The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

This is the passage from The Wind in the Willows where Mole and Ratty, looking on the riverside for the missing baby otter, come across the Great God Pan himself. It moves me so much, more than I can say.

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror--indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy--but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend. and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

`Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. `Are you afraid?'

`Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. `Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet--and yet-- O, Mole, I am afraid!'

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.

Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.

Of Human Bondage: the Tragedy of George Gissing

In considering the case of writers who have entered into relationships with their social and intellectual inferiors the example of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle comes to mind. But that, at least, was positive for both, unlike the story of poor George Gissing, a talented, though now sadly neglected English writer, whose novel The Odd Women was considered by George Orwell to be one of the best in the English language. Poor Gissing had not one but two disastrous relationships!

In some ways his story resembles that of Maugham's Philip Cary, though his experience was far, far worse. When he was still a student he had the misfortune to fall in love with Nell Harrison, a woman he met in a Manchester brothel. In pursuit of his infatuation, he stole books and money from his fellow students to feed Nell's taste for booze as well as for her treatment for syphilis. He was finally caught and sentenced to a month's imprisonment with hard labour. This was the same kind of treadmill treatment that Oscar Wilde received at Reading Jail, which meant climbing the equivalent of 10,000 feet a day!

After his release, and a temporary exile in the United States, he returned to England and married Nell, syphilitic as she was. Of course it could not last. But even after they separated Gissing continued to send her money, supporting no less than fifteen members of her family at one point from his tiny income. Yet having rid himself of Nell he immediately picked up one Edith Underwood. No syphilis this time; Edith was just mad! Violent and unstable, she made life hell for George, as he did for her. After they separated she spent the last fifteen years of her life in a mental asylum.

With a life like this you may not be surprised to learn that much of Gissing's oeuvre is of a gloomy nature. He blamed himself for his own unhappiness, tracing it to "my own strongly excitable temperament, operated upon by the hideous experience of low life." Yet he produced some superb novels. To Orwell's recommendation I would add Born in Exile, The Nether World and, above all, New Grub Street, with an autobiographical theme to match that Of Human Bondage