by H. G. Wells
Now the spirit of romantic adventure slumbers in the most unexpected places, and I have already told you of our plump Author’s discontents. He had been like a smouldering bomb for some years. Now, he burst out. He suddenly became excited, energetic, stimulating, uplifting.
He stood over the drooping devil.
“But my dear chap!” he said. “You must pull yourself together. You must do better than this. These confounded brutes may be doing all sorts of mischief. While you—shirk…”
And so on. Real ginger.
“If I had some one to go with me. Some one who knew his way about.”
The Author took whisky in the excitement of the moment. He began to move very rapidly about his room and make short, sharp gestures. You know how this sort of emotion wells up at times. “We must work from some central place,” said the Author. “To begin with, London perhaps.”
It was not two hours later that they started, this Author and this devil he had taken to himself, upon a mission. They went out in overcoats and warm underclothing—the Author gave the devil a thorough outfit, a double lot of Jaeger’s extra thick—and they were resolved to find the Wild Asses of the Devil and send them back to hell, or at least the Author was, in the shortest possible time. In the picture you will see him with a field-glass slung under his arm, the better to watch suspected cases; in his pocket, wrapped in oiled paper, is a lot of salt to use if by chance he finds a Wild Ass when the devil and his string of oaths is not at hand. So he started. And when he had caught and done for the Wild Asses, then the Author supposed that he would come back to his nice little villa and his nice little wife, and to his little daughter who said the amusing things, and to his popularity, his large gilt-edged popularity, and—except for an added prestige—be just exactly the man he had always been. Little knowing that whosoever takes unto himself a devil and goes out upon a quest, goes out upon a quest from which there is no returning—
Nevermore.
ANSWER TO PRAYER
The Archbishop was perplexed by his own state of mind. Maybe the shadow of age was falling upon him, he thought, maybe he had been overworking, maybe the situation had been too complex for him and he was feeling the reality of a failure without seeing it plainly as a definable fact. But his nerve, which had never failed him hitherto, was failing him now. In small things as in important matters he no longer showed the quick decisiveness that had hitherto been the envy of his fellow-ecclesiastics and the admiration of his friends. He doubted now before he went upstairs or downstairs, with a curious feeling that he might find something unexpected on the landing. He hesitated before he rang a bell, with a vague uncertainty of who or what might appear. Before he took up the letters his secretary had opened for him he had a faint twinge of apprehension.
Had he after all done something wrong or acted in a mistaken spirit?
People who had always been nice to him showed a certain coolness, people from whom he would have least expected it. His secretaries, he knew, were keeping back “open letters” and grossly abusive comments. The reassurances and encouragements that flowed in to him were anything but reassuring, because their volume and their tone reflected what was hidden from him on the other side. Had he, at the end of his long, tortuous and hitherto quite dignified career, made a howler?
There was no one on earth to whom he could confide his trouble. He had always been a man who kept his own counsel. But now, if only he could find understanding, sympathy, endorsement! If he could really put things as he saw them, if he could simplify the whole confused affair down to essentials and make his stand plain and clear.
Prayer?
If anyone else had come to him in this sort of quandary, he would have told him at once to pray. If it was a woman he would have patted the shoulder gently, as an elderly man may do, and he would have said very softly in that rich kind voice of his, “Try Prayer, my dear. Try Prayer.”
Physician heal thyself. Why not try prayer?
He stood hesitatingly between his apartments and his little private oratory. He stood in what was his habitual children’s-service attitude with his hands together in front of him, his head a little on one side and something faintly bland and whimsical about him. It came to him that he himself had not made a personal and particular appeal to God for many years. It had seemed unnecessary. It had indeed been unnecessary. He had of course said his prayers with the utmost regularity, not only in the presence of others, but, being essentially an honest man, even when he was alone. He had never cheated about prayer. He had felt it was a purifying and beneficial process, no more to be missed than cleaning his teeth, but his sense of a definite hearer, listening at the other end of the telephone, so to speak, behind the veil, had always been a faint one. The reception away there was in the Absolute, in Eternity, beyond the stars. Which indeed left the church conveniently free to take an unembarrassed course of action…
But in this particular tangle, the Archbishop wanted something more definite. If for once, he did not trouble about style and manner…
If he put the case simply, quite simply, just as he saw it, and remained very still on his knees, wouldn’t he presently find this neuralgic fretting of his mind abating, and that assurance, that clear self-assurance that had hitherto been his strength, returning to him? He must not be in the least oily—they had actually been calling him oily—he must be perfectly direct and simple and fearless. He must pray straightforwardly to the silence as one mind to another.
It was a little like the practice of some Dissenters and Quakers, but maybe it would be none the less effective on that account.
Yes, he would pray.
Slowly he sank to his knees and put his hands together. He was touched by a sort of childish trustfulness in his own attitude. “Oh God,” he began, and paused.
He paused, and a sense of awful imminence, a monstrous awe, gripped him. And then he heard a voice.
It was not a harsh voice, but it was a clear strong voice. There was nothing about it still or small. It was neither friendly nor hostile; it was brisk.
“Yes,” said the voice. “What is it?”
They found His Grace in the morning. He had slipped off the steps on which he had been kneeling and lay, sprawling on the crimson carpet. Plainly his death had been instantaneous.
But instead of the serenity, the almost fatuous serenity, that was his habitual expression, his countenance, by some strange freak of nature, displayed an extremity of terror and dismay.
PART SIX
PSYCHO-SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION
INTRODUCTION
I don’t like to describe these stories with such a fancy polysyllabic label, but I don’t know how else to highlight the amazing variety and originality of Wells’s genre writing. Invasions from Mars, time machines, voyages to the moon, invisible men, visions of war and cataclysm and of brave new worlds, all these are his well-known legacy to us. These last two stories enrich that legacy with a different wealth.
In “The Queer Story of Brownlow’s Newspaper,” which was written in 1932, Wells meets the challenge of living through times of immense and rapid social and cultural change by exaggerating it—imagining a leap forty years into the future, and a tantalizing glimpse of that future.
Now, science fiction is always doing this, and always falling flat on its face, too. Science fiction that has “passed its date” should be unreadable, an object of pity and derision—how could they have thought the Cold War would go on forever? how could they have thought space-ship crews would all be white, male, and English-speaking? and so on. But the odd thing is, if a story has intelligence and passion, it can pass its date, have all its predictions belied, and yet lose nothing in interest. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a case in point that almost settles the issue by itself. The fact is, “the future” in science fiction is always more or less a metaphor for the writer’s present. What is fascinating now in a story like “Brownlow’s Newspaper” is the interplay between Wells’s present, which is our long past—Wells’s
ingeniously imagined future, which is our more recent past—and our present, which we perceive, for a moment, as amazingly contingent….
Moreover, the story has a delectable end-twist.
As for “The Country of the Blind,” I incline to think this is the best of all Wells’s short stories. I call it science fiction but it could be called fable or fantasy or, best of all, simply fiction. The theme of seeing, of vision, which runs so strong through this whole book, here again is the keynote. Wells published it first in 1904, and again in 1913; he reprinted it with a radically changed ending in 1939. The text given here, for most of the story, is that of the revision. As Wells said, “The two versions open with practically identical incidents, which I have never wished to alter; they run parallel until the distant mountain masses crack.” Both endings are given here, the older one first, then the revision; for though the revision is more powerful, the original remains valid, and the difference is both interesting and moving.
Omitting sentences that would give away the story, this is what Wells himself said, in his introduction to the 1939 edition, about why he rewrote it:
It has been changed because there has been a change in the atmosphere of life about us. In 1904 the stress is upon the spiritual isolation of those who see more keenly than their fellows and the tragedy of their incommunicable appreciation of life… In the later story vision becomes something altogether more tragic; it is no longer a story of disregarded loveliness and release; the visionary sees destruction sweeping down upon the whole blind world he has come to endure and even to love; he sees it plain, and he can do nothing to save it from its fate.
It is no wonder that between 1904 and 1939 the outlook of this visionary writer became more tragic. It is no wonder that in the year 1939, on the eve of Hitler’s war, Wells felt that to see destruction coming, to speak of it, to cry out warnings, might be as vain as trying to stop an avalanche with words. A hard lesson for an old man who had tried all his life to show people the danger of blind unreason, the worlds of promise and beauty they might see if they’d only open the eyes of their intelligence and their imagination.
THE QUEER STORY OF BROWNLOW’S NEWSPAPER
1
I call this a Queer Story because it is a story without an explanation. When I first heard it, in scraps, from Brownlow I found it queer and incredible. But—it refuses to remain incredible. After resisting and then questioning and scrutinising and falling back before the evidence, after rejecting all his evidence as an elaborate mystification and refusing to hear any more about it, and then being drawn to reconsider it by an irresistible curiosity and so going through it all again, I have been forced to the conclusion that Brownlow, so far as he can tell the truth, has been telling the truth. But it remains queer truth, queer and exciting to the imagination. The more credible his story becomes the queerer it is. It troubles my mind. I am fevered by it, infected not with germs but with notes of interrogation and unsatisfied curiosity.
Brownlow, is, I admit, a cheerful spirit. I have known him tell lies. But I have never known him do anything so elaborate and sustained as this affair, if it is a mystification, would have to be. He is incapable of anything so elaborate and sustained. He is too lazy and easy-going for anything of the sort. And he would have laughed. At some stage he would have laughed and given the whole thing away. He has nothing to gain by keeping it up. His honour is not in the case either way. And after all there is his bit of newspaper in evidence—and the scrap of an addressed wrapper…
I realise it will damage this story for many readers that it opens with Brownlow in a state very definitely on the gayer side of sobriety. He was not in a mood for cool and calculated observation, much less for accurate record. He was seeing things in an exhilarated manner. He was disposed to see them and greet them cheerfully and let them slip by out of attention. The limitations of time and space lay lightly upon him. It was after midnight. He had been dining with friends.
I have inquired what friends—and satisfied myself upon one or two obvious possibilities of that dinner party. They were, he said to me, “just friends. They hadn’t anything to do with it.” I don’t usually push past an assurance of this sort, but I made an exception in this case. I watched my man and took a chance of repeating the question. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that dinner party, unless it was the fact that it was an unusually good dinner party. The host was Red-path Baynes, the solicitor, and the dinner was in his house in St. John’s Wood. Gifford, of the Evening Telegraph, whom I know slightly, was, I found, present, and from him I got all I wanted to know. There was much bright and discursive talk and Brownlow had been inspired to give an imitation of his aunt, Lady Clitherholme, reproving an inconsiderate plumber during some re-building operations at Clitherholme. This early memory had been received with considerable merriment— he was always very good about his aunt, Lady Clitherholme—and Brownlow had departed obviously elated by this little social success and the general geniality of the occasion. Had they talked, I asked, about the Future, or Einstein, or J. W. Dunne, or any such high and serious topic at that party? They had not. Had they discussed the modern newspaper? No. There had been nobody whom one could call a practical joker at this party, and Brownlow had gone off alone in a taxi. That is what I was most desirous of knowing. He had been duly delivered by his taxi at the main entrance to Sussex Court.
Nothing untoward is to be recorded of his journey in the lift to the fifth floor of Sussex Court. The liftman on duty noted nothing exceptional. I asked if Brownlow said, “Good-night.” The liftman does not remember. “Usually he says Night O,” reflected the liftman—manifestly doing his best and with nothing particular to recall. And there the fruits of my inquiries about the condition of Brownlow on this particular evening conclude. The rest of the story comes directly from him. My investigations arrive only at this: he was certainly not drunk. But he was lifted a little out of our normal harsh and grinding contact with the immediate realities of existence. Life was glowing softly and warmly in him, and the unexpected could happen brightly, easily, and acceptably.
He went down the long passage with its red carpet, its clear light, and its occasional oaken doors, each with its artistic brass number. I have been down that passage with him on several occasions. It was his custom to enliven that corridor by raising his hat gravely as he passed each entrance, saluting his unknown and invisible neighbours, addressing them softly but distinctly by playful if sometimes slightly indecorous names of his own devising, expressing good wishes or paying them little compliments.
He came at last to his own door, number 49, and let himself in without serious difficulty. He switched on his hall light. Scattered on the polished oak floor and invading his Chinese carpet were a number of letters and circulars, the evening’s mail. His parlourmaid-housekeeper, who slept in a room in another part of the building, had been taking her evening out, or these letters would have been gathered up and put on the desk in his bureau. As it was, they lay on the floor. He closed his door behind him or it closed of its own accord; he took off his coat and wrap, placed his hat on the head of the Greek charioteer whose bust adorns his hall, and set himself to pick up his letters.
This also he succeeded in doing without misadventure. He was a little annoyed to miss the Evening Standard. It is his custom, he says, to subscribe for the afternoon edition of the Star to read at tea-time and also for the final edition of the Evening Standard to turn over the last thing at night, if only on account of Low’s cartoon. He gathered up all these envelopes and packets and took them with him into his little sitting-room. There he turned on the electric heater, mixed himself a weak whisky-and-soda, went to his bedroom to put on soft slippers and replace his smoking jacket by a frogged jacket of llama wool, returned to his sitting-room, lit a cigarette, and sat down in his armchair by the reading lamp to examine his correspondence. He recalls all these details very exactly. They were routines he had repeated scores of times.
Brownlow’s is not a preoccupied mind
; it goes out to things. He is one of those buoyant extroverts who open and read all their letters and circulars whenever they can get hold of them. In the daytime his secretary intercepts and deals with most of them, but at night he escapes from her control and does what he pleases, that is to say, he opens everything.
He ripped up various envelopes. There was a formal acknowledgement of a business letter he had dictated the day before, there was a letter from his solicitor asking for some details about a settlement he was making, there was an offer from some unknown gentleman with an aristocratic name to lend him money on his note of hand alone, and there was a notice about a proposed new wing to his club. “Same old stuff,” he sighed. “Same old stuff. What bores they all are!” He was always hoping, like every man who is proceeding across the plains of middle age, that his correspondence would contain agreeable surprises—and it never did. Then, as he put it to me, inter alia, he picked up the remarkable newspaper.
2
It was different in appearance from an ordinary newspaper, but not so different as not to be recognisable as a newspaper, and he was surprised, he says, not to have observed it before. It was enclosed in a wrapper of pale green, but it was unstamped; apparently it had been delivered not by the postman, but by some other hand. (This wrapper still exists; I have seen it.) He had already torn it off before he noted that he was not the addressee.
For a moment or so he remained looking at this address, which struck him as just a little odd. It was printed in rather unusual type: “Evan O’Hara, Mr., Sussex Court 49.”
“Wrong name,” said Mr. Brownlow; “right address. Rummy. Sussex Court 49… ’Spose he’s got my Evening Standard… ’Change no robbery.”