In her Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady, this blog's heroine Marjory Allen records how H.G. Wells invited her to design the garden at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park:
He was seventy-three, already ill and dispirited, and visitors were not encouraged; but I spent many amusing hours with him.
One foggy afternoon when we were sitting in his study, he drew out of the shelf one of his own books and inscribed on the fly-leaf, "To my most adored Annie, from H.G." The joke appealed to him and, taking one book after another, he wrote more inscriptions: "To Muriel, the only woman I ever loved" and "For Helen, who was my wife in all but name".
After signing half a dozen copies he tired of the game, heaved a sigh and said, "That will fox them all when I have gone." I wonder if it has.
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