George Gissing, Classicist [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512816112

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GEORGE GISSING

GEORGE

GISSING

Classicist By SAMUEL V O G T GAPP

With

me it is a constant

aim

to

bring the present and the past near to each

other,

to remove

the

tance which seems to separate las from Lambeth. by

grasping meanings

It can be

firmly

disHeldone,

enough

of human

the

nature.

LETTERS OF GEORGE GISSING IM3iaiBI3JBISJ3I3MIS®3J3IM3ISM3iaEI3J3IS/SJSiai0iai3

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

Philadelphia London:

Humphrey

Milford:

1936

Oxford

University

Press

Copyright 1936 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Manufactured

in the

United

States

PRESS

of

America

CONTENTS Chapter Page I. I N T R O D U C T I O N i T h e importance of Gissing's classic interests T h e unusual duplicity of his interests—classics and the slums II. T H E D E V E L O P M E N T OF HIS CLASSICISM T O 1883 Influence of his father, his home, his schooling His early classic reading Origin of his love for the classic countries

12

III. GISSING'S CLASSIC STUDIES, 1883 T O 1897 His knowledge of classic metres His interest in archaeology His first and second trips to classic countries His knowledge of the languages His reading of the Greek authors His reading of the Latin authors

51

IV. GISSING'S CLASSIC PERIOD, 1897 T O 1903 His third trip to Italy By the Ionian Sea Veranilda

117

V. I N F L U E N C E O F T H E CLASSIC ON HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS Influence of the classics on his novels of modern life His appreciative and critical reaction to the classics His philosophy of culture and his view of the place of the classic in modern life

158

BIBLIOGRAPHY

199

INDEX

207

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS O W that this work has been brought to completion, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Cornelius Weygandt for his guidance during the years of my graduate study and for the suggestions, advice, and criticism which were so valuable in writing the book.

N

T o the late Dr. Godfrey Singer and to Mr. Richard Gimbel I have been indebted for their help in making accessible a copy of the rare first edition of Workers in the Dawn. Mr. Alfred C. Gissing, the son of the author, has given me very valuable help in interpreting certain phases of his father's work. S. V. G. April, 1936 Philadelphia

I

INTRODUCTION H E thoughtful reader receives a somewhat anomalous impression from the novels of George Gissing. On the one hand they appear to be the work of an uncompromising realist; on the other hand they seem to be the product of a shy and retiring scholar whose main interest, after all, is not in the life about him but in the life of a long past era. It is of course as a writer of realistic fiction that he is best known —and properly so, for this was the craft which gave him his livelihood. But the type of realistic novel which he has taken as his own seems far removed from scholarly pursuits. It is in the deliberate and somewhat cold-blooded portrayal of the miseries of the poor of London that he has done his best work. If it is by New Grub Street that he is best known, it is nevertheless true that the typical Gissing novel is not so much that chronicle of the lives of poverty-ridden authors as is such a story of the poorest of the poor as The Nether World or Thyrza. The Nether World, above all others, represents the typical Gissing novel. It is a somewhat unusual type of realism which we have in his best work, a type all the more unusual when we consider its early date. Gissing, after all, set forth with Workers in the Dawn in 1880 and The Unclassed in 1884, novels whose relentlessness in giving poverty its due have seldom been surpassed. T h e dates alone are enough to show that his realism was a product of the mid-Victorian period. As such it must be judged, not as a writing of the modern realistic period, however many affinities it may have with modern tendencies. It is because of this fact and because of his frequently expressed admiration for Dickens, that his descriptions of the London poor are so often connected with those of that much greater Vic-

T

1

2

GEORGE GISSING

torian, that he is often considered first and foremost a follower of Dickens. This view is not without some justification. There is much in Gissing which reminds one of Dickens, particularly of the technique of Dickens. The long threevolume novel appears again in Gissing. Gissing, too, has a fondness for eccentrics. Over and over again we can trace the influence of the Dickens type of plot. Many of Gissing's novels have the true Dickens habit of devoting a chapter or two to one group of people, then spending some chapters on a second or even a third group, finally returning to the original characters several chapters later. Gissing was as enthusiastic as was Dickens in tracing the bits of old London; in fact, much of his appreciation of London was based on his early memories of Dickens. T h e class of life pictured is much the same. In the spirit of his work, however, Gissing has no resemblance to Dickens. T h e matter can be expressed most simply by saying that Dickens took a cheerful view of the lives of the poor and Gissing a pessimistic view. There is nothing of the humorist in Gissing; Clerkenwell Green, Tottenham Court Road, the lives of the London clerks were not subjects for humor to him. Poverty was not funny to Gissing; he had experienced it as Dickens had not. Dickens had some hope of social reform, of alleviation of the worst evils. Gissing had no such hope; his pictures of London poor life are of a life without hope. Dickens could not have written anything comparable to the thirty-seventh chapter of The Nether World nor would he have expressed his view of poverty in the memorable words of Mad Jack in that chapter: You are passing through a state of punishment. . . . This life you are now leading is that of the damned; this place to which you are confined is Hell! There is no escape for you. From poor you shall become poorer; the older you grow the lower shall you sink in want and misery; at the end there is waiting for you, one and all, a death in abandonment and despair.

INTRODUCTION

3

Yet this is the typical Gissing view of poverty. T h e bitterness of the economic struggle has eaten into his soul, and he can find no humor in it. Dotheboys Hall or the parish almshouse w o u l d have had no redeeming features in a Gissing novel; such characters as Q u i l p or Fagin or Sykes or T h e A r t f u l Dodger would have been regarded by him only with undisguised bitterness—and their machinations would have succeeded. Oliver T w i s t w o u l d have been ruined by the company he kept, and Dick Swiveller w o u l d have been overcome by his enjoyment of drink. Gissing w o u l d have thought it insincere to present these matters in a cheerful light, even though he did not condemn Dickens for so doing. N o r is it enough to say that Gissing lacked the zest of life which Dickens had, and consequently painted his pictures in unrelieved gray and black. T h e r e is a certain amount of realism in the technical sense in Gissing which never was in Dickens. H e had been influenced by Flaubert and T u r g e n i e f f and Balzac and Daudet as Dickens had not. It was from such writers that he, a m o n g the first of English novelists to do so, obtained many an idea that he developed in his o w n individual fashion. His theories are best expressed in the statements of Biflen and R e a r d o n in New Grub Street, in an article on The Place of Realism in Fiction, and in the remarks of W a y m a r k in The Unclassed. F r o m these sources we gather that he did not think that realism need be synonymous with p a i n f u l or revolting, n o r need it be connected with any form of philosophy, pessimistic or otherwise. H e believed that it involves artistic sincerity in the portrayal of contemporary life, a willingness to give the " i g n o b l y d e c e n t " side of life just as it is, without either drama or humor. It may involve psychological realism in the sphere of culture, as it did in the case of Reardon. In Gissing's case it amounted to the photographic portrayal of the life of the poor as he saw it, in all honesty and sincerity, but without propaganda or any indication of a remedy for the evils of modern poverty. It becomes unsensational, undramatic, even uninteresting in its efforts to present the ordinary course of life;

4

GEORGE

GISSING

p e r h a p s that is w h y G i s s i n g is so little r e a d . T h e r e is m o r e t h a n a t o u c h of F r e n c h n a t u r a l i s m in Gissing, yet he has little e n o u g h of its t e c h n i q u e . O f its sex passages, of its discussion of social p r o b l e m s , he has n e a r l y n o n e . H e presents l i f e m e r e l y as a series of p i c t u r e s seen by himself. W h e n w e say of a w r i t e r of such t e n d e n c i e s that he is scholarly w e c o m m o n l y u n d e r s t a n d s o m e t h i n g far d i f f e r e n t f r o m w h a t w e really find i n G i s s i n g . W e e x p e c t to find h i m scholarly in t h e sense of b e i n g an e x a c t a n d close o b s e r v e r of c o n t e m p o r a r y

l i f e . W e e x p e c t to

find

his novels docu-

m e n t e d a n d scientific affairs, l i k e Zola's, t h e w o r k of a m a n who knows

much

of l i f e a n d

w h o has systematized

that

k n o w l e d g e . S u c h is not t h e s c h o l a r s h i p of Gissing. H e is an exact o b s e r v e r o n l y w i t h r e g a r d to e x t e r n a l s ; he k n o w s t h e streets of L o n d o n , its v a r i o u s p o o r districts, and can describe w e l l the a p p e a r a n c e a n d m o v e m e n t s of p e o p l e in mass. O f the p s y c h o l o g y of the p o o r he k n o w s little; character a f t e r c h a r a c t e r acts o n l y as G i s s i n g h i m s e l f w o u l d have acted in the same c i r c u m s t a n c e s . N o , his s c h o l a r s h i p is the ding an

sich;

he is interested in i n t e l l e c t u a l matters f o r t h e i r o w n sake, n o t f o r t h e i r p r a c t i c a l results. In fact, h e d i s l i k e d such studies; he t o o k n o p l e a s u r e in such o b s e r v a t i o n a l w o r k as was necessary f o r his novels. S c h o l a r s h i p to h i m was the study of lite r a t u r e , n o t the study of l i f e ; it was the scholarship of the i n t e l l e c t u a l élite, n o t that of t h e e c o n o m i s t or the r e f o r m e r . T h i s shows itself in t h e v e r y t o n e of the novels; they are novels of t h e p o o r w r i t t e n f r o m t h e aristocratic point of v i e w . E v e r y w h e r e w e c o m e u p o n praises of t h e c u l t u r e d , l e i s u r e d type of l i f e ; a m a n is j u d g e d , n o t b y his success in

finding

a l i v e l i h o o d , b u t by t h e v i g o r a n d d e p t h of his i n t e l l e c t u a l interests. U r g i n g t h e p r o l e t a r i a t to rise against its oppressors was the last t h i n g G i s s i n g h a d in m i n d . H e admires a n d respects the social aristocracy, h o w e v e r little he may

belong

to it. In his c h o i c e of characters, that is, of those characters w h o m w e are to r e g a r d f a v o r a b l y , he v i n d i c a t e s himself o v e r a n d o v e r a g a i n as a " p s y c h o l o g i c a l realist in the sphere of

INTRODUCTION

5

c u l t u r e " 1 — a s Biffen was wont to describe Reardon. For his heroes, almost without exception, are people of pronounced intellectual interests, and they are his heroes because they have such interests. T h e y may b e l o n g to the artisan class by birth or they may have descended to the lower classes by reason of poverty, but they are not true Gissing heroes unless they have such interests. In fact, the creed of Gissing amounts to the statement that intellectual pursuits alone are noble. It is expressed nowhere more vividly than in his account of Mutimer's library in Demos. T h a t worthy stands condemned not for the n u m b e r or the quality of his books but because of their nature and contents. T h e y are books of sociology, of economics, of discussion of modern problems and, according to Gissing, M u t i m e r , though a workingman, should have been interested in pure literature, in the classics. His ignorance of such matters is enough to indicate his fail ings as a leader of a reform movement. N o w the scholarly interests of Gissing are not merely those of a student of the literature of his o w n nation or of his own time. Again and again we notice that his intellectual interests are centered in a time long past, in the literature of Greece and Rome, in the ages of Pericles and Augustus. T h i s is evident in the most realistic of his novels, in those which are most properly slum novels. Reference after reference to things classic is made, references which only one brought up in the classic tradition w o u l d appreciate. T h i s is most strikingly evident in the twelfth chapter of The Nether World. T h e subject of that chapter is the visit of some slum dwellers to the Crystal Palace on the occasion of a bank h o l i d a y — a chapter which was based on direct observation of such a holiday, made by Gissing with this novel in mind. T h e chapter is nevertheless headed " I o Saturnalia" and the celebration is described in terms drawn from that ancient festival. " T o d a y will the slaves of industrialism don the p i l e u s " — s u c h is its second sentence. Classic references intrude continually u p o n the most exact and rigorous first1

New

Grub

Street,

M o d e r n Library ed., p. 151,

(chap. X ) .

6

GEORGE GISSING

hand description; we hear about maenads, about the statues of antiquity, about ships of Tarsus, about the "sun-god, inspirer of thirst," about Orphean magic. In fact, it is one of the most typical examples of Gissing's mixing of the classic with the contemporary—and is almost without parallel in the English novel. Such references to classic story appear in all his novels; they are part of his literary method. Parson Wyvern, the chorus of Demos, expresses the main idea of that novel by means of a quotation from the Phadrus; The Unclassed is full of references to classic history, to Gibbon, to Tacitus, to Plutarch and Livy, to the Georgics of Virgil; Sleeping Fires is full of Aristophanes; Gregorovius and Lucian form the favorite reading matter of the index characters of The Whirlpool; Thyrza is prefaced by a quotation from Theocritus and contains discussions of Moschus and Catullus; Our Friend the Charlatan has much to say about Marcus Aurelius; the luckless authors of New Grub Street are devoted to Sophocles and Euripides. That such references in the novels of modern life are no accidents is proved by the number of works by their author which are directly of classic inspiration. We have one book of travel in southern Italy which is directly inspired by the connection of that land with the period of Greek colonization. We have one novel of classic times, Gissing's offering to the manes of Gibbon. In The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft we have a series of literary and personal essays which are no less characteristic of their author than is The Nether World—and they are essays in which the love of scholarship and of classic scholarship in particular is ever present. In his life and letters we find even more of that love of the classic which seems so strange in the novelist of modern London. We discover that he made no less than three extended trips to Italy and Greece, that he constantly hoped to make more such trips and would surely have done so, had it been at all possible. His letters show a continual reading of the ancient classics —and practically no reading which would enable him better to comprehend the problems of the present. These two

INTRODUCTION

7

elements in his character, however contradictory they may appear, were both of great consequence to Gissing; George Gissing the man, as well as George Gissing the writer, cannot be properly understood without a proper evaluation of both of them. An exact parallel to this unusual duplicity of interests is somewhat hard to find elsewhere in literature. The writers who have combined the study of the classics with the writing of slum novels have been few indeed. Suggestions of similar double sets of interest, however, may be found in various of Gissing's own literary heroes and in men closely associated with him during his lifetime. T h e great Samuel Johnson, for example, whom Gissing so highly respected, was a student of the classics as well as one acquainted with poverty and with the mean streets of London. But his writings can be called "realistic" only in the most general sense; there is, of course, no trace of the realism of modern times in his work. Between Rasselas and The Nether World there is a great gulf fixed. Landor, too, was a writer whom Gissing read and reread. Gissing was wont to call his Imaginary Conversations "perfect prose." But the two writers are alike only as far as the classic is concerned. Gissing shared Landor's interest in the classics and his aristocratic point of view; the reading of Landor may have helped to lead him to both ideas; further than that the parallel does not go; Landor was no realist. Flaubert may prove to be a closer parallel than either of these two English writers. It was his realistic method, more than that of any other, that Gissing studied and copied during his apprenticeship; he used to speak of a period in his life when he regarded Flaubert's as the only adequate method. And Flaubert did after all study ancient times and write at least two works based on ancient history and ancient theology. He was both realist and classicist in the strictest senses of both terms. Yet there is a great deal of difference between Salammbô and Veranilda, though both are romances of ancient times written by authors who had previously occupied themselves with the

8

GEORGE GISSING

realistic novel of contemporary life. Placed beside the highly colored and dramatic pictures of Flaubert's Carthaginian novel, Gissing's Roman novel seems unimaginative, commonplace, almost like the reporting of ancient scenes by a modern realist in terms of his own method. Gissing lacks the imagination of Flaubert, though not his scholarship. Nor is Flaubert exactly the same kind of realist as Gissing is. He is no slum novelist. He is the realist in the depiction of character, which Gissing was not, and not the realist in the treatment of the environment of the poor—of mean streets, of fruitless efforts to rise on the social scale, of bitter economic struggles—as Gissing was. Meredith, too, the friend and adviser of Gissing, was a classicist of sorts, as we can see from such a character as Dr. Middleton in The Egoist. But even if that character be pure Meredith and not simply an example of the influence of Peacock, there is not nearly as much of the classic in Meredith. Meredith does not make as much of scholarship as does Gissing nor was he a novelist of the slum, however much of a realist he may have been. T h e novelist who was closest to Gissing in both of these respects was, I presume, Thomas Hardy. He, too, was numbered among Gissing's acquaintances and Gissing on the whole admired his novels although he could not stomach Hardy's excursion into French naturalism in Jude the Obscure. And even here we must begin with a qualification. Hardy was first and foremost a novelist of the countryside as Gissing was above all a novelist of the town. In other respects the parallel is fairly close. Hardy, too, was a realistic novelist who studied the classics. There are many traces of classicism in his novels; one need think only of the close of Tess of the D'Urbervilles with its reference to "the President of the Immortals, in iEschylean phrase," of the close of The Mayor of Casterbridge with its echoes of the last chorus of the CEdipus Tyrannos, or of the description of Eustacia Vye in The Return of the Native with its constant use of images taken from Greek and Roman literature. In fact, there really is more classicism in the novels of Hardy than

INTRODUCTION

9

there is in the novels of Gissing. With Hardy it is often an integral part of the novel; with Gissing it most frequently is mere ornament. T h e list of Gissing characters can present no such protagonist of ancient tragedy as Michael Henchard. T h e architectonics of his novels present no such parallel to the structure of classic tragedy as some of Hardy's do. Gissing was not imbued with the spirit of ancient philosophy. There is but little of the malign chance in his works; the fate of (Edipus is not repeated time and time again as it is in Hardy. T h e calamities of Gissing are those of modern times—those caused by economic pressure, by weakness of character, by inadequate nerve force or by failure of purpose—not those brought about by fate and the bitter irony of the gods. Hardy never introduces the classic in any casual way. H e does not make his leading characters students of the classic. H e does not imply that a devotion to intellectual interests is a prerequisite of such a character. H e does not use classic phrases purely as ornament or as evidence of learning. In this one point Hardy proves himself the greater man; his learning is better assimilated. But he does stand with Gissing as proof of the fact that it is possible for a student of the classics to write good novels of contemporary life in the modern realistic fashion. A full explanation of this unique characteristic of Gissing as classicist and realist in one may be left until later, but at least something can be said by way of introduction. His choice of "realistic" subjects can probably be explained by reference to the circumstances of his life. During the most impressionable period of his life—in his early twenties—he was forcibly brought into contact with the matters of which he writes. H e was hardly more than a boy when he began his novels; the first was published before he was twenty-two; the fund of experience on which he had to draw was limited to his school career, a short sojourn in America, and his struggles in the great arena of London. It was but natural that, in attempting to write novels, he should be led, partly perhaps through the influence of Dickens, to write of those

IO

G E O R G E GISSING

L o n d o n scenes w h i c h had so vividly presented themselves to his imagination. It can hardly be stated too positively that much of the Gissing novels, particularly of the earlier ones, is disguised autobiography. H e wrote of the lives of the poor because he was poor himself. T h e mean streets of L o n d o n of which he writes are those in which he himself had lived. T h e trials and tribulations of Golding, of Waymark and Casti, of Reardon and Biffen are those which he himself had experienced. Obviously, such subjects cannot be handled in the romantic manner, and the young writer found in the works of Flaubert and T u r g e n i e f f just such a technique as suited his needs. It was inevitable that he should become a realist of some sort just as it was most natural for him to write novels of the L o n d o n slums. His love for the classic goes even deeper. It originated in an even earlier part of his life, in his early boyhood. W e have every reason to believe that his taste for literature in general and for the classic literature in particular was developed in him before his father's death in his home at Wakefield. His early reputation, as a mere boy, was that of a remarkable student of the classics; for five years at least he had every opportunity to study those languages and read those literary works which were to mean so m u c h to him later on. T h e classicist was there before the realist had arrived. His bookishness and the solitariness of the early years in L o n d o n encouraged and deepened this interest. T h e r e is every reason to believe that he early f o u n d in the classics an escape from the life around him. In By the Ionian Sea he writes: "Every man has his intellectual desire; m i n e is to escape life as I know it and dream myself back into that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood." 2 It was no new desire that he was then expressing; it had been one of the leading motives of his entire career, however little suited it may seem to a writer of realistic novels. T h e s e classic tastes did not, of course, develop in a vacuum. T h e r e had been a l o n g line of English writers before • The Travellers' Library ed., London, 1933, p. 28.

INTRODUCTION him who had similar interests in the classics. T h e return to things Greek had been one of the leading features of the romantic movement; Gissing was following in the steps of Byron and Keats and Shelley and Landor and Browning and Tennyson. Gissing had read all of these men as well as not a little of the classicism of the eighteenth century, of Gibbon and Dr. J o h n s o n . In fact, the only really u n i q u e element in his development is the combination of two such diverse elements—slum material and classic tastes. Gissing is a slum dweller who sits in a mean room on some alley off T o t t e n ham Court R o a d , making a dinner of cold meat and bread before a dwindling fire while he reads Aristophanes with his feet on the andirons, rising only occasionally to consult his Liddell and Scott. Such a situation is really u n i q u e and quite without parallel in the annals of literature. T h e aims of this discussion can therefore be defined somewhat as follows. It aims to make a study of Gissing the classicist with some slight reference to Gissing the realistic novelist. It aims to study the origin of his classic tastes and to show their importance and their continuance throughout his life. It aims to trace his reading of the Graeco-Roman literature and his contact with the classic countries. It aims to analyze those books in which the classic is dominant and to explain his appreciation of the G r e e k and Latin writers. It plans to show the influence of the classic on his novels. It will attempt some resolution of the puzzle presented by these two seeming contradictory elements in the one writer.

II T H E DEVELOPMENT OF HIS CLASSICISM TO 1883 H E R E may be a number of ways of explaining this unusual combination of interests in Gissing, but, in any case, it does seem clear that both interests were present in him from the beginning. Our first task, therefore, will be to give enough of an account of his early life and youthful contact with the classics to explain the origin of those classic tastes which were so important throughout his entire life. Our discussion can be limited to the time before 1883, the date of his first important novel. George Robert Gissing, born November 22, 1857, was the oldest child of Thomas Waller Gissing (1829-1870), a pharmaceutical chemist of Wakefield, a small town near Manchester. Gissing's father seems to have been known outside of Wakefield chiefly through his hobby, which was botany. 1 T h e influence of his father on the future novelist was unusually important. Gissing himself gave us fictional pictures of his father in the characters of Harvey Rolfe in The Whirlpool and of Godwin Peak's father in Born in Exile. In the second chapter of Born in Exile Nicholas Peak is described as "the son of a laborer burdened with a large family" who had made his way "by sheer force of character." " H e was employed as a dispenser . . . by a medical man with a large practice." Though poor, he was proud to a fault and paid, out of mere pride, a tax which he might have avoided. He was a man of "strong impulses towards culture" and of marked intellectual interests; he studied history, politics and economics; his oldest

T

1 T . W. Gissing's work in botany is referred to in Gissing's Letters, and described in the (British) Journal of Botany for 1889.

12

p. 347,

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

13

child was named after the author of Political Justice.2 N o w there is undeniably a great deal of autobiography in this novel and it is probable that m u c h of this description of Peak's father is based on memories of his own. It might be argued that the father here is only the fitting background for the hero of the novel, the man of great intellectual force who, by virtue of the accidents of birth and position, is an exile from that social stratum w h i c h alone preserves the type of cultured and refined life for which he longs. B u t that type of h e r o — t h e intellectual w h o cannot find his place in modern society—is the typical Gissing hero and for the good and sufficient reason that he was always Gissing himself in one or another form of fictional disguise. It is not too m u c h to assume f r o m these statements that Gissing's father, like his son, was an intellectual placed in uncongenial circumstances. It is d o u b t f u l whether any chance chemist would have been the father of two novelists. T h e picture Gissing gives of his father in The Whirlpool emphasizes the more pleasant features of his personality. In the sixth chapter of the third v o l u m e he describes the relation between R o l f e and his child in a manner which seems to combine his own experiences as a father with his recollections of early childhood. T h u s Rolfe's feeling of responsibility to the child, his d o u b t as to the wisdom of "thus fostering over the imagination," is probably one of Gissing's o w n thoughts, although it may be connected with the development of his o w n imagination in childhood. B u t a paragraph such as that one in w h i c h he describes Rolfe's r e a d i n g to hi« child seems undeniably a memory of the author's o w n childhood. H e relates that " I t was the rule now that before his bedtime, seven o'clock, H u g h i e spent an h o u r in the library, alone with his father," and that, along with fairy tales, "Stories from the Odyssey had come in of late; b u t Polyphemus was a doubtful e x p e r i m e n t — H u g h i e dreamt of him." 8 I wonder how closely w e can push this statement. A r e w e to suppose that Gissing's *Born • The

in Exile, London, 1892, I, 44-47. Whirlpool, L o n d o n , 1897, p. 385.

•4

G E O R G E GISSING

interest in the classics was so strong because it dated from childhood, from the time before he himself could read? Was Homer given to him with his nursery tales? Well, this is not so improbable as it might seem on the basis of this single reference. Gissing's father did read to him. Morley Roberts says: I learnt then [at Manchester, 1874-76] a little of his early history. . . . He always believed that he owed most, and perhaps everything, to his father, who must have been a very remarkable man. . . . Maitland often used to speak, with a catch in his voice, of the way his father read to him. I do not remember what books he read, but they were the classic authors of England. 4 In a letter of January 2, 1880, Gissing himself wrote: " W e sat up to see the old year out and the new in, and following Father's immemorial practice, I read Tennyson's appropriate poem aloud; then we threw up the window and listened to the bells which sounded finely. . . ." A f t e r such a statement we see that the reference to a similar reading in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Winter X I X ) is certainly autobiographical: When I was scarce old enough to understand, I heard read by the fireside the Christmas stanzas of "In Memoriam." Tonight I have taken down the volume, and the voice of so long ago has read to me once again—read to me as no other ever did, that voice which taught me to know poetry, the voice which never spoke to me but of good and noble things. It is hardly necessary to quote other statements of Gissing's friends to the effect that his father was the cardinal formative influence in his life, and that the memory of his father's reading remained with him throughout his entire life. 8 This reading was of the first importance in developing his intellectual life and it very probably did include at least some 'Morley Roberts, The Private Life of Henry Maitland, London, 1923, pp. 16, 17. • Cf. F. Swinnerton: George Gissing, a Critical Study, New York, 1923, p. 22.

DEVELOPMENT T O 1883

15

selections from the classics. Roberts is even willing to locate such readings for us; he suggests that they took place in "the garden belonging to their Mirefields [i.e., Wakefield] house," a garden which is supposed to be "photographically reproduced" in A Life's Morning.8 Gissing's own memories of his home at Wakefield before his father's death are given most directly in an article called Dickens in Memory, in the New York Critic for January, 1902. He there says that one of his earliest recollections was that of the coming of Our Mutual Friend serially—"a thin book in a green paper cover." This was appearing in 1864, when Gissing was only seven. He remembered the frontispiece of Little Dorrit, and The Old Curiosity Shop was the first book which he read through—at the age of ten years. He speaks of a picture called " T h e Empty Chair" in The Illustrated London News. " T h e n for the first time I heard of Dickens' home and knew that he lived at that same Gadshill of which Shakespeare spoke." This incident must be placed by the context six months before his father's death in December of 1870; that is to say, it was just after the death of Dickens in June, 1870. This would seem to allow us to infer that his father had introduced him to Dickens and Shakespeare as well as to Homer before George was thirteen years of age. In The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X I I ) he speaks of his "great Cambridge Shakespeare" which had belonged to his father; the statement is probably fact, not fiction. His father's library must have contained a good selection of the standard writers of England. His sister states that he took from that library "when the youngest of us was twenty-one" a folio Hogarth, Don Quixote, fourteen volumes of De Quincey, and five or six volumes of Browning. There were many other volumes which he might have had; he had little room at the time and took these because he "felt he must have with him" these particular works.7 In a letter of July 10, 1881, he wrote to his sister • Roberts, op. cit., p. 20; A Life's Morning, Vol. I, Chapter 7. ''Blackwood's Magazine, May, 1929, p. 653.

i6

GEORGE GISSING

that he could give her no information about Arthur Hallam and adds that, "But if you look in one of the glass-doored bookcases you will find a little volume called A. H. Hallam's Literary Remains which, I feel sure, has a memoir prefixed." This must refer to the bookcases left by the senior Gissing. In The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Summer V) Gissing again refers to this library: While a child, I was permitted to handle on Sunday certain books which could not be exposed to the more careless usage of common days; volumes finely illustrated, or the more handsome editions of familiar authors, or works which, merely by their bulk, demanded special care. Happily, these books were all of the higher rank in literature. We can also state, on the evidence of his early poems, that his father's library must have contained a good selection from the Elizabethan drama. These poems (existing only in manuscript) are said to "show unmistakably how much reading of the Elizabethan drama he had done and how much influence that phase of English literature had already had on his precocious mind." 8 This interest did not develop as the classic interest did; Gissing refers to Shakespeare frequently but to Elizabethan studies in general only in Isabel Clarendon and in a few of his letters. Certainly the library of his father must have had a great influence on Gissing's youthful mind; it, as well as his father's readings, must have directed his attention to the classics of antiquity as well as to the standard modern writers. We also have some direct evidence of an interest in and a knowledge of ancient times which dates from before his father's death. This is in the form of a diary which Gissing kept in September of 1870 and which has since been published in his Letters. On September 10, 1870, he wrote: Today I invented, and intend to construct, a little model of a locomotive engine, working by steam, also a model of • An account of the sale of these documents appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer for May n , 1931.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

17

a Roman trireme, the oars moving by steam. I have read J . Eastman's lecture upon Gladstone's book Juventus Mundi. T h i s is remarkable, not only for the pronounced intellectual interests shown in the reference to the lecture, but also for the knowledge of R o m a n naval affairs which one would not expect in the average boy of thirteen. T w o days later the diary stated that " T o d a y I prepared a study of a picture to be done in pencil, 'Orpheus playing.' Father gave me a long round tin to hold drawing paper and the three volumes of trees he has." On September 17th he proudly wrote that he had "Finished my picture of Orpheus to my satisfaction." From the diary's description of the sketch we gather that it was based on that part of the Orphic legend which deals with the power exerted by Orpheus over the animal kingdom. A considerable number of animals were pictured in it —all entranced by the music from the lyre of Orpheus. T h i s acquaintance with classic legend at so early an age can hardly be overemphasized. It is especially noteworthy that the first traces of his classic bent occur in connection with drawing, for it appears to have been the pictorial or picturesque elements of the classic which later fascinated him—not the philological or merely literary phases. We can state quite positively that the Orphic legend, at least, was brought to Gissing's notice by his father. This diary also dates for us another important phase of his classicism. On September 15, 1870, he wrote: " I began to do latin verses today for the first time." T h i s first contact with classic metres was at the Wakefield school; classic metres remained one of his abiding interests. Eighteen seventy must also be given as the time of his first interest in classic places, an interest which presumably owed its origin to some course in history or literature at the Wakefield school. When he first visited Rome, he wrote, in a letter of December 17, 1888: " T h e ruins are very fragmentary but nearly all have been identified and one walks among places that have been familiar to one's imagination since Harrison's Back Lane School [Wakefield]." His interest

G E O R G E GISSING

i8

in classic matters was, therefore, already present and active w h e n his father died in December, 1870. T h e three brothers were then sent to board at L i n d o w G r o v e School at Alderly Edge. T h e impression we get of Gissing's boyhood home is that of a home in which education, culture, the classics were indeed highly regarded. Gissing's son emphasizes the fact that there was no lack of education nor any lack of the necessary funds. " T h e r e was at no time a shortage of money for the education of the children. Even the sisters were able to remain in school [the W a k e f i e l d H i g h School] until the age of eighteen." 9 T h e importance of this period before his father's death for his later classic studies was undeniably great. O n e is reminded of the passage in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Summer X X V I I ) in which, speaking of H o m e r , he says: I know that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than a faint and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for its blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the world's primeval glory. T h i s is the main point to be kept in mind in connection with Gissing's devotion to the classics; they were so dear to h i m because they were associated with the u n t r o u b l e d days of his youth before his father's death and before the calamity at Manchester. O u r knowledge of his stay at L i n d o w G r o v e is unfortunately rather meagre. W e have a few letters from this school, but they are merely about routine school matters. W e can presume, of course, that the c u r r i c u l u m was the usual one, that it included a good bit of literary and historical studies of various kinds, that his interest in the classics was fostered by direct study of Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, and X e n o p h o n . The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft give us some of Gissing's own memories of that school. It seems that it was here that he first began the study of Greek. T h e essay headed S u m m e r I X speaks most affectingly of the b e g i n n i n g of that • L o n d o n Times

Literary

Supplement,

A p r i l 27, 1933.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

19

study. It was then that he began the Anabasis, piecing it out in "the little Oxford edition" with the aid of Liddell and Scott's lexicon. He says: My old Liddell and Scott still serves me, and if, in opening it, I bend close enough to catch the scent of the leaves, I am back again at that day of boyhood (noted on the flyleaf by the hand of one long dead) when the book was new and I used it for the first time. It was a day of summer, and perhaps there fell upon the unfamiliar page, viewed with childish tremor, half apprehension and half delight, a mellow sunshine, which was to linger forever in my mind. T h i s is, of course, a direct and concrete example of that "blending with those memories of youth" which has been referred to in the preceding paragraph. T h e summer day was probably in 1 8 7 1 , at the beginning of his second term at the school. T h e "hand of one long dead" may have been that of his brother William, who died in 1880. Is it not probable that one lexicon served the three brothers? His Greek must have been kept up through the ensuing five years of his scholastic career. In a letter of December 5, 1878, he wrote: " I have got a sudden wish to take up my Greek again, which I have now dropped for nearly three years." T h i s "nearly three years" would bring us to the spring of 1876 when he left Owens. We also have a number of statements by his sister Ellen, which bear upon this very period. In The Nineteenth Century for 1927, for example, she gives a character sketch of her brother in which she speaks of his early development. She states that his intellectual ability, even in youth, was much above the average and that it set him apart from his natural associates. She tells us that he had no real intellectual companionship at Lindow Grove. For this reason it is to this period that we can attribute the beginning of that withdrawal into the world of books which was to have so marked and so doubtfully fortunate an effect on his career. At this school he seems to have shone scholastically, on speech days, and in amateur theatricals, though not other-

G E O R G E GISSING

20

wise. Roberts, in a rather obscure passage, asserts that Gissing became interested in plays through a schoolfellow at Lindow Grove and that this interest in plays and speeches was the source of his interest in the sound of words. H e says: " A t school he used to read Oliver Wendell Holmes aloud to some of the other boys. T h i s was when he was thirteen. Even then he always laid stress on beautiful words and loved their rhythm." 1 0 If this statement can be taken as fact, we are again dealing with the summer of 1871. It would indicate that his experience at Lindow Grove helped to develop an interest in the sound and the rhythm of words, an interest already brought to him by the beginning of Latin verses in the preceding year. At any rate, he did take part in amateur theatricals at this school. T h e r e is in existence a marked copy of Love's Labour's Lost "with his own pencilled markings of cuts and stage business, as well as the note, 'Acted at Lindow Grove, Xmas 1873.' " n One of the most important elements of his classicism, his love for classic metres, can possibly be traced to this youthful declamation of the blank verse of the great Elizabethan. T h e Lindow Grove period seems to have been between January of 1871 and some short time after these theatricals in December of 1873. A n interesting letter from this school, dated May 5, 1872, speaks of the examinations he was then taking: But now I have to work in earnest for my great exam, the Oxford. If I pass that I don't care. I shall work as hard as ever I can for I know you would like me to pass well. This is in about three weeks, so that I have but very little time. H e did study hard, and his proficiency in his studies is sufficiently attested by the fact that he came out first in the entire kingdom in the Oxford local examination. Such brilliance was rewarded a year or two later by the granting of a scholarship at Owens College, Manchester, and he left Lindow Grove for that institution. 10

Roberts, op. cit., p. 21. "Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1 1 , 1931.

DEVELOPMENT TO 1883

21

He left for Owens College in 1874, in the summer of which year he places the imaginary distribution of prizes in the first chapter of Born in Exile. We have now come to the time in his life when his extraordinary interest in classical matters was recognized by all who knew him. His schoolfellow at Owens, Morley Roberts, says: "There was nobody in the place who could touch him for classical learning, and everybody prophesied the very greatest future for the boy. . . . Even then he thought about nothing but ancient Greece and Rome, or so it would appear to those who knew him at that time." 1 2 Nevertheless, he did not beat everybody in the place for classical learning; the cold facts are that the prizes he won at Owens included first prizes in Senior Latin, English language and English Literature, and the English poem prize, but second prizes in the Annual Classical Examination for Greek and in the Higher Junior Classical Competition. Still, it is true that his reputation at that time was that of a classical scholar, and the set of his life appears to have been in the direction of such scholarship rather than in the direction of realistic fiction. It is from this time that we can most surely date that interest in classic locale which was to be the most prominent phase of his classicism. But before we can touch upon this matter it may be well to pause a moment to consider the tendency of this development which was so rudely broken off by the calamity which closed his career at Owens and shut the door to any career along the conventional lines of scholarly work. One cannot but wonder what we might have had from his pen, had circumstances been favorable. Would he have become a scholar, perchance a Don like Pater, interested in the literature of all nations from a critical rather than from a creative standpoint? Looking back on his career in later times, Gissing was rather inclined to feel that he should have been such a scholar. By the time of the writing of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft he could say, in Spring XVII: "Roberts, op. cit., pp. 15, 16.

GEORGE GISSING

22

I had in me the making of a scholar. With leisure and tranquillity of mind, I should have amassed learning. Within the walls of a college, I should have lived so happily, so harmlessly, my imagination ever busy with the old world [i.e., the world of classic times]. . . . Scholarship in the high sense was denied me, and now it is too late. . . . That, as I can see now, was my true ideal; through all my battlings and miseries I have always lived more in the past than in the present. It would not be wise to disregard entirely so positive a statement. T h e r e was much of the scholar about Gissing, even in the days of his bitterest poverty. Certainly much, very much, of the material of his novels was derived from his unhappy experiences; much of that which is called "realism" in his work would never have been penned, had his life been one of tranquil scholarship. Yet one cannot give entire assent to the idea that his work would have been entirely critical, philosophical, reflective; one cannot altogether imagine Gissing the author of Marius the Epicurean. But one can easily imagine that the historical novel, rather than the novel of contemporary life, would have been most prominent in his writings; one can imagine that the scholarly note would have been much more noticeable; one can imagine that critical discussions of the ancients would have come from his pen. Gissing was after all the type of man who lives largely in books; he was not the good reporter, the observer of modern life, the social critic, the ideal realistic novelist. Some of these things he became; they were not all natural to him. T h e r e was only too much of his own Reardon in Gissing: It was significant, however, that no native impulse had directed him to novel-writing. His intellectual temper was that of the student, the scholar, but strongly blended with a love of independence which had always made him think with distaste of a teacher's life. 13 But it is idle to imagine what Gissing might have become, had the way been smoothed for h i m to develop those inu

New

Grub Street, Modern Lib. ed., p. 60.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

23

terests in classic and historical studies which were the most prominent feature of his personality d u r i n g his youth. It is evident only that, largely on account of circumstances over which he had no control, no such development took place. T h e development in Gissing's classic tastes w h i c h did take place between 1876, w h e n he left Owens, and the w r i t i n g of The Unclassed in 1883, can be traced most easily by a consideration of that phase of his classicism w h i c h was most prominent in those years. T h i s was, of course, his great interest in the classic countries, an interest which grew as the possibilities for a life of scholarship receded. T h i s enthusiasm for Italy and Greece was the main and the distinguishing feature of his reaction to the classics for many years; it had its origin in his childhood, was the result of his early reading of the classics, and remained with him to the end. It is not hard to trace the origin of this enthusiasm to his early youth. W e have seen that he had associations with certain places in R o m e which dated from the W a k e f i e l d grammar school, that is, before 1871, that he began the study of Latin verse in 1870 and the study of Greek in the summer of 1871. Classic history must have played a part in this early schooling. T h e first reference of importance to his feeling for classic places, however, occurs in the prize poem, " R a v e n n a . " 1 4 A c c o r d i n g to his son, 1 5 this was written in 1873 when Gissing had "barely reached his sixteenth birthday," a date which may or may not be correct. 1 6 In any case, it is his first published work and it must be dated before 1876, when he left Owens. N o w the k n o w l e d g e which this poem shows of the history and geographical surroundings of Ravenna is considerable. It describes the surroundings of the city. It relates the f o u n d i n g of R a v e n n a and carries its 14 Published in Selections, Autobiographical and imaginative, from the Works of George Gissing, New York, 1929, pp. 175-184. "Ibid., p. 175. " C o m p a r e the various statements made or implied in: Roberts. The Private Life of Henry Maitland. London, 1923, p. 21. Ellen Gissing, Nineteenth Century. 1927, vol. 102, p. 419. Letters of George Gissing to Members of His Family, London, 1927, p. 9. Born in Exile, London, 1892, I, 7.

24

G E O R G E GISSING

history through the period of Belisarius, paying particular attention to the capture of the city by T h e o d o r i c . T h e poem is of course purely literary in origin, has few merits and is distinctly y o u t h f u l , but it does show a real interest in classic locale d u r i n g Gissing's school days. O n e of Gissing's early unpublished poems, a short lyric of 1874, called Italia, confirms the idea that he was interested in Italy and Greece even before 1876. W e have every reason to believe that this interest in classic places continued through the difficult years that followed his leaving Owens. O u r knowledge of these years is rather scant, but it is quite possible that Whelpdale's remark in New Grub Street:11 " I t was in T r o y , . . . T r o y , N . Y. T o think that a man should live on pea-nuts in a town called T r o y ! " is not only a faithful account of Gissing's experiences but actually a thought which occurred to him at the t i m e — i n the summer of 1877. T h e various references to an interest in classic history which occur in the letters written directly after his return from America show that this interest was still present, if dormant. His dream of writing a novel about G r e e c e at the time of the Peloponnesian W a r , mentioned in a letter of January 16, 1881, implies something of this sort. By 1882, at any rate, the desire to visit the Mediterranean had become almost overpowering. In a letter to his sister, dated A p r i l 16, 1882, he writes: Alg. and I often compare our notions as to the pleasantest way of spending a holiday. I say how grand it would be to have a month in the Mediterranean; Alg. would not think of that in preference to the Scotch border or the Hebrides. I cannot get him to realize the gloriousness of seeing Italy, Sicily and Greece, Rome, Athens, the Ionian Islands—countries where every spot of ground gives off as it were an absolute perfume of reminiscences and associations. Think of standing in the Forum, and saying to oneself—"Here on this very spot have Scipio and Sulla, Cicero and Caesar, Virgil and Horace stood and talked; these very blocks of stone and mar" Modern Library ed., p. 416.

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ble have echoed to the noises of a Roman crowd, and beheld the grandest scenes of all history I" But we have come to the period of his earliest novels, to Workers in the Dawn and The Unclassed. O n e would not expect to find much about the classic locale in Workers in the Dawn\ something about it is there just the same. It is present, for example, in the account of T o l l a d y ' s wanderings as a young man. T h e old bookseller, one of the most pleasant characters in this book, had visited Athens, and it had played no small part in the development of his intellectual life. A passage of more importance occurs in that part of the book which relates the story of the hero's unhappy marriage—a part of the novel which is generally held to be autobiography rather thinly disguised. It describes A r t h u r Golding's thoughts after his wife has left h i m . 1 8 Arthur's thoughts wandered off to a translation of the Odyssey, which he had once read aloud to Mr. Tollady, and he could not help connecting the vari coloured smoke before him with his imagination of the smoke arising from a Greek altar in some sea-girded isle made beautiful under an Ionian sunset. A letter of N o v e m b e r 3, 1879, described the novel as " t o all intents and purposes finished." T h i s quotation can therefore be held to represent Gissing's own state of m i n d in the late months of 1879 when these words were written. B u t it is his second novel, The Unclassed, which more than any other shows the positive worship which Gissing paid to the genii of classic places. T h i s novel was sent to the publishing firm of Chapman and H a l l about December 8, 1883, where it attracted the attention of George Meredith, then reader for the firm. " A l r e a d y in the early pages," says Gissing's son, " h e gives expression to a burning desire to visit Italy, which was always present with him, putting his own thoughts into the mouth of J u l i a n Casti." 1 9 T h e r e are here some passages of considerable importance. T h e first occurs when Casti is 11

Workers in the Dawn, ed. R. Shafer, New York, 1935, II, 194. ™ Selections, loc. cit. p. 43.

26

GEORGE

GISSING

o n l y t h i r t e e n . H e has b e e n r e a d i n g P l u t a r c h a n d it stirs his p r i d e in his R o m a n ancestry. " A n d I was born in R o m e , wasn't I, uncle," he exclaimed at last. " I am a R o m a n ; R o m a n u s s u m l " T h e n he laughed with his wonted bright gleefulness. It was half in jest, but for all that there was a genuine warmth on his cheek, and lustre in his fine eyes. " S o m e day I will go to R o m e again," he said, "and both of you shall go with me. W e shall see the Forum and the Capitol! Shan't you shout when you see the Capitol, uncle?" 2 0 S o m e e i g h t years a f t e r this i n c i d e n t we find t h a t Casti keeps u p this e n t h u s i a s m for R o m e by d e c o r a t i n g his r o o m with e n g r a v i n g s of views in a n c i e n t a n d m o d e r n R o m e . T h i s enthusiasm is really t h e m a i n f e a t u r e o f Casti's c h a r a c t e r . I t shows in his literary plans, in his hopes to w r i t e a story a b o u t S t i l i c h i o o r an e p i c o n t h e fall of R o m e with especial refere n c e t o A l a r i c . A n even m o r e i m p o r t a n t passage occurs in t h e first c o n v e r s a t i o n b e t w e e n W a y m a r k and Casti. " Y o u have been in Italy?" asked Waymark, with interest. A strange look came over Julian's features, a look at once bright and melancholy; his fine eyes gleamed as was their wont eight years ago, in the back-parlour in Boston Street, when he was telling tales from Plutarch. " N o t , " he said, in a low voice charged with feeling, "since I was three years old. You will think it strange, but I don't so much long for the modern Italy, for the beautiful scenery and climate, not even for the Italy of Raphael, or Dante. I think most of classical Italy. I am no scholar, but I love the Latin writers, and can forget myself for hours, working through Livy or Tacitus. I want to see the ruins of R o m e ; I want to see the T i b e r , the Clitumnus, the Aufidius, the Alban Hills, L a k e Trasimenus—a thousand places! It is strange how those old times have taken hold upon me. T h e mere names in Roman history make my blood warm." 2 1 T h e same e n t h u s i a s m persists in Casti even w h e n h e is The Unclassed, " Ibid., p. 46. x

Essex Lib. ed., London, 1930, p. 32.

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most despondent as the result of his unhappy marriage. He regrets most of all then the failure of his plans to visit Rome, his inability to live in Italy, to see the Forum, to write his great epic. But the greatest of Gissing's passages in praise of Italy comes near the end of this same book. Casti is now slowly dying of a lingering illness and Waymark has taken him off on a trip in an effort to improve his health. On the evening before his death Waymark is to read to him. "Read that passage in the Georgics which glorifies Italy," Julian replied. "It will suit my mood tonight." Waymark took down his Virgil. "Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra, Nec pulcher Ganges atque auro turibus Hermus Laudibus Italiae certent, non Bactra, neque Indi, Totaque turiferus Panchaia pinguis arenis." Julian's eyes glistened as the melody rolled on, and when it ceased, both were quiet for a time.22 T h e next morning the exiled R o m a n was found dead. Such was the fate of J u l i a n Casti, the character who better than any other expresses the classic side of Gissing. T h e friendship between Casti and Waymark is generally supposed to have been a transcript of Gissing's friendship for Edouard Bertz; even if this were not the case, these statements would be sufficient to indicate how great and how sincere his love for the classic countries was, long before he had any opportunity to visit them. If Gissing's love for the classic countries existed at such an early date in a form similar to that familiar to readers of By the Ionian Sea and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, it is obviously of a literary origin. Gissing had, in fact, an unusually fine feeling for the literary and historical associations of places. T h i s feeling did not manifest itself only with regard to classic localities, and it must have been part of his mental make-up even in his childhood. In that article on Dickens in Memory which gave us some of his "Ibid.,

p. 296; Georgics

II, 136-139 quoted. Cf. entire passage II, 136-176.

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G E O R G E GISSING

earliest memories Gissing tells us that London became k n o w n to him first of all through the pages of Dickens. W h e n he himself came to London, he saw it as the city of which Dickens had written. What I chiefly thought of was that now at length I could go hither and thither . . . seeking for the places which had been made known to me by Dickens. . . . Four and twenty years ago, when I had no London memories of my own, they were simply the scenes of Dickens's novels, with all remoter history enriching their effect on the great writer's page. . . . In time I came to see London with my own eyes, but how much better when I saw it with the eyes of Dickens. 23 W e have here a phenomenon exactly parallel to this literary association with classic places in the case of Gissing's first master in the art of writing; the books preceded the visit to the actual locality and gave the visits their meaning. A similar statement might be made for the L o n d o n of Samuel Johnson, another of Gissing's literary heroes, as w e can see from the beginning of the sixth chapter of The Nether World. T h i s faculty for the literary and historical associations of places was indeed an important quality of his mind. Morley Roberts noticed it, credits him with "a historical imagination of a very high order," and attributes much of his love of the classic to this very quality. " H e saw in Italy the land of Dante and Boccaccio, a land still peopled in the south towards Sicily with such folk as these and Horace and Theocritus had known." 2 4 Gissing himself was conscious of this quality; he considered it an important element in the artistic imagination, and stated this principle with almost philosophic exactness in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Summer X I X ) : There is as much difference, said Johnson, between a lettered and an unlettered man as between the living and the dead; and in a way, it was no extravagance. Think merely " A r t i c l e reprinted in Critical Studies New York, 1924, pp. 154-156 quoted. * Roberts, op. cit., p. 46.

of the

Works

of Charles

Dickens.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

29

how one's view of common things is affected by literary association. What were honey to me if I knew nothing of Hymettus and Hybla?—if my mind had no stores of poetry, no memories of romance? Suppose me town-pent, the name might bring with it some pleasantness of rustic odor; but of what poor significance even that, if the country were to me mere grass and corn and vegetables, as to the man who has never read nor wished to read. For the Poet is indeed a Maker: above the world of sense, trodden by hidebound humanity, he builds that world of his own whereto is summoned the unfettered spirit. " T h i n k merely how one's view of common things is affected by literary association"—it could be put as a motto over the best of Gissing's work. It is present to a minor extent in most of his realistic novels, although it is hardly minor in New Grub Street, Sleeping Fires, and The Emancipated. Literary association is the direct theme of much of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft; historical associations with places form much of the material for Veranilda; literary and historical associations are the very reason for the existence of By the Ionian Sea. Such associations were the direct causes of which his three trips to the classic lands were the effects. It is needless to belabor the point. Obviously, this unusually sensitive imagination, this magnificent appreciation of literary associations of all kinds, nourished as it was on the frequent reading of the classics, was the quality in Gissing's mind which was responsible for his abiding enthusiasm for the shores of Italy and Greece. When we attempt to particularize—to state just which writers were read by Gissing before 1883 in order to build up these associations—we come of course first to Gibbon. His first reading of Gibbon must have been very early. We may turn first to The Unclassed: [Casti] had the good luck to light upon a cheap copy of Gibbon in a second hand bookshop. It was the first edition; six noble quarto volumes, clean and firm in the old bindings. . . . Since then he had mastered his Gibbon, knew him from

3o

G E O R G E GISSING end to end, and joyed in him more than ever. Whenever he had a chance of obtaining any of the writers, ancient or modern, to whom Gibbon refers, he read them and added to his knowledge. About a year ago, he had picked up an old Claudian . . ." 25

At the time when Gissing wrote these words he too, like J u l i a n Casti, had mastered his Gibbon; he possessed just such a copy of the Decline and Fall as Casti had; he acquired it under similar circumstances. T h e story of his buying a Gibbon which is given in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X I I ) is a familiar one. It is substantially autobiography, as is this passage in The Unclassed. In a letter of May 7, 1882 he wrote: I shall to the end of my life look upon the bookseller Allen [referring to a small old bookshop at that time in Euston Road] as a personal benefactor and bless his name. You remember our wondering what the price would be of a first edition of Gibbon? Well, on going to fetch away the last volume of Stephanus from your late abode the other night, I actually found the very book outside Allen's shop and—is it credible?— marked 6s, 6d!!l Six quarto volumes, portrait and maps! In absolutely perfect condition, not a yellow stain, glorious print, published by Strahan and Cadell. . . . Of course it was impossible not to get this; flesh and blood could not forego the possession of it, despite all impecuniosity. T h e same essay, however, gives us a trace of an even earlier copy of Gibbon. My Gibbon, for example, my well-bound eight-volume Milman edition, which I have read and read and read again for more than thirty years—never do I open it but the scent of the noble page restores to me all the exultant happiness of that moment when I received it as a prize. T h e r e were, then, two copies of Gibbon which Gissing had, the six-volume first edition which, if we are to believe this essay, was sold "years after" its purchase in 1882, and the " P . 67.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

31

eight-volume M i l m a n edition which, on the same authority, he still had in 1900 w h e n he wrote these words. Roberts, incidentally, says that he believes that the quarto G i b b o n was sold after Gissing's death. 2 6 B u t we can trace an interest in G i b b o n back further than 1882. T h e passage just quoted says that he had the M i l m a n edtion for " m o r e than thirty years." T h i s would b r i n g his first reading of it to 1870 or, if this statement was introduced d u r i n g the revision of the work in 1902, to 1872. C a n we take the statement literally? H e says that he received it as a prize. O n e thinks of the prize day described in the first chapter of Born in Exile, a description generally held to be based on Gissing's own experiences at Manchester. However, Gissing did not get to O w e n s until 1874, the date he gives for the prize day of Born in Exile, nor does he mention G i b b o n a m o n g the prizes received by the characters of the novel, a surprising omission, if he really did receive G i b b o n as a prize then. W e must suppose that he received the M i l m a n edition at L i n d o w G r o v e — t h a t is, between the years 1871 to 1873—if we wish to take the passage in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft literally. A t any rate, Gissing read G i b b o n at a very early age and it was a m o n g the first sources of his interest in the classic countries. H e says as m u c h in the third chapter of By the Ionian Sea: Ever since the first boyish reading of Gibbon, my imagination has longed to play upon that scene of Alaric's death. . . . How often had I longed to see this river Busento, which the "labour of a captive multitude" turned aside. It is interesting to note in this connection that Earwaker's prize poem, in Born in Exile,

was on this very subject. B u t

we have direct evidence that Gissing had read G i b b o n , either before or immediately after his arrival at Manchester, for we have the prize poem which Gissing himself wrote, dating quite possibly from 1873. T h i s poem has much to say " Roberts, op. cit., p. »83.

32

GEORGE GISSING

about Italy—and it is directly derived f r o m Gibbon. It begins: One evening, as beneath an oak-tree old I read, reclining, by the fading light, T h e sun departing tinged the page with gold. And the wind whispered to the leaves, good night. I read of emp'rors old, and kings of might Who ruled in fair Ravenna. Fancy clear Peopled the landscape fading on the sight, While on each passing breeze I seem'd to hear T h e roar of Hadria's waves borne near, and yet more near. T h e book, I submit, was Gibbon. T h e opening cantos of the poem are obviously dependent on the account of the founding and the topography of Ravenna which Gibbon gives in his thirtieth chapter. Gissing calls the sea the Hadria, following Gibbon's terminology (the "Hadriatic") instead of dropping the " H " in the modern m a n n e r . Gissing is dependent not merely for his facts on Gibbon; we come at times to close verbal parallels. T h u s , in his thirty-ninth chapter, Gibbon wrote: "Ravenna alone, secure in the fortifications of art and nature, still sustained a siege of almost three years. . . . At length, destitute of provisions and hopeless of relief, the u n f o r t u n a t e monarch yielded." T h i s appears in Gissing's poem as follows: Thrice golden Autumn came, and reapers plied Their sickles, 'midst the scenes of rustic mirth; And thrice with icy breath and hasty stride Hoar Winter paced upon the frozen earth,— Ere yet Ravenna yielded to disastrous dearth. These and other parallels show beyond any reasonable d o u b t that the youthful poet knew well at least those parts of Gibbon which deal with Ravenna. T h e evidence clearly indicates that he began to read Gibbon no later than his sixteenth year. T h i s reading of Gibbon was therefore the first and the most important cause of his abiding love for the scenes of antiquity.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

33

Reference has been made to the passage in The Unclassed in which Gissing allows Casti to be influenced by Gibbon to such an extent that he read "any of the writers, ancient or modern, to which Gibbon refers." Gissing probably did that very thing himself; it is probable that he read Claudian, for example, because of Gibbon's references to his work in the thirtieth chapter of the Decline and Fall. W e can prove that Gibbon's influence led Gissing to read modern historical works which dealt with classic times. H e set before himself a regular course of reading along such lines a full four years before the writing of The Unclassed. In a letter of J a n u a r y 26, 1879 he wrote: We must know our histories . . . I have planned out for myself a course of reading which I shall pursue . . . with increasing firmness. I shall go through all the great standard works on general history: e.g., Thirwall's Greece, Arnold's and Niebuhr's Rome, Hallam, Guizot, Buckle, Gibbon, etc. In the same letter he shows that the plan was not merely visionary; he actually began it. I have taken up Curtius' History of Greece (5 large vols.) and have got to the commencement of the Persian Wars. . . . Work steadily ahead at your Hallam, etc., and if you have any time I would recommend Gibbon. T h e period he treats of is at the root of our modern civilization. . . . You have several good editions of Gibbon. T h i s was when Gissing was not yet twenty-two, at the close of his first year in London. It was in all respects the most difficult time in his career; he was suffering the most bitter poverty and had only faint hopes of being able to support himself by his pen. It is perhaps to such schemes, conceived of at such a time, that he refers with a certain rueful laughter in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Winter X V I ) . However, the project of studying classic history seems to have been carried out more conscientiously than this passage might lead us to suppose. Shortly after the publication

34

G E O R G E GISSING

of his first novel, and before there is any mention of a second, he wrote in a letter of January 16, 1881: Also I am reading a translation of Michelet's History of the Roman Republic. I get more and more towards historical reading. It is my ambition to write a historical novel one of these days, subject to be Greek history at the time of the end of the Peloponnesian War. About a month later, on February 1 1 , 1881, he wrote: I am much taken up with the study of history just now, having to teach it so much. I should not be at all surprised if I find myself planning a historical work one of these days. In J u n e of the same year he refers to the reading of Tacitus and some Roman history. Now a man would hardly outline his entire course of reading in casual letters to his friends. I think that we have here the traces of a somewhat extended course of reading in ancient history which Gissing proposed to himself in 1879, interrupted for the writing of Workers in the Dawn, and continued after that novel was out of the way. It appears to have been of considerable importance in forming his desire to visit Italy and Greece. That he did not give up such reading at once can be seen by an 1885 reference to a reading of Milman's History of Latin Christianity, that he read historical works to the end of his life, Veranilda is sufficient witness. T h e purely historical interest is indeed important in estimating the sources of his love for Italy. T h e reading of the modern historians seems to have been fully as important as the reading of the classic literatures themselves. T h e part played by the classic authors in building up his associations with the classic countries, however, should not be neglected. Here the historians of ancient Greece and Rome played a part, if not a major one. Of the Greek historians he says little. Xenophon appears to have been his favorite, although he seldom refers to him except in connection with his school days. There are a few references to that writer in Sleeping Fires. T h e same must be said of Thucyd-

DEVELOPMENT TO

1883

35

ides and Pausanias; he refers to them only at dates later than 1883. T o Herodotus he refers, curiously enough, only once. Still, there is a question which might be raised. What sources did Gissing have in mind for the novel about the Peloponnesian War which he projected in 1 8 8 1 , if not Thucydides and Xenophon's Hellenica? T h e classic historians who aroused Gissing's interest in the places they dealt with were primarily the R o m a n historians. Caesar's Gallic War, however, was an exception; Gissing refers to it only in order to declare it inferior to Xenophon. T h e historians most concerned appear to have been Plutarch, Tacitus, and Livy. T h e letters of Cicero as well as those of Pliny may have added to this purely historical interest. For the historians The Unclassed marks a very definite terminus; we cannot doubt that, by that time, Gissing had read all three of them carefully and with enthusiasm. He probably was thinking of his own school days in writing of Casti: A t school he was much engaged just now with the history of R o m e , and it was his greatest delight to tell the listeners at home the glorious stories which were his latest acquisitions. All today he had been reading Plutarch. 2 7

Casti's enthusiasm for Rome was the result of his reading of Livy and Tacitus as well as Plutarch; Gissing's love for the classic countries must have owed much to the same source. Livy and Tacitus he must have read at school. His scholastic honors are sufficient evidence that his schoolboy reading must have amounted to more than an ill-done task. Plutarch is not mentioned frequently in his writings; it may be that his acquaintance with that author was somewhat casual. Of his reading of Tacitus we have definite evidence, quite apart from the supposition that he read his work in school. In a letter of J u n e 19, 1881, he wrote: " I work something like this. Before breakfast three chapters of the Germania of Tacitus, and some R o m a n history." Tacitus, I " P . 32-

36

G E O R G E GISSING

presume, came near the conclusion of that planned reading of R o m a n history which has already been discussed. Cicero and Pliny, too, added to his associations with classic places. His Cicero's Letters, for example, "podgy volumes in parchment, with all the notes of Graevius, Gronovius, and I know not how many other old scholars," is said to have been obtained from "that little bookshop opposite Portland Road Station." 2 8 T h i s was the place where he bought his G i b b o n in 1882 and, as this mention of Cicero occurs in the same connection, in the very next section of the work, we must suppose that it was bought at about the same date. His interest in Cicero, of course, must date f r o m before 1882. It is practically certain that he read some of his writings at school. In a letter of May 22, 1878, he wrote: "I have not had much time for reading lately, and now I am g r i n d i n g u p Cicero's De Officiis which is the book my new pupil has." T h i s letter almost causes one to imagine that Gissing at that time had no copy of Cicero in his possession. It makes it even more probable that he purchased the Letters at Allen's bookshop in 1881 or 1882. O f the orations I can find no trace and, indeed, Cicero is not one of Gissing's favorite authors. T h e evidence for an early interest in Pliny is even slighter. It is true that New Grub Street speaks of an article on Pliny's Letters written by Reardon. Many phases of Reardon's career are supposed to parallel Gissing's own earlier life, but w e cannot be sure that such a parallel could extend to an interest in Pliny. T h a t Gissing wrote articles on Pliny is definitely not true; his son, in a letter to me, says: " H e never wrote any definite essays on classical subjects such as he makes Reardon do, but, of course, the classic meant more to him than any other subject." Some later references to Pliny, such as those in Veranilda, seem to show an exact knowledge of his Letters, but there are none early e n o u g h to indicate that Pliny played much part in developing his love for Italy. T h e r e is no evidence to prove that the importance of these writers in cultivating his interest in classic • The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

(Spring X I I I ) .

DEVELOPMENT T O

1883

37

places was a n y t h i n g b u t m i n o r ; at this early date

Gibbon

a p p e a r s to h a v e b e e n the most i m p o r t a n t of all t h e historians, b o t h a n c i e n t and m o d e r n . To

G i b b o n , t h e R o m a n historians, a n d several

modern

historians must b e a d d e d three or f o u r poets of the A u g u s tan age. It may a p p e a r strange that these are the only literary r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s of Gissing's interest in classic

locale—

b u t h o w m a n y classic writers are localized, directly or indirectly? W e can p r o v e the r e a d i n g of H o m e r and the G r e e k tragedians long before

1883, b u t o n e w o n d e r s h o w

much

they c o u l d h a v e c o n t r i b u t e d to this phase of his developm e n t . A r i s t o p h a n e s and T h e o c r i t u s w e r e later a m o n g his f a v o r i t e authors, b u t w e can p r o v e n o early r e a d i n g of either of t h e m . I n the cases of V i r g i l , H o r a c e , T i b u l l u s , a n d C a t u l lus w e are on surer g r o u n d . T h e y w e r e e v i d e n t l y t h e L a t i n w r i t e r s w h o m he p r e f e r r e d a b o v e all others. In a very imp o r t a n t letter of A u g u s t 2, 1885, he lists as t h e "really great m e n " of the L a t i n l i t e r a t u r e " V i r g i l , C a t u l l u s ,

Horace"—a

list w h i c h corresponds closely w i t h R o b e r t s ' statement that " A m o n g t h e Latins, V i r g i l , C a t u l l u s , a n d T i b u l l u s w e r e his f a v o r i t e s . " 2 9 O f these f o u r , V i r g i l appears to h a v e b e e n of the most i m p o r t a n c e . Gissing refers to h i m n o less than sixteen t i m e s — i n all p e r i o d s of his career. T h e death of Casti in The

Unclassed

is e n o u g h in itself to show w h a t an in-

f l u e n c e V i r g i l h a d h a d o n G i s s i n g b y 1883. N o r is it h a r d to p r o v e that his r e a d i n g of V i r g i l was m u c h earlier t h a n 1883. O f course G i s s i n g was i n t r o d u c e d to V i r g i l at school; g e n e r a t i o n s of schoolboys have sweated u n d e r the necessity of t r a n s l a t i n g t h e first six b o o k s of the ALneid. AZneid, ested;

It is n o t t h e

h o w e v e r , in w h i c h G i s s i n g was p a r t i c u l a r l y h e has

Georgics,

more

to say a b o u t

a n d Georgia

the Eclogues

inter-

and

the

II, 136-176 appears to h a v e b e e n his

f a v o r i t e passage, as w e l l as the passage of most i m p o r t a n c e in d e v e l o p i n g his l o v e for Italy. T h a t he read the

Georgics

m u c h b e f o r e 1883 c a n n o t be p r o v e d . It is t r u e that in Private

Papers

of Henry

" Roberts, op. cit., p. »85.

Ryecroft

The

( S u m m e r V ) h e lists V i r -

38

G E O R G E GISSING

gil among those "certain books which could not be exposed to the more careless usage of common days" which he was allowed to read in his father's library on Sunday, but the reference is too indefinite to prove much of anything. T h e incident in the second chapter of Born in Exile in which Peak is shown the examination questions containing a "passage of Virgil which his class had been reading" may very probably be a reminiscence of Gissing's own days at Lindow Grove, but it proves nothing about the Georgics. He refers twice to Virgil in Workers in the Dawn but only in general terms. T h e importance of Virgil in developing Gissing's love for Italy, nevertheless, should not be underestimated. Virgil was precisely the poet who had done most for the glorification of Italy, and we can prove that Gissing read precisely those parts of his works which are most localized. He continued to read Virgil long after he had left school. Horace, too, is a writer to whom Gissing refers frequently and in direct connection with classic places. We must not forget that in 1882 his idea of a perfect vacation was to go to Rome so that he could stand where Horace and Virgil had stood. A n entire chapter of By the Ionian Sea is devoted to his search for the "Dulce Galaesi Flumen" which Horace had celebrated in Odes II. 6 . 1 1 . It was a considerable part of his delight in Rome on his first visit that he was able to read Horace's first epistle while actually in Rome, and that the words of Horace's ode (III. 30: 8, 9 by the context) were always in his mind. Such associations between Rome and Horace must have been formed years before his visit. In the first place, there is the probability that he read Horace, as well as Virgil, during his school days. It is this schoolboy reading which probably led him to write in 1879 of the benevolent clergyman in Workers in the Dawn: " A newspaper lay on the table, which had apparently not yet been opened, but an exquisite copy of Horace formed his companion at breakfast instead." 30 At the time of the writing of this book Gissing was supporting himself largely through " i , «3-

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

39

the teaching of Latin; there is every reason to believe that he taught both Virgil and Horace long before 1883. In addition to this, the importance which Horace later assumed in his thinking leads us to suppose that he must have read and reread him in his youth. It is Horace, more than any other writer, who built up those associations with Rome which were so precious to him later, which explain his frequent and lengthy visits to the Eternal City. Catullus and Tibullus, too, helped to build up his assocations with Italy. T h e date of his reading of Catullus can be declared to be 110 later than May of 1882. In a letter of May 7, 1882, he says: " T h r e e fine lines I have just come across in Catullus, and which I must give you the trouble of making out, so rich are they in melody and meaning." He then quotes three lines from the famous poem to Lesbia (5; 4-6) and concludes " I must read more of the Veronian." Tibullus, too, must have been one of his early favorites. He has Reardon write an article on T i b u l l u s in the early stages of his career in London. In The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X I I ) he states that his "Heyne's T i b u l l u s " was obtained when he was almost starving, when "Sixpence was all I had—yes, all I had in the world. . . . But I did not dare to hope that the T i b u l l u s would wait until the morrow, when a certain small sum fell due to me. T h e book was bought and I went home with it, and as I made a dinner of bread and butter I gloated over its pages." Can we date this incident? Well, the book is said to have been bought in "the old shop in Goodge Street." Now a bookseller named Tollady who has a shop in Charlotte Place, a small street which runs directly into Goodge Street, appears in Workers in the Dawn. In the middle of 1879, when Gissing was beginning that novel, he was living at 70 Huntley Street, in the immediate vicinity of Goodge Street and Charlotte Place. Is it too much to suppose that Tollady is a character directly drawn from the bookseller with whom Gissing was doing business when he was down to his last sixpence? T h e r e was no time more likely than 1878 or 1879 for him to be down to the last sixpence

4o

G E O R G E GISSING

in very fact. Furthermore, there was a sum, rather large, it is true, which fell due in Gissing's most difficult days. " F i v e hundred pounds, George Gissing's share of a trust fund which had been thrown into Chancery on his father's death, would be payable to him on attaining his majority." 8 1 Taking the statement of the fictional Henry Ryecroft in all literalness and at face value, therefore, we date the purchase of the T i b u l l u s on November 2 1 , 1878. Gissing was then living at 31 Gower Place, some eight or ten squares from the shop in Goodge Street. T h i s date may be the correct one; if not, we can at least say that T i b u l l u s was bought in the most difficult years of his career, that is, between 1878 and 1880. T h e influence of T i b u l l u s and Catullus was, of course, not as great as that of Horace or Virgil. T h e y themselves are not as definitely localized in their writing. All four of these writers, however, had a great deal to do with the development of a love for the classic landscape, for nature as the writers of classic times saw it, for the countries of which they wrote. T h e y are demonstrably earlier in this regard than the influence of Theocritus. Theocritus appears in Gissing's writings first on the title page of Thyrza; his first complete reading of Theocritus was in J u l y of 1887. T h e reading of Catullus and Tibullus may have lead him to that of Theocritus. However, it was not the classic writers alone who directed Gissing's attention to the classic countries. T h e r e existed before his time a definite classic current in English literature. T h e romantic movement had directed the attention of all literary-minded people to the study of Greek and to the charms exerted by the shores of Italy. T h i s very matter, that of a love for classic scenes, was by no means original with Gissing. One has only to think of the various associations with Italy formed by Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rossetti, Browning, and Landor to see that Gissing was part of a definite literary current. All of these writers Gissing read; they, too, n Letters of George Ellen Gissing.

Gissing,

p. 32. Notes contributed by Algernon and

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

41

helped to stir up in him the passion for Italy. In fact, the reading of these men may in many cases have antedated his reading of the classic writers themselves. Browning, w e know, was liberally represented in his father's library, and B r o w n i n g had lived in Italy from 1846 until several years after Gissing's birth in 1857. T h e influence of T e n n y s o n in developing his classic tastes must have been of great importance. W e have seen that his father read T e n n y s o n to h i m before 1870—and Tennyson remained one of his lifelong enthusiasms. H e continually refers to T e n n y s o n and his works in his letters, and always with veneration. In Workers in the Dawn Gissing pays a great deal of attention to T e n n y son's Palace of Art and has his hero a true T e n n y s o n devotee. Certainly he must have been influenced by the classicism of such poems as Tiresias, Ulysses, The Lotus-Eaters, and CEnone. O n e wonders whether his attention was not first directed to Catullus by Tennyson's poem in honor of that writer—Frater Ave atque Vale. A n d indeed the resemblance between Gissing's classicism and that of T e n n y s o n ' s is remarkable. Both men were particularly influenced by the idyllic poets; both found in the classics a source of inexhaustible picturesqueness. I venture to assert that the entire classicism of Gissing can be qualified with the adjective " T e n n y s o n i a n . " Byron's R o m a n passages, too, had their effect, though Gissing was no admirer of Byron. In 1885 he wrote: A l l that relates to Italy in "Childe Harold" is magnificent— though perhaps rhetoric rather than poetry. You ought to know by heart all the lines on Rome. . . . For me Rome is the center of the universe. I must go thither and that shortly, if I beg my way. T h i s was written three years before he himself had visited Italy. W h e n he actually arrived in R o m e , his opinion of Byron was even poorer: Happened to read in Murray, Byron's stanza on the Pala-

42

G E O R G E GISSING tine. What poor stuff it is! And I am afraid the same applies to the greater part of the Childe Harolde. 32

T h e consequence to Gissing of the verses was simply that he had the identical feeling about R o m e ; Byron expressed Gissing's feeling about Italy and everything connected with it. Outside of this, he had n o interest in Byron. A similar identity of feeling must have been at the basis of his appreciation of Goethe's Italienische Reise. Goethe, however, was a writer w h o m he did admire. H e seems to have read at least some G o e t h e in 1876, when he was in Boston, but the Italienische Reise is never referred to until the time of his first visit to Italy. H e read the work in Paris after that journey had started. I remark that Goethe had got exactly into my own state with regard to Italy before his visit there; he says he could not bear to read a Latin book, or to look at a picture of Italian scenery; again and again I have felt and expressed that, these last three years.33 T h e s e , then, are the writers whose works were the source of that a b i d i n g enthusiasm for classic places and for the classic in landscape which was so important a part of Gissing's literary background. N o r is it too much to state that this feeling was a q u i t e important part of his e q u i p m e n t as writer. It is not merely that he so frequently introduces direct descriptions of classic localities into his essays or refers to them in his novels. H i s descriptions in general, even his descriptions of the L o n d o n slums, show the influence of his love for the scenes of classic antiquity, show the results of his reading of G i b b o n , of the historians of antiquity, of Horace and Virgil, of m i n o r classic poets of an idyllic tendency, of those modern writers who, before him, had turned their eyes to Italy. A n enthusiasm so deeply grounded could not fail to be "Letters,

pp. 172, 254.

" D i a r y for Oct. 17, 1888, quoted in Letters, p. 228. O t h e r references to this work in The Emancipated, Chicago, 1895, p. 22, and in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Autumn XIX) .

DEVELOPMENT T O

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43

intense, lasting, a n d p e r m a n e n t . T h e l o n g i n g for R o m e a n d t h e isles of G r e e c e was a d o m i n a t i n g e l e m e n t in his life, m o r e sincere a n d less of a pose than it was w i t h

Byron,

d e e p e r a n d m o r e e m o t i o n a l t h a n it was w i t h B r o w n i n g or L a n d o r . A m o r e sincere enthusiast for I t a l i a n travel the G i s s i n g of The

Unclassed

than

could hardly have been found

in all E n g l a n d . N o r was he e v e r d i s a p p o i n t e d .

Far

from

b e i n g d i s i l l u s i o n e d , he e x p e r i e n c e d o n his first visit to R o m e a " w o n d e r f u l happiness of m i n d " w h i c h he ascribes directly to his e n j o y m e n t of the city. " A l l these t h i n g s , " h e w r o t e , " a r e realities to m e and, as l o n g as I k e e p m y m e m o r y , n o o n e can r o b m e of them. . . . M y l i f e is r i c h e r a t h o u s a n d t i m e s — a y e a m i l l i o n t i m e s — t h a n six m o n t h s a g o . " 3 4 A n d the t h o u g h t s of H e n r y R y e c r o f t , w r i t t e n a f u l l s e v e n t e e n years a f t e r the description of the y o u t h f u l Casti in The

Unclassed,

s h o w n o real c h a n g e in the passage f r o m y o u t h to m i d d l e age. O n e n e e d only t u r n to the essays A u t u m n I I I ,

XIX,

a n d X X to see that. It is the G i s s i n g of 1900 w h o writes: A l l the delight I have known in Italian travel burned again in my heart. T h e old spell has not lost its power. Never, I know, will it draw me away from England; but the Southern sunlight cannot fade from my imagination, and to dream of its glow upon the ruins of old time wakes in me the voiceless desire which once was anguish. It is i n t e r e s t i n g to n o t e the v a r i e t y of associations w i t h classic places w h i c h G i s s i n g had b y t h e t i m e of t h e w r i t i n g of these essays. T h u s a song r e m i n d s h i m of a peasant's s o n g w h i c h he had h e a r d at P a e s t u m a n d t h e r e f o r e of t h e g l o r i o u s a f t e r n o o n he h a d spent a m o n g its r u i n s . W i n e

reminded

h i m b e f o r e all of the w i n e h e h a d d r u n k at P a e s t u m or of the F a l e r n i a n of H o r a c e . R e a d i n g n e v e r fails to r e m i n d h i m of Italy; at times he c a n n o t l o c a t e t h e s o u r c e of t h e suggest i o n w h i c h has b r o u g h t some d e t a i l of his travels b a c k to h i m . N o r are w e to s u p p o s e that the statements of R y e c r o f t are "Letters,

fictional.

Henry

W r i t i n g in his o w n person, G i s s i n g

p p . 264, 369, q u o t e d . C f . also p p . 228-232, 251.

44

GEORGE GISSING

said, in a letter of January 2, 1900: "Sitting here, I often let my memory wander about the south of Europe. I see spots in Greece, on the coast of Albania, in Calabria, and see them so vividly." T h e reference to the coast of Albania, of course, directly guarantees the genuineness of the experience described by Ryecroft in Autumn III, an essay written at practically the same time as this letter. Such an interest in the classic countries remained with him all his life. In fact, the localities described in the classic writings seem to have meant as much to him as did the literature itself. One of the things that he so continually refers to in connection with the scenes of classic times is the necessity for such visits as he made in order to understand the classic properly. T h e literature, he believed, is appreciated only by one who has seen the countries. He speaks of this first when he is at Rome: The Roman life and literature becomes real in a way hitherto inconceivable. I must begin to study it all over again; I must go to school again and for the rest of my life. Ah, if only I could have come here years agol He makes the same remark when he gets to Greece: " N o one can hope really to appreciate the Romans and Greeks who has not seen Italy and Greece." 35 It appears to be a settled part of his thought. In fact, he attributes an interest in classic travels to nearly all of those characters in the novels which he wishes us to regard favorably. It begins, of course, with Casti, but it does not stop there. Reardon is saturated with it and he passes it on to Biffen. Emily and Wilford, in A Life's Morning, wish to visit Italy. T h e old bookseller of his first novel had visited Greece and Italy. The Emancipated is full of Italian travel and it is the sympathetic characters alone who make the most of it even though the unstable Elgar must thank heaven that he is forced to come to the Bay of Naples. It is natural, almost inevitable, that he should have as the hero of that novel the painter of the *Letters,

pp. 262, 298.

D E V E L O P M E N T T O 1883

45

ruins of Pacstum. T h e first thing that the luckless hero of Born in Exile does with his liberty is to go to Italy. Throughout all of the novels, wherever it is at all possible, this idea is introduced. Culture, to Gissing, included in its very definition at least a wish to see Greece and Italy. His early classic studies, then, were the cause of his great love for Italy and Greece. T h e y may also have been of considerable consequence in another regard. It is possible to assert that such studies were the determining force in his intellectual development in the critical and most important years between 1878 and 1883; it may be that it was his classic background primarily which determined the specific nature and tone of his realistic novels. I make this statement with some diffidence because our sources—his first two novels and his letters of this period—give us but confused and doubtful traces of this development. I will, at any rate, state the case. It is in the nature of his realism that the traces of the classic scholar are to be found. Gissing's is the realism of the pure artist, with no axe to grind, with no controversial point to make. Realism has too often included propaganda in favor of some reform or discussion of social or economic problems—and such might have been the "realism" of Gissing. His later artistic position was not his original one; it was the result of these early years, the end of a course of development. His first novel was attacked by the critics of 1880 as propaganda for the submerged classes of London, as an attack on religion. Even so liberal a man as Frederic Harrison objected to the thought of The Unclassed; Gissing's own brothers looked with doubt upon both of his earliest works. And there can be no doubt that, in a sense, these novels were propaganda. Gissing himself had this to say about Workers in the Dawn: The book . . . is not a novel in the generally accepted sense of the word, but a very strong . . . attack upon certain features of our present religious and social life. . . . First and foremost, I attack the criminal negligence of governments.

46

GEORGE

GISSING

. . . Herein I am a mouthpiece of the advanced Radical party. As regards religious matters, I plainly seek to show the nobility of a faith dispensing with all we are accustomed to call religion. 38 T h e r e can b e l i t t l e d o u b t that h e i n t e n d e d to k e e p on writi n g w o r k s of such a n a t u r e ; the n e x t n o v e l w h i c h he w r o t e was called Mrs. Grundy's

Enemies

a n d , as far as w e c a n m a k e

o u t f r o m his letters of t h e fall of 1882 a n d t h e s p r i n g of 1883, it was of an e x c e e d i n g l y c o n t r o v e r s i a l

nature—so

contro-

versial, in fact, that G i s s i n g ' s friends, a n d his p u b l i s h e r , objected to it a n d h a d it suppressed, e v e n a f t e r its first t w o v o l u m e s had b e e n sent to t h e p r i n t e r . In these years, too, G i s s i n g seems to h a v e b e e n a c t i v e as a radical

reformer.

F r o m J a n u a r y to J u l y of 1881 he a p p e a r s to h a v e b e e n a c o n v i n c e d Positivist; h e e v e n d a t e d his letters a c c o r d i n g to the Positivistic c a l e n d a r ; he does not speak of r e j e c t i n g that belief entirely u n t i l O c t o b e r 1882. H e a c t u a l l y d e l i v e r e d lectures in b e h a l f of his ideas, m u c h as E g r e m o n t did in

Thyrza.

H e took an active p a r t in w o r k i n g m e n ' s clubs, an e x p e r i ence that h e t u r n e d to g o o d use in Workers a n d in Demos. of Demos

in the

Dawn

It seems a l m o s t u n b e l i e v a b l e that t h e a u t h o r

s h o u l d e v e r h a v e p r e p a r e d a l e c t u r e on " P r a c t i c a l

Aspects of S o c i a l i s m " f o r a "society w i t h w h i c h I h a v e connected m y s e l f , " the o b j e c t of w h i c h society was to b e f o u n d in " a n a t t e m p t to e d u c a t e t h e w o r k i n g classes in some d e g r e e by lectures at t h e i r v a r i o u s c l u b s . " 3 7 S u c h was the case, just the same, in A p r i l , 1881. A f t e r he finally b r o k e w i t h Positivism he w r o t e a p h i l o s o p h i c a l article o n " T h e H o p e of Pess i m i s m " a n d said i n r e f e r e n c e to it: I think that there is little doubt that my work will ultimately follow the line which has been hinted at all along. I mean that of philosophic-social speculation. I feel more inclination to write in this abstract way than to go on embodying theories in fiction.38 MLetters,

p. 73. J u n e , ** Letters, p. 96. "Ibid., p . 120.

1880.

DEVELOPMENT T O

1883

47

T h e r e are o t h e r statements of this sort a n d traces of v a r i o u s o t h e r activities a l o n g this l i n e ; a n y o n e w h o k n e w

Gissing

o n l y f r o m his activities of t h e years b e t w e e n 1879 a n d 1882 m i g h t be e x c u s e d f o r s u p p o s i n g that h e was p l a n n i n g to bec o m e a l a b o r leader. H o w e v e r , this phase of his d e v e l o p m e n t d i d n o t last l o n g , a n d i n d e e d he was by n a t u r e a n y t h i n g b u t t h e k i n d of m a n w h o b e c o m e s t h e leader of a r e f o r m m o v e m e n t . O n e c a n see it in his earliest p r o n o u n c e m e n t s o n social matters; they are as m u c h a c t u a t e d by a d m i r a t i o n of " t h e G r e e k s " as b y any response to m o d e r n c o n d i t i o n s . T o h o p e f o r a r e t u r n of the " c i v i c spirit of o l d G r e e c e " is b u t a scholar's a p p r o a c h to ref o r m . O n e is r e m i n d e d of a very w e l l - c o n s i d e r e d s t a t e m e n t of M r . W e l l s : W e encounter an attitude of mind essentially idealistic, hedonistic, and polite, a mind coming from culture to the study of life, trying life, which is so terrible, so brutal, so sad, and so tenderly beautiful, by the clear methodical measurements of an artificial refinement and expressing even in its earliest utterance a note of disappointment. 3 9 Gissing's early a n d t e m p o r a r y interest in r e f o r m was of a h i g h l y idealistic n a t u r e . T h r o w n b y c i r c u m s t a n c e s i n t o t h e p o o r e r districts of L o n d o n , he tried f o r a b r i e f p e r i o d to aid v a r i o u s m o v e m e n t s w h i c h l o o k e d t o w a r d r e f o r m , f o u n d his efforts i m p r a c t i c a l or f u t i l e , a n d g a v e u p t h e idea for good a n d all. C o m i n g f r o m c u l t u r e to t h e s t u d y of life, as M r . W e l l s says, he at first tried to c h a n g e things, t h e n g a v e that u p , a n d for t h e m a j o r part of his c a r e e r r e g a r d e d

himself

as a student of l i f e , as an o b s e r v e r of its p h e n o m e n a ,

but

n o t as a critic or a r e f o r m e r of his s u r r o u n d i n g s . T h e result of this p e r i o d of i n t e l l e c t u a l a n d

emotional

t u r m o i l m i g h t a l m o s t h a v e b e e n p r o p h e s i e d f r o m the first. In Workers

in the Dawn

A r t h u r G o l d i n g is a m e m b e r of a

radical c l u b , b u t h e finally decides in f a v o r of t h e l i f e of an artist, r e f u s i n g to use his m o n e y , as a n o l d f r i e n d wishes h i m " " T h e Novels of Mr. George Gissing," Contemporary P- '95-

Review,

August 1897,

48

G E O R G E GISSING

to do, in the service of the radical cause. Golding's desire for reform seems to follow the lines laid down by T e n n y s o n and R u s k i n ; there is as much aestheticism in it as there is economics. It is in The Unclassed, however, that we see the position at which Gissing finally arrived. M u c h of what Waymark says in its twenty-fifth chapter seems to apply as well to Gissing. W a y m a r k says: Upon ranting radicalism followed a period of philosophical study. My philosophy, I have come to see, was worth nothing; what philosophy is worth anything? W h e n The Unclassed was being completed, in July of 1883, Gissing wrote in his own person: T am by degrees getting my right place in the world. Philosophy has done all it can for me, and now scarcely interests me any more. My attitude henceforth is that of the artist pure and simple. T h e world is for me a collection of phenomena, which are to be studied and reproduced artistically. 40 T h e r e can be little doubt that Gissing's own thoughts are represented in this novel. In The Unclassed he has divided himself into two people, W a y m a r k representing Gissing the realistic novelist, and Casti, Gissing the classicist. H e actually published his next novel under the pseudonym of Osmond W a y m a r k . It is from Waymark's remarks that we can gather the beginnings of Gissing's theory of realism which was to blossom out into Biffen's "ignobly decent" and Reardon's "realist in the sphere of culture" seven years later. W e cannot go into Gissing's realism here, however, except to say that it dispensed with all theory whatsoever, that it involved the presentation of character and of the external conditions of life in a simple and direct manner with n o discussion of any sort. A f t e r 1883 the aim of Gissing's w r i t i n g was artistic, aesthetic, not controversial. Some of his friends hoped that he w o u l d change. Mr. Wells is a case in point. In his discussion of the last chapter of The Whirlpool, a novel of 1897, he wrote: "Letters,

p. 128.

DEVELOPMENT T O

1883

49

It is a discussion, in fact, between a conception of spacious culture and a conception of struggle and survival. . . . It is the discovery of the insufficiency of the cultivated life and its necessary insincerities; it is a return to the essential, to honorable struggle as the epic factor in life, to children as a matter of morality and the sanction of the securities of civilization. 4 1 H o w e v e r , in this case M r . W e l l s d i d n o t v i n d i c a t e h i m s e l f as a p r o p h e t . G i s s i n g r e m a i n e d the c r e a t u r e of c u l t u r e to t h e e n d ; 1897

w a s

the

verY

Year

w h i c h he t u r n e d his inter-

ests back to the classics. I n d e e d , I d o u b t very m u c h w h e t h e r h e h a d ever m o v e d f r o m the positions he took u p in a n d in Thyrza.

Demos

A certain c y n i c i s m a b o u t c u l t u r e m a y s h o w

itself, b u t Gissing's interest in r e f o r m , in social, e c o n o m i c , a n d political s p e c u l a t i o n was a t h i n g of t h e past b y 1885. N o w it is h i g h l y p r o b a b l e that it is to Gissing's scholarly tastes, c e n t e r e d as they w e r e o n t h e classics, that t h e o u t c o m e of this d e v e l o p m e n t is to be a t t r i b u t e d . C e r t a i n l y his absorpt i o n in the w o r l d of b o o k s was the most n o t a b l e t h i n g a b o u t h i m . In the classics he f o u n d a l i t e r a t u r e d e v o i d , for the most part, of s p e c u l a t i o n a b o u t p h i l o s o p h i c a l s u b j e c t s a n d a l m o s t e n t i r e l y d e v o i d of e c o n o m i c theory. It was the l i t e r a t u r e of a refined, c u l t u r e d , l e i s u r e d , a n d m o n e y e d

aristocracy—in

its o r i g i n s — a n d it was, in his day, the study of a s i m i l a r class or, at any rate, of professional m e n . H i s early studies h a d so impressed the essential n o b i l i t y of i n t e l l e c t u a l pursuits u p o n his m i n d that h e n e v e r f o r g o t it. H i s heroes are almost w i t h o u t e x c e p t i o n c u l t u r e d g e n t l e m e n ; h e was o n l y r e m o t e l y interested in a c h a r a c t e r w h o h a d n o g e n u i n e intellectual interests. T h e a t t i t u d e of t h e scholar a n d the attit u d e of the artist h a d b e e n so f o r c e f u l l y a n d so attractively p r e s e n t e d to his y o u t h f u l m i n d that they h a d b e c o m e his o w n . A r t a n d l i t e r a t u r e m e a n t m u c h to h i m as a b o y ; econ o m i c s a n d social r e f o r m w e r e m e r e l y f o r c e d u p o n his attention by his early e x p e r i e n c e s in L o n d o n . H o w c a n w e ima g i n e that a m a n w h o d e s i r e d n o t h i n g m o r e t h a n leisure to

"Wells, op. cit., p. 196.

5o

GEORGE

GISSING

d e v o t e h i m s e l f to t h e r e a d i n g of t h e classics c o u l d b e c o m e a m o u t h p i e c e of socialism? T h e c h a n g e f r o m controversialist to artist was d i r e c t l y t h e result of his early classic studies. S u c h studies c o u l d n o t , of course, i n f l u e n c e h i m to b e c o m e a classic scholar p u r e a n d s i m p l e . T o t h e end of his life he r e m a i n e d a realistic novelist. T h e p o i n t is s i m p l y that they h e l p e d to m a k e h i m a realist w h o sees l i f e in a non-controversial m a n n e r , w h o describes it as an impression, not as a s u b j e c t for a r g u m e n t . In a very i n t e r e s t i n g passage his son discusses his c h o i c e of m a t e r i a l . H e says: Undoubtedly the one subject which stirred his imagination more than any other was that of ancient history. But of this, so circumstances had decreed, he could make little use till the last years of his life, when he had gained a certain degree of freedom from financial and other harassments. Next in order comes that of low-class life in L o n d o n ; the reason for this being not far to seek. A t a period of his life when he was most open to outside impressions, he found himself snatched by circumstances, and by reason of a certain tendency in his nature, from his natural surroundings, and placed alone, with but little between himself and starvation, amid some of the grimmest scenes which life in a large city could present. 42 T h i s is a pretty a c c u r a t e s t a t e m e n t of t h e case; any consideration of his w o r k as a w h o l e m u s t c o m e to the c o n c l u s i o n that it was precisely these t w o s u b j e c t s w h i c h a p p e a l e d to his ima g i n a t i o n m o s t a n d in w h i c h a l o n e h e d i d his best w o r k . T h e w o r l d of t h e classics, as r e v e a l e d in b o o k s , a n d the w o r l d of the L o n d o n slums, in w h i c h h e spent his most impressiona b l e y e a r s — t h e s e f o r m e d t h e s u m total of his literary capital, e v e n t h o u g h , u n f o r t u n a t e l y , h e d i d n o t a l w a y s c o n f i n e himself to these t w o sources of m a t e r i a l . H e was first of all, if b y c i r c u m s t a n c e s as m u c h as b y n a t u r a l b e n t , a realistic novelist. H i s classic studies, h o w e v e r , o n the o n e h a n d prev e n t e d h i m f r o m b e i n g l e d away f r o m t h e s t a n d p o i n t of t h e artist i n t o c o n t r o v e r s i a l g r o u n d s ; o n t h e o t h e r h a n d , t h e y led h i m to t h e w r i t i n g of b o o k s w h i c h w e r e d i r e c t l y t h e result of his passion f o r a n c i e n t history. "Selections,

pp. 19-20.

Ill GISSING'S CLASSIC STUDIES 1883 T O 1897

T

H E i m p o r t a n c e of scholarship, of classical s c h o l a r s h i p

in p a r t i c u l a r , in t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of the t y p i c a l G i s s i n g

manner

has b e e n

sufficiently

indicated

by

the

preceding

c h a p t e r . It w o u l d b e needless to q u o t e t h e statements his f r i e n d s have

m a d e , o r any

of his o w n

statements

about

scholarship, to s h o w that he himself r e g a r d e d it as o n e of his chief claims to d i s t i n c t i o n , that he was p r o u d of it, a n d that, in m o m e n t s of depression, he r a t h e r r e g r e t t e d that circ u m s t a n c e s had n o t a l l o w e d h i m to b e c o m e a scholar r a t h e r t h a n a novelist. A l l that a p p e a r s to b e fairly o b v i o u s . It is necessary at this p o i n t to i n q u i r e i n t o the e x t e n t of these classical studies, to e v a l u a t e t h e i r d e p t h a n d b r e a d t h .

We

m u s t p r o p o u n d the q u e s t i o n : W a s G i s s i n g an e x a c t scholar? Curiously

enough,

it is prcciscly

in

the

most

difficult

b r a n c h of classical l e a r n i n g that he most n e a r l y m a k e s g o o d his c l a i m of b e i n g a classical scholar. I r e f e r to his k n o w l e d g e of classic metres, of the m e t r i c a l system of t h e G r e e k tragedies in p a r t i c u l a r . M o r l e y R o b e r t s , for e x a m p l e , says that they t a l k e d " m o s t l i k e l y , a n d very p o s s i b l y " of " G r e e k

metres,

a l w a y s his great p a s s i o n " w h e n they w e r e t o g e t h e r at Eastb o u r n e in F e b r u a r y 1888; he says that G i s s i n g o n c e t u r n e d to h i m

" w i t h an assumed

air of strange a m a z e m e n t

and

e x c l a i m e d : ' W h y , m y d e a r f e l l o w , d o y o u k n o w that t h e r e are a c t u a l l y m i s e r a b l e m e n w h o d o n o t k n o w — w h o never

even

heard

of

the

minuter

D o c h m i a c s and A n t i s p a s t s ! '

differences

have

between

T h i s s t a t e m e n t seems an un-

d e n i a b l y a u t h e n t i c p a r t of his m e m o r i e s of G i s s i n g ; he has i n c o r p o r a t e d it in t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n later f o r an e d i t i o n of The 1

The

Private

Life

of Henry

Nether

Maitland,

51

w h i c h he w r o t e World.

years

T h e c o n t e x t of

London, 1923, pp. 208, 75.

52

GEORGE

GISSING

the statement implies that the remark was made sometime between 1884 and 1890. N o w w h o does know the difference — e x c e p t the professed scholar? Gissing did not mean the statement in all seriousness; it is nevertheless true that he attached a great deal of importance to the matter of metrics, of the study of G r e e k ; it was to h i m one of the primary tests of true culture. " I f one animadverted on some popular person w h o was obviously uneducated, M a i t l a n d [i.e., Gissing] always v o w e d that he did not k n o w G r e e k , and probably or certainly had never starved," says R o b e r t s . Many of Gissing's own statements give us a similar impression of the importance of G r e e k studies in his m i n d , and it w o u l d hardly be well to discount too much his scorn f o r those who cannot distinguish Dochmiacs and Antispasts. H e was an enthusiast about G r e e k metres. He used to come to my room and there we reread the tragedies. . . . But whenever we met, either there or at 7 K, we always read or recited Greek to each other, and then entered into a discussion of the metrical value of the choruses—in which branch of learning I showed proper humility, for in prosody he was remarkably learned. . . . We talked of rhythm, and of Arsis or Ictus. Pyrrhics we spoke of, and trochees and spondees were familiar on our lips. Especially did he declare that he had a passion for anapaests, and when it came to the actual metres, Choriambics and Galliambics were an infinite joy to him. He explained to me most seriously the differences between trimeter Iambics when they were catalectic, acatalectic, hypercatalectic. What he knew about comic tetrameter was at my service, and in a short time I knew . . . almost all that he did about Minor Ionic, Sapphic, and Alcaic verse. 2 R o b e r t s appears to think very highly of Gissing's merits as a reader of G r e e k verse; he gives us the impression that Gissing not only understood the technicalities of the metre but actually was able to read the tragedies in such a way as to revive their music for others. I am not sure that Gissing was 'Ibid.,

pp. 76, 79-80.

CLASSIC

STUDIES

53

so o p t i m i s t i c a b o u t his o w n powers; he seems to h a v e k n o w n e n o u g h a b o u t t h e m a t t e r to realize the e n o r m o u s difficulty of p r o p e r l y a p p r e c i a t i n g the m e t r i c a l f o r m s of the ancients. " I a m w o n t to t h i n k that I c a n read H o m e r , " he has R y e c r o f t say

" a n d , assuredly, if any

man

e n j o y s h i m , it is I; b u t can I for a m o m e n t d r e a m

(Summer X X V I I ) ,

that

H o m e r yields m e all his m u s i c , that his w o r d is to m e as to h i m w h o w a l k e d by the H e l l e n i c shore w h e n H e l l a s l i v e d ? " Still, this statement s h o u l d increase o u r respect f o r his app r e c i a t i o n of G r e e k verse. W e m i g h t h a v e t h o u g h t that his enthusiasm was l a r g e l y a pose, that it was a m e r e l y p e d a n t i c interest in technicalities. S u c h statements as that m a d e

by

R y e c r o f t show us that he really d i d a p p r e c i a t e G r e e k p o e t r y , that he felt its m e l o d y instead of m e r e l y k n o w i n g t h e n a m e s of the types of verse, that he k n e w

enough about

Greek

metres to realize t h e difficulty of r e p r o d u c i n g t h e m in m o d ern times. R o b e r t s c o m m e n t s : A n d to hear him chant the mighty verse of the great Greeks w h o were dead, and yet were alive to him, was always inspiring. . . . He knew by heart a hundred choruses of the Greek tragedies, and declaimed them with his wild hair flung back and his eyes gleaming as if the old tragedians . . . were there to hear him, an alien yet not an alien, using the tongue that gave its chiefest glories to them forever. 3 One really

is rather i m p r e s s e d b y such statements. D i d know

any

considerable

t w e n t y , b y heart? T h a t

number

of

Gissing

choruses,

say

is n o m e a n a c h i e v e m e n t . A n d

as

f o r t h e prosody of t h e c h o r u s e s — w h y , v e r y f e w u n d e r s t a n d that m a t t e r to t h e p r e s e n t t i m e . I n d e e d , he m u s t h a v e b e e n r e m a r k a b l y l e a r n e d in this respect. T h e statements of R o b e r t s n a t u r a l l y lead us to a conside r a t i o n of a n u m b e r of passages in New

Grub

Street.

The

p e r i o d of w h i c h R o b e r t s was s p e a k i n g e n d e d in 1890 a n d , as R o b e r t s tells us that h e w a s absent f r o m E n g l a n d f r o m • Ibid., p. 97. On Gissing's appreciation of classic metre, cf. New Grub Street, Modern Lib. ed., p. 361, and By the Ionian Sea, Travellers L i b . ed., p. i i o .

54

GEORGE

GISSING

1884 to 1887, these r e a d i n g s of G r e e k tragedy m u s t b e dated w i t h i n t h e n a r r o w space b e t w e e n 1887 a n d 1890. New Street

Grub

w a s w r i t t e n b e t w e e n O c t o b e r 6, 1890, a n d D e c e m b e r

6th of the same year, in the c o n c l u d i n g m o n t h s of the p e r i o d to w h i c h R o b e r t s refers these discussions of G r e e k

metres.

W e c a n n o t d o u b t , t h e r e f o r e , that the passages in this b o o k w h i c h deal w i t h t h e r e a d i n g of G r e e k tragedy by

Reardon

a n d B i f f e n are m e r e l y m o r e o r less exact transcripts of the scenes r e c o r d e d by R o b e r t s . 4 T h e first of these passages is the o n e G i s s i n g uses to i n t r o d u c e B i f f e n . B i f f e n enters a n d d e m a n d s R e a r d o n ' s Sophocles; h e is m u c h distressed to disc o v e r that R e a r d o n has had to sell the W u n d e r e d i t i o n a n d that h e n o w

has o n l y

t h e e d i t i o n of the O x f o r d

Pocket

Classics. H e t h e n says: "I'm sorry to hear that; very sorry. Well, this must do. Now, I want to know how you scan this chorus in the 'CEdipus Rex.' " Reardon took the volume, considered, and began to read aloud with metric emphasis. "Choriambics, eh?" cried the other. "Possible, of course; but treat them as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they don't go better." H e involved himself in terms of pedantry, and with such delight that his eyes gleamed. H a v i n g delivered a technical lecture, he began to read in illustration, producing quite a different effect from that of the rhythm as given by his friend. A n d the reading was by no means that of a pedant, rather of a poet. For half an hour the two men talked Greek metres as if they lived in a world where the only hunger known could be satisfied by grand or sweet cadences. 5 T h e r e are o t h e r passages of the same sort, i n c l u d i n g o n e in w h i c h B i f f e n , o n l e a v i n g R e a r d o n ' s r o o m , m u r m u r s to h i m self " a G r e e k i a m b i c l i n e w h i c h had c o m e i n t o his h e a d a 1 Gissing has Biffen meet Reardon in a manner analogous to that of Roberts in finding him in London. Cf. New Grub Street, p. 150, Roberts op. cit., p. 31, and Athenaeum for June 12, 1880. sNew Grub Street, Modern Lib. ed., p. 149.

CLASSIC propos

of

STUDIES

nothing obvious."

A

55

more

important

passage

comes later o n w h e n R e a r d o n , a f t e r his w i f e ' s desertion, is sick a n d a t t e n d e d o n l y by B i f f e n . " 'By-the-by,' says B i f f e n , 'I w a n t to talk to y o u a b o u t a difficulty in o n e of the fragments of

Euripides.

Did

you

ever g o t h r o u g h

the

Frag-

ments?' " W e are told that this difficulty c a u s e d a discussion w h i c h lasted half an h o u r . W e are t o l d that t h e t w o unfort u n a t e novelists then w e n t o u t in the f o g to m a k e a d i n n e r of h a m a n d eggs at a n e a r b y c o f f e e shop. T h e n Biffen drew from the pocket of the venerable overcoat the volume of Euripides he had brought, and their talk turned once more to the land of the sun. Only when the coffee-house was closed did they go forth again into the foggy street, and at the top of Fentonville H i l l they stood for ten minutes debating a metrical effect in one of the Fragments. 6 N o w these passages certainly h a v e a scholarly t o u c h . It was no

casual

Greek

choriambics and

student w h o

could

Ionics a m i n o r e

choruses of the (Edipus

Rex

distinguish

with

between

an anacrusis;

the

a n d t h e F r a g m e n t s of E u r i p i d e s

are not the sort of t h i n g t h a t w o u l d b e discussed b y

the

a v e r a g e r e a d e r of some little classical e d u c a t i o n . B y 1890 at least, Gissing's study of G r e e k metres m u s t h a v e

resulted

in the k i n d of k n o w l e d g e w h i c h c a n o n l y b e d e s c r i b e d as "scholarly." T h e s e passages f r o m New

Grub

Street

are t h e most impor-

tant of Gissing's references to classic metres, b u t they are by n o m e a n s the o n l y ones. 7 N e v e r t h e l e s s , his r e f e r e n c e s to classic metres in his o t h e r n o v e l s are n o t v e r y

important.

N o r d o his letters h a v e m u c h to say o n this s u b j e c t ; he may r e f e r f r e q u e n t l y to matters of classic literary interest, b u t he does n o t refer o f t e n to classic metres specifically. In fact, the study of classic metres m i g h t a l m o s t b e said to b e c o n f i n e d to t h e years b e t w e e n 1887 a n d 1890, t h e years i m m e d i a t e l y p r e c e d i n g New

Grub

Street.

It m u s t n o t be f o r g o t t e n that

'Ibid., pp. 225, 391, 400-401. 7 Cf. The Unclassed, Essex Lib. ed., p. 296; Thyrza, New York, n. d., pp. 18, 54; Born in Exile, London, 1892, I, 265; A Life's Morning, p. 17.

56

G E O R G E GISSING

Gissing's study of Greek can be proved for his school years but that it was, on the basis of his own statement, dropped for "nearly three years" between 1876 and 1878. A similar hiatus seems to have occurred between 1882 and 1887. T h i s can be proved by a consideration of his reading as revealed in his letters, as well as by noting certain facts of his life. T h e period between 1887 and 1890, if his letters are to be trusted, is precisely the period in which he was doing more study of Greek than he ever did before or after that time. 8 In 1887 he again took up his Greek studies and made considerable progress in them. It appears to have been a singularly happy year for him. A c c o r d i n g to what may be inferred by c o m b i n i n g the statements of Roberts with certain facts in his letters, this was the period in which he finally obtained his freedom from his first wife. She died (as far as can be inferred) in February of 1888, and Gissing had been separated from her for some time before that. By 1887 he was free from the distressing circumstances of his earlier life and was gradually making a certain place for himself as a novelist. His increased leisure, as well as his increased prosperity, enabled him to take up the study of Greek again. Eighteen eighty-eight was the date of the first of his trips to Italy. H e was able to read Horace in R o m e , and he was greatly impressed by the ruins of Paestum's Greek temples. H e returned to England but remained for only a very short time; in N o v e m b e r 1889 he started his trip to Greece. T h e influence of this trip on his Greek studies was obviously great. H e read Aristophanes while in Athens, attended a lecture on Sophocles at the University of Athens, and read some of the tragedies on the return trip. T h e s e events limit still further the period to which Roberts refers their reading of the tragedies in London; it must have been the very period (in 1890) when he was preparing New Grub Street. T h e reading of Sophocles to which he was led by his experience at the University of Athens may very well have been the 8 Cf. Letters of George Gissing to Members PP- 19', 195' '97. >98. '99- 203. 221.

of his Family,

London, 1927,

CLASSIC S T U D I E S

57

direct source of New Grub Street's references to that author. It does not appear, though, that Gissing's interest in Greek metres extended much beyond these years. As we have seen, his reading of Greek was confined to the two periods between 1878 and 1882, and between 1887 and 1890. T h e r e is very little said of any such reading after 1890. In 1891 he married again, and this marriage brought with it many responsibilities and, presumably, took away the leisure which had had so rich a fruition in Reardon and Biffen's discussions of Greek metres. In fact, the period is appropriately brought to a conclusion by an entry in his diary for December 3 1 , 1892: " T h e year 1892 on the whole profitless. Marked by domestic misery and discomfort. . . . Have read next to nothing; classical studies utterly neglected." His interest in classic metres was, therefore, confined to this limited period, but we have no reason to doubt the statements of Roberts about his knowledge of the subject. H e must have known a great deal about metrics; he must have had a real and an unusually fine appreciation of ancient rhythms; he must have been a truly inspiring reader of Greek poetry. One might imagine that Gissing's interest in the science of archaeology was comparable to his interest in Greek metres. In By the Ionian Sea he has a good bit to say about such matters; he appears to be reading works of a purely archaeological nature; he seems to know quite a bit about the topography of ancient Calabria. Veranilda was a book which demanded a considerable knowledge of ancient places. At times Gissing asserts an active interest in this study; he has Henry Ryecroft say (Winter X V I ) : What have I to do with Egypt? Yet I have been beguiled by Flinders Petrie and by Maspero. How can I pretend to meddle with the ancient geography of Asia Minor? Yet here I have bought Prof. Ramsay's astonishing book, and have even read with a sort of troubled enjoyment a good many pages of it; troubled, because I have but to reflect a moment, and I see that all this kind of thing is a mere futile effort of the intellect when the time for serious intellectual effort is over.

58

G E O R G E GISSING

We might suppose, too, from the very real interest in classic locale which he had developed as early as 1883 that archaeology would be a subject to which he would very naturally turn. There are, however, a number of negative considerations. T h e passage quoted is in itself a confession of his failure to do much in that line. N o r had his education been that which would naturally prepare one for the serious study of archaeology. His formal training stopped in 1876, when he was barely eighteen, and after that there was literally no time for a definite study of this discipline—one which, as much or more than any other branch of classic learning, demands concentration, leisure, and serious and protracted study. In the early part of his career Gissing underwent a bitter struggle to keep his head above water; even in his later years he had to work very hard at the craft of fiction for the necessaries of life. Nor had he the opportunity to be a member of archaeological expeditions; he did make three trips to Italy and Greece, but in none of them did he have much time to study their ancient ruins. His writings confirm this negative view. Except for Veranilda and By the Ionian Sea there are hardly any of them which have much to say on the subject. His letters have more of archaeology in them but their archeology is distinctly unprofessional and unscholarly; they suggest that his interest in the classic countries was not primarily archaeological at all. In fact, we have no real references to this study before his first trip to Italy. All the evidence tends to show that Gissing's knowledge of archaeology was a late accomplishment, one which came to him only when he was writing By the Ionian Sea, when he was making his extensive and labored preparations for Veranilda. If we were dealing with classic history in a general sense, it might be different. We can prove that he was interested in that study at an early date and that he read many historical works, even during the most difficult periods of his life. However, it seems improbable that he made any study at all of archaeological matters before his first trip to Italy.

CLASSIC STUDIES

59

T h i s trip began in September of 1888 when he left London, proceeding to Italy via Marseilles after a lengthy stay in Paris. H e arrived in Naples on October 30th and spent a month in its vicinity. O n the 29th of November he left for R o m e where he spent another month, following up this visit with stays of similar length in Florence and in Venice, returning to L o n d o n on March 1, 1889. T h e results of this trip, as far as Gissing's classic interests are concerned, were of course very great. It may be treated in somewhat greater detail than its consequences for his knowledge of archaeology would warrant, as it was the foundation for much of his later interest in classic places. T h e two months spent in R o m e and Naples were of the most consequence, and it is to this part of the journey that we will confine ourselves, using his letters as the basis for our observations. His letters are literary and personal in their emphasis, rather than scholarly o r archaeological. T h e y give us m u c h of Gissing's impressions of Naples and R o m e , and only few examples of any interest in the many scholarly problems of the R o m a n ruins to be f o u n d near those cities. T h e r e are, however, a n u m b e r of things which must be mentioned, beginning with his trips in and near Naples. T w i c e in the course of his letters Gissing describes a walk which he took, on N o v e m b e r 3, 1888, from Naples towards Baja. H e describes his impressions of the village of Fuorigrotta. H e says that the hill of Posillipo is "pierced by two enormous tunnels, one of them of R o m a n m a k i n g . " H e speaks of sitting in a public garden at Pozzuoli and looking over towards Baja. " I stopped a little short of the Baths of Nero, reserving Baja itself for a later day." H e speaks of visiting, on this walk, the L u c r i n e Lake "made into a port by A u gustus, and then very famous for its oysters." T h i s might seem a more impressive bit of erudition had not Baedeker, who appears to have been Gissing's guide on this trip, already made both observations. Both Avernus and the Lucrine Lake, by the way, are described in that passage in the Georgics (II, 160-164) to w h i c h Gissing frequently re-

GEORGE

6o

GISSING

ferred, e v e n b e f o r e this t i m e . Gissing's letters r e f e r to A v e r nus, b u t archaeology was c e r t a i n l y n o t his m a i n interest at this date; h e h i m s e l f gives to these e x p e r i e n c e s a literary flavor.

H i s interest in B a j a , he says, was that " H e r e V i r g i l

and Horace and Cicero have many a time walked. Horace o f t e n speaks of it in his p o e m s . " 9 If a n y f u r t h e r proof that his chief interest at this t i m e was literary a n d not archaeological b e n e e d e d , it c a n be o b t a i n e d m e r e l y b y listing some of the o b j e c t s of archaeological interest, d i r e c t l y in the l i n e of this w a l k w h i c h G i s s i n g describes, of w h i c h he says little or nothing. 1. H e says nothing of the R o m a n piers at Pozzuoli, of its Serapeum, an ancient Market Hall, nor anything of its amphitheatre, the scene of many bloody combats under Diocletian. 2. He says nothing of the ruins near Baiae. 3. Most surprising of all, he says nothing of Cumae, despite the fact that it is, archaeologically, of more importance than Naples. O n e cannot even be sure that he visited it on this trip, though he did visit it in 1890 on his second trip. A f e w days a f t e r this w a l k G i s s i n g m a d e t h e first of his several trips to P o m p e i i , b u t his letter a b o u t this visit is m e r e l y descriptive. H e does say: I understand now, of course, vastly better the arrangement of R o m a n houses. T h e streets are certainly very narrow. T h e theatres rejoiced me. R e m e m b e r the deep cutting for the curtain, and the three doors on to the stage. . . . Delightful perfection of the divisions into regiones and insulae and streets and numbered houses. 10 W e l l , such a c o m m e n t does show a c e r t a i n k n o w l e d g e

of

R o m a n times. H o w e v e r , I still d o n o t feel that it owes m u c h to scholarship. G i s s i n g m a d e o t h e r visits to P o m p e i i ;

nine

days a f t e r this visit, o n t h e t w e n t i e t h of N o v e m b e r , he spent a n i g h t at an i n n , t h e " S o l i , " n e a r t h e P o m p e i i station, a n d made an ascent of V e s u v i u s o n the f o l l o w i n g day. H e m a y •Letters, pp. 237, 233, 237, 238. w Ibid., p. 240.

CLASSIC STUDIES

61

have made another study of P o m p e i i at a later date; still, it does not appear that this happy h u n t i n g g r o u n d of the archaeologist had much attraction for him. W e get the impression that Gissing was interested in the life and the literature of the R o m a n s , in the aesthetic appeal of those times, rather than in the laborious business of d i g g i n g among the ruins left by the ancients. T h i s idea is c o n f i r m e d by his several accounts of his visit to Paestum, a visit which was by f a r the most important of his contacts with classic ruins d u r i n g this first month in Naples and its vicinity. T h i s took place on the twentieth of N o v e m b e r , in the course of the trip f r o m A m a l f i to Vesuvius which concluded with his second stay at P o m p e i i . H e had only two hours there between trains, but it was enough f o r him to observe c a r e f u l l y the two r u i n e d temples, that of Ceres and that of N e p t u n e , a n d to spend a quiet noontime there, eating his f r u g a l lunch of bread, cheese, and Calabrian w i n e in the temple of N e p t u n e . N o w the account of this event which he wrote in his diary is a very interesting one, not without some literary beauty. H o w e v e r , the real point of his interest in Paestum was not the archaeological; it is revealed in his exclamation: " T h i n k that these columns have echoed to the G r e e k s p e e c h ! " — t h e power of literary-historical association, and in his many comments on the beauty of the spot—the purely aesthetic appeal of classic ruins. T h e kind of archaeologist Gissing then was is revealed by his own comment: " H e r e discovered f o r first time a mistake in Baedeker; he says that the guardian's house is by the T e m ple of Ceres, whilst it stands by that of N e p t u n e . " A t any rate this brief visit to Paestum m a d e a great impression on him. H e speaks of it again in an entry in his diary f o r F e b r u a r y 8, 1889, w h e n he was in Florence: T o enjoy myself among buildings, I must be at Paestum. Ah, that glorious Paestum. T h e old temples of sunny-golden travertine. T h e Temples that heard the voice of Greeksl Shall I ever stand there again. . . ?

G E O R G E GISSING

62

Paestum figures prominently in The Emancipated. In 1890, when he visited the ruins of Cumae, ruins of the greatest archaeological interest, he merely says: " F o r impressiveness, the scene comes after Paestum, I think." 1 1 He devotes the better part of two essays in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Autumn X I X , X X ) to his memories of Paestum —in a book written ten or twelve years after this visit. Even then it was to him the type of the highest classical beauty. Gissing's references to Paestum are a great deal more than purely archaeological. T h e y show that such ancient ruins could re-create in his imagination the beauty of a long vanished civilization, that they gave him the keenest aesthetic pleasure. T h e r e remains but one more visit to an ancient ruin which he made in the month he spent at Naples. This was on the twenty-fifth of November, when he visited the villa of Tiberius. It, however, made no great impression on him, and Baedeker seems to have been the main source of his information about it; we meet in the diary again the now familiar "Baedeker says . . ." It was shortly after this that he left for Rome. T h e accounts which we have of his Roman experiences, it must be admitted, contain more items of archaeological interest than were found in the account of the travels of the preceding month. His explorations in Rome must have been considerable. T h e first day after his arrival was largely spent in the Forum and the Colosseum "in spite of intense weariness." He wandered all around, visiting the Capitol, the Pantheon, the grave of Keats, the Vatican, the galleries, and, indeed, all the places of interest. He ventured to disagree with Baedeker with regard to a statue in the Capitoline Museum: ". . . that great sea-god (I think the shell in his hand proves him of the sea, and not river, as Baedeker believes) ." On a second visit to the Colosseum he showed an interest in its arrangement: The latter irritates me. I can't understand the arrangements, and have access to no good book. T h e guide books are futile. 11

Letters, pp. 244, 243, 279, 307. Cf. By the Ionian Sea, pp. 76-77.

CLASSIC STUDIES

63

Again and again I try to distinguish clearly the various rows of seats, and cannot determine their exact position. H e " g r u b b e d about the T e m p l e of J u l i u s Caesar, and f r o m the basement picked u p some bits of pottery which must be very o l d " ; later he attempted to get a clear view of the seven hills. Went to the Palatine and by degrees got an idea of the plan of the Palaces. . . . From the hilltop, I remarked well the situation of the Circus Maximus. Of the seven hills, the Capitoline, Aventine and Quirinal are still well distinguishable; the others scarcely rise as distinct hills. Of course the Janiculum is plain enough. A t R o m e he seems to have been dependent on a second guide book, for he several times mentioned M u r r a y as well as Baedeker. H e devoted a good bit of time to the classic statuary in the various museums. In a letter to his sister he gave a somewhat longer account of his explorations. " T h e first week I gave to the old part of the city—the F o r u m , the Colosseum, etc.—and a few of the galleries in the private palaces." " F o r several days," he asserts, " I studied the F o r u m conscientiously." H e did write a minute description of the appearance of the F o r u m at the time of his visit, p a y i n g particular attention to the spot on which, according to tradition, the body of Caesar was burned. H e also wrote: Here and there one sees bits of the oldest wall, the wall which enclosed Rome when its site was only the Palatine—the R o m e of the Kings. A wall built of huge blocks of tufa without mortar, what a wall! And doubtless more than 2,000 years old. H e made a trip out on the A p p i a n W a y and copied d o w n some of the inscriptions on the tombs. One of the inscriptions he declared to be very ancient because " T h e L a t i n spelling is very a n t i q u e . " B u t he was depressed by his ignorance of ancient R o m e and wished that he had the time to study it properly.

64

G E O R G E GISSING I thought that I had formed an idea of ancient Rome but I had done nothing of the kind. Everywhere the wonderful antiquity haunts you. T h e Roman life and literature becomes real in a way hitherto inconceivable. I must begin to study it all over again; I must go to school again and for the rest of my life. Ah, if I only could have come here years ago.

O n D e c e m b e r 19th he made an excursion to Veii, using Murray as his guide, and attempted to locate its ancient " A r x , " speculating about the probable period of the pottery, brick, and cut stone which he found in its ruins. H e visited the Mamertine Prison, and observed the "three remaining columns of the temple of Mars Ultor, which stood in the F o r u m of Augustus." 1 2 Christmas Day he spent at St. Peter's, and on his return to England he wrote an article describing his experiences there, called "Christmas on the Capitol." 1 3 It is mostly a description of scenes within the church, combined with a series of protests against the destruction of the ancient ruins. It refers to a lecture delivered before the British Archaeological Society in which a similar protest was made. It describes the hill of the Capitol and notes that the steps leading up to it were made of marble taken f r o m the ruins of the temple of Quirinus. However, the purpose of this article was anything but archaeological, despite its various pronouncements on the necessity of keeping up the ancient landmarks. It does describe a view of the V i a T r i u m p h a l i s from the Colosseum, but it is more occupied with the R o m e of the Popes than with the R o m e of the Caesars. T h e impression we get from Gissing's R o m a n explorations is somewhat different from that obtained from his excursions in the vicinity of Naples. Such remarks show at least a considerable knowledge of those parts of R o m e w h i c h are famous for literary or historical reasons, and they do ** Letters, pp. 249. 251, 253-254, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 266. " P u b l i s h e d in Selections, Autobiographical and Imaginative, Works of George Gissing, New York, 1929, pp. 130-148.

from

the

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show a very real interest in its archaeology. We are able to say that Gissing already on this first visit gained an adequate knowledge of the topography of the ancient city. His researches in the Forum and the Colosseum must have gone a good bit further than those of the average amateur student of antiquity. Nevertheless, his chief interest in R o m e was that afforded him by its literary and historical associations; it was to him above all the place that Horace had glorified in his poems. But the influence of this visit to Rome must not be discounted simply because we cannot prove that Gissing saw it with the eye of a professional archaeologist. It was of the greatest importance to him emotionally, intellectually, and artistically, and it had no little influence on his later works. T h e stay in Florence and Venice was of less importance; Gissing said several times that he preferred southern Italy to the Italy of the north. It was the time spent in southern Italy which alone proved of importance for his work. T h i s was immediately evident in his next novel, The Emancipated, which was laid in Naples and Rome. He began work on it soon after his return to England, and had completed it by October of 1889. It is, however, not an historical novel, let alone an archasological one. It does owe a great deal to Gissing's classical studies and it is very definitely a record of his impressions upon this first trip. T h e story begins in 1878 and its theme is indicated by its title. It is the study of the effect of the Italian countryside in its modern aspect, as well as in its historical background, on a group of English tourists. Its main point is the emancipation of its principal female character, Miriam Baske, from her Puritan background by means of the artistic and intellectual influence of Italy. It is, therefore, primarily a social study, comparable in a number of ways to those novels of Henry James which deal with the influence exerted on Americans by the different social standards of Europe. One would rather expect, from the haste in which Gissing seems to have compiled this novel, that a great deal of it,

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particularly the setting, w o u l d turn out to be merely " g o o d reporting" of what he himself saw in R o m e and Naples. T h i s is the case; there are passages w h i c h look much like description written on the spot or, at any rate, based on very recent memories. In the beginning Mallard is staying at the V i c o Brancaccio just as Gissing himself did in N o v e m b e r 1888. A few pages later Mallard and Spence walk along "the road which runs along the ridge of Posillipo," and Gissing describes the scene " l o o k i n g away from Naples," referring to the noise from Fuorigrotta, the R o m a n tunnel, "the island rock of Nisida, meeting place of Cicero and Brutus after Caesar's death," Pozzuoli, "the nook w h i c h shelters Lake Avernus," and "at a little distance . . . the ruins of C u m a e , first home of the Greeks upon Italian soil," C a p e Misenum, and the ruins of Baiae. W e l l , this is all very evidently based on the walk which Gissing himself took on N o v e m b e r 3, 1888. It is a very conscious sort of description; otherwise one would not meet such a sentence as this: " T u r n to the opposite corner of the plain." 1 4 It almost looks as though it were based on notes rather than on mere memory. In its classical references it is typical of Gissing. O n e wonders from what classical historian he derived the information about the island of Nisida. T h e remark about C u m a e is not notable as a proof of erudition; it is more commonly known; besides, one finds much the same statement in Baedeker. O n e finds examples of reporting of his own experiences throughout the novel. A particularly prominent example is furnished by the sixth chapter of the first part which, on the testimony of one of his letters, he wrote on A p r i l 23, 1889. It is very obviously a record of Gissing's own stay at Pompeii on the evening of N o v e m b e r 20, 1888. H e r e it appears to have been his diary which furnished him with his material. Sometimes the dependence is almost verbal. T h u s the novel reads: T h e dusty road ran on between white trunks of plane trees. . . . T o the left of the road . . . lay the dead city; far beyond " The

Emancipated,

Chicago, 1895, pp. 11, 12.

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rose the dark shape of Vesuvius, crested with beacon-glow . . . now angry, now murky. T h e diary is very similar: As I walked from Pompeii station to the Inn, the moon rising, right in front. On my left, the dead town in darkness, and behind it the bulk of Vesuvius, with an angry glow. On either side of the road, plane trees. Put up at the "Soli," a capital place. Found a lot of Germans there, good fellows. O n Gissing's third visit to Pompeii (he was there on November i i , 20-21, 23) he made a trip by carriage to Sorrento and walked on until he could obtain a good view of Naples. Such a trip occurs in the novel. T h e novel calls Naples "an unbroken line of delicate p i n k " ; the diary speaks of "the long salmon-coloured line of houses." T h e novel reads: " T h e sea was f o a m i n g under the tramontana, and its foam took colour f r o m the declining sun." In the diary he had written: " T h e sea foaming under the tramontana, which was strong. O v e r all, sunlight from the west." A character in the novel remarks: " W h y , their vino di Vesuvio is for all the world like cider"; Gissing's diary for November 21st had said: " A t Boscoreale stopped and had a bottle of white Vesuvian wine; tastes very like cider." 1 5 It is useless to belabor the point. T h e same events occur in both the novel and the diary; the diary calls the hotel the "Soli"; it appears as the " S o l e " in the novel. Gissing's own experiences occur and re-occur in the novel; the diary must have been used in preparing it, at least in this chapter. In other parts of the book he uses his experiences at Paestum and at Rome. But to return to the main point. Does the novel then show, any more definitely than the diary and the letters, that the author was especially interested in archaeology at this time? W e l l , it does contain a n u m b e r of statements not to be f o u n d in the other records of Gissing's trip. It does show an interest in archaeological matters; I am not so sure that it shows any considerable knowledge. T h e novel has a 15

Cf. The

Emancipated,

pp. 98, 111, 99, with Letters,

pp. 244, 246, 245.

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good many scenes which are placed in Pompeii. He has his characters walk around the amphitheatre and think of the things it must have witnessed. It is more significant that he places the main love scene of the book in the house of Meleager. Here Cecily and Reuben Elgar declare their illfated love for each other, lingering there after the others have gone on. Gissing makes a good deal of the painting on the wall—the judgment of Paris—but there is nothing in this description which a casual tourist might not have seen. Curiously enough Gissing's diary, as well as his letters, says nothing about the house of Meleager. All the information that has been used in this scene, however, can be found in Baedeker. Still, there is something significant in the choice of such a locality for one of the main scenes of the book; it shows a certain interest in the ruins of Pompeii. In the eleventh chapter we have an account of Mallard's thoughts while staying at Amalfi, headed by an inscription taken from an ancient sarcophagus in its cathedral. Did Gissing then go about copying down inscriptions, in the manner of the born student of ancient times? He was in Amalfi on November 19, 1888, but his diary says nothing about the cathedral; it remarks only on "a day of incessant rain." Furthermore, the inscription is given in Baedeker, exactly as Gissing quotes it in the novel, letter for letter. He has his characters visit the villa of Tiberius, as he himself did, but nothing is made of it. T h e sixth chapter of Part T w o is devoted to Paestum, and here we do seem to have more knowledge of its past than was shown in the diary account of Gissing's own visit. T h i s chapter refers to the "difference between the columns of the middle temple and those of the so-called Basilica." Spence proposes a "libation to Poseidon." Mallard and Miriam pick up some of the stones, and Mallard remarks: "Bits of Paestum, perhaps of Poseidonia. Look at the field over there, where the oxen are; they have walled it in with fragments dug up out of the earth—the remnants of a city." 1 6 T h i s , again, proves no knowledge of archaeology; there were M

The Emancipated,

pp. 312, 313.

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many places where he could have discovered that Poseidonia had been the name of Paestum when it was a G r e e k colony; his diary makes much of its connection with the Greeks; besides, most of this i n f o r m a t i o n is in Baedeker, including the w o r d "so-called" in connection with the Basilica. T h e r e is, therefore, little evidence of archaeological researches near N a p l e s evident in the novel. T h e r e is just as little evidence of archaeology in those scenes, in the latter part of the novel, which deal with R o m e . T h e r e is a great deal about the m u s e u m s and art galleries, particularly as f a r as sculpture is concerned. T h i s , of course, is in accordance with the plan of the novel; the purpose of these chapters is to show the gradual softening of the puritanical M i r i a m through the influence of ancient art. T h e scenes in R o m e are pretty closely confined to the artistic, rather than to the archaeological, elements of the eternal city. Perhaps it was just as well that archaeology did not intrude too m u c h in this novel. H e r e , as elsewhere, Gissing showed that he was not that k i n d of a u t h o r w h o uses the novel as a means of showing his knowledge of scholarly subjects. In conclusion, then, one must a d m i t that on his first trip Gissing was distinctly an a m a t e u r as f a r as archaeology goes. H e was interested in such matters, consulted such authorities as a casual traveler might have at hand, went out of his way to see matters of archaeological interest, and often spent some time in e x a m i n i n g ancient ruins. H o w e v e r , he h a d little technical knowledge of archaeology, nor was it his m a i n interest. His main interest in Italy was that of its literary associations, its historical associations and its aesthetic appeal. H e was vitally interested in the life of the south, in the appeal of its landscape, in the splendor of certain ruins, such as those of Paestum, and in its priceless relics of ancient and medieval art. In a word, the first visit reveals the artist, the man of letters, the student of l i f e and manners rather than the professional student of long-vanished civilizations. Gissing let very little time pass b e f o r e his second trip.

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H e returned to London on March i, 1889. His letters tell us that the last proofs of The Emancipated were sent off on November 3rd; on November 15th he was on board a vessel of the Messageries Maritimes opposite Corsica on his way to Athens. Four days later the ship arrived at Piraeus, and Gissing then spent almost an entire month in Athens, leaving there only on the seventeenth of December. It is unfortunate that we have so little knowledge of this important part of his experiences in classic lands. N o part of his diary for that month has been published; we have nothing but three letters. At any rate we can say that Gissing put up at the Hotel de la Couronne in Athens and explored, mostly on foot, a great deal of the surrounding country. In a letter to his brother he comments on the streams of Athens, the Kephisos and the Ilissos, on the various mountains visible from Athens, such as Hymettus, and gives a somewhat lengthy description of the view from the Acropolis. T h e most significant item in such descriptions is the fact that Gissing recognizes all such landscape features and has associations with each one. His interest in the museums was minor: The museums are of almost purely archaeological interest. All the fine statues have long ago been distributed over Europe. Besides the Acropolis, there are only half a dozen ruins to be seen (excepting the temple of Theseus, which is the best preserved building of the kind in existence), and it takes only two or three days to examine everything in an ordinary way. But of course the interest is in the locality. It is heightened by the fact that there are so many hills about here whence you have views of great extent; and every visible inch of ground has its association. This, again, expresses the view of affairs which was evident in his earlier trip: he is not primarily interested in archaeology; he regrets the loss of the works of art which made Greece famous; he is interested in the locality chiefly because of its literary and historical associations. H e was evi-

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dently very much attracted by the views about Athens, particularly the sunsets; he referred to them frequently in his letters and used them in his later books. He made several excursions from Athens. One was to Phaleron, a village near Piraeus, where he could stand by the Attic sea. He made two trips to Salamis and "stood where Xerxes placed his throne to watch the battle." One day he walked to Eleusis. However, he did not seem particularly impressed by the life of modern Greece; it was to him "very uninteresting indeed"; he thought a visit to Greece folly " f o r anyone who has not had a classical education." On the seventeenth he left Athens by train, passing over the Isthmus of Corinth en route to Patras. T h e ship left there at ten o'clock in the evening, passing "Stony Ithaka" at night, much to his regret. T h e following morning they were in Corfu and remained there until five in the afternoon, Gissing spending "the day on deck, reading Sophocles." T h e ship started again but, on account of a rough sea, the captain put back into a harbor north of Corfu, near the town of Avellona. Gissing spent the following day reading Sophocles and "thinking of a letter of Cicero's in which he speaks of being detained by adverse winds on entering from Greece into Italy." 1 7 T h e y finally got away during the night and arrived at the port of Brindisi at sunrise. A fairly exact account of these experiences of December 19 and 20, 1889, is given in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Autumn I I I ) . From Brindisi Gissing went to Naples where he spent another month, sailing from there about the sixth of February by way of Gibraltar. He was back in London and starting work again by the second of March, 1890. Historical and literary associations were his chief interest in the trip to Greece, as they had been in the trip of the previous year to Italy. T h e best expression of this feeling comes in Sleeping Fires: His eyes wandered over the vast scene, where natural beauty and historic interest vied for the beholder's enthusiasm. Plain and mountain; city and solitude; harbor and sheltered bay; "Letters,

pp. 297, 300, 301, 302, 303.

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G E O R G E GISSING craggy islands and the far expanse of sea; a miracle of lights and hues, changing ever as cloudlets floated athwart the sun. From Parnes to the Argolic hills, what flight of gaze and of memoryl 18

For some reason, perhaps that of his constant rereading of the Odyssey, it is the sea which formed for him the center of interest in the Greek landscape. In a letter of February 8, 1889, written from Venice, he speaks of finding on the shores of the Adriatic ". . . my old associations once more. Here again is a Greek sea." T h e phrase "Greek sea" occurs over and over again in his letters and in his works; it is not for nothing that his only travel book is called By the Ionian Sea. Evidently his early reading of Homer had formed in his mind associations with the enchanted sea of the Odyssey, and it remained his most constant association with Greek landscape. It is the paucity of materials which makes it so difficult to say whether or not Gissing had a greater interest in archaeology on his trip to Greece. H e certainly made good literary capital out of the experience. T h i s appears first in New Grub Street which was written in the late months of the very year which saw his return f r o m Greece. Most of these reminiscences of his experiences in Greece come in the scenes between Biffen and Reardon in the latter part of the book. T h e r e is a reminiscence of the trip from C o r f u to Brindisi in the beginning of the twenty-seventh chapter. A little later in the same chapter Reardon describes at length —and with a good bit of poetic feeling—a marvelous sunset which he had seen at Athens. Now this is evidently based on a sunset which Gissing himself had seen and described in a letter to his brother. T h e letter speaks of a "perfect rainbow encircling the whole of Athens." Well, Reardon says that he "was on the Pynx; had been rambling about there all afternoon." H e then describes the color effects on the hills near Athens, with particular reference to Parnes, Lycabettus, Hymettus, "the pass that leads to Eleusis," "the nearer M

Sleeping Fires, New York, 1896, p. 55.

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slopes of Aigaleos," the gulf of JEgina, and "black Salamis." T h e only result of this description is to make Biffen feel unhappy; he exclaims in despair that he will never be able to go himself, that he will never get twenty shillings together. Curiously enough, in a letter of O c t o b e r 20, 1889, written therefore before this trip, Gissing speaks of an incident in many respects parallel to this incident in New Grub Street, one which really seems to have been its original. H e there speaks of an unsuccessful man w h o m he calls " B . " who "writes in a melancholy strain, about his inability to go a n y w h e r e " and of another, likewise unidentified, w h o said to him: " W e l l , well, you will wake up on a sunny m o r n i n g in Athens and chuckle to yourself when you think of us poor wretches h e r e l " 1 9 T h e other references to Gissing's Grecian experiences in this novel concern the fond hope of the two friends to visit Greece together, a hope that becomes more and more despairing as Reardon's sickness becomes worse and Biffen comes nearer to absolute starvation. Four or five days after this description of the sunset, after Reardon hears of A m y ' s good fortune, he tries to persuade Biffen that they shall yet find themselves "at Marseilles, g o i n g aboard some boat of the Messageries." T h e y are speaking of the same matter when the telegram s u m m o n i n g Reardon to his son's bedside is received. In Reardon's last illness he dreams of the trip from Patras, grieving that he had to pass Ithaca in the darkness, and l o o k i n g for the site of the battle of A c t i u m . H e speaks of his proposed trip to Greece with Biffen to A m y , and describes his experiences in Greece and Italy in a manner w h i c h almost deceives her into believing that he is fully conscious and not just delirious. H e gives up the idea of g o i n g to Greece only after Biffen arrives and just before he finally loses consciousness. T h e real fruit of Gissing's visit to Greece, as far as his knowledge of the ancient geography of that country is concerned, did not appear either in New Grub Street or in the U " B . " was probably Bertz; cf. The 208 n. Was Roberts the other?

Private

Life

of Henry

Maitland,

p.

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various references to Greece w h i c h he made in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. T h i s was left for a short and little k n o w n novel called Sleeping Fires which he wrote early in 1895. It is the best record of his impressions of Athens, and it is just as definitely based on his experiences there as The Emancipated is on his experiences in Italy. T h i s is evident on the first page; it opens with the hero sitting in an A t h e n i a n hotel reading Aristophanes, just as Gissing himself did. " H e had passed the winter at Athens, occupying t w o rooms, chosen for the prospects they commanded, in a hotel u n k n o w n to his touring countrymen, where the waiters had no English, and only a smattering of French or Italian." N o w Gissing was at Athens in N o v e m b e r and December; he did pay special attention to just such prospects; he wrote to his brother that: " I n this hotel . . . I am the only foreigner at present. T h e waiters can speak a few words of French and Italian." 2 0 In the second chapter a walk to Salamis, such as Gissing himself took, is proposed and the three characters—Langley, the hero; Worboys, the pedantic tutor of archaeological tastes; and his y o u n g charge, Louis R e e d — t a k e a drive to Phaleron. In the beginning of the fourth chapter Langley, standing at his hotel window, traces the course of the Cephisus " d o w n from the Acharnae of the poet, past the bare hillock which is called Colonus, to the b l u e Phaleric bay." In his letters Gissing mentions the river in a manner that shows h i m to have followed at least some of its course. W h e n Langley finally leaves for England in order to assist in the affairs of Louis R e e d he takes the course w h i c h Gissing himself t o o k — o v e r land to Patras, to Brindisi by steamer, and thence to Naples. T h e description Gissing gives of this journey is obviously based on memories of his o w n ; he even states that Langley's vessel spent a whole day at C o r f u , just as his o w n had done. T h e r e can be little d o u b t that the A t h e n i a n scenes of this book, which take up the first six chapters of the novel, as well as its last chapter, "Sleeping

Fires, p. 1; Letters, p. 297.

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are based very directly on his memories of this trip, perhaps even on notes taken at the time. It is therefore all the more remarkable that there should be so much archaeology in this novel, based as it is on a trip taken five years before its writing. There is really a good bit of the geography of Athens, even of ancient Athens, in the book. He says of Langley, for example: He strolled to the public market—the Bazaar, as it is called —where, as in the Athens of old, men, not women, were engaged in marketing, and where fish seemed a commodity no less important than when it nourished the sovereign Demos. Thence, by the street of Athena . . . to the street of Hermes, where he loitered as if in uncertainty, indifference leading him at length to the broad sunshine of that dusty, desolate spot where stands the Temple of Theseus. Well, these are not the remarks that one only casually acquainted with the Agora of ancient Athens would make; they imply special knowledge. Gissing's knowledge of the street names is, I suppose, based on his own observation. At the Theseion Langley meets Worboys, one of his college friends, who is trying to piece out the ancient geography of the locality with the aid of Pausanias. His first words are: " T o think that we should meet in the Kerameikos! You know that we are in the Kerameikos? I've got Pausanias here, but it really is so extremely difficult to identify the sites." 21 Well, a casual traveler would hardly know what or where the Kerameikos was; it is even less probable that he would refer to it, not by its more usual Latinized name of Ceramicus, but by a transliteration of its Greek name. No one but a person of definitely scholarly tastes would know that it is precisely to Pausanias that we must turn for a knowledge of the topography of ancient Athens. Curiously enough, the only other reference to Pausanias in Gissing comes in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X V I I ) where he says: Yet here I am gloating over Pausanias, and promising myself to read every word of him. Who that has any tincture of " Sleeping Fires, pp. 4, 6.

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G E O R G E GISSING old letters would not like to read Pausanias, instead of mere quotations from him and references to him?

Are we to infer from this that by 1900 Gissing had not yet read Pausanias but was hoping to do so? We certainly have no evidence which would lead us to believe that he took Pausanias with him to Athens, as Worboys did. Nevertheless, an interest in so definitely archaeological a work is not without its importance; Gissing certainly knew at least something about Athenian archaeology. Worboys is presented to us as a genuine student, one who has made a name as a scholar by editing the Cyropœdia of Xenophon. Needless to say, he is presented as a character with whom we can have the greatest sympathy. A f t e r his discourse about Pausanias, on their way back to Athens through the street of Hermes to the Place of the Constitution, he entertains Langley with a long discussion of R o m a n archaeology. A little later he discourses of the Theseion: "And that reminds me, Langley; I am strongly tempted to believe with some of the Germans that the Theseion isn't a temple of Theseus at all. I'll show you my reasons." He did so, with Ausführlichkeit and Gründlichkeit, as they ascended the steps of the hotel. Here again Gissing shows a definite knowledge of a purely archaeological matter; this theory about the Theseion must have come from some work dealing with ancient Athens which he had read before 1895. His archaeology in such cases may have been amateur but it shows that, granted the time and the leisure, he might have done a great deal in this respect. A little later on, Worboys talks to Reed and Langley of the Long Walls, another subject of distinctly scholarly interest. Worboys cannot be dismissed without quoting the description Langley gives of him near the end of the book: " I like the old pedant and feel for him no little respect. After all, he does what I myself am bent on doing; the business of archaeology has taken such strong possession of him that he

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lives in it with abounding vigor. . . . He loves an inscription for its own sake. If he has a personal hope in the matter, I rather think it would take the form of a desire to die in the trenches, and be buried at Colonus along with Ottfried Miiller and Charles Lenormant." 22 This is an expression of considerable importance. In the first place, I believe that it expresses Gissing's own attitude toward the science of archaeology, one of great respect, if not of the enthusiasm which he attributes to Worboys. T h e reference to the two scholars who had done so much for Athenian archaeology, too, is of consequence; no one but one having a definite interest in the matter would know of the fact that Langley here adduces. One wonders how much of their work Gissing was familiar with. Miiller died in Athens in 1840 and a monument, which Gissing may have seen, was erected to his memory. Charles Lenormant was the father of that François Lenormant whose book, La Grande-Grèce, was used by Gissing as his guide on his Calabrian journey two years after the writing of this novel. Sleeping Fires really has more direct classicism in it than any other Gissing novel; it shows a really surprising knowledge of the archaeology of Athens. T h e impression that one gathers from these accounts of Gissing's visit to Greece is distinctly in favor of the view that his archaeological interest had deepened in the preceding year, that his trip to Athens aroused in him a desire to study such matters which had not been present in the time spent in Naples and Rome on his first journey to classic lands. It is true that we have little trace of this in his letters, but they are too fragmentary to be of weight. T h e references in Sleeping Fires really are important. It is a short novel; it allowed but few opportunities for references of this nature; nevertheless, Gissing saw fit to make an archaeologist one of its most sympathetic characters and to include in it quite a bit of knowledge about ancient Athens. Of course Gissing does not identify himself with Worboys any more than to indicate in Worboys a course of life which he might "Ibid., pp. 17, 206.

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have enjoyed, had the circumstances been favorable. Gissing was attracted to archaeological studies at this time and to the life of an archaeologist, but after all he was a writer of realistic fiction; he, like Langley, had to live in the present and forget, for his working hours at least, the undeniable charm which the science of archaeology held for him. However, despite the interest in such matters which his trip to Greece had aroused, the year 1890 was to be the end of his classic studies for some time; he was to put aside his interest in historical and archaeological matters for a full seven years. Not until early in 1897 was he able to begin his classic studies again with his preparation for Veranilda; in September of 1897 he started on his third journey to Italy. I do not think that it was lack of interest which caused this seven year hiatus. H e says, for example, in a letter of March 16, 1890, written directly after this trip to Greece and before he began New Grub Street, that: Everything points to the likelihood of my practically leaving England for a long time. London is too solitary for me; I can stand it no longer. Little by little, the subjects of my books will probably change a good deal; in fact, this process has already begun, as you will see in The Emancipated. One is somewhat at a loss to determine just what Gissing meant by this statement. Does he mean to say that he intended to continue his studies of the effect of modern Italy and Greece on English people? Did he intend to shift the setting of his stories away from London? Did he perchance mean to write historical novels of the classic times, such as he later did in Veranilda? If this last supposition be correct, we have here a confirmation of the view that his Athenian journey had aroused in him a great interest in archaeological and historical matters. However, as a matter of fact, no such change took place. T h e change in the subjects of his books which actually occurred was a change to a somewhat different type of realism, a change from such powerful pictures of the slu ms as The Nether World to studies of the middle

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e

class. T h e period between 1890 and 1897 h period of Born in Exile, Odd Women, The Whirlpool, In the Year of Jubilee, and of a number of slighter stories of more cheerful tone such as Denzil Quarrier and Eve's Ransom. It is the period in which most of his short stories were written. Reference has been made to that diary note for December 3 1 , 1892, which speaks of his classical studies as "utterly neglected" and that, indeed, seems to have been true of the entire seven years now in question. I presume that it was his second marriage in 1891, with its increased responsibilities, which made it impossible for him to change from realistic fiction. That style of writing was, after all, that to which he was accustomed; it was one by which he had been able to support himself in the preceding five years. T h e interest in archaeology and in other classic matters therefore had to be sidetracked until its happy revival in 1897. In studying Gissing's scholarship with a view to evaluating the equipment with which he came to his principal works of a classic nature in the years between 1897 and 1903 it is of course necessary to mention again his interest in classic history, although there is not much evidence of any extended historical reading between 1883 and 1897. Gissing's historical reading seems to fall in two periods, the first of which started with his boyish reading of Gibbon and continued through his bitterest years of struggle from 1878 to 1883, when he was reading writers on Roman history and some Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, and Cicero. Gissing's interest in ancient history was a very real one. It is true that he speaks somewhat slightingly of the study of history in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Winter X V I I ) : Why do I give so much of my time to the reading of history . . . ? . . . if historic tomes had a voice, it would sound as one long moan of anguish. Think steadily of the past, and one sees that only by defect of imaginative powers can anyone endure to dwell with it. History is a nightmare of horrors; we relish

8o

GEORGE GISSING it, because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is to man rich in interest.

Despite this protest, it was at this very period that Gissing was preparing to write his historical romance; the writing of these words corresponds very closely with his second period of historical reading. It was in the very same book that he had quoted approvingly Michelet's statement in the introduction to his History of France: "J'ai passe a cote du monde, et j'ai pris I'histoire pour la vie." It is impossible to doubt that his interest in history continued through all these years when he was devoting his time to realistic fiction. Of the period between 1884 and 1897 there is nevertheless little to record in the way of historical reading; there are a few references to such reading, but not many. T h e most interesting thing, probably, is an evidence of a growing interest in Thucydides. This seems to date from 1889 when, at the close of his first trip to Italy, he recorded in his diary (February 8, 1889) : "One of the aims of my life now is to read Thucydides and Theocritus in Sicily." He refers to him again in 1895 in Sleeping Fires, and in 1896 makes Thucydides one of the favorite authors of Basil Morton in The Whirlpool. Xenophon is referred to casually in Sleeping Fires and in a letter of 1889. Tacitus is referred to in 1892 in Born in Exile and in The Whirlpool. Plutarch is quoted at some length in Born in Exile in a manner that might indicate a rereading at that time. There is, however, no definite proof that he reread these authors in these years; indeed there is not much proof that he read any ancient history between 1884 and 1897. Of course the range of his historical interest had never been a very wide one. His main interest was in the period covered by the Decline and Fall. Next to that time came, it seems, the golden age of Rome, the time of Horace and Virgil. He was interested in the age of Pericles. During his Calabrian trip he developed an interest in the history of the Greek colonies in southern Italy, an interest that had been present in a minor degree before.

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Within these limits he was a good historical scholar. It is useless to attempt to prove this point in detail. A r c h x o l o g y may not have been his strong point in the field of classic studies; history certainly was at least one of them. A n even more important part of the scholarly equipment with which Gissing came to the writing of his distinctively classic works was his knowledge of the languages, not only of the classic languages themselves, but also of all those modern languages in which scholarly works on classic subjects are to be f o u n d . H e r e we are on sure ground; Gissing can easily be proven to have been a linguist of no mean abilities; in no other branch of classic studies can we so certainly vindicate f o r him the title of an exact scholar. T h e know-ledge of languages was implanted in him by his early training. T h e break in his formal education may have prevented him from going on in the study of various other branches of classics; it fortunately came too late to hinder him in acq u i r i n g that knowledge of language which was to open so much of the world's literature to him. His Latin began at Wakefield when he was only twelve; his G r e e k began at L i n d o w G r o v e when he was thirteen. Obviously he was, as a schoolboy, unusually proficient in both languages. H e must have had an absolute command of Latin by the time he left Owens in 1876; one of his pupils in the W a l t h a m , Massachusetts, high school in 1877 says: " I t was in the close association of a private pupil that I came to know him. Neither before nor since that time have I come in contact with anyone who showed so keen a grasp of Latin. It was to him a living language; apparently he thought in it." 2 3 French, too, must have been included in his early training; the only letter which w e have f r o m h i m during the Manchester period speaks of corresponding with his sister in that language. G e r m a n was another language which he began in his school days. Roberts gives us an instance of this study f r o m their schooldays at Owens College: He always loved the sound of words, and even when first " Workers in the Dawn, ed. R . Shafer, New York, 1935, p. xiii.

82

G E O R G E GISSING at Moorhampton he took down a German book and read some of it aloud to the younger Lake who did not know German and said so. Whereupon Maitland shook his fist at him and said: "But Lake, listen, listen, listen—doesn't it sound fine?"24

If this incident really took place soon after his arrival at Owens, he must have begun German before that time—at Lindow Grove, before he was sixteen. We have, therefore, evidence of at least six years of school Latin and five years of school Greek. He seems to have had several years of French and German at school and, indeed, actually taught Latin, French, and German in an American high school. His letters from America speak of a great deal of reading of German—Heine, Goethe, and German novels being mentioned. His knowledge of German and, indeed, of other matters, including the classic languages, might be supposed to have rested on an even surer foundation of scholastic training, if we could accept the report that he spent some time at a German university. It is confidently asserted that this was the case; the university is given as Jena, and he is supposed to have there studied Goethe, Haeckel, Schopenhauer, Comte, and Shelley, and to have become "an adept in religious and metaphysical discussion." 25 These statements are supposed to be based on Gissing's correspondence with Edward Bertz, a lettered German who was his lifelong friend. It is one of the most regrettable things about the entire career of Gissing that these letters, treating as they do the most crucial period of his life, have never been published. Now it is true that Workers in the Dawn betrays some knowledge of German universities; its heroine spends some time at Tübingen and studies those very writers whom Seccombe and Harrison mention. Nevertheless, a German period ** The Private Life of Henry Maitland, pp. 20-21. "Dictionary of National Biography. 2nd Supplement. II, 114. A similar statement is made by Austin Harrison in the Nineteenth Century Review, September 1906, Vol. 60, p. 455. Cf. also Intro, to Shafer's ed. of Workers in the Dawn, p. xv, n., and W. H. Hudson: Men, Books and Birds, London, 1925, p. 90.

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in Gissing's life must remain unproved. He himself, as Ryecroft, says that he first met E. B. (Bertz) in London. It does not seem possible to find a time for such a visit. Finally, his son, Mr. Alfred C. Gissing, in a letter to me, directly denies that any such trip ever took place, and I have the word of the university authorities themselves for it that Gissing was never a student at Jena, nor was Edward Bertz ever Privat-Dozent at that university. At any rate Gissing kept up his languages upon his return to London in 1877. For at least several years after his return, the teaching of languages was almost his sole means of support; we hear of pupils in French, in German, in Latin, and in Greek. The only really first-hand account of Gissing's teaching at this time which we have is in an article by Austin Harrison which tells of the instruction in Latin and Greek which he and his brother received from Gissing, beginning in December 1880. In the three or four years following that date he did a great deal of tutoring, his pupils including the sons of a bishop and the nephew of a duke. 26 All of this teaching must have had its result; he must have become well grounded in these languages. T h e position he had reached with regard to languages is well illustrated by a letter of August 2, 1885, in which he claims a reading knowledge of Greek, Latin, German, French, and Italian. It was no idle boast. He did actually read Dante in the original in that very year. On his first trip to Italy he had a good command of the written language, which he immediately extended by practice in speaking Italian. In his later years he even gained a certain knowledge of the dialects of Naples and of Calabria. Spanish he was not to learn until the end of his life, but he did learn it; as late as July 1902 we hear of his studying Spanish grammar with the aid of a book borrowed from W. H. Hudson and then proceeding to the reading of Don Quixote. His German was of course kept up by his lifelong association with Bertz and by constant readHis teaching in these years is referred to in Letters, pp. 26, 30, 3 1 . 39, 88, 95, 96, I O I , 104, 108, 1 1 7 , 136, 138, 147, 15«, 153, 154, 175, 217, etc.

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ing of Goethe and other German authors. He visited Paris a number of times, read French frequently, finally married a French woman, and spent his last years in France. Gissing had a good command of five languages throughout the greater part of his career and was adding a sixth at the time of his death. Something must be added, however, about his command of Greek. It appears to have been absolutely phenomenal. It is not merely that we have so many references to the reading of Greek authors in the original; we have proof that he read them easily, without effort, with a language skill that many a Greek scholar might envy. By J u n e 13, 1887, he could write to his brother: Do little but read Greek. I thank heaven that I shall very soon have as tolerable a command of Greek as anyone who is not a professed scholar. That has been my ambition for many years, but Greek takes a long, long learning. T h i s was no overestimate of his abilities. In the same years he was reading aloud " a rough and ready translation of old H o m e r " to his sister Margaret, and was planning to continue such readings. In his diary for September 2, 1888, he speaks of reading "six books of Odyssey translated aloud to Madge"; several days before that he had written to his sister Ellen about this reading, planning to continue from the sixth book on, "though we shall scarcely reach the end before your return." I suppose that this continuation of the Odyssey readings in September 1888 is that to which Ellen Gissing refers in an article on "Some Personal Recollections of George Gissing": I can recall how . . . he used to make Homer real to my sister and myself by translating it straight from the Greek. I can still hear the intonation of his voice as he read, never seeming to pause for a word, generally standing with his head thrown back, the light falling on his auburn hair, and his eyes

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sparkling with enjoyment. T o hear the Odyssey read as he read it was to be enabled to enter into its true spirit. 27 T h e s e statements show an absolute c o m m a n d of G r e e k ; it is not the average scholar w h o can read H o m e r off into English without so m u c h as referring to a dictionary, w h o can get the spirit of the Odyssey into a direct verbal translation. O n e can almost come to accept the statement of Roberts about the hundred choruses which he knew by heart in the year or two immediately after this time. In addition to this easy reading knowledge of ancient G r e e k , there is some evidence to show that Gissing studied modern Greek and attained a certain speaking knowledge of the language. T h i s dates from 1889, just before his visit to Athens, when he speaks of making such a study in order to be able to reduce expenses in Athens. In a letter from A t h e n s he had the foll o w i n g to say: T h e spoken language is exceedingly difficult to understand, owing to peculiarities of pronunciation and accent; still I have just enough of it to buy, and ask ordinary questions. T h e newspapers I can read without much difficulty; the Greeks are doing their best to reform the written language on the classical models. . . . In fact, I no longer consider Greek as a dead language, for in a discourse of half an hour I scarcely use a word that wouldn't have been understood by Xenophon. 2 8 It therefore seems that his earlier study of modern Greek, plus his natural linguistic ability, had enabled h i m to pick up a fair knowledge of modern G r e e k before he left Athens. In summarizing Gissing's linguistic attainments we may adopt the statement of Morley Roberts: His Greek . . . was most familiar. He could read Aristophanes lying on the sofa, thoroughly enjoying it, and rarely rising to consult Liddell and Scott. . . . There was no Latin author whom he could not read fluently. . . . French he knew nearly as well as a Frenchman, and spoke it very fluently. 17 Blackwood's Magazine, 203, 221, 222. "Letters, p. 297.

May

1929, C C X X V , 653; Letters,

pp. 195,

igg,

86

G E O R G E GISSING His Italian was also good, and he spoke that too without hesitation. Spanish he only read; I do not think that he often attempted to speak it. . . . His Italian can be judged from the fact that he read Dante's Divina Commedia almost as easily as Virgil. German too was an open book to him, and he had read most of the great men who wrote in it, understanding even the obscurities of "Titan." 2 9

T h e s e statements have been fully borne out by the evidence just cited. By 1897 he had G r e e k , Latin, German, French, and Italian at command. T h i s evidence of his c o m m a n d of languages will serve as a preface to a m u c h more important m a t t e r — t h a t of his reading of the classic literatures. T h e most important statement made by Gissing himself about his reading is contained in a letter of A u g u s t 2, 1885, in which he lists the "really great m e n " of the various literatures. H e there has: " H o m e r , ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, a m o n g the Greeks; Virgil, Catullus, Horace, a m o n g the Latins." T h e list given by Morley Roberts is similar in most respects. H e gives H o m e r and the three tragedians as Gissing's favorites among the Greeks, and Virgil, Catullus, and T i b u l l u s as his favorite Latin authors. H e also gives a list of other classic authors which Gissing read: He took a curious interest in Cicero. . . . T h e only Latin book that I myself introduced to Maitland was the Letters of Pliny. They afterwards became great favorites with him because some of them dealt with his beloved Naples and Vesuvius. Lucian's Dialogues he admired very much. . . . In the Golden Ass of Apuleius he knew the story of Psyche and Cupid almost by heart. Petronius he read very frequently. . . . He knew Diogenes Laertius well, though he read that author . . . rather for the light he throws upon the private life of the Greeks than for the philosophy in the book; and he frequently dipped in Athenaeus the Deipnosophist. Occasionally . . . he did read some ancient metaphysics, for Plato was a favourite of his. . . . Aristotle he rarely touched, though he knew the " The Private Life of Henry Maitland, pp. 383-184.

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Poetics. He had a peculiar admiration for the Stoic Marcus Aurelius. 30 With these statements as a guide it should not be too difficult to trace Gissing's classic reading in his own writings, to fix the dates of such readings, if possible, and to see what he has to say about the various authors of Greek and Latin times. It may be less easy to find any indications of his critical judgments of the ancients; despite his interests in such writers, no formal piece of literary criticism of an ancient writer by Gissing has been published. When we turn, therefore, to a consideration of the Greek authors which Gissing read we come first to Homer. Homer was, beyond a doubt, the most important classic writer in the development of George Gissing. He became acquainted with Homer, of course, at least as early as his school days at Lindow Grove. When he took up Greek again after his school days, in December 1878, he asked his brother for his Greek Lexicon (the old Liddell and Scott which they had both used at Lindow Grove?) and "some Greek author." It seems that the author which he did read was Homer, whether Algernon Gissing brought it to him in January or not, as the letter suggested. It was precisely in the period following this letter—January to November of 1879—that he was writing Workers in the Dawn, a novel which contains a considerable number of references to Homer, rather more than we should expect of one who had not read Homer since his school days. 31 We also have the statement of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X ) that his Homer had lain on the table of his room in the "alley hidden on the west side of Tottenham Court Road, where, after living in a back bedroom on the top floor, I had to exchange for the front cellar." T h i s seems to suit most nearly 22 Colville Place, which is an alley on the west side of Tottenham Court Road, where Gissing, early in 1878, had but one room. It was, according to the 1889 Baedeker of London, located directly behind a police staK

Ibid., pp. S85, 286. " Workers in the Dawn, I, so8, 338; II, 194, «73.

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tion; Ryecroft speaks of hearing the tramp of the "policemen w h o passed along the alley on their way to relieve guard." A t the time at which he was to receive this unnamed " G r e e k author" from his brother—January 1 8 7 9 — h e was in fact living at 70 Huntley Street, Bedford Square, w h i c h is on the east side of T o t t e n h a m Court Road. O f course the statement of Henry Ryecroft may be fiction or it may refer to a translation such as that which A r t h u r Goldi n g had read to T o l l a d y in Workers in the Dawn. T h e idea of a translation is perhaps favored by two references in letters of 1881 which speak of a pupil who wished to learn to read H o m e r in the original, and of Gissing himself reading either a Greek or Latin author every night with the hope of becoming able "to read H o m e r and the Greek tragedians as easily at least as I read Goethe." T h i s latter statement will bear some emphasis. It implies that he did not t h e n — i n March 1 8 8 1 — h a v e that command of Greek which he later had. Inasmuch as his reading of Sophocles can be dated from the same year, one wonders whether his real reading of H o m e r did not, in fact, begin only in 1881. A t any rate by 1885 he was able to write of being able to read Homer in the original and of a wish to have a quiet cottage in the country with leisure to read Homer. I presume that this rereading of Homer dates at least from 1881, if not actually from 1879, with some possible traces of a translation read in 1878. In 1886 he had the following to say about H o m e r : He is the fountain head of most modern poetry. He has the world all fresh before him, and no fear of not being original. T o read him is like standing in the light of sunrise and seeing the world renewed. Of the Greeks he was the Bible—the philosophers quote from him as moderns do from the Jewish Scriptures. When you have read Homer, your thought will be enriched with knowledge of an era of human history. 32 In a letter of A p r i l 12, 1887, he wrote of H o m e r and Shakespeare as " m y other authors just n o w " and added: " H o m e r — o n e cannot speak of him, only think." His reading of the "Letters,

p. 181.

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Odyssey aloud to his sisters took place in November of 1887 and was continued in September of the following year. Those of Gissing's novels which have the most to do with Homer are those written immediately after his first and second trips to Italy and G r e e c e — T h e Emancipated and New Grub Street. In the former novel he speaks of the elopement of Elgar and Cicely in a manner that betrays an active interest in Homer: There was no sound, yet to intense listening the air became full of sea-music. It was the night of Homer, the island charm of the Odyssey. And again, in the closing words of the same chapter: And the gods sent a fair breeze from the west, and it smote upon the sail, and the prow cleft its track of foam, and on they sped over the back of the barren sea. T h e later passage is, I believe, one of the most direct imitations of Homer to be found in any novel. Somewhat later on he introduces a reminiscence of his own days in Italy: " T h e s e are the kind of oxen that Homer saw"—a remark that he had made in one of his letters from Italy. In describing the statuary in the Sala Rotonda (his own favorite museum in Rome, by the way) he says this of the J u p i t e r of Otricoli: As though he had just uttered his words in Homer: "For verily there is no creature more afflicted than man, of all that breathe upon the earth." 33 T h e quotation is from one of Gissing's favorite passages, that describing the weeping of the horses of Achilles. In New Grub Street the references are more numerous, as one would expect after the trip to Greece. In the first chapter Milvain speaks of literature as an art—that is, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare—as opposed to that idea of literature as a trade which he would wish to get into Reardon's head. Reardon reads Homer to A m y : •The

Emancipated,

pp. 216, 221, 322, 351.

go

GEORGE

GISSING

In a few minutes it occurred to him that it would be delightful to read a scrap of the Odyssey; he went to the shelves on which were his classical books, took the desired volume, and opened it where Odysseus speaks to Nausicaa: " F o r never yet did I behold of mortals like to thee, neither man nor woman; I am awed as I look upon thee. In Delos once, hard by the altar of Apollo, I saw a young palm-tree shooting u p with even such a grace." D e s p i t e h e r dissatisfaction w i t h R e a r d o n ' s prospects and his s e e m i n g lack of i n i t i a t i v e , A m y is c h a r m e d by his r e a d i n g of H o m e r a n d presently suggests: " R e a d s o m e H o m e r , dear. L e t us h a v e Odysseus d o w n in H a d e s , a n d A j a x stalking past h i m . O h , I s h o u l d l i k e t h a t ! " 8 4 W e l l , this passage is based o n G i s s i n g ' s o w n e x p e r i e n c e s ; the d w e l l i n g of the R e a r d o n s is a f a i r l y f a i t h f u l copy of 7 k C o r n w a l l R e s i d e n c e s , R e g e n t s P a r k , w h e r e G i s s i n g l i v e d f r o m 1884 to 1 8 9 0 ; the w o r k h o u s e clock in the n o v e l is that of M a r y l e b o n e w o r k h o u s e to which h e o f t e n r e f e r r e d in his letters; R e a r d o n reads to A m y direct f r o m the G r e e k , j u s t as G i s s i n g had read the Odyssey to his sisters t w o years b e f o r e w r i t i n g this novel. W h e n

Reardon

comes to sell his books he l a m e n t s that H o m e r is so cheap, that his l i b r a r y is that of a p o o r s t u d e n t — " b a t t e r e d

bind-

ings, s t a i n e d pages, s u p p l a n t e d e d i t i o n s . " S o m e time later h e r e f e r s to " t h e l i n e of H o m e r I have o f t e n q u o t e d a b o u t the d e m o r a l i z i n g effect of e n s l a v e m e n t ; p o v e r t y degrades in the s o m e w a y . " H e insists that " T h e curse of poverty is to the m o d e r n w o r l d j u s t w h a t that of slavery was to the anc i e n t . " S u c h was R e a r d o n ' s thesis; it was Gissing's as w e l l , a n d it is characteristic of G i s s i n g to root the idea in a statem e n t t a k e n f r o m H o m e r . It is also characteristic of Gissing, in the scene in w h i c h R e a r d o n a n d A m y finally part, that he has R e a r d o n pick o u t the books to take w i t h h i m — " J u s t a f e w , the i n d i s p e n s a b l e c o m p a n i o n s of a bookish m a n w h o still clings to l i f e — h i s H o m e r , his S h a k e s p e a r e . " 3 5 T h e references to H o m e r in his later novels are f e w a n d of less im"New •Ibid,

Grub Street, pp. 130-131, 134. pp. 147, a n , a i s , S35.

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portance. In The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft there are several references of importance. In Summer V I , for example, he mentions Homer as one of the books he usually read on Sundays: " N o t many Sundays have gone by without my opening one or other of these." A Homeric touch comes in almost unawares at times, as when he refers to the dawn with the epithet of "rosy-fingered goddess" (Summer X I ) . I have several times referred to the important passage in Summer X X V I I in which he doubts that " H o m e r yields me all his music." But the most extended of all of his statements about Homer is that on the bedstead of Odysseus, contained in Winter X V . It is there cited as an example of the ancient sanctity of the hearth, of the home. T h e most important thing about this particular essay is the fact that it contains the only published extract from those translations of the Odyssey which we know that Gissing made orally, the only extract, perhaps, that was ever written out. T h i s is a rendering of Odyssey X X I I I : 190-201 into blank verse. It is really well done; one regrets that Gissing never added a complete verse translation of the Odyssey to the already rather long list of such translations. It is now possible to list a number of Gissing's favorite passages in Homer. T h e y are: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

T h e bedstead of Odysseus— Odyssey X X I I I : 190-201 The weeping of the horses —Iliad X V I I : 426-440 T h e death of Argos—Odyssey X V I I : 292 Odysseus and Nausicaa—Odyssey VI Odysseus in Hades—Odyssey X I Homer on slavery

T o these may perhaps be added Odyssey X X I V which, so his letters tell us, he was reading in March of 1891. It is to be noted that most of these references are to the Odyssey; this work, rather than the Iliad, was the Homer which Gissing read and reread. Gissing's knowledge of Homer, then, must have been considerable; Roberts says that he knew H o m e r as well as he did Shakespeare. T h e reasons for his

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love of H o m e r can be gathered from the statements just quoted. H o m e r was associated in his mind with the happiest time of his l i f e — h i s school days. H o m e r furnished him with a view of the world in its primeval glory; it was to him the best retreat from the pressing problems of the modern world. It furnished him with certain more or less philosophical conceptions. T h e metrics of H o m e r — i t s noble and majestic m e l o d y — m e a n t a great deal to him, more than it can mean to anyone w h o has only a superficial knowledge of Greek. B u t above all it was a matter of aesthetic delight which drew h i m to Homer. H o m e r was literature to him, a statement of some importance when we recall the distinctively bookish character of the man. W e are not on quite such sure ground when we speak of his reading of Greek tragedy. Roberts says that he knew the old tragedy very well indeed: " T h e r e was no single play or fragment of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that he did not know familiarly." 3 9 W e are not sure just when this reading of the tragedies began. A t school, I presume, he can hardly have read more than one or two plays, though it is worth noting that one of his letters from Athens says that at the University of Athens they read Sophocles "very much as we do in England." In March 1881 he expressed a desire to read H o m e r and the Greek tragedians as easily as he read Goethe, and one surmises that it was in 1881, after his reading of Homer, therefore, that he began his serious reading of Greek tragedy. Sophocles appears to have been the writer with w h o m he began; in a letter of J u n e 19, 1881, he outlined his reading at that time: " A t night . . . and, last of all, 50 lines of Sophocles—at present the Antigone." The importance of this statement lies not so much in the fact that it mentions a particular play; it seems to be a trace of a definite course of reading; it infers that he was going right through Sophocles and happened at that particular date to be reading the Antigone. A t any rate Sophocles is both the first of the three tragedians to w h o m he alludes and the one " The Private Life of Henry Maitland, p. »86.

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to w h o m he alludes most frequently. Late in 1886 he had A n n a b e l N e w t h o r p e , in Thyrza, lament that Sophocles was still u n k n o w n to her, and there is no definite proof of another reading of Sophocles until the time of his trip to Greece. T h e references to that writer in New Grub Street and in Roberts' description of their readings of the Greek tragedians probably are based on the rereading of 1890 and not on a rereading (otherwise unproved) in 1887. T h e reference to the two editions of Sophocles in New Grub Street is of interest; I very much suspect that Gissing, with his usual liking for autobiographical details, has here made use of the editions with which he himself was most familiar, which he himself probably owned. A t any rate he did read Sophocles on his way back from Greece; his letters twice speak of reading Sophocles on the steamer from Patras to Brindisi. It is rather curious that he should have a Sophocles with him; he may have taken it with him to Greece (he certainly had an Aristophanes) or he may have bought a copy in Athens. I suspect, too, that the plays with which he was then concerned were those of the CEdipus trilogy. T h e reference to the CEdipus Rex in New Grub Street was written in the following year. Sleeping Fires speaks of the "bare hillock which is called C o l o n u s " 3 7 — a kind of unconscious reference, I think, to the CEdipus Coloneus. T h e r e are perhaps not as many Sophocles references in Gissing's writings as one might expect, but we must remember that there w o u l d hardly be any occasion to discuss Sophocles in a novel of modern life and that Gissing's letters are incomplete and hardly the place for an exercise in literary criticism. A t any rate, we have proof that he began a reading of Sophocles in 1881 and that he made a second reading of at least some of his plays in 1889. O f iEschylus and Euripides we have even fewer traces. It is possible that he followed up his reading of Sophocles in 1881 with a reading of the other tragedians; he had expressed a desire to do so. Roberts says that " w e discussed our jEschylus . . . in his flat,"38 that is to say, " Op. cit., p. 46.

"Op.

cit., p. 81.

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presumably between 1887 and 1890. However, the only reference that Gissing made to jEschylus occurs in one of the Ryecroft essays (Summer X X ) : "It is the second Jubilee. Bonfires blaze upon the hills, making one think of the watchman on Agamemnon's citadel." Even this, though it shows a fairly close knowledge of the story of the Agamemnon, does not prove a reading of iEschylus. Nevertheless, I think we can accept the idea that Gissing did read ^Eschylus, probably between 1887 and 1890. T h e case for his reading of Euripides is a little stronger. Walter Egremont refers to his desire to read Euripides in Thyrza-, Gissing may have been reading Euripides when he was writing that novel; it was a period of renewed Greek interests. At any rate, in 1890 he wrote those powerful scenes in New Grub Street in which the Fragments of Euripides figure so prominently. A reference to the Fragments is of course rather impressive as an indication of his knowledge of the author. I presume that these two scenes are records of his experiences in reading Euripides to Roberts and some of his other friends in the years between 1887 and 1890. Our evidence for Gissing's reading of the three great tragedians is, therefore, somewhat less than we might expect. However, there are other Greek writers which may have been of less importance in his career which he very certainly read. This is especially true of Theocritus and Aristophanes, and I rather suspect that they were omitted from his own list of the truly great men in 1885 only because he had not read them at that time. T h e evidence for a later reading of both writers is decisive. Theocritus is mentioned first on the title-page of Thyrza. On January 16, 1887, he wrote: " I read mostly Greek at present. Thyrza was finished yesterday morning." In connection with a review of Thyrza in the Athenaum he wrote, on May 14, 1887: The quotation on the title page is from the glorious idyllist Theocritus. It means "But we heroes are mortals, and being mortals, of mortals let us sing." Alas, how little these reviewers comprehend . . . of my real meaning.

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These quotations imply that he was beginning to read Theocritus when Thyrza was being brought to its conclusion. This seems to have been the case; in a letter of J u l y 24, 1887, he wrote: " I have just finished a complete reading of Theocritus of which I am rather proud. His vocabulary is very stiff." Well, if he completed this reading in J u l y , it is quite probable that he had begun it in January and so came to put a quotation from Theocritus on his title-page. T h e r e is no earlier reference to Theocritus. It is this reading of Theocritus, I presume, which caused Seccombe to say of A Life's Morning that "renewed recollections of T i b u l l u s and Theocritus may have served to give his work a more idyllic tinge." 3 9 However, this is beside the point; if any novel is tinged with the idyllicism of Theocritus it is more likely to be Thyrza than any other. T h i s interest in Theocritus, once it was aroused, remained with him. His diary at the end of his first trip, on February 8, 1889, says that " O n e of the aims of my life now is to read . . . Theocritus in Sicily." In By the Ionian Sea he twice refers to Theocritus; in the third chapter he mentions the fourth idyll; in the seventeenth chapter he speaks of the Ionian Sea as echoing the "softer rhythm of Theocritus," softer in comparison with that of Homer. Henry Ryecroft (Autumn X V I I ) refers to Theocritus in connection with visions of Arcadia. Gissing's reading of Theocritus was evidently pretty complete. His reason for liking Theocritus is obvious; it was specifically the idyllic, the "little pictures," devoid of any philosophical or social meaning but full of the simpler human joys, that he enjoyed in the classics. In many ways Theocritus is the typical Gissing classic writer, the kind of thing in which he had most joy. If this is the case, his interest in Aristophanes is a deviation from what we might normally expect. It is also a curious commentary on the frequently repeated statement that • The House of Cobwebs, New York, 1906, p. xxiii. A Life's Morning, though not published until 1888, had been written in 1885. Cf. Letters, pp. 168. 173.

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Gissing lacks humor. His reading of Aristophanes came immediately after his first reading of Theocritus. In the same letter which had announced his completion of Theocritus he wrote: " A m now going on with Aristophanes, who is considerably more difficult as he abounds in slang." How far he may have got with Aristophanes in 1887 it is impossible to say; there is no further reference to that writer until a letter of April 24, 1889, in which he wrote: " M y reading at present is The Frogs of Aristophanes." T h i s was just before his trip to Greece; it appears to have been the time, more than any other, in which he read Aristophanes. A t any rate he took a copy with him to Athens in November and December of the same year and wrote home from Athens that: My evenings I spend in reading Greek, chiefly Aristophanes, who is above all the poets associated with Athens. Of course a vast amount of light is thrown upon him by my experiences here. T h i s was the reading of Aristophanes which he had in mind in causing the hero of Sleeping Fires to spend so much of his time in Athens reading Aristophanes. In chapter four of this novel he speaks of the "Acharnae of the poet." Now the poet is obviously Aristophanes who wrote a play bearing the name of that deme of ancient Athens. T h i s play, therefore, must be added to The Frogs as one of the works of Aristophanes which Gissing can be proved to have read; certainly his letters give us the impression that he read many more. T w o other Greek writers of minor but still very definite interest to Gissing were Plato and Xenophon. T h e evidence for his reading of Plato is interesting because it is practically the only certain evidence we have of his contact with any of the ancient philosophers. Plato seems to have been one of his earliest enthusiasms. In the third chapter of Workers in the Dawn he has the philanthropic clergyman, Edward Norman, answer his daughter's questions about religion in terms

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of the Platonic philosophy and with a direct use of the Socratic method. T h e first artistic efforts of A r t h u r G o l d i n g , the hero of this novel, are said to show "some likeness to those ideas of the animal world in the existence of which Plato and his disciples put their faith." 4 0 T h e s e references w o u l d seem to argue some knowledge of Platonism as early as 1879, the date of his setting forth as a novelist. Still, they may be just evidence of a schoolboy's knowledge of ancient philosophy, or they may be the result of reading those "German tomes on A n c i e n t Philosophy" which, according to Henry R y e c r o f t (Spring X V I I ) , he was reading in the British Museum at about that date. N o further references to Plato occur until A u g u s t of 1885, w h e n he speaks of reading Plato in that very letter in which he does not list him a m o n g the indispensable "really great m e n . " T w o years later, on A u g u s t 25, 1887, his letters had this to say about Plato: I am spending this week over a dialogue of Plato. Next time I have a holiday, I shall read some Plato to you—especially the speech of Socrates at his trial. It is one of the most inspiring things I have discovered in the world's literature. I often think of that story of Lady Jane Grey sitting in the summer's morning reading Plato. . . . And who has time nowadays to read Plato? Perhaps fifty people in the United Kingdom—if so many. T h e s e two statements are of some interest. T h e letter of 1887, of course, proves that he read the Apology of Socrates', I am not sure but what we can make out a case for the letter of 1885 b e i n g a reference to the reading of the Phcedrus. It does not name the dialogue he was then reading, b u t the context of the statement tells us that he was w o r k i n g at that time on the first chapters of Demos, and in the twelfth chapter of this novel he makes good use of the Phcedrus. Of course there is a letter of January 17, 1886, which says that he was then reading "scarcely anything, only a little G r e e k and Italian," and this may be a trace of a third reading of Plato. H e was then, in January, 1886, c o m p l e t i n g the second Workers

in the

Dawn,

I, 102.

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volume of Demos. A t any rate, in this novel he has Mr. W y v e r n instruct the hero from Plato: They repaired to the study. A volume of Plato was open on the reading table. "Do you remember Socrates' prayer in the Phadrus}" said the vicar, bending affectionately over the page. He read a few words of the Greek, then gave a free rendering. "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward be at one. May I esteem the wise alone wealthy, and may I have such abundance of wealth as none but the temperate can carry." 41 T h e quotation is from the closing words of the dialogue; the translation is a reasonably free one, though accurate, and is another of the rare examples of Gissing's translations from the Greek. T h e r e are n o references to Plato between 1887 and his last writings about the turn of the century. H e refers to Plato in Our Friend the Charlatan, in By the Ionian Sea, and several times in Veranilda. In this last novel he speaks of T h e o d o h a d as "a scholar, deeply read in Plato," a statement w h i c h he probably took from G i b b o n (Chap. X L I ) who calls the man T h e o d a t u s . Some time later in the book he says that Decius "had lately completed certain translations from Plato, left unfinished by Boethius." 4 2 H e could have derived from G i b b o n the fact that Boethius made such translations; that he left them unfinished at his death is not there (Chap. X X X I X ) stated. A t any rate, these later references do not prove a later reading of Plato. W e can say that he was acquainted with some of the leading ideas of Plato when he wrote Workers in the Dawn in 1879, that he was reading the Phcedrus in 1885 or 1886, and that he was occupied with the Apology in 1887. O f course he probably read much more. Roberts is not of the o p i n i o n that the philosophy of Plato meant m u c h to him; he says Plato was one of Gissing's favorites " n o t . . . on account of his phiDemos, New York, n. d., pp. 151-152. " Veranilda, New York, 1905, pp. 12, 159. a

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losophy but because he wrote so beautifully." 4 3 X e n o p h o n , as we have seen, was the text with which he started his study of Greek at L i n d o w G r o v e School. H e makes few references to that author except in this connection. T h e two passages which Henry R y e c r o f t cites (Summer I X ) (from Anabasis IV. 7. end and IV. 1. 23-24) are sufficient proof that he kept up his reading of X e n o p h o n l o n g after his school days. T h e r e remain only those writers w h o are minor in all respects. A s can be easily seen, Gissing's interest in the Greeks was mostly in a few great names. Nevertheless, there are some evidences of an antiquarian taste, of an interest in obscure Greek writers which reminds one not a little of Lamb's antiquarianism with regard to English literature. T h e s e lessk n o w n m e n were evidently read at an early period in his life. In connection with Gissing's early classic reading we must not forget H e n r y Ryecroft's statements in Spring X V I I : At the time when I was literally starving in London, when it seemed impossible that I should ever gain a living from my pen, how many days have I spent in the British Museum, reading as disinterestedly as if I had been without a carel . . . A t such a time, I worked through German tomes on Ancient Philosophy. At such a time, I read Apuleius and Lucian, Petronius and the Greek anthology, Diogenes Laertius and—heaven knows whatl N o w it is easier to date this reading than it is to say just what obscure authors he then read. Evidently Ryecroft's statements can be applied, in general at least, to Gissing. T h e reference to his "literally starving" and to the seeming impossibility of his ever earning a l i v i n g by his pen suits well his first years in L o n d o n — 1 8 7 8 and 1879. T h e r e are a n u m b e r of references in his letters of 1878 and early 1879 which prove beyond a d o u b t that he was then spending much time in the British M u s e u m and that he was then living on lentils (cf. W i n t e r I X in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft) and suffering a great deal f r o m poverty. 44 "Roberts, op. cit., p. »86.

" C f . Letters, pp. jg, 3s, 43-44.

ÌOO

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Gissing must have read a good many classic authors in the British M u s e u m in these years before his first published novel; just what authors he read may be hard to say. T h i s is the only reference which Gissing himself made to a reading of Lucian; he has his characters read him in one or two novels, and I presume from Roberts' statement about Gissing's admiration of Lucian's dialogue that he reread Lucian, or spoke to Roberts about the dialogues, in the years between 1887 and 1890. In New Grub Street Reardon reads Diogenes Laertius in the British M u s e u m , gets together an article on that ancient gossip and actually sells the article for seven pounds ten shillings. I presume that this is a reflection of Gissing's o w n early reading of that author. Gissing presumably o w n e d a copy of the Greek anthology; Roberts says that he had "perhaps" even more delight in the Latin anthology than he did in the Greek. T h i s is Gissing's only reference to the Greek anthology. A m o n g other Greek writers to w h o m he does refer may be mentioned Moschus, Plotinus, Euclid, and Pythagoras. O f these Moschus is the only one w h o was of any consequence in his development. W h e n he read him is uncertain, but it certainly was before the writing of Thyrza in late 1886. In this book there occurs a very important and lengthy statement in the form of a letter from Egremont, then in America. Egremont has just discovered W h i t m a n , as Gissing himself did about 1886. H e writes: T h e old melodious weeping of the poets—Moschus with his mallows, and Catullus with his "Soles occidere et redire possum"—Whitman has no touch of that. . . . Has he then made me a thorough-going optimist? Scarcely . . . I shall always be rather a weak mortal, shall always be marked by that blend of pessimism and optimism which necessarily marks the man to whom . . . the beautiful is of supreme import, shall always be prone to accesses of morbid feeling, and in them . . . find after all my highest pleasure. Nay, it is certain that Moschus and Catullus will always be more loved by me than Whitman. 40 " Thyrza, New York, n. d., p. 425. Cf. Roberts' statement on reading of W h i t m a n , pp. vii-viii.

Gissing'i

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Now this statement of Egremont's is a direct stepping out of character; in the rest of the book he seldom appears as such a man; evidently we here have Gissing himself speaking, giving his reasons for preferring the elegiac poets to the somewhat loud and over-virile optimism of Whitman. In view of the fact that Gissing's reading of Catullus, in fact, his reading of the very passage he quotes in Thyrza can be dated in 1882, it is not too much to assume that he read Moschus after this date and that he was led to Moschus by the reading of Catullus. Roberts seems to imply that Gissing read Moschus to him at 7k Cornwall Residences—that is to say, after he had moved there in December 1884. Euclid Gissing refers to but once, and then only as a representative of geometry. Pythagoras is spoken of several times in By the Ionian Sea because of his connection with southern Italy. Plotinus is mentioned once in Veranilda when the philosopher Simplicius asks Decius to examine a rare treatise of Plotinus which he has just discovered. Of Aristotle and Athenasus the Deipnosophist, both mentioned by Roberts, Gissing himself says not a word. In attempting to summarize and evaluate Gissing's Greek reading, one is immediately struck by the fact that there are some important omissions. Greek philosophy as a whole seems to have been utterly neglected; Gissing read some writers who gave us the lives of the philosophers, but he read none of the philosophers themselves except for a little Plato. This is not so surprising; he took little interest in philosophy, except in the early part of his career. It is more noteworthy that he never refers to Hesiod or to Sappho. There is but one reference to Herodotus, and indeed very little evidence that he knew Thucydides or Pausanias well. There is no evidence that he ever read any of the New Comedy or any tragedy except that of the three recognized masters of Greek tragedy. Gissing's Greek reading amounted to Homer, the three tragedians, Aristophanes, and some idyllic and elegiac poets. I presume that his reading of Greek was fairly continuous, but the evidence which we

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have does not prove this; it divides his reading of Greek into several periods. Xenophon he read at school, presumably some Homer as well, perhaps a tragedy or two. There was then a three-year hiatus in his reading of Greek. In 1878 and 1879 he seems to have been reading some Greek in the British Museum, and some Homer as well. In 1881 he began his serious reading of the tragedies with Sophocles. Some time before 1886 he must have read Moschus. In 1885 he began a reading of Plato, the Phcedrus and the Apology being two of the dialogues he read them. But the time in which he read most of his Greek was evidently between 1887 and 1890, during the period of his first two trips to Italy and Greece. This is the period during which he translated the Odyssey aloud to his sisters, when he read the tragedies to Roberts and studied the metre of their choruses. In 1887 he read his Theocritus and his Aristophanes; in 1889 he read Sophocles and Aristophanes at Athens. We have no evidence that Gissing continued his Greek readings after 1890, though there is every possibility that he did so. In fact, we have little information as to his activities between 1890 and 1897; Otters from this period have been printed; it hardly needs repeating that we have, as yet, no biography of Gissing that is in any respect adequate. Gissing's Latin studies were no less important than his readings of the Greek writers. Here we have to begin with Virgil, his favorite Latin author. His early reading of Virgil has been discussed in connection with the part Virgil played in building up his love for Italy. This early reading of the /Eneid and the Georgics had its influence on his works; in 1886 he made Annabel Newthorpe, a character in Thyrza, quite an enthusiastic student of Virgil, one who goes about "humming over dactylics," who is "deep in Virgil and Dante," who quotes Virgil apropos of the vanities of the London social season.46 In Thyrza, therefore, Virgil appears as the representative of the proper study of the classic for a woman who had no Greek. Curiously enough, Gissing seems " Thyrza, pp. 18, 78, 565.

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to have been u r g i n g the study of Virgil on his sister Ellen in the time immediately following the writing of this novel. On J a n u a r y 16, 1887, the day after Thyrza was finished, he wrote to her: " G o o d that you have read Ekkehard, it will give you an interest in V i r g i l . " In N o v e m b e r of the same year he wrote again: You have done wonderfully in Latin. If I had one single five minutes free I would try and give you some help at beginning Virgil, but I am driven too hard, and it must wait for a little while. His diary for his second Italian trip shows most interestingly the part Virgil had played in developing his love for Italy; he says of Stromboli that Virgil makes it the home of .iEolus; Brindisi to him is simply the place where Virgil died on his return from Greece. T h e s e references show a continued interest in V i r g i l . T h i s interest extended to more than a reading of the life of Virgil or to memories of the /Eneid. O n March 26, 1 8 9 1 , he wrote to his brother: Herewith I send the passage of Virgil—the a free translation—done chiefly for my own noticeable that his idealization conflicts with of the Georgics, which is distinctly practical to the expression of hardship.

whole of it, with amusement. It is the general tone and rather tends

W e have here another trace of Gissing's classic translations. B u t what was the passage which he translated? W e l l , the description he here gives of it sounds suspiciously like Georgics I I . 1 3 6 sqq., the passage in praise of Italy which he had used in The Unclassed eight years before this letter. It is an idealization of Italy; it conflicts with the general tone of the work. T h i s letter indicates a knowledge of the Georgics as a whole, not simply of this passage. In By the Ionian Sea he several times refers to Virgil. W h e n he arrives at Squillace he sees it as " V i r g i l ' s 'ship-wrecking Scylaceum.' " 4 T In this work "By the Ionian Sea. Travellers' L i b . cd., p. 1 7 1 . T h e quotation is f r o m /Eneid I I I , 553, but Gissing probably got it from Hodgkin's ed. of the letters of Cassiodorus (p. 6) which he read about this time.

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occurs the first mention of the Eclogues. In writing Veranilda in the last years of his life he several times had occasion to refer to Virgil, as the favorite author of late Latin times. In the beginning of that book the scholar Decius on the ides of October arises "at daybreak to meditate the Fourth Eclogue" and by so doing arouses in Maximus the regret that he had lost the memory of Virgil in his distresses. Decius is still pagan enough to reject the prophetic interpretation put on that eclogue by the church of his day and speaks to Maximus about it: "Let us speak of it," he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil some two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus. "Tell me, dear lord, your true thought; is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine Birth? To you . . . may I not confess that I have doubted this interpretation . . . ? "I know not, Decius, I know not," replied the sick man, with thoughtful melancholy. "My father held it a prophecy, his father before him."48 This is the first indication we have of any extended knowledge of the Eclogues', it is possible that he read this work only in preparation for Veranilda or that his interest in it had been aroused by his trip in 1897 to the locality in which the Eclogues had been written. Later in the book St. Benedict uses the very quotation about Squillace which Gissing had used in By the Ionian Sea, and speaks of Virgil, along with Statius, Livy, and Cicero, as an author whom even a monk might read, citing the examples of Jerome and Augustine. T h e references to Gissing's reading of Virgil may not be many, but they are important. They show that he must have become acquainted with Virgil, presumably the /Eneid, at school, that he frequently taught Virgil during his early career, that he read the Georgics before 1883 and maintained his interest in that work in later years, that he read at least some of the Eclogues in his last years, and that he had some knowledge of the various branches of Virgilian scholarship. " Veranilda,

pp. 7, 9.

CLASSIC S T U D I E S Horace, too, he probably read in his school days and in the years soon after that time. Horace was the author principally concerned in b u i l d i n g u p his enthusiasm for the city of R o m e . W h e n he did visit R o m e in 1888, he saw it as the place which Horace had glorified, and he was influenced to reread his Horace while there. As I ascend homewards from the Forum, I always hear singing in my head: Dum Capitolium Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex. After dinner, home and read Horace's First Epistle. T h e quotation is from the Odes (III. 30: 8, 9 ) . T h i s seems to indicate that he was familiar with the Odes before his visit to R o m e and that he began to read the epistles as a result of his stay there. A few days later he wrote: Horace begins one of his poems by saying " D o you see how Soracte stands there covered with white snow?" And almost every day I see that mountain Soracte in the far distance, though not as yet with snow on it. I shouted with delight the first time I recognized it. T h e T i b e r is a strange river. H o r a c e calls it " f l a v u s , " w h i c h

means "tawny," and to this day it is the exact colour of it. 49 T h e s e quotations show repeated readings of Horace; a casual reading w o u l d not account for the ready identification of Soracte or for the knowledge of the exact adjective w h i c h Horace had used for the T i b e r . His diary states that he identified Soracte on his second day in R o m e , D e c e m b e r 1, 1888, and he used the experience in w r i t i n g The Emancipated immediately after this trip. Horace is, indeed, fairly important in this book; Millard points out Soracte to Miriam; Cecily studies the Odes while at R o m e ; Elgar, while in the jo.lly company at the inn in Pompeii, exclaims: " W e are in the land of Horace, and n u n c est b i b e n d u m . " 5 0 His expression was certainly as true of Gissing; to h i m Italy " Letters, pp. 251, S63. Emancipated, pp. 385, as, 101.

xThe

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was above all the land of Horace. T h i s influence of Horace was equally important in his later years. His diary for J u n e 29, 1896, says: "Read a little Ovid and Horace. Ah, if I had but the energy to give but half an hour daily to Greek and Latin!" About a year and a half after this he was in Calabria, on his trip to the Ionian Sea, looking for the places mentioned in Horace, and going distinctly out of his way to see the Dulce Galaesi Flumen of the Horatian ode. One is unable to say whether Gissing took his Horace with him to Calabria, as he certainly did to Rome. It is probable, though, that he had a copy with him when he wrote the chapter in By the Ionian Sea which is devoted to Horace. He refers to Horace again in the 1899 Crown of Life, and uses the very quotation which had rung in his head while in Rome again in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Autumn X X ) . This second use of the quotation comes in a chapter devoted to praise of Italian wines, and there is more than a little of Horace in it, in an indirect fashion. Italian wine reminds him of his study of Horace, of the wine he had had at Paestum, of all his associations with Italy. Earlier in the same book (Summer III) he refers with pleasure to the incident in Walton's Life of Hooker which tells of his being found tending sheep, "with a Horace in his hand." It was not the least of his merits in Gissing's eyes that he was so found. Horace, next to Virgil, is Gissing's favorite Latin author. For some reason or other much is often made of the influence of Catullus and Tibullus by those who have written about Gissing, although the evidence hardly shows them to have been as important in his career as were Virgil and Horace. It was early in his career, about the time of his purchase of Gibbon, that he first read Catullus and discovered in his writings what was, I believe, his favorite Latin quotation. This was the three lines beginning Soles occidere et redire possunt, from the best-known of Catullus's poems to Lesbia. Egremont quotes these lines in Thyrza, and Worboys quotes them in Sleeping Fires. This interest in

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Catullus was a continuous one; in a letter of N o v e m b e r 1902 he wrote to Edward Clodd about the villa of Catullus which is believed to be preserved at Sirmione: " A t all events he did live there, and there wrote one at least of his loveliest poems." 5 1 H e did read Catullus, therefore, and knew not a little about his life and writings; that he was as important as Virgil or Horace in Gissing's mind I fail to see. T i b u l l u s , too, though undoubtedly read by Gissing, cannot have been as important as either of the two major writers. I have already referred to his buying Heyne's edition of T i b u l l u s at the Goodge Street shop in his days of poverty, and to the description of that event which Henry Ryecroft gives. T h i s description is a vivid one, not easily forgotten; I presume that it accounts for the many references to T i b u l l u s in connection with Gissing. Years after this incident, in New Grub Street, Gissing has the poverty-stricken Reardon, wishing to gain access to the British Museum, approach a well-known writer with the story of his literary aspirations and ask for his aid. T h e writer asks what he has done; Reardon says that he has lately written an essay on T i b u l l u s , and is nearly laughed at for his pains. Some of this may be autobiographical. Gissing did write to his brother asking for subjects for essays immediately after his arrival in London; he did obtain a museum ticket soon after that; he did read T i b u l l u s before the first of his novels was published; his career presents certain parallels to that of Reardon. However, no such essay on T i b u l l u s was ever published, and these are the only references to T i b u l l u s which Gissing ever made. H e probably read T i b u l l u s about 1879 when he bought a copy of Heyne's edition and glanced through it from time to time, but it is not probable that he read T i b u l l u s as regularly as he did his Horace or his Virgil. I have already referred to the facts that Gissing did not seem to have a copy of Cicero in 1878 when he taught a pupil from De Officiis, and that he bought his copy of Cicero's Letters about 1881 or 1882 in the old bookshop opn

E. Clodd, Memories, New York, 1916, p. 184.

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posite the Portland Road Station. It was the letters of Cicero, not his orations or his philosophical discussions, which attracted his attention. H e was reading the Letters again, presumably in the "podgy volumes in parchment" which he had picked up at the old bookshop, in April 1889, as his own letters show. On December nineteenth of the same year his letters speak of his thinking "of a letter of Cicero's, in which he speaks of being detained by adverse winds on entering into Greece from Italy." T h i s was the day Gissing spent on the deck of the steamer from Patras to Brindisi, reading Sophocles, while they were detained near Avellona by a storm in the Adriatic. T h i s thought was evidently the result of his rereading of the Letters in April. In Veranilda Decius quotes Cicero to Basil: Then Decius, a roll in his hand, stepped to his kinsman's side and indicated with his finger a passage of the manuscript. What Basil read might be rendered thus: " I am hateful to myself. For though born to do something worthy of a man, I am now not only incapable of action, but even of thought." 52 T h i s is still another example of Gissing's translations from the classics. These passages show that he knew the Letters of Cicero very well indeed, but they say nothing about his other writings. I presume that Gissing's interest in Cicero was purely personal. His interest in Marcus Aurelius was probably a late one, but it was of some consequence and it actually included an interest in his philosophy. T h e r e is no reference to Marcus Aurelius before The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, which was written in 1900. Here, however, we have two entire chapters (Autumn X I I I , X I V ) devoted to him and to his philosophy. Henry Ryecroft says: Many a time, when life went hard with me, I have betaken myself to the Stoics, and not all in vain. Marcus Aurelius has often been one of my bedside books; I have read him in the night watches . . . I read him still, but with no turbid emo " Veranilda, p. 149.

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tion, thinking rather of the man than of the philosophy, and holding his image dear in my heart of hearts. T h e r e is no way of telling to what periods in Gissing's life this may refer. Evidently there were two periods involved, a time of difficulty when he read Marcus Aurelius for the solace his philosophy might grant, and a later period when he read him with a purely personal interest. Now the philosophical note is not characteristic of the middle period of Gissing's career. We come upon some philosophy in the days before 1883—some Platonism, some thought on theological problems, and a great deal of social and economic speculation. T h e r e was little of it from that time until 1900. One is tempted to assert that Plato was the philosopher of Gissing's youth as Marcus Aurelius was that of his declining years. Henry Ryecroft does not profess himself in agreement with the great Stoic; he finds himself unable to accept his primary assumption, that we have a knowledge of the absolute; he doubts that we have any absolute moral authority, though he would like to find something of the sort. Ryecroft says that he is not able to accept the Stoic duty of resignation; he utters doubts about free will. Evidently these are Gissing's own opinions. These essays also contain several of Gissing's translations from the Latin; he must have had a copy of Marcus Aurelius before him when he wrote this book. T h e essays of Ryecroft, however, are not the only ones of Gissing's reactions to Marcus Aurelius which have been preserved. Morley Roberts has printed a letter of Gissing's to "Rivers," i.e., H . G. Wells, in which Gissing wrote: Seeing that mankind cannot altogether have done with the miserable mystery of life, undoubtedly it behooves us before all else to lighten as we best can the lot of those for whose being we are responsible. This for the vast majority of men— a few there are, I think, who are justified in quite neglecting that view of life, and, bye the bye, Marcus Aurelius was one of them. Nothing he could have done would have made Commodus other than he was . . . and then one feels pretty sure Commodus was not his son at all. For him, life was the in-

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dividual, and whether he has any true influence or not, I hold him absolutely justified in thinking as he did. 53 N o date is given for this letter, b u t it must have been a late one. Gissing's acquaintance with Wells is dated by his diary as b e g i n n i n g on N o v e m b e r 20, 1896, when they met at an O m a r dinner. Furthermore, the reference in the letter to "those for whose b e i n g we are responsible" and the statement about C o m m o d u s seem side glances at Gissing's o w n children, the oldest of w h o m was only five w h e n he met Wells. B u t the period of his reading of Marcus A u r e l i u s can be fixed more definitely by Our Friend the Charlatan, a novel w h i c h dates from the same time as The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Both books were written at St. H o n o r é les Bains in the summer of 1900. In this novel the index character, a certain L o r d D y m c h u r c h , is a great student of Marcus A u r e l i u s and from that author derives his philosophy of life. His g o i n g back to the old Stoic is contrasted with the shallow and self-seeking modernism of Dyce Lashmar, the titular hero. D y m c h u r c h quotes Marcus A u r e l i u s w h e n he first speaks with Lashmar about Lashmar's theory, learns from Marcus A u r e l i u s what his o w n duty in the present state of civilization is, and comes to think resignedly of death upon reading the Stoic's discussion of that problem. 6 4 It is interesting to note that D y m c h u r c h , in his last appearance in this novel, has arrived at approximately the standpoint of H e n r y R y e c r o f t ; he, too, desires now only books and a quiet life in some peaceful country retreat. T h e matter of Marcus A u r e l i u s is, then, one of some importance. T h e r e is every reason to believe that the philosophy of life w h i c h is f o u n d in the later Gissing owes a great deal to that writer. T h e philosophical position of H e n r y R y e c r o f t represents the last phase of his creator's thought; that final development owes most to Marcus A u r e l i u s and little to the literary giants of the A u g u s t a n age. T h e r e remain a considerable n u m b e r of m i n o r Latin auThe Private Life of Henry Maitland, pp. 120-121. " Our Friend the Charlatan, New York, 1901, pp. 42, 193, 364. M

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thors whom Gissing read before 1897, minor at least as far as he was concerned, and of considerably less importance for him than those who have already been discussed. T o Ovid he refers but twice. A letter of August 29, 1889, says: " I read old Ovid and to do so under such a sky half brings back the indescribable feeling of being in Italy." A letter of J u n e 29, 1896, speaks of reading " a little Ovid and Horace." T h i s would seem to indicate that he read Ovid seldom and then only late in his career. It is interesting to note, however, that the name of the hero of his first novel, published in 1880, is Arthur Golding—the name of an Elizabethan translator of Ovid who published a translation of the Metamorphoses in 1565. T h i s can hardly be an accident; Gissing must have known at least something about this Elizabethan version of Ovid at the very start of his career. Livy, of course, he read early in his career; that author figures prominently in The LJnclassed. He refers to him several times later. In a letter of September 22, 1885, he wrote: " I hope you are getting to enjoy Livy. His Latin is glorious—history set to the organ." In Veranilda he has his hero, Basil, a student of Livy: Nowadays if he ever opened a book it was some historian of antiquity. Livy, by choice, who reminded him of his country's greatness, and reawakened in him the desire to live a not inglorious life. 55 Gissing seems to have read Livy between 1880 and 1885, but there is no evidence of a later reading. T h e same thing is true of Plutarch, another of the favorite authors of Casti in The Unclassed. H e is referred to only once in Gissing's later writings. T h i s is in Born in Exile where he quotes a story from the " L i f e of Phokion" and uses it to enforce a point about the valuelessness of public opinion. Still, this does not seem a mere reminiscence of a reading that took place before 1883; he must have referred to his Plutarch at the time of the writing of this novel in 1891. Tacitus, " Veranilda, p. 151. Cf. also p. 305.

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too, belongs to his early reading. Tacitus also figures briefly in Born in Exile. Mr. Warricombe ventures the opinion "that the first sentence of the Annals is a hexameter." This idea he had found "mentioned not long ago"; the mention had led him to reading of the Annals "with no little enjoyment." 56 Otherwise we hear nothing of Tacitus in Gissing's later writings, though there is an off-hand allusion in The Whirlpool. In The Whirlpool we again meet the poet Claudian, to whom Casti had been led by his interest in Gibbon. Morton is wont to quote "in that mellow tone which gave such charm to his talk, the line from Claudian, 'Erret et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.' " 5T Whether or not Gissing knew Martial I have been unable to decide. Born in Exile speaks of the motto Pereunt et imputantur beneath the clock in Exeter Cathedral. There Gissing must have seen it in 1891 when he was living in Exeter and writing this book. He says of Peak: "Had he known that the words were found in Martial, his rebellious spirit would have enjoyed the consecration of a phrase from such an unlikely author." 88 Henry Ryecroft uses the same quotation (Winter I) but this hardly proves that Gissing had read Martial. The evidence for a reading of Pliny is stronger, although it must have been fairly late in Gissing's career. Morley Roberts asserts that it was he who introduced Gissing to Pliny's Letters. In a recent article he has repeated this statement: Then again he wrote of Pliny's letters, a copy of which I gave him. "Ah, the good old timesl" He saw Pliny with many good slaves, and he could not get or keep a capable servant.69 T h e letter of Gissing to which Roberts here refers was one of 1895. The time when he brought Pliny to Gissing's atten1 tion was, I presume, sometime between 1887 8go. In New Grub Street, written at the conclusion of this period M

Born " The "Ibid., ••"The p. 421.

in Exile, London, 1892, I, 265. Whirlpool, London, 1897, p. 325. I, 227. Letters of George Gissing." Virginia

Quarterly

Review,

July 1931,

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d u r i n g which he was so friendly with Roberts, Gissing has a great deal to say about Reardon's article on Pliny's Letters which was rejected by The Wayside. In Veranilda Gissing again refers briefly to Pliny. Certainly he did read some Pliny, b u t Pliny was not one of his favorite authors. T h e Latin anthology is another book which Gissing read, one which he probably read more frequently than most of these works of minor interest to him, but we have little record of such readings. His diary for A p r i l 11, 1902 does say: " B e e n reading in my 'Latin Anthologia' lately." Roberts says: " T h i s was a volume in which he took peculiar delight. . . . M a n y times I have seen him take down the little Eton anthology and read aloud." 6 0 O n this account Gissing had the Eton edition and read it to Roberts, presumably between 1887 and 1890. Roberts says that he received Gissing's copy from Gissing's third wife after his death. A p u l e i u s and Petronius he must have read at an early date; R y e c r o f t mentions them a m o n g the books he had read at the British M u s e u m . W e have no other proof that Gissing read them, although Roberts lists them a m o n g his favorite authors. T h e r e were also a n u m b e r of Latin authors w h o m Gissing read while he was making his labored preparation for Veranilda. It seems that he read several writers of the latest period of Latin literature when he was considering this work. Statius, for example, is a writer w h o is not mentioned until Veranilda. Gissing has the scholar Decius say: " I had only time to reperuse with care the Silvae of Statius—his Epicedion being appropriate to my mood." 8 1 T h i s probably indicates that Gissing had read the Silvae between 1897 the w r i t i n g of this passage in 1902 or 1903. I imagine that he was attracted to Statius because of his popularity in the early M i d d l e Ages; he wanted to read the works which Romans of the sixth century w o u l d be most likely to know. His readings of Boethius, of Cassiodorus, and of A u g u s t i n e seem similarly motivated. A u g u s t i n e occurs in Veranilda only in " The

Private

Life of Henry

Maitland,

p. 282.

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the monastery scenes, as is natural. O n e of the monks presents Basil with a newly finished copy of De Civitate Dei; Basil admires the workmanship of the copyist, but is unable to read much of it. Benedict then expounds the work to him, trying to explain to Basil how he had erred in his patriotic enthusiasm for the temporal city of R o m e by neglecting the heavenly city. Basil refers to the predestination taught by Augustine; the A b b o t regrets that he has met with that idea at this stage of his career. Later Benedict quotes A u g u s t i n e : For, as the Egyptians had not only idols to be detested by Israelites, but also precious ornaments of gold and silver, to be carried off by them in flight, so the science of the Gentiles is not only composed of superstitions to be abhorred, but of liberal arts to be used in the service of truth. 62 T h i s is probably Gissing's own translation. H e must have k n o w n at least something of Augustine to be able to write the monastery chapters in this novel, although he probably never read Augustine for any other reason. Boethius, too, is never referred to until the writing of Veranilda, but h e figures rather importantly in the book. Veranilda is placed shortly after his death, when his widow was still alive. In fact, the hero of the book is related to Boethius, as well as to Symmachus, father-in-law of the author of the Consolations. In his last hours Maximus has Decius read to him from this work. It was "a book wherein Maximus sought comfort, this last year or two more often than in the Evangel, or the Lives of the Saints." W e learn that Maximus was especially f o n d of the passages of verse; he asks Decius to cease his r e a d i n g for the day when he comes to the lines: O felix hominum genus, Si vestros animos amor Quo coelum regitur, regat,63 T h e book speaks of Decius completing certain translations left unfinished by Boethius, and presents the widow of » ibid., p. 305. "Ibid., p. 33.

CLASSIC STUDIES

"5

Boethius and some of his accusers at the trial as minor characters. Gissing must have studied the life of Boethius, as well as some parts of the Consolation of Philosophy, in preparation for this novel. It would require another chapter to treat properly of his reading of Cassiodorus, and his study of that ancient worthy will be discussed only in connection with By the Ionian Sea and Veranilda. He did not begin to read Cassiodorus until February or March of 1897 when he was already thinking of his historical novel. T h e mention of Cassiodorus brings our study of Gissing's Latin readings to a close, as it brings us to the latest period of his life, to the period of his writing on classic subjects. His contact with Latin literature included an ardent enthusiasm for Virgil and Horace, a real interest in Catullus, T i b u l l u s , Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and the Roman historians, together with a somewhat miscellaneous reading of many more or less major Latin authors and a reading of late Latin writers in preparation for Veranilda. Virgil and Horace he read regularly, from his school days on. Tibullus he first read in 1879; Catullus came a little later, in 1882. T o this early period of his career also belong the writers he read in the British Museum—Apuleius, Petronius, and those to whom he was led by his interest in Gibbon, such as Claudian and the historians Plutarch, Tacitus, and Livy. Ovid and Pliny he read later on, probably for the first time between 1887 and 1890. T h e Latin anthology was one of his favorites. Marcus Aurelius became the philosopher of his later years, while the late Latin writers, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Boethius, were read only after 1897. There are, evidently, some significant omissions. Gissing never refers to R o m a n drama; there is no evidence that he ever read Plautus or Terence. In fact, we have no reference to any writers before the age of Augustus, except for Catullus and Cicero. T h e r e is no mention of Seneca, of Juvenal, of Suetonius, or of Lucretius. In late Latin he read only Marcus Aurelius and the writers immediately connected with his own work. His knowledge of Latin literature was, then, deep

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rather than broad. It confined itself to a few great authors, with some scattered reading of lesser men from time to time. Two interests appear evident in his reading of Latin. On the one hand there is the historic and personal interest, the reverence for the great deeds and the great men; on the other hand there is again evident his love for the idyllic, the elegiac, the interest in poetry which directly and simply expresses human emotion, emotion more often of a sad than of a joyful character.

IV GISSING'S CLASSIC PERIOD 1897 TO 1903 N F I X I N G on the year 1897 as the time when Gissing's classic interests really came to the fore we may seem to have acted rashly. He did work of other kinds after this; he wrote six novels of modern life, his book on Dickens, his series of Dickens prefaces, and made his abridgment of Forster's life of Dickens. However, of these novels only The Crown of Life is of much importance and the Dickens works are, of course, purely critical. The year 1897 does mark a definite break in his career. In February he left for South Devon where he spent three months, not in preparation for another modern novel, but in studying the Ostrogothic period in Italy, particularly as it is revealed in the works of Cassiodorus. The interpretation which Gissing's son gives of this period is interesting. He says, in connection with the Calabrian trip later in 1897:

I

My father was growing weary of modern civilization with all its problems and was inclined to dwell more and more upon the thought of ancient Rome, which had always taken first place in his imagination. . . . The real burden of his message regarding the corruptness of civilization had already been delivered, and henceforth his work lay chiefly in the region of literary criticism, biography, and ancient history. He tells that "even during the writing of Veranilda my father had in mind certain ideas for a second historical work," 1 and supposes that Gissing would have produced a series of works of this kind, had he had the opportunity. Now it is a fact that Gissing considered By the Ionian Sea, 1

Selections, pp. 245, »85. 117

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Veranilda, and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft to b e his best work. Furthermore, in a letter of December 27, 1900, at the time w h e n he was just beginning Veranilda, therefore, he wrote that " T o break new ground, I think, is my only chance." H e made no further statement, and one is unable to say whether or not he was conscious that his work was turning away from narratives of modern life to the critical study of literature and the historical study of ancient life. W e cannot be sure that he would have devoted himself to the essay, personal or critical, or to the historical romance; we can be sure that these last years of his life showed a renewed attention to the ancient world and that they resulted in what is generally admitted to be some of his best work. T h i s latest period, that of predominantly classic interests, therefore, began early in 1897 with this extensive course of reading in the history of late R o m a n times. In September he began the longest and most important of his trips to Italy, a trip w h i c h lasted from September 22, 1897, until late in A p r i l of 1888. H e arrived in M i l a n by train on the 23rd, stayed there a day, and then went on to Sienna where h e wrote his Charles Dickens. By the 14th of N o v e m b e r he was in Naples w h e r e he may have met F. Marion Crawford, the well-known writer of Italian historical novels. 2 His subsequent itinerary, w h i c h he describes so vividly in By the Ionian Sea, can best be presented in tabular form. 3 Nov. 16: Leaves Naples in the morning. Ship stops at Torre Annunziata in the afternoon, resumes voyage at dinner time. Nov. 17: Arrives Paola at breakfast time. Starts drive to Cosenza at 10 A.M. Arrives there at 4 P.M., spends night there. Nov. 18: Leaves for Taranto by train, 7 A.M. " C l o d d , op. cit., pp. 167, 168. " T h i s itinerary has been made out by comparing the book, with his diary and his letters. It is reasonably accurate and certain, except for the time spent at Cotrone and Catanzaro. H e spent three days at Catanzaro and was in Cotrone from November 24th to December 6th, but we cannot be sure to what days we are to assign the events which occurred in these places.

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PERIOD

L u n c h at Sybaris, en route, arrives T a r a n t o in the afternoon. Nov. 19-23: In T a r e n t u m . Dulce Galaesi Flumeti. Museum. Writes At the Grave of Alaric. Nov. 24: Leaves for Metaponto 4:15 A.M., arrives there 6 A.M. Walks to " T a b l e of the Paladins." Continues journey after lunch, arrives Cotrone 10 P.M. Nov. 25, 26: A t Cotrone. Plans to visit T e m p l e of Hera. Visits orange groves. O n 26th writes to his son. Nov. 27: Visits cathedral and graveyard of Cotrone. Feels sick after dinner. Nov. 28: Feels sick but takes a walk anyhow. Dr. Sculco summoned. Nov. 29—Dec. 5: Sick at Cotrone. Dec. 6: Leaves Cotrone by 1:55 P.M. train for Catanzaro. Arrives there 6 P.M. Dec. 7, 8, 9: Catanzaro. Speaks of material for his book. Visits English vice-consul. Dec. 10: A b o u t 8 A.M. starts to drive to Squillace in the rain. Arrives at hotel—can't stand it. Walks around town and continues drive to railroad station. Walks from station to see site of monastery of Cassiodorus. In the evening by train to R h e g i u m . Dec. 11: In Rhegium. Dec. 12: Visits museum, sees signature of Lenormant. Leaves for Naples at 7 P.M. by train, arriving there at 7 A.M. on the 13 th. G i s s i n g stayed b u t o n e d a y in N a p l e s o n this occasion, leavi n g t h e r e o n t h e m o r n i n g of t h e 14th a n d p r o c e e d i n g d i r e c t l y to t h e t o w n of M o n t e C a s s i n o . A t t w o o ' c l o c k in t h e aftern o o n he t o o k a d o n k e y u p to t h e m o n a s t e r y w h e r e he spent t h e n i g h t . T h e n e x t d a y h e r e t u r n e d to t h e t o w n a n d at 5:20 t o o k t h e t r a i n f o r R o m e , a r r i v i n g t h e r e at 8:30 P.M. H e n o w s p e n t f o u r m o n t h s i n R o m e . H e r e h e was j o i n e d b y M r . H . G . W e l l s a n d his w i f e w h o l e f t E n g l a n d

about

t h e s i x t h o r seventh of M a r c h a n d spent f o u r w e e k s w i t h

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Gissing in R o m e . Wells's biographer tells us that they talked much about Gissing's " R o m a n romance," i.e., Veranilda.* Gissing remained in R o m e until the 14th of April when he left for England, stopping at Potsdam four days to visit Edward Bertz. T h e first and most direct result of this trip was, of course, By the Ionian Sea. A l t h o u g h it was not written until sometime later, one can easily see that he was thinking of it during this trip and that the personal parts at least were written on the basis of notes written d o w n at the time. T h e most convincing evidence of this fact is furnished by an article called At the Grave of Alaric. T h i s was written while he was at T a r a n t o , between the 18th and the 23rd of November. It is nothing more nor less than a first sketch of the second and third chapters of By the Ionian Sea. T h e material covered is exactly the same; the incidents are the same; it contains, in germ at least, most of the things which appeared in the book. T h e r e are actual verbal identities with the book. 6 It is quite evident that this little article was used in preparing the book; it was merely expanded to form these two chapters. I presume that it was little sketches of this sort w h i c h Gissing had in mind in writing home from Catanzaro on D e c e m b e r 7th: " I t is very plain that I must get to work again. I have materials for a good little book." In addition to such sketches, his diary must have been of considerable assistance; many parts of By the Ionian Sea are evidently expansions of incidents recorded in it. T h e material given in his diary for D e c e m b e r first, for example, is quite evidently the basis for m u c h of his tenth chapter. T h e diary reads: This evening they quarrelled in the kitchen and the servant —a middle-aged woman—stout and very black-eyed, a pure savage—came to tell me in her terrible dialect all about the "guai"—lamenting that she should be so used after having * G. West, H. G. Wells, New York, 1930, pp. 114-125. • Cf. By the Ionian Sea, pp. 36, 42, with the corresponding sections of the article, as published in Selections, p. 241.

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"lanto lavorati," and saying that all her relatives were "freddi morti." I thought at first she was railing at me but saw her drift at last. This is of course the incident given to us in the tenth chapter of By the Ionian Sea; the identities extend to verbal reminiscences; the book uses just those Italian words—and no more—which already stood in the diary. Other cases could be cited, such as the incident of the railway official, or that of the healthy-looking man of Catanzaro. T h e most remarkable expansion of his diary, however, is that paragraph which closes the eleventh chapter, a bit of description which, for colorfulness, is one of Gissing's very best efforts. It is based on the following note in his diary for December sixth: "At entrance to the valley, splendid orange orchards— a wonderful sight with the setting sun blazing on them. Full moon rising. Tinted clouds on Sila." T h e article, the notes of his diary, and, I suspect, certain of his letters to his friends at home, therefore, furnished the material for the narrative portions of By the Ionian Sea. Something should be said about the literary sources of the book, for it is a great deal more than a mere account of Gissing's own travels and observations. His principal literary sources were Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Lenormant, Grande Grece (F. Lenormant: La Grande Grece: Paysages et Histoire. 3 vols. 2nd ed. Paris 1881-1884), and the works of Cassiodorus. I am not able to say with any degree of certainty whether he took all of these volumes to Calabria with him or not. In By the Ionian Sea he tells us that the customs official at Cosenza wanted to know what he was doing with "tanti libri." He speaks of the reading which he attempted to do at Cosenza, but does not mention the name of the book. He had at any rate two guidebooks, one presumably a Baedeker, such as he used on his first trip, for he speaks of an error discovered in "both my guide-books, the orthodox English and German authorities," confesses himself led astray as to the Cosenza hotel by his guidebook, and speaks in general terms of the "Fontana di Cassiodorio": "From

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my authors I knew of this; it may or may not have genuine historic interest." 6 In the article which he wrote at T a r a n t o he refers to Gibbon's description of the burial of Alaric, and actually quotes a few words from Gibbon's thirty-first chapter. Did he then have the work with h i m — o r did he remember the words, as well as the details, of G i b b o n ' s description? G i b b o n w o u l d certainly have been rather bulky to carry around the little-frequented villages of Calabria. T h e references in the T a r a n t o article might easily be the result of his constant reading of G i b b o n . In the completed book he added a n u m b e r of quotations from G i b b o n which did not stand in the preliminary sketch. H e also adds that G i b b o n says of the river Busentinus, "the true Latin was Buxentius," and asserts that, in order to make sure of the present name, he questioned a n u m b e r of the people of Cosenza and concluded that the correct name was Busento, in which form it appears in the article. A somewhat similar uncertainty exists as to the works of Cassiodorus. However, he says that he had studied the " t w o folio volumes of his works" w h i l e at Devon in the preceding winter. 7 T h i s seems to imply that he did not have them with him at the time. As to Lenormant, there can be no doubt; he was Gissing's guide on this trip and Gissing had with him at least two volumes of La Grande Grece.8 Lenormant, then, his English guide-book, his Baedeker—these four volumes he certainly had with him; as to the others, we can only express uncertainty. Of the three literary sources, G i b b o n , strange to say, had the least influence on the book. In the third chapter Gissing is dependent on the thirty-first chapter of G i b b o n , particularly on those pages which describe the events after the capture of R o m e by Alaric. T h e r e is n o other reference to G i b b o n in By the Ionian Sea, not even in the many pages devoted to Cassiodorus, w h o does figure in G i b b o n (chapter 'By the Ionian Sea, pp. 189, 37, 205. ''Ibid., p. 171. 'Ibid., pp. 51, 80.

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X X X I X ) though perhaps not to any great extent. Gissing does not seem to have had the period covered by the Decline and Fall in mind when he made this journey, and his references to Cassiodorus are evidently merely the result of the study of that writer which he had been making earlier in 1897. He was interested, as the entire book shows, mainly in the period of the Greek colonization; his travels were therefore guided by Lenormant rather than by Gibbon. It is to Lenormant, then, that we must turn for the explanation of the greater part of By the Ionian Sea. His influence can hardly be underestimated; it was of supreme importance. T h e third volume of his work, of course, is not concerned; it does not treat the Calabria of Gissing's travels. It seems that Gissing borrowed his title from a part of Lenormant's work; Lenormant gives as a subtitle for the first two volumes "Littoral de la Mer Ionienne"; Gissing calls his book By the Ionian Sea. Certainly, he seems to have had the greatest reverence for Lenormant's work. This is easy to understand when we note certain statements which Lenormant makes as to the nature and purpose of the work. He states that, although he himself is vitally interested in archaeology, particularly in the period of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy, he does not propose to write a book on the principles of scientific archasology. He plans to address himself to the general public and to do away with the impedimenta of scholarship. He describes his work as a compound of "description des lieux et l'aspect du pays, histoire, mythologie, archéologie monumentale, topographie et géographie." He expresses the wish that his work be used as a guide for travelers: "Je voudrais qu'il peut être une sorte de guide par ceux qui feront à l'avenir le voyage de la GrandeGrèce."9 His work was indeed so used, by Paul Bourget in 1890, by Gissing in 1897, by Norman Douglas in 1907 and again in 1 9 1 1 , but I doubt whether anyone followed him as faithfully as did Gissing. Lenormant represented exactly that type of semi-archaeological work which Gissing himself en• Lenormant, La Grande-Grèce, I, iv, v.

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joyed. He says that "No archaeologist, whose work I have studied, affects me with such a personal charm, with such a sense of intellectual sympathy, as François Lenormant—dead, alas, before he could complete his delightful book." It is with the discovery of the signature of Lenormant in the Rhegium museum that Gissing closes his book; he writes that he "could have desired no happier incident for the close of my journey" and then adds: " T o come upon his name thus unexpectedly gave me a thrill of pleasure; it was like being brought . . . into the very presence of him whose spirit had guided, instructed, borne me delightful company throughout my wanderings." 10 It was quite natural that this should be so. Lenormant represents, as does Gissing himself, the artistic appreciation of ancient times in contrast to the scientific, intellectual study of such periods. Gissing was delighted by the literary references of Lenormant and by his description of natural scenery. Above all it was the literary and historical associations of classic places which he found so fascinating in this writer. Such associations were the very reason for Gissing's going to Italy, to the Ionian Sea, at all. Lenormant's work was directly in line with those classic tastes which had been formulated by his classic reading in the early years of his sojourn in London. There is no reference to this writer before the time of Gissing's departure to Magna Graecia; one wonders when and how he came upon his work. Certainly it was one of the most happy of his literary adventures. T h e influence of Lenormant, then, is paramount in this work. It seems that Lenormant dictated his itinerary. This becomes evident from a mere recounting of the chapter heads of La Grande-Grèce. Its first chapter is devoted to Taranto (By the Ionian Sea, chaps. IV, V), its second to Metapontum (Gissing's sixth chapter). Lenormant then has six chapters devoted to traces of Greek colonization which have either vanished entirely or are too far from the railroad for the ordinary traveler to visit. Gissing read those 10

By the Ionian Sea, pp. 187, 223, m .

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chapters, but he made no attempt to follow Lenormant's itinerary here. Lenormant's ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters deal with Cotrone, its surroundings, and its history, corresponding to chapters seven to ten of By the Ionian Sea. His twelfth chapter is headed "De Cotrone a Catanzaro"— the trip Gissing describes in his eleventh chapter. Lenormant's thirteenth chapter is devoted to Catanzaro, as are Gissing's twelfth and thirteenth. Lenormant concludes with a chapter on Squillace; Gissing relates his visit to that town in chapters fourteen to seventeen. Obviously, Gissing started from Naples to Paola, went overland to Cosenza to reach the railroad, and then went distinctly out of his way to reach Taranto, where Lenormant's book, started. He visited Taranto, Metapontum, Cotrone, Catanzaro, and Squillace exactly in the order of Lenormant's description of them. One can find passage after passage which Gissing evidently derived directly from the corresponding part of La Grande-Grèce. His reference to the Theocritean idyll which celebrates the Neaithos, for example, is, most probably, not a reminiscence of his own reading of that author in 1887; it is a borrowing from the eighth chapter of Lenormant. His recognition of the river Crati as the ancient Crathis "which flowed by the walls of Sybaris," his statements as to the fate of Sybaris, his various references to the history of Tarentum, his discussions of Pythagoras, the vision of Hannibal and the mercenaries which he saw in his delirium at Cotrone—all were based directly on Lenormant. 1 1 In some places the dependence is particularly close. Gissing thus describes the purple of Tarentum: ". . . the murex precious for its purple, that of Tarentum yielding in glory only to the purple of T y r e . " Lenormant had written: "La pourpre de Tarente, nous dit Pline, était la plus recherchée " C o m p a r e By the Ionian Sea, p. 35, with La Grande-Grèce, I, 324, 325; By the Ionian Sea, p. 51, with La Grande-Grèce, I, 327-330; By the Ionian Sea, p. 60, with La Grande-Grèce, I, 48, 49; By the Ionian Sea, p. 71, with La Grande-Grèce, I, 47; By the Ionian Sea, p. 117, with La Grande-Grèce, II, 147; Gissing on Pythagoras, with La Grande-Grèce, chaps. 2 and 9.

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et la plus chère après celle de Tyr."12 Near the end of his sixth chapter Gissing retails to us "Lenormant's description of the costumes of Magna Graecia prior to the Persian W a r s , " and this paragraph is little more than a free translation of Lenormant's statements in pages 203 and 204 of his first volume. Even Gissing's hunt for the Dulce Galaesi Flumen of Horace was motivated by Lenormant; he had devoted a section of his first chapter to the " L i t t l e Sea" and quotes the very same lines of H o r a c e — O d e s II. 6-10. Gissing wrote: " I thought, too, of the praise of Virgil, who, tradition has it, wrote his Eclogues hereabouts." Lenormant had q u o t e d the praise of V i r g i l f r o m the Georgics (IV. 126) ; he had written: "C'est sur ses bords qu'il a composé une partie de ses Eglogues."13 Such a dependence might seem to indicate that Gissing was using L e n o r m a n t to the exclusion of his own classic knowledge; yet there are two things which show plainly that this was not the case. In the first place, his translation of the lines of Horace shows few points of contact with the French of L e n o r m a n t ; he is evidently here directly translating from the original. In the second place, L e n o r m a n t utters no such doubts as to the possibility of Virgil's really having written the Eclogues near T a r e n t u m ; Gissing must have had some other information about the matter. It is even more important to note that he differs with Lenormant as to the location of ancient Scyaleceum. 1 4 Here he is evidently comparing his reading of Lenormant with the results of his o w n study of Cassiodorus. N o r do I think that these borrowings should be allowed to lower our opinion of Gissing's artistry in this particular work. H e himself acknowledges the debt many times. It is not as though the book was intended to be a piece of original research. It is intended to be a travel book somewhat in the style of the personal essay, a record of the author's impressions d u r i n g the Cf. By "Cf. Letters u u

p. 57 with La Grande-Grèce, I, 14. the Ionian Sea, p. 63; La Grande-Grèce, I, 20. pp. 186-187 with La Grande-Grèce II, 360-371. Note also Hodgkin, of Cassiodorus. London, 1886, pp. 68-72.

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journey, of his reading. It must therefore be judged by the author's intention, by the degree to which he attains his aims, and by comparison with other works of a similar type. T h e third of the main literary sources of By the Ionian Sea is of course that formed by the study of Cassiodorus which Gissing made in the early months of 1897. These studies are the main source for the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of the book as well as for the several references to Cassiodorus which occur elsewhere. Just what was the source for this account of Cassiodorus and his writings? Well, the natural place for an Englishman to turn would be to the works of Thomas Hodgkin (Hodgkin, T . : Italy and Her Invaders, Oxford, 1885, vols. 3, 4, and The Letters of Cassiodorus, London, 1886). Now we can be sure that Gissing had read the third volume of Italy and Her Invaders, which gives us quite an account of Cassiodorus (pp. 310-328), before he went to Calabria; his diary for June 13, 1897 s o states. Nevertheless, the introduction to The Letters of Cassiodorus (pp. 1-140) gives a much more detailed account of everything connected with Cassiodorus, while the translations of the letters in that volume would have been of special value to him. Unfortunately Gissing does not refer to this translation, and our belief that he was acquainted with it must rest on inferences from various statements in By the Ionian Sea. His own account of his studies in Cassiodorus fits neither of Hodgkin's works. His diary for J u n e 2, 1897, says: " I got from London the works of Cassiodorus, and read very carefully the twelve books, noting good material." In By the Ionian Sea he says of this time: " I had with me the two folio volumes of his works, and patiently read the better part of them." 18 T h e natural inference from the diary is that he had the twelve books of the letters only, not the other writings. But if he really had two folio volumes it is not so hard to determine what edition he was using. T h e "standard edition of the works of Cassiodorus" is that first issued in 1679, "in two volumes u

By

the Ionian Sea, p. 171.

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folio," by François J e a n Garet. "Garet's edition was reissued at Venice in 1729, and more recently in Migne's 'Patrologia' (Paris 1865) of which it forms vols. 69 and 70." i a T h i s , then, would appear to be the edition which Gissing had at Devon in the early spring of 1897. By the Ionian Sea shows traces of all three books. Hodgkin's two accounts are, of course, largely parallel, and Gissing makes many statements which occur in both books. However, he makes some statements which occur only in the introduction to The Letters of Cassiodorus, and there are one or two things in his book which seem to show an acquaintance with the Latin text which could come only through the Garet edition. His Cassiodorus studies were evidently not casual; he was well acquainted with all three of these books and probably had some knowledge of other authorities on the subject. Norman Douglas has suggested another possible literary background for Gissing's book. He says: "Strangely does the description of his arrival in the town, and his reception in the 'Concordia,' resemble that in Bourget's 'Sensations.' " I am unable to see that this amounts to so much. A f t e r all, Gissing is speaking of his arrival under similar circumstances at the same hotel in Cotrone where Bourget had stayed only seven years before. Bourget thus describes his arrival at the inn: L'infame véhiculé tressaute sur le pave, il s'arrête, et c'est l'entrée de l'auberge,—une vraie porte de coupe-gorge, étroite, humide, basse, qui s'ouvre entre une epicerie et un "salone". . . . Un escalier en pierre, raide et malapropre, monte au fond du corridor et conduit au premier étage où est installée la "locanda." Gissing writes: T h e next moment we pulled up, our bruised bodies colliding vigorously for the last time; it was the "Albergo Concordia." " Hodgkins, Letters

of Cassiodorus,

p. 1 1 7 .

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A dark stone staircase, yawning under the colonnade; on the first landing an open doorway; within, a long corridor, doors of bedrooms on either side, and in a room at the far end a glimpse of a tablecloth. This was the hotel, the whole of it. N o w the resemblance here is close; Gissing may have been influenced by this passage in Bourget. Still, it is after all a description of the same place. I am more impressed by Gissing's statement about S y b a r i s — " t i l l recently it bore the h u m b l e r name of Buffaloria." T h i s does not seem to occur in Lenormant, but Bourget mentions this very bit of information. H o w would Gissing discover this? H e says nothing about inquiries made on the spot. It is also a bit curious that both men should refer to Paestum while at the temple at Metapontum. Bourget says: "Elles suffisent à vous émouvir autant que les édifices presque intacts de Paestum, quoique d'une émotion un peu autre." Gissing writes: " A s I lingered here, there stirred in me something of that deep emotion w h i c h I felt years ago amid the temples of Paestum." 1 7 T h i s , too, is inconclusive, though interesting; Gissing, after all, had been to Paestum. T h e r e are a n u m b e r of other resemblances between the two books, but most of them seem to be d u e to a common use of Lenormant. Still, it is q u i t e probable that Gissing had read Bourget; it was exactly the kind of book which he would be led to read by his enthusiasm for Italy. T h i s , then, represents fairly accurately the composition of By the Ionian Sea. T h e narrative sections, for the most part, are accurately and conscientiously related on the basis of his diary, some letters, and notes of various kinds which he wrote en route. T h e majority of the unassigned reminiscences of the history of M a g n a G r a c i a are from Lenormant's La Grande-Grèce which he took along as a sort of guidebook. His studies in Cassiodorus furnished the ma" N. Douglas, Old Calabria, Modern Lib. ed., p. 403. P. Bourget, Sensations d'Italie, Paris, 1891, p. 316, with By the Ionian Sea p. 84, p. 314 with p. 51, p. 305 with p. 76.

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terial for an important section. His earlier readings of classic authors play their part, as do his recollections of G i b b o n and possibly other travel books, such as Bourget's Sensations d'ltalie. These comprised the material which he had at hand when he began to write the book early in 1899 in Paris. It is hard to say when he completed the work. He refers to the events of his stay at Cotrone in a letter of January 2, 1900; he may have been working on that chapter at the time. A note in his diary for J u l y 10 seems to indicate that it was completed by that time at least, and the book was published in the early spring of 1901. Its first edition came out with numerous illustrations, including some of Gissing's own sketches. At any rate, By the Ionian Sea has received high praise from the critics of Gissing and, I think, deservedly. It was probably the most direct and sincere expression of the man himself, as he really was. Veranilda can claim equal sincerity, but it is partly ancient history, partly fiction. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft contains much autobiography, much expression of his literary tastes, but one feels that it is slightly posed. It is Gissing as he would like to have been, not as he really was. One must always separate Henry Ryecroft from George Gissing and wonder how many of the thoughts of the book are really Gissing's, not merely Ryecroft's. T h e book has been criticized for a certain failure of courage, for self-pity, perhaps justly. T h e r e is nothing of this in By the Ionian Sea. It is also possible that it was the essay form after all, both in its personal and critical phases, which best suited the mind and temper of George Gissing. Competent critics have so asserted. T h e subject matter of this book, too, was most congenial to him. One thinks of his own definition of art as "an expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest of life." Now in writing of some matters Gissing himself may have lacked this zest of life. T h i s was certainly not the case in this book; he enjoyed immensely such trips to Italy as he here records; he had a real zest for the books he was then reading; he was able to communicate

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this feeling for such things to his readers. In By the Ionian Sea one can share the enthusiasm of the author for Italy, for all its associations. And is this not a great part of the literary art? Is it not to make us feel? That is just what some of his novels fail to do, but this book admits to no such failure. In addition, one could hardly be wrong in saying that By the Ionian Sea contains much of his best prose. It contains much of his best description, even of that type of description which gives us squalid surroundings in all their noisomeness. One might cite his description of the hotel at Cosenza, of that of Squillace—the hotel as well as the town itself. T h e book also has some of those colorful descriptions of natural scenery which play such a part in the musings of Henry Ryecroft. His description of the orange groves of Catanzaro is most remarkable in this connection; one might also mention the sunset at Taranto, or the night scene on the boat to Paola. He shows, also, a narrative skill that is not always present in his work. It is of some importance to note that these narratives are rarely long or connected bits of work; they are small incidents of the journey, hardly as long, as Gissing himself would have said, as an idyll of Theocritus. But they are very vividly and directly related, and the book is full of such moments of interest. One thinks of the landing at Paola, the remarks of the don of Cosenza on the inns of that town, Gissing's adventures in obtaining permission to visit the orange groves of Cotrone, the visit to the Cotrone graveyard, the incident of the brigadiere at the tunnel near Squillace. The book also gave him an opportunity for some of his only too rare critical work, for the longest essay he ever wrote on any one writer of classic times, and for some of the best expressions of that feeling which he represents perhaps as well as any modern writer—the love for the literary and historical associations of Italy. One regrets that such a work was in his case the solitary instance of its kind. No one was better fitted to write about Italy. T h e connection between Veranilda and By the Ionian Sea

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is close. Veranilda had been thought of, at least, before the trip to Italy which was the basis for the earlier work. It grew directly out of those studies in Cassiodorus which played so important a part in By the Ionian Sea; the material of the two books is much the same, even to identical quotations. Veranilda is, of course, the development of an idea which had been in Gissing's mind since the beginning of his career as an author. As early as 1881 he had hoped to write an historical novel on the Peloponnesian W a r . It is more directly the development of an idea which seems to have been in his mind during the w r i t i n g of The Unclassed in 1883. Casti plans two works w h i c h were to be the result of his enthusiasm for G i b b o n . H e actually completes a drama on Stilichio and proposes an epic poem, after the manner of Virgil, on the "siege and capture of R o m e by A l a r i c . " O n e is reminded of Gissing's o w n prize poem on Ravenna, and I do not doubt that he had some such ideas as those which he attributes to Casti. Veranilda does treat part of the period covered by G i b b o n ; it was the fruition of Gissing's lifelong admiration of that writer. It certainly represented, in any case, the results of a long study. In a letter of February 17, 1901, Gissing wrote that "it represents the preparatory labour of years" and he was by no means exaggerating. T h e direct preparation for this work may be pushed back to the time of the writing of The Whirlpool which he completed on December 10, 1896. T h e hero of that novel makes an effort " t o absorb himself in a volume of Gregorovius, which was at present his study." 1 8 Basil Morton is wont to quote a line from Claudian, that poet who was concerned in the youthful Casti's drama on Stilichio, and is m a k i n g a special study of the ruins of the R o m a n Empire. In the important last chapter of the novel where R o l f e , how sincerely I know not, seems to be converted to the jingoistic imperialism of Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads, Morton, the representative of that type of culture which Gissing so much admired, quietly speaks of himself as conu

The Whirlpool,

London, 1897, p. 48.

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cerned with the campaigns of Belisarius. Now, if Gissing himself was reading Gregorovius and the campaigns of Belisarius in 1896, he was covering precisely that material which he was later to use in Veranilda. T h e more direct and concentrated preparation for this novel dates from the early months of 1897 when he began to read Cassiodorus. T h e various references which Gissing made to that writer in Veranilda seem to indicate that in his later years he carried these studies beyond the point reached by the time he wrote By the Ionian Sea. He refers, for example, to the opinions expressed by Cassiodorus in his treatise, De Anima. Hodgkin's preface to The Letters of Cassiodorus discussed that work only in the most general terms, and Gissing could not have obtained his knowledge of the treatise from that source; he must have read it in the two folio volumes of the Garet edition. Strange to say, he also appears to have read, in the Latin of the Garet edition, a good part of Cassiodorus' commentary on the Psalms, which Hodgkin declares to be the dullest and least important of his works. T h e r e are several references to it, including two translated quotations from it, in the twenty-fifth chapter of Veranilda. St. Benedict there says that Cassiodorus had visited Monte Cassino and made him a present of a copy of the commentary. Gissing is here consciously and deliberately inventing incidents; he knows that he has no historical authority for such a meeting of Benedict and Cassiodorus. 19 His studies in Cassiodorus were only a part of his preparation for Veranilda. He read a good many works on R o m a n history and topography early in 1897 with this novel directly in mind. His diary for J u n e 1, 1897, states: My reading was concerned with the Ostrogothic rule in Italy. In the first volume of Gregorovius I got hold of a good idea for a historical novel and worked it out. . . . Got also Manso's Geschichte des Ost. goth. Reiches and read it twice; studied carefully Burn's Ancient Rome. u

C f . By the Ionian Sea, p. ioi.

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T h e books here referred to are: F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, 6 vols. Stuttgart, 1859, probably in the translation by Anne Hamilton (History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, transl. from the 4th German ed. London, 1894), J . K. F. Manso, Geschichte des ostgothischen Reiches in Italien, Breslau, 1824, and R . Burn, Rome and the Campagna, an historical and topographical description of the site, buildings, and neighbourhood of ancient Rome, Cambridge, 1 8 7 1 . One is somewhat puzzled by the statement that he got the idea of the novel from Gregorovius. 2 0 T h e period which Gissing covered in the novel is treated in chapter five of the second book and is in the first volume of Hamilton's translation. However, I am unable to find any specific suggestion in that chapter which might have resulted in Veranilda. It is improbable that the one idea he mentioned in 1897 w a s later used in Veranilda; Gissing only too often started novels, became dissatisfied, and then began to rewrite. Besides, as we shall see later, there is a much more likely suggestion for the idea of the book to be found in the Variae of Cassiodorus. N o r did Gissing continue the work whose plan he had thought of in 1897. His diary for December 25, 1900, states that he then began the book and "did more than a page." We have no evidence that the actual writing of the book began before that date. T h i s beginning of study early in 1897 must, in any case, have been followed up by a regular and intensive course of preparation for the novel in J u n e and J u l y of the same year. His diary for these two months bears witness that he was then reading the following books: R . A. Lanciani, Ancient Rome in the light of Recent Discoveries, Boston, 1888, and Pagan and Christian Rome, Boston, 1893; Gibbon's chapters on Justinian (40-43 inclusive) ; Hodgkin's "third volume," i.e., of Italy and Her Invaders; J . H. Middleton, Remains of " T h e reference in By the Ionian Sea, p. 48, to the fate of the golden statue of Virtus appears to be taken from Gregorovius I, 1 3 0 - 1 3 1 . (Hamilton's translation, cited in the text.)

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Ancient Rome, London, 1892; T . H . Dyer, History of the City of Rome: Its Structures and Monuments, London, 1865; T . H . Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 2nd ed. L o n d o n , 1857 (first volume) ; and A . A. Beugnot, Histoire de la destruction du paganisme en Occident, Paris, 1835. T h i s is rather an imposing list. H e first mentions several books of secular history; he tells us that he read a n u m b e r of books, such as those of Lanciani, which deal specifically with the topography of ancient R o m e — a n d which contain, by the way, in addition to their many maps of ancient R o m e , pictures of famous buildings, well-known bits of statuary, etc.; he concluded this particular bit of study by reading at least two books which deal specifically with the religious history of the time. Of all the historical works which he mentions, it was the work of Hodgkin which w a s — o r should have b e e n — o f the most importance. It was the most recent, the most complete, and the most authoritative of the works to which Gissing had access. It is regrettable, however, that we have no further statement of his sources for Veranilda. T h e s e books he read before he left for the Ionian Sea, and we have but the barest traces of the study which he must have made after his return. T h e reference in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Spring X V I I ) to F. D a h n , die Koenige der Germanen, Parts 1-5, M u n i c h , 1861, and W u e r z b u r g 1866-1870, may indicate that he was using that book at the time of writing the essay—in September or October of 1900. Of course the trip to Italy furnished many opportunities of checking up on the topography of the places involved by personal observation, and he did not neglect such opportunities. In fact, the main reason for believing that the plan of the book was in his mind as early as 1897 is the purposiveness of the observations he made while in Italy. O n his return to Naples he made a special trip, entirely out of his way, to Monte Cassino. H e spent the night of D e c e m b e r 14, 1897 at the monastery and, according to his diary, told the prior that he was "getting materials for a historical

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novel." Notes taken at the time must have furnished the basis for much of the twenty-fourth to twenty-seventh chapters of Veranilda. This seems to prove, therefore, that the monastery scenes were already part of his plan, although he did not write them until the very end of his life. In the very last of his published letters, under the date of November 1 1 , 1903, he speaks of being "about two thirds done" and of being "just now in the monastery of St. Benedict." For the first chapters of Veranilda, of course, there was no need for observational work in 1897; he had visited Surrentum and Cumae on his earlier visits to Italy. It was on this last trip, though, that he spent four months in Rome. This period must have been the basis for that considerable knowledge of ancient Rome which he showed in the tenth to the eighteenth chapters of Veranilda. However, a good bit of time was to pass after these preparatory studies in 1897 before he began the book. T h e actual writing began about Christmas Day, 1900; on December 27 he writes that "a month's toil has resulted in a detailed plan of the book." A letter of February 17, 1901, says that he was "advancing slowly" with the book which he then hoped to finish "by the end of the summer." In this respect he was disappointed; his health failed and he had to spend much of that summer in a sanatorium. It is not until the last year of his life that we again hear of Veranilda. On April 12, 1903, he can write to a friend that the book is half done. From then on it was a desperate struggle to the end; sickness and death closed round about him with the book still lacking three or four chapters. In his last published letter he speaks of his hopes to complete the book in January, 1904; he did not live to reach that time. There is an interesting note by Roberts which indicates how carefully Gissing was proceeding in this last writing, despite his sickness. Roberts relates that he received a letter from him, dated August 6, 1903, which asked for assistance on a point of Roman law. He quotes Gissing as writing:

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>37

The time with which I am concerned is about A.D. 540. Now the testator is a senator. He has one child only, a daughter, and to her he leaves most of his estate. There are legacies to two nephews, and to a sister. . . . But he dying, all the legatees being with him at the time, how . . . were things settled? Was an executor appointed? Might an executor be a legatee? Probate, I think, as you say, there was none, but who inherited? . . . Funny, too, that this is the only real difficulty which bothers me in the course of my story. As regards all else that enters into the book I believe I know as much as one can without being a Mommsen. . . . Wills of this date were frequently set aside on the mere assertion of a powerful senator that the testator had verbally expressed a wish to benefit him. 21 Roberts states that he helped him, both by looking up the matter and writing him a long letter about it, and by sending him "Saunders' 'Justinian.' " I am unable to determine what book this is, unless it should be The Institutes of Justinian, with English introduction, translation, and notes by T . C. Sandars, London, 1853. Why then does Roberts call the author Saunders? T h e material ¿hus gained, at any rate, was used in the third, fourth, and tenth chapters of the book in connection with the will of Flavius Anicius Maximus. "Basil was instituted 'heir'; that is to say, he became the legal representative of the dead man and was charged with the distribution of those parts of the estate bequeathed to others." 2 2 T h i s appears to be the answer to the questions Gissing had addressed to Roberts. Basil, of course, was the nephew, a legatee as well as an executor, and the " h e i r . " It now remains to examine the results of these extensive courses of study. How far were they successful? A r e Gissing's chronology and topography correct? A r e his characters historical? Does he capture the spirit of late R o m a n times? W e can attack first the matter of chronology, using as our guide Hodgkin's Italy and Her Invaders, a work which Gissing himself used. T h e entire story is placed between the n

The Private Life of Henry Maitland, " Veranilda, New York, 1905, p. 35.

pp. 260-261; cf. pp. 259, 264.

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years 542 and 546, between the first successes of T o t i l a and his siege of R o m e . T h e first twelve chapters are placed in late summer and a u t u m n of 542 before T o t i l a attacks C u m a e . A half year passes, and the thirteenth chapter opens in the spring of 543. Chapters 13 to 15 are said to relate events occ u r r i n g d u r i n g T o t i l a ' s siege of Naples; chapters 16 and 17 are dated shortly after the capture of that city in May 543. T h r e e months now pass, and chapters 18 to 23 inclusive, the events dealing with the death of Marcian, are dated in July and August. T h i s w o u l d therefore date Basil's stay in the monastery (chapters 24-27) late in 543, possibly extending into 544. A t any rate the twenty-eighth chapter, in which T o t i l a is at the villa of Hadrian, must date from the summer and a u t u m n of 544. A winter and a spring are now said to intervene, and the twenty-ninth chapter takes place with T o t i l a before R o m e in the summer or a u t u m n of 545. T h e last, incomplete, chapter is placed in winter, six months after the b e g i n n i n g of the siege, that is, in early 546 or December 545. T h i s gives us the f o l l o w i n g table of the most probable dates for Veranilda: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.

Chapters 1-12. Summer and autumn, 542. Chapters 13-15- Spring, 543. Chapters 16-17. Late May and June of 543. Chapters 18-23. J u ty a n ( ^ August of 543. Chapters 24-27. Late 543 and early 544. Chapter 28. Autumn 544. Chapter 29. Summer 545. Chapter 30. December 545 or January 546.

Gissing's chronology, on the whole, is accurate. H e seems to have the summer and a u t u m n of 542 quite clearly in m i n d in the first section, and makes n o mistakes either directly or by implication; all the historical figures are in his book where the historians place them at the time. 23 It is, however, impossible to justify Gissing's dating of the siege of Naples (chap. 13, p. 148) as c o m m e n c i n g in the spring of *"Cf. Veranilda, pp. l, 2, 106, 123, with Italy and Her Invaders 398, 438, 445, 448, 449.

IV, 2, 382,

CLASSIC P E R I O D

39

543; it appears to have begun in N o v e m b e r 542; the city surrendered in May 543-24 Evidently Gissing postdates the beginning of the siege and, presumably, shortens the time required for its completion. T h e 13th, 14th, and 15th chapters, at any rate, are intended to relate events h a p p e n i n g while T o t i l a was before Naples and are correctly placed, except for this one point. T h e next two chapters present no problems. T h e 18th chapter begins "three months" after the fall of Naples, that is, in A u g u s t of 5 4 3 ^ O n the day of the festival of St. Laurentius, Leander entrusts Marcian with the secret of Veranilda's whereabouts; on the next day Marcian leaves to fetch her at Praeneste. O n this day Gissing has Pope Vigilius depart for S i c i l y — b u t he seems to be incorrect both as to the date of the Pope's departure and the time of the arrival of the grain-ships which he later sent from Sicily. 28 Chapters 18 to 23 suit A u g u s t of 543 in all other respects. T h e next section, devoted to the sickness of Basil while at M o n t e Cassino, obviously dates in the late months of 543 or in early 544; we have no indication of the length of his stay at the monastery. T h e 27th chapter contains the account of T o t i l a ' s visit to Benedict. T h i s event, however, is usually dated in 542, while T o t i l a was on his way to the siege of Naples, not many months after that event. Furthermore, it is at any rate possible that Benedict died in 543; this is probably the fact that Gissing had in m i n d in having the saint fall sick while Basil is still at the monastery, and die some months later, in the a u t u m n of 544- 27 W h i l e still at the monastery, V e n a n t i u s tells Basil that Belisarius had again been charged w i t h the Italian war and that he was, according to the latest news, in Illyria. T h i s is dated by H o d g k i n in May 544. 28 I presume that Gissing has simM Cf. Hodgkin: IV. 451, 453, 455 and Gregorovius I. 417 (Hamilton's translation) . Cf. also Veranilda pp. 161, 170 with Hodgkin IV. 448. " P a g e «13 gives the month as August, and states that this August is "nearly a year" since the disappearance of Veranilda. M Cf. Veranilda, pp. 208, 210, 211, 336, with Hodgkin, IV, 525, 654, 655, and Gregorovius, I, 424, 425. " Cf. Hodgkin IV, 487, 491; Gregorovius I, 415; Dyer, p. 336. " C f . Veranilda, p. 313, with H o d g k i n IV, 460, 513.

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ply—and probably deliberately—postdated this visit of Totila; everything else in the chapter points to the spring of 544. T h e chronology of the last three chapters is somewhat confused. Evidently the 28th chapter is meant to take place in autumn of 544, but Gissing places Belisarius "on the other side of Hadria" when, it seems, he was at Ravenna. 29 The 29th chapter begins late in 544, 30 and has Belisarius cross to Italy in the spring of 545. Gissing places the beginning of the siege of Rome "at high summertide" of 545 correctly, 31 and the rest of this chapter seems to be correct enough. T h e last chapter takes place "on a winter's day" after Rome had been "six months besieged." This would bring us to January or February of 546 for the conclusion of the novel, in its incomplete form. However, it is stated that Bessas was offering entertainments "such as suited the Saturnalian season." If this means that it actually was that season, we are, of course, compelled to assign this chapter to December 17 to 24, 545—on which account Gissing dates the beginning of the siege as about J u n e 15, 545, despite the fact that he had called it "high summertide." However, probably these dates should not be taken so literally or pushed so closely. T h e impression made by this discussion of the chronology may be that it is rather inaccurate. This is indeed partly the case; there is no good reason for the mistakes made with regard to Pope Vigilius or that made about the date of the arrival of Belisarius in Italy. However, a number of events are postdated because of the requirements of the story. This is true of the siege of Naples; the first nine chapters all take place in that locality, and the events of those chapters could not have run their course in late summer and autumn of 542, had the troops of Totila then been in the Campania. This is even more evidently the case with regard to the in" C f . Veranilda, pp. 319, 320, 322-324, 327, 460, 514-516, Gregorovius I, 417-419, 420, and " C f . Veranilda, pp. 334, 335, with Hodgkin " H o d g k i n IV, 522, Gregorovius I, 421, Dyer with Hodgkin IV, 521.

339, with Hodgkin IV, 459, Dyer, p. 337. IV, 515. p. 337. Cf. Veranilda p. 339,

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terview of Benedict and Totila. This event would have served no purpose in the story, had it been introduced in 542. It is therefore placed after the murder of Marcian and the sickness of Basil in early 544. T h e dating of Totila's placards in Rome (which is also at least doubtful) serves a similar purpose; Gissing wishes to ascribe it to Basil; this can only happen after Basil has entered the Gothic service. A number of these mistakes must be put down to artistic license, to the requirements of the story. We must also remember that we have no traces of Gissing's later studies in this period; he may be relying for his chronology on some work which his letters never mention. A number of these dates are uncertain, in any case; they are arrived at by a process of deduction from various statements of ancient writers. Veranilda was never completed. We have it as its author left it at his death. Is it not fair to assume that Gissing would have gone over his completed chapters and checked many of these matters, had he lived to bring it to publication? That Gissing intended his work to be accurate in all respects becomes more probable when we consider the characters which he has used in the story. He has done his best to use only such people as would be found in sixth century Italy; he has, in many cases, made fictional characters out of people of whom there is at least some trace in history. T h e character of most consequence in history is of course the Gothic king, Totila, but his part in the novel is not a great one although the course of his campaigns in Italy is completely and accurately described. Gissing's view of the character of Totila is that of his sources; Totila is the most heroic character in the book, a worthy successor to Theodoric. Justinian and Belisarius do not occur in the novel at all, except by casual mention of their activities. T h e story deals with the fortunes of a certain Basil, son of Probus, an Anician, and nephew of Flavius Anicius Maximus, the head of the Anician gens in 542, with his love for the Gothic princess, Veranilda, and his final going over to the Gothic

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cause under the influence of his two friends, Venantius and Marcian. T h e first one of these characters to require some extended treatment is Flavius Anicius Maximus. He had been consul under Theodoric, had urged Amalasuntha to yield to Justinian, was an "Illustrious" and a Senator, and was related to Boethius and Symmachus. His father had led the attack on the pagan festival of the Lupercalia. This we gather from Gissing's relation of the events connected with his death at his villa near Surrentum in the late summer of 542. Now this man can be found on the pages of history. A startling confirmation of the correctness of Gissing's statements about him is furnished by Cassiodorus (Variae, X , 1 1 , 1 2 ) . We there learn of the appointment of a Flavius Anicius Maximus to a minor office in 535-536. He was an Illustris and had been a consul. Hodgkin tells us that his consulship dated from the last years of Theodoric, from 523, in fact, and this is confirmed by a letter to him from Cassiodorus, dated 523, in which he is addressed as Vir Illustris, Consul (Variae, V, 42). This is beyond doubt the Maximus of Veranilda; every fact that Gissing gives about him is checked by history, although I have not yet been able to prove his father's part in putting down the Lupercalia, an event of about 492 to 496. However, the account given by Cassiodorus has a wider interest than that of showing that Maximus existed at a date which would make his death in 542 quite probable. In Variae, X , 1 1 , 12, writing in the name of King Theodahad, he says: "You have received an honour which is greater than the fasces in being permitted to marry a wife of our royal race." 32 Now Gissing makes no reference to the wife of Maximus; nor does there appear to be any information as to which princess of the Amal line Theodahad, speaking through his minister Cassiodorus, is here referring. History does, therefore, record the marriage of a Gothic princess to an Anician; Veranilda is about such a romance, though it is not that of Maximus, but that of his nephew Basil with the grand" Hodgkin, Letters of Cassiodorus, p. 425; cf. also Hodgkin's note p. 424.

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daughter of Theodahad. Now Gissing is known to have proceeded from his study of Cassiodorus to this novel. Is it too much to suppose that it was this passage in Variae X , 1 1 , and not any part of the first volume of Gregorovius, which furnished the idea for the novel as it actually did come to be written? I think not; the parallel is too close. It seems that he merely transferred the romance from the uncle to the nephew and used that very idea which the Variae might suggest—a romance between an Amal princess and a descendant of that family which, more than any other, glorified the declining years of the Roman Empire. It was indeed a good idea for an historical novel. It is not hard to see where Gissing obtained his information about the Anician family. It had been mentioned in Livy (xlv, 43, also xliv, 30, 3 1 , xlv, 3, 26). Gibbon had said in his thirty-first chapter: From the reign of Diocletian to the final extinction of the Western empire that name shone with a lustre which was not eclipsed in the public estimation by the majesty of the Imperial purple. Gissing must have read Hodgkin's account of the trial of Boethius and what Gregorovius had written about the Anicians. In several places in which he refers to the Anician poetess of an earlier date he very evidently seems to be taking his material from Gregorovius. Of Basil himself, however, history tells us nothing. Gissing says that he was the son of Probus, a friend of Cassiodorus, that he lived with his father at Ravenna under Amalasuntha, that his father had taken him (then aged eighteen) to Constantinople after the murder of Amalasuntha in 535, that, as Probus was returning to Ravenna during its siege with a message for Belisarius, he had fallen sick and died. Basil had remained at Ravenna until its capture and then, disappointed at Belisarius's refusal to accept the crown of Italy, had returned with Marcian to R o m e where he had become the lover of Heliodora. His father's friend Cassiodorus had meanwhile retired to

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Squillace. Basil was distantly related to St. Benedict w h o had known his grandfather and his great-grandmother at Nursia and Sublaqueum. Despite this circumstantial account of Basil we can find no proof that such a man existed. T h e name of Probus was, of course, a common one in the Anician family, but this Probus cannot be identified, unless he was that assessor of taxes under T h e o d o r i c w h o m Cassiodorus mentions in Variae IV. 38, and I presume that Gissing invented him. T h e name of Basil, or Basilius, too, was common about this date; H o d g k i n directly states this fact, and Cassiodorus mentions at least three men of that name. N o n e of these men can have been our Basil. It is of interest to note, though, that a Basilius, probably the last consul, A n i c i u s Faustus A l b i n u s Basilius, fled R o m e when T o t i l a took it in 546 together with a Decius. 33 As far as chronology goes, this could have been the Decius and Basil of our story, though neither of them would have fled before T o t i l a , and Basil was actually in the Gothic service at the time. Basil, then, as well as his father, seems to be a purely fictional character. T h e same thing is true about the other members of the household of Maximus, his sister Petronilla, his daughter Aurelia, and his kinsman, the scholar Decius. T h e other characters of importance in the story are the heroine and Basil's two friends, Marcian and Venantius. T h e y all belong to the semi-historical class. Gissing has invented the Gothic princess, but the possibility of her existence cannot be denied by the Muse of history. She was of the house of T h e o d o r i c , being "a daughter of E b r i m u t , through her m o t h e r — w h o was the daughter of T h e o d a h a d , who was the son of Amalfrida, who was the sister of T h e o d oric himself." She is historical as far as her parents at least; she is the daughter of the G o t h Ebrimut, who "delivered R h e g i u m to Belisarius, and enjoys his reward at Byzantium." T h i s betrayal of R h e g i u m by Ebrimut, the sonin-law of T h e o d a h a d , is a well-known fact of history w h i c h *•Italy

and Her

Invaders,

I V , 558.

CLASSIC PERIOD 34

145 35

took place in 536. According to Gissing, her mother was ashamed to have any part in Ebrimut's treachery and remained in Italy, being permitted to keep with her "the little maiden, just growing out of childhood." She died at Cumae soon after this betrayal, and her daughter Veranilda passed into the care of Aurelia, and so met Basil when, in the last days of Maximus, a reconciliation with Aurelia was effected. Veranilda herself is a fictional character, however historical her background may be. Hodgkin tells us that, at the deposition of Theodahad in 536, " T h e line of the great Theodoric was practically extinct (only a young girl, the sister of Athalaric, remained) " and that the Amal family came to an end in 605 with the death of Germanus Postumus and his daughter. 36 T h e possibility of her existence, as well as her romance with one of the Anicii, however, cannot be denied; Ebrimut could have had a daughter. Basil's treacherous friend, Marcian, is less historical. He is said to have come from a family active under Theodoric, to have served under the Prefect of Ravenna, and to have come to R o m e with Basil from that city. We possess no trace of his family unless his father was that Vir Spectabilis Marcian whom Cassiodorus mentions (Variae V. 35) as a collector of grain in Spain under Theodoric. Venantius, however, has a definite historical background; as in the case of Veranilda, we can trace at least his family and his father. He is the "son of a senator of the same name, who, under Theodoric, had attained the dignity of Patrician." 3 7 He inherited an estate between Naples and Salernum, near Nuceria, and fortified it, living like a medieval feudal lord, and devoted himself to the Gothic cause. Now his father actually did serve under Theodoric; Cassiodorus refers to him a number of times in the Variae. Cassiodorus says that he was the son of that Liberius who had been Praetorian Prefect under Theodoric " Veranilda, p. 21 quoted; cf. Hodgkin's pedigree and marriages of Amals in Italy and Her Invaders, I I I , 5, 354; cf. also IV, 48. " Veranilda, p. 57. "Italy and Her Invaders, IV, 73; cf. also IV, 644. 17 Veranilda, pp. 72-73.

the

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GISSING

a b o u t 493 to 500. H o d g k i n describes L i b e r i u s as " a d v a n c e d i n years" in 500. W e hear of V e n a n t i u s senior b e c o m i n g an Illustris

and finally a P a t r i c i a n . H e was g o v e r n o r of B r u t i i

a n d L u c a n i a u n d e r T h e o d o r i c . Cassiodorus (Variae I X . 23) speaks of a son of this V e n a n t i u s

(named Paulinus)

being

m a d e consul u n d e r A t h a l a r i c a b o u t 533, a n d praises t h e sons of V e n a n t i u s as b e i n g c o u r a g e o u s in arms, distinctly i m p l y i n g that there w e r e several of them. 3 8 It is t h e r e f o r e a s i m p l e m a t t e r to s u p p o s e that t h e V e n a n t i u s of history h a d a n o t h e r son, w h o b o r e his father's n a m e , a n d that this son was t h e k i n d of m a n t h e V e n a n t i u s of o u r story is r e p r e s e n t e d as being. T h e m i n o r characters also have, in some cases, a m o r e o r less certain p l a c e in history. I p r e s u m e that the " H u n n a m e d C h o r s o m a n , f o r m e r l y o n e of Belisarius' b o d y g u a r d " w h o was g o v e r n o r of C u m a e in t h e 542 of Gissing's story owes at least his n a m e to that " C h o r s a m a n t i s , a H u n

a n d o n e of

the

b o d y g u a r d s of B e l i s a r i u s " w h o perished d u r i n g t h e siege of R o m e b y W i t i g i s in 537. 3 9 W e also hear a great d e a l a b o u t Bessas, c o m m a n d a n t of R o m e at the t i m e of T o t i l a ' s siege. H e b e c a m e G o v e r n o r of R o m e a b o u t t h e t i m e

( " e i t h e r at

this t i m e o r soon a f t e r , " H o d g k i n , I V , 424) of the d e p a r t u r e of Belisarius f r o m R a v e n n a in 540. F o l l o w i n g this statement, G i s s i n g makes h i m c o m m a n d e r of R o m e b e f o r e the death of M a x i m u s w h i l e T o t i l a was still in T u s c a n y . G i s s i n g seems to i m p l y that h e r e m a i n e d in R o m e u n t i l its siege in 545. H o d g k i n , h o w e v e r , f o l l o w i n g P r o c o p i u s , says that he was present at t h e b a t t l e of M u g e l l o in A p r i l 542 d u r i n g t h e s o u t h w a r d progress of T o t i l a . A f t e r that he was shut u p in S p o l e t o ; by i m p l i c a t i o n at least, he was still there w h e n T o t i l a b e g a n the siege of N a p l e s . 4 0 T h i s of course w o u l d m a k e impossible Basil's i n t e r v i e w w i t h h i m late in 542 b e f o r e t h e b e g i n n i n g of that siege. T h e character of Bessas is g i v e n to us by G i s s i n g just as he a p p e a r s on the pages of history. T h e 38 Cf. Italy and II, 15, 16; III, 8, " Veranilda, p. Veranilda, pp.

Her Invaders, III, 310; IV, 537; III, 301-303. Variae, 36, 46, etc. 50; Hodgkin, IV, 228. 13, 16, 120-122. Italy and Her Invaders, IV, 424, 446, 449.

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churchmen of the story are also for the most part historical. T h e wily deacon Leander appears to be the exception; of h i m there is no trace. Pope Vigilius, w h o is merely mentioned on two occasions in Veranilda, is of course historical. T h e deacon Pelagius, too, who hears Marcian's secrets d u r i n g his d e l i r i u m and is later deceived by him, is historical; in 555 he became Pope under the title of Pelagius I. T h e account of him which Gissing gives is directly based on the historians Gissing is k n o w n to have read, and requires no comment. W h e n Gissing writes that: " I t had already been decided that, d u r i n g his absence, the Holy Father should be represented by Pelagius," he is probably basing it on some such statement as that of H o d g k i n : " A l r e a d y d u r i n g the long absence of V i g i l i u s he wielded an influence little less than Papal in the Eternal City." 4 1 Gissing's account of St. Benedict is derived from his visit to the monastery as well as f r o m his reading. H e makes n o attempt to " d e b u n k " the sainthood of Benedict, but gives us exactly that picture of h i m (omitting, of course, the miraculous) w h i c h he found in his sources. His letters tell us that he had some difficulty with this character; he could not make h i m talk naturally. O t h e r historical characters are Rusticiana, the widow of Boethius, w h o appears briefly at the house of Gordian about Easter 543/42 and a certain O p i l i o , one of the accusers of Boethius, together with his son. T h e son may be invented; the father appears in the accounts of the trial. It is of some interest to note that Gissing accepts the dark picture of this man's character which Boethius himself gives in preference to the more favorable view expressed by Cassiodorus in his official capacity. T h e impression made u p o n us by Gissing's choice of characters is a very favorable one. H e has used many people w h o actually were alive at the time, and he has placed them in the circumstances in which history finds them. His major characters are generally fictional as far as they themselves are " Veranilda, " Veranilda,

p. 167; Hodgkin, IV, 527. p. 166. Hodgkin, IV, 561, says she lived until 546.

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concerned, although their families can be traced as existing at this time and the possibility of their own existence cannot be denied. We have, therefore, evidence of a good bit of research into the history of the period and a resultant knowledge of a number of people of distinctly minor historical importance as well as an acquaintance with the lives of the leaders of that time. Something must be said about the topography. T h e settings used in Veranilda can best be presented in tabular form. T h e action takes place at: I. Chaps. 1-9. Anician estate at Surrentum and his surroundings—Cumae, etc. II. Chaps. 10-18. Rome. III. Chaps. 19-23. Via Latina and various towns along it— Praeneste, ¿Esernia, Marcian's villa near Arpinum. IV. Chaps. 24-27. Monastery of St. Benedict. V. Chaps. 28-29. Totila's camp at Hadrian's villa. VI. Chap. 30. Rome. Much of the topography of the novel is merely the result of Gissing's visits to Italy; this is not an archaeological novel, as might be supposed by one who did not understand the nature of Gissing's interest in Italy. This is especially true of the first section; little is said about the villa of Maximus which would not apply to any Roman villa. There is a description of a trip made by Basil and Aurelia across the bay of Naples to Puteoli and thence overland to Cumae. T h e locality of Baiae, the Lucrine Lake, Cape Misenum, the Julian harbor are all described, evidently, on the basis of Gissing's several trips to Naples. Marcian is said to lodge in Cumae "at the house of the curial Venustus, hard by the temple of Diana" 43 ; one wonders whether Gissing had before him some map of ancient Cumae. Outside of these few references there is no description of the vicinity of Surrentum, less, in fact, than is to be found in Gissing's earlier letters or in The Emancipated. At the death of Maximus, Basil obtained estates in Lucania and Apulia, an estate in Picenum, u

Veranilda, p . 45.

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at Asculum, and the mansion on the Caelian in Rome. T h e r e is also a reference to an estate at A r p i n u m which is rather puzzling. Is this a confusion with Marcian's villa near there or should the text read "Picenum"? Why did Basil not stop there when he rode to Marcian's villa in quest of the false friend? T h e villa at Surrentum was willed to Aurelia, as was the house in R o m e at the foot of the J a n i c u l u m (the " A n i c i a n u m " ) which was seized by Petronilla during Aurelia's captivity. 44 Can the Anicii be shown to have held such properties at this time? T h e r e is more, however, of the geography of R o m e in the novel. We must not forget that Gissing had been to R o m e several times, that he spent four months there preparing for this novel, and that he is known to have read a number of books on R o m a n archaeology. As can easily be seen from a plan of Basil's wanderings in R o m e (chapters 10-18) Gissing seems to have the positions of the hills, of the gates, of the principal monuments clearly in mind. T h u s Basil and Marcian approach R o m e on the Appian Way from Naples and enter the Porta Appia. " O n their left hand they saw the Thermae of Caracalla . . . in front rose the Caelian." Basil's home in R o m e was on the summit of the Caelian. " B e f o r e it stood the ruined temple of Claudius, overlooking the Flavian amphitheatre; behind it ranged the great arches of the Neronian aqueduct; hard by were the round church of St. Stephen and a monastery dedicated to St. Erasmus." 4 6 T h e bounds of this palace are described with an assurance which makes one believe that Gissing had visited the exact spot and could give its location within a few feet. Whatever his authority for the condition of the buildings at the time may have been, there can be no doubt that they stood exactly where he places them. Some pages later we have a description of Basil's route on his way to the Palatine to visit Bessas. Gissing mentions the amphitheatre, the Arch of Constantine, the Meta Sudans, the T e m p l e of Venus, and the "Ibid., pp. 35, 73, 107, 1 1 0 , 1 1 , 126, 139. " Veranilda, p. 107.

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Arch of Titus in the order in which one would pass them in coming from the Caelian. He describes the condition of the buildings on the Palatine. On the way back Basil and Marcian halt for a moment on the Via Sacra "between the Basilica of Constantine and the Atrium of Vesta."4® A few days later Basil visits Petronilla. He crosses the river by the iEmilian bridge because "the nearer bridge of Probus was falling into ruins." Did Gissing know that this was the case in 542? On the same page he locates the Anicianum "on a gentle slope above the river, at the foot of the Janiculum Hill," 4 7 and near the Porta Portusensis. After that Basil visits Marcian at his home on the Via Lata near Hadrian's long colonnade, called the Septa, and the headquarters of the city watch; that, too, is easily located on a map of ancient Rome. Soon after this Heliodora finds Basil "in that open space between the Capitol and the Arx, where merchants were still found." 48 He hears the news of Petronilla's death when he is so close to the temple of Janus that he can reach out and touch it with his hand.49 Some time later he visits Heliodora at her home 50 in "the street on the Quirinal named Alta Semita"; her home is "not far from the Thermae of Constantine, and over against that long-ruined sanctuary of Rome, the Temple of Quirinus." This precisely suits the Alta Semita which ran from the baths of Constantine to the Porta Nomentana. After Basil leaves Rome, Marcian meets Leander near the porch of Agrippa and the Pantheon where he is supervising the removal of precious marbles from the Temple of Minerva Chaldica. This was, of course, quite close to Marcian's home on the Via Lata. Soon after this Marcian becomes sick and leaves Rome by the Via Praenestina. One is rather impressed by Gissing's knowledge of ancient Rome. He makes no attempt to display archaeological knowledge and introduces no descriptions which are not required by his "Ibid., p. 123. "Ibid., p. 126. "Ibid., p. 139. " T h e Temple of Janus was still standing. Gregorovius, I, 391. K Veranilda, p. 173.

CLASSIC P E R I O D narration. His topographical references are always by way of mere allusion; they are the means of locating the exact position of the characters at the time of certain events, and no more. Nevertheless they are in all cases correct. Evidently the study of the topography of Rome, which Gissing made in 1897 and 1898, resulted in a complete and absolutely accurate knowledge of the R o m e of the time of Justinian. T h e various journeys of the characters in the succeeding chapters (19 to 23) can easily be traced on the map. Marcian goes along the Via Praenestina to Praeneste. Here he eludes the horsemen of Pelagius by starting during the night, and descends to the Via Latina. At dawn he turns off the Via Latina into the mountains and arrives at Aletrium the following afternoon. Here he hears about the bandits and, on the next day, pushes on until he arrives at his villa on the river Liris, near Arpinum. He sends Sagaris with a message for Totila; Sagaris meets Venantius with the sick Basil at -iflsernia, whence he had recently arrived from Asculum. On hearing of Marcian's treachery, Basil hastens over the mountains and kills Marcian. A f t e r that the fever grows on him and Venantius takes him down the V i a Latina until they come to Casinum, where he is left at the monastery. Any map will show that this is all quite correct. Gissing's description of the monastery is simply based on his own visit; there is no reason to suppose he made any special study of that locality. T h e same thing seems true of his description of the half-ruined villa of Hadrian which he has Totila occupy in late 544. I imagine this was suggested to him by Hodgkin's statement (IV, 577) that Totila "may have lodged" there during his second siege of R o m e in 547. Gissing's topographical references are, therefore, quite accurate, but surprisingly few for a man whose interest in the Italian countryside had been lifelong. T h e characters and their doings were, to him, the main things in the story; this novel was not made an excuse for a display of its writer's knowledge of Italy in the sixth century. T h e r e are a number pf details which should be mentioned

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—details which Gissing has carefully inserted in order to make the whole picture true to the period. Some of them are of an historical nature, such as Maximus's bitter reference to "Alexandros the coin-clipper" 5 1 or Marcian's reference to Belisarius as " T h e Patricius," and his citation of the titles of Justinian. It is interesting to note that Basil's idleness and consequent entanglement with Heliodora is connected with the failure of the water supply. Gissing gives us quite a long account of the fate of the aqueducts (destroyed March 537 by the Goths) and seems to be dependent on Hodgkin's account of their destruction. Another interesting fact, which seems certainly drawn from Hodgkin, is implied in the incident in which Marcian picks up "a coin of Vitiges, showing a helmeted bust of the goddess of the city, with legend 'Invicta Roma.' " Such coins existed; Gissing must have seen the plates of Ostrogothic coins in the third volume of Hodgkin. 62 He also speaks of the plague—lues inguinaria—which had broken out in Italy "two years ago," that is, in 540, gives us an example of the destructive attitude of the clergy towards the old temples in the activities of Leander, speaks of the joke made by Bessas on hearing of Totila's kindness to the people of Naples (cf. Hodgkin, IV, 455), and even gives us a trace of old Roman games—micare digitis—and of a proverb connected with the game. He also made at least some effort to picture the customs and the laws of the time, when this would come naturally in the story. H e speaks of the legality of the civil marriage ceremony alone and of the illegality under Roman laws of bequests to such Arians as refused to be united with the church. He tells us of the break-up of the senatorial class, of their gradual change to the position of feudal rulers. We hear something of the education of the time, of its emphasis on grammar, rhetoric, and oratory. We discover that omens, such as that of thunder when a corpse lay in the house, were still regarded. Gissing speaks of Heliodora's foppery, of her writing Latin in Greek 51

Ibid., p. 16. Correctness attested by Hodgkin, IV, 428; is also in Gibbon. p. 46; cf. Hodgkin, III, 724-725.

"Ibid.,

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>53

characters, of her addressing Basil with a Greek diminutive. W e hear less of religious customs except in the cases of Petronilla, Leander, and the Benedictine monastery. Leander is said to have grown famous by his chanting of the gradual; Petronilla fasts until the hour of nones on the fourth day of the week. T h e r e are also a number of references to the house furnishings of the Romans and to their dress, as in the description of Basil, of the Anician library on the Caelian, and of the house of Heliodora. In fact, no effort has been spared to give us a true picture of the times. T h e success of the novel from the standpoint of scholarship alone might therefore be said to be considerable. It is true that the chronology is somewhat shaky, but its characters are extraordinarily well chosen and are such as must have existed at the time. His descriptions of the topography of sixth century Italy are few but accurate; he gives us many details which show a real knowledge of the period. Nor can it be denied that he has in many cases caught the real spirit of the times. T h e scholarly Roman of the Ostrogothic period is well represented by Decius with his doubts as to the Christian interpretation of Virgil and his long conversation with the pagan philosopher Simplicius in the thirteenth chapter. T h a t chapter, appropriately headed " T h e Soul of R o m e , " really does recapture the spirit of the time as it expressed itself in individuals who were still more or less pagan. T h e religious spirit of the time, too, is well given, through crafty and proud clerics like Leander and Pelagius as well as through the saintly Benedict. In the Monte Cassino chapters he reconstructs for us—and with considerable probability— the original Benedictine monastery, warping the picture neither by cynicism as to the actual motives of the monks nor by accepting the ascetic and miraculous view of Benedict which had crept into the earliest records of his career. Especially commendatory is his picture of Maximus, Basil, Marcian, and Venantius as wavering between the Imperial cause and that of the Goths and their final espousal of the cause of Totila. It was in every sense typical of the time;

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some of the noblest Romans, notably Cassiodorus and Boethius, acted just as Gissing's characters did. T h e historians w h o m Gissing read are practically unanimous in asserting that the Gothic rule was the best Italy had known for some years or was to know for centuries to come. T h e intellectual, political, and emotional standpoint of the better class of Romans in the sixth century is well represented in Veranilda. It gives us the soul of R o m e as it actually was in the last years of the Ostrogothic rule. It is unfortunate, then, that such high praise cannot be given to the novel as a work of a r t — a n d that, after all, is the main thing. It is, I believe, the very point at which most historical novels fail; for some reason writers of such works have succeeded better in the preparation of the background than in the actual narration. Gissing was warned of this very fact by Meredith. Edward Clodd, in his Memories, gives an account of a conversation between Gissing and Meredith, dated by Gissing's diary as on N o v e m b e r 13, 1898, in w h i c h Gissing's plan for Veranilda was mentioned. H e quotes Meredith as remarking: You may have histories, but you cannot have novels on periods so long ago. A novel can only reflect successfully the moods of men and women around us, and, after all, in depicting the present, we are dealing with the past, because the one is enfolded in the other. 53 Meredith's criticism, evidently, did not dissuade Gissing f r o m g o i n g on with the novel, b u t the o u t c o m e seems to indicate that there was at least something in what Meredith said. T h e characters of Veranilda do not seem human enough; he appears to be w r i t i n g from outside of them; we know them mostly by externals only. T h e y are not as good as those characters in the earlier novels w h i c h were drawn from Gissing's own experience, w h i c h were, to a great extent, the projection of his o w n personality. Basil and Veranilda are little more than lay figures on which to hang the action. Marcian M

Clodd, op. cit., p. 156.

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and Venantius are better. O f them all the scholar Decius, a comparatively m i n o r character, seems to be most vivid. H e was the kind of man that Gissing himself w o u l d have been, had he lived at the time. T h e action, too, is not unusually well handled. T h e plot is well conceived, the action eminently true to the period, and the idea is a good one; but it does not move. It reminds one too m u c h of the medieval representations of battles in tapestry form. It seems a little strange that he failed to put life and color, movement and passion into this novel. It was after all a work in which he himself believed most intensely; it was written about a subject of which he was very fond. It was the expression of his love for ancient times, much as the earlier novels were the expression of his hatred for the life of the poor in the modern metropolis. Perhaps the best explanation of the matter lies in the fact that his enthusiasm for ancient times was for the most part an enthusiasm for books, rather than for the life that people then lived. Veranilda has been called his offering to the manes of G i b b o n , and rightly so. If, then, its inspiration be so purely literary, it is perhaps possible to explain its faults on that g r o u n d alone. It is at a second remove from the life of the time of T h e o d o r i c and his successors and it is pale and colorless, however correct its scholarship may be. It lacks that power to move us which certain other of his novels, notably New Grub Street and The Unclassed, really do possess. It contains, nevertheless, some of his best prose. O n e might cite the entire first five pages, with their description of the situation in Italy in 542 and of the sickness of Maximus. T h e r e are other good sections, such as the account of Basil's early life, or the description of Heliodora's house. A l l of these sections are of the historic or descriptive order, however; one might have to name some such passage as that of Marcian's journey from R o m e to his villa as an example of the best of the narrative prose. It is in the purely historical kind of w r i t i n g that he has done his best work in Veranilda. His dialogue seems stilted and, indeed, there is too m u c h of i t — a n o t h e r fault against w h i c h

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Meredith had warned him. His sentences, though, at least in the historical portions, show a feeling for style and for rhythm that is not to be despised. T o a certain extent the influence of G i b b o n may be here evident, though Gissing does not use antithesis. H e does have a good style for historical prose—close-knit, carefully finished, and rhythmical. It seems to lack strength and vividness and it may be a trifle over-formal, but it is good work. O n e regrets that its author was never able to write a work that was purely and professedly history; he had the qualifications for such writing. It is impossible to say just how Veranilda was to end. Roberts says that it lacks "some few chapters dealing with the final catastrophe." 5 4 Other sources confirm the idea that the book lacked but three or four chapters, but it is hard to imagine just what this catastrophe may have been. Still, where did Roberts get the idea, if not from Gissing? N o w the book closes six months after the beginning of the siege of R o m e by T o t i l a , to whose cause Basil had attached himself. T h e r e can have been only a few chapters to be written; Gissing himself described it as "two-thirds done" w h e n he was writing the monastery scenes. H o w much further in history could these few chapters carry us? I fail to see that there was room for more than the events connected with the capture of R o m e by T o t i l a in December 546, nearly a year after the point reached by the book as it now stands. If Gissing intended to carry the story on to the complete failure of the Gothic cause in 553 or to the death of T o t i l a in 552, these last few chapters must have been planned to give only a very sketchy view of the next six years. Yet, as a matter of fact, the book as we have it covers little more than three years. In addition to this, the tone of the book seems to be against the idea of some catastrophe overtaking the lovers. It is spoken of as a romance, and indeed it is distinctly lighter in tone than the typical, rather grim, Gissing novel of the earlier periods. T h e r e tragedy was logical, inevitable for a n u m b e r of reasons. T h e r e is no such inherent 54

Roberts, op. cit., p. 29*.

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reason for tragedy here. Indeed, when we last hear of Basil and Veranilda, Basil is about to leave for Ravenna to spy on the forces of Belisarius and intends to claim as his reward on his return the hand of Veranilda which Totila does not seem loath to grant. Are we then to suppose that some chance calamity overtook the lovers about the time of the surrender of Rome to the Goths? T h i s may have been the intention; Basil may have been captured and executed by Belisarius.

V INFLUENCE OF T H E CLASSIC ON HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS i T REMAINS to draw certain generalizations from the material about Gissing's classic studies which has been presented in the preceding chapters. We shall discuss the influence of the classic on his novels of contemporary life, his appreciative and critical reaction to the classic literature, and his philosophy of culture, that is, his view of the place of classic studies in modern life. In considering the influence of the classic on his novels it will be well to limit the discussion to the typical Gissing slum novels. Such novels as The Emancipated and Sleeping Fires really need not come into consideration; the one is laid largely in Italy, the other largely in Greece; both are naturally full of classic references and could hardly have been written by any but a classicist. Many of his later novels hardly require treatment; they were mere potboilers, consciously written as works of light fiction. New Grub Street is another novel in which the influence of his classic studies is very evident; that fact is too familiar to require elaboration; besides, a novel whose characters are almost exclusively literary men is no true slum novel. As a realistic novelist Gissing is best remembered by Thyrza, Demos, and The Nether World, the works of his middle period. We will then consider the influence of classicism on his novels by a special study of Demos and The Nether World, drawing illustrations from the other works when necessary. The most obvious case of classic influence on Gissing's novels is that of the direct or indirect use of classic reference.

I

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It is a fixed feature of his style, present in the slum novels no less than in those other works where it might be expected. In these novels it appears most often on the part of the author; one could not expect the characters of such works to know their Latin or their Greek. Most often, I believe, he uses the classic by way of descriptive simile—as, for example, in his descriptions of a man's hat as in form "exactly that of the old petasus," of Clem Peckover's shoulders as spreading "like those of a caryatid," of her cruel lips as resembling those "on certain fine antique busts." 1 When he wants to say that a woman is beautiful, he says that she has "features of the purest Greek type"; when he wants to say that a man is noisy, he speaks of the "stentor-note of Daniel." 2 Another man might have said "stentorian"—hardly "stentor-note." T h e twelfth chapter of The Nether World, of course, is full of such similes and metaphors; we need only cite his ironic description of Clem as sweeping on "like a stately ship of Tarsus, bound for the isles of Javan or Gadire." A good example of his use of classic metaphor occurs later in the same book where he calls Clerkenwell Green "that modern Agora"; earlier he had said of a beer-shop that "through it ran a beery Pactolus." 8 Such similes and metaphors are a regular part of his descriptive apparatus, especially in the earlier novels. Latin words or phrases, too, are used more frequently than one would expect; we encounter impransus, ad libitum, sic voleo, sic jubeo, imprimatur, pia mater, and many others. Now and then we come upon a kind of classic reference that is indeed rare in the English novel—a Greek word, deliberately transliterated into English and used in its Greek meaning. This is not so striking when a character like Reardon says: " I haven't that diathesis"; he and Biffen were just the men who would throw in a Greek word now and then. It is more marked on the part of the author of a slum novel who says that an agitator "would have found 1

The Nether World, New York, n. d. (Dutton), pp. 1, 120, 8. Demos, New York, n. d. (Dutton), pp. 56, 60. • The Nether World, pp. 1 8 1 , 42. 3

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euthanasia"; it is most marked when he speaks of Rodman's schemes as "a mere parergon." 4 And, of course, the very title of Demos might be cited in this connection. T h e word appears frequently throughout the book; Mutimer is never a demagogue; he is simply demos—demos in the Greek sense, a member of the common people who has tried to step beyond the bounds fixed by fate for a man of his class. T h e word is also applied to the mob of workingmen which he leads in an exactly similar connotation; it is the demos of Plato, not the proletariat of the modern city, that rules the plot of this book. Such a use of classic reference may lay the author open to criticism. It certainly does not make for ease and lightness of style. Readers of the working class would hardly have appreciated such evidences of learning. But Gissing was not writing for such people; he would undoubtedly have classed them scornfully with the "quarter-educated." He was not writing with the hope that the proletariat would read his works. He may have thought of appealing to men of culture and refinement on their behalf, if indeed he would have allowed that his books had any ulterior, non-artistic purpose. Gissing would probably have felt that he was deliberately falsifying himself by "writing down" to a lower level, had he omitted such references. After all, they came naturally to him; they were part of his normal way of talking and writing. Few of them can be classed as purposeless; even the Greek words are used because they were the best way of expressing his meaning. Many of his more extended classic references are placed in the mouth of a character, and here they can hardly be criticized. Gissing does not make a worker quote Plato; it is but natural that Parson Wyvern should do so. Reardon and Biffen are exactly the men who would spend evenings discussing the Fragments of Euripides. Gissing's characters are often people who naturally have an interest in the classics. A more important, if less obvious, influence of his studies * New Grub Street, p. 390. Demos, pp. 36, 305.

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is to be found in his characterization. T h e characters of his novels were, of course, largely the result of his observation of the people he m e t — b u t this statement is not true of Gissing to the extent to which it w o u l d be true of most novelists. In fact it is often asserted, and with m u c h justice, that his characters are too often evolved from his own consciousness, or that they are mere transcripts of h i m s e l f — e x a m p l e s of how George Gissing would have behaved in certain circumstances. W h a t many critics are apt to forget is that these characters are the result of an adherence to a definite principle of selection. Gissing's learning was absolutely determinant in his choice of the type of character to be represented. If there is any one theme that is particularly his, it is that of the cultured man, of fine sensibilities and high literary ideals, at odds with the economic forces of the modern world. In his slum novels the slum-dwellers merely form the background for the poor scholar, u n a b l e to reconcile his ideal of the world as he has obtained it from books with that which goes on around him. Surely this is a direct heritage of the classic, that is, the theoretical, academic, nonpractical type of m i n d which his early studies had implanted in him. H e was conscious that this was his theme; in a letter to Roberts he wrote on February 10, 1895: My books deal with people of many social strata. . . . But what I desire to insist upon is this; that the most characteristic, the most important part of my work is that which deals with a class of young men distinctive of our time—well-educated, fairly bred, but without money. 5 T h i s of course is the very theme of New Grub Street. Biffen and Reardon are devoted to the classics, and hopelessly poor. T h e i r learning is the very cause of their failure; it has bec o m e an end in itself, not a means to economic success, as it was in the case of Milvain. T h e book is filled with learned characters; hardly a man of them b u t has pretensions to scholarship—and few enough are those w h o succeed in mak• Virginia

Quarterly

Review,

July 1931, pp. 417-418.

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ing a living through their learning. Even the genial Whelpdale supports himself only by playing u p to the quartereducated. T h e best novels of Gissing, then, are studies of the impact of the modern world on the cultured student, as has been said in this discussion, I believe, almost too often. Sometimes the learned characters appear as the mouthpiece of their author; more often they are the protagonists of the action. In both cases they are the results of Gissing's studies in books. Wyvern is of course the best example of the Greek student as a mouthpiece. H e expresses Gissing's own views about industrialism, about social reform, about marriage, about socialism, about education. T h e r e are many such characters. Some of them are content to be rather than to speak. Morton in The Whirlpool is an example of such a "normal" character. It is interesting to note that Morton, as well as many other Gissing characters who fall u n d e r this classification, has, after all, the last word. A study of Gissing's last chapters would bring many similar cases to light, but this last chapter, in which Morton places his absorption in classic studies over against the active life which Kipling celebrates, is particularly important. Decius, too, in Veranilda, is a kind of mouthpiece, though his message is a negative one. H e represents the viewpoint that, in such an age as that of the fall of Rome, there remains little b u t mere resignation and absorption in the past by way of literary and historical study. Mallard, in The Emancipated, is another such normal character, as are the Newthorpes in Thyrza. It is left to Earwaker in Born in Exile to represent the practical man of letters who succeeds without compromise, in sharp contrast to Milvain, who was, after all, a mere charlatan. It is Earwaker who pronounces the last verdict over the career of Peak; his words serve as an obituary for the unfortunate hero. Of course, H e n r y Ryecroft is the mouthpiece par excellence. Most of the time he is Gissing himself talking. His lonely life, his non-social outlook, his absorption in books, his philosophical bent, particularly the

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views he had arrived at by 1900—all are represented in the essays of Ryecroft. T h e cultured hero as protagonist is, however, the typical Gissing character. His want of success in the struggle for existence is almost without exception. T h i s usually results from his over-sensitiveness, his lack of social background, the fact that his intellectual approach to life is not shared by the people he meets, particularly the women, his inability to cope with the practical difficulties and small irritations of existence, his unwillingness to compromise with ideals that are not realizable in the conditions of modern life and the consequent poverty. It is a formidable list of disqualifications which the scholar, as Gissing conceived him, had to face. Biffen and Reardon, Milvain and Godwin Peak are examples of this type of character; all of them are really failures, for Milvain attains success only by the most shameless prostitution of his abilities. Egremont, in Thyrza, is perhaps the best case of the learned character as protagonist, for his work was directly in the sphere of culture. T h i s young student, full of social enthusiasm, tries to reach the working classes intellectually and culturally—and his failure is total. He helps none of the workers except Gilbert Grail, a man who never had been representative of his class. Into this man's life he brings tragedy by depriving him of the wife he should have had. In fact, Egremont merely upsets things for all the working people he meets. Egremont, better than any other Gissing character, expresses the futility of the older learning in the face of modern social and intellectual conditions. T h e s e characters stand in sharp contrast to the many ignoble and uncultured members of the proletariat who form the background for the man of culture and so frequently bring his work to failure. It may be said that Gissing overdoes this; that his poor and uncultured characters are generally mean, selfish, and grasping, utterly without any better self to which one might appeal. Characters like 'Arry Mutimer, Harriett Swales, Bob Hewitt, and Clem Peckover

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have, indeed, little or no good about them. Gissing deliberately makes many of his poor people almost beyond hope of improvement. W e need only quote his apostrophe to the charitably inclined ladies who fed the inhabitants of Shooter's Gardens: Gratitude, mesdames? You have entered upon this work with expectation of gratitude? And can you not perceive that these people of Shooter's Gardens are poor, besotted, disease-struck creatures of whom—in the mass—scarcely a human quality is to be expected? 6 Such was his opinion of the inhabitants of the nether world, and his opinion of those of a higher station who remained still uneducated and uncultured was not a great deal better. Of course, when one considers them thoughtfully, Dickens' people are just as ignoble, but he has surrounded them with humor, with sentiment, with sympathy of various sorts; one feels that their distorted lives are the fault of the social order, not their own. T h e r e is no such relieving element in Gissing; he traces their faults directly to their inherent lack of the finer qualities of mind and character. Certainly this great group of characters forms a sharp contrast to those few well-educated men of fine sensibilities who are the protagonists of the action. Gissing's learning, therefore, particularly his study of the seemingly refined society of ancient times, is largely responsible for his characterization. It was absolutely determinant in his choice of the characters who bear the brunt of the argument. Another very definite trace of his classic studies appears in the setting of his various works. It is not merely that he so often describes places in figurative language which is drawn from his classic studies. T h e very spirit with which he approaches his description shows the classic student. T h i s is true both negatively and positively. H i s slum description is on the negative side; it shows his adverse reaction to such scenes as he approaches them from his imaginings of the • The

Nether

World,

p. 252.

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classic scene. His nature description is on the positive side. It is often in the classic mode; it is an attempt to transfer to the English countryside feelings and categories of thought which seem to have come to him from the Georgia. In brief, he does his descriptions of London by antipathy, and his nature descriptions in the tone of the classic idyllic poets. It is a familiar fact that many of his best descriptions are actuated by dislike. Morley Roberts has given us his memories of Gissing's experience in writing the Crystal Palace chapter in The Nether World. He states that Gissing spent a bank holiday there for the express purpose of writing this chapter and arrived home tired, worn out, and utterly disgusted with all that he had seen: " I t was with difficulty that I could imagine him sitting it out, even with the purpose that took him there. He spoke of the scene with bitterest disgust. This—this was humanity." 7 T h e chapter certainly bears out these statements; it is full of vivid details, of exact observations; it bears all the marks of a description written on the spot or from very recent memory; it concludes with the bitter comment: "Since man came into being did the world ever exhibit a sadder spectacle?" T h e whole tone of the description is lugubrious, if not distinctly condemnatory. T h a t kind of description is common in Gissing's slum novels. T h e r e is much of it in Workers in the Dawn; it is vividly exemplified in the description of Litany Lane in The Unclassed; The Nether World is full of it; one need only think of the several descriptions of Shooter's Gardens. One of the most characteristic examples of such a description is found in the first two pages of this same novel, pages which have often seemed to me among the best that Gissing ever wrote. Here there is no denunciation and the tone is quiet, but the piling on of detail after detail has a force that a more directly expressed dislike for the scene could never have had. T h i s is the scene as Michael Snowden passes a graveyard near the Middlesex House of Detention: * The Nether

World, p. viii.

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At this corner the east wind blew with a malice such as it never puts forth save where there are poorly clad people to be pierced; it swept before it thin clouds of unsavoury dust, mingled with the light refuse of the streets. Above the shapeless houses night was signalling a murky approach; the sky— if sky it could be called—gave threatening of sleet, perchance of snow. And on every side was the rumble of traffic, the voiceful evidence of toil and of poverty; hawkers were crying their goods; the inevitable organ was clanging before a public-house hard by; the crumpet-man was hastening along, with monotonous ringing of his bell and hoarse rhythmic wail. After reading such a description one can easily understand why the first two pages of The Nether World conclude with the statement that "Something more than pain came over the old man's face as he looked and pondered." T h e London of Gissing's early novels is, indeed, a city of dreadful night; it is only too often the home of the damned, as Mad Jack was wont to proclaim it in Shooter's Gardens. If London is not the scene of the bitterest struggles for existence, as it is in the slum novels, it is generally a drab, colorless place, full of endless streets whose small, poorly built and poorly furnished houses huddle up to the paved streets, leaving their unfortunate inhabitants literally no place to go by way of relief from the unhappy scene, and leaving them, of course, no opportunity at all to see anything that has the qualities of distinction or of beauty. One is reminded of the description of the two sections of Hoxton in the third chapter of Demos—the slums and the homes of the moderately well-paid workmen. " T h e change," says Gissing, "is from undisguised struggle for subsistence to mean and spirit-broken leisure; hither retreat the better paid of the great slave-army when they are free to eat and sleep." Such descriptions, of course, are a direct reflection of the author's early days in London. One can understand them best after reading some such essay as Spring X, in which Henry Ryecroft reviews his early days in London. "Would

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I live it over again, that life of the garret and the cellar? Not with the assurance of fifty years' contentment such as I now enjoy to follow upon it!" W e must remember that Gissing came to just such scenes only two short years after the conclusion of his school career, that happy time when he had been free to pursue his classic studies with his whole heart. It was the young classicist who lived amidst such surroundings, while his mind was still busy with the enchanted sea of the Odyssey, with the pastoral scenes of Virgil, with the countryside of Theocritus, with the Arcadian woods, still peopled by fauns and satyrs. It is not hard to explain his dislike of the London locale. It was the natural result of the impingement of a somewhat grimy reality on a mind full of imaginings of a far distant past as it presented itself—much glorified and brightened, no doubt—in its literature. Less need be said about his descriptions of nature; it is obvious that much of it is the work of a classicist. His nature descriptions are remarkable above all for their sense of color, but also for their careful observation of the smaller features of the landscape—of brooks, of trees, of birds and flowers, for the finely polished style he uses in them, and for the mood of quiet happiness, at times rising to ecstasy, with which he contemplates nature. T h e description of the orange trees at Catanzaro in the ninth chapter of By the Ionian Sea is typical of Gissing's best work of this type. It is occupied largely with color—with the gold of the oranges contrasting with the deep green of the foliage, with the "magic sea, purple and crimson as the sun descended," with the full moon rising over the mountains, a pale yellow moon against a "sky soft-flushed with rose." It closes with a reference to the garden of the Hesperides. Such descriptions appeared early in his career; the scene at the end of the seventeenth chapter oi'The Unclassed is a similar case. I much suspect, by the way, that this is all that is left of a scene which Gissing abbreviated greatly at the request of George

G E O R G E GISSING Meredith; 8 evidently the description of the younger man seemed too luxuriant, too colorful, perhaps too weighted down with classical fancies, to suit the reader for Chapman. T h e description of the Athenian sunset in New Grub Street is also a remarkably colorful bit. In reading such passages one is reminded over and over again of his love for the classic countries and for the classic pastoral and idyllic writers. Sometimes both of these types of description occur in close connection. T h e outstanding example of such a contrast comes in the nineteenth chapter of The Nether World where he is describing an excursion from London to the country. Over the pest-stricken regions of East London, sweltering in sunshine which served only to reveal the intimacies of abomination; across miles of a city of the damned, such as thought never conceived before this age of ours; above streets swarming with a nameless populace, cruelly exposed by the unwonted light of heaven; stopping at stations which it crushes the heart to think should be the destination of any mortal; the train made its way at length beyond the uttermost limits of dread, and entered upon a land of level meadows, of hedges and trees, of crops and cattle. A short paragraph later we read: It is merely one of those quiet corners of flat, homely England, where man and beast seem on good terms with each other, where all green things grow in abundance, where from of old tilth and pastureland are humbly observant of seasons and alternations, where the brown roads are familiar only with the tread of the labourer, with the light wheel of the farmer's gig, or the rumbling of the solid wain. By the roadside you pass occasionally a mantled pool, where perchance ducks or geese are enjoying themselves; and at times there is a pleasant glimpse of farmyard, with stacks and barns and stables. T h e contrast between Gissing's feeling about London and • Cf. The Private 34 2 -

Life of Henry Maitland,

p. 161, and Gissing's Letters,

p.

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his feeling about the English countryside could hardly be more clearly expressed. Both these types of description, then, are derived, for their spirit at least, and to a great extent even for their form, from Gissing's classic studies. It is interesting to note that Gissing was criticized for this very thing by no less prominent a nature writer than W . H. Hudson. Speaking of another writer altogether he wrote in a letter: " L i k e Gissing, he is incapable of understanding or believing in a m i n d that can do with nature pure and simple and find it sufficient for happiness—very pleased to let all books . . . go hang." 9 Hudson correctly states Gissing's attitude towards nature, the attitude of a man who does not take it " p u r e and simple," as Hudson did, but who sees it through literary spectacles—spectacles, in Gissing's case, which had been made by his early reading of the classics. Gissing and Hudson knew each other; it might be possible to make an interesting comparison of their differing descriptive styles, but that is impossible here. A t any rate, it is precisely in the settings of his novels and of his semi-narrative essays alike that Gissing seems to have done his best work. H e had a good faculty of observation and he was deeply affcctcd by his surroundings, whether by way of joy or by way of disgust. His descriptions give the impression of reality, of sincerity, of a force of feeling. Here is a part of his novels w h i c h he felt and felt deeply. It is the sort of thing which a non-social being could do, could attain mastery in, as such a person could not do in the analysis of character and situation. T h e classic background of this phase of his work should not be forgotten. It is rather difficult to say much about the influence of Gissing's classic studies upon his style without merely being vague. It is present, though, and none the less important because it is intangible. His style is evidently that of a student. It is somewhat formal; in his earlier books it is even ornate, rather loaded down with classic references and full • W . H. Hudson, Men, Books, and Birds, London, 1925, p. 189.

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of difficult and unusual words. It is quiet and subdued, seldom robust, vigorous, or forceful except when he is expressing a dislike for something. T h e descriptive and reflective parts rather over-balance the action, and Gissing is too fond of a rather irritating apostrophe to the reader. T h e most classic feature of his style is probably its carefulness, its attention to the rhythm of the sentence. One is reminded of Biffen's efforts in finishing " M r . Bailey, Grocer": " H e had labored over it for many months, patiently, affectionately, scrupulously. Each sentence was as good as he could make it, harmonious to the ear, with words of precious meaning skillfully set." 1 0 T h i s kind of work was his ideal and he did attain it frequently. It is certainly in his sentence construction, in the details of the work, and not in the organization of the work as a whole or in the technique of the novel, that we are to look for traces of any classic influence. Gissing's later style is familiar enough to the average reader, but an example of his earlier style might be of interest. T h e beginning of the twenty-eighth chapter of The Nether World is representative. With the first breath of winter there passes a voice halfmenacing, half-mournful, through all the barren ways and phantom-haunted refuges of the nether world. Too quickly has vanished the brief season when the sky is clement, when a little food suffices, and the chances of earning that little are more numerous than at other times; this wind that gives utterance to its familiar warning is the vaunt-courier of cold and hunger and solicitude that knows not sleep. Will the winter be a hard one? It is the question that concerns this world before all others, that occupies alike the patient workfolk who have yet their home unbroken, the strugglers foredoomed to loss of such scant needments as the summer gifted them withal, the hopeless and the self-abandoned and the lurking creatures of prey. T o all of them the first chill breath from a lowering sky has its voice of admonition; they set their faces; they sigh, or whisper a prayer, or fling out a curse, each according to his nature. 10

New

Grub

Street, p. 456.

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Most of the typical Gissing style is there—the careful, wellrounded, thoughtful sentences, the unusual compound words, the preponderance of Latin derivatives, the coined word like "needments," the really remarkable slow and sad rhythm. T h e most evident stylistic trace of his classic studies is his diction. Even in writing of the most uncultured of men he uses the diction of the scholar. T h e s e unusual, Latinate words are used so often, in fact, that he sometimes seems pedantic. At times this is deliberately done; when Gissing chooses to be sarcastic, one can always expect words which smell of the dictionary. Hell appears as "a certain igneous realm"; "that aristocratic vacuity of visage" is attributed to "carefully induced cerebral atrophy"; Mutimer's table manners are indicated by the fact that he has just discovered that "manducation and absorption of fluids must be performed without audible gusto." 1 1 Mustard appears as "condiment," grease as "oleaginous matter"; Clem Peckover uses "the vituperative vernacular of the nether world." 1 2 Well, it is but a schoolmaster's idea of humor. But this kind of diction is common throughout his works. " L e a f a g e , " "verdure," "tillage," "vale," and other similar words occur in the space of two sentences. Mr. Wyvern's clerical clothes are described as "sable garniture"; his "towering sableness" is mentioned; "unflinching orbs" is used instead of "steady eyes"; when Adela blushes, "the subsiding warmth left a pearly translucency as of a lily petal against the light"; the author speaks of the soul's "hidden velleities," of "supernal spheres." 1 3 T h i s kind of diction is obviously a direct heritage of his classic studies. In his later works his language becomes simpler, freer from unusual or coined words, not so studded with Latin and Greek derivatives and is all the better for it. T h e most important influence of the classics upon his novels is in the realm of ideas. His classic studies have lent 11 13 u

Demos, pp. i, 33, 89. The Nether World, pp. 6, 8, 158. Demos, pp. 3, 4, 10, 80, 333, 416.

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to the novels their tone and their point of view. I refer, of course, to the aristocratic point of view, to the ideals of gentility, of bookish leisure, of withdrawal from the everyday world which form so obvious an anomaly in works whose material is drawn from the poorest classes of society. Gissing is no true novelist of revolt; he speaks often as a conservative country squire might speak. This is a direct heritage of his classic study. It is a familiar fact that the classic literature was an aristocratic one. It took little account of slaves, of poor artisans, of the hordes of freemen who filled the Circus Maximus in the Rome of the Caesars. It was a literature written by men who reclined at ease in their villas. It was often definitely the product of an imperial court, as in the Augustan age. Proletarian literature was simply inconceivable in ancient times. In the education of modern times the classic literatures have found a similar and appropriate destiny. T h e y are not taught to artisans; a classic education is synonymous with a professional training; it is the privilege of the professional classes, of lawyers, doctors, divines, of the wealthy classes, or of statesmen. Naturally, then, classic training produces a conservative attitude of mind. Gissing shared to the full such ideals and never, as far as I can make out, deserted them, although he had every excuse to do so. He may have detested the conventions of morals, society's set of values; he did not question the right of established society to be what it was, nor did he believe that much good would come from its overthrow. It is needless to repeat that he had no faith in the lower orders of society. Demos amounts to an attack on socialism, upon democracy, upon popular education, upon the fitness of the masses to be masters of their own destiny. Its hero, Richard Mutimer, is meant to be representative of the better type of workingman. Gissing tries hard to be fair to him, but Mutimer is a sorry sham, for all that. His ideas for the betterment of the lot of the worker are founded on ignorance, egotism, and a desire for personal renown. He basely deserts the girl he was engaged to, and marries a lady. He dishonestly plans to

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conceal a will. He refuses to know his old friends after he has risen in the world. His own mother regards him as a mere talker. His companions are little better; their interest in socialism never rises higher than that of Daniel Dabbs to whom economic agitation was a "mode of passing a few hours amid congenial uproar." T h e i r meetings are a farce, utterly lost to reason and common sense. There is, in fact, "a monstrous gulf between men of that kind and cultured human beings." T h e city mob which Mutimer leads is formed of "the enemies of every man who speaks the pure English tongue and does not earn a living with his hands." 1 4 Gissing's poor people, in this book at least, resemble no other historical group so much as the mobs of the French Revolution. Individually, they may be people of some value; collectively, they are the enemies of all that is good in civilization. Such being his view of the proletariat, it is easy to see that Gissing held out no hope for any real improvement in their condition; any effort to improve their situation which did not involve an improvement of their mass character he regarded as futile. Demos inveighs against the folly of leaving money to a representative of this class. Richard Mutimer's uncle did not intend to leave him the money. " T o leave wealth to young men of the working-class would have seemed to him the most inexcusable of follies; if such were to rise at all, it must be by their own efforts and in consequence of their native merits." 1 5 Nevertheless, Richard Mutimer does obtain the money, with consequences disastrous to himself and all which is his. Mutimer's own character is degraded, and he comes to his death; his brother becomes a loafer and a drunkard; his sister bigamously marries an adventurer; the poor workers are in the end worse off than they had been before he started to help them. T o give the poor money was no solution in Gissing's mind. He goes even further than that; he denies that much good can come of edu"/fciU, pp. 35, 383, 376. u

Ibid., p. 29.

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eating the average poor man. H e feels that the average man of such classes lacks the capacity for education and will use his knowledge to the general harm of all. T h e plight of a man educated beyond his social and economic station is another one of his recurring themes. Mr. Wyvern has this to say about it: Take one feature of it—universal education. That, I believe, works most patently for the growing misery I speak of. . . . It is a class created by the mania of education, and it consists of those unhappy men and women whom unspeakable cruelty endows with intellectual needs whilst refusing them the sustenance they are taught to crave. 16 This, I presume, was Gissing's own view with respect to the classical and cultural education as imposed on the lower classes. He thought no better of what might be called a practical education—witness his description of Mutimer's library. Education is simply an injury to those who are incapable of a cultured and refined outlook on life. Social and economic agitation, too, is a futile way of trying to improve the condition of the poor. English socialism, says Eldon, is "infused with the spirit of shop-keeping; it appeals to the vulgarest minds; it keeps one eye on personal safety, the other on the capitalist's strong-box." Mr. Wyvern will have nothing to do with it and informs his parishioners: " I am a Christian, madam, and have nothing to do with economic doctrines." 1 7 Certainly the pictures of various types of socialists—the well-intentioned but ignorant Mutimer, the violently denunciatory Moorhouse, the scholarly, refined, and purely theoretical Westlake—would not dispose the readers of Demos to think well of the movement. It is not that Gissing has simply adopted a capitalistic viewpoint from his education; his condemnation of the selfishly wealthy classes is as violent as his condemnation of the agitators. He simply believes that the masses are at present unfit for any position except the one they now hold, and that no good "Ibid., p. 384. "Ibid., pp. 381-382,

87.

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can come of a change in the social order unless the masses can be improved culturally, intellectually, and morally. Social agitation offends, in his view, against the very spirit of culture. One remembers the protest he made against the part William Morris took in revolutionary movements; in Demos he says that such agitation has even caused Westlake's style to deteriorate: "His very style has abandoned him, his English smacks of the street corners, of Radical clubs." 18 In fact, Gissing is generally committed to the position that a poor man, of the lower social order, can improve his position only with difficulty. T h e outstanding case in his novels is that of Godwin Peak in Born in Exile. Here we have an individual, not a group, and a man of pronounced talents and considerable ability. He aims, as a plebeian, to marry a lady. His efforts result only in putting himself in an entirely false position where his very sincerity can be questioned. His aims, like Gissing's own, were derived from a cultural education, but he simply was on the wrong track. He had overstepped the bounds allotted by fate and attempted that which the decrees of the immortal gods had forbidden. Such views naturally imply a great deal of respect for the ideals associated with the word "gentleman" and a belief in the reality of class distinction. Gissing had both the respect and the belief. A gentleman, to him, was a person of education and culture, a man of refined sensibilities with a broad, liberal, but realistic outlook on life, one possessed of those very social graces which he himself did not always possess. Even that old plebeian, the elder Mutimer, appreciated such ideals. He sought money only as a means; ". . . the end he really aimed at being the satisfaction of instincts which could only have play in a higher social sphere." " H e bowed in sincere humility to those very claims which the Radical most angrily disallows: birth, hereditary station, recognized gentility." There is no better way of stating the difference between Eldon and Mutimer than to say that the "Ibid., p. 381.

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one was, and the other was not, a gentleman. Even Mrs. Waltham, who has married her daughter to the wealthy plebeian, feels this. " O h , but Mr. Eldon is a g e n t l e m a n — h e can never exact his legal rights to the full extent. H e has too much delicacy of feeling for that." 1 9 Such are the grasping old lady's real views, despite her actions. T h e admission of such an ideal means that class distinctions are real and fairly permanent because they are based on realities, on real differences. Because of such realities A d e l a gradually loses her respect for her husband, the representative of Demos. T h i s gradual loss of respect reaches its culmination as she watches his sleeping face in the railroad coach on the way back to London. Beholding that face as if it were that of a man unknown to her, she felt that a whole world of natural antipathies was between it and her. It was the face of a man by birth and breeding altogether beneath her. . . . Their life of union was a mockery; their married intimacy was an unnatural horror. He was not of her class, not of her world; only by violent wrenching of the laws of nature had they come together. She had spent years in trying to convince herself that there were no such distinctions, that only an unworthy prejudice parted class from class. One moment of true insight was worth more than all her theorizing on abstract principles. . . .20 Such is Gissing's general statement of the problem. His opinion on such subjects remained unchanged; much the same philosophy appears in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, published only two years before his death. Its very theme is that of a hack writer who by chance reaches the condition of a gentleman. In miniature, he is a member of the landed and moneyed g e n t r y — a man of fine feelings who appreciates the simple comforts of life, the beauty of nature, and the beauties of the great books of the world's literature. "Ibid., " Ibid.,

pp. 28, 328. pp. 350-351.

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He is still against the demos of the city: Spring X V I , with its formidable opening sentence, " I am no friend of the people," is enough to prove that. He is still against the quarter-educated, as his criticism of the periodical literature of his day in Spring X X I I shows. He still believes in social differences; we all remember the unhappy fate of the young workingman who tried to eat in a restaurant frequented by people of a higher class than his own (Summer X V I I ) . H e is still unconvinced by the propaganda in favor of democracy (Summer X X I I ) . Such ideas as these formed the most important part of all the influences on his novels which Gissing's classical education exerted. These ideas are characteristic of all his writing, and they are very closely connected with the studies in the classics begun in his youth and continued throughout his life. These studies were responsible for the one unique note of Gissing—the combination of slum material, sympathy for the sufferings of the lower classes, with a demand for culture, for the ideals of gentility, for an interest in strictly intellectual pursuits. 2 We have already reviewed the knowledge which was the basis for Gissing's appreciation of the classic. We have seen that his scholarship, though not wide, was thorough ana deep in an untechnical, unspecialized manner. He knew well the best of the classic writers—those of the Augustan and Periclean ages. H e was strong on classic metres, in the history of classic times, in the languages themselves. Doubtless he was weaker as regards the philosophy and the art of classic times, and his archaeology was that of the cultured reader rather than that of the professional scholar. Nevertheless, his scholarship was a rather impressive achievement in one who led so busy a life, and it certainly was wide and deep enough to make us approach his appreciation of Greek and R o m a n times with a certain amount of respect. It is obvious that the classics were to him a source of very deep and lasting emotion. We first became aware of this

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when we noticed how deeply his characters feel about classic matters. We have already noted the deep feeling which the classic literature, Greek metres, and the scenery of the classic countries produced in Reardon and Biffen. T h e thought of such matters drove out of their minds all thoughts of their own poverty and misery. Biffen cannot stand Reardon's description of an Athenian sunset and threatens to clutch him by the throat if he does not stop. Reardon's feeling for such scenes is best expressed in his own words: "What does a man care for any woman on earth when he is absorbed in contemplations of that kind?" T o him it is not only one of life's satisfactions; it is "the best, and infinitely preferable to sexual emotion." He continues: "Poverty can't rob me of those memories. I have lived in an ideal world that was not deceitful, a world that seems to me, when I recall it, beyond the human sphere, bathed in diviner light." 2 1 One could hardly go farther in expressing an enthusiasm for classic times, for the classic literature, and for the shores of Italy and Greece. T h e emotion which Gissing himself felt about such matters was no less than that of Reardon. As early as 1885 he wrote: " I dare not read a book about Rome, it gives me a sort of angina pectoris, a physical pain, so extreme is my desire to go there." 2 2 Well, Gissing has often been criticized for the dullness and drabness of his outlook, for the lack of the zest of life. T h i s may be true, but critics should first read those pages in his letters which speak of his first arrival in Italy. A greater enthusiasm, a more fervent emotion, is expressed in no other part of his writings. A few quotations give us but a faint idea of it. I woke in the night and in vain tried to believe it. It makes me choke in the throat and tears come to my eyes. . . . Let no one tell me I am in the 19th century, nothing of that kind. Nothing later at all events, than the conquests of the Saracens. . . . These are the mountains that the Greek colonists saw. n

New Grub Street, p. 394. "Letters, p. 173.

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H i s e n j o y m e n t of N a p l e s , w i t h all its noise a n d p o v e r t y , is i n s t r i k i n g contrast to his lack of e n j o y m e n t of L o n d o n ; it is the classic association w h i c h m a d e the difference, I i m a g i n e . H e writes of B a i a e : " A n d these things H o r a c e saw just as I see them. N o , n o ; o n e can't speak of it!" A t any rate, these raptures at the first sight of Italy were succeeded by a calmness a n d a peace that G i s s i n g s e l d o m felt d u r i n g his t r o u b l e d life. H e several times speaks of this n e w e m o t i o n in his letters f r o m R o m e . Woke early this morning and enjoyed wonderful happiness of mind. It occurs to me, is not this partly due to the fact that I spend my days solely in the consideration of beautiful things, undisturbed by base necessities and considerations? In any case the experience is remarkable. 2 3 C e r t a i n l y , if there was any o n e t h i n g w h i c h t o u c h e d his ima g i n a t i o n , aroused his enthusiasm, a n d stirred his e m o t i o n a l n a t u r e to its d e p t h , that t h i n g was the c o n t e m p l a t i o n of t h e classic, the classic c o u n t r i e s in the first instance, b u t the classic literatures with almost e q u a l force. It is not hard to d e t e r m i n e just w h i c h e l e m e n t s in t h e classics he a p p r e c i a t e d so d e e p l y . G i s s i n g l o v e d the classic l i t e r a t u r e as the best expression of h u m a n e m o t i o n , as free a n d u n t r a m m e l e d expressions in contrast to w h a t he was w o n t to regard as the shackles of V i c t o r i a n

respectability.

M r . R o b e r t s says: It was for the little touches of realism, the little pictures in the Odes, that he loved Horace . . . and even more, Theocritus and Moschus, for Theocritus wrote things which were ancient and yet modern, full of the truth of humanity. L i k e all the men of the Renaissance he turned his eyes wistfully to the immemorial past . . . O r again: W h a t he wanted in literature was emotion, feeling, and humour—literature that affected him sensuously, and made him happy, and made him forget. 24 "Ibid., pp. 229-230, 238, 264. * The Private Life of Henry Maitland, pp. 50, 288.

G E O R G E GISSING

i8o

T h i s is essentially correct, if not in all the details, as any fairly close reading of Gissing will show. It may be true that he often preferred the expression of sorrowful emotion to that of joyful feeling; one is reminded of the passage in Thyria in which Egremont concludes that, after all, he prefers the laments of Catullus and Moschus to the somewhat crass optimism of W a l t W h i t m a n . Yet that very passage has much to say in praise of W h i t m a n , and the sum total of it is that W h i t m a n is " . . . first and foremost, a man, a large, healthy, simple, powerful, full-developed m a n . " 2 5 It was for his humanity, his frank and free expression of human emotion, that he came to like the bard of Camden; one can hardly imagine that it was for the music of his verse. It is the similar expression of personal emotion which attracted him so much in the classics. O n e would imagine that from the class of works which he read, from his avoidance of philosophy and myth, from his concentration on history, on lyric poetry, on the epic and the G r e e k tragedies, from his enthusiasm for the Odyssey, the Odes of Horace, the poems of T h e o c r i t u s and Catullus. His interest in the places celebrated in ancient story and in the personal fortunes of the authors themselves is another indication of the same thing. His favorite passages are almost without exception those noted for picturesqueness, for the suggestion or depiction of feeling. T h e poems Catullus dedicated to Lesbia, especially the lines beginning "Soles occidere et redire possunt," the weeping of the horses in the Iliad, the death of Odysseus' dog in the m o m e n t of his master's homecoming, little touches of personal history from the Anabasis, striking incidents from ancient historians—such were the passages to which he refers again and again. O f the purely political or national history of the ancients he says but little; Veranilda is no history of the campaigns of T o t i l a . Classic history was to Gissing a history of men, of people, not an account of institutions and forms of government. T o sum it all up, then, Gissing, in his relation to the classics, is a Renaissance m

Thyrza,

p. 423.

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181

humanist born in another time. It is not for nothing that he had no interest in the Renaissance; he was too m u c h like the men of that period; he went back to the classic himself for release from the mental bondage of his own time; he sought release from conventional Victorianism, as they did from scholasticism. N o r was there really anything of the modern classic scholar about Gissing. H e was not interested in textual questions, and was positively indignant at the thought of a composite authorship of the Odyssey. H e consistently went back to the classics because he f o u n d in them the essential h u m a n emotions expressed without the restraints of any creed or dogma or of any moral or social code. But we are not to gather from this that his reaction to the classics was a purely emotional one, that he had no interest in their specifically literary merits. O n e w o u l d hardly expect that from a man whose contact with literature of all times and peoples was so constant. His various discussions of Dickens show us that his interest in literary criticism was a real one. Nevertheless, no criticism of a classic author was ever published by Gissing except in the course of other writings. W e have little indication of what he considered the specifically literary merits of the classic authors. A m o n g his most interesting statements along this line may be considered his account of the visions which he had at C o t r o n e while sick of a fever on his Calabrian trip. H e appears to have dreamt of classic times, to have actually seen in a vision events that he had just been reading about in La GrandeGrèce. H e speaks of a "succession of w o n d e r f u l pictures" w h i c h "gave me such placid happiness as I have never known w h e n perfectly awake." H e marveled at the multiplicity of detail in these pictures, at their "marvellously bright yet delicate colouring," at the " m i n u t e finish of the pictures, the definiteness of every point on which the eye fell." 2 6 Cannot we deduce from this something of what the classic in literature meant to him? Picturesqueness, color, definiteness of outline, craftsmanship w h i c h produces a m i n u t e finish, "By

the Ionian

Sea, pp.

115-118.

182

G E O R G E GISSING

warm h u m a n emotion, i m a g i n a t i o n — i t is almost a list of those very qualities w h i c h a Matthew A r n o l d or a Landor might have given us as the essence of the classic. It is particularly characteristic of Gissing that these pictures are said to be historical and that they should result in a beautiful, placid happiness. A similar impression is gained from his discussion of the Anabasis in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Summer I X ) . H e praises its "combination of concise and rapid narrative with colour and picturesqueness." It is impersonal, as opposed to Herodotus, and its conciseness comes from a vivid imagination, not from strength and pride, as was the case with Caesar's Commentaries. He praises it for many a little picture "which deeply stirs the emotions." W e must not forget that the question of style was an unusually important one to Gissing. A minutely finished style must have been one of the canons of criticism which he derived from the classics. It was such a feeling for style which led h i m to Landor's Imaginary Conversations. In a letter of 1883 he quotes a passage f r o m ". 57. 73- 82. 86, 9 2 , 93, 98,

Naples, 59-60. 66, 71, 118, 119, 139, 148,

Rome,

179

Nether

World, The,

1, 2, 5-6. 7, 28,

78, 158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 168,

170

109,

112,

113,

136-137,

161,

26, 44, 5 9 , 62-65, 69,

119,

165. 179, 182

136,

17,

149-151,

179

R u s k i n , 191, 196

New Grub Street, 1, 3, 6, 24, 29, 36, 53, 54 55. 72-73. 7 g . 89. 93. 94. >°°. >°7. 113, 155, 158, 161, 168, 170. 178,

191

Odd Women, The, 79 O r p h i c legend, 6, 17 Our Friend the Charlatan, 6, 98, 110 Ovid, 106, 111 Owens College, M a n c h e s t e r , a t t e n d e d by Gissing, 1874 t o 1876, 14, 18, 19, 20, 2 1 , 23,

31

P a e s t u m , 43, 45, 56, 61, 62, 68-69, 1 2 9 Patras, 71, 73, 74, 93. 1 0 8 Pausanias, 35, 101 P e l o p o n n e s i a n W a r , p r o j e c t e d novel a b o u t , 24, 34, 35, 132 P e t r o n i u s , 75, 76, 86, 99, 113, 115 Plato, 6, 86, 96-99, 101, 102, 109, 160 Plautus,

115

Salamis, 71, 74 Seneca, 115 Shakespeare, 15, 16, 88, 91 Sleeping Fires, 6, 29, 71, 74-77, 106, 158, 190, 193

194

Sophocles, 6, 54, 55, 56, 71, 86, 88, 92, 93. 1 0 2 Sorrento, 136, 142, 147 Spanish, knowledge of, 83 Squillace, 104, 125, 126, 131, 144 Statius, 104, 113 Style, influence of t h e classics o n , 170 Suetonius, 115 Sybaris, 125, 129 T a c i t u s , 6, 26, 34, 35, 80, 112 T a r e n t u m , 118, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 126, 131

T e a c h i n g , Gissing as a t u t o r , 83 Tennyson,

10, 14, 4 1 ,

48

Pliny, 3 6 , 8 6 , 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 P l o t i n u s , 100, 101 P l u t a r c h , 6, 26, 35, 80, 111

T e r e n c e , 115 Theocritus, 6,

P o m p e i i , 60-61, 66-68

T h e s e i o n , 70, 75, 76 T h u c y d i d e s , 35, 80, 101 Thyrza, 1, 6, 40, 46, 49, 93, 94, 100,

Positivism, t e m p o r a r y interest in, 46 Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, The,

6, 14, 15, 18, 2 1 - 2 2 , 2 7 , 28, 29,

SO. 33. 37. 39. 43- 53. 57.

62, 7 1 , 75,

87, 9 1 , 93, 99, 106, 108, 1 1 0 , 1 1 8 , 130, 135, 162-163, 176-177,

182, 187,

189,

1 94'95 Pythagoras, 101, 125

Ravenna,

37,

40,

80,

94-95,

102, 103, 106, 158, 162, 163, 180,

193

T i b u l l u s , 39-40, 86, 107, 115 T o t i l a , figures in Veranilda, 138, 139, 140, 1 4 1 , 144, 146, 1 5 1 , 156, 1 5 7 ,

180

T u r g e n i e f f , 3, 10 Unclassed, The, 1, 6, 23, 25-27, 29, 30, 33- 35. 37. 43. 48, «32. '55- 165, 1 6 7 ,

prize p o e m at M a n c h e s t e r ,

23. 84. >3« R e a l i s m of Gissing, 3 , 4 5 - 5 0 a r t i c l e o n The Place of in Fiction, 3 R h e g i u m , 119, 124, 144

28,

102, 125, 179, 180

Realism

190

Venice, 59, 65, 72 Veranilda, 6, 7, 29, 34, 36, 57, 58, 78, 101,

104,

108,

111,

113,

1 1 7 , 118, 120, 130, 1 3 2 - 1 5 7 ,

114, 162,

115, 180

2 IO

INDEX

Virgil, 6, 18, 27, 37-38, 39, 59, 60, 86, 102-104, 115, 126, 165 Wakefield, Gissing's boyhood

home,

10, i i , 15, 17, 18, 23 W a l t h a m , Mass., a teacher there in 1877, 81 Wells, H. G., 47, 48, 49, 109, 110, 119, 185, 196

Whirlpool,

The, 6, 12, 13, 17, 80, 112,

132, 162 W h i t m a n , W a l t , 100, 101, 180 Workers in the Dawn, 1, 25, 34, 38, 45, 46-47, 82, 87, 88, 96-97, 98, 165 X e n o p h o n , 18, 19, 34, 35, 76, 80, 85, 99, 102, 180, 182