H. G. WELLS AND STEPHEN M'KENNA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19204, 21 June 1924, Page 4

H. G. WELLS AND STEPHEN M'KENNA.

TWO NOVELISTS AND THEIR NOVELS. By Constant Reader. It is scarcely sufficiently realised to what extent a novel leflects the personal experiences and everyday life of the novelist. Perhaps it may not apply to the machinemade novel, to stories turned cut according to an accepted recipe by a practised hand with great rapidity. All really sincere writers, however, who have an ambition to do something more than merely make a living—a definition which excludes all but actual artists —draw largely upon their own lives for their plots, incidents, and characterisations. Speaking broadly, almost all the great novels are 'largely autobiographical, and the view of the world depicted is tbc view born in the mind of the novelist as the of heredity acting upon environment. This thesis is interestingly exemplified in the case of a couple of recent novels, ‘‘The Dream,” by H. G. Wells (Jonathan Cape), and “To-morrow and To-morrow,” by Stephen APKonna (Thornton Butlerworth).

The contrast between the novelists is rejected in the contrast between the novels. Both stories are in the nature, of a backward book, but, while the scenes surveyed are surprisingly different, the conclusions reached arc surprisingly similar. Before touching on the novels, it mav be a? well to have a good look at the novelists. Mr IT. C, Wells is the son of n small

• hopkeeper in the outer suburbs of Greater London. His grand'other was bead gar'enor to a country squire. His mother was the daughter of a village innkeeper who became a lady’s maid, and after her ’’usband’s death took service as houseeeper in a great establishment in the country. His father failing in business, 11. G. Wells was b'hind the counter in a hemist’s shop at the age of thirteen. Then '■"■Hewed a term n= draper’s assistant, and only by dint of restlessness and pertinacity :: d he, as a young man, educate himself t of his sordid surroundings, slowl- but

ircly climbing the literary ladder. The ay to authorship was marked by a degree

• ith first-class honours at London UniverUv and a period of schoolmastering. Ah his is important because it explains Art 'ipps, Mr Polly, Air I ewisham. Hoop'river on holiday. Bert Smallwnys, and. hove all. Henry Mortimer Smith, the lead•>c character in Mr Wells’s new novel ''he Dream.” Air Steuben M'Konna belongs to quite

■'other sphere. The nublic school, the niversity, and tho world of society, ol olitieal intrigue, of secret diplomacy have '■-cn the influences wHob have moulded ’is character and directed his career. Hi? '■■•st essav hi literature vas a literal trimstion of Plotinus on “The Beautiful."

ade sixteen years ago. A greater con"■st than between thi? and Mr Wells’s -st hook. “Sele-t Conversations With An T nele,” published in 1895. can hardly be nagined. Mr M'Konna is an irishman nd as a young man he was in the habit 51 attending the Sunday evening gatherings Dublin in the bouse of “A. TC.,’* where II the men and women who counted in bo Irish Literary Movement were wont to -ather. It was Air Stephen M'Kenna •ho discovered James Stephens in Pan? nd persuaded him to return to his native and. In short, the gulf dividing the

vorld of Wells from the world of MTCennn s as wide as the gulf which divided the odd of Dickons from the world of r haekerny. and on closer examination the ’arallel will be found to hold good.

In a brief introduction to “To-morrow -nd To-morrow.” Air Al‘Kenna, says of tb” -haracters appearing and reappearing in he series of stories which, beginning with "■tama.” is with his latest novel brought a a close! “Bv the accident of birth, ■dune, or talent ‘these our actors’ were

ado to fill a position—before, during, and

Her the war —which attracted to them noro attention than was warranted by •Heir historical importance. My defence— I must defend myself—is that the butterfly in every age has claimed more notice ‘han the bee.” It is of butterflies that Mr Al’Kenna writes. It is the bees who form tho subiect matter of Mr Wells’? -'ages. Air Wells especially dwells upon 'fie sordid world in which the .human hive -iocs tho work and struggles for existence ■mid murk and gloom. In contrast, Mr 'l‘Kenna depicts the social butterflies, ■making in the sunlight of society on the ■irfaoo but ever and anon touching on ' ragedy as thev dive info the depths. Mr 'Toll’s biographer—ATr Ivor Brown—in an -iresting paragraph, ’•■ichirps the environment of tho novelist’? upbringing, scenes Tom which are vividly reflected in “The Oream” ;

Wells was born on the edge of a London that was still Dickensian, a city, not a county; but in his boyhood and in his student days he saw this monstei of streets and stucco rise and stretch itself and sprawl in shabby chaos over the countryside, He saw the ‘uihmersion of villages and of tho old village semifeudal conventions. He saw everywhere development unplanned and undisciplined He saw the decline and fall of Victorian England, not as Arnold Bennett was seeing it among the furnaces and pit-heads and pot-banks of North Staffordshire, not ns John Galsworthy was seeing it from Harrow and Oxford and the Forsyte windows round Hyde Park, b't from the squalid disorder of the new suburbs. Wells is one of tho first citizens of Greater London ; he felt its grow ing pains and cursed the absent physicians who let the young giant shoot all ungainly out of its clothes and presented no regimen to give it health proportionate to its size.

On the second page of “Sonia,” Mr M'Kenna puts into the mouth of Oakleigh--tho amiable nonentity, narrator of that and the subsequent stories —words which reve l a contrasting environment to that of H. G. Wells For thirty years T have lived among what the world has agreed loosely to call “the governing classes.” The title may already be obsolescent ; sentence of proscription may, as I write, have been passed on those who hear it. At the lowest computation those classes will soon have changed beyond recognition in personnel. function, power, and pb'losophy. This book mav then perhaps have something of historical value in portraying a

group of men and women who were at the same time mv personal friends and representative of those Governing Classes in politics, journalism, commerce, and society. I have drawn them as I saw them, without attempting to select or label predominant types. And if there be blank spaces on mv canvas, it is to bo remembered that I only sot out to paint that social group with which I happened to be brought in contact.

In his preface to “To-morrow and Tomorrow” Mr M‘Kenna explains: “Three years ago The Secret Victory’ bronchi, to an end the trilogy which I called ‘The Sensationalists,’ This book and the antecedent, volumes —‘Ladv Lilith’ and ‘The Education of Eric Lane’—described the fortunes of certain men nnd women who constituted part of the larger groups which I bad in ‘Sonia,’ ‘Midas and pen,’ and ‘Sonia Married.’ ” The novelist adds; “If this present seri os have any arriptie or historical value, I should like it to ho found in the completed pictures.” He further says;— I attempted in “Sonia” to trace the adolescence of the generation that grew to manhood in time to meet the shock of the war. That war ends in the first lino of the present volume; and. before the last page, the Government that was charged to bring pence back to the sparse survivors had itself passed away. One phase in history has been concluded; and this series, which aimed at describing a single English scene in the life of a single generation, ends with the end of that, phase.

The date of the first chapter of “Sonia” ir. placed as the late summer of 1898: “Tomorrow and To-morrow,” ends with the beginning of social revolution in 1022. Mr Wells starts 2000 years ahead with a group of Utopians cozing curiously on the ruins of a town on which poison gas and deathdealing rays had done their worst and which revealed ‘evidences of one of the characteristic disasters of (he last war period in man’s history.” One of (he Utopians who gazed on the evidences of (his human disaster has a dream, which ho afterwards relates to his companions. The dream resolves itself into a satiric description of London and its suburban shop-keening inhabitants as Mr Wells knew it—child, boy, and young man—a description showing the causes which gradually led up to the disaster of the Great War and the subsequent destruction of Western civilisation. The much-vaunted British home, the absurdly deficient education, the narrowness and pettiness of evangelical religious life, the animalism of what passed for love and marriage, the injustice of bringing into the world unwanted children are pitilessly pictured until London consisted of a vast, congestion of human beings. . . . . Within a radius of 15 miles a population of seven and a-half million people were gathered together, people born out of duo time into a world unready for them, and born mostly through the sheer ignorance of their procroatora,

gathered together into nn area of not very attractive clay country by an urgent need to earn a living." All this and more is pilloried by the novelist in vigorous language which brings out finally the sins of omission and commission on the part of what Mr M'Kenna calls "the Governing Classes."

These two novels should be read together, since the one makes the necessary complement of the other. Mr Wells knows ‘‘the Bees,” their habits, and their outlook on life; Mr M'Kcnna knows “the Butterflies,” and without an understanding of “the Bees” it is difficult rightly to appreciate “tho Butterflies.” Novel readers in search of a story will probably be disappointed with both l>ooks. In cither case the novelist subordinates the story to the' background. The virtue of "Tho Dream” and of ‘‘Tomorrow and To-morrow” is the faithful picture cf London before, dining, and after tho war, a city which is tho heart of the British Empire. In parts there may be undue emphasis, even to the point almost of exaggeration, but the impression left on tho mind of the reader is none the less convincing. These two books should be studied by preachers and by politicians, and indeed by all who view the future with an. ill-con-cealed anxiety.