The War of the Wenuses | Page 2

risibly towards the earth. He
compared it to a colossal cosmic cachinnation. And, in the light of
subsequent events, the justice of the comparison will commend itself to
all but the most sober readers.
Had it not been for my chance meeting with Swears, the eminent
astronomer and objurgationist, this book would never have been written.
He asked me down to our basement, which he rents from me as an
observatory, and in spite of all that has happened since I still remember
our wigil very distinctly. (I spell it with a "w" from an inordinate
affection for that letter.) Swears moved about, invisible but painfully
audible to my naked ear. The night was very warm, and I was very
thirsty. As I gazed through the syphon, the little star seemed alternately
to expand and contract, and finally to assume a sort of dual skirt, but
that was simply because my eye was tired. I remember how I sat under
the table with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes.
Grotesque and foolish as this may seem to the sober reader, it is
absolutely true.

Swears watched till one, and then he gave it up. He was full of
speculations about the condition of Wenus. Swears' language was
extremely sultry.
"The chances against anything lady-like on Wenus," he said, "are a
million to one."
Even Pearson's Weekly woke up to the disturbance at last, and Mrs.
Lynn Linton contributed an article entitled "What Women Might Do"
to the Queen. A paper called Punch, if I remember the name aright,
made a pun on the subject, which was partially intelligible with the aid
of italics and the laryngoscope. For my own part, I was too much
occupied in teaching my wife to ride a Bantam, and too busy upon a
series of papers in Nature on the turpitude of the classical professoriate
of the University of London, to give my undivided attention to the
impending disaster. I cannot divide things easily; I am an indivisible
man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a
Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was
starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if
I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I
told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine.
She had a good bulk of falls. There were lights in the upper windows of
the houses as the people went to bed. Grotesque and foolish as this will
seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. Coming home, a party of
bean-feasters from Wimbledon, Wormwood Scrubs, or Woking passed
us, singing and playing concertinas. It all seemed so safe and tranquil.
But the Wenuses were even then on their milky way.

II.
THE FALLING STAR.
Then came the night of the first star. It was seen early in the morning
rushing over Winchester; leaving a gentle frou-frou behind it. Trelawny,
of the Wells' Observatory, the greatest authority on Meteoric Crinolines,
watched it anxiously. Winymann, the publisher, who sprang to fame by

the publication of The War of the Worlds, saw it from his office
window, and at once telegraphed to me: "Materials for new book in the
air." That was the first hint I received of the wonderful wisit.
I lived in those days at 181a Campden Hill Gardens. It is the house
opposite the third lamp-post on the right as you walk east. It was of
brick and slate, with a party-wall, and two spikes were wanting to the
iron railings. When the telegram came I was sitting in my study writing
a discussion on the atomic theory of Krelli of Balmoral. I at once
changed the Woking jacket in which I was writing for evening
dress--which wanted, I remember, a button--and hastened to the Park. I
did not tell my wife anything about it. I did not care to have her with
me. In all such adventures I find her more useful as a sentimental figure
in the background--I, of course, allow no sentiment in the
foreground--than an active participant.
On the way I met Swears, returning from breakfast with our mutual
friend, Professor Heat Ray Lankester--they had had Lee-Metford
sardines and Cairns marmalade, he told me,--and we sought the meteor
together.
Find it we did in Kensington Gardens. An enormous dimple had been
made by the impact of the projectile, which lay almost buried in the
earth. Two or three trees, broken by its fall, sprawled on the turf.
Among this débris was the missile; resembling nothing so much as a
huge crinoline. At the moment we reached the spot P.C. A581 was
ordering it off; and Henry