The Time Machine, Chapters One and Two

In which there is a gathering of unnamed satirical archetypes with much harrumphing and discussions on the nature of Time, and the Time Traveler claims to have traveled in time; and in which the narrator has already used up all of the voices that will be needed in this book.



Yay, new book! We haven't done a full-on science fiction book yet, so we'll start with one that invented or at least codified one of sci-fi's greatest tropes: TIME TRAVEL. As overly discussed in the intro, The Time Machine had kind of an odd publishing history, starting out as one short story in a college newspaper in 1888, then heavily rewritten to be serialized in another newspaper, never concluded, rewritten again to be serialized in another newspaper, and rewritten versions of both of those latter newspaper texts submitted and accepted by two different publishing companies, and published within three weeks of each other in 1895. Of the two book texts, the "Holt" or "American" version and the "Heinemann" or "British" version, named for their respective publishing companies and countries, the latter is by far the most reprinted. There's also the matter of deleted text, a section from a later chapter that Wells included in the serial due to editorial fiat but cut out once he had the chance. It was, however, inexplicably included in whatever cheap book-fair paperback I read back in elementary school, so it may or may not get read later on. We'll see how I feel.

Anyway, for the first time thus far I was unable to find any public domain illustrations for this book. I know, right? So, we'll just have to do what we did to fill in several chapters back in Green Gables, and show covers from various versions over the years. We'll start with the first edition covers:

Photo via the University of California, Riverside

The one on the left is the more well-known Heinemann version, showing the winged sphinx that will play a major part in the story. The Holt version on the right just has the Henry Holt & Co. logo, with an owl on a book. Not... entirely relevant to the story, but understandable, I suppose.

Luckily (?) there are plenty of notes after the jump to fill the void left by the illustrations! Especially in these here early chapters.


First, pretty much as soon as we start, I think it should seriously be noted that the Time Traveler has apparently invented the massage chair. I believe this is treated FAR too glibly in the text, and makes it more confusing why the Time Machine is later shown to have a mere saddle. (The answer is actually that Wells was a bicycling enthusiast.)

At about 12:53, we have one of the more bizarre and opaque passages we've come across yet for our modern ears: "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German Scholars have improved Greek so much." I... what? Okay, so, modern (for 1895) classical scholarship, especially in Germany, had attempted to regularize and systematize ancient Greek to make it more, I don't know... proper. To "plough" was slang of the time meaning "to cause to fail," and "the Little-go" was a nickname for the Responsions, one of the three examinations that were at the time required to graduate from Oxford. So, the joke is that if the Very Young Man learned Greek from actual ancient Greeks like Homer and Plato, it wouldn't be proper enough to pass modern tests.

Towards the end, we get a whole barrage of confusing references. Following the Time Traveler's dusty, raggedy appearance at dinner, at 27:59 the Journalist asks "Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger?" He means, basically, "Is he pretending to be a vagrant to get handouts?"

Then, at 28:38, the Editor asks "Does our friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?" Phew, okay. a "crossing" means some trick that a thief (especially highwaymen) would use to get their victims to stop or detour so that they may get held up. You know, tree down on the road, that sort of thing. "Nebuchadnezzar" means specifically Nebuchadnezzar II, an ancient king famously mentioned in the Bible's Book of Daniel. There, he was punished by God with insanity, whereby he lived in the wild like an animal for seven years.

The Editor follows this jocularity up at 29:41 by telling the Time Traveler to "Tell us all about little Rosebery, will you?" Near as I can tell, this refers to Lord Rosebery, Prime Minister at the time of publication, but perhaps more importantly he owned racehorses that won the Epsom Derby in both 1894 and 1895. In other words, he wants gambling tips.

At 30:05, the Time Traveler says he needs to get some peptone into his arteries. I'll spare you the actual biochemical definition; he basically means protein.

Finally, and perhaps most confusingly, at 30:42 the Journalist tries to "relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter," and yes, it was hard for me not to read it as "Harry Potter." She's... well, we don't know exactly who she is. It's generally thought that some if not all of the gentlemen in these two chapters are satirically based on people Wells knew, particularly members of the Fabian Society, a non-violent Marxist socialist group (which, hey! is still around and has a website!) that Wells himself was a member of at one point. The red-headed Filby, for instance, might be based on George Bernard Shaw, a major member of the group. Well, "Hettie Potter" might be a reference to founding Fabian member Beatrice Webb (née Potter, 1858-1943, and not to be confused with Beatrix Potter).

Whew, all right! That wraps it up for the intro. Next installment, we get started on the REAL story. Oh, and I hope you all missed the "casual racism" tag after its absence during Sense and Sensibility because Wells didn't... didn't have the most enlightened view on such subjects. There will be more talk of, sigh, "savages." Be ye warned.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!