Certain Personal Matters

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Герберт Уэллс. Certain Personal Matters

THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE

THE TROUBLE OF LIFE

ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE

THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO

OF CONVERSATION

IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD

ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME

THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

THE LITERARY REGIMEN

HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT

OF BLADES AND BLADERY

OF CLEVERNESS

THE POSE NOVEL

THE VETERAN CRICKETER

CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY

THE SHOPMAN

THE BOOK OF CURSES

DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY

EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT

FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING

INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD

OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN

THE EXTINCTION OF MAN

THE WRITING OF ESSAYS

THE PARKES MUSEUM

BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST

THE THEORY OF QUOTATION

ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE

CONCERNING CHESS

THE COAL-SCUTTLE

BAGARROW

THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY

THROUGH A MICROSCOPE

THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER

FROM AN OBSERVATORY

THE MODE IN MONUMENTS

HOW I DIED

Отрывок из книги

I do not know whether this will awaken a sympathetic lassitude in, say, fifty per cent. of its readers, or whether my experience is unique and my testimony simply curious. At anyrate, it is as true as I can make it. Whether this is a mere mood, and a certain flagrant exhilaration my true attitude towards things, or this is my true attitude and the exuberant phase a lapse from it, I cannot say. Probably it does not matter. The thing is that I find life an extremely troublesome affair. I do not want to make any railing accusations against life; it is – to my taste – neither very sad nor very horrible. At times it is distinctly amusing. Indeed, I know nothing in the same line that can quite compare with it. But there is a difference between general appreciation and uncritical acceptance. At times I find life a Bother.

The kind of thing that I object to is, as a good example, all the troublesome things one has to do every morning in getting up. There is washing. This is an age of unsolicited personal confidences, and I will frankly confess that if it were not for Euphemia I do not think I should wash at all. There is a vast amount of humbug about washing. Vulgar people not only profess a passion for the practice, but a physical horror of being unwashed. It is a sort of cant. I can understand a sponge bath being a novelty the first time and exhilarating the second and third. But day after day, week after week, month after month, and nothing to show at the end of it all! Then there is shaving. I have to get shaved because Euphemia hates me with a blue jowl, and I will admit I hate myself. Yet, if I were left alone, I do not think my personal taste would affect my decision; I will say that for myself. Either I hack about with a blunt razor – my razors are always blunt – until I am a kind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like the top of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning being dabbed about the face by a barber with damp hands. In either case it is a repulsive thing to have, eating into one's time when one might be living; and I have calculated that all the hair I have lost in this way, put end to end, would reach to Berlin. All that vital energy thrown away! However, "Thorns and bristles shall it bring forth to thee." I suppose it is part of the primal curse, and I try and stand it like a man. But the thing is a bother all the same.

.....

He took some more whisky.

"A kind of grey horror came upon me. I don't know if I can describe it. We went through vast vistas of chairs, of hall-tables, of machine-made pictures, of curtains, huge wildernesses of carpets, and ever this cold, unsympathetic shopman led us on, and ever and again made us buy this or that. He had a perfectly grey eye – the colour of an overcast sky in January – and he seemed neither to hate us nor to detest us, but simply to despise us, to feel such an overwhelming contempt for our petty means and our petty lives, as an archangel might feel for an apple-maggot. It made me think…"

.....