Will Warburton: A Romance of Real Life

by George Gissing

George Gissing wrote twenty - three novels before his death in 1903. His subject was life as it was lived in the London slums and by the lower classes of ordinary people. A perceptive and informed observer, Gissing wrote on the issues that surrounded him, such as the financial woes of artists and the hardships faced by single, educated women. His works feature psychological analysis and dark humor

Genres: Fiction, British Literature, Classics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1905

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]

Gissing's Romance Of Real Life

George Gissing's (1857 - 1903) last completed novel "Will Warburton: a Romance of Real Life" was published posthumously in 1904. Frequently overlooked or downplayed among his works, "Will Warburton" shows marked shifts for Gissing. Moving from his characteristic pessimism, Gissing's novel is indeed a romance that ends happily in a successful courtship and marriage between two people much in love. In the book, Gissing's hero moves from the ranks of the upper-middle class to a lower social strata. The novel is set in London against the background of greed, business speculation and financial ruin. Thus it has a disquietingly contemporary feel.

As the book opens, Will Warburton, young, open-hearted and generous, is in the business of refining sugar with his improvident and scheming friend Godfrey Sherwood. With the business experiencing difficulties, Sherwood proposes that the pair cut their losses in sugar refining and become involved instead in the manufacture of jam. Warburton acquires the necessary capital from his aging mother and his sister, who sell a treasured family property to finance the venture. To keep them from penury, Warburton plans on paying his mother and sister a varying share of interest from the profits of the jam business. Alas the business comes to naught. Sherwood quickly loses Warburton's capital, as well as his own, in a stock market speculation. Warburton is ruined.

With his small remaining funds and the assistance of a man named Allchief, a brusque individual who tends to engage in fighting when unoccupied with work, Warburton opens a small grocery store under the name of Jollyman. Gissing makes much of Warburton giving up his business dress and wearing instead the apron of a grocer as reflective of his diminution in class. Warburton keeps his new occupation, a distinct step down in his own eyes and in the eyes of others, a secret in order to save his mother and sister from embarrassment. The shop prospers and Warburton is able to pay his mother and sister the promised minimal return on their capital. But Warburton remains ashamed and ambivalent about his new career. He also feels guilty over his secrecy and deception.

The novel sets off Warburton's upper class friends with his newly-acquired friends to the detriment, on the whole, of the former. Warburton's story is contrasted with that of a young painter and friend, Norbert Franks, whose efforts Warburton had encouraged at an early stage of Frank's career with loans. Franks had aspired to serious art, but he becomes a portrait painter who achieves great financial success with no artistic distinction. In his poor days, Frank had tried to win the love of a beautiful amateur painter, Rosamund Evan, who accepts his marriage proposal but then jilts him. Frank then courts a poor but talented artist, Bertha Cross. With the seeming end of the relationship between Franks and Rosamund, Warburton cautiously tries to court Rosamund. She is responsive at first but ends the relationship abruptly when she visits the grocery store and sees that Warburton is the proprietor, Jollyman. Rosamund then returns to Franks whom, up until the discovery of Jollyman, she had continued to spurn. Franks is all-too-willing to leave Bertha for the beautiful Rosamund, even though Rosamund had earlier abandoned him. Warburton begins courting Bertha who is able to look to his heart and not to his grocer's apron. She accepts him. Warburton continues his modest life as a grocer with its independence. He becomes free of social cant and open and accepting about his position in life. The married couple, Franks and Rosamund want little to do with their former friend Warburton, and Gissing is emphatic that Warburton is well rid of them.

In Gissing's best-known novel, "New Grub Street", which tells of literary life in Victorian London, Gissing draws a portrait of a poor, serious writer, Biffen, who does not write to please the multitudes. Biffen works diligently on a work of social realism that has no chance of achieving popularity, a novel called "Mr Bailey: Grocer". The novel explores the lives of those whom Biffen calls the "ignobly decent". In a climactic scene in "New Grub Street", Biffen rushes into a burning building to save the manuscript of "Mr. Bailey:Grocer" from destruction. "Will Warburton" is Gissing's own "Mr. Bailey: Grocer" with its portrayal of the unglamorous but stolidly honest life of the hero. In its portrait of love and romance, "Will Warburton" also bears resemblances to another earlier Gissing work, the short novel "Eve's Ransom"(1895)in which the young protagonist, Maurice Hilliard, loses the woman he loves to a wealthier man but finds peace and independence for himself.

Unfortunately little read today, "Will Warburton" explores Gissing's familiar themes of love relationships, art, and commerce, with a light, humorous touch and, most importantly, a great deal of hope. Gissing ended his career fittingly with this novel. "Will Warburton" deserves to be remembered and read.

Robin Friedman

[George]

An interesting, engaging Victorian novel set in England in the 1880s and 1890s. Will Warburton, a gentleman and apparently financially secure at age sixteen when his father died. His mother and sister have been adequately provided for. Will is a kind, generous man, always willing to help friends in need, like his poor artist friend, Norbert Franks. Financial disaster strikes and Will is obliged to become a grocer. In those times, being a grocer is to belong to a class lower than that of a clerk. Will is embarrassed by working as a grocer and keeps it a secret from his friends and relatives for some time.

Interesting well developed characters and good plot momentum make for an enjoyable reading experience.

This book was first published in 1905, two years after the author died.

[Felicity]

Gissing's final novel presents a happier resolution than most of his gloomy earlier works. The romance of real life appears to reside less in the prospect of the companionable marriage than in Will's overcoming of his internalised social prejudice against counter jumpers. His wife-to-be is perhaps only half joking in her acceptance speech, espousing a single objection to Will's trade, that he is 'nothing worse than a grocer. A grocer's is such a clean, dainty, aromatic trade,' a trade befitting 'a very honest man'. Modern readers may not share her confidence in the perspicuous honesty of retailers, but neither are they likely to condemn Will's reconciliation to his role among the much traduced nation of shopkeepers. (Remember Ted 'Grocer' Heath and the grocer's daughter who supplanted him?) Those familiar with Gissing's background -- if you're not, I recommend Paul Delany's biography -- will understand the source of the status anxiety apparent in so many of Gissing's novels. The Goodreads profile of Gissing referring to his brilliant academic career and high esteem among fellow authors suppresses the ignominious counter-evidence, most notably the expulsion from Owens College on account of his conviction and imprisonment for theft; his consecutive improvident marriages; his persistent poor mouthing, and his lifelong -- not that his life was very long -- grievance that he was undervalued as a writer. His life ended where Will Warburton's inspiration and escalation began: in the French Pyrenees.

[Kim]

Will Warburton: A Romance Of Real Life is the last novel of George Gissing, it was written while he was dying and was not published until 1905, two years after his death. I read this immediately after his novel "In The Year Of Jubilee" for no reason other than it was next on my bookshelf. I almost skipped over it because I found myself so annoyed with "In The Year Of Jubilee" I thought I might need a break from Gissing; but I thoroughly enjoyed "Will Warburton". I was often amused by the ideas of Will and the people around him.

The books begins with Will Warburton returning to his home in London after a holiday in Switzerland with "the sea-wind in his hair, his eyes agleam with the fresh memory of Alpine snows". We are told he is a young man "three or four years on the green side of thirty". Immediately on arriving at his flat in London his housekeeper, Mrs. Hopper tells him that her brother-in-law is in trouble again, and Will tells her to have the brother-in-law come see him the next morning letting us know he intends to help the brother-in-law out of his trouble.

Then we are told that Mrs. Hopper is not the best of housekeepers having a tendency to break things, a dish and two plates this time; although I'm not sure what the difference is between a dish and a plate, and that her ideas of cleanliness were by no means rigid; but that she was " a widow, she had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body", again letting us know that Will is more interested in helping her than in her qualities as a housekeeper.

Now he asks Mrs. Hopper about her sister and on hearing of her headaches volunteers to pay the expenses for the sister to go away for a change of air to help her condition. Having had a headache most of my life, I fail to see how a change of air will help, but I'm no doctor. It is clear that Will likes helping the less fortunate people with his money, and he likes his position in life, he likes having people depend on him and look up to him.

However, Will is about to loose all he has and his life will change forever. Will is in partership with Godfrey Sherwood, the sole representative of Sherwood Brothers and they own a sugar refinery. It says of Will

;"Here he sat for certain hours of the solid day, issuing orders to clerks, receiving commercial callers, studying trade journals in sundry languages--often reading some book which had no obvious reference to the sugar-refining industry.

And so goes his life until the bottom falls out of the sugar industry and Godfrey Sherwood convinces Will they will have to get into a different type of product; jam. I'm not sure why jam making would be any safer than sugar refining; but that's just me.

Godfrey and Will sell their sugar business and agree to buy the Applegarth jam factory. Not only do they put all their money into the new business venture, but Godfrey convinces Will to invest all his mother and sister's money as well. Shortly after this, when Will is expecting settlement to be reached and to begin business in the jam industry he receives a letter from Godfrey informing him that all the money has been lost. Godfrey had gone into the money market, and upon winning the first time, continued speculating, winning sometimes, losing more, using his money first, then Will's, until finally all the money is gone. Now both are nearly penniless and must begin again. Godfrey has hopes of getting paid back on a loan he had made to a friend some time ago, and he leaves for the country to stay with relatives and try to rebuild his fortune. He is seldom seen after this. Will decides to take the little money he has left and buy a grocer's shop in a poorer district of London, there he is sure he will be able to spend his life in a grocer's shop without anyone he knows becoming aware of it.

And so begins the rest of the story, the days, months and then years of keeping the secret from his family and friends. Will in his grocer's shop which he has named "Jollyman's Grocery" and known only as Mr. Jollyman to the people in the area. The life he finds humiliating. The surprising, or should I say the not so surprising reactions of the people he is close to once they begin to find out what he really does with his time.

There are other interesting characters in the novel, Godfrey, who once the money is gone, goes to Ireland and comes up with a

"scheme for making a fortune out of Irish eggs and poultry."

The scheme is never made clear and once that falls through, he becomes secretary to a young, rich man who is a vegetarian, and together they plan to start a vegetarian colony, a self-supporting colony of people who eat no meat, drink no alcohol and smoke no tobacco.

Then there is Rosamund Elvan, engaged to Will's best friend Norbert Franks, an artist (starving of course). While he is starving Rosamund is proud of him, proud that he refuses to lower his standards and paint inferior works just to sell, but once his art begins to make money, she breaks the engagement. She says:

" I ought to have married him in the first year, when I had courage and hope enough to face any hardships. We spoke of it, but he was too generous. What a splendid thing to have starved with him--to have worked for him whilst he was working for art and fame, to have gone through and that together, and have come out triumphant! That was a life worth living. But to begin marriage at
one's ease on the profits of pictures such as 'Sanctuary'--oh, the shame of it! Do you think I could face the friends who would come to see me?"

I think Will's sister Jane could have been made into a very interesting character. She seemed to be a minor character in the novel but I think she could have had possibilities. Perhaps she could have married the guy with the jam factory who as far as I know still owns it. :-}

Then there is Mrs. Cross and her daughter Bertha. Mrs. Cross reminded me a little of Mrs. Nickleby in Dicken's Nicholas Nickleby, but without any of her sweetness. I absolutely loved Bertha's sense of humor, she had me smiling more than once.

Now I would not have been a very good choice as a character for this novel. I see absolutely no reason why a grocer is a step down, or more than one step down, from a clerk in an office; which it seems no one would have had a problem with. Or how owning a grocer's shop was lower than owning half of a sugar refinery or a jam factory. Or why being a starving artist is better than being a wealthy artist, so I guess it's good I'm not a character in a Victorian novel. I liked the book, it was fun to read, it was funny, and best of all, I even liked the ending.

[Mbuye]

It seems appropriate that Gissing's swansong should end on a note of courage and hope, with only twinges of the bleak despair we see in some of his earlier novels. ‘Will Warburton’ is the parable of Job transferred to a turn-of-the-century society.

Gissing's strengths as a novelist are threefold: good characterisation, a well developed plot and a clear social conscience, all faultlessly put together and presented in uncompromising language. Will Warburton, the eponymous hero, at first appears a cheerful dilettante, a kind of sleeping partner in a failing business, with leisure enough to go holidaying in the Alps, or tramp across the streets of London when the mood takes him, and with pockets deep enough to lend his friend, a talented but impoverished artist, the occasional five-pound note, or send the relative of a servant on a holiday by the seaside to recover her health. Warburton makes friends easily, and is a generous, kindly man. His great failing, which he candidly admits, is an aversion to work under any authority.

His actual strength of character reveals itself when disaster strikes him financially, emotionally and socially at the same moment. His business partner, Godfrey Sherwood, who until now has been handling the business efficiently and honestly, now through either cupidity or downright criminal dishonesty, leads Warburton into a dodgy business deal in which Warburton sinks his widowed mother and his unmarried sister's sole source of income as well as his own. When the inevitable crash comes, Warburton is forced to choose between accepting a subordinate post as a clerk or be his own master, and buy and manage a grocer’s shop. He chooses the latter.

Warburton’s cheerful disposition is a great help to him in his business. There is only one drawback: Warburton would, in his own eyes, and those of his acquaintances, be “sunk” from being a gentleman in commerce to being a commoner in trade, the implications of which are of such enormity that he dare not tell the truth even to his mother until almost two years later. Her reaction is one of admiration for her son's courage, but for the friend who caused the disaster, “I’m glad he wasn’t a friend of mine,” said Mrs. Warburton. “In all my life, I have never quarrelled with a friend, but I’m afraid I must have fallen out with Mr. Sherwood. Think of the women who entrust their all to men of that kind, and have no strong son to save them from the consequences.”

A girl that he has known socially in happier days, Rosamund Elwan, is seized upon by his artist friend, Norbert Franks, who proposes to, and is first accepted when he is still unknown and impoverished, and later rejected by her, when the painter achieves fame. The painter, in his despair, turns to Warburton, who has no sympathy to offer. He had been Franks’s creditor for several years now, five and ten pounds at a time, all of which have grown to a substantial amount, and it is now payback time, when Warburton is reduced to counting his shillings and pennies. Unless the artist be mindful of work, how will he repay his debt? There is another instance, more disturbing, when the petty dishonesties of grocerhood come to the surface in Warburton: when he sees Franks's interest in the girl he himself has fallen in love with. Then, for the first time, Warburton directs Franks's attention back to Rosamund Elwan.

Warburton admires Miss Elwan’s looks, but cannot help feeling that hers is a perverse influence on Franks, reducing his work to the mediocre and popular from the heights of originality and brilliance that has displayed itself so far in his work: from the talented artist Warburton first knew to a portrait painter of “counterfeit presentments” of society women. Rosamund Elwan, who for reasons of her own sentimental/pragmatic nature had broken off her engagement to Franks, now seeks out Warburton, unaware that he is a grocer. Her imagination shrouds him in mystery, and it is the Mystery Man she sets out to captivate – and captivated he is. Alas for both, when she faces him across the counter in his apron!

When the possibility of the social stigma attaching to a grocer's wife hits her, Miss Elwan decides that it is better to be married to a rich and successful portrait painter than to be tied to tied to grocerhood. And so she goes back to Norbert Franks, weaning him away from the side of the bright and sympathetic Miss Bertha Cross, who is an illustrator for children's books.

Here the inevitable comparison arises with ‘New Grub Street,’ with a few cosmetic changes of profession. Aren't Rosamund Elwan and Amy Reardon the same person under different names? And what of Edwin Reardon and Norbert Franks? One refuses to write simply to pander to the popular fashion; the other succumbs to counterfeit presentments, which brings in a deal of money, and keeps Rosamund not simply in comfort but in luxury.

Gissing is such a serious novelist that one forgets at times what a marvellous sense of humour he retained, despite his own difficulties in life, several of which he brought upon his own head. Here it is seen in part in the character of Godfrey Sherwood and his financial adventures, occasionally in that of Norbert Franks and his propensity to fall in love, in Warburton's sardonic marriage proposal to Bertha Cross, and finally, in a great burst of farce, in the episode of Mrs Cross and the servant Martha.

Each book by Gissing reveals something different, something unexpected and enthralling. That he is not in fashion today is explained by the fact that the social inequalities, poverty and squalor that he raged against no longer exist to the same degree. This is not altogether Gissing's doing: two world wars and the creation of an international labour union account for this. Nevertheless, Gissing is a writer who is worth any attention paid to him.

[Donna Earle]

..all I can say is anything by George Gissing is great reading..my fav by him was New Grub Street....

[Pgchuis]

Will loses his (and his mother's) investment money when his partner gambles it away on the stock market. Forced to make enough money to support his mother and sister, he chooses to become a grocer, but since this involves stepping down a social class, he keeps this a secret from his friend Norbert and even his family. Norbert is a painter who chooses commercial success over artistic integrity, and the story also includes a contrasting pair of love interests: Rosamund, who believes she cares nothing for money but spends it like water; and Bertha whose mother scrimps and saves even more than their genteel poverty requires.

This was an enjoyable read with a believable ending.

[Kyle Gann]

I've read dozens of Victorian novels in which young men of leisure came into financial difficulties and had to escape them through marriage or inheritance, as though getting a job was the worst thing that could happen to a person. It is delightful that Gissing wrote a novel about such a person who mans up and manages a grocery store for a living.

[Ernest]

3.75 stars

[Liz Goodacre]

What a wonderful book. Gissing is a hugely important Victorian writer, a social realist who confronts the deep inequalities of the times he lives in with all the moral dilemmas that involves. The conflict in male and female gender roles and relationships, the significance of one's profession to social status are all here in a book that flows, engages and moves you. His final novel, with strong autobiographical content. Underrated and shocking at the time, rediscovered in the 60s. Exsential reading.

[Katherine]

"Yes, the accident of possessing money; a life to depend upon that! In another station--though, as likely as not, with no moral superiority to justify the privilege--the sick woman would be guarded, soothed, fortified by every expedient of science, every resource of humanity. Chance to be poor and not only must you die when you need not, but must die with the minimum of comfort, the extreme of bodily and mental distress" (164).
"As she moved slowly away, she kept her look still turned upon the face which smiled from the easel. Watching her tremulous eyebrows, her uncertain lips, one might have fancied that Rosamund sought the solution of some troublesome doubt, and hoped, only hoped, to find it in that image of herself so daringly glorified" (333).