ABSTRACT
Victor Hugo has said somewhere that perhaps the reason that inanimate objects do not speak is their taciturnity. There is dignity in this reticence, but if a concession may be made in favour of the morning stars Mr Gissing may claim mere wood and iron for his side. For him inanimate nature suffers like the rest, and the human drama is ushered in by the 'yell ofbrake-tortured wheels' in the sordid gloomy railway station of Dudley Port. It is a raw and grimy world to which this somewhat strained use of the pathetic fallacy introduces us-a dirty night, a third-class carriage, and a disagreeable colloquy between a coarse and vulgar rich man and the hero (using the word in its technical sense), Maurice Hilliard:-
Now, it is disagreeable even for a self-made man to be called a scoundrel, especially by one whom he ranks, quite sincerely, as a 'blackguard.' Mr Dengate could not be wholly bad; he had at least sufficient virtue to appreciate a pose. Irony is a strong point with Mr Gissing, and this incident of the payment ofa debt ofhonour is a good example of it. For from the most unpromising of skies, the comfortable sum of £436 brightens suddenly the world of the poor mechanical draughtsman, who earns £2 a week, and spends halfofit to pension a poor relative. It has been his misfortune to have sufficient intelligence to appreciate the misery of his condition, and he has arrived at a state of mind that is described as 'desperation centred in self' Now, with the sudden
access ofall the possibilities that money brings, he steadies himselffor a careful choice. His wretched environment, his life of drudgery, his expanding instincts, all impel him to a course deliberately epicurean. He throws up his situation; he will taste life at last; not the stale makebelieve of a mechanical routine, but the best that civilisation and art can offer to a man ofhis capacities. After that-the deluge. It is a bold and striking choice; it creates a situation ofgreat and growing interest, and it carries our sympathies.
