solitude; he
is tyrannised by moods, dominated by temperament. His intellect is in
abeyance. He shuns the present--the historical past seems alone to concern
him. Yet he abjures his own past. The ghost of his former self affected him
with horror. Identity even he denies. 'How can one be responsible for the
thoughts and acts of the being who bore his name years ago?' He has no
consciousness of his youth--no sympathy with children. In him is to be
discerned 'his father's intellectual and emotional qualities, together with
a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother.' He reveals
already a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His prejudices are
intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of
his nature. All this is profoundly significant, knowing as we do that this
was produced when Gissing's worldly prosperity was at its nadir. He was
living at the time, like his own Harold Biffen, in absolute solitude, a
frequenter of pawnbroker's shops and a stern connoisseur of pure dripping,
pease pudding ('magnificent pennyworths at a shop in Cleveland Street, of a
very rich quality indeed'), faggots and saveloys. The stamp of affluence in
those days was the possession of a basin. The rich man thus secured the
gravy which the poor man, who relied on a paper wrapper for his pease
pudding, had to give away. The image recurred to his mind when, in later
days, he discussed champagne vintages with his publisher, or was consulted
as to the management of butlers by the wife of a popular prelate. With what
a sincere recollection of this time he enjoins his readers (after Dr.
Johnson) to abstain from Poverty. 'Poverty is the great secluder.' 'London
is a wilderness abounding in anchorites.' Gissing was sustained amid all
these miseries by two passionate idealisms, one of the intellect, the other
of the emotions. The first was ancient Greece and Rome--and he incarnated
this passion in the picturesque figure of Julian Casti (in _The
Unclassed_), toiling hard to purchase a Gibbon, savouring its grand epic
roll, converting its driest detail into poetry by means of his enthusiasm,
and selecting Stilicho as a hero of drama or romance (a premonition here of
_Veranilda_). The second or heart's idol was Charles Dickens--Dickens as
writer, Dickens as the hero of a past England, Dickens as humorist, Dickens
as leader of men, above all, Dickens as friend of the poor, the outcast,
the pale little sempstres