Word: clissold
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...happens that Mr. Wells will be 60 next Tuesday. It happens that his character, William Clissold, enunciates a prodigious amount of Wellsian philosophy. But the "vulgar" reader and reviewer are asked to understand that the book is not Mr. Wells' autobiography, but William Clissold's. The latter is merely a "relative" of Mr. Wells, a mineralogist whose promoter-father committed suicide on the way to prison, leaving the mother free to remarry and the boys, William and Dickon Clissold, to make their own lives...
...William Clissold is in London on his 59th birthday. It is dismally wet, so he falls to writing down what it feels like to realize that one's life is some four-fifths finished. Later he writes on and on, mostly in the mas (villa) in Provence where he lives with a young woman named Clementina, trying to make plain to himself and the world the nature and origin of his beliefs, metaphysical, theological, political, social, economic, ethical, etc. To make this writing wholly natural, Mr. Wells permits William Clissold to mention encounters with Dean Inge, Dr. Jung, George...
This second motto is self-explanatory. Here is no light Wellsian fantasy with a happy ending. Having written two volumes, William Clissold dies in an .automobile smash, as related by his brother in the epilogue...