H G Wells - A Modern Utopia

Wells' Utopia is an alternative world but serves as an imagined future for our world. I have reached the chapter where his Utopian counterpart takes him to London. I was in the same part of London last week (Millbank) and I am able to compare what Wells wanted with what we have.

We have pleasant avenues by the sides of the Thames, but we have too many cars, and Wells didn't mention those.

London's air is dirty, which would have disappointed Wells, but the river is clean and the streets are fairly clean. We would disappoint Wells by our propensity to wear black instead of gay colours. Although you don't generally see people who are ragged or dirty, you do see some. Busking on the bridge, for example. He imagined we would wear woollen robes. It would be lovely to have woollen robes, but few people wear wool at all. Clothes now are very cheaply produced and not expected to last, so making them of wool would be a terrible waste. He imagined that in the clean air, people would often wear white.

Wells imagined that Utopian London would be heated by electricity, which is largely true, although there are also gas boilers, and the roads are sealed, which they are, and there are hardly any dogs or horses, which again is true. So he thought the city would be clean - where did he think the electricity would come from? Had he not seen a power station, burning coal?  No.

He thought everyone would be healthy, walk well, and have clear eyes and shapely bodies. Ah, well, they're not too bad, the Londoners, and in winter many of the office workers go running about in their lunch break displaying fit bodies. (In summer there are too many tourists in the way.)  However, they are all shapes and sizes, and I can't say that Londoners have good complexions, but they are not too noticeably spotty either. He thought that the Utopians would put off the years of decay. Well, that is true, in that some lucky people remain healthy until very old age, but I am beginning to see that as a matter of luck. It is true that we have learned to look after our teeth, on the whole, but having said that I heard something awful on the radio this morning  about children's teeth. - From today's Guardian -

The number of tooth extractions on children aged four and under in English hospitals has risen by almost a quarter over the past decade.

NHS data obtained by the faculty of dental surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) shows there were 9,206 extractions within the age group in 2015-16 compared with 7,444 in 2006-07 – a 24% rise.

He said 90% of tooth decay is preventable through reducing sugar consumption, regular brushing with fluoride toothpaste and routine dental visits, but that 42% of children did not see a dentist in 2015-16 despite treatment being free for under-18s.

 So 42% of children have parents who neglect their well-being. Not much of a Utopia, is it?

Wells says - "they have extended the level years far into the seventies, and age, when it comes, comes swiftly and easily." Hahaha. Old age never comes swiftly and easily. The quicker it comes, I would judge, the more of a shock it is.

However, he does talk about "a ripe, prolonged maturity. .. a grave deliberation, to a fuller and more powerful emotion, to a broader handling of life. " This is not the case at all. The drive for novelties is something Wells never anticipated.

He says that education and training in Utopia lasts until the student is twenty years old - 18 is normal in this country although some of the courses are of questionable value. He predicts the Gap year - "then comes the travel year" "and many are still students until 24 or 25." But he concedes that at this stage young adults need to take some responsibility for themselves, but says that their lives don't start in good earnest until the age of 30.  He sees the Utopians settling down to marry at about this time, and before that they fool around with love "play", he calls it.

This is nice - "my eye is caught at once by a young negro, carrying books in his hand, a prosperous-looking, self-respecting young negro, in a trimly-cut coat of purple-blue and silver." Wells was really very unusual for his time in that he wasn't a racist but an internationalist who believed that all races would work together in one world.

He really fulminates against all the nonsense of racism, but is very longwinded.
Then he asks what other alternatives there are to his idea of synthesis of all nations to the World State. "Synthesis... does not necessarily mean fusion, nor does it mean uniformity." As one of his ironically outlined alternatives he predicts mass killings of foreign races, "race-destroying fumigations". He points out the process could go on over and over again.

Mr Britling Sees it Through by H. G. Wells

I couldn't read the last Book Group choice. It was Dr Thorne by Trollope and I struggled through about three chapters and gave it up. So I missed the meeting.

Instead I took up a book which has been on my shelf for ages. In fact, I think it was on the grandparents' bookshelves in Walton-on-Thames. (Do you remember we grew up in my grandparents house? They had gone, but when we moved in their books were still on the bookshelves and their old coats and hats were in the cupboards, old tennis rackets and hockey sticks in the hall. They were proper people with a history. But maybe I haven't written about this here.)

The book is Mr Britling Sees it Through and it is a novel, but one with no real plot; it is more like a thinly fictionalised record of how it felt to live through the first two years of the First World War. The main character, Mr Britling, is a writer like H. G. Wells, and he has a certain fame and a certain degree of comfort, and he fools around with women who are not his wife and tells himself some good reasons for this philandering - only, of course, he never calls it philandering; but he admits these serial relationships are a kind of game. A game of ego on two sides.

As well as a wife and another woman a motor-ride away, he has a young secretary, who has a young wife and sister-in-law; Mr B also has a teenage son and two younger sons, and a live-in German tutor for his son. And at the outset, he has a visiting American who is keen to gain understanding of the British way of life. All these people are caught unawares by the war and the drama comes in the way the war treats them all. The book was published in the deepest days of the war before the United States came into it. I shall type up some extracts but I believe it is all worth reading. There is a freshness and vividness about Wells, an honesty that's fresh air in a fuggy room; a shot of hard stuff.

I love the picture of the Georgians before the war - the world of rose gardens and no central heating, when women were struggling for the vote and exhilarating in a degree of independence. It's the moment that Mrs Dalloway's daughter (Mrs Dalloway: Virginia Woolf) catches a bus on her own and goes riding up the Strand just because she can; and suddenly freedom is just possible for her... she starts to envision possible careers, possible professions...

Anyway, to set the scene there's a terrific description of a hockey match involving both sexes, very like one of those old school stories, and you imagine what fun they had in the days before we all got scared of being outside.

After the war breaks out, the people of the village start a run on the village shop (Hickson's), amongst them the well-to-do neighbour Mrs Faber.

" And would you believe me," she went on, going back to Mrs Britling, "that man Hickson stood behind his counter - where I've dealt with him for years, and refused absolutely to let me have more than a dozen tins of sardines. Refused! Point-blank!

"I was there before nine, and even then Hickson's shop was crowded - crowded, my dear!"

Mr Britling is just disgusted with women who just want to be dramatic, like this. But then he starts to worry that there will be "a tremendous change in values"; he worries that all his investments will be worthless and there will be bankruptcy. He tells his wife that they may have to leave home and go somewhere safer. But he, too, is as excited as the neighbour.

"Now I am afraid - and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken. The magic prison is suddenly all doors. You may call this ruin, bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and routine ... I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things and discursive things."

"... Writing is recording, not living. But now I feel suddenly that we are living intensely. ...There are times when the spirit of life changes altogether..."

"They speculated about the possible intervention of United States. Mr Britling thought that the attack on Belgium demanded the intervention of every civilised power, that all the best instincts of America would be for intervention. ...

"It would be strange if the last power left out to mediate were to be China," said Mr. Carmine. "The one people in the world who really believe in peace .... I wish I had your confidence, Britling."

For a time they contemplated a sort of Grand Inquest on Germany and militarism, presided over by the Wisdom of the East. Militarism was, as it were, to be buried as a suicide at four crossroads, with a stake through its body to prevent any untimely resuscitation."

Then there are reports of the atrocities in Belgium. Mr Britling's American visitor, Mr Direck, has been on the continent to see for himself, and has returned, shocked.

 "They have started in to be deliberately frightful. You do not begin to understand ... Well....Outrages. The sort of outrages Americans have never heard of. That one doesn't speak of.... Well... Rape. ....They have been raping women for disciplinary purposes on tables in the market-place of Liege. Yes, sir. It's a fact. I was told it by a man who had just come out of Belgium.

 Meanwhile, the British are unprepared and unarmed. Germany expects to win the war in weeks. Direck says:

"Germany today is one big armed camp. It's all crawling with soldiers. And every soldier has his uniform and his boots and his arms and his kit."

"And they're as sure of winning as if they had got London now. They mean to get London. ... They say it's England they are after, in this invasion of Belgium. They'll just down France by the way. ... They know for certain you can't arm your troops. They know you can't turn out ten thousand rifles a  week."

So Mr Britling's thoughts take a different turn. He stops being excited at the new world order he dreams of. The English start retreating in disorder. There are rumours of corruption in high places. And Mr Britling decides his country needs him and takes the train to London where he has contacts; he tries hard to find a role in the war machine. He wants to be of service to his threatened country, and finds that he is not alone; other men men of thirty-eight and fifty-four proclaim themselves fit enough to serve and lobby to learn to shoot and use a bayonet. But they are not wanted: the war machine can't cope with them. They have nothing to do. They feel "left out."

"The great "Business as Usual" phase was already passing away, and London was in the full tide of recruiting enthusiasm. That tide was breaking against the most miserable arrangements for enlistment it is possible to imagine. Overtaxed and not very competent officers, whose one idea of being efficient was to refuse civilian help and be very, very slow and circumspect and very dignified and overbearing, sat in dirty little rooms and snarled at this unheard-of England that pressed at door and window for enrolment. Outside every recruiting office crowds of men and youths waited, leaning against walls, sitting upon the pavements, waiting for long hours, waiting to the end of the day and returning next morning, without shelter, without food, many sick with hunger; men who had hurried up from the country, men who had thrown up jobs of every kind, clerks and shopmen, anxious only to serve England and "teach those damned Germans a lesson."

"Everywhere there were the flags of the Allies; [in London] in shop-windows, over doors, on the bonnets of automobiles, on people's breasts, and there was a great quantity of recruiting posters on the hoarding and in windows.. There were also placards calling for men on nearly all the taxicabs. "

Later on the German population in London come under suspicion and some are badly treated, but not so badly, it seems, as the English population in Germany. Mr Britling is really shocked when he reads a bale of German comic papers in the study of a friend in London. They were filled with caricatures of the Allies and more particularly of the English...

"One incredible craving was manifest in every one of them. The German caricaturist seemed unable to represent his enemies except in extremely tight trousers or in none; he was equally unable to present them without thrusting a sword or bayonet, spluttering blood, into the more indelicate parts of their persons. "... "But it's blind fury - at the dirt-throwing stage."

His friend points out: "They want to foam at the mouth. They do their utmost to foam more." and Wells incudes the lyrics of a "Hymn of Hate" which the Germans sing about England. It is extraordinary - but Britling's friend points out that this is war. "We pretend war does not hurt. They know better..."

The important character at this point is the German tutor who had taught Britling's son Hugh before the war, and had been an earnest and loveable character in the household - whenever Britling is inclined to hate the Germans he remembers Heinrich (who has gone back to his country), who "became a sort of advocate for his people before the tribunal of Mr. Britling's mind." He also remembered happy holidays in the hospitable village of the Odenwald. And then he is told of young German soldiers who have shot women and babies. In short, Mr Britling tries hard to be reasonable and understand the Germans, but at the same time the war becomes more and more savage; there is the torture of "gas", the use of flame jets...

I think I won't write more - all this is prelude to the moment that Britling's son Hugh goes to fight at the age of seventeen, and the forthright letters he sends home about the experience of fighting in the trenches form a large part of the middle of the book.

But this book has been written to record the truth as Wells saw it and felt it and experienced it; he meant it to be representative, and he meant it for posterity. It was published a hundred years ago and it still has interesting things to say. I recommend it. I shall be pressing it one everyone. It's not a great story or a great book - but there is a boldness to it that makes it remarkable. Good old Wells! what a long time he lived and how hard he worked.

Happy Boxing Day!

Boxing Day may be much nicer than Christmas Day as you don't need to eat so much food, and you can go out and do the things you like doing. There are fewer family games and quizzes. And yesterday we went for a short bedraggled walk in the rain, rather muddy and I had forgotten to take waterproof boots with me, but today looks gusty and bracing.

I got a great number of books for Christmas which is lovely. I received from F: Weeds, by R Mabey, which I will read with recourse to the internet because it doesn't have illustrations of all the weeds. I have Plants from Roots to Riches by K Willis and C Fry: which does have illustrations and (some of them I saw quite recently in a programme about the history of gardens with Monty Don which was very informative) and this book I can't wait to get to grips with. But first I must read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (1922) for the book group. I thought this would be awfully drippy because I saw a film of it recently in which the women were all equally gorgeous in their long, floppy dresses and the whole mood was very slushy. But the book is a better experience as it is quite slyly acerbic and as frank as it can be about sex without actually mentioning sex and women's attitudes to it. I think Elizabeth von Arnim is quite an amazing person. I am not surprised she had an affair with H.G. Wells; although he was appalling to his wives (bad point) he could cope with women who wanted to be open, honest and experimental with sex, which shows the courage of his convictions about feminism.

 The next Book Club book is called Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. A man called Tom suggested this as I said I would like to read a serious book. Tom is one of two men at the book club and he seems extremely well-read and well-informed.

The book that's driving me mad at the moment is Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name. I have read it all out of order because I kept skipping ahead because it's so long and wordy, but I must read it  again properly to make sure I haven't missed anything so I can't really say I have finished it, but I sort of hate it because the protagonist is making such dangerous decisions and one feels menaced. I have part three of this series to read as well. Italian torture!

I have also had an interesting understanding about Virginia Woolf. I read all her pieces of memoir writing in a book called Moments of Being, and I loved her style and her calm air of understanding what went on about her, then the tragedies, and how she felt about them, her judgements and her love for those she lost. I read it all twice. And in tandem with this, I read Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, which I am nowhere near the end of. It gives you quite a shock to realised that Mrs W. was an unreliable narrator, because she left out the fact that she herself was often very ill physically, in pain and unable to eat, and that during periods of her life she was insane, psychotic or otherwise mentally ill - was violent to Leonard, who had huge strength of character in taking her on (quite the reverse of his tiny physicality). Mrs W doesn't mention what a pain in the neck she had been to Vanessa during their adolescence, and to her sister Stella who had charge of her during her first madness, and how people said: "It's very bad for Stella to have Ginny with her all the time." I imagine she had a doleful intensity that could make anyone feel depressed. From the standpoint of her own memoir, Virginia is a rock of sense! I imagine when she read this out to the Memoir club*, Vanessa was sitting in a corner either laughing quietly to herself or shaking her head and rolling her eyes, sketching or designing something all the while: Vanessa went to listen but always kept her hands busy. Vanessa was a remarkable person in herself, and Virginia could have done nothing, I think, if Vanessa had not been so staunchly determined to be an artist and to be a Bohemian, because Virginia was too weak to do all that without her.

We gave the daughter a pair of Clarks stout leather boots for Xmas, (although she was faintly tempted by Doc Martens), also party clothes and ridiculous shoes (for nightclubs), a jumper, a purse, a scarf - oh, many things, it was fun to get her so many things!

*A Bloomsbury thing: Lytton, Morgan, Maynard, Leonard, Duncan, Clive, Virginia and Vanessa, maybe some others.

the Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit

I love the Nesbits, and this one is my favourite.

In the Story of the Amulet, the children who found the psammead (sammy-ad) that could grant them wishes find an amulet in a London junk shop, that can take them anywhere in the past to look for the other half of itself. They have to hold up the amulet and say the sacred name (which is read to them by the learned gentleman in the flat upstairs) and the amulet grows into a doorway, and they walk through it to wherever in time they want to go. The stories are very exciting - for example, the time they are imprisoned in ancient Babylon, they want to escape but then they remember that Jane has the amulet and Jane is missing! Jane, who is the indiscreet youngest, is telling the Babylonian queen all sorts of fascinating facts about Edwardian London with the result that the queen says "I wish I could see your country some day." and the psammead has to grant her wish.

So some weeks later the ancient Babylonian queen visits the children in London. She is very tyrannical, unsuitably dressed and wants all kinds of things. She is not happy with London. Someone has the bright idea of taking her to the British Museum and she is very angry that so many of her precious possessions are in there. She starts to break the glass cases and take her things back and the guards throw her out, believing she should be locked up in an asylum.

Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.
“I wish,” she said, very loud and clear, “that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.”
“Oh, you are a tiresome woman,” said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.
Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this. But the nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the courtyard.
It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone, bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine‐jars, bowls, bottles, vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird‐feet, necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings—heaps and heaps and heaps of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see distinctly.
All the angry gentlemen had abruptly sat down on the Museum steps except the nice one. He stood with his hands in his pockets just as though he was quite used to seeing great stone bulls and all sorts of small Babylonish objects float out into the Museum yard. But he sent a man to close the big iron gates.

You can read this book free of charge! Here

That's my favourite chapter and it's very funny. when E. Nesbit was researching her stories she simply went to the B.M. and knocked on the door marked Curator. She made a friend of the learned gentleman who worked behind the door and then they became more than friendly, probably on a glass case. She dedicated the book to him, Dr Wallis Budge.

Because her husband was an appalling philanderer, and she didn't see why she should not, E Nesbit had a number of lovers, many of them younger than herself, and stayed friends with them even after they had married other women. I think her stories were always written with her mind on the amusement of her peer group - H.G. Wells, for example, loved them, probably Shaw too.

HG Wells

There is a great deal to say about HG Wells, possibly because he wrote too much. He was full of himself. His voice adds a huge amount to his fiction and the most important element was energy: the vitality of the man who knows he is intelligent and that, without belonging to the establishment (Wells' mother was a servant), he could make it in the world.

I have just finished Tono Bungay, a novel which I have been meaning to read for some time. It gets great reviews. But I here and there thought - now he is trying to be Dickens - now he is trying to get the effect of Rice Boroughs or Conan Doyle writing an exotic adventure - Conrad even! and he is trying to get away from the limitedness of his world view, his view which is so English and class bound. Even at the end where he tried to describe his vision of England, it is not England he describes but London, and the very centre of London at that.

Having just read (March 2013) about Charlie Chaplin, I see that he and Wells had a huge amount in common. They both grew up poor, insecure and hungry, worked incredibly hard to get success, and became terrible romantic womanisers even as they were trying not to be - but to strip away all that seemed mythical and bunkum and get to the truth. Their private lives were interesting but messy. Chaplin seems always to have liked very young girls, and found older women frightening, and this may be because his mother, at a young age, went insane through malnutrition.

You see in both that pre- WWI physique - short stature, narrow shoulders and chest.