Mr. Wells perhaps got his love of outdoor life from his father, Joseph Wells, who was a professional cricketer and the son of the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at Penhurst Castle, in Kent. His mother was the daughter of an innkeeper at Midhurst. Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, September 21, 1866, and his childhood impressions of his mother's kitchen and his father's garden and shop he has described in "First and Last Things" and in "Tono-Bungay." In this novel, the first, perhaps, to be devoted to that conspicuous feature of modern life, the patent medicine, he has utilized his brief experience as a chemist's apprentice, or, as we would say, a drug clerk. Next an unsuccessful attempt was made to train him as a draper's assistant—a dry goods clerk, in our language, though we have fortunately nothing that exactly corresponds. The hardships and humiliations of this experience seem to have cut deep into his soul, for he recurs to it again and again, always with bitterness, as in "Mr. Polly", "Kipps", and "The Wheels of Chance", for example. But to untangle the autobiographical threads from the purely fictional in Wells's novels would be to cheat some future candidate for a Ph. D. in English literature of his thesis.
The interesting point to observe is that temperament and training have combined to give him on the one hand a hatred of this muddled, blind, and inefficient state of society in which we live, and on the other a distrust of the orderly, logical, and perfected civilization usually suggested as a possible substitute. He detests chaos, but is skeptical of cosmos. Set between these antipathetic poles, he vibrates continually like an electrified pith ball. He has a horror of waste, war, dirt, cruelty, cowardice, incompetency, vagueness of mind, dissipation of energy, inconvenience of households, and all friction, mental or physical. But yet his ineradicable realization of the concrete will not allow him to escape from these disagreeables by taking refuge in such artificial paradises as Fourier's phalanx or Morris' idyllic anarchism. Wells is a Socialist, yet he finds not merely the Marxians, but even the Fabians, too dogmatic and strait-laced for him. His "Modern Utopia" is, I think, the first to mar the perfection of its picture by admitting a rebel, a permanently irreconcilable, antagonistic individuality, a spirit that continually denies. Yet we know that if a utopia is to come on earth it must have room for such.
Wells would never make a leader in any popular movement. He has the zeal of the reformer, but he has his doubts, and, what's worse, he admits them. In the midst of his most eloquent passages he stops, shakes his head, runs in a row of dots, and adds a few words, hinting at another point of view. He has what James defined as the scientific temperament, an intense desire to prove himself right coupled with an equally intense fear lest he may be wrong.
Your true party man must be quite color blind. He must see the world in black and white; must ignore tints and intermediate shades. Wells as Socialist could not help seeing—and saying—that there were many likable things about the Liberals. As a Liberal he must admit that the Tories have the advantage in several respects. He professes to view religion rationalistically, yet there are outbursts of true mysticism to be found in his books, passages which prove that he has experienced the emotion of personal religion more clearly than many a church member.
He has the courage of his convictions, but it does not extend much beyond putting them into print. I doubt whether, if he were given autocratic power, he would inaugurate his "Modern Utopia" or any other of his visions. At least he has hitherto resisted all efforts to induce him to carry them into effect.
For instance, one of the most original and interesting features of his "Modern Utopia" was the Samurai, the ruling caste, an order of voluntary noblemen; submitting to a peculiar discipline; wearing a distinctive dress; having a bible of their own selected from the inspiring literature of all ages; spending at least a week of every year in absolute solitude in the wilderness as a sort of spiritual retreat and restorative of self-reliance. A curious conception it was, a combination of Puritanism and Bushido, of Fourier and St. Francis, of Bacon's Salomon's House, Plato's philosophers ruling the republic, and Cecil Rhodes's secret order of millionaires ruling the world.
One day a group of ardent young men and women, inspired by this ideal, came to Wells and announced that they had established the order, they had become Samurai, and expected him to become their leader, or at least to give them his blessing; instead of which Wells gave them a lecture on the sin of priggishness and sent them about their business. I have no doubt he was right about it, nor does his disapproval of this premature attempt to incorporate the Samurai in London prove that there was not something worth while in the idea. But it shows that Wells knew what his work was in the world and proposed to stick to it, differing therein from other Utopians: Edward Bellamy, who because his fantastic romance, "Looking Backward", happened to strike fire, spent the rest of his life in trying to bring about the coöperative commonwealth by means of clubs, papers, and parties; Dr. Hertzka, who wasted his substance in efforts to found a real Freeland on the steppes of Kilimanjaro, Africa.
Perhaps the matter with Wells is simply that he cannot find his proper pigeon-hole. Perhaps I can find it. Wells has little sympathy with any political grouping or ideal regnant to-day. The orthodox Tory is in his view simply a man without imagination. The orthodox Liberal is a mere sentimentalist substituting democratic phrases for science and discipline. The Imperialist, though touching Wells at some points, repels him by his mania for military expenditure and his ignorant race prejudice. The Socialist or Labor Party man is appallingly narrow and totally unimpressed with the need for intelligence to rule the State. In "The New Machiavelli" the hero hovers distressfully over the entire field of modern politics, finding as little rest for his soul as Noah's dove on the first trip from the ark found for its feet. Once and once only has Wells's ideal found even partial embodiment, and that was in the best days of the Roman Empire.