Today’s Almanac-September 21, 2010-Part II
Frenchman Jules Verne is usually credited as the inventor of science fiction. But if that was the case it was H. G. Wells that gave it a modern form as more than just adventure stories but as serious social commentary.
Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England on September 21, 1866. His father was a former gardener turn small shop keeper and the family languished in lower middle class near poverty. His father’s main income was as a Cricket player until an injury ended his career. When he was confined to bed with a broken leg as a boy of 12 Wells, a new world opened up to him as he passed the time reading books from the local library.
Despite yearning for deeper study, Wells was enrolled in a commercial academy to train him in penmanship and basic book keeping in preparation for a career as a commercial clerk. In 1880 the family bound the boy out as an apprentice to a draper. He hated his three years “in bondage” but the experience set his attitudes about class exploitation and was later the inspiration for his novels The Wheels of Chance and Kipps both of which might be regarded as English anti-Horatio Alger tales.
After his father’s injury his mother had to take a job as a lady’s maid at Uppark, a country house in Sussex leaving his father to struggle alone. When young Wells finished his apprenticeship, he failed at his own attempt to run a drapery, and then successively at other trades. After each set back he would show up at his mother’s place of employment to lick his wounds for a few weeks. He also took advantage of the house’s large library and gave himself a good education reading the classics. He was particularly influenced by to visionary works-Plato’s Republic and Thomas Moore’s Utopia, both of which built ideal worlds to illustrate philosophy.
In 1883 he managed to get into Midhurst Grammar School, which he had briefly attended earlier, as a teacher-pupil-earning his keep by tutoring younger boys. His proficiency in Latin and science earned a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, about as good a school as a lad from his class could hope to attend. His good fortune was to study biology under Thomas Huxley, Britain’s main proponent of Darwinian evolution.
It was also during this period of schooling that Well’s was introduced to Fabian Socialism. He was a quick and eager convert and was soon writing articles and tracts himself. It was the beginning of a life long commitment to socialism, although he would eventually break with the Fabians for being insufficiently serious about working class emancipation. He was also became a pacifist, although he passed his time inventing some of the first ever table-top war games. He opposed the rush to World War I, but like many socialists reluctantly supported the war after it began. Unlike other socialists, he was not attracted to Soviet style Communism, which he criticized for its authoritarian tendencies. He ran at least once as a Labor Party candidate and remained interested in Utopian possibilities.
Wells despite outstanding grades in physics, chemistry, and biology, Wells failed his examination in geology for simple lack of interest in the topic and lost his scholarship in 1887. He finally did get a baccalaureate degree from the extension program of the University of London in 1890.
After leaving the Normal School, Wells went to live with an aunt, where he courted her daughter, his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, who he married in 1891. Four years later he abandoned Isabel and married a student at Henley House School, where he was teaching. The marriage to Amy Catherine Robbins, who he called Jane, lasted until her death in 1926 despite her knowledge of many affairs. Wells considered himself to be incapable of conventional monogamy. Over his life time paramours included American birth-control activist Margaret Sanger, and novelist Elizabeth von Arnim, writer Amber Reeves, and feminist Rebecca West, then twenty-six years his junior. In addition to his two legitimate children with Jane, had a daughter with Reeves and a son, Anthony West who himself became a noted writer.
In the mid 1890’s Wells began to combine his interests in science, the moral vision of his socialism, and his love of words to begin to write short stories and novellas for popular magazines. He had a string of successes with what he called scientific romances, books first either serialized in magazines or expanded form original stories. The fist of this was The Time Machine in 1895 followed by The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau in 1896, The Invisible Man in 1897, and The First Men in the Moon in 1901. In these tales Wells established the themes of countless science fiction works to follow-time travel, extraterrestrial invasion, science run amok as humans try to play god, invisibility, and space travel.
Wells was soon one of the most popular writers in England. With his income he retired from teaching to write full time and established comfortable, but simple homes first in Working near London, and then at Standgate in Kent.
His first non-fiction book was Anticipations in which he tried to describe the world of the year 2000. It was a surprise best seller. It included many accurate predictions-the wide spread use of automobiles and railroads to disperse population for urban centers, the relaxation of sexual mores, the defeat of German militarism, and the foundation of a European Union. He did not, however, foresee effective heavier than air craft until 1950.
Wells turned to more realistic novels, although some, like Tono-Bungay, a satire on business, advertising, and the exploitation of science, had fantastic elements. Kipps was a comic novel that none the less recounted the miseries of life as an apprentice. Ann Veronica was appreciative of a radical, independent feminist and was ardently embraced by women. The more scandalous The Passionate Friends about a love triangle shocked more conventional women.
The coming of the First World War and the horrors of that great conflict deeply affected Wells. He turned more than ever to the dream of a world government to avoid such disasters in the future. In war’s wake he became a leading voice in support of the League of Nations. He also turned to history to try and explain to himself and the public just how things got to be the way they were.
In 1920 Wells released his three volume Outline of History, an ambitious survey of world history for popular readers. Although excoriated by academic historians, it remains very readable to this day-I enjoyed reading an abridged version when I was in high school and flirting with Fabianism.
The rise of authoritarian regimes also alarmed him. In 1933 Wells returned to science fiction in his “future history” The Shape of Things to Come which predicted the rise of totalitarian fascism and described the world government that brought peace. Three years later Wells adapted his story as a screen play for Things to Come produced by Alexander Korda and staring Raymond Massey, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Pearl Argyle and Margaretta Scott.
By this time Wells had seen several of his stories transformed to film. In 1938 he became as startled as the rest of the world when Orson Wells’s radio adaption of The War of the Worlds, scared the bejeebers out of America.
Not all of Wells’s ideas have stood the test of time. As a scientist interested in biology, he easily became enraptured with the ideas of eugenics, as did his former Fabian inspiration George Bernard Shaw. His belief that religion was a cause of global conflict that needed to be eradicated was mistaken for anti-Semitism. He actually had nothing against Jews because he did not think of them, like so many Europeans did, as an identifiable “race.” He thought persecution of them would end when they could seamlessly be integrated into a post-religious world. He opposed Zionism as he opposed all nationalism as an impediment to the world government necessary to create lasting peace.
Wells, for all of his success, was never well accepted by the class riddled British literary elite and despite his protests, it hurt. He always preferred “an honest working man’s tweeds to a gentleman’s broadcloth." He never lost his Kentish accent and found his education looked down upon by elite graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was dismissed as a genre writer and popularizer incapable of lofty and elevating sentiments.
As the world dragged itself to one more war, Wells became ever more distraught and his writing ever more didactic, loosing popularity even among his loyal readers for “scolding” them. The failure of his beloved League of Nations to prevent the rise of totalitarian states in Italy, Germany and Russia and then to act decisively against them to stave off war was a bitter disappointment.
His last book, Mind at the End of its Tether published in 1949 and virtually unread, was a pained cry of misery and disappointment. He even speculated that the world would be better off if Humans became extinct and were replaced by some more advanced and benign species.
Wells died on August 13, 1946 at the age of 79 in his London home. There was no autopsy. The cause of death was probably a result of complications from diabetes. In 1940 he wrote that he wanted his epitaph to be. “I told you so. You damned fools.” At his request there was no service and his ashes were scattered at sea.
Despite his disappointment, Well’s star has risen since his death. Many of his books remain in print. They continue to be the inspiration for other novelists, the theater, and film. Wells himself is so compelling that he frequently appears as a character in novels and films, some like the Time Machine are take offs on based on his work, others cast him as a sort of sleuth or a prophet. The story of his youth, Kipps, was even made into the very successful Broadway musical Half a Sixpence.