The _fumier_ in question is Lambeth Walk, of which we
have a Saturday night scene, worthy of the author of _L'Assommoir_ and _Le
Ventre de Paris_ in his most perceptive mood. In this inferno, amongst the
pungent odours, musty smells and 'acrid exhalations from the shops where
fried fish and potatoes hissed in boiling grease,' blossomed a pure white
lily, as radiant amid mean surroundings as Gemma in the poor Frankfort
confectioner's shop of Turgenev's _Eaux Printanieres._ The pale and rather
languid charm of her face and figure are sufficiently portrayed without any
set description. What could be more delicate than the intimation of the
foregone 'good-night' between the sisters, or the scene of Lyddy plaiting
Thyrza's hair? The delineation of the upper middle class culture by which
this exquisite flower of maidenhood is first caressed and transplanted,
then slighted and left to wither, is not so satisfactory. Of the upper
middle class, indeed, at that time, Gissing had very few means of
observation. But this defect, common to all his early novels, is more than
compensated by the intensely pathetic figure of Gilbert Grail, the
tender-souled, book-worshipping factory hand raised for a moment to the
prospect of intellectual life and then hurled down by the caprice of
circumstance to the unrelenting round of manual toil at the soap and candle
factory.
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