University of Virginia Library

An Unknown Gissing Story from the Chicago Daily News
by
Robert L. Selig

I recently discovered an unknown Gissing story in the Chicago Daily News of 1877, a story dating from his year of American exile. The search for Gissing's youthful lost fiction has lasted now some two-thirds of a century. His best-known novel, New Grub Street (1891), provided the earliest clue: the minor character Whelpdale, a resilient London hack, tells of first getting published during an ill-considered trip to America's Middle West. With almost no money remaining in his pockets, he wrote a short story and had it accepted by Chicago's largest newspaper. "For some months," Whelpdale adds, "I supported myself in Chicago, writing for that same paper, and for others."[1] In 1912 a thinly disguised Gissing biography by his friend Morley Roberts, The Private Life of Henry Maitland, asserted that Whelpdale's

transatlantic adventures came from Gissing's own life—specifically from his year in the United States after his college thefts for his prostitute love, his expulsion from Owens, and his imprisonment in Manchester. Roberts challenged American scholars to look for Gissing's fiction in the Chicago Tribune, that city's largest newspaper in the late 1870s.

Shortly after the First World War, a group of researchers including George Everett Hastings, Vincent Starrett, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, and Christopher Hagerup found eight Gissing stories in the Tribune just as Roberts had foretold: three signed "G. R. G." and five without signature. The publication dates ranged from March 10 to July 29, 1877. Both manner and theme identified even the unsigned pieces as Gissing's. Next, Whelpdale's last words caught the eyes of the researchers—"for that same paper, and for others"—and they shifted their investigation to the rest of Chicago's press. Sure enough, they found three more stories in Chicago dailies other than the Tribune—all unsigned but clearly by Gissing. The publication of these extended from April 28 to June 2, 1877.[2]

In the late 1920s and the early 1930s, three further stories cropped up from Gissing's American stay: "An English Coast-Picture" in Appletons' Journal (New York) (July 1877); "The Artist's Child" in the Alliance (Chicago) (30 June 1877), an obscure religious paper; and "A Terrible Mistake" in the National Weekly (Chicago) (5 May 1877), an even more obscure and ephemeral publication. All three of these pieces appeared under the pseudonym "G. R. Gresham"—the name of a villainous character in Workers in the Dawn (1880), Gissing's first novel. Then, after a lapse of almost fifty years, Pierre Coustillas and I found two more Gissing stories in Chicago's Alliance: "A Mother's Hope" (12 May 1877) and "A Test of Honor" (2 June 1877). Like the previously uncovered story in the Alliance and also like those in Appletons' and in the National Weekly, these two newest finds bore the pen name "G. R. Gresham."[3]

My latest discovery of an unknown Gissing story comes from a paper ignored till now in the search for Gissing's fiction—the Chicago Daily News. I found my clue in Professor Mabbott's description of where he and others had looked: the Tribune, the Journal, the Post, the Times, the Inter-Ocean, but, curiously enough, not the News—Chicago's largest evening paper in 1877.[4] When I read through the News of Gissing's American year, I found an unsigned story that I thought undoubtedly his—"Too Wretched to Live" (24 April 1877, p. 2). The gloomy theme and the journeyman prose have the unmistakable ring of Gissing's early work. And in the News of May 18,

1877, I found an important piece of corroborating evidence: "The Warder's Daughter"—a virtually unchanged version of Gissing's "The Warden's Daughter," which had first appeared in Chicago's Journal of April 28, 1877, and was identified as his by both Starrett and Mabbott.

Struggling to earn his keep from one week to the next, Gissing apparently gained a second payment for a story already published by a rival Chicago daily. The News piece remains essentially the same as that appearing in the Journal. The few alterations in scattered words and in a single phrase could easily have occurred during simple recopying. For many years later, Gissing retained the habit of submitting his work in longhand. Obviously, he could not have sent the News the clipped-out published version, for that would have exposed it as an already-used story. He could have recopied either the Journal's printed version or his own hand-written draft. One other possibility remains: simultaneous submissions of slightly different manuscripts, followed first by publication in the Journal and then by Gissing's failure to withdraw his story from that paper's local rival. In any case, the title change from the Americanized "Warden" to the British form "Warder" argues against a mere case of literary piracy by the News's American staff—a piracy without the awareness of the young man from England. Most importantly, the appearance in the News of this known Gissing piece establishes that the editors had a taste for his fiction—circumstantial evidence that tends to support his authorship, as well, of "Too Wretched to Live."

The publication date of "Too Wretched to Live"—April 24, 1877—falls well within the period of Gissing's other known stories from Chicago: March 10 to July 29, 1877. More specifically, Mabbott and Starrett established that Gissing's fiction had appeared in dailies other than the Tribune from April 28th through June 2nd. Indeed, "Too Wretched to Live" came out in the News four days before his first other extant non-Tribune story—"The Warden's Daughter" (the Journal, 28 April 1877). In view of the News's prominence and its extensive use of fiction, Gissing's turning to that paper soon after the Tribune seems just what one would expect from a struggling young writer in Chicago of the late 1870s.

"Too Wretched to Live" contains marks of Gissing's handiwork at least as compelling as the external evidence. Consider, for example, the jilted Lilian Frasier's suicide by drowning. In Gissing's early fiction and even in works from the '90s, the plot device of drowning recurs like an obsession. In his very first story, "The Sins of the Fathers" (1877), the heroine commits both suicide and murder by drowning herself and her former fiancé. The heroine in "Brownie" (1877) avenges the murder of her poor drowned sister by driving the villain into drowning himself too. Watery suicide also turns up in the novelette All for Love (written 1880; pub. 1970) and in two short stories from about this same period: "The Last Half Crown" (written 1879-1880; pub. 1970) and "Cain and Abel" (written 1880; pub. 1970). Accidental drowning occurs in "The Quarry on the Heath" (written 1881; pub. 1970) and, most memorably, in a piece from Gissing's maturity—"The Day of

Silence" (1893). In this late working-class story, the death of father and son during a pleasure trip on the Thames evokes an almost tragic intensity. Death by water also appears in Gissing's full-length novels. In Workers in the Dawn (1880), the hero chooses its most spectacular form: he throws himself into Niagara Falls. In Denzil Quarrier (1892) suicide by drowning ends the life of sensitive Lilian, who has the same first name as the "crushed and broken lily" in "Too Wretched to Live." Even The Odd Women (1893), one of the novelist's best known works, contains two random drownings: the first by a boating accident and the second by suicide in a mental ward's bathtub. Given this frequent pattern in much of Gissing's fiction, one can recognize the drowning in "Too Wretched to Live" as an identifying sign—a virtual Gissing watermark.

The broad narrative subject of "Too Wretched to Live"—the hero's abandonment of one woman for another—also serves to mark the story as Gissing's. He uses this theme in his early, middle, and even late fiction. At times he provides mitigating details to help excuse man's fickleness, but at others he presents the most extreme cases: males who engage themselves to an alternative woman while still engaged to a first. His earliest story, "The Sins of the Fathers" (10 March 1877), has the hero discard his old love for a new one, but with many extenuating circumstances. A variant of this theme appears in Workers in the Dawn (1880), when the hero tries to abandon his false love for his true one but is blocked by the inconvenience of having unwisely bound himself as husband of the rival female. Interestingly enough, the protagonist in Workers has the same first name, Arthur, as the inconstant young man in "Too Wretched to Live." A rather sympathetic treatment of the fast sexual shuffle occurs in both The Unclassed (1884) and in A Life's Morning (1888). By the time of New Grub Street (1891), however, Gissing depicts male fickleness with rueful comedy and by Our Friend the Charlatan (1901) with broadly satiric ridicule. In embryonic form, then, "Too Wretched to Live" contains a persistent and basic Gissing theme: off with the old love and on with the new.

With its stiff formal prose interspersed with attempted lyricism, the style of "Too Wretched to Live" provides a further mark of the youthful Gissing's authorship. Like many others of his early short stories, this one sets the scene with a flowery description of landscape, sky, and sun: "The sun was just setting as he turned the corner of the house and both sea and sky were bathed in a crimson splendor. . . ." This purple patch bears a strong resemblance to an opening passage from "A Mother's Hope": ". . . The long track of sunlight, which gleamed from the horizon to the limits of the wet sands, kept ever spreading as the sun rose higher, . . . till the whole sea and shore exulted in the splendors of the new day."[5] Similar effusions about splendid suns or overarching skies open other stories from the writer's early period: "An English Coast-Picture," "A Test of Honor," "The Death-Clock," and

"R. I. P"—all from 1877. But as his art matured, Gissing outgrew this neoromantic habit of beginning his short stories with lyrical weather reports.

Another of Gissing's stylistic quirks—the pedantic term imported from Latin or Greek—appears near the climax of "Too Wretched to Live": "As he glanced at the handwriting, a woman's delicate chirography. . . ." From the Greek root kheirographon, that bookish final word intrudes upon a scene of supposedly high emotion. The former classics student from Owens College, Manchester, never lost his taste for ink-horn phrases. To the end of his writing career, he retained a preference for erudite words over plain ones—for visage or physiognomy over simply face. Even in Born in Exile (1892), one of his finest novels, we find a broad sprinkling of learned expressions: "susurration," "sequaciousness," "intenerates."[6] Thus the fancy word chirography in the Daily News story provides further evidence of George Gissing's authorship.

From a biographical viewpoint, "Too Wretched to Live" has a special connection with "The Sins of the Fathers," Gissing's first story. Both pieces construct troubled fantasies out of his guilty feelings at having left Nell Harrison on the other side of the ocean—his prostitute love for whom he had besmirched himself back at Owens College. In Gissing's later life, his romantic guilt undid him: he returned to Nell after one year abroad and eventually married this unreformed and alcoholic streetwalker. They lived together unhappily, though not quite ever after, for they separated at last in 1883.

In "The Sins of the Fathers," Nell Harrison's fictional counterpart walks the streets of an English city very like Manchester. Though the hero saves her from becoming a prostitute, his father falsely tells him that she has suddenly died, and the hero marries instead a pretty American schoolgirl. At the end the Nell-like figure becomes an avenging "Medusa"—a word used to describe her in the very first paragraph. In effect, the protagonist has much justification for feeling relieved when he thinks her dead—good riddance of a wild female. Yet in "Too Wretched to Live," the egoistic hero has no excuse at all but snobbery. He abandons a sweet and respectable young farm girl for a fashionable beauty who sings drawing-room opera—a beauty whose last name even suggests nobility: Earle. Then he discovers, too late, that he really preferred his dead former love to her more elegant rival. In a final touch of Gissing lugubriousness, the protagonist marries the rival woman anyway but lives unhappily ever after.

The contrast between the "Medusa" avenger in Gissing's first story and the tender-hearted suicide in the newly discovered piece illustrates a weakness running through his early work. The youthful writer tended to depict all women as one of two extremes: idealized angel or deplorable man-trap. His early novels usually contain both a female saint and a slut: seraphic Helen Norman versus drunken Carrie Mitchell (Workers in the Dawn—1880),

good-hearted Ida Starr versus hateful Harriet Smales (The Unclassed—1884), sweet Jane Snowden versus murderous Clem Peckover (The Nether World —1889). Not until Gissing could achieve such complex female characters as Cecily Doran in The Emancipated (1890) or Marian Yule and Amy Reardon in New Grub Street (1891) would he attain full development in his fictional art. "Too Wretched to Live" records a faltering early step on his way to becoming one of late-Victorian fiction's most skillful portrayers of women. The complete text of the story follows.

TOO WRETCHED TO LIVE

"I think that will do; I have broken it to her as gently as I could," soliloquized Arthur Melville, as he sealed and directed a letter, which, to judge from the appearance of the table where he had been writing, upon which were scattered several sheets of letter paper partly written upon, had been a difficult one to compose.

Then, turning to the mantel-piece, he carelessly lighted a cigar, and strolled out upon the beach. The sun was just setting as he turned the corner of the house and both sea and sky were bathed in a crimson splendor; but the beauty of the sunset seemed lost upon the young man to-night, for his brow was clouded, and he appeared lost in a deep and paintful [sic] reverie.

Just then the sound of a woman's voice, singing some snatch from a favorite opera, fell upon his ear, and seemed to instantly banish all but joyous thoughts from his mind.

"She told me to come to her room at 8, and it is now only half-past 6," he remarked, glancing at his handsome gold repeater. "I shall have time to walk up to the cove and back before then. My beautiful, peerless Jessie! And she has at last consented to marry me. I can scarcely realize my good fortune yet. How different she is from Lilian Frazier [sic—elsewhere spelled as Frasier]! And yet I thought I loved Lily last summer well enough to ask her to be my wife; but after I met Jessie Earle my love for Lilian all died out. I wonder if Lily will feel badly when she receives my letter telling her how my feelings have changed toward her, and asking her to release me from my engagement? Poor little girl! But then she will soon get over it, doubtless, and probably marry some young farmer. I don't believe she ever loved me very much—she was such a quiet little thing." And then he began comparing her with Jessie, and by the time he returned home had made up his mind that it was all for the best—his meeting beautiful Jessie Earle and forsaking poor Lilian.

Arthur Melville was the son of a wealthy and aristocratic family, and the summer before, while out fishing, he had lodged for six weeks at Linden Farm, with the Frasiers. Here his fancy had been captivated by the beauty and grace of Lilian, the old people's grandchild, and when he left he was engaged to her.

Entering the house—for the Melvilles were spending the summer there—Arthur proceeded at once to the Earles' room, and in the presence of Jessie soon forgot the letter that was destined to prove so fatal to the happiness of a loving young girl's heart.

"Grandpa!"

"Well, darling, what is it?"

The speakers were an old man and a fair young girl, over whose head scarce eighteen summers had rolled. They were standing at the gate of a pretty farmhouse, half hidden in the vines which clambered over it, and the old man was just preparing to get into the carriage which stood waiting for him, when he was interrupted by his granddaughter.

Looking down, he saw a sweet, pleading face upturned to his; the roses had forsaken her cheeks lately, and, oh, such a sad, wistful look had crept into the

sunny blue eyes that it made his heart ache to look at her.

"What is it, pet?" he repeated.

"Don't forget to call at the postoffice, grandfather; there must be a letter today," she answered.

"You have felt so every day, Lily, and yet it is six weeks since you have heard a word from that rascally lover of yours. It's my opinion he's a deceitful villain. I never did like the looks of him much, and now for him to treat you this way! O, if I only had him here—that's all!" shaking his whip at some imaginary person.

"O, do not speak so! He never, never would be false to me—his little Lily, grandpa! No, he is ill, or something has happened to prevent his writing. But I would stake my life on Arthur's truth!" she said, throwing back her head while a red flush mantled each cheek at her grandfather's words.

"Well, maybe so, Lily dear, maybe so," and whipping up his horses he started towards the place.

All day long Lily flitted about the house, every now and then running to the window to see if she could catch a glimpse of the returning carriage, even when she could not expect them for hours.

At last the long day drew to a close, and just as the sun was setting she saw them coming. With the speed of a fawn she flew down the path to the gate, and stood there breathless awaiting his arrival. Yes, he held something white in his hand, and held it up for her to see it; then it must be a letter from Arthur, for no one else wrote to her.

"Give it to me—quick, grandpa!" she exclaimed. "It is for me, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's for you, at last."

With a cry of joy she took it, and hugged it close to her bosom. Then, darting away, she ran until she came to the orchard, and at last, sinking down under the apple-tree where Arthur had asked her to be his bride, she took the long-looked-for letter and kissed the writing and the seal; then carefully opening it, she read the following:

"Friend Lily: My long silence, I feel, demands an explanation, and so I will give it to you in this short letter. In alluding to your little flirtation of last summer, which we were foolish enough to end by an engagement, I should like to say a few words. I hope the matter was not more serious to you than it was to me, and so I desire that you will release me from my promise to you, Lily; it was only a passing fancy. Since meeting beautiful Jessie Earle, I know what real love is. I do not think that your feeling for me will be more enduring than mine for you has been. Doubtless ere this you have outlived it, for I remember you were always rather shy and cool in your expressions of affection toward me. Hoping that we shall always be friends, I am yours, truly,

"Arthur H. Melville."

The young girl read this cruel letter through, and then she turned, and, burying her face in the long grass, burst into a storm of passionate, tearless sobs, which shook her slender form as the fierce winds bend some tender flower.

She lay there until at last the pale moon rose slowly, slowly over the tree tops, and then her grandfather, who, alarmed at her long absence, had come to seek her, found he[r] lying cold and still, with the letter on the ground by her side.

Tender arms raised her, and bore her away to the farm-house. Here, for weeks, she was confined to her room, and when at last she left it, she looked like a crushed and broken lily, so white and delicate and fragile was she. From the hour of her receiving Arthur's letter, his name never passed her lips. * * *

The sun was shining bright and beautiful.

A lovely morning, indeed," thought Jessie Earle as she drew back the curtain of her luxurious room. "It is an old saying, 'Blest is the bride that the sun shines on.' I ought to be blest, for there is plenty of sunshine on my wedding day."

Arthur Melville sat toying with his cup of chocolate on the same summer morning, the day on which he was to wed Jessie Earle, when the footman entered

and handed him a letter. As he glanced at the handwriting, a woman's delicate chirography, he started back as if he had seen an apparition. At last, regaining his composure, he tore it open and read as follows:

"Arthur:—Ere you receive this letter, the heart which loved you and trusted you so fully will be at rest, and you will be free to wed the beautiful girl who has won your heart away from me. So you thought I did not love you! Well, perhaps not, Arthur Melville: but I cared for you so much that your smile made all the sunlight of the world for me. Your voice was sweeter than the sweetest music to my ears. I loved you so beneath the shy exterior which hid the depth of my devotion that I cannot live in the black darkness which has fallen upon my life with the withdrawal of your love. I should have answered your letter ere this, but I have been very, very ill ever since I received it. I do not think I am entirely well yet, for my poor little head burns and throbs so all the time. Last night, when they were all asleep, I rose very softly, and went down into the orchard; the moon was shining. O, so soft and clear! just as it did that night when you told me that you loved me. I went and stood under the same tree, and then I walked over to the little lake by the north woods; it is all covered with the lilies now, just as it was the day when we went rowing there, and you gathered so many for your Lily, you said. The lilies kept whispering to me me [sic] last night to come there and find rest; but I had to write to you first, and you must tell grandfather and grandmother where I've gone. O, the water is so blue and soft! I must go now while the moon shines so brightly. So good-by, Arthur: don't forget me; think, sometimes, of poor little Lily, sleeping underneath the calm, still waters."

With a deep groan Arthur Melville sank back in his chair, and just then the door was suddenly opened, and the form of old Mr. Frasier entered.

"Have you seen anything of my grand-daughter, Arthur Melville?" he exclaimed. "Three days ago she suddenly disappeared; we have searched everywhere, but can find no clue to her whereabouts. She sent a letter to the post, by the boy, directed to you, on the same evening in which she disappeared. I found out about it yesterday, and so I took the next train and came here. Lily has not been in her right mind for two or three weeks; she was so gentle and quiet, but O! I have had such a dreadful fear. That letter is in her writing!" and before Arthur could interfere he had snatched it from the table and read the fatal missive. When he had finished it, he sprang to his feet, and pointing his finger at Arthur, cried:

"Arthur Melville, the law may never brand you as such, but I declare you as a murderer, just as much as though you had plunged a knife into my darling's heart. Oh, accursed was the day in which you came to Linden Farm, with your false words, to break the heart of the sweetest maiden that ever lived! Dead— drowned—my little Lily! May your life be as wretched as you have made mine! May ——"

"Hush! your curses cannot make me more wretched than I am," exclaimed Arthur, springing to his feet. "I feel the brand of Cain upon my heart! I loved your granddaughter—I know it now! I was fas[c]inated by another, but my heart was Lily's all the time, I know it when, alas, it is too late."

Arthur Melville married Jessie Earle, but from the hour in which he received Lillian [sic] Frasier's letter, he never knew real happiness.

Notes