It begins, as these things often do, with a search for a source. Wellsians, as we style ourselves, are familiar with this picture of H.G. hanging with a gorilla skeleton,
What I didn’t realize was how far back Wells was dealing with gorillas. In his Experiment in Autobiography, he relates a childhood terror caused by reading a book:
There was Wood’s Natural History, also copiously illustrated and full of exciting and terrifying facts. I conceived a profound fear of the gorilla, of which there was a fearsome picture, which came out of the book at times after dark and followed me noiselessly about the house. The half landing was a favourite lurking place for this terror. I passed it whistling, but wary and then ran for my life up the next flight.
Seeking out this book, I came upon copies of an Illustrated Natural History by Rev. J. G. Woods in several different editions. The 1853 edition did not have a gorilla at all, nor did the 1854 or 1858 editions. Wells dated his experience around 1874, when he was about eight years old. I found the beast in the 1872 edition, then went backwards till I found him in the 1859 edition.
He doesn’t look that fearsome to me, but I am not an 8-year-old boy laid up with a broken leg. In later editions, they show a gorilla family that is far less daunting.
The reason for all this searching? I needed a footnote for a chapter I’m writing on Wells, so I needed the most likely edition. The 1859 edition makes sense, since Wells’s father had brought it home from the Bromley Literary Institute, and they probably had older books. But as soon as I saw the engraving (by the Dalziel Brothers, featured in my novel Murder at an Exhibition) I knew that was the monster.
In light of this, the photo of Wells with his insouciant arm around a gorilla skeleton is more than just that of a cocky fellow. He had overcome his fear and was now hob-nobbing with the quadrumana.
