Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, Volume 1Orphaned at an early age, raised by his aunt and uncle, and apprenticed for seven years to a draper, Artie Kipps is stunned to discover upon reading a newspaper advertisement that he is the grandson of a wealthy gentleman and the inheritor of his fortune. Thrown dramatically into the upper classes, he struggles desperately to learn the etiquette and rules of polite society. But as he soon discovers, becoming a true gentleman is neither as easy nor as desirable as it at first appears. Wells satirized what he saw as a gross stupidity and blight upon English society; the pretensions of and obsession with class. The basis for the musical Half a Sixpence. |
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ain't Anagram Ann's anyhow apprentice ardly Artie asked Kipps Aunt aven't banjo began Bindon Botting Buggins called Carshot chap Chitterlow cigarette cockchafers Coote Coote's course cretonne dessay dinner door dress everything eyes face felt flushed Folkestone freckled girl Frock coat glanced gone hand head heart Helen Hughenden Hythe Kipps became Kippses kissed knew laughed little ouse London looked marry Masterman mind Miss Walshingham never night old Kipps old Methusaleh ouse pause Pierce play Pornick portmanteau pounds presently Queen Anne style reely remarked Romney round Sandgate seemed Shalford shook Sid's sixpence smiled social sort stared stood Street suddenly talk tell There's things thought tion told took turned Twelve undred Uncle voice Wace walk window young lady young Walshingham
Popular passages
Page 56 - Not to covet nor desire other men's goods ; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.
Page 134 - ... Kipps' face became portentously careful and he tugged at his moustache, such as it was, hard. He had always represented his father as being a "gentleman farmer." "It didn't pay," he used to say with a picture in his own mind of a penny magazine aristocrat prematurely worn out by worry. " I'm a Norfan, both sides," he would explain, with the air of one who had seen trouble. He said he lived with his uncle and aunt, but he did not say that they kept a toy shop, and to tell anyone that his uncle...
Page 294 - I've taken my fun where I've found it, An' now I must pay for my fun, For the more you 'ave known o...
Page 259 - You'll soon be swelled too big to speak to a poor mechanic like me." Kipps was unprepared for the unpleasant truth; that the path of social advancement is and must be strewn with broken friendships. This first protrusion of that fact caused a painful confusion in his mind. It was speedily to protrude in a far more serious fashion in relation to the "hands" from the Emporium, and Chitterlow.
Page 342 - He found a waiter regarding him and blushed deeply. He did not look again for some time, and became confused about his knife and fork over the fish. Presently he remarked a lady in pink to the left of him eating the fish with an entirely different implement. It was over the vol au vent that he began to go to pieces. He took a knife to it; then saw the lady in pink was using a fork only, and hastily put down his knife, with a considerable amount of rich creaminess on the blade, upon the cloth. Then...
Page 441 - Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life. It is matter and darkness, it is the anti-soul, it is the ruling power of this land, Stupidity.
Page 45 - ... and the like, serviettes and all the bright, hard white wear of a well-ordered house, pleasant dress materials, linings, stiffenings — they were to him from first to last no more than things heavy and difficult to handle in bulk, that one folded up, unfolded, cut in lengths, and saw dwindle and pass away out into that mysterious happy world in which the customer dwells.
Page 478 - Out of the darknesses beneath the shallow, weedy stream of his being rose a question, a question that looked up dimly and never reached the surface. It was the question of the wonder of the beauty, the purposeless, inconsecutive beauty, that falls so strangely among the happenings and memories of life. It never reached the surface of his mind, it never took to itself substance or form; it looked up merely as the phantom of a face might look, out of deep waters, and sank again to nothingness. "Artie,"...
Page 441 - But for that monster they might not be groping among false ideas and hurt one another so sorely; but for that, the glowing promise of childhood and youth might have had a happier fruition, thought might have awakened in them to meet the thought of the world, the quickening sunshine of literature pierced to the substance of their souls, their lives might not have been divorced, as now they are divorced, from the apprehension of beauty that we favoured ones are given — the vision of the Grail that...
Page 351 - ... Joyous, exorbitant music it was from the gigantic nursery of the Future, bearing the hearer along upon its torrential succession of sounds, as if he was in a cask on Niagara. Whiroo! Yah and have at you! The strenuous Life! Yaha! Stop! A Reprieve! A Reprieve! No! Bang! Bump! Everybody looked round, conversation ceased and gave place to gestures. The friend of Lady Jane became terribly agitated. "Can't it be stopped?" she vociferated, pointing a gloved finger and saying something to the waiter...