- Perhaps one of the most difficult of all human
roles is that of the wife of a creative genius. It involves a lifelong playing of second fiddle ; that is, if she intends to remain by his side.
It means also a constant overreaching of herself, striving to keep pace with a temperament cruel in its sensitiveness.
Mr. Wells's portrait (The Book of Catherine Wells. With an introduction by H. G. Wells. Chatto & Windus. 7s. 6d.) of his wife is of such a woman, one who in spite of her active and manifold life was in the last and deepest things, a renun- ciatory being, clinging wistfully to a handful of her own personal dreams and tastes and counting them privately
in the moments of solitude so rare in 'her existence-as helpmeet and sometime helmswoman of a turbulent and creative mind. Mr. Wells's tribute is candid and detached, and in consequence he succeeds in- giving the outsider a definite picture of this brave woman. Her own stories and verses in this volume. serve to fill out that picture, showing a very uncommon and yet essentially feminine delicacy of taste, and the fine beauty of her personality.
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