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Certain Personal Matters - The Book of Essays Dedicatory · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty three of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: Recording by D. J. Wood Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty three, The Book of Essays Dedicatory. I have
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  Speaker 1: been bothered about this book this three months. I have
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  Speaker 1: written scarcely anything since Llewellyn asked me for it. For
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  Speaker 1: when he asked me, I had really nothing on hand.
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  Speaker 1: I had just published every line I had ever written,
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  Speaker 1: at my own expense with Prigsby's. Yet three months should
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  Speaker 1: suffice for one of Llewellyn's books, which consist chiefly of
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  Speaker 1: decorus fly leaves and a dedication or so and margins.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, you know Llewellyn's books the most delightful things
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  Speaker 1: in the market, the sweetest covers with little gilt apples
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  Speaker 1: and things carelessly distribute over luminous gray and bright red
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  Speaker 1: initials in all these delightful fopperies. But it was the
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  Speaker 1: very slightness of these biblots that disorganized me, and perhaps
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  Speaker 1: also the fact that no one has ever asked me
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  Speaker 1: for a book before. I had no trouble with the title,
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  Speaker 1: though Lichens, I have wondered, the thing was never used before.
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  Speaker 1: Lichens variegated, beautiful, though on the most arid foundations, half fungoid,
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  Speaker 1: half vernal, the very name for a booklet of modern verse,
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  Speaker 1: and that, of course, decided the key of the cover,
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  Speaker 1: and disposed of three or four pages. A flyleaf, a
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  Speaker 1: leaf with lichens printed fair and beautiful, a little to
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  Speaker 1: the left of the center, and then a title page
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  Speaker 1: Lichens by H. G. Wells, London, M D C C
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  Speaker 1: C x C V Stephan Llewellyn. Then a RESTful blank page,
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  Speaker 1: and then dedication. It was the dedication stopped me. The
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  Speaker 1: title page, it is true, had some points of difficulty,
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  Speaker 1: should the Christian name be printed in full or not,
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  Speaker 1: for instance, But it had none of the fatal fascination
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  Speaker 1: of the dedicatory page. I had, so to speak, to
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  Speaker 1: look abroad among the ranks of men and make one
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  Speaker 1: of those fretful, forgotten millions immortal. It seemed a congenial task.
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  Speaker 1: I went to work forthwith. It was only this morning
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  Speaker 1: that I realized the magnitude of my accumulations ever since then.
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  Speaker 1: It was three months ago I have been elaborating this dedication.
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  Speaker 1: I turned the pile over idly at first, Presently I
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  Speaker 1: became interested in tracing my varying moods as they had
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  Speaker 1: found a record in the heap. This struck me image
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  Speaker 1: of handwriting reading to my dearest friend K. H. Holsen's
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  Speaker 1: another name, which scribbled out a name below it E. M. Jonas,
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  Speaker 1: with a single strike through through it. Then again a
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  Speaker 1: little essay in gratitude came to hand to Professor Augustus Flood,
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  Speaker 1: whose admirable lectures on paleontology first turned my attention to literature.
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  Speaker 1: There was a tinge of pleasantry in the latter that
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  Speaker 1: pleased me very greatly when I wrote it, and I
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  Speaker 1: find immediately overlying it another essay in the same line
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  Speaker 1: to the latter day reviewer these pearls. For some days
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  Speaker 1: I was smitten with the idea of dedicating my little
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  Speaker 1: booklet to one of my numerous personal antagonists and conveying
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  Speaker 1: some subtly devised insult with an air of magnanimity. I thought,
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  Speaker 1: for instance, of Blizzard, Sir Joseph Blizzard, the most distinguished,
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  Speaker 1: if not the greatest, of contemporary an tanamous. I think
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  Speaker 1: it was x L's book aut Diablus out Nihill. That
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  Speaker 1: set me upon another line. There is, after all your
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  Speaker 1: reader to consider in these matters, your average middle class
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  Speaker 1: person to impress in some way. They say the creature
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  Speaker 1: is a snob and absolutely devoid of any tinge of humor.
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  Speaker 1: And I must confess that I more than half believe it.
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  Speaker 1: At any rate. It was that persuasion inspired to the
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  Speaker 1: Countess of X in memory of many happy days. I
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  Speaker 1: know no Countess of X as a matter of fact,
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  Speaker 1: But if the public is such an ass as to
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  Speaker 1: think better of my work for the suspicion, I do
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  Speaker 1: not care how soon I incur it. And this again
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  Speaker 1: is a pretty utilization of the waste desert of politics.
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  Speaker 1: My dear Salisbury pray except this unworthy tribute of my
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  Speaker 1: affectionate esteem. There were heaps of others, and looking at
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  Speaker 1: those heaps, it suddenly came sharp and vivid before my
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  Speaker 1: mind that there there was the book I needed, already written,
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  Speaker 1: a blank page, a dedication, a blank page, a dedication,
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  Speaker 1: and so on. I saw no reason to change the title.
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  Speaker 1: It only remained to select the things, and the book
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  Speaker 1: was done. I set to work at once, and in
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  Speaker 1: a very little. While my biblot was selected. There were
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  Speaker 1: dedications fulsome and fluid dedications, acrid and uncharitable dedications in verse,
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  Speaker 1: and dedications in the dead languages, all sorts and conditions
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  Speaker 1: of dedications, even the simple to J. H. Gables so
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  Speaker 1: suggestive of the modest white stones of the village churchyard. Altogether,
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  Speaker 1: I picked out one hundred and three dedications. At last,
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  Speaker 1: only one thing remained to complete the book, and that
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  Speaker 1: was the dedication. You will scarcely credit it. But that
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  Speaker 1: worries me still. I am almost inclined to think that
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  Speaker 1: dedications are going out of fashion. End of chapter thirty
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  Speaker 1: three