The History of Mr. Polly by H. G. Wells (online e reader TXT) 📕
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This work by H. G. Wells was first published in 1910. In contrast to Wells’ early speculative fiction works like The Time Machine, this is a comic novel set in the everyday world of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in England. Despite the less than happy life-story of Mr. Polly, it is an amusing book, enlivened by Polly’s inventive attitude towards the English language.
Alfred Polly’s mother dies when he is only seven, and he is brought up by his father and a stern aunt. He is indifferently educated, and leaves school in his early teens to be employed as a draper’s assistant. As the years pass, he finds himself more and more disenchanted with his occupation, but it is too late to change it. Eventually his father dies and leaves him a legacy which may be enough to set up in business for himself. He sets up his own shop in a small town and stumbles into an unhappy marriage. The business is not profitable, and in his middle-age, unhappy and dyspeptic, Mr. Polly comes up with an idea to bring an end to his troubles. Things, however, do not go as he planned, and lead to an unexpected result.
Wells’ later work often displays his passion for social reform. Here, that passion is less obvious, but nevertheless he demonstrates his sympathy for middle-class people raised like Mr. Polly with but a poor education and trapped into either dead-end jobs or in failing retail businesses.
The History of Mr. Polly was well-received by critics at the time of publication and was subsequently made into both a film and two different BBC television serials.
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- Author: H. G. Wells
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A momentary faintness came upon him. He walked past and down the street, returned and surveyed the shop again.
He saw a middle-aged, rather untidy woman standing behind the counter, who for an instant he thought might be Miriam terribly changed, and then recognised as his sister-in-law Annie, filled out and no longer hilarious. She stared at him without a sign of recognition as he entered the shop.
“Can I have tea?” said Mr. Polly.
“Well,” said Annie, “you can. But our Tea Room’s upstairs. … My sister’s been cleaning it out—and it’s a bit upset.”
“It would be,” said Mr. Polly softly.
“I beg your pardon?” said Annie.
“I said I didn’t mind. Up here?”
“I daresay there’ll be a table,” said Annie, and followed him up to a room whose conscientious disorder was intensely reminiscent of Miriam.
“Nothing like turning everything upside down when you’re cleaning,” said Mr. Polly cheerfully.
“It’s my sister’s way,” said Annie impartially. “She’s gone out for a bit of air, but I daresay she’ll be back soon to finish. It’s a nice light room when it’s tidy. Can I put you a table over there?”
“Let me,” said Mr. Polly, and assisted. He sat down by the open window and drummed on the table and meditated on his next step while Annie vanished to get his tea. After all, things didn’t seem so bad with Miriam. He tried over several gambits in imagination.
“Unusual name,” he said as Annie laid a cloth before him. Annie looked interrogation.
“Polly. Polly & Larkins. Real, I suppose?”
“Polly’s my sister’s name. She married a Mr. Polly.”
“Widow I presume?” said Mr. Polly.
“Yes. This five years—come October.”
“Lord!” said Mr. Polly in unfeigned surprise.
“Found drowned he was. There was a lot of talk in the place.”
“Never heard of it,” said Mr. Polly. “I’m a stranger—rather.”
“In the Medway near Maidstone. He must have been in the water for days. Wouldn’t have known him, my sister wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for the name sewn in his clothes. All whitey and eat away he was.”
“Bless my heart! Must have been rather a shock for her!”
“It was a shock,” said Annie, and added darkly: “But sometimes a shock’s better than a long agony.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Polly.
He gazed with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. “So I’m drowned,” something was saying inside him. “Life insured?” he asked.
“We started the tea rooms with it,” said Annie.
Why, if things were like this, had remorse and anxiety for Miriam been implanted in his soul? No shadow of an answer appeared.
“Marriage is a lottery,” said Mr. Polly.
“She found it so,” said Annie. “Would you like some jam?”
“I’d like an egg,” said Mr. Polly. “I’ll have two. I’ve got a sort of feeling—. As though I wanted keeping up. … Wasn’t particularly good sort, this Mr. Polly?”
“He was a wearing husband,” said Annie. “I’ve often pitied my sister. He was one of that sort—”
“Dissolute?” suggested Mr. Polly faintly.
“No,” said Annie judiciously; “not exactly dissolute. Feeble’s more the word. Weak, ’E was. Weak as water. ’Ow long do you like your eggs boiled?”
“Four minutes exactly,” said Mr. Polly.
“One gets talking,” said Annie.
“One does,” said Mr.-Polly, and she left him to his thoughts.
What perplexed him was his recent remorse and tenderness for Miriam. Now he was back in her atmosphere all that had vanished, and the old feeling of helpless antagonism returned. He surveyed the piled furniture, the economically managed carpet, the unpleasing pictures on the wall. Why had he felt remorse? Why had he entertained this illusion of a helpless woman crying aloud in the pitiless darkness for him? He peered into the unfathomable mysteries of the heart, and ducked back to a smaller issue. Was he feeble?
The eggs came up. Nothing in Annie’s manner invited a resumption of the discussion.
“Business brisk?” he ventured to ask.
Annie reflected. “It is,” she said, “and it isn’t. It’s like that.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Polly, and squared himself to his egg. “Was there an inquest on that chap?”
“What chap?”
“What was his name?—Polly!”
“Of course.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“What you mean?”
Annie looked at him hard, and suddenly his soul was black with terror.
“Who else could it have been—in the very cloes ’e wore?”
“Of course,” said Mr. Polly, and began his egg. He was so agitated that he only realised its condition when he was half way through it and Annie safely downstairs.
“Lord!” he said, reaching out hastily for the pepper. “One of Miriam’s! Management! I haven’t tasted such an egg for five years. … Wonder where she gets them! Picks them out, I suppose!”
He abandoned it for its fellow.
Except for a slight mustiness the second egg was very palatable indeed. He was getting on to the bottom of it as Miriam came in. He looked up. “Nice afternoon,” he said at her stare, and perceived she knew him at once by the gesture and the voice. She went white and shut the door behind her. She looked as though she was going to faint. Mr. Polly sprang up quickly and handed her a chair. “My God!” she whispered, and crumpled up rather than sat down.
“It’s you” she said.
“No,” said Mr. Polly very earnestly. “It isn’t. It just looks like me. That’s all.”
“I knew that man wasn’t you—all along. I tried to think it was. I tried to think perhaps the water had altered your wrists and feet and the colour of your hair.”
“Ah!”
“I’d always feared you’d come back.”
Mr. Polly sat down by his egg. “I haven’t come back,” he said very earnestly. “Don’t you think it.”
“ ’Ow we’ll pay back the insurance now I don’t know.” She was weeping. She produced a handkerchief and covered her face.
“Look here, Miriam,” said Mr. Polly. “I haven’t come back and I’m not coming back. I’m—I’m a Visitant from Another World. You shut up about me and I’ll shut up about myself. I came back because I thought you might be
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