Pastimes for Peter Pan

Over in Britain things were little more sophisticated, even among leading intellects. Invited for a weekend with Mr and Mrs H.G. Wells, guests were expected to change into fancy garments kept for dressing up, with flowered curtains from the bedrooms also pressed into service. Wells himself would sometimes lead the final procession round the dinner table vigorously banging saucepan lids together before sitting down for the meal. A other times there was hockey on the lawn or else The Smuggling Game, where a football had to be secretly transported from one end of a pond to the other without being spotted and seized by the opposing team. Meanwhile over at Well Hall or else down at their country retreat at Dymchurch, Wells' friends E. Nesbit and Hubert Bland were playing similarly active games with their guests: Devil in the Bark, for example, or Hide and Seek, even when Nesbit was well over fifty. Quieter activities included Subjects and Adjectives (nouns in one hat, adjectives in another, each player drawing one noun and two adjectives then introducing them into lines of verse as convincingly as possible).