Following my post on the people behind H.G. Wells’ development of Little Wars:
Thanks to Rahway’s comments about the Scholarly Editing text edition of Little Wars, the two editors have suggestions on who two more of the unattributed names are: Mr W and a dear friend who died, suggested as Graham Wallas and George Gissing.
https://scholarlyediting.org/2017/editions/littlewars/fulltext.html#note5
Thanks to Nigel Lepianka and Deanna Stover at Scholarly Editing for this research.
According to them, the identity of Mr M and his brother Captain M “Hot from the Great War in Africa” remained as yet unidentified. Until now?
Graham Wallas, like Wells, was interested in socialism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Wallas
George Gissing the writer
George Robert Gissing (22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known novels, which have reappeared in modern editions, include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gissing
The dates of Gissing’s death fits Wells’ pen portrait of his dear ailing friend, who died six or seven years ago if Little Wars was published in 1913 but probably written in stages over several years including the two published Windsor Magazine articles 1912 and Floor Games in 1911.
Gissing died aged 46 on 28 December 1903 having caught a chill on an ill-advised winter walk. He is buried in the English cemetery at Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Veranilda was published incomplete in 1904.
H. G. Wells, after a Christmas Eve telegram, came to Gissing at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in his final days and helped to nurse him. Wells characterized him as a “flimsy inordinate stir of grey matter”, adding: “He was a pessimistic writer. He spent his big fine brain depreciating life, because he would not and perhaps could not look life squarely in the eyes — neither his circumstances nor the conventions about him nor the adverse things about him nor the limitations of his personal character. But whether it was nature or education that made this tragedy I cannot tell.”[27] Will Warburton was published in 1905, as was his final volume, the short-story collection The House of Cobwebs.[28]. (Wikipedia source George Gissing)
Thanks Wikipedia – and happy 20th Birthday!
New Grub Street is a version of Fleet Street, the newspaper and journalists’ haunt of old, close to Red Lion Court (Bloomsbury?) where Wells’ publisher Frank Palmer worked.
I have ordered a second hand copy of Gissing’s letters to H G Wells, as I enjoy Gissing’s books.
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN, January
Man of Tin blog 