-*- coding: utf-8 -*- the following is a newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written post, answering the question “what does the Hettie Potter refers to?”, as mentioned in H G Well's novel Time Machine, chapter 2. (see Time Machine Chapter 2 at: http://xahlee.org/p/time_machine/tm2.html) The text belong is edited. Parts relevant to the flow of discusion but not relevant to the question per se is elided. The original unedited post can be found at: http://xahlee.org/p/time_machine/Hettie_Potter_orig.txt —Xah Lee, 2005 August ssss--------------------------------------------------- From: Joe Bernstein joe@sfbooks.com Subject: H G Wells: Time Machine: Hettie Potter? Date: 1 Aug 2005 ... Well, in the nick of time (I hope) to put this post in the proper thread without mighty machinations of Pnews, I may have an answer to the subject-line question. Yay. Or I may not, and could use your help. See below, after some quote-and-response. ... I'm citing solely . H. G. Wells, edited by Leon Stover. Volume 1 of . Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, c 1996. (And yes, further volumes of did appear, and the library I'm posting from has several on the shelf.) Stover states that there were several magazine appearances of versions of the story prior to the book version he reprints. These are: 1) "The Chronic Argonauts". Appeared in (not as reported earlier in this thread). Stover reprints it in full. It doesn't much resemble the work as we know it, and certainly doesn't mention Hettie Potter. 2) A story titled either "The Time Machine" or "Time Machine". (Sorry; I made copies from the book, then put it in the reshelving bin expecting to do more research elsewhere, then found I wouldn't be doing more research elsewhere, started writing this post, and found the book gone from the reshelving bin... Well, that's the simplified version, anyhow.) Stover reprints this story in full too. I didn't look closely at it, but Stover claims it's basically the time traveller's story from the book we know, and it doesn't mention Hettie Potter. Perhaps this is the source of the reference to upthread? 3) A serialisation immediately prior to the book publication, also in 1895, in , which presumably is not the US publication known for its conservative views today. Stover includes an appendix printing this version's alternative treatment of chapter 1 (but Hettie Potter is in book chapter 2, at least as of 1895), and summarising other noteworthy changes, which summary doesn't mention Hettie Potter. In sum, I consider it possible, but unlikely, that Hettie Potter first appeared in the London edition of 1895; otherwise she first appeared in the serialisation. Here is what Stover has to say about her: || The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of || Hettie Porter.54 The footnote does make clear that Stover meant "Potter" there; this is our first hint that Stover is not entirely reliable. Anyway, to proceed: | 54. Hettie Potter is a composite reference that at once alludes to | Beatrice (Potter) Webb who, with Sidney Webb dominated the Fabian | Society, and to a family of music-hall comedians named Potter (see | McConnell 1977:27, n9). The merciless Potter "anecdotes" "merciless" ? Where was *that* in the text? | retailed by the Journalist suggest that the public laughed at the | economic tracts written by Mrs. Webb. In this Wells is quite | mistaken, and he uses the Journalist to make the same mockery of her | working-class humanitarianism as he later did in the person of | Alitora Bailey in (1911). | | The fact is that Beatrice Webb's research reports, aimed at | reforming the uncaring Poor Laws, were seriously received. Like | Alitora Bailey before she married Oscar Bailey (Sidney Webb), | Beatrice Potter made her debut on the London scene as a wealthy | socialite; born rich, she could talk about the urban poor with | empathy and get away with it, as less respectable do-gooders could | not. Wells clearly resented this, it seems, because her popularity | went against his unsentimental views of his own lower-class origins. | | His hated Morlocks, after all, are those antisocial elements of the | working poor organized for mischief by trade unionists of Marxist | persuasion. Adding to Wells's dismay at the doings of the Fabian | Society, is the fact that it started out with a statist program a | la Bellamy, only to lend support to the Labour Party formed after | the Coal War of 1893; the resulting tension between authoritarian | and democratic socialism within Fabianism (see Lipow 1982:138) | caused Wells to leave the Society shortly after joining it in 1902. (Huh. A biography of E. Nesbit tells a much less respectable story, involving an attempt to take over the Society by packing its membership, followed by an attempt to elope with Nesbit's 16-year-old daughter.) | The Journalist who, in , reports a public making | fun of "Hettie Potter" is therefore wishful thinking on Wells's | part. He would rather this was the case, in support of his own | unflinching statism. Now, the germane reference here is | McConnell, Frank D., ed. | 1977 New York: Oxford University Press. It appears that library catalogues regard the title of this book as but that doesn't mean that any libraries I can easily get to admit to owning a copy. Since it will soon become very difficult to put this post in this thread, and I have a lot else to do, I thought it best to stop here. But we now know that Stover has *not* seriously considered the possibility that Wells is here referring to the actual Hetty/Hettie Potter who appeared in several silent films a decade later. Has McConnell taken her into account? I don't know. At the first library I tried, no print resource at all gave information about the screen actress Hetty Potter. I have not tried at the library whence I post this. If someone reading this has access to McConnell's version, and can let us know what it has to say on this subject, and it turns out that McConnell is *also* unaware of our screen actress, then it will be time for me to do further research (and it'll probably be enough days from now that I can *take* time to do further research) on her. Meanwhile, though, that's Stover's theory, for what it's worth. Joe Bernstein -- Joe Bernstein, bookseller and writer