Herbert George Wells["Wells, H. G."]
Revised 18 May 2015. ''fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and th ...
and in part a utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island societ ...
n novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
.
Plot summary
''The Holy Terror'' presents itself as a biography of Rudolf "Rud" Whitlow, who is born with such an aggressive temperament that scarcely is he born but his monthly nurse
A monthly nurse is a woman who looks after a mother and her baby during the postpartum period, postpartum or postnatal period. The phrase is now largely obsolete, but the job continues under other names and various conditions around the world.
...
exclaims: "It's a Holy Terror!" Rud Whitlow goes on to become the founder of the first world state, long a Wellsian dream.
''The Holy Terror'' is divided into four books. The events of Book One take place in the recognizable recent English past, although Wells warns that "Every person, place and thing in this story—even the countries in which it happens—are fictitious . . . The England, the America, the London in this book are not the England, America and London of geography and journalism, but England, America, and London transposed into imaginative narrative." The novel even takes a futuristic
The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...
turn and the action of the novel extends into the early 1950s.
Book One describes Rud Whitlow's early life and education, including his years at university, where Richard Carstall, a childhood acquaintance who is the son of the doctor who brought Rud into the world, recognizes and admires Rud's emerging political genius. On a summer walking tour through the English countryside Rud meets Chiffan, a politically seasoned militant activist who is also disenchanted with democracy and left politics. Chiffan becomes a sort of advisor and mentor to Rud Whitlow.
In Book Two, Rud is taken up by a wealthy half-American, Steenhold, who believes in Rud's political future and foots the bill as he gathers a group of like-minded collaborators who work out of "two large flats in Camborne Square just out of the Euston Road
Euston Road is a road in Central London that runs from Marylebone Road to King's Cross. The route is part of the London Inner Ring Road and forms part of the London congestion charge zone boundary. It is named after Euston Hall, the family s ...
." These include Rogers, a boxer who handles security, and Bodisham, an intellectually inclined strategist trained at the London School of Economics who will be the mastermind of the future World Revolution. The Group (as it calls itself) successfully stages a coup to oust from the leadership of the Popular Socialist Party its founder, Lord Horatio Bohun, a character inspired by Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a Member ...
's British Union of Fascists
The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, fo ...
. The putsch does not succeed, however, before a brief imprisonment reveals the cowardice and fear that underlie Rud Whitlow's bold aggressiveness.
In Book Three, Rud and his collaborators purge the party of anti-Semitism and rename it the Common-Sense Movement. Over a twelve-year period they fulfill a project of which Wells had long dreamed and which he described in ''The Open Conspiracy
''The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution'' was published in 1928 by H. G. Wells, when he was 62 years old. It was revised and expanded in 1930 with the additional subtitle ''A Second Version of This Faith of a Modern Man Made Mo ...
'' (1930): the foundation of a world state. Rud regularly visits America to promote his views. Their movement is joined by "a disgruntled military genius and expert" named Reedly and "a brilliant and quite disinterested aeronautical engineer" named Bellacourt. A future chief of secret police named Thirp also joins. By 1944 the Common Man's Party is known everywhere in the world. When the global War of the Ideologies breaks out and develops toward a worldwide stalemate, Rud is able to anticipate a coup on Reedly's part. He uses Bellacourt's control of air power not only to exterminate Reedly, but also to decapitate the military leadership of the various world powers. Steenhold dies in this final conflict, but the others survive to establish, with opportune support from the World Association for the Advancement of Science, "a Common World-State."
Book Four, however, reveals that Rud is not the enlightened leader the world takes "the Director" to be. The fierce aggression in Rud Whitlow's character re-emerges as The Group finds it necessary to mount a propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
campaign adulating him as a world savior. Stalin-like, Rud develops a taste for secret police and secret prisons. He turns on collaborators who try to restrain him, including Chiffan, who is executed for having dared to warn Whitlow that he is betraying their revolution. Rud is becoming obsessed with the Jews and beginning to plot "an ultimate pogrom," "a cumulative massacre," when Richard Carstall, now a famous physician, is able to take matters into his own hand and kill the dictator in his clinic. But he keeps his deed a secret, and as the book concludes Carstall is discussing with his young son an official history of the World Revolution in which Rud Whitlow is still considered a hero.
Composition and reception
Wells, 72, completed reviewing the proofs for ''The Holy Terror'' in December 1938, just before embarking on a lecture tour of Australia.
Wells' old friend Richard Gregory
Richard Langton Gregory (24 July 1923 – 17 May 2010) was a British psychologist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol.
Life and career
Richard Gregory was born in London. He was the son of Christopher Clive Langto ...
, the editor of ''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...
'' from 1919 to 1939, "found the message in ''The Holy Terror'' alarming, but very true." J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley (; 13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator.
His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction, notably in '' The Good Comp ...
also appreciated the novel and discussed it.
Biographers Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie believe that ''The Holy Terror'' demonstrates "the link between the unconscious fears and aggressions which were so marked in ells'youth and the plans for the saving of the world which ran through his adult writing." Similarly, another biographer, Michael Sherborne, sees in the novel "an unhinged psychodrama concerning Wells' own yearnings for extremes of discipline and freedom."[Michael Sherborne, ''H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life'' (Peter Owen, 2010), p. 324.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holy Terror, The
Novels by H. G. Wells
1939 British novels
1939 science fiction novels
Utopian novels
Michael Joseph books