The Research Magnificent

"I've had recurring nightmares that I was loved for who I am

And missed the opportunity to be a better man"

Muse -  Hoodoo

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"when you speak of love as a phase—isn’t it a necessary phase? Quite apart from reproduction the love of the sexes is necessary. Isn’t it love, sexual love, which has released the imagination? Without that stir, without that impulse to go out from ourselves, to be reckless of ourselves and wonderful, would our lives be anything more than the contentment of the stalled ox?'
'The key that opens the door,’ said Karenin, ‘is not the goal of the journey."

 

H.G. Wells - The World Set Free (1914)

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The Research Magnificent was published in 1915, and like Tono-Bungay doesn't bother to hide its autobiographical touches. The difference, stylistically, is extraversion vs. introversion. Given Wells wrote worlds better than he wrote people, it's not quite as good. Where the former was mostly a study of English society, with the more passive protagonist mired or inundated by both entrenched institutions and the insanity of the time, in The Research Magnificent Wells' quasi-avatar, Benham, sets out to overcome all such limitations by deliberate self-improvement. All. He's gonna perfect the human condition y'see, make himself a truly noble being unfettered by the weaknesses and venality of lesser men.

His plan doesn't quite work out that way... partly because it can't be called a plan so much as a directionless vague inkling endlessly re-evaluated as Benham grows up. A point in favor of Wells' self-awareness but accidentally condemning the lack of such from our modern revolutionaries whipping each other to "be better" or "do better" according to farcically simplistic yet fixed definitions of better. Not that Benham's quest for personal quality is particularly appreciated by those around him, who'd much rather he used his money like normal rich fucks, fucking around with riches. Though diffused throughout the book, I can't help but chuckle retroactively at the recurring theme of characters excitedly welcoming our hero's utopian rhetoric until realizing he expects themselves to follow through on it as well, the episode with the Russian jews providing a particularly concise example.

The central theme stands out for being framed negatively yet paradoxically coming across as hopeful. As the eventual four points of self-improvement all target some personal failing (fear, self-indulgence, jealousy/envy and prejudice) you'd expect the finger-wagging to get more annoying. But Wells' socialism spun it into a fundamentally optimistic outlook. After all, if the path to betterment does not require construction of superhuman abilities but merely removal of impediments, this implies that sought nobility is already inherent in us. As character study in idealism hapless Benham's just not memorable enough, explaining some of the book's obscurity. But its illustration of doomed perfectionism may stick with you.

 

It's also an uncomfortable book politically, for some brief (not entirely inaccurate) barbs at Eastern Europe or the Orient, but more so to any feminists unlucky enough to read it. Where Tono-Bungay conciliated or The World Set Free waxed poetic about women joining men as equals in the great adventure of humanity, The Research Magnificent pulls fewer punches portraying female inertia, pettiness and greed. After his mother using men as social stepping-stones and himself getting seduced by a middle-aged gold-digger, it's downright painful to sit alongside Benham watching the sharp, adventurous girl he thought he married settle comfortably into his finances and devolve at blinding speed into yet another two-faced, stodgy, gossiping, superficial, manipulative, status-obsessed London matron. Combined with best friend Prothero's own misadventure, it's the clearest expression I've seen yet from Wells of the control women hold over men (sexually, socially, emotionally) and further proof of just how far ahead of his time, or even this time, his mind could stretch.

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P.S.: The title has to be a reference to The Gay Science, doesn't it? I'd love to confirm that.