Our Friend the Charlatan

by George Gissing

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did.By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist.In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated.Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

Genres: Victorian

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

People best know British writer George Robert Gissing for his novels, such as New Grub Street (1891), about poverty and hardship.

This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.

Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Coming Man

It is becoming a rare treat to visit a walk-in used book store and find something wanted and unexpected. I recently had the opportunity to browse in an old used book store, stuffed with two floors of books, in the Capitol Hill section of Washington, D.C. I have the habit of looking for books by the late Victorian novelist George Gissing, (1857 -- 1903), and on this visit I found a surprise: a 1976 hardback edition of Gissing's little known book, "Our Friend the Charlatan" complete with an introduction, notes and variant manuscript readings by the Gissing scholar, Pierre Coustillas and illustrations by Launcelot Speed from the original edition of the book published in 1901. I was elated; finding the book made my day.

The edition I found does not seem to be available here on Amazon. Thus, I am doing the next best thing by reviewing the easily accessible kindle edition of "Our Friend the Charlatan". Gissing remains relatively unfamiliar to most readers, and this book is a rarity even to his admirers. The book was written late in the author's life. long after his novels set in the poor areas of London and his latter better-known books such as "New Grub Street" and "The Odd Women". Critics have not been kind to "Our Friend the Charlatan". But I was glad to read the book.

The novel differs from most of Gissing in that it is a sharp political satire and in its setting: it is almost a drawing room novel set largely in rural England and told, as is typical for Gissing, largely in dialogue. Unusually for Gissing, the book maintains a sense of distance and detachment from its characters. The reader does not become emotionally involved with most of them or with the story. Yet in its treatment of character and ideas and in its pessimism the book is worthy of its author.

The main character of the book is a man in his late 20's, Dyce Lashmar. Dyce is described in the book, with great irony as "the coming man" which was Gissing's original title before the publisher demanded a change. Dyce is the "coming man" in his individualism, cynicism, lack of feeling, and continued pursuit of the main chance. Dyce is a vocal protagonist of the "new woman", a companion to the "coming man" and distinguished by her independence, intellect, and her freedom from false attempts at chivalry and her contempt for male chauvinism. Yet no one is more sexist, to use the modern term, than Dyce Lashmar. An in his relationship with women there is nothing of romance, love, or sexuality but only the quest for money and personal advantage. Although he is ever resourceful and opportunistic, this book sees Dyce's, "the coming man's", downfall.

The child of a poor rural curate, Dyce is Oxford educated but his parents are worried that he has made nothing of himself. His father at last due to his own fiscal difficulties cuts off the young man's allowance, and Dyce must leave his position as tutor to the son of a young widow when the boy is sent away to school. The young widow has long been attracted to Dyce who has his eye on larger opportunities. Dyce inveigles the acquaintance of a dying, wealthy, and autocratic widow, Lady Ogram, who had in her youth been an artist's model and actress but who married well. Lady Ogram sees potential in Dyce and sponsors him in a bid for a seat in Parliament, running as a Liberal in opposition to the ensconced conservative member with whom Lady Ogram has had a personal feud for many years. Lady Ogram is dictatorial and rigid in her old age and insists that Dyce marry her personal secretary, Constance Bride, a "new woman" whose affections Dyce had abused somewhat some years earlier. Dyce is reluctant to do so because he thinks Lady Ogram about to will her money to a long lost niece, May Tomalin, half-educated, addled, and ambitious. Dyce sets out secretly to woo May and to jettison Constance. As ambiguities in Lady Ogram's intent develop, Dyce shifts his attention from one woman to the other depending on where he thinks the money will land. At length, he is found out in a sharp, searing scene with both women and with Lady Ogram just before her death. Even after his exposure as a cad, Dyce proposes to Constance, who receives a substantial bequest, but is, finally, roundly rebuffed.

The part of the book that deals with ideas centers around a French book called "The Modern City" by M. Jean Izoulet, a Professor of Sociology. Dyce Lashmar has read this book and claims its ideas as his own without acknowledging the book. As the novel unravels, Dyce is uncovered as a plagiarist and a hypocrite, but Izoulet's book gets explored in its own right. The book, which fascinated Gissing, is an early version of "socio-biology". Izoulet took evolutionary theory and said it could be applied directly to human politics. The book advocates a form of socialism, of communalism, but with a twist. The more gifted, intelligent people are to be put on the top of society and the other people are to be happy with their places. In Dyce Lashmar's hand, Izoulet's theory becomes the basis for rampant egoism and self-pursuit. Gissing's point in the book is that socio-biology or scientific theory cannot be applied to the problems of human society. It is position still worth taking.

Besides exploring Izoulet's book, the novel has critical things to say about Nietzsche -- Gissing thinks both Dyce Lasmar and Constance Bride are more like Nietzsche than they care to admit -- and admiring things to say about Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Thomas Huxley. The latter two figures are important to the only sympathetic character in the book, a poor English peer, Lord Dymchurch, who is rebuffed by May Tomalin and settles on the decaying family farm. In so doing, Dymchurch has an experience with a poor gardener which teaches him that human society operates in a manner generally in opposition to the physical rules which govern nature.

At the end of the story, Dyce, rebuffed by both May and Constance, loses his bid for parliament and is accepted by the young widow whose son he formerly tutored. Dyce believes the woman has an income of about 700 pounds a year but, alas, after the marriage, most of this money is lost to a corrupt trustee. Dyce and his wife and stepson are left to fend for themselves.

As with all of Gissing, "Our Friend the Charlatan" is a novel of ideas with much of value. It is a book I might not have read if I hadn't found it fortuitously. It would not be my first suggestion for readers new to Gissing. "Our Friend the Charlatan", however, is worth reading. It deserves to be remembered.

Robin Friedman

[Chrissie]

Available free at Librivox, here: https://librivox.org/our-friend-the-c... read by Jim Locke.



*Eve's Ransom 4 stars
*The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft 3 stars
*The Odd Women 3 stars
*New Grub Street 2 stars
*Our Friend the Charlatan TBR

[Jim Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even a lesser novel of George Gissing is better than most other Victorian fiction. Our Friend starts out slowly but builds into a compelling page-turner about a political and emotional fraud who tries to manipulate a series of women, who, it turns out, are all manipulating him! The women have control in this novel, which is an extremely rare and refreshing viewpoint for a novel of this time. The protagonist thinks of himself as modern man who says he relates to women honestly and equally, yet uses every emotional and intellectual manipulation on them to get what he wants. He is a nobody, son of a poor clergyman who sacrificed his comfort so that his son could graduate Oxford, determined to rise in the world without giving any of himself to do so. His sense of entitlement is appalling as is his lack of feelings for anything or anyone except what advances his goals. He gets his comeuppance at the end as each of his schemes fails and he falls in the world about as low as he can (although we wish he could fall even further).

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

It occurs to me that Gissing was exercising his rare sense of humour in this magnificent study of human folly and cupidity. Of all the people in this novel, there is something akin to sympathy for only two persons – the protagonist’s father, the Vicar, Mr Lashmar Senior, and the dreamy peer, Lord Dymchurch, in whom one sees the origins of Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth.

As far as plot is concerned, it treats of a Parliamentary election, in which an autocratic old lady pulls the strings for a Liberal candidate. This is not because she has Liberal convictions. She does not. She has however quarrelled with the Tory candidate over the endowment of land for charitable purposes.

The candidate she has chosen, Dyce Lashmar, is a penniless man, unable and unwilling to do any work after a University education which has nearly beggared his parents. He is almost completely without principle or scruple, and finds it as easy to plagiarise another man's thoughts and pass them off as his own, as to manipulate women of every age and acuity. The brisk efficiency with which he engages himself to one girl, the shrewdest and in her own way, the kindliest, while he juggles with the affections of two others, all the while keeping an eye on the whims and fancies of his patroness, and allowing himself to be mentored by the razor sharp mind of a political hostess, draws the reader's admiration while at once repelled by, and despising him.

The strength of this book lies not in the plot, but in the characters. It is remarkable how little all but one man actually changes, grows and achieves an introspective understanding of himself. No: from the first meeting to the end, each character maintains a sturdy delusion of himself/herself and proceeds on that basis to deceive everyone else. Nowhere else has Gissing been at such pains to portray so many thoroughly disagreeable people in whom literally not once trace of common decency, common humanity exists. And yet we turn away with a laugh, for the laugh is on them.

While not a tirade on socialism or class equality, the novel does lay bare the deficiencies of the electoral system even after the reform bills of nearly eighty years previously. Interestingly, Gissing's remarks on Nietzsche foreshadows a terrible truth.

[Robert burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“One can say of of “Our Friend the Charlatan” the trouble is that is nobody’s favourite”.G.W.Stonier.