{"id":2272,"date":"2016-06-15T11:37:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T16:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nonsolusblog.wordpress.com\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2017-06-29T16:59:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T16:59:02","slug":"have-i-got-to-cook-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/2016\/06\/15\/have-i-got-to-cook-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Have I Got to Cook That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Frederick Joseph Wells Collection\u00a0consists of letters written by the science-fiction author H.G. Wells to his family members, photographs of H.G. Wells, drawings by H.G. Wells, and other documents related to H.G. Wells. The collection was compiled by H.G. Wells\u2019s older brother, Frederick Joseph Wells. The majority of the letters in the collection are from H.G. to Frederick, and they range from short wishes for a Merry Christmas to more substantive\u00a0poetic and philosophic passages about deaths in the family as well as descriptions of the destruction and the horrors of World War II.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In one such letter, dated\u00a0July 21 1887, H.G. informs Frederick of the death of their cousin Lillie from\u00a0the horrors of consumption:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI am sorry to have to tell you that Aunt Hannah has just suffered another severe loss.\u00a0 Lillie died last Saturday morning of \u2026 rapid destruction of lung tissue by tuberculosis. It is scarcely a fortnight since Gracie was buried, and the shock of this loss is therefore doubly intensified. I can hardly image what that house will be like now those girls have gone. It is an awful thing, this consumption.\u00a0 There is no haste, no pause, no pity.\u00a0 It hunts down the family that is cursed with it and one by one, inevitably, they pass away. People shudder at the conception of Frankenstein but here is a demon raised by our sins unspeakably more dreadful.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is well known that H.G. Wells predicted the atomic bomb in his 1914 novel\u00a0The World Set Free,<\/i>\u00a0three decades before the atomic bombs were dropped. In this note from H.G. to Frederick on October 27, 1945, he describes his frustration at being inaccurately portrayed as\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0having predicted the bomb. (He often addressed his brother Frederick as \u201cFezzer,\u201d \u201cFuzz,\u201d or \u201cFezz\u201d and often signed his letters to his family as \u201cBusswhacker\u201d or \u201cBertie.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDearest Old Fezzer,<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m all right & everything misses me.\u00a0 I explained the inevitableness of the atomic bomb half a century ago & it is rather infuriating to have all these journalistic halfwits explaining that here\u2019s something Mr. Wells did not foresee. It\u2019s a strange rightful phase this poor little planet is passing through[.] I have always been a stoic but I would be glad to see the run of mankind behaving more like stoics & less like smart Alecs than they seem to be doing.\u00a0 Blessings on your fraternal \/\/\u00a0Fizz<\/span>\u00a0Fuzz.<\/span><\/p>\n

H.G. Wells<\/span><\/p>\n

The one & only<\/span><\/p>\n

Busswhacker\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not uncommon to find little drawings, or \u201cpicshuas,\u201d as H.G. Wells called them, in the margins of his letters. He used these picshuas to emphasize a point, add humor to his letters, or poke fun at himself or others. For example, a letter from H.G. Wells to his mother Sara Neal Wells, on October 31, 1882, discusses his upcoming birthday and his upcoming wedding to his first wife, Isabel Neal. At the top of the letter he has drawn a pischua, depicted below, joking about the birthday present he hopes to receive from his mother. LV<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Chicken.jpg\"<\/p>\n

If you are interested in reading more about H.G. Wells\u2019s picshuas, please see\u00a0Gene K. Rinkel and Margaret E. Rinkel,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The Picshuas of H. G. Wells<\/i><\/span>, available<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>here<\/span><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Click\u00a0here<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0contact the Rare Book & Manuscript Library<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for more information.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Frederick Joseph Wells Collection\u00a0consists of letters written by the science-fiction author H.G. Wells to his family members, photographs of H.G. Wells, drawings by H.G. Wells, and other documents related to H.G. Wells. The collection was compiled by H.G. Wells\u2019s older brother, Frederick Joseph Wells. The majority of the letters in the collection are from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":2274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[136],"class_list":["post-2272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-h-g-wells"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}