ABSTRACT
It would not be necessary to remind anyone who had read New Grub Street that Mr Gissing is a pessimist. It seemed, indeed, hardly possible to conceive anything more gloomy than that novel, although the strength and fascination of it were remarkable. Yet Born in Exile is at least as sombre in its tone. Mr Gissing has looked out upon the world and seen that it is not all good: or, perhaps, in the course ofhis literary career he has grown contemptuous ofwriters who secure the happiness of their characters at the expense of the conviction of the story. At any rate even in the opening pages ofBorn in Exile we have the gloomy atmosphere; we are present at a prize-giving at Whitelaw College, and it is characteristic of Mr Gissing that we view this prize-giving chiefly from the point of view of the disappointed. The same depression is to be felt in the following chapters; the hero, Godwin Peak, is a boy at Whitelaw College, vexed by terrible poverty and more terrible pride. We read of miserable economies, wretched vulgarities, sordid struggles. When, at the close of the first part of the story, the hero decides to leave Whitelaw College for London, it is not because London holds out for him any bright hopes, any remarkable allurement; it is because he cannot face the humiliation which would attend him if he returned to the College. An insufferable Cockney uncle has taken a shop near the College which he proposes to open as 'Peak's
