Love and Mr. LewishamWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
Love and Mr. Lewisham
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Satire; Spiritualists -- England -- Fiction
Lewisham's investigations were two-fold. He wanted to discover some
way of adding materially to that weekly guinea by his own exertions,
and he wanted to learn the conditions of the market for typewriting.
For himself he had a vague idea, an idea subsequently abandoned, that
it was possible to get teaching work in evening classes during the
month of March. But, except by reason of sudden death, no evening
class in London changes its staff after September until July comes
round again. Private tuition, moreover, offered many attractions to
him, but no definite proposals. His ideas of his own possibilities
were youthful or he would not have spent time in noting the conditions
of application for a vacant professorship in physics at the Melbourne
University. He also made a note of the vacant editorship of a monthly
magazine devoted to social questions. He would not have minded doing
that sort of thing at all, though the proprietor might. There was
also a vacant curatorship in the Museum of Eton College.
The typewriting business was less varied and more definite. Those were
the days before the violent competition of the half-educated had
brought things down to an impossible tenpence the thousand words, and
the prevailing price was as high as one-and-six. Calculating that
Ethel could do a thousand words in an hour and that she could work
five or six hours in the day, it was evident that her contributions to
the household expenses would be by no means despicable; thirty
shillings a week perhaps. Lewisham was naturally elated at this
discovery. He could find no advertisements of authors or others
seeking typewriting, but he saw that a great number of typewriters
advertised themselves in the literary papers. It was evident Ethel
also must advertise. "'Scientific phraseology a speciality' might be
put," meditated Lewisham. He returned to his lodgings in a hopeful
mood with quite a bundle of memoranda of possible employments. He
spent five shillings in stamps on the way.
After lunch, Lewisham--a little short of breath-asked to see Madam
Gadow. She came up in the most affable frame of mind; nothing could be
further from the normal indignation of the British landlady. She was
very voluble, gesticulatory and lucid, but unhappily bi-lingual, and
at all the crucial points German. Mr. Lewisham's natural politeness
restrained him from too close a pursuit across the boundary of the two
imperial tongues. Quite half an hour's amicable discussion led at last
to a reduction of sixpence, and all parties professed themselves
satisfied with this result.
Madam Gadow was quite cool even at the end. Mr. Lewisham was flushed
in the face, red-eared, and his hair slightly disordered, but that
sixpence was at any rate an admission of the justice of his
claim. "She was evidently trying it on," he said almost apologetically
to Ethel. "It was absolutely necessary to present a firm front to
her. I doubt if we shall have any trouble again....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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