k MODERN PROPHET

Evening Star, Issue 22541, 8 January 1937, Page 7

k MODERN PROPHET

CAREER OF MR K. G. WELLS AGGRESSIVE SEEKER OF FACTS Mr H. G. Wells is 70 years old, and is a stocky, squeaky-voiced little man with something of the air of a fox terrier about him—sharp and perky, with a liking for worrying away at things and for holding on, writes’ “ R.C.M.A.,” in ‘ Mine.’ He is a successful, worth-while all-round writer who has made the best possible use of his chances, faculties, and abilities. Writers are supposed to be born, not made (as also are cooks and surgeons). The truth is that success in writing only follows the successful exploitation by individuals of the talents they are born with; and in this respect more people start even than is generally suspected. But it is also necessary to be possessed either of the means or the wits to support life through the early, fumbling, apprentice stages. As far as externals go, H. G. Wells had about as poor a start in the race as it is possible to imagine. He was born over his father’s poky little hardware shop in Bromley. Wells senior was a first-class cricketer (Kent) but an nth-rate shopkeeper. Mrs Weils valiantly tried to keep up appearances, so that H.G.’s early boyhood was spent in a constricted, shabby, threadbare, little world. Aged eight, he broke his leg and began to read any book ho could lay his hand on. He bad begun to escape. Then an accident forced his father to give up the shop, which had practically given him up, and Mrs Wells became the family breadwinner by going to Up Park, a big house in Hampshire, as housekeeper, H.G. "went with her into this odd, new, belowstairs world. Aged 13, after a minimum of schooling, he was sent on trial “ with a view to apprenticeship ” to a firm of drapers in Windsor. He loathed it, kept the books all wrong, and left to become a pupil teacher. After that lie worked in a chemist’s shop, wont back to school, and finally spent two awful years in another draper’s shop, this time in Southsea. He escaped again, to become a student master as Midhurst School, where he suddenly became interested in the business of book learning, and the skinny, restless, unsatisfactory boy who had caused his mother such a lot of worry—because he simply wouldn’t settle down to a nice respectable calling—surprised everyone by winning a scholarship as a teacher-in-training at the South Kensintgon Normal School of Science (now absorbed by London University). Here he studied biology under the great Professor Huxley and did exceptionally well; physics, in which he did less well; and geology, in which he did extraordinarily badly. He had liked biology because one fact had fitted in with and had followed another until a whole intelligible science was built up. That’s how H.G. liked, and likes, things to be. I For these three student years he

lived in London lodgings on his scholarship of £1 Is a week, quite often went hungry, founded and wrote a College Journal, spoke in debates, sported a red tie, and generally became a sort of intellectual desperado, very suspicious of the old order and of his socialist friends who wanted to pull everything up by the roots, hut couldn’t agree as to what, if anything, they were going to plant in its place. Once his scholarship came to an end he had to teach because that was the only way of earning a living that seemed open to him; and he went to a little schoool in Wales where he might well have gone on teaching for the rest of his days had not a bad. accident playing football made him chuck the job up,go back to Up Park to recover, and then find a post in another, bettor school in Hampstead (kept by A. A. Milne’s father). Here he began to teach intelligently, got interested in the process, fell in with a man who crammed pupils for examinations, got quite a good job with him, and was beginning to find his feet when, out of the blue, it suddenly transpired that he had contracted consumption, which meant that for a year or two .he must stay quietly at home or die. By this time he had dependent on him .a wife, his mother (whose housekeeping job had given her up), his father, and (to a lesser extent) his two brothers. He solved this really terrifying problem by making writing pay. tip to this time his efforts in this line had been of the high faintin’, imitative order; but in the nick of time he discovered that what editors wanted and would pay for was something light and bright and simple. So he aimed a good deal lower, used his wits and experience (especially his scientific training), studied the market, and his manuscripts began to be .taken. Here is one concrete instance. • In his student days he had written a romance called ‘ Chronic Argonauts.’ in which a fantastic hero, Dr Nebo-Gipfel, was able to move about in Time as we move about in space. It was a good idea, smothered, in this first version, under a load of sham scientific; jargon. H.G. subsequently made a roaring success of the story by changing its title to ‘ The Time Machine,’ making the hero an ordinary member of the upper middle class, and cutting out the trimmings. He has a favourite assertion, and it is this: “ I am a I refuse to play ‘ the Artist.’ I write, as I walk, because I wapt to get there; and I write as straight as I can because that is the best way to get there.” He started off, then, as a story writer with a particular interest in this or that character in relation to the outside world (read ‘ The History of Mr Polly ’) ; he has ended up by being recognised as one of the foremost interpreters of past and current history. And it happened like this. ‘ The Time Machine ’ gave him the idea of writing some more stories cast in the future and instead of guessing as to what things would be like in the year 2,000 he found himself soberly examining current tendencies, looking back in history to see their roots and origins and so predicting the ways that they would develop in the future. _ And this study led to a return of his student day

doubts as to whether the existing political and social institutions were really suited to carrying out the promises that the recent strides of science and industry ought to be holding out to the inhabitants of the twentieth century world. - So we have this aggressive worrierout of facts, looking backwards and forwards and talking about “ Planning ” in 1912 (Planning is a new idea to lots of people in this year of grace), expressing views on the Peace Settlement and the League of Nations, talking about the necessity for the establishment of a World State, and writing and preaching the doctrine that it is only bad, out-of-date management, and bad, out-of-date ideas that prevent everyone from enjoying' the leisure and abundance of good things that speeded up production is willing and waiting to give them. And from this resolute tackling of underlying causes there emerged his three great post-war books —‘ The Outline.of History,’ ‘The Science of Life,’ and ‘ The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind.’ ‘The Outline of History ’ is the best known —it sold over 2,000,000 copies. It is a new kind'of history, or, rather, a new way of looking at history,' in which details about Icings and queens, and this and that little squabble, are passed over in favour of the really significant events and tendencies which have influenced the “getting together” or association of mankind on-which civilisation and progress depend. So there, in an adequate‘nutshell, is the history of the young man who wouldn’t be a respectable draper. He has made the most of everything that has come his way. He has enjoyed life. He has a clever family. He has travelled. He - has met most of his interesting contemporaries. He has enjoyed his success. He’s a fox terrier, remember, with a remarkably keen nose.