Filmer - H.G. Wells

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Filmer by H. G. Wells. In truth, the mastery of
flying was the work of thousands of men, this man
a suggestion, and that an experiment, until at last only
one vigorous intellectual effort was needed to finish the work.

(00:23):
But the inexorable injustice of the popular mind has decided
that of all these thousands, one man, and that a
man who never flew, should be chosen as the discoverer,
just as it has chosen to honor Watt as the
discoverer of steam, and stevenson of the steam engine. And surely,
of all honored names, none is so grotesquely and tragically

(00:46):
honored as poor Filmers, the timid intellectual creature who solved
the problem over which the world had hung perplexed and
a little fearful for so many generations, the man who
pressed the button that has changed peace and warfare, and
well nigh every condition of human life and happiness. Never
has that recurring wonder of the littleness of the scientific man,

(01:10):
in the face of the greatness of his science, found
such an amazing exemplification. Much concerning Filmer is and must
remain profoundly obscure. Filmers attract no Boswell's but the essential
facts and the concluding scene are clear enough, and there
are letters and notes and casual allusions to piece the

(01:30):
whole together. And this is the story one makes, putting
this thing with that of Filmer's life and death. The
first authentic trace of Filmer on the page of history
is a document in which he applies for admission as
a paid student in physics to the Government laboratories at
South Kensington, and therein he describes himself as the son

(01:53):
of a military bootmaker cobbler in the vulgar tongue of Dover,
and lists his various execs emanation proofs of a high
proficiency in chemistry and mathematics, with a certain want of dignity.
He seeks to enhance these attainments by a profession of
poverty and disadvantages, and he writes of the laboratory as

(02:14):
the gowl of his ambitions, a slip which reinforces his
claim to have devoted himself exclusively to the exact sciences.
The document is endorsed in a manner that shows Filmer
was admitted to this coveted opportunity, but until quite recently
no traces of his success in the government institution could

(02:34):
be found. It has now, however, been shown that, in
spite of his professional zeal for research, Filmer, before he
had held this scholarship a year, was tempted by the
possibility of a small increase in his immediate income, to
abandon it in order to become one of the nine
pence an hour computers employed by a well known professor

(02:56):
in his vicarious conduct of those extensive researches of him
is in solar physics, researches which are still a matter
of perplexity to astronomers afterwards, for the space of seven years,
save for the past lists of the London University, in
which he has seen to climb slowly to a double
first class BSc In mathematics and chemistry, there is no

(03:19):
evidence of how Filmer passed his life. No one knows
how or where he lived, though it seems highly probable
that he continued to support himself by teaching while he
prosecuted the studies necessary for this distinction. And then, oddly
enough one finds him mentioned in the correspondence of Arthur Hicks,

(03:39):
the poet. You remember Filmer, Hicks writes to his friend Vance, well,
he hasn't altered a bit the same hostile mumble and
the nasty chin. How Canaman contrived to be always three
days from shaving and a sort of furtive air of
being engaged in sneak in front of one. Even his

(04:02):
coat and that frayed collar of his show no further
signs of the passing years. He was writing in the library,
and I sat down beside him in the name of
God's charity, whereupon he deliberately insulted me by covering up
his memoranda. It seems he has some brilliant research on hand,
that he suspects me, of all people, with a bodily

(04:24):
booklet of printing, of stealing. He has taken remarkable honors
at the university. He went through them with a sort
of hasty slobber, as though he feared I might interrupt
him before he had told me all. And he spoke
of taking his DSc as one might speak of taking
a cab. And he asked what I was doing, with

(04:45):
a sort of comparative accent, And his arm was spread
nervously positively, a protecting arm over the paper that hid
the precious idea, his one hopeful idea, poetry, he said, poetry.
And what do you profess to teach in it, Hicks
the things of provincial professor lying in the very act

(05:06):
of budding. And I thank the Lord devoutly that but
for the precious gift of indolence, I also might have
gone this way to d sc and destruction. A curious
little vignette that I am inclined to think caught Filmer
in or near the very birth of his discovery. Hicks
was wrong in anticipating a provincial professorship for Filmer. Our

(05:29):
next glimpse of him is lecturing on rubber and rubber
substitutes to the Society of Arts. He had become manager
to a great plastic substance manufactory, and at that time
it is now known he was a member of the
Aeronautical Society, albeit Pete contributed nothing to the discussions of
that body, preferring no doubt, to mature his great conception

(05:52):
without external assistance. And within two years of that paper
before the Society of Arts, he was hastily taking out
a number of patents and proclaiming in various undignified ways
the completion of the divergent inquiries which made his flying
machine possible. The first definite statement to that effect appeared

(06:12):
in a halfpenny evening paper through the agency of a
man who lodged in the same house with Filmer. His
final haste after his long laborious secret patients, seems to
have been due to a needless panic a bootle, the
notorious American scientific quack, having made an announcement that Filmer
interpreted wrongly as an anticipation of his idea. Now what

(06:36):
precisely was Filmer's idea really a very simple one? Before
his time, the pursuit of aeronautics had taken two divergent lines,
and had developed, on the one hand, balloons, large apparatus
lighter than air, easy in assent and comparatively safe in dissent,
but floating helplessly before any breeze that took them, And

(06:59):
on the other, flying machines that flew only in theory,
vast flat structures, heavier than air, propelled and kept up
by heavy engines, and for the most part smashing at
the first descent, but neglecting the fact that the inevitable
final collapse rendered them impossible. The weight of the flying
machines gave them this theoretical advantage that they could go

(07:22):
through the air against a wind, a necessary condition if
aerial navigation was to have any practical value. It is
Filmer's particular merit that he perceived the way in which
the contrasted and hitherto incompatible merits of balloon and heavy
flying machine might be combined in one apparatus, which should be,

(07:43):
at choice, either heavier or lighter than air. He took
hints from the contractile bladders of fish and the pneumatic
cavities of birds. He devised an arrangement of contractile and
absolutely closed balloons, which, when expanded, could lift the actual
flying apparatus with ease, and when retracted by the complicated

(08:04):
musculature he wove about them, were withdrawn almost completely into
the frame. And he built the large framework which these
balloons sustained of hollow, rigid tubes, the air in which,
by an ingenious contrivance, was automatically pumped out as the
apparatus fell, and which then remained exhausted so long as

(08:24):
the aeronaut desired. There were no wings or propellers to
his machine, such as there had been to all previous aeroplanes,
and the only engine required was the compact and powerful
little appliance needed to contract the balloons. He perceived that
such an apparatus as he had devised, might rise, with
frame exhausted and balloons expanded to a considerable height, might

(08:48):
then contract its balloons and let the air into its frame, and,
by an adjustment of its weights, slide down the air
in any desired direction. As it fell, it would accumulate
velocity and at the same time lose weight, and the
momentum accumulated by its downrush could be utilized by means
of a shifting of its weights to drive it up

(09:11):
in the air again as the balloons expanded. This conception,
which is still the structural conception of all successful flying machines, needed, however,
a vast amount of toil upon its details before it
could actually be realized, and such toil Filmer, as he
was accustomed to tell the numerous interviewers who crowded upon

(09:31):
him in his heyday of fame, ungrudgingly and unsparingly gave
His particular difficulty was the elastic lining of the contractile balloon.
He found he needed a new substance, and in the
discovery and manufacture of that new substance he had, as
he never failed to impress upon the interviewers performed a

(09:52):
far more arduous work than even in the actual achievement
of my seemingly greater discovery. But it must not be
imagined that these interviews followed hard upon Filmer's proclamation of
his invention, an interval of nearly five years elapsed, during
which he timidly remained at his rubber factory. He seems
to have been entirely dependent on his small income from

(10:15):
this source, making misdirected attempts to assure a quite indifferent
public that he had invented what he had invented. He
occupied the greater part of his leisure in the composition
of letters to the Scientific and Daily Press, and so forth,
stating precisely the net result of his contrivances, and demanding
financial aid that alone would have sufficed for the suppression

(10:39):
of his letters. He spent such holidays as he could
arrange in unsatisfactory interviews with the door keepers of leading
London papers. He was singularly not adapted for inspiring hall
porters with confidence, and he positively attempted to induce the
War Office to take up his work with him. There
remains a confidential letter from Major General Volley Fire to

(11:03):
the earl of frogs. The man's a crank and a
bounder to boot, says the Major General in his bluff,
sensible army way, and so left it open for the
Japanese to secure, as they subsequently did, the priority of
this side of warfare a priority they still, to our
great discomfort, Retaine. And then, by a stroke of luck,

(11:27):
the membrane filmer had invented for his contractile balloon was
discovered to be useful for the valves of a new
oil engine, and he obtained the means for making a
trial model of his invention. He threw up his rubber
factory appointment, desisted from all further writing, and, with a
certain secrecy that seems to have been an inseparable characteristic

(11:49):
of all his proceedings, set to work upon the apparatus.
He seems to have directed the making of its parts
and collected most of it in a room in Shoreditch,
but its final putting together was done at Dimchurch in Kent.
He did not make the affair large enough to carry
a man, but he made an extremely ingenious use of

(12:10):
what were then called the Marconi rays to control its flight.
The first flight of this first practicable flying machine took
place over some fields near Burford Bridge, near Height in Kent,
and Filmer followed and controlled its flight upon a specifically
constructed motor tricycle. The flight was, considering all things, an

(12:31):
amazing success. The apparatus was brought in a cart from
Dimchurch to Burford Bridge and ascended there to a height
of nearly three hundred feet. Swooped, thence very nearly back
to Dimchurch, came about in its sweep, rose again, circled,
and finally sank uninjured in a field behind the Burford
Bridge Inn. At its descent, a curious thing happened. Filmer

(12:56):
got off his tricycle, scrambled over the intervening nike, advanced
perhaps twenty yards towards his triumph, threw out his arms
in a strange gesticulation, and fell down in a dead feint.
Everyone could then recall the ghastliness of his features, and
all the evidence of extreme excitement they had observed throughout
the trial, things they might otherwise have forgotten. Afterwards, in

(13:21):
the inn he had an unaccountable gust of hysterical weeping. Altogether,
there were not twenty witnesses of this affair, and those
for the most part uneducated men. The new Romney doctor
saw the ascent but not the descent, his horse being
frightened by the electrical apparatus on Filmer's tricycle and giving

(13:42):
him a nasty spill. Two members of the Kent Constabulary
watched the affair from a cart in an unofficial spirit,
and a grocer calling round the marsh for orders, and
two lady cyclists seemed almost to complete the list of
educated people. There were two reporters present, one representing a

(14:02):
Folkstone paper and the other being a fourth class interviewer
and symposium journalist, whose expenses down Filmer anxiously as ever
for adequate advertisement, and now quite realizing the way in
which adequate advertisement may be obtained, had paid. The latter
was one of those writers who can throw a convincing

(14:23):
air of unreality over the most credible events, and his
half facetious account of the affair appeared in the magazine
page of a popular journal. But happily for Filmer, this
person's colloquial methods were more convincing. He went to offer
some further screed upon the subject to Banghurst, the proprietor

(14:44):
of the new paper and one of the ablest and
most unscrupulous men in London journalism, and Banghurst instantly seized
upon the situation. The interviewer vanishes from the narrative, no
doubt very doubtfully remunerated, and Banghurst, Banghurst himself, double chinned,
gray twill suit, abdomen, voice, gestures and all, appears at

(15:06):
Dymchurch following his large, unrivaled journalistic nose. He had seen
the whole thing at a glance, just what it was
and what it might be. At his touch, as it were,
Filmer's long pent investigations exploded into fame. He instantly and
most magnificently was a boom. One turns over the files

(15:28):
of the journals of the year of nineteen o seven
with a quite incredulous recognition of how swift and flaming
the boom of those days could be. The July papers
know nothing of flying, see nothing in flying, state by
a most effective silence that men never would, could or
should fly. In August, Flying and Filmer and flying, and

(15:50):
parachutes and aerial tactics, and the Japanese government and Filmer
and again flying shouldered the war in Yu Nan and
the gold mines of Upper Green off the leading page,
and Banghurst had given ten thousand pounds, and further Banghurst
was giving five thousand pounds, And Banghurst had devoted his
well known, magnificent but hitherto sterile private laboratories and several

(16:14):
acres of land near his private residence on the Surrey
Hills to the strenuous and violent completion banghurst fashion of
the life size, practicable flying machine. Meanwhile, in the sight
of privileged multitudes in the walled garden of the Banghurst
Town residence in Fulham, Filmer was exhibited at weekly garden parties,

(16:35):
putting the working model through its paces at enormous initial cost,
but with a final profit. The new paper presented its
readers with a beautiful photographic souvenir of the first of
these occasions. Here again, the correspondence of Arthur Hicks and
his friend Vance comes to our aid. I saw Filmer

(16:56):
in his glory, he writes, with just the touch of
envy natural to his position as a poet passe. The
man is brushed and shaved, dressed in the fashion of
a royal institution afternoon lecturer, the very newest shape in
frock coats and long patent shoes, and altogether in a
state of extraordinary streakiness, between an awlish great man and

(17:19):
a scarred, a bashed, self conscious bounder, cruelly exposed. He
hasn't a touch of color in the skin of his face.
His head juts forward, and those queer, little dark amber
eyes of his watch furtively round him for his fame.
His clothes fit perfectly, and yet sit upon him as
though he had bought them ready made. He speaks in

(17:40):
a mumble still, but he says, you perceive indistinctly enormous
self assertive things. He backs into the rear of groups
by instinct. If Banghurst drops the line for a minute,
And when he walks across Banghurst's lawn, one perceives him
a little out of breath and going jerky, and that
his weak white hands are clenched. His is a state

(18:02):
of tension, horrible tension. And he is the greatest discoverer
of this or any age, the greatest discoverer of this
or any age. What strikes one so forcibly about him
is that he didn't somehow quite expect it, ever, at
any rate, not at all like this. Banghurst is about
everywhere the energetic MC of his great little catch, and

(18:26):
I swear he will have everyone down on his lawn
there before he has finished with the engine. He had
bagged the Prime Minister yesterday, and he, bless his heart,
didn't look particularly outsized on the very first occasion. Conceive
it Filmer, our obscure, unwashed filmer, the glory of British science.
Duchesses crowd upon him. Beautiful bold peeresses say in their beautiful,

(18:51):
clear loud voices. Have you noticed how penetrating the great
Lady is becoming nowadays? Oh, mister Filmer, how did you do?
Common men on the edge of things are too remote
for the answer. One imagines something in the way of
that interview toil ungrudgingly and unsparingly given, Madam. And perhaps

(19:13):
I don't know, but perhaps a little special aptitude. So
far Hicks and the photographic supplement to the new paper
is in sufficient harmony with the description. In one picture,
the machine swings down towards the river, and the tower
of Fulham Church appears below it through a gap in
the elms. And in another, Filmer sits at his guiding batteries,

(19:36):
and the great and beautiful of the earth stand around him,
with Banghurst masted modestly but resolutely in the rear. The
grouping is oddly opposite, accluding much of Banghurst, and looking
with a pensive speculation expression at Filmer stands the lady
Mary Elkinghorn, still beautiful in spite of the breath of scandal,

(19:56):
and her eight and thirty years, the only person whose
his face does not admit a perception of the camera
that was in the act of snapping them. All. So
much for the exterior facts of the story, But after
all they are very exterior facts. About the real interest
of the business one is necessarily very much in the dark.

(20:18):
How was Filmer feeling at the time? How much was
a certain unpleasant anticipation present inside that very new and
fashionable frock coat. He was in the halfpenny, penny, sixpenny
and more expensive papers alike, and acknowledged by the whole
world as the greatest discoverer of this or any age.

(20:39):
He had invented a practicable flying machine, and every day
down among the Serrey Hills, the life sized model was
getting ready. And when it was ready, it followed as
a clear inevitable consequence of his having invented and made it.
Everybody in the world indeed seemed to take it for granted.
There wasn't a gap anywhere in that serried front of

(21:01):
anticipation that he would proudly and cheerfully get aboard it,
ascend with it, and fly. But we know now pretty
clearly that simple pride and cheerfulness in such an act
were singularly out of harmony with Filmer's private constitution. It
occurred to no one at the time, But there the
fact is, we can guess with some confidence now that

(21:24):
it must have been drifting about in his mind a
great deal during the day, And from a little note
to his physician complaining of persistent insomnia, we have the
soundest reason for supposing it dominated his nights, the idea
that it would, be, after all, in spite of his
theoretical security, an abominably sickening, uncomfortable and dangerous thing for

(21:45):
him to flap about in nothingness a thousand feet or
so in the air. It must have dawned upon him
quite early in the period of being the greatest discoverer
of this or any age, the vision of doing this,
and that which an extensive void below. Perhaps somewhere in
his youth he had looked down a great height, or

(22:06):
fallen down in some excessively uncomfortable way. Perhaps some habit
of sleeping on the wrong side had resulted in that
disagreeable falling nightmare one knows, and given him his horror.
Of the strength of that horror there remains now not
a particle of doubt. Apparently he had never weighed this

(22:26):
duty of flying. In his earlier days of research. The
machine had been his end. But now things were opening
out beyond his end, and particularly this giddy whirl up above. There.
He was a discoverer, and he had discovered, but he
was not a flying man. And it was only now
that he was beginning to perceive clearly that he was

(22:48):
expected to fly. Yet, however much the thing was present
in his mind, he gave no expression to it until
the very end. And meanwhile he went to and fro
from bang Hurst's magnificent laboratories, and was interviewed and lionized,
and wore good clothes and ate good food, and lived
in an elegant flat, enjoying a very abundant feast of

(23:12):
such good, coarse, wholesome fame and success as a man
starved for all his years as he had been starved
might reasonably expected to enjoy. After a time, the weekly
gatherings in Fulham ceased. The model had failed one day,
just for a moment, to respond to Filmer's guidance, or
he had been distracted by the complements of an archbishop.

(23:35):
At any rate, it suddenly dug its nose into the air,
just a little too steeply, as the archbishop was sailing
through a Latin quotation for all the world, like an
archbishop in a book, and it came down in the
Fulham road within three yards of a bus horse. It
stood for a second, perhaps astonishing and in its attitude astonished.

(23:55):
Then it crumpled, shivered into pieces, and the bus horse
was incidentally killed. Filmer lost the end of the arch
episcopal compliment. He stood up and stared as his invention
swooped out of sight and reach of him, His long
white hand still gripped his useless apparatus. The archbishop followed

(24:16):
his skyward gaze with an apprehension unbecoming in an archbishop.
Then came the crash and the shouts an uproar from
the road. To relieve Filmer's tension, My God, he whispered,
and sat down. Everyone else almost was staring to see
where the machine had vanished, or rushing into the house.

(24:40):
The making of the big machine progressed all the more
rapidly for this over its making presided Filmer, always a
little slow and very careful in his manner, always with
a growing preoccupation in his mind. His care over the
strength and soundness of the apparatus was prodigious the slightest,

(25:00):
and he delayed everything until the doubtful part could be replaced. Wilkinson,
his senior assistant, fumed at some of these delays, which
he insisted were for the most part unnecessary. Banghurst magnified
the patient certitude of Filmer in the new paper and
reviled it bitterly to his wife, and mac Andrew, the

(25:21):
second assistant, approved Filmer's wisdom. We're not wanting a fiasco, man,
said mac Andrew. He's perfectly well advised. And whenever an
opportunity arose, Filmer would expound to Wilkinson and mac Andrew
just exactly how every part of the flying machine was
to be controlled and worked, so that, in effect they

(25:42):
would be just as capable and even more capable. When
at last the time came of guiding it through the skies. Now,
I should imagine that if Filmer had seen fit at
this stage to define just what he was feeling, and
to take a definite line in the matter of his assent,
he might have escaped that painful ordeal quite easily. If

(26:03):
he had had it clearly in his mind, he could
have done endless things. He would surely have found no
difficulty with a specialist to demonstrate a weak heart or
something gastric or pulmonary to stand in his way. That
is the line I am astonished he did not take,
or he might, had he been man enough, have declared

(26:23):
simply and finally that he did not intend to do
the thing. But the fact is, though the dread was
hugely present in his mind, the thing was by no
means sharp and clear. I fancy that all through this
period he kept telling himself that when the occasion came,
he would find himself equal to it. He was like
a man just gripped by a great illness who says

(26:45):
he feels a little out of sorts and expects to
be better presently. Meanwhile, he delayed the completion of the
machine and let the assumption that he was going to
fly it take root and flourish exceedingly about him. He
even accepted anti incipatory compliments on his carriage, and barring
this secret squeamishness, there can be no doubt he found

(27:06):
all the praise and distinction, and thus he got a
delightful and even intoxicating draft. The Lady Mary Elkinghorn made
things a little more complicated for him. How that began
was a subject of inexhaustible speculation to Hicks. Probably in
the beginning she was just a little nice to him,

(27:27):
with that impartial partiality of hers, and it may be
that to her eyes, standing out conspicuously as he did
ruling his monster in the upper air, he had a
distinction that Hicks was not disposed to find. And somehow
they must have had a moment of sufficient isolation, and
the great discoverer a moment of sufficient carriage for something

(27:49):
just a little personal to be mumbled or blurted. However
it began, there is no doubt that it did begin,
and presently became quite perceptible to a world a cut
to find in the proceedings of the Lady Mary Elkinghorn
a matter of entertainment. It complicated things because the state
of love in such a virgin mind as Filmers would

(28:11):
brace his resolution, if not sufficiently at any rate considerably
towards facing a danger he feared and hampered him in
such attempts at evasion as would otherwise be natural and congenial.
It remains a matter for speculation just how the lady
Mary felt for a Filmer, and just what she thought
of him at thirty eight. One may have gathered much

(28:34):
wisdom and still be not altogether wise, and the imagination
still functions actively enough in creating glamors and affecting the impossible.
He came before her eyes as a very central man,
and that always counts. And he had powers, unique powers,
as it seemed at any rate in the air. The

(28:56):
performance with the model had just a touch of the
quality of a potent incantation. And women have never displayed
an unreasonable disposition to imagine that when a man has powers,
he must necessarily have power. Given so much, and what
was not good in Filmer's manner and appearance became an
added merit. He was modest, he hated display, but given

(29:20):
an occasion where true qualities are needed, then then one
would see. The late Missus Bampton thought it wise to
convey to Lady Mary her opinion that Filmer, all things considered,
was rather a grub. He's certainly not the sort of
man I have ever met before, said the Lady Mary,

(29:40):
with a quite unruffled serenity, And missus Bampton, after a swift,
imperceptible glance at that serenity, decided that so far as
saying anything to Lady Mary went, she had done as
much as could be expected of her. But she set
a great deal to other people. And at last, without
any unto haste or unseemliness, the day dawned, the great

(30:03):
day when Banghurst had promised his public, the world in fact,
that flying should be finally attained and overcome. Filmers saw
it dawn, watched even in the darkness before it dawned,
watched its stars fade and the gray and pearly pinks
give place at last to the clear blue sky of
a sunny, cloudless day. He watched it from the window

(30:27):
of his bedroom in the new built wing of Banghurst's
tutor House, And as the stars were overwhelmed and the
shapes and substances of things grew into being out of
the amorphous dark, he must have seen more and more distinctly,
the festive preparations beyond the beach clumps, near the green
pavilion in the outer park, the three stands for the

(30:49):
privileged spectators, the raw new fencing of the enclosure, the
sheds and workshops, the Venetian masts and fluttering flags that
Banghurst had considered essential, black and limp in the breezeless dawn,
and amidst all these things, a great shape covered with
a tarpaulin. A strange and terrible portent for humanity. Was

(31:11):
that shape a beginning that must surely spread and widen,
and change and dominate all the affairs of men. But
to Filmer, it is very doubtful whether it appeared in
anything but a narrow and personal light. Several people heard
him pacing in the small hours, for the vast place
was packed with guests by a proprietor editor who before

(31:34):
all understood compression. And about five o'clock, if not before,
Filmer left his room and wandered out of the sleeping
house into the park, alive by that time with sunlight
and birds and squirrels and the fallow deer. Mac Andrew,
who was also an early riser, met him near the machine,
and they went and had a look at it together.

(31:57):
It is doubtful if Filmer took any breakfast in spite
of the urgency of Banghurst. So soon as the guests
began to be about in some number, he seems to
have retreated to his room. Thence about ten he went
into the shrubbery, very probably because he had seen the
lady Mary Elkinghorn. There. She was walking up and down,

(32:18):
engaged in conversation with her old school friend, Missus Bruce Craven,
And although Filmer had never met the latter lady before,
he joined them and walked beside them for some time.
There were several silences in spite of the lady Mary's brilliance.
The situation was a difficult one, and Missus Bruce Craven

(32:39):
did not master its difficulty. He struck me, she said afterwards,
with a luminous self contradiction, as a very unhappy person
who had something to say and wanted, before all things,
to be helped to say it. But how was one
to help him when one didn't know what it was?
At half past eleven, the enclosures for the public in

(33:01):
the outer park were crammed. There was an intermittent stream
of equipages along the belt which circles the outer park,
and the house party was dotted over the lawn and
shrubbery and the corner of the inner park in a
series of brilliantly attired knots, all making for the flying machine.
Filmer walked in a group of three with Banghurst, who

(33:24):
was supremely and conspicuously happy, and Sir Theodore Hickel, the
President of the Aeronautical Society. Missus Banghurst was close behind,
with the Lady Mary Elkinghorn, Georgina Hinkel, and the Dean
of Stays. Banghurst was large and copious in speech, and
such interstices as he left were filled in by Hickel

(33:46):
with complimentary remarks to Filmer, and Filmer walked between them,
saying not a word except by way of unavoidable reply.
Behind Missus Banghurst listened to the admirably suitable and shapely
conversations of the Dean with that fluttered attention to the
ampler clergy. Ten years of social assent and ascendancy had

(34:07):
not cured in her, and the Lady Mary watched, no
doubt with an entire confidence in the world's disillusionment, the
drooping shoulders of the sort of man she had never
met before. There was some cheering as the central party
came into view of the enclosures, but it was not
very unanimous nor invigorating cheering. They were within fifty yards

(34:30):
of the apparatus when Filmer took a hasty glance over
his shoulder to measure the distance of the ladies behind them,
and decided to make the first remark he had initiated
since the house had been left. His voice was just
a little hoarse, and he cut in on Banghurst in
mid sentence on progress, I say, Banghurst, he said, and stopped. Yes,

(34:53):
said Banghurst. I wish he moistened his lips. I'm not
feeling well. Banghurst stopped dead. Ah, he shouted, a queer
feeling Filmer made to move on, but Banghurst was immovable.
I don't know. I may be better in a minute.

(35:15):
If not, perhaps mc andrew. You are not feeling well,
said Banghurst, and stared at his white face. My dear,
he said. As missus Banghurst came up with them, Filmer
says he isn't feeling well. A little queer exclaimed Filmer,

(35:36):
avoiding the Lady Mary's eyes. It may pass off. There
was a pause. It came to Filmer that he was
the most isolated person in the world. In any case,
said Banghurst. The assent must be made, perhaps if you
were to sit down somewhere for a moment. It's the crowd,

(35:56):
I think, said Filmer. Was a second pause. Banghurst's eye
rested in scrutiny on Filmer, and then swept the sample
of public in the enclosure. It's unfortunate, said Sir Theodore Hickel.
But still I suppose your assistants, of course, if you

(36:17):
feel out of condition and disinclined. I don't think mister
Filmer would permit that for a moment, said Lady Mary.
But if mister Filmer's nerve is run, it might even
be dangerous for him to attempt. Hickel coughed, it's just
because it's dangerous, began the Lady Mary, and felt she

(36:37):
had made her point of view and Filmer's plain enough.
Conflicting motives struggled for Filmer. I feel I ought to
go up, he said, regarding the ground. He looked up
and met the Lady Mary's eyes. I want to go up,
he said, and smiled whitely at her. He turned towards Banghurst.

(36:58):
If I could just sit down somewhere for a moment,
out of the crowd and sun. Banghurst at least was
beginning to understand the case. Come into my little room
in the green pavilion, he said, it's quite cool there.
He took Filmer by the arm. Filmer turned his face
to the Lady Mary Elkinghorn again. I shall be all

(37:20):
right in five minutes, he said. I'm tremendously sorry. The
Lady Mary Elkinghorn smiled at him. I couldn't think, he
said to Hickel, and obeyed the compulsion of Banghurst's pull.
The rest remained watching the two recede. He is so fragile,

(37:40):
said the Lady Mary. He's certainly a highly nervous type,
said the dean, whose weakness it was to regard the
whole world, except married clergymen with enormous families, as neurotic.
Of course, said Hickel, it isn't absolutely necessary for him
to go up, because he has in How could he

(38:02):
avoid it, asked the Lady Mary, with the faintest shadow
of scorn. It's certainly most unfortunate. If he's going to
be ill now, said missus Banghurst, a little severely. He's
not going to be ill, said the lady Mary, and
certainly she had met Filmer's eye. You'll be all right,

(38:23):
said Banghurst, as they went towards the pavilion. All you
want is a nip of brandy. It ought to be you.
You know you'll be you get it rough, you know,
if you let another man. Oh, I want to go,
said Filmer. I shall be all right. As a matter
of fact, I'm almost inclined now. No, I think I'll

(38:44):
have that nip of brandy first. Banghurst took him into
the little room and routed out an empty decanter. He
departed in search of a supply. He was gone perhaps
five minutes. The history of those five minutes cannot be written.
Intervals Filmer's face could be seen by the people on
the easternmost of the stands erected for spectators against the

(39:07):
window pane, peering out, and then it would recede and fade.
Banghurst vanished, shouting behind the grandstand, and presently the butler appeared,
going pavilion word with a tray. The apartment in which
Filmer came to his last solution, was a pleasant little room,
very simply furnished with green furniture and an old bureau.

(39:28):
For Banghurst was simple in all his private ways. It
was hung with little engravings after Morland, and it had
a shelf of books. But as it happened, Banghurst had
left a rook rifle he sometimes played with on the
top of the desk, and on the corner of the
mantel shelf was a tin with three or four cartridges

(39:48):
remaining in it. As Filmer went up and down that room,
wrestling with his intolerable dilemma, he went first towards the
neat little rifle athwart the blotting pad, and then towards
the eat little red label twenty two long. The thing
must have jumped into his mind in a moment. Nobody

(40:08):
seems to have connected the report with him, though the gun,
being fired in a confined space, must have sounded loud,
and there were several people in the billiard room, separated
from him only by a lath and plaster partition. But
directly Banghurst's butler opened the door and smelt the sour
smell of the smoke. He knew, he says, what had happened.

(40:30):
For the servants at least of Banghurst's household had guessed
something of what was going on in Filmer's mind. All
through that trying afternoon, Banghurst behaved as he held a
man should behave in the presence of hopeless disaster, and
his guests, for the most part succeeded in not insisting
upon the fact, though to conceal their perception of it

(40:52):
altogether was impossible that Banghurst had been pretty elaborately and
completely swindled by the deceased. The public in the enclosure,
Picks told me, dispersed like a party that has been
ducking a welsher. And there wasn't a soul in the
train to London, it seemed. Who hadn't known all along
that flying was a quite impossible thing for a man,

(41:15):
But he might have tried, it, said many. After carrying
the thing so far. In the evening, when he was
comparatively alone, Banghurst broke down and went on like a
man of clay, I have been told. He wept, which
must have made an imposing scene, And he certainly said
Filmer had ruined his life, and offered and sold the
whole apparatus to mac Andrew for palf a crown. I've

(41:39):
been thinking, said mac Andrew at the conclusion of the bargain,
and stopped. The next morning, the name of Filmer was
for the first time less conspicuous in the new paper
than in any other daily paper in the world. The
rest of the world's instructors, with varying emphasis according to
their dignity and a degree of competition between themselves, and

(42:00):
the new paper proclaimed the entire failure of the new
flying machine and suicide of the impostor. But in the
district of North Surrey, the reception of the news was
tempered by a perception of unusual aerial phenomena. Overnight, Wilkinson
and mac Andrew had fallen into violent argument on the

(42:20):
exact motives of their principles rash act. The man was
certainly a poor, cowardly body, but so far as his
science went, he was no impostor, said mac Andrew. And
I'm prepared to give that proposition a very practical demonstration,
mister Wilkinson, so soon as we've got the place a
little more to ourselves, For I've no faith in all

(42:43):
this publicity for experimental trials, and to that end, while
all the world was reading of the certain failure of
the new flying machine, mac Andrew was soaring and curvetting
with great amplitude and dignity over the Epsom and Wimbledon divisions.
Banghurst restored once more to hope and energy, and regardless

(43:04):
of public security, and the Board of Trade was pursuing
his gyrations and trying to attract his attention on a
motor car and in his pajamas. He had caught sight
of the ascent when pulling up the blind of his
bedroom window, equipped among other things, with a film camera
that was subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmer was

(43:26):
lying on the billiard table in the Green Pavilion with
a sheet about his body. And of Filmer by H. G.
Wells