by H. G. Wells
A large wardrobe made it awkward to open the door fully. Opposite the window that looked out on to the garden was a smaller circular window which looked out on to the courtyard. There was a plain, unsprung bed and beside it a table with a water jug, two combs and a small cake of blue soap on a chipped plate. Fixed to the walls were rosaries, medals, several pictures of the Virgin and a holy-water stoop made out of a coconut shell. On the chest of drawers, which was draped with a cloth like an altar, was the shell box that Victor had given her, a watering can and a ball, some handwriting books, the illustrated geography book and a pair of little ankle boots. Hanging by its two ribbons from the nail which supported the mirror was the little plush hat! 21
Henry James's treatment of the material world, especially in his later work, is in contrast impressionistic, subjective, lacking in specificity. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), for instance, a novel all about precious ‘things’ (i.e. antiques), hardly any of them are actually described, and then in no great detail. In James's fiction everything is filtered through the consciousness of the characters, and it is their emotional and psychological reaction to the world and to each other, rendered in exquisitely nuanced prose, that is of central importance. James, who knew Flaubert's work very well, and wrote a fine essay about it, revered him primarily for his complete dedication to his art, his tireless pursuit of the perfectly appropriate form for his subject, however unpromising it might be. To Wells the subject of a novel, and its relevance to contemporary life, was all-important. He was never much bothered about formal perfection, and in due course it became evident to both him and James that their respective concepts of the novel were incompatible. In 1914 James wrote critically about Wells's recent work in a survey of contemporary fiction in The Times Literary Supplement, 22 and the following year Wells retaliated with a cruel caricature of the late James's style in his satire Boon (1915). After an exchange of letters, pained on James's part, unrepentant on Wells's, the two men severed relations. Henry James died the following year. But in 1905 the friendship was still intact, and James was able to appreciate and enjoy, along with many other readers, the originality and verve of Kipps.
David Lodge
NOTES
1. Norman and Jean Mackenzie, The Time Traveller (1973), p. 193.
2. H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 2 vols. (1934; reissued 1966), p. 148.
3. Ibid., p. 155.
4. In his 1959 lecture, ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, C. P. Snow argued that those educated exclusively in the humanities were incapable of understanding the importance of science in the modern world.
5. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, p. 587.
6. George Gissing (1857–1903) was the author of many novels, realistic in style, of which the best known today is probably New Grub Street (1891).
7. Sir Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), prolific man of letters, best known now for his autobiographical memoir, Father and Son (1907).
8. H. G. Wells, The Wealth of Mr Waddy, edited with an introduction by Harris Wilson (1969).
9. Ibid., p. xix.
10. Ibid., p. 12.
11. Preface to Volume VIII of the Atlantic Edition: See Appendix, p. 337.
12. Quoted in J. R. Hammond, A H. G. Wells Chronology (1999), p. 18, and Lovat Dickson, H. G. Wells: His Turbulent Life and Times (1969), p. 145.
13 Literally ‘A god set down on the stage by machinery’. More generally, any unlikely or providential intervention which extricates a character from a difficult situation.
14. Letter to Pinker in June 1904, quoted in Wells, The Wealth of Mr Waddy, p. xxii.
15. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, pp. 660–61.
16. N. and J. Mackenzie, The Time Traveller, p. 193 and note.
17. Dickson, H. G. Wells, p. 143.
18. Ibid., pp. 146–7.
19. Philip Horne (ed.), Henry James: A Life in Letters (1999), p. 424.
20. Metonymy is the rhetorical figure by which the attribute of a thing is substituted for the thing itself (e.g. ‘the deep’ for ‘sea’). It is closely related to synecdoche, which substitutes part for whole or whole for part. See David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature (1977) for the application of these terms to realistic fiction.
21. Gustave Flaubert, A Simple Heart, in Three Tales, trans. Roger Whitehouse (2005), p. 34.
22. Henry James, ‘The Younger Generation’, Times Literary Supplement(19 March and 2 April 1914).
Further Reading
The most vivid and memorable account of Wells's life and times is his own Experiment in Autobiography (2 vols., London: Gollancz and Cresset Press, 1934). It has been reprinted several times. A ‘postscript’ containing the previously suppressed narrative of his sexual liaisons was published as H. G. Wells in Love, edited by his son G. P. Wells (London: Faber & Faber, 1984). His more recent biographers draw on this material, as well as on the large body of letters and personal papers archived at the University of Illinois and elsewhere. The fullest and most scholarly biographies are The Time Traveller by Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie (2nd edn, London: Hogarth Press, 1987) and H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal by David C. Smith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986). Smith has also edited a generous selection of Wells's Correspondence (4 vols., London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998). Another highly readable, if controversial and idiosyncratic, biography is H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life (London: Hutchinson, 1984) by Wells's son Anthony West. Michael Foot's H. G.: The History of Mr Wells (London and New York: Doubleday, 1995) is enlivened by its author's personal knowledge of Wells and his circle.
Two illuminating general interpretations of Wells and his writings are Michael Draper's H. G. Wells (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987) and Brian Murray's H. G. Wells (New York: Continuum, 1990). Both are introductory in scope, but Draper's approach is critical and philosophical, while Murray packs a remarkable amount of biographical and historical detail into a short space. John Hammond's An H. G. Wells Companion(London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1979) and H. G. Wells (Harlow and London: Longman, 2001) combine criticism with useful contextual material. H. G. Wells: The Critical Heritage, edited by Patrick Parrinder (London: Routledge, 1972), is a collection of reviews and essays of Wells published during his lifetime. A number of specialized critical and scholarly studies of Wells concentrate on his scientific romances. These include Bernard Bergonzi's pioneering study of The Early H. G. Wells (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961); John Huntington, The Logic of Fantasy: H. G. Wells and Science Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and Patrick Parrinder, Shadows of the Future: H. G. Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995). Peter Kemp's H. G. Wells and the Culminating Ape (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982) offers a lively and, at times, lurid tracing of Wells's ‘biological themes and imaginative obsessions’, while Roslynn D. Haynes's H. G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980) surveys his use of scientific ideas. W. Warren Wagar, H. G. Wells and the World State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961) and John S. Partington, Building Cosmopolis (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) are studies of his political thought and his schemes for world government. John S. Partington has also edited The Wellsian (The Netherlands: Equilibris, 2003), a selection of essays from the H. G. Wells Society's annual critical journal of the same name. The American branch of the Wells Society maintains a highly informative website at http://hgwellsusa.50megs.com
P.P.
A Note on the Text
H. G. Wells claims in Experiment in Autobiography (1934) that he began to write Kipps on 5 October 1899, the day on which he finished Love and Mr Lewisham (published 1900), although he seems to have been planning Kipps a year earlier. As Wells's Preface indicates, Kipps was initially planned as part of a much longer novel, ‘The Wealth of Mr Waddy’ (see Appendix). Although he believed the draft of ‘Mr Waddy’ to have been destroyed, parts of it are in the Wells archive at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it was published in 1969, edited by Harris Wilson. These chapters narrate a more sinister Chitterlow's schemes to acquire Waddy's fortune by manipulating his will after his death. Muriel Chitterlow, his wife, is made a more prominent character. Chester Coote is less trustworthy in this version, and Helen Walshingham more sympathetic.
The final manuscript of Kipps is in the same archive. The novel was serialized from January to December 1905 in the Pall Mall Magazine and was published in book form in October 1905 by Macmillan and Co.; by the end of the year it had sold 12,000 copies. The copy text for this edition, in contrast to the practice adopted in other Penguin Classic editions in this series, is the first edition. While the Atlantic Edition of the Works of H. G. Wells (London: T. Fisher Unwin, and New York: Scribner's, 1924) is usually taken as the standard edition of his works, in the case of Kipps, which is Volume VIII, many of the later revisions are to the detriment of the novel's effect. Its language is more standardized, lessening the comic emphases of Wells's prose style. Some of his comic flourishes, such as the description of the bus in Book I, Chapter the Sixth, § 5, are also removed; the penultimate paragraph in Book II, Chapter the Ninth, §3 is deleted even though its contents are alluded to later in the novel. The phonetic spelling of much of the Kent-accented dialogue is made more consistent, but ‘corrected’, thus somewhat flattening its distinctiveness. In removing superfluous punctuation marks, the Atlantic deletes many commas from adverbial phrases such as ‘indeed’, ‘as it were’ and ‘for the most part’, and replaces many long dashes with commas, sometimes erroneously. The punctuation and syntax of the first edition are closer to idiosyncrasy than correctness, but it is generally superior in deliberately keeping the cadences of Wells's prose closer to the rhythms of ordinary speech.
The Atlantic edition revisions that correct obvious mistakes in the first edition have been incorporated into the present edition, such as ‘Tonbridge’ for ‘Tunbridge’ and an apparently garbled phrase (36:15–17). Atlantic replaces Helen's utterance ‘There's aitches’ with the more grammatically correct ‘There are aitches’; also her question ‘Whom to?’, with ‘To whom?’ These revisions have been incorporated into the present text. Atlantic punctuation has also been preferred in a number of places where sense and syntax require it; further small emendations in punctuation have also been made where necessary. The full list of such changes is given in List of Textual Emendations, pp. 339–42.
Housestyling of punctuation and spelling has been implemented to make the text more accessible to the present-day reader: single quotation marks (for doubles) with doubles inside singles as needed; end punctuation placed outside end quotation marks when appropriate; spaced N-dashes (for the heavier, longer M-dash) and M-dashes (for double length 2M-dash); no full stop after personal titles (Dr, Mr, Mrs, Messrs); chapter titles do not not follow the capitalization of the copy text, and chapter numbers have been standardized in the Contents (for example, ‘First’ for the copy-text's ‘I.’); book and magazine titles have been consistently italicized (Wells often had in quotation mark(s), and occasionally neither); and ligatures removed.
Hyphenation is consistent in neither the first nor Atlantic edition: modern practice and housestyle have been followed to resolve inconsistencies, in such cases as: ‘mortarboards’, ‘trouser pocket’ and ‘trouser-leg’ (these are recorded in the List of Textual Emendations). Words that are usually spelt as one word in modern English are done so here, for example, ‘someone’ and ‘upstairs’. Spellings have also been modernized: ‘bus’ for ‘bus’, ‘Michelangelo’ for ‘Michael Angelo’ and ‘chiffonier’ for ‘cheffonier’, but the Atlantic's spelling of ‘whiskey’ has been favoured over Macmillan's European spelling ‘whisky’, since the context makes clear that the characters are drinking rye, rather than Scotch. Certain inconsistencies have been standardized: the hero's uncle is ‘Old Kipps’ and ‘old Kipps’ in the Macmillan text, but always the latter in the Atlantic (and here); ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ are frequently capitalized in the latter part of the book in Macmillan and Atlantic texts, but are always lower cased here (except in direct address); Macmillan and Atlantic texts start with ‘Methusaleh’ for the whiskey, but both later correct (mostly) to ‘Methuselah’ (as here). A very few obvious errors have been corrected, e.g. ‘con-veration’ (140:13), suddenness of of one (286:20). None of these has been included in the List of Textual Emendations.
I would like to thank the staffs of the British, Bradford Public and Durham University Libraries for their assistance in the preparation of the text and Notes for this edition, and also Helen Cornford and Lindeth Vasey at Penguin, and Patrick Parrinder. Folkestone Tourist Information Office, Folkestone Public Library and Sandra Lawrence provided assistance with specific notes.
Simon J. James
KIPPS
The story of a Simple Soul
‘Those individuals who have led secluded or isolated lives, or have hitherto moved in other spheres than those wherein well-bred people move, will gather all the information necessary from these pages to render them thoroughly conversant with the manners and amenities of society.’
MANNERS AND RULES OF GOOD SOCIETY,
By a Member of the Aristocracy.1
Contents
BOOK I
THE MAKING OF KIPPS
First THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY
Second THE EMPORIUM
Third THE WOODCARVING CLASS
Fourth CHITTERLOW
Fifth ‘SWAPPED’
Sixth THE UNEXPECTED
BOOK II
MR COOTE THE CHAPERON
First THE NEW CONDITIONS
Second THE WALSHINGHAMS
Third ENGAGED
Fourth THE BICYCLE MANUFACTURER
Fifth THE PUPIL LOVER
Sixth DISCORDS
Seventh LONDON
Eighth KIPPS ENTERS SOCIETY
Ninth THE LABYRINTHODON
BOOK III
KIPPSES
First THE HOUSING PROBLEM
Second THE CALLERS
Third TERMINATIONS
BOOK I
THE MAKING OF KIPPS
CHAPTER THE FIRST
THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY
§ 1
Until he was nearly arrived at manhood, it did not become clear to Kipps how it was that he had come into the care of an aunt and uncle instead of having a father and mother like other little boys. He had vague memories of a somewhere else, a dim room, a window looking down on white buildings, and of a someone else who talked to forgotten people and who was his mother. He could not recall her features very distinctly, but he remembered with extreme definition a white dress she wore, with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers and little bows upon it, and a girdle of straight-ribbed white ribbon about the waist. Linked with this, he knew not how, were clouded, half-obliterated recollections of scenes in which there was weeping, weeping in which he was inscrutably moved to join. Some terrible tall man with a loud voice played a part in these scenes, and, either before or after them, there were impressions of looking for interminable periods out of the windows of railway trains in the company of these two people.
He knew, though he could not remember that he had ever been told, that a certain faded wistful face that looked at him from a plush and gilt framed daguerreotype 1 above the mantel of the ‘sitting-room’ was the face of his mother. But that knowledge did not touch his dim memories with any elucidation. In that photograph she was a girlish figure, leaning against a photographer's stile, and with all the self-conscious shrinking natural to that position. She had curly hair and a face far younger and prettier than any other mother in his experience. She swung a Dolly Varden hat 2 by the string, and looked with obedient respectful eyes on the photographer-gentleman who had commanded the pose. She was very slight and pretty. But the phantom mother that haunted his memory so elusively was not like that, though he could not remember how she differed. Perhaps she was older or a little less sh
rinking, or, it may be, only dressed in a different way… .
It is clear she handed him over to his aunt and uncle at New Romney with explicit directions and a certain endowment. One gathers she had something of that fine sense of social distinctions that subsequently played so large a part in Kipps' career. He was not to go to a ‘common’ school, she provided, but to a certain seminary in Hastings, that was not only a ‘middle-class academy’ with mortarboards 3 and every evidence of a higher social tone, but also remarkably cheap. She seems to have been animated by the desire to do her best for Kipps even at a certain sacrifice of herself, as though Kipps were in some way a superior sort of person. She sent pocket-money to him from time to time for a year or more after Hastings had begun for him, but her face he never saw in the days of his lucid memory.
His aunt and uncle were already high on the hill of life when first he came to them. They had married for comfort in the evening or, at any rate, in the late afternoon of their days. They were at first no more than vague figures in the background of proximate realities, such realities as familiar chairs and tables, quiet to ride and drive, the newel 4 of the staircase, kitchen furniture, pieces of firewood, the boiler tap, old newspapers, the cat, the High Street, the back yard, and the flat fields that are always so near in that little town. He knew all the stones in the yard individually, the creeper in the corner, the dustbin and the mossy wall, better than many men know the faces of their wives. There was a corner under the ironing-board which, by means of a shawl, could be made, under propitious gods, a very decent cubby-house, 5 a corner that served him for several years as the indisputable hub of the world, and the stringy places in the carpet, the knots upon the dresser, and the several corners of the rag hearthrug his uncle had made, became essential parts of his mental foundations. The shop he did not know so thoroughly; it was a forbidden region to him, yet somehow he managed to know it very well.