Anna-Jane Blanco White

BBC finally locates daughter of Wells' 'storm of passion'
Richard Brooks, London Observer Service

The lost illegitimate daughter of H.G. Wells has been found living in New Zealand.
Anna-Jane Kennard, now in her late 80s, was conceived in 1909 during a final fling between her mother, Amber Reeves, and Mr. Wells in a hotel near Victoria Station. She was born on Dec. 31 that year.
Mr. Wells had met Ms. Reeves 18 months earlier at a Fabian Society summer school and described their affair as "the one great storm of intense physical sexual passion and desire" of his life.
He said she implored him "Give me a child."
H.G. Wells saw Anna-Jane briefly when she was a baby, then met her once more, when she was 20, when he revealed that he was her father. After they had spent an evening together at a London restaurant, he wrote in his diary that he thought of her "as a very dear, friendly niece."A year later, he wrote to her "For years I've done my best to ignore your existence. But the fact is that you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I very much love you. Yours H.G."
Mr. Wells continued to pay part of her upkeep when she moved to New Zealand, her mother and grandparents' native country.Mrs. Kennard now lives in a house overlooking the ocean on North Island. She was brought up as the daughter of the marriage between her mother and the Fabian thinker Rivers Blanco White, who married Ms. Reeves knowing she was carrying Mr. Wells' child. She grew up assuming he was her father -- until she met Mr. Wells.
For years Mrs. Kennard kept the secret of her real father from all but a handful of those closest to her. "My mother and H.G. obviously loved each other all their lives, didn't they?" she recalls now.
Mrs. Kennard was traced to New Zealand by the BBC, which has made a two-part special to mark the 50th anniversary of H.G. Wells' death, to be broadcast in Britain on Aug. 24-25. Researchers traced her after finding she had been receiving some of his royalties.
Mr. Wells' affair with Ms. Reeves (he called her "Dusa" after the mythological man-slayer Medusa) occurred during his second marriage, to Jane Robbins. He was sexually frustrated in both marriages -- the more so in his first to his cousin Isabel.
"My grandmother knew H.G. had affairs," says Jane's grandson, Martin Wells, a Cambridge scientist and one of Mr. Wells' literary executors. "They were usually with clever and witty women. She knew about them because she kept all the accounts."
Mr. Wells split up with Ms. Reeves before their child was born but met her again years later, after Jane Robbins had died. The eponymous heroine of his novel "Ann Veronica," published in 1910, is based on her, as is Isabel Rivers from "The New Machiavelli."
According to Michael Foot, whose "The History of Mr. Wells" (a title recalling H.G. Wells' autobiographical novel "The History of Mr. Polly") was published last year and who presents the BBC programs, Mr. Wells upbraided himself until his death for not spending his life with Ms. Reeves, who died in the 1970s.
"Wells describes it as his most passionate relationship," said Mr. Foot. "And this from a very passionate man who said the more sex you have, the better you are at work."
Mr. Foot, who first met Mr. Wells in 1938, heard about Mrs. Kennard's existence in New Zealand while finishing his biography. But he did not mention her in his book. "I wish I had met her," he said.
Mr. Foot and his wife, Jill Craigie, knew another of Mr. Wells' lovers, Rebecca West, and the Russian-born Moura Budberg, the companion of his later years.
"H.G. and Moura would come and see me when I was a child," recalls Martin Wells. "Both had whiskers!"
H.G. Wells has gone out of fashion since his death. A scientist, who studied under T.H. Huxley, his first best-seller was "The Time Machine," published in 1895, shortly before "The Island of Dr. Moreau," about man's creation (which is being remade into a Hollywood film). The Hollywood blockbuster, "Independence Day," is based on his most famous work, "The War of the Worlds" -- which predicated that there was life on Mars.
John Hammond, founder and president of the Wells Society, says H.G. Wells would have preferred to be remembered as a popular educator. "But it is probably his science-fiction books which people recall."
They were uncannily accurate in predicting the atom bomb (in 1898) and terrorism -- in "The World Set Free" (1914), bombs in suitcases cause destructive havoc. Mr. Wells was appalled by World War I, writing about it in "Mr. Britling Sees It Through" and "Joan and Peter."
Though a socialist, he did not romanticize about any workers' revolution. As a believer in eugenics, he thought the world should be run by intellectual whites. He also preached and practiced free love.
"But he argued that the passionate daughter should have the same rights as the passionate son," says Mr. Foot.
However, Ms. Craigie is not so convinced "He was a naughty boy, the way he treated his women."
But Ms. Reeves may have sided with Mr. Foot. Mrs. Kennard has a letter from her mother to Mr. Wells, written in March 1939, 30 years after their affair
"What you gave me all those years ago -- a love which seemed perfect to me, the influence of your mind and Anna-Jane -- have stood by me ever since. I have never for a moment felt they were not worth the price. Yours ever, Dusa." https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/entertainment/local/1996/08/1... accessed 20 Jan 2024.