Sleeping Fires

by George Gissing

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Genres: Classics

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1895

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]

Renewing Love In Middle Age

"Sleeping Fires" (1895) is a short novella by the English novelist George Gissing (1857 -- 1903) that explores the possibility of finding a former love and overcoming grief and guilt in middle and late life. Gissing has never been a popular novelist; but his books have lasted. He has a small but loyal group of readers and his books are becoming accessible and in-print once again. Some critics, such as John Halperin in his biography "George Gissing: A Life in Books" rate "Sleeping Fires" highly indeed within Gissing's output.

"Sleeping Fires" is set in Greece and in London. The two major characters are Edward Langley,42, and Lady Agnes Revill, 37. As the book opens, Langley is touring in Greece. Langley is well-to-do, has never had to work, and feels a sense of emptiness in his life. Sixteen years earlier Langley had courted a young woman, Agnes Forrest, but his marriage proposal was rejected when Langley confessed to Forrest's father that he had fathered a son out of wedlock three years earlier. The mother had taken the boy away and married another man. Langley did not know of the child's whereabouts. Langley had remained unmarried living an essentially leisurely life. Agnes Forrest had married a member of Parliament to become Lady Agnes Revill, where she had moved in powerful British society, become socially prominent, and conservative in her outlook. Revill died, leaving her a widow courted by another influential member of Parliament, Lord Henry Strands.

While in Greece, Langley meets a companion from his college days, Worboys, who has become a classical scholar-- and an unmitigated pendant. Worboys is accompanied by an 18 year old boy, Louis Reed, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Langley. It develops that Reed is the ward of Lady Revill who has sent the lad on tour because the youth is coming under what she fears is the unfortunate influence of a woman named Mrs. Treslian, who has liberal views about social equality and about helping the condition of the poor. When Reed gets a letter from Treslian saying that her relationship with him must end due to her guardian's objection, Langley agrees with Reed to sail back to England and discuss the matter with Lady Revill. Langley is still unhappy over the rejection years earlier by Lady Revill and her family.

When the two meet after so many years, it is with an awkward formality, as Lady Revill informs Langley that Louis Reed is his son. Louis soon thereafter dies in Greece, and the two former would-be lovers engage in a sharp dialogue of recrimination. Lady Revill blames Langley for fathering the child and not offering to marry the mother. Langley, in turn, blames Lady Revill for not telling him about his son and for making a loveless marriage following her rejection of him.

With Louis dead, the story shifts to the possible renewal of the relationship between Langley and Revill. Much of the tale is played out in dialogue between the two, which is frank and cutting for a Victorian novel. Langley and Revill excoriate themselves and each other for what they see as the meaningless of their lives. Revill exchanges letters with Mrs. Treslian, who works with the poor in a London slum, and comes to appreciate the value of Treslian's efforts and of Louis's idealism in trying to follow her. Langley renews his proposal of many years earlier and is again sharply rejected. Revill does not want to surrender her independence and her will. But with time, she softens and reluctantly admits that she still loves Langley. She asks for time to reflect as Langley returns to Greece to attend to burial arrangements for his son.

Here is a key passage from the end of the story in which Langley pursues his marriage proposal.

"How strange it is, Agnes. We seem so far apart. The long years of utter separation -- the meeting at length in cold formality -- the bitterness, the reproaches -- so much that seems to stand between us; and yet we are everything to each other. If you were the kind of woman who has no will of her own, could I love you as I do? And if I were less conscious of my purpose would you listen to me? There is no question of one yielding to the other, save in the moment which overcomes your pride and leaves you free to utter the truth. Those are the old phrases of love-making -- they rise to a man's tongue when his blood is hot. We shall never see the world with the same eyes; man and woman never did so, never will; but there is no life for us apart from each other. Our very faults make us born companions. Your need of me is as great as mine of you. We have forgiven all there is to forgive; we know what may be asked and what may not. No castles in the air; no idealisms of boy and girl; but two lives that have a want and see but the one hope of satisfying it."

Unlike much of Gissing, "Sleeping Fires" ends with a sense of hope as Langley and Revill move towards each other in hope for the "day that is still granted to us." With all its Victorian trappings, this story speaks clearly of love as the source of meaning in human life. The manner in which the two primary characters verbally expose each other's shortcomings is highly modern. The book can be read easily in a single sitting. While not the best of Gissing, the book will reward reading.

Robin Friedman

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 32% —
“What do you suppose it amounts to”, asked Langley, “all we know of Greek life? What’s the use of it to us?”
“That’s what I have never been able to learn. It seems to me to have no bearing whatever on our life today. That’s why I hate the thought of giving years more to such work.”
“You’ll see it in a different light some day”, said Langley. “The world never had such need of the Greeks as in our time. Vigour, sanity, and joy that’s their gospel.”
“And of what earthly use”, cried the other, “to all but a fraction of mankind?”
“Why, as the ideal, my dear fellow. And lots of us, who might make it a reality, mourn through life.”

At 80% —
“When one has wasted so many years of life, ever so faint a hope of recovering the past becomes a strong motive.”
“Wasted? Why have the years been wasted?” She endeavoured to speak with her usual cold dignity, but her voice had lost its firmness. Langley could not take his eyes from her; pallid, disdainful, with tormented brows, the face had a wonderful beauty in this light of afterglow.
“Why?” he echoed sadly. “Folly, of course. But the natural enough result of what we both remember.”
“And whose the blame?” broke from her lips. “Whose the blame?”
“Who is ever to blame for spoilt lives! Fate, I suppose: a convenient word for all the mistakes we live to be ashamed of.”



By the same author
The Paying Guest (26/11/15) 3 stars
Thyrza (28/04/16) 3 stars
A Life's Morning (30/04/16) 3 stars
The Odd Women (20/08/20) 4 stars
Sleeping Fires (19/11/20) 4 stars
Our Friend the Charlatan (19/01/21) 4 stars
The Crown of Life (02/03/21) 4 stars
Eve's Ransom (02/95/21) 4 stars
Human Odds and Ends: Stories and Sketches (30/06/21) 3 stars
The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories (07/09/21) 4 stars
The Emancipated, Volume 1 (28/02/22) 3 stars
The Emancipated, Volume 2 (14/03/22) 4 stars
The Emancipated, Volume 3 (04/04/22) 5 stars
Sins of the father,: And other tales, (16/11/23) 4 stars

[Phantomº · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Let him be buried among the ruins"

I, whose life is now to begin, must shake off this sorcery of Athens, and remember it only as a delightful dream. Mere fairyland; and our Louis has become part of it -- to be remembered by me as calmly, yet as tenderly, as this last sunset.

Possibly the favourite story I have read for university in a fair while...

[J M-B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of Gissing’s later works (1895), freed of the requirement of the commercial libraries to write works in the, often bloated, ‘triple-dekker’ format, but dense with the preoccupations of so many of his earlier works - class, classical culture, ruinous youthful indiscretions, ill-advised marriages and the feminist challenge to social convention. In his earlier books, it was socialism that offered the ideological challenge to the stark contrast between wealth and the degradations of poverty but in both ‘Sleeping Fires’ as, earlier, in ‘The Odd Women’ (1893), it is women who embody the drive for social change - Mrs Tresilian in ‘Sleeping Fires’ and Rhoda Nunn in ‘The Odd Women’.

Unusually for Gissing, who frequently writes of the declassé intellectual excluded from both society and the resorts of culture, the main protagonist of ‘Sleeping Fires’ (Langley) has the means to indulge his love of classical culture by spending prolonged periods in Greece, where he idles between reading Aristophanes and viewing the landscapes and relics of ancient Athens. Langley remains, however, a man with no fixed ties, responsibilities or, indeed, purpose: he is introduced as repeatedly consulting his watch “perhaps because he had no appointment, nor any call whatever upon his time” (p. 1). Whether this drifting state is a consequence of constitution or circumstance is left unresolved, but both are implied by the disclosure that he was rejected as a suitor because of an earlier indiscretion with a woman he describes as occupying a social stratum “below my own” (p. 15) and resulting in an illegitimate child. Those familiar with the biographical details of Gissing’s own life will understand why the character Langley is very definite both in his arguments in justification for not marrying the woman and in his sense of grievance at being badly treated for ‘honourably’ confessing his transgression. Langley’s values are informed by the pre-Christian energy of pagan Greece and inevitably bring him into conflict with the representatives of Victorian stolidity and in sympathy with the progressive views of Mrs Tresilian.

Fully in accord with the conventions of the Victorian melodrama, the bastard offspring of his early life becomes the ward of the woman he was prevented from marrying and also the cause of Langley’s shuttling between sun-filled Athens and rain-lashed London as he intercedes on behalf of his son with the woman he was prevented from marrying. The confrontations between the two take the form of declamatory exchanges over the claims of love versus duty and pagan energy versus Christian morality but find some reconciliation in the headstone of Langley’s son inscribed simply with his name and the cross requested by his guardian who, finally, accepts Langley as her husband. It is a neat and elegant novel, perhaps too neat, and missing some of the dark that makes ‘The Odd Women’ so much more effective to the modern reader.

[Seven Pesos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm getting rid of a lot of books in my library. I've read many of these before I ever had a Goodreads account, so I've decided to make them eternal in my memory by giving them a little recap / some thoughts here.

This book was fucking STUPID. If I remember correctly, a rich English scholar / academic / bachelor is living in Greece when he meets the son of an old flame (some Lady back on the isles). The young man is suffering from a mysterious sickness / health condition. The old guy and the young guy hit it off, they connect over their shared love of history, Greek culture, and other high-society / aristocratic male-bonding shit. I think the old guy decides to take on the young man as his mentor / ward and then the young man dies. Old guy discovers that the young guy was actually his son from his time with The Lady Back on the Isles. He travels back to England to harass this poor woman who has just lost her son.

I don't remember if there's any moral / resolution here, but my key-takeaway was this: This man is a fucking loser, low-level aristocrat, deadbeat father.

[Gareth Reeves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like a half-developed novella by Henry James without the Master's great characterisation/psychological interest, so feels thin and falls flat. Gissing's interests are generally in line with my own, so it would be impossible for me to hate anything by this author (though Veranilda comes very close), hence two stars and not one.

[Scull17 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louis and his goals (bless his heart). The Louis and Langley angle was interesting, but the Langley and Agnes one bored me, so I had to take away a star.

[Ahalya Sabaratnam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short fun read. The story was dramatic and a bit predictable but the prose was gorgeous.

[Joel Van Valin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mr. Langley is a Victorian gentleman bachelor who had, as a youth, to give up his truelove because of some indiscretion on his own part resulting in a love child. He thought those passions a thing of his past - until the day he happened to cross paths with his sweetheart again. She is now Lady Revill, a widow who has survived her own loveless marriage. As the two rekindle their old relationship, Langley begins to wonder if he did the right thing in doing his "duty" and relinquishing her all those years ago.

After an interesting start in Greece, Sleeping Fires settles down to be a stiff domestic drama with stock characters and a lot of talking about morals. Gissing probably wrote it to challenge Victorian notions of honor and marriage, but now that these issues are a century in the past, the book seems desultory and no longer really relevant. A Victorian lit student or a Gissing fan might like it, but otherwise I would pass.