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It is not that Gissing's picture of poverty in the literary profession is wanting in the elements of truth, although even in that profession there is even more eccentricity than the author leads us to suppose in the social position and evil plight of such men as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen.
His arms occasionally swung as if brandishing dumb-bells, his chest now and then spread itself to the uttermost, and his head was often thrown back in an attitude suggesting self-defence. Of Gissing's first year or so at Owens, after leaving Lindow Grove School at Alderley, we get a few hints in these pages.
In my own opinion we have here in The Scrupulous Father, and to a less degree, perhaps, in the first and last of these stories, and in A Poor Gentleman and Christopherson, perfectly characteristic and quite admirable specimens of Gissing's own genre, and later, unstudied, but always finished prose style. But a few words remain to be said, and these, in part at any rate, in recapitulation.
Indeed Gissing's course, as logged on the chart, surprised even himself, so that he forbade the officers taking their noon observations. When Mr. Pointer said something about isobars, the staff-captain replied serenely that he did not expect to find any polar bears in these latitudes. He had hoped privately for an occasional pirate, and scanned the sea-rim sharply for suspicious topsails.
The evils of indiscriminate education and the follies of our grotesque examination system were one of Gissing's favourite topics of denunciation in later years, as evidenced in this characteristic passage in his later manner in this same book: 'She talked only of the "exam," of her chances in this or that "paper," of the likelihood that this or that question would be "set."
I can't take things in the simple way that comes natural to other men. 'Not as other men are': more intellectual than most, fully as responsive to kind and genial instincts, yet bound at every turn to pinch and screw an involuntary ascetic. Such is the essential burden of Gissing's long-drawn lament.
She held out a page of classified advertising, in which he read with amazement: PERSONAL If MR. GISSING, late floorwalker at Beagle and Company, will communicate with Mr. Beagle Senior, he will hear matters greatly to his advantage. There had been great excitement in the private offices of Beagle and Company after Gissing's sudden disappearance. Old Mr.
But of those above he knew little.... He did not know the upper middle classes, which are as difficult every whit as those beneath them, and take as much time and labour and experience and observation to learn. 'The Exile of George Gissing, Albany, Christmas 1904. Few, if any, of Gissing's books exhibit more mental vigour than In the Year of Jubilee.
Dobermann-Pinscher, and several other prominent members of the Church burst into threatening growls. A wild bark and clamour broke from Mr. Towser, the Sunday School superintendent, and his pupils, who sat in the little gallery over the door. And then, to Gissing's horror and amazement, Mr. Poodle appeared from behind a pillar where he had been chafing unseen.
Add to these characteristics a penchant for cheap jewellery, and Oliver Peak stands confessed. The white, maidenish and silk-haired fairness of Sidwell, and Peak's irresistible passion for the type of beauty suggested, is revealed to us with all Gissing's wonderful skill in shadowing forth feminine types of lovelihood.
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