Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/138

112 112 THE ARTLESSNESS OF MR. H. G. WELLS negligent neatness you can't help admiring, the board is set for the display. The pieces are our " types," our puzzled pawns and podgy bishops, teachers and taught — and comical objects they look as the cool forefinger flicks and clicks them condescendingly into place. There is Mr. Pope (U) — " a coachbuilder by birth, a gentleman by education — one of that large and representative class which imparts a dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from its ancestors " ; and Mrs. Pope, who thinks there is a lot in Christian Science. There is Sir Thomas Petch- worth (L), who has restored his parish church " in a costly and destructive manner," and Lady Petchworth, who strives to raise the level of village life through the influence of green-dyed deal and morris dances. There is Aunt Plessington, still more progressive, a lean lady with large front teeth fitted with lips that speeches, as if the words she spoke tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth." And there is Mr. Bunford Paradise the musician, and samples of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, and the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "a clergyman of the evasive type with a quite distinguished voice." What a Race ! Every surname a sneer. And in the midst of these phenomena is placed Marjorie, daughter of the Popes, outwardly a delicious English girl, cream and rose- gold, but a type at heart. For she has been educated at Oxbridge on Muffled Christianity, and is therefore a true product of our Twentieth Century Muddle, and her business is to complete the exposure of the absurd guides and guardians about her by making a thorough mess of her marriage. To this end Mr. Wells provides another piece, a Mr. Magnet, " a humorous writer," a person with a whitey-grey face, a thin neck, low silk collars, and a protuberant eye. His creator (no ! his compiler, his constructor, his pro-
 * close quietly and with a slight effort after her