the spectacles of his +own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might +have been born into the leisured classes, +and sent to Eton and Christchurch, and if +his genius had found any expression after +that awful experience, he would probably, +at the best, have written polite essays or a +history of Napoleon, during the intervals +of his leisured activity as a member of the +Upper House.</p> + +<p>Happily, Fate provided a scheme for preserving +his eyesight, and pitched him into +the care of Mr and Mrs Joseph Wells on the +21st September 1866; behind or above a +small general shop in Bromley. Mrs Wells +was the daughter of an innkeeper at Mid<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>hurst +and had been in service as a lady's +maid before her marriage. Joseph Wells +had had a more distinguished career. He +had been a great Kent bowler in the early +sixties, and it must have been, I think, only +the year before the subject of our essay +appeared at Bromley that his father took +four wickets with consecutive balls and +created a new record in the annals of cricket. +The late Sir Francis Galton might have made +something out of this ancestry; I must +confess that it is entirely beyond my powers, +although I make the reservation that we +know little of the abilities of H.G. Wells' +mother. She has not figured as a recognisable +portrait in any of his novels.</p> + +<p>The Bromley shop, like most of its kind, +was a failure. Moderate success might +have meant a Grammar School for young +Wells, and the temptations of property, but +Fate gave our young radical another twist +by thrusting him temporarily within sight +<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>of an alien and magnificent prosperity, +where as the son of the housekeeper at Up +Park, near Petersfield, he might recognise his +immense separation from the members of the +ruling class, as described in <i>Tono-Bungay</i>.</p> + +<p>After that came "the drapery," first at +Windsor and then at Southsea; but we +have no autobiography of this period, only +the details of the trade and its circumstances. +For neither Hoopdriver, nor Kipps, nor Polly +could have qualified for the post of assistant +at Midhurst Grammar School, a position +that H.G. Wells obtained at sixteen after +he had broken his indentures with the +Southsea draper.</p> + +<p>At this point we come up with Mr Lewisham, +and may follow him in his experiences +after he obtained what was, in fact, a scholarship +at the Normal School of Science, South +Kensington; but we drop that hero again +before his premature marriage and failure, +to follow the uncharted course of Wells +<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>obtaining his B.Sc. with first-class honours; +passing to an assistant-mastership at the +Henley House School, St John's Wood, and +so coming by way of tutor, lecturer and +demonstrator to the beginnings of journalism, +to the breaking of a blood-vessel and +thence, without further diversion, to the +trade of letters, somewhere in the summer +of 1893.</p> + +<p>I have taken as my text the normality of +Mr Wells, on the understanding that I shall +define the essential term as I will; and this +brief outline of his early experiences may +help to show, <i>inter alia</i>, that he viewed life +from many angles before he was twenty-seven. +That he had the capacity so to see +life was either a lucky accident or due to +some untraceable composition of heredity. +That he kept his power was an effect of his +casual education. He was fortunate enough +to escape training in his observation of the +sphere.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>Persistent repetition will finally influence +the young mind, however gifted, and if Mr +Wells had been subject to the discipline of +what may be called an efficient education, he +might have seen his sphere at the age of +twenty-seven as slightly flattened—whether +it appeared oblate or prolate is no consequence—and +I could not have crowned +him with the designation that heads this +Introduction.</p> + +<p>He is, in fact, normal just in so far as his +gift of vision was undistorted by the precepts +and dogmas of his parents, teachers +and early companions.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II" /><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>II</h2> + +<h2>THE ROMANCES</h2> + + +<p>Mr Wells' romances have little +or nothing in common with those +of Jules Verne, not even that +peculiar quality of romance which revels in +the impossible. The heroes of Jules Verne +were idealised creatures making use of some +wonderful invention for their own purposes; +and the future of mankind was of no account +in the balance against the lust for adventure +under new mechanical conditions. Also, +Jules Verne's imagination was at the same +time mathematical and Latin; and he was entirely +uninfluenced by the writings of Comte.</p> + +<p>Mr Wells' experiments with the relatively +improbable have become increasingly involved +with the social problem, and it would +<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>be possible to trace the growth of his opinions +from this evidence alone, even if we had +not the valuable commentary afforded by +his novels and his essays in sociology. But +his interest in the present and future welfare +of man would not in the first place have +prompted him to the writing of romance +(unless it had been cast in the severely allegorical +form of <i>The Pilgrim's Progress</i>), and +if we are to account for that ebullition, we +shall be driven—like Darwin with his confounding +peacock—to take refuge in some +theory of exuberance. The later works +have been so defensive and, in one sense, +didactic that one is apt to forget that many +of the earlier books, and all the short stories, +must have originated in the effervescence of +creative imagination.</p> + +<p>Mr Wells must, also, have been slightly +intoxicated by the first effects of reaction. +A passage from <i>The Future in America</i> +exhibits him somewhat gleefully reviving +<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>thoughts of the prison-house, and I quote +it in order to account for his first exercises +in prophecy by a study of contrasts. "I +remember," he writes, "that to me in my +boyhood speculation about the Future was +a monstrous joke. Like most people of my +generation, I was launched into life with +millennial assumptions. This present sort of +thing, I believed, was going on for a time, interesting +personally, perhaps, but as a whole +inconsecutive, and then—it might be in my +lifetime or a little after it—there would +be trumpets and shoutings and celestial +phenomena, a battle of Armageddon, and the +Judgment.... To talk about the Man of the +year Million was, of course, in the face of this +great conviction, a whimsical play of fancy. +The year Million was just as impossible, just +as gaily nonsensical as fairyland...."</p> + +<p>The imprisoning bottle was opened when +he became a student of biology, under +Huxley, and the liquid of his suppressed +<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>thought began to bubble. He prefaced his +romances by a sketch in the old <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i>, entitled <i>The Man of the Year +Million</i>, an a priori study that made one +thankful for one's prematurity. After that +physiological piece of logic, however, he +tried another essay in evolution, published +in 1895 in book form under the title of <i>The +Time Machine</i>—the first of his romances.</p> + +<p>The machine itself is the vaguest of mechanical +assumptions; a thing of ivory, +quartz, nickel and brass that quite illogically +carries its rider into an existing past or +future. We accept the machine as a literary +device to give an air of probability to the +essential thing, the experience; and forget +the means in the effect. The criterion of the +prophecy in this case is influenced by the +theory of "natural selection." Mr Wells' +vision of the "Sunset of Mankind" was of +men so nearly adapted to their environment +that the need for struggle, with its corol<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>lary +of the extermination of the unfit, had +practically ceased. Humanity had become +differentiated into two races, both recessive; +one, the Eloi, a race of childlike, simple, +delicate creatures living on the surface of +a kindly earth; the other, the Morlocks, a +more active but debased race, of bestial +habits, who lived underground and preyed +cannibalistically on the surface-dwellers +whom they helped to preserve, as a man +may preserve game. The Eloi, according +to the hypothesis of the Time Traveller, +are the descendants of the leisured classes; +the Morlocks of the workers. "The Eloi, +like the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to +a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed +the earth on sufferance; since the +Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable +generations, had come at last to find the +day-lit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks +made their garments, I inferred, and +maintained them in their habitual needs +<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>perhaps through the survival of an old +habit of service." All this is in the year +802,701 A.D.</p> + +<p>The prophecy is less convincing than the +wonderful sight of the declining earth some +million years later, sinking slowly into the +dying fires of the worn-out sun. Man and +the vertebrates have disappeared, and the +highest wonder of animal life is represented +by giant crustaceans, which in turn give +way to a lower form. We have a vision of +an involution that shall succeed the highest +curve of development; of life ending where +it began in the depths of the sea, as the +initial energy of the solar system is dissipated +and the material of it returns to +rest at the temperature of the absolute zero. +And the picture is made more horrible to +the imaginative by the wonder whether +the summit of the evolutionary curve has +not already been reached—or it may be +passed in the days of the Greek philosophers.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a><i>The Time Machine</i>, despite certain obvious +faults of imagination and style, is a brilliant +fantasy; and it affords a valuable picture +of the young Wells looking at the world, +with his normal eyes, and finding it, more +particularly, incomplete. At the age of +twenty-seven or so, he has freed himself +very completely from the bonds of conventional +thought, and is prepared to examine, +and to present life from the detached +standpoint of one who views it all from +a respectable distance; but who is able, +nevertheless—an essential qualification—to +enter life with all the passion and generosity +of his own humanity.</p> + +<p>And in <i>The Wonderful Visit</i>—published +in the same year as <i>The Time Machine</i>—he +comes closer to earth. That ardent ornithologist, +the Rev. K. Hilyer, Vicar of +Siddermouth, who brought down an angel +with a shot-gun, is tenderly imagined; a +man of gentle mind, for all the limitations +<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>of his training. The mortalised angel, on +the other hand, is rather a tentative and +simple creature. He may represent, perhaps, +the rather blank mind of one who sees +country society without having had the +inestimable privilege of learning how it came +about. His temperament was something +too childlike—without the child's brutality—to +investigate the enormous complexities +of adjustment that had brought about the +conditions into which he was all too suddenly +plunged by a charge of duck-shot. +He came and was filled with an inalterable +perplexity, but some of his questions were +too ingenuous; and while we may sympathise +with the awful inertia of Hilyer +before the impossible task of explaining +the inexplicable differences between mortal +precept and mortal practice, we feel that +we might, in some cases at least, have +made a more determined effort. We might +have found some justification for chairs, +<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>by way of instance, and certainly an excuse +for raising beds above the floor. But the +wounded angel, like the metal machine, is +only a device whereby the searching examination +of our author may be displayed +in an engrossing and intimate form. And +in <i>The Wonderful Visit</i>, that exuberance we +postulated, that absorption in the development +of idea, is more marked; in the unfolding +of the story we can trace the method +of the novelist.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the three romances that follow +discover hardly a trace of the social investigator. +<i>The Island of Dr Moreau</i>, <i>The Invisible +Man</i> and <i>The War of the Worlds</i> are +essays in pure fantasy, and although the first +of the three is influenced by biology I class +it unhesitatingly among the works of sheer +exuberance. Each of these books is, in +effect, an answer to some rather whimsical +question, and the problem that Dr Moreau +attempted to solve was: "Can we, by +<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>surgery, so accelerate the evolutionary +process as to make man out of a beast in +a few days or weeks?" And within limits +he found that the answer was: "Yes."</p> + +<p>In the seclusion of his island, and with +the poor assistance of the outlawed medical +student, Montgomery, Dr Moreau succeeded +in producing some creditable parodies of +humanity by his operations on pigs, bulls, +dogs and other animals. These cut and +remoulded creatures had something the +appearance and intelligence of Homo +Sapiens, and could be maintained at that +level by the exercise of discipline and the +constant recital of "the Law"; left to +themselves they gradually reverted to the +habits and manners of the individual beasts +out of which they had been carved. We +may infer that some subtle organic chemistry +worked its determination upon their uncontrolled +wills, but Mr Wells offers no +explanation, psychic, chemical or biological, +<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>and I do not think that he intended any +particular fable beyond the evident one +that, physically, one species is as like to +the next as makes no matter. What Moreau +did well another man might have done +better. It is a good story, and the adventures +of the marooned Prendick, alone, +are sufficient justification for the original +conception. (I feel bound to note, however, +the absurd comments of some early reviewers +who seemed to imagine that the story was +a defence of vivisection.)</p> + +<p>The next romance (1897) seeks to answer +the question: "What could a man do if +he were invisible?" Various attempts to +answer that question had been made by +other writers, but none of them had come +to it with Mr Wells' practical grasp of the +real problem; the earlier romantics had not +grappled with the necessity for clothes and +the various ways in which a material man, +however indistinguishable his body by our +<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. +The study from beginning to end +is finely realistic; and even the theory of +the albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree +his method of winning the useless gift of +invisibility, are convincing enough to make +us wonder whether the thing is not scientifically +possible. As a pure romance set +in perfectly natural surroundings, <i>The Invisible +Man</i> is possibly the high-water mark +of Mr Wells' achievement in this kind. +He has perfected his technique, and the +interest in the development of the story +works up steadily to the splendid climax, +when the form of the berserker Griffin returns +to visibility, his hands clenched, his +eyes wide open, and on his face an expression +of "anger and dismay," the elements—as +I choose to think—of man's revolt against +imprisonment in the flesh. It is worth +while to note that by another statement, +the same problem is posed and solved in +<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>the short story called <i>The Country of the +Blind</i>.</p> + +<p><i>The War of the Worlds</i> (1898), although +written in the first person, is in some ways +the most detached of all these fantasies; +and it is in this book that Mr Wells frankly +confesses his own occasional sense of separation. +"At times," says the narrator of the +history, "I suffer from the strangest sense +of detachment from myself and the world +about me, I seem to watch it all from the +outside, from somewhere inconceivably +remote, out of time, out of space, out of the +stress and tragedy of it all." That sense +must have remained with him as he wrote +the account of the invading Martians, so +little passion does the book contain. The +vision, however, is clear enough and there +is more invention than in many of the other +romances. The picture of the Martians +themselves develops in one direction the +theory of human evolution expressed in<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a> +<i>The Man of the Year Million</i>. The expansion +of the brain case, and the apotheosis +of pure intellect, devoid, so far as we can +judge, of any emotional expression, are the +steadily biological deductions that we should +expect from the Wells of this period. The +fighting machines of these incomprehensible +entities, the heat ray and the black smoke, +are all excellent conceptions; and the +narrative is splendidly graphic. But only +in the scenes with the curate, when the narrator +is stirred to passionate anger, and in +his later passages with the sapper, do we +catch any glimpses of the novelist intrigued +with the intimate affairs of humanity. +Even the narrator's brother, in his account +of the escape with two women in a pony-carriage, +has become infected with that +sense of detachment. The two women are +strongly differentiated but leave little +impression of personality.</p> + +<p>The fact that I have made this comment +<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>on lack of passion in describing one of these +earlier romances is indicative of a particular +difference between Mr Wells' method in this +sort and the method of the lesser writer of +fantasias. The latter, whatever his idea, +and it may be a brilliant idea, is always intent +on elaborating the wonder of his theme +by direct description. Mr Wells is far more +subtle and more effective. He takes an +average individual, identifies him with the +world as we know it, and then proceeds +gradually to bring his marvel within the +range of this individual's apprehension. +We see the improbable, not too definitely, +through the eyes of one who is prepared +with the same incredulity as the reader of +the story, and as a result the strange phenomenon, +whether fallen angel, invisible man, +converted beast or invading Martian, takes +all the shape of reality. That this shape is +convincing is due to the brilliance of Mr +Wells' imagination and his power of graphic +<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>expression; the lesser writer might adopt +the method and fail utterly to attain the +effect; but it is this conception of the +means to reach the intelligence and senses +of the average reader that chiefly distinguishes +these romances from those of such +writers as Jules Verne. Our approach to +the wonderful is so gradual and so natural +that when we are finally confronted with it +the incredible thing has become inevitable +and expected. Finally, it has become so +identified with human surprise, anger or +dismay that any failure of humanity in the +chief person of the story reacts upon our +conception of the wonderful intrusion among +familiar phenomena.</p> + +<p>Now, this power of creating the semblance +of fact out of an ideal was too valuable a +thing to be wasted on the making of stories +that had no purpose beyond that of interesting +or exciting the reader with such imaginations +as the Martians, whose only use was to +<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>threaten humanity with extinction. Mr +Wells' own sight of our blindness, our complacent +acceptance of the sphere as an oblate +or prolate spheroid, might be, he hoped, +another of the marvels which we should +come to accept through the medium of +romance. So he began tentatively at first +to introduce a vivid criticism of the futility +of present-day society into his fantasies, and +the first and the least of these books was +that published in 1899 as <i>When the Sleeper +Wakes</i>, a title afterwards changed to <i>The +Sleeper Awakes</i>.</p> + +<p>In the two opening chapters we find the +same delightfully realistic treatment of +the unprecedented slowly mingling with the +commonplace. The first appearance of +Graham the Sleeper, tormented then by the +spectres and doubts that accompany insomnia, +is made so credible that we accept +his symptoms without the least demur; +his condition is merely unusual enough to +<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>excite a trembling interest. Even the passing +of his early years of trance does not +arouse scepticism. But then we fall with +one terrific plunge into the world of A.D. +2100, and, like Graham, we cannot realise it. +Moreover this changed, developed world has +a slightly mechanical air. The immense +enclosed London, imagined by Mr Wells, is +no Utopia, yet, like the dream of earlier +prophets, it is too logical to entice us into +any hallucination; and we come, fatally, to +a criticism of the syllogism.</p> + +<p>Mr Wells himself has confessed, in a new +Preface, that this is "one of the most ambitious +and least satisfactory" of his books; +and explains that it was written against +time, when he was on the verge of a serious +illness. It is superfluous, therefore, to +criticise it in detail, but one or two points +in relation to the sociological idea must be +emphasised.</p> + +<p>The main theme is the growing division +<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>between Capital and Labour. The Giant +Trust—managing the funds accumulated in +Graham's name, a trust that has obtained +possession of so immense a capital that it +controls the chief activities of the world—is +figured in the command of a certain +Ostrog, who, with all the dependents that +profit by the use of his wealth and such +mercenaries as he can hold to himself, represents +one party in opposition to the actual +workers and producers, generically the +People. The picture is the struggle of our +own day in more acute form; the result, +in the amended edition, is left open. "Who +will win—Ostrog or the People?" Mr +Wells writes in the Preface referred to above, +and answers: "A thousand years hence +that will still be just the open question we +leave to-day."</p> + +<p>I am not concerned in this place to question +the validity of that answer, nor to +suggest that the Wells of 1914 would not +<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>necessarily give the same account of his +beliefs as the Wells of 1909, but I must draw +attention to the attitude displayed in the +book under consideration in order to point +the change of feeling recognisable in later +books. In <i>The Sleeper Awakes</i>, even in the +revised version, the sociological theory is +still mechanical, the prophecy at once too +logical, and at the same time deduced from +premises altogether too restricted. The +world of A.D. 2100 is the world of to-day, +with its more glaring contrasts still more +glaringly emphasised; with its social incongruities +and blindness raised to a higher +power. And all that it lacked has been put +into a romance called <i>In the Days of the +Comet</i> (1906), a book to which I shall now +leap, returning later to consider the comparatively +irrelevant theses of three other +romances that chronologically intervened.</p> + +<p>The great change wrought by the coming +of the Comet might be sentimentally +<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>described as a change of heart; I prefer to +call it a change of reason. All the earlier +part of the work, which is again told in the +first person, presents the life of a Midland industrial +area as seen by one who has suffered +it. The Capital-Labour problem bulks in +the foreground, and is adequately supported +by a passionate exposition of the narrowness +and misery of lower-middle-class life +in the jumble of limitations, barriers and +injustices that arise from the absolute ownership +of property. Also, into this romance—the +only one, by the way—comes some examination +of the relations of the sexes. +And all this jumble is due, if we are to +believe the remedy, to human misunderstanding. +The influence of the Comet +passed over the earth, and men, after a few +hours of trance, awoke to a new realisation. +We come to a first knowledge of the change +in one of the most beautiful passages that +Mr Wells has written; and although I +<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>dislike to spoil a passage by setting it out +unclothed by the idea and expectations which +have led to its expression, given it form, +and fitted it to a just place in the whole +composition, I will make an exception in +this case in order to justify my metaphor +of "normal sight." The supposed writer of +the description had just awakened from the +trance induced by the passing of the Comet. +He says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I came slowly, stepping very carefully +because of those drugged, feebly awakening +things, through the barley to the hedge. It +was a very glorious hedge, so that it held +my eyes. It flowed along and interlaced +like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, +honeysuckle, campions and ragged robin; +bed straw, hops and wild clematis twined +and hung among its branches, and all along +its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted +its childish faces and chorused in lines and +<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>masses. Never had I seen such a symphony +of note-like flowers and tendrils and +leaves. And suddenly, in its depths, I +heard a chirrup and the whir of startled +wings.</p> + +<p>"Nothing was dead, but everything had +changed to beauty! And I stood for a +time with clean and happy eyes looking at +the intricate delicacy before me and marvelling +how richly God has made his +worlds...."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And not only the writer but also every +other person on the earth had been miraculously +cured of their myopia and astigmatism. +They saw beauty and the means to still +more perfect beauty, and, seeing, they had +but to believe and the old miseries vanished. +In the old days men preached a furious +denial of self that led to the fatuity of an +asceticism such as that of St Simon Stylites. +The lesson—I cannot deny that the book is +<a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>didactic—of the change wrought by the +comet is that man should find the full expression +of his personality in sympathy and +understanding. The egotism remains, but +it works to a collective end....</p> + +<p>War is necessarily touched upon in this +book as an inevitable corollary to the problems +of personal and a fortiori of national +property; but the real counterblast against +wholesale fratricide was reserved for the +following romance, published in 1908.</p> + +<p><i>The War in the Air</i> definitely disclosed a +change of method that was adumbrated in +its predecessor. The agent of experience +is still retained in the person of Bert Smallways, +but the restrictions imposed by the +report of an eye-witness have become too +limiting, and, like Hardy in <i>The Dynasts</i>, +Mr Wells alternates between a near and a +distant vision. The Welt-Politik could not +be explained through the intelligence of a +"little Cockney cad," even though he was<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a> +"by no means a stupid person and up to a +certain limit not badly educated"; and the +general development of the world-war, the +account of the collapse of the credit system +and all such large and general effects +necessitated the broad treatment of the +historian. So the intimate, personal narrative +of Smallways' adventures is occasionally +dropped for a few pages; Mr Wells shuts +off his magic-lantern and fills the interval +with an analysis of larger issues.</p> + +<p>And the issues are so vital, the <i>dénouement</i> +so increasingly probable, that, despite +all the exaggerations necessary in a fiction +of this kind, the warning contained in this +account of a world-war is one that must +remain in the minds of any thoughtful reader. +Smallways' pert reflection on the causes of +the immense downfall represents the wisdom +that comes of bitter experience, and the +application of it is very pertinent to present +conditions. "There was us in Europe all +<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>at sixes and sevens with our silly flags and +our silly newspapers raggin' us up against +each other and keepin' us apart," says Smallways, +and for the briefest analysis of causes +that continually threaten us with all the +useless horrors of war, the summary could +scarcely be bettered.</p> + +<p>Indeed, I think that <i>The War in the Air</i> +is the greatest of Mr Wells' achievements +in fantasy that has a deeper purpose than +mere amusement. The story is absorbing +and Smallways a perfectly conceived character, +recommendations that serve to popularise +the book as a romance; but all the +art of the construction is relevant to the +theme, and to the logical issue which is +faced unflinchingly. In the many wild +prophecies that have been incorporated in +various stories of a great European war, +there has been discoverable now and again +some hint of insight into the real dangers +that await mankind. But such stories as +<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>these degenerate into some accidental, but +inferentially glorious, victory of British +arms, and any value in the earlier comments +is swamped in the sentimentality of the +fortuitous, and designedly popular, sequel. +In the book now under consideration the +conception is too wide for any such lapses +into the maudlin. British interests play an +insignificant part in the drama. We have +to consider war not as an incident in the +history of a nation, but as a horrible disgrace +in the history of humanity.</p> + +<p>And war is the theme also of <i>The World +Set Free</i> (1914), but it leads here to a theory +of reconstruction of which we have no sight +in the earlier work. The opening chapters +describe the inception of the means, the +discovery of the new source of energy—a +perfectly reasonable conception—that led +to the invention of the "atomic bomb," a +thing so terribly powerful and continuous in +its action that after the first free use of it in +<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>a European outbreak, war became impossible. +As a romance, the book fails. The +interest is not centred in a single character, +and we are given somewhat disconnected +glimpses of various phases in the discovery +of the new energy, in its application, and of +the catastrophes that follow its use as an +instrument of destruction. The essay form +has almost dominated the method of the +novelist, and consequently the essential +parable has not the same force as in <i>The +War in the Air</i>. Nevertheless, the vision +is there, obscured by reason of its more +personal expression; and before I return +to consider the three less pertinent romances +interposed between those that have a more +recognisable critical tendency, I wish to sum +up the distinctive attitude of the four just +considered.</p> + +<p>And in this thing I claim that the conscious +purpose of the artist is of comparatively +small account. I may be doing Mr<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a> +Wells an injustice, either by robbing him of +the credit of a clearly conceived intention, or +by reading into his books a deliberation which +he might wish to disclaim. But my business +is not justice to the author in this sense, but +an interpretation—necessarily personal—of +the message his books have conveyed to a +particular reader. And the plain message +that all these romances—including those +that follow—have conveyed to me is the +necessity for ridding the mind of traditions +of the hypnotic suggestions of parents and +early teachers, of the parochial influences +of immediate surroundings, of the prejudices +and self-interested dogmatisms and hyperboles +of common literature, especially of the +daily and weekly press; in order that we +may, if only for an exercise in simple reason, +dissociate ourselves for a moment from all +those intimate forces, and regard life with +the calmness of one detached from personal +interests and desires. No human being who +<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>has not thus stood apart from life can claim +to have realised himself; and in so far as +he is unable thus to separate himself temporarily +from his circumstances he confesses +that he is less a personality than a bundle +of reactions to familiar stimuli. But given +that power of detachment, the reader may +find in these four books matter for the reconsideration +of the whole social problem. +Whether he accept such tentative reconstructions +as those suggested in <i>The World +Set Free</i> or <i>In the Days of the Comet</i> is relatively +unimportant, the essential thing is +that he should view life with momentarily +undistracted eyes; and see both the failures +of our civilisation and its potentialities for a +finer and more gracious existence....</p> + +<p><i>The First Men in the Moon</i> (1901) is little +more than a piece of sheer exuberance. The +theory of the means to the adventure and +the experience itself are both plausible. +There are a few minor discrepancies, but +<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>when the chief assumption is granted the +deductions will all stand examination. The +invention of cavorite, the substance that is +impervious to the force—whatever it may +be—of gravitation, as other substances are +impervious to light, heat, sound or electricity, +is not a priori impossible, nor is the +theory that the moon is hollow, that the +"Selenites" live below the surface, or that +evolution has produced on our satellite an +intelligent form which, anatomically, is more +nearly allied to the insect than to the vertebrate +type as we know it. The exposition +of lunar social conditions cannot be taken +very seriously. Specialisation is the key-note; +the production by education and +training, of minds, and, as far as possible, +bodies, adapted to a particular end, and +incapable of performing other technical +functions. The picture of this highly developed +state, however, is not such as would +tempt us to emulation. As a machine it +<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation +of the thing we call beauty. The apotheosis +of intelligence in the concrete example leaves +us unambitious in that direction.</p> + +<p>One chapter, however, stands apart and +elaborates once more that detachment for +space and time which I have so particularly +emphasised as the more important feature +of these particular books. Mr Bedford, +alone in his Cavorite sphere between the +Earth and the Moon, experiences this sensation +of aloofness. "I became, if I may go +express it, dissociate from Bedford," he +writes. "I looked down on Bedford as a +trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced +to be connected," Bedford, unfortunately +for my moral, was a poor creature who got +no benefit from his privilege, who flouted it +indeed and regretted his inability "to +recover the full-bodied self-satisfaction of his +early days." Possibly the fact that in his +case the knowledge was thrust upon him +<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>may account for his failure. It is only the +knowledge we seek that has any influence +upon us.</p> + +<p><i>The Sea Lady</i> (1902) stands alone among +Mr Wells' romances. The realistic method +remains, but the conception is touched with +a poetic fancy of a kind that I have not found +elsewhere in these books. The Venus Annodomini +who came out of the sea at Folkestone +in the form of an authentic mermaid was +something more than a mere critic of our +civilised conventions. She was that, too; +she asked why people walked on the Leas +"with little to talk about and nothing to +look at, and bound not to do all sorts of +natural things, and bound to do all sorts of +preposterous things." But she was also +the personification of "other dreams." She +had "the quality of the open sky, of deep +tangled places, of the flight of birds ... of +the high sea." She represented to one man, +at least, "the Great Outside." And, if we +<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>still find a repetition of the old statement +in that last description, it is, nevertheless, +surrounded with a glamour that is not revealed +in such books as <i>In the Days of the +Comet</i>. The ideal that is faintly shadowed +in <i>The Sea Lady</i> is more ethereal, less practical; +the story, despite the naturalistic, +half-cynical manner of its recountal, has the +elements of romance. The closing scene +describes the perplexity of a practical +Kentish policeman "who in the small hours +before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea +Lady had been wearing, just as the tide overtook +it," He stands there on the foreshore +with a foolish bewilderment, wondering +chiefly "what people are up to." He is +the "simple citizen of a plain and obvious +world." And Mr Wells concludes: "I +picture the interrogation of his lantern going +out for a little way, a stain of faint pink +curiosity upon the mysterious vast serenity +of the night." And I make an application +<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>of the parable for my own purposes, and +wonder how far the curiosity of Mr Wells' +readers will carry them into the great mystery +that lies behind the illusion of this +apparently obvious world.</p> + +<p>We come, finally, without any suggestion +of climax, to <i>The Food of the Gods</i> (1904). +The food was produced, casually in the first +instance, by two experimenters who served +no cause but that of their own inquisitive +science. One of them, Redwood, had become +intrigued by the fact that the growth +of all living things proceeded with bursts +and intermissions; it was as if they had "to +accumulate force to grow, grew with vigour +only for a time, and then had to wait for a +space before they could go on growing +again." And Bensington, the other experimenter, +succeeded in separating a food that +produced regular instead of intermittent +growth. It was universal in its effects, +influencing vegetable as well as animal life; +<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>and in the course of twenty years it produced +human giants, forty feet high. This +is a theme for Mr Wells to revel in, and he +does, treating the detail of the first two-thirds +of the book with a fine realism. Like +Bensington, he saw, "behind the grotesque +shapes and accidents of the present, the +coming world of giants and all the mighty +things the future has in store—vague and +splendid, like some glittering palace seen +suddenly in the passing of a sunbeam far +away." The parable is plain enough, but +the application of it weakens when we +realise that so far as the merely physical +development goes, the food of the gods is +only bringing about a change of scale. If +we grant that this "insurgent bigness" +must conquer the world, the final result +is only humanity in the same relation to life +that it now occupies, and we are left to +reflect with Bensington, after the vision had +faded, on "sinister shadows, vast declivities +<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>and darknesses, inhospitable immensities, +cold, wild and terrible things."</p> + +<p>The change of scale, however, so long as it +was changing, presents in another metaphor +the old contrasts. The young giants, the +Cossars and Redwood, looking down on +common humanity from a vantage-point +some thirty to forty feet higher than the +"little people," are critical by force of +circumstances; and they are at the same +time handicapped by an inability to comprehend +the thing criticised. They are too +differentiated; and for the purpose of the +fable none of them is gifted with the power +to study these insects with the sympathy +of a Henri Fabre. We may find some +quality of blundering stupidity in the Cossars +and in young Redwood, they were too +prejudiced by their physical scale; but the +simple Caddles, born of peasant parents, +uneducated and set to work in a chalk +quarry, is the true enquirer. He walked up +<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>to London to solve his problem, and his +fundamental question: "What's it all +<i>for</i>?" remained unanswered. The "little +people" could not exchange ideas with him, +and he never met his brother giants. It is, +however, exceedingly doubtful whether they +could have offered him any satisfactory +explanation of the purpose of the universe. +Their only ambition seemed to be reconstruction +on a larger scale.</p> + +<p>I think the partial failure of <i>The Food of the +Gods</i> to furnish any ethical satisfaction is +due to the fact that in this romance Mr Wells +has identified himself too closely with the +giants; a fault that indicates a slight +departure from normality. The inevitable +contrast between great and little lacks a +sympathy and appreciation we find elsewhere. +"Endless conflict. Endless misunderstanding. +All life is that. Great +and little cannot understand one another" +is the true text of the book; and it implies +<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>a weakness in the great not less than in the +little; a weakness that is hardly exonerated +by the closing sentence: "But in +every child born of man lurks some seed of +greatness—waiting for the food." I find a +quality of reasonableness in the little people's +antagonism to the blundering superiority +of those giants.</p> + +<p>To the tail of these romances I may pin +the majority of Mr Wells' short stories. +The best of them are all included in the +collection published under the title of <i>The +Country of the Blind</i>. In this form Mr +Wells displays nothing but the exuberance +of his invention. In the Preface to the +collection he defines his conception of short-story +writing as "the jolly art of making +something very bright and moving; it may +be horrible or pathetic or funny, or beautiful, +or profoundly illuminating, having only this +essential, that it should take from fifteen +to twenty minutes to read aloud." I can +<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>add nothing to that description, and would +only take away from it so much as is implied +by the statement that I cannot call to mind +any one of these stories which is "profoundly +illuminating" in the same sense +that I would certainly apply the phrase to +some of the romances. Jolly and bright +they undoubtedly are, but when they are +moving, they provide food for wonder rather +than for enlightenment....</p> + +<p>I cannot leave these romances without +a comment on Mr Wells' justification as +preacher and prophet. Writing in the +midst of the turmoil of war, I am vividly +conscious of having had my mind prepared +for it by the material I have here so inadequately +described. All the misunderstandings, +the weaknesses, the noisy, meaningless +ambitions, the tepid acceptance of +traditional standards, have been exposed +by Mr Wells in these fantasies of his. And +in <i>The War in the Air</i>, with just such +<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>exaggerations as are necessary for a fiction +of this kind, he has forecast the conditions +which have now overtaken us. We know—or +we might know if we had the capacity +for any sort of consequent consideration of +our conditions—that in a reasonably conducted +civilisation no such awful catastrophe +as this senseless conflagration could +have been possible. No doubt we shall +profit by the lesson, but it is one that any +individual might have learned for himself +from these romances, without paying the +fearful price that is now necessary. And +because humanity is apt to forget its most +drastic punishments, to revert to its original +inertia as soon as the smart is healed, I feel +that when the worst is over, these books will +have a greater value than ever before. I +believe that in them may be found just +those essentials of detachment and broad +vision which might serve to promote a +higher and more stable civilisation.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="III" id="III" /><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a></p> + +<h2>III</h2> + +<h2>THE NOVELS</h2> + + +<p>I am willing to maintain that H.G. +Wells is second to none as a writer of +romances of the type I have just examined. +I am less certain of his position +as a novelist. He brings to his fiction the +open-eyed recognition of realities, the fine +analysis of modern conditions, the lucid +consequent thought and the clean, graphic +style that mark the qualities of his other +method; he has that "poetic gift, the gift +of the creative and illuminating phrase," +which, he has said, "alone justifies writing"; +but he has not the power of creating characters +that stand for some essential type of +humanity. On the one hand he is inclined +to idealise the engineer and the scientific +<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>researcher, on the other to satirise and, in +effect, to group into one sloppy-thinking mass +every other kind of Englishman, not excepting +philosophers, politicians and social +reformers. This broad generalisation omits +any consideration of the merely uneducated, +such as Hoopdriver or Kipps, and the many +women he has drawn. But the former, +however sympathetically treated, are certainly +not idealised; and among the latter, +the only real creation, in my opinion, +is Susan Ponderevo in <i>Tono-Bungay</i>; although +there is a possible composite of +various women in the later books that may +represent the general insurgent character of +recent young womanhood. But now that +I have made this too definite statement I +want to go back over it, touch it up and +smooth it out. For if I have found Mr +Wells' character types too few and too +specialised; and as if, with regard to his +more or less idealised males—such as Capes,<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a> +George Ponderevo, Remington, Trafford, +Stafford—he had modelled and re-modelled +them in the effort to build up one finally +estimable figure of masculine ability; +there still remains an enormous gallery of +subsidiary portraits, for the most part +faintly caricatured, of men and women who +do stand for something in modern life; +portraits that are valuable, interesting and +memorable. Nevertheless, I submit that +Mr Wells' novels will not live by reason of +their characterisation.</p> + +<p>The desire to write essays in this class +of fiction does not seem to have overcome +Wells until the last few years. Before 1909, +he had written all his sociology and all his +romances, with the exception of <i>The World +Set Free</i>, but only three novels—namely, +<i>The Wheels of Chance</i>, <i>Love and Mr Lewisham</i> +and <i>Kipps</i>; and none of them gives any indication +of the characteristic method of the +later work.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>The first of the three, published in 1896, +is in one respect a splendid answer to the +objection against what has been called the +episodical novel. The story deals only with +ten glorious days in the life of Hoopdriver, +a callow assistant in a draper's "emporium" +at Putney. He learnt to ride a bicycle, set +out to tour the south coast for his short +summer holiday and rode into romance. +One section of the book is a trifle too hilarious, +coming perilously near to farce, but +underlying the steady humour of it all is +a perfectly consistent, even saddening, +criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has +imagination without ability; life is made +bearable for him chiefly by the means of +his poor little dreams and poses; he sees +himself momentarily in the part of a detective, +a journalist, a South African millionaire, +any assumption to disguise the horrible +reality of the draper's assistant; and yet +there is fine stuff in him. (Perhaps the +<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>suggested antithesis is hardly justified!) +We leave him at the door of the Putney shop +full of resolution to read, to undertake his +own education, in some way, no doubt, to +better himself, as he might have phrased it. +But we doubt the quality of his determination +and of the lasting influence of the +"more wonderful desires and ambitions replacing +those discrepant dreams." We have +only followed Hoopdriver through a ten-day +episode, but all his story has been told.</p> + +<p>We are in quite a different position with +regard to Lewisham. The history of his +encounter with love and the world, published +in 1900, covers a period of four or five years, +but while we leave him down-at-heel, with +a wife and a mother-in-law dependent upon +him, and the prospect of fatherhood adding +to his responsibilities, we are uncertain +whither his career will take him. Lewisham +is the first sketch for the type that was to +be elaborated in five subsequent books. The +<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>allurements of his love for Ethel Henderson +spoilt his chances at the science school, but +he has the quality that is so conspicuously +lacking in the Hoopdriver-Kipps-Polly succession. +Lewisham had some resolution, undoubted +energy, and the beginnings of that +larger vision which was the gift of the later +protagonists. But he is not idealised; he +comes nearer to the average of humanity +than the later pictures of his like; although +they share with him that tendency to sudden +irascibility, to outbursts of a somewhat +petty temper against the obvious limitations +of life—a common tendency observable in +nearly all Mr Wells' dominant male characters. +Those few years of Lewisham's +life were so well done, so consistently developed, +that I have regretted the absence of +a sequel. Indeed, I still regret it, although +I realise very well that Mr Wells' steady +progress in the conception of his own purpose +as a writer has absolutely precluded +<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>any return to an older method. Lewisham +was not quite strong enough to portray the +further development of the dominant idea, +not a sufficiently tempered tool for the dissection +of the modern world.</p> + +<p>I have said little about the story of this +fragment of Lewisham's career; I have not +even mentioned that deliciously plausible +and able rogue, Chaffery, the fraudulent +medium; but in this essay I am more concerned +to trace the meaning of Mr Wells' +books than to criticise or praise the detail. +With regard to the latter, the reader may +always feel so perfectly safe. He need have +no doubt that description of action, of mood, +or of place will be vivid and convincing, true +to life and essential to the story. I do not +pass this detail by because I have found it +better done in other contemporary writers; +I have not; but because I find a pregnancy +and a growing force behind these minutiæ +that is strangely lacking from any other +<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>works of fiction in which I can find any comparison.</p> + +<p>There are, however, still two more novels +to be disposed of before I can examine the +full expression of Mr Wells' purpose as I +find it in his later books. One of these +novels, <i>Kipps</i> (1905), is the next in chronological +order; the other, <i>The History of +Mr Polly</i>, was published in 1910, interpolated +between <i>Ann Veronica</i> and <i>The New +Machiavelli</i>. Both Kipps and Polly began +active life in a draper's shop. The former +is explicitly labelled "a simple soul." He +is at once sillier and sharper than Hoopdriver, +but, like that "dear fool" (the phrase +is Mr Wells'), Kipps has some very sterling +qualities. He had the good fortune to come +into money—I cannot but count it good +fortune in his case—and was just wise enough +to avoid a marriage with Helen Walshingham—"County +family. Related to the Earl of +Beauprés"—and if he shirked that match +<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>rather from sheer funk than from any clear +realisation of the futility of what he was +avoiding, he did, at least, run away with and +marry that very charming little housemaid, +Ann Pornick, whom he had loved in his +early boyhood. After his marriage he lost +the greater part of his money, and later recovered +it again; but all these shocks of +fortune left him the same simple soul, untroubled +by any urgent problems outside the +range of his personal experience. His brief +contact with the dreamer, Masterman, and +his friendship with the capable young +engineer-socialist, Sid Pornick, Ann's brother, +only roused Kipps to a momentary wonder, +and his final enunciation of the great question +was representative. "I was thinking just +what a Rum Go everything is," he says. +That question, to quote Mr Wells, "never +reached the surface of his mind, it never +took to itself substance or form; it looked +up merely as the phantom of a face might +<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>look, out of deep waters, and sank again +into nothingness."</p> + +<p>Mr Polly is a third variant of the Hoopdriver-Kipps +genus. He had more initiative, +although he still presents a problem in inertia, +and he is the only one of the three who +had a feeling for literature, and read persistently, +if vagariously. And Mr Polly +did at last take his fate into his own hands, +commit arson, desert his wife and wander +off, an "exploratious adventurer," as he +might have put it, to discover some joy and +poetry in life after a heroic battle that he +funked most horribly and might have +avoided. This may sound rather a criminal +record, and even so I have taken no account +of his fraud on the Life Assurance Company, +but no one could ever condemn Mr Polly—or +wish him a happier employment than that +he finally achieved partly by luck and partly +by his own effort. He was the sport of the +forces that break out so ungovernably in +<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>this haphazard world. As the "high-browed +gentleman living at Highbury" explains: +"Nothing can better demonstrate the collective +dullness of our community, the crying +need for a strenuous, intellectual renewal, +than the consideration of that vast mass +of useless, uncomfortable, under-educated, +under-trained, and altogether pitiable people +we contemplate when we use that inaccurate +and misleading term, the Lower Middle +Class. A great proportion of the lower +middle class should properly be assigned to +the unemployed and the unemployable." +And that is the moral we may lay to heart +from the presentation of these three quite +lovable and quite futile draper's assistants. +Their stories are told without didacticism; +the method displays at its brightest Mr +Wells' intimate knowledge and understanding +of the life and speech of the class portrayed; +the developments are natural and +absorbing enough to hold the interest of the +<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>most idle reader; and here and there, perhaps, +an intelligent man or woman may be +stirred to realise that he or she is in part +responsible for the futility of a Hoopdriver +or a Kipps, or for the jovial crimes of Mr +Polly....</p> + +<p>I come now to the six novels which represent +most truly the striving, persistent +idealism of the mature Wells. In these +books he has come to the mastery of his +own technique—so far as a man may ever +master it. He admits that there remain +inexpressible visions, he is apt at times to be +overtaken by his own mannerisms (a fault +that in no way affects the enjoyment or +enlightenment of the average reader), but +he has wrought and perfected a delicate instrument +of style that is finely adapted to +his purpose. I cannot avoid speaking of +"purpose" in relation to these five books, +and yet the word is misleading. I do not +mean by it that Mr Wells has ever sat down +<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>to write a novel with the deliberate intention +of converting an honest reader or so. But +I do mean that he has tried very deliberately +to express his own attitude in these +books, and that whether or not he was +intentionally a propagandist, he has done +his utmost to explain and to glorify that +attitude of his. Perhaps I shrink from that +word "purpose" too sensitively, because +it is so naturally associated in the mind +with all that is clumsy and didactic in +fiction. The "novel with a purpose," as +the dreadful phrase has it, is a horrible +thing, and none of this five could be so misdescribed. +Nevertheless it is very plain +that Mr Wells has deliberately selected his +stories and his characters to illustrate +certain points of view. The characters are +consistent, and the story growing out of +their influences and reactions is never +distorted in order to score a point for the +maintainer of a theory. But the prelimin<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>ary +selection cannot be overlooked. It has, +without question, been made in each case +to illustrate a thesis.</p> + +<p><i>Ann Veronica</i> (1909) opens an aspect of +the sex question that has been amplified +in later novels. The chief person in the +story illustrates for us the revolt of young +women against the limitations of a certain, +the most representative, type of home discipline. +Ann Veronica was a well-educated +young woman with that leaning towards +biological science which seems an almost +necessary element in the make-up of Mr +Wells' exemplars of the open mind. She +came to an open quarrel with her father on +the question of attending a somewhat +Bohemian fancy-dress ball, and she had +the courage and determination to uphold +her declaration of independence. She ran +away, came up to London from her father's +suburb, took lodgings and essayed quite +unsuccessfully to make her own living. She +<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>failed in this endeavour because she had not +been educated or trained for any of those +few and specialised occupations that women +may attempt in modern conditions. She +learned by experience various essentials +that had been omitted from any teaching +she had received at home, and ended that +phase of her life by falling in love with Capes, +demonstrator at the Westminster Imperial +College, a man who was living apart from +his wife. Ann Veronica's story is the first +serious essay in feminism—a term that takes +a much wider meaning in Mr Wells' definition +than is commonly attributed to it. +The novel presents the claim of the woman +to free herself from the restrictions that +once almost necessarily limited her sphere +of action, restrictions that are ever becoming +more meaningless in a civilisation that +has enforced new economic conditions. +But Mr Wells goes far beyond that elementary +proposition. He has tried in <i>Ann<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a> +Veronica</i>—and again with a more delicate +probe in <i>Marriage</i> and <i>The Passionate +Friends</i>—to touch the hidden thing that is +causing all this surface inflammation. He +has analysed and diagnosed the exposed +evil, always it seems with a certain tentativeness, +and we are left to carry on his line of +research; many of the difficulties of the +problem are indicated, but no sovereign +specific for the malady.</p> + +<p><i>Tono-Bungay</i> (1909) touches only casually +on the sex question. The involved love +affairs of George Ponderevo are less essential +than the career of his uncle, the inventor +of the patent medicine that gives a title to +the book. In many ways <i>Tono-Bungay</i> is +the best novel that Mr Wells has given us. +It is written in the first person, a narrative +form that afterwards served to convey Mr +Wells' interpolated criticisms of the bodies +social and politic in something nearly approaching +the shape of an essay, but in<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a> +<i>Tono-Bungay</i> there are no important divagations +from the development of the story. +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 was not a bad little man, this plump little +chemist; a Lombroso or a Ferri would have +found difficulty in classifying him as a +"criminal type," however eager those investigators +might have been to confirm +their pet theories. 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 +<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>matter of certain trust monies. He was +"imaginative, erratic, inconsistent, recklessly +inexact," and his imagination led +him by way of a patent medicine to company +promoting on the Hooley scale. "Do +you realise the madness of the world that +sanctions such a thing?" asks Mr Wells +in the person of the supposed narrator and +points that question on a later page as +follows:—"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 +<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>claim that a single one of the great businesses +we organised added any real value to human +life at all."</p> + +<p>The enormous success and rapid failure +of this futile, ambitious little chemist—a +success that is, unhappily, only too conceivable +and probable—are seen against the +background of his nephew's life, Mr Wells +has given a greater value and credulity to +the legal criminalities of Ponderevo, by +coming at him, as it were, through a wider +angle; just as he achieves all the circumstances +of reality in his romances by his +postulation of an average eye-witness. But +there are many threads in George Ponderevo's +life that were not immediately +intertwined with the <i>Tono-Bungay</i> career, +and his love for Beatrice Normanby touches +in quite another manner on the sex problem +opened in <i>Ann Veronica</i>. In both these +books the story is the essential thing, and +the attack upon social conditions is relatively +<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>indirect. The general criticism is at times +quite explicit, but it is subordinated.</p> + +<p>In <i>The New Machiavelli</i> (1910) these +relations are nearly reversed. The detailed +exposure of the moving forces that stimulate +our political energies, occupies long +sections into which the human relations of +Remington (the form is again that of an +autobiography) hardly enter, except in an +occasional conversation to sharpen up a +criticism. This comment on politics (regarded +in his own constituency, Remington +says, not as a "great constructive process" +but as a "kind of dog-fight") is the chief +theme; subsidiary to it is the comment on +a society that could waste so valuable a +life as Remington's for the sake of a moral +convention. Both comments point Mr +Wells' expression of what he calls in this +book "the essential antagonism ... in all +human affairs ... between ideas and the +established method—that is to say, between +<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>ideas and the rule of thumb." And he adds: +"The world I hate is the rule-of-thumb +world; the thing I and my kind exist for +primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, +disarrange it, reconstruct it." This confession +is so lucid and characteristic that I +cannot improve upon it, and yet I see that +it is a statement likely to arouse considerable +resentment, "Of course we are detestable," +Remington admits in this connection; +and in these later, more urgently +critical novels, we recognise a little too +clearly that note of protest, almost of defensive +proclamation. And in none of them +do we see it more definitely than in the book +now under consideration. In many ways +<i>The New Machiavelli</i> stands apart from +the other novels. I find it a little bitter +in places, because the thing condemned +appears too small for such unequivocal +condemnation. The following superlative +summary is put into the mouth of a minor +<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>character, but I think it is fairly representative +of Remington's later attitude. "But +of all the damned things that ever were +damned," says the plain-spoken Britten, +"your damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, +self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, +Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is +the utterly damnedest." As a commentary, +I find this exaggerated; and although it is +in the mouth of one who is not presented +as a spokesman for Mr Wells' own opinions, +I feel that it comes very near to being a text +for a considerable section of the political +criticism; and that it indicates bias, a +departure from normality.</p> + +<p>And yet, despite this occasional exhibition +of temper, <i>The New Machiavelli</i> is a most +illuminating book. It reveals with extraordinary +clearness the Wells of that period; +but it also gives us a sight of the spirit in +him that does not change. All his books, +romances, novels and essays indicate a +<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>gradual process of growth; if we were to +apply any label to him, we should inevitably +land ourselves in confusion. He is +nothing "in the first place" but a man with +an intense desire to understand life. As he +says in this book: "A human being who is +a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in +the first place, or a statesman in the first +place, is thereby and inevitably—though he +bring God-like gifts to the pretence—a +quack." But while he may dissociate himself +from any clique, and disclaim any fixed +opinion that might earn for him the offensive +and fiercely rejected label, he nevertheless +presents to us one unchanging attitude in +these very refusals. "I'm going to get +experience for humanity out of all my +talents—and bury nothing," says Remington; +and that purpose is implicit in every +book that Wells has written. He is an +empiric, using first this test and then that +to try the phenomena of life; publishing the +<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>detail of his experiment and noting certain +deductions. But while he may offer a prescription +for certain symptoms, he gives us +to understand that he is only diagnosing a +phase in human development; that he is +seeking an ultimate which he never hopes +to find, and that the deductions he draws +to-day may be rejected to-morrow without +a shadow of regret. He would be constant, +I think, only in his inconstancy to any +criterion of present conditions as applicable +or likely to be applicable to the future; he +sees life as a dynamic thing in process of +change and growth. "All the history of +mankind," he writes, "all the history of life +has been and will be the story of something +struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, +struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend +individual lives—an effect of insidious +attraction, an idea of invincible +appeal." And it is for this reason that he is +so eager to battle with, annoy, disarrange +<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>and reconstruct that rule-of-thumb world +he censures so steadily; he is fighting the +assumption of a static condition which he +knows to be impossible.</p> + +<p>And for a moment in <i>The New Machiavelli</i>, +and again in his next book, <i>Marriage</i>, he has +a passing vision of some greater movement +of which we are but the imperfect instruments. +He develops and then drops the +idea of a "hinterland," not only to the individual +mind but to the general consciousness. +The "permanent reality," he calls +it, "which is never really immediate, which +draws continually upon human experience +and influences human action more and more, +but which is itself never the actual player +upon the stage. It is the unseen dramatist +who never takes a call." And in another +place he writes in the same connection: +" ... the ideas go on—as though we are +all no more than little cells and corpuscles in +some great brain beyond our understanding."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>We come again to a hint of that explanation +at the end of <i>Marriage</i>, published in +1912. The story, reduced to the barest +outline, is that of the relations of Trafford +to his wife. It is not complicated by any +sexual temptations or jealousies, but it +gradually evolves the integral problem of +the meaning of life.</p> + +<p>Trafford, before his engagement to +Marjorie Pope, and for a year or two after +his marriage, was engaged in research work. +His speciality was molecular physics and he +was a particularly brilliant investigator. +That research, with all the possibilities that +it held of some immense discovery of the +laws that govern the constitution of inorganic +and progressively, perhaps, of +organic, matter, was sufficient to engross his +mental energies, to give him a sense of satisfaction +in life; but his six hundred pounds +a year proved insufficient to satisfy the +demands of Marjorie's claim to enjoyment.<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a> +She was not a mere type of the worldly-minded +woman. She represents, indeed, the +claim of modern women for a distinctive +interest and employment not less urgent and +necessary than the interests and employments +of men. And when she failed, as she +plainly must have failed, to find any such +occupation, her sense of beauty and her +justifiable demand for life found an outlet +largely in shopping, in entertaining, in all +such ephemeral attractions and amusements +as women in her class may seek and reject. +That way of escape, however, soon raised +financial obstructions to Trafford's work. +He had to find a means for increasing his +income, and came at last and inevitably to +the necessity for making more money and +continually still more. The road to wealth +was opened for him and he took it by sacrificing +his research work, but when the +economic problem had been triumphantly +solved, he could not return to his first +<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>absorption in the problems of molecular +physics. Life pressed upon him at every +moment of the day, he had been inveigled +into a net.</p> + +<p>The manner of Trafford's escape from the +thing that intrigued him has been severely +criticised. After I had first read the book +I too was inclined to deprecate the device +of taking Trafford and Marjorie into the +loneliness of a Labrador winter, in order to +set them right with themselves and give them +a clearer vision of life. But I have read +<i>Marriage</i> twice since I formed that premature +judgment, and each time I have +found a growing justification for what at +first may seem a somewhat whimsical solution +to the difficulties of an essentially social +problem.</p> + +<p>But in effect this is the same specific that +I upheld in my comment on the romances; it +illustrates the need felt by a certain class of +mind for temporary withdrawal from all +<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>the immediate urgencies and calls of social +life; the overwhelming desire to see the +movements and intricacies of human initiative +and reactions, from a momentarily +detached standpoint. And Mr Wells has +offered us a further commentary on the +difficulties of this abstraction, by withholding +any vision from Trafford until he +was finally isolated from Marjorie, and even +from any physical contact with the movement +of what we call reality, by illness and +fever. Only then, indeed, did he touch the +vital issues. I find the statement of this +ultimate thing, vaguely phrased in Trafford's +semi-delirium, presenting another expression +of the thought quoted from <i>The New Machiavelli</i>; +the conception of humanity as an +instrument. "Something trying to exist," +he says, something "which isn't substance, +doesn't belong to space or time, something +stifled and enclosed, struggling to get +through." And later he repeats: "It +<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>struggles to exist, becomes conscious, becomes +now conscious of itself. That is +where I come in as a part of it. Above the +beast in me is that—the desire to know +better, to know—beautifully, and to transmit +my knowledge. That's all there is in +life for me beyond food and shelter and +tidying up. This Being—opening its eyes, +listening, trying to comprehend. Every +good thing in man is that—looking and +making pictures, listening and making songs.... +We began with bone-scratching. We're +still—near it. I'm just a part of this beginning—mixed +with other things. Every +book, every art, every religion is that, the +attempt to understand and express—mixed +with other things."</p> + +<p>I have reached something like a climax +with this passage; a climax that I would +willingly maintain if it were possible, inasmuch +as it holds a representation of that +unchanging influence which I find as an in<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>spiration +and a force behind all H.G. Wells' +books. Necessarily this vital inspiration is, +as he says, "mixed with other things"; he +has had to find a means to express it, and +our means of expression is limited not only +by our own powers but in a large degree by +the limitations of the audience addressed. +Moreover H.G. Wells' art represents him in +that it is a practical art. He is, in an unspecialised +sense, a pragmatist. He comes +back from his isolations to find in this world +all the substance and potentialities of beauty +both in outward appearance and in conduct. +And he is not content to vapour of ideals. +He recognises that the stuff of admiration +and desire that animates his own being is +present throughout humanity. Only the +sight of it is obscured by all those stupidities +and condescensions to rule-of-thumb that +he attacks so furiously. Those are the impediments +that he would clear away, and +he acknowledges that they stand between +<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>him and his own sight of beauty. He is +compelled always to struggle—and we can +see the signs of it in all he writes—with his +own weakness and limitations; criticising +himself as he satirises the thing condemned, +but striving without ceasing to +serve the purpose of that which he knows +is "struggling to exist." This, to me, +is the spirit of H.G. Wells, and I find +it a spirit that is as admirable as it is +human....</p> + +<p><i>The Passionate Friends</i> (1913) is another +experiment in exposition. The very real +and fine love of Stafford (the autobiographer +in this case) and Lady Mary Christian is +spoiled, made to appear insignificant and +debased, by all the conventions and petty, +unoriginal judgments that go to the making +of the rule of our society. The woman had +to make her choice between love in an undignified +poverty for which all her training +had unfitted her, and a sterile ease and +<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>magnificence that gave her those opportunities +which her temperament and education +demanded. She chose for dignity and +opportunity, was tempted to grasp at love, +and thus finally came into a blind alley from +which death was the only escape. It is +another picture of the old conflict illustrated +in the persons of Ann Veronica and +Marjorie Trafford; the constant inability +that our conditions impose on the desire +to love beautifully. The implicit demand +is that for greater freedom for women, +socially and economically. Incidentally we +see that the man, Stafford, does not suffer +in the same degree. His splendid love for +Lady Mary is thwarted, but he finds an outlet. +It is a new aspect of escape, by the way, +for Stafford's illuminating business of spreading +and collating knowledge is a relief from +the scientific research which was in some +form or another the specific of the earlier +novels—if we exclude Remington's political +<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>propaganda in <i>The New Machiavelli</i>, a suggested +solution that was, at the best, something +half-hearted. And Stafford's escape, +and his version of going to the mountain +apart—by way of a sight of the East and of +America—bring us back to that integral +theme which I have so insisted upon, even +at the risk of tedious repetition. "I was +already beginning to see the great problem +of mankind," writes Stafford, "as indeed +nothing other than a magnification of the +little problem of myself, as a problem in +escape from grooves, from preoccupations +and suspicions, precautions and ancient +angers.... For all of us, as for each of us, +salvation is that. We have to get away +from ourselves to a greater thing, to a giant's +desire and an unending life, ours and yet +not our own."</p> + +<p>The last novel published at the time I +write is <i>The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman</i> (1914). +The same theme is presented, but in other +<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>circumstances. Ellen Sawbridge, when she +married, at eighteen, the founder and proprietor +of "The International Bread Shops," +was an ingenuous schoolgirl; and for more +than seven years the change from a relatively +independent poverty to the luxuries she +could enjoy as the wife of a man who had +not outgrown the Eastern theory with regard +to the position of women, sufficed to keep +her reasonably content. Mr Brumley was +the instrument of Fate that seriously disturbed +her satisfaction; but she must have +come to much the same crisis, if Mr Brumley +had never existed. Brumley was a writer, +but he was not one of "the really imaginative +people, the people with vision, the +people who let themselves go"—I quote the +expression of George Wilkins, the novelist—and +Lady Harman never fell very deeply in +love with him. Nevertheless it was through +Brumley's interference with her life that she +faced the crux of her position as the closely +<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>restricted occupant of "a harem of one." +She never broke out of that cage. One +desperate effort led her, by way of a +suffragist demonstration on a post office +window, to a month's freedom in prison; +but Sir Isaac and society were too clever +and too strong for her. When she was +enlarged from the solitude of confinement +in a cell, she was tricked and bullied into +the resumption of her marital engagements. +And presumably she must have continued +to act as the nurse of her now invalid husband +for the rest of her life, suffering the indignities +of his abuse and the restrictions of +liberty that the paid attendant may escape +by a change of situation, if release had not +come through Sir Isaac's death. By that +time Lady Harman had learnt her lesson. +I am distinctly sorry for Mr Brumley, but +I should have been seriously disappointed +in Ellen Harman if she had consented to +marry him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>Thus far I have only traced an imperfect +outline of what I take to be the more important +motive of the book. But there is +a second pattern hardly less essential—namely, +the criticism of the management +and, <i>à fortiori</i>, of the conception of principle, +in relation to the International Bread +Shops. Arising out of this interwoven +theme we come to some examination of the +status of the female employee in general, +and particularly in connection with the +question of their board and lodging outside +business hours. But in <i>The Wife of Sir +Isaac Harman</i> the essay manner has been +abandoned. Any diversion from the development +of the story is carried out by +the expressed opinions of the characters +themselves; and, as a consequence, the two +essential problems are not unduly intruded +upon the reader, although for that very +reason they may remain longer in his +thoughts. One more comment should be +<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>added, which is that this is the wittiest book +that Mr Wells has yet given us. However +serious the motives that give it life, it must +be classed as a comedy....</p> + +<p>In concluding this brief review of Mr +Wells' novels, I feel that I must hark back +to a passage in <i>The Passionate Friends</i> in +order to indicate a spirit which, if it is not +so definitely phrased in this last book of his, +is certainly upheld in the matter of the +story. For it is that spirit which seems to +me the thing that should live and be remembered. +Here is one of its more characteristic +expressions in the mouth of +Stafford, who writes:</p> + +<p>"I know that a growing multitude of +men and women outwear the ancient ways. +The bloodstained organised jealousies of +religious intolerance, the delusions of +nationality and cult and race, that black +hatred which simple people, and young +people and common people cherish against +<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>all that is not in the likeness of themselves +cease to be the undisputed ruling forces of +our collective life. We want to emancipate +our lives from this slavery and these stupidities, +from dull hatreds and suspicions.... A +spirit ... arises and increases in human +affairs, a spirit that demands freedom and +gracious living as our inheritance too long +deferred...."</p> + +<p>And surely H.G. Wells has striven to give +a freer and more vital expression to that +spirit, working through his own life, than +any other novelist of our day. Indeed I +would go further and claim that no such +single and definite inspiration can be found +in the works of any other secular writer. +Wells has given to the novel a new criticism +and, to a certain degree, a new form.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><a name="IV" id="IV" /><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a></p> + +<h2>IV</h2> + +<h2>SOCIOLOGY</h2> + + +<p>Mr Wells' essays in sociology are +not dry treatises, based on Blue +books and the gathering together +of information and statistics from a formless +and largely worthless collection of +earlier sources. He has approached this +question of man in relation to the State in +the same generous spirit displayed in his +works of fiction; and it is only by using +the word "sociology" in its fuller sense as +conceived by Comte, rather than in the +restricted sense of "social science" with its +implication of economics, as narrowed by +Herbert Spencer, that I dare to head this +last chapter with so dangerously technicalised +a term. Indeed, I would not use the +<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>word "sociology" now if I could find a +more inclusive heading. For it must be +obvious, I think, to anyone who has followed +my exposition of the romances and the +novels that Mr Wells has a way of treating +all such subjects as relate to the betterment +of humanity with a broad outlook, an entire +disrespect for conventional forms however +hallowed by precedent, and a habit of +trenchant criticism that could hardly be +fettered by an analysis of sociological literature +or continual deference to this or +that experiment in practice or theory. He +approaches his subject with the normal +mind of one who sees the world, its customs +and rules of conduct, from what is, after all, +the point of view of common-sense—another +term that has been so grossly misused that +the possessor of true common-sense is apt to +be regarded as a most uncommon person. It +is, in fact, the least common of qualities.</p> + +<p>The first three books under this heading +<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>form some sort of a trilogy, and have a +definite air of consequence. Of these, +<i>Anticipations</i> was published in 1901, and +<i>Mankind in the Making</i> and <i>A Modern +Utopia</i> followed in 1903 and 1905 respectively. +The scheme of the first two books +combines a criticism of present conditions +with a growing constructiveness that points +the way to the ideal of what is called "The +New Republic." Now, one of the labels that +has been most frequently and adhesively +affixed to Mr Wells is that of "Socialist," +and no doubt it would proclaim his purpose +admirably enough if we could satisfactorily +define the word in its relation to him. But, +personally, I refuse so to label him, because +I know that socialism means as many things +to different people as religion, and is as much +a term of reproach in the mouth of some self-labelled +individualists as the designation +"Christian" might be in the mouth of the +"true believers"—as the Mohammedans +<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>call themselves. Wherefore I am particularly +anxious in approaching any description +of "The New Republic," to make +it quite clear that that idealised State is +not built of the bricks that have been +modelled and cast by any recognisable group +of propagandists, working to permeate, or +more forcibly to convert, a section of the +public under the flags of, say, Fabianism +or Social Democracy. The essential thing +about Mr Wells is that he is not a Follower, +whether of Marx, or Hyndman, or Shaw, +or Bebel; he may have learnt from any or +all of them, but his theory of social reconstruction +is pre-eminently and characteristically +his own. He does not believe in +the private ownership of land, for example, +but I do not remember that he has ever +advocated the means of the "Single Tax." +And in these sociological essays, as in his +novels, his method is that of picturing +the more desirable thing or condition, the +<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>method of sweet persuasion rather than that +of the sectarian who has a pet specific. +Nevertheless Mr Wells uses his sharpened +weapon of satire with considerable effect +when he contemplates and displays for us +the world as he sees it to-day. I find no +hint of sweetness or persuasiveness on that +side.</p> + +<p>It would be impossible in an exposition +of this kind to dissect these essays in detail, +nor would it be desirable. Many of the +suggestions with regard to actual practice, +suggestions that might be embodied in +modern legislation, are open to criticism in +detail, and I would not pin Mr Wells down +to the letter of any one of them. He has +certainly changed his mind on many points +since he wrote these essays in constructive +sociology, and the fact that he has so altered +and enlarged his opinions is the best possible +evidence of his reliability and sincerity. +He is before all else devoted to the services +<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>of growth and progress. "To rebel against +instinct," he writes, "to rebel against limitation, +to evade, to trip up, and at last to close +with and grapple and conquer the forces that +dominate him, is the fundamental being of +man." And no man can hope to dominate +those forces, if he is content to let his opinions +crystallise at the age of thirty-five or so. +If he would retain his powers of criticism +and construction he must have the patience +and the energy to maintain the normal, receptive +mind with which he is naturally +endowed. Unfortunately with that endowment +commonly comes another—namely, +a tendency to avoid the irk or constant +struggle by taking the line of least resistance; +by adopting an opinion and upholding +it in the face of all reason; and only a +man of exceptional patience, courage and +ability can keep himself free from the +prejudices and fixed opinions which not +only bring him a delusive peace and +<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>certainty but also are the means to worldly +success.</p> + +<p>So I would advise the readers of <i>Anticipations</i> +and <i>Mankind in the Making</i> to be +influenced by the spirit rather than by the +letter of these two books. The spirit is +definite enough; it is the spirit of humaneness, +of a passionate criticism of all the evils, +miseries and disease that are the outcome +of our present haphazard civilisation; the +spirit for a desire for order, wider prospects +and opportunities, greater freedom for +growth. Men are born unequal, with different +tendencies, different desires, different +potentialities, but there should be a place +for every one of them in the great economy +of "The New Republic." Each has to learn +the lesson—for discipline is essential—that +he is not an independent unit as regards his +work, but a factor, more or less insignificant, +in the sum of individuals that make up the +greater State. The good New Republican<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a> +"will seek perpetually to gauge his quality, +he will watch to see himself the master of +his habits and of his powers; he will take his +brain, blood, body and lineage as a trust to +be administered for the world."</p> + +<p>Such, I think, is the spirit, the permanent +principle of these two books. That remains +and increases. The conception of the process +by which the New Republic shall be +built is less constant, and Mr Wells will +change his opinions concerning it for just +so long as he continues to grow. Should he +ever adopt an inalterable policy, subscribe +to some "ism," and wear a label, he would +brand himself truly as inconsistent. Then, +indeed, he would have contradicted himself. +We search for truth never hoping to find it +complete and whole; and he who is contented +with a part denies God....</p> + +<p><i>A Modern Utopia</i> (1905) is an attempt +to picture "The New Republic" in being; a +very different dream of reconstruction from +<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>that displayed in Edward Bellamy's <i>Looking +Backward</i>, and <i>Equality</i>, but having nevertheless +certain points of likeness to the former +at least, and especially in the method of +marking contrasts by a form of parallelism, +by keeping the world as we know it within +the circle of attention in order to break the +paralysing illusion that we are moving in +romantic and quite impossible surroundings. +Mr Wells' machinery is slightly complicated. +He takes two figures from the beginning of +this twentieth century. The Owner of the +Voice ("you will go with him through +curious and interesting experience. Yet, +ever and again, you will find him back at the +table, the manuscript in his hand ...") +and the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator +to the other expositor. "The image of a +cinematograph entertainment is the one to +grasp," writes Mr Wells in his preliminary +explanation. "There will be an effect of +these two people going to and fro in +<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>front of the circle of a rather defective +lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes +gets out of focus, but which does +occasionally succeed in displaying on a +screen a momentary moving picture of +Utopian conditions."</p> + +<p>I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to +avoid the all too obvious mistake made by +other Utopian builders, both romantic and +practical. He began, I feel sure, with the +admirable intention of depicting the people +of the early twentieth century in new conditions, +changed only in so far as they were +influenced by the presentation of finer ideals +and by more beautiful circumstance. He +even introduced a contemporary critic of +Utopian conditions in the shape of the +talkative person, "a conscious Ishmaelite +in the world of wit, and in some subtly +inexplicable way a most consummate ass." +But once we begin to postulate our Utopian +villains, the reader's thought is distracted +<a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>from the contemplation of the heroic which +is the cement that binds every stone in the +visionary city. In order to change conditions +it is necessary to change much in the +present cast of human nature. In a fiction +of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, +a Rockefeller, or an ambition-swelled Imperialist. +So Mr Wells is driven with various +hesitations and resentments to assume that +the interactions of cause and effect have +indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, +more generous race of men and women; +that the spirit which moves us now to seek a +larger liberty and a greater tolerance has +been encouraged and increased by the +exercise of its own tendencies and the sight +of its own triumphs; and that those who +set their minds to the building gain an added +grace in the labour. It is a perfectly fair +and consistent assumption, but Mr Wells +has been warned by his predecessors, from +Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a> +Edward Bellamy, that the designs for +Utopia have always been flawed by an +altered conception of the humanity that +walks within the city; and he has begun +by trying to avoid a fallacy and ended by +begging a question that he might very well +have convincingly argued.</p> + +<p>By many people <i>A Modern Utopia</i> is +definitely labelled as the "Samurai" book. +That conception of a natural aristocracy of +spirit and ability did indeed return upon +its creator in the form of an object lesson +that filled him with a disgust for what was +really a fine ideal, only too temptingly displayed. +So many of his readers, and particularly +his younger readers, formed the +wish to become "Samurai" without more +ado, a high office for which none of them, +perhaps, had the ability or the determination +to fill. For Utopias take even longer to +build than Rome or London. But the plan +is there—vague and tentative as the original +<a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>scheme of a Gothic cathedral, a plan to be +continually modified and changed in its most +important features; and the building has +begun....</p> + +<p>The last books that can strictly fall into +the present category are <i>The Future of +America</i> (1906) and <i>New Worlds for Old</i> +(1908). The former is rather a record of +impressions than the attempt at prophecy +which the title and the first chapter indicate; +and the final conclusion is too hesitating +even to convince us that America has a +future. "I came to America questioning the +certitudes of progress," Mr Wells says in his +Envoy. "For a time I forgot my questionings, +I sincerely believed, 'These people +can do anything,' and, now I have it all in +perspective, I have to confess that doubt +has taken me again." And without question +he has changed his opinion with regard +to many of the observations he made nine +years ago. I sincerely hope he has.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a><i>New Worlds for Old</i> is quite definitely a +book of suggestions with regard to certain +aspects of socialism. It is the most practical +of all the sociological books, and makes +so strong an appeal to the buried common-sense +of even prejudiced readers, that a +devoted Primrose Leaguer to whom I lent +my copy was quite seriously disturbed in +mind for nearly a week after he had read it. +Fortunately for his own peace, he found +an answer that permitted him comfortably +to avoid the perpetual burden of +an active responsibility. He thought that +"Socialism would be all right in a perfect +world," or words to that effect; and it was +quite evident to him that the effort to make +some small contribution towards raising the +standard of human idealism was no part of +his duty. In any case he greatly preferred +the solid assurance of the Primrose League. +And, speaking generally, as I have tried to +do throughout, I find that <i>New Worlds for +<a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>Old</i> presents a clearer indication to the possible +path for the idealist than any of the +other sociological essays. <i>Mankind in the +Making</i> dealt very largely with education +directed to a particular end, but in the book +I am now considering may be found certain +outlets for the expression of the less consistently +strenuous. Education, whether of +individual children in the home or regarded +as a function of the State, offers continual +perplexities that only the most resolute can +confront day by day with renewed zeal; +the problems of collective ownership are less +confused by psychology, and the broad principles +may be adopted and the energy of the +young believer directed towards the accomplishment +of minor detail. He may, for example, +find good reason for the nationalising +of the milk supply without committing himself +to any broader theory of expropriation.</p> + +<p>Finally I come to the collection of various +papers issued in 1914 under the title <i>An +<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>Englishman Looks at the World</i>—a book that +I may pass with the comment that it exhibits +Mr Wells in his more captious moods, +deliberately more captious in some instances, +no doubt, inasmuch as the various papers +were written for serial publication—and that +<i>Confession of Faith and Rule of Life</i>, published +in 1907 as <i>First and Last Things</i>. +The opening is unnecessarily complicated +by the exposition of a metaphysic that is +quite uncharacteristic and has little to do +with the personal exposition that follows; +and, indeed, I feel with regard to the whole +work that it attempts to define the indefinable. +I deprecate the note of finality +implied in the title. "It is as it stands +now," I read in the Introduction, "the +frank confession of what one man of the +early Twentieth Century has found in life +and himself," but that man has found much +since then, and will continue to find much +as he grows continually richer in experience.<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a> +So that while no student of Wells' writings +can afford to overlook <i>First and Last +Things</i>, I would warn him against the +danger of concluding that in that book he +will find at last the ultimate expression of +character and belief, set out in the form of +a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit +and overlook the letter. I choose to take +as representative such a passage as the +following, with all its splendid vagueness +and lack of dogma, rather than a definite +expression of belief that Mr Wells does not +believe in a personal immortality. This +passage runs: "It seems to me that the +whole living creation may be regarded as +walking in its sleep, as walking in the sleep +of individualised illusion, and that now out +of it all rises man, beginning to perceive his +larger self, his universal brotherhood, and +a collective synthetic purpose to increase +Power and realise Beauty...."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>And now that I have attempted my interpretation, +I look back and confess that +it is a very personal reading of my subject. +I may have sought too eagerly for all those +passages in which I found a note that roused +in me the most thrilling response. I may +have omitted to display vital issues that +more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the +appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies +that I have found most sympathetic and +most admirable. But if I appear to have +done him an injustice in some particulars, +it is rather because I have been absorbed +by the issue I sought to reveal, than because +I deliberately weighed and rejected others. +This short essay can be no more than an +introduction to the works it describes. It +was never intended to be critical. I have +had no intention of discussing technique, +nor of weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries +in any literary scale. But I +have attempted to interpret the spirit and +<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>the message that I have found in his books; +and I have made the essay in the hope that +any reader who may consequently be stirred +to read or to re-read Wells will do so with +a mind prepared to look below the surface +expression.</p> + +<p>I feel no shade of hesitation when I say +that H.G. Wells is a great writer. His +fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension +of character are gifts and abilities +that certain of his contemporaries have in +equal, or in some particulars in larger +measure. But he alone has used his +perfected art for a definite end. He has not +been content to record his observations of +the world as he has seen it, to elaborate this +or that analysis of human motive, or to +relate the history of a few selected lives. He +has done all this, but he has done infinitely +more by pointing the possible road of our +endeavour. Through all his work moves +the urgency of one who would create some<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>thing +more than a mere work of art to amuse +the multitude or afford satisfaction to the +critic. His chief achievement is that he has +set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a +more generous life than that in which we live; +an ideal that, if it is still too high for us of +this generation, will be appreciated and +followed by the people of the future.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><a name="A_BIBLIOGRAPHY_OF_HG_WELLS" id="A_BIBLIOGRAPHY_OF_HG_WELLS" /><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a></p> +<h2>A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF H.G. WELLS'</h2> +<h2>PRINCIPAL WRITINGS</h2> + + + +<ul> +<li>Select Conversations with an Uncle (<i>Lane</i>). 1895.</li> + +<li>The Time Machine—An Invention (<i>Heinemann</i>). 1895.</li> + +<li>*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1895.</li> + +<li>The Wonderful Visit (<i>Dent</i>). 1895.</li> + +<li>The Island of Dr Moreau (<i>Heinemann</i>). 1896.</li> + +<li>The Wheels of Chance (<i>Dent</i>). 1896.</li> + +<li>*The Plattner Story (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1897.</li> + +<li>The Invisible Man (<i>MacMillan</i>). 1897.</li> + +<li>The War of the Worlds (<i>Heinemann</i>). 1898.</li> + +<li>When the Sleeper Wakes (<i>Nelson</i>). 1899. [Afterwards published (1911) in a revised and altered +edition, as "The Sleeper Awakes."]</li> + +<li>*Tales of Space and Time (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1899.</li> + +<li>Love and Mr Lewisham (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1900.</li> + +<li>Certain Personal Matters (<i>Unwin</i>). 1901.</li> + +<li>Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and +Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought +(<i>Chapman & Hall</i>). 1901.</li> + +<li>The First Men in the Moon (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1901.</li> + +<li>The Discovery of the Future (A Lecture given at the +Royal Institute). 1902.</li> + +<li>The Sea Lady—A Tissue of Moonshine. 1902.</li> + +<li>Mankind in the Making (<i>Chapman & Hall</i>). 1903.</li> + +<li>*Twelve Stories and a Dream (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1903.</li> + +<li>The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(<i>Macmillan</i>). 1904.</li> + +<li>A Modern Utopia (<i>Nelson</i>). 1905.</li> + +<li>Kipps—The Story of a Simple Soul (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1905.</li> + +<li>In the Days of the Comet (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1906.</li> + +<li>The Future in America—A Search after Realities +(<i>Chapman & Hall</i>). 1906.</li> + +<li>First and Last Things—A Confession of Faith and +Rule of Life (<i>Constable</i>). 1907.</li> + +<li>The Misery of Boots (Fabian Tract). 1907.</li> + +<li>Socialism and Marriage (Fabian Tract). 1908.</li> + +<li>New Worlds for Old (<i>Constable</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>The War in the Air (<i>Bell</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>Tono-Bungay (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>Ann Veronica—A Modern Love Story (<i>Unwin</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>The History of Mr Polly (<i>Nelson</i>). 1910.</li> + +<li>The New Machiavelli (<i>Lane</i>) 1910.</li> + +<li>The Country of the Blind and Other Stories +(<i>Nelson</i>). 1911.</li> + +<li>Floor Games (A book about play for children) +(<i>Palmer</i>). 1911.</li> + +<li>Socialism and the Great State (A contribution by +H.G. Wells. The book is written by fifteen +authors) (<i>Harper</i>). 1911.</li> + +<li>Marriage (<i>Macmillan</i>). 1912.</li> + +<li>The Passionate Friends—A Novel (<i>Macmillan</i>). +1913.</li> + +<li>Little Wars (A book about play for children) +(<i>Palmer</i>). 1913.</li> + +<li>An Englishman Looks at the World (<i>Cassell</i>). +1914.</li> + +<li>The World Set Free—A Story of Mankind +(<i>Macmillan</i>). 1914. +</li> +</ul> + +<p>The volumes marked * are collections of short +stories, the best of which were republished in "The +Country of the Blind," 1911.</p> + +<p>NOTE.—Some of these volumes have been published +under different titles in the U.S.A. (See American +Bibliography.)<br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<p><b><a name="AMERICAN_BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="AMERICAN_BIBLIOGRAPHY" />AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY</b></p> + +<ul> +<li>Island of Dr Moreau (<i>Duffield</i>). 1896.</li> + +<li>Invisible Man (<i>Harper</i>). 1898.</li> + +<li>Thirty Strange Stories (<i>Harper</i>). 1898.</li> + +<li>When the Sleeper Wakes [English title, "The Sleeper Awakes."] (<i>Harper</i>). 1899.</li> + +<li>Anticipations (<i>Harper</i>). 1902.</li> + +<li>Discovery of the Future (<i>Smithsonian Institute +Washington</i>). 1903.</li> + +<li>Discovery of the Future (<i>Huebsch</i>). 1913.</li> + +<li>Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(<i>Scribners</i>). 1904.</li> + +<li>Love and Mr Lewisham (<i>Stokes</i>). 1904.</li> + +<li>Mankind in the Making (<i>Scribners</i>). 1904.</li> + +<li>Modern Utopia (<i>Scribners</i>). 1905.</li> + +<li>Twelve Stories and a Dream (<i>Scribners</i>). 1905.</li> + +<li>Kipps (<i>Scribners</i>). 1905.</li> + +<li>Future in America (<i>Harper</i>). 1906.</li> + +<li>Time Machine—An Invention (<i>Holt & Company</i>). +1906.</li> + +<li>In the Days of the Comet (<i>Century Company</i>). +1906.</li> + +<li>First and Last Things (<i>Putnams</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>New Worlds for Old (<i>Macmillan Company</i>). +1908-13.</li> + +<li>Socialism and the Family (<i>Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>This Misery of Boots (<i>Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>War in the Air (<i>Macmillan Company</i>). 1908.</li> + +<li>War in the Air (<i>Grosset & Dunlap</i>). 1910.</li> + +<li>Ann Veronica (<i>Harper</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>Select Conversations with an Uncle (<i>Saalfield +Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>Tono-Bungay (<i>Duffield</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>War of the Worlds (<i>Harper</i>). 1909.</li> + +<li>History of Mr Polly (<i>Duffield</i>). 1910.</li> + +<li>History of Mr Polly (<i>Grosset & Dunlap</i>). 1912.</li> + +<li>New Machiavelli (<i>Duffield</i>). 1910.</li> + +<li>Door in the Wall and Other Stories (<i>Mitchell +Kennerley</i>). 1911.</li> + +<li>Floor Games (<i>Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts</i>). 1912.</li> + +<li>Socialism and the Great State (<i>Harper</i>). +1912. (See page 119.)</li> + +<li>Marriage (<i>Duffield</i>). 1912.</li> + +<li>Little Wars (<i>Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts</i>). 1913.</li> + +<li>Passionate Friends (<i>Harper</i>). 1913.</li> + +<li>Wheels of Chance—A Bicycling Idyll (<i>Macmillan +Company</i>). 1913. Illustrated by F.A. Symington. [English title, "The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday +Adventure."]</li> + +<li>The Wonderful Visit (<i>E.P. Dutton & Company</i>). 1914.</li> + +<li>Social Forces in England and America (<i>Harper</i>). 1914.</li> + +<li>The World Set Free (<i>E.P. Dutton & Company</i>). 1914. +</li> +</ul> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX" /><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<p> +<i>Ann Veronica</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br /> +<i>Anticipations</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br /> +<br /> +Bebel, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +Bellamy, Edward, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br /> +Bromley, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br /> +<br /> +Capital and Labour, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> +Characterisation, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +Common-sense, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br /> +Comte, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br /> +<i>Country of the Blind, The</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Dynasts, The</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a><br /> +<br /> +Education, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br /> +<i>Englishman Looks at the World, An</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<br /> +Fabre, Henri, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br /> +Fecundity, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +Feminism, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br /> +<i>First and Last Things</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<i>First Men in the Moon, The</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +Fixed Opinions, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br /> +<i>Food of the Gods, The</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br /> +<i>Future of America, The</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> +<br /><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a> +Henley House, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<i>History of Mr Polly, The</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br /> +Huxley, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> +Hyndman, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +<br /> +Idealism, <a href="#Page_69">69</a><br /> +Insurgent Bigness, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br /> +<i>In the Days of the Comet</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +<i>Invisible Man, The</i>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br /> +<i>Island of Dr Moreau, The</i>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br /> +Isolation, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Kipps</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_65">65</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Love and Mr Lewisham</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Man of the Year Million, The</i>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br /> +<i>Mankind in the Making</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a><br /> +<i>Marriage</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>-<a href="#Page_85">85</a><br /> +Marx, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +Metaphysics, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +Midhurst Grammar School, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br /> +<i>Modern Utopia, A</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>New Machiavelli, The</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br /> +New Republic, The, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br /> +<i>New Worlds for Old</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Passionate Friends, The</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a><br /> +<br /> +Rule of Thumb, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br /> +<br /><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> +Samurai, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<i>Sea Lady, The</i>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br /> +Shaw, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +Socialism, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br /> +South Kensington School, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br /> +Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br /> +Spirit of Freedom, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Time Machine, The</i>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<i>Tono-Bungay,</i> <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br /> +<br /> +Up Park, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br /> +Utopias, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<br /> +Verne, Jules, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>War in the Air, The</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br /> +<i>War of the Worlds, The</i>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br /> +Wells, Mr and Mrs Joseph, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br /> +<i>Wheels of Chance, The</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +<i>When the Sleeper Wakes (The Sleeper Awakes)</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br /> +<i>Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, The</i>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, etc.<br /> +Women Employees, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> +<i>Wonderful Visit, The</i>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br /> +<i>World Set Free, The</i>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a><br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of H. 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G. Wells, by J. D. Beresford + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: H. G. Wells + +Author: J. D. Beresford + +Release Date: March 13, 2005 [EBook #15351] +[Last updated: November 10, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK H. G. WELLS *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + +[Illustration: H.G. WELLS] + + + + +H.G. WELLS +By +J.D. BERESFORD + +[Illustration] + + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + +_First Published in 1915_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + I. INTRODUCTION 9 + II. THE ROMANCES 17 +III. THE NOVELS 58 + IV. SOCIOLOGY 97 + BIBLIOGRAPHY 117 + AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY 121 + INDEX 125 + + + + +[Transcriber's Notes for e-book: + +The spelling and punctuation are consistent with the original scans +with the following exceptions. If you are using this book for research, please +verify any spelling or punctuation with another source. + +I added ["] at end of phrase: "to recover the full-bodied +self-satisfaction of his early days." + +In the following sentence, I changed 'succeded' to 'succeeded': And +Bensington, the other experimenter, succeeded in separating a food +that produced regular instead of intermittent growth.] + + + + +TO +R.A.A.B. +THIS ESSAY IS FRATERNALLY +DEDICATED + + + + +I + +INTRODUCTION + +THE NORMALITY OF MR WELLS + + +In his Preface to the _Unpleasant Plays_, Mr Shaw boasts his +possession of "normal sight." The adjective is the oculist's, and the +application of it is Mr Shaw's, but while the phrase is misleading +until it is explained to suit a particular purpose, it has a pleasing +adaptability, and I can find none better as a key to the works of Mr +H.G. Wells. + +We need not bungle over the word "normal," in any attempt to meet the +academic objection that it implies conformity to type. In this +connection, the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated +from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears no glasses; and +if a few happy people still exist here and there who have no need for +the mere physical assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook +is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form of bias is so +small that we regard them as inspired or criminal according to the +inclination of our own beloved predilection. And no spectacles will +correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often +a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight. +That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the +confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout +life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly +flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an "oblate +spheroid" would be the physicist's brief description), seeks the +society of other men who share his illusion; and the company of them +take arms against the opposing faction, which is confirmed in the +belief that the ball is egg-shaped, that the bulge, in fact, is not +"oblate" but "prolate." + +I will not elaborate the parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in +my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a +reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his +early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent mark +upon him. His readers may infer, from certain descriptions in _Kipps_, +and _The History of Mr Polly_, that Wells himself sincerely regrets +the inadequacies of that "private school of dingy aspect and still +dingier pretensions, where there were no object lessons, and the +studies of book-keeping and French were pursued (but never effectually +overtaken) under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, who wore a +nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, +and used a cane with remarkable dexterity and gusto." But, properly +considered, that inadequate elderly gentleman may be regarded as our +benefactor. If he had been more apt in his methods, he might have +influenced the blessed normality of his pupil, and bound upon him the +spectacles of his own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might have been +born into the leisured classes, and sent to Eton and Christchurch, and +if his genius had found any expression after that awful experience, he +would probably, at the best, have written polite essays or a history +of Napoleon, during the intervals of his leisured activity as a member +of the Upper House. + +Happily, Fate provided a scheme for preserving his eyesight, and +pitched him into the care of Mr and Mrs Joseph Wells on the 21st +September 1866; behind or above a small general shop in Bromley. Mrs +Wells was the daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst and had been in +service as a lady's maid before her marriage. Joseph Wells had had a +more distinguished career. He had been a great Kent bowler in the +early sixties, and it must have been, I think, only the year before +the subject of our essay appeared at Bromley that his father took four +wickets with consecutive balls and created a new record in the annals +of cricket. The late Sir Francis Galton might have made something out +of this ancestry; I must confess that it is entirely beyond my powers, +although I make the reservation that we know little of the abilities +of H.G. Wells' mother. She has not figured as a recognisable portrait +in any of his novels. + +The Bromley shop, like most of its kind, was a failure. Moderate +success might have meant a Grammar School for young Wells, and the +temptations of property, but Fate gave our young radical another twist +by thrusting him temporarily within sight of an alien and magnificent +prosperity, where as the son of the housekeeper at Up Park, near +Petersfield, he might recognise his immense separation from the +members of the ruling class, as described in _Tono-Bungay_. + +After that came "the drapery," first at Windsor and then at Southsea; +but we have no autobiography of this period, only the details of the +trade and its circumstances. For neither Hoopdriver, nor Kipps, nor +Polly could have qualified for the post of assistant at Midhurst +Grammar School, a position that H.G. Wells obtained at sixteen after +he had broken his indentures with the Southsea draper. + +At this point we come up with Mr Lewisham, and may follow him in his +experiences after he obtained what was, in fact, a scholarship at the +Normal School of Science, South Kensington; but we drop that hero +again before his premature marriage and failure, to follow the +uncharted course of Wells obtaining his B.Sc. with first-class +honours; passing to an assistant-mastership at the Henley House +School, St John's Wood, and so coming by way of tutor, lecturer and +demonstrator to the beginnings of journalism, to the breaking of a +blood-vessel and thence, without further diversion, to the trade of +letters, somewhere in the summer of 1893. + +I have taken as my text the normality of Mr Wells, on the +understanding that I shall define the essential term as I will; and +this brief outline of his early experiences may help to show, _inter +alia_, that he viewed life from many angles before he was +twenty-seven. That he had the capacity so to see life was either a +lucky accident or due to some untraceable composition of heredity. +That he kept his power was an effect of his casual education. He was +fortunate enough to escape training in his observation of the sphere. + +Persistent repetition will finally influence the young mind, however +gifted, and if Mr Wells had been subject to the discipline of what may +be called an efficient education, he might have seen his sphere at the +age of twenty-seven as slightly flattened--whether it appeared oblate +or prolate is no consequence--and I could not have crowned him with +the designation that heads this Introduction. + +He is, in fact, normal just in so far as his gift of vision was +undistorted by the precepts and dogmas of his parents, teachers and +early companions. + + + + +II + +THE ROMANCES + + +Mr Wells' romances have little or nothing in common with those of +Jules Verne, not even that peculiar quality of romance which revels in +the impossible. The heroes of Jules Verne were idealised creatures +making use of some wonderful invention for their own purposes; and the +future of mankind was of no account in the balance against the lust +for adventure under new mechanical conditions. Also, Jules Verne's +imagination was at the same time mathematical and Latin; and he was +entirely uninfluenced by the writings of Comte. + +Mr Wells' experiments with the relatively improbable have become +increasingly involved with the social problem, and it would be +possible to trace the growth of his opinions from this evidence alone, +even if we had not the valuable commentary afforded by his novels and +his essays in sociology. But his interest in the present and future +welfare of man would not in the first place have prompted him to the +writing of romance (unless it had been cast in the severely +allegorical form of _The Pilgrim's Progress_), and if we are to +account for that ebullition, we shall be driven--like Darwin with his +confounding peacock--to take refuge in some theory of exuberance. The +later works have been so defensive and, in one sense, didactic that +one is apt to forget that many of the earlier books, and all the short +stories, must have originated in the effervescence of creative +imagination. + +Mr Wells must, also, have been slightly intoxicated by the first +effects of reaction. A passage from _The Future in America_ exhibits +him somewhat gleefully reviving thoughts of the prison-house, and I +quote it in order to account for his first exercises in prophecy by a +study of contrasts. "I remember," he writes, "that to me in my boyhood +speculation about the Future was a monstrous joke. Like most people of +my generation, I was launched into life with millennial assumptions. +This present sort of thing, I believed, was going on for a time, +interesting personally, perhaps, but as a whole inconsecutive, and +then--it might be in my lifetime or a little after it--there would be +trumpets and shoutings and celestial phenomena, a battle of +Armageddon, and the Judgment.... To talk about the Man of the year +Million was, of course, in the face of this great conviction, a +whimsical play of fancy. The year Million was just as impossible, just +as gaily nonsensical as fairyland...." + +The imprisoning bottle was opened when he became a student of biology, +under Huxley, and the liquid of his suppressed thought began to +bubble. He prefaced his romances by a sketch in the old _Pall Mall +Gazette_, entitled _The Man of the Year Million_, an a priori study +that made one thankful for one's prematurity. After that physiological +piece of logic, however, he tried another essay in evolution, +published in 1895 in book form under the title of _The Time +Machine_--the first of his romances. + +The machine itself is the vaguest of mechanical assumptions; a thing +of ivory, quartz, nickel and brass that quite illogically carries its +rider into an existing past or future. We accept the machine as a +literary device to give an air of probability to the essential thing, +the experience; and forget the means in the effect. The criterion of +the prophecy in this case is influenced by the theory of "natural +selection." Mr Wells' vision of the "Sunset of Mankind" was of men so +nearly adapted to their environment that the need for struggle, with +its corollary of the extermination of the unfit, had practically +ceased. Humanity had become differentiated into two races, both +recessive; one, the Eloi, a race of childlike, simple, delicate +creatures living on the surface of a kindly earth; the other, the +Morlocks, a more active but debased race, of bestial habits, who lived +underground and preyed cannibalistically on the surface-dwellers whom +they helped to preserve, as a man may preserve game. The Eloi, +according to the hypothesis of the Time Traveller, are the descendants +of the leisured classes; the Morlocks of the workers. "The Eloi, like +the Carlovingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They +still possessed the earth on sufferance; since the Morlocks, +subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the +day-lit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I +inferred, and maintained them in their habitual needs perhaps through +the survival of an old habit of service." All this is in the year +802,701 A.D. + +The prophecy is less convincing than the wonderful sight of the +declining earth some million years later, sinking slowly into the +dying fires of the worn-out sun. Man and the vertebrates have +disappeared, and the highest wonder of animal life is represented by +giant crustaceans, which in turn give way to a lower form. We have a +vision of an involution that shall succeed the highest curve of +development; of life ending where it began in the depths of the sea, +as the initial energy of the solar system is dissipated and the +material of it returns to rest at the temperature of the absolute +zero. And the picture is made more horrible to the imaginative by the +wonder whether the summit of the evolutionary curve has not already +been reached--or it may be passed in the days of the Greek +philosophers. + +_The Time Machine_, despite certain obvious faults of imagination and +style, is a brilliant fantasy; and it affords a valuable picture of +the young Wells looking at the world, with his normal eyes, and +finding it, more particularly, incomplete. At the age of twenty-seven +or so, he has freed himself very completely from the bonds of +conventional thought, and is prepared to examine, and to present life +from the detached standpoint of one who views it all from a +respectable distance; but who is able, nevertheless--an essential +qualification--to enter life with all the passion and generosity of +his own humanity. + +And in _The Wonderful Visit_--published in the same year as _The Time +Machine_--he comes closer to earth. That ardent ornithologist, the +Rev. K. Hilyer, Vicar of Siddermouth, who brought down an angel with a +shot-gun, is tenderly imagined; a man of gentle mind, for all the +limitations of his training. The mortalised angel, on the other hand, +is rather a tentative and simple creature. He may represent, perhaps, +the rather blank mind of one who sees country society without having +had the inestimable privilege of learning how it came about. His +temperament was something too childlike--without the child's +brutality--to investigate the enormous complexities of adjustment that +had brought about the conditions into which he was all too suddenly +plunged by a charge of duck-shot. He came and was filled with an +inalterable perplexity, but some of his questions were too ingenuous; +and while we may sympathise with the awful inertia of Hilyer before +the impossible task of explaining the inexplicable differences between +mortal precept and mortal practice, we feel that we might, in some +cases at least, have made a more determined effort. We might have +found some justification for chairs, by way of instance, and +certainly an excuse for raising beds above the floor. But the wounded +angel, like the metal machine, is only a device whereby the searching +examination of our author may be displayed in an engrossing and +intimate form. And in _The Wonderful Visit_, that exuberance we +postulated, that absorption in the development of idea, is more +marked; in the unfolding of the story we can trace the method of the +novelist. + +Indeed, the three romances that follow discover hardly a trace of the +social investigator. _The Island of Dr Moreau_, _The Invisible Man_ +and _The War of the Worlds_ are essays in pure fantasy, and although +the first of the three is influenced by biology I class it +unhesitatingly among the works of sheer exuberance. Each of these +books is, in effect, an answer to some rather whimsical question, and +the problem that Dr Moreau attempted to solve was: "Can we, by +surgery, so accelerate the evolutionary process as to make man out of +a beast in a few days or weeks?" And within limits he found that the +answer was: "Yes." + +In the seclusion of his island, and with the poor assistance of the +outlawed medical student, Montgomery, Dr Moreau succeeded in producing +some creditable parodies of humanity by his operations on pigs, bulls, +dogs and other animals. These cut and remoulded creatures had +something the appearance and intelligence of Homo Sapiens, and could +be maintained at that level by the exercise of discipline and the +constant recital of "the Law"; left to themselves they gradually +reverted to the habits and manners of the individual beasts out of +which they had been carved. We may infer that some subtle organic +chemistry worked its determination upon their uncontrolled wills, but +Mr Wells offers no explanation, psychic, chemical or biological, and +I do not think that he intended any particular fable beyond the +evident one that, physically, one species is as like to the next as +makes no matter. What Moreau did well another man might have done +better. It is a good story, and the adventures of the marooned +Prendick, alone, are sufficient justification for the original +conception. (I feel bound to note, however, the absurd comments of +some early reviewers who seemed to imagine that the story was a +defence of vivisection.) + +The next romance (1897) seeks to answer the question: "What could a +man do if he were invisible?" Various attempts to answer that question +had been made by other writers, but none of them had come to it with +Mr Wells' practical grasp of the real problem; the earlier romantics +had not grappled with the necessity for clothes and the various ways +in which a material man, however indistinguishable his body by our +sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. The study from +beginning to end is finely realistic; and even the theory of the +albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree his method of winning the +useless gift of invisibility, are convincing enough to make us wonder +whether the thing is not scientifically possible. As a pure romance +set in perfectly natural surroundings, _The Invisible Man_ is possibly +the high-water mark of Mr Wells' achievement in this kind. He has +perfected his technique, and the interest in the development of the +story works up steadily to the splendid climax, when the form of the +berserker Griffin returns to visibility, his hands clenched, his eyes +wide open, and on his face an expression of "anger and dismay," the +elements--as I choose to think--of man's revolt against imprisonment +in the flesh. It is worth while to note that by another statement, the +same problem is posed and solved in the short story called _The +Country of the Blind_. + +_The War of the Worlds_ (1898), although written in the first person, +is in some ways the most detached of all these fantasies; and it is in +this book that Mr Wells frankly confesses his own occasional sense of +separation. "At times," says the narrator of the history, "I suffer +from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about +me, I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere +inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and +tragedy of it all." That sense must have remained with him as he wrote +the account of the invading Martians, so little passion does the book +contain. The vision, however, is clear enough and there is more +invention than in many of the other romances. The picture of the +Martians themselves develops in one direction the theory of human +evolution expressed in _The Man of the Year Million_. The expansion +of the brain case, and the apotheosis of pure intellect, devoid, so +far as we can judge, of any emotional expression, are the steadily +biological deductions that we should expect from the Wells of this +period. The fighting machines of these incomprehensible entities, the +heat ray and the black smoke, are all excellent conceptions; and the +narrative is splendidly graphic. But only in the scenes with the +curate, when the narrator is stirred to passionate anger, and in his +later passages with the sapper, do we catch any glimpses of the +novelist intrigued with the intimate affairs of humanity. Even the +narrator's brother, in his account of the escape with two women in a +pony-carriage, has become infected with that sense of detachment. The +two women are strongly differentiated but leave little impression of +personality. + +The fact that I have made this comment on lack of passion in +describing one of these earlier romances is indicative of a particular +difference between Mr Wells' method in this sort and the method of the +lesser writer of fantasias. The latter, whatever his idea, and it may +be a brilliant idea, is always intent on elaborating the wonder of his +theme by direct description. Mr Wells is far more subtle and more +effective. He takes an average individual, identifies him with the +world as we know it, and then proceeds gradually to bring his marvel +within the range of this individual's apprehension. We see the +improbable, not too definitely, through the eyes of one who is +prepared with the same incredulity as the reader of the story, and as +a result the strange phenomenon, whether fallen angel, invisible man, +converted beast or invading Martian, takes all the shape of reality. +That this shape is convincing is due to the brilliance of Mr Wells' +imagination and his power of graphic expression; the lesser writer +might adopt the method and fail utterly to attain the effect; but it +is this conception of the means to reach the intelligence and senses +of the average reader that chiefly distinguishes these romances from +those of such writers as Jules Verne. Our approach to the wonderful is +so gradual and so natural that when we are finally confronted with it +the incredible thing has become inevitable and expected. Finally, it +has become so identified with human surprise, anger or dismay that any +failure of humanity in the chief person of the story reacts upon our +conception of the wonderful intrusion among familiar phenomena. + +Now, this power of creating the semblance of fact out of an ideal was +too valuable a thing to be wasted on the making of stories that had no +purpose beyond that of interesting or exciting the reader with such +imaginations as the Martians, whose only use was to threaten humanity +with extinction. Mr Wells' own sight of our blindness, our complacent +acceptance of the sphere as an oblate or prolate spheroid, might be, +he hoped, another of the marvels which we should come to accept +through the medium of romance. So he began tentatively at first to +introduce a vivid criticism of the futility of present-day society +into his fantasies, and the first and the least of these books was +that published in 1899 as _When the Sleeper Wakes_, a title afterwards +changed to _The Sleeper Awakes_. + +In the two opening chapters we find the same delightfully realistic +treatment of the unprecedented slowly mingling with the commonplace. +The first appearance of Graham the Sleeper, tormented then by the +spectres and doubts that accompany insomnia, is made so credible that +we accept his symptoms without the least demur; his condition is +merely unusual enough to excite a trembling interest. Even the +passing of his early years of trance does not arouse scepticism. But +then we fall with one terrific plunge into the world of A.D. 2100, +and, like Graham, we cannot realise it. Moreover this changed, +developed world has a slightly mechanical air. The immense enclosed +London, imagined by Mr Wells, is no Utopia, yet, like the dream of +earlier prophets, it is too logical to entice us into any +hallucination; and we come, fatally, to a criticism of the syllogism. + +Mr Wells himself has confessed, in a new Preface, that this is "one of +the most ambitious and least satisfactory" of his books; and explains +that it was written against time, when he was on the verge of a +serious illness. It is superfluous, therefore, to criticise it in +detail, but one or two points in relation to the sociological idea +must be emphasised. + +The main theme is the growing division between Capital and Labour. +The Giant Trust--managing the funds accumulated in Graham's name, a +trust that has obtained possession of so immense a capital that it +controls the chief activities of the world--is figured in the command +of a certain Ostrog, who, with all the dependents that profit by the +use of his wealth and such mercenaries as he can hold to himself, +represents one party in opposition to the actual workers and +producers, generically the People. The picture is the struggle of our +own day in more acute form; the result, in the amended edition, is +left open. "Who will win--Ostrog or the People?" Mr Wells writes in +the Preface referred to above, and answers: "A thousand years hence +that will still be just the open question we leave to-day." + +I am not concerned in this place to question the validity of that +answer, nor to suggest that the Wells of 1914 would not necessarily +give the same account of his beliefs as the Wells of 1909, but I must +draw attention to the attitude displayed in the book under +consideration in order to point the change of feeling recognisable in +later books. In _The Sleeper Awakes_, even in the revised version, the +sociological theory is still mechanical, the prophecy at once too +logical, and at the same time deduced from premises altogether too +restricted. The world of A.D. 2100 is the world of to-day, with its +more glaring contrasts still more glaringly emphasised; with its +social incongruities and blindness raised to a higher power. And all +that it lacked has been put into a romance called _In the Days of the +Comet_ (1906), a book to which I shall now leap, returning later to +consider the comparatively irrelevant theses of three other romances +that chronologically intervened. + +The great change wrought by the coming of the Comet might be +sentimentally described as a change of heart; I prefer to call it a +change of reason. All the earlier part of the work, which is again +told in the first person, presents the life of a Midland industrial +area as seen by one who has suffered it. The Capital-Labour problem +bulks in the foreground, and is adequately supported by a passionate +exposition of the narrowness and misery of lower-middle-class life in +the jumble of limitations, barriers and injustices that arise from the +absolute ownership of property. Also, into this romance--the only one, +by the way--comes some examination of the relations of the sexes. And +all this jumble is due, if we are to believe the remedy, to human +misunderstanding. The influence of the Comet passed over the earth, +and men, after a few hours of trance, awoke to a new realisation. We +come to a first knowledge of the change in one of the most beautiful +passages that Mr Wells has written; and although I dislike to spoil a +passage by setting it out unclothed by the idea and expectations which +have led to its expression, given it form, and fitted it to a just +place in the whole composition, I will make an exception in this case +in order to justify my metaphor of "normal sight." The supposed writer +of the description had just awakened from the trance induced by the +passing of the Comet. He says: + + "I came slowly, stepping very carefully because of those drugged, + feebly awakening things, through the barley to the hedge. It was a + very glorious hedge, so that it held my eyes. It flowed along and + interlaced like splendid music. It was rich with lupin, + honeysuckle, campions and ragged robin; bed straw, hops and wild + clematis twined and hung among its branches, and all along its + ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and + chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of + note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its + depths, I heard a chirrup and the whir of startled wings. + + "Nothing was dead, but everything had changed to beauty! And I + stood for a time with clean and happy eyes looking at the + intricate delicacy before me and marvelling how richly God has + made his worlds...." + +And not only the writer but also every other person on the earth had +been miraculously cured of their myopia and astigmatism. They saw +beauty and the means to still more perfect beauty, and, seeing, they +had but to believe and the old miseries vanished. In the old days men +preached a furious denial of self that led to the fatuity of an +asceticism such as that of St Simon Stylites. The lesson--I cannot +deny that the book is didactic--of the change wrought by the comet is +that man should find the full expression of his personality in +sympathy and understanding. The egotism remains, but it works to a +collective end.... + +War is necessarily touched upon in this book as an inevitable +corollary to the problems of personal and a fortiori of national +property; but the real counterblast against wholesale fratricide was +reserved for the following romance, published in 1908. + +_The War in the Air_ definitely disclosed a change of method that was +adumbrated in its predecessor. The agent of experience is still +retained in the person of Bert Smallways, but the restrictions imposed +by the report of an eye-witness have become too limiting, and, like +Hardy in _The Dynasts_, Mr Wells alternates between a near and a +distant vision. The Welt-Politik could not be explained through the +intelligence of a "little Cockney cad," even though he was "by no +means a stupid person and up to a certain limit not badly educated"; +and the general development of the world-war, the account of the +collapse of the credit system and all such large and general effects +necessitated the broad treatment of the historian. So the intimate, +personal narrative of Smallways' adventures is occasionally dropped +for a few pages; Mr Wells shuts off his magic-lantern and fills the +interval with an analysis of larger issues. + +And the issues are so vital, the _denouement_ so increasingly +probable, that, despite all the exaggerations necessary in a fiction +of this kind, the warning contained in this account of a world-war is +one that must remain in the minds of any thoughtful reader. Smallways' +pert reflection on the causes of the immense downfall represents the +wisdom that comes of bitter experience, and the application of it is +very pertinent to present conditions. "There was us in Europe all at +sixes and sevens with our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' +us up against each other and keepin' us apart," says Smallways, and +for the briefest analysis of causes that continually threaten us with +all the useless horrors of war, the summary could scarcely be +bettered. + +Indeed, I think that _The War in the Air_ is the greatest of Mr Wells' +achievements in fantasy that has a deeper purpose than mere amusement. +The story is absorbing and Smallways a perfectly conceived character, +recommendations that serve to popularise the book as a romance; but +all the art of the construction is relevant to the theme, and to the +logical issue which is faced unflinchingly. In the many wild +prophecies that have been incorporated in various stories of a great +European war, there has been discoverable now and again some hint of +insight into the real dangers that await mankind. But such stories as +these degenerate into some accidental, but inferentially glorious, +victory of British arms, and any value in the earlier comments is +swamped in the sentimentality of the fortuitous, and designedly +popular, sequel. In the book now under consideration the conception is +too wide for any such lapses into the maudlin. British interests play +an insignificant part in the drama. We have to consider war not as an +incident in the history of a nation, but as a horrible disgrace in the +history of humanity. + +And war is the theme also of _The World Set Free_ (1914), but it leads +here to a theory of reconstruction of which we have no sight in the +earlier work. The opening chapters describe the inception of the +means, the discovery of the new source of energy--a perfectly +reasonable conception--that led to the invention of the "atomic bomb," +a thing so terribly powerful and continuous in its action that after +the first free use of it in a European outbreak, war became +impossible. As a romance, the book fails. The interest is not centred +in a single character, and we are given somewhat disconnected glimpses +of various phases in the discovery of the new energy, in its +application, and of the catastrophes that follow its use as an +instrument of destruction. The essay form has almost dominated the +method of the novelist, and consequently the essential parable has not +the same force as in _The War in the Air_. Nevertheless, the vision is +there, obscured by reason of its more personal expression; and before +I return to consider the three less pertinent romances interposed +between those that have a more recognisable critical tendency, I wish +to sum up the distinctive attitude of the four just considered. + +And in this thing I claim that the conscious purpose of the artist is +of comparatively small account. I may be doing Mr Wells an injustice, +either by robbing him of the credit of a clearly conceived intention, +or by reading into his books a deliberation which he might wish to +disclaim. But my business is not justice to the author in this sense, +but an interpretation--necessarily personal--of the message his books +have conveyed to a particular reader. And the plain message that all +these romances--including those that follow--have conveyed to me is +the necessity for ridding the mind of traditions of the hypnotic +suggestions of parents and early teachers, of the parochial influences +of immediate surroundings, of the prejudices and self-interested +dogmatisms and hyperboles of common literature, especially of the +daily and weekly press; in order that we may, if only for an exercise +in simple reason, dissociate ourselves for a moment from all those +intimate forces, and regard life with the calmness of one detached +from personal interests and desires. No human being who has not thus +stood apart from life can claim to have realised himself; and in so +far as he is unable thus to separate himself temporarily from his +circumstances he confesses that he is less a personality than a bundle +of reactions to familiar stimuli. But given that power of detachment, +the reader may find in these four books matter for the reconsideration +of the whole social problem. Whether he accept such tentative +reconstructions as those suggested in _The World Set Free_ or _In the +Days of the Comet_ is relatively unimportant, the essential thing is +that he should view life with momentarily undistracted eyes; and see +both the failures of our civilisation and its potentialities for a +finer and more gracious existence.... + +_The First Men in the Moon_ (1901) is little more than a piece of +sheer exuberance. The theory of the means to the adventure and the +experience itself are both plausible. There are a few minor +discrepancies, but when the chief assumption is granted the +deductions will all stand examination. The invention of cavorite, the +substance that is impervious to the force--whatever it may be--of +gravitation, as other substances are impervious to light, heat, sound +or electricity, is not a priori impossible, nor is the theory that the +moon is hollow, that the "Selenites" live below the surface, or that +evolution has produced on our satellite an intelligent form which, +anatomically, is more nearly allied to the insect than to the +vertebrate type as we know it. The exposition of lunar social +conditions cannot be taken very seriously. Specialisation is the +key-note; the production by education and training, of minds, and, as +far as possible, bodies, adapted to a particular end, and incapable of +performing other technical functions. The picture of this highly +developed state, however, is not such as would tempt us to emulation. +As a machine it works; as an ideal it lacks any presentation of the +thing we call beauty. The apotheosis of intelligence in the concrete +example leaves us unambitious in that direction. + +One chapter, however, stands apart and elaborates once more that +detachment for space and time which I have so particularly emphasised +as the more important feature of these particular books. Mr Bedford, +alone in his Cavorite sphere between the Earth and the Moon, +experiences this sensation of aloofness. "I became, if I may go +express it, dissociate from Bedford," he writes. "I looked down on +Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be +connected," Bedford, unfortunately for my moral, was a poor creature +who got no benefit from his privilege, who flouted it indeed and +regretted his inability "to recover the full-bodied self-satisfaction +of his early days." Possibly the fact that in his case the knowledge +was thrust upon him may account for his failure. It is only the +knowledge we seek that has any influence upon us. + +_The Sea Lady_ (1902) stands alone among Mr Wells' romances. The +realistic method remains, but the conception is touched with a poetic +fancy of a kind that I have not found elsewhere in these books. The +Venus Annodomini who came out of the sea at Folkestone in the form of +an authentic mermaid was something more than a mere critic of our +civilised conventions. She was that, too; she asked why people walked +on the Leas "with little to talk about and nothing to look at, and +bound not to do all sorts of natural things, and bound to do all sorts +of preposterous things." But she was also the personification of +"other dreams." She had "the quality of the open sky, of deep tangled +places, of the flight of birds ... of the high sea." She represented +to one man, at least, "the Great Outside." And, if we still find a +repetition of the old statement in that last description, it is, +nevertheless, surrounded with a glamour that is not revealed in such +books as _In the Days of the Comet_. The ideal that is faintly +shadowed in _The Sea Lady_ is more ethereal, less practical; the +story, despite the naturalistic, half-cynical manner of its recountal, +has the elements of romance. The closing scene describes the +perplexity of a practical Kentish policeman "who in the small hours +before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea Lady had been wearing, just as +the tide overtook it," He stands there on the foreshore with a foolish +bewilderment, wondering chiefly "what people are up to." He is the +"simple citizen of a plain and obvious world." And Mr Wells concludes: +"I picture the interrogation of his lantern going out for a little +way, a stain of faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious vast serenity +of the night." And I make an application of the parable for my own +purposes, and wonder how far the curiosity of Mr Wells' readers will +carry them into the great mystery that lies behind the illusion of +this apparently obvious world. + +We come, finally, without any suggestion of climax, to _The Food of +the Gods_ (1904). The food was produced, casually in the first +instance, by two experimenters who served no cause but that of their +own inquisitive science. One of them, Redwood, had become intrigued by +the fact that the growth of all living things proceeded with bursts +and intermissions; it was as if they had "to accumulate force to grow, +grew with vigour only for a time, and then had to wait for a space +before they could go on growing again." And Bensington, the other +experimenter, succeeded in separating a food that produced regular +instead of intermittent growth. It was universal in its effects, +influencing vegetable as well as animal life; and in the course of +twenty years it produced human giants, forty feet high. This is a +theme for Mr Wells to revel in, and he does, treating the detail of +the first two-thirds of the book with a fine realism. Like Bensington, +he saw, "behind the grotesque shapes and accidents of the present, the +coming world of giants and all the mighty things the future has in +store--vague and splendid, like some glittering palace seen suddenly +in the passing of a sunbeam far away." The parable is plain enough, +but the application of it weakens when we realise that so far as the +merely physical development goes, the food of the gods is only +bringing about a change of scale. If we grant that this "insurgent +bigness" must conquer the world, the final result is only humanity in +the same relation to life that it now occupies, and we are left to +reflect with Bensington, after the vision had faded, on "sinister +shadows, vast declivities and darknesses, inhospitable immensities, +cold, wild and terrible things." + +The change of scale, however, so long as it was changing, presents in +another metaphor the old contrasts. The young giants, the Cossars and +Redwood, looking down on common humanity from a vantage-point some +thirty to forty feet higher than the "little people," are critical by +force of circumstances; and they are at the same time handicapped by +an inability to comprehend the thing criticised. They are too +differentiated; and for the purpose of the fable none of them is +gifted with the power to study these insects with the sympathy of a +Henri Fabre. We may find some quality of blundering stupidity in the +Cossars and in young Redwood, they were too prejudiced by their +physical scale; but the simple Caddles, born of peasant parents, +uneducated and set to work in a chalk quarry, is the true enquirer. He +walked up to London to solve his problem, and his fundamental +question: "What's it all _for_?" remained unanswered. The "little +people" could not exchange ideas with him, and he never met his +brother giants. It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether they +could have offered him any satisfactory explanation of the purpose of +the universe. Their only ambition seemed to be reconstruction on a +larger scale. + +I think the partial failure of _The Food of the Gods_ to furnish any +ethical satisfaction is due to the fact that in this romance Mr Wells +has identified himself too closely with the giants; a fault that +indicates a slight departure from normality. The inevitable contrast +between great and little lacks a sympathy and appreciation we find +elsewhere. "Endless conflict. Endless misunderstanding. All life is +that. Great and little cannot understand one another" is the true text +of the book; and it implies a weakness in the great not less than in +the little; a weakness that is hardly exonerated by the closing +sentence: "But in every child born of man lurks some seed of +greatness--waiting for the food." I find a quality of reasonableness +in the little people's antagonism to the blundering superiority of +those giants. + +To the tail of these romances I may pin the majority of Mr Wells' +short stories. The best of them are all included in the collection +published under the title of _The Country of the Blind_. In this form +Mr Wells displays nothing but the exuberance of his invention. In the +Preface to the collection he defines his conception of short-story +writing as "the jolly art of making something very bright and moving; +it may be horrible or pathetic or funny, or beautiful, or profoundly +illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from +fifteen to twenty minutes to read aloud." I can add nothing to that +description, and would only take away from it so much as is implied by +the statement that I cannot call to mind any one of these stories +which is "profoundly illuminating" in the same sense that I would +certainly apply the phrase to some of the romances. Jolly and bright +they undoubtedly are, but when they are moving, they provide food for +wonder rather than for enlightenment.... + +I cannot leave these romances without a comment on Mr Wells' +justification as preacher and prophet. Writing in the midst of the +turmoil of war, I am vividly conscious of having had my mind prepared +for it by the material I have here so inadequately described. All the +misunderstandings, the weaknesses, the noisy, meaningless ambitions, +the tepid acceptance of traditional standards, have been exposed by Mr +Wells in these fantasies of his. And in _The War in the Air_, with +just such exaggerations as are necessary for a fiction of this kind, +he has forecast the conditions which have now overtaken us. We +know--or we might know if we had the capacity for any sort of +consequent consideration of our conditions--that in a reasonably +conducted civilisation no such awful catastrophe as this senseless +conflagration could have been possible. No doubt we shall profit by +the lesson, but it is one that any individual might have learned for +himself from these romances, without paying the fearful price that is +now necessary. And because humanity is apt to forget its most drastic +punishments, to revert to its original inertia as soon as the smart is +healed, I feel that when the worst is over, these books will have a +greater value than ever before. I believe that in them may be found +just those essentials of detachment and broad vision which might serve +to promote a higher and more stable civilisation. + + + + +III + +THE NOVELS + + +I am willing to maintain that H.G. Wells is second to none as a writer +of romances of the type I have just examined. I am less certain of his +position as a novelist. He brings to his fiction the open-eyed +recognition of realities, the fine analysis of modern conditions, the +lucid consequent thought and the clean, graphic style that mark the +qualities of his other method; he has that "poetic gift, the gift of +the creative and illuminating phrase," which, he has said, "alone +justifies writing"; but he has not the power of creating characters +that stand for some essential type of humanity. On the one hand he is +inclined to idealise the engineer and the scientific researcher, on +the other to satirise and, in effect, to group into one +sloppy-thinking mass every other kind of Englishman, not excepting +philosophers, politicians and social reformers. This broad +generalisation omits any consideration of the merely uneducated, such +as Hoopdriver or Kipps, and the many women he has drawn. But the +former, however sympathetically treated, are certainly not idealised; +and among the latter, the only real creation, in my opinion, is Susan +Ponderevo in _Tono-Bungay_; although there is a possible composite of +various women in the later books that may represent the general +insurgent character of recent young womanhood. But now that I have +made this too definite statement I want to go back over it, touch it +up and smooth it out. For if I have found Mr Wells' character types +too few and too specialised; and as if, with regard to his more or +less idealised males--such as Capes, George Ponderevo, Remington, +Trafford, Stafford--he had modelled and re-modelled them in the effort +to build up one finally estimable figure of masculine ability; there +still remains an enormous gallery of subsidiary portraits, for the +most part faintly caricatured, of men and women who do stand for +something in modern life; portraits that are valuable, interesting and +memorable. Nevertheless, I submit that Mr Wells' novels will not live +by reason of their characterisation. + +The desire to write essays in this class of fiction does not seem to +have overcome Wells until the last few years. Before 1909, he had +written all his sociology and all his romances, with the exception of +_The World Set Free_, but only three novels--namely, _The Wheels of +Chance_, _Love and Mr Lewisham_ and _Kipps_; and none of them gives +any indication of the characteristic method of the later work. + +The first of the three, published in 1896, is in one respect a +splendid answer to the objection against what has been called the +episodical novel. The story deals only with ten glorious days in the +life of Hoopdriver, a callow assistant in a draper's "emporium" at +Putney. He learnt to ride a bicycle, set out to tour the south coast +for his short summer holiday and rode into romance. One section of the +book is a trifle too hilarious, coming perilously near to farce, but +underlying the steady humour of it all is a perfectly consistent, even +saddening, criticism of the Hoopdriver type. He has imagination +without ability; life is made bearable for him chiefly by the means of +his poor little dreams and poses; he sees himself momentarily in the +part of a detective, a journalist, a South African millionaire, any +assumption to disguise the horrible reality of the draper's assistant; +and yet there is fine stuff in him. (Perhaps the suggested antithesis +is hardly justified!) We leave him at the door of the Putney shop full +of resolution to read, to undertake his own education, in some way, no +doubt, to better himself, as he might have phrased it. But we doubt +the quality of his determination and of the lasting influence of the +"more wonderful desires and ambitions replacing those discrepant +dreams." We have only followed Hoopdriver through a ten-day episode, +but all his story has been told. + +We are in quite a different position with regard to Lewisham. The +history of his encounter with love and the world, published in 1900, +covers a period of four or five years, but while we leave him +down-at-heel, with a wife and a mother-in-law dependent upon him, and +the prospect of fatherhood adding to his responsibilities, we are +uncertain whither his career will take him. Lewisham is the first +sketch for the type that was to be elaborated in five subsequent +books. The allurements of his love for Ethel Henderson spoilt his +chances at the science school, but he has the quality that is so +conspicuously lacking in the Hoopdriver-Kipps-Polly succession. +Lewisham had some resolution, undoubted energy, and the beginnings of +that larger vision which was the gift of the later protagonists. But +he is not idealised; he comes nearer to the average of humanity than +the later pictures of his like; although they share with him that +tendency to sudden irascibility, to outbursts of a somewhat petty +temper against the obvious limitations of life--a common tendency +observable in nearly all Mr Wells' dominant male characters. Those few +years of Lewisham's life were so well done, so consistently developed, +that I have regretted the absence of a sequel. Indeed, I still regret +it, although I realise very well that Mr Wells' steady progress in the +conception of his own purpose as a writer has absolutely precluded +any return to an older method. Lewisham was not quite strong enough +to portray the further development of the dominant idea, not a +sufficiently tempered tool for the dissection of the modern world. + +I have said little about the story of this fragment of Lewisham's +career; I have not even mentioned that deliciously plausible and able +rogue, Chaffery, the fraudulent medium; but in this essay I am more +concerned to trace the meaning of Mr Wells' books than to criticise or +praise the detail. With regard to the latter, the reader may always +feel so perfectly safe. He need have no doubt that description of +action, of mood, or of place will be vivid and convincing, true to +life and essential to the story. I do not pass this detail by because +I have found it better done in other contemporary writers; I have not; +but because I find a pregnancy and a growing force behind these +minutiae that is strangely lacking from any other works of fiction in +which I can find any comparison. + +There are, however, still two more novels to be disposed of before I +can examine the full expression of Mr Wells' purpose as I find it in +his later books. One of these novels, _Kipps_ (1905), is the next in +chronological order; the other, _The History of Mr Polly_, was +published in 1910, interpolated between _Ann Veronica_ and _The New +Machiavelli_. Both Kipps and Polly began active life in a draper's +shop. The former is explicitly labelled "a simple soul." He is at once +sillier and sharper than Hoopdriver, but, like that "dear fool" (the +phrase is Mr Wells'), Kipps has some very sterling qualities. He had +the good fortune to come into money--I cannot but count it good +fortune in his case--and was just wise enough to avoid a marriage with +Helen Walshingham--"County family. Related to the Earl of +Beaupres"--and if he shirked that match rather from sheer funk than +from any clear realisation of the futility of what he was avoiding, he +did, at least, run away with and marry that very charming little +housemaid, Ann Pornick, whom he had loved in his early boyhood. After +his marriage he lost the greater part of his money, and later +recovered it again; but all these shocks of fortune left him the same +simple soul, untroubled by any urgent problems outside the range of +his personal experience. His brief contact with the dreamer, +Masterman, and his friendship with the capable young +engineer-socialist, Sid Pornick, Ann's brother, only roused Kipps to a +momentary wonder, and his final enunciation of the great question was +representative. "I was thinking just what a Rum Go everything is," he +says. That question, to quote Mr Wells, "never reached the surface of +his mind, it never took to itself substance or form; it looked up +merely as the phantom of a face might look, out of deep waters, and +sank again into nothingness." + +Mr Polly is a third variant of the Hoopdriver-Kipps genus. He had more +initiative, although he still presents a problem in inertia, and he is +the only one of the three who had a feeling for literature, and read +persistently, if vagariously. And Mr Polly did at last take his fate +into his own hands, commit arson, desert his wife and wander off, an +"exploratious adventurer," as he might have put it, to discover some +joy and poetry in life after a heroic battle that he funked most +horribly and might have avoided. This may sound rather a criminal +record, and even so I have taken no account of his fraud on the Life +Assurance Company, but no one could ever condemn Mr Polly--or wish him +a happier employment than that he finally achieved partly by luck and +partly by his own effort. He was the sport of the forces that break +out so ungovernably in this haphazard world. As the "high-browed +gentleman living at Highbury" explains: "Nothing can better +demonstrate the collective dullness of our community, the crying need +for a strenuous, intellectual renewal, than the consideration of that +vast mass of useless, uncomfortable, under-educated, under-trained, +and altogether pitiable people we contemplate when we use that +inaccurate and misleading term, the Lower Middle Class. A great +proportion of the lower middle class should properly be assigned to +the unemployed and the unemployable." And that is the moral we may lay +to heart from the presentation of these three quite lovable and quite +futile draper's assistants. Their stories are told without +didacticism; the method displays at its brightest Mr Wells' intimate +knowledge and understanding of the life and speech of the class +portrayed; the developments are natural and absorbing enough to hold +the interest of the most idle reader; and here and there, perhaps, an +intelligent man or woman may be stirred to realise that he or she is +in part responsible for the futility of a Hoopdriver or a Kipps, or +for the jovial crimes of Mr Polly.... + +I come now to the six novels which represent most truly the striving, +persistent idealism of the mature Wells. In these books he has come to +the mastery of his own technique--so far as a man may ever master it. +He admits that there remain inexpressible visions, he is apt at times +to be overtaken by his own mannerisms (a fault that in no way affects +the enjoyment or enlightenment of the average reader), but he has +wrought and perfected a delicate instrument of style that is finely +adapted to his purpose. I cannot avoid speaking of "purpose" in +relation to these five books, and yet the word is misleading. I do not +mean by it that Mr Wells has ever sat down to write a novel with the +deliberate intention of converting an honest reader or so. But I do +mean that he has tried very deliberately to express his own attitude +in these books, and that whether or not he was intentionally a +propagandist, he has done his utmost to explain and to glorify that +attitude of his. Perhaps I shrink from that word "purpose" too +sensitively, because it is so naturally associated in the mind with +all that is clumsy and didactic in fiction. The "novel with a +purpose," as the dreadful phrase has it, is a horrible thing, and none +of this five could be so misdescribed. Nevertheless it is very plain +that Mr Wells has deliberately selected his stories and his characters +to illustrate certain points of view. The characters are consistent, +and the story growing out of their influences and reactions is never +distorted in order to score a point for the maintainer of a theory. +But the preliminary selection cannot be overlooked. It has, without +question, been made in each case to illustrate a thesis. + +_Ann Veronica_ (1909) opens an aspect of the sex question that has +been amplified in later novels. The chief person in the story +illustrates for us the revolt of young women against the limitations +of a certain, the most representative, type of home discipline. Ann +Veronica was a well-educated young woman with that leaning towards +biological science which seems an almost necessary element in the +make-up of Mr Wells' exemplars of the open mind. She came to an open +quarrel with her father on the question of attending a somewhat +Bohemian fancy-dress ball, and she had the courage and determination +to uphold her declaration of independence. She ran away, came up to +London from her father's suburb, took lodgings and essayed quite +unsuccessfully to make her own living. She failed in this endeavour +because she had not been educated or trained for any of those few and +specialised occupations that women may attempt in modern conditions. +She learned by experience various essentials that had been omitted +from any teaching she had received at home, and ended that phase of +her life by falling in love with Capes, demonstrator at the +Westminster Imperial College, a man who was living apart from his +wife. Ann Veronica's story is the first serious essay in feminism--a +term that takes a much wider meaning in Mr Wells' definition than is +commonly attributed to it. The novel presents the claim of the woman +to free herself from the restrictions that once almost necessarily +limited her sphere of action, restrictions that are ever becoming more +meaningless in a civilisation that has enforced new economic +conditions. But Mr Wells goes far beyond that elementary proposition. +He has tried in _Ann Veronica_--and again with a more delicate probe +in _Marriage_ and _The Passionate Friends_--to touch the hidden thing +that is causing all this surface inflammation. He has analysed and +diagnosed the exposed evil, always it seems with a certain +tentativeness, and we are left to carry on his line of research; many +of the difficulties of the problem are indicated, but no sovereign +specific for the malady. + +_Tono-Bungay_ (1909) touches only casually on the sex question. The +involved love affairs of George Ponderevo are less essential than the +career of his uncle, the inventor of the patent medicine that gives a +title to the book. In many ways _Tono-Bungay_ is the best novel that +Mr Wells has given us. It is written in the first person, a narrative +form that afterwards served to convey Mr Wells' interpolated +criticisms of the bodies social and politic in something nearly +approaching the shape of an essay, but in _Tono-Bungay_ there are no +important divagations from the development of the story. 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 was not a bad little man, this +plump little chemist; a Lombroso or a Ferri would have found +difficulty in classifying him as a "criminal type," however eager +those investigators might have been to confirm their pet theories. +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. He was "imaginative, erratic, +inconsistent, recklessly inexact," and his imagination led him by way +of a patent medicine to company promoting on the Hooley scale. "Do you +realise the madness of the world that sanctions such a thing?" asks Mr +Wells in the person of the supposed narrator and points that question +on a later page as follows:--"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." + +The enormous success and rapid failure of this futile, ambitious +little chemist--a success that is, unhappily, only too conceivable and +probable--are seen against the background of his nephew's life, Mr +Wells has given a greater value and credulity to the legal +criminalities of Ponderevo, by coming at him, as it were, through a +wider angle; just as he achieves all the circumstances of reality in +his romances by his postulation of an average eye-witness. 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. The +general criticism is at times quite explicit, but it is subordinated. + +In _The New Machiavelli_ (1910) these relations are nearly reversed. +The detailed exposure of the moving forces that stimulate our +political energies, occupies long sections into which the human +relations of Remington (the form is again that of an autobiography) +hardly enter, except in an occasional conversation to sharpen up a +criticism. This comment on politics (regarded in his own constituency, +Remington says, not as a "great constructive process" but as a "kind +of dog-fight") is the chief theme; subsidiary to it is the comment on +a society that could waste so valuable a life as Remington's for the +sake of a moral convention. Both comments point Mr Wells' expression +of what he calls in this book "the essential antagonism ... in all +human affairs ... between ideas and the established method--that is to +say, between ideas and the rule of thumb." And he adds: "The world I +hate is the rule-of-thumb world; the thing I and my kind exist for +primarily is battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct +it." This confession is so lucid and characteristic that I cannot +improve upon it, and yet I see that it is a statement likely to arouse +considerable resentment, "Of course we are detestable," Remington +admits in this connection; and in these later, more urgently critical +novels, we recognise a little too clearly that note of protest, almost +of defensive proclamation. And in none of them do we see it more +definitely than in the book now under consideration. In many ways _The +New Machiavelli_ stands apart from the other novels. I find it a +little bitter in places, because the thing condemned appears too small +for such unequivocal condemnation. The following superlative summary +is put into the mouth of a minor character, but I think it is fairly +representative of Remington's later attitude. "But of all the damned +things that ever were damned," says the plain-spoken Britten, "your +damned shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, +respectable, make-believe, Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the +utterly damnedest." As a commentary, I find this exaggerated; and +although it is in the mouth of one who is not presented as a spokesman +for Mr Wells' own opinions, I feel that it comes very near to being a +text for a considerable section of the political criticism; and that +it indicates bias, a departure from normality. + +And yet, despite this occasional exhibition of temper, _The New +Machiavelli_ is a most illuminating book. It reveals with +extraordinary clearness the Wells of that period; but it also gives us +a sight of the spirit in him that does not change. All his books, +romances, novels and essays indicate a gradual process of growth; if +we were to apply any label to him, we should inevitably land ourselves +in confusion. He is nothing "in the first place" but a man with an +intense desire to understand life. As he says in this book: "A human +being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teacher in the first +place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and +inevitably--though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence--a quack." +But while he may dissociate himself from any clique, and disclaim any +fixed opinion that might earn for him the offensive and fiercely +rejected label, he nevertheless presents to us one unchanging attitude +in these very refusals. "I'm going to get experience for humanity out +of all my talents--and bury nothing," says Remington; and that purpose +is implicit in every book that Wells has written. He is an empiric, +using first this test and then that to try the phenomena of life; +publishing the detail of his experiment and noting certain +deductions. But while he may offer a prescription for certain +symptoms, he gives us to understand that he is only diagnosing a phase +in human development; that he is seeking an ultimate which he never +hopes to find, and that the deductions he draws to-day may be rejected +to-morrow without a shadow of regret. He would be constant, I think, +only in his inconstancy to any criterion of present conditions as +applicable or likely to be applicable to the future; he sees life as a +dynamic thing in process of change and growth. "All the history of +mankind," he writes, "all the history of life has been and will be the +story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, +struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual +lives--an effect of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible +appeal." And it is for this reason that he is so eager to battle with, +annoy, disarrange and reconstruct that rule-of-thumb world he +censures so steadily; he is fighting the assumption of a static +condition which he knows to be impossible. + +And for a moment in _The New Machiavelli_, and again in his next book, +_Marriage_, he has a passing vision of some greater movement of which +we are but the imperfect instruments. He develops and then drops the +idea of a "hinterland," not only to the individual mind but to the +general consciousness. The "permanent reality," he calls it, "which is +never really immediate, which draws continually upon human experience +and influences human action more and more, but which is itself never +the actual player upon the stage. It is the unseen dramatist who never +takes a call." And in another place he writes in the same connection: +" ... the ideas go on--as though we are all no more than little cells +and corpuscles in some great brain beyond our understanding." + +We come again to a hint of that explanation at the end of _Marriage_, +published in 1912. The story, reduced to the barest outline, is that +of the relations of Trafford to his wife. It is not complicated by any +sexual temptations or jealousies, but it gradually evolves the +integral problem of the meaning of life. + +Trafford, before his engagement to Marjorie Pope, and for a year or +two after his marriage, was engaged in research work. His speciality +was molecular physics and he was a particularly brilliant +investigator. That research, with all the possibilities that it held +of some immense discovery of the laws that govern the constitution of +inorganic and progressively, perhaps, of organic, matter, was +sufficient to engross his mental energies, to give him a sense of +satisfaction in life; but his six hundred pounds a year proved +insufficient to satisfy the demands of Marjorie's claim to enjoyment. +She was not a mere type of the worldly-minded woman. She represents, +indeed, the claim of modern women for a distinctive interest and +employment not less urgent and necessary than the interests and +employments of men. And when she failed, as she plainly must have +failed, to find any such occupation, her sense of beauty and her +justifiable demand for life found an outlet largely in shopping, in +entertaining, in all such ephemeral attractions and amusements as +women in her class may seek and reject. That way of escape, however, +soon raised financial obstructions to Trafford's work. He had to find +a means for increasing his income, and came at last and inevitably to +the necessity for making more money and continually still more. The +road to wealth was opened for him and he took it by sacrificing his +research work, but when the economic problem had been triumphantly +solved, he could not return to his first absorption in the problems +of molecular physics. Life pressed upon him at every moment of the +day, he had been inveigled into a net. + +The manner of Trafford's escape from the thing that intrigued him has +been severely criticised. After I had first read the book I too was +inclined to deprecate the device of taking Trafford and Marjorie into +the loneliness of a Labrador winter, in order to set them right with +themselves and give them a clearer vision of life. But I have read +_Marriage_ twice since I formed that premature judgment, and each time +I have found a growing justification for what at first may seem a +somewhat whimsical solution to the difficulties of an essentially +social problem. + +But in effect this is the same specific that I upheld in my comment on +the romances; it illustrates the need felt by a certain class of mind +for temporary withdrawal from all the immediate urgencies and calls +of social life; the overwhelming desire to see the movements and +intricacies of human initiative and reactions, from a momentarily +detached standpoint. And Mr Wells has offered us a further commentary +on the difficulties of this abstraction, by withholding any vision +from Trafford until he was finally isolated from Marjorie, and even +from any physical contact with the movement of what we call reality, +by illness and fever. Only then, indeed, did he touch the vital +issues. I find the statement of this ultimate thing, vaguely phrased +in Trafford's semi-delirium, presenting another expression of the +thought quoted from _The New Machiavelli_; the conception of humanity +as an instrument. "Something trying to exist," he says, something +"which isn't substance, doesn't belong to space or time, something +stifled and enclosed, struggling to get through." And later he +repeats: "It struggles to exist, becomes conscious, becomes now +conscious of itself. That is where I come in as a part of it. Above +the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to +know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is +in life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This +Being--opening its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good +thing in man is that--looking and making pictures, listening and +making songs.... We began with bone-scratching. We're still--near it. +I'm just a part of this beginning--mixed with other things. Every +book, every art, every religion is that, the attempt to understand and +express--mixed with other things." + +I have reached something like a climax with this passage; a climax +that I would willingly maintain if it were possible, inasmuch as it +holds a representation of that unchanging influence which I find as an +inspiration and a force behind all H.G. Wells' books. Necessarily +this vital inspiration is, as he says, "mixed with other things"; he +has had to find a means to express it, and our means of expression is +limited not only by our own powers but in a large degree by the +limitations of the audience addressed. Moreover H.G. Wells' art +represents him in that it is a practical art. He is, in an +unspecialised sense, a pragmatist. He comes back from his isolations +to find in this world all the substance and potentialities of beauty +both in outward appearance and in conduct. And he is not content to +vapour of ideals. He recognises that the stuff of admiration and +desire that animates his own being is present throughout humanity. +Only the sight of it is obscured by all those stupidities and +condescensions to rule-of-thumb that he attacks so furiously. Those +are the impediments that he would clear away, and he acknowledges that +they stand between him and his own sight of beauty. He is compelled +always to struggle--and we can see the signs of it in all he +writes--with his own weakness and limitations; criticising himself as +he satirises the thing condemned, but striving without ceasing to +serve the purpose of that which he knows is "struggling to exist." +This, to me, is the spirit of H.G. Wells, and I find it a spirit that +is as admirable as it is human.... + +_The Passionate Friends_ (1913) is another experiment in exposition. +The very real and fine love of Stafford (the autobiographer in this +case) and Lady Mary Christian is spoiled, made to appear insignificant +and debased, by all the conventions and petty, unoriginal judgments +that go to the making of the rule of our society. The woman had to +make her choice between love in an undignified poverty for which all +her training had unfitted her, and a sterile ease and magnificence +that gave her those opportunities which her temperament and education +demanded. She chose for dignity and opportunity, was tempted to grasp +at love, and thus finally came into a blind alley from which death was +the only escape. It is another picture of the old conflict illustrated +in the persons of Ann Veronica and Marjorie Trafford; the constant +inability that our conditions impose on the desire to love +beautifully. The implicit demand is that for greater freedom for +women, socially and economically. Incidentally we see that the man, +Stafford, does not suffer in the same degree. His splendid love for +Lady Mary is thwarted, but he finds an outlet. It is a new aspect of +escape, by the way, for Stafford's illuminating business of spreading +and collating knowledge is a relief from the scientific research which +was in some form or another the specific of the earlier novels--if we +exclude Remington's political propaganda in _The New Machiavelli_, a +suggested solution that was, at the best, something half-hearted. And +Stafford's escape, and his version of going to the mountain apart--by +way of a sight of the East and of America--bring us back to that +integral theme which I have so insisted upon, even at the risk of +tedious repetition. "I was already beginning to see the great problem +of mankind," writes Stafford, "as indeed nothing other than a +magnification of the little problem of myself, as a problem in escape +from grooves, from preoccupations and suspicions, precautions and +ancient angers.... For all of us, as for each of us, salvation is +that. We have to get away from ourselves to a greater thing, to a +giant's desire and an unending life, ours and yet not our own." + +The last novel published at the time I write is _The Wife of Sir Isaac +Harman_ (1914). The same theme is presented, but in other +circumstances. Ellen Sawbridge, when she married, at eighteen, the +founder and proprietor of "The International Bread Shops," was an +ingenuous schoolgirl; and for more than seven years the change from a +relatively independent poverty to the luxuries she could enjoy as the +wife of a man who had not outgrown the Eastern theory with regard to +the position of women, sufficed to keep her reasonably content. Mr +Brumley was the instrument of Fate that seriously disturbed her +satisfaction; but she must have come to much the same crisis, if Mr +Brumley had never existed. Brumley was a writer, but he was not one of +"the really imaginative people, the people with vision, the people who +let themselves go"--I quote the expression of George Wilkins, the +novelist--and Lady Harman never fell very deeply in love with him. +Nevertheless it was through Brumley's interference with her life that +she faced the crux of her position as the closely restricted occupant +of "a harem of one." She never broke out of that cage. One desperate +effort led her, by way of a suffragist demonstration on a post office +window, to a month's freedom in prison; but Sir Isaac and society were +too clever and too strong for her. When she was enlarged from the +solitude of confinement in a cell, she was tricked and bullied into +the resumption of her marital engagements. And presumably she must +have continued to act as the nurse of her now invalid husband for the +rest of her life, suffering the indignities of his abuse and the +restrictions of liberty that the paid attendant may escape by a change +of situation, if release had not come through Sir Isaac's death. By +that time Lady Harman had learnt her lesson. I am distinctly sorry for +Mr Brumley, but I should have been seriously disappointed in Ellen +Harman if she had consented to marry him. + +Thus far I have only traced an imperfect outline of what I take to be +the more important motive of the book. But there is a second pattern +hardly less essential--namely, the criticism of the management and, _a +fortiori_, of the conception of principle, in relation to the +International Bread Shops. Arising out of this interwoven theme we +come to some examination of the status of the female employee in +general, and particularly in connection with the question of their +board and lodging outside business hours. But in _The Wife of Sir +Isaac Harman_ the essay manner has been abandoned. Any diversion from +the development of the story is carried out by the expressed opinions +of the characters themselves; and, as a consequence, the two essential +problems are not unduly intruded upon the reader, although for that +very reason they may remain longer in his thoughts. One more comment +should be added, which is that this is the wittiest book that Mr +Wells has yet given us. However serious the motives that give it life, +it must be classed as a comedy.... + +In concluding this brief review of Mr Wells' novels, I feel that I +must hark back to a passage in _The Passionate Friends_ in order to +indicate a spirit which, if it is not so definitely phrased in this +last book of his, is certainly upheld in the matter of the story. For +it is that spirit which seems to me the thing that should live and be +remembered. Here is one of its more characteristic expressions in the +mouth of Stafford, who writes: + +"I know that a growing multitude of men and women outwear the ancient +ways. The bloodstained organised jealousies of religious intolerance, +the delusions of nationality and cult and race, that black hatred +which simple people, and young people and common people cherish +against all that is not in the likeness of themselves cease to be the +undisputed ruling forces of our collective life. We want to emancipate +our lives from this slavery and these stupidities, from dull hatreds +and suspicions.... A spirit ... arises and increases in human affairs, +a spirit that demands freedom and gracious living as our inheritance +too long deferred...." + +And surely H.G. Wells has striven to give a freer and more vital +expression to that spirit, working through his own life, than any +other novelist of our day. Indeed I would go further and claim that no +such single and definite inspiration can be found in the works of any +other secular writer. Wells has given to the novel a new criticism +and, to a certain degree, a new form. + + + + +IV + +SOCIOLOGY + + +Mr Wells' essays in sociology are not dry treatises, based on Blue +books and the gathering together of information and statistics from a +formless and largely worthless collection of earlier sources. He has +approached this question of man in relation to the State in the same +generous spirit displayed in his works of fiction; and it is only by +using the word "sociology" in its fuller sense as conceived by Comte, +rather than in the restricted sense of "social science" with its +implication of economics, as narrowed by Herbert Spencer, that I dare +to head this last chapter with so dangerously technicalised a term. +Indeed, I would not use the word "sociology" now if I could find a +more inclusive heading. For it must be obvious, I think, to anyone who +has followed my exposition of the romances and the novels that Mr +Wells has a way of treating all such subjects as relate to the +betterment of humanity with a broad outlook, an entire disrespect for +conventional forms however hallowed by precedent, and a habit of +trenchant criticism that could hardly be fettered by an analysis of +sociological literature or continual deference to this or that +experiment in practice or theory. He approaches his subject with the +normal mind of one who sees the world, its customs and rules of +conduct, from what is, after all, the point of view of +common-sense--another term that has been so grossly misused that the +possessor of true common-sense is apt to be regarded as a most +uncommon person. It is, in fact, the least common of qualities. + +The first three books under this heading form some sort of a trilogy, +and have a definite air of consequence. Of these, _Anticipations_ was +published in 1901, and _Mankind in the Making_ and _A Modern Utopia_ +followed in 1903 and 1905 respectively. The scheme of the first two +books combines a criticism of present conditions with a growing +constructiveness that points the way to the ideal of what is called +"The New Republic." Now, one of the labels that has been most +frequently and adhesively affixed to Mr Wells is that of "Socialist," +and no doubt it would proclaim his purpose admirably enough if we +could satisfactorily define the word in its relation to him. But, +personally, I refuse so to label him, because I know that socialism +means as many things to different people as religion, and is as much a +term of reproach in the mouth of some self-labelled individualists as +the designation "Christian" might be in the mouth of the "true +believers"--as the Mohammedans call themselves. Wherefore I am +particularly anxious in approaching any description of "The New +Republic," to make it quite clear that that idealised State is not +built of the bricks that have been modelled and cast by any +recognisable group of propagandists, working to permeate, or more +forcibly to convert, a section of the public under the flags of, say, +Fabianism or Social Democracy. The essential thing about Mr Wells is +that he is not a Follower, whether of Marx, or Hyndman, or Shaw, or +Bebel; he may have learnt from any or all of them, but his theory of +social reconstruction is pre-eminently and characteristically his own. +He does not believe in the private ownership of land, for example, but +I do not remember that he has ever advocated the means of the "Single +Tax." And in these sociological essays, as in his novels, his method +is that of picturing the more desirable thing or condition, the +method of sweet persuasion rather than that of the sectarian who has +a pet specific. Nevertheless Mr Wells uses his sharpened weapon of +satire with considerable effect when he contemplates and displays for +us the world as he sees it to-day. I find no hint of sweetness or +persuasiveness on that side. + +It would be impossible in an exposition of this kind to dissect these +essays in detail, nor would it be desirable. Many of the suggestions +with regard to actual practice, suggestions that might be embodied in +modern legislation, are open to criticism in detail, and I would not +pin Mr Wells down to the letter of any one of them. He has certainly +changed his mind on many points since he wrote these essays in +constructive sociology, and the fact that he has so altered and +enlarged his opinions is the best possible evidence of his reliability +and sincerity. He is before all else devoted to the services of +growth and progress. "To rebel against instinct," he writes, "to rebel +against limitation, to evade, to trip up, and at last to close with +and grapple and conquer the forces that dominate him, is the +fundamental being of man." And no man can hope to dominate those +forces, if he is content to let his opinions crystallise at the age of +thirty-five or so. If he would retain his powers of criticism and +construction he must have the patience and the energy to maintain the +normal, receptive mind with which he is naturally endowed. +Unfortunately with that endowment commonly comes another--namely, a +tendency to avoid the irk or constant struggle by taking the line of +least resistance; by adopting an opinion and upholding it in the face +of all reason; and only a man of exceptional patience, courage and +ability can keep himself free from the prejudices and fixed opinions +which not only bring him a delusive peace and certainty but also are +the means to worldly success. + +So I would advise the readers of _Anticipations_ and _Mankind in the +Making_ to be influenced by the spirit rather than by the letter of +these two books. The spirit is definite enough; it is the spirit of +humaneness, of a passionate criticism of all the evils, miseries and +disease that are the outcome of our present haphazard civilisation; +the spirit for a desire for order, wider prospects and opportunities, +greater freedom for growth. Men are born unequal, with different +tendencies, different desires, different potentialities, but there +should be a place for every one of them in the great economy of "The +New Republic." Each has to learn the lesson--for discipline is +essential--that he is not an independent unit as regards his work, but +a factor, more or less insignificant, in the sum of individuals that +make up the greater State. The good New Republican "will seek +perpetually to gauge his quality, he will watch to see himself the +master of his habits and of his powers; he will take his brain, blood, +body and lineage as a trust to be administered for the world." + +Such, I think, is the spirit, the permanent principle of these two +books. That remains and increases. The conception of the process by +which the New Republic shall be built is less constant, and Mr Wells +will change his opinions concerning it for just so long as he +continues to grow. Should he ever adopt an inalterable policy, +subscribe to some "ism," and wear a label, he would brand himself +truly as inconsistent. Then, indeed, he would have contradicted +himself. We search for truth never hoping to find it complete and +whole; and he who is contented with a part denies God.... + +_A Modern Utopia_ (1905) is an attempt to picture "The New Republic" +in being; a very different dream of reconstruction from that +displayed in Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, and _Equality_, but +having nevertheless certain points of likeness to the former at least, +and especially in the method of marking contrasts by a form of +parallelism, by keeping the world as we know it within the circle of +attention in order to break the paralysing illusion that we are moving +in romantic and quite impossible surroundings. Mr Wells' machinery is +slightly complicated. He takes two figures from the beginning of this +twentieth century. The Owner of the Voice ("you will go with him +through curious and interesting experience. Yet, ever and again, you +will find him back at the table, the manuscript in his hand ...") and +the "botanist," a foil and a stimulator to the other expositor. "The +image of a cinematograph entertainment is the one to grasp," writes Mr +Wells in his preliminary explanation. "There will be an effect of +these two people going to and fro in front of the circle of a rather +defective lantern, which sometimes jams and sometimes gets out of +focus, but which does occasionally succeed in displaying on a screen a +momentary moving picture of Utopian conditions." + +I think Mr Wells tried very valiantly to avoid the all too obvious +mistake made by other Utopian builders, both romantic and practical. +He began, I feel sure, with the admirable intention of depicting the +people of the early twentieth century in new conditions, changed only +in so far as they were influenced by the presentation of finer ideals +and by more beautiful circumstance. He even introduced a contemporary +critic of Utopian conditions in the shape of the talkative person, "a +conscious Ishmaelite in the world of wit, and in some subtly +inexplicable way a most consummate ass." But once we begin to +postulate our Utopian villains, the reader's thought is distracted +from the contemplation of the heroic which is the cement that binds +every stone in the visionary city. In order to change conditions it is +necessary to change much in the present cast of human nature. In a +fiction of Utopia there is no place for a Napoleon, a Rockefeller, or +an ambition-swelled Imperialist. So Mr Wells is driven with various +hesitations and resentments to assume that the interactions of cause +and effect have indeed tended to produce a sweeter-tempered, more +generous race of men and women; that the spirit which moves us now to +seek a larger liberty and a greater tolerance has been encouraged and +increased by the exercise of its own tendencies and the sight of its +own triumphs; and that those who set their minds to the building gain +an added grace in the labour. It is a perfectly fair and consistent +assumption, but Mr Wells has been warned by his predecessors, from +Robert Owen back to Plato and forward to Edward Bellamy, that the +designs for Utopia have always been flawed by an altered conception of +the humanity that walks within the city; and he has begun by trying to +avoid a fallacy and ended by begging a question that he might very +well have convincingly argued. + +By many people _A Modern Utopia_ is definitely labelled as the +"Samurai" book. That conception of a natural aristocracy of spirit and +ability did indeed return upon its creator in the form of an object +lesson that filled him with a disgust for what was really a fine +ideal, only too temptingly displayed. So many of his readers, and +particularly his younger readers, formed the wish to become "Samurai" +without more ado, a high office for which none of them, perhaps, had +the ability or the determination to fill. For Utopias take even longer +to build than Rome or London. But the plan is there--vague and +tentative as the original scheme of a Gothic cathedral, a plan to be +continually modified and changed in its most important features; and +the building has begun.... + +The last books that can strictly fall into the present category are +_The Future of America_ (1906) and _New Worlds for Old_ (1908). The +former is rather a record of impressions than the attempt at prophecy +which the title and the first chapter indicate; and the final +conclusion is too hesitating even to convince us that America has a +future. "I came to America questioning the certitudes of progress," Mr +Wells says in his Envoy. "For a time I forgot my questionings, I +sincerely believed, 'These people can do anything,' and, now I have it +all in perspective, I have to confess that doubt has taken me again." +And without question he has changed his opinion with regard to many of +the observations he made nine years ago. I sincerely hope he has. + +_New Worlds for Old_ is quite definitely a book of suggestions with +regard to certain aspects of socialism. It is the most practical of +all the sociological books, and makes so strong an appeal to the +buried common-sense of even prejudiced readers, that a devoted +Primrose Leaguer to whom I lent my copy was quite seriously disturbed +in mind for nearly a week after he had read it. Fortunately for his +own peace, he found an answer that permitted him comfortably to avoid +the perpetual burden of an active responsibility. He thought that +"Socialism would be all right in a perfect world," or words to that +effect; and it was quite evident to him that the effort to make some +small contribution towards raising the standard of human idealism was +no part of his duty. In any case he greatly preferred the solid +assurance of the Primrose League. And, speaking generally, as I have +tried to do throughout, I find that _New Worlds for Old_ presents a +clearer indication to the possible path for the idealist than any of +the other sociological essays. _Mankind in the Making_ dealt very +largely with education directed to a particular end, but in the book I +am now considering may be found certain outlets for the expression of +the less consistently strenuous. Education, whether of individual +children in the home or regarded as a function of the State, offers +continual perplexities that only the most resolute can confront day by +day with renewed zeal; the problems of collective ownership are less +confused by psychology, and the broad principles may be adopted and +the energy of the young believer directed towards the accomplishment +of minor detail. He may, for example, find good reason for the +nationalising of the milk supply without committing himself to any +broader theory of expropriation. + +Finally I come to the collection of various papers issued in 1914 +under the title _An Englishman Looks at the World_--a book that I may +pass with the comment that it exhibits Mr Wells in his more captious +moods, deliberately more captious in some instances, no doubt, +inasmuch as the various papers were written for serial +publication--and that _Confession of Faith and Rule of Life_, +published in 1907 as _First and Last Things_. The opening is +unnecessarily complicated by the exposition of a metaphysic that is +quite uncharacteristic and has little to do with the personal +exposition that follows; and, indeed, I feel with regard to the whole +work that it attempts to define the indefinable. I deprecate the note +of finality implied in the title. "It is as it stands now," I read in +the Introduction, "the frank confession of what one man of the early +Twentieth Century has found in life and himself," but that man has +found much since then, and will continue to find much as he grows +continually richer in experience. So that while no student of Wells' +writings can afford to overlook _First and Last Things_, I would warn +him against the danger of concluding that in that book he will find at +last the ultimate expression of character and belief, set out in the +form of a categorical creed. Again I find a spirit and overlook the +letter. I choose to take as representative such a passage as the +following, with all its splendid vagueness and lack of dogma, rather +than a definite expression of belief that Mr Wells does not believe in +a personal immortality. This passage runs: "It seems to me that the +whole living creation may be regarded as walking in its sleep, as +walking in the sleep of individualised illusion, and that now out of +it all rises man, beginning to perceive his larger self, his universal +brotherhood, and a collective synthetic purpose to increase Power and +realise Beauty...." + + * * * * * + +And now that I have attempted my interpretation, I look back and +confess that it is a very personal reading of my subject. I may have +sought too eagerly for all those passages in which I found a note that +roused in me the most thrilling response. I may have omitted to +display vital issues that more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the +appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies that I have found most +sympathetic and most admirable. But if I appear to have done him an +injustice in some particulars, it is rather because I have been +absorbed by the issue I sought to reveal, than because I deliberately +weighed and rejected others. This short essay can be no more than an +introduction to the works it describes. It was never intended to be +critical. I have had no intention of discussing technique, nor of +weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries in any literary scale. +But I have attempted to interpret the spirit and the message that I +have found in his books; and I have made the essay in the hope that +any reader who may consequently be stirred to read or to re-read Wells +will do so with a mind prepared to look below the surface expression. + +I feel no shade of hesitation when I say that H.G. Wells is a great +writer. His fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension of +character are gifts and abilities that certain of his contemporaries +have in equal, or in some particulars in larger measure. But he alone +has used his perfected art for a definite end. He has not been content +to record his observations of the world as he has seen it, to +elaborate this or that analysis of human motive, or to relate the +history of a few selected lives. He has done all this, but he has done +infinitely more by pointing the possible road of our endeavour. +Through all his work moves the urgency of one who would create +something more than a mere work of art to amuse the multitude or +afford satisfaction to the critic. His chief achievement is that he +has set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a more generous life +than that in which we live; an ideal that, if it is still too high for +us of this generation, will be appreciated and followed by the people +of the future. + + + + +A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF H.G. WELLS' PRINCIPAL WRITINGS + +Select Conversations with an Uncle (_Lane_). 1895. + +The Time Machine--An Invention (_Heinemann_). 1895. + +*The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories (_Macmillan_). 1895. + +The Wonderful Visit (_Dent_). 1895. + +The Island of Dr Moreau (_Heinemann_). 1896. + +The Wheels of Chance (_Dent_). 1896. + +*The Plattner Story (_Macmillan_). 1897. + +The Invisible Man (_MacMillan_). 1897. + +The War of the Worlds (_Heinemann_). 1898. + +When the Sleeper Wakes (_Nelson_). 1899. + +Afterwards published (1911) in a revised and altered +edition, as "The Sleeper Awakes." + +*Tales of Space and Time (_Macmillan_). 1899. + +Love and Mr Lewisham (_Macmillan_). 1900. + +Certain Personal Matters (_Unwin_). 1901. + +Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and +Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought +(_Chapman & Hall_). 1901. + +The First Men in the Moon (_Macmillan_). 1901. + +The Discovery of the Future (A Lecture given at the +Royal Institute). 1902. + +The Sea Lady--A Tissue of Moonshine. 1902. + +Mankind in the Making (_Chapman & Hall_). 1903. + +*Twelve Stories and a Dream (_Macmillan_). 1903. + +The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(_Macmillan_). 1904. + +A Modern Utopia (_Nelson_). 1905. + +Kipps--The Story of a Simple Soul (_Macmillan_). 1905. + +In the Days of the Comet (_Macmillan_). 1906. + +The Future in America--A Search after Realities +(_Chapman & Hall_). 1906. + +First and Last Things--A Confession of Faith and +Rule of Life (_Constable_). 1907. + +The Misery of Boots (Fabian Tract). 1907. + +Socialism and Marriage (Fabian Tract). 1908. + +New Worlds for Old (_Constable_). 1908. + +The War in the Air (_Bell_). 1908. + +Tono-Bungay (_Macmillan_). 1909. + +Ann Veronica--A Modern Love Story (_Unwin_). 1909. + +The History of Mr Polly (_Nelson_). 1910. + +The New Machiavelli (_Lane_) 1910. + +The Country of the Blind and Other Stories +(_Nelson_). 1911. + +Floor Games (A book about play for children) +(_Palmer_). 1911. + +Socialism and the Great State (A contribution by +H.G. Wells. The book is written by fifteen +authors) (_Harper_). 1911. + +Marriage (_Macmillan_). 1912. + +The Passionate Friends--A Novel (_Macmillan_). +1913. + +Little Wars (A book about play for children) +(_Palmer_). 1913. + +An Englishman Looks at the World (_Cassell_). +1914. + +The World Set Free--A Story of Mankind +(_Macmillan_). 1914. + +The volumes marked * are collections of short +stories, the best of which were republished in "The +Country of the Blind," 1911. + +NOTE.--Some of these volumes have been published +under different titles in the U.S.A. (See American +Bibliography.) + + + + +AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +Island of Dr Moreau (_Duffield_). 1896. + +Invisible Man (_Harper_). 1898. + +Thirty Strange Stories (_Harper_). 1898. + +When the Sleeper Wakes [English title, "The Sleeper Awakes."] (_Harper_). 1899. + +Anticipations (_Harper_). 1902. + +Discovery of the Future (_Smithsonian Institute +Washington_). 1903. + +Discovery of the Future (_Huebsch_). 1913. + +Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth +(_Scribners_). 1904. + +Love and Mr Lewisham (_Stokes_). 1904. + +Mankind in the Making (_Scribners_). 1904. + +Modern Utopia (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Twelve Stories and a Dream (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Kipps (_Scribners_). 1905. + +Future in America (_Harper_). 1906. + +Time Machine--An Invention (_Holt & Company_). +1906. + +In the Days of the Comet (_Century Company_). +1906. + +First and Last Things (_Putnams_). 1908. + +New Worlds for Old (_Macmillan Company_). +1908-13. + +Socialism and the Family (_Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts_). 1908. + +This Misery of Boots (_Ball Publishing Company, +Boston, Massachusetts_). 1908. + +War in the Air (_Macmillan Company_). 1908. + +War in the Air (_Grosset & Dunlap_). 1910. + +Ann Veronica (_Harper_). 1909. + +Select Conversations with an Uncle (_Saalfield +Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio_). 1909. + +Tono-Bungay (_Duffield_). 1909. + +War of the Worlds (_Harper_). 1909. + +History of Mr Polly (_Duffield_). 1910. + +History of Mr Polly (_Grosset & Dunlap_). 1912. + +New Machiavelli (_Duffield_). 1910. + +Door in the Wall and Other Stories (_Mitchell +Kennerley_). 1911. + +Floor Games (_Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts_). 1912. + +Socialism and the Great State (_Harper_). +1912. (See page 119.) + +Marriage (_Duffield_). 1912. + +Little Wars (_Small, Maynard & Company, Boston, +Massachusetts_). 1913. + +Passionate Friends (_Harper_). 1913. + +Wheels of Chance--A Bicycling Idyll (_Macmillan +Company_). 1913. Illustrated by F.A. Symington. [English title, "The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday +Adventure."] + +The Wonderful Visit (_E.P. Dutton & Company_). 1914. + +Social Forces in England and America (_Harper_). 1914. + +The World Set Free (_E.P. Dutton & Company_). 1914. + + + + +INDEX + +_Ann Veronica_, 65, 76 +_Anticipations_, 99 + +Bebel, 100 +Bellamy, Edward, 105 +Bromley, 13 + +Capital and Labour, 35 +Characterisation, 60 +Common-sense, 98 +Comte, 97 +_Country of the Blind, The_, 29, 55 + +_Dynasts, The_, 40 + +Education, 111 +_Englishman Looks at the World, An_, 112 + +Fabre, Henri, 63 +Fecundity, 115 +Feminism, 72 +_First and Last Things_, 112 +_First Men in the Moon, The_, 46 +Fixed Opinions, 102 +_Food of the Gods, The_, 51, 54 +_Future of America, The_, 109 + +Henley House, 15 +_History of Mr Polly, The_, 65, 67 +Huxley, 19 +Hyndman, 100 + +Idealism, 69 +Insurgent Bigness, 52 +_In the Days of the Comet_, 36, 46 +_Invisible Man, The_, 25, 28 +_Island of Dr Moreau, The_, 25 +Isolation, 86 + +_Kipps_, 60-65 + +_Love and Mr Lewisham_, 60-64 + +_Man of the Year Million, The_, 20, 30 +_Mankind in the Making_, 99 +_Marriage_, 73, 82-85 +Marx, 100 +Metaphysics, 112 +Midhurst Grammar School, 14 +_Modern Utopia, A_, 99, 104 + +_New Machiavelli, The_, 65, 77-79, 82, 86 +New Republic, The, 99, 103, 104 +_New Worlds for Old_, 109 + +_Passionate Friends, The_, 73, 89, 95 + +Rule of Thumb, 77, 78, 88 + +Samurai, 108 +_Sea Lady, The_, 49, 50 +Shaw, 100 +Socialism, 99, 110 +South Kensington School, 14 +Spencer, Herbert, 97 +Spirit of Freedom, 96, 103 + +_Time Machine, The_, 20, 23 +_Tono-Bungay_, 59, 73 + +Up Park, 14 +Utopias, 106-108 + +Verne, Jules, 17 + +_War in the Air, The_, 40, 42, 44, 56 +_War of the Worlds, The_, 25, 29 +Wells, Mr and Mrs Joseph, 12 +_Wheels of Chance, The_, 60 +_When the Sleeper Wakes (The Sleeper Awakes)_, 33, 36 +_Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, The_, 91, etc. +Women Employees, 92, 94 +_Wonderful Visit, The_, 23, 25 +_World Set Free, The_, 43, 46 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of H. 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