ence alone is quite sufficient to indicate that the man out of whose
brain such bitter experiences of the educated poor were wrung had learnt in
suffering what he taught--in his novels. His start in literature was made
under conditions that might have appalled the bravest, and for years his
steps were dogged by hunger and many-shaped hardships. He lived in cellars
and garrets. 'Many a time,' he writes, 'seated in just such a garret (as
that in the frontispiece to _Little Dorrit_) I saw the sunshine flood the
table in front of me, and the thought of that book rose up before me.' He
ate his meals in places that would have offered a way-wearied tramp
occasion for criticism. 'His breakfast consisted often of a slice of bread
and a drink of water. Four and sixpence a week paid for his lodging. A meal
that cost more than sixpence was a feast.' Once he tells us with a thrill
of reminiscent ecstasy how he found sixpence in the street! The ordinary
comforts of modern life were unattainable luxuries. Once when a newly
posted notice in the lavatory at the British Museum warned readers that the
basins were to be used (in official phrase) 'for casual ablutions only,' he
was abashed at the thought of his own complete dependence upon the
facilities of the place. Justly might the author call this a tragi-comical
incident. Often in happier times he had brooding memories of the familiar
old horrors--the foggy and gas-lit labyrinth of Soho--shop windows
containing puddings and pies kept hot by steam rising through perforated
metal--a young novelist of 'two-and-twenty or thereabouts' standing before
the display, raging with hunger, unable to purchase even one pennyworth of
food. And this is no fancy picture,[4] but a true story of what Gissing had
sufficient elasticity of humour to call 'a pretty stern apprenticeship.'
The sense of it enables us to understand to the full that semi-ironical and
bitter, yet not wholly unamused passage, in _Ryecroft_:--

'Is there at this moment any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but
without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain
and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret and
writes for dear life? There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have
read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a very
different aspect. No garretteers, these novelists and journalists
awaiting their promotion. They eat--and entertain their critics--a