GENIAL SATIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1938, Page 30

GENIAL SATIRE

H. G. WELISAND U.S.A.

Connoisseurs of what might be described as playful malice should certainly include in their anthologies of that art Mr. H. G. Wells's reflections on a fairly well-recognised constituent in the United States scheme of things, says the "Manchester Guardian." Mr. Wells has been visiting America again, and has contributed some of his impressions of that visit to the "Daily Telegraph." Thus he refers to the fact "that in every considerable American city large gatherings of mature, prosperous, well-dressed women are in permanent session." He then continues: This year they are all wearing black hats. These hats stick in my mind. Ultimately of the most varied shapes, the original the.ne seems to have been cylindrical, so that the general effect of an assembly of smart American womankind in 193? is that of a dump of roughly-treated black tin cans.

That is not so bad for a beginning, but Mr. Wells proceeds to conclude his reflections on this subject with the assurance that "the-crazy irrelevance of this headgear on embattled middleaged womanhood" remains with him as one of the essential memories of the United States. And most students of the art already mentioned will readily agree that he has done his distinguished best to put that memory into swift and telling form.

"In his introduction to the passage on those hats and their wearers, Mr. Wells observes that the existence in the United States of the "permanent sessions" of "mature, prosperous, well-dressed women" is "not generally known in Europe." But that, of course, must be just another example of his calculated playfulness; Europe is perfectly well acquainted (at least by leputation) with those ladies and their earnest and determined gatherings. We constantly see jesting references to them in American journals and magazines; it might be impolitic to quote. Mr.. Wells's latest remarks about them if they were not a recognised target among United States satirists themselves. And have been for long enough, for their distant ancestor must have been "the mother of the modern Gracchi" in chapters 22 and 34 of "Martin Chuzzlewit," or the "literary lady" in the brown wig who thus addressed the Honourable Elijah Pogram: "Mind and matter glide swift into the vortex of immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm ideal, in the whispering chambers of imagination. To hear it, sweet it is. Bui then, outlaughs the stern philosopher, and saith to the Grotesque, 'Whjt ho! Arrest for me that Agency. Go, bring it here!' And so the vision fadeth."

But Mr. Wells's ladies in the tincan hats talk a good deal more sensibly than that. ■ And Mr. Wells's genial saiare is fairer and more effective than the crude, sledge-hammer strokes of Dickens.

However, having quoted Mr. Wells on the high-hat brigade of embattled American womanhood, it seems only fair to let the United States get a bit of its own back on Mr. Wells. One of tu's specialities is, as we all know, intelligent anticipation, but the "New York Times" has been pointing out that not all of his prophecies have come off. It recalls an article he contributed to its own columns in 1927 on "The Way the World is Going," in which he predicted the speedy decline of the wireless. One reason,, he said, for its failure to satisfy listeners would be the fact that broadcasting shouted out its information once and could not be recalled. If you missed a word, that word was missed for good. Again, the talks and \debates were merely spoken magazine matter and could be more effectively studied in a magazine itself, where diagrams and illustrations could be used in conjunction with them. The number of people who were too lazy to read and yet intellectually active enough to be interested by serious topics when vocalised must be very small indeed.