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And this is no fancy picture, but a true story of what Gissing had sufficient elasticity of humour to call 'a pretty stern apprenticeship. The sense of it enables us to understand to the full that semi-ironical and bitter, yet not wholly unamused passage, in Ryecroft:
He was talking to Major de Pyrmont outside the Duchess of Graatli's box. Two General officers joined them, and presently Count Serabiglione, with his courtly semi-ironical smile, on whom they straightway turned their backs. The insult was happily unseen, and the count caressed his shaven chin and smiled himself onward.
When he had gone, Noel returned to the room with sober gait, and paused in the middle of it to pick up his sword. "I wonder if he cares much," he murmured half aloud. He stood by the table with eyes absently fixed, going over in his mind the conversation that had just passed, recalling the leisurely, supercilious tones, the semi-ironical kindness with which his brother had revealed the situation.
We all laughed a little, perceiving the semi-ironical spirit of his talk; but the Altrurian must have taken it in dead earnest: "But, in that case, the number of people thrown out of work would be very great, wouldn't it? And what would become of them?"
We find in Charles's verse much semi-ironical regret for other days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He who had been "nourished in the schools of love" now sees nothing either to please or displease him. Old age has imprisoned him within doors, where he means to take his ease, and let younger fellows bestir themselves in life.
Such tastes, with the coming of years, would doubtless take the place of many others. We find in Charles's verse much semi-ironical regret for other days, and resignation to growing infirmities. He who had been "nourished in the schools of love," now sees nothing either to please or displease him.
I offer for what it is worth the suggestion that a well-known truth, especially in the case of personal characteristics, may sound very amusing when pronounced in a quizzical or semi-ironical fashion by a person possessing sufficient vis comica.
A sea of faces were turned toward me expectantly, and I pitied their owners' disappointment, but I saw only four persons plainly my uncle, and Alice, who flashed an encouraging glance at me, Colonel Carrington looking up with a semi-ironical smile, and Grace. I could not tell what her expression meant.
Sir John was wholly unable to understand the laugh and semi-ironical cheer which greeted his entrance to the smoking-room of the English Club on the following evening. He stood upon the threshold, dangling his eye-glasses in his fingers, stolid, imperturbable, mildly interrogative. He wanted to know what the joke against him was if any.
He asked, after a moment, "Don't you think that would be rather a heavy-handed way of dealing with the matter?" "Oh," we returned, "we have light methods of treating the weightiest questions. There is the semi-ironical vein, for instance, which you must have noticed a good deal in us, and perhaps it would be better suited to the occasion." "Yes?" our visitor suggested. "Yes," we repeated.
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