Tuesday, July 05, 2005

The millinery obsession of HG Wells

From The War of the Worlds (my emphasis):

He met a waggoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that the man simply drove on.
Sparks and burning twigs began to fall into the road, and single leaves like puffs of flame. Hats and dresses caught fire.
My terror had fallen from me like a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its fastener.
I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door again. I could not see his face. He was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned.
Then round the corner of the lane, from between the villas that guarded it at its confluence with the high road, came a little cart drawn by a sweating black pony and driven by a sallow youth in a bowler hat, grey with dust.
I had found oil and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt that I found in one of the bedrooms.
There was a little two-wheeled cart inscribed with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk; there was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud, and at the top of West Hill a lot of blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough.

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