CONCERNING H. G. WELLS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 89, 21 May 1914, Page 5

CONCERNING H. G. WELLS.

SOME INTERESTING BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. Admirers of Mr H. G. Wells's new book should make a point Of getting the April number "of the "Bookman," which contains a long and exceptionally interesting article, by Thomas Seccombe, on the famous novelist and social philosopher. Mr Seccombe's article is

largely biographical, and is specially interesting as disclosing the originals of several notable Wellsiai] backgrounds. Wells's father was head gardener at Penshurst, and in his day a professional cricketer, playing for Kent in the sixties and seventies of the last century. When, however, the future novelist was born, his father was keeping a small mixed shop at Bromley, in Kent. Wells's mother was the daughter of an innkeeper at Mill hurst, the scene of the •climax of Mr Hopdriver 's fortunes in that amusing earlier story '' The Wheels of Chance," just republished in MiDent's "JWayfarer's Library." Probably the family shopkecping finds some' reflection in "Mr Polly." At any rate, Mr Wells, senior, like Mr Polly, lost first what little custom he had,, and then his small capital, the mother taking a position as housekeeper. Young Wells' went as a "learner" into a draper's shop at Windsor, an experience which was the origin, no doubt, of some of the earlier episodes in '' Mr Kipps''; but, tiring of the drapery trade, he soon transferred his energies to a chemist's shop in Midhurst. Here he gathered that curiously intimate knowledge of the humbler class of "pharmacy" which he

put to such good service in '' Tono Bungay.'' Finally, after a brief stage as pupil teacher in a primary school at Wookey Hole, Somerset, he became a 16-year-old assistant at Midhurst Grammar School, where, no doubt, he drew up a "Schema" on the same lines as that .famous document which figures in "Love and Mr Lewisham."

Still following Mr Seeeombe's interesting story, we find Wells winning a scholarship at the Normal School at South Kensington, where he studied biology under Huxley. He passed his B.Se. with first-class honours. His next move was to an assistant-mastership at Henley House School, St. John's Wood, where he taught not only science but English, and edited the "Henley House Magazine," which had been started some years previously by a boy named - Alfred Harmsworth! A 'breakdown, in health compelled a rest from teaching, and to keep the pot boiling Wells contributed articles to the "Pall Mall Gazette." He made the acquaintance of Henley, . Stevenson, George Steevens, and, later on, f of George Gissing, Grant Allen, Edward Clodd, and Frank Harris. Through the latter's influence, he got his work, into the "Saturday Review" and the "Fortnightly." He was now definitely launched on a career of journalism, which, after a time, he relinquished for the writing of novels. Mr Seccombe's article, which is well illustrated, runs into a dozen pages or so of the "Bookman." Every line of it will be of interest to admirers of Mr Wells's many sided genius .and brilliant literary work.