I
There are men, such as Dr. Johnson, who are mentally active and
physically torpid, and there are other men, such as Mr. Jack Johnson,
who are very alert physically, but not quite so alert in their minds.
It seldom happens that a man combines great physical energy with great
intellectual energy. Such a man is Mr. Bernard Shaw. So is Mr. H. G.
Wells. I imagine that Mr. Wells is more active, both in body and in
mind, than Mr. Shaw, despite the fact that the latter is the slender
man of the two and that his tongue works more rapidly in conjunction
with his brain; for Mr. Shaw feels fatigue sooner than Mr. Wells.
I doubt whether Mr. Wells suffers from fatigue at all or to any
serious extent. He takes few, if any, holidays, works for many hours
every day, plays games very assiduously, and is unhappy if he has
not got some work on hand. He begins to write a new book immediately
he has completed its predecessor, having no belief, seemingly, in
fallow time. When he is not working or playing, he is talking. His
conversation has a curious resemblance in its shape, if I may use
that word, to the style of his writing. One listens for the suspended
sentence, for the dots with which, in his prose, he breaks a thought so
that the reader may himself complete it. Mr. Shaw once told me that he
could not work at creative writing for more than two hours every day,
and I suspect that he suffers more from physical fatigue than he will
admit. Mr. Wells works for considerably more than two hours every day
(and sometimes during the night) though I do not suppose he works for
two consecutive hours at any time. If you are a guest in his house, you
will see him engaged in some game, tennis or hockey or that wild game
of his own invention, "barn-ball," or perhaps playing demon patience;
and when you are inclined to imagine that he is settling down to a long
day of games, you discover that he is no longer with the players, but
back in his study working on a manuscript.
One expects a certain amount of sluggishness in every man, and probably
there are days when Mr. Wells's mind and body go to sleep or lie about
supine, but I do not believe that any one has ever seen him asleep or
supine. His mind is so active that one can almost see ideas leaping
off his tongue as he talks, and he has a very remarkable capacity for
engaging the attention of his auditors without making any perceptible
effort to do so. His conversation, unlike that of Mr. Yeats or Mr.
George Moore, is unrehearsed conversation. It has not the swift
brilliance of Mr. Shaw's talk, and it goes to its point rather jerkily,
but it reaches its destination. He is not so easily distracted from his
course as Mr. Gilbert Chesterton is, or perhaps I ought to say that he
does not take so long to get to his destination. Mr. Chesterton seems
to me to be falling with great amiability on his subject, whereas Mr.
Wells is eagerly struggling up to it. Mr. Chesterton defers to others
with great courtesy, but his mind, I imagine, is already made up. He
listens to a controversialist, not because he thinks he is likely to be
converted to an opposite opinion--he is fairly certain that he will not
be converted--but because he has excellent manners and an exceptionally
kindly character. It is hard to believe that any man of merit is
without some malice in his nature, some element of cattishness, but
if there is a man of merit without these things then that man is Mr.
Chesterton. If he could bring himself to throttle the creature he
most detests, the international financier, the man without a country,
he would, I am sure, do so entirely without prejudice. Mr. Wells
listens, not out of politeness, but in the hope that he will receive
information, and this hope of his causes him to listen very patiently
even to bad or inexpert talkers. He has the additional merit, rare
among men of genius, of being an uncommonly good host, very punctilious
about the comfort and pleasure of his guests. He is a sociable man,
mingling easily with very various people, gregarious where Mr. Yeats
and Mr. Shaw are solitary, and he is instinctively friendly. His
hospitality is lavish and with something of the Dickensian tradition
in it. He has none of the chilly aloofness of Mr. Yeats nor of the shy
constraint of Mr. Shaw nor of the nervous coldness of Mr. Galsworthy.
Were it not for a degree of cruelty in his nature, I should say that
Mr. Chesterton and he were as near to each other in temperament as any
two men of merit can be. It is this strain of cruelty in him which
makes him so attractive when he loses his temper, for he seems only to
be witty when he is about to hit some one very severely on the head.
I do not know any man who can lose his temper in print with so much
effect and so entertainingly as Mr. Wells can lose his. He is hardly a
witty man, as Mr. Shaw and Mr. Yeats and even Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
are witty men, but he has a neat, malicious humour which delights him
as much as it delights his friends, and is most often displayed when he
is attacking some one.