Certain Personal Matters

Certain Personal Matters

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Title: Certain Personal Matters
Author: H. G. Wells
Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #17508]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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PERSONAL MATTERS ***

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CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS
BY
H.G. WELLS

LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C.
1901

CONTENTS
PAGE
THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE 7
THE TROUBLE OF LIFE 12
ON THE CHOICE OF A WIFE 18
THE HOUSE OF DI SORNO 22
OF CONVERSATION 27
IN A LITERARY HOUSEHOLD 32
ON SCHOOLING AND THE PHASES OF MR. SANDSOME 36
THE POET AND THE EMPORIUM 40
THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS 45
THE LITERARY REGIMEN 49
HOUSE-HUNTING AS AN OUTDOOR AMUSEMENT 54
OF BLADES AND BLADERY 59
OF CLEVERNESS 63
THE POSE NOVEL 67
THE VETERAN CRICKETER 71

CONCERNING A CERTAIN LADY 76
THE SHOPMAN 80
THE BOOK OF CURSES 85
DUNSTONE'S DEAR LADY 90
EUPHEMIA'S NEW ENTERTAINMENT (this is illustrated) 94
FOR FREEDOM OF SPELLING 98
INCIDENTAL THOUGHTS ON A BALD HEAD 104
OF A BOOK UNWRITTEN 108
THE EXTINCTION OF MAN 115
THE WRITING OF ESSAYS 120
THE PARKES MUSEUM 124
BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST 128
THE THEORY OF QUOTATION 132
ON THE ART OF STAYING AT THE SEASIDE 135
CONCERNING CHESS 140
THE COAL-SCUTTLE 145
BAGARROW 150
THE BOOK OF ESSAYS DEDICATORY 155
THROUGH A MICROSCOPE 159
THE PLEASURE OF QUARRELLING 164

THE AMATEUR NATURE-LOVER 169
FROM AN OBSERVATORY 174
THE MODE IN MONUMENTS 177
HOW I DIED 182

CERTAIN PERSONAL MATTERS

THOUGHTS ON CHEAPNESS AND MY AUNT CHARLOTTE
The world mends. In my younger days people believed in mahogany;
some of my readers will remember it--a heavy, shining substance,
having a singularly close resemblance to raw liver, exceedingly heavy
to move, and esteemed on one or other count the noblest of all woods.
Such of us as were very poor and had no mahogany pretended to have
mahogany; and the proper hepatite tint was got by veneering. That
makes one incline to think it was the colour that pleased people. In
those days there was a word "trashy," now almost lost to the world. My
dear Aunt Charlotte used that epithet when, in her feminine way, she
swore at people she did not like. "Trashy" and "paltry" and
"Brummagem" was the very worst she could say of them. And she had,
I remember, an intense aversion to plated goods and bronze halfpence.
The halfpence of her youth had been vast and corpulent red-brown
discs, which it was folly to speak of as small change. They were fine
handsome coins, and almost as inconvenient as crown-pieces. I
remember she corrected me once when I was very young. "Don't call a
penny a copper, dear," she said; "copper is a metal. The pennies they
have nowadays are bronze." It is odd how our childish impressions
cling to us. I still regard bronze as a kind of upstart intruder, a mere
trashy pretender among metals.
All my Aunt Charlotte's furniture was thoroughly good, and most of it
extremely uncomfortable; there was not a thing for a little boy to break

and escape damnation in the household. Her china was the only thing
with a touch of beauty in it--at least I remember nothing else--and each
of her blessed plates was worth the happiness of a mortal for days
together. And they dressed me in a Nessus suit of valuable garments. I
learned the value of thoroughly good things only too early. I knew the
equivalent of a teacup to the very last scowl, and I have hated good,
handsome property ever since. For my part I love cheap things, trashy
things, things made of the commonest rubbish that money can possibly
buy; things as vulgar as primroses, and as transitory as a morning's
frost.
Think of all the advantages of a cheap possession--cheap and nasty, if
you will--compared with some valuable substitute. Suppose you need
this or that. "Get a good one," advises Aunt Charlotte; "one that will
last." You do--and it does last. It lasts like a family curse. These great
plain valuable things, as plain as good women, as complacently assured
of their intrinsic worth--who does not know them? My Aunt Charlotte
scarcely had a new thing in her life. Her mahogany was avuncular; her
china remotely ancestral; her feather beds and her bedsteads!--they
were haunted; the births, marriages, and deaths associated with