The novels that H.G. Wells published after the end of the Belle Époque seem to get something of a bad rap. The early scientific romances and the comic and social novels of the Edwardian years have largely stayed in print since their original appearance, but Wells’ later novels tend to be overshadowed, dismissed for verging on the polemical and not keeping up with literary trends. It is true that Wells seemed to concentrate on non-fiction, especially his three great attempts to systematise and make accessible whole fields of human knowledge: The Outline of History (1920), The Science of Life (1930), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). And there were the numerous other books in which he addressed current affairs and fired-off solutions to the world’s problems, charting the way forward to a socialist future of peace and prosperity for all – if only his sane and reasonable suggestions were adopted. Wells wrote his books and a tremendous amount of journalism while maintaining a headlong schedule – travelling widely, speaking at meetings and conferences, visiting and talking at length with influential people including world leaders.
Yet in most years Wells still published at least one novel – often a very substantial one. Although they sometimes did serve (at least in part) as fictional vehicles for Wells’ ongoing concerns and ideas, that was nothing new. Many of the novels of the inter-war period are full of interesting and characteristically Wellsian things: vivid incident and character, with sharp observation and not a little humour along the way.
In addition to everything else, the turbulence of Wells’ private life – actually not always particularly private – was legendary. This was particularly so during 1923, when his relationship of ten years with Rebecca West conclusively ended. It was during this fraught period for Wells that he wrote what Adam Roberts, in H.G. Wells: A Literary Life (2019), refers to as ‘one of his oddest, most striking and most unjustly overlooked novels’ (321). This is Christina Alberta’s Father, first published one hundred years ago in September 1925.
Christina Alberta’s father is Albert Preemby. Wells opens by proclaiming ‘This is the story of a certain Mr Preemby… Some remarkable experiences came to him. […] it is a story of London in the age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first Labour peers.’ Preemby starts out as another of Wells’ ‘little men’: of humble origin, put-upon and dominated by other people and their circumstances. While still a very young man Preemby meets Christine Hossett and quickly finds himself married: ‘He was carried over his marriage as a man might be carried over a weir’ (16). Christina Alberta, their only child, is born soon after the wedding, and her father settles down to family life and the laundry owned by his wife’s family. Denied any real involvement in the business, Preemby spends his time reading, particularly ‘ancient history, astronomy, astrology, and mystical works. He became deeply interested in the problem of the pyramids and in the probable history of the lost continent of Atlantis’ (17).
Twenty years go by, and Preemby finds himself a widower and single parent. Father and daughter emerge from the shadow of Christine Preemby. Christina Alberta soon realises that ‘Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, but now he was germinating and nobody could tell what sort of thing he might become’ (31). Selling the business, they embark on a life in boarding houses and meet people who live on the borders of bohemianism. A dispute over spiritualism between two fellow boarders leads to Preemby taking part in a séance – and it is then revealed to him that he is Sargon the King of Kings, ‘Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria […] come back as Lord of the World’ (87).
Sargon disappears. Christina Alberta and her friend, the author Paul Lambone, walk the streets looking for him. They miss him at Buckingham Palace, where they find that he might have been planning to offer an audience to George V. To Sargon Trafalgar Square was ‘Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you see, by the lapse of time and the development of his ancient empire, he was the rightful owner and ruler of this city and of every other city in the world. And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s disorders and reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria once again’ (106). After looking out over London from the dome of St Paul’s, Sargon decides to reveal himself. He attracts his first ‘disciples’ and swiftly loses them – except for the young journalist Bobby Roothing, who turns out to be Sargon’s saviour in the troubled days and weeks that follow.
At this time an ambiguity in the novel’s title is also revealed – or rather confirmed, as hints were sown in the first two chapters. Christina Alberta accepts the reality of the situation. Dr Devizes is her biological father, and they agree to regard themselves as cousins; Sargon remains her ‘little Daddy’.
As Sargon undergoes what will be his final illness he explains: ‘I am Sargon, but in a rather different sense from what I had imagined. […] I am not exclusively Sargon. You – you perhaps are still unawakened – but you are Sargon too. We are all descended from Sargon […] We all inherit. […] Of course, everybody is really Sargon King of Kings, and everybody ought to take hold of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have got to do. (227-9). Wells has moved away from his Edwardian dreams of a modern utopian world ruled by an order of ‘Samurai’ to something very different – and much more approachable, although just as problematic. This was not to last. For example, in Wells’ film Things to Come (1936) the remnants of civilisation are saved by a small elite: the ‘freemasonry of science’ operating as ‘Wings Over the World’.
In Christina Alberta’s Father, as Adam Roberts notes: ‘Wells is asserting the fundamental and essentially spiritual dignity of even the most overlooked and neglected of human beings. The point of this novel, in other words, is that Preemby is a king not despite being (in Jung’s cruel but accurate phrase) a ‘midget personality’, but because of it: that we are all great-souled and royal no matter how unprepossessing our exteriors’ (321-24).
Perhaps there is some hope after all.
(John Howard)
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