H. G. Wells - "The Moth" - 1895

🎩 H.G. Wells - "The Moth" (1895) 🦋✨

A haunting tale of rivalry, obsession, and the shadow of guilt that transcends death. 🌌⚖️
In this chilling story, Professor Hapley, a proud and combative entomologist, is locked in a bitter feud with his rival, Professor Pawkins. Their relationship is marked by relentless hostility and public disputes. But when Pawkins unexpectedly dies, the rivalry seems to have reached an abrupt end—or so it seems. 🕯️💔Soon after Pawkins’ death, Hapley is tormented by the appearance of a mysterious, malevolent moth. At first, the insect seems ordinary, but it quickly becomes an otherworldly force, stalking Hapley with a relentless presence. 🦋🌌 Its glowing eyes and eerie fluttering wings grow into an obsession for Hapley, who becomes convinced that this is no ordinary creature—it is Pawkins’ vengeful spirit, returned to haunt him for his sins.The story plunges into psychological terror as Hapley spirals deeper into madness. Is the moth real, or is it a manifestation of Hapley’s own guilt and paranoia? 🌀💭H.G. Wells weaves a gripping narrative, blending gothic horror with profound themes of pride, rivalry, and the psychological toll of unresolved guilt. "The Moth" is a powerful reminder of how the past can linger like a specter, haunting the conscience of those who cannot let go.A darkly atmospheric exploration of human frailty and the thin line between reality and delusion. 🦋🕯️

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
H. G. Wells The Moth, published in eighteen ninety five.
Probably you have heard of Haply, not w T Happily
the Sun, but the celebrated happily, the happily of Paraplanida
haplia happily the entomologist. If so, you know at least
of the great feud between Happly and Professor Pawkins, though
certain of its consequences may be new to you for

(00:22):
those who have not a word or two of explanation
is necessary, which the idle reader may go over with
a glancing eye, if his indolence so incline him. It
is amazing how very widely diffused is the ignorance of
such really important matters as this Happy Pawkins feud. Those
epic making controversies again that have convulsed the geological society

(00:45):
are I verily believe, almost entirely unknown outside the fellowship
of that body. I have heard men of fair general
education even refer to the great scenes at these meetings
as vestu meeting squabbles. Yet the great hate of the
English and Scotch geologists has lasted now half a century,
and has left deep and abundant marks upon the body

(01:07):
of the science. And this Haply Pawkins business, though perhaps
a more personal affair, stirred passions as profound, if not profounder.
Your common man has no conception of the zeal that
animates a scientific investigator. The fury of contradiction you can
arouse in him. It is the odium theologicum in a
new form. There are men, for instance, who would gladly

(01:31):
burn Professor Ray Lancaster at Smithfield for his treatment of
the Mollusca in the Encyclopedia, that fantastic extension of the
cephalopods to cover the terrapods. But I wander from Haply
and Pawkins. It began years and years ago with a
revision of the Microlepidoptera, whatever these may be, by Pawkins,
in which he extinguished a new species created by Haply. Haply,

(01:55):
who was always quarrelsome, replied by a stinging impeachment of
the entire classification of Pawkins. Pawkins, in his rejoinder, suggested
that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his power of observation,
and called him an irresponsible meddler. Haply was not a
professor at that time. Haply, in his retort, spoke of

(02:16):
blundering collectors, and described as if inadvertently, Pawkins's revision as
a miracle of ineptitude. It was war to the knife. However,
it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these
two great men quarreled, and how the split between them widened,
until from the microlepidoptera they were at war upon every

(02:36):
open question in entomology. There were memorable occasions. At times
the Royal Entomological Society meetings resembled nothing so much as
the Chamber of Deputies. On the whole, I fancy Pawkins
was nearer the truth than Haply, But Haply was skillful
with his rhetoric, had a turn for ridicule rare in
a scientific man, was endowed with vast energy and had

(02:59):
a fire Kine's sense of injury in the matter of
the extinguished species, while Pawkins was a man of dull presence,
prosy of speech, in shape not unlike a water barrel over,
conscientious with testimonials, and suspected of jobbing museum appointments. So
the young men gathered round happily and applauded him. It
was a long struggle, vicious from the beginning and growing

(03:20):
at last to pitiless antagonism. The successive turns of fortune,
now an advantage to one side, and now to another,
now happily tormented by some successive Pawkins, and now Pawkins
outshone by Haply, belong rather to the history of entomology
than to this story. But in eighteen ninety one, Pawkins,
whose health had been bad for some time, published some

(03:41):
work upon the Mesoblast of the Death's head Moth. What
the mesoblast of the Death's Head Moth may be does
not matter a rap in this story. But the work
was far below his usual standard and gave Haply an
opening he had coveted for years. He must have worked
night and day to make the most of his advantage.
In an elaborate critique, he rent Pawkins to tatters. One

(04:03):
can fancy the man's disordered black hair and his queer
dark eyes flashing as he went for his antagonist. And
Pawkins made a reply, halting, ineffectual, with painful gaps of silence,
and yet malignant. There was no mistaking his will to
wound Haply, nor his incapacity to do it. But few
of those who heard him. I was absent from that

(04:25):
meeting realized how ill the man was. Haply got his
opponent down and meant to finish him. He followed with
a simply brutal attack upon Pawkins in the form of
a paper upon the development of moths in general, a
paper showing evidence of a most extraordinary amount of mental labor,
and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. Violent as

(04:47):
it was an editorial note. Witnesses that it was modified.
It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face.
It left no loophole. It was murderous an argument, and
utterly can temptuous in tone, an awful thing for the
declining years of a man's career. The world of entomologists
waited breathlessly for the rejoinder from Pawkins. He would try one,

(05:11):
for Pawkins had always been game. But when it came,
it surprise them, for the rejoinder of Pawkins was to
catch influenza, proceed to pneumonia, and die. It was perhaps
as effectual a reply as he could make under the circumstances,
and largely turned the current of feeling against Hapley. The
very people who had most gleefully cheered on those gladiators

(05:33):
became serious at the consequence. There could be no reasonable
doubt the fret of the defeat had contributed to the
death of Pawkins. There was a limit even to scientific controversy,
said serious people. Another crushing attack was already in the
press and appeared on the day before the funeral. I
don't think Happily exerted himself to stop it. People remembered

(05:56):
how Happily had hounded down his rival, and forgot that
rival's defeare scathing satire reads ill over fresh mold. The
thing provoked comment in the daily papers. This it was
that made me think that you had probably heard of
Happily and this controversy. But as I have already remarked,
scientific workers live very much in a world of their own.

(06:17):
Half the people, I dare say, who go along Piccadilly
to the Academy every year, could not tell you where
the learned societies abide. Many even think that research is
a kind of happy family cage, in which all kinds
of men lie down together in peace. In his private thoughts,
Happily could not forgive Pawkins for dying in the first place.
It was a mean dodge to escape the absolute pulverization

(06:39):
Happily had in hand for him, and in the second
it left Happy's mind with a queer gap in it.
For twenty years he had worked hard, sometimes far into
the night, and seven days a week with microscope, scalpel,
collecting net and pen, and almost entirely with reference to Pawkins.
The European reputation he had one had come as an

(06:59):
incident in that great antipathy he had gradually worked up
to a climax. In this last controversy, it had killed Pawkins,
but it had also thrown Happily out of gear, so
to speak, and his doctor advised him to give up
work for a time and rest. So Happily went down
into a quiet village in Kent and thought day and
night of Pawkins and good things it was now impossible

(07:22):
to say about him. At last, Happily began to realize
in what direction the preoccupation tended. He determined to make
a fight for it, and started by trying to read novels,
but he could not get his mind off Pawkins, white
in the face and making his last speech, every sentence
of beautiful opening. For Happily. He turned to fiction and
found it had no grip on him. He read The

(07:44):
Island Knight's Entertainments until his sense of causation was shocked
beyond endurance by the bottle imp Then he went to
Kipling and found he proved nothing besides being irreverent and vulgar.
These scientific people have their limitations. Then, unhappily he tried
Besson's Inner House, and the opening chapter set his mind

(08:06):
upon learned societies and pawkins at once. So happily turned
to chess and found it a little more soothing. He
soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner
closing positions, and began to beat the vicar. But then
the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began to resemble
pawkins standing up and gasping ineffectually against checkmate, and happily

(08:28):
decided to give up chess. Perhaps the study of some
new branch of science would, after all be better diversion.
The best rest is change of occupation. Happily determined to
plunge at Diatom's, and had one of his smaller microscopes
and Halibu's monograph sent down from London. He thought that
perhaps if he could get up a vigorous quarrel with halibit,

(08:50):
he might be able to begin life afresh and forget pawkins.
And very soon he was hard at work in his habitual,
strenuous fashion at these microscopic denizens of the wayside pool.
It was on the third day of the diatoms that
happily became aware of a novel addition to the local fauna.
He was working late at the microscope, and the only

(09:11):
light in the room was the brilliant little lamp with
the special form of green shade. Like all experienced microscopis,
he kept both eyes open. It is the only way
to avoid excessive fatigue. One eye was over the instrument,
and bright and distinct. Before that was the circular field
of the microscope, across which a brown diatom was slowly moving.

(09:32):
With the other I happily saw, as it were. Without seeing,
he was only dimly conscious of the brass side of
the instrument, the illuminated part of the tablecloth, a sheet
of notepaper, the foot of the lamp, and the darkened
room beyond. Suddenly his attention drifted from one eye to
the other. The tablecloth was of the material called tapestry,

(09:54):
by shopmen, and rather brightly colored. The pattern was in gold,
with a small mount of crimson and pale blue upon
a grayish ground. At one point the pattern seemed displaced,
and there was a vibrating movement of the colors. At
this point Haply suddenly moved his head back and looked
with both eyes. His mouth fell open with astonishment. It

(10:16):
was a large moth or butterfly, its wings spread in
butterfly fashion. It was strange it should be in the
room at all, for the windows were closed. Strange that
it should not have attracted his attention when fluttering to
its present position. Strange that it should match the tablecloth.
Stranger far that to him Haply, the great entomologist, it

(10:39):
was altogether unknown. There was no delusion. It was crawling
slowly towards the foot of the lamp. New Genus by
heavens and in England, said happily staring. Then he suddenly
thought of Pawkins. Nothing would have maddened Pawkins more, and
Pawkins was dead. Something about the head and body of

(11:00):
the insect became singularly suggestive of Pawkins. Just as the
chest king had been confound. Pawkins said Haply, but I
must catch this, And, looking round him for some means
of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair.
Suddenly the insect rose struck the edge of the lamp shade.

(11:20):
Happily heard the ping, and vanished into the shadow. In
a moment, Happily had whipped off the shade, so that
the whole room was illuminated. The thing had disappeared, but
soon his practiced I detected it upon the wallpaper near
the door. He went towards it, poising the lamp shade
for capture. Before he was within striking distance, however, it

(11:43):
had risen and was fluttering round the room. After the
fashion of its kind, it flew with sudden starts and turns,
seeming to vanish here and reappear there. Once Happily struck
and missed. Then again the third time he hit his microscope.
The instrument swayed, struck and overturned the lamp and fell

(12:04):
noisily upon the floor. The lamp turned over on the
table and very luckily went out. Haply was left in
the dark. With a start, he felt the strange moth
blunder into his face. It was maddening. He had no lights.
If he opened the door of the room, the thing
would get away. In the darkness, he saw Pawkins quite

(12:26):
distinctly laughing at him. Pawkins had ever an oily laugh.
He swore furiously and stamped his foot on the floor.
There was a timid rapping at the door. Then it opened,
perhaps a foot and very slowly. The alarmed face of
the landlady appeared behind a pink candle flame. She wore
a nightcap over her gray hair, and had some purple

(12:46):
garment over her shoulders. What was that fearful smash? She said,
has anything? The strange moth appeared fluttering about the chink
of the door. Shut that door, said happily, and suddenly
rushed at her. The door slammed hastily. Haply was left
alone in the dark. Then, in the pause he heard

(13:08):
his landlady's scuttle upstairs, lock her door, and drag something
heavy across the room and put against it. It became
evident to Haply that his conduct and appearance had been
strange and alarming. Confound the moth and Pawkins. However, it
was a pity to lose the moth. Now he felt
his way into the hall and found the matches. After

(13:30):
sending his hat down upon the floor with a noise
like a drum. With the lighted candle, he returned to
the sitting room. No moth was to be seen, yet
once for a moment it seemed that the thing was
fluttering round his head. Haply very suddenly decided to give
up the moth and go to bed, but he was
excited all night long. His sleep was broken by dreams

(13:53):
of the moth, Pawkins, and his landlady. Twice in the
night he turned out and soused his head in cold water.
One thing was very clear to him. His landlady could
not possibly understand about the strange moth, especially as he
had failed to catch it. No one but an entomologist
would understand quite how he felt. She was probably frightened

(14:15):
at his behavior, and yet he failed to see how
he could explain it. He decided to say nothing further
about the events of last night. After breakfast, he saw
her in her garden and decided to go out and
talk to reassure her. He talked to her about beans
and potatoes, bees, caterpillars, and the price of fruit. She
replied in her usual manner, but she looked at him

(14:37):
a little suspiciously, and kept walking as he walked, so
that there was always a bed of flowers, or a
row of beans, or something of the sort between them.
After a while, he began to feel singularly irritated at this,
and to conceal his vexation, went indoors and presently went
out for a walk. The moth or butterfly trailing an
odd flavor of pawkins with it coming into that walk,

(15:01):
though he did his best to keep his mind off it.
Once he saw it quite distinctly with its wings flattened
out upon the old stone wall that runs along the
west edge of the park. But going up to it,
he found it was only two lumps of gray and
yellow lichen. This, said, haply, is the reverse of mimicry.
Instead of a butterfly looking like a stone, here is

(15:22):
a stone looking like a butterfly. Once something hovered and
fluttered round his head, but by an effort of will,
he drove that impression out of his mind again. In
the afternoon, happily called upon the vicar and argued with
him upon theological questions. They sat in the little arbor
covered with brier and smoked as they wrangled. Look at

(15:44):
that moth, said Haply, suddenly, pointing to the edge of
the wooden table where, said the vicar. You don't see
a moth on the edge of the table there, said Haply.
Certainly not, said the vicar Haply, with thunderstres he gasped.
The vicar was staring at him. Clearly the man saw nothing.

(16:06):
The eye of faith is no better than the eye
of science, said Haply, awkwardly. I don't see your point,
said the vicar, thinking it was part of the argument.
That night, Happily found the moth crawling over his counterpane.
He sat on the edge of the bed in his
shirt sleeves and reasoned with himself. Was it pure hallucination?

(16:27):
He knew he was slipping, and he battled for his
sanity with the same silent energy he had formerly displayed
against Pawkins. So persistent is mental habit that he felt
as if it were still a struggle with Pawkins. He
was well versed in psychology. He knew that such visual
illusions do come as a result of mental strain. But

(16:47):
the point was he did not only see the moth,
he had heard it when it touched the edge of
the lampshade, and afterwards, when it hit against the wall
and he had felt it strike his face in the dark,
he looked at it. It was not at all dream like,
but perfectly clear and solid. Looking in the candlelight, he
saw the hairy body and the short, feathery antennae, the

(17:10):
jointed legs, even a place where the down was rubbed
from the wing. He suddenly felt angry with himself for
being afraid of a little insect. His landlady had got
the servant to sleep with her that night because she
was afraid to be alone. In addition, she had locked
the door and put the chest of drawers against it.
They listened and talked in whispers after they had gone

(17:32):
to bed, but nothing occurred to alarm them. About eleven,
they had ventured to put the candle out and had
both dozed off to sleep. They woke up with a
start and sat up in bed, listening in the darkness.
Then they heard slippered feet going to and fro. In
Hapley's room, a chair was overturned and there was a

(17:53):
violent dab at the wall. Then a china mantle ornament
smashed upon the fender. Suddenly, the door of the room opened,
and they heard him upon the landing. They clung to
one another listening. He seemed to be dancing upon the staircase.
Now he would go down three or four steps quickly,
then up again, then hurry down into the hall. They

(18:15):
heard the umbrella stand go over, and the fanlight break.
Then the bolt shot and the chain rattled. He was
opening the door. They hurried to the window. It was
a dim, gray night, an almost unbroken sheet of watery
cloud was sweeping across the moon, and the hedge and
trees in front of the house were black against the
pale roadway. They saw Haply, looking like a ghost, in

(18:38):
his shirt and white trousers, running to and fro in
the road and beating the air. Now he would stop.
Now he would dart very rapidly at something invisible. Now
he would move upon it with stealthy strides. At last
he went out of sight up the road towards the down. Then,
while they argued who should go down and lock the door,
he returned. He was walking very fast, and he came

(19:01):
straight into the house, closed the door carefully, and went
quietly up to his bedroom. Then everything was silent. Missus
Colville said Haply, calling down the staircase next morning. I
hope I did not alarm you last night. You may
well ask that, said missus Colville. The fact is I

(19:21):
am a sleepwalker, and the last two nights I have
been without my sleeping mixture. There is nothing to be
alarmed about. Really, I am sorry I made such an
ass of myself. I will go over the down to
Shoreham and get some stuff to make me sleep soundly.
I ought to have done that yesterday, But halfway over
the down by the chalk pits, the moth came upon

(19:44):
Happily again, he went on trying to keep his mind
upon chess problems, but it was no good. The thing
fluttered into his face and he struck at it with
his hat in self defense. Then rage, the old rage,
the rage he had so often felt again pawkins came
upon him again. He went on leaping and striking at

(20:05):
the eddying insect. Suddenly he trod on nothing and fell headlong.
There was a gap in his sensations, and happily found
himself sitting on the heap of flints in front of
the opening of the chalkpits, with a leg twisted back
under him. The strange moth was still fluttering round his head.
He struck at it with his hand, and turning his head,

(20:26):
saw two men approaching him. One was the village doctor.
It occurred to haply that this was lucky. Then it
came into his mind with extraordinary vividness that no one
would ever be able to see the strange moth except himself,
and that it behooved him to keep silent about it.
Late that night, however, after his broken leg was set,

(20:48):
he was feverish and forgot his self restraint. He was
lying flat on his bed, and he began to run
his eyes round the room to see if the moth
was still about. He tried not to do this, but
it was no good. He soon caught sight of the
thing resting close to his hand by the night light,
on the green tablecloth. The wings quivered with a sudden

(21:10):
wave of anger. He smote at it with his fist,
and the nurse woke up with a shriek. He had
missed it, that moth, he said, And then it was
fancy nothing. All the time, he could see quite clearly
the insect going round the cornice and darting across the room,
and he could also see that the nurse saw nothing
of it and looked at him strangely. He must keep

(21:32):
himself in hand. He knew he was a lost man
if he did not keep himself in hand. But as
the knight waned, the fever grew upon him, and the
very dread he had of seeing the moth made him
see it about five, just as the dawn was gray.
He tried to get out of bed and catch it,
though his leg was afire with pain. The nurse had

(21:53):
to struggle with him. On account of this, they tied
him down to the bed. At this the moth grew bolder,
and once he felt it settle in his hair. Then,
because he struck out violently with his arms, they tied
these also. At this the moth came and crawled over
his face, and happily wept, swore, screamed, prayed for them

(22:14):
to take it off him. Unavailingly. The doctor was a blockhead,
a just qualified general practitioner, and quite ignorant of mental science.
He simply said there was no moth. Had he possessed
the wit, he might still perhaps have saved Haply from
his fate by entering into his delusion and covering his

(22:34):
face with gauze. As he prayed might be done. But
as I say, the doctor was a blockhead, and until
the leg was healed, happily was kept tied to his bed,
and with the imaginary moth crawling over him. It never
left him while he was awake, and it grew to
a monster in his dreams. While he was awake, he
longed for sleep, and from sleep he awoke screaming. So

(22:57):
now Haply is spending the remainder of his days in
a padded room, worried by a moth that no one
else can see. The asylum doctor calls at hallucination, but Haply,
when he is in his easier mood and can talk,
says it is the ghost of Pawkins, and consequently a
unique specimen and well worth the trouble of catching