H. G. Wells - "The Purple Pileus" - 1896

🎩 H.G. Wells - "The Purple Pileus" (1896) 🍄✨

A surreal tale of rebellion, transformation, and the intoxicating lure of freedom! 🌌🌿 Mr. Coombes, a timid shopkeeper trapped in an oppressive marriage and stifled by societal expectations, stumbles upon an otherworldly escape when he discovers a strange, glowing purple mushroom in the countryside. 🍄💜Driven by despair, he eats the mushroom in an act of defiance. What follows is an extraordinary shift—his mundane world takes on vivid colors, and his timid demeanor is replaced with boldness and clarity. 💥🌈 Suddenly, Coombes finds the strength to confront the people who have long suppressed him, including his domineering wife and her overbearing family. 🕴️⚡But the tale teeters on the edge of absurdity and danger. Is the mushroom a gift of liberation or a gateway to madness? 🍃🌀 Wells deftly blends dark humor and societal critique, exploring themes of conformity, individual freedom, and the thin line between courage and recklessness. 🕯️💭Both a biting satire of Victorian norms and a whimsical exploration of self-discovery, "The Purple Pileus" asks: What are we willing to risk to reclaim our own lives? 🌒🍷A poignant and peculiar journey into the transformative power of rebellion. 💜✨

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
H. G. Wells The Purple Pilius, published in eighteen ninety six.
Mister Coonbs was sick of life. He walked away from
his unhappy home, and sick not only of his own existence,
but of everybody else's. Turned aside down gaswork lane to
avoid the town, and crossing the wooden bridge that goes

(00:22):
over the canal to Starling's cottages, was presently alone in
the damp pine woods and out of sight and sound
of human habitation. He would stand it no longer, he
repeated aloud, with blasphemies unusual to him, that he would
stand it no longer. He was a pale faced little
man with dark eyes and a fine and very black mustache.

(00:45):
He had a very stiff upright collar, slightly frayed that
gave him an illusory double chin, and his overcoat, albeit shabby,
was trimmed with astrakan. His gloves were a bright brown
with black stripes over the knuckles and split at the
finger ends. His appearance. His wife had said once in
the deer dead days beyond recall, before he married her,

(01:07):
that is was military, But now she called him. It
seems a dreadful thing to tell of between husband and wife.
But she called him a little grub. It wasn't the
only thing she had called him either. The row had
arisen about that beastly Jenny Again. Jenny was his wife's friend,
and by no invitation of mister Coombe's, she came in

(01:30):
every blessed Sunday to dinner and made a shindy all
the afternoon. She was a big, noisy girl with a
taste for loud colors and a strident laugh. And this
Sunday she had outdone all her previous intrusions by bringing
in a fellow with her, a chap as showy as herself,
and mister Coombs, in a starchy, clean collar in his

(01:52):
sunday frock coat, had sat dumb and wrathful at his
own table while his wife and her guests talked foolishly
in undesirable and laughed aloud. Well he stood that, And
after dinner, which as usual was late, what must miss
Jenny do but go to the piano and play banjo
tunes for all the world, as if it were a

(02:13):
week day. Flesh and blood could not endure such goings on.
They would hear next door, they would hear in the road.
It was a public announcement of their disrepute. He had
to speak. He had felt himself go pale, and a
kind of rigor had affected his respiration. As he delivered himself.

(02:34):
He had been sitting on one of the chairs by
the window. The new guest had taken possession of the
arm chair. He turned his head. Sunday, he said over
the collar, in the voice of one who warns Sunday.
What people call a nasty tone? It was. Jenny had

(02:55):
kept on playing, but his wife, who was looking through
some music that was piled on the top of the piano,
had stared at him. What's wrong now? She said? Can't
people enjoy themselves? I don't mind rational enjoyment at all,
said little Coombs. But I ain't a going to have
week day tunes playing on a Sunday in this house.

(03:19):
What's wrong with my playing now? Said Jenny, stopping and
twirling round on the music stool with a monstrous rustle
of flounces. Kombs saw it was going to be a row,
and opened too vigorously, as is common with your timid,
nervous men all the world over. Steady on with that
music stool, said he. It ain't made four evy weights

(03:45):
never you mind about weights, said Jenny, incensed. What was
you saying behind my back about my playing? Surely you
don't old with not having a bit of music on
a Sunday, mister Coombs, said the new guest, leaning back
in the arm chair, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke
and smiling in a kind of pitying way. And simultaneously

(04:08):
his wife said something to Jenny about never mind, Bim,
you go on, Jinny I do, said mister Coombs, addressing
the new guest. May I arst why, said the new guest,
evidently enjoying both his cigarette and the prospect of an argument.
He was, by the bye, a lank young man, very

(04:29):
stylishly dressed in bright drab, with a white cravat and
a pearl and silver pin. It had been better taste
to come in a black coat, mister Coomb's thought, because
began mister Coombs, it don't suit me. I'm a business man.
I ave to study my connection, rational enjoyment, his connection,

(04:53):
said missus Coombs scornfully. That's what he's always a saying.
We got to do this and we got to do that.
If you don't mean to study my connection, said mister Coombs,
what did you marry me for I wonder, said Jenny,
and turned back to the piano. I never saw such
a man as you, said, Missus Coombs. You've altered all

(05:16):
round since we were married before. Then Jenny began at
the turn, turn, turn again. Look here, said mister Coombs,
driven at last to revolt, standing up and raising his voice.
I tell you I won't have that. The frock coat
heaved with his indignation. No six lents now, said the

(05:40):
long young man in drab sitting up. Who the juice
are you, said mister Coombs fiercely, whereupon they all began
talking at once. The new guest said he was Jenny's
intended and meant to protect her, and mister Coombs said
he was welcome to do so anywhere but in his
mister Coomb's house. And Missus Coombs said he ought to

(06:03):
be ashamed of insulting his guests, and as I have
already mentioned that, he was getting a regular little grub.
And the end was that mister Coombs ordered his visitors
out of the house, and they wouldn't go, and so
he said he would go himself. With his face burning
and tears of excitement in his eyes, he went into
the passage, and as he struggled with his overcoat his

(06:26):
frock coat sleeves got concertined up his arm and gave
a brush at his silk hat. Jenny began again at
the piano and strummed him insultingly out of the house.
Turn turn, turn, he slammed the shop door so that
the house quivered. That, briefly was the immediate making of
his mood. You will perhaps begin to understand his disgust

(06:49):
with existence. As he walked along the muddy path under
the furs. It was late October, and the ditches and
heaps of fur needles were gorgeous with clumps of fungi.
He recapitulated the melancholy history of his marriage. It was
brief and commonplace enough. He now perceived with sufficient clearness

(07:10):
that his wife had married him out of a natural
curiosity and in order to escape from her worrying, laborious,
and uncertain life in the workroom. And like the majority
of her class, she was far too stupid to realize
that it was her duty to co operate with him
in his business. She was greedy of enjoyment, loquacious and

(07:30):
socially minded, and evidently disappointed to find the restraints of
poverty still hanging about her. His worries exasperated her, and
the slightest attempt to control her proceedings resulted in a
charge of grumbling. Why couldn't he be nice as he
used to be? And Combs was such a harmless little man,
too nourished mentally on self help and with a meager

(07:53):
ambition of self denial and competition that was to end
in a sufficiency. Then Jenny came in as a female Mephistopheles,
a gabbling chronicle of fellers, and was always wanting his
wife to go to theaters and all that, And in
addition were ants of his wife and cousins male and female,

(08:13):
to eat up capital, insult him personally, upset business arrangements,
annoy good customers, and generally blight his life. It was
not the first occasion by many that mister Coombs had
fled his home in wrath and indignation and something like fear,
vowing furiously and even allowed that he wouldn't stand it,
and so frothing away his energy along the line of

(08:34):
least resistance. But never before had he been quite so
sick of life as on this particular Sunday afternoon. The
Sunday dinner may have had its share in his despair,
and the grayness of the sky. Perhaps too, he was
beginning to realize his unendurable frustration as a business man
as the consequence of his marriage presently bankruptcy, and after

(08:58):
that perhaps might have reason to repent when it was
too late. And destiny, as I have already intimated, had
planted the path through the wood with evil smelling fungi,
thickly and variously planted it, not only on the right side,
but on the left. A small shopman is in such
a melancholy position if his wife turns out a disloyal partner.

(09:22):
His capital is all tied up in his business, and
to leave her means to join the unemployed in some
strange part of the earth. The luxuries of divorce are
beyond him altogether, so that the good old tradition of
marriage for better or worse holds inexorably for him, and
things work up to tragic culminations. Bricklayers kick their wives

(09:44):
to death, and dukes betray theirs. But it is among
the small clerks and shopkeepers nowadays that it comes most
often to a cutting of throats. Under the circumstances, it
is not so very remarkable, and you must take it
as charitably as you can. That the mind of mister
Bombs ran for a while on some such glorious close
to his disappointed hopes, and that he thought of razors, pistols,

(10:06):
bread knives, and touching letters to the coroner, denouncing his
enemies by name, and praying piously for forgiveness. After a time,
his fierceness gave way to melancholia. He had been married
in this very overcoat, in his first and only frock
coat that was buttoned up beneath it. He began to
recall there, courting along this very walk, his years of

(10:29):
penurius saving to get capital, and the bright hopefulness of
his marrying days. For it all to work out like this.
Was there no sympathetic ruler anywhere in the world. He
reverted to death as a topic. He thought of the
canal he had just crossed, and doubted whether he shouldn't
stand with his head out even in the middle. And

(10:51):
it was while drowning was in his mind that the
purple pilias caught his eye. He looked at it mechanically
for a moment and stopped and stooped towards it to
pick it up, under the impression that it was some
such small leather object as a purse. Then he saw
that it was the purple top of a fungus, a
peculiarly poisonous looking purple, slimy, shiny, and emitting a sour odor.

(11:15):
He hesitated with his hand an inch or so from it,
and the thought of poison crossed his mind. With that
he picked the thing and stood up again with it
in his hand. The odor was certainly strong, acrid, but
by no means disgusting. He broke off a piece, and
the fresh surface was a creamy white that changed like

(11:37):
magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish
green color. It was even an inviting looking change. He
broke off two other pieces to see it repeated. They
were wonderful things, these fungi, thought mister Coombs, and all
of them the deadliest poisons, as his father had often
told him, deadly poisons. There is no time like the

(12:00):
present for a rash resolve. Why not here and now,
thought mister Coombs. He tasted a little piece, a very
little piece, indeed a mere crumb. It was so pungent
that he almost spat it out again. Then merely hot
and full flavored, a kind of German mustard with a
touch of horse radish and well mushroom. He swallowed it

(12:24):
in the excitement of the moment. Did he like it?
Or did he not? His mind was curiously careless. He
would try another bit. It really wasn't bad, it was good.
He forgot his troubles in the interest of the immediate moment.
Playing with death it was. He took another bite, and

(12:45):
then deliberately finished a mouthful. A curious tingling sensation began
in his finger tips and toes. His pulse began to
move faster. The blood in his ears sounded like a
mill race. Try bit more, said mister Coombs. He turned
and looked about him, and found his feet unsteady. He

(13:08):
saw and struggled towards a little patch of purple a
dozen yards away. Joel goo stuff, said mister Coombs. E
la more yi dot. He pitched forward and fell on
his face, his hands outstretched towards the cluster of pelay,
But he did not eat any more of them. He

(13:28):
forgot forthwith He rolled over and sat up with a
look of astonishment on his face. His carefully brushed silk
hat had rolled away towards the ditch. He pressed his
hand to his brow. Something had happened, but he could
not rightly determine what it was. Anyhow, he was no

(13:49):
longer dull. He felt bright, cheerful, and his throat was afire.
He laughed in the sudden gayety of his heart. Had
he been dull, he did not know, But at any
rate he would be dull no longer. He got up
and stood unsteadily, regarding the universe with an agreeable smile.

(14:10):
He began to remember. He could not remember very well
because of a steam roundabout that was beginning in his head.
And he knew he had been disagreeable at home, just
because they wanted to be happy. They were quite right,
life should be as gay as possible. He would go
home and make it up and reassure them. And why

(14:31):
not take some of this delightful toadstool with him for
them to eat, a hatful, no less, some of those
red ones with white spots as well, and a few yellow.
He had been a dull dog, an enemy to merriment.
He would make up for it. It would be gay
to turn his coat sleeves inside out and stick some

(14:53):
yellow gorse into his waistcoat pockets. Then home singing for
a jolly evening. After the departure of mister Coombs, Jenny
discontinued playing and turned round on the music stool again.
What a fuss about nothing, said Jenny. You see, mister Clarence,

(15:13):
what I've got to put up with, said missus Coombs.
He is a bit hasty, said mister Clarence. Judicially, He
ain't got the slightest sense of our position, said missus Coombs.
That's what I complain of. He cares for nothing but
his old shop. And if I have a bit of company,
or buy anything to keep myself decent, or get any

(15:35):
little thing I want out of the housekeeping money. There's
disagreeables economy, he says, struggle for life and all that.
He lies awake of nights about it, worrying how he
can screw me out of a shilling. He wanted us
to eat Dorset butter once, if once I was to
give in to him there, of course, said Jenny. If

(16:00):
a man values a woman, said mister Clarence, lounging back
in the arm chair, he must be prepared to make
sacrifices for her. For my own part, said mister Clarence,
with his eye on Jenny. I shouldn't think of marrying
till I was in a position to do the thing
in style. It's downright selfishness. A man ought to go

(16:20):
through the rough and tumble by himself, and not drag her.
I don't agree altogether with that, said Jenny. I don't
see why a man shouldn't have a woman's help, provided
he doesn't treat her meanly. You know it's meanness you
wouldn't believe, said missus Coombs. But I was a fool
to ave im. I might ave known if it a

(16:45):
d had been for my father, we shouldn't ave add
not a carriage to our wedding. Lord. He didn't stick
out at that, said mister Clarence, quite shocked. Said he
wanted the money for his stock or some such rubbish.
Why he wouldn't have a woman in to help me

(17:05):
once a week if it wasn't for my standing out
plucky and the fusses he makes about money. Comes to
me well pretty near crying with sheets of paper and figures.
If only we can tide over this year, he says.
The business is bound to go. If only we can
tide over this year, I says, then it'll be if

(17:27):
only we can tide over next year. I know you,
I says, and you don't catch me screwing myself lean
and ugly. Why didn't you marry a slavey, I says,
if you wanted one instead of a respectable girl. I says, so,
Missus Coombs. But we will not follow this uneedifying conversation further.

(17:50):
Suffice it that mister Coombs was very satisfactorily disposed of,
and they had a snug little time round the fire.
Then Missus Coombs went to get the tea, and Jenny
sat coquettishly on the arm of mister Clarence's chair until
the tea things clattered outside. What was that I heard,
asked Missus Coombs playfully as she entered. And there was

(18:12):
badinage about kissing. They were just sitting down to the
little circular table when the first intimation of mister Kombe's
return was heard. This was a fumbling at the latch
of the front door. Herese, my Lord said, Missus Coombs
went out like a lion and comes back like a lamb.
All lay something fell over in the shop a chair,

(18:37):
it sounded like. Then there was a sound as of
some complicated step exercise in the passage. Then the door
opened and Coombs appeared. But it was Coomb's transfigure. The
immaculate collar had been torn carelessly from his throat. His
carefully brushed silk hat, half full of a crush of fungi,

(18:57):
was under one arm. His coat was in side out,
and his waistcoat adorned with bunches of yellow blossomed furs.
These little eccentricities of Sunday costume, however, were quite overshadowed
by the change in his face. It was livid white,
His eyes were unnaturally large and bright, and his pale
blue lips were drawn back in a cheerless grin. Mary,

(19:21):
He said he had stopped dancing to open the door.
Rational enjoyment dance. He made three fantastic steps into the
room and stood bowing. Jim shrieked, Missus Coombs and mister
Clarence sat petrified with a dropping lower jaw. Tea, said

(19:45):
mister Coombs. Joel thing tea toe's stools two bracher. He's drunk,
said Jenny in a weak voice. Never before had she
seen this intense pallor in a drunken man or such
shining dilated eyes. Mister Coombs held out a handful of

(20:05):
scarlet agaric to mister Clarence. Joe Stuff said he tossum.
At that moment he was genial. Then at the sight
of their startled faces, he changed with the swift transition
of insanity into overbearing fury, and it seemed as if
he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of his departure. In

(20:27):
such a huge voice as Missus Coombs had never heard before,
he shouted, my house, I'm master, heir, eat what I
give yer. He bawled this, as it seemed, without an effort,
without a violent gesture, Standing there as motionless as one
who whispers holding out a handful of fungus, Clarence approved

(20:50):
himself a coward. He could not meet the mad fury
in Coombe's eyes. He rose to his feet, pushing back
his chair and turned stooping. At that Coombs rushed at him.
Jenny saw her opportunity, and with the ghost of a shriek,
made for the door. Missus Coombs followed her. Clarence tried

(21:12):
to dodge over went the tea table with a smash
as Coombs clutched him by the collar and tried to
thrust the fungus into his mouth. Clarence was content to
leave his collar behind him and shot out into the passage,
with red patches of fly agaric still adherent to his face.
Shut I'm in, cried Missus Coombs, and would have closed

(21:35):
the door, but her supports deserted her. Jenny saw the
shop door open and vanished thereby locking it behind her,
while Clarence went on hastily into the kitchen. Mister Coombs
came heavily against the door, and Missus Coombs, finding the
key was inside, fled upstairs and locked herself in the
spare bedroom. So the new convert to Shoi de vivre

(21:58):
emerged upon the passage, his decorations a little scattered, but
that respectable hatful of fungi still under his arm. He
hesitated at the three ways and decided on the kitchen,
whereupon Clarence, who was fumbling with the key, gave up
the attempt to imprison his host and fled into the scullery,
only to be captured before he could open the door

(22:20):
into the yard. Mister Clarence is singularly reticent of the
details of what occurred, it seems that mister Coombe's transitory
irritation had vanished again, and he was once more a
genial playfellow, and as there were knives and meat choppers about,
Clarence very generously resolved to humor him and so avoid

(22:40):
anything tragic. It is beyond dispute that mister Coombs played
with mister Clarence to his heart's content. They could not
have been more playful and familiar if they had known
each other for years. He insisted gaily on Clarence trying
the fungi, and after a friendly tussle, was smitten with
remorse at the mess he was making of his guest's face.

(23:03):
It also appears that Clarence was dragged under the sink
and his face scrubbed with the blacking brush, he being
still resolved to humor the lunatic at any cost, and
that finally, in a somewhat disheveled, chipped and discolored condition,
he was assisted to his coat and shown out by
the back door, the shopway being barred by Jenny. Mister

(23:24):
Coombe's wandering thoughts then turned to Jenny. Jenny had been
unable to unfasten the shop door, but she shot the
bolts against mister Coombe's latch key, and remained in possession
of the shop for the rest of the evening. It
would appear that mister Coombs then returned to the kitchen,
still in pursuit of gaiety, and albeit a strict good templar,

(23:46):
drank or spilt down the front of the first and
only frock coat no less than five bottles of the
stout Missus Coombs insisted upon having for her health's sake.
He made cheerful noises by breaking off the necks of
the bottles with several of his wife's wedding present dinner plates,
and during the earlier part of this great drunk he
sang divers merry ballads. He cut his finger rather badly

(24:09):
with one of the bottles, the only bloodshed in this story.
And what with that and the systematic convulsion of his
inexperienced physiology by the licorice brand of Missus coombstout, it
may be the evil of the fungus poison was somehow allayed.
But we prefer to draw a veil over the concluding
incidents of this Sunday afternoon. They ended in the coal

(24:30):
cellar in a deep and healing sleep. An interval of
five years elapsed. Again. It was a Sunday afternoon in October,
and again mister Coombs walked through the pine wood beyond
the canal. He was still the same dark eyed, black
mustached little man that he was at the outset of
the story, but his double chin was now scarcely so

(24:52):
illusory as it had been. His overcoat was new, with
a velvet lapel and a stylish collar with turn down
corners free of any coarse starchiness, had replaced the original
all round article. His hat was glossy, his gloves newish,
though one finger had split and been carefully mended. And

(25:12):
a casual observer would have noticed about him a certain
rectitude of bearing, a certain erectness of head that marks
the man who thinks well of himself. He was a
master now with three assistants beside him, walked a larger,
sunburnt parody of himself. His brother Tom, just back from Australia.
They were recapitulating their early struggles, and mister Coombs had

(25:36):
just been making a financial statement. It's a very nice
little business, Jim, said, brother Tom, in these days of competition,
you're jolly lucky to have worked it up so. And
you're jolly lucky too to have a wife whose willing
to help like yours does. Between ourselves, said mister Coombs.

(25:58):
It wasn't always so. It wasn't always like this. To
begin with. The missus was a bit giddy. Girls are
funny creatures, dear me. Yes, you'd hardly think it. But
she was downright extravagant and always having slaps at me.

(26:18):
I was a bit too easy and loving and all that.
And she thought the whole blessed show was run for her.
Turned the poos into a regular caravansery, always having her
relations and girls from business in and their chaps comic
songs At Sunday it was getting to and driving trade away,
and she was making eyes at the chaps too. I

(26:41):
tell you, Tom, the place wasn't my own. Shouldn't have
thought it. It was so well. I reasoned with her.
I said, I ain't a duke to keep a wife
like a pet animal. I married you four Elp and company.
I said you got to belp and pull the business through.

(27:04):
She wouldn't ear of it very well, I says I'm
a mild man till I'm roused, I says, And it's
getting to that. But she wouldn't bear of no warnings. Well,
it's the way with women, she didn't think I added
in me to be roused. Women of her sort between ourselves,

(27:26):
Tom don't respect a man until they're a bit afraid
of him. So I just broke out to show her.
In comes a girl named Jenny that used to work
with her and her chap. We add a bit of
a row and I came out ere. It was just
such another day as this, and I thought it all out.
Then I went back and pitched into them. You did,

(27:51):
I did? I was mad. I can tell you I
wasn't going to it er if I could help it.
So I went back and licked into the chap just
to show Er what I could do. E was a
big chap too. Well. I chucked him and smashed things
about and gave her a scaring and she ran up

(28:12):
and locked air zelf into the spare room. Well that's
all I says to Er the next morning. Now you know,
I says what I'm like when I'm roused, And I
didn't have to say anything more. And you've been happy
ever after. Eh. So to speak, there's nothing like putting

(28:34):
your foot down with them. If it a d and
been for that afternoon, I should have been tramping the
roads now, and she'd have been grumbling at me and
all her family, grumbling for bringing her to poverty. I
know their little ways, but we're all right now, and
it's a very decent little business, as you say. They

(28:55):
proceeded on their way meditatively. Women are funny creatures, said
brother Tom. They want a firm hand, says Coombs. What
a lot of these funguses there are about here, remarked
Brother Tom. Presently I can't see what use they are
in the world. Mister Coombs looked. Idacity there sent for

(29:18):
some wise purpose, said mister Coombs. And that was as
much thanks as the purple pillias ever got for maddening
this absurd little man to the pitch of decisive action,
and so altering the whole course of his life.