Second paragraph of third chapter:

White had not read the book of Tobit for many years, and what he was really thinking of was not that ancient story at all, but Botticelli’s picture, that picture of the sunlit morning of life. When you say ” Tobias” that is what most intelligent people will recall. Perhaps you will remember how gaily and confidently the young man strides along with the armoured angel by his side. Absurdly enough, Benham and his dream of high aristocracy reminded White of that. . . .

Not far to go in my foolish effort to read all of Wells’ fiction. This one is generally awful. (Adam Roberts didn’t like it much either.) Benham, the protagonist, decides to make his life goal the ‘Research Magnificent’ on how to live a noble and aristocratic life; he does this from a position of immense wealth and privilege; he marries a teenager and it doesn’t work out; and he gets killed in a political riot in South Africa. There are many many tedious speeches about politics and personal vision.

There are however one or two good lines. When Benham meets his first lover:

There was in particular Mrs. Skelmersdale, a very pretty little widow with hazel eyes, black hair, a mobile mouth, and a pathetic history, who talked of old music to him and took him to a Dolmetsch concert in Clifford’s Inn, and expanded that common interest to a general participation in his indefinite outlook. She advised him about his probable politics — everybody did that — but when he broke through his usual reserve and suggested views of his own, she was extraordinarily sympathetic. She was so sympathetic and in such a caressing way that she created a temporary belief in her understanding, and it was quite imperceptibly that he was drawn into the discussion of modern ethical problems. She herself was a rather stimulating instance of modern ethical problems. She told him something of her own story, and then their common topics narrowed down very abruptly. He found he could help her in several ways.

I don’t think I have seen much innuendo from Wells, but that did make me chuckle.

A bit later, the protagonist and his young bride go on a disastrous honeymoon in the Balkans, taking in various places which I know from a century or so later. One passage here puzzled me. The couple are stuck in Monastir (now Bitola) in (North) Macedonia, and Benham has fallen ill with measles. After they find a doctor,

The Benhams went as soon as possible down to Smyrna and thence by way of Uskub tortuously back to Italy.

I was really puzzled by this. Uskub is now Skopje, and these days to get there from Bitola you go by the highland road through Prilep before joining the main Vardar Valley route at Gradsko or Veles; it’s 173 km according to Google. This would take you nowhere near the Aegean port of Smyrna, which is now Izmir in Turkey, 1000 km by road from either Bitola or Skopje.

I raised this question on social media, and a couple of people pointed out that ‘Smyrna’ here is obviously a mistake for ‘Salonica’, ie Thessaloniki in Greece. Back in the day, the old Via Egnatia would have taken you easily there from Bitola, and the railway back up north to Skopje had been built in 1873. Full credit to the several people who tried to convince me of a plausible route from Bitola to Izmir to Skopje, but I don’t think that’s what Wells meant.

Just a few more books acquired in 2019 to go now. The next by Wells is Bealby, but before that I have volume 3 of the Collected Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston.