ABSTRACT
Mr George Gissing has caused a serious commotion amongst the Minor Clerks. Sooner or later somebody in Brixton or Kennington was bound to tum upon the man who writes the small-beer chronicle of those districts. We thought the revolt would come when, in In The Year ofJubilee, Mr Gissing drew a Brixton scholar whose knowledge was entirely derived from the kind of journal which tells you how many sovereigns, all in a row, would make a girdle round the earth. How is it that Brixton did not protest against this reflection upon its culture? However, the worm has turned at last, and Kennington is angry with the portrait of a Minor Clerk in The Town Traveller. Mr Christopher Parish earns two pounds a week on a stool in the City. He succumbs to the charms of Miss Polly Sparkes, who sells programmes at one of the theatres, and he regales her with supper at a restaurant, where he is alarmed by the waiter, does not know the dish he orders at random, and sits munching dry bread in extreme nervousness. Moreover, his speech is not polished, and he hovers weakly on the brink of illiteracy. Mr Parish is a perfectly harmless young man with the most honourable intentions; but his very blamelessness seems to be a new offence in the eyes of Kennington. If he were a 'dog', his Cockney diction might be overlooked; but the spectacle of an abject milksop munching dry bread has prompted some Minor Clerks to vindicate the character of their Order. In Ouida's early novels it is enjoined upon our young nobility that, while they may disregard conventional morals, the dignity of their Order must never be compromised. It is this uplifting ideal which prompts one of them, in a famous passage, to fight his way through a riotous mob in a theatre. Every time his fist encounters the face of Demos he feels that he is
victoriously asserting his Order. Now, had Mr Parish entered that restaurant with self-possession and his hat on one side, addressed the waiter like a tyrant, pooh-poohed the cookery, and ignored the dry bread, the Order ofMinor Clerks might not have felt ashamed ofhim.
