“I HATE BEING 70”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23045, 23 November 1936, Page 11

“I HATE BEING 70”

MR H. G. WELLS'S REGRETS LIFE NOT" LONG ENOUGH P.E.N. CLUB'S BIRTHDAY DINNER (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Oct. 14. " I hate being 70. I wish I were still 45 with another 40 or 50 years to go. I feel like a little boy at a party with all his toys spread out on the floor when in comes nurse. ' Now it's getting late,' she says, ' it's time to put away your toys.' I don't want to put away my toys. Life is .not half long enough." Thus Mr H. G. Wells, famous author, speaking in reply to speeches in his honour at his seventieth birthday, on October 13, when a dinner was given by the P.E.N. Club, of which he is international president, at the Savoy Hotel. Mr J. B. Priestley presided over a gathering of 500, which included many distinguished authors and writers. P.E.N, clubs in countries all over the world were represented and for the New Zealand Club Miss Nelle Scanlan and Dr A. J. Harrop extended congratulations to Mr Wells. New Zealand also had another " interest" at the dinner: the cover of the menu was designed by David Low, the noted cartoonist, and showed Mr Wells full of life, vigour and energy taking a flying leap-frog over a milestone on which was inscribed " 70."

So many telegrams of congratulations were received that Mr Priestley announced that he would read but one —from Sir James Barrie. The others would be published in the club's magazine. Sir James regretted his inability to be present. " Wells is one of our chiefest glories," his message said. " He is one of the two angels left to us. I should like to be with you and to have a go at him." The dinner was distinctive, in that Mr Priestley, as chairman, dispensed with the toastmaster, usually present at such functions, " the long, dreary rounds of toasts and responses, and all the other nonsense." There were four speeches, by Mr George Bernard Shaw, Mr Andre Maurois. Mr Julian Huxley, and Miss G. B. Stern. Then Mr M. Priestley proposed, briefly, the toast of Mr Wells, who replied. " POOR OLD WELLS " In the absence.of Sir James Barrie, it was left to Mr Shaw to " have a go" at the guest of honour. Looking little older than when he was in New Zealand, Mr Shaw thoroughly enjoyed himself. He rose to a tremendous ovation, and during his speech alternately rubbed his hands, folded his arms across his chest, or linked his hands. " Poor old Wells," were his first words, which were received with roars of laughter. " He is going on for 80. — (Renewed laughter.) I am going on for 90.—(Cheers.) Yes, I feel that the prospect of soon getting rid of me creates a certain jubilation." Continuing in a more serious mood, he said that life passed so rapidly that it seemed only yesterday that there burst into the consciousness of the world two young men, who had been born practically at the same time, H. G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling. They botli made a great impression and seized the ear of the public with their stories. That was their only common bond, because Kipling was delighted with the world and Wells hated it like the devil. Kipling, an idealist, wanted the world to go on as it was, and became the leader of the feeling that was largely the spirit of English society. Wells had the strongest objection to English society as it existed, and his idea was to get rid of it for something better. He had the craze for making the world better. Whereas the charm of Kipling was in always describing the people he knew nothing about, Wells never made a mistake of that kind. He knew what he was writing about, and for the most part he did not like it. He did an extraordinary amount of cleaning up. People began reading Wells, and they were now quite different from what they used to be before he started in on them. That was his claim to the dinner that night. "Wells almost said, 'I told you so,' and," added Mr Shaw, " I hope he will go on telling you so." "NOTHING AGAINST HIM" " When he had been in South Africa at the time of the Jubilee people had asked him why the did not make Mr Wells a baronet, or confer some honour upon him. " I had to say," Mr Shaw went on, " that there was not the slightest reason to believe that King George had ever heard of H. G. Wells. His books are not the sort of books that one might expect to find on the shelves in Buckingham Palace. I was then asked whether there was anything 'aaainst' Mr Wells.— (Laughter.) I had never been confronted before by this curious question, so I said, No, there was nothing

Here Mr Shaw paused. There was a general laugh. Everyone glanced at Mrs Wells, who joined in the laughter. "I don't know exactly what this merriment means," declared Mr Shaw rather severely. "There is no question about fact. He is also an uncommonly good husband, and he has never lost a friend. Wells may also have had powers of reserve and self-control of an extraordinary character, but it is certain that he has never been known to exercise them. If you say anything that annoys or hurts Mr Wells you will receive in turn such a torrent of instant vituperation that nobody else has been able to produce in this country since the days of Milton. Although I and others have been the object on occasions of this vituperation, it has never slackened our regard for him. He has never hidden his feelings and he has never lost a friend. When you drink his health you will be toasting a very likeable chap, our dear old H. G."

Miss G. B. Stern, who gave a warning that such an occasion was liable to make her "richly emotional," declared that she spoke for a million Andromedas to a Perseus who had rescued them in the first 14 years 01 this century from that monster the Victorian papa. Women had had trouble with Mrs Grundy, and public opinion, but it was the Victorian papa that had been the most terrible. The first to lay the foundation of the defeat of this monster had been Samuel Butler, in "The Way of All Flesh," but he had written more on behalf of suffering sons than daughters, and it had been left to H. G. Wells to be thenleaders and spokesman in "Ann Veronica" and "Marriage." But for those two books she was not at all sure that any women would be where they were at present. Mr Julian Huxley recalled the story of the woman at the zoo who had seen a hippopotamus for the first time swimming in the water, with only its eyes and nostrils appearing. She asked the keeper whether the animal was a male or female, and the keeper, being somewhat Victorian, replied, "Madam, that is a question that ought not to interest nobody but another hippopotamus." If Mr Wells had been the keeper, Mr Huxley felt sure that he would have assisted the woman in her thirst for knowledge, and would not have rested until he had satisfied her. For Mr Wells was a man who was for ever in search of realities and facts. He was a great man in his own right, and Mr Huxley hoped that in 10 years' time Mr Wells would be still engaged in some new activity, feted as was Voltaire in his old age, and that the world would see in him the first and only sensible dictator of modern times. Mr Andre Maurois suggested that in 2036 a monument would be found erected on the too of Mount Everest dedicated to Mr Wells. " the first civilised man."

Mr Wells, wearing a white carnation in his buttonhole, and standing with his left hand in his pocket, received a tremendous ovation, lasting several minutes. After differing from Mr Shaw on a few points concerning Rudyard Kipling, he read his speech in his familiar high-pitched voice. "I don't in the least want to put away my toys. I hate the thought of leaving. Few of my games are nearly finished, and some I feel I have hardly begun.

"There is this game of encyclopsedism. The work I have done in outlining history and economic reality, and getting two of my betters to work upon the science of life, and so on, has taught me the need and the- possibility of an infinitely more powerful sort of encyclopfedism—a real, modern encyclopsedism which could assemble knowledge, con-elate ideas, make them more widely accessible, and so hold the mind of this distraught world together. "1 believe that a new movement on a grand scale towards a comprehensive encyclopsedism is overdue to-day and urgently needed. Other young men will do that work, but still I would love to have a finger in the pie."

Alluding to his film-making. Mr Wells said: " I have tried to make the talkies say something. So far I have not proved very competent at that, I have no illusions about what I have done. It is a battling, fatiguing business, but, all the same, I should like a few years yet to have just one more bout with it." Mr Wells also said that he would like to write another novel. He commented: "As we grow up we become more and more interested in real character, our own and other people's, and we write about personal reactions. The short stories grow long. Few of us have any original political sense of our own until we are round about 40, and then we incline to the novel of affairs. Each phase in development produces novels after its kind. " Some day perhaps the biologists will be opening out hopes of prolonga-

tion and expansion for us. But hot, I fear, in time for me." Remarking that the P.E.N. Club was "anti-nothing except anti-science and anti-obscurity," Mr Wells continued: "It is one of the most preposterous of our present human limitations that so few of us escape being either what is called Left or Right. We are like people travelling along a road that has been banked too steeply. All the time we tend to slew round into this gutter °£ £? at -, And both gutters are full now of blood and wasted life. "In the most vital human concerns there is no Right or Left at all. There is no Left science—in spite of the desperate attempts of some of our Red tnends to represent Marxism as a scientific philosophy. Science marches on and marches on, neither to the left nor the right, but straight forward. And the real artist, too. goes straight forward. The free activities of the human mind rise supreme above all political considerations." Mankind was adjusting itself painfully and confusedly to an unprecedented change of scale and pace and scope. The world would be worse before it Was better. Political life was more and more a struggle against hysteria, and new generations found them unprepared. "Seven-eighths of the hideous killing that is going on now all over the world is being done by youngsters—by people well under 30. Only a great, free, intellectual and moral drive—an educational encyclopaedism—can restore the shattered morale of our race and give a definite direction to its disordered will. " Men must age and men must pass, but the life of which our work is part need have no end. And that is a very consoling thought for an elderly gentleman of 70 more or less under notice to go." Among those present were: Lord and Lady Aberconway, Mr Lascelles Abercrombie, Lady Cynthia Asquith, Mr Henry Baerlein, Miss Helen Beauclerk, Mr Neil Bell. Princess Bibesco. Miss Ursula Bloom, Sir Edgar and Lady Bonham-Carter. Miss Vera Brittain, Mr Ivor Brown, Baroness Budberg, Mr Gerald Bullett, Lord Castlerosse, the Chilean Ambassador, Mr Richard Church, Lady Colefax, Mr Norman Collins, Mr F. W. Crofts, Sir James and Lady Currie. Miss E. M. Delafield. Mr Lovat Dickson, Mr Edmund Dulac, Miss Susan Ertz, Miss Rose Fyleman, Mr Edward Garnett. Md Louis Golding. Sir Richard and Lady Gregory, Mr Walter Greenwood, the Finnish Minister, Mr Philip Guedalla, Mr Stephen Gwynn, Mr Francis Hackett. Miss Ciceb- Hamilton, Mr Hamish Hamilton, Lord and Lady Hollenden. Mr Laurence Housman, Mr Sh-I Hsiung. Mr Holbrook Jackson, Professor C. E. M. Joan. Mr J. M. Keynes, Mr E. V. Knox, Mr Gonnoske Komai. Miss Lydia Lopokova. Mrs Belloc Lowndes. Mr E. V. Lucas, Mr Robert Lynd, Miss Rose Macaulay, Mr Desmond MacCarthy, Mr Miles Malleson, Mr Aylmer Maude, Mr W. Somerset Maugham, Mr Francis Meynell. Mr A. A. Milne, Sir Leo Chiozza and Ladv Money, Mr H. W. Nc-Vinson. Sir Henry and Lady Norman, Mr R. Ellis Roberts, Sir William and Lady Rothenstein, Miss Mazo de la Roche, Mr R. Cobden Sanderson. Miss Beatrice Kean Seymour, Miss Edith Shackleton. Mr L. A. G. Strong, Miss Annie Swan, Leonora Countess of Tankerville, Mr Stanley Unwin, Frances Countess of Warwick, Mr Alec Waugh.