A Man of Parts (69 page)

‘One of the most inspiring leaders of the new order is a Russian intellectual called Marcus Karenin, a key member of the World Education Committee. He’s a congenital cripple with an extraordinary mind. Towards the end of the story he is very ill, in a sanatorium in the Himalayas, where he is due to have an operation which may or may not prolong his life, and various characters make a pilgrimage to hear his words of wisdom while they can. He tells his secretary Gardener that he hopes to die under the surgeon’s knife. This is what he says: ‘
I hope he kills me, Gardener … The thing I am most afraid of is that last rag of life. I may just go on – a scarred selvage of suffering stuff. And then – all the things I have hidden and kept down or discounted or set right afterwards will get the better of me. I shall be peevish. I may lose my grip on my own egotism. It’s never been a very firm grip … I do not see why life should be judged by its last trailing thread of vitality … Remember that, Gardener, if presently my heart fails me and I despair, and if I go through a little phase of pain and ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end … Don’t believe what I may say at the last … If the fabric is good the selvage doesn’t matter
.’

Gip looks up from the page. ‘You see, Marjorie?’ he says triumphantly. ‘It’s as if H.G. foresaw his own final illness, and left us a warning: “
Don’t believe what I may say at the last
.” This cry of despair –’ Gip slaps his hand down on the galleys of
Mind at the End of its Tether
‘– is not the true voice of H.G. Wells.’

Anthony has a different theory about H.G.’s gloom. He sees his father less frequently these days, because he no longer lives in Mr Mumford’s on the other side of the wall at the end of the garden, but with Kitty and the children, having been reconciled with her some months ago, and he has been very busy in the Far East department of the World Service as the war against Japan reached its climax. But he still calls at Hanover Terrace occasionally, chats with his father and exchanges views with Gip and Marjorie, if they happen to be there at the same time, about H.G.’s state of mind and body. When Gip shows him the manuscript of
Mind at the End of its Tether
, and repeats the argument he put to Marjorie, that its extreme pessimism and renunciation of H.G.’s progressive humanist principles are effects of his physical debility and should therefore be ignored, citing the words of Karenin in support, Anthony shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve only skimmed through the book, of course, but I’d say that it expresses a very real, very personal despair.’

‘About what?’ says Marjorie.

‘About the way his reputation has declined, and his audience has dwindled.’

‘Oh, come!’ Gip protests.

‘Did you read ‘The Betterave Papers’ in the July
Cornhill
?’ Anthony asks.

‘Yes, of course,’ says Gip. ‘But that’s entirely ironic. Betterave is a caricature of H.G.’s enemies, a bigoted reactionary who appropriates and exaggerates every insult and slur my father suffered in his lifetime, and so makes them look ridiculous. Irony is saying the opposite of what you mean.’

‘It can also be a way of saying something you
do
mean, indirectly. There are criticisms of his own books in that piece towards the end, which are too accurate to be interpreted as irony. On
William Clissold
, for instance … Is there a copy of the
Cornhill
here?’

There are several of the author’s complimentary copies in the office, and Marjorie hands one to Anthony.

‘Listen to this,’ he says, turning to the end of the article: ‘“The World of William Clissold
is a vast three-decker, issued in three successive volumes of rigmarole, which broke down the endurance of readers and booksellers alike
.” You can’t call that irony – it’s absolutely true. And so is the rest of the passage. “
It marks the collapse of an inflated reputation. After that Mr Wells might write what he liked and do his utmost. It was no longer the thing to read him. Reviewers might praise him and a dwindling band of dupes might get his books. They vanished from the shop windows and from the tables of cultured people
…” And then he lists a number of his later books, with their awful off-putting titles, like
The Autocracy of Mr. Parham
, and
The Bulpington of Blup
. And he goes on:
“People whom once he had duped would perhaps mention him as a figure of some significance in English literature, but the established reply of the people who no longer read him and had nothing to say about him was simply the grimace of those who scent decay. ‘Oh
, Wells
!
’
they would say, and leave it at that. So that Wells decays alive and will be buried a man already forgotten
.” That’s not Betterave speaking, that’s H.G.’

‘It’s not all like that,’ says Gip.

‘No, it’s not,’ says Anthony. ‘There’s some good knockabout fun earlier that you can call ironic. But it’s the ending that leaves the deepest impression.’

‘Well, he won’t be buried – or cremated – as a forgotten man,’ says Gip.

‘No, of course not. There will be obituaries, tributes. And some of his books will endure:
The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The War of the Worlds, Mr Polly
, maybe
Tono-Bungay
… but they’re all early ones.
Mr Polly
, is, I suspect, the last of his novels that has never been out of print since it was first published, and that was 1910 – correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘You’re probably right,’ says Gip. ‘But I think you’re reading too much into “The Betterave Papers”. It’s just a squib.
Mind at the End of its Tether
is a much more worrying work to me, because its pessimism is so extreme.’

‘But H.G.’s best work
was
essentially pessimistic,’ says Anthony. ‘It was inspired by ideas like entropy, the randomness of evolution, the innate folly and vanity of mankind, the possible ways in which the world could end, or human civilisation be wiped out. His true vocation was to work that vein of inspiration, producing novels that would last, that would become classics. But he got distracted by his involvement in politics, his sense of vocation changed, he started to believe in Progress, and he began to write books which expounded various ways of achieving it. He claimed he wasn’t interested in creating enduring works of art in fiction, but in responding to pressing social and political concerns, like a journalist. He quarrelled with Henry James about that, and picked over the bones of their disagreement years later in the
Experiment in Autobiography
. He was unrepentant then. But lately – as
Mind at the End of its Tether
shows – he’s lost faith in Progress, or in the perfectibility of man, which comes to the same thing. For nearly half a century he campaigned for World Government on the assumption that the only people capable of achieving and running it would axiomatically be enlightened, selfless, reasonable. But recent history has demonstrated that they are much more likely to be ruthless tyrants or, worse still, enlightened, selfless, reasonable people who
turn into
ruthless tyrants.’

‘Tyrants can be defeated,’ Gip objects. ‘We have defeated Hitler.’

‘Yes, but at what a cost …’ Anthony says. ‘I think it all became too much for H.G. in the end, the evidence of the power of evil in the world, mocking his belief in Progress. It wouldn’t be surprising if he felt he had wasted his energies and gifts as a writer propagandising for a lost cause. If he had listened more carefully to Henry James, he might not be so depressed about the reception of his work today.’

‘Isn’t Henry James just as out of fashion today as H.G.?’ Marjorie says.

‘Perhaps he is,’ Anthony says. ‘But he still has his devotees among the literati, and according to my mother American universities teach him as a great writer.’

Gip gives a snort of derision. ‘The world would be just the same if Henry James had never written a word. You can’t say that about H.G.’

‘How
is
Rebecca?’ Marjorie asks Anthony, thinking it is time for a change of subject.

‘Very busy,’ says Anthony. ‘She’s doing a lot of work for the
New Yorker
these days. The editor really loves her stuff.’

‘That’s nice,’ Marjorie says.

‘Yes, I wish she could pull a few strings for me in that quarter,’ says Anthony wistfully. ‘The
New Yorker
pays extremely well.’

In September Rebecca publishes a report on the trial of the traitor William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’, in the
New Yorker
, and sends a copy of the magazine to him when it comes out. ‘
I had to file it the day after the trial ended
,’ she says in her covering letter. ‘
Harold Ross told me, “I know of only five or six writers in the world who could have written such a thorough and journalistically competent story in such a short time, and of no other who could have equalled it in literary excellence
.”’ Her pride in this accolade from the notoriously demanding editor is justified by the article. She conveys the character and appearance of each of the major players in the drama vividly but economically – for a drama is what a treason trial at the Old Bailey necessarily is – and achieves some degree of empathy with them all, even the central figure, the man who taunted British listeners throughout the war with his propaganda broadcasts from Berlin. Many people – though not himself – found something horribly addictive about those broadcasts, which was usually attributed to Joyce’s strange nasal drawl and unpleasant wit. He was like a pantomime villain, a man they loved to hate. So far from frightening the British public with his gloating celebration of Nazi victories early in the war, he strengthened their determination to resist; but there was a temptation to gloat in turn now that he stood in the dock, which Rebecca deftly avoided in her article. She brought out the strange twists and paradoxes of his early life and upbringing and showed how they made him first a fascist and then a traitor. She picked her way ably through the complex legal argument which dominated this first trial, as to whether the child of Irish parents born in the USA could be deemed a traitor to the United Kingdom. The judge ruled that he could, but Joyce was granted leave to appeal, which is where her article ends. Writing to congratulate her he says that he enjoyed reading it, but would enjoy seeing her even more. She replies apologetically that she is too busy at present, keeping track of the appeal, and preparing to report on another treason trial for the
New Yorker
. ‘
Ross cabled me “We want whatever you want to write on the Amery trial
”,’ she declares exultantly. Clearly, she is enjoying a surge of success and confidence as a writer, and he is glad for her.

Rebecca is too busy to visit him, but fortunately Moura is not. She moved back to London at the end of the war, into a new flat in Kensington, and calls in frequently to sit by his bedside or – if he is up – joins him in the small sitting room or the sun lounge, relieving his boredom and Marjorie of some secretarial duties. When it is necessary to write to correspondents in French or Russian she can take his dictation down in the appropriate foreign language. She gives him news of her children, Paul and Tania, and Tania’s family, and commiserates with him over the sad news about Anna Jane’s husband, Eric, now known to have died when a ship on which he was escaping from Java in 1942 was sunk. She entertains him with anecdotes about the people she knows and meets at parties and receptions in London and invites to her flat for sherry, for she has an amazingly wide and promiscuous circle of acquaintance that includes Russian exiles, British government officials, foreign diplomats, writers, artists, actors and film-makers. She brings articles she has clipped out of newspapers and magazines which she thinks will interest him and reads them aloud. Sometimes they just sit in contented silence for minutes at a time, like an old married couple for whom sex is a memory and only companionship remains – which indeed is exactly their case, except that they have never been married. They do not talk about the past very much, for there are too many minefields in that territory: buried crises and quarrels and infidelities and unsolved mysteries which it would be foolish to dig up now. But when she has left him, after squeezing his hand and stooping to kiss him goodbye, his mind often goes back in time to recall various moments in their shared experience.

For twenty-five years Moura has been woven into the fabric of his life, at first a bright thread that appeared and vanished again for long intervals, but later as a more and more prominent motif. They corresponded only occasionally after that memorable night in Gorky’s apartment in Petrograd, during the years when he was involved with Rebecca and Odette, and Moura was secretary and companion to Gorky in Sorrento, where he had gone to live for his health with Stalin’s permission. They did not meet again until 1929. In the spring of that year he went to Berlin to deliver a lecture on ‘The Common Sense of World Peace’ at the Reichstag (an inauspicious venue in retrospect), unaware that she was eking out a living there as the literary agent of Gorky, who had been persuaded by Stalin to return to Russia the year before. At his hotel he found a note from her saying she would be at his lecture. He could not spot her in the audience as he spoke, but she was waiting for him at the back of the hall afterwards, tall, beautiful, and alluring as ever in spite of her shabby, well-worn clothes. ‘Aigee,’ she said, smiling, as he came up to her with his arms held wide to embrace her, and her pronunciation of his name acted on him like an aphrodisiac injected straight into a vein. For the next two days, until he had to return to Lou Pidou and Odette, they were lovers again.

At that time, eighteen months after Jane’s death, he was in an unsettled emotional state. Odette was eager to occupy the vacant space in his life, but he was growing increasingly tired of her whims and tantrums. She had become a kind of nagging wife without the rights of a wife; but instead of doing the sensible thing, which would have been to drop Odette and take up with Moura now he had found her again, he carried on for some years a covert, quasi-adulterous affair with her, conducted through assignations in various Continental venues. In retrospect he couldn’t really explain his behaviour to himself, except that he foresaw the difficulty of cutting loose from Odette without losing Lou Pidou, but when eventually he made that sacrifice in 1933 it seemed absurdly obvious to him that Moura was the love of his life and the woman with whom he wanted to spend the remainder of it, and he courted her accordingly. Moura was perfectly happy to be his acknowledged mistress, but insisted on retaining her independence. She refused to live with him, and she was always moving about, going off on foreign trips of her own. He did not suspect her of being unfaithful, for she was not promiscuous. She told him once that she had slept with only five men besides himself: a man called Engelhardt she claimed to have married and divorced before she married Benckendorf but who he suspected had been a lover, her husbands Benckendorf and Budberg, Bruce Lockhart, and an Italian in Sorrento, whom she did not identify. All of them she said were either dead or no longer in a relationship with her, and he believed her – until he caught her out deceiving him about a visit she made to Moscow in 1934.