H. G. Wells

“ Therefore I take refuge in saying that H.G. Wells is an artist, neither more nor less, that socialism is to him at bottom an artistic idea, and that if it had not existed in the world he would have invented it. This clears me at once of the accusing frowns of any possible Marxian reader, and it also states a truth at the outset. For if the orthodox maintain that socialism is not an affair of choices, may I not retort that here actually is a mind that chooses to make it so? ”

“ He became aware of her emergence with a start, he ceased to lean and became observant.
He was one of those men whose face suggests the word “muzzle,” with an erect combative nose and a forward slant of the body from the rather inturned feet. He wore an observant bowler hat a little too small for him, and there is something about the tail of his jacket—as though he had been docked.
She passed at a stride to the acceptance of Mr. Brumley’s hitherto incredible suspicion. Her pulses quickened. It came into her head to see how far this man would go in following her. ”

“ I've always had an inclination to do a bit of research on my own. I like it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I'm sure I could have done things. I'm not a born money-maker. But——." He became very close and confidential. "It's——them. You said good-bye to science for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn, Trafford." He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went over! No more aviation for me, Trafford!"
He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After all—this of course—it's interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takes hold of you. It's a game." ”

“ No man of all that black multitude saw the coming of his fate, no man among them dreamt of the hawk that struck downward upon him out of the sky. Those who were not limp in the agonies of air-sickness, were craning their black necks and staring to see the filmy city that was rising out of the haze, the rich and splendid city to which “Massa Boss” had brought their obedient muscles. Bright teeth gleamed and the glossy faces shone. They had heard of Paris. They knew they were to have lordly times among the poor white trash.
Suddenly Graham hit them. ”

“ It is in these moments that individual men have done all the things which make up the real history of this planet.
If individual men are capable of this amazing experience, then why not the world? That is the spirited question Wells has propounded in a hundred different forms, in his earlier, more theoretical, and more optimistic writings suggesting that society as a whole should turn over a new leaf, and even picturing it as doing so, in his later work, more experienced and less hopeful but with a compensating fervor, picturing the attempt of delegated individuals to act on society's behalf. ”

“ But indeed I should make a mistake were I to over-stress the solemnities that underlie the spirit of Wells. In tone he is more profane than sacred, that is to say he is a realist. He wants a world thrillingly alive, curious, exercised, magnanimous, with all its dim corners lighted up, shaken out of its dulness and complacency, keen, elastic, tempered like a fine blade—the counterpart on a grand scale of what he most admires in the individual. ”

“ I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then.
"We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I said, and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this, you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your fourth labourer to-morrow."
He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile. Rather, he was self-depreciatory.
He looked at me doubtfully. "But do you really think—?" he said. "And your play! How about that play?"
"It's vanished!" I cried. "My dear sir, don't you see what you've got? ”

“ And if that goes well, I will see if I can get some introductions and really push him."
"But Lady, Lady Hammergallow."
"Not another word!" said Lady Hammergallow, still resolutely holding her speaking trumpet before her and clutching her eyeglasses. "I really must not leave those horses. Cutler is so annoyed if I keep them too long. He finds waiting tedious, poor man, unless there is a public-house near." She made for the door.
"Damn!" said the Vicar, under his breath.
He had never used the word since he had taken orders. It shows you how an Angel's visit may disorganise a man. ”

“ Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. "I shall keep my hand on your shoulder" said the Voice, "all through the village. Go straight through and try no foolery. It will be the worse for you if you do."
"I know that," sighed Mr. Marvel, "I know all that."
The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows. ”

“ These creatures of mine seemed strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began to observe them; but to me, just after I make them, they seem to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as I observe them, that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait, then another, creeps to the surface and stares out at me. But I will conquer yet! Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say, ‘This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!’ After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.” ”

“ Belinda,’ she said, ‘we’ve got to see all we can of this sort of thing before we go back to America. They’ve been keeping this from us.’ And that’s why we’re here right now instead of being shopping in Paris or London like decent American women.”
The younger lady looked down on her companion with something of the calm expert attention that a plumber gives to a tap that is misbehaving, and like a plumber refrained from precipitate action. She stood with the backs of her hands resting on her hips.
“Well,” she said slowly, giving most of the remark to Sir Richmond and the rest to the doctor. ”

“ We stand by the law and each other, and that's what it all amounts to. That's as far as my patch of Humanity goes. Humanity at large! Humanity be blowed! Look at it! It isn't that I'm hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed to go under as I should do if I didn't say that.-345- So I say it. And that's about all it is, and there you are."
He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing fiercely at it for some moments. Then seeing Trafford on the point of speaking, he snatched it from his lips, demanded silence by waving it at his hearer, and went on. ”

“ His eye followed them until they had vanished.
“I can’t go back to Surbiton,” said the Young Lady in Grey.
“EIGH?” said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his moustache. This was an unexpected development.
“I want to write, you see,” said the Young Lady in Grey, “to write Books and alter things. To do Good. I want to lead a Free Life and Own myself. I can’t go back. I want to obtain a position as a journalist. I have been told—But I know no one to help me at once. No one that I could go to. There is one person—She was a mistress at my school. ”

“ He supported himself by one hand against the tree, and just touched the ground gingerly with the toe of his wounded leg. In the other hand he gripped the new club. He looked at his healing thigh; and suddenly the reeds began whispering, and ceased and whispered again, and coming cautiously along the track, bending down and holding his fire-hardened stabbing-stick of ash in his hand, appeared Siss. He stopped dead, and his eyes met Ugh-lomi's. ”

“ I said. “And that dog’s been on the pavement this six years—can’t sleep even there, poor dear, because of the motor-horns and its shattered nerves.”
“Movin’ everywhere,” said my uncle. “I expect you’re right.... It’s a big time we’re in, George. It’s a big Progressive On-coming Imperial Time. This Palestine business—the daring of it.... It’s, it’s a Process, George. And we got our hands on it. Here we sit—with our hands on it, George. Entrusted.
“It seems quiet to—night. But if we could see and hear.” He waved his cigar towards Leatherhead and London. ”

“ So much as they could see of the road Londonward between the houses to the right was a tumultuous stream of dirty, hurrying people, pent in between the villas on either side; the black heads, the crowded forms, grew into distinctness as they rushed towards the corner, hurried past, and merged their individuality again in a receding multitude that was swallowed up at last in a cloud of dust.
"Go on! Go on!" cried the voices. "Way! Way!"
One man's hands pressed on the back of another. My brother stood at the pony's head. Irresistibly attracted, he advanced slowly, pace by pace, down the lane. ”

“ He got down with raised eyebrows. "It's that," he said. The barman stood in front of the bar-parlour door which was now locked on Mr. Marvel, stared at the smashed window, and came round to the two other men.
Everything was suddenly quiet. "I wish I had my truncheon," said the policeman, going irresolutely to the door. "Once we open, in he comes. There's no stopping him."
"Don't you be in too much hurry about that door," said the anaemic cabman, anxiously.
"Draw the bolts," said the man with the black beard, "and if he comes—" He showed a revolver in his hand. ”

“ The centre of his face became a black cavity. “Here,” he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically. Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and staggered back. The nose—it was the stranger’s nose! pink and shining—rolled on the floor.
Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible anticipation passed through the bar. “Oh, my Gard!” ”

“ In a bit the room will be warmer.”
He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed, laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called rather than said to him, “Your lunch is served, sir.” ”

“ What right have you ..."
"Don't you go talking Socialist rot," said Gotch in short gasps. "This wood's mine, and I've a right to protect it how I can. I know your kind of muck. Talking rot and stirring up discontent. And if you don't get out of it jolly sharp ..."
"Well!" said the Angel, a brimming reservoir of unaccountable energy.
"Get out of this damned wood!" said Gotch, flashing into the bully out of sheer alarm at the light in the Angel's face.
He made one step towards him, with the whip raised, and then something happened that neither he nor the Angel properly understood. ”

“ By this time he was evidently no longer unaware of her intelligent interest in his movements. It was clear too that he had received a false impression that she wanted to shake him off and that all the sleuth in him was aroused. He was dishevelled and breathing hard and getting a little close and coarse in his pursuit, but he was sticking to it with a puckered intensified resolution. He came up into the South Kensington air open-mouthed and sniffing curiously, but invincible.
She discovered suddenly that she did not like him at all and that she wanted to go home. ”

“ Evidently the early bathing section of this Littlestone!
"Help!" said the young man: "rather!" He became vaguely active. "What particularly do you want done?" He turned round and gesticulated. The three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they there about me, plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. "I'll tell all that later," I said. "I'm dead beat. I'm a rag."
"Come up to the hotel," said the foremost little man. "We'll look after that thing there."
I hesitated. "I can't," I said. "In that sphere there's two big bars of gold." ”

“ He sat with his chin almost touching his knees, sucking at his pipe.
"That's what I mean," he went on, "when I say life is getting on to me as extraordinary queer. I don't see my game, nor why I was invited. And I don't make anything of the world outside either. "What do you make of it?"
"London,*" I began. "It's—so enormous!"
"Isn't it! And it's all up to nothing. You find chaps keeping grocers' shops—why the devil, Ponderevo, do they keep grocers' shops? They all do it very carefully, very steadily, very meanly. ”

“ He grows more like him every day.... And so I have brought him to you.”
“His father, madam?”
“George.”
For a moment the chemist was still at a loss. He stood behind the counter with the glass my mother had returned to him in his hand. Then comprehension grew.
“By Gosh!” he said. “Lord!” he cried. His glasses fell off. He disappeared replacing them, behind a pile of boxed-up bottles of blood mixture. “Eleven thousand virgins!” I heard him cry. The glass was banged down. “O-ri-ental Gums!”
He shot away out of the shop through some masked door. One heard his voice. “Susan! Susan!” ”