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I find this sentence confusing. Its syntax is mysterious to me. Could you help me figure it out? Wells's short story Jimmy Goggles the God

He got hold of the Sanderses and their brig; they were brothers, and the brig was the Pride of Banya, and he it was bought the diving dress—a second-hand one with a compressed air apparatus instead of pumping.

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It is both an elision (of the word "who") and somewhat non-standard word order. Note that Jimmy Goggles the God was written one-and-a-quarter centuries ago!

The phrase

he it was bought

would today more naturally be written

it was he who bought

or perhaps (depending on how strict you do or don't want to be)

it was him who bought

That last one is not really correct, because the "he" in question is the "he" from the beginning of the sentence, and it should still be the in subject form "he" instead of the object form "him." But I think many speakers would find "it was he who bought" to sound awkward and stilted, so they would use "him" instead.

Diving dress is no longer in use, having been replaced by more lightweight equipment and clothing.

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I'm sorry I don't recognise that passage, though I thought I'd read the complete works of HG Wells.

Please look at how long ago Wells might have written that and how the English of those days differed from today's.

"He it was who bought… " would work today.

"It was he who bought… " would work today.

"… he it was (anything)…" might have worked 100 years ago; not today."

Today, "… diving dress…" is archaic enough to negate any meaning that grammar might have given it.

"… second-hand …" makes it all the more necessary to use the same adjectival hyphen with "… compressed-air…"

With or without the hyphen, nothing like "… apparatus instead of pumping…" could ever work.

Wells had a brilliant imagination and told his stories better than most but like, for instance, Dickens, that doesn't mean he paid much attention to grammar.

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  • Sorry, Michael, 'apparatus instead of pumping' could never be fine, nor even work. 'apparatus' is a noun and 'pumping' is part of a verb. How could they be comparable? If you've read much Wells, you know he had little interest in formal grammar or semantics. (Far) short of stream-of-consciousness, flow was all. instead of the common 'Sanders' or 'Sandersons' why would anyone use 'Sanderses'… a (pointlessly) unique term, until you show other examples. 'he it was bought the diving dress…' worked in Wells' day because then, logic was part of the skill of reading. More…
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Oct 6, 2022 at 19:59
  • Further… 'apparatus' is a noun; 'pumping' part of a verb. How could they be compared? If you've read much Wells, you know he had little interest in formal grammar or semantics. Flow was all, short of stream-of-consciousness. instead of the common 'Sanders' or 'Sandersons' why would anyone use '…'… a (pointlessly) unique term, until you show other examples? 'he it was bought the diving dress…' worked in Wells' day because then, logic was a necessary part of the skill of reading. More…
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Oct 6, 2022 at 20:27
  • Further… 'he it was bought the diving dress…' won't work unless logic over-rides grammar or semantics. Does it, here? Today you'd at least need a comma, as 'he it was, bought the diving dress…' Today, you'd at least need a comma, as 'he it was, bought the diving dress…' Meanwhile 'a second-hand one with a compressed air apparatus instead of pumping' begs two Questions in today's English; both irrelevant in Wells' day. How do either 'compressed air apparatus' or 'pumping' not need to be matched by 'a second-hand one'? How is any apparatus comparable to any action?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Oct 6, 2022 at 20:44
  • Which do you want, Michael? What is strictly correct, or what is generally acceptable? Both could work if you could explain the difference. Can you?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Oct 6, 2022 at 20:56
  • I do not berate Wells for anything, as the back-track of this thread shows. I do 'berate' you for thinking about, let alone Posting anything remotely like '… for not writing…' Can you translate 'I am wondering why you berate Wells for not writing i ' into English?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Oct 6, 2022 at 21:55

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