ABSTRACT
Born in Exile is, like all Mr George Gissing's recent works, a suggestive novel, full of close thought and carefully-drawn character. To skim it is impossible. Read attentively, as it deserves to be, it must leave the impression ofa power and penetration not possessed by many modem novelists. On the other hand, in lighter and far commoner qualifications, such as humour, pathos, picturesqueness, or stirring narrative, Mr Gissing is deficient. His novels appeal neither to the heart, nor the senses, nor the imagination, but almost exclusively to the head; and they, moreover, are pervaded by a certain provincialism of tone and topic. The principal characters belong to a group ofrather clever young men educated at the institute of a big Midland town; and the odour ofthis institute and its classes tends to cling to the story from beginning to end. Of the young men, Godwin Peak is the most conspicuous figure. Described flatteringly, he is a natural aristocrat clogged by plebeian connexions and plebeian breeding. Described unflatteringly, he is a snob. We should be doing an injustice, however, to Mr Gissing's subtlety of treatment if we adopted this latter description. Peak goes forth into the world a fierce, if undeclared, Radical and atheist. But blended with his Radicalism and atheism is an intellectual disdain of the populace, which ripens first into a feeling of social repugnance, and finally into a yearning to move in the circles with which his mental and social affinities ally him. So far, Godwin Peak is an interesting and genuine study in human nature, and we cannot lightly dismiss him as a snob. But we cannot find the same plausibility in the false step which he is led to take by his overmastering desire to scale the social heights above him. Having been seized with admiration for a young lady of some social station, it suddenly strikes him. that he might recommend himself to her and to her father by entering the Church-the Church
which, as his intimates know, he derides in private, and has even derided in point. On the spur of the moment he calmly announces his intention to take Holy Orders. Forthwith he casts science to the winds, and settles down in the neighbourhood ofhis friends the Warricombes, reading divinity and preparing defences ofthe faith in order to improve his position with Warricombe pere. For a while all is well. Then his falsity is detected and he is humiliated in the eyes ofthe woman whom he loves and who has begun to return his love. It does not seem to us that there is any adequate motive for Peak's unpremeditated treachery to himsel£ To a strong, self-contained, and proud character-and Peak's had been so presented-such a sudden and violent deflection from ordinary straightforwardness appears well-nigh impossible. However, it could hardly have failed to occur to Peak that in the nineteenth century he was far more likely to attain the social position he coveted by persevering in his own work than by masquerading as a clergyman. Nor does society receive every clergyman with open a~ms. It may be said that this is human nature, to go hopelessly astray just when one would have least expected it. Perhaps; but, if novelists are to avail themselves freely of human fallibility as a spring of action, where will consistency of characterization-heretofore considered the prime merit of the novel writer-come in? The minor characters are all cleverly drawn. The Rev. Bruno Chilvers, in particular, is an excellent satire upon the broad, complaisant clergyman who is so tolerant that he would smile benignantly upon Apollyon, and welcome him as a disguised supporter of the Christian religion. The author of the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, we might add, was Sir Thomas Browne, not Sir Thomas Brown. But here, no doubt, it is the reviser who is at fault.
