Mr. Wells's New Novel
The Bulpington of Blup. By H. G. Wells. (Hutchinson. 8s. M.) WHEN Mr. Wells's new novel came into my hands, I went to an old trunk and took from it a fat brown exercise book. It bore on its cover the name of a school, and in it I used to copy out such passages from the books I read as seemed to me memorable. There are about a hundred extracts in the book, and of these thirty-seven bear the name of IL G. Wells. Second comes Walter Pater with fifteen, and among the also-rans are Bergson, F. W. H. Myers, John Addington Symonds, and Upton Sinclair Even this impressive figure is not truly representative, for the book is dated Winter 1913-14, and I had been a long time previously under Mr. Wells's spell. Moreover, I only copied out extracts from the books I did not possess. Mine was not an isolated case. It is impossible for anyone who did not experience it to realize the joyous shnek given by Mr. Wells to an adolescent mind: No man of our time has done more to liberate thought. Because of him, although they may not know it, there are thousands in whose path certain intellectual obstacles lie no longer. I have never yet had occasion publicly to thank Mr. Wells for the period in which I sat at his feet, and with all gratitude I do it now.
That was some twenty years ago : and a good deal has happened since, to both master and pupil. The master, busy for the most part upon gigantic surveys, has been a little off-band in his treatment of fiction ; and, though she still comes to his call, she comes a little unwillingly. The pupil, while wider reading and experience have intensified rather than lessened his former admiration, has lost something of his taste for being harangued. Admiration makes a severe judge : and the fact cannot be concealed that The Bulpington of Blup is in essence a harangue. This has come about the more readily because of what appears to be a vital flaw in Mr. Wells's relationship to his hero. Theodore Bulpington, beginning with the ordinary, harmless daydream in which the child sees himself in a thousand heroic situations, comes to depend altogether on fantasy, and to edit every actual encounter in his mind until he has taken a leading part in it. Worsted in fact, he agonizes until a docile memory puts him right. He- is systematically a self-deceiver.1 Now, those to whom truth is all-important would sooner be dead than get into this condition. They can forgive a man who deliberately deceives others, but never a man who will not in the sanctuary of his own mind admit the facts. They cannot understand such a man. Mr. Wells is one of these people ; and, as a result, Theodore does not emerge from the story as a character, but is toilsomely built- up like a statue of clay flung on dollop by dollop by Mr. Wells's truth-defending hands. He is not a person, but an agglomeration of data ; and he is made an exponent of almost every idea which Mr. Wells dislikes. He never has a chance. (Would he ever, by the way, have transformed Blayport into the hideous Blup ? Even Raymond admits that " the boy has taste " ; and who with taste would choose as part of Ms name a monosyllable that sounds like a blancmange falling out of a mould ?) His father was a poseur, and he grew up an intellectual prig. Every detail of his adolescence
is pitilessly described. Margaret represented sacred love for him (Mr. Wells's attractive streak of naiveté comes out in his handling of her), and profane love is supplied by Rachel Bernstein. When the War breaks out, he avoids joining up at first, persuading himself that he has been rejected at a mythical medical examination. Joining up just in time to avoid being conscripted, he is sent to the front, suffers acute fear, and narrowly escapes an ignominious death for cowardice. Mr. Wells is at his best in these war chapters, which are from start to finish magnificent, but he is very cruel to Theodore. The Btdpinglon of Blup's final humiliation occurs after this, but he had long ago deserved to lose Margaret ; and the book ends with his glorious and drunken apologia.
This is not a great novel, but only a great man could have
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