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HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY
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KIPPS
THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL
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Books by H. G. Wells
SHORT STORIES
Twelve Stories and a Dream
The Plattner Story and Others
Talcs of Space and Time
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories
ROMANCES
The Food of the Gods
The Wonderful Visit
The War of the Worlds
The InvisibleMan
The Time Machine
The First Men in the Moon
The Sea Lady
The Island of Dr. Moreau
NOVELS
Kipps
Love and Mr. Lewisham
The Wheels of Chance
SOCIOLOGICAL ESSAYS
A Modern Utopia
Anticipations
Mankind in the Making.
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K I P P S^
THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL
BV
H. G. WELLS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1905
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HARVAIO C0LLE6E HBKARY
eiFT Of
RADCttFFE C0UE6E UMAtY
Copyright 190«, bv
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published, 1905
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' Those individuals who have led secluded or isolated lives, or have
hitherto moved in other spheres than those wherein well-bred
people move, will gather all the information necessary from
these pages to render them thoroughly conversant with the
manners and amenities of society."
Manners and Kulcs of Good Society
By a Member of the Arittocracy
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CONTENTS :
Book I.
The Making of Kipps
PAGE
I. The Little Shop at New Romney 3
II. The Emporium 36
III. The Wood-Carving Class 64
IV. Chitterlow 88
V. "Swapped" 117
VI. The Unexpected 128
Book II.
Mr. Coote, the Chaperon
I. The New Conditions 169
II. The Walshinghams 201
III. Engaged 218
IV. The Bicycle Manufacturer 245
V. The Pupil Lover 259
VI. Discords 282
VII. London 309
VIII. Kipps Enters Society 354
IX. The Labyrinthodon 380
Book III.
K1PP8ES
I. The Housing Problem 395
II. The Callers 424
III. Terminations 443
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BOOK I
THE MAKING OF KIPPS
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CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE SHOP AT NEW ROMNEY
§1
Until he was nearly arrived at adolescence it did
not beccmie clear to Kipps how it was that he was
under the care of an aunt and uncle instead of having
a father and mother like other boys. Yet he had
vague memories of a somewhere else that was not
New Romney — of a dim room, a window looking
down on white buildings — and of a some one else who
talked to forgotten people, and who was his mother.
He could not recall her features very distinctly, but
he remembered with extreme definition a white dress
she wore, with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers and
little bows of ribbon upon it, and a girdle of straight-
ribbed white ribbon about the waist. Linked with
this, he knew not how, were clouded half-obliterated
recollections of scenes in which there was weeping,
weeping in which he was inscrutably moved to join.
ScMTie terrible tall man with a loud voice played a part
in these scenes, and either before or after them there
were impressions of looking for interminable periods
out of the windows of railway trains in the company
of these two people. . . .
3
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4 THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
He knew, though he could not remember that he
had ever been told, that a certain faded, wistful face,
that looked at him from a plush and gilt framed
daguerreotype above the mantel of the "sitting-
room," was the face of his mother. But that knowl-
edge did not touch his dim memories with any elucida-
tion. In that photograph she was a girlish figure,
leaning against a photographer's stile, and with all
the self-conscious shrinking natural to that position.
She had curly hair and a face far younger and prettier
than any other mother in his experience. She swung
a Dolly Varden hat by the string, and looked with
obedient respectful eyes on the photographer-gentle-
man who had commanded the pose. She was very
slight and pretty. But the phantom mother that
haunted his memory so elusively was not like that,
though he could not remember how she differed. Per-
haps she was older, or a little less shrinking, or, it
may be, only dressed in a different way. . . .
It is clear she handed him over to his aunt and
uncle at New Romney with explicit directions and a
certain endowment. One gathers she had something
of that fine sense of social distinctions that subse-
quently played so large a part in Kipps' career. He
was not to go to a "common" school, she provided,
but to a certain seminary in Hastings that was not
only a "middle-class academy," with mortar boards
and every evidence of a higher social tone, but also
remarkably cheap. She seems to have been animated
by the desire to do her best for Kipps, even at a cer-*
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CH. I THE LITTLE SHOP 5
tain sacrifice of herself, as though Kipps were in some
way a superior sort of person. She sent pocket-money
to him from time to time for a year or more after
Hastings had begun for him, but her face he never
saw in the days of his lucid memory.
His aunt and uncle were already high on the hill of
life when first he came to them. They had married
for comfort in the evening or at any rate in the late
afternoon of their days. They were at first no more
than vague figures in the background of proximate
realities, such realities as familiar chairs and tables,
quiet to ride and drive, the newel of the staircase,
kitchen furniture, pieces of firewood, the boiler tap,
old newspapers, the cat, the High Street, the back
yard and the flat fields that are always so near in that
little town. He knew all the stones in the yard indi-
vidually, the creeper in the corner, the dustbin and the
mossy wall, better than many men know the faces of
their wives. There was a comer under the ironing-
board which by means of a shawl could, under pro-
pitious gods, be made a very decent cubby-house, a
comer that served him for several years as the indis-
putable hub of the world; and the stringy places in
the carpet, the knots upon the dresser, and the several
comers of the rag hearthmg his uncle had made, be-
came essential parts of his mental foundations. The
shop he did not know so thoroughly — it was a for-
bidden region to him; yet scnnehow he managed to
know it very well.
His aunt and uncle were, as it were, the immediate
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6 THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
gods of this world ; and, like the gods of the world of
old, occasionally descended right into it, with arbi-
trary injunctions and disproportionate punishments.
And, unhappily, one rose to their Olympian level at
meals. Then one had to say one's "grace," hold one's
spoon and fork in mad, unnatural ways called "prop-
erly," and refrain from eating even nice sweet things
"too fast." If he "gobbled" there was trouble, and
at the slightest abandon with knife, fork, and spoon,
his aunt rapped his knuckles, albeit his uncle always
finished up his gravy with his knife. Sometimes,
moreover, his uncle would come, pipe in hand, out
of a sedentary remoteness in the most disconcerting
way, when a little boy was doing the most natural
and attractive things, with "Drat and drabbit that
young rascal 1 What's he a-doing of now?" And
his aunt would appear at door or window to interrupt
interesting conversation with children who were upon
unknown grounds considered "low" and undesirable,
and call him in. The pleasantest little noises, how-
ever softly you did them,^-drumming on tea-trays,
trumpeting your fists, whistling on keys, ringing
chimes with a couple of pails, or playing tunes on the
window-panes, — brought down the gods in anger.
Yet what noise is fainter than your finger on the win-
dow — gently done ? Sometimes, however, these gods
gave him broken toys out of the shop, and then one
loved them better — for the shop they kept was,
among other things, a toy shop. (The other things
included books to read and books to give away and
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CH. I THE LIITLE SHOP 7
local photographs; it had some pretensions also to be
a china shop, and the fascia spoke of glass ; it was also
a stationer's shop with a touch of haberdashery about
it, and in the windows and odd corners were mats and
terra-cotta dishes, and milking-stools for painting;
and there was a hint of picture-frames, and fire-
screens, and fishing tackle, and air-guns, and bathing
suits, and tents : various things, indeed, but all cruelly
attractive to a small boy's fingers.) Once his aunt
gave him a trumpet if he would promise faithfully not
to blow it, and afterwards took it away again. And
his aunt made him say his Catechism and something
she certainly called the "Colic for the Day" every
Sunday in the year.
As the two grew old while he grew up, and as his
impression of them modified insensibly from year to
year, it seemed to him at last that they had always
been as they were when, in his adolescent days, his
impression of things grew fixed. His aunt he thought
of as always lean, rather worried-looking, and prone
to a certain obliquity of cap, and his uncle massive,
many-chinned, and careless about his buttons. They
neither visited nor received visitors. They were al-
ways very suspicious about their neighbours and other
people generally; they feared the "low" and they
hated and despised the **stuck-up," and so they "kept
themselves to themselves," according to the English
ideal. Consequently little Kipps had no playmates,
except through the sin of disobedience. By inherent
nature he had a sociable disposition. When he was
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8 THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
in the High Street he made a point of saying "Hel-
lo 1" to passing cyclists, and he would put his tongue
out at the Quodling children whenever their nurse-
maid was not looking. And he began a friendship
with Sid Pornick, the son of the haberdasher next
door, that, with wide intermissions, was destined to
last his lifetime through.
Pornick, the haberdasher, I may say at once, was,
according to old Kipps, a **blaring jackass"; he was
a teetotaller, a **nyar, nyar, 'im-singing Methodis',"
and altogether distasteful and detrimental, he and his
together, to true Kipps ideals, so far as little Kipps
could gather them. This Pornick certainly possessed
an enormous voice, and he annoyed old Kipps greatly
by calling, "You — Arn" and "Siddee," up and down
his house. He annoyed old Kipps by private choral
services on Sunday, all his family "nyar, nyar-ing";
and by mushroom culture ; by behaving as though the
pilaster between the two shops was common property ;
by making a noise of hammering in the afternoon,
when old Kipps wanted to be quiet after his midday
meal; by going up and down uncarpeted stairs in his
boots; by having a black beard; by attempting to be
friendly; and by — all that sort of thing. In fact, he
annoyed old Kipps. He annoyed him especially with
his shop doormat. Old Kipps never beat his mat.
preferring to let sleeping dust lie ; and, seeking a mo-
tive for a foolish proceeding, he held that Pornick
waited until there was a suitable wind in order that
the dust disengaged in that operation might defile his
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CH. I THE LITTLE SHOP 9
neighbour's shop. 'ITiese issues would frequently de-
velop into loud and vehement quarrels, and on one
occasion came so near to violence as to be subsequent-
ly described by Pornick (who read his newspaper) as
a "Disgraceful Frackass." On that occasion he cer-
tainly went into his own shop with extreme celerity.
But it was through one of these quarrels that the
friendship of little Kipps and Sid Pornick came about.
The two small boys found themselves one day looking
through the gate at the doctor's goats together ; they
exchanged a few contradictions about which goat
could fight which, and then young Kipps was moved
to remark that Sid's father was a "blaring jackass."
Sid said he wasn't, and Kipps repeated that he was,
and quoted his authority. Then Sid, flying off at a
tangent rather alarmingly, said he could fight young
Kipps with one hand, an assertion young Kipps with
a secret want of confidence denied. There were some
vain repetitions, and the incident might have ended
there, but happily a sporting butcher boy chanced on
the controversy at this stage, and insisted upon seeing
fair play.
The two small boys under his pressing encourage-
ment did at last button up their jackets, square and
fight an edifying drawn battle, until it seemed good to
the butcher boy to go on with Mrs. Holyer's mutton.
Then, according to his directions and under his ex-
perienced stage management, they shook hands and
made it up. Subsequently, a little tear-stained per-
haps, but flushed with the butcher boy's approval
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lo THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
("tough little kids"), and with cold stones down
their necks as he advised, they sat side by side on the
doctor's gate, projecting very much behind, staunch-
ing an honourable bloodshed, and expressing respect
for one another. Each had a bloody nose and a black
eye — three days later they matched to a shade —
neither had given in, and, though this was tacit,
neither wanted any more.
It was an excellent beginning. After this first en-
counter the attributes of their parents and their own
relative value in battle never rose between them, and
if anything was wanted to complete the warmth of
their regard it was found in a joint dislike of the
eldest Quodling. The eldest Quodling lisped, had a
silly sort of straw hat and a large pink face (all cov-
ered over with self-satisfaction), and he went to the
National School with a green baize bag — a contempti-
ble thing to do. They called him names and threw
stones at him, and when he replied by threatenings
("Look 'ere, young Art Kipth, you better thtoppitT)
they were moved to attack and put him to flight.
And after that they broke the head of Ann Por-
nick's doll, so that she went home weeping loudly — a
wicked and endearing proceeding. Sid was whacked,
but, as he explained, he wore a newspaper tactically
adjusted during the transaction, and really it didn't
hurt him at all. . . . And Mrs. Pomick put her
head out of the shop door suddenly, and threatened
Kipps as he passed.
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CH.I THE LITTLE SHOP n
§2
"Cavendish Academy," the school that had won
the limited choice of Kipps' vanished mother, was es-
tablished in a battered private house in the part of
Hastings remotest from the sea; it was called an
Academy for Young Gentlemen, and many of the
young gentlemen had parents in **India," and other
unverifiable places. Others were the sons of credu-
lous widows, anxious, as Kipps' mother had been, to
get something a little "superior" to a board school
education as cheaply as possible; and others again
were sent to demonstrate the dignity of their parents
and guardians. And of course there were boys from
France.
Its "principal" was a lean, long creature of indiffer-
ent digestion and temper, who proclaimed himself on
a gilt-lettered board in his front garden George Gar-
den Woodrow, F.S.Sc, letters indicating that he had
paid certain guineas for a bogus diploma. A bleak
white-washed outhouse constituted his schoolroom,
and the scholastic quality of its carved and worn desks
and forms was enhanced by a slippery blackboard and
two large yellow out-of-date maps, one of Africa and
the other of Wiltshire, that he had picked up cheap
at a sale. There were other maps and globes in his
study, where he interviewed inquiring parents, but
these his pupils never saw. And in a glass cupboard
in the passage was several shilUngsworth of test tubes
and chemicals, a tripod, a glass retort, and a damaged
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1 2 THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
Bunsen burner, manifesting that the "Scientific labora-
tory" mentioned in the prospectus was no idle boast
This prospectus, which was in dignified but incor-
rect English, laid particular stress on the sound prep-
aration for a commercial career given in the Acad-
emy, but the army, navy and civil service were
glanced at in an ambiguous sentence. There was
something vague in the prospectus about "examina-
tional successes" — though Woodrow, of course, dis-
approved of "cram" — ^and a declaration that the cur-
riculum included "art," "modem foreign languages"
and "a sound technical and scientific training." Then
came insistence upon the "moral well-being" of the
pupils, and an emphatic boast of the excellence of the
religious instruction, "so often neglected nowadays
even in schools of wide repute." "That's bound to
fetch 'em," Mr. Woodrow had remarked when he
drew up the prospectus. And in conjunction with the
mortarboards it certainly did. Attention was directed
to the "motherly" care of Mrs. Woodrow — in reality
a small partially effaced woman with a plaintive face
and a mind above cookery; and the prospectus con-
cluded with a phrase intentionally vague, "Fare un-
restricted, and our own milk and produce."
The memories Kipps carried from that school into
after life were set in an atmosphere of stuffiness and
mental muddle ; and included countless pictures of sit-
ting on creaking forms bored and idle, of blot licking
and the taste of ink, of torn books with covers that
set one's teeth on edge, of the slimy surface of the
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CH. I THE LITTLE SHOP 13
laboured slates, of furtive marble-playing, whispered
story-telling, and of pinches, blows, and a thousand
such petty annoyances being perpetually '^passed on"
according to the custom of the place, of standing up
in class and being hit suddenly and unreasonably for
imaginary misbehaviour, of Mr. Woodrow's raving
days, when a scarcely sane injustice prevailed, of the
cold vacuity of the hour of preparation before the
bread-and-butter breakfast, and of horrible headaches
and queer, unprecedented, internal feelings resulting
from Mrs. Woodrow's motherly rather than intelli-
gent cookery. There were dreary walks, when the
boys marched two by two, all dressed in the mortar-
board caps that so impressed the widowed mothers;
there were dismal half-holidays when the weather was
wet and the spirit of evil temper and evil imagination
had the pent boys to work its will on; there were un-
fair, dishonourable fights and miserable defeats and
victories, there was bullying and being bullied. A
coward boy Kipps particularly afflicted, until at last
he was goaded to revolt by incessant persecution, and
smote Kipps to tolerance with whirling fists. There
were memories of sleeping three in a bed, of the dense
leathery smell of the schoolroom when one returned
thither after ten minutes' play, of a playground of
mud and incidental sharp flints. And there was much
furtive foul language.
"Our Sundays are our happiest days," was one of
Woodrow's formulae with the inquiring parent, but
Kipps was not called in evidence. They were to him
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14 THE MAKING OF KIPPS bk. i
terrible gaps of inanity — ^no work, no play, a drear
expanse of time with the mystery of church twice and
plum duff once in the middle. The afternoon was
given up to furtive relaxations, among which "Tor-
ture Chamber" games with the less agreeable, weaker
boys figured. It was from the difference between this
day and common days that Kipps derived his first
definite conceptions of the nature of God and heaven.
His instinct was to evade any closer acquaintance as
long as he could.
The school work varied, according to the prevail-
ing mood of Mr. Woodrow. Sometimes that was a
despondent lethargy; copy-books were distributed or
sums were "set," or the great mystery of bookkeeping
was declared in being, and beneath these superficial
activities lengthy conversations and interminable
guessing games with marbles went on while Mr.
Woodrow sat inanimate at his desk heedless of school
affairs, staring in front of him at unseen things. At
times his face was utterly inane, at times it had an ex-
pression of stagnant amazement, as if he saw before
his eyes with pitiless clearness the dishonour and mis-
chief of his being. . . .
At other times the F.S.Sc. roused himself to action,
and would stand up a wavering class and teach it,
goading it with bitter mockery and blows through a
chapter of Ann's "First French Course," or "France
and the French," or a Dialogue about a traveller's
washing, or the parts of an opera-house. His own
knowledge of French had been obtained years ago in
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CH. 1 THE LITTLE SHOP 15
another English private school, and he had refreshed
it by occasional weeks of loafing and mean adventure
in Dieppe. He would sometimes in their lessons hit
upon scMne reminiscence of these brighter days, and
then he would laugh inexplicably and repeat French
phrases of an unfamiliar type.
Among the ccmimoner exercises he prescribed the
learning of long passages of poetry from a "Poetry
Book," which he would delegate an elder boy to
"hear," and there was reading aloud from the Holy
Bible, verse by verse — it was none of your "godless"
schools ! — so that you counted the verses up to your
turn and then gave yourself to conversation — and
sometimes one read from a cheap History of this
land. They did, as Kipps reported, "loads of cate-
chism." Also there was much learning of geographi-
cal names and lists, and sometimes Woodrow in an
outbreak of energy would see these names were actu-