H. G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Imperatives and Imaginative Obsessions

241 Pages·1996·25.59 MB·English

by  Peter Kemp (auth.)

H. G. WELLS AND THE CULMINATING APE
By the same author
MURIEL SPARK
H. G. Wells and the
Cullllinating Ape
Biological Imperatives and
Imaginative Obsessions
Peter Kemp
Published in Great Britain by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-67893-0 ISBN 978-1-349-24832-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24832-2
Published in the United States of America by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division.
175 Fifth A venue.
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-35592-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-312-16489-8 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for.
© Peter Kemp 1982, 1996
First edition 1982
Reprinted (with alterations) 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WI P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
To David Grylls
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface to the 1996 Rep·rint IX
Introduction: Wells and Biology 1
1 The Edible Predator: Wells and Food 7
2 The Slave Goddess: Wells and Sex 73
3 The Redeveloped Basement: Wells and Habitat 119
4 The Pugnacious Pacifist: Wells and
Survival-Mechanisms 145
5 The Grand Earthly: Wells and Self-Image 187
Postscript ( 1996 ): Stains and Whitewash 215
Bibliography 221
Index 227
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Professor G. P. Wells for permission to
quote from The Outline of History, A Short History of the World, The
Science of Life and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind; and
the Trustees of the Estate of H. G. Wells and Professor G. P. Wells
for permission to quote from all other books by Wells.
In addition, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to all who
have helped in the production of this book-particularly David
Grylls, Gail Cunningham, David Brown and judith Stinton.
Preface to the 1996 Reprint
This book was written in the belief that H. G. Wells's prodigious
achievement can only be fully appreciated through a full
exploration of his work. Earlier critical studies, conscious of the
unevenness of his output and the prolixity of much of his later
writing, often concentrated almost entirely upon Wells's most
accomplished phase: the period from 1895 to 1910 during which
he produced his best science fiction and his Edwardian social novels.
While exhibiting his fictional powers at their peak, this approach
allowed for only a partial picture of an imagination that, as H. G.
Wells and the Culminating Ape seeks to display, was exceptionally
miscellaneous: rife with wayward idiosyncrasies but everywhere
coloured by the biologist's view of life that Wells acquired as a
science student in the South Kensington lecture theatre of Charles
Darwin's champion, T. H. Huxley.
Since this book first appeared in 1982, another kind of
partialness - in fact, of partiality - has been promoting a lopsided
image of Wells. In recent years, some critics and biographers, eager
to portray Wells as unimpeachably progressive, have ignored or
bowdlerised opinions he expressed, courses of action he advocated,
and scenarios he enthusiastically envisaged concerning eugenics,
population control, racial attributes and relations between the
sexes. This phenomenon is examined in a postscript to this new
edition, which is published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary
of the death, in August 1946, of the man who - born as a mid
Victorian - became one of the most remarkable and influential
figures of the twentieth century.
Peter Kemp, 1996
Introduction:
Wells and Biology
A scientific education saved Wells's life: he assumed it would
do the same for the world. Poverty undermined his health from
childhood onwards. Drudgery in draperies sapped his energy
as a young man. Had he not got away from these conditions,
he once said, he could not have survived late into life. What
rescued him was the grant he won to study science at South
Kensington. Before this, deprivation and frustration dragged at
his vitality; after it, he bounded energetically towards affluence
and achievement. Not surprisingly, he came to believe that
science was-as he affirmed in his college's old students' bulletin
'the light and redemption of the world'. For over fifty years, he
cast himself as the evangelist, and sometimes the messiah, of this
gospel.
In his Experiment in Autobiography, Wells recalls the day he
enrolled at the Normal School of Science as 'one of the great days
of my life'. It led to what was 'beyond all question, the most
educational year of my life'-a year spent studying biology with
T. H. Huxley. This veteran campaigner for evolutionary theory
and scientific education influenced his student in two ways. His
career showed Wells what could be achieved, despite a dis
advantaged background, by conviction and pugnacity. His
course in biology-'a vivid, sustained attempt to see life clearly
and to see it whole, to see into it, to see its inter-connexions, to
find out ... what it was, where it came from, what it was doing
and where it was going'-mapped out what Wells would try to
establish and convey throughout a prolific writing-life.
'To lay down the main lines of Mr Wells's Weltanschauung',
F. H. Doughty wrote in 1926, 'necessitates a bird's-eye view of a
range of material appalling in its extent.' By the time Wells died,
twenty years after this, he had heaped a miscellany of nearly