Meanwhile (novel)
 First edition | |
| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Ernest Benn |
Publication date | 1927 |
| Pages | 320 |
Meanwhile is a 1927 novel by H. G. Wells set in an Italian villa early in 1926.
Plot summary
Meanwhile is divided into two books: "The Utopographer in the Garden" and "Advent".
In the first book, Cynthia and Philip Rylands, a wealthy British couple, are entertaining guests at Casa Terragena, an Italian villa with a famous garden on the Italian Riviera. Among the party are a prominent author, "the great Mr. Sempack," an American aesthete, Mr. Plantagenet-Buchan, the beautiful, vivacious Lady Catherine, Col. and Mrs. Bullace, Lady Grieswold, and a number of others. At dinner, Sempack, a brilliant talker with ideas similar to Wells's, expounds the idea that a "Great Age" is certain to come, and that contemporaries are obliged in the present to live, as it were, "meanwhile": "Since nothing was in order, nothing was completely right. We lived provisionally. There was no just measure of economic worth; we had to live unjustly .... We were justified in taking life as we found it; in return if we had ease and freedom we ought to do all that we could to increase knowledge and bring the great days of a common world-order nearer, a universal justice, the real civilisation, the consummating life, the days that would justify the Martyrdom of Man."[1]
A crisis is precipitated when Cynthia Rylands, who is pregnant with her first child, surprised her husband engaged in a dalliance "in the little bathing chalet" with one of their guests, a Miss Clarges.[2] She is distraught and confides in Sempack, who offers her wise advice in a long letter: she should not forgive her husband, but rather "realize that there is nothing to forgive."[3] Mrs. Rylands accepts Sempack's notion that her husband's real problem is not infidelity but idleness, and the first book ends with him departing at her urging for a visit to England, where his family's vast coal holdings are at risk in the crisis that culminated in the 1926 general strike.
The novel's second "book" is dominated by Philip Rylands's letters describing the British political situation ("many of the leading participants in the strike appear in the novel without disguise"
Commercial success
Meanwhile was chosen as an alternate selection of the recently founded
Criticism
Meanwhile is regarded variously by later critics. Writing in the 1980s, David C. Smith considered the novel "badly neglected" and praised "excellent descriptions of the rich on the Riviera just before the deluge, as well as a poignant and sharp analysis of the fascist system under stress" and "a strong statement of the Open Conspiracy."[8] But Wells's most recent biographer, Michael Sherborne, judged it "not a successful novel" whose "dull characters ... share predictable views about the state of the world and engage in token romantic entanglements."[9] Some biographies do not mention it at all.[10]
References
- ^ H. G. Wells, Meanwhile, Book I, §5 ("The Idea of Meanwhile").
- ^ H. G. Wells, Meanwhile, Book I, §9 ("Apparition of Mrs. Rylands").
- ^ H. G. Wells, Meanwhile, Book I, §11 ("Two Letters").
- ^ David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 290.
- ^ H. G. Wells, Meanwhile, Book II, §13 ("Opinions of Mrs. McManus").
- ^ David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 291.
- ^ David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 291–92.
- ^ David C. Smith, H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 290–91.
- ^ Michael Sherborne, H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life (London and Chester Springs, PA: Peter Owen, 2010), p. 277.
- ^ For example, Vincent Brome, H. G. Wells: A Biography (London, New York, and Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1951).
External links
- Meanwhile: The Picture of a Lady at Faded Page (Canada)