Autograph letters from H.G. Wells to Matilda Spence

1931. New York, Boston, and Dearborn, MI: 1931.

4 letters, 2 notes, and 1 postcard on a variety of stationery, with 6 addressed and postmarked envelopes. All in fine condition, written in unfaded ink. Full description and transcription available.

§ A small collection of correspondence written by H.G. Wells to the American social welfare organizer Matilda Spence during his brief stay in America in the fall of 1931. The collection is fascinating as though the relationship suggested by the letters appears very friendly - perhaps even intimate - Spence's name does not appear in any of the main biographies of Wells.

Wells (truncated) sailed to New York on October 7, 1931, where he had been invited to be the guest of honor at a Waldorf-Astoria dinner in support of Margaret Sanger's campaign for a federal law on birth control. The MacKenzie biography mentions the trip, the bad cold he caught in New York, and his return to Europe on November 13, but records little else of the time. This correspondence reveals Wells writing to Spence as a close friend and meeting with her in New York on several occasions.

All the letters are short and informal. The first was written on October 22, the day before the Waldorf-Astoria dinner, when already the cold was brewing: "Dear Matilda, I'm looking forward to coming to tea with you tomorrow but the chances are I shall not do so. Sore throat. Slightly raised temperature. Sneezes. General discomfort. As I have the damn Birth Control dinner in evening I may decide to go to bed with whisky & hot bottle all the afternoon in preparation. Your tea party would have been so much nicer..."

The next three letters are all written the following weekend, starting in a Boston hotel in the early hours: "This is 4am on Saturday. I'm ill... Disgusting to be so fragile... I think I shall scrap my pilgrimage to Chicago & Detroit & take care of myself at [his address in New York] which is not an unfath. distance from [Spence's address]. Bless you dear Matilda. I’m ashamed of myself. H.G.” A second letter comes from Boston, written in the third person ("The wretch has collapsed at the Palisades and gone to bed") and a third follows his hasty retreat to New York: "... what I want to say is that I feel so much better after flying from Boston and landing in New York that I am sure I shall keep my appointment on Tuesday at 12.30... & I am your dearest H.G."

The last three items comprise a postcard sent from Dearborn, MI, referring to a "dinner with Sasha", the short note "Perfect Matilda / Rendezvous with you at 7 sharp at your flat for the Sasha dinner", and an undated humorous sketch sent to record that Wells had rung the door bell of her flat but she had not answered.

Matilda Spence (1892-1971) was born Painesville, OH. She attended Western Reserve University and the New York School of Philanthropy, specializing in social welfare work and was active in the suffragette movement in both Ohio and New York State. During the First World War Spence worked for the Red Cross and led relief work among French civilians, for which she was personally decorated by the French Government, the City of Toulouse, and the French Red Cross. After the war she was an organizer in the Serbian Relief Committee, the New York State Department of Education and the Baltic American Society and traveled widely in Europe. These letters were addressed to her around her 39th birthday. About 18 months later she married an American steel executive named Henry Rowland.

It is not known when or how Wells and Spence became acquainted. While the letters suggest familiarity and affection, the suggestion of romance can only be speculation, although Wells was famously an enthusiastic collector of lovers. (Margaret Sanger the birth control activist who had invited Wells to New York was one.)

Full transcriptions available. The four letters and two notes are each accompanied by an addressed and postmarked envelope but it seems at least two of these may have been jumbled and it will take a careful biographer to check and correct the pairings.

Provenance: By descent from Matilda Spence to family members.

Reference: H.G. Wells: A Biography by Norma and Jeanne MacKenzie, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. (Inventory #: 126389)