In his Preface to the _Unpleasant Plays_, Mr Shaw boasts his
possession of "normal sight." The adjective is the oculist's, and the
application of it is Mr Shaw's, but while the phrase is misleading
until it is explained to suit a particular purpose, it has a pleasing
adaptability, and I can find none better as a key to the works of Mr
H.G. Wells.
We need not bungle over the word "normal," in any attempt to meet the
academic objection that it implies conformity to type. In this
connection, the gifted possessor of normal sight is differentiated
from his million neighbours by the fact that he wears no glasses; and
if a few happy people still exist here and there who have no need for
the mere physical assistance, the number of those whose mental outlook
is undistorted by tradition, prejudice or some form of bias is so
small that we regard them as inspired or criminal according to the
inclination of our own beloved predilection. And no spectacles will
correct the mental astigmatism of the multitude, a fact that is often
a cause of considerable annoyance to the possessors of normal sight.
That defect of vision, whether congenital or induced by the
confinements of early training, persists and increases throughout
life, like other forms of myopia. The man who sees a ball as slightly
flattened, like a tangerine orange too tightly packed (an "oblate
spheroid" would be the physicist's brief description), seeks the
society of other men who share his illusion; and the company of them
take arms against the opposing faction, which is confirmed in the
belief that the ball is egg-shaped, that the bulge, in fact, is not
"oblate" but "prolate."
I will not elaborate the parable; it is sufficient to indicate that in
my reading of Mr Wells, I have seen him as regarding all life from a
reasonable distance. By good fortune he avoided the influences of his
early training, which was too ineffectual to leave any permanent mark
upon him. His readers may infer, from certain descriptions in _Kipps_,
and _The History of Mr Polly_, that Wells himself sincerely regrets
the inadequacies of that "private school of dingy aspect and still
dingier pretensions, where there were no object lessons, and the
studies of book-keeping and French were pursued (but never effectually
overtaken) under the guidance of an elderly gentleman, who wore a
nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing,
and used a cane with remarkable dexterity and gusto." But, properly
considered, that inadequate elderly gentleman may be regarded as our
benefactor. If he had been more apt in his methods, he might have
influenced the blessed normality of his pupil, and bound upon him the
spectacles of his own order. Worse still, Mr Wells might have been
born into the leisured classes, and sent to Eton and Christchurch, and
if his genius had found any expression after that awful experience, he
would probably, at the best, have written polite essays or a history
of Napoleon, during the intervals of his leisured activity as a member
of the Upper House.
Happily, Fate provided a scheme for preserving his eyesight, and
pitched him into the care of Mr and Mrs Joseph Wells on the 21st
September 1866; behind or above a small general shop in Bromley. Mrs
Wells was the daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst and had been in
service as a lady's maid before her marriage. Joseph Wells had had a
more distinguished career. He had been a great Kent bowler in the
early sixties, and it must have been, I think, only the year before
the subject of our essay appeared at Bromley that his father took four
wickets with consecutive balls and created a new record in the annals
of cricket. The late Sir Francis Galton might have made something out
of this ancestry; I must confess that it is entirely beyond my powers,
although I make the reservation that we know little of the abilities
of H.G. Wells' mother. She has not figured as a recognisable portrait
in any of his novels.
The Bromley shop, like most of its kind, was a failure. Moderate
success might have meant a Grammar School for young Wells, and the
temptations of property, but Fate gave our young radical another twist
by thrusting him temporarily within sight of an alien and magnificent
prosperity, where as the son of the housekeeper at Up Park, near
Petersfield, he might recognise his immense separation from the
members of the ruling class, as described in _Tono-Bungay_.
After that came "the drapery," first at Windsor and then at Southsea;
but we have no autobiography of this period, only the details of the
trade and its circumstances. For neither Hoopdriver, nor Kipps, nor
Polly could have qualified for the post of assistant at Midhurst
Grammar School, a position that H.G. Wells obtained at sixteen after
he had broken his indentures with the Southsea draper.
At this point we come up with Mr Lewisham, and may follow him in his
experiences after he obtained what was, in fact, a scholarship at the
Normal School of Science, South Kensington; but we drop that hero
again before his premature marriage and failure, to follow the
uncharted course of Wells obtaining his B.Sc. with first-class
honours; passing to an assistant-mastership at the Henley House
School, St John's Wood, and so coming by way of tutor, lecturer and
demonstrator to the beginnings of journalism, to the breaking of a
blood-vessel and thence, without further diversion, to the trade of
letters, somewhere in the summer of 1893.
I have taken as my text the normality of Mr Wells, on the
understanding that I shall define the essential term as I will; and
this brief outline of his early experiences may help to show, _inter
alia_, that he viewed life from many angles before he was
twenty-seven. That he had the capacity so to see life was either a
lucky accident or due to some untraceable composition of heredity.
That he kept his power was an effect of his casual education. He was
fortunate enough to escape training in his observation of the sphere.
Persistent repetition will finally influence the young mind, however
gifted, and if Mr Wells had been subject to the discipline of what may
be called an efficient education, he might have seen his sphere at the
age of twenty-seven as slightly flattened--whether it appeared oblate
or prolate is no consequence--and I could not have crowned him with
the designation that heads this Introduction.
He is, in fact, normal just in so far as his gift of vision was
undistorted by the precepts and dogmas of his parents, teachers and
early companions.