JOAN AND PETER.• Six EDWARD Come in his excellent essay
on the Art of Indexing points out that there is high authority—no less than that of Dr. Johnson—for furnishing even novels with an index. Indeed, he himself subscribes to this view on the ground that " the great characters of fiction are much more worthy of memory and do, in fact, live much longer than the subjects of most biographies," which cannot be considered complete without indexes. There is an extra reason in the ease of the novel before us, since Joan and Peter is a veritable Wells Encyclopaedia from the number of subjects which it treats, ranging from Anglicanism to Ulster and Queen Victoria (all three special pet aversions of the writer), aid from the educative influence of the pianola to God. Education is the keynote of the whole book. Under that heading might be grouped such observations as the following r- " The war was an educational break-down."
" Now for the first time [April, 1918] he could see the possibility of an ultimate failure in the war. To this low level of achievement, he perceived, a steadfast contempt for thought and science and organization had brought Britain ; at this low level Britain had now to struggle through the war, blundering, talking, and thinking confusedly, suffering enormously—albeit so sound at heart. It was a humiliating realization. At any rate she could still hope to struggle through ; the hard-won elementary education of the common people, the stout heart and sense of the common people, saved her gentlefolk from the fate of their brother ineflicients in Russia." (The italics are ours.)
" This war was an outrage by the senior things in the world upon all the hope of the future ; it was the parent sending his sons through the fires to Moloch, it was the guardian gone mad, it was the lapse of all educational responsibility."
Under " Victoria " we have " that poor little old panting German widow," " an alien-spirited old lady making muoh of the pathos of her widowhood and trading still on the gallantry and generosity that had welcomed her as a ' girl queen.' " And again:— " Hanoverian England, with its indolence, its dullness, its economic uncleanness, its canting individualism, its contempt for science and system, has been an England darJeened, an England astray—Young England has had to pay at last for all those wasted years—and has paid."
The conduct of the war provokes an indignant outburst against " the shame of following after clumsy, mean leadership in the sight of all the world," and an attack on " the cavalry coterie who ruled upon land," and had " demonstrated triumphantly their incapacity to seize even so great an opportunity as the surprise of the tanks afforded them."
Heu vaturn ignaree mantes. Recent events in Palestine, to say nothing of the Western Front, form a rather disconcerting commentary on the passages we have quoted.
The theme of Joan and Peter, which is at once a novel and a huge panoramic pamphlet of seven hundred and forty-eight pages, is our national incompetence, the result of fifty years of under- education, fetish-worship of the Hanoverian Monarchy, and in general of the domination of what Mr. Wells calls " the Anglican system." By this he means not merely an antiquated theology, but a narrow, obscurantist, evasive, and double-minded view of all the larger issues of life. Oswald Sydenham, who is the real hero of the novel, was bred up in the old traditions, served in the Navy, winning the V.C. at the bombardment of Alexandria, and on recovery from wounds, which disfigured him for life, entered the Colonial Service, helping Sir Harry Johnston—the only public servant of whom Mr. Wells speaks with cordial approval—to tidy up Central Africa at the close of the nineteenth century. He suffered from the prejudices of his class, but gradually outgrew them. By tradition and nature he disliked the " irregulars," the irresponsible contemporary teachers who twenty-five years ago had begun to combat " the Anglican system." Even Mr.
Wells failed to inspire him with confidence. " He had seen a picture of Wells by Max that confirmed his worst suspicions about these people ; a heavy bang of hair assisted a cascade moustache to veil a pasty face that was broad rather than long and with a sly, conceited expression ; the creature still wore a long and crumpled frock coat, acquired no doubt during his commercial phase, and rubbed together two large, clammy, white, misshapen hands." Happily this was only a phase. Oswald was all the time an unconscious Wellsian. He was passionately interested in biology, and was always ready on any occasion to damn the
• Jean and Pia Mt SIM! of an &Wallin By ff. 0. Wells. London Cassell and Co. [9s. net.
classical curriculum and the " stale old culture " which stood behind it ; he revolted against the New Imperialism as interpreted by Mr. Chamberlain, and he was a convinced Home Ruler. He had, in short, the root of the matter in him, and when on the sudden and simultaneous deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Stubland he was entrusted with the guardianship of their son and niece, he was about as well equipped for the task as any one of his class and generation could be. Still, it was a tremendous task, for at first there were three other guardians—two maiden ladies with freak views of education, and his formidable relative, Lady Charlotte Sydenham, who combined all the iniquities of Anglicanism in her " pampered evil soul " and stuck at nothing, even kidnapping, to gain her ends- But she did not stand alone. " She was only one of a whole class of truculent, illiterate harridans who were stirring up bad blood in half the great houses of London, and hurrying Britain on to an Irish civil war." Oswald rescued the children from this terrible old lady, but that was only the beginning of his labours. He had to find schools for his charges ; and there were no really good schools available. Even reforming schoolmasters were the victims of Anglicanism, and driven to humiliating compromises. However, Oswald did his best, but the difficulty recurred when it was time for Peter and Joan to complete their education. Oxford was of course impossible, in view of Oswald's abhorrence of Lord Milner and other products of Balliol ; but we are rather surprised that he allowed Peter to go to Cambridge instead of one of the newer Universities. As a matter of fact, the young people largely educated themselves. They too were unconscious disciples of Mr. Wells, and after copiously illustrating their guardian's conception of humanity—that even in civilized man " the ape is still there struggling subtly "—they emerge at the end glorified, de-Anglicanized, and cured of their " egotistical eroticism " by the red discipline of war, and content to face poverty and hard work together. Their guardian is left desolate by their departure, finding his only consolation in ceaseless labours for the dream of a great Federation of Free Nations, and upheld by the consciousness of a presence in the world that made all life worth while, yet remained nameless and incomprehensible. The eloquence and the passion of the last pages are undeniable, but they cannot obliterate the injustice, the animosity, and the intolerance which disfigure most of what goes before.
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