New Grub Street, George Gissing [10 best books of all time TXT] 📗

“Most people will take it for fiction. I wish I had inventive power enough to write fiction anything like it. I have published novels, Mr. Reardon, but my experience in that branch of literature was peculiar⁠—as I may say it has been in most others to which I have applied myself. My first stories were written for The Young Lady’s Favourite, and most remarkable productions they were, I promise you. That was fifteen years ago, in the days of my versatility. I could throw off my supplemental novelette of fifteen thousand words without turning a hair, and immediately after it fall to, fresh as a daisy, on the Illustrated History of the United States, which I was then doing for Edward Coghlan. But presently I thought myself too good for the Favourite; in an evil day I began to write three-volume novels, aiming at reputation. It wouldn’t do. I persevered for five years, and made about five failures. Then I went back to Bowring. ‘Take me on again, old man, will you?’ Bowring was a man of few words; he said, ‘Blaze away, my boy.’ And I tried to. But it was no use; I had got out of the style; my writing was too literary by a long chalk. For a whole year I deliberately strove to write badly, but Bowring was so pained with the feebleness of my efforts that at last he sternly bade me avoid his sight. ‘What the devil,’ he roared one day, ‘do you mean by sending me stories about men and women? You ought to know better than that, a fellow of your experience!’ So I had to give it up, and there was an end of my career as a writer of fiction.”

He shook his head sadly.

“Biffen,” he continued, “when I first made his acquaintance, had an idea of writing for the working classes; and what do you think he was going to offer them? Stories about the working classes! Nay, never hang your head for it, old boy; it was excusable in the days of your youth. Why, Mr. Reardon, as no doubt you know well enough, nothing can induce working men or women to read stories that treat of their own world. They are the most consumed idealists in creation, especially the women. Again and again work-girls have said to me: ‘Oh, I don’t like that book; it’s nothing but real life.’ ”

“It’s the fault of women in general,” remarked Reardon.

“So it is, but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you’re to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest anything that tries to represent their daily life. It isn’t because that life is too painful; no, no; it’s downright snobbishness. Dickens goes down only with the best of them, and then solely because of his strength in farce and his melodrama.”

Presently the three went out together, and had dinner at an à la mode beef shop. Mr. Sykes ate little, but took copious libations of porter at twopence a pint. When the meal was over he grew taciturn.

“Can you walk westwards?” Biffen asked.

“I’m afraid not, afraid not. In fact I have an appointment at two⁠—at Aldgate station.”

They parted from him.

“Now he’ll go and soak till he’s unconscious,” said Biffen. “Poor fellow! Pity he ever earns anything at all. The workhouse would be better, I should think.”

“No, no! Let a man drink himself to death rather. I have a horror of the workhouse. Remember the clock at Marylebone I used to tell you about.”

“Unphilosophic. I don’t think I should be unhappy in the workhouse. I should have a certain satisfaction in the thought that I had forced society to support me. And then the absolute freedom from care! Why, it’s very much the same as being a man of independent fortune.”

It was about a week after this, midway in November, that there at length came to Manville Street a letter addressed in Amy’s hand. It arrived at three one afternoon; Reardon heard the postman, but he had ceased to rush out on every such occasion, and today he was feeling ill. Lying upon the bed, he had just raised his head wearily when he became aware that someone was mounting to his room. He sprang up, his face and neck flushing.

This time Amy began “Dear Edwin”; the sight of those words made his brain swim.

“You must, of course, have heard [she wrote] that my uncle John has left me ten thousand pounds. It has not yet come into my possession, and I had decided that I would not write to you till that happened, but perhaps you may altogether misunderstand my silence.

“If this money had come to me when you were struggling so hard to earn a living for us, we should never have spoken the words and thought the thoughts which now make it so difficult for me to write to you. What I wish to say is that, although the property is legally my own, I quite recognise that you have a right to share in it. Since we have lived apart you have sent me far more than you could really afford, believing it your duty to do so; now that things are so different I wish you, as well as myself, to benefit by the change.

“I said at our last meeting that I should be quite prepared to return to you if you took that position at Croydon. There is now no need for you to pursue a kind of work for which you are quite unfitted, and I repeat that I am willing to live with you as before. If you will tell me where you would like to make a new home I shall gladly agree. I do not think you would care to leave London permanently, and certainly