The Timaru Herald. MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1909. SOME SOCIAL TYPES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13881, 19 April 1909, Page 4

The Timaru Herald. MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1909. SOME SOCIAL TYPES.

When a man like H. G. AVells, who lias made his mark as (.a writer of purely imaginary stories, who has followed these with philosophical treatises on modern society and social reforms—when a man with such a training iu the art of literary expression and in observation of men and their "N ays, their aims and aspirations, undertakes to nourtray in the form of a. novel some of the evils that afflict society, a story of more than ordinary interest aud vafyie is to bo expected. Such a story Mr Wells has achieved in " TonoBungay," recently published by Maclnillans. In this book the authoi strikes a curved, or rather zigzag lino through certain strata of English society, an 3 presents thumbnail or larger sketches of various types of people met with in those strata. Somo of tho sketches are filled with detail that makes them completer —yet still incom-plete-—representations of those types; and as lie proceeds he. comments upon the conditions which have produced and are producing them. It is evident that Mr Wells has tried to forget that he, the author, lias been a student ot sociology, and has tried to mako the autobiographic character of the tale give utterance to such reflections as might have occurred to an intelligent and thoughtful observer who had not specialised in that line; but in this he has not succeeded; probably success irr that direction was impossible, for one must have a theory of somo kind as a guide to consistent and effective criticism. The of society dealt with do not include the highest or the lowest. The " trajectory of his thought" runs from tho servants' hall of a somewhat decayed aristocratic family through a few lines of trade; the artisan and labourer do not appear as dramatis personao at all. The servants' hall supplies materials for the pourtrayal of an old feudal system gone to seed, suffering and becomo ineffectual from fatty degeneration. The greater part of tho story deals with one aspect of modern trade, one type of modern trader, by tracing the fortunes of a mercurial, energetic, conscienceless -man whoso one idea is to hit upon some way of making money easily and rapidly. Mr Wells makes this "star" character a chemist — Edward Ponderevo —who compounds a valueless and not altogether harmless euack medicine, calls it "Tono-Bunjjay," and by dint of unscrupulous advertising and assisted by a better business man than himself —his nephew George, tho teller of the story—lie makes a fortune. This is but a step to his becoming a, great financier, boom speculator, and exploiter of many other " idces," useful and useless, until 'he becomes, nominally at least, a millionaire. Then he begins to spend, as recklessly as hp had made money, and presently his bubble reputation bursts, and only flight and death save liim from the dock. The chemist is made a most amusing character, and one wonders whether anyone

would trust such an inconsequential chatterer as Wells depicts liim. The idea of course is that talk tells, and that ignorance is easily gulled by confident assertion. Tono-Bmigay and its inventor fill a large space in the story, and tlic author explains that he made much of them, because he intended it to be " a story of activity and urgency and sterility. I have called it ' Tono-Bungay,' but I had better have called it ' Waste.'

It is all one spectacle of forces running to waste, of people who use and do not replace, the story of a country hectic with a wasting fever of aimless trade and money-making and pleasure-seek-ing." It is evident, even from the low hints above given of the nature of this side of the story, that as a picture of modern trade it is absolutely out of proportion. It does not profess to-be a picture of modern trade, but tinlv of one section of it, and the reader will recognise that the types of man and of business represented by Edward Ponderevo and his Tono-Bungay exist tuid flourish amongst us, without the reprobation and repression which they deserve. lutcrwovcu with the story of Tono-Bungay and its inventor, treating of an even more important social question, arc the descriptions of the narrator's love affairs, which are made types of the mischievous effects of modern social conventions. George I'ondcrevo falls in love with a girl who is incapable of loving in return. His own idea of love and marriage had been ill-formed. "Nobody was ever frank and decent with me in this relation, nobody, no book, ever came and said to me thus and thus is this world made, and so and so is necessary.

And the make-up of Marion's mind in the matter was an equally irrational a Hair. . . . For all that is cardinal

in this essential business of life she Lad one inseparable epithet ' horrid.' " Her one aim in accepting matrimony was to get a nice home; and in order to secure this for her, as a condition of her consent to wed him, George swallows his conscience, and agrees to help liis uncle in his fraudulent business, in return for £3OO a year. The marriage proved unsatisfactory, unhappy—for George, he knows' only -.his own share of it —he is unfaithful, and divorce follows, after a very matter-of-fact discussion of the situation between them. The lop-sided courtship, the miserable married life of the incompatibles, the. tragedy of the separation, arc well done, and all through one can trace the influence of that fatal error in'the woman's upbringing. The story, as a story, winds up with a chapter intended to pourtray what should have been a fine natural healthy sort of mutual love, but it is a passion spoiled because the woman had been spoiled; her true feeling has -become vocal through practice of the false, and being vocal'it is shocking. One agrees with the author that this is the most painful of his female types. There arc other women in the story, of course, and one of them, George's aunt, is a delicious humorist, but she also has missed the vocation of motherhood, and that is one of the points the author sought to enforce by his story: \\ hat hope is there for a people whose women become unfruitful?" The note of pessimism in regard to the future of England is struck again and again, and in its, tray the whole "story-is a -companion aud to some extent a complement of the now famous play " The Englishman's Home." 'J'liis deals with the national neglect of danger from without: " Tono-Bungay" with dangers from within. And curiously enough the book links oddly with the play, for George Pondercvo is bv nature a mechanic and engineer, and at the close he is designing aud building superior ".destroyers"—but " X2 isn't intended for the empire, or indeed for the hands of any European power. AYe offered it to our own people first, but they would have nothing to do with inc." That, too, is typical.