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Re: Fwd: strange relationships: a query
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I'm not sure if this is entirely relevant to Alexey Sklyarenko's query, but on
pp. 86-87 of H.G. Wells's The World of William Clissold (New York, George H.
Doran Company, 1926, 2 volumes) the narrator writes (the book purports to be
Clissold's autobiography):
"Some one mentioned a distant relative of mine, Wells, who had employed many
religious expressions in a book called God, the Invisible King; a Manichean
book, said somebody, neither Greek nor Hebrew, but Persian. The writer in
question had gone very far indeed in his resuscitation of theological terms and
in his recommendation of prayer and suchlike exercises. Too far, said some one.
I agreed. I had already talked about that with Wells himself [...] Yet I would
not be too hard on my cousin for his use of the word God."
And again on pp. 627-628:
"My distant cousin Wells -- if a character may for once turn on his creator and
be frank about him -- has written frequently and abundantly of the supreme
necessity of education, of that race he detects in human affairs between
'education and catastrophe.' I agree about the urgency of the need for
education, but I doubt if he has sufficiently separated the idea of education
from the idea of schoolmastering. He was, I believe, for some years at an
impressionable age, a schoolmaster, and he has shown a pathetic disposition
throughout a large part of his life to follow schoolmasters about and ask them
to be more so, but different. His actions have belied his words. He was indeed
so much of an educator that quite early he found it imperative to abandon
schoolmastering. He produced encyclopaedic schemes and curricula that no
schoolmaster would or could undertake. He wrote a text-book of history that
shocked the scholastic mind beyond measure. Finally he settled down to a sort
of propaganda of Sanderson of Oundle, whose chief claim to immortality is that
there never was a man in control of a public school so little like a
schoolmaster."
And slightly further off the subject of Sklyarenko's query, but possibly a
propos something else: As Brian Boyd points out on page 91 of his Vladimir
Nabokov: The Russian Years, the novels of H.G. Wells are indeed "weighed down
by sociological speculation" yet they do not seem to be entirely lacking in
"intensely artistic detail." On page 50 of the book (The Passionate Friends,
New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1913) Boyd is briefly discussing, we
can read (the narrator, writing an autobiography addressed to his son, is
reminiscing about seeing his childhood playmates and sweetheart again for the
first time in several years):
" 'The children,' she said were still at tennis, and as she spoke I saw Guy,
grown nearly beyond recognition, and then a shining being in white, very
straight and graceful, with a big soft hat and overshadowed eyes that smiled,
come out from the hurried endearments of the sunflakes under the shadows of the
great chestnuts, into the glow of summer light before the pavilion."
--
Michael S Strickland
mstrickland@p3.net
Quoting "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>:
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
> Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 02:53:49 +0300
> From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Subject: strange relationships: a query
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> Dear all,
>
> Does anyone know of a non-Russian novel in which one of the characters is a
> relative of the author (who may also appear in that novel as a character)?
>
> Many thanks,
> Alexey
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----
pp. 86-87 of H.G. Wells's The World of William Clissold (New York, George H.
Doran Company, 1926, 2 volumes) the narrator writes (the book purports to be
Clissold's autobiography):
"Some one mentioned a distant relative of mine, Wells, who had employed many
religious expressions in a book called God, the Invisible King; a Manichean
book, said somebody, neither Greek nor Hebrew, but Persian. The writer in
question had gone very far indeed in his resuscitation of theological terms and
in his recommendation of prayer and suchlike exercises. Too far, said some one.
I agreed. I had already talked about that with Wells himself [...] Yet I would
not be too hard on my cousin for his use of the word God."
And again on pp. 627-628:
"My distant cousin Wells -- if a character may for once turn on his creator and
be frank about him -- has written frequently and abundantly of the supreme
necessity of education, of that race he detects in human affairs between
'education and catastrophe.' I agree about the urgency of the need for
education, but I doubt if he has sufficiently separated the idea of education
from the idea of schoolmastering. He was, I believe, for some years at an
impressionable age, a schoolmaster, and he has shown a pathetic disposition
throughout a large part of his life to follow schoolmasters about and ask them
to be more so, but different. His actions have belied his words. He was indeed
so much of an educator that quite early he found it imperative to abandon
schoolmastering. He produced encyclopaedic schemes and curricula that no
schoolmaster would or could undertake. He wrote a text-book of history that
shocked the scholastic mind beyond measure. Finally he settled down to a sort
of propaganda of Sanderson of Oundle, whose chief claim to immortality is that
there never was a man in control of a public school so little like a
schoolmaster."
And slightly further off the subject of Sklyarenko's query, but possibly a
propos something else: As Brian Boyd points out on page 91 of his Vladimir
Nabokov: The Russian Years, the novels of H.G. Wells are indeed "weighed down
by sociological speculation" yet they do not seem to be entirely lacking in
"intensely artistic detail." On page 50 of the book (The Passionate Friends,
New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1913) Boyd is briefly discussing, we
can read (the narrator, writing an autobiography addressed to his son, is
reminiscing about seeing his childhood playmates and sweetheart again for the
first time in several years):
" 'The children,' she said were still at tennis, and as she spoke I saw Guy,
grown nearly beyond recognition, and then a shining being in white, very
straight and graceful, with a big soft hat and overshadowed eyes that smiled,
come out from the hurried endearments of the sunflakes under the shadows of the
great chestnuts, into the glow of summer light before the pavilion."
--
Michael S Strickland
mstrickland@p3.net
Quoting "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>:
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
> Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 02:53:49 +0300
> From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
> Subject: strange relationships: a query
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> Dear all,
>
> Does anyone know of a non-Russian novel in which one of the characters is a
> relative of the author (who may also appear in that novel as a character)?
>
> Many thanks,
> Alexey
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----