The Project Gutenberg EBook of Born in Exile, by George Gissing

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Title: Born in Exile

Author: George Gissing

Posting Date: March 20, 2009 [EBook #4526]
Release Date: October, 2003
First Posted: February 2, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.

Born in Exile

By

George Gissing

JTABLE 4 7 1

Part I

CHAPTER I

The summer day in 1874 which closed the annual session of Whitelaw
College was marked by a special ceremony, preceding the wonted
distribution of academic rewards. At eleven in the morning (just as a
heavy shower fell from the smoke-canopy above the roaring streets) the
municipal authorities, educational dignitaries, and prominent burgesses
of Kingsmill assembled on an open space before the College to unveil a
statue of Sir Job Whitelaw. The honoured baronet had been six months
dead. Living, he opposed the desire of his fellow-citizens to exhibit
even on canvas his gnarled features and bald crown; but when his
modesty ceased to have a voice in the matter, no time was lost in
raising a memorial of the great manufacturer, the self-made
millionaire, the borough member in three Parliaments, the enlightened
and benevolent founder of an institute which had conferred humane
distinction on the money-making Midland town. Beneath such a sky,
orations were necessarily curtailed; but Sir Job had always been
impatient of much talk. An interval of two or three hours dispersed the
rain-clouds and bestowed such grace of sunshine as Kingsmill might at
this season temperately desire; then, whilst the marble figure was
getting dried,--with soot-stains which already foretold its negritude
of a year hence,--again streamed towards the College a varied
multitude, official, parental, pupillary. The students had nothing
distinctive in their garb, but here and there flitted the cap and gown
of Professor or lecturer, signal for doffing of beavers along the line
of its progress.

Among the more deliberate of the throng was a slender, upright,
ruddy-cheeked gentleman of middle age, accompanied by his w