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George Gissing: A Life

The downfall of a pessimist

Paul Delaney
Weidenfeld, 472pp, £25,

Ferdinand Mount

Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Ferdinand Mount reviews Paul Delany's biography of George Gessing

Gissing is really a sweet fellow, he has charm and sympathy, humour too and a louder laugh than Oscar’s. That man is not wilfully a pessimist. But he is lonely —there has been a great sorrow and ill-health too.

So what went wrong? Well, that is the question pipe-sucking professors used to put, and though professors may no longer suck pipes, at least on college property, that is the question Paul Delany can’t stop asking. This is a highly enjoyable life of Gissing, lucidly written and carefully researched. Unfortunately, it is also so horribly bland, so wretchedly wrong-headed from start to finish, in the most important aspect of that life that it made me want to seek out the nearest ninth-story window to hurl it from. However, let us remember our anger management training and strive to condemn a little less and understand a little more.

The facts of Gissing’s first downfall are well-known. They remain startling. At the back of the estimable Owens College, which later turned out Nobel-prizewinners in droves, were the slums along the River Irwell. And in the handily situated brothel in Water Street, Gissing met Nell Harrison and fell in love with her, or with the idea of reclaiming her from her fallen state, or both. He stole books and clothes from his fellow students to raise money for her boozing and her VD treatment. He bought her a sewing machine too. Then he stole 5s 6d and was caught and sentenced to a month’s jail with hard labour, which meant the treadmill: climbing the equivalent of 10,000 feet a day. After his release, far from making a big deal of his month inside, he never spoke of it and did his best to keep it dark for the rest of his life. The Governors of the College remained keen to help their star pupil, and raised about £50 to speed him on his way to America where he could forget Nell and be himself forgotten.

No such thing. Gissing returned, having gained nothing from his year in the US ‘except to have studied with tolerable thoroughness the most hateful form of society yet developed’. American readers should not take too much offence at this. Gissing was a great hater of wherever he happened to be. After his stay in Exeter, he told Nell that ‘I should fancy no town in England has a more unintellectual population. And the country people are ignorance embodied.’ After an evening at the Authors’ Club, he recorded that ‘to mingle with these folk is to be once and for ever convinced of the degradation that our time has brought upon literature’. Brighton was

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jeffrey manley

March 6th, 2008 6:48pm

When mentioning prominent South London authors, I'm surprised Mr. Mount does not name Henry Williamson. The fisrt volumes of his Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight describe his early life in and around Lewisham. And Mr. Mount is surely familiar with his work since he calls his own series of novels Chronicle of Modern Twilight. These latter by the way should have received more attention than they have.

Markus Neacey

March 11th, 2008 10:13pm

Gissing was not the self-defeating, self-pitying, or hopelessly pessimistic individual so many generally misinformed reviewers imagine him to be. Had he been so he would have hanged himself in his prison cell. Yet, having sacrificed his career and reputation to save a common prostitute, he did not wallow in despair. Instead, by sheer determination and imcomparable industriousness, not to mention courage, he resurrected his life and made of it beauty from ashes. For, during twenty-five years of literary activity, he produced a body of work, whose power and humanity resounds to this day. As Orwell in his day and his many admirers today recognise, that is hardly the legacy of a defeated pessimist.

Tom Luke

March 28th, 2008 4:57pm

I'm left gessing as to the quality of spelling.

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