Structure in four novels by H. G. Wells 9783111391533, 9783111029030

Table of contents :
Preface
A Note on Editions
I. Love and Mr. Lewisham
II. Kipps
III. Tono-Bungay
IV. The History of Mr. Polly
V. Rebuttal and Summary
Appendix: Illusion and Reality in Tono-Bungay

Citation preview

STUDIES

IN ENGLISH Volume

XLVIII

LITERATURE

STRUCTURE IN FOUR NOVELS BY H.G. WELLS by

KENNETH B. NEWELL

1968

MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1968 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without writttn permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 68-17902

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.

For Helen and John

PREFACE

Among scholars of Edwardian literature - especially at the universities of Illinois and Purdue - H. G. Wells is undergoing a "boom". One of several approaches called for by these scholars is the formal or structural approach to his fiction - especially to his four best realistic novels, often called "Dickensian". Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps, Tono-Bungay, and The History of Mr. Polly are Wells's "lower middle class novels", or as he said, his novels "about a dislocation and an adjustment" in life.1 They are currently acknowledged to be his finest works, his most "solid literary" or "novelistic" novels, and therefore seem worthy of individual structural study. The present study analyzes "structure" as part of an attempt as Wells said novel criticism should attempt - "to understand the bearing of structural expedients upon design, to get at an author through his workmanship, to analyse a work as though it stood alone in the world".8 I have purposely not defined the term "structure" here so that it might not be defined narrowly and exclusively. "Structure" here includes not only any pattern - such as symmetry, recurrence, "rhythm", similarity, contrast, progression - found within much or all of a novel but even any organization found there, All of Wells's novels have been accused of such 1

H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (New York, Company, 1934), p. 410. Unless otherwise noted, all sources hereafter are by Wells. 1 "Certain Critical Opinions", Saturday Review, 82:33 (July Quoted by Gordon N. Ray, Introduction to The History of p. ix. (See note 5 below.)

Macmillan mentioned 11, 1896). Mr. Polly,

8

PREFACE

disorganization that notation of even the more obvious organizing elements in these four seems necessary. That most of his later novels lack organizing elements seems indisputable. They look as if they were - and actually they were - written directly from beginning to end while Wells's inspiration was fresh. They had little editing or revision; and though their basic organization was supposed to show a complex of ideas illustrated by a plot, the narrative too often extended - or digressed - into other complexes. But in the writing of the four novels here discussed, Wells was less abrupt. He edited and revised with care in order that the works might approach a "novelistic" form. The form that results derives from an organization not of conventional narrative elements but of ideas expressed abstractly or metaphorically. To some critics, of course, a structure of ideas does not produce "novelistic" form as they strictly define the term. Professor Mark Schorer feels that Γοπο-Bungay has, "to be sure, a plan, a framework; but it is the framework of Wells's abstract thinking, not of his craftsmanship".8 My own opinion is that a "framework of abstract thinking" can be another valid framework for a novel and one which deserves analysis. That this framework evidences "craftsmanship" in Wells is disputable; but that it causes a "craftsmanlike" quality in his four novels is demonstrable. In other words, I do not wish to imply that Wells consciously structured the novels in the way I describe. But neither do I grant that structure was a purely accidental result of his writing process. If the only alternative to these opposite views is a middle view that Wells unconsciously structured the novels - then I would merely subscribe to it without feeling the necessity to investigate his "psychology" or to define the unconscious purposes at work in his writing. Whatever the processes at work in Wells and however structure came to be in his four novels, this study is concerned only with describing the structure found there. An earlier version of the present Chapter III was written without knowledge of Professor Gordon N. Ray's talk on Wells before 5

Mark Schorer, "Technique as Discovery", Hudson Review, Reprinted afterwards in several collections of essays.

1:74(1948).

PREFACE

9

the English Institute.4 After his talk was published,5 I found that some of my discussion of Tono-Bungay was suggestive of one of his observations - that the "disintegration" in the lives of George and Edward Ponderevo and in the "quap" was representative of the "disintegration" in contemporary English society. But our discussions of Tono-Bungay overlapped merely in this respect. Naturally, I have attempted to avoid overlapping in my subsequent analyses of Love and Mr. Lewisham, Kipps, and The History of Mr. Polly. But Professor Ray's thesis - that these four are indeed "novels" in the formal and esthetic sense of the term - is still a foundation for the present study. I am grateful to the late Professor Edwin C. Bolles for prompting the Tono-Bungay study, to Professor Helmut E. Gerber for advising me on its organization before publishing it in English Fiction in Transition in 1961, to Professor Morse Peckham for advising me on the organization of Chapter I, and to Professors William H. Marshall, Lawrence S. Dembo, and Dr. Samuel B. Hagner for providing help and encouragement in related academic matters. The book is a slightly condensed version of a 1964 doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. June, 1965

4

K.B.N.

"H. G. Wells Tries to Be a Novelist", delivered Sept. 1959. In Edwardians and Late Victorians, ed. Richard Ellmann, English Institute Essays (New York, Columbia University Press, 1959). Professor Ray's paper was later republished in a slightly different form as an Introduction (entitled "The Early Novels of H. G. Wells") to The History of Mr. Polly (Riverside edition; Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960). All references to and quotations from this paper are from this later republication of it. 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

7

A Note on Editions

12

I. Love and Mr. Lewisham

13

II. Kipps

42

III. Tono-Bungay

73

IV. The History of Mr. Polly

84

V. Rebuttal and Summary

101

Appendix: Illusion and Reality in Tono-Bungay .

.

.114

A NOTE ON EDITIONS

The authoritative edition of Wells's collected writings is the Atlantic Edition in 28 volumes, published from 1924 to 1927 by T. Fisher Unwin in Great Britain and Charles Scribner's Sons in the United States. Wells edited the text before publication, but he made only minor stylistic revisions in the works as they had appeared previously in separate unedited editions. The Atlantic Edition is scarce in this country since only 1050 sets were printed here. For the present study I have thought it desirable to quote from editions more readily available to the reader, and so I have not quoted from the Atlantic Edition. Fortunately the Riverside Edition of The History of Mr. Polly follows the Atlantic text and is quoted here. TonoBungay has also been reprinted in a paperbound format (by Signet), but it was so carelessly edited that some passages are garbled. The Modern Library 2nd edition (Copyright, 1935) has been used instead, especially since it is the most available edition. For Love and Mr. Lewisham, one of many American hardcover reprints has been used. All such reprints are no less dependable than the English first edition which they follow, and, so long as a reprint of the Atlantic text is lacking, any one of them serves equally well. Most American reprints have the same pagination (323 pp.). Consequently, by quoting f r o m one of them, this study - practically speaking - uses the "most available edition". The case is the same for Kipps. It is most available in an edition of 479 pages.

I LOVE AND MR.

LEWISHAM

Summarized in the most abstract terms, Love and Mr. Lewisham tells of a young man's progress from error to truth. It shows George Edgar Lewisham gradually shedding his false beliefs shedding them arduously and unwillingly, with much backsliding and agonizing - but eventually accepting the truth about his environment, his abilities, and his feelings. The truth about his environment is that existence is a struggle - that he must make his way in an unsympathetic, competitive world. The truth about his abilities is that they are, after all, undistinguished. And the truth about his feelings is that he does, after all, love his wife Ethel. The novel, of course, does not treat Lewisham's progress in three separate aspects: environment, abilities, and feelings. Instead, it treats his life chronologically and integrally. He grows and learns as a unit, and so the three aspects of his progress interweave and interact throughout the text. They may be separated only to show the structure of the novel conveniently. Not only does the novel fall conveniently into three aspects and thus show a "vertical" organization - but its chapters group naturally into sections - and thus show a "horizontal" organization as well. Structurally, the work might be compared to a five-act play with prologue and epilogue. Chapter One (entitled "Introduces Mr. Lewisham") is, of course, the "prologue"; Chapter Thirty-two ("The Crowning Victory"), the "epilogue". The remaining thirty chapters group into five "acts" or sections, each containing six chapters. Chapters Two to Seven constitute the first section, since the only time interval and setting change

14

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

in the narrative occur directly after it. In this section the action occurs in Whortley, Sussex, whereas in the following section it resumes in London after "an interval of two years and a half" 1 and for the remainder of the book occurs there continuously. Chapters Eight to Thirteen constitute the second section. Near its end, Lewisham and Ethel "stood face to face at the cardinal point of their lives" - the point to which the entire section leads up. Chapters Fourteen to Nineteen constitute the third section, which ends with the lovers' relationship being wholly rejuvenated: In Lewisham "a new tenderness for her sprang up . . . - a new feeling" (167), and for Ethel "suddenly the world opened out in reality" (169). He proposes marriage and she accepts. The fourth section (Chapters Twenty to Twenty-five) covers the ecstatic honeymoon; the fifth section (Chapters Twenty-six to Thirtyone), the succeeding grim marriage. By Chapter Thirty the end of Lewisham's progress is in sight. "Adolescence was coming to an end; the days of his growing were numbered" (308). By Chapter Thirty-one "he perceived finality, the advent of the solution, the reconciliation of the conflict that had been waged so long. Hesitations were at an end; - he took his line" (309310). The aftermath of that line is related in the following chapter, the last in the book. Here, in the "epilogue", "it is the end of adolescence . . . the end of empty dreams" (323). Lewisham becomes fully reconciled to the world, to his work, and to his wife. Throughout the novel Lewisham's errors are described not objectively - as errors - but subjectively - as unrealities and deceptions. His progress is from unreality to reality and from deception to honesty. Deception especially appears in many forms. It appears as romantic and unintentional deception of oneself as illusion, delusion, affectation, posturing, and vanity. And it appears as intentional deception of others - as dissimulation, pretense, exaggeration, lying, cheating, fraud, and forgery. The novel exhausts or "works out" these forms until only reality and honesty remain. In fact, deception so suffuses the novel that 1

H. G. Wells, Love and Mr. Lewisham (New York, George H. Doran Company, 1889), p. 70. All quotations are from this edition.

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

15

noting therein all appearances of its forms almost retells the entire story. I A beginning may be made by offering an account - in terms of deception - of Lewisham's progress towards the first truth: the truth of the struggle for existence. In church, the eighteen-yearold Lewisham * vainly2 feels himself to be an object of "universal attention." The "prominent position" of his seat "made him feel painfully conspicuous, except in moods of exceptional vanity, when he used to imagine that all these people were thinking how his forehead and his certificates accorded. . . . He rarely looked down the church, as he fancied to do so would be to meet the collective eye of the congregation regarding him" (22). By the age of twenty-one, however, this vanity declines. "He no longer felt that universal attention he believed in at eighteen; it was beginning to dawn on him indeed that quite a number of people were entirely indifferent to the fact of his existence." But while he is "one with whom the world goes well" (71) he is not disturbed by the fact of public indifference. "Things had come so easily to him for the last two years that he had taken his steady upward progress in life as assured" (143). Then he encounters difficulties. His growing relationship with Ethel takes so much time and attention from his studies that he fails to pass a zoological examination with first-class honors. This relative failure threatens the loss of his entire career. Nor can his possession of Ethel compensate for the now probable loss. He knows that, being hopelessly poor, they cannot marry for years. Now he realizes "the leeway he had lost and the chances there were against him in the battle of the world. . . . The Career was improbable, and that Ethel should be added to it was almost hopeless" (150). This initial recognition of the struggle for existence leaves him in despair - until his friend Dunkerley acknowledges the structure to him and thereby strengthens him for it. A 8

An allusion to a form of deception will hereafter be noted by a prefixed asterisk (*) where that allusion may not be readily apparent.

16

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

"chap ought to fight", says Dunkerley. "Struggle for existence keen, no doubt, tremendous in fact - still. In it - may as well struggle. Two - join forces - . . . . Fight together. . . . Female sex always has been in the struggle for existence - no great damage so far — always will be. Tremendous idea — that struggle for existence. Only sensible theory you've got hold of, Lewisham" (153-155). And so, on the following evening, Lewisham proposes marriage to Ethel. "The world is against us", he says, "against us. . . . Let us fight against it" (167-168). As he prepares to elope with Ethel, he senses both the world's opposition and its indifference. He feels "a sense of entire detachment from the world. . . . What a flimsy thing he was! . . . And the vast multitude of people about him - against him - the huge world in which he found himself! Did it matter anything to one human soul save her if he ceased to exist forthwith" (178179)? During the blissful first week of the ensuing marriage, Lewisham is able to forget the world. Then he receives the first bill for rent and is sharply reminded that life is "begotten of a struggle for existence and the Will to Live" (217). He immerses himself in the struggle by seeking positions of evening teaching and private tuition. And, as part of that struggle, he resists successfully a scholastic agent's demand for an advance booking fee: "No", he said. "I don't pay that. If you get me anything there's the commission - if you don't - " "We lose", supplied the assistant. "And you ought to", said Lewisham. "It's a fair game." (231-232) On the whole, though, his teaching inquiries are ""disillusioning. He was inclined to "disregard the competition of such inferior enterprises as the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the literate North. But the scholastic agents to whom he went . . . did much in a quiet way to disabuse his mind" (226). Consequently, "long before he reached home he was tired, and his simple pride in being . . . in active grapple with an unsympathetic world had passed" (238). Lewisham's involvement in the struggle is illustrated most graphically by his being cheated out of more than five pounds by a

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

17

professional swindler. Holderness, the swindler, appears in the novel only briefly, but long enough to show that Lewisham can be involved in the struggle on its lowest human level. After completing the swindle, the "lank, cadaverous" Holderness acts like a hungry, predatory animal devouring his prey. Having eyed his "grocer's stock with a curious intensity" (245), he bought a roll, "bit a huge piece of the roll directly he was out of the shop, and went on his way gnawing. It was so large a piece that his gnawing mouth was contorted into the ugliest shapes. He swallowed by an effort, stretching his neck each time. His eyes expressed an animal satisfaction" (246). Lewisham soon overshoots a moderate position on the world's attitude and confuses the indifferent many with the opposing few. In particular he selects "bishops as scapegoats for his turpitude" (243). On applications for teaching positions, necessity compels him to profess the Anglican faith, and for this compulsion he holds the bishop responsible. It is quite natural, then, that Lewisham "would like to boil a bishop or so in oil. . . . If a man is poor", he tells Ethel, "and doesn't profess to believe . . . they wouldn't lift a finger to help him" (242-243). "Moreover, as time went on" - as no work appeared and savings dwindled - "Lewisham found himself more and more in sympathy with Chaffery's bitterness against those who order the world. It was good to hear him on bishops and that sort of people" (250-251). Eventually Lewisham does find steady work, but it is teaching on a mean, "industrial level" (258). His financial affairs change only "from the catastrophic to the sordid" (256). Yet, he is at last sustaining Ethel and himself in the struggle for existence. And he is unconsciously gratified by the fact, notwithstanding the drudgery of his work and the sordiness of his living conditions. It is his father-in-law Chaffery who makes him aware of his gratification, his "vigorous young happiness - you are having a very good time, you know, fighting the world" (299). "That is the happy life", says Chaffery; "the life Natural Selection has been shaping for man since life began" (276). Eventually Lewisham is forced to agree: "Naturally Selection - it follows . . . this way is happiness . . . must be. There can be no other" (322).

18

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

Lewisham's appreciation of the struggle grows as his self-deception lessens. But, struggle and deception are interrelated in another way too: As his appreciation of the struggle grows, he comes to appreciate the deliberate use of deception - the necessity of lying. His profession of Anglican faith on teaching applications is not the first lie he ever thought necessary. Years before, on applications for an assistant master's position, "he called himself nineteen, though he had several months of eighteen still to run". And "once or twice Lewisham misquoted the testimonial" of his then-current headmaster because it "ignored the question of moral character and discipline in a marked manner" (65). Lewisham, of course, had thought himself above the immorality of lying (and continued to think so even after he "misquoted"). He had no notion then of the struggle for existence. But, in applying for a position, he entered the struggle in a small way, and his instinct for it momentarily overcame his untried morals. The degree, then, to which his morals fail - the degree to which he appreciates the use of lying - can be a measure of his appreciation of the struggle for existence. Chaffery himself expounds the relationship between lying and the struggle. The nature of money serves as his case in point. Money is a lie, he declares. It deceives men into believing that a valueless token is the equivalent of a valued commodity. But it is a lie appreciated by guardians of the social contract. They realize that the lie of money is necessary to preserve society. Without it, men would compete for valued commodities directly. They would see their competition in simple, obvious terms and would discover that they are indeed in a struggle for existence each against the other. Warfare over the essential commodities would break out, and the social contract would be at an end. Suppose the milkman, for instance, no longer accepted the lie of money. Then the true nature of man would appear. I should . . . seize some weapon, and after the milkman forthwith. It's becoming to keep the peace, but it's necessary to have milk. The neighbours would come pouring out - also after milk. Milkman, suddenly enlightened, would start clattering up the street. After him! Clutch - tear! Got him! Over goes

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

19

the cart! Fight if you like, but don't upset the can! . . . I should return, bruised and bloody, with the milk-can under my a r m . . . . Life is a struggle for existence, a fight for food. Money is just the lie that mitigates our fury. (206-207) Chaffery, of course, * exaggerates the world's opposition even more than Lewisham does. But, by means of the exaggeration, the relationship between lie and struggle becomes apparent. If a lie "mitigates our fury" in the struggle for existence, an appreciation of lying shows an appreciation of the true nature of the struggle. Lewisham obviously appreciates neither when he meets Chaffery. He has not yet immersed himself in the struggle, and so he protests self-righteously to Chaffery that ^counterfeiting séance effects is wrong. "Cheating is cheating. You can't get away from that. . . . There's a Right and a Wrong in things" (201 and 204). By means of such argument he defends himself against Chaffery's general thesis - that "lies are the mortar that bind the . . . individual man into the social masonry" (205). But later, when Lewisham applies for teaching positions - that is, tries to become a part of the "social masonry" himself - he finds that he must lie. The scholastic agent, Mr. Blendershin, convinces him of it: "Legal fiction", said Mr. Blendershin. "Everyone understands. If you don't do that, my dear chap, we can't do anything for you...." Lewisham's face flushed irregularly. He did not answer.... "Compromise, you know", said Mr. Blendershin, watching him kindly. "Compromise". For the first time in his life Lewisham faced the necessity of telling a lie in cold blood. He glissaded from the austere altitudes of his self-respect and his next words were already disingenuous. "I won't promise to tell lies if I'm asked", he said aloud. "I can't do that." "Scratch it out", said Blendershin.... "You needn't mention it." . . . A pause of further moral descent, and a whack against an obstacle. "But they will find me out", said Lewisham. Blendershin smiled. " . . . They won't find you out. The sort of schoolmaster we deal with can't find anything o u t . . . . " "All right", said Lewisham catching his breath in a faint sob of shame. (229-231) Lewisham's moral descent - or rather his moral adaptability to

20

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

the struggle for existence - is now accomplished. When he completes an application form for another agent, he merely pauses at a space before he fills it with a lie (236). Later he freely admits, "I'm not so amazingly honest - now" (316). Yet, Lewisham does not overshoot a moderate position on the subject of lying as he did on the subject of the world's attitude toward him. H e does not become an exponent of lies like Chaffery. "I can't d o anything underhand", he confesses. "I've not that sort of mind. . . . It would do no good. . . . I can't manage it and go straight" (316). H e realizes that, like most people, he is psychologically limited in his ability to lie - too human to keep from lying altogether but too human to lie more than he must. Constant lying as well as constant truthfulness prohibits the flexibility, the adaptability needed in the struggle for existence. And Lewisham has learned to adapt himself in the struggle. Therefore, as he comes to accept it, he comes to accept the necessity of conditional lying. There is perhaps another reason - a structural reason - why Lewisham need not overshoot the moderate position on the subject of lying. Chajfery is already at the opposite position: He believes in lying at a time when Lewisham believes in truthfulness. In Chaffery, Lewisham has a contrast. And when Lewisham does change - when he comes to accept the necessity of conditional lying - Chaffery also changes. He comes to accept the necessity of conditional truthfulness: "I was early convinced of the absolute necessity of righteousness if a man is to be happy. . . . But let me tell you the happy life. . . . In the first place, mental integrity. . . . Hold fast to that which is right. . . . Stout honest work. . . . A life of self-devotion . . . and for sunset a decent pride - that is the happy life" (275-276). The balance, then, between Lewisham and Chaffery is not upset. The two change in opposite directions and end at approximate, moderate positions. Perhaps as an added ironic touch, their attitudes toward love are shown to undergo a similar counterbalancing change. Lewisham begins as a romantic lover but will change into a realist husband. On the other hand, Chaffery begins as a realist-husband "Nature's to blame", he tells the honeymooners; "neither of you

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

21

know what you are in for yet" (194). But, near the end of the novel, he suddenly becomes a romantic lover and runs off with another woman. His flight shows that "these people also - with grey hair and truncated honor - had their emotions! Even it [sic] may be glowing" (306)! His flight also shows why Chaffery, in his last talk with Lewisham, affirms love to be "no footlight passion" and is "very solemn and insistent, with a lean extended finger, upon this point" (275-276). Once again, the balance between Lewisham and Chaffery is not upset. The two change in opposite directions - and, in this case, almost exchange positions.

II An account - also in terms of deception - may be given of Lewisham's progress toward the second truth - the truth of his abilities. Like the former progress, this one also is long and vacillating, and it too extends through the entire story. The early Lewisham keeps the * illusion of unlimited abilities before him by hanging upon his wall a Schema - a calendar of planned future achievements. It schedules him, first, to take his university degree with "hons. in all subjects" and win a "gold medal", then to pass "examinations to a remote Bar" and attain "political eminence" by writing "pamphlets in the Liberal interest" (3 and 74). The Schema represents not only this impossible career but the *vanity and *delusion that he has ability enough to achieve it. The Schema embodies his self-deception about his abilities. When natural instincts and his relationship with Ethel divert him, these diversions are expressed as oppositions to Schema and Career. And as his love for Ethel grows to be a reality, Schema, Career, and abilities will prove to be unrealities, "mere ghosts of themselves", self-deceptions. Of course, if they were sound, love would not turn them to nothing. But they are not, and so love will only bring about their inevitable disappearance sooner. Before that time, however, Lewisham endures three years of

22

"LOVE AND M R . L E W I S H A M "

separation from Ethel. His love for her becomes dormant then, and, by contrast, his abilities again seem real. He appears to be "having a brilliant career after all" (72). But, it is soon apparent that * vanity still impels the career. And now his vanity is supported and increased by a classmate, Alice Heydinger, who resolves "to stir up his ambitions - an easy task. She thought he had exceptional gifts and that she might serve to direct them". About his gifts, however, Alice is deceived even more than Lewisham, and she leads him into extremes of self-deception that he might not have experienced by himself. Under her inspiration "Lewisham for the first time in his life began to fancy he had conversational powers" (79). He reads a paper on Socialism before the school Debating Society, and its success produces in him "symptoms of that febrile affection known to the vulgar as 'swelled 'ed' " (86). Afterwards, in the school art gallery, with his eyes on a statue of Moses and Alice's eyes upon him, he imagines himself writing pamphlets, forming a party, and becoming the Luther of Socialism. "You do put - well - courage into a chap", he admits to Alice. "I shouldn't have done that Socialism paper if it hadn't been for you" (87). Alice leads him into situations not only beyond his own inclination but sometimes against it as well. At a gathering Alice "was quite at her ease and began talking at once". But "Lewisham's replies were less confident than they had been in the Gallery. . . . Indeed there was almost a reversal of their positions. She led and he was abashed. He felt obscurely that she had taken an advantage of him" (96). Lewisham's reaction suggests that Alice may be leading him too far, that his career ambition may now be a product more of her desire than of his own. If so, that ambition may be thought * unreal in Lewisham even though he professes it. His ambition did seem real enough in Whortley long before he knew Alice, but now it is quite different from what it was at Whortley. "His conception of his destiny in this world was no longer an avenue of examinations to a remote Bar and political eminence 'in the Liberal interest' " (74). Now he conceives his destiny to be in Socialism. But it is Alice who inspires his activity in this field. And so even at this early stage it is im-

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

23

plied that his ambition and belief in great supporting abilities may be self-deceptions which he will eventually give up. Thus far no other careers for Lewisham have been suggested. Work in science and university teaching occur to him later, and then they are but a vitiation of his ambition. In his self-deception he does not realize them to be as far beyond his abilities as Socialist eminence is. He considers them merely ways of earning a living - albeit ways very practical and satisfying in themselves. But they are not the "Career". He envisages only steppingstones to the Career when he thinks of "all the brilliant things that he held it was possible for a South Kensington student to do and be - of head-masterships, northern science schools, inspectorships, demonstratorships,yea,even professorships. And then,and t h e n - " (131) he continues, and thereby shows that he aims beyond these "brilliant things" toward the Career. Even while he notes "the conditions of application for a vacant professorship in Physics", he also notes "the vacant editorship of a monthly magazine devoted to social questions" (220-221). After Lewisham discovers his love for Ethel to be revived, love is again expressed as an opposition to the Career. It is even necessary for Lewisham to believe love and career opposed, since this opposition rather than his own limited abilities would account for the career difficulties he is experiencing. "Everything was going. Not only his work - his scientific career, but the Debating Society, the political movement, all his work for Humanity. . . . Why not be resolute - even now" (145)? Later he perceives a bit more of the truth. "Thinking of his position, the leeway he had lost and the chances there were against him in the battle of the world" (150), he realizes the Career to be "improbable" notwithstanding his "superior" abilities. After his marriage he begins to notice his limitations. "Certain wild shots and disastrous lapses in his recent botanical examination, that he had managed to keep out of his mind hitherto, forced their way on his attention. For the first time since his marriage he harboured premonitions of failure" (238-239). These premonitions are fulfilled in the final examination of the biological course. At its close "he knew well enough that he had done

24

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

badly" (251). Indeed, "he was quite sure that he had failed. . . . He knew that any career as a scientific man was now closed to him for ever" (254). As he abandons hope of the means to his ultimate Career, he probably abandons hope of the Career itself. Giving up the ^illusion about his abilities should not be far behind. It is heralded, in fact, by a revelation about quite another matter: As he finds himself momentarily unable to conceive of Chaffery's romance and flight, "he realised more vividly than he had ever done before the narrow range of his experience, the bounds of his imagination" (306). With a newly perceived truth he confronts Alice Heydinger, the mainstay of his illusions. "There is one thing . . . that has come to me once or twice lately. Don't you think that perhaps you over-estimate the things I might have done" (314)? She disagrees, but her reply only convinces him that his perception is correct. Even he can now see that her confidence in him is a delusion. He "looked at her doubtfully. That phantom greatness of his, it was that lit her eyes. . . . He knew that in some way the secret of his greatness and this admiration went together. Conceivably they were one and indivisible" (315). Greatness, he realizes, and the abilities promising it are ""unreal, "phantom", "mere ghosts of themselves" like the Schema. His real abilities are sufficient merely for teaching on an "industrial level". '"This will be my work now. The other . . . ' He faced a truth. 'It was just. . . vanity! . . . Yes, it was vanity. . . . A boy's vanity. For me - anyhow. I'm too two-sided. . . . Two-sided? . . . Commonplace! Dreams like mine - abilities like mine. Yes - any man!' " (320322). Thus, he gives up the illusion about his abilities. He literally destroys it by tearing up the Schema and dropping the pieces into a wastepaper basket. And the completeness, the finality of the act is shown by his picking up two pieces which have fallen outside the basket and putting them "carefully with their fellows" (323). Previously his belief in his abilities acted as a barrier between Ethel and him. Now his surrender of the belief not only removes the barrier but even serves as a link between Ethel and him. "It joins us", he assures her. "Before . . . But now it's different.

"LOVE AND M R . LEWISHAM"

25

It's something we have between us. . . . It will hold us together, cement us together. It will be our life" (319-320).

Ill Lewisham's progress toward the third truth - the truth of his feelings - also extends through the entire story and, as usual, begins with self-deception. In his youth his "mind was still an unknown land to him. He believed . . . that he was always the same consistent intelligent human being, whereas under certain stimuli he became no longer reasonable and disciplined but a purely imaginative and emotional person" (23). As we first see him, he is trying diligently but unsuccessfully to study while "the stir of Mother Nature's awakening" is "bidding him rouse himself to live" (7). The cause of his restlessness is not only Spring but the sight of Ethel, and he deceives himself into believing that he wanders out to the park to study rather than to increase the likelihood of meeting her. In the resulting encounter, Ethel's use of deception is as frequent as Lewisham's. As they approach, they *pretend not to notice each other. They meet only because Ethel pretends that the wind has torn from her hand the paper on which she has been busily writing. And the paper itself is an imposition which she has been *forging for one of his students. Lewisham retrieves the paper and recognizes the forgery. But she pretends that his discovery is an accident, for, * supposedly unaware of his identity, she could not know that he would recognize the forgery. She is then sufficiently artful in her contrition to appeal to Lewisham for forgiveness, whereupon he * affects such a chivalrous pose that he not only forgives her forgery but cancels the imposition altogether. When he requests the paper as a keepsake - another romantic * affectation - she pretends surprise at his request, but acquiesces, and then pretends that she must go. In the whole encounter, their outward behavior ""dissimulates their feelings of mutual attraction and excitement. Afterwards Lewisham continues to dissimulate. Encountering

26

"LOVE AND M R . LEWISHAM"

Ethel on the way to church, he raises his hat as if to her aunt, who is beside her; and in church he peeps between his fingers at her. He also continues in his romantic affectation. In the privacy of his room he kisses the forged imposition, then goes out to watch dreamily the only lit window of Ethel's house. And in church a hymn about religious love inspires him with overpowering feelings of romantic love. Under the stimulus of the hymn he first discovers love to be a reality. He sees it as "the greatest of all things", even though he sees it through the haze of romantic illusion. "So came the great discovery like a flood across his mind, pouring over it with the cadence of the hymn. . . . The rest of the service was phantasmagorial background to that great reality. . . . He, Mr. Lewisham, was in Love" (24-25). Afterwards love becomes a certain fact independent of its emotional stimulus, for it remains after the stimulus is gone. He remembers it "as a bald discovery, and without a touch of emotion. With all the achromatic clearness, the unromantic colourlessness of the early morning. . . . Yes. He had it now quite distinctly. . . . He was in Love" (27). However, momentary sight of the reality in love does not banish the unreality, the deception. At his next encounter with Ethel, dissimulation and affectation are as common as before. In the park he furtively glances beyond his Latin book for a sight of her. Then, at her approach, he pretends not to have seen her, turns away, and busies himself in "reading an ode that he could not have translated to save his life" (29). This time fortunately, because Ethel's manner is more direct, conversation begins readily. He *lies about the frequency of his visits to the park in order to conceal his interest in her. And Ethel lies as flagrantly. To ingratiate herself, she falsely professes to value London for its cultural facilities, to relish serious talk, to admire Carlyle, to "love" reading, and to dislike "idle novels" (the same novels which, after their marriage, Lewisham finds her reading continually). But he loses the romantic element in their conversation - "the delightful feeling of enterprise" (34) - when his headmaster Mr. Bonover - a harsh reality - passes by and nods disapprovingly.

"LOVE AND M R . LEWISHAM"

27

Afterwards Lewisham regains that "feeling of enterprise", for he can deceive boldly in the cause of romance. He *lies outright to Mr. Bonover about Ethel's identity and ^postures to himself that Bonover's disapproval will not intimidate him. But he is caught in the lie and he is intimidated. And so, failing to deceive in one cause - romance - he tries to deceive in its opposite anti-romance - and invariably misses the truth between. Thus, he chastises himself that "it was nonsense this being in love; there wasn't such a thing as love outside of trashy novelettes" (40). Such extreme delusion is accompanied by extreme dissimulation. At Ethel's distant approach, he hurries away, "looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. Shame overtook him" (40). The anti-romantic delusion fails him, and he rebounds again to the former romantic one. "On Friday his belief in love was warm and living again" (40). Once more he can lie outright to Mr. Bonover - this time about his arrangements for the afternoon. Once more he can pretend indifference about Bonover's disapproval. And once more he can adopt the other romantic postures and affectations by now quite familiar. "His imagination became riotous with things he might say, attitudes he might strike, and a multitude of vague fine dreams about her. . . . His mind would do nothing but circle round this wonderful pose of lover" (40). Lewisham prepares for the next encounter with Ethel by * disguising the usual shabbiness of his appearance. As he waits in the park, he sneaks glances at passers-by and tries to dissemble his anxiety. Ethel appears and, again by dissimulation, effects their encounter and a stroll together. In response, Lewisham"s affectation becomes outlandishly romantic and chivalrous. Besides the romantic or unreal element in love, the real element is also present - and passes between them for the first time. Lewisham had felt the reality of love before, but privately. Now, some of his remarks - and her responses - show an honesty of feeling not shown in previous encounters. "I knew I should see you", Lewisham says, confessing that he came to the park aware of the likelihood of meeting her. "It was our last chance almost", she replies, confessing "with as frank a quality of avowal" the

28

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

same awareness in herself (46). When it is time to part and Lewisham cannot delay it with proprietous conversation, he speaks his feelings outright; and Ethel, though with more restraint, answers with her own: "Don't leave me", he said . . . with a sudden stress in his voice. "Don't leave m e . . . . I have wanted to talk to you so much. The first time I saw y o u . . . . And now, just as I am - happy, you are going." . . . "No", she said.... "No. I am not going." Lewisham restrained an impulse to shout.... He began to tell her with simple frankness how he cared for her company.... "I would not change this . . . for - anything in the world.... I don't care what happens so long as we have this afternoon." "Nor I", she said. "Thank you for coming", he said in an outburst of gratitude. "Oh, thank you for coming", and held out his hand. She took it and pressed it. (52-53) By such unprecedented communication, real love passes between them. "The word 'Love' never passed their lips that day. Yet . . . their speech and their hearts came very close together" (55). Fortunately their love on this occasion is fixed in Lewisham's memory by a chance musical accompaniment. As they return from their walk, the Whortley band is playing in public concert. The melodic air is "very slow and tender and with an accompaniment of pum, pum. Pathetically cheerful that pum, pum, hopelessly cheerful indeed against the dirge of the air. . . . But to young people things come differently" (56). The music is only pure and beautiful to them now, and thus very like their love. Only much later will Lewisham feel that both the music and their love have a "pathetically" and "hopelessly cheerful" side. Soon he finds that their stroll together has had disastrous results academically and socially. And so inevitably he rebounds into anti-romantic affectation. He calls himself "Fool", tears to pieces a drawing of Ethel's face and disparages their relationship as "silly spooning". But "that was one mood. The rarer one" (63). Romanticism is the more common. In accordance with it, he eagerly watches the posts for a letter from her (she has moved away) and meditates the one he will write in answer. For consolation he retraces "by moonlight almost every step of that one

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

29

memorable walk of theirs. . . . He worked himself up to the pitch of talking as if she were present. And he said some fine brave things. . . . And then home through the white indistinctness in a state of melancholy that became at last so fine as to be almost pleasurable" (68). He can adopt an equally romantic posture when he faces public disapproval for his past relationship with Ethel: "In certain moods he found it exhilarating and several times he professed himself . . . not a little of a blade. In others, he told himself he bore it for her sake" (64). Indeed, he exalts his forbearance by comparing it to that of Jacob for the sake of Rachel. Lewisham too would work for years in a wilderness of separation until success should allow him to claim his beloved.8 And so the inscription "Mizpah" outlandishly dominates his room to remind him daily of his goal. But time slowly dulls the intensity of Lewisham's purpose. He notices the inscription less and less as a symbol, and by the end of the following term, he uses it "to line the bottom of the yellow box in which he packed his books. . . . At last after the manner of youth, so gloriously recuperative in body, heart, and soul, he began to forget" (69-70). Such is his condition when, three years after their parting, he sees Ethel again at Mr. Lagune's séance. "At first his only emotion was surprise" (96). The emotion of love had been hard won in the past, but now it was conspicuously absent. "His mind was astonishment mingled with annoyance. . . . The spell of the old days of longing . . . had not returned to him" (97-98). But his love is not entirely dead. During their past relationship, the forms of deception initially had hidden his love even from his own view. Now, during the séance, the same forms of deception - romantic posturing, affectation, and dissimulation - reappear in his behavior. "What did she think of him? Was she peering at him through the darkness even as he peered at her? Should he pretend to see her for the first time when the lights were restored? . . . He hoped that she had not marked his shudder. 3

The idea is absurd to Lewisham when three years later it is maintained by Parkson, whom Lewisham considers a fool: "If need be, a man should toil seven years - as Jacob did for Rachel - ruling his passions, to make the home fitting and sweet for her" (155).

30

"LOVE AND M R . LEWISHAM"

He thought of laughing a low laugh to show he was not afraid. . . . He became acutely desirous of a successful exposure. He figured the dramatic moment he had prepared . . . - Ethel a spectator" (98-100). And so, at the dramatic moment, "he turned to see how she took this exposure in which he was such a prominent actor" (103-104). But Ethel too is once more involved in deception, and now her instrument of deception is a pneumatic glove. When Lewisham realizes her connection with it, he reacts as he did long ago to her connection with the forged imposition. Then, he had found himself "struggling with the new aspect. . . . To find her doing this jarred oddly upon certain vague preconceptions he had formed of her. Somehow it seemed as if she had betrayed him" (15). His romantic ^illusion of her innocence was undermined - or rather "betrayed", since Lewisham always rebounds to the other romantic extreme. Now, at his discovery of the pneumatic glove, he stands in an "attitude of triumph, with the evidence against her in his hand! But his triumph had vanished" (104). The illusion of "betrayal" conflicts thereafter with the illusion of her innocence, so that on the way home he walks "looking straight before him, lost in some grim argument with himself" (107). He can resolve the argument only by hearing her confess the truth. And so he meets her in order to ask directly, "Were you cheating?" Ethel tries to confess, but she is stopped by his eagerness to save the illusion of her innocence. She too is eager to save it, and so she confesses only a half-truth. Lewisham allows himself to be deceived; he rationalizes for her and is satisfied. Periodically afterwards, however, he again becomes suspicious. And so eventually she confesses all. "I was . . . I was helping . . . I had gone meaning to help if anything went wrong at Mr. Lagune's. Yes - that night. No . . . don't! It was too hard before to tell you" (165). Directly afterwards, Lewisham asks her to marry him. His proposal results from other factors in their relationship, but it may indicate that now he finally accepts the whole truth about her involvement in spiritualism. By this time he has also begun to accept his love for Ethel. At the séance his thoughts of deception suggested that love existed in

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

31

his feelings and eventually would be disclosed. So it had been at Whortley. Now, deception is again followed by disclosure. Though Ethel attempts to hide her love, he does not. "Go back", she whispers. And her whisper is a half-hearted attempt to discourage him, to deceive him about her own feelings. But Lewisham speaks directly. His words may still be romantic affectation at bottom, but they are too sincere to be posture: "It is hard to say what I feel. I don't know m y s e l f . . . . But I'm not going to lose you like this. I'm not going to let you slip a second t i m e . . . . I had to come and try to find you. It's you. I've never forgotten you. Never. I'm not going to be sent back like t h i s . . . . I shan't leave y o u . . . . The sight of you has somehow brought back a lot of things.... I can't explain it. Perhaps - 1 had to come to find you - 1 kept on thinking of your face, of how you used to smile, how you jumped from the gate by the lock, and how we had t e a . . . a lot of things... ." He spoke deliberately. "I shall come", he said, "to-morrow night." . . . "No", she whispered. "I shall come." (116-118)

As he did more than three years before, Lewisham speaks his feelings outright. And again Ethel answers with her own. Once more, his abandonment of dissimulation is followed by hers. "She could hide the gladness of her heart from herself no longer. She was frightened that he had come, but she was glad and she knew he knew that she was glad. She made no further protest. She held out her hand dumbly" (118). As usual, such direct expression of feelings does not last. During successive walks, deception once more appears in their conversation. "They talked of this and that, their little superficial ideas about themselves and of their circumstances and tastes, and always there was something, something that was with them unspoken, unacknowledged, which made all these things unreal and insincere" (127). Even the London fog lends a touch of unreality to their relationship. It obscures them from each other just as superficiality and insincerity do. They talk of "far-off things, remote and unreal down the long, ill-lit vista of the suburban street which swallowed up Ethel nightly" (127). She would "vanish . . . into a grey mist and the shadow beyond a feeble

32

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

yellow gas-lamp, and he would watch her vanish" (126-127). Besides insincere conversation, romantic affectation is another of the forms now taken by deception. And this form also is abetted by the London fog, since the latter romantically separates them from the rest of the world: There were nights o f . . . thick fogs, beautiiul, isolating, grey-white veils, turning every yard of pavement into a private room. Grand indeed were these fogs, things to rejoice at mightily, since then it was no longer a thing for public scorn when two young people hurried along arm in arm, and one could to a thousand impudent, significant things with varying pressure and the fondling of a little hand. .. . Then indeed one seemed to be nearer that elusive something that threaded it all together. And the dangers of the street corners, the horses looming up suddenly out of the d a r k . . . seemed to accentuate the infinite need of protection on the part of a delicate young lady who had already traversed three winters of fogs, thornily alone. Moreover, one could come right down the quiet street where she lived, half-way to the steps of her house, with a delightful sense of enterprise. (129-130) The last phrase is especially familiar, for, throughout the first - and most romantic - period of their acquaintance, Lewisham experienced a similarly "delightful feeling of enterprise" (34). But subsequent failure to pass a zoological examination with first-class honors destroys the romantic mood. "The rich prettiness of his love-making . . . fled to some remote quarter of his being" (142), and he realized that each night, after leaving Ethel, he had "tramped homeward - full of foolish imaginings" (143). Then, within the space of one meditative sitting, he goes back and forth from one side of the truth to the other - first to the anti-romantic side of it (as shown above) and then to the romantic side: "His softer emotions were in abeyance, but he told himself no lies. He cared for her, he loved to be with her and to talk to her and please her" (143-144). Then back once more to the anti-romantic side: After the séance he should have gone home and forgotten her. Why had he felt that irresistible impulse to seek her out? Why had his imagination spun such a strange web of possibilities about her? He was involved now, foolishly involved.... All his future was a sacrifice

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

33

to this transitory ghost of love-making in the streets... . Men of the upper or middle classes . . . were properly warned against involving themselves in this love nonsense before they were independent. It was much better. (144-145)

Then back again to romance and affectation: "That abandonment of the walks insisted on looking mean to him. And she would think it mean. Which was very much worse, somehow" (146). And so back and forth he rebounds, once more overpassing the truth between the extremes: He had some violent fluctuations. At times he was bitterly angry with her for her failure to see things as he did. He would wander about the museum conducting imaginary discussions with her and making even scathing remarks. At other times he had to summon all his powers of acrid discipline and all his memories of her resentful retorts, to keep himself from a headlong rush to Chelsea and unmanly capitulation. (148)

Then, his vacillation is temporarily halted. He discovers that Ethel has again begun spiritualistic ^cheating - and that, if she had not begun, she would have been compelled to leave London and thus would have been lost to him forever. Unable to choose between Ethel cheating and Ethel lost, he decides to rescue her from compulsion altogether - by marrying her. His proposal is impelled, of course, by this logical reason, but it is impelled even more by an emotional one. He realizes that their halfway relationship is slowly destroying in her the qualities he loves. He has made her feel guilty about her cheating so that she is torn between guilt and the anxiety at being sent away. And the strain is beginning to show. She had always looked at him with tender regard, but now "she was looking at him, in fear and perplexity. . . . Hitherto he had loved and desired her sweetness and animation - but now she was white and weary-eyed". And so "a new tenderness for her sprang up in him - a new feeling. . . . He felt as though he had forgotten her and suddenly remembered. A great longing came into his mind". And, as "all the world vanished before that great desire" (167), he proposed marriage.

34

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

After this climactic moment Lewisham, as usual, returns to romantic affectation. But he returns to affectation slightly different. Now he daydreams not of the intimacy of nightly walks but of the closer intimacy possible in marriage. "At the thought of that new life together . . . she came into his head, vivid and near and warm. . . . He recovered himself from a daydream. He became aware of a library attendant down the room . . . staring at him curiously. It occurred to Lewisham that thought reading was one of the most possible things in the world. He blushed, rose clumsily" (173), and left the room. He envisions the marriage as a romantic "adventure" in other ways too. Since it was a daring financial risk based upon precarious resources, "the affair was beginning to take on a flavour of adventure not at all unpleasant". The idea of a daring risk gives him even "a quite unreasonable exultation" (172). And their marriage is a romantic adventure for the additional reason that it begins with a secret elopement and seems a desperate flight from the "dishonour of mediumship" (186). Thoughts of elopement produce in Lewisham other romantic and affected moods as well - at first, "a philosophical mood, a sense of entire detachment from the world. He saw a bundle of uprooted plants beside the portmanteau of a fellow-passenger and it suggested a grotesque simile. His roots, his earthly possessions, were all downstairs in the booking-office. What a flimsy thing he was! . . . and the vast multitude of people about him - against him - the huge world in which he found himself! Did it matter anything to one human soul save her if he ceased to exist forthwith" (178-179)? This mood, in turn, gives way to a romantic flight of imagination among disastrous possibilities. "Suppose her aunt were to come to Farnham Junotion to meet her? Suppose someone stole her purse? Suppose she came too late! . . . Suppose she never came at all" (179)! But Ethel does arrive, and they are married without further delay. For three days thereafter, romantic illusion and affectation are, if possible, even more predominant. But the kind they now experience as a young, newly wedded couple is perhaps forgivable in Ethel and Lewisham this once:

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

35

For three indelible days Lewisham's existence was a fabric of fine emotions, life was too wonderful and beautiful for any doubts or forethought. To be with Ethel was perpetual delight. . . . And the light in her eyes and the warmth in her heart that lit them!.. . And Ethel too had a fine emotional time. She was mistress of a home, - their home together. She shopped and was called "Ma'am" by respectful, good-looking shopmen; she designed meals and copied out papers of notes with a rich sense of helpfulness. And ever and again she would stop writing and sit dreaming. (184-186)

The honeymoon also occasions the return of that extreme form of romanticism which is partly chivalrous pose and partly sheer posturing: "We are Fighting the World", he said, finding great satisfaction in the thought. "All the world is against us - and we are fighting it all." "We will not be beaten", said Ethel. "How could we be beaten - together?" said Lewisham. "For you I would fight a dozen worlds." It s e e m e d . . . almost indeed too easy for their courage, to be merely fighting the world. (190)

The affectations of marriage dominate his academic life as well. Just before the marriage, his life at school becomes a romantic "adventure". There "he wanted to dance along the corridors. He felt curiously irresponsible and threw up an unpleasant sort of humour that pleased nobody. . . . He threw a bun across the refreshment room at Smithers and hit one of the Art School officials" (177). After marriage his life at school becomes a daydream of the honeymoon. "To neglect one's work and sit back and dream of meeting again! . . . Lewisham's long hours in the laboratory were spent largely in a dreamy meditation, in . . . the invention of foolish terms of endearment. . . . Indeed it was a very foolish time" (184-185). Its ending is omened by Madam Gadow, their landlady. Sympathetically she remarks to Ethel, "You are ver' 'appy", and then adds with a sigh, "/ was ver' 'appy" (190). But it is Madam Gadow who later precipitates the ending. After Lewisham and Ethel have lived for a week in her rented apartments, she presents them with a first bill replete with overcharges. "That document . . . was the end of Mr. Lewisham's informal honeymoon. Its

36

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

advent was the snap of that bright Prince Rupert's drop; and in a moment - Dust" (216-217). When love first proved to be a reality to Lewisham, it appeared in "all the achromatic clearness, the unromantic colourlessness of the early morning" (27). Now, when marriage first appears as a reality to him, it seems equally clear and colorless. "After all, the rosy love-making and marrying and Epithalamy are no more than the dawn of things, and to follow comes all the spacious interval of white laborious light. . . . Our young couple, emerging presently from an atmosphere of dusk and morning stars, found the sky gathering greyly overhead and saw one another for the first time clearly in the light of every-day" (247). Several petty quarrels culminate into a decisive one, and Lewisham speculates how it had been possible "to get from such an opalescent dawning to such a dismal day" (268). Because of their quarrels, Lewisham is in a posture of indignation at Ethel. It is the current form of his self-deception - the anti-romantic extreme which has replaced the romantic extreme of their honeymoon. But, as he studies and broods, a hurdy-gurdy tune drifts in to him from outdoors. Along with the music, a memory returned... a vision of Whortley.... It was moonlight and a hillside... and the scene was set to music, a lugubriously sentimental air. For some reason this music had the quality of a barrel organ - though he knew that properly it came from a b a n d . . . . This air not only reproduced the picture with graphic vividness, but it trailed after it an enormous cloud of irrational emotion, emotion that had but a moment before seemed gone for ever from his being. He recalled it all! He had come down that hillside and Ethel had been with h i m . . . . Had he really felt like that about h e r ? . . . The tune and the memory had won their footing. (264-265) The irritations of marriage, the "overwhelming pressure of everyday stresses and necessities" had obscured his love, but now love is again revealed by a chance overhearing of the tune heard years ago. "Accusations faded like smoke as he put them forth. But the picture of two little figures back there in the moonlit past did not fade" (266). As he begins to see through his current anti-romantic feelings, he can recognize the true cause of the most recent quarrel. "Was it, after all, just possible that in some degree he himself rather was the chief person to blame? It was instantly as

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

37

if he had been aware of that all the time" (267). He can then see the essential love which his feelings obscured. "He knew love now for what it was, knew it for something more ancient and more imperative than reason. He knew now that he loved her, and his recent . . . condemnation of her seemed to him the reign of some exterior influence in his mind. . . . For now he was assured he loved her still with all his heart" (268 and 270). Being so useful, therefore, the tune is not merely an idyll of pure love, as they first experienced it, and not merely a romantic affectation, as in itself it would seem to be. It is rather as it was originally described: an evocation of the "pathetically" and "hopelessly cheerful" side of love. The tune is also important structurally. It appears in the sixth chapter of the book and then reappears in the sixth chapter from the end. While it creates a thematic bridge for Lewisham's recollection of love, it creates a structural bridge as well and another instance of symmetry in the "horizontal" organization of the novel. Thus far Lewisham's progress in love has been a series of rebounds - from romantic extreme to anti-romantic extreme and back again. But, with every rebound, it has become more certain that he would eventually end, like the pendulum, at dead center. His approach and overshooting would take some time — thirty-one chapters, to be precise - but in the thirty-second he would arrive at the center which is truth. In Chapter Twenty-nine Lewisham undergoes one last rebound into the anti-romantic extreme of self-deception. Again he is in a posture of indignation at Ethel - this time about a gift of roses. When he is described as "thrusting his feet among the scattered roses with a sort of grim satisfaction" (283), one may be sure that he is again indulging in pose and pretense. In the previous quarrel, Lewisham showed himself occasionally conscious of his pose: He "perceived" it. Having begun one line of argument, he "perceived that line was impossible. He took the way . . . of vast disgust, he raised his voice" (259). Having ended another line of argument, "he perceived himself wordless" and so "he glared about him, seeking a prompt climax" (262). In the present quarrel

38

"LOVE AND MR. L E W I S H A M "

over the roses, he seems to be entirely conscious of his pose, for he never loses "perception" of it. After one tirade "he turned his eyes to watch what she was about to do"; during another, "he perceived he must ignore that argument". And in the middle of another, "he stopped. He had suddenly perceived the pathetic. He took refuge in anger" (285). When he does find just the right attack, he repeats it "with bitter satisfaction" (286), remains "impenetrably malignant" (287), and notes its effect "with grim satisfaction. . . . He knew quite clearly that he was inflicting grievous punishment and that gratified him. There was also indeed a curious pleasure in the determination of a long and painful period of vague misunderstanding" (288). To be thus conscious of his behavior and its effects means, of course, that he is consciously •pretending to misunderstand. Afterwards he indulges in another form of deception when he is alone: Thoughts about his "rival" lead him to envision a "tragic avenging of his honour" (291). But soon, "pestered by an absurd idea that he had again behaved unjustly to Ethel", he slips "back to the remorse and regrets of the morning time" (291). He wonders what Ethel will do, now that he has decided to leave her. Wondering soon turns into apprehension and romantic *exaggeration - for "he knew how much her character leant upon his. Good Heavens! What might she not do" (291)? In a flight of imagination, he no doubt envisions some fate much worse than her returning to spiritualism. His self-deception multiplies. Apprehension for her future becomes apprehension for her present condition as well. He exaggerates the meaning of the silence in Ethel's room and wonders why he should "suddenly feel afraid" (292). "An unreasonable persuasion that some irrevocable thing had passed" seizes him, and he has "a prevision of unendurable calamity" (293). Unable to resist any longer, he enters her room and is touched by the sight of her pathetic sleeping figure. Anxiously he wakes her, and they become reconciled at once. His anti-romantic indignation thus gives way to romantic exaggeration and this, in turn, to the truth. "I knew it was nothing", he confesses. "I knew. I knew" (295). From this confession follows the affirmation that he does love and need her above all things. "I don't care for anything - "

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

39

he says. "It's you. If I have you nothing else matters. . . . Dear one, we must hold to each other" (296). Later he does admit to his classmate Alice Heydinger that she understands him better than Ethel does, that she would be a more logically suitable mate for him than Ethel is "Only - " "You love her." "Yes", said Lewisham. . . . "I suppose.. . that must be it." (313314) It is his ultimate admission of the truth of his feelings. IV It is well to admit once more that the novel does not treat Lewisham's progress in three separate aspects - environment, abilities, and feelings - as this chapter has done. The textual material was separated - literally "analyzed" - to show the structure of the novel conveniently and to do justice to the highly analytic mind from which the novel came. However, to do justice also to Wells's organic method of writing, the structural aspects should be shown recombined - or rather blended together (as they were for Wells) in an artistic whole. The task need not mean reproducing most of the novel. Fortunately, each of two passages in the novel - and there are probably others - shows the three aspects together. In the first passage, Lewisham is directly exhorting Ethel to marry him: You must come out of your cheating, and I must come out of my . . . cramming. And we - we must m a n y . . . . The world is against us, against - us. To you it offers money to cheat.... And it keeps you from me. And me too it bribes with the promise of success - if I will desert y o u . . . . We may have to wait for ever, if we wait until life is safe. We may be separated.... We may lose one another altogether. . . . Let us fight against it. Why should we separate? Unless True Love is like the other things - an empty cant. This is the only way. We two-who belong to one another. (167-168) Ethel's "cheating" - the first theme represented here - is one form of ^delusion, for Lewisham admits elsewhere that "even if what you do is not cheating, it is delusion - unconscious cheating"

40

"LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM"

(164). Lewisham's "cramming" - the second theme - is another form of delusion, for it is an attempt to delude the examiner about his study habits throughout the term in particular and about his abilities and "promise of success" in general. The first two themes, then, are balanced against each other: Ethel's delusion against Lewisham's. Moreover, the world is in opposition (the third theme). It encourages their delusions by comparable methods ("offers money" to Ethel and "bribes" Lewisham) and discourages "True Love" (the fourth theme). Ethel's "cheating" is a lesser structural aspect of the novel, but the other three themes belong respectively to the main structural aspects discussed above: to Lewisham's overestimation of his abilities, to his struggle for existence, and to his love for Ethel. These aspects are so blended in the passage as to discourage analysis, but they are so blended as to produce an organic - an artistically unified - passage. The second passage which shows the three structural aspects together is at the end of the novel. Here, while Lewisham significantly tears the Schema to pieces, he muses. His future role has become certain (he is soon to become a father), and so he reviews the past: His thoughts went to his Socialism, to his red-hot ambtion of world mending. He marvelled at the vistas he had discovered since those days. "Not for us - Not for us. "We must perish in the wilderness. - Some day. Somewhen. But not for u s . . . . "Come to think, it is all the Child. The future is the Child. The Future. What are we - any of us - but servants or traitors to that? . . . "Natural Selection - it follows . . . this way is happiness . . . must be. There can be no other." He sighed. "To last a lifetime, that is. . .." "Career! In itself it is a career - the most important career in the world. Father! Why should I want more? . . . "It is the end of adolescence", he said; "the end of empty dreams...." He became very s t i l l . . . his eyes staring out of the blue oblong of the window. The dwindling light gathered itself together and became a star. (322-323)

In this passage, Lewisham's "Socialism", his "red-hot ambition of

41

"LOVE AMD M R . L E W I S H A M "

world mending", and his "empty dreams" are results of his overestimating his abilities (one structural aspect). "Natural Selection" is a result, in the Darwinian scheme, of the struggle for existence (another aspect), and the "Child" is literally a result of love for Ethel (the third aspect). The term "Natural Selection" is used here rather than "struggle for existence" in order to refer to Lewisham's biological as well as his social activity - his begetting of a child as well as his struggle. As Chaffery used the term earlier, it included both activities: To him "Natural Selection" was a life-force thai required both "children and stout honest work" (276). And elsewhere T. H. Huxley, Wells's teacher, used the term in the same inclusive way. "New species" are generated, wrote Huxley, "by the process of natural

selection

. . . - the struggle

for

existence

. . . exerting . . . that selective action".4 Struggle for existence, then, impels the natural selection which will generate the "species" of the "Future" - the Child who will "mend" the world. The originally planned Career is now an "empty dream", and so it cannot help to effect the future. But if it becomes a career of fatherhood, it can do so in a small way. Indeed, begetting a child is perhaps the only certain way that Lewisham, limited by his mortality as well as his abilities, can help to effect the future. By accepting fatherhood, then, he accepts the career which offers the greatest opportunity for personal fulfillment within his limitations. And so, the symbol of the child embraces the three main structural aspects: It represents not only Lewisham's love for Ethel and a "new species" generated by the struggle for existence but also a new "Career" suitable to his abilities. And the symbol is given more force, more finality, by the addition of a metaphor - the star. "Empty dreams" which are "ending" are readily comparable to "dwindling light" at dusk, and the comparison of a child to a star is almost apocryphal. Accordingly, out of the demise of an ureal Career is born a real Career - fatherhood; out of "the end of empty dreams" is born a child; and out o£ the "dwindling light" of dusk is born a star. 4

Thomas Henry Huxley, "The Origin of Species", Darwiniana (Vol. II of Collected Essays) (New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1897), p. 71.

II KIPPS

The first section of Kipps is entitled "The Making of Kipps". Appropriate to its title, the section describes not only his early formative years but also the social forces that "make" him. Until the appearance of Chitterlow in his life, social forces determine Kipps's development. And they are shown to be linked in a chain of cause and effect. It would seem, then, that Wells is writing not only in the realistic tradition but in the naturalistic (i.e., deterministic) tradition as well. However, after the appearance of Chitterlow in the fourth chapter, it becomes apparent that Wells has used determinism at first only to show its limitations later. Determinism ultimately becomes inadequate to account for Kipps's destiny. Over his entire life, the force of Chance or Fortune or Luck — erratic, unpredictable, indeterminable - assumes a much greater control. The novel, therefore, is not in the naturalistic tradition: Kipps's life is not so ruled by deterministic social forces that it becomes an inevitable decline toward ruin. Instead, ruled more strongly by Chance, his life becomes an erratic alternation of "ups and downs"; and the deterministic social forces merely provide that the alternation will be augured, somewhat prepared for, and thus made somewhat gradual. The predominance of Chance is one main theme in the novel. Another is the theme of vanity. The ultimate cause of each social force is shown to be some form of vanity. As a consequence, not only does Chance free Kipps from deterministic social forces but it frees him from vanity as well. It frees him from external vanities which only seemed to have become part of his character but which were really part of his relatives', friends', and even his nation's character.

"KIPPS"

43

At the beginning of the novel and of Kipps's life, two facts immediately determine his fate: Kipps is illegitimate, and yet his father is of a superior social class.1 Because his parents can never marry to legitimate him, Kipps cannot be raised in the world of gentlemen. Yet, he is also "set apart" from the lower-middle-class world in which he is raised. His mother and the aunt and uncle who raise him treat him as "set apart" not only because they exaggerate his quality (as is natural in relatives) but - again because he is illegitimate. And his mother treats him so for the additional reason that (as she alone knows) his father was of superior social quality. Even at the beginning of his life, then, appears the source of Kipps's later discontent - his feeling of alienation from both the world of gentility and the world of the lower middle class. Wells mentions that Kipps's mother "had something of that fine sense of social distinctions that subsequently played so large a part in Kipps's career" (4). Indeed, her "sense of social distinctions" determined the beginnings of his career and indirectly helped to affect the whole of it. First of all, her "sense" determined the nature of Kipps's schooling - and schooling had a lasting effect upon him. "He was not to go to a 'common' school, she provided, but to a 'middle-class academy', with mortar boards and every evidence of a higher social tone" (4). As subsequently described by Wells, Cavendish Academy was worthless because the schoolmaster, Mr. Woodrow, was concerned only with simulating the "higher social tone". The school "was called an Academy for Young Gentlemen", but its students "were the sons of credulous widows, anxious, as Kipps' mother had been, to get something a little 'superior' to a board school education. . . . Others were sent to demonstrate the dignity of their parents and guardians" (11). When Kipps's schooling was finished, its adverse effects upon him were apparent: "By the nature of his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and retreating 1

The latter fact is revealed only much later in the novel, but it is implied at the beginning by the mother's "desire to do her best for Kipps . . . as though Kipps were in some way a superior sort of person". (H. G. Wells, Kipps [New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927], pp. 4-5. All quotations are from this edition.)

44

"KIPPS"

in his manners' (36). When he and his friend Sid read a novelette together, Kipps fell behind, for "he read slowlier than Sid, whose education was of the inferior elementary school brand" (26). And so, because of his mother's "sense of social distinctions" - that is, her social vanity - Kipps was deprived of an adequate education. Her vanity determined that Kipps would grow up relatively ignorant. It was a "force" that, depriving Kipps of a major social opportunity, placed him one step lower in the social scale and perhaps (in naturalistic fashion) one step on the road to inevitable social ruin. Vanity satisfied at the expense of education was characteristic not only of credulous mothers. It was a national - even a nationalistic - vanity characteristic of lower-middle-class Englishmen. Because of it, the latter ignored or depreciated (the harm to themselves of an inadequate education. They believed that, after the age of thirteen, they could "get along" as well with as without more schooling. If they needed to learn anything afterwards, they could learn it by themselves. Even Mr. Chester Coote, the prominent social worker, asserted that "Self-Help" was the "noblest of all our distinctive English characteristics. . . . He was very much down upon the 'over-educated' Germans" (67). Indeed, "if Mr. Kipps had been so unfortunate as to have been born a German he might have been educated in an elaborate and costly special school ('overeducated - crammed u p ' . . .) to fit him for his end - such being their pedagogic way"(36-37). But, for lower-middleclass Englishmen, apprenticeship in a trade and, perhaps, "selfhelp" in their "free" time was more practical than schooling after the age of thirteen. Consequently, there was no need to decry a Cavendish Academy. It may have done Kipps little good, but, as preparation for apprenticeship, little harm either. Besides, if it did not satisfy some economic demand, it would have gone out of business altogether. And so, one need do nothing about it. It was a characteristically English vanity, therefore, a "national bias towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone, which entrusted his general education to Mr. Woodrow". And it was the same vanity, the same "bias" which then "indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford, of the Folkestone Drapery

45

"KIPPS"

Bazaar" (36). National vanity shaped the two social forces education and commerce - and so they affected Kipps in a like adverse manner. The unfairness and inefficiency of Mr. Shalford's system was comparable to Mr. Woodrow's, and their effects upon Kipps were practically the same. He remembered mainly In the Academy

In the Bazaar

"Sitting on creaking forms bored and idle" (12).

"What was more difficult than all, to do nothing.... He plumbed an abyss of boredom, or stood a mere carcass, with his mind far away" (48).

"A thousand . . . petty annoyances being perpetually 'passed on' according to the custom of the place;... Mr. Woodrow's raving days, when a scarcely sane injustice prevailed;... bullying and being bullied" (13).

Mr. Shalford would "issue sharp, confusing, contradictory orders very quickly.... They all snapped at Kipps.... If he put the ink down before he went to fetch things Mr. Shalford usually knocked it over, and if he took it away Mr. Shalford wanted it before he returned. . . . Mr. Shalford would become purple in the face and jab round with his dry pen at imaginary inkpots and swear, and Carshot would stand and vociferate, and the smart junior would run to the corner of the department and vociferate, and the second apprentice would pursue Kipps, vociferating.... Presently he was third apprentice . . . and there were three apprentices whom he might legally snub and c u f f (51-52 and 57).

"The school work varied according to the prevailing mood of Mr. Woodrow. Sometimes that was a despondent lethargy.

"There was nothing pedagogic about Mr. Shalford.... It was not Mr. Shalford's way to explain things." In the indentures

46

"KIPPS"

. . . Mr. Woodrow sat inanimate at bis desk heedless of school affairs, staring in front of him at unseen things" (14).

"there were vague stipulations about teaching the whole art and mystery of the trade to him; b u t . . . Mr. Shalford... set himself assiduously... to put as little into him as he could" (37, 43, and 44).

"There were memories of sleeping three in a bed" (13).

"He was allowed to share a bedroom with eight other young Englishmen" (44).

"The cold vacuity of the hour of preparation before the breadand-butter breakfast" (13).

"His round began at half-past six in the morning, when he would . . . dust boxes and yawn, and take down wrappers and clean the windows." Then he would be given "an austere breakfast of bread and margarine" (45).

Sundays were "terrible gaps of inanity —no work, no play, a drear expanse of time with the mystery of church twice and plum duff once in the middle" (14).

"On Sundays he was obliged to go to church once, and commonly he went twice, for there was nothing else to do. . . . In the intervals between services he walked about Folkestone with an air of looking for something" (49).

"Interspersed with the memories of this grey routine were certain patches of brilliant colour - the holidays . . . glorious days of 'mucking about' along the beach . . . the windy excursions. . . . In his memory of his boyhood they shone like strips of stained glass window in a dreary waste of scholastic wall, they grew brighter and brighter as they grew remoter" (15-17).

"He would compare his dismal round of servile drudgery with those windy, sunlit days at Littlestone, those windows of happiness shining ever brighter as they receded" (54).

"KIPPS"

47

Apparently "inexorable fate" had appointed him to be badly educated. Now, the same "inexorable fate . . . appointed him to serve his country in commerce" (36). And it then prevented Kipps from "self-help" to further education. Whereas the intellectual harm done him by Cavendish Academy discouraged "self-help", the exigencies of the apprenticeship system practically forbade it. As an apprentice Kipps could not see "how he might set about a little self-help on his own private account in such narrow margins of time as the System of Mr. Shalford spared him" (67). His round beginning at half-past six in the morning and ending with a supper "rarely much later than nine, . . . the rest of the day was entirely at his disposal for reading, recreation, and the improvement of his mind. . . . The front door was locked at half-past ten, and the gas in the dormitory extinguished at eleven" (49). But, even in this "free" time, Kipps "never read a book; there were none for him to read, and besides, in spite of Mr. Woodrow's guidance through a cheap and cheaply annotated edition of the Tempest (English Literature) he had no taste that way; he never read any newspapers, except occasionally Tit-Bits or a ha'penny 'comic' " (50). Once, a young lady "instructed him how to get books from the public library. He was to get a form of application for a ticket signed by a ratepayer; and he said 'of course', when she said Mr. Shalford would do that, though all the time he knew perfectly well it would 'never do' to ask Mr. Shalford for anything of the sort" (85). Only knowledge could enable Kipps to understand his "fate" and thus become free of it. But, comparatively ignorant, he was hopelessly confused. "He felt that the whole business was unjust and idiotic, but the why and the wherefore was too much for his unfortunate brain. His mind was a welter" (52). Only education could enable Kipps to find a way of escaping the system. But self-education was discouraged by the system itself - a vicious circle - and by his mental apathy resulting from formal schooling. And so, it seemed that escape was cut off for him, that the system and "fate" had him caught in a deterministic manner. It was Minton, his co-worker, who put this outlook into words for Kipps. "When you get too old to work they chuck you away. . . . You

48

"KIPPS"

find old drapers everywhere - tramps, beggars, dock labourers, 'bus conductors - Quod. Anywhere but in a crib." They don't get shops of their own, Minton complains, because as drapers' shopmen, they can't save enough capital. "You got to stick to cribs until it's over. I tell you we're in a blessed drainpipe, and we've got to crawl along it till we die" (52-53). This idea of naturalistic determinism takes root in Kipps's mind. It provides a means by which he can "dimly perceive" a part of the truth, whereas before - his mind a "welter" - he could perceive nothing at all. Now he "would lie awake . . . and think dismally of the outlook Minton pictured. Dimly he perceived the thing that had happened to him - how the great, stupid machine of retail trade had caught his life into its wheels, a vast, irresistible force which he had neither strength of will nor knowledge to escape. This was to be his life until his days should end. . . . They were caught - they were all caught" (53-55). Under the sway of determinism, Kipps gradually becomes resigned to his "fate". But another influence also fosters his resignation: the Established Church. In the figure of a preaching clergyman, the Established Church exhorts Kipps "thai whatever his hand found to do, he was to do with all his might; and the revision of his Catechism. . . reminded him that it behooved him 'to do his duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call him. . . .' " Consequently, "he subdued himself to his position even as his Church required of him, seeing moreover no way out of it" (56). Still another influence which fosters Kipps's resignation is his developing social vanity. Initially he had not been vain; and, by the time he was apprenticed, he still did not possess his own social vanity. Instead, he followed - and thus possessed only by sympathy - the vanity of his aunit and uncle, since theirs had influenced him from his birth. But their vanity is sufficient to make Kipps accept his place in the commercial system. When he wrote home "some vague intimation of his feelings about business and his prospects, quoting Minton . . . Mrs. Kipps answered him, 'Did he want the Pornicks [their next-door neighbors] to say he wasn't good enough to be a draper?' This dreadful possibility was

"KIPPS"

49

of course conclusive in the matter. 'No', he resolved they should not say he failed at that" (55). Other vanities - though they do not encourage acceptance of his "fate" - yet mitigate the dejection resulting from acceptance. "Distractions, the natural distractions of adolescence . . . take his mind off the inevitable. His costume, for example, began to interest him more; he began to realise himself as a visible object, to find an interest in the costume-room mirrors and the eyes of the girl apprentices" (57). And "most potent help of all in the business of forgetting his cosmic disaster was this, that so soon as he was in tail coats the young ladies of the establishment began to discover . . . that he was a 'nice boy' " (57-58). Flirtations inevitably follow. But "the very deepest of these affairs was still among the shallow places of love. . . . Affairs of clothes and vanities they were" (60). One of the young ladies then introduces him to further (or more grown-up) vanities. She explains to him "how a gentleman must always walk 'outside' a lady on a pavement, and how all gentlemen wore, or at least carried gloves, and generally the broad beginnings of the British social ideal. . . . In this way . . . did that pervading ambition of the British young man to be, if not a 'gentleman', at least mistakably like one, take root in his heart" (59). This growing vanity is, significantly, one of social distinctions and is fairly characteristic of all young English apprentices. Kipps now becomes a representative of a social class - and consequently Wells's instrument for criticizing the social structure. Indeed, it is the entire social structure - from the lowest class to the highest - that Wells is criticizing in the novel. All classes are pervaded by the vanity of social distinctions - even unified by it. Such is the universality of vanity "that the shop young lady in England has just the same horror of doing anything that savours of the servant girl as the lady journalist, let us say, has of anything savouring of the shop girl, or the really quite nice young lady has of anything savouring of any sort of girl who has gone down into the economic battlefield to earn herself a living" (60). The world of independent wealth and gentility (which Kipps is soon to join) is "in part an endorsement, in part an amplifica-

50

"KIPPS"

tion and in part a rectification of the world of Kipps, the world thai derived from the old couple [his guardians] . . . and had been developed in the Emporium; the world, in fact, of common British life. There was the same subtle sense of social graduation that had moved Mrs. Kipps to prohibit intercourse with labourers' children and the same dread of anything 'common' that had kept the personal quality of Mr. Shalford's establishment so high" (272-273). The novel is partly a survey (through Kipps's eyes) of the classes of British society. And since these classes are unified by a common vanity of social distinctions, the novel itself may be considered to be unified by this theme of vanity. From now on, Kipps's sense of social distinctions increases steadily; and it is partly aided by a growing sense of his social inferiority. He first senses this inferiority in relation to the girl apprentices, but he later feels it much more intensely in a relationship with two genteel young ladies - with Miss Helen Walshingham and her freckled girl friend, Kipps's teacher and classmate respectively in a wood-carving class he attends. His sense of inferiority is soon noted by the two young women. "It struck the girls that there was a quality of modest disavowal" about Kipps (79). "He confided, he submitted, and for both of them he had the realest, the most seductive flattering undertone of awe and reverence" (217). And so, in the classroom, Miss Walshingham and her friend respond by regarding him in a flattering way: They talked him over, and the freckled girl discovered there was something "wistful" in his manner. They detected a "natural delicacy", and the freckled girl set herself to draw him o u t . . . . Under her sympathetic management the position of Kipps was presently defined quite clearly. He was unhappy in his position - misunderstood. He told her he "didn't seem to get on like" with customers, and she translated this for him as "too sensitive". (80-81) He reacts expansively. Talk of authors having . . . impressed the imagination of Kipps very greatly,... he let it be drawn from him that his real choice in life was to be a Nawther"only one doesn't get a chance". After that there were times when Kipps had that pleasant sense that comes of attracting interest. He was a mute, inglorious Dickens, or at any rate something of that sort, and they were all taking him

"KIPPS"

51

at that. . . . He was unfortunate, he was futile, but he was not "common." Even now with help...? The two girls, and the freckled girl in particular, tried to "stir him up" to some effort to do his imputed potentialities justice. (82-83) Just as the female apprentices fostered his vanity of social distinctions, so do the young ladies of the wood-carving class. Kipps wants to appear to them as an author because such an appearance would satisfy his vanity of social distinctions. T o him, authors were "a class that seemed to bridge the gulf. On the one hand essentially Low, but by factitious circumstances capable of entering upon those levels of social superiority to which all true Englishmen aspire, those levels from which one may tip a butler, scorn a tailor, and even commune with those who lead 'men' into battle. 'Almost like gentlefolks' - that was it" (82). And so, the encouragement he receives in response to his humility serves only to increase his vanity. But "as soon as he emerged from the first effect of pure and awestricken humility . . . he perceived that he was in a state of adoration for Miss Walshingham that it seemed almost a blasphemous familiarity to speak of as being in love. . . . H e meditated about her when he was blocking cretonne; her image was before his eyes at tea-time, and . . . made him silent and preoccupied" (72-73). Unfortunately, his preoccupation makes him careless in his work, and, because of that carelessness, he draws nearer to the point where he will be fired from his job - " f o r Shalford, taking exception at a certain absent-mindedness that led to mistakes and more particularly to the ticketing of several articles in Kipps' Manchester window upside down, had been 'on to' him for the past few days in an exceedingly onerous manner" (88). Thus, the vanity that leads to love humility may lead him also to the loss of his job; and this loss, according to naturalistic tradition, would place him one more step on the road to inevitable social ruin. Then he meets Chitterlow. Through him Kipps becomes acquainted with whiskey and the siate of pleasant, incipient drunkenness. The whiskey produces in Kipps a vain illusion that he is "a bright young man of promise" (102). But then the clock strikes

52

"KIPPS"

eleven and reminds Kipps that he has already been locked out of his lodgings above the emporium. He and Chitterlow go there anyway, but they see "the exterior of the Emporium, shut and darkened. . . . It appeared to Kipps that the establishment was closed to him for evermore. Those gilded letters, in spite of appearances, spelt FINIS for him. . . . This was the knife, this was final. He had stayed out, he had got drunk, there had been that row about the Manchester window dressing only three days ago" (106). Ruin now seems to be upon him. Unemployment and the economic misery that attends it appear to be inevitable. And Kipps may become such a job-hunting draper as Buggins (Kipps's co-worker) once described: "Boots been inked in some reading rooms . . . hat been wetted, collar frayed, tail coat buttoned up, black chest-plaster tie-spread out. Shirt, you know, gone Buggins pointed upward with a pious expression. "No shirt, I expect?" "Eat it", said Buggins. (124) Kipps tries to account for the steps that have made this condition imminent, but in his ignorance he reverts to the deterministic formula: "Why had he done it? Why hadn't he gone at ten? Because one thing leads to another. One thing, he generalized, always does lead to another" (116). And again, when "in the perplexed privacies of his own mind he could not understand how everything had happened", he concludes that "he had been the Victim of Fate, or at least of one as inexorable - Chitterlow" (123). It might be expected that, after finding the shop closed, Kipps would indulge that same night in drinking more heavily. Drink would console him, perhaps, for the inexorable fate that awaits him - dismissal and unemployment. And Kipps does, at least, begin drinking. But here, it is also shown that complete drunkenness will not follow - ever - and that Kipps therefore may not be on the brink of a naturalistic decline after all. He became "glad there was so little more Methusaleh to drink beoause that would prevent his getting drunk. He knew that he was not now

"KIPPS"

53

drunk, but he knew that he had had enough. He was one of those who always know when they have had enough" (114). Here, what might be called "character" - an internal influence - saves him from "Environment" — the external influence by people and deterministic social forces. And, from now on, Kipps's Character will appear more and more in opposition to his Environment. Character, of course, will not allow Kipps to escape determinism. But Kipps's behavior will be determined by his own genuine Character traits - by solidity, conservatism, common sense, even prudishness - rather than by the vanities acquired from his Environment. And these traits - like the vanities - are also characteristic of lower-middle-class Englishmen. Character determinism in general is illustrated by Chitterlow's claim that, if an actor has a "lot of ups and downs", it is usually his own fault. "If it isn't one thing it's another. If it isn't the manager's wife it's bar-bragging. I tell you things happen at times. I'm a fatalist. The fact is Character has you. You can't get away from it. You may think you do, but you don't. . . . It's what makes tragedy Psychology really. It's the Greek irony - Ibsen and - all that. Up to date" (112). But Wells himself does not believe in a supreme determinism by Character any more than in a supreme determinism by Environment. He shows his disbelief by describing unsympathetically Chitterlow's above summary. Chitterlow, says Wells, "emitted this exhaustive summary of high-toned modern criticism as if he was repeating a lesson while thinking of something else" (112). And Chitterlow's method of obtaining names for dramatic characters seems a satire upon all determinist authors: He searches the daily newspaper. "I went down the column and every blessed name that seemed to fit my play I took. Documents whenever you can. I like 'em hot and real" (130-131). And, for a farce - a play of the most unrealistic kind - "real" names seem extraneous. From the farce he is writing, Chitterlow mentions a representative scene - "a man with a live beetle down the back of his neck trying to seem at his ease in a roomful of people" (103). The unreality of this scene mocks Chitterlow's idea that "real" names will have a bearing on whether the play succeeds or not.

54

"KIPPS"

For Wells, Character and Environment are not the only determinants of life. Chance, a third and saving factor, intervenes. It ultimately determines the "ups and downs" of life (indeed, Chance is not "determinism" at all, but "accidentalism"); and its supremacy over both Environment and Character makes hope possible. A s Buggins remarks to the fired Kipps, "Curious thing . . . but every time I've had the swap I've never believed I should get another Crib - never. But I have. . . . Always. So don't lose heart, whatever you d o " (123). The supremacy of Chance and the possibility of hope is also the theme of the second "speech" made by Masterman, Sid's tenant. In his first speech, Masterman seemed to deny Chance and hope. His despair seemed to be evidence of Wells's belief in naturalistic determinism, for Masterman thought himself caught by the system: "What have I had? I found myself at thirteen being forced into a factory like a rabbit into a chloroformed b o x . . . . But even a child of that age could see what it meant, that Hell of a factory! Monotony and toil and contempt and dishonour! And then death. So I fought at thirteen!" Minton's "crawling up a drain pipe until you die" echoed in Kipps' mind. Masterman does allow a small degree of Chance, but not enough to inspire hope. " I got out at last - somehow. . . . For a bit. Some of us get out by luck, some by cunning, and crawl on to the grass, exhausted and crippled to die. That's a poor man's success, Kipps. Most of us don't get out at all. I worked all day and studied half the night, and here I am with the common consequences. Beaten! And never once have I had a fair chance, never once" (331-332)! However, several days after this outburst, Masterman again views the matter, and his second view serves to cancel the first. Kipps tells him then, "I often thought about what you said last time I saw y o u " . . . . " I wonder what I said", said Masterman in parenthesis.... "After a l l , . . . there's hope." "What about?" said Sid. "Everything", said Masterman....

"KIPPS"

55

Masterman lifted his glass. "Here's to Hope!" he said, "The Light of the World!" . . . "Here's to Hope", repeated Masterman. "The best thing one can have. Hope of l i f e - y e s . " (381-382)

If Masterman is thought to be Wells's spokesman, then Wells's final word would also be - not naturalistic despair - but hope. When Chance brings hope and good fortune to Kipps, it brings them in the person of Chitterlow. His symbolic function in Kipps's life is stated in the description of their first meeting: "There it was that Fortune came upon him, in disguise and with a loud shout . . . followed immediately by a violent blow in the back" (89). Later, this omen is forgotten as Chitterlow causes Kipps to lose his job. Chitterlow then seems to be an omen of ill fortune. As he talks and drinks, Chitterlow seems more and more to represent the ineffectual failure that Kipps may become - and the congenital drunk that Kipps might have become but for "Character". Even Kipps "doubted whether Chitterlow might not be one of those people who did not know when they have had enough" (114). But there are greater differences in Character between Chitterlow and Kipps. Chitterlow is unsubstantial, erratic, and completely lacking in solid, English middle-class traits. This difference in Character determines that the two will inevitably fall out or at least drift apart after a short acquaintance. In fact, after but one evening of Chitterlow's incessant talk about his playwriting, Kipps "discovered that he disapproved of Chitterlow. Highly. It seemed to him that Chitterlow went on and on like a river. For a time he was inexplicably and quite unjustly cross with Chitterlow and wanted to say to him, 'you got the gift of the gab', but he only got so far as to say 'the gift', and then Chitterlow thanked him. . . . So he eyed Chitterlow with a baleful eye until it dawned upon him that a most extraordinary thing was taking place" (114-115): In telling Kipps about his current play, Chitterlow calls its main character by the name of "Kipps" - a name he chose long before he met the original. This "extraordinary thing" is an instance of Chance at work - Chance superseding the influence of Character, Chance working to Kipps's advantage. It works at the moment he

56

"KIPPS"

is about to express an antipathy that may dissolve their association. It thus prolongs the association until they should discover the cause of the "extraordinary thing" and thereby the good fortune and wealth that will completely change their lives. Soon the apparently "disastrous Chitterlow descended upon Kipps with the most amazing coincidence in the world" (128): He had found the cause of the "extraordinary thing". For the main character in his play, he had taken the name "Kipps" from a random newspaper item — a solicitor's inquiry for a missing heir named "Kipps". Now he accosted Kipps with the good news. "I took that newspaper up to get my names by the merest chance. Directly I saw it again and read that - I knew it was you. I believe in coincidences. People say they don't happen. / say they do. Everything's a coincidence. Seen properly. Here you are. Here's one! Incredible? Not a bit of it" (131)! Chitterlow is here the spokesman of coincidence, of Chance. Just as Chance proverbially brings good fortune disguised as bad, so does its agent Chitterlow bring into Kipps's life good fortune initially disguised as bad. Though Chance is now shown to predominate over Environment and Character, it does not make them non-existent. Kipps's life from now on does not follow a course of erratic, unpredictable accident. It still assumes a "pattern" - The term itself implies a trend and thus a certain determinism. But this pattern is neither predictable - as Environment and Character unchecked might make it - nor completely unpredictable - as Chance alone might make it. Life becomes a course of "ups and downs" since Chance predominates, but the other two forces determine that the "ups and downs" will be augured, prepared for, and thus made somewhat gradual. In graphic terms, his life might be considered an irregularly alternating curve rather than a zigzag, jagged line. Thus, the period of his schooldays at Cavendish Academy (the influence of Environment then predominating) may be considered a declining part of the curve. The following love interlude with Ann Pornick (the influence of Character then predominating) may be considered a rising part. His period at the emporium (Environment again predominant) is again a decline - at least until

"kipps"

57

he accepts his defeat by life and submits to his "fate". But then, from this "bottom" point, his fate is mitigated. After a time the sorrows of Kipps grew less acute, and save for a miracle the brief tragedy of his life was over. He subdued himself to his position. .. . The earliest mitigation of his lot was that his soles and ankles became indurated to the perpetual standing. The next was an unexpected weekly whiff of freedom that came every Thursday.... Kipps could emerge in daylight and go where he listed for long, long hours. Moreover Minton, the pessimist, reached the end of his appointed time and l e f t . . . . In a little while Kipps cleaned windows no longer.... and presently he was third apprentice.... There came still other distractions, the natural distractions of adolescence, to take his mind off the inevitable. (56-57) The chain of vanities involving clothes and love affairs with female apprentices "kept him going as much as anything through all these servile years" (61). If all these mitigating circumstances do not indicate an upward trend to the curve, they at least augur one. They augur the good fortune that soon will more than mitigate - will transform Kipps's whole life. The "weekly whiff of freedom" from the emporium augurs the complete freedom that is to be his when he is independently wealthy. The departure of Minton, who is spokesman for Environmental determinism, augurs the lessening of that force hereafter in Kipps's life. And the love vanities and series of engagements to female apprentices augur his love humility toward Helen Walshingham and his engagement to her afterwards. As a result of Chance, Kipps's change from penniless unemployment to independent wealth would be an abrupt rise, were it not for the above mitigating circumstances which augur and somewhat prepare for the rise - and were it not even more for Kipps's protracted uncertainty about his wealth - an uncertainty which may be said to "retard" the rise once it has begun. This uncertainty is shown on three separate occasions. When Kipps proclaims his ownership of a town house to a gentleman passer-by and the gentleman remains unconvinced, Kipps becomes unconvinced too. When he proclaims his wealth to his guardians and they disbelieve, he begins to disbelieve also. And that night, his

58

"KIPPS"

past life returns in a dream and makes the new life unreal to him when he wakes in the morning. This protracted uncertainty and the above mitigating circumstances make the rise of

Kipps's

fortunes gradual.2 And, since they are results of Environment and Character, it may be said that, here, deterministic forces "smooth out" into a curve the abrupt changes produced by Chance. Even after Kipps is first propelled securely into a life of wealth, Chance still favors him. It promotes his engagement to Helen Walshingham and leads him, graphically, to the "top of the curve" -

or literally and figuratively, to the "'height" of success. A s

Wells phrases it, within two months after becoming

wealthy

"Kipps had clambered to the battlements of Heart's Desire" (218). The battlements are those of medieval Lympne Castle situated at the top of the highest hill in the district. On a parapet of the castle Kipps proposes marriage and Helen accepts. It is here - at this highest point in the district -

that Fortune appropriately

raises the curve of his life to its highest point thus far. On this occasion "things favoured him, the day favoured him, everyone favoured him" (219). A n d

"Fortune, to crown their efforts"

(220), gives him the opportunity to perform a deed that looks more heroic to Helen than it is. A s they went "up the steep slopes toward the mediaeval castle on the crest the thing was also manifest in her eyes" (222). Approaching the height of the hill, Kipps approaches the height of his desires. " H e r e it was, high out of the world of everyday" (223) that Kipps proposes. A n d when Helen accepts, "he felt as a praying hermit might have felt, snatched from the midst of his quiet devotions, his modest sackcloth and ashes, and hurled neck and crop over the glittering gates of Paradise, smack among the iridescent wings, the

bright-eyed

Cherubim. H e felt like some lowly and righteous man dynamited into Bliss" (227-228). Yet, even at this high point, there are omens of the downward curve to follow. Helen's underestimation of Kipps was reversed His uncertainty about his wealth also serves to augur his later loss of that wealth and then his realization, after he regains it, that it is basically "unreal". 2

"KIPPS"

59

by his heroic deed; but "in her moment of reaction she went perhaps too far in the opposite direction" (222). Her confidence in him now is perhaps as "unreal" as her lack of confidence before. This note of "unreality" in their relationship is augmented by their being "high out of the world of everyday" when he proposes to her. It is here implied that, when they climb down from the hill to the reality of "everyday", their relationship also will "descend". And so, their leaving the castle parapet is phrased significantly: "He turned about, and with something very like a scared expression on his face led the way into the obscurity of their descent" (228). A few days later, the downward curve begins. Kipps senses a change in his feelings. "Somewhere at the back of his mind, dim and mingled with doubt and surprise, appeared the perception that he felt now quite differently towards her, that something between them had been blown from Lympne Keep to the four winds of heaven" (241). Afterwards he still "could not analyse his feelings, only he knew the world was wonderfully changed about them, but the truth was that, though he still worshipped and feared her . . . he loved her now no more. That subtle something woven of the most delicate strands of self-love and tenderness and desire, had vanished imperceptibly; and was gone now for ever. But that she did not suspect in him, nor as a matter of fact did he" (260). Soon, however, he begins to suspect his feelings, or at least their ambivalent nature. "He loved Helen, he revered Helen. He was also beginning to hate her with some intensity. When he thought of that expedition to Lympne, profound, vague, beautiful emotions flooded his being; when he thought of. . . her latest comment on his bearing, he found himself rebelliously composing fierce and pungent insults, couched in the vernacular" (299). Besides the early omens at Lympne and his sense of an emotional change, there are other portents that their relationship is declining. Kipps finds himself wanting to delay the marriage as long as possible; he is unable to ask Helen to "name the day"; he forgets continually to announce his engagement to his guardians; and he cannot accustom himself to the idea of the engagement. Directly after Helen's acceptance, "he did not say even in the

60

"KIPPS"

recesses of his heart that she was his" (231). He confesses to Chester Coote, "I can't 'ardly believe it. I can't believe it at all. No!" Unbelievably to Kipps, Coote "talked of when 'it' might be, he presented the thing as concrete and credible" (233). "You know", Kipps persists - this time to Helen - "I can't 'ardly believe it. . . . It's as though everything 'ad changed. More even than when I got my money" (241). Like his earlier disbelief in the inheritance, his disbelief in their engagement indicates the unreality of the doubted object and portends its eventual end. While his love for Helen is declining, his feelings for Ann Pornick - the sweetheart of his youth - return and increase. They increase partly because his love for Helen is decreasing; they augur that his relationship with Helen will end and that his relationship with Ann will develop into marriage. At a time when he is still only surprised to find his love for Helen changing, he returns for a visit to New Romney - where he and Ann were once next-door neighbors - and wonders about his changed feelings for Helen. As his wonder gradually turns to memories of his youth with Ann, he happens upon Ann herself. Even before they are finished greeting each other, "all and more than all of those first emotions of his adolescence had come back to him. Her presence banished a multitude of countervaling considerations. It was Ann more than ever" (287). Thereafter, he thinks of Ann and Helen together; and in the juxtaposition Helen gradually loses favor. The change in Kipps's feelings indicates that his "ascent" toward Helen and gentility has been in vain. But just before Kipps meets Ann, Wells makes the point directly - perhaps to make it obvious to the reader: One cannot hide any longer that all this fine progress of Kipps is doomed to end in collapse. So far indeed you have seen him ascend. You have seen him becoming more refined and careful day by day, more carefully dressed, less clumsy in the ways and methods of social life. You have seen the gulf widening between himself and his former low associates.... All the time I have refrained from the lightest touch upon the tragic note that must now creep into my tale. Yet the net of his low connections has been about his feet, and moreover there was something interwoven in his being.... (281)

"kipps"

61

Unfortunately, before Kipps renounces Helen completely and accepts his love for Ann, he vacillates between the two. When he is in New Romney, he chooses Ann; but, whenever he travels back to Folkestone - the place of his wealth, the home of Helen and genteel society - vanities and prejudices, like the landscape, "close in upon him". As he rode through Hythe he came upon the idea that there was a considerable amount of incompatibility between the existence of one who was practically a gentleman and of Ann. In the neighbourhood of Seabrook he began to think he had, in some subtle way, lowered himself by walking along by the side of A n n . . . . After all, she was only a servant. (288) What had happened at New Romney, he must bury in his memory and begin again at the reconstruction of his social position. Ann, Buggins, Chitterlow, all these, seen in the matter-of-fact light of the Folkestone train, stood just as they stood before; people of an inferior social position who had to be eliminated from his world. (354-355) New Romney and Folkestone come to represent his two opposing "worlds" - middle-class economy versus genteel wealth, contentment versus obligation, Ann versus Helen. But his feelings for Ann are so persistent that they begin to plague him even in Folkestone. Then Ann takes a position as housemaid in Folkestone, and Kipps discovers her serving at a social gathering which includes Helen. His two "worlds" converge at last, and the stress of the situation causes him finally to choose between the two women: He elopes with Ann. In deciding, Kipps is free - at least temporarily - of the vanities of both middle-class and genteel societies; he thus makes a decision true to his own Character. "For once in his life he . . . distinctly made up his mind on his own account" (373). The following chapter, the last of the middle book, is a chapter apart. In it, as in the final chapter of the novel, Kipps is free not only of middle-class and genteel vanities but of the social system entirely. He and Ann escape from the genteel world of Folkestone, flee "through our complex and difficult social system", and finally pass through a "multitudinous swarming London" to Sid's house. There the social system can be understood, for Sid's house is a haven from it. Kipps may not be able to understand the system,

62

"KIPPS"

but Sid's tenant, Masterman, can. It is he who analyzes for Kipps what a genteel marriage would have implied and what his middleclass marriage does imply: You were starting a climb . . . that doesn't lead anywhere. You would have clambered from one refinement of vulgarity to another and never got to any satisfactory top. There isn't a top. It's a squirrel's cage.... You'd have hung on, a disconsolate, dismal, little figure, somewhere up the ladder, far below even the motor-car class, while your wife larked about-or fretted because she wasn't a bit higher than she was.... Anyhow, you're doing the right and sane thing, and that's a rare spectacle. You're going to marry your equal, and you're going to take your own line, quite independently of what people up there, or people down there, think you ought or ought not to do. (381-382) Later, Kipps tries to explain to Ann how their marriage and his engagement to Helen ever came about. Instinctively he approaches the truth, but he never realizes it sufficiently to express it with exactness. For instance, he rightly suspects that, despite the strong feelings which attracted him to Ann, Chance was the predominant influence leading to their marriage. "It's a lark, our marrying", he says. "It's curious 'how things come about. If I 'adn't run against you, where should I 'ave been now. Eh? . . . Even after we met, I didn't seem to see it like - not marrying you I mean - until that night I came" (385). He wonders even more how he ever came to be engaged to Helen. "It's curious. . . . Life, jolly rum; that's one thing any'ow." By calling life "jolly rum", Kipps judges it to be odd, strange, full of wonder. He expresses as nearly as he can that quality in life which results from the unexpected, the unpredictable - from Chance. Kipps then concludes this quality to be in himself too: "And I suppose I'm a rum sort of feller. I get excited sometimes, and then I don't seem to care what I do. That's about what it was reely. Still - " (385-386). The conclusion, however, that he is "a rum sort of feller" is incorrect, for he is a predictable, determinable product of Character and Environment. His conclusion here misses the truth, even as it missed it on an earlier occasion - At that time Wells ridiculed it:

"KIPPS"

63

"When I'm reely excited", he said, "I don't seem to care what I do. I'm like that." . . . The fire grimaced behind his back, and his shadow on the wall and ceiling was disrespectfully convulsed. (186) His final disclaimer, "Still - " , indicates that he too is still somewhat dissatisfied with his conclusion. And so, later he returns to his original expression, "rum", but he can develop it no further. On this occasion he and Ann are visiting the Crystal Palace and are seated before an exhibit of prehistoric-animal replicas. At this point in his reflections he notices a stuffed Labyrinthodon in front of him. He sees a facial resemblance - or, more significantly, a resemblance in facial expression - between the Labyrinthodon and Chester Coote, between the paragon of prehistoric animals and the paragon of gentility. But Kipps is unaware of the implications in his comparison. He merely observes that the Labyrinthodon is " . . . jest like old Coote." "It's extinct", said Ann, not clearly apprehending. "I dessay 'e is. But 'e's jest like old Coote all the same for that. . . . I wonder 'ow all these old antediluvium animals got extinct.... No one couldn't possibly 'ave killed ' e m . " . . . The great green and gold Labyrinthodon took no notice of their conversation. It gazed with its wonderful eyes over their heads into the infinite - inflexibly calm. It might indeed have been Coote himself there, Coote, the unassuming, cutting them dead. (390-391) Here, through Kipps's observation, Wells is implying that it is gentility which is extinct. Like an "antediluvium" species, it has not been - could not have been - "killed". Instead, outmoded in a changing society and no longer functional to it, gentility has passed away, and only its lifeless replicas, mere empty forms, remain on the scene. Coote's self-possession is therefore the selfpossession of a lifeless body. In performing the act of "cutting dead", he seems only to pretend a lifeless disregard of a "dead" outsider. But actually Coote is himself "dead", and his seeming disregard is really a lifeless gaze past the vitally living. Unfortunately, Kipps will not realize this implication when, later, he is actually "cut" by Coote. An understanding of the nature of Coote and of gentility would then have prevented Kipps

64

"KIPPS"

from being stricken by the "cut". But by that time Kipps will have become immersed once more in the social system. He will again be affected by its vanities and will therefore be stricken by the "cut". And he will not again be free of the system and its vanities until the final chapter of the novel. Hence, Chapter IX of Book II - appropriately entitled "The Labyrinthodon" - may be considered an interlude, a disclosure of the truth through Kipps, though not to Kipps. What portion of the truth he can realize will come at the end of the novel. The next chapter indicates that Kipps is once more becoming a part of the social system. Its vanities are again his own. Shopping with Ann in Bond Street, Kipps "looked at the passers-by and it . . . suddenly occurred to him that Ann was dowdy. He . . . noted the hat of a very proud-looking lady passing in an electric brougham and . . . resolved to get Ann the nearest thing to that." But the hat he chose - "a flourishing hat with feathers and buckle and bows and things" - hid her simple, clean brightness behind a "preposterous dignity". Passers-by "perceived some subtle incongruity in Ann, . . . and Kipps, a little pale, blowing a little, not in complete possession of himself, knew that they noticed her and him. . . . "Ere!' said Kipps to a cabman, and regretted too late a vanished Ή ' " (395-396). Kipps and Ann now return from London to the district around Folkestone - a trip which makes his "return" to the social system and its vanities more than figurative. In an address to the reader, Wells states this meaning of their "return" directly: We English . . . live in a strange atmosphere . . . of insistent, triumphant petty things, we are given up to the fine littlenesses of intercourse; table manners and small correctitudes are the substance of our lives. You do not escape these things for long even by so catastrophic a proceeding as flying to London with a young lady of no wealth and inferior social position. The mists of noble emotion swirl and pass and there you are divorced from all your deities and grazing in the meadows under the Argus eyes of the social system, the innumerable mean judgments you feel raining upon you, upon your clothes and bearing, upon your pretensions and movements. (397) The apparent occasion for their return to the Folkestone district is to find a model house in which to live. It is to be a home outside

"KIPPS"

65

the social system and free of its vanities: "a sensible little 'ouse and sensible things. N o art or anything of that sort, nothing stuckup or anything, but jest sensible" (388). However, "to go househunting is to spy out the nakedness of this pretentious world" (398), and this world can still lead Kipps into demonstrations of vanity. When unsympathetic house agents take lightly his requirements, he proudly resolves to have a house built to order. And, when his uncle and an ambitious architect appeal to his pride, he accepts plans for a house more ornate than he and Ann want. Moreover, he becomes defensive and proud whenever his guardians and genteel acquaintances show disdain for his having married "beneath him". He complains to Ann: We must 'ave servants.... We got to keep up our position, any'ow. . . . It stands to reason, Ann, we got a position. Very well! I can't 'ave you scrubbin' floors. You got to 'ave a servant and you got to manage a 'ouse. You wouldn't 'ave me ashamed.... I'm not a-going to be looked down upon It's not only Uncle I'm thinking o f ! . . . I won't 'ave that young Walshingham f r instance, sneering and sniffling at me. Making out as if we was all wrong. I see 'im yesterday Nor Co ote neether. I'm as good - we're as good. Whatever's 'appened. (420) Kipps's hasty substitution of "we're" for "I'm as good" betrays that his guardians' pride in respect to the Poraicks has become his own. Later, when Ann notifies him of callers turned away accidentally, his social vanity reaches an extreme and becomes completely at odds with the honest simplicity of Ann. " Y o u got to return that call", he tells her. "It's in Manners and Rools of Good S'ity. Y o u got to find jest 'ow many cards to leave and you got to go and leave 'em" (437). But, when she shrinks from the idea, he realizes that their position in society is as good as lost. By that evening, vanity has brought him to the low point of his life, and "in the small hours Kipps lay awake at the nadir of unhappiness". Besides his social ambitions, his relationship with Ann also seems to be ruined. He knows that his harsh words have caused her to cry. Yet "he hardened his heart; resolutely he hardened his heart" (440),

66

"KIPPS"

A t this low point, Wells addresses the reader directly in order to summarize the several themes and episodes of the novel and to unify them under one main topic: that improper influences throughout Kipps's life have made him subject to vanity. As I think of them lying unhappily there in the darkness,... I can see... brooding over them... a monster, a lumpish monster,... like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, l i k e . . . Dulness,... like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life. It is . . . Stupidity. My Kippses live in its shadow. Shalford and his apprenticeship system, the Hastings Academy, the ideas of Coote, the ideas of the old Kippses, all the ideas that have made Kipps what he is, all these are its shadow. But for that monster they might not be groping among false ideas and hurt one another so sorely and so stupidly. (441) The following day brings only more calamity. Kipps receives news of financial ruin. Young Walshingham, whom Kipps had made his solicitor and investments counselor, has embezzled his fortune and absconded. Almost simultaneously, then, in three aspects - social vanity, relationship with Ann, and financial condition Kipps reaches the lowest point of his career. Fortunately however, financial ruin causes him to realize and then admit to Ann the folly of his social vanity and his unfairness to her. The reconciliation that follows is the first improvement in their relationship. And just before, an improvement in their fortunes was omened. Ann was optimistic when Kipps told her of Walshingham's embezzlement. But, she did not insist on her own view. When Kipps finds out that Walshingham was not able to touch some investments worth about a thousand pounds, Ann's view is understood to have been another omen. Indeed, Ann's view is the last in a series of omens that prepare the reader for the theft itself. Even Kipps becomes aware of these omens but only when it is too late. He admits to Ann, " I ought to 'ave known. I did in a sort of way know. . . . I knew 'e wasn't to be depended upon and there I left it" (499)! In fact, only the day before, Kipps had had his latest portent as he had passed the site of his house-building operations and, seeing hardly anyone at work, had suspected that "the builders were having him, young Walshingham was having him, everybody was having him" (431).

"KIPPS"

67

And earlier that day Kipps had augured the truth unaware after reading a postcard in which Walshingham had declined to see him. "He's getting too big for 'is britches.... 'E's seemed to think I've got no right to spend my own money".... "Overman indeed!" he added. "Overmantel!... Έ trys that on with me, I'll tell 'im something 'e won't like." (425-426) The "Overman" reference alludes to Walshingham's particular enthusiasm for Nietzschian amorality. This enthusiasm had been in evidence from the time of the Lympne outing and had made Walshingham even then a ominous figure. "He had just been entrusted with the management of Kipps' affairs . . . and, moreover, he had been reading Nietzsche, and he thought that in all probability he was the Non-Moral Overman referred to by that writer" (220). Juxtaposition of these two points of information could not fail to imply then that Walshingham's "non-moral" theory would influence his professional practice. Still earlier, Coote had spoken of Walshingham in a way that augured the embezzlement. Though he did not mention Walshingham by name, Coote told Kipps of an acquaintance who had already "gone wrong": "I know a young fellow - a solicitor - handsome, gifted. And yet, you know-utterly sceptical. Practically altogether a Sceptic." "Lor"!" said Kipps, "not a Natheist?" "I fear so", said Coote. " . . . Gifted! But full of this dreadful Modern Spirit - Cynical! All this Overman stuff. Nietzsche and all that."... "And often", he said, after a pause, "it's just the most spirited chaps... who Go Wrong It isn't everyone is Strong. Half the young fellows who go wrong, aren't really bad." (178-179) At this time, Coote was citing the unnamed young man to Kipps as a warning. He was certainly not warning Kipps of Walshingham, for the legal association between the two had not yet begun. But Coote's citation may be regarded as the earliest omen - the first in a series which prepares for the theft. The series gives to the novel an effect of connectedness, of gradual plot-development. And this gradualness produced by omens serves to offset the

68

"KIPPS"

abruptness - the "ups-and-downs" effect - produced by the succession of one development by its opposite (such as wealth by economy). It is soon apparent that Walshingham's embezzlement has compensatory advantages for Kipps. Not only does it destroy all his social vanities, but, purely by Chance, it leaves to Kipps an amount of money that can most benefit him: The amount is sufficient to give him the means to earn a living, but it is not sufficient to re-encourage in him the social vanities that his former great wealth encouraged. In making the best of his modest capital, Kipps comes to realize that it is not, after all, a blessing second to great wealth, but actually better than it. With part of his capital, Kipps opens a bookshop. He also nearly invests in a related business venture that would have lost his investment. But his new solicitor, possessing the caution and conservatism of the English middle class, intervenes in time to save Kipps's money. After this experience, Kipps becomes truly cautious. "I'm going to put it in jest as many different banks as I can. See? Fifty 'ere, fifty there. 'Posit. I'm not going to 'nvest it - no fear. . . . I'm 'arf a mind to bury some of it under the shop. . . . I don't seem to trust anyone - not with money" (475-476). His last "word" on the subject is a movement more convincing than words. He "took up the cheque and began folding it carefully to put it back in his pocket-book". Then, when the doorbell rang, "he drove his pocket-book securely into his breast pocket before he opened the living-room door" (476). In the end, limited financial means and the necessity to earn a living do prove better than great wealth. And still another blessing comes later. Chitterlow's play becomes a financial success, and Kipps's investment in it makes him almost as wealthy as he was originally. However, the blessing to Kipps is not that the play restores his wealth, but that - again by chance - it restores his wealth only after he has learned to remain unchanged by it. By the time the play succeeds, Kipps is running the bookshop successfully. He knows that, from now on, he will not have to work for a living; but, as he tells Ann, "we'll keep on the shop . . . all the same. . . . I 'aven't much trust in money after the things we've

"KIPPS"

69

seen" (473). His decision is an assurance that he will also "keep on" his recovered middle-class simplicity and not return to the vanities of genteel society. When Kipps received Walshingham's postcard, he also received the first of many postcards from Chitterlow about the play. At the same time, therefore, that the loss of his first fortune was augured, so was the acquisition of his second fortune. The illegibility of Chitterlow's postcards prevented Kipps from understanding the messages, but the few words he could recognize were enough to allow the reader, if not Kipps, to guess the significance of the whole. The earliest omen of the play's success occurred long before Chitterlow sent postcards - indeed, while he was still writing the play. In a sense, the play was a "financial success" even then, for its writing occasioned the coincidental use of the name "Kipps" and thereby led Kipps to his inheritance and "financial success". Chitterlow divined that, since there was enough luck in the play to bring Kipps an inherited fortune, there must be enough lude in the play to bring himself a theatrical fortune. The coincidental name is "a mascot", Chitterlow says. "There's luck in my play. Bif! You're there. I'm there. Fair in it" (131). Kipps's freedom from vanity does not, in the end, remain complete. He never again develops a vanity which suppresses his good Character, but he is uneducated and fallible, and so it may be expected that he cannot become perfectly free of the defect. However, from now on, he shows a vanity which is so moderate as to be harmless and forgivable. To old and trusted bookshop customers, for instance, he may tell . . . how he inherited a fortune "once". "Run froo it", he'll say with a not unhappy smile. "Got another afterwards - speckylating in plays. Needn't keep this shop if I didn't like. But it's something to do." . . . Or he may be even more intimate. "I seen some things.... Raver! Life! Why! once I - 1 'loped! I did - reely!" (477) Vanity, then, seems to be no longer a problem; and so, the remainder of the novel is concerned instead with the other main subject, Chance. First of all, the very success of the play is owing to Chance. The play succeeds not because of planned comic

70

"KIPPS"

effects but because of effects Chitterlow did not plan - because of luck. "Everything they laughed at", he reports. "They laughed at things that we hadn't meant to be funny - not for one moment" (469). And so, theater audiences add "to Kipps' enrichment, lured by the hitherto unsuspected humours of the entomological drama" (473. Italics mine). Chance or Luck is as instrumental this time in delivering a fortune as it was earlier in delivering an inheritance. To account for this luck, Kipps can only remark to Ann, "It's rum" (473). Once again - as in the scene before the Labyrinthodon - Kipps senses that life is odd, strange, full of wonder. And once again, he does not realize that this "rum" quality comes from the predominance in life of the unexpected, the unpredictable, of Chance or Luck. "It's dashed rum", he repeats. "Wot 'ave I done to get two fousand pounds, Ann?" "Wot a'ven't you - not to?" said Ann. He reflected upon this view of the case. (475) But he can neither agree nor disagree - nor even suspect the meaning intrinsic in her words. He cannot see that fate ordains neither determinable justice nor even determinable injustice, but only indeterminacy. The unexpected, the unpredictable may occur as readily and as "rightly" as the expected and the predictable. But, unaware of this condition, Kipps can only wonder at the "rum" turn of events and philosophize to customers about "life, and the ups and downs of life" (477). The last scene of the novel is also filled with Kipps's sense of the wonder of life. He takes Ann "for a row on the Hythe canal. It was a glorious evening . . . exactly as it had been when he paddled home with Helen, when her eyes had seemed to him like dusky stars." The earlier scene with Helen provides a contrast here as well as a parallel, for it was a high point not destined to last, a high point in appearance only. By contrast, the final scene will last, will be a high point in truth - for, unlike the earlier scene, it occurs when Kipps has attained the limits (albeit relatively narrow limits) of his undersrtanding. Remembering the former time, he reflects on the unpredictability of life - or on

"KIPPS"

71

whatever element has caused Ann to be there in his boat (and in his life) where once Helen was. "Suddenly he was touched by the wonder of life, the strangeness that is a presence stood again by his side. Out of the darkness beneath the shallow, weedy stream of his being rose a question, a question that rose up dimly and never reached the surface. It was a question of the beauty, the purposeless, inconsecutive beauty, that falls so strangely among the happenings and memories of life." But, because his mind is "shallow and weedy" - limited in its comprehension of self and "fate" - his question cannot be conceived in terms of a thought and then a phrase. It remains a mere impression and is likened to a fish submerged in a stream. "It 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 to nothingness" (478). Because Kipps cannot bring it to the surface of conscious thought and expression, it disappears; and he can only repeat the same vague comment upon life that he stated before. "I was thinking jest what a Rum Go everything is." He can sense the truth with instinctive feelings; but, he can do no more than sense it. Just as in the scene before the Labyrinthodon, he can develop his reflection no further. "Queer old Artie!" Ann remarks - and thereby evokes in him the old vanity of self-distinctiveness. "Ain't I?" replies Kipps. "I don't suppose there ever was a chap quite like me before." But, it is the last appearance of a weak and harmless vanity. Kipps has already sensed the truth not only about the nature of "fate" but about his own nature as well. He does not realize that he is common enough to typify the solid, conservative, cautious middleclass Englishman, but he does sense his commonness enough so that, on the question of uniqueness, he reflects "for just another minute" and then adds a conservative, a cautious "Oo! I dunno" (479). In the scene before the Labyrinthodon a disclaimer ("Still - " ) also followed and negated a vain reflection. In these disclaimers Kipps speaks out of his true Character. The novel ends here, and so it may be assumed that he will speak and act in accordance with his true Character henceforth. The novel, having begun with one illustration of vanity (his

72

"kipps"

mother's), ends with another. The first vanity began a chain of harmful effects; but the last is controlled and made harmless. The difference is caused by the fact that Kipps, now conservative and cautious, has vaguely sensed the truth about "fate" and his own nature.

III TONO-BUNGAY

Near the beginning of Tono-Bungay, George Ponderavo - Wells's hero and persona - promises that the rest of the book will be only an "agglomeration".1 Apparently he fulfills this promise. Written in the first person, the entire book is George's account, with long reflective analyses, of his disorganized life. Of course, the chronological order of the story may be considered a device of structure; but then any fictional biography inherently contains some semblance of chronology (and thus a kind of structure). In other respects, the novel seems to lack a definite organization. However, several themes do recur throughout the novel and appear related. They do not seem obvious as "structure", yet they serve nonetheless. One theme is the flight of a skyrocket; another is the life cycle of an organism. Each parallels a third - the transformation of reality into illusion - and all three manifest the over-all and unifying theme of Change. The rise of a skyrocket becomes a fall; the growth of an organism becomes a decay; reality becomes illusion; and each process manifests Change. The structure of Tono-Bungay, then, is based on the idea of Change and its several manifestations. I The first theme applicable to the entire novel is the flight of a skyrocket. To it George specifically compares his uncle Edward's career (a "comet-like transit of the financial heavens") and his own 1

Tono-Bungay (New York, Modern Library, 1953), p. 5. All quotations are from this edition.

74

"TONO-BUNGAY"

subsidiary one. Since the novel is the story of their careers, it is the story of their flight - of the rocket-like rise to a zenith and the subsequent fall to ruin: "Astraddle on Tono-Bungay", Uncle Edward "flashed athwart the empty heavens - like a comet rather, like a stupendous rocket! - and overawed investors spoke of his star. A t his zenith he burst into a cloud of the most magnificent promotions. . . . I was hanging on to his coat-tails all the way through. . . . I was . . . the stick of his rocket; and after our tremendous soar, after he had played with millions, a golden rain in the sky, after my bird's-eye view of the modern world, I fell again" (4-5). In another passage, instead of the two businessmen, their business venture is compared to a skyrocket, "a thing on the go - a Real Live Thing!" Uncle Edward makes "alluring expanding circles in the air with his hand" in order to suggest their expanding the business, making it climb to zenith, "Wooshing it up!" as he says, "Making it buzz and spin" (131). The flight metaphor becomes literal, for George constructs and flies experimental aircraft. And this actual flying represents a figurative "soaring" in his spiritual life - a soaring above the mean commercial dealings of his business career into aeronautical research. T o him, research is the one real and redeeming grace in an otherwise wasted life. But actual flying is financially made possible by the mean commercial dealings, and so the growth and subsequent decline of his flight experiments are but the results of the rise and fall of the business venture. Moreover, his flying brings him to the zenith of his career as a financier: "It was more, you know, than a figurative soar. The zenith of that career was surely our flight across the channel" (5) in a balloon, in order to help Uncle Edward escape prosecution for embezzlement. One over-all theme in the novel, therefore, is a sequence of rise, zenith, and fall - the flight of a figurative skyrocket. The sequence represents the business venture, the scientific research and actual flying which that business venture makes possible (and, in the end, compels them to use for escape), and the spiritual well-being which George derives from his research. Moreover, the very novel itself is, so to speak, a "skyrocket",

"TONO-BUNGAY"

75

for its sequence also is one of rise, zenith, and fall: The second, third, and last books are entitled respectively "The Rise. . .", "The Great Days . . .", and "The Aftermath of Tono-Bungay."

II The second theme applicable to the entire novel is the life cycle of an organism. Certainly, in a literal sense, the novel is a telling of the life of one middle-aged "organism", George Ponderevo. But it is not merely about an "organism"; it is one itself. George calls it a "fermenting mass of things learnt and emotions experienced and theories formed" by him, a rendering of "nothing more nor less than Life". Through it, "I want to tell - myself' (6). In another sense, the novel is the life cycle of an "organism" larger than George - of the British social and economic system. This metaphor of "social organism" may be derived from the above skyrocket metaphor since it is George's business "soaring" that made possible his writing what he calls an "extensive crosssection of the British social organism" (4). In terms of this metaphor, the British social and economic system can be described thus: it appeared organically sound during its past growth, but it has long since aged beyond its sturdiest maturity. Now in decline, the system can be analyzed with a scientific dispassion. And analysis reveals that, during the growth to maturity, there was growing within the system a hidden disease - a disease inherent in the very life and soundness of the system, such as a cancer is inherent in the life-promoting properties of human cells. Once the maturity of the system is past, the still-growing cancer becomes noticeable and decays the organism more openly as the organism declines. The decline of the system therefore becomes apparently identical with the disease. Here, the skyrocket metaphor is not abandoned. It is, instead, developed into the different metaphor of a diseased organism. The sequence of rise, zenith, and fall becomes - in the British social organism - a sequence of growth, maturity, and decay. The basic structural idea remains abstractly the same. The rising and falling

76

"TONO-BUNGAY"

business venture yields the author his vision of the once-growing, now-decaying social organism. Moreover, the business rise and fall occurs against the background of the decay stage. One metaphor is thus a part of the other - or another expression of it. "In this book", George summarizes, " I have written of England as a feudal scheme overtaken by fatty degeneration and stupendous accidents of hypertrophy" (396). Such a description shows modern Britain to be well advanced into the stage of open decay - a stage which is illustrated throughout the novel. It is reflected in the important subjects that touch the life of George Ponderevo. Decay is obviously reflected in (1) the business enterprise, but is is also reflected in (2) the condition of London and the feudal estate of Bladesover, (3) the "quap', (4) Uncle Edward, (5) Beatrice Normandy, and, for a time, (6) George himself. (1) Social decay is mainly represented by the fake remedy and the business enterprise which exploits it. They can exist only in a civilization characterized by dishonesty and disorder - that is, only in an "unhealthy" civilization. (2) Decay also characterizes London. A t the commercial center of a decaying civilization, the decay would naturally be concentrated. The physical features of London suggest "some tumorous growth-process" which "bursts all the outlines of the affected carcass and protrudes such masses as ignoble comfortable Croyden" (98-99). But decay is not restricted to London. The business tycoons of the city spread from Croyden to rural England and thereby carry the disease to feudal estates like Bladesover. The tycoons "could not have made Bladesover, they cannot replace it; they just happen to break out over it - saprophytically" (63). (3) Another subject of decay is the "quap" - a radioactive "festering mass of earths and heavy metals . . . mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand" so that "the world for miles about it is blasted and scorched and dead" (227). A t first, the quap represents financial hope. In terms of the organism metaphor, it is the only remedy available to prolong (though not to "cure") the diseased business. The business cannot cure itself, for (in a double sense) it has been built upon a false nostrum. It now must be saved by a remedy external to it. But that remedy - the quap -

"TONO-BUNGAY"

77

is itself a "disease" incarnate, and so the business must surely die (and its originator, Uncle Edward, with it). The quap is a "disease" not only to the business but to physical matter as well. It is an agent of "disintegration, of that mysterious decay and rotting of those elements, elements once regarded as the most stable things in nature". And "there is something . . . cancerous . . . about the whole of quap, something that creeps and lives as a disease lives by destroying" (336). Upon the characters in the novel, the effects of the quap, although devastating, are limited: Men contract a feverish malaria; their hands break out into sores (338); even a ship begins to go to pieces because "emanations from quap have a rapid rotting effect upon woody fibre" (344345). But the potential effects of the quap are unlimited. Being contagious, the disease of radioactivity can spread to all healthy matter and result in "the ultimate eating away and dry-rotting and dispersal of all our world. So that while man still struggles and dreams his very substance will change and crumble from beneath him" (337). The disease therefore can spread to all healthy matter just as diseased values have spread from London to the whole of England and from the ambitious middle class to the whole of British society. Radioactivity "is in matter exactly what the decay of our old culture is in society, a loss of traditions and distinctions and assured reactions" (336-337). Thus, the quap represents the disease in the British social system. (4) Major characters also represent social decay - especially Edward Ponderevo. His mercantile success attests to the decline in power of the old aristocratic order and also to the diseased nature of the present commercial order. The latter "is no more than my poor uncle's career writ large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances. . . . It all drifts on perhaps to some tremendous parallel to his individual disaster" (225). Indeed, Ponderevo so obviously represents social decay that his very person organically responds to it. H e becomes literally a "decaying organism". The economic corruptness of Tono-Bungay so transforms him that he becomes "shrunken very much in size. . . . The cannon ball he had swallowed was rather more evident and shameless than it had been, his skin less fresh and the nose between his glasses . . . mudi

78

"TONO-BUNGAY"

redder. . . . He seemed much laxer in his muscles and not quite as alertly quick in his movements. But he evidently wasn't aware of the degenerative nature of his changes" (132). Like a cancer, Ponderevo produces more organisms like himself. Besides Tono-Bungay, he acquires other and greater corporations. But, behind them all lie speculation and insolvency. He builds the mansion Crest Hill - in organic terms, he begins "incubating and hatching" it (280) - but it too is a cancerous outgrowth of his genius. It "grew and changed its plans as it grew, and bubbled like a salted snail, and burgeoned and bulged and evermore grew . . . - that empty instinctive building of a childless man" (276). While his commercial ventures grow, Ponderevo also grows in his degenerative way. But, when the collapse of these ventures is imminent, his physical collapse also becomes imminent. "Stomach", he complains. "Every man . . . gives way somewhere, - head, heart, liver - something" (350). The indication of his impending ruin, both physical and commercial, is the drug (or "stomach medicine") upon which he relies through the days of public investigation. The drug is an ineffectual remedy to his body just as the quap was an ineffectual remedy to his enterprises. And, like the quap, the drug can only prolong, not cure. Soon after, the disease overcomes the organism. The business collapses completely and Ponderevo dies. Even his half-finished, abandoned "child", Crest Hill, begins to disintegrate shortly after his death. Some of its outermost wall "towards the last was so dishonestly built that it collapsed within a year upon its foundations" (278). (5) Beatrice Normandy too is a subject of social decay. She represents the once-landed aristocracy which has been compelled to surrender its holdings andi power to the new commercial aristocracy of Ponderevos. Bladesover, the ancestral estate and symbol of her nobility, "went to the Phillbrick gang. And they let it! And I and my stepmother - we let, too. And live in a little house" (294). By the time she meets George again in middle age, she has long since morally "decayed". Her decay remains hidden (from both George and the reader) during much of the love affair. But, at its climax - when it is time either to part or to marry, to

"TONO-BUNGAY"

79

deny or to affirm life - the decay becomes apparent and shows that the organism is doomed. "I couldn't be any sort of helper to you", she complains, "any sort of wife, any sort of mother. I'm spoilt. . . . Do you think I wouldn't face life with you if I could, if I wasn't absolutely certain I should be down and dragging in the first half-mile of the journey?" And, though her decay is primarily of the spirit, it has affected her body as well. "You know what I am! You know. . . . I am a little cad - sold and done. I'm - . My dear, you think I've been misbehaving, but all these days I've been on my best behaviour. . . . A woman, when she's spoilt, is spoilt. She's dirty in grain. She's done" (388). The theme of Beatrice's personal decay accords with the theme of British social decay. Indeed, her behavior is a result of that decay. She has been "spoilt by this rich idle way of living, until every habit is wrong, every taste wrong. . . . People can be ruined by wealth just as much as by poverty" (388). Like Ponderevo's, her disease is a part of the disease in the social organism. Just before George and Beatrice part, it is implied that, like Uncle Edward, she has been relying on a drug, "chloral", to sustain herself through the climactic days of the affair. And, like Uncle Edward's drug, hers is ultimately ineffective too. On the last day, her despair will not allow the drug to sustain her spirit. "This morning", she confesses, "my head aches, my eyes ache. The light has gone out of me and I am a sick and tired woman" (388). In despair, then, she ends her relationship with George - and this ending is figuratively the end of her life as well. Her return to Lord Carnaby can mean nothing else. (6) George too is forced to sustain himself by using a drug. The drug is only the nicotine in endlessly smoked cigars; but the apparent harmlessness of nicotine is later belied by its marked adverse effect on his scientific experiments. And not only cigars but excessive food, drink, and generally luxurious impulses are shown to be harmful. Before his experiments begin, these overindulgences are a sign of his spiritual "decay". They are an attempt to compensate for his unsatisfying marital and business situations. "With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more

80

"TONO-BUNGAY"

carelessly. I felt no reason why I should d o anything else" (282283). Because his spirit hungers, his body is ovemourished without plan or discipline - much like E d w a r d Ponderevo's fattening figure or the environs

of

the

burgeoning

organism

London.

G e o r g e as an organism is then in the stage of growth which yet hides a developing decay. Later, after his scientific experiments begin, overindulgence in cigars is especially meaningful. Science was so much m o r e exacting than business that " I found some difficulty at first in concentrating my mind upon scientific work . . . but I got o v e r that difficulty by smoking. . . . It gave me moods of profound depression, but I treated these usually by the homoeopathic method, - by lighting another cigar. I didn't realise at all h o w loose my moral and nervous fibre had become until I reached the practical side of my investigations and was face to face with the necessity of finding out just h o w it felt to use a glider and just what a man could d o with o n e " (283). This necessity t o fly precipitates a critical period -

perhaps even the turning point -

in George's

spiritual life. But that critical p e r i o d d o e s not f o r c e him

to

continue bodily indulgences o r to depend on a drug m o r e potent than

nicotine.

In

this

respect,

he

is

unlike

drug-dependent

Beatrice and Uncle Edward during the respective crises of their lives. Instead, G e o r g e resolves t o f r e e himself f r o m the debilitating influences: " I went into training, and I kept myself in training f o r many months. I had delayed my experiments . . . because of my dread of this first flight, because of the slackness of body and spirit that had come to me with the business life. . . . F o r a time I went altogether without alcohol, I stopped smoking altogether and ate very sparingly, and every day I did something that called a little upon my nerves and muscles. I soared as frequently as I could' (285). Previously, then, within G e o r g e as an organism, decay was being fostered by undisciplined growth and drug-like indulgences. But his resolve to free himself f r o m them remedies this decay. Thereafter, G e o r g e can a f f i r m life; he acquires not only "healthy"

spiritual

values

physical values as well.

of

scientific

research

but

the

healthy

"TONO-BUNGAY"

81

George's affirmation, it should be noted, is attained well after he withdraws from the nostrum business - that is, after he withdraws from the British social process. He is still involved in the eventual collapse of the business; but, since he is not spiritually a part of the business, he is not destroyed by its collapse, as Uncle Edward is. George's spirit belongs instead to science. Even though financial ruin makes further aeronautical research impossible, he continues in scientific work - this time in shipbuilding research. Thus, his withdrawal from the commercial world and his affiliation with science allow him to recover, whereas Uncle Edward and Beatrice succumb. By the end of the novel, George's affiliation with science becomes an almost mystical acceptance. Science allows him to transcend not only commercial interests but broadly national interests as well: Though the government unwisely ignores his new destroyer, he says, " I have long since ceased to trouble much about such questions. I have come to see myself from the outside, my country from the outside - without illusions. W e make and pass" (399-400). His affirmation of Science allows him to "rise above" the social process and to view his own eventual decline as separate from that of his nation. It also allows him to accept the eventual death of both as part of the natural, "scientific" order of the universe. This acceptance, perhaps, is George's highest achievement. Stated summarily, then, the business enterprise, London and Bladesover, the quap, Uncle Edward, Beatrice, and, for a while, George - all parallel and represent the British social process. Moreover, the metaphors of the rise-and-fall skyrocket and the growth-and-decay organism are as applicable to each of these representative subjects as to the greater socio-economic process.

Ill The third structural theme applicable to the entire novel is the transformation of reality into illusion. The British social system - once a reality - is now being transformed into illusion. The system still looks real enough, but only because it possesses a

82

"TONO-BUNGAY"

certain inertia and because its decline is so slow as to be unnoticeable. But currently, the system is midway between the two stages. Here the stages are called "reality" and "illusion", but they are merely another pair of names to characterize what was shown before as rise and fall or growth and decay. The three pairs of names are interchangeable. The relevance erf the terms "reality" and "illusion" is perhaps best illustrated by the passage which first describes Bladesover and the surrounding countryside. Here the obsolescent social system of rural England is called a "fine appearance . . . already sapped". Forces were already "at work that might presently carry all this elaborate social system . . . to Limbo" (9). And so its illusory quality is like that of an autumn scene: "The English countryside . . . persists obstinately in looking what it was. It is like an early day in a fine October. The hand of change rests on it all, unfelt, unseen; resting for awhile, as it were half reluctantly, before it grips and ends the thing for ever. One frost and the whole face of things will be bare, links snap, patience end, our fine foliage of pretences lie glowing in the mire." The illusory social system is also like a stereopticon picture: "Just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the 'Dissolving Views', the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have grown bright and strong" (10). In these comparisons, the idea of illusion parallels the idea of fall or decay. Again, one structural idea in the novel is a part of the others - or another expression of them. It might be expected that Wells would use the theme of realitytransformed-into-illusion as he used the other two themes: to describe not only the British social process but also the important subjects that touch the life of George Ponderevo - the subjects that parallel and represent the social process. And, indeed, Wells does just this. He discusses in terms of illusion and reality the business enterprise, London, the quap, Uncle Edward, Beatrice, and George himself.2 These discussions - and some others - in terms of illusion and reality are included in the Appendix below. 1

"TONO-BUNGAY"

83

IV If, then, the rise of British civilization must become a fall, its growth a decay, and past realities current illusions, the only constant aspect of the civilization must be Change. Change is, so to speak, the only unchanging principle, a principle actually external to and independent of the civilization. It insures that Britain will continue to fall, decay, or become illusory: "It was not just changes that were coming in his world, but . . . all his world lay open and defenceless, conquered and surrendered, doomed so far as he could see, root and branch, scale and form alike, to change" (279-280). Change is not the only name for this principle. George also calls it the Mysterious Unknown, the Future, Austerity, Beauty, Truth, Science, and, of course, Reality. He symbolizes it concretely in the destroyer and the sea. But, all names and symbols manifest the one principle. And to affirm his final belief in it, George equates and juxtaposes all its names and symbols throughout the final chapter. Here he describes the voyage of his destroyer down the Thames and out to the open sea. Here, George not only names all the manifestations of Change, but also describes a voyage which is the unifying symbol of the change, fall, decay, or passing-into-illusion of British civilization. George explains it thus: In the voyage, all parts of the novel "fuse and run together into a sort of unity and become continuous. . . . That rush down the river became mysteriously connected with this book. . . . I seemed in a new and parallel maimer to be passing all England in review. I saw it then as I wanted my readers to see it" (392). In a threefold sense, this chapter is the structural apex of the novel, for not only does it end the story but it contains the summarizing abstraction - Change - and its summarizing symbol - the voyage. In Tono-Bungay, the principle of Change unifies all the dualisms characteristic of British civilization: the rise and fall, the growth and decay, the reality and illusion. And, since these dualisms act as structure in the novel, it is the principle of Change that, in the end, structurally unifies all - that organizes the "agglomerative" Tono-Bungay.

IV THE HISTORY

OF MR.

POLLY

At the beginning of The History of Mr. Polly, the hero is suffering from what Wells calls "indigestions of mind and body". 1 From this simple metaphor, Wells develops a complex analogue whose variations and implications pervade most of the novel. While Mr. Polly was yet a schoolboy, "the indigestions of mind and body that were to play so large a part in his subsequent career were still only beginning. His liver and his gastric juice, his wonder and imagination kept up a fight against the things that threatened to overwhelm soul and body together" (12). On the one hand, the indigestion of body was produced by the poor choosing and cooking of food for him. His parents "fed him rather unwisely, for no one had ever troubled to teach his mother anything about the mysteries of a child's upbringing . . . and by his fifth birthday the perfect rhythms of his nice new interior were already darkened with perplexity" (10). Afterwards, when he married, his wife's cooking only increased the perplexity of his interior. "She cooked because food had to be cooked, and with a sound moralist's entire disregard of the quality or the consequences. The food came from her hands done rather than improved, and looking as uncomfortable as savages clothed under duress by a missionary with a stock of out-sizes. Such food is too apt to behave resentfully, rebel, and work Obi" (127). On the other hand, the indigestion of mind was produced by the boring and confusing education which he received from a 1 H. G. Wells, The History of Mr. Polly, ed. Gordon N. Ray (Riverside edition; Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), p. 12. All quotations are from this edition.

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

85

penurious, inefficient school system. Because of this education, his mental state could be compared to states of physical confusion even more extreme than indigestion: His mind was in much the same state that you would be in . . . if you were operated upon for appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather overworked and underpaid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but intemperate habits — that is to say, it was in a thorough mess. The nice little curiosities and willingness of a child were in a jumbled and thwarted condition, hacked and cut about the operators had left, so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled confusion. (11-12) Against the indigestion of body "his liver and his gastric juice . . . kept up a fight". He began to eat voraciously in order to satisfy the "craving hunger of the dyspeptic" (148). His digestive system was continually "demanding . . . evil and unsuitable internal satisfactions such as pickles and vinegar and the crackling on pork" (134) - foods which did not ameliorate his indigestion but reinforced it instead. Consequently, he became somewhat addicted to these foods. In a like manner, against the indigestion of mind "his wonder and imagination kept up a fight". "He began to read stories voraciously" - The adverb is particularly apt here. Voraciousness of reading became as much a part of his mental indigestion as voraciousness of eating became a part of his physical indigestion. "He began to read . . . books of travel, provided they were also adventurous, . . . inspiring weeklies thai dull people used to call 'penny dreadfuls', admirable weeklies crammed with imagination" (12-13). But, likewise, these satisfactions did not ameliorate his mental indigestion. (Perhaps only re-education could have done that.) Instead, they reinforced it so that he became addicted to them. And the addiction was harmful since it kept him from acting positively to end his misery. The essential thing of those fifteen long years of shopkeeping is Mr. Polly... lost in a book, or rousing himself with a sigh to attend to business.... Suddenly, one day it came to him - forgetful of those books and all he had lived and seen through them - that he had been in his shop for exactly fifteen y e a r s . . . and that his life during that

86

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

time had not been worth living, that it had been... ugly in detail and mean in scope, and that it had brought him at last to an outlook utterly hopeless and grey. (130-131) Although he ate unsuitably, Mr. Polly yet dreamed of joyous and delightful health. And, though he read unsuitably, he also dreamed of joyous and delightful experiences. Indeed, partly because of his reading "there survived something . . . that pointed . . . to the idea that there was interest and happiness in the world. Deep in the being of Mr. Polly, deep in that darkness . . . crawled a persuasion that . . . there was beauty, there was delight; that somewhere - magically inaccessible, perhaps, but still somewhere - were pure and easy and joyous states of body and mind" (13). And this persuasion lived in him (the simile is apt) "as an insatiable hunger for bright and delightful experiences, for the gracious aspect of things, for beauty" (124. Italics mine). However, a poor education and "indigestion of mind" did not promote the knowledge and will he needed to achieve the above ideal. Either he desired ideal situations which were impossible or else he lost those which were possible. He could not learn how to hold on to ideals in a realm outside his reading - in actual living. Won only by the imagination and received passively, they were not ideals hard won by experience and achieved actively. Thus, when he was a school-boy reading his adventure books surreptitiously in class, he would envision fantasies of heroism and glory. But such visions of the ideal would usually end with his being "recalled to the realities of life" (14): The schoolmaster would confiscate the books or use a cane upon him. In young manhood, he experienced carefree fellowship with Piatt and Parsons. But this situation ended with the forced departure of Parsons and the revelation that Piatt by himself was really a tiresome companion. Later, a business situation in Canterbury was surprisingly congenial; for, when he visited "the cloisters behind the cathedral, and looked at the rich grass-plot in the centre, he had the strangest sense of being at home - far more than he had ever been at home before" (42). But, the Canterbury situation was ended by a misadventure - and by his "unfortunate tendency to phrase things" (45) when he tried to explain the misadventure

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

87

to his employer. Then, after inheriting a small legacy, he planned a leisurely holiday. But his plans ended when he noticed his depleted bank balance. "The happy dream in which he had been living, of long, warm days, of open roads, of limitless, unchecked hours, of infinite time to look about him, vanished like a thing enchanted. He was suddenly back in the hard old economic world, that exacts work, that limits range, that discourages phrasing and dispels laughter" (102). The most "unreal" of these ideal situations was his falling in love with a girl of the upper class. "Mr. Polly fell in love, as though the world had given way beneath him and he had dropped through into another, into a world of luminous clouds and of a desolate, hopeless wilderness of desiring and of wild valleys of unreasonable ecstasy, a world whose infinite miseries were finer and in some inexplicable way sweeter than the purest gold of the daily life, whose joys - they were indeed but the merest remote glimpses of joy - were brighter than a dying martyr's vision of heaven" (88). He indulged extravagantly in a chivalric romance, but then made the mistake of showing his beloved that he was seriously in love. Soon after, he discovered himself betrayed to her mocking friends, and the romance was over. "Real Romance came out of dreamland into his life, intoxicated and gladdened him with sweetly beautiful suggestions - and left him . . . not sparing him one jot or one tittle of the hollowness of her retreating aspect" (82). Afterwards, he realized that it was "folly not to banish dreams that made one ache. . . . Cruel and foolish dreams they were, that ended in one's being laughed at and made a mock o f ' (99). Finally, he turned to his Cousins Larkins and soon developed what seemed to him an ideal relationship with them. But that relationship was ended by his disillusioning marriage to one of them. Perhaps the one way in which Mr. Polly achieved some measure of his ideal was in his eccentric speech - in what he called his "upside down way of talking" (226). He composed odd words and phrases and mispronounced regular ones. By means of this eccentricity too "his wonder and imagination . . . kept up a fight against" the mental indigestion caused by deficient education. Partly because "his school training had given him little or no

88

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

mastery of the mysterious pronunciation of English, . . . new words had terror and fascination for him; he did not acquire them, he could not avoid them, and so he plunged into them. . . . He avoided every recognized phrase in the language, and mispronounced everything in order that he should be suspected of whim rather than ignorance" (24). Because he fought his terror of words by "plunging" into them, he made them his own by force. It was the only way in which he was active, the only way in which he achieved. Herein some measure of his ideal became real. Elsewhere in his life and in his reading, he was passive; he received rather than achieved, and his ideal remained a fantasy. Mr. Polly was a man of action only in matters philological. Despite his dreams of a joyous and delightful life, physical indigestion caused him to experience life as hateful and bleak - to experience what might be called "spiritual" indigestion. "He suffered from indigestion . . . nearly every afternoon in his life, but as he lacked introspection he projected the associated discomfort upon the world. Every afternoon he discovered afresh that life as a whole, and every aspect of life that presented itself, was 'beastly'." He "fell into a violent rage and hatred against the outer world . . . and never suspected that it was this inner world . . . that was thus reflecting its sinister disorder upon the things without". In the "desolation of these afternoon periods, those gray spaces of time after meals when all one's courage had descended to the unseen battles of the pit, . . . life seemed stripped to the bone and one saw with a hopeless clearness" (5, 7, and 9). The process was reversible also. Hateful and bleak situations worsened his indigestion; joyous and beautiful situations improved it. When he was working as a draper's apprentice, "his progress was necessarily slow. He did not get rises; he lost situations. . . . And he had moods of discomfort and lassitude and ill-temper, due to the beginnings of indigestion" (42). Then he was taken "into a driving establishment in Clapham, which . . . fed its assistants in an underground dining-room, and kept open until twelve on Saturdays. He found it hard to be cheerful there. His fits of indigestion became worse. . . . Sunshine and laughter

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

89

seemed things lost for ever" (46). On the other hand, after he left the drapery business, he rode about contentedly on a bicycle. "Sometimes he was so unreasonably happy he had to whistle and sing. . . . His indigestion vanished with air and exercise, and it was quite pleasant in the evening to stroll about the garden . . . and discuss plans for the future" (73-74). Much later, having found a congenial situation, he discovered that "three months passed all too quickly - months of sunshine and warmth, of varied novel exertion in the open air, of congenial experiences, of interest and wholesome food and successful digestion" (212). And after this situation became permanent, his good health became permanent also. "It was a plumper, browner, and healthier Mr. Polly altogether than the miserable bankrupt with whose dyspeptic portrait our novel opened. He was fat, but with a fatness more generally diffused", a fatness signifying abundant good health rather than unhealthy overeating (216). As the British government was responsible for the school system and thus for Mr. Polly's improper education, so also was it partly responsible for his improper eating. "Our Mother England had equipped Mr. Polly for the management of his internal concerns no whit better than she had for the direction of his external affairs. With a careless generosity she affords her children a variety of foods unparalleled in the world's history, including many condiments and preserved preparations novel to the human economy" and "evil and unsuitable" in their effect upon it (134). The badly managed society partly causes the poor health of its citizens. And so it is only natural that the badly managed society may be likened to one of its unhealthy citizens: A rapidly complicating society... which, as a whole, declines to contemplate its future or face the intricate problems of its organisation, is in exactly the position of a man who takes no thought of dietary or regimen, who abstains from baths and exercise and gives his appetites free play. It accumulates useless and aimless lives, as a man accumulates fat and morbid products in his blood; it declines in its collective efficiency and vigour, and secretes discomfort and misery. Every phase of its evolution is accompanied by a maximum of avoidable distress and inconvenience and human waste. (131-132)

90

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

So, conversely, the unhealthy citizen may be likened to the badly managed society: Mr. Polly's system, like a confused and ill-governed democracy, had been brought to a state of perpetual clamour and disorder. (134) Wonderful things must have been going on inside Mr. Polly It must have been like a badly managed industrial city during a period of depression; agitators, acts of violence, strikes, the forces of law and order doing their best, rushings to and fro, upheavals, the "Marseillaise", tumbrils, the rumble and the thunder of the tumbrils. (7-8) Furthermore, internal trouble in the badly managed society often leads the society into "vindictive external expressions, such as war and bloodshed throughout the world" (134). Likewise, the internal, digestive trouble in Mr. Polly often led him into . . . vindictive external expressions,... into hatred and a series of disagreeable quarrels with his landlord, his wholesalers, and most of his neighbours.... So the poison in his system poisoned the world without As his internal malady grew upon Mr. Polly, and he became more and more a battle-ground of fermenting foods and warring juices, he came to hate the very sight... of every one of these neighbours. (134 and 139) Of course, to Wells the trouble in British society is actually neither war nor civil agitation. These are merely metaphors. The literal trouble (or at least the phase of it which Wells treats in this novel) is the obsolescence of small retail shops such as Mr. Polly's. In an economy characterized by large distributing businesses, the small retail shops are inefficient, non-functional, and therefore short-lived. Continually they go bankrupt; yet continually they are replaced by other small shops, for their apparent security always lures the unemployed or insecurely employed shop assistant. In Section 3 of Chapter 7, Wells analyzes at length this socioeconomic trouble in order to explain Mr. Polly's trouble. In passing from the one to the other, Wells passes "across unbridged abysses between the general and the particular" (133). Consequently, "it was not simply indigestion that troubled him. Behind the superficialities of Mr. Polly's being moved a larger and vaguer distress. . . . The little shop in the High Street was not paying. An

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

91

absence of returns, a constriction of credit, a depleted till - the most valiant resolves to keep smiling could not prevail for ever against these insistent phenomena" (9). Continually under the threat of bankruptcy, Mr. Polly and his fellow shopkeepers were always under a nervous strain. In his fellow shopkeepers, this strain was manifested externally: They quarreled with one another. "Shops bankrupted all about him, and fresh people came, and new acquaintances sprang up, but sooner or later a discord was inevitable - the tension under which these badly fed, poorly housed, bored and bothered neighbours lived made it inevitable" (138). In Mr. Polly, the strain was manifested both externally and internally - in quarrels and in indigestion. The "indigestion" analogue - it should by now be apparent - is not a simple metaphor. Employed by Wells, it becomes extended and extendible in several directions. Indigestion becomes a condition not only physical but mental and spiritual. It characterizes not just individuals but their social relationships. It is not only of the body but of the body politic. By means of these extensions, the analogue pervades much of the novel and organizes it with a kind of unity. Under the given socio-economic system, indigestion and discord were "inevitable". Indeed, all the circumstances surrounding the lives of the shopkeepers seemed inevitable. "These adventurers in commerce were all more or less distraught souls, driving without intelligible comment before the gale of fate" (139). And, of all the shopkeepers, Mr. Polly felt most acutely the entrapment by "fate". (In his case, perhaps, "fate" might better be called the "Indigestion Complex".) Long before he became a shopkeeper, he was already familiar with the feeling of entrapment. When he was working for the "driving establishment in Clapham", he first sensed that "a young rabbit must have very much the feeling when, after a youth of gambolling in sunny woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity in a net - for the rest of its life" (46). Marriage

92

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

provided another occasion for Mr. Polly's feeling of entrapment. His uncle Pentstemon impressed it upon him thus: "You got to get married. . . . That's the way of it. Some has. Some hain't. . . . You can't 'elp being the marrying sort any more than me. It's nat'ral - like poaching, or drinking, or wind on the stummick. You can't 'elp it, and there you are" (121). Moreover, the will of nature was reinforced by the "will of society". Mr. Polly . . . tried to assure himself that he was acting upon his own forceful initiative, but at the back of his mind was the completest realisation of his powerlessness to resist the gigantic social forces he had set in motion. He had got to marry under the will of society, even as in times past it had been appointed for other sunny souls under the will of society that they should be led out by serious and unavoidable fellow creatures and ceremoniously drowned or burned or hung. He would have preferred infinitely a more observant and less conspicuous rôle, but the choice was no longer open to him. (106-107) At the ceremony, the will of society was represented by the bride's uncle, Mr. Voules, who gave her away. "Until the conclusive moment of the service was attained the eye of Mr. Voules watched Mr. Polly relentlessly, and then instantly he relieved guard. . . . Mr. Polly felt at last like a marionette that has dropped off its wire" (110). After he became a shopkeeper, Mr. Polly seemed to be trapped most securely. He appeared to be merely a "unit" within a rigid system, "one of those ill-adjusted units that abound in a society that has failed to develop a collective intelligence and a collective will for order commensurate with its complexities" (47). He became only one of a "vast mass of useless, uncomfortable, undereducated, under-trained, and altogether pitiable people" (132). Eventually, after fifteen years of joyless shopkeeping, general passiveness, and compensatory dreaming, Mr. Polly ends this way of life. He becomes so afflicted with feelings of entrapment and with mental, physical, and spiritual indigestion that he is compelled to act. His life has become hateful and bleak to him, and he decides upon suicide. The decision is a turning point in the novel - not only because it marks the lowest point of his despair (his

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

93

spirits have steadily declined toward it and afterwards will steadily rise from it) but also because his decision is itself an assertive act. He becomes a man of action in a respect other than philological. And, merely planning his suicide - an action only mildly assertive - is enough to dispel physical and spiritual indigestion. "He found it quite interesting elaborating his plan. His countenance became less miserable. . . . There is nothing so good in all the world for melancholia as . . . the exercise of the imagination in planning something presently to be done, and soon the wrathful wretchedness had vanished from Mr. Polly's face. . . . He took a long walk. . . . His dinner and the east wind lost their sinister hold upon his soul" (148). His decision allows him to believe that one can break out of the entrapping circumstances of life. Suicide was, for him, a "bright and attractive idea of ending for ever and ever all the things that were locking him in" (149). And, as he is about to end that imprisonment by cutting his throat, he realizes that he should have ended it long before - and in a more constructive manner. He understands that, despite his educational limitations and economic circumstances, he always should have striven actively for his ideal. The impulse to act has released his impulse to understand, and now for the first time he sees his life in correct perspective. He sees that he ought to have fought: It seemed to him now that life had never begun for him, never! It was as if his soul had been cramped and his eyes bandaged from the hour of his birth. Why had he lived such a life? Why had he submitted to things, blundered into things? Why had he never insisted on the things he thought beautiful and the things he desired, never sought them, fought for them, taken any risk for them, died rather than abandon them? They were the things that mattered. Safety did not matter. A living did not matter unless there were things to live for He had been a fool, a coward and a fool; he had been fooled too, for no one had ever warned him to take a firm hold upon life, no one had ever told him of the littleness of fear or pain or death. (153) Nonetheless, he continues suicide preparations. He sets fire to his shop and prepares to cut his throat before the flames envelop him. But, before he can use the razor, his trouser leg catches fire. His instinct for self-preservation comes into play. It is his newly-

94

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

discovered instinct to act, to fight for his life - in this case literally - and it is now too strong in him to be denied. "He smacked the flicker with his hand to put it out. . . . It seemed to him necessary that he must put this out before he cut his throat. He put down the razor beside him to smack with both hands very eagerly. . . . He swore sharply, and slapped again at a recrudescent flame upon his leg. . . . He had nerved himself for throat-cutting, but this was fire" (154-155)! Then, he notices the fire spreading to his neighbor's shop and remembers that, there, his neighbor's old and deaf mother-in-law is upstairs and, just now, alone. Forgetting completely about suicide, he hastens to her rescue. The instinct to act prevails completely. He saves the old woman and becomes a hero to his neighbors and fellow-shopkeepers. And he is their hero for the additional reason that he has unwittingly freed them from their potentially bankrupt shops. Most of the shops have been destroyed by the fire he started. But, since they are heavily insured, their owners will be reimbursed. And so, the money which the shopkeepers long ago invested so unwisely will be restored to them. "Not one of those excellent men but was already realising that a great door had opened, as it were, in the opaque fabric of destiny, that they were to get their money again that had seemed sunken for ever beyond any hope in the deeps of retail trade. Life was already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames" (168). For them all, Mr. Polly "had turned old, cramped, and stagnant Fishbourne into a blaze and new beginnings" (173). For Mr. Polly, financial recovery is a spiritual rebirth as well. He senses it as he contemplates the trousers lent him, his own clothing having been consumed in the fire: "Funny not to have a pair of breeches of one's own. . . . Like being born again. Naked came I into the world" (170). He has been "reborn" free - free of his near-bankrupt shop, of the obsolescent economic system which the shop represented, and, most important of all, free of the sense of general inevitability for which the economic system was partly responsible. His illusion of entrapment vanished in the fire. "Something constricting and restrained seemed to have been destroyed by that flare" (173). For, having "once broken through

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

95

the paper walls of everyday circumstances, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he . . . made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether" (172). And so, as he began automatically to assume his former routine and to lie "awake at nights, with a renewed indigestion . . . and a general air of inevitableness about his situation", he "saw through it, understood there was no inevitable any more, and escaped his former despair. He could, for example, 'clear out'. . . . Fishbourne wasn't the world. That was the new, the essential fact of which he had lived so lamentably in ignorance. Fishbourne, as he had known it and hated it . . . wasn't the world" (172-173). Accordingly, he does "clear out". And not only does his indigestion then improve but his whole general health. He regains his human kindliness and even the desire to work. "For the first time in many years he had been leading a healthy human life, living constantly in the open air, walking every day for eight or nine hours, eating sparingly, accepting every conversational opportunity, not even disdaining the discussion of possible work" (174). Mr. Polly's "clearing out" can hardly be considered an escape, an evasion of action. It is rather a continuation of his taking action - a continuation of the rebirth first presaged by his decision to commit suicide, then initiated by his fighting the fire and rescuing the old woman, and afterwards confirmed by his realization that he has the power to alter his fate. "Gearing out" is another step in this series. Moreover, it is not an escape from necessary work but from unnecessary work. Small-scale retailing has become unnecessary to society because the economic system that demanded it is obsolescent. The burnt-down shops of his fellow-tradesmen are naturally replaced by branches of "distributing businesses" organized "upon large and economical lines" (133). These branches are the truly functional units in the current economic system. "A row of new shops replaced the destruction of the great fire. Mantell and Throbsons' ['the little Fishbourne branch of that celebrated firm' (159)] had risen again upon a more flam-

96

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

boyant pattern. . . . Next door, in the place of Rumbold's, was a branch of the Colonial Tea Company, and then a Salmon and Gluckstein Tobacco Shop" (219). His former fellow-tradesmen, it seems, have "cleared out" with their insurance money. And Mr. Polly's departure is no more an escape than their departure is. By not setting themselves up again in shops, all of them abandon an obsolescent economic system, which, as Wells feels, they should abandon. Of course, his fellow-tradesmen do not also abandon their wives, as Mr. Polly does his. But, since his wife as well as his business "spoiled" his life, it is perhaps just that he should abandon both. Finally, "clearing out" is a search rather than an escape - a search perhaps not consciously for some other type of work but for some activity that should fulfil his ideal of beauty and joy. Work per se is not unthinkable to him - merely the work that is idealless drudgery. He had planned that, after leaving Fishbourne, he would "get an odd job here and there. . . . Perhaps he would get quite a lot of work, and prosper" (173). And afterwards, he does get a "job with some van people who were wandering about the country with swings and a steam roundabout" (175). When he does find a situation which entirely suits him - caretaking at the Potwell Inn - he is not repelled by the numerous attendant duties (even though the listing of those duties extends for more than a page). When told of them, he reacts whimsically: "Can but try it. . . . When there's nothing else on hand I suppose I might do a bit of fishing" (183). But, because the situation manifests his ideal of beauty and joy, he accomplishes his duties without considering them work. In time, "all the Potwell Inn betrayed his influence . . . for here, indeed, he had found his place in the world. . . . He had lavished upon it" a great deal of paint, for he found "a positive sensuous pleasure in the laying on of paint" (218). And so, not until "about five years after his first coming to the Potwell Inn" did he find "leisure to fish, though from the very outset of his Potwell career he had promised himself abundant indulgence in the pleasures of fishing" (216). Mr. Polly, then, at last finds his ideal and does so as a result

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

97

of his own activity. But, perhaps to emphasize the necessity of activity, Wells then makes it necessary for Mr. Polly to act most vigorously in order to keep his ideal. The obstacle to his setting out to find the Potwell Inn and his ideal was, basically, himself; but the obstacle now to his staying there and retaining his ideal is external and much more formidable. The obstacle is Uncle Jim, who threatens Mr. Polly with violence and even death if he does not leave the Inn. Jim is Wells's instrument for testing to the utmost Mr. Polly's recent conviction - that one must fight for his ideal despite any opposition. Once more, he must literally "fight" - and this time with weapons and cunning. "For the first time in his life it seemed to Mr. Polly that he had come across something sheerly dreadful" (185). Evidently, he had forgotten the discovery he had made long ago when his friend Parsons had battled the drapers. At that time, "the fabric of Mr. Polly's daily life was torn, and beneath it he discovered depths and terrors. Life was not altogether a lark" (32-33). Mr. Polly must fight Jim in defense of his "artistic" ideal just as Parsons had felt compelled to fight in defense of his artistic ideal. But, according to his former ways, Mr. Polly now avoids thought of action by various mental evasions. He reflects discontentedly "on the flaws and drawbacks that seem to be inseparable from all the more agreeable things of life" (187). Or, at the other extreme, he almost forgets about the particular "drawback" before him. "So resistant is the human mind to things not yet experienced, that he could easily have believed in that time that there was no such person in the world as Uncle Jim" (190). And, like Mr. Polly, Aunt Flo, the proprietress of the Inn, also refuses to face the situation. "I try not to think of it, and night and day he's haunting me. I try not to think of it. I've been for easy-going all my life. But I'm that worried and afraid, with death and ruin threatened and evil all about me! . . . I pray to God night and day he may never come again. Praying! Back he's come, sure as fate. . . . I just hoped there might be a day or so. Before he comes back again. I was just hoping - I'm the sort that hopes" (186-187). But neither her hopes nor his evasions relieve Mr. Polly of the necessity to deal with Jim. And

98

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

so, Mr. Polly fights the climactic battle of his life - not with Jim, but with himself. It is a battle within - to decide whether he is to run away and give up his ideal or to face Jim and fight him for it. It is a battle between his old, passive self and his new, active self - to determine which kind of self he was to be for good and all. And while he fought this battle with himself, . . . he knew that if only he dared to look up, the Heavens had opened, and the clear judgment on his case was written across the sky. He knew... now as much as a man can know of life. He knew he had to fight or perish. Life had never been so clear to him before. It had always been a confused, entertaining spectacle. He had responded to this impulse and that, seeking agreeable and entertaining things, evading difficult and painful things. Such is the way of those who grow up to a life that has neither danger nor honour in its texture. He had been muddled and wrapped about and entangled, like a creature born in the jungle who had never seen sea or sky. Now he had come out of it suddenly into a great exposed place. It was as if God and Heaven waited over him, and all the earth was expectation. (194) The countryside setting where Mr. Polly is now deliberating is a metaphorical setting too. Around him, as a reminder, is the beauty and joy of nature - a portion and emblem of the ideal which is at stake: The reality of the case arched over him like the vault of the sky, as plain as the sweet blue heaven above and the wide spread of hill and valley about him. Man comes into life to seek and find his sufficient beauty, to serve it, to win and increase it, to fight for it, to face anything and dare anything for it, counting death as nothing so long as the dying eyes still turn to it. And fear and dullness and indolence and appetite, which, indeed, are no more than fear's three crippled brothers,... are against him, to delay him, to hold him off, to hamper and beguile and kill him in that quest. (195) In the past, the "dullness" of Fishboume life, the "indolence" of shop routine, the dyspeptic "appetite" for food and adventure stories had served "to hamper and beguile and kill him in that quest". And now, it was their principal "brother" - "fear". He had but to lift his eyes to see all that, as much a part of his world as the driving clouds and the bending grass; but he kept himself downcast,... full of dreams and quivering excuses.

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

99

"Why the hell was I ever born?" he said, with the truth almost winning him. (195) And, after several more appeals and denials, the truth finally does win him: "Oh, God!" cried Mr. Polly, and lifted his eyes to heaven, and said for the last time in that struggle, "It isn't my affair!" And so saying, he turned his face towards the Potwell Inn. (196) The truth wins him, perhaps because it is already instinctive within him. He does not reflect on it here, but he did before - when he was about to set fire to his shop and cut his throat. He had then asked himself, Why had he submitted to things...? Why had he never insisted on the things he thought beautiful and the things he desired, never... fought for them, taken any risk for them, died rather than abandon them? They were the things that mattered. Safety did not matter He had been a fool, a coward and a fool.... No one had ever told him of the littleness of fear or pain or death. (153) When he faces Jim and puts him to flight, Mr. Polly realizes the littleness of his fear. He discovers that his apparently invincible opponent has "shrunken, as all antagonists that are boldly faced shrink, after the first battle, to the negotiable, the vulnerable. Formidable he was, no doubt, but not invincible. He had, under Providence, been defeated once, and he might be defeated altogether" (204). Eventually, he is - and, if Mr. Polly's victory is not achieved strictly by an offense, it is yet achieved by a persistent defense of the Inn. He wins because he refuses to surrender his ideal. Later, he hears of Jim's death by drowning - a kind erf death that Mr. Polly once imagined might be his own. Just before leaving Fishbourne, he thought that he might "wait for a warm night and then fall into some smooth, broad river" (173). Symbolically, Jim takes Mr. Polly's place in the river - just as, actually, Mr. Polly, "reborn", takes Jim's place at the Inn and performs the work that Jim should have done. Perhaps because he has finally become completely "responsible" to his ideal, Mr. Polly extends that feeling of responsibility further

100

"THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY"

than he needs to - to his deserted wife. But fortunately, he takes action rather than endure guilty imaginings about her. He visits Fishbourne to investigate her circumstances, and, finding them better than when he left her, returns contentedly to the Potwell Inn for good. There, because he had fought for the Inn as his home and had earned a right to it, he experiences the perfect security that a true home can give. Not only is Aunt Flo "motherly" and "comfortable as she might be" (194), but the whole setting of the Inn appears "securely within a great, warm, friendly globe of crystal sky. It was as safe and inclosed and fearless as a child that has still to be bora. It was an evening full of quality, of tranquil, unqualified assurance. Mr. Polly's mind was filled with the persuasion that indeed all things whatsoever must needs be satisfying and complete" (224). Indeed, Mr. Polly is so secure and at peace that he can even accept the unhappy past. In the last pages of the book, he accepts philosophically the disappointment of his early idealistic hopes, his misguided and haphazard life, and even the animosity and opposition of Jim. He accepts the wrong Jim did him and the wrong he himself did - committing arson and deserting his wife. Amorally, he sees that these actions are not "wrong" per se - but only when they are judged by falsely absolute standards. He thus "frees" himself to the utmost - from restrictive moral judgments and therefore can find, within the security of his life, the freedom to enjoy that life sensuously. In an inefficient society which has not been able to provide a place - a spiritual home - for its eccentric members, they must provide a home for themselves. In the Potwell Inn, Mr. Polly has done just this - and to such a degree that he intends never to leave it, not even when he dies. "Come here always", he says, "when I'm a ghost. . . . I'd be a sort of diaphalous feeling - just mellowish and warmish like" (227). Mr. Polly then will have so "found" a home as to be its very spirit.

ν REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

The original purpose of this study was to analyze the structure of each of the four novels as part of an attempt "to understand the bearing of structural expedients upon design, to get at an author through his workmanship", and "to analyse a work as though it stood alone in the world".1 Such a study, however, results in an understanding of the novels somewhat different from conventional understandings. Love and Mr. Lewisham, for instance, is usually considered a tale of conflict between two equally strong forces within Lewisham - between love for Ethel and an urge to develop his scientific abilities. And these abilities are considered substantial enough to have led him naturally into a successful scientific career if the opposing force of love had never arisen in him - that is, if he had never seen Ethel. But he did see and love her, and so one of the equally strong but opposite forces had to give way. Because love prevailed, Lewisham had to abandon his scientific ambitions. Even so, the outcome was regrettable, and Wells meant it to be regrettable. Lewisham was to be "a figure for compassion".2 Such was the conventional understanding of the novel. Wells's statement (in his autobiography) about this conflict of forces is of no help in determining their relative strengths or the reason why love prevailed over ambition. The love in the novel, he writes, "is the most naïve response of youth and maiden 1 "Certain Critical Opinions", Saturday Review, 82:33 (July 11, 1896). Quoted by Gordon N. Ray, Introduction to The History of Mr. Polly (Riverside edition; Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960), p. ix. 2 Ivor Brown, H. G. Wells (London, Nisbet and Company, 1923), p. 39.

102

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

imaginable, and the story is really the story of the 'Schema' of a career and how it was torn up. The conflict and disharmony between the two main strands . . . was troubling my mind. . . . Because he loved his Ethel, Mr. Lewisham had to tear up his Schema and settle down". 3 The book "stressed the harsh incompatibility of wide public interests with the high, swift rush of imaginative passion - with considerable sympathy for the passion".4 However, Arnold Bennett perceived in Lewisham's love the overpowering, innate, and universal "will to live". This will provided the reason why love prevailed over ambition. Lewisham, wrote Bennett, "got into the toils of that blind force of nature which we call love, and was, in a worldly sense, thereby utterly ruined. . . . Here, therefore, even in the realistic novel of modern matter-offact, we are not allowed to get away from the scientific principles that man is a part of nature, that he is a creature of imperious natural forces, that he is only one link in the chain of eternal evolution".5 Bennett also realized that the outcome was not regrettable, but rather salutary. "Only in the worldly sense was Lewisham ruined" because he realized his fatherhood to be "the most important career in the world"." While seconding Bennett's views, structural analysis provides another reason why love prevailed over ambition: not only because the "will to live" was overpowering, but also because Lewisham's abilities were in reality undistinguished. His abandonment of his scientific career was therefore salutary indeed, since the career would have been undistinguished even if he had never seen Ethel. And so, the novel was not merely a tale of Lewisham's conflict and eventual choice between two forces. It was also a tale of Lewisham's progress in the realization that the conflicting forces were of greatly unequal strength and that his choice between them was inevitable. 3

Experiment in Autobiography, pp. 392-393. Ibid., p. 398. 5 Arnold Bennett, "Herbert George Wells and His Work", Appendix Β in Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells: A Record of a Personal and a Literary Friendship, ed. Harris Wilson (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1960), pp. 270-271. Originally published in Cosmopolitan Magazine, 33:465 (1902). « Ibid., p. 271. «

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

103

Structural analysis also produces an understanding of Kipps somewhat different from the conventional one. At the least, the conventionally brief plot summary cannot be considered adequate. Lionel Stevenson's summary is representative: Kipps "suddenly acquires wealth and is faced with the problem of adjusting himself to a higher social sphere, where he gets into such ludicrous plights that he is glad to revert to his former shabby obscurity".7 Because the summary mentions only one cycle of the "ups and downs" pattern, it does not show that the novel includes other cycles and that they constitute a repeating pattern. The many accepted ideas about Tono-Bungay (the book has been popular enough to elicit many) become more than inadequate under structural analysis; they become incorrect. The novel is usually criticized for lacking unity. Arnold Kettle objects that the work "lacks that inner artistic unity, that unifying 'subject, one and indivisible' which creates patterns out of the apparently casual and wayward 'life'. . . . There ought to be a pattern to Tono-Bungay. It is, so to speak, there for the asking. The rise and fall of Uncle Ponderevo might have been a poem in prose, so might have been the young manhood of George".8 That TonoBungay is not constructed upon a "subject, one and indivisible" is readily admitted, for it is constructed upon a group of interrelated subjects which effect unity out of multiplicity. Either of the topics which Dr. Kettle suggests might have made a traditional subject for an author other than Wells, but their interrelation - the effect of Uncle Ponderevo's rise upon George's young manhood - is Wells's subject (or rather part of it), and it is a subject just as valid artistically. Harry T. Moore expresses an objection similar to Kettle's in his statement that "George's pathetically comic childhood doesn't quite connect thematically with the bizarre world of his uncle's financial racketeering".9 Yet, George's childhood experience of "Bladesovery" and then his 7

Lionel Stevenson, The English Novel: A Panorama Mifflin Company, 1960), p. 441. 8 Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel son University Library, 1953), Π, 90-91. • Harry T. Moore, Foreword to Tono-Bungay (Signet New American Library of World Literature, 1960), p.

(Boston, Houghton (London, Hutchinedition; New York, ix.

104

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

experience of the world of financial racketeering are connected in more ways than just sequentially. Because both experiences manifest the rise-and-fall, growth-and-decay, and illusion-and-reality patterns, they "connect thematically". J. D. Beresford sees "many threads in George Ponderevo's life that were not immediately intertwined with the Tono-Bungay career". 10 He mentions as an example only George's "love for Beatrice Normandy". But, Beatrice is as ineffectual and unhealthy as Tono-Bungay; her decline is just as inexorable and just as symbolic of socioeconomic decay. Moreover, George notes the quality of illusion, of unreality, pervading his and Beatrice's love for each other. The same quality pervaded the Tono-Bungay career. A related conventional idea about Tono-Bungay is that the digressive episodes spoil any pretense of unity in the novel. Professor Moore feels that, by means of the quap episode, "the reader is taken away from the details of the financial crack-up of the Tono-Bungay empire".11 And Antonina Vallentin writes that the quap episode and the airship escape to France "hardly belong to the main plot, but seem like short stories loosely interwoven with it".12 On the contrary, the quap is another - a physical form of "disintegration" treated in the novel, and the airship escape is the "zenith" of George's and Edward's careers as financiers. Usually, Science is thought to be George's "escape" from the problems of his culture. Failing to solve its social problems in respect to himself, he abandons both problems and culture. Geoffrey West considers George's science to be an escape, but an escape from philosophical rather than social problems. George abandons reason for faith, intellectual negations for unthinking belief. Tono-Bungay, writes West, . . . is essentially the search of George Ponderevo, the personification of the intellectual consciousness, for a reality which will stand against 10

J. D. Beresford, H. G. Wells (London, Nisbet and Company, 1915), p. 76. 11 Moore, p. x. 12 Antonina Vallentin, H. G. Wells: Prophet of Our Day, trans. Daphne Woodward (New York, John Day Company, 1950), p. 157.

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

105

all his tests. Again and again, without cessation, he applies them to every level and phase of society, and society crashes about him. Life breaks down at that inhuman questioning, until at last there seems nothing left.

The last page of the novel (beginning "But through the confusion sounds another note") is then . . . a repudiation, a confession of failure, of the intellectual consciousness. Its utmost power has discovered no ultimate reality beyond this worthless material reality; that is the inevitable victory of the intellect, and in the moment of victory there comes defeat. Such victory is unbearable, a thing which the soul cannot admit; in the vital hour Wells fails, and has to take refuge in a conception which, whatever it is, certainly has nothing to do with the intellectual consciousness. I doubt, indeed, whether that last page was not forced in quite against the original design. The value of Tono-Bungay to me lies in its effort to find a final reality; in it man the individual carries the banner of the intellect to the last barrier - it is only when he is beaten back that his deeper self cries out an instinctive knowledge.13

In contradistinction, my own thesis is that George's "intellectual consciousness" - not his "instinctive knowledge" - does, after all, discover an "ultimate reality beyond this worthless material reality"; that this ultimate reality is Change or Science (of which Change is a principle). Sometimes, Science is thought to be George's solution per se for the ills of his culture, whereas my own thesis has been that George accepts the insolubility and inevitability of these ills and turns to problems which are soluble - the problems of scientific research. The novel, then, does not lament a dying culture; rather it acknowledges grimly that, in accordance with the ultimate reality of Change, the culture is dying and must die. And the novel celebrates the activity - scientific research - that investigates this ultimate reality and even produces an instrument of it. The instrument of Change is X 2 - a "destroyer" just as the universal process of Change is a "destroyer" - and the instrument is as 13

Geoffrey West, H. G. Wells (New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1930), pp. 244-245.

106

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

unconcerned with its effects upon civilizations as is the universal process it represents. Consequently, George's return to Science at the end of the novel should not be interpreted as an attempt to solve present social ills. Neither should it be interpreted as an attempt to prepare future social structures. The benefit of any society is irrelevant to Science as George conceives it. And so it is inaccurate to state that George finally entered "body and soul into the chosen mission, the battle for the future of humanity",14 or, worse, that he began "to move towards world order by building - of all things - battleships".15 Because of such misinterpretations, George's destroyer seems to be a contradictory symbol. It represents Science, and Science is supposedly the positive solution for the ills of British culture. But the destroyer also represents destruction — obviously a negative solution for the ills. Accordingly, a tone of puzzlement invests the above quotation about battleships, and Professor Moore calls the destroyer an "unholy symbol".16 Even Mark Schorer can admit himself confused by its significance and thus by the end of the novel. But, unfairly he blames Wells for the confusion. The significant failure is in that end, and in the way that it defeats not only the entire social analysis of the bulk of the novel, but Wells's own end as a thinker. For at last George finds a purpose in science. . . . But science, power and knowledge, are summed up at last in a destroyer. As far as one can tell Wells intends no irony.... The novel ends in a kind of meditative rhapsody which denies every value that the book had been aiming toward. For of all the kinds of social waste which Wells has been describing, this is the most inclusive, the final waste. Thus he gives us in the e n d . . . a nihilistic vision quite opposite to everything that he meant to represent. With a minimum of attention to the virtues of technique, Wells might... have established a point of view and a tone which would have told us what he meant.17 According to the conventional interpretation of The History of Mr. Polly, the hero escapes from all responsibility to an ir14

Vallentin, p. 155. Norman Nicholson, H. G. Wells (Denver, Alan Swallow, 1950), p. 64. 18 Moore, p. xiii. 17 Mark Schorer, "Technique as Discovery", Hudson Review, 1:74-75 (1948). 15

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

107

responsible Eden: "Unable to adapt himself to the harsh world of reality" and "hating instinctively every form of strenuous life, . . . he settles down only when he can lead an easy-going, effortless life".18 The "escape" idea is often extended so that not only Mr. Polly but Wells too is accused of escapism. "The progression of Mr. Polly suggests the progression of Wells in some respects. . . . Polly is romantic, a poet and a dreamer in the same way that Wells is." 19 The novel is then considered to be in the tradition not of realism but of fantasy. This interpretation must, of course, ignore elements in the novel not suggestive of fantasy - Mr. Polly's battles within himself, for instance, or his battles with Jim. But the interpretation seems to be appealing nonetheless. Antonina Vallentin can first call the novel "an apology for escapism" and then conclude that Wells "too must have known what it was to dream of escape. . . . Such dreams come to everyone when things seem to be at a deadlock. . . . There is a touch of the fairy story in Mr. Polly, a streak of improbability such as runs through all the tales of escape that soothe the minds of young and grown-up children".40 Then it is but a step to consider the novel not even in the tradition of fantasy, but in no tradition at all. The book becomes merely a "lark", a "bout of spontaneity".21 In Geoffrey West's opinion, it "owes so little to the schematic interrogations of the intellect that it might be called simply an essay in exuberance; it has no plot, its movement is purely organic".22 Such extreme views can result from the original idea that Mr. Polly escapes from all responsibility. But these views become inacceptable when the "escape" idea becomes so. For Mr. Polly merely leaves behind one responsibility that is obsolete (his shop) and another that can do better without him (his wife); he then finds at the Potwell Inn demanding responsibilities for which he can joyfully feel responsible. 18

Ingvald Raknem, H. G. Wells and his Critics (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1962), p. 168. " R. Thurston Hopkins, H. G. Wells: Personality, Character, Topography (London, Cecil Palmer, 1922), pp. 121-122. 80 Vallentin, p. 154. » Hopkins, p. 107. " West, p. 158.

108

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

One particular question has always been controversial: whether the unprincipled intellectual spokesman - Chaffery in Lewisham, Masterman in Kipps, Ewart in Tono-Bungay - is Wells's spokesman and whether he is so by plan or by accident. The question is intrusive in the first two novels, less so in the third, and not at all in Mr. Polly. But, though the question gradually loses importance, a decision upon it can greatly determine what one decides is the auctorial viewpoint and thus the "point" in each novel. In Lewisham, Chaffery argues that forms of lying and cheating are necessary to an orderly society. His opinions are eloquently expressed, and so they are readily thought to be Wells's also. Professor Ray believes that Wells preserved the good will of conventional readers by attributing these outrageous opinions to an admitted scoundrel with a taste for fantastic paradox. But the more penetrating contemporary critics (Bennett among them) were not deceived. They recognized that Chaffery's highly subversive view of society was Wells's own, that his role in the novel was in fact very like that of the raisonneur in the well-made play of the period.23 It cannot be disputed that, in one sense, Chaffery's ideas (or Masterman's or Ewart's) are Wells's. Since Wells wrote these ideas, they are his, no matter to which character, major or minor, he assigns them. And taking these ideas out of context or away from the character would not really matter. Being Wells's, they are autonomous and really need neither fictional context nor character. In a letter to Arnold Bennett, Wells speaks of Chaffery's ideas in this way. "There is something other than either story writing or artistic merit which has emerged through the series of my books, something one might regard as a new system of ideas - 'thought'. It's in [among other works mentioned] Chaffery's chapter in Love and Mr. L." 24 On the other hand, what may be disputed is that Chaffery's outrageous ideas represent the "point" or "theme" of the novel·, that Wells's understanding of the entire novel was based upon these ideas and that therefore ours should 25

Ray, p. xxiv. In Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells: A Record of a Personal and a Literary Friendship, p. 74.

24

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

109

be. It need only be noticed how little the story of Lewisham corroborates Chaffery's outrageous ideas in order for them to be rejected as the "point" of the entire novel. Of course, a somewhat compromising position may be taken on this question. One may, first of all, concede that Wells did not intend Chaffery's outrageous ideas to be the "point" of the novel but then add that the ideas usurped the function anyway - despite Wells's intention because Wells was not careful enough in writing the novel to prevent it. But this position attributes the cause of an apparent flaw in the novel to careless writing rather than to careless reading and for this reason should be automatically suspect. In my chapter on Lewisham, Chaffery's outrageous ideas were not emphasized in themselves so as to avoid their being overemphasized in an analysis of the entire novel. The analysis tried instead to show how Chaffery's ideas related proportionately to other and more important ideas in the novel. In the above quotation, Wells must be referring to Chapter 23 as "Chaffery's chapter". This would be obvious even if Harris Wilson had failed to footnote it.25 And in Professor Ray's statement, the "outrageous opinions" referred to are those in Chapter 23. However, five chapters further, Chaffery practically recants. In Chapter 28, his "outrageous opinions" are replaced by moderate ones; his "highly subversive view of society" is abandoned for a conservative view. When Arnold Bennett writes about Chaffery, he considers only the later opinions - the moderate opinions of Chapter 28. And so, Bennett may not have supposed (contrary to Professor Ray's suggestion) "that Chaffery's highly subversive view of society was Wells's own". For Bennett does not discuss that view, but rather its successor. He writes: The sayings of Mr. Chaffery, that audacious and unmoral spirit who saw things as they are and gained a livelihood by deceiving the fools who wanted to be deceived, are the memorable utterances in the book. Here, for example, is Mr. Chaffery's recipe for a happy life [a recipe which, as Bennett implies, Lewisham follows]: "In youth, exercise and learning; in adolescence, ambition, and in early manhood, love - n o footlight passion. Then marriage, young and decent, and then «

Ibid., p. 74.

110

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

children and stout honest work for themselves and for the State in which they live; a life of self-devotion, indeed, and for sunset a decent pride - that is the happy l i f e . . . . So a man may go happy from the cradle to the grave - at least passably h a p p y . . . . No other happiness endures. And when all men are wise, all men will seek that life. Fame! Wealth! Art! The Red Indians worship lunatics, and we are still by way of respecting the milder sorts. But I say that all men who do not lead that happy life are knaves and fools." So that only in the worldly sense was Lewisham ruined [when he chose to abandon his scientific ambitions in order to undertake the "happy life"].26 Bennett implies here that, notwithstanding Chaffery's way of living (noted in the first sentence above), his later, conservative philosophy expresses a main point of the novel - for, afterwards, Lewisham decides independently to live according to this philosophy. If, then, Wells's understanding of the entire novel is based upon any of Chaffery's ideas, it is based upon the conservative ones of Chapter 28 rather than the "outrageous" ones of Chapter 23. In Kipps the question is similarly resolved. Professor Ray believes that in Kipps . . . Wells's jaundiced view of English life finds far fuller and more effective expression than it had in Love and Mr. Lewisham. He is still sufficiently cautious, however, to entrust the task of tying together the threads of his indictment to a spokesman who need not be taken seriously by the conventional reader. This time it is Masterman, a dying socialist intellectual, who voices Wells's opinions, albeit in exaggerated form, in a tirade against... society.... Wells is at pains to make Kipps disown Masterman's views . . . , [but it is] a device that does not mislead the acute.47 Masterman's "tirade against society" is in Book II Chapter 7. But his speech later in Book II Chapter 9 annuls the effect of his earlier tirade with a note of hope. Masterman's disapproval of society may still be applicable, for he remarks that "everything [is] getting more muddled and upside down every day" (382). But the bitterness is now gone. And it is his final, hopeful words which seem to provide the "point" of the novel, since Kipps's " "

Ibid., pp. 270-271. Ray, pp. xxvii-xxviii.

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

111

fortunate life thereafter shows that hope was warranted. Though the earlier Masterman may still be the spokesman for Wells outside the context of the novel, it is the later, hopeful Masterman who speaks for the author in context. In Tono-Bungay, Ewart represents - by his viewpoint and the example of his life - the waste and purposelessness of the world about him. To some, the novel is merely the tale of that world's waste and purposelessness. Ewart, then, would be very much a central figure in the novel. Yet, indisputably George is the central figure, and through Science, he rises above the waste and purposelessness of which Ewart is a part. Consequently, neither the waste nor Ewart's representation of it can be the final "point" of the novel. Ewart cannot be the final spokesman for the author in context because George is, and the two figures represent fundamentally different viewpoints. George realizes this early in the novel: I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his [Ewart's] philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and energetic nature to active protests.... His was essentially the nature of an artistic appreciator; he could find interest and beauty in endless aspects of things that I marked as evil, or at least as not negotiable. (110) On the important questions in his life, George found that "Ewart as a moral influence was unsatisfactory" (138). "No", George replied to his advice, "that's not my way" (171). And after a crisis in which George "tried Ewart and got no help from him", George found help in Science. It is his salvation - and the "point" of the novel - but Ewart has no share in it. Previously, Ewart had played a diminishing part in George's life and in the novel; thereafter, he has no part at all in either. In The History of Mr. Polly, the author's spokesman is indisputably the "highbrowed, spectacled gentleman living at Highbury, wearing a gold pince-nez, and writing for the most part in the beautiful library at the Climax Club" (47). It is this gentleman who explains Mr. Polly to the reader. But, unlike the supposed spokesman in the other three novels, he is not involved in the

112

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

plot and thus requires no name. Perhaps he foreshadows those characters in the later discussion novels through whom Wells speaks almost directly. In any case, as the supposed spokesman changes through these four novels, he becomes less a characterized figure involved in the plot and more a spokesman for the author; but also his point of view becomes more estimable. In the most general terms, all four novels show a hero becoming "undeceived" about the forces influencing his life: The forces appear to be deterministic but are not completely so. In other words, at least two abstract ideas serving as structure are common to the four novels. One is the idea of deception. Deception and most of its forms pervade Lewisham. One of its forms, Vanity, pervades Kipps and another, Illusion, pervades Tono-Bungay. In The History of Mr. Polly, Illusion appears as the hero's daydreaming and reading of travel and adventure books; Delusion appears as his false idea that circumstances are invincible. The other abstract idea serving as structure and common to all four novels is the idea of determinism - a heritage traceable to Darwin or, more directly, to Wells's teacher, T. H. Huxley. In Lewisham, the hero's life is determined, but only by the primal will to love, to live, to survive among the fittest. Moreover, in Lewisham, it is almost for the hero's own good that he is caught in a deterministic pattern. In Kipps, the pattern upon the hero's life takes a cyclical form. He possesses even fewer intellectual gifts than Lewisham by which to free himself; yet, he is freed from the pattern, though not by his own efforts. In Tono-Bungay, the pattern is expanded so that it comprehends not only the hero's life but his civilization. Here, however, through his own efforts, he frees himself from the pattern - and not only as it comprehends his own life but as it comprehends his civilization. In Mr. Polly, the pattern (not cyclical here) is reduced in scale. It comprehends the hero's life and merely his socio-economic class (retail shopkeepers) rather than his entire civilization. But, again, through his own efforts, he frees himself from the pattern. Consequently, the four novels might be called "anti-deterministic", even though the epithet might be controversial in the

REBUTTAL AND SUMMARY

113

case of Lewisham. "Anti-deterministic" in theme, the novels are - as might be expected - "non-pessimistic" in tone. ("Optimistic" would be too positive a word to apply to Tono-Bungay.) And so, they might be considered an implied opposition to the deterministic and pessimistic novels that represented in the late eighties and nineties the genre of literary naturalism. This implied opposition causes the term "realistic", normally applied to the four novels, to be particularly suitable.

APPENDIX

ILLUSION A N D REALITY IN

TONO-BUNGAY

When George first sees the Tono-Bungay laboratory, he suspects immediately that its reality is based upon an illusion: Through the glass I saw dimly a crowded suggestion of crucibles and glass retorts, a n d . . . the dear old Wimblehurst air-pump.... All these were evidently placed on a shelf just at the level to s h o w . . . . [Then Uncle Edward] whisked me through the door into a room that quite amazingly failed to verify the promise of that apparatus.... The bottles were all labelled simply A, B, C, and so forth, and that dear old apparatus above, seen from this side, was even more patently "on the shelf" than when it had been used to impress Wimblehurst. (126-127) We came downstairs again into that inner room which pretended to be a scientific laboratory through its high glass lights. (132)

After the growth of the business into three general trading companies, its reality is still based upon an illusion. The establishment of these companies gave Edward Ponderevo ". . . unmanageable wealth and power and real respect. [But] it was all a monstrous payment for courageous fiction, a gratuity in return for the one reality of human life - illusion. . . . Beneath it all, you know, there was nothing but fictitious values as evanescent as rainbow gold" (224-225). Then the entire business structure collapses, Ponderevo dies, and George walks from the deathbed out into the foggy night. There, while all the past realities of their lives, and even life itself, become illusions to him, death becomes so real that its elements are personified:

APPENDIX

115

Death! It was one of those rare seasons of relief, when for a little time one walks a little outside of and beside life. I felt as I sometimes feel after the end of a play. I saw the whole business of my uncle's life as something familiar and completed. It was done, like a play one leaves, like a book one closes. I thought of the push and the promotions, the noise of London, the crowded, various company of people through which our lives had gone, the public meetings, the excitements, the dinners and disputations, and suddenly it appeared to me that none of these things existed. It came to me like a discovery that none of these things existed. Before and after I have thought and called life a phantasmagoria, but never have I felt its truth as I did that night.... We two who had kept company so long had parted. But there was, I knew, no end to him or me. He had died a dream death, and ended a dream; his pain dream was over. It seemed to me almost as though I had died, too. What did it matter, since it was unreality, all of it, the pain and desire, the beginning and the end? There was no reality except this solitary r o a d . . . , along which one went rather puzzled, rather tired.... Part of the fog became a big mastiff that came towards me and stopped and slunk round me, growling, barked gruffly, and shortly and presently became fog again. My mind swayed back to the ancient beliefs and fears of our race. My doubts and disbeliefs slipped from me like a loosely fitting garment. I wondered quite simply what dogs bayed about the path of that other walker in the darkness, what shapes, what lights, it might be, loomed about him as he went his way from our last encounter on earth —along the paths that are real, and the way that endures for ever? (375-376) George's Aunt Susan also senses illusion. Of the days before business success, she says: "I can remember it all - bright and shining - like a Dutch picture. Real! And yesterday. And here we are in a dream. You a man - and me an old woman, George" (377). The traditional landmarks of English culture have the quality of illusion about them - St. Paul's Cathedral, for instance: "When in a moment the traffic permits you and you look round for it, it has dissolved like a cloud into the grey blues of the London sky" (396). And, in London harbor, steamboats christened Caxton, Pepys, and Shakespeare . . seemed so wildly out of place,

116

APPENDIX

splashing about in that confusion. One wanted to take them out and wipe them and put them back in some English gentleman's library" (397). The culture as a whole is no less illusory: "It is quaint, no doubt, this England - it is even dignified in places - and full of mellow associations. That does not alter the quality of the realities these robes conceal. The realities are greedy trade, base profit seeking, bold advertisement; and kingship and chivalry, spite of this wearing of treasured robes, are . . . dead among it all" (394). Throughout the novel, George disparages as a youthful illusion the idea that England comprises a stable and orderly socioeconomic system, attendant public-spirited citizens, and honest human relationships. The idea of stability and order is opposed to the reality of rise and fall, growth and decay, and so it must be illusory: I found Landhorne's "Plutarch" too, I remember, on those shelves. It seems queer to me now to think that I acquired pride and selfrespect, the idea of a state and the germ of public spirit, in such a furtive fashion; queer, too, that it should rest with an old Greek, dead these eighteen hundred years, to teach me that. (23) The naïve intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with a disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the state there is a power as irresistible as a head master's to check mischievous and foolish enterprises of every sort. (66) It is the constant error of youth to over-estimate the Will in things. . . . I suffered from the sort of illusion that burnt witches in the seventeenth century. I endued her [London's] grubby disorder with a sinister and magnificient quality of intention. (92) [Ewart] made me f e e l . . . how ready I was to take up commonplace assumptions. Just as I had always imagined that somewhere in social arrangements there was certainly a Head-Master who would intervene if one went too far, so I had always had a sort of implicit belief that in our England there were somewhere people who understood what we were all, as a nation, about. That crumpled into his pit of doubt and vanished. He brought out, sharply cut and certain, the immense effect of purposelessness in London that I was already indistinctly feeling. (108)

APPENDIX

117

[Ewart's affair with a prostitute] was a relationship so alien to my orderly conceptions of honour, to what I could imagine any friend of mine doing, that I really hardly saw it with it there under my nose. But I see it and I think I understand it now. ( I l l ) I still clung to the idea that the world of men was or should be a sane and just organisation. (135-136) A lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish imagination [make me think] that at bottom our State should be wise, sane and dignified. (233) What living thing now had any concern with their honour and judgments and good and evil deeds? (254)

To the youthful George, love is a combination of illusion and reality: "I was not by any means touched by any reality of passion for either of these young people; love - love as yet came to me only in my dreams. . . . In all my early enterprises in the war of the sexes, I was torn between the urgency of the body and a habit of romantic fantasy that wanted every phase of the adventure to be generous and beautiful" (70). But, even in his middle age, the illusory quality of love remains: "I began to live for the effect I imagined I made upon her, to make that very soon the principal value in my life. I played to her. I did things for the look of them. I began to dream more and more of beautiful situations and fine poses and groupings with her and for her. . . . At bottom it was disingenuous; it gave my life the quality of stage scenery, with one side to the audience, another side that wasn't meant to show, and an economy of substance. . . . And it robbed me, too, of any fine perception of absurdity" (302-303). For Beatrice, the illusion is much stronger. Because the reality of her life is unendurable, she tries to escape completely into an illusion of their love: The whole world is blotted out - it's dead and gone, and we're in this place. This dark wild p l a c e . . . . We're dead. Or all the world is dead. No! We're dead. N o one can see us. We're shadows. We've got out of our positions, out of our b o d i e s . . . . That's why the world can't see us and why we hardly see the w o r l d . . . . I insist upon your being dead. Do you understand? I'm not joking. To-night you and I are out of l i f e . . . . We're - in Hades if you like. Where there's nothing to hide and nothing to tell. N o bodies even. N o bothers. We loved each

118

APPENDIX

other - down there - and were kept apart, but now it doesn't matter. (324-325) And so, to George, the natural setting about them has an unearthly quality that reflects Beatrice's illusion: "And always we walked . . . along dim, interminable greasy roads - with never a soul abroad it seemed to us, never a beast in the fields. . . . [Afterwards, when they returned to the house, she] vanished and slammed the door upon ine, leaving me alone like a man new fallen from fairyland in the black darkness of the night" (325326). The quap episode alternates between illusion and reality. While George is in England, his life there is "the reality". But then the quap supersedes: "So it was quap came into our affairs, came in as a fairy-tale and became real. More and more real it grew until at last it was real, until at last I saw with my eyes the heaps my imagination had seen for so long" (231). As the quap draws him to Africa, his life in England becomes the illusion: "I lived a strange concentrated life through all that time, such a life as a creature must do that has fallen in a well. All my former ways ceased, all my old vistas became memories. The situation I was saving was very small and distant now; I felt its urgency no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove, my uncle and the Hardingham, my soaring in the air and my habitual wide vision of swift effectual things became as remote as if they were in some world I had left forever" (331-332). In Africa, all is confused. His dreams are so real that they seem like reality to him: "For three nights running, so that it took a painful grip upon my inflamed imagination, I dreamt of my uncle's face, only that it was ghastly white like a clown's, and the throat was cut from ear to ear - a long ochreous cut. 'Too late', he said; 'too late! . . .' " (339-340). Conversely, George's very real murder of a native is so dreamlike that it seems unreal to him: "I went to him, not as one goes to something one has made or done, but as one approaches something found" (342). Then, the dream and the reality merge so that George can no longer identify their separate natures: "I lay . . . wide awake, staring at my memories. In some odd way these visions mixed up

APPENDIX

119

with my dream of my uncle in his despair. The black body which I saw now damaged and partly buried, but which, nevertheless, I no longer felt was dead but acutely alive and perceiving, I mixed up with the ochreous slash under my uncle's face. I tried to dismiss this horrible obsession from my mind, but it prevailed over all my efforts" (343). Then, when the quap is aboard and the ship has left Africa behind, England again becomes "a reality" to George: "I was going back to Beatrice and my real life again - out of this well into which I had fallen" (344). After his return, Africa again becomes so illusory that George can remark as a half-forgotten afterthought, "And once (though it is the most incidental thing in my life) I murdered a man" (4). The failure of the Tono-Bimgay business is the failure of an "illusion". George must then earn his living by "realistic" means: "I had to come off my mage carpet and walk once more in the world" (353). Fundamental necessities compel him into the realities of applied science, "into this Thames-side yard, into these white heats and hammerings, amidst the fine realities of steel" (5). At the helm of the destroyer X2, "I lived with my hands and eyes hard ahead. I thought nothing then of any appearances but obstacles" (392-393). Here at last is unmixed reality; it characterizes not only his work but his whole view of life as well: I've g o t . . . to a time of life when things begin to take on shapes that have an air of reality, and become no longer material for dreaming. (6-7) The perplexing thing about life is the irresoluble complexity of reality, of things and relations alike. (196) I have come to see myself from the outside, my country from the outside - without illusions. (400) But, even before he built destroyers, his aeronautical experiments had taught him that Science was the one reality of life: I know that over all these merry immediate things, there are other things that are great and serene, very high, beautiful things-the reality. (203) Sometimes I call this reality Science, sometimes I call it Truth....

120

APPENDIX

This thing we make clear is the heart of life. It is the one enduring thing. (398-399) [Science] is reality, the one reality I have found in this strange disorder of existence.... Things grow under your hands when you serve her, things that are permanent as nothing else is permanent in the whole life of man. That, I think, i s . . . its enduring reward. (282) Compounded of illusion, George's love of woman was a failure. To succeed, he had to turn from illusion to reality - that is, from love to Science. His feelings for Science were therefore expressed in terms of love (especially for Marion), and his research was at first a "substitute" for love: In the end of this particular crisis [divorce from Marion]... I idealised Science. I decided that in power and knowledge lay the salvation of my life, the secret that would fill my need; that to these things I would give myself. (203) I took to these experiments after I had sought something that Marion in some indefinable way had seemed to promise. I toiled and forgot myself for a time, and did many things. Science too has been something of an irresponsive mistress since, though I've served her better than I served Marion. But at the time Science, with her order, her inhuman distance, yet steely certainties, saved me from despair. (204) [Scientific research] is a different thing from any other sort of human effort. You are free from the exasperating conflict with your fellowcreatures altogether.... Scientific truth is the remotest of mistresses; she hides in strange places, she is attained by tortuous and laborious roads, but she is always there! Win to her and she will not fail you; she is yours and mankind's for e v e r . . . . She will not sulk with you nor cheat vou of vour reward upon some oettv doubt. (282)