H. G. Wells Read online

  The Atlantic Edition, printed in the United States and published simultaneously in London and New York, was intended to provide definitive texts of Wells's works. In the case of The First Men in the Moon there are numerous stylistic improvements; many of these, however, are inherited from Bowen-Merrill and seem to be the products of scrupulous American copy-editing rather than of Wells's own hand. At the same time, Wells's last-minute revisions to the Newnes text do not appear in the Atlantic version.

  The present edition uses the Atlantic edition as copy-text (subject to the modifications set out below); but frequently I have preferred readings from the Newnes line of texts. A whole page of the Strand serial version, including the beginning of Chapter 7(‘Sunrise on the Moon’) was dropped from Bowen-Merrill and subsequently from the Atlantic text, apparently due to an oversight, and I have restored this material and renumbered the subsequent chapters. There are also significant divergences between the Newnes and Atlantic texts in the descriptive passages of Chapter 24 (‘The Natural History of the Selenites’). Here I have generally followed the Atlantic edition or its successor the Essex edition (London: Ernest Benn, 1927). The figure for the moon's mass in proportion to the earth's in Chapter 9 (one-eightieth, not one-eighth as in all previous editions) is taken from a handwritten correction in Wells's own copy of the Atlantic text.

  The Atlantic texts were supposedly printed in accordance with British spelling conventions, but in practice many examples of American usage inherited from the US copy-texts were left unaltered. In the present edition, using the Newnes line of text as a guide, I have sought to remove all features that do not reflect Wells's own habitual style: thus ‘dumfounded’ has been changed to ‘dumbfounded’, ‘farther’ to ‘further’, ‘leaped’ to ‘leapt’, ‘veranda’ to ‘verandah’, ‘whiskey’ to ‘whisky’, etc., in accordance with Newnes. The hyphenation of some 40 words has been anglicized and modernized (e.g. ‘countryside’ for ‘country-side’, ‘cast iron’ for ‘cast-iron’), and the words ‘any one’ and ‘some one’have been joined together to reflect modern practice. Changes in punctuation to achieve greater clarity include the restoration of some 65 commas found in the Newnes line of texts, and the capitalization of ‘New’ in ‘New Romney’ (p. 159). The other substantive changes are listed below.

  Housestyling of punctuation and spelling has also been implemented to make the text more accessible to the reader: single quotation marks (for doubles) with doubles inside singles as needed; end punctuation placed outside end quotation marks when appropriate; spaced N-dashes (for the heavier, longer M-dash) and M-dashes (for the double-length 2M-dash); ‘ize’ spellings (e.g. recognize, not recognise), and acknowledgements and judgement, not acknowledgments and judgment; no full stop after personal titles (Dr, Mr, Mrs) or chapter titles, which may not follow the capitalization of the copy-text.

  SOURCES OF SUBSTANTIVE EMENDATIONS

  (i) The following readings from the Newnes line of texts have been adopted:

  Page: line

  Newnes reading adopted

  Atlantic reading rejected

  28:1

  water-distilling

  water, distilling

  30:21

  unloosened

  loosened

  40:30–31

  unilluminated

  illuminated

  41:10

  five pounds

  £5

  43:31

  appetites

  appetite

  48:15–49:26

  provisions

  provision

  43:32

  the smeared puzzle… distance of the crater

  the crater

  [Since the above emendation includes the beginning of Newnes Chapter 7, ‘Sunrise on the Moon’, subsequent chapters have been renumbered.]

  Page: line

  Newnes reading adopted

  Atlantic reading rejected

  51:34

  toppling crag of the

  huge landslip, as were of

  66:10–11

  ejaculations, our… about us.

  ejaculations.

  2:

  bird-like

  bud-like

  84:13

  the

  this

  84:14–15

  There the… us! [At

  At

  89:28

  instincts

  instinct

  109:21

  lob

  fling

  113:37

  craters

  crater

  117:34

  This

  That

  120:19

  pricked

  picked

  124:24

  four

  for

  127:11

  landscape,

  and landscape

  130:22

  After all

  Afte rail

  132:7

  clubs

  club

  133:9

  purposes, what purposes.

  purpose

  136:11

  furious

  curious

  137:22

  stretched

  reached

  140:37

  in

  on

  149: 14

  The sphere became very hot. I

  I

  12:8

  sands

  sand

  153:29

  the one hand,

  one hand

  157:6

  D‘ye

  D‘y

  162:10

  months

  weeks

  171:1

  since seen

  seen since

  173:12

  was

  is

  174:32 178:6

  herds

  hinds

  176:7

  mooring-rope

  mooring-place

  176:18

  mock

  burlesque

  182:15

  is

  was

  183:31

  herd

  hind

  184:30

  have a sort of limp appeal

  appeal

  187:12

  satellite of ours

  planet

  200:19

  a

  the

  (ii) ‘Eighth’ (p. 61) has been emended to ‘eightieth’ following a handwritten correction in Wells's copy of the Atlantic text.

  (iii) The Atlantic text of the third paragraph of Chapter 24 was further emended by Wells in the Essex edition, which in other respects is an inferior copy of the Atlantic.

  Page: line

  Essex reading adopted

  Atlantic reading rejected

  174:10

  in place

  instead

  174: 11

  ant there

  ant that are found there

  174:15

  difference

  differences

  SELECTED VARIANT READINGS

  Page: line Atlantic reading Newnes reading

  54:17 two-thirds two blinds

  132:27 Against Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of opportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against

  171:14 palace presence

  174:5–6 female, produced by almost all other animals, a great variety female form, that almost all other animals possess, a number

  174:8–10 And these… ants. For these Selenites, also, have a great variety of forms. Of course, they are not only colossally greater in size than ants, but also, in Cavor's opinion at least, in intelligence, morality, and social wisdom are they colossally greater than men.

  174:14–15 size, hue, and shape size and proportions

  174:22–9 host of variations… than man… number of other sorts of Selenite, differing in size, differing in the relative size of part to part, differing in power and appearance, and yet not different species of creatures, but only different forms
of one species, and retaining through all their variations a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. The moon is, indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there being only four or five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different sorts of Selenite, and almost every gradation between one sort and another.

  176:14 size! size, they rang all the horrible changes on the theme of Selenite form!

  For the detail of the moon's mass and for his unfailing guidance through the intricacies of Wells's textual revisions, I am greatly indebted to David Lake, editor of the ‘World's Classics’ edition of The First Men in the Moon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). The account of the novel's genesis given above draws on J. R. Hammond, An H. G. Wells Chronology (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 34–5, and David C. Smith, ed., The Correspondence of H. G. Wells, 4 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1998), i, pp. 342–3, 361. The surviving manuscripts and proofs of The First Men in the Moon, together with Wells's own copy of the Atlantic edition, are in the Wells Collection at the Rare Book and Special Collections Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  P. P.

  ‘Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon…. Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. The long and the short of the matter is that I am running over the order of a Journey I have lately made.’

  —Lucian's ‘Icaromenippus.’1

  Contents

  1 Mr Bedford Meets Mr Cavor at Lympne

  2 The First Making of Cavorite

  3 The Building of the Sphere

  4 Inside the Sphere

  5 The Journey to the Moon

  6 The Landing on the Moon

  7 Sunrise on the Moon

  8 A Lunar Morning

  9 Prospecting Begins

  10 Lost Men in the Moon

  11 The Mooncalf Pastures

  12 The Selenite's Face

  13 Mr Cavor Makes Some Suggestions

  14 Experiments in Intercourse

  15 The Giddy Bridge

  16 Points of View

  17 The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers

  18 In the Sunlight

  19 Mr Bedford Alone

  20 Mr Bedford in Infinite Space

  21 Mr Bedford at Littlestone

  22 The Astonishing Communication of Mr Julius Wendigee

  23 An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr Cavor

  24 The Natural History of the Selenites

  25 The Grand Lunar

  26 The Last Message Cavor Sent to the Earth

  1

  MR BEDFORD MEETS MR CAVOR AT LYMPNE

  As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been anyone. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne1 because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. ‘Here at any rate,’ said I, ‘I shall find peace and a chance to work!’

  And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.

  I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper2 in certain business enterprises. At the present moment, surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I can even admit that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity; the conduct of business operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth, among other objectionable forms, took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

  It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount to give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving, reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me at last that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to my belief in my powers as a businessman I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I believe, an uncommon persuasion. I knew there was nothing a man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had indeed got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come and I set to work.

  I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed – at first I had reckoned ten days for it – and it was to have a pied-à-terre3 while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years' agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs Beeton4. And yet, you know, it had a flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a saucepan for eggs and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon. Such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. One can't always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. It was not perhaps in the style of Sybaris5, but I have had worse times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man; but even for him I hoped.

  Certainly if anyone wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff and stared across the flats of Romney marsh at the sea. In very wet weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that make up the present village, big birch besoms are stuck to wipe off the worst of the clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if the place would be there at all if it were not a fading memory of things gone forever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street, still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope and a sheep or two – and I! And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round in a broad curve to distant Dungeness6 and dotted here and there with tree clumps and the church towers of old mediaeval towns that are following Lemanis now towards extinction.

  That outlook on the marsh was indeed one of the finest views I have ever seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on the sea, and further westward were the hills by Hastings7 under the setting sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and canals.

  The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was struggling with my scenario, holding down my
mind to the sheer hard work of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.

  The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and against that he came out black, the oddest little figure.

  He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It was a fortuitous concurrence of garments arising I know not how. He gesticulated with his hands and arms and jerked his head about and buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing. And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most extraordinary noise.

  There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of convulsive gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that showed the relatively large size of his feet – they were I remember grotesquely exaggerated in size by adhesive clay – to the best possible advantage.