The background may well bring up some interesting memories to those of us of A Certain Age, although the 17thC farm cottage in which my adoptive mother's mother lived until the late 60s was straight out of Thomas Hardy's Wessex!
IJ
Terry Pratchett commented once that he was brought up in a house that his young witch Tiffany Aching would have been immediately at home i - as also was I, and probably many other readers of a certain age.
Happy days, though black-leading the range is something which has now been consigned to history!
My grandmother's cottage was modernised somewhen about a century ago by the installation of a range (which did indeed have to be black-leaded from time to time)! Previously, cooking was on an open fire, with a spit for roasting meat (chiefly rabbits), and a bread oven in the chimney...
A bit of a tangent, perhaps, but some of the aspects of daily life described in Mr. Polly can still be seen in such places as the Black Country Museum, near Dudley, where houses and shops of various periods have been painstakingly recreated.
I took Mr Polly to the Botanic Gardens and had a good read on a cloudy spring (calendar)/winter (astronomical) day. Several ducks seemed interested in what I was doing and stopped by.
Thank you Ship's Book Club. It was so nice to be taken away by a book to another time and place...and so nice to indulge in a book and let my mind picture all the happenings. Look forward to continuing Mr Polly this week.
I took Mr Polly to the Botanic Gardens and had a good read on a cloudy spring (calendar)/winter (astronomical) day. Several ducks seemed interested in what I was doing and stopped by.
Thank you Ship's Book Club. It was so nice to be taken away by a book to another time and place...and so nice to indulge in a book and let my mind picture all the happenings. Look forward to continuing Mr Polly this week.
That is exactly what I have been thinking. I am just past the 'romance' section.
I can vaguely remember from reading it at school, that some of us thought, well, what a daft thing to do,' at various points in Mr Polly's life. But then, of course, we had not experienced life. It was probably a poor choice for that era, but probably, not so many years post-war, the School was limited in what they had in store.
The War of the Worlds, Kipps, and The History of Mr. Polly were all set books at my grammar school (1960s), so I read and enjoyed all three at various times.
I have a nice hardback copy of Wells' Short Stories, and many of them are worth reading, too. Whether or not they're available in print today, I know not, but I expect they can be found on the internet.
Sure, that's certainly the case with most writers. I s'pose you notice it more when it's a collection of short stories as the juxtaposition between the good and the not so good is fairly immediate and obvious.
Writers' works do vary in quality in lots of cases, usually getting better as they grow older and more mature.
Not so in the case of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), especially regarding his poetry. It's hard to tell, simply by reading one, from which period of his long and fruitful life it comes.
Writers' works do vary in quality in lots of cases, usually getting better as they grow older and more mature.
Not so in the case of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), especially regarding his poetry. It's hard to tell, simply by reading one, from which period of his long and fruitful life it comes.
IJ
But his novels are generally miserable no matter what period they come from! President of the Immortals indeed!
Well, Middleton's words are certainly visible in bits of the Scottish Play, though not here, I suspect. Generally, though, the whole play as we have it is a bit of a mess. And it's very short, so our text may well be taken from a version heavily cut for performance.
For instance, Macduff - who is crucial to the story - is only identified once (as 'Duff') before the witches' warning to beware of him; and some of the scrappy dialogue looks as if it was only created to patch gaps where scenes were cut.
I have come to the end this afternoon - a pleasure from start to finish. I listened again to the beginning and it simply says 'Introduction by Frank Wells' but gives no further information there.
This afternoon I have started listening. Do all copies everyone is reading have the preface by Frank Wells? I can see it is going to be a most enjoyable listen. I like the voice and style of the reader.
It looks to me as though reprints in the 1960s included an introduction by Frank Wells, who would, I think, have been the son of H.G. Wells, and who also was involved in the production of a pictorial biography of H.G. Wells published in 1977.
I haven't finished it yet, but more because I'm disorganised at getting round to it, so a deadline of Monday will hopefully motivate me to get round to it!
Ok folks, some thoughts to get you started (but please feel free to ramble as much as you want, like Mr. P. on one of his famous bike rides.)
1). By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
2). We hear a bit from time to time about the 'gentleman with gold pince-nez' and his musings on the socio-political situation. Could we just snip these bits out without very much loss?
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
4). Mr. Polly and his chronicler both share an unconventional morality: arson, for instance, is 'not a natural crime,' but leaving Miriam is 'Mean' (with a capital 'M'). Do you agree with them?
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
6). Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
I loved the Preston and the melt down he had dressing the window scenes. He was obviously a man before his time. I thought he might turn up later as a successful socialist politician as that seemed to be the way he was heading.
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
As I said somewhere upthread I feel like I know this era from hearing stories from my grandparents, and certainly my paternal grandparents lived a life that I could imagine Wells chronicling. I thought captured the small houses, the outward respectability and the food pretty well.
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
I loved the Preston and the melt down he had dressing the window scenes. He was obviously a man before his time. I thought he might turn up later as a successful socialist politician as that seemed to be the way he was heading.
Pedant alert - I think you mean Parsons (the window-dressing affair).
A socialist politician turns up in Wells' other rather similar novel, Kipps, published in 1905, so perhaps H.G. didn't want to repeat the motif.
Oddly enough, the old Collins school edition copy which I have renders 'Fishbourne' as 'Foxbourne' in earlier chapters, although it seems clear from the context that 'Fishbourne' is meant throughout.
Have any of you noticed such an inconsistency/error in your own editions of the book? I can't think that the mistake is Wells'.....
That leads on to the question of topography/dating. I'm sure that 'Port Burdock', with its naval dockyard, river, warships, trams, and neighbouring towns is Chatham. Easewood, OTOH, where Cousin Johnson lives, sounds as if it's in that part of Surrey being suburbanised around the beginning of the 20thC, a process much hastened a little later by the electrification of the London & South Western Railway's local lines (1915-on).
Wells may have had in mind places like Whitstable, Herne Bay, and Margate, when he refers to 'Fishbourne' and 'Hampstead-on-Sea', and his descriptions of the Kent countryside of the late 19thC/early 20thC , as rambled about by The Three Ps, are entirely accurate.
But....Wells mentions trams in Port Burdock during Polly's time at the Bazaar, although they weren't introduced to Chatham until 1903, a little later than Polly's time in that town.
If he left Fishbourne, following the Fire, after 15 years, in 1910, when the novel was published, he would have been at Port Burdock much earlier, around 1890. Given that at the time the novel begins he's aged 37, he would have been born around 1873. The mention of him avoiding an electric tram whilst learning to cycle at Easewood is also a little inconsistent.
None of which nit-picking detracts from the appeal of the story. The problem is that I have CDO, which is basically OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), but with the letters ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY as Our Lord and His Blessed Mother intended.
Does it actually say 'electric tram'? I don't have my copy to hand at the moment, but there were horse-trams in many places long before the electric variety came along (and they still survive at Douglas on the Isle of Man).
1). By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
I found it effective. I liked a bit of the sense of mystery whereby some things were passed over and left to our imagination, or left to us to dismiss.
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
The fire and the fights with Uncle Jim.
The whole set-up of the fire I did not find as tragic as I possibly should have. Perhaps I had a feeling that Mr Polly would do something silly or something silly would befall him. But once he became brave and we had the scenes with Rumbold’s deaf mother-in-law I was on a jolly jaunt. “I can’t jump” has stuck in my head.
The fights with Uncle Jim were, as I think with the fire scenes, so wonderfully written and I read them at a rapid pace and saw the scenes unfold before me. H G Wells has a way with words, and a great turn of phrase, and the sight of Uncle Jim being attacked by day trippers very much raised a smile. I was really surprised at how the use of language, both Mr Polly's coinages and Wells' use of the richness of the language, painted pictures in my mind.
6). Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
Does it actually say 'electric tram'? I don't have my copy to hand at the moment, but there were horse-trams in many places long before the electric variety came along (and they still survive at Douglas on the Isle of Man).
It's the wedding dogcart that just misses an electric tram, not Mr. Polly learning to cycle....my mistake, but it would in any case have been one of the earliest electric trams in England (Blackpool was the first, in 1885). As I said, nit-picking!
Port Burdock is, I believe, Chatham, which never had horse trams, only electric (1903-1930).
Does it actually say 'electric tram'? I don't have my copy to hand at the moment, but there were horse-trams in many places long before the electric variety came along (and they still survive at Douglas on the Isle of Man).
It's the wedding dogcart that just misses an electric tram, not Mr. Polly learning to cycle....my mistake, but it would in any case have been one of the earliest electric trams in England (Blackpool was the first, in 1885). As I said, nit-picking!
Port Burdock is, I believe, Chatham, which never had horse trams, only electric (1903-1930).
IJ
Thanks for the detail there. Of course, any author is entitled to improve on reality a bit; reality often needs a bit of a polish anyway.
1). By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
I think it would only make a difference if the skill of the writer was not that of H G Wells. I found the change from the author speaking to the reader to the telling of Mr Polly’s life was sort of seamless and as soon as I was reading about Mr Polly, the setting and the characters came alive. Inconsistencies or explaining everything would have damaged the charm of the story for me.
2). We hear a bit from time to time about the 'gentleman with the gold
pince-nez' and his musings on the socio-political situation. Could we just snip these bits out without very much loss?
Yes! I’d forgotten about him until I read the question!
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
Difficult to choose, but I think they are all hilarious in a painful sort of way. You know Mr Polly is going to come out of it more or less all right, but you want to warn him not to get into that situation in the first place!
4). Mr. Polly and his chronicler both share an unconventional morality: arson, for instance, is 'not a natural crime,' but leaving Miriam is 'Mean' (with a capital 'M'). Do you agree with them?
I think my automatic reaction was briefly to think no, he can't do thati.e. set fire to the house, , he'll be found out, but then immediately dismissed the thought as forensic analysis was way into the future. I also found it interesting (and I don't know enough about H G Wells' other books to comment fairly) but no mention was made of the marital bed except for the reasonably passionate kiss on the train! I think his leaving of Miriam was more on the side of a good thing.
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
I never thought of considering that actually because (a) I was taking the background for granted and (b) the story was so well told that any inconsistencies didn’t matter.
6). Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
Well, since Synthetic Dave pronounced them as spelt, they did not have the intended effect! I think I remember correctly that when I first read the book(in my teens) I thought what silly words. In fact, I don't think my opinion has changed that much, and I do wonder how much effect or significance that characteristic has on the reader. As Climacus says, ‘skeptaceous is a good one.
The way the audio book was read suited me very well. There was a laconic touch and only a hint at different ways of speaking for different people which is much better than the reader trying to act the story. All the way through the use of the English language was a joy. It seemed to me that it was strong and rich with colour and life, but not pretentious. I wonder whether any author using such a way of writing today would in fact be considered pretentious? I know I’ve started listening to some novels which grate because although there is evidently an attempt to write *well*, the picture remains blank. Hmmmm.
There was one book - The Journey Home I think the title was - where the reader ruined everything by emphasising the f word so heavily every time it came up, which seemed to be every other line! ,that it completely ruined the story, so I missed a really good book I understand.
I think that HGW was such a fine writer that he completely conceals just how brilliantly he does his job; one's never aware that he's writing 'well' and yet scene after scene just leaps to the mind's eye.
Mind you, burning down half a shopping street in a seaside town must surely be some sort of crime, mustn't it? Even though Wells almost manages to gloss over it as of no importance.
I think that HGW was such a fine writer that he completely conceals just how brilliantly he does his job; one's never aware that he's writing 'well' and yet scene after scene just leaps to the mind's eye.
Mind you, burning down half a shopping street in a seaside town must surely be some sort of crime, mustn't it? Even though Wells almost manages to gloss over it as of no importance.
I wonder if there were many crime and/or detective novels in H G Wells' time, because if there were, then perhaps he would have treated that insurance question differently? I wonder, too, if it could have something to do with the increase in and popularity of such novels during the second half of last century which make us more aware of the criminal asspect, but I do not know.
I wonder if there were many crime and/or detective novels in H G Wells' time, because if there were, then perhaps he would have treated that insurance question differently?
The heyday of Sherlock Holmes for one - among dozens of others. Not that Edwardians would have needed detective novels to inform them arson was a crime.
I’m coming to this rather late, I’m afraid, but I’ve enjoyed the discussion. I had never read The History of Mr Polly before (we got Great Expectations as O level set text, IIRC) but now I realise that I had missed a gem. I always associated Wells with science fiction, and had realised he wrote in a variety of genres.
1) By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
I don’t think it makes much difference to the distancing, but it allows the author to focus on certain things – great detail in the set-piece dramas, while glossing over a 15 years marriage in a few words.
2). We hear a bit from time to time about the 'gentleman with gold pince-nez' and his musings on the socio-political situation. Could we just snip these bits out without very much loss?
I gather he’s supposed to be Sydney Webb, but I don’t think he adds much.
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
I liked the rescue of the old lady, Rumbold’s deaf mother-in-law, over the roof (she seems to be enjoying herself so much), and the punting scene (yes I have tried, and it’s harder than it looks!). But all the set-pieces are wonderfully written. I will admit to having startled a couple of rather serious Chinese students when I laughed out loud on the bus.
4). Mr. Polly and his chronicler both share an unconventional morality: arson, for instance, is 'not a natural crime,' but leaving Miriam is 'Mean' (with a capital 'M'). Do you agree with them?
The way the arson works out seems not to upset anyone too much (apart from the insurance companies, one assumes), as the other shopkeepers also feel liberated: ‘Life was already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames’. Not a conventionally moral thing to do, but it was property that was lost after all, rather than lives or even, it seems, livelihoods – which fits Wells’ philosophy. I’m not even sure that Wells – or Mr Polly – feels that leaving Miriam was all that mean. Mr Polly gets a crisis of conscience about her, but once he’s checked that she’s fundamentally OK, he goes back to the Potwell Inn quite happily.
Wells’ admiration for the imagination, freedom, reading, the gothic as oppose to the sterility of the commercial life and obeying your elders seems strongly influenced by Ruskin. (Unto This Last is a truly astonishing book – it should be compulsory reading for all 1st year economics students)
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
Very well, I felt. The little shop at Fishborough reminded me strongly of my grandparents’ house behind and above their shoe shop in the Black Country – built around 1880, and similarly respectable but cramped. The ‘respectability’ of the funeral was brilliantly captured, and the role of the bicycle was well explored too.
6) Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
‘dejected angelosity’ (on Canterbury Cathedral) ‘Jawbacious argument’ (describing the aftermath of the cycling accident to the Larkins)
HGW, of course, was notorious in later life for meeting - separately and at different times - both Lenin and Stalin, and seems to have felt quite comfortable about both.
It makes me wonder if this man who thought that 'arson was not a natural crime' would feel that burning 'bad' books was acceptable - remembering Heine's warning that those who begin by burning books end up by burning men.
Am the only one to feel a bit sad that Miriam hadn't changed much despite not being married to Polly when he went back to look her up? I was hoping that she'd found the marriage as much of a disaster as he had, and like Polly, managed to re-invent her self. From what Annie says and the conversation with Polly she is still much the same.
Am the only one to feel a bit sad that Miriam hadn't changed much despite not being married to Polly when he went back to look her up? I was hoping that she'd found the marriage as much of a disaster as he had, and like Polly, managed to re-invent her self. From what Annie says and the conversation with Polly she is still much the same.
Yes, I wondered the same, but, with a sigh, I had to admit it would have been the wrong happy ending!
Am the only one to feel a bit sad that Miriam hadn't changed much despite not being married to Polly when he went back to look her up? I was hoping that she'd found the marriage as much of a disaster as he had, and like Polly, managed to re-invent her self. From what Annie says and the conversation with Polly she is still much the same.
Yes, I wondered the same, but, with a sigh, I had to admit it would have been the wrong happy ending!
Comments
My grandmother's cottage was modernised somewhen about a century ago by the installation of a range (which did indeed have to be black-leaded from time to time)! Previously, cooking was on an open fire, with a spit for roasting meat (chiefly rabbits), and a bread oven in the chimney...
A bit of a tangent, perhaps, but some of the aspects of daily life described in Mr. Polly can still be seen in such places as the Black Country Museum, near Dudley, where houses and shops of various periods have been painstakingly recreated.
IJ
Thank you Ship's Book Club. It was so nice to be taken away by a book to another time and place...and so nice to indulge in a book and let my mind picture all the happenings. Look forward to continuing Mr Polly this week.
I can vaguely remember from reading it at school, that some of us thought, well, what a daft thing to do,' at various points in Mr Polly's life. But then, of course, we had not experienced life. It was probably a poor choice for that era, but probably, not so many years post-war, the School was limited in what they had in store.
I have a nice hardback copy of Wells' Short Stories, and many of them are worth reading, too. Whether or not they're available in print today, I know not, but I expect they can be found on the internet.
IJ
That goes for most writers' work, I suspect. Some of Shakespeare is pretty awful too:
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,
But certain issue strokes must arbitrate:
Towards which advance the war.
(Yes, I know what it means, but it's not exactly the Swan of Avon at his best, is it?)
IJ
If not Thomas Middleton
Writers' works do vary in quality in lots of cases, usually getting better as they grow older and more mature.
Not so in the case of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), especially regarding his poetry. It's hard to tell, simply by reading one, from which period of his long and fruitful life it comes.
IJ
But his novels are generally miserable no matter what period they come from! President of the Immortals indeed!
Well, Middleton's words are certainly visible in bits of the Scottish Play, though not here, I suspect. Generally, though, the whole play as we have it is a bit of a mess. And it's very short, so our text may well be taken from a version heavily cut for performance.
For instance, Macduff - who is crucial to the story - is only identified once (as 'Duff') before the witches' warning to beware of him; and some of the scrappy dialogue looks as if it was only created to patch gaps where scenes were cut.
Other opinions are available.
IJ
How about we start discussion on Monday next, say, to give everyone who needs it a chance to catch up over the weekend?
IJ
Too quickly? No, don't skip at all, it's worth savouring!
IJ
By the last chapter she's a fat lady...
IJ
As long as she doesn't ask me to punt...
1). By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
2). We hear a bit from time to time about the 'gentleman with gold pince-nez' and his musings on the socio-political situation. Could we just snip these bits out without very much loss?
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
4). Mr. Polly and his chronicler both share an unconventional morality: arson, for instance, is 'not a natural crime,' but leaving Miriam is 'Mean' (with a capital 'M'). Do you agree with them?
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
6). Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
I loved the Preston and the melt down he had dressing the window scenes. He was obviously a man before his time. I thought he might turn up later as a successful socialist politician as that seemed to be the way he was heading.
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
As I said somewhere upthread I feel like I know this era from hearing stories from my grandparents, and certainly my paternal grandparents lived a life that I could imagine Wells chronicling. I thought captured the small houses, the outward respectability and the food pretty well.
I'll come back to the other questions later.
Pedant alert - I think you mean Parsons (the window-dressing affair).
A socialist politician turns up in Wells' other rather similar novel, Kipps, published in 1905, so perhaps H.G. didn't want to repeat the motif.
IJ
Have any of you noticed such an inconsistency/error in your own editions of the book? I can't think that the mistake is Wells'.....
That leads on to the question of topography/dating. I'm sure that 'Port Burdock', with its naval dockyard, river, warships, trams, and neighbouring towns is Chatham. Easewood, OTOH, where Cousin Johnson lives, sounds as if it's in that part of Surrey being suburbanised around the beginning of the 20thC, a process much hastened a little later by the electrification of the London & South Western Railway's local lines (1915-on).
Wells may have had in mind places like Whitstable, Herne Bay, and Margate, when he refers to 'Fishbourne' and 'Hampstead-on-Sea', and his descriptions of the Kent countryside of the late 19thC/early 20thC , as rambled about by The Three Ps, are entirely accurate.
But....Wells mentions trams in Port Burdock during Polly's time at the Bazaar, although they weren't introduced to Chatham until 1903, a little later than Polly's time in that town.
If he left Fishbourne, following the Fire, after 15 years, in 1910, when the novel was published, he would have been at Port Burdock much earlier, around 1890. Given that at the time the novel begins he's aged 37, he would have been born around 1873. The mention of him avoiding an electric tram whilst learning to cycle at Easewood is also a little inconsistent.
None of which nit-picking detracts from the appeal of the story. The problem is that I have CDO, which is basically OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), but with the letters ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY as Our Lord and His Blessed Mother intended.
IJ
The fire and the fights with Uncle Jim.
The whole set-up of the fire I did not find as tragic as I possibly should have. Perhaps I had a feeling that Mr Polly would do something silly or something silly would befall him. But once he became brave and we had the scenes with Rumbold’s deaf mother-in-law I was on a jolly jaunt. “I can’t jump” has stuck in my head.
The fights with Uncle Jim were, as I think with the fire scenes, so wonderfully written and I read them at a rapid pace and saw the scenes unfold before me. H G Wells has a way with words, and a great turn of phrase, and the sight of Uncle Jim being attacked by day trippers very much raised a smile. I was really surprised at how the use of language, both Mr Polly's coinages and Wells' use of the richness of the language, painted pictures in my mind.
skeptaceous is one that has stuck in my mind.
It's the wedding dogcart that just misses an electric tram, not Mr. Polly learning to cycle....my mistake, but it would in any case have been one of the earliest electric trams in England (Blackpool was the first, in 1885). As I said, nit-picking!
Port Burdock is, I believe, Chatham, which never had horse trams, only electric (1903-1930).
IJ
Thanks for the detail there. Of course, any author is entitled to improve on reality a bit; reality often needs a bit of a polish anyway.
The way the audio book was read suited me very well. There was a laconic touch and only a hint at different ways of speaking for different people which is much better than the reader trying to act the story. All the way through the use of the English language was a joy. It seemed to me that it was strong and rich with colour and life, but not pretentious. I wonder whether any author using such a way of writing today would in fact be considered pretentious? I know I’ve started listening to some novels which grate because although there is evidently an attempt to write *well*, the picture remains blank. Hmmmm.
There was one book - The Journey Home I think the title was - where the reader ruined everything by emphasising the f word so heavily every time it came up, which seemed to be every other line! ,that it completely ruined the story, so I missed a really good book I understand.
Mind you, burning down half a shopping street in a seaside town must surely be some sort of crime, mustn't it? Even though Wells almost manages to gloss over it as of no importance.
Yes, though it could have turned very nasty.
Would Mr. P have been so brave if the threat had been to his shop rather than to the Potwell Inn, I wonder? I suspect not.
The heyday of Sherlock Holmes for one - among dozens of others. Not that Edwardians would have needed detective novels to inform them arson was a crime.
1) By calling the book The History of Mr. Polly the author slightly distances himself from the usual position of the 'omniscient author,' allowing him to pretend not to know certain things - such as how Mr. Polly comes to lose the gun. Is this an effective approach, or does it really make no difference?
I don’t think it makes much difference to the distancing, but it allows the author to focus on certain things – great detail in the set-piece dramas, while glossing over a 15 years marriage in a few words.
2). We hear a bit from time to time about the 'gentleman with gold pince-nez' and his musings on the socio-political situation. Could we just snip these bits out without very much loss?
I gather he’s supposed to be Sydney Webb, but I don’t think he adds much.
3). There are some hilarious set-pieces: the wedding and the business with the punt, among others. Which is your favourite?
I liked the rescue of the old lady, Rumbold’s deaf mother-in-law, over the roof (she seems to be enjoying herself so much), and the punting scene (yes I have tried, and it’s harder than it looks!). But all the set-pieces are wonderfully written. I will admit to having startled a couple of rather serious Chinese students when I laughed out loud on the bus.
4). Mr. Polly and his chronicler both share an unconventional morality: arson, for instance, is 'not a natural crime,' but leaving Miriam is 'Mean' (with a capital 'M'). Do you agree with them?
The way the arson works out seems not to upset anyone too much (apart from the insurance companies, one assumes), as the other shopkeepers also feel liberated: ‘Life was already in their imagination rising like a Phoenix from the flames’. Not a conventionally moral thing to do, but it was property that was lost after all, rather than lives or even, it seems, livelihoods – which fits Wells’ philosophy. I’m not even sure that Wells – or Mr Polly – feels that leaving Miriam was all that mean. Mr Polly gets a crisis of conscience about her, but once he’s checked that she’s fundamentally OK, he goes back to the Potwell Inn quite happily.
Wells’ admiration for the imagination, freedom, reading, the gothic as oppose to the sterility of the commercial life and obeying your elders seems strongly influenced by Ruskin. (Unto This Last is a truly astonishing book – it should be compulsory reading for all 1st year economics students)
5) How well do you feel the book captures the late Victorian / Edwardian period in which it is set?
Very well, I felt. The little shop at Fishborough reminded me strongly of my grandparents’ house behind and above their shoe shop in the Black Country – built around 1880, and similarly respectable but cramped. The ‘respectability’ of the funeral was brilliantly captured, and the role of the bicycle was well explored too.
6) Mr. Polly has 'an innate sense of epithet.' Which of his many coinings / malapropisms do you like best?
‘dejected angelosity’ (on Canterbury Cathedral) ‘Jawbacious argument’ (describing the aftermath of the cycling accident to the Larkins)
It makes me wonder if this man who thought that 'arson was not a natural crime' would feel that burning 'bad' books was acceptable - remembering Heine's warning that those who begin by burning books end up by burning men.
Why?
IJ