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MOORE, Lewis Durward, 1937- A STUDY OF GEORGE GISSING AND SOCIAL DARWINISM WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON NEW GRUB STREET AND THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF H E N R m Y E C R D F T !

The American University, Ph.D., 1974 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

© Copyright by

Lewis Durward Moore

1974

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A STUDY OF GEOROE GISSING AND SOCIAL DARWINISM

WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON NEW GRUB STREET AND THE PRIVATE PAPERS

OF HENRY RYECROFT

BY

LEWIS DURWARD MOORE

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of The American University

in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree

of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Literary Studies

Q - Signatures Committee Dean of the College Chairman: Date:

197^

The American University

Washington, D. C.

.THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIIRAE'/ Hgri

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A STUDY OF GEORGE GISSING AND SOCIAL DARWINISM

WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON NEW GRUB STREET AND THE PRIVATE PAPERS

OF HENRY RYECROFT

This paper examines the relationship between social Darwinism

and selected novels of George Gisaing* Social Darwinism, a late 19th

century social theory growing out of evolutionary thought in general,

and Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species in particular, found its

most fervid supporter in Herbert Spencer. An analysis of social

Darwinist ideas in Part One of the paper, particularly those of Spencer

and his American disciple, William Graham Sumner, shows that four elements

are of primary importance: the idea of the struggle for existence and

consequent survival of the fittest, the limited role of the state, the

emphasis on private versus government charity, and the freedom of the

individual.

Part Two of the paper examines a wide selection of Gissing's novels,

relating the ideas of social Darwinism to his major themes, i.e., his

concern for the role of women, the plight of the poor, the poor but

cultured young man or woman, and the role of the writer and artist in

society. In the third part of the paper, New Grub Street (1891) and

The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (I90j5) are chosen as two of Gissing's

most fruitful novels through which to relate the ideas of social Darwinism

and his major themes. In both of these novels, writers are the dominant

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii

characters* and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is seen as a con­

tinuation of the themes and ideaB of New Grub Street. This relation­

shipobetween the two novels, coupled with their place in Gissing's

literary career, New Grub Street approximately in the middle and The

Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft at the end, allows one to use the

two novels as models representing essential concerns of Gissing at

strategic stages of his career.

My conclusion is that in New Grub Street and The Private Papers

of Henry Ryecroft Gissing reflects to a large extent the language and

ideas of social Darwinism, and though he clearly Ehows in his letters

his aversion to the competitive struggle in hie day, he remains am­

bivalent in these novels. Characters are allowed to express their

views on society, with special emphasis on social Darwinist ideas,

but the narrator remains in the background. Gissing views his role

as that of the artist presenting life as he sees it and allows the

reader to draw his own conclusion about the social or moral issues

presented. Characters take stands for and against the ideas of social

Darwinism, but the narrator remains neutral.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ill

Contents

Introduction p. 1 .

Part I...... p. 7 .

Part II p. 13.

Part III, p. 21.

Appendix...... p. 39.

A Selected Bibliography...... p. ^5.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. George Gissing's novels were reviewed in a variety of ways

during his literary career, but if there is any consensus of opinion

in these reviews, it is that he is a thoughtful novelist, one con­

cerned with ideas, whose works are seriously concerned with contem­

porary problems. For example, an unsigned review of The Whirlpool

in the Manchester Guardian. April 13, 1897» comments: "Novel readers

who are weary of the conventional love story turn with a certain

satisfaction to the works of Mr. George Gissing, where they are sure

to find a thoughtful presentment in dramatic form of some of the

wider and more complicated issues of modern society."^ An unsigned

review of the same novel in the Academy. May 15, 1897, states: "Mr.

Gissing is in love with ideas, and can illustrate them through flesh

and blood: his work lives."2 Finally, in an unsigned review of Our

Friend the Charlatan in The Times. June 29, 1901, the critic sums up

Gissing's career: "Mr. Gissing is still, too, it may be noted, more

interested in ideas than in men and women. Look back upon the many

hours that have been profitably spent over his books and you will find

that the characters you renember best are personifications of some

idea rather than human beings drawn for their own sake."^ These typi­

cal reviews all appeared in the later period of Gissing's career, but

similar ones can be found for the earlier stages of his career.

^Rev. of The Whirlpool, by George Gissing, Manchester Guardian, 13 April 1897, rpt. in Gissing: The Critical Heritage, ed. Pierre Coustillas and Colin Partridge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 276.

2Rev. of The Whirlpool, by George Gissing, Academy. 15 May 1897, li, 516-175 rpt. in Gissing: The Critical Heritage, ed. Coustillas and Partridge, p. 284.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2

It is not only the physical setting of the modern world but

the dilemmas of that world with which Gissing concerns himself,

i.e., the alienation of the talented and sensitive but poor young

man or woman, poverty in general, disease, slums, alcoholism, failure,

mass culture, and the place of women in society. Of course, Gissing

was not the first to write about the problems of 19th century

industrial England. Among those who had explored the miserable

social conditions in which the vast majority of Englishmen lived,

were: Benjamin Disraeli in Sybil, or The Two Nations (l8*t5 ),

Elizabeth Gaskell in Mary Barton (18^8) and North and South (1855),

Charles Kingsley in Alton Locke. Tailor and Poet (1850) and Yeast

(1851), Charles Dickens in Hard Times (185^), and George Eliot in

Felix Holt. The Radical (1866), not to mention writers current with

Gissing, such as Walter Besant. It must be admitted, however, that

the earlier novels dealing with social and industrial problems were

concerned with what might be called the beginnings of conditions

which by Gissing's time had both intensified and been dealt with,

however inadequately, in the political process. Possibly Gissing's

pessimism can be partially traced to the lack of any real progress

in dealing effectively with social problems by his time.

The literary exploration of social problems in 19th century

England was concomitant with, and possibly a spur to, various reform

measures. In 1832 and again in 1867, Parliament passed bills that

^Rev. of Our Friend the Charlatan, by George Gissing, The Times. 29 June 1901, 5; rpt. in Gissing: The Critical Heritage. ed. Coustillas and Partridge, p. 377*

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began to correct some of the social and political inequalities

which had existed for centuries. But no acts of Parliament had

been effective by 1880, when Gissing's first novel, Workers in

the Dawn, was published, in wiping out the appalling conditions

he depicted in that work. His description of Whitecross Street

on a Saturday night matches the horrors of the London of Fagin

and Bill Sikes:

The fronts of the houses, as we glance up towards the deep blackness overhead, have a decayed, filthy, often an evil, look; and here and there, on either side, is a low, yawning archway, or a passage some four feet wide, leading presumably to human habitations. ... Straining the eyes into horrible darkness, we behold a blind alley, the unspeakable abomina­ tions of which are dimly suggested by a gas-larap flickering at the further end. Here and there through a window glimmers a reddish light, forcing one to believe that people actually do live here; otherwise the alley is deserted, and the foot­ step echoes as we tread cautiously up the narrow slum. If we look up, we perceive that strong beams are fixed across between the fronts of the houses - sure sign of the rottenness which everywhere prevails.

In this novel and a number of subsequent ones, Gissing was to deal

with the conditions of the lower classes, for instance in The

Unclassed (l88*t), Detmos (1886), Thvrza (1887), and The Nether World

(1889). After 1889, however, ho turned for the primary setting of

his novels from the lower to the middle classes. Even among the

cited novels, except for The Nether World, he did not deal exclusive­

ly with the lower classes, yet he never ceased to concern himself

with social injustices. In Gissing's last published novel, Will

Warburton (1905), the main character, whose name provides the title

of the work, is suddenly rendered penniless and is forced to become

^George Gissing, Workers in the Dawn: A Novel (1880); rpt. 3 vols. in 1, New York: AMS Press, 19&J), I, 2.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. a grocer. The society to which he formerly belonged has no use for

him once it is known that he has fallen so low. Obviously, this is a

different kind of social injustice from that in the hopeless environ­

ment of The Nether World, where Gissing seldom moves away from his

exposure of the effects of poverty and ignorance. Though Warburton

eventually accepts his position, Gissing makes it clear that he is

somehow tarnished by his profession and that he is no longer of the

same value as a human being to his former acquaintances. He has

become vulgar.

Gissing's interests in social problems began to develop strongly

soon after he met Frederic Harrison in London in 1880.^ Under the

latter*s influence, Gissing soon became a Comtist and joined the

Positivist Society. Harrison, believing in the Comtist view that

reason could solve the problems of society, for a time influenced

Giseing to subscribe to this idea as well. However, by 1882, when

his essay "The Hope of Pessimism" was written, Gissing had completely

rejected the Positivist claims and plans for social reform and had

moved toward the pessimism of Schopenhauer. In this essay, unpublished

in his lifetime, Gissing states that there is no possibility for man

to overcome his problems. The best solution for him is to accept the

dilemma of his existence, i.e., an inability to do anything more than

show sympathy to his fellow man.

^Letters of George Gissing to Members of His Family, collected and arranged by Algernon and Ellen Gissing Tl927; rpt. New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1970), pp. b O t Mt. The above quotations reveal that Gissing had read Comte and was somewhat involved with social problems even before he met Harrison. Hereafter cited as Letters to Family.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5

Not as a hardy, self-sufficient being, ripe to cope with circumstances, as a strong warrior competent against the odds which face him, as a conqueror marching on with front to the stars, - not thus let us regard man, for thence comes the hardening of the heart against him, the insistence on one's own miserable claims, the prevalence of the spirit of combat; so have we come to use that phrase, "the battle of life." No; rather cultivate our perception of man's weak­ ness, learn thoroughly the pathos inherent in a struggle between the finite and infinite. We are shipmates, tossed on the ocean of eternity, and one fate awaits us all. Let this excite our tenderness. Let us move on to the real gulfs hand clasped in hand, not each one's raised in enmity against his fellow. So will the agony of the last drowning moment be lightened by the thought that we have not lived in vain. Save our brother we could not, knowing not, alas, how to save ourselves; but our last word to him was one of kindness, and on hisganguished face we still recognize the gleam of gratitude.

In his introduction to Essays and Fiction. Pierre Coustillas writes

that as much as year before Gissing wrote "The Hope of Pessimism," 7 he had begun to doubt the Comtist dream of the improvement of man.

Although Gissing rejected the Positivist solution and seemed

to have found reasons for accepting the rigors of Schopenhauer, the

evidence of his writings clearly indicates that he never abandoned

his concern for the problems that beset English society in the later

19th century, that affected the individuals living in that society.

Gissing, of course, cannot be forced into one viewpoint about society

in his novels. For one thing, there are too many of them, twenty-

three published in a career that spans nearly a quarter of a century

from 1880 to 1903. Although an examination of a representative selec­

tion of his novels in Part Two of this paper will reveal many traitb

^George Gissing, "The Hope of Pessimism," in George Gissing: Essays & Fiction, ed. Pierre Coustillas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), pp. 9*4-95. The book hereafter cited as Essays.

^Gissing, Essays, pp. 16-17•

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In common among them, Gissing1 a array of characters and situations

is varied enough to merit the claim that he did not, as it were,

merely write and rewrite the same book throughout his career.

It is in light of Gissing's concern for modern social problems,

his ability to transform this concern into varied dramatic situations

and intense character studies, and his awareness of the intellectual

currents of his day that his works may be most profitably examined.

And among all the social theories that flourished during Gissing's

lifetime, what has been called social Darwinism held a prominent

place. Gissing wrote of Herbert Spencer, one of the foremost social

Darwinists of his day, that "He is perhaps our greatest living

philosopher."® Throughout his novels, when he is not explicitly

mentioning Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley, Gissing incorporates and

dramatizes many of the tenets of social Darwinism. In the first

part of this paper I shall briefly explore social Darwinism and

where necessary show its growth from Darwinism. After a clear

understanding is arrived at as to what social Darwinism stood for,

I shall, as mentioned above, examine a representative selection

of Gissing's novels and explain my reasons for choosing two, New

Grub Street (1891) and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903),

for more detailed examination.

In examining Gissing's work as it is related to social Darwinism,

it is not my intention either to show how Gissing is a conscious

exemplar of social Darwinism or how he deliberately opposes the

o Gissing, Letters to Family, p. ko.

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theory, but rather to show that, as someone aware of the intellectual

currents of his day, he reflects, consciously or unconsciously, cer­

tain aspects of that theory. Even if his novels could not be proven

to employ these ideas directly, I think that it is abundantly clear

that he knew social Darwinist theories and that one could at least show

how his novels reflect his reactions, for or against them. I hope to

show how Gissing's novels are indeed permeated with reactions to the

ideas and attitudes called scial Darwinism, and to illuminate two

novels in particular, New Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry

Ryecroft. as Gissing's most successful treatment of such concepts.

I

Charles Darwin's predecessors, Jean Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and

Herbert Spencer raised many of the questions and provided many of the

answers arrived at by the author of The Origin of Species, but Darwin

lays claim to a central place in evolutionary theory by virtue of his

principle of natural selection.^ It is true that A. R. Wallace came

to the same conclusion independently of Darwin, but the latter's name

holds the spotlight because of the books he wrote and the public

attention paid to them.^0 With the idea of natural selection, Darwin

^See Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (New YQrk: The Modern Library, n. d.), p. 53. 5?here, Darwin acknowledges his debt to Malthus for the suggestion of applying the struggle for existence to the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Hereafter cited as Origin of Species.

10Leo J. Henkim, Darwinism in the English N„vel; 1860-1910. The Impact of Evolution on Victorian Fiction (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 19^3), pp.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (and Wallace) gave direction to evolutionary theory in at least one

major area which had been previously lacking. Many earlier thinkers

had noted the gradual changes in, and evolution of, species, but no one

before Darwin had proposed an acceptable mechanism for that change.

Lamarck, in particular, had thought that both changes in species and

new species came about through changes in function. He posited that

if an animal continued to perform, or not perform, certain acts, this

effort would be transformed through its genes to descendants in the

form of acquired characteristics. With the advent of Darwin, Lamarck's

views were rejected though they never lost their fascination for

Spencer, who maintained, in his Principles of Biology, a theory that

combines the views of Lamarck and Darwin.^

The most remarkable aspect of the theory of natural selection is

its simplicity. Briefly, Darwin suggests that changes in species, and

the occurrence of new species, come about through the normal accidents

of birth and reaction to environment. Offspring generally differ from

their parents in some slight manner, and those offspring which can

best cope with the conditions of their environment would have the best

chance of survival and would probably pass their characteristics on to

their offspring. Through the normal processes of reproduction, then,

these "fittest" members of a species would survive and possibly advance 12 mew traits which would later differentiate them from other similar species.

^Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Vol. II of The Works of Herbert Spenceri A System of Synthetic Philosophy (1898; rpt. OsnabnTckT Otto Zeller, 19^), I, 630-32. Hereafter cited as Principles of Biology.

12Darwin, Origin of Species, pp. 51-52.

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As can be readily seen, Darwin's explanation avoided the necessity

of explaining the changes of species by appealing to anything

supernatural.

Before Darwin's Descent of Man was published in 1871, ther~

had been some speculation on the application of evolutionary theories

to human society. In 1850, nine years before The Origin of Species

appeared, Herbert Spencer wrote in his Social Statics that,

The forces at work £ln nature^ exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in the way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds as useless ruminant a. Just as the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he have remained too long a savage, give place to his superior.

Earlier in Social Statics. Spencer had employed the term "fitted for

existence," and one can see him working toward the phrase "survival

of the fittest" which he coined in 186^. Darwin says in a later

edition of The Origin of S p ecies that Spencer's term could be inter­

changed for natural selection.1^ The interesting thing to note about

the above passage is that Spencer not only sees evolutionary movement

occurring in man but implies some progress in this movement. As he

sees it, a lower form gives place to a more advanced one.

In his Social Darwinism in American Thought. Richard Hofetadter

examines those ideas of Spencer which can be called social Darwinist.

^Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, abridged and revised, Vol. XI of The Works of Herbert Spencer (l#92; rpt. Osnabrifck: Otto Zeller, 1963T7 P. 23^. 14 Spencer, Social Statics, p. 203. Spencer, Principles of Biology. I, 530.

"^Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 52.

^Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, rev. ed. (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959), pp. 31-50.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10

The principal idea is the application of natural selection or survival

of the fittest to man and society. Thus, the mechanism which controls

evolution in the rest of nature is applied to humans as well. Through

the survival of the fittest, through this continuous mechanism, man

raises himself higher and higher. Eventually, the effects of the

struggle for existence will result in perfection and happiness for

17 society though individuals may be born and destroyed in the process.

In the interim, along with the application of the struggle for

existence concept to society, Hofstadter makes several other points

about Spencer's views on society. One of the most important of these,

and it must be understood that all are linked to the doctrine of the

survival of the fittest, is Spencer's belief that the state should not

interfere with the individual.

Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state-supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even estate protection of the ignorant from medical quacks. He likewise _g opposed tariffs, state banking, and government postal systems.

Hofstadter points out that Spencer's philosophy was in part an answer

19 to Bentham's "stress upon the positive role in social reform." It

is apparent in the reference to Spencer's attitudes about the state

that the latter has little or no role to play in improving the lot of

man.

Another aspect of Spencer's attitudes toward society, and one

which is directly related to his opinions on the role of the state,

17Hofstadter, p. 37.

l8Ibid., p. 41.

19Ibid., p. 40.

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is that the individual should have virtually unlimited freedom to

do as he pleases.

He ^/BpencexT' called for a return to natural rights, setting up as an ethical standard the right of every man to do as he pleases, subject only to the condition that he does not infringe upon the equal rights of others. In such a scheme, the sole function ofjthe state is negative - to insure that freedom is net curbed.

The individual, free from state restraint and with the ability to

act out his life as he desires, is the means by which society will

progress. Only in the free, competitive clash of individuals with

one another and with nature will the fittest survive and the less fit

decline.

Once man's ability to transform society and himself has been

active long enough, there will be an inevitable progression to the

point where "The very process of social consolidation brought about

by struggles and conquest eliminates the necessity for continual

conflict. Society then passes from its barbarous or militant phase

into an industrial phase ^Spencer's own time^."2”*’ Spencer then en­

visages a period of kindness and cooperation when "The emergence of

a new human nature hastens the trend from egoism to altruism which

will solve all ethical problems."22 Though Spencer does not approve

of state-supported charities, he does approve of private ones for the

beneficial effect which charity has on the giver.23

^Hofstadter, p. kO.

^"Ibid., p. 42. See also Herbert Spencer, The Man 'Versus* the State. Vol. XI of The Works of Herbert Spencer (1892; rpt. Osnabruck: Otto Zeller, 1966), p. 275.

^Hofstadter, pp. 42-43.

23Ibid., p. 41.

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Although Thomas Henry Huxley in Evolution and Ethics and

Walter Bagehot in Physics and Politics or Thoughts on the Applica­

tion of the Principles of ’’Natural Selection11 and ’’Inheritance" to

Political Society explored the possibilities of applying evolutionary

theories to human society, Herbert Spencer was the foremost exponent

of social Darwinist theories in the 19th century. Along with bis

American disciple, William Graham Sumner, he propounded his views

in essays and books. Though Sumner rejected the concept of natural

rights as foreign to the competitive world in which man found himself

and was less certain of any perfect state to be gained apart from a

continual struggle, and consequent survival of the fittest,, he pJf essentially agreed with Spencer. Both believed, aside from the

view that natural selection operated in society, that change could

only come through a slow process. This naturally led to a support

of the status quo, though Sumner, in particular, was against "pluto­

cracy as he understood its he thought it responsible for political 25 corruption and protectionist lobbies." Hofstadter links Spencer

and Sumner in a sentence which expresses some of the things they

stood for: "...personal providence, family loyalty and family

responsibility, hard work, careful management, and proud self-

sufficiency. ” ‘::o This brings out their special emphasis on the indi­

vidual and clearly Implies that the state has little part to play

in the social Darwinist view of social action.

2if Hofstadter, pp. 5>» 66.

25Ibid., p. 63.

26Ibid., p. 12.

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II

The novels of George Gissing provide ample evidence of his

awareness of, and concern for, the social problems of his day. In

a period which witnessed great wealth and the worst kind of poverty

existing side by side, particularly in London and the large industri­

alized cities of England, Gissing consciously set out to describe life

as he saw it. In a letter to his only surviving brother, Algernon,

on November 3, 1880, he wrote:

Certainly I have struck out a path for myself in fiction, for one cannot, of course, compare my methods and aims with those of Dickens. I mean to bring home to people the ghastly condi­ tion (material, mental, and moral) of our poor classes, to show the hideous injustice of our whole system of society, to give light upon the plan of altering it, and, above all, to preach an enthusiasm for just and high 'ideals' in this age of unmitigated egotism and 'shop.' I shall .never write a book which does not keep all these ends in view. 1

Although Gissing was to lose his enthusiasm for, and belief in, reform,

he never lost his desire to write novels that were faithful to what he

saw as the real world. Reviewers of his works constantly label him a

"realist," and though this word is applied with various shades of

meaning, the basic point of view is that Gissing does not falsify what

he sees.2® Consequently, he is also frequently called a pessimist.2^

^Gissing, Letters to Family, p. 83. 28 Rev. of Workers. Gissing, Manchester Examiner and Times. 15 September 1880, 3; R®v. of The Unclassed, by George Gissing, Evening News. 25 June 1884, 1 ; Rev. of The Nether World, by George Gissing, Nation (New York), 20 February 1890, 1(j0 ; Rev. of The Whirlpool, by George Gissing, Critic (New York), 5 March 1898, 159; Eev. of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. by George Gissing, The Times Literary Supplement. 6 February 1903, 38-9; rpt. in Gissing: The Critical Heritage, ed. Coustillas and Partridge, pp. 57,67, 147, 286, 412.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Inherent In these responses to Gissing's works is the view that

though he is not wrong in what he describes, he ignores the more

positive aspects of life. Indeed, one reason that has been ad­

vanced for Gissing's lack of popularity is that he refused to trumpet

optimism. In his novels, Gissing more often has his characters

resign themselves to their hopeless condition than gives them a 30 positive and hopeful solution to their dilemmas.

Gissing's novels, as has been noted, reflect a more pessimistic

view of society than Spencer and the social Darwinists. In analyzing

his works in relation to social Darwinism, though, it must be noted

that Gissing just as frequently agrees with the ideas of the social

Darwinists as disagrees with them. In none of his novels does the

state play a significant part. In two of them, at least, The Unclassed

(1884) and The Wether World (1889), policemen appear and apprehend

someone who has committed a crime, but other than this evidence of

civic justice, the state is never appealed to for a solution to society's

problems. In Workers in the Dawn (1880), Samuel Tollady, the book­

seller and printer who befriends Arthur Golding, does lament the

absence of government activity to help the poor, but nothing is made

of such a solution.^ The social Darwinists believed that the state

^Bev. of The Unclassed. Gissing, Daily Chronicle. 2 December 1895* 3; "Edith Michel on Gissing," Murray's Magazine. April, 1888, 506-18; G . Barnett Smith, Bev. of The Emancipated, by George Gissing, Academy. 19 April 1890, xxxvii, 263; Bev. of New Grub Street, Gissing, Court Journal. 25 April 1891, 710; rpt. in Gissing: The Critical Heritage, ed. Coustillas and Partridge, pp. 76 , "il6, l<5o, 170. 30 Some examples are: Arthur Golding and Helen Norman in Workers in the Dawn: Richard Mutimer in Demos; Sidney Kirkwood and Clara Hewlett in The Nether World; Bernard Kingcote in Isabel Clarendon.

^Gissing, Workers. I, 249.

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would only worsen those problems by its interference. By his usual

omission of such action in his novels, Gissing would seem to agree.

Personal freedom is another tenet of the social Darwinists, and

Gissing's heroes and heroines are fervid believers in their independ-

dence. Although his characters interact with one another and the

larger society, they generally are left to decide their own destiny.

Sidney Kirkwood, in The Nether World, finally arrives at a satis­

factory position in his efforts to maintain a decent life, but it

is one which largely derives from his own inner strength. The social

Darwinists did believe that aid to their fellow human beings was

personally uplifting and Gissing time and again introduces situations

in which one character helps another. In Eve's Ransom (1895)» Maurice

Hilliard relieves the hardships of Eve Madeley and enables her to

survive in a way that wculd probably have been Impossible without

his financial aid. Although he is tempted to exact something in

return for his help in the way of some promise to marry him, in the

end, he renounces any claim to her affections and allows her to feel

free to marry whom she wishes.

In general, Gissing could never be called a social Darwinist

since he rejected the idea that the struggle prevalent in society

could ever lead to any state of perfection or any advance in civili­

zation. Usually when he presents a character struggling to keep

alive and make a life for himself or herself, the general effect is

of the degradation of a life so led, i.e., Osmond Waymark in The

Pnclassed (188^), Bernard Kingcote in Isabel Clarendon (1886), Edwin

Reardon in New Grub Street (1891), Godwin Peak in Born in Exile (1892),

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Jessica Morgan in In the Year of Jubilee, and Will Warburton in the

book by that name. Many of the above characters achieve some balance

in their lives, but Gissing makes it clear that the necessity for the

struggle rather harmed than helped them.

Although it would be inaccurate to call Gissing a social Darwi­

nist, a classification of the themes of his works reveals the extent

to which he was concerned with the same issues. Gissing’s biographer,

Jacob Korg, points this out most succinctly:

The time itself encouraged moral originality. As a thoughtful youth and a wide reader, Gissing was aware that established ethical doctrines were being deeply probed by the blade of scien­ tific inquiry, and that science seemed to suggest the possibility of a systematic code of morality based on its own principles. A vigorous rationalism, captained by such agnostics as Leslie Stephen, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Stuart M i l l a n d Herbert Spencer clashed with intuitive religion, ... ,

Although Gissing shows little concern for science as such, he, like

the agnostics mentioned above, is deeply concerned with how man lives

in this world, not a hypothetical future state of existence. He does,

however, refer on occasion to Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and to ideas

based on the scientists' view of society. Our Friend the Charlatan

(1901) is centered in a bio-sociological approach to society, and

Darwin and Spencer are referred to in that work, the former in rela­

tion to his evolutionary views and the latter as he applied evolution

to society.^ In an early letter, as I have mentioned before, Gissing

^Jacob Korg, George Gissing: A Critical Biography (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 19&3), p. 13.

^George Gissing, Our Friend the Charlatan (1901; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1969), pp. 1, 37, 3*4, 23^.

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3lf registered his high regard for Spencer. In Workers in the Dawn.

Helen Norman discovers The Origin of Species while a student in

Germany and reads it as a revelation.^ Gissing's "The Hope of

Pessimism," without mentioning any social Darwinist by name, rejects

their approach to society along with that of the Positivist's.^

In New Grub Street. Born in Exile. In the Year of Jubilee, and The

Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and

evolution are variously mentioned, the three scientists invariably

in relation to some aspect of evolutionary theory, whether applied 37 to the natural world or man in society. Aside from the specific

references to the theory of evolution and its theorists* Gissing

frequently employe such phrases as "the struggle for existence," or 38 variations thereof, as will be demonstrated in Part III of this paper.

Indeed, as the quotation from Korg asserts, Gissing was well aware of

the intellectual currents of his day, particularly with regard to

evolutionary thought, and frequently employed ideas linking evolution

and society in his novels.

■^Gissing, Letters to Family, p. *t0 .

^Gissing, Workers. I, 318.

^Gissing, "The Hope of Pessimism," Essays, p. 90.

^George Gissing, New Grub Street (Garden City, New York: Dolphin Books, Doubled^y & Company, Inc., n. d.), pp. 31*+t 36*t; George Gissing, Born in Exiled A Novel (1892; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1968), II, pp. 50, 55, 82, 1177 HI . I'M George Gissing, In the Year of Jubilee (189^; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1969). P» 97; George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (New York: A Signet Classic, The New American Library, 1961), pp. 117, 119, 120. Hereafter cited as Ryecroft. 38 See Appendix for examples in Gissing's novels of the phrase "struggle for existence" and variations of that phrase.

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Gissing's intellectual concerns make it relatively easy to

classify his novels in terms of dominant themes. For instance, it

is difficult to read Gissing and not to become aware of his abiding

concern for the place and function of women in society. There is no

novel of Gissing's in which the men so dominate the action that the

women are not of equal importance. For example, in Denzil Quarrier

(1892) the central character is indeed crucial to the novel, but

equal emphasis is placed on his wife, Lilian, and the independent

Mrs. Wade, whom Quarrier responds to as an equal, figures prominently

as well. Possibly in Born in Exile, Gissing concerns himself less with

women than the majority of his other novels since the novel focuses on

Godwin Peak and his intellectual and emotional life. Even here, however,

one of the central motivations of the hero is to marry a woman of

wealth and refinement, especially the latter. When Sidwell Warricombe

becomes the object of his desire, she emerges as a fully developed

character, rather than simply a symbol of Peak's challenge to a world

whioh resists his desires.

Another major concern in Gissing's novels is the role of the

writer or artist in society. Aside from writing novels and short

stories, Gissing sketched, especially on his travels to Italy; these

sketches were used as the basis for the illustrations which accompanied

the published account of his travels, the Ionian Sea (1901) . ^ In

his first novel, Workers in the Dawn, Arthur Golding is an artist and

^ T h e Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertzs 1887-1903. ed. Arthur C. Young (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1961), pp. 236, 28^, 287, 2.9k. For instances of Gissing's interest in music see Letters to Family, pp. 67, 130, 15^» 171*

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artists appear as minor oharactors in other novels. More signifi­

cantly, Gissing concerned himself with his own profession, writing,

and often based the characters and events of his novels on his own

experience. Gissing, like other writers of his time, reveals a pre­

occupation with the writer as hero, particularly with the way his

(the character's) work affects his life. Such a ooncern marks a

self-conaoiousnoss about the craft of writing which Gissing, who

draws on his professional and economical struggles as a writer as

well as his lifo in general, exemplifies to a marked degree. New

Qrub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Hyeoroft are two of

Gissing's most dotailed examinations of the life of the writer in

the late 19th century.

Concomitant with Gissing's ooncern for the role of the writor and

artiBt in sooiety is his awareness of the poor. Oiseing does not pro­

pose any major solutions to the sociul evils he describes in his novole,

beginning with Workers in the Dawn and ending with The Nether World.

He makes it clear that ho does not like the poor and thinks they are /g) fit for little more than they have. But Oissing is eloquent about

their conditions in the five novels in which he describes their life.

One might theorize that he does not believe things should be as they are

in society, but given the brutality in whioh most of tho poor live,

he sees no way out for them. Gissing oven, on occasion, raises tho

question as to whether they ore not more satisfied with their lot Ll than reformers make thorn out to be. Gissing's attitude toward the

llQ Gissing, Letters to Family, pp. h2, 116, 172, l8">, 199, 327. Gissing, Workers. II, 6-7. Ifl Gissing, Workers, I, 8 . Gissing, Our Friend the Charlatan,

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poor and the conditions In which they live is at best ambivalent and

probably reflects his own distaste for their lack of culture and re­

finement.

Among what could be classified as Gissing's major themes, certain­

ly his concern for the frustrations of a cultured, but poor, young man it2 or woman would have to rank high in importance. The central charac­

ters in over half of his novels could be thus described. Godwin Peak,

in Born in Exile, probably presents the problem in its most excruciating

form. Peak's one "sin," poverty, drives him to hide his real views

on religion versus evolution. This deception leads to his eventual

unmasking and consequent failure. Edwin Reardon, in New Grub Street.

ceases to function as a novelist for want of a secure income. His

poverty ruins his marriage and is largely responsible for his early

death. Each character who is portrayed by Gissing as cultured and

refined, but poor, underlines Gissing's theme that poverty destroys.

Though some of these young men and women are rescued, Gissing clearly

shows what could be their lot and in some cases provides no escape.

In these latter instances, the characters either die from their ina­

bility to carry on in the face of their adversities, or they live out

their lives with little enjoyment or hope, rather harmed than aided

by their sensitiveness to culture and a life of greater refinement

than they can afford to lead.

Among the twenty-three novels from which one might choose to

illustrate Gissing in relation to social Darwinism, New Grub Street

(1891) and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903) provide the

^^The themes in Gissing's novels previously discussed sire: Gissing's concern for the role of women, the writer and artist in society, and the plight of the poor.

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best examples. Both novels bring together Gissing’s major themes;

both demonstrate his reactions to the tenets of social Darwinism.

All four major themes, as well as many of the concerns of social

Darwinists (survival of the fittest, the role of the state, personal

charity versus state welfare, and the freedom of the individual), are

dealt with either directly or indirectly. A close examination of New

Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, with the latter

novel interpreted as a reexamination of some of the problems of the

earlier work, will serve to illuminate both Gissing’s fictional

handling of themes and his attitude toward the ideas presented in

the theory called social Darwinism.

Ill

Both New Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

detail the lives of professional writers. New Grub Street was written

half-way in Gissing’s career as a writer and The Private Papers of

Henry Ryecroft at the end of it, thus giving some sense of the range

of experience from which Gissing drew. Chronologically, these two

novels were not only evenly spaced within the years of his writing

career but also among his published works. New Grub Street was

Gissing's ninth published novel, while The Private Papers of Henry

Ryecroft was his twenty-first. The import of these statistics is to

show that not only does Gissing deal with one of his major themes in

both of the above novels, i.e., a concern for the role of the writer

in society, but also that he deals with this theme at widely different

times and after varied experiences. In addition, Gissing merges the

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social Darwinist idea of the struggle for existence and the consequent

survival of the fittest with the theme of the role of the writer in

society, thus joining his preoccupation with his own craft to one of

the principal social theories of his day. For the purposes of this

study, an examination of this union in New Grub Street and The Private

Papers of Henry Ryecroft. along with other major themes of his works

and the ideas of social Darwinism dealt with in Part Two of this paper,

will demonstrate how Gissing makes use of the ideas of social Darwinism.

So far as the structure of the novel is concerned, New Grub Street

is written in the third person in a straightforward chronological

framework with few delvings into the past by any characters. Edwin

Reardon, a failed novelist, looks back to the way things were in a

happier time between himself and Amy, his wife. The narrative begins

with a crucial time in the lives of nearly every one of the major

characters and ends with the death of Reardon and the marriage of Amy

to Jasper Mil vain, a successful writer and a friend of Edwin's. Both

Reardon and Mil vain are struggling writers when the mvel opens, but

Reardon fails while Milvain succeeds triumphantly. In The Private

Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Gissing poses as the editor of a manuscript

left behind by Ryecroft after his death. Ryecroft, after his retire­

ment to Devon, has written a memoir of his life, both while in London

as a struggling writer and while in Devon, where he lives quietly

after being rescued from the toils of his profession by a legacy. At

the end, his life is cut short by heart trouble and general debilita­

tion from his earlier privations.

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One of the main elements which tie New Grub Street and The

Private Papers of Henry Byecroft together, in addition to presenting

Gissing's major themes and the ideas of social Darwinism reflected in

them, is the want of money. This lack causes many of the struggles

and privations encountered in these two works and is intimately

connected with the working out of the plots of both. In New Grub

Street, each character's concept of the way money would help him is

slightly different from the others, but with all of them, there is

a certainty that more money than they possess will benefit their lives.

They see money as a tool that will solve all problems and allow them

to approach nearer to an ideal existence. Henry Byecroft is given a

few more years of life than he could have expected through his un­

looked-for legacy. And, in remembering Byecroft's earlier life, the

reader is profoundly struck by the presence or absence of money*

Byecroft, more than any other character in New Grub Street, approaches

the tenuous nature of Harold Biffen's existence, a writer friend of

Edwin Beardon. The varieties of suffering caused by the lack of

sufficient means permeates the two novels under discussion and makes

real the dramatic nature of the battle of life in their pages.

In many other novels, for instance in Workers in the Dawn. The

Nether World. Eve's Hansom, and Will Warburton, Gissing graphically

shows the struggle to obtain a decent life on the part of his charac­

ters. But, in few of his other novels does he more consistently show

that life for his characters is a battle, a struggle to survive in

any decent way than in New Grub Street and The Private Papers of

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Henry Ryecroft. The social Darwinist idea of the survival of the

fittest does not necessarily mean death to those who fail. It can

mean an existence which is barely tenable from one generation to the

next. Certainly in The Nether World, the poor continue to exist and

propagate, but they seldom prevail against their poverty and ignorance

in obtaining a decent life. Sidney Kirkwood's answer to his wife,

Clara, in The Nether World, when she asks if they must continue to

live as precariously as they do, is that the continuation itself is k3 of value. Kirkwood has no answer other than this stoical acceptance

of fate.

Qissing's emphasis on life as a battle is surprisingly more like

William Graham Sumner's social Darwinist ideas than those of Herbert

Spencer. While Spencer believed that the present day (middle to late

19th century) witnessed the advent of cooperation and that the bitterest

struggles in society were a thing of the past, Sumner felt that man

must continue to struggle and that, over the centuries, progress would

continue to be made through the inevitable competition. Sumner's pri­

mary stipulation for that struggle is that all should have an equal

chance in the battle for life. In New Grub Street. Reardon's struggles

are continuous but productive only of defeat. Far from bringing out

the best in him, when we first encounter Reardon, he is defeated by the

necessity of grinding out another novel to support himself, his wife,

and his child. He tells his wife:

n-z George Gissing, The Nether World: A Novel (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1889), III, 82. kk William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1966),p. l4l.

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"I think it's all over with me. I don't think I shall write any more." "Don't be so foolish dear. What is to prevent your writing?" "Perhaps I am only out of sorts. But I begin to be horribly afraid. My will seems to be fatally weakened. I can't see ray way to the end of anything; if I get hold of an idea which seems good, all the gap has gone out of it before I have got it into working shape."

A few pages later the narrator comments on Reardon:

He was the kind of man who cannot struggle against averse conditions, but whom prosperity warms to the exercise of his powers. Anything like the cares of responsibility would aooner or later harass him into unproductiveness.

As Sumner prescribes, Reardon has am equal chance in life. Part of

Reardon's problems, however, lies in the fact that his struggles,

because of his own personality, increasingly narrow his chances.

He cannot adapt to the prevailing conditions of existence.

Jasper Milvain, on the other hand, adapts ideally to what must

be written in order to progress monetarily. As he tells his sisters,

Dora and Maud, while advising them to begin an authorial career:

"I maintain that wo people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make tho best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you: end to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity. For ray own part, I shan't be able to address the bulkiest multitude; my talent doesn't lend itself to that form. I shall write for the upper middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel that what they are reading has some special r- cleverness, but who can't distinguish between stone and paste."^

^Gissing, New Grub Street, pp. 52-53.

^Ibid., p. 66.

^Ibid., pp. 17-18.

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Milvain is conscious of his own limitations and the world in which

he must exist* He has no illusions as to what is needed in tho

literary marketplace. Toward the end of the book, Jasper discusses

with Dora the future of Biffen's "realistic" novel, "Mr. Bailey,

Grocer," and comments that "The struggle for existence among books

is nowadays as severe as among men." Gissing skillfully manages

to merge the literary world and the larger world behind it in clear

social Darwinist language.

Leo Henkin, writing of men like Milvain and Reardon, admirably

portrays Gissing's depiction of the world where the struggle for

existence ends in the survival of the fittest, those best able to

adapt to the prevailing conditions.

New Grub Street paints the stniggle both among books and among men in the literary world of Gissing's day. Natural selection plays the role of villain; for the adaptation of writers to their environment and to prevailing conditions is the basis of the ac­ tion. The general conception is that in the modern Grub Street success is assured only by adopting the most frankly utilitarian and mercenary views. The author must write what the public wants and is willing to pay for, without consulting his artistic con­ science; and he must employ every art of self-advertisement in the literary game. Those authors who can change their writings to suit the fickle public taste for the new will survive and live, ... • Others, those poor souls with ideals who have set themselves rigid rules of composition, can exist only so long as the public favors their particular brand of literature.

Intelligence and will are skillfully blended in Mil vain, who meets

the criteria for a successful career described by Henkin. Reardon,

however, lacks the necessary force to survive in the literary world.

In the end, Reardon takes a position at a hospital and does not die

Ml Gissing, New Grub Street, p. 460.

^ H e n k i n , Darwinism in the English Novel, p. 230.

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from outright starvation but rather from a congestion in the lungs.

It is certainly with a wistful emphasis that Reardon addresses Biffen

after the latter's novel appears. "I find it difficult to think that

you will always struggle on in such an existence as this. To every

mem of metal there does come an opportunity, and it surely is time

for yours to present itself. I have a superstitious faith in 'Mr.

Bailey.' If he leads you to triumph, don't altogether forget me."

Biffen's reply appears to underscore the failure of both men's lives: 50 "Don't talk nonsense."

Gissing is not backward in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

in using the terminology of social Darwinism. Secure in his good for­

tune, Ryecroft, a blend of Mil vain and Reardon in that he could adapt

enough to continue writing though not enough to achieve Milvain's

success, gives stronger echoes of Reardon than of the latter's prosper­

ous friend.

Hateful as is the struggle for life in every form, this rough-and- tumble of the literary arena seems to me sordid and degrading beyond all others. Oh, your prices per thousand words! Oh, your paragraphings and your interviewings! And oh, the black despair that awaits those down trodden in the fray.

Ryecroft shrinks from the reality of what he knows to be true in the

literary world. But, it is not only from the literary fray that Ryecroft

removes himself. After reading a currently depressing article on the

prospects of an European war, he remarks:

Peace, after all, is the aspiration of the few; so it always was and ever will be. But have done with the nauseous cant about

^°Gissing, New Grub Street, p. M«0.

^Gissing, Ryecroft, p. 52.

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'dire calamity.' The leaders and the multitude hold no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or they are driven to it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them. Let them rend and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till— if that would ever happen— their stomachs turn. Let them blast the cornfield and the orchard, fire the home. For all that, there will yet be found some silent few, who go their way amid the still meadows, who bend to the flower and watch the sunset; aid these alone are worth a thought.

Like Candida, Ryecroft cultivates his own garden, sure in his belief

that the multitude cannot appreciate the beauty of the quiet life.

However, Ryecroft is not forever at peace in his garden. In dis­

cussing stoicism, he questions:

How do we know that the reason of the stoic is at harmony with the world's law? I, perhaps, may see life from a very different point of view; to me reason may dictate, not self-subdual, but self- indulgence; I may find in the free exercise of all my passions an existence far more consonant with what seems to me the dictate of nature. I am proud; nature has made me so; let my pride assert itself to justification. I am strong; let me put forth my strength, it is the destiny of the feeble to fall before me. On the other hand, I am weak and I suffer; what avails a mere assertion that fate is just, to bring about my calm and glad acceptance of this downtrodden doom? Nay, for there is that within my soul which bide me revolt and cry against the iniquity of a o m power I know not. Granting that I am compelled to acknowledge n scheme of things which constrains me to this or that, whether I will or no, how can I be sure that wisdom or moral duty lies in acquiescence? Thus the unceasing questioner; to whom, indeed, there is no reply. For our philosophy sees no longer a supreme sanction, and no longer hears a harmony of the universe. ^

But, Ryecroft's awareness of the struggle for life is at most a memory.

Over the book there lies a sense of peace in Ryecroft's pastoral set­

ting in Devon while from the past come echoes of another, and harsher,

world.

Aside from the clear evidence Gissing gives us in the lives of

Reardon, Mil vain, and Biffen in New Grub Street that life is a struggle

^Gissing, Ryecroft. p. 7*K

53Ibid., pp. 123-124.

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to survive and aside from the words and phrases of Byecroft in The

Private Papers of Henry Byecroft, which also reflect the vocabulary

of social Darwinism, several other characters in New Grub Street

show that Gissing was not only familiar with social Darwinist ideas

but dramatically employed them in his novel, Mrs. Edmund Yule, Amy's

mother, in thinking of her children, admits:

But life was a battle. She must either crush or be crushed. With sufficient means, she would have defrauded no one, and would have behaved generously to many; with barely enough for her needs, she set her face and defied her feelings, inasmuch as she believed there was no choice.

But whilst she could be a positive hyena to strangers, to those who were akin to her, and those of whom she was fond, her affec­ tionate kindness was remarkable. One observes this peculiarity often enough; it reminds one how savage the social conflict is, in which those little groups of people stand serried against their common enemies; relentless to all others, among themselves only the. more tender and zealous because of the ever-impending danger.'7

Gissing clearly shows us the nakedness of the struggle in Mrs. Yule's

personality. Amy, too, know® what is necessary to exist in the world.

After leaving her husband, sh< plans her education, intent on finding

her intellectual balance.

The solid periodicals attracted her, and especially those articles which dealt with themes of social science. Anything that savored of newness and boldness in philosophic thought had a charm for her palate. She read a good deal of that kind of literature which may be defined as specialism popularised; writing which addresses it­ self to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and which forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had never opened one of Darwin's books, her knowledge of his main

^Gissing, New Grub Street, p. 21+0.

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theories and illustrations was respectable. She was becoming a typical women of the new time, the woraan_who has developed concurrently with journalistic enterprise.

Amy's avoidance of Spencer appears to reflect, and somewhat humo­

rously, on his heavy style, but it is noteworthy that she refers

to him as evidently important to intellectual growth. During her

troubles with Reardon, Amy had remarked to him, in the language of

social Darwinism, that "You are much weaker than I imagined. Diffi­

culties crush you, instead of rousing you to struggle."^ Amy, like

her mother later in the novel, believes that one both will and should

react strongly to any call to combat. When she marries Milvain at

the end of the book, she clearly chooses someone who is not defeated

by the battle of life and cam adapt himself to the conditions of

existence.

Toward the end of the book, when Jasper is trying to effect an

end to his engagement with Marian Yule, a writer and the daughter of

another writer, Mdrian talks about Jasper in social Darwinist language,

referring to Reardon and Biffen in the process:

"There are two of my companions fallen in the battle. I ought to think myself a lucky fellow, Marian. What?" "You are better fitted to fight your way, Jasper." "More of a brute, you mean." "You know very well I don't. You have more energy and more intellect."

Alfred Yule, Marian's father, after he learns that he is going blind,

•^Gissing, iiew Grub Street, pp. 36^*365.

56Ibid., p. 51*.

57Ibid., p. 503.

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is spoken of by the narrator in social Darwinist language as well.

Among all the strugglers for existence who rushed this way and that, Alfred Yule felt himself a man chosen for fate’s heaviest infliction. He never questioned the accuracy of the stranger’s judgment, and he hoped for no mitigation,-gf the doom it threatened. His life was over— and wasted.

Yule's approaching blindness makes it virtually impossible for him

to continue his work. Thus, through both the major and minor charac­

ters of his work, Gissing reflects the social Darwinist idea of the

struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.

In the theory of social Darwinism, all ideas grow from the idea

of the survival of the fittest; this concept is the necessary linch­

pin which secures the whole structure of ideas and reaches to every

one. The emphasis on private charity and the role of the state can

be clearly related to the idea of the survival of the fittest. The

practice of charity toward others reveals the advance of civilization

and benefits both giver and receiver. Without past struggles which

allow a measure of security in the modern world, so the social

Darwinists contend, there would be no way in which man could practice

charity. A continuation of the competition between men, though much

abated in the present day, will assure the possibility of further

support for those in need. It is here that the idea comes in of the

state’s limited role. For, in the social Darwinist view, it is only

because of the state's non-interference that there can be a free

movement of both ideas and people toward a better existence. Partic-

kb Gissing, New Grub Street, p. klk.

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ularly in Spencer's view, progress toward perfection in society is

inevitable, but only so long as the state remains in the background.

In New Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.

private charity plays a limited role. Poverty is frequently apparent

in both novels, but we see no Ida Starr (The Unclassed) or Miss Lant

(The Nether World) devoting themselves to its eradication. There is

not even a Lady Ogram to come to the aid of an ambitious young man,

poor but cultured, like Dyce Lashmar in Our Ffriend the Charlatan.

though Ryecroft receives a legacy when he is nearly past needing one.

After Biffen's suicide, Amy Reardon remarks to Jasper Mil vain that if

only one had know that he was so poor something could have been done.^

Both Biffen and Reardon receive help from others, the former from his

brother and the latter from his mother-in-law, but no one in New Grub

Street acts as an agent of charity. One character, a Mrs. Morton

White, referred to by Milvain as a literary hostess but never present 60 in the novel, has in the past worked in a Liverpool soup kitchen.

Gissing appears to be concerned for the problems of his struggling

writers, but their independent and sensitive natures probably prevent

anyone from approaching them with charity in mind. When Amy receives

L10,000 on the death of her uncle, John Yule, Edwin, then separated

from his wife, is too proud to effect a reconciliation now that she is

wealthy. It is only the illness of their son, Willy, that breaks

through their barriers of pride and allows them to renew their happi-

^Gissing, New Grub Street, p. 500.

^°Ibid., p. 167.

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ness, a happiness unfortunately cut short by the death of Reardon.

A similar event occurs to Ryecroft in The Private Papers of

Henry Ryecroft; the writer struggles on, lonely and poor, until the

legacy "drops" from the sky. This is an informal kind of giving.

An acquaintance, much to Ryecroft's surprise, leaves him a life

annuity of LJOO. Gissing, posing as the memoirist's editor, gives

us a portrait of the author which probably explains why he was not

treated as an object of charity, at least to his face.

When first I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for twenty years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man, beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental work. Many forms of literature had he tried; in none had he been conspicuously successful; yet now and then he had managed to earn a little more money than his actual needs demanded, and thus was enabled to see something of foreign countries. Naturally a man of independent and rather scornful outlook, he had suffered much from defeated ambition, from disillusions of many kinds, from subjection to necessity; the result of it, at the time of which I am speaking was certainly not a broken spirit, but a mind and temper so sternly disciplined that in ordinary intercourse with him one did not know but that he led a calm, contented life. Only after several years of friendship was I able to form a just idea of what the man had gone through, or of hiB actual existence.

Ryecroft is someone to know only on his own terms; one who could not

be easily helped directly. The disguise of his material and emotional

needs places Ryecroft beyond the reaches of ordinary sympathy; no one

knows what he endures and consequently cannot begin to help him.

Although the limited nature of private charity in the two novels

under discussion might be explained by the concentration on the lives

of writers and not the world of the lower-class poor as in earlier

novels, the absence of fictional treatment of the state appears, when

^Gissing, Ryecroft. pp. xvii-xviii.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. seen in relation to Gissing's other works, to be a reflection on

Gissing's part that the best state is one which interferes the

least in the lives of its citizens. Hail is delivered in both

New Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft; but other

than this incident, and references to the workhouse in the former novel,

one might assume from these two works, and most other novels of Gissing

except where someone runs for Parliament as in Our Friend the Charlatan

and Denzil Quarrier. that England had no government. Private individ­

uals, acting alone or with others, work out their destinies without

the benefit of a paternalistic state. Surprising as it is in this

era of reform, Gissing, either consciously or unconsciously, reflected

the social Darwinist views that the state's role in society should be

strictly limited.

As in the case of private charity and the role of the state in

society, the social Darwinist emphasis on individual freedom iB inti­

mately linked with the idea of the struggle for existence in society

leading to the survival of the fittest. Without the free play of

individual wills, ideas, desires, and aspirations, the social Darwinist

would say that there would be no progress in society. Certainly

Spencer's era of cooperation and altruism, according to the social

Darwinists, would be impossible if individual man had not created the

conditions for it. While in New Grub Street and The Private Papers

of Henry Ryecroft, Gissing makes no claim for his characters as

benefactors of humanity, he does present them as fiercely individual­

istic. Reardon and Biffen, in particular, display a pride and indepen­

dence that prevent them from seeking anyone's help. When Milvain

attempts to promote Reardon's next-to-last novel, the latter refuses

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his aid evezi though it would have been financially remunerative

to accept.^ Biffen, who in the past has borrowed from his brother,

finally refuses to do so again, and his consequent, extreme poverty,

coupled with his frustrated passion for Amy, Reardon's widow, drives

him to suicide. It is unlikely that if he had had L*lOO a year he

would have killed himself.

Gissing's portrait of Ryecroft quoted earlier reveals the intense

isolation of the man. Ryecroft himself notes his perfect happiness

in being alone, unfettered with other people. Although Ryecroft is

an extreme case of individualism in the novels of Gissing, he is

representative of a strain seen in many other Gissing characters,

Godwin Peak in Born in Exile and Hubert Eldon in Demos, in particular,

who recoil from groups and find their salvation in their own indepen­

dent natures. Ryecroft's last words echo his emphasis on finding,

in his own life, the standards and motivations for his conduct.

I could wish for many another year; yet if I knew that not one more awaited me, I should not grumble. When I was ill at ease in the world, it would have been hard to die; I had lived to no purpose that I could discover; the end would have seemed abrupt and meaningless. Now my life is rounded; it began with the natural irreflective happiness of childhood, it will close in the reasoned tranquillity of the mature mind. How many a time after long labour on some piece of writing, brought at length to its conclusion, have I laid down the pen with a sigh of thankfulness; the work was full of faults, but I had wrought sincerely, had done what time and circumstance and my own nature permitted. Even so may it be with me in my last hour. May I look back on life as a long task duly completed— a piece of biography; faulty enough, but good as I could make it— and, with no thought but one of contentment, welcome the repose to follow when I have breathed the word "Finis."

^Gissing, New Grub Street, p. 165•

^Gissing, Ryecroft. p. 183•

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The world has receded to a remote distance, and like both Reardon

and Milvain in their own independent decisions on how they should

live and work, Ryecroft's tone is one which lacks apology for being

what he is.

One may well ask, granted that Gissing reflects the world to a

large extent through the ideas of social Darwinism in New Grub Street

and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. what does Gissing think of

the ideas of social Darwinism, using these two novels as evidence?

Does he approve of the social world he constructs? This is a diffi­

cult question to answer in terms of clear-cut evidence. One is reduced,

without external evidence, to choosing where one thinks Gissing's sym­

pathies lie. Though Jasper Mil vain lives and succeeds where Reardon

and Biffen die, I am inclined to think Gissing favored the ideas of

the latter two while recognizing, through the character of Milvain,

the way life is. Reardon, after all, is the central character of Now

Grub Street and Gissing's relentless portrayal of his defeat and death

appears to attempt to evoke a response in the reader to the horror of

life under these conditions. Eyacroft, in The Private Papers of Henry

Ryecroft. is another sympathetic portrait; he is removed from the

struggle to succeed but appears to want to evoke sympathy on the part

of the reader for his past hardships. But to answer that Gissing

abhorred the brutality of the struggle for existence in society and

thus favored characters most like himself is only one reader's response.

One could, however, bring in evidence from Gissing's own life that

would align him on the side of Reardon, Biffen, and Ryecroft— his

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bookishness, his love of the classics, his attempt to create art

and not mere commercial success, his dislike of the masses, and his

aversion to the competition so rife in his own d ay.^ All of these

characteristics can be documented from Gissing’s own letters, but

this does not decide for the vorld of the novels. Probably the

answer to the question as to whether or not Gissing approved of

the struggle for existence depicted in the fictional worlds of the

two novels under discussion lies in Gissing's own superb control of

his craft. For Reardon, Biffen, and Ryecroft, Milvain's way is be­

yond them; but Milvain himself has the paramount desire to adapt

to what he sees as the necessary means to continue the struggle for

existence and to survive as well as possible. In other words, the

novels leave the answer up to the reader as to whether life is

bearable in a competitive system. If we were to believe what Gissing

states in "The Hope of Pessimism," resignation and withdrawal from

the world's strife is the only answer— the competition for existence,

no matter what it might bring, is not worth the consequent travail.^

But, in the narrative world of New Grub Street and The Private Papers

of Henry Ryecroft. the reader is confronted with a clear choice as

to where to put his sympathies and ultimately left to his own inter­

pretation. Even though Ryecroft has no Milvain with which the reader

^Gissing, Letters to Family, pp. 133, 1^ , 160; 161, 197, 198; 126, 128-29, 139, 193,' 196; 155,’ 183, 185 , 207; 158, 169.

^Gissing, "The Hope of Pessimism," Essays, pp. 96-97.

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can contrast him, Byecroft's own life is presented clearly and

the reader can either agree or disagree with his opinions and mode

of life. There is no "right" answer for the novels as to whether

the struggle for existence is worth continuing. However, though

Gissing clearly disliked the brutal competitiveness of modern life

and though he personally withdrew from it as much as possible, yet

he worked, and struggled, with his own life and craft until his last

illness. Veranilda was left unfinished at his death. The ambivalent

nature of Gissing's response to the ideas of social Darwinism in

New Grub Street and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft could thus

be traced to his own life. Proud and independent, Gissing, himself

his own ideal of the refined and cultured young man without means,

labored intensely to create his art in his own vision.

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Appendix

Many of Qissing's novels reflect aspects of the phrases

"struggle for existence" and "survival of the fittest." Below

are selections from four works at various periods of his career.

The Unclassed (1884, 1896)

p. 19 * "...in each decisive instance his will had been

directed by a shrewd intelligence which knew at once

the strength of its own resources and the multiplied

weaknesses of the vast majority of men. In the pur­

suit of his ends he would tolerate no obstacle which

his strength would suffice to remove."

p. 20. "...his physical power was wont to manifest itself in

brutal self-assertl6n."

p. 20. "••.henceforth to fight his own battle, and showed

himself capable of winning it."

p. 46. "...these times of miserable struggle."

p. 54. " fI am by nature combative.' "

p. 125. " 'It's nature that the strong should rule over the

weak, and show them what's for their own good. What

else are we here for?' "

p. 125. " 'In private contract a man hasonly a right to what he's

strong enough to exact.' "

p. 225. " 'Man triumphs by asserting his right to do so. Self-

consciousness he claims as a good thing, and embraces

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the world as his birthright. Here, you see, there is

no room for the crushing sense of sin. Sin, if anything,

is weakness. Let us rejoice in our strength whilst we

have it.' "

p. 255• ’’What of those numberless struggling creatures to whom

such happy fortune could never come, who, be their

aspirations and capabilities what they might, must

struggle vainly, agonise, and in the end despair?"

p. 290. "Unconsciously, he had struggled to the extremity of

weariness, and now he cared only to let things take

their course, standing aside from every shadow of new

onset."

New Grub Street (1891)

p. 10. " 'The failure of his last ^novel^ depressed him, and

now he is struggling hopelessly to get another done

before the winter season.' "

p. 11. " 'Because one book had a sort of success he imagined

his struggles were over.' "

p. 12. " 'He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make

them; he can't supply the market.' "

p. 25. "...one readily divined in him a struggling and embittered

man."

p. 57. " 'It makes me eager to go back and plunge into the fight

again.' "

p. 80. "It ^Reardon's nature^ was adjusted to circumstances of

hardship, privation, struggle."

p. 82. " 'Because you are the kind of man who is roused by

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necessity. I am overcome by it.' "

p. 95- "And he took a draught of ale, like one who is re­

invigorated for the battle of life."

p. 97* "...his name should be spoken among men— unless he

killed himself in the struggle for success."

p. 108. "In literature, as in most other pursuits, the press

of energetic young men was making it very hard for a

veteran even to hold the little grazing-plot he had

won by hard fighting."

p. 130. " 'Hope of money enough to struggle through another

half year, ... .' "

p. 150. "That a struggling man of letters should have been able

to marry, ... ."

p. 161. " 'It's only the strongest men that can make their way

independently.' "

p. 197* " 'I can't recall one word of encouragement from you,

but many, many which made the struggle harder for me.' "

p. 2*4-1. "Mr. Reardon, it was true, did not impress one as a

man likely to push forward where the battle called for

rude vigour, ... ."

p. 260. "A man has no business to fail; least of all can he

expect others to have time to look back upon him or

pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict. Those

behind will trample over his body; they can't help it;

they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure."

p. 293* " 'My life has been one long, bitter struggle, ... .' "

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p. 379. " 'They ^two or three successful novelists of the to£/

have never known struggle; not they.' "

p. *429. " 'The end of mine (/my life?, of many long years of

unremitting toil, is failure and destitution.' "

p. 430. "But try to imagine a personality wholly unfitted for

the rough and tumble of the world's labour-market."

p. *495. "And why should he preserve a life which had no pros­

pect but of misery?"

pp.507- " 'It is men of my kind who succeed; the conscientious, 508 and those who really have a high ideal, either perish

or struggle on in neglect.' "

Eve*a Ransom (1895)

p. 12. " '...and ask how I go to my present position, you'll

find it's the result of hard and honest work.' "

p. *47. "Another twelvemonth of his slavery and he would have

yielded to brutalizing influences which rarely relax ... ,

their hold upon a man."

p. 92. "...the country girl who toiled to support her drunken

father's family."

p. 1*41. " 'From year's of struggle to keep myself alive, ... .' "

p. 168. " 'There's so much of the brute in us all.' "

p. 225. " 'I should have drudged at some wretched occupation

until the work and the misery of everything killed me.' "

p. 235. " 'You have a struggle before you; ... .' "

pp.332- "When would the cursed people get back to their toil, 333 and let the world resume its wonted grind and clang?"

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p. xvii. "He was a struggling man, beset by poverty and other

circumstances very unpropitious to mental work."

p. xviii. "It was a bitter thought that after so long and hard

a struggle with unkindly circumstances he might end

his life as one of the defeated."

p. 25. "It amuses me then to see what the noisy world is doing,

what new self-torments men have discovered, what new

forms of vain toil, what new occasions of peril and

of strife."

pp. 28- "In those days I was feelingly reminded, hour by hour, 29 with what a struggle the obscure multitudes manage to

keep alive."

p. 32. "I was battling for dear life; on most days I could

not feel certain that in a week's time I should have

food and shelter."

p. 40. "Only by contrast with this thick-witted multitude can

I pride myself upon my youth of endurance and of combat."

p. 48. "It is because nations tend to stupidity and baseness

that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals

have a capacity for better things that it moves at all."

p. 53. "Everyone who can think at all sees how slight are our

safeguards against that barbaric force in man which the

privileged races have so slowly and painfully brought

into check."

p. 71. "Man is not made for peaceful intercourse with his

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fellows; he is by nature self-assertive, commonly aggres­

sive."

pp.120- "...does the savage, scarce risen above the brute, enter 121 upon the same 'new life' as the man of highest civiliza­

tion?"

p. 160. "Wind and rain lashing the house filled me with miserable

memories and apprehensions; I lay thinking of the savage

struggle of man with man, and often saw before me no

better fate than to be trampled down into the mud of life."

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A Selected Bibliography

Works by George Gissing.

George Gissing and H. G. Wells: Their Friendship and Correspondence.

Ed. Royal A. Gettmann. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961.

George Gissing's Commonplace Book: A Manuscript in the Berg Collec­

tion of The New York Public Library. Ed. Jacob Korg. New York:

The New York Public Library, 1962.

George Gissing: Essays & Fiction. Ed. P.ierre Coustillas. Baltimore:

The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.

Gissing, George. Born in Exile: A Novel. 1892; rpt. New York: AMS

Press, 1968.

Gissing, George. Demos: A Story of English Socialism. Ed. Pierre

Coustillas. Brighton, England: The Harvester Press, 1972.

Gissing, George. Denzil ^uarrier: A Novel. 1892; rpt. New York:

AMS Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. Eve's Ransom: A Novel. 1895; rpt. New York: AMS

Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories. Intro.

Thomas Seccombe. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1906.

Gissing, George. In the Year of Jubilee. 189^; rpt. New York: AMS

Press, 1969*

Gissing, George. Isabel Clarendon. 2 vols. Ed. Pierre Coustillas.

Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. The Nether World: A Novel. 3 vols. London: Smith,

Elder, & Co., 1889.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Gissing, George. New Grub Street. Garden City, New York: Dolphin

Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., n. d.

Gissing, George. Our Friend the Charlatan: A Novel. 1901; rpt.

New York: AMS Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. New York:

A Signet Classic, The New American Library, 1961.

Gissing, George. Thyrza: A Tale. 3 vols. in 1. 1887; rpt. New

York: AMS Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. The Unclassed. 1896; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Gissing, George. The Whirlpool. 1897; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. Will Warburton: A Romance of Real Life. 1905; rpt.

New York: AMS Press, 1969.

Gissing, George. Workers in the Dawn: A Novel. 5 vole, in 1. 1880;

rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

The Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz: 1887-1903. Ed. Arthur

C. Young. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press,

1961.

The Letters of George Gissing to Gabrlelle Fleury. Ed. Pierre

Coustillas. New York: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox

and Tilden Foundations, 196^.

Letters of George Gissing to Members of His Family. Collected and

arranged by Algernon and Ellon Gissing. 1927; rpt. New York:

Kraus Reprint Co., 1970.

Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George

Gissing. With biographical and critical notes by his son. Intro.

Virginia Woolf. London: Jonathan Cape, 1929.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ^7

Works on George Gissing.

Coustillas, Pierre, ed. Collected Articles on George Gjss-jng.

New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 196?.

Coustillas, Pierre and Partridge, Colin, eds. Gissing: The Critical

Heritage. London: Routledge 8c Kegan Paul, 1972.

Goode, John. "Gissing, Morris and English Socialism." Victorian

Studies. 12 (1968), 201-227.

Korg, Jacob. George Gissing: A Critical Biography. Seattle: Univer­

sity of Washington Press, 1963.

Roberts, Morley. The Private Life of Henry Maitland. London: Eveleigh

Nash, 1912.

Swinnerton, Frank. George Gjssing: A Critical Study. New York:

George H. Doran Company, 1923.

Ward, A. C. Gissing. London: Longmans, Green 8e Co. for The British

Council and the National Book League, 1959*

Works on social Darwinism and nineteenth century.

Bagehot, Walter. Physics and Politics; or. Thoughts on the Applica­

tion of 'Natural Selection1 and 'Inheritance' to Political

Society. Intro. Hans Kohn. Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Victorian Temper: A Study in Literary

Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,

1951.

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life

and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. New

York: The Modern Library, n. d.

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ELlwood, Charles A. A History of Social Philosophy. New York:

Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1939.

Henkin, Leo J. Darwinism in the English Novel; 1860-1910. The

Impact of Evolution on Victorian Fiction. New York; Russell

& Russell, Inc., 1963.

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. Garden

City, New York; Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company,

Inc., 1959.

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Victorian Minds. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.

Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Rev. ed.

New York; George Braziller, Inc., 1959.

Huxley, Thomas H. Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays. New York:

D. Appleton and Company, 1896.

Irvine, William* Apes, Angeles, and Victorians; The Story of Darwin,

Huxley, and Evolution. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc.,

1955.

Keating, P. J. The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction. New York;

Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1971.

Laver, James. Manners and Morals in the Age of Optimism; 1848-1914.

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966.

Spencer, Herbert. First Principles. The Works of Herbert Spencer, I.

1904; rpt. Osnabrffck: Otto Zeller, 1966.

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Biology. 2 vols. The Works of

Herbert Spencer. II, III. 1898; rpt. Osnabrifck: Otto Zeller, 1966.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. k9

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Ethics. 2 vols. The Works

of Herbert Spencer. EC, X. 1892; rpt. Osnabruck: Otto Zeller, 1966.

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. The

Works of Herbert Spencer. IV, V. 1899; rpt. OsnabrUck: Otto

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Sociology. 3 vols. The Works

of Herbert Spencer. VI, VII, VIII. 190^; rpt. Osnabruck: Otto

Zeller, 1966.

Spencer, Herbert. Social Statics. Abridged and Revised: Together

with The Man 1 Versus* the State. The Works of Herbert Spencer.

XI. 1892, rpt. Osnabrtfck: Otto Zeller, 1966.

Sumner, Graham. Social Darwinism: Selected Essays. Intro.

Stow Persons. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,

1963.

Sumner, William Graham. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.

Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1966.

Trevelyan, George Macaulay. British History in the Nineteenth Century

and After (1782-1919). 2nd. ed. London: Longmans, Green and

Co., 1937.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.