Gordon N. Ray (1915–1986)

Wells doesn't say a whole lot about the disintegration of his relationship with Rebecca West in H. G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography. West was one of three women who bore him a child (that he knew of). Wells couches the end of their relationship in terms of his concept of "the Lover-Shadow," the ideal lover of whom all actual lovers are only a reflection, and thus one perpetually seeks. After one of their separations, he reports, "I was secretly in intense misery and haunted to an extraordinary extent by the thought of Rebecca. At that time I was feeling too acutely to observe myself. But I see now that Rebecca had become for me the symbol of the Lover-Shadow and that I was unable to conceive of it in any other form than hers-- or exist without it. I began to see her on balconies, away across restaurants. Any dark-haired woman would become Rebecca for me. I felt I must at any cost get her back to me and get back to her. I sent her a telegram [...] suggesting we should [...] make another try at a life together. But Rebecca was now inflexibly in revolt."

Published ten years before Wells's take on the relationship in the Postscript was finally released, Gordon Ray's H. G. Wells & Rebecca West reconstructs the relationship between the two from the existing letters, supplemented by interviews with Dame Rebecca herself. Most of the letters that survive are those from Wells to West, leading to a necessarily incomplete account. Wells's perspective comes from the moment, as expressed in the letters, while West's comes in retrospect, meaning it is more considered. But it is what it is.

My impression is of two very intelligent people, drawn to each other yet unable to coexist for any length of time. I wish we had West's letters, because Wells often comes across as unpleasant and condescending, yet we don't have her words to judge his responses by. As the relationship goes on, things get worse and worse between them, and I feel like Wells wanted something West could never give him. Wells wanted another version of his second wife, Jane, a helpmeet who would help him execute his great work, except this one would also have sex with him. But the very things that drew him to West meant she could never supply him with that; she would never subjugate herself to his desires, even though biology and finances meant that she was the one who had to take care of their child together.

Wells actually uses that child as a weapon against her late in their relationship, alternately threatening to take him away from her and to stop seeing him altogether, depending on his whims. It's hard to blame her for being "inflexibily in revolt" given how much of an asshole he could be, and his reaction to feeling "intense misery" seems to be to make her feel that way, too. Wells was not always an emotionally mature man, to say the least.

It's not all misery. There are cute doodles by Wells (I wonder if he called them "picshuas" as he did the doodles he drew for Jane), and they clearly were two intelligent people enjoying each others' intellectual, emotional, and sexual company when their relationship began. But I feel like the seeds of their relationship's disintegration were planted early, even if took them a while to realize it.… (altro)

Hi christiguc:
I just want you to know that I appreciate you sharing this review, (it’s just SO cool that I can pull up the article you cited and read it in its entirety on the internet – my god: the internet, the internet), and that also I very much respect your library (you know – I just can’t get myself to love anything nearly as much as the classics). But I’m afraid I respectfully experience a view that may turn out by the time I’m finished writing this to be diametrically opposed to your own (although I can’t really tell until I get it out of my head and on to the page).

Anyway, I got this one at a book fair recently, and although I’m not much for easy-reading, a person simply must force herself to relax once in a while, and I so love HG Wells that I was indeed morbidly curious (sorry). Yes, I certainly agree that an author’s personal life has nothing to do with the merits of his or her writing. And yes: who can argue that any party hasn’t the very fundamental right to protect his/ her love letters from release to the public without consent (wow – wouldn’t that just be horrifying?) At the same time, I found this book to be valuable reading, and I’m trying as I write this to put my finger on exactly why. I know at least part of it is this (bear with me – I’m afraid this is going to be a rather circuitous set of thoughts – but I know from their rumblings that it’s some very important set of soap-box things to say! Ha ha):
My father was a very intellectual and opinionated person (legend has it that he received his BA in Econ at age 18 – which means he skipped four years of school) and one of the few constructive and not-terribly-condescending points he made to us in his lifetime was the unequivocal fact that Wells’ Brief Outline of History was the greatest set of books ever written. So it was interesting and I suppose rather healing for me (my father was also a jerk and a brute) to uncover the human elements of Wells’ persona. This was a man that I was – hmm, I think can accurately say I was “indoctrinated” from a young age to deify the guy (although I do agree in the absence of my father, The Thought Police Chief, that he is pretty hot-****, after all. He really does pull facts together and make intellectual connections in a way that made me literally drop the book (Outline of History) on many occasions, and sit agog for a while at what I’d just read. And then I learned about the rest of his ouvre and just thought: “No way – this is like Shakespeare – he couldn’t have possibly written all this stuff.” And so varied – it really is amazing).
But I guess I do believe there is something of intrinsic worth in knowing that such an authoritative writer didn’t have the handle on his personal life that we’d all might assume (although I’m by no means condoning his treatment of Rebecca West, nor am I condoning her acceptance of such). And perhaps the reason I think this is important to say (write) is this: I think we’re all vulnerable to the notion that one is not really a worthwhile person if one hasn’t snared a great artist and kept him or her intrigued for life (you know – like I’m a good, hearty overachiever, I’m a wonderfully bright, honest, fair person, but if I’m not REALLY living up to my potential unless I can and continue to look like Penelope Cruz). I don’t know – reading this book felt very similar to the experience of reading the bio on Wikipedia of Brian Keith, which I happened across the other night. I realized as I was reflecting on Keith and his career - that for fifty years in the back of my mind I’ve been quietly wondering what it was I was lacking for not being able to marry a man like Uncle Bill or the dad from Parent Trap. I found relief I didn’t know I NEEDED upon discovering that Uncle Bill doesn’t exist (ha ha)! And I was relieved when I saw the details of the – I don’t know – it’s a Universal Hook, I think – I was completely convinced at the end of the story that the image of “keeping” a powerful, famous lover is something very human, and that it’s very human to overlook the devastating costs of that sort of thinking. I just remember watching people get all excited about vicious critics and thinking: “This is very much like watching people smoke”. (emoticon that’s really proud of one’s self for one’s profundity).

And regarding the NYT article –I just GOTTA say this: There’s a reason I stopped reading the newspaper decades ago, and that reason is that the media is actually designed for people like Lillian Hellman, and I’m not kidding, and I can’t even believe it. Although she’s absolutely correct – it’s not even a matter of opinion – she’s absolutely correct, and so very entertaining when she says stuff like:
“…and [Wells] was a complete ass about women. But, of course, for women that is the most attractive of the ass categories”,
I’m sorry, but she’s just one more damnable thought-bully. I sometimes ironically find that what I’m really confounded about is the fact that I’m STILL confounded -no matter HOW old and jaded I become - about why we allow people like this to dump into the newspaper what any other polite person among us isn’t allowed to say. Get this:
“Most love letters are just plain silly except to those who write them and those who receive them”,
"Rebecca West, we are all disappointed in you ... We thought of you as an independent woman but here you are looking down in the mouth because you relied on a man to give you all you wanted and now that you have to turn out and fend for yourself you are bellyaching about it. I believe Wells treated you too darn well, he gave you money and jewels and everything you wanted and if you live with a man on those terms you must expect to get turned out when he gets tired of you".
I ask you: How on EARTH have we evolved as a group of people that would allow one person to say stuff like that - in PRINT, no less - about another person?
“Circulation” is an important word – we’re not just paying columnists like this – they are actually revered for circulating mean-spiritedness throughout the – pretty much the entirety of our society. I remember as a young person thinking: “Wow, every erudite adult I’m exposed to seems to be – I don’t know – like BRAINWASHED into appreciating the wit of vicious columnists, and just turning the strangest blind-eye to what they’re DOING TO US all in the process, so they can continue to appear to be erudite to everyone around them (it felt very much like watching them smoke cigarettes).
Whether Hellman’s correct or NOT – I have and always will think she SHOULD BE REQUIRED to take the words and subsequent attitudes and culture that she’s circulating through so many of your family members’ and co-workers’ and neighbors’, and run it thru her CONSTRUCTIVE-Filter, for ******’s sake. WHERE are the NUNS in her life???? I can think of ten ways she could have expressed any sentence in that article without using a single, sensationalistic, self-aggrandizing, snotty approach to a poor woman who’s all caught up in really-amazing-turned-really-bad-love, and find 10 newspapers that approach their audience with just that attitude, and do so with financial success. I think Rebecca West needed input on raising her self-esteem – not public humiliation.
Because it doesn’t stop with inter-celebrity gossip – and everyone knows it. About every three years I have a conversation with some avid news-fan, and I like him or her so I end up feeling stupid about turning my head to the news. So I go online or go out and get a newspaper, and the last time it happened I read the St. Louis Post Dispatch very thoroughly – so I could see what I was missing and how I was wrong about missing it. Toward the end – at what would have been the back of a hard-copy newspaper, were stories about shootings in the inner city. And it happened to be the online version, so readers could post “feedback”. There were lots of comments like: “Well, if those jigaboos are stupid enough to sit on their porches, I guess they deserve to get shot”. Personally, I think it’s the muckrakers who should to be publically humiliated. They fuel some pretty horrible fires – on purpose, and largely undetected because of their keen understanding of human denial.
Eek and phew! I guess that’s finally the upshot of all the soapbox feelings this subject has stirred up – I just wish we were all nicer to each other.… (altro)