Kipps

Wells H. G.

Description

Fans of Dickens' Great Expectations will love H.G. Wells' classic novel Kipps. This tale follows the life and rapid social ascension of a humble orphan and textile worker who discovers he is actually the heir to great wealth. Will Kipps be able to survive and thrive in the unfamiliar milieu of the ultra-affluent?

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775456193
• Langue: English

Extrait

KIPPS
THE STORY OF A SIMPLE SOUL
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H. G. WELLS
 
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Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul First published in 1906 ISBN 978-1-77545-619-3 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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BOOK I - THE MAKING OF KIPPS Chapter I - The Little Shop at New Romney Chapter II - The Emporium Chapter III - The Wood-Carving Class Chapter IV - Chitterlow Chapter V - "Swapped" Chapter VI - The Unexpected BOOK II - MR. COOTE, THE CHAPERON Chapter I - The New Conditions Chapter II - The Walshinghams Chapter III - Engaged Chapter IV - The Bicycle Manufacturer Chapter V - The Pupil Lover Chapter VI - Discords Chapter VII - London Chapter VIII - Kipps Enters Society Chapter IX - The Labyrinthodon BOOK III - KIPPSES Chapter I - The Housing Problem Chapter II - The Callers Chapter III - Terminations
BOOK I - THE MAKING OF KIPPS
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Chapter I - The Little Shop at New Romney
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§1
Until he was nearly arrived at adolescence it did not become clear toKipps how it was that he was under the care of an aunt and uncle insteadof having a father and mother like other boys. Yet he had vague memoriesof a somewhere else that was not New Romney—of a dim room, a windowlooking down on white buildings—and of a some one else who talked toforgotten people, and who was his mother. He could not recall herfeatures very distinctly, but he remembered with extreme definition awhite dress she wore, with a pattern of little sprigs of flowers andlittle bows of ribbon upon it, and a girdle of straight-ribbed whiteribbon about the waist. Linked with this, he knew not how, were cloudedhalf-obliterated recollections of scenes in which there was weeping,weeping in which he was inscrutably moved to join. Some terrible tallman with a loud voice played a part in these scenes, and either beforeor after them there were impressions of looking for interminable periodsout of the windows of railway trains in the company of these twopeople....
He knew, though he could not remember that he had ever been told, thata certain faded, wistful face, that looked at him from a plush and giltframed daguerreotype above the mantel of the "sitting-room," was theface of his mother. But that knowledge did not touch his dim memorieswith any elucidation. In that photograph she was a girlish figure,leaning against a photographer's stile, and with all the self-consciousshrinking natural to that position. She had curly hair and a face faryounger and prettier than any other mother in his experience. She swunga Dolly Varden hat by the string, and looked with obedient respectfuleyes on the photographer-gentleman who had commanded the pose. She wasvery slight and pretty. But the phantom mother that haunted his memoryso elusively was not like that, though he could not remember how shediffered. Perhaps she was older, or a little less shrinking, or, it maybe, only dressed in a different way....
It is clear she handed him over to his aunt and uncle at New Romney withexplicit directions and a certain endowment. One gathers she hadsomething of that fine sense of social distinctions that subsequentlyplayed so large a part in Kipps' career. He was not to go to a "common"school, she provided, but to a certain seminary in Hastings that was notonly a "middle-class academy," with mortar boards and every evidence ofa higher social tone, but also remarkably cheap. She seems to have beenanimated by the desire to do her best for Kipps, even at a certainsacrifice of herself, as though Kipps were in some way a superior sortof person. She sent pocket-money to him from time to time for a year ormore after Hastings had begun for him, but her face he never saw in thedays of his lucid memory.
His aunt and uncle were already high on the hill of life when first hecame to them. They had married for comfort in the evening or at any ratein the late afternoon of their days. They were at first no more thanvague figures in the background of proximate realities, such realitiesas familiar chairs and tables, quiet to ride and drive, the newel of thestaircase, kitchen furniture, pieces of firewood, the boiler tap, oldnewspapers, the cat, the High Street, the back yard and the flat fieldsthat are always so near in that little town. He knew all the stones inthe yard individually, the creeper in the corner, the dustbin and themossy wall, better than many men know the faces of their wives. Therewas a corner under the ironing-board which by means of a shawl could,under propitious gods, be made a very decent cubby-house, a corner thatserved him for several years as the indisputable hub of the world; andthe stringy places in the carpet, the knots upon the dresser, and theseveral corners of the rag hearthrug his uncle had made, becameessential parts of his mental foundations. The shop he did not know sothoroughly—it was a forbidden region to him; yet somehow he managed toknow it very well.
His aunt and uncle were, as it were, the immediate gods of this world;and, like the gods of the world of old, occasionally descended rightinto it, with arbitrary injunctions and disproportionate punishments.And, unhappily, one rose to their Olympian level at meals. Then one hadto say one's "grace," hold one's spoon and fork in mad, unnatural wayscalled "properly," and refrain from eating even nice sweet things "toofast." If he "gobbled" there was trouble, and at the slightest abandon with knife, fork, and spoon, his aunt rapped his knuckles, albeit hisuncle always finished up his gravy with his knife. Sometimes, moreover,his uncle would come, pipe in hand, out of a sedentary remoteness in themost disconcerting way, when a little boy was doing the most natural andattractive things, with "Drat and drabbit that young rascal! What's hea-doing of now?" And his aunt would appear at door or window tointerrupt interesting conversation with children who were upon unknowngrounds considered "low" and undesirable, and call him in. Thepleasantest little noises, however softly you did them,—drumming ontea-trays, trumpeting your fists, whistling on keys, ringing chimes witha couple of pails, or playing tunes on the window-panes,—brought downthe gods in anger. Yet what noise is fainter than your finger on thewindow—gently done? Sometimes, however, these gods gave him broken toysout of the shop, and then one loved them better—for the shop they keptwas, among other things, a toy shop. (The other things included books toread and books to give away and local photographs; it had somepretensions also to be a china shop, and the fascia spoke of glass; itwas also a stationer's shop with a touch of haberdashery about it, andin the windows and odd corners were mats and terra-cotta dishes, andmilking-stools for painting; and there was a hint of picture-frames, andfire-screens, and fishing tackle, and air-guns, and bathing suits, andtents: various things, indeed, but all cruelly attractive to a smallboy's fingers.) Once his aunt gave him a trumpet if he would promise faithfully not to blow it, and afterwards took it away again. And hisaunt made him say his Catechism and something she certainly called the"Colic for the Day" every Sunday in the year.
As the two grew old while he grew up, and as his impression of themmodified insensibly from year to year, it seemed to him at last thatthey had always been as they were when, in his adolescent days, hisimpression of things grew fixed. His aunt he thought of as always lean,rather worried-looking, and prone to a certain obliquity of cap, and hisuncle massive, many-chinned, and careless about his buttons. Theyneither visited nor received visitors. They were always very suspiciousabout their neighbours and other people generally; they feared the "low"and they hated and despised the "stuck-up," and so they "kept themselves to themselves," according to the English ideal. Consequently littleKipps had no playmates, except through the sin of disobedience. Byinherent nature he had a sociable disposition. When he was in the HighStreet he made a point of saying "Hello!" to passing cyclists, and hewould put his tongue out at the Quodling children whenever theirnursemaid was not looking. And he began a friendship with Sid Pornick,the son of the haberdasher next door, that, with wide intermissions, wasdestined to last his lifetime through.
Pornick, the haberdasher, I may say at once, was, according to oldKipps, a "blaring jackass"; he was a teetotaller, a "nyar, nyar,'im-singing Methodis'," and altogether distasteful and detrimental, heand his together, to true Kipps ideals, so far as little Kipps couldgather them. This Pornick certainly possessed an enormous voice, and heannoyed old Kipps greatly by calling, "You—Arn" and "Siddee," up anddown his house. He annoyed old Kipps by private choral services onSunday, all his family "nyar, nyar-ing"; and by mushroom culture; bybehaving as though the pilaster between the two shops was commonproperty; by making a noise of hammering in the afternoon, when oldKipps wanted to be quiet after his midday meal; by going up and downuncarpeted stairs in his boots; by having a black beard; by attemptingto be friendly; and by—all that sort of thing. In fact, he annoyed oldKipps. He annoyed him especially with his shop doormat. Old Kipps neverbeat his mat, preferring to let sleeping dust lie; and, seeking a motivefor a foolish proceeding, he held that Pornick waited until there was asuitable wind in order that the dust disengaged in that operation mightdefil