1894

2. The Telegram

It had been a strange day, a day of shattered routine. Yesterday, and for many days prior, Jane[1] and I had scheduled our lives with order and despatch in our two rooms at 12 Mornington Place. Our bedroom had a double bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, chairs, wash basin, and so on. Every morning I jumped out of bed, pulled my britches on over my night shirt, Jane got into her wrapper, and then we’d go through the folding doors into the front room, already warmed up a bit if need be by a coal fire, set by the house servant in the cold dawn. I’d take a look at the paper while we had breakfast. And then we’d both get to work—I to my writing, Jane to her science studies. In the afternoon we’d take long walks, looking for material I could write about. So far in this year of 1894, I have done fairly well. By year’s end I’ll probably have sold seventy-five articles, and I was off to a marvelous start with my stories: “The Stolen Bacillus,” “The Diamond Maker,” “Aepyornis Island,” “Lord of the Dynamos.”

Home from our walk, it’s tea and scones, then back to work. Supper is brought up in the evening, and then more work. And finally to bed, and some wonderful love-making as the trains thunder by and rattle the house.

Yesterday that halcyon routine was blasted by a thing that I had set in motion the year before. In 1893 I had applied for a patent on “Temporal Flux Adjustment.” At the time I was simply thinking of a couple of articles, with titles such as “The Inventive Act,” “How to Get a Patent,” “The British Patent Office,” that kind of thing. Applying for a patent seemed a good way to start. But there were immediate problems. First, one must have what appears, at least superficially, to be an invention. So, how about my ideas for traveling back in time?

I explained the theory to three patent agents, one after another. Patent agents are special lawyers, and most of them have offices on High Holborn and in Staple Inn, near the Patent Office. They pontificated in buildings erected in Tudor times, with semiexposed beams, plaster, and jutting windows. For each century en retard I think they added another £ 10 to their fees.

One after another, they refused to take my case. Also, the cheapest wanted a £ 50 retainer. Ha! So I wrote up the patent application myself, complete with a proper description and drawing of the time-flux modifier, included a postal order of £ 5 for the filing fee, and mailed it off, all without benefit of clergy.

Months passed, and no word from the Patent Office. I tried to conjecture what might be going on in those august chambers. Probably they had read it, passed it around for all to have a good laugh, and then tossed it into the waste basket. Too bad. No articles. And so I forgot all about it.

Then, yesterday—the telegram.

I had been working on a short story. Jane answered the door, and a moment later came bouncing up the stairs, waving a little sheet of paper. She stood at the entrance of our sitting room, and in a trembling voice, she read:

“Wells, H.G., 12 Mornington Place, Camden, London. Re: Application for Letters Patent Serial Number 21-X, filed 3 March 1893, for Temporal Flux Adjustment. The comptroller respectfully requests your attendance in chambers at ten o’clock in the morning of 6 June, 1894 to discuss the subject patent application.”

I snatched it from her hand and read it myself, carefully, word for word. Yes. No hoax. Only the Patent Office had the filing data. It was real, at least in substance. But the form was unreal. A telegram is expensive. The message is generally presented in as few words as possible. But not this one. Look at the extra “the’s” and the several unnecessary prepositions. Over half the words were surplusage. Somebody—the comptroller?—was spending a lot of money just to make sure there would be no mistake in my instructions. It was all very very odd. I knew for a fact that (1) interviews for pending applications were rarely granted, (2) that when they did occur, the notices were sent by ordinary mail, and (3) the interviews were always before the examiner in charge of the case, never before the comptroller.

What was going on?

So, today, I arose early, had a quick biscuit and tea, and left Jane sleeping groggily as I set off for my mysterious meeting with the comptroller. I had earlier decided to walk. The exercise would put me there wide awake. I had a feeling I would need to be fully alert with every nerve tingling.