A Man of Parts (58 page)

But it
had
got under his skin, and he did intend to write something that would relieve the irritation. He went to his study and took from a locked drawer the manuscript of a book he had been working on intermittently, at long intervals, for nearly a decade, provisionally entitled
Boon
. He had no definite plans to publish it when it was finished, if it were ever finished. It was a difficult book to classify or describe – not that he had tried to describe it to anybody. It was a very private, almost secret work into which he periodically discharged the black bile of his feelings about English literary and intellectual life in the twentieth century: satirical, iconoclastic, fragmentary, digressive, bookish, a bit like Swift’s
A Tale of a Tub
, a bit like Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy
, comparable to Peacock’s conversation novels, explicitly indebted to Mallock’s
The New Republic
, but more heterogeneous than any of these precursors. It purported to be the ‘Literary Remains’ of a writer called George Boon, edited by a fatuous hack called Reginald Bliss. Boon was a respected and well-rewarded author such as H.G. Wells might have become had he stayed in Sandgate and pursued the conventional life of an Edwardian Man of Letters. A chapter which sounded like an opening one but in fact occurred halfway through, began: ‘
There was once an Author who pursued fame and prosperity in a pleasant villa on the south coast of England. He wrote stories of an acceptable nature and rejoiced in a growing public esteem, carefully offending no one and seeking only to please
.’ Boon’s unpublished literary remains, however, revealed to his editor’s embarrassment a much more subversive and anarchic character, who was in a state of raging inner rebellion against the established literary culture and fantasised various projects to satirise and undermine it.

He began to write a new chapter for this book, entitled ‘Of Art, of Literature, of Mr Henry James’, in which ‘
Boon sat on the wall of his vegetable garden and discoursed upon James
’, describing the Jamesian aesthetic of fiction in a fashion that became increasingly prejudicial as it went on:

He demands homogeneity … Why should a book have that? For a picture it’s reasonable because you have to see it all at once. But there is no need to see a book all at once … He talks of selection … In practice James’s selection becomes just omission and nothing more. For example, he omits opinions. In all his novels you will find no people with defined political opinions, no people with religious opinions, none with clear partisanships or with lusts and whims … There are no poor people dominated by the imperatives of Saturday night and Monday morning … Having first made sure that he has scarcely anything to express, he then sets to work to express it … He brings up every device of language to state and define. Bare verbs he rarely tolerates. He splits his infinitives and fills them up with adverbial stuffing. He presses the passing colloquialism into his service. His vast paragraphs sweat and struggle. And all for tales of nothingness … It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den. Most things, it insists, are beyond it, but it can, at any rate, modestly, and with an artistic singleness of mind, pick up that pea
.

Boon
was for him a kind of castor oil of the spirit: reading this chapter through the next morning he found he had been purged of his anger and resentment. He spent another enjoyable day in which Boon sketched out a Jamesian novel called ‘The Spoils of Miss Blandish’, with a plot that didn’t begin for 150 pages and concerned the hero’s search for the perfect butler. It was so funny that he longed to see it in print. Perhaps one day he would finish
Boon
after all.

There was a level paddock at Easton Glebe which he had ordered to be mown and marked out as a hockey pitch, and provided with proper netted goals, on which weekend guests were required to play mixed hockey as a condition of their entertainment. Hockey sticks for both right-handed and left-handed persons, padded shin-guards, and a large box of white cricket and tennis shoes of all sizes, were provided. The ball used was a hard leather cricket ball. Grown men – not just London aesthetes, but Members of Parliament, seasoned journalists, and even sportsmen who fancied themselves with a rod or a gun, were apt to pale at the sight of that ball, imagining what damage it might inflict on their persons when propelled by a reckless and undisciplined player, but they were made to feel that they could not excuse themselves with honour. Ladies were given more latitude, but as most of them had played the game at school they were generally more willing to participate. Allowance was made for age. The younger and more vigorous players were forwards, and did most of the running; the more mature played in defence, and the elderly were given extra protective garments and put in goal. He felt obliged to set an example himself, however, and always played forward, while also lending a hand in defence, and refereeing the game at the same time (since he was the only one who knew the rules peculiar to Easton hockey).

‘You’re going to injure yourself one of these days,’ Jane warned him, after a particularly vigorous game, and on the very next occasion, early in June, he did, straining the ligaments in his left knee. The doctor strapped it up, prescribed bed-rest for one week and forbade travel for an indefinite period. This had several inconveniences. It prevented him from improving his skills in driving the motor car of which he had recently taken delivery, a four-seater Willys-Overland with white-walled tyres, which he had christened ‘Gladys’, and whose gear-change mechanism he had just begun to get the hang of. It also prevented him from visiting Rebecca, which understandably drew some complaint from her, but there was nothing he could do about it except write fervent daily letters, reflecting ruefully that by the time they were reunited she might be too near the term of her pregnancy to find making love comfortable or safe. To keep her now very visible condition secret, Rebecca was pretending to her London friends that she was ill, unable to visit or be visited, and consequently she was lonely. Fortunately her sister Lettie agreed to keep her company while his knee was mending, and the enforced hiatus in their meetings had its advantages in that it enabled him to get on with his main work in progress, another ‘prig’ novel called
The Research Magnificent
, whose heroine, Amanda Morris, had developed a close resemblance to Rebecca West (she called the hero ‘Leopard’ and he called her ‘Cheetah’). His convalescence passed pleasantly enough, the weekdays devoted to quiet sedentary work, and weekends spent relaxing in the company of visitors who were all the more convivial when they discovered they would not have to play hockey. The weather was exceptionally fine.

Then on the 28th of June the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by Serbian terrorists at Sarajevo, and a shudder of apprehension went through the entire continent of Europe. The remainder of the summer was dominated by talk of war. Would there be one, or wouldn’t there? And how far would it spread? On the face of it the issue was just a territorial dispute in the Balkans between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia, but potentially it involved the other great European powers, Germany, Russia, France and Great Britain, who were tied to each other by various treaties and alliances which might drag them into the conflict. Rebecca, after reading a newspaper article which argued that this outcome was inevitable, sent him an anxious letter, but he reassured her: there would be no war. The world was mad, but not that mad. And he genuinely believed this. Although for the past decade he had been predicting a major war, indeed a global war, if mankind did not find a rational way of ordering its affairs and settling its disputes, he had prophesied only to warn, to have his predictions falsified by appropriate action, and he always post-dated the fictional conflagration by a number of decades. That the political leaders of the Great Powers would allow it to happen now, in the summer of 1914, seemed unthinkable, preposterous; and the fact that it was a particularly glorious summer made the threat seem all the more unreal. Day after day the sun rose into a clear blue sky and shone until evening on the ripening wheat of the Essex fields, on the green, well-watered lawns and shrubberies of Easton Glebe, on the damask-covered tea table and the striped deckchairs under the shade of the great cedar. It was idyllic. How could such peace be shattered?

The news however was increasingly grave, and a particular circumstance of the Wells household brought its implications home to them more sharply than to most English families. The previous summer he had decided that his sons needed a new tutor, a male one, more rigorous and highly qualified than Miss Meyer, admirably as she had served them. He had accordingly parted with her on amicable and generous terms and appointed in her place a young German, Herr Karl Bütow, a Pomeranian student of philology working towards his doctorate, to introduce Gip and Frank to Latin and Greek and to establish a more systematic curriculum in other subjects. He was a pleasant young man, kind, courteous, methodical, who did not always understand English humour and English manners, but adjusted uncomplainingly to the peculiarities and whims of the Easton household. He was charmed to discover that the boys had a brown squirrel which they had tamed and trained, called Fritz, and adopted it as his own pet, allowing it to sleep in his room. Karl Bülow was the very best type of German, and having him in the family made the prospect of war more horrible and at the same time more improbable. It was his own conviction that the ordinary people of Germany, people like Karl, did not want war, and that they were being hustled towards it by a combination of Prussian imperialism and the greed of the German armaments industry – ‘Kaiser and Krupp’, in a nutshell – who were trying to get their way by bullying and threatening. Surely, he would say, when the subject came up, as it did every day, surely if their bluff were called, and the Kaiser declared war, the decent German majority would simply refuse to fight? Karl Bütow shook his head in melancholy dissent. ‘There is a mood for war in my country,’ he said. ‘I have felt it. And even those who disagree will not dissent. We are an obedient people.’ Like all young Germans he had done his military service, and was liable to be called up in the event of war.

For a few weeks nothing really alarming developed on the Continent, and the English newspapers were more preoccupied with the possibility of civil war in Great Britain, because the Protestants of Ulster, led by Sir Edward Carson, threatened to resist the Irish Home Rule bill by force if it were passed by Parliament. For a while Ireland dominated the headlines and relegated the Balkans to second place. But then on the 23rd of July came the news of Austria-Hungary’s peremptory ultimatum to Serbia. ‘This is very bad,’ said Karl. ‘Russia will mobilise in support of Serbia, Germany will mobilise in support of Austria. I will be called up. It is really very annoying. It will seriously delay the completion of my thesis.’ He made enquiries and a few days later received an official letter requiring him to return immediately to Germany to report for military service. The whole family and some of the servants went to the station to see him off, and there were tears on several cheeks as the train drew away and Karl leaned out of the window to sadly wave goodbye.

‘Well, if there is a war, it won’t last long,’ he said to Jane, as the train disappeared out of sight in its own smoke and steam. ‘Germany will be taking on Russia, France and us, all at once. They can’t possibly win. We’ll see Karl back at Easton next year.’ He spoke more confidently than he felt, for it was well known that the German armies were formidably well armed and trained.

‘I hope you’re right, H.G.,’ Jane said, ‘but I feel afraid.’

Many others were afraid. There were reports of people stockpiling food and of a run on the banks as clients tried to convert their banknotes and deposits into gold sovereigns. Rebecca was alarmed and wired him to ask for his advice, addressing the telegram to ‘Mr West’ in her perturbation. He wrote back ‘
Keep your gold and cash for your tradespeople until they are reconciled to notes and pay Mrs Crown in notes
.’ He jocularly forbade her to go off as a war correspondent, citing imaginary headlines – ‘
The First War Correspondent With Child. Impression of a Battlefield by a New Comer
’ – and concluded encouragingly
: ‘Prepare your Citizen for the Age of Peace
.’

But this optimistic exhortation was rapidly undermined by events. On Thursday 29th July, Austria-Hungary rejected Serbia’s reply to the ultimatum and declared war. On Friday 30th, Russia mobilised in response. On Saturday 31st Germany gave an ultimatum to Russia demanding cessation of military activities. France reaffirmed its support of Russia. Germany shook its fist at France. Great Britain sought assurances from both France and Germany that in the event of hostilities Belgian neutrality would be respected. It was common knowledge that this was the only route by which Germany could make an effective attack on France, and Britain was bound by treaty to defend Belgian sovereignty. France of course agreed; Germany did not respond. On Saturday, the first day of August, France and Germany both mobilised their armies and Germany declared war on Russia. Suddenly Armageddon was at hand.

And yet it was still hard to believe, especially at Easton. August 3rd was Bank Holiday Monday, the day of the annual Easton Lodge Fête, when Lady Warwick opened her grounds to the local populace. There was always a funfair with steam-driven carousels and coconut shies, stalls offering gaudy prizes for feats of strength or skill with hammers, airguns and darts, and refreshment tents offering tea and cakes and lemonade. Lady Warwick’s gardens could be inspected for a modest entry fee, the proceeds going to local charities. The Shaws were staying at Easton Glebe for the weekend, and some friends in the neighbourhood, including Ralph Blumenfeld and his son John, joined them that day, which was as fine as its predecessors. After lunch they strolled the mile to the fairground, the ladies tilting parasols against the hot sun, the men in linen jackets and straw boaters (all except Shaw, who sweated conscientiously in his usual Jaeger suit), hearing as they approached the strains of the steam organ, and discussing the war that now seemed inevitable. The crowds in the fairground however appeared surprisingly untroubled by the news, perhaps because they didn’t realise its gravity, or possibly because they had decided there was nothing they could do about it, so they might as well make merry while they could. The air rang with laughter, cheers, whoops, and the foot-tapping cadences of the steam organ. He and Shaw went on arguing.