at one side of the young author. A long succession of Kingcote's traits are
obvious self-revelations. At the beginning he symbolically prefers the old
road with the crumbling sign-post, to the new. Kingcote is a literary
sensitive. The most ordinary transaction with uneducated ('that is
uncivilised') people made him uncomfortable. Mean and hateful people by
their suggestions made life hideous. He lacks the courage of the ordinary
man. Though under thirty he is abashed by youth. He is sentimental and
hungry for feminine sympathy, yet he realises that the woman who may with
safety be taken in marriage by a poor man, given to intellectual pursuits,
is extremely difficult of discovery. Consequently he lives in solitude; he
is tyrannised by moods, dominated by temperament. His intellect is in
abeyance. He shuns the present--the historical past seems alone to concern
him. Yet he abjures his own past. The ghost of his former self affected him
with horror. Identity even he denies. 'How can one be responsible for the
thoughts and acts of the being who bore his name years ago?' He has no
consciousness of his youth--no sympathy with children. In him is to be
discerned 'his father's intellectual and emotional qualities, together with
a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother.' He reveals
already a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His prejudices are
intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of
his nature. All this is profoundly significant, knowing as we do that this
was produced when Gissing's worldly prosperity was at its nadir. He was
living at the time, like his own Harold Biffen, in absolute solitude, a
frequenter of pawnbroker's shops and a stern connoisseur of pure dripping,
pease pudding ('magnificent pennyworths at a shop in Cleveland Street, of a
very rich quality indeed'), faggots and saveloys. The stamp of affluence in
those days was the possession of a basin. The rich man thus secured the
gravy which the poor man, who relied on a paper wrapper for his pease
pudding, had to give away. The image recurred to his mind when, in later
days, he discussed champagne vintages with his publisher, or was consulted