The War of the WenusesLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Science
The War of the Wenuses
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Science fiction; Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946 -- Parodies, imitations, etc.
Grotesque and foolish as it may seem to the scientific reader, I was
entirely unable to answer this simple conundrum. My mind reverted to my
school days. I found myself declining _musa_. Curious to relate, I had
entirely forgotten the genitive of _ego_.... With infinite trouble I
managed to break into a vegetarian restaurant, and made a meal off some
precocious haricot beans, a brace of Welsh rabbits, and ten bottles of
botanic beer.
Working back into Holland Park Avenue and thence keeping steadily along
High Street, Notting Hill Gate, I determined to make my way to the
Marble Arch, in the hopes of finding some fresh materials for my studies
in the Stone Age.
In Bark Place, where the Ladies' Kennel Club had made their vast
grand-stand, were a number of pitiful vestiges of the Waterloo of
women-kind. There was a shattered Elswick bicycle, about sixteen yards
and a half of nun's veiling, and fifty-three tortoise-shell side-combs.
I gazed on the _débris_ with apathy mingled with contempt. My movements
were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I knew that I wished to avoid my
wife, but had no clear idea how the avoiding was to be done.
V.
BUBBLES.
From Orme Square, a lean-faced, unkempt and haggard waif, I drifted to
Great Orme's Head and back again. Senile dementia had already laid its
spectral clutch upon my wizened cerebellum when I was rescued by some
kindly people, who tell me that they found me scorching down Hays Hill
on a cushion-tired ordinary. They have since told me that I was singing
"My name is John Wellington Wells, Hurrah!" and other snatches from a
pre-Wenusian opera.
These generous folk, though severely harassed by their own anxieties,
took me in and cared for me. I was a lonely man and a sad one, and they
bored me. In spite of my desire to give public expression to my
gratitude, they have refused to allow their names to appear in these
pages, and they consequently enjoy the proud prerogative of being the
only anonymous persons in this book. I stayed with them at the Bath Club
for four days, and with tears parted from them on the spring-board. They
would have kept me for ever, but that would have interfered with my
literary plans. Besides, I had a morbid desire to gaze on the Wenuses
once more.
And so I went out into the streets again, guided by the weird Voice, and
_viâ_ Grafton Street, Albemarle Street, the Royal Arcade, Bond Street,
Burlington Gardens, Vigo Street and Sackville Street, Piccadilly, Regent
Street, Pall Mall East, Cockspur Street and Whitehall, steadily wheeled
my way across Westminster Bridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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