Comments on: Of a cross-channel passage

By: Airminded · Shuttleworth Collection

Airminded · Shuttleworth Collection — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:28:19 +0000

[...] a Blériot XI built in 1909. It’s the same type Louis Blériot himself used in his historic flight across the English Channel that year. It’s the world’s oldest aeroplane which is still flyable, and I got to see [...]

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:18:17 +0000

Interesting, thanks. Tono-Bungay is probably the non-sf Wells I’d most like to read.

By: Jeff Nagle

Jeff Nagle — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:25:43 +0000

This made me think of a more immediate Wells reference, actually – his (also) 1909 novel Tono-Bungay, a social satire about a sort of shabby-genteel middle class lad who becomes fabulously wealthy through a partnership with his uncle, who invented a ridiculously popular & addictive cure-all tonic. While there’s lots of “look at how ridiculous these people are,” there’s a lot of railing against the lack of proper education in the middle and upper classes, too. However, unlike this article, it does draw a distinction between George’s middle-class willingness and desire to become a member of the reading & thinking public and the contentment of the upper classes.

Oh, and then he uses his new wealth and free time to build an airplane to fly across the Channel:

As the four of us sat at tea together under the cedar on the terrace she asked questions about my aeronautics. My aunt helped with a word or so about my broken ribs. Lady Osprey evidently regarded flying as a most indesirable and improper topic—a blasphemous intrusion upon the angels. “It isn’t flying,” I explained. “We don’t fly yet.”

“You never will,” she said compactly. “You never will.”

“Well,” I said, “we do what we can.”

The little lady lifted a small gloved hand and indicated a height of about four feet from the ground. “Thus far,” she said, “thus far—AND NO FARTHER! No!”

She became emphatically pink. “NO,” she said again quite conclusively, and coughed shortly. “Thank you,” she said to her ninth or tenth cake. Beatrice burst into cheerful laughter with her eye on me. I was lying on the turf, and this perhaps caused a slight confusion about the primordial curse in Lady Osprey’s mind.

“Upon his belly shall he go,” she said with quiet distinctness, “all the days of his life.”

After which we talked no more of aeronautics.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:23:32 +0000

That’s not the sense I get from the whole article, Alex. He doesn’t distinguish between upper and middle classes but lumps them in together (while ignoring the working classes completely), along the lines of the fourth and sixth blockquotes in my post.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:44:51 +0000

He rants against the lack of science education, but he himself received a first-class science education, despite his father being only a cricket-playing shopkeeper.

Isn’t his point that it’s not “despite”, it’s “because”? The middle class get a good technical grounding, but then go off to mediocrity, while the elite get a lot of Greek and games and then have to make decisions on things they kno nuffin about. It’s not just the science, it’s the class system as well.

By: Ricardo Reis

Ricardo Reis — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:29:11 +0000

“The shape of things to come” is one of my favourites :)

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:32:45 +0000

I wondered about that too! In fact, the whole thing could be read as a diatribe against the life Wells escaped. He rants against the lack of science education, but he himself received a first-class science education, despite his father being only a cricket-playing shopkeeper. I suppose he felt he himself was the exception that proved the rule, and wished it were otherwise. After WWI, Wells became much more interested in the education question — hence The Outline of History and so forth.

By: Nicholas Waller

Nicholas Waller — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:06:47 +0000

"its youths more interested in batting and bowling" - I wonder if this was some kind of dig at his father Joseph Wells, who was a professional cricketer (in a time of Gentlemen and Players, the players being the pros) as well as a shopkeeper, including a spell for Kent.

By: Netlex FOCUS » Blog Archive » Le 25 Juillet 1909, Blériot traversait La Manche en avion

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:18:22 +0000

[...] (septembre-octobre 1936, p. 300 [back]Louis Charles-Joseph Blériot (1872 – 1936) Of a cross-channel passage 25 July 2009 at “Airminded” blog : “Airpower and British society 1908-1941″ [...]