For the rest I laid in an eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each day. One cannot always be magnificent, but simplicity is always a possible alternative. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs, and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon-such was the simple apparatus of my comfort. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in hand I did my own cooking. I reckoned myself lucky in getting that little bungalow. I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had supposed at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. That rainy day had come, and I set to work. I had, indeed, got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient little reserve put by for a rainy day. I knew there is nothing a man can do outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. It is not, I believe, a very uncommon persuasion. In addition to my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a clerk.
Perhaps you have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only felt it. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Whether they have brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.
I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. But in those days I was young, and my youth among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for affairs. It may be there are directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business operations is not among these. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my disasters were conceivably of my own making. Sitting now surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in admitting my extremity. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. So utterly at variance is destiny with all the little plans of men. “Here, at any rate,” said I, “I shall find peace and a chance to work!”Īnd this book is the sequel. I had gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the world. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. Cavor at LympneĪs I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. CavorĬhapter 24 - The Natural History of the SelenitesĬhapter 26 - The Last Message Cavor sent to the EarthĬhapter 1-Mr. Julius WendigeeĬhapter 23 - An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Bedford in Infinite SpaceĬhapter 22 - The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Cavor Makes Some SuggestionsĬhapter 17 - The Fight in the Cave of the Moon ButchersĬhapter 20 - Mr. Published by Good Press, 4057664175861 Table of ContentsĬhapter 1 - Mr.
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