Although she was bright and vivacious, I could see that she was detached from life. Her actions were nervous and jerky and showed strain as she talked of her duties as a school-teacher. ‘Young children are so difficult to teach,’ she said, ‘but I’ll get used to it.’
Ralph’s eyes twinkled with pride as he talked to her and smoked his cigarette. Pagan that he was, I could see he rather enjoyed the idea of his daughter being a nun.
There was a wistful detachment about their meeting. Undoubtedly she had been through a spiritual trial. As beautiful and as youthful as she was, her face was sad and dedicated. She talked of the glowing accounts of our reception in London, and inquired about Germaine Taillfer, Ralph’s fifth wife. Ralph told her that they were separated. ‘Of course,’ she said humorously turning to me, ‘I can’t keep up with Daddy’s wives.’ Both Ralph and I laughed self-consciously.
Ralph asked if she were staying long in Hackney. She shook her head thoughtfully and said she might be sent to Central America. ‘But they never let us know when or where.’
‘Well, you can write to your father when you get there,’ I interposed.
She hesitated. ‘We’re not supposed to communicate with anyone.’
‘Not even with your parents?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, attempting to be matter-of-fact, then smiled at her father. There was a moment’s silence.
When it was time to leave she took her father’s hand and held it long and affectionately, as though some intuition were at work. As we drove away Ralph was subdued, though still nonchalant. Two weeks later, in his apartment in New York, he committed suicide by shooting himself while he lay in his bed with a sheet over his head.
*
I now saw H. G. Wells frequently. He had an apartment in Baker Street. When I visited him there, he had four lady secretaries inundated in books of reference, checking and making notes from encyclopedias, technical books, documents and papers. ‘That’s The Anatomy of Money, my new book,’ said he – ‘quite an industry.’
‘It strikes me they’re doing most of the work,’ I remarked jokingly. What appeared to be large biscuit-tins were ranged on a high shelf round his library, each labelled ‘Biographical Material’, ‘Personal Letters’, ‘Philosophy’, ‘Scientific Data’, and so forth.
After dinner friends arrived, among them Professor Laski, who was still very young-looking. Harold was a most brilliant orator. I heard him speak to the American Bar Association in California, and he talked unhesitantly and brilliantly for an hour without a note. At H.G.’s flat that night, Harold told me of the amazing innovations in the philosophy of socialism. He said that the slightest acceleration in speed translates into terrific social differences. The conversation was most interesting until H.G.’s bedtime, which, with little subtlety, he indicated by looking at the guests, then at his watch, until everybody left.
When Wells visited me in 1935 in California, I took him to task about his criticism of Russia. I had read of his disparaging reports, so I wanted a first-hand account and was surprised to find him almost bitter about it.
‘But is it not too early to judge?’ I argued. ‘They have had a difficult task, opposition and conspiracy from within and from without. Surely in time good results should follow?’
At that time Wells was enthusiastic about what Roosevelt had accomplished with the New Deal, and was of the opinion that a quasi-socialism in America would come out of a dying capitalism. He seemed especially critical of Stalin, whom he had interviewed, and said that under his rule Russia had become a tyrannical dictatorship.
‘If you, a socialist, believe that capitalism is doomed,’ I said, ‘what hope is there for the world if socialism fails in Russia?’
‘Socialism won’t fail in Russia, or anywhere else,’ he said, ‘but this particular development of it has grown into a dictatorship.’
‘Of course Russia has made mistakes,’ I said, ‘and like other nations she will continue to do so. The biggest one, I think, was the repudiation of her foreign loans, Russian bonds, etc., and calling them the Tsar’s debts after the Revolution. Although she might have been justified in not paying them, I think she made a great mistake, because it resulted in world antagonism, boycotts and military invasions. In the long run, it cost her twice as much as if she had paid them.’
Wells partially agreed and said that my comment was good in theory but not in fact; for the repudiation of the Tsar’s debts was one of the edicts that had inspired the spirit of the Revolution. The people would have been outraged at having to pay off the debts of the old régime.
‘But,’ I argued, ‘had Russia played the game and been less idealistic, she might have borrowed large sums of money from the capitalist countries and built up her economy more rapidly – what with the vicissitudes of capitalism since the war, inflation and the like, she might have liquidated her debts easily and retained the world’s good-will.’
Wells laughed. ‘It’s too late now.’
I saw a lot of H.G. under different auspices. In the South of France he had built a house for his Russian mistress, a very temperamental lady. And over the mantelpiece was inscribed in Gothic letters: ‘Two lovers built this house.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, after my commenting on it. ‘We’ve had it put on and taken off a number of times. Whenever we quarrel, I instruct the mason to take if off and when we make up she instructs the mason to put it back. It had been put on and taken off so many times that the mason finally ignored us and left it there.’
In 1931 Wells completed The Anatomy of Money, a two years’ work, and he looked rather tired.
‘Now what are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘Write another book.’ He smiled wearily.
‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed, ‘wouldn’t you like
