“Ever since the publication of that first book Mr. Quarles had been writing, or at least had been supposed to be writing, another, much larger and more important about democracy. The largeness and the importance justified an almost indefinite delay in its completion. He had already been at work on it for more than seven years and as yet, he would say to anyone who asked him about the progress of the book (shaking his head as he spoke with the expression of a man who bears an almost intolerable burden), as yet he had not even finished collecting materials.

“It’s a labour of Hercules,” he would say with an air at once martyred and fatuously arrogant . . .

If the questioner were sufficiently sympathetic, he would take him into his study and show him (or preferably her) the enormous apparatus of card indices and steel filing cabinets which he had accumulated round his very professional-looking roll-top desk. As time passed and the book showed no signs of getting itself written, Mr. Quarles had collected more and more of these impressive objects. They were the visible proofs of his labour, they symbolized the terrific difficulty of his task. He possessed no less than three typewriters. The portable Corona accompanied him wherever he went, in case he should at any time feel inspired when on his travels. Occasionally, when he felt the need of being particularly impressive, he took the Hammond, a rather larger machine, on which the letters were carried, not on separate arms, but on a detachable band of metal clipped to a revolving drum, so that it was possible to change the type at will and write in Greek or Arabic, mathematical symbols or Russian, according to the needs of the moment; Mr. Quarles had a large collection of these alternative types which, of course, he never used, but of which he felt very proud, as though each of them represented a separate talent or accomplishment of his own. Finally, there was the third and latest of the typewriters, a very large and very expensive office instrument, which was not only a typewriter, but also a calculating machine. So useful, Mr Quarles would explain, for compiling statistics for his great book and for doing the accounts of the estate. And he would point with special pride to the little electric motor attached to the machine; you made a connection with the wall plug and the motor did everything for you — everything that is to say, except actually compose your book. You had only to touch the keys, so (and Mr. Quarles would give a demonstration); the electricity provided the force to bring the type into contact with the paper. All muscular effort was eliminated. You could go on typing for eighteen hours at a stretch — and Mrs. Quarles gave it to be understood that it was a common thing for him to spend eighteen hours at his desk (like Balzac, or Sir Isaac Newton) — you could go on, indeed, almost indefinitely without experiencing the slightest fatigue, at any rate of the fingers. An American invention. Very ingenious.” — Aldous Huxley: Point Counter Point (Chapter XX).

Mr Quarles is Sidney, the father of the narrator of this roman à clef. That narrator, Philip Quarles, is a sardonic self-portrait of the author himself. Aldous Huxley’s father was Leonard Huxley, son of “Darwin’s bulldog”, Thomas Henry Huxley. According to his Wikipedia entry Leonard was a schoolmaster, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, and author of several books including a life of his father. It seems certain that the viciously-written portrait of the obnoxious Mr. Quarles should not be read as a portrait of Leonard Huxley! Point Counter Point was published in 1928, five year’s before Leonard’s death. As author in potentio sublimating all their “writing” into displacement activity, Sidney Quarles has nothing on the Reverend Edward Casaubon, but then of course neither does Point Counter Point have anything on Middlemarch. Perhaps large sprawling topics like “Democracy” and “Key to all Mythologies” lend themselves inevitably to writer’s block.

That there were electric typewriters with changeable faces a century ago is surprising — to me anyway. The Selectric typewriter wasn’t introduced till 1961, and we all thought we were looking at a revolutionary concept as they became available to publishers.