1894

3. I Walk to the Patent Office

So early this morning, while Jane slept, I set off down South Everholt Street, which changed to Southhampton Street, and then a left turn into High Holborn. (An article, perhaps, on how London streets keep changing their names? Or how they got their names? “Holborn” means “Stream in the Hollow”—the great highway runs along the route of what used to be Fleet River. London sucks up these little streams like a sponge.) Farther down High Holborn is the Viaduct and the circus with Prince Albert’s statue raising his hat to the city of London. Albert, born in 1819, died December 1, 1861. The date of his death sticks in my mind because it’s part of the sign over the draper’s shop where I was once (oh so unhappily!) apprenticed. It’s also the date Britain declared war on the Northern States during the American Civil War.

On to Chancery Lane on the right, and Gray’s Inn Road on the left. This is Dickens country. Hard by is The Old Curiosity Shop. As a lad of sixteen Dickens joined the law firm of Ellis and Blackmore at Gray’s Inn, and quickly acquired very definite ideas about lawyers and the law. As he said in Bleak House, “A poor man has nothing more to fear from lawyers than from a gang of pickpockets.” Again, in The Uncommercial Traveller: “I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar known to the children of men.” But apparently not everybody felt the same way. Shakespeare staged The Comedy of Errors in Gray’s Inn in 1594.

We English love history. A third of the English are busy making it, a third are busy recording it, and a third are busy reading it. A fine market for scribblers like me! Except that I want to write history before it happens. I want to write of things to come.

I go down to Chancery Lane to Lincoln’s Inn, then to Staple Inn, where Dr. Johnson lived for a while. They’re called inns because lawyers once lived here. Now they’re legal universities, and the seat of the Council of Legal Education. The lawyers have all moved to side streets.

The Patent Office (including—alas!—since 1863 the Confederate American residency) occupies an attractive two-storey Jacobean building on the south side of High Holborn. It is huddled in very nearly the center of London, and hence of course in the center of the world. The main entrance faces Staple Inn, and that’s where I came in and encountered Mr. Mason and the American Confederacy.

And now I think I’m finally in the right place.

I gave my name to the lad at the reception desk. I assumed he’d give me directions to the comptroller’s office, but for a moment he just stared at me. “Do you have something to identify you, Mr. Wells?”

I showed him the telegram.

“Thank you.” He arose, bowed slightly, and murmured in very formal tones, “This way, Mr. Wells.”

This both puzzled and alarmed me. I was not accustomed to civility, much less respect, from a government employee. Something very serious was going on. I was torn between an urge to turn and run, and an even stronger urge to stay and find out what it was all about.

I followed him upstairs and down a hall. At the end of the hall was a double door, guarded by four men-at-arms.

Their sergeant stepped forward.

My heart was now pounding away like a trip-hammer. Something was wrong, horribly wrong. Was I about to be arrested? Simply for filing a patent application? No. Not yet, anyway.

“Mr. Wells,” the receptionist announced to the sergeant.

“Proper I.D.?” demanded the sergeant.

“He has the telegram.”

The sergeant clicked his heels together vehemently, bowed, then held the door open for me.

I walked in.

Five people were spaced around a table in the center of the room. One was a woman, the others were men. As I entered, the men rose to their feet.

The woman was small, plump, and dressed in black. Except in pictures I had never seen her before. But I recognized her instantly: Victoria Regina, the Widow of Windsor, Her Majesty the Queen.

Now, I hold no brief for royalty, or for that matter, for the hereditary nobility. I’m a republican. It made no sense to me that they should live in the lap of luxury while I and my family had to watch every pence in a hardscrabble attempt to survive.

I now noticed a dark figure leaning against the nearest wall. He was peculiarly dressed, with a long light-colored jacket, black trousers, and a brimless cap. I took him to be the Hindu manservant that helped the queen in and out of her wheelchair and carried her up and downstairs. He kept half-lidded eyes on his mistress. The rest of us he ignored. And we ignored him.

So, as I waited for someone to say or do something, I had decided I wasn’t going to offer that spine-cracking ceremonial bow you see in the illustrated newspapers, when ambassadors from small unpronounceable countries are presented in court.

Meanwhile, I was trying to place the standing men, and I was having no luck at all. I couldn’t even identify the Patent Office Comptroller.

But the uncertainty ended quickly.

The man at the end of the table said. “Mr. Herbert George Wells?”

To him, I nodded slightly. “Yes?”

“Mr. Wells, I am Reader Lack, Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Patent Office.”

I nodded again and mumbled something inconsequential.

He now turned to the queen. “Your Majesty, may I present Mr. Herbert George Wells.”

And now, damn it, I found myself bowing deeply!

She said quietly, with no hint of sarcasm or irony, “We are grateful that you could spare the time to attend us, Mr. Wells.” She peered at me rather vaguely, and squinted, as though trying to bring me into focus. This seemed to confirm the gossip: she had cataracts, and was going blind. Not surprising. In this year of 1894 she was seventy-five. She continued, “Mr. Levering, now that we are all here, perhaps you would like to complete the introductions.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” He cleared his throat. “Major Banning, Her Majesty’s equerry.” The officer bowed somberly.

“Mr. Thomas Wilshire,” continued the patent official.

To his right a slight gray-haired man bowed slightly.

I blurted, “The Tom Wilshire?”

“Sir?” he said.

“Joseph Paxton’s lieutenant? Some say you invented the machinery for laying the glass panes in the Crystal Palace?”

“A gross exaggeration, sir.” But his lips lifted in a faint smile. “I merely carried out Mr. Paxton’s instructions.”

“And finally,” said the comptroller, “Sir Almroth Wright, M.D.” Dr. Wright bowed formally.

I knew the name of course. Everybody did. Dr. Wright had developed a typhoid antitoxin. A very new thing, and already a matter of great controversy in the medical profession. The entire army medical corps (which still had strong adherents for bleeding to combat fever and hanging asafetida around the throat to combat influenza) was dead set against it. Perhaps thereby proving it must have merit.

“And now gentlemen,” said the queen, “Please be seated.” I found myself sitting very uncomfortably directly across from the queen. After the chairs had stopped scraping, she said, “Mr. Lack, you may begin.”