Dodd is a leading member of the Rationalist Press Association, a militant agnostic, and a dear compact man, one of those Middle Victorians who go about with a preoccupied, caulking air, as though, having been at great cost and pains to banish God from the Universe, they were resolved not to permit Him back on any terms whatever. He has constituted himself a sort of alert customs officer of a materialistic age, saying suspiciously: "Here, now, what's this rapping under the table here?" and examining every proposition to see that the Creator wasn't being smuggled back under some specious new generalization. Boon used to declare that every night Dodd looked under his bed for the Deity, and slept with a large revolver under his pillow for fear of a revelation.
One advantage of anonymity is that Wells can contradict himself with even more freedom than usual. For instance, he expresses great contempt for Bergson and his "Pragmatism for Ladies." But not long ago, in "Marriage", he was contemptuous of "Doctor Quiller [Schiller] of Oxford," for "ignoring Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular Pragmatism."
Much of the volume was manifestly written in the calm days before the war, but the fragment entitled "The Wild Asses of the Devil" expresses in fantastic guise his—and the world's—confusion and despair at the catastrophe which has overwhelmed the human race. "It is like a dying man strangling a robber in his death grip. We shall beat them, but we shall be dead beat in doing it," says Boon, and he rejects all suggestions that it may be a good thing in the end:
No! War is just the killing of things and the smashing of things. And when it is all over, then civilization will have to begin all over again. They will have to begin lower down and against a heavier load and the days of our jesting are done. The Wild Asses of the Devil are loose and there is no restraining them. What is the good of pretending that the Wild Asses are the instruments of Providence kicking better than we know? It is all evil. Evil.
There are many different Wellses. Probably nobody likes all of them. He does not like all of himselves. In writing a preface or otherwise referring to an earlier work he is, after the manner of Maeterlinck, almost apologetic, and looks back upon the author with a curious wonder as to how he came to hold such opinions and express them in such a way. Those of us who have grown up with him, so to speak, and followed his mind through all its metamorphoses in their natural order can understand him better, I believe, than those of the younger generation who begin with the current serial and read his works backward. Mr. Wells is just about my age. We were in the laboratory together and breathed the same atmosphere, although five thousand miles apart. When he began to write I was ready to read and to admire the skill with which he utilized for literary purposes the wealth of material to be found in the laboratory. Jules Verne had worked the same rich vein, clumsily but with great success. Poe had done marvels in the short story with such scanty science as he had at his command. But Wells, trained under Huxley in biology at the University of London, had all this new knowledge to draw upon. He could handle technicalities with a far defter touch than Verne and almost rivaled Poe in the evocation of emotions of horror and mystery. Besides this he possessed what both these authors lacked, a sense of humor, a keen appreciation of the whimsicalities of human nature. So he was enabled to throw off in the early nineties a swift succession of short stories astonishingly varied in style and theme. As he became more experienced in the art of writing, or rather of marketing manuscripts, he seems to have regretted this youthful prodigality of bright ideas. Many of them he later worked over on a more extensive scale as the metallurgist goes back to a mine and with an improved process extracts more gold from the tailings and dump than the miner got out of the ore originally.
"The Star" was the first of these I came across, clipping it for my scrap book from Harper's Weekly, I believe. First loves in literature make an indelible impression, so I will always hold that nothing Wells has done since can equal it. Certainly it was not improved by expanding it to "In the Days of the Comet." The germ of that creepy tale of advanced vivisection, "The Island of Dr. Moreau", appeared first in the Saturday Review, January, 1895, as a brief sketch, "Doctor Moreau Explains." "The Dream of Armageddon", vivid and swift as a landscape under a flash of lightning, served in large part for two later volumes, "When the Sleeper Wakes" and "The New Machiavelli."
It was, as I have said, "The Star" that first attracted me to Wells. It was "The Sea-Lady" who introduced me to him personally. It was in the back room of a little Italian restaurant in New York, one of those sixty-cent table d'hôtes where rich soup and huge haystacks of spaghetti serve to conceal the meagerness of the other five courses. Here foregathered for years a group of Socialists, near-Socialists, and others of less definable types, alike in holding the belief that the world could be moved and ought to be, but disagreeing agreeably as to where the fulcrum could be placed and what power should move the lever. We called ourselves the "X Club", partly because the outcome of such a combination of diverse factors was highly problematical, partly perhaps in emulation of the celebrated London X. One evening some ten years ago, as I came late to the dinner, I noticed that the members were not all talking at once, as usual, but concentrated their attention upon a guest, a quiet, unassuming individual, rather short, with a sunbrowned face, tired eyes, and a pessimistic mustache—a Londoner, I judged from his accent. Then I was introduced to him as "The man who knows all your works by heart, Mr. Wells." This disconcerting introduction was their revenge for my too frequent quotation in debate. The reason, I suppose, for the old saying, "Beware the man of one book", is because he is such a bore.
Mr. Wells appeared to take the introduction literally and began to examine me on the subject. "Did you ever read 'The Sea-Lady'?" I happily was able to say I had, and was let off from any further questions, for he said that he had never met but two persons before who admitted having read the book. I am glad he did not ask me what it meant, for while I had an opinion on the subject, it might not have agreed with his.
Then we turned the tables on Mr. Wells and for the rest of the evening asked him questions and criticized his views; all of which he took very good-naturedly and was apparently not displeased thereby, since in the book about his trip, "The Future in America", he expressed disappointment at not finding in Washington any "such mentally vigorous discussion centers as the New York X Club."
Five years later I had another glimpse of Mr. Wells, this time a jolly evening at his home, where he kept his guests, a dozen young men and women, entertained, first by playing on the pianola, which he bought at the suggestion of Mr. Shaw; afterward by improvising a drama for the occasion, the star rôle being taken by his wife, whom I had seen a few days before marching in the great London suffrage procession. Mr. Wells's home differs from most London houses in having a view and a park. The back windows look over all the sea of houses, the shipping in the Thames, and, smoke permitting, the Surrey hills beyond. On the other side of the house five minutes' walk uphill brings one to Hampstead Heath, the largest of London's public places, which serves Mr. Wells for his long walks.