“PLAYFUL MALICE”

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 97, 25 May 1938, Page 1

“PLAYFUL MALICE”

MR WELLS AND THE UNITED STATES. Connoisseurs of what might be described as playful malice should certainly include in their anthologies of that art Mr H. G. Wells’ 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 seme of his impressions of that visit to the “Daily Telegraph.” Thus he refers to the fact “ that in every considerable American cities large gatherings of mature, prosperous, welldressed women are in permanent session.” He then continues: This year they are all wearing black hats. These hats stick in my mind. Uultimately of the most varied shapes, the original theme seems to have been cylindrical, so that the general effect of an assembly of smart American womankind in 1937 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 middle-aged 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 calculated playfulness; Europe is perfectly well acquainted (at least by reputation) 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’ 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 modem gracchi” in chapters 22 and 34 of “Martin Chuzzlewit,” or the “literary lady” in the brown wig who thus addressed the Honorable 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. But then, outlaughs the stern philosopher, and saith to the Grotesque, ‘ What ho! Arrest me for that Agency. Go, bring it here! ’ And so the vision fadeth. ’ ’ But Mr Wells’ ladies in the tin-can hats talk a good deal more sensibly than that. And Mr Wells’ genial satire is fairer and more effective than the crude, sledge-hammer strokes of Diekens.

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 his specialties 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 Vet intellectually active enough to be interested by serious topics when vocalised must be very small indeed.