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With Gissing In Italy: Memoirs Of Brian Boru Dunne

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Out of left field, from the editors of The Collected Letters of George Gissing, comes a refeshing new view of Gissing--plus some charming turn-of-century Americana. The oddly successful combinaton comes about in this way. When the English novelist, desperate to escape for a time from his miserable marriage, visited Italy in 1897-98, he met there a 20-year old American traveller named Brian Boru Dunne. The precocious young man, who would later become a journalist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, kept a diary of their conversations over several months, recording Gissing's opinions on literature, modern and ancient Rome, and everything else that interested them. Years later, he wrote p some of his notes. The diary is lost, but the editors have used Dunne's surviving materials to create a fascinating portrait that shows us a more unbuttoned and humorous Gissing than we knew. Because Dunne is worthy of interest in himself, they have seen fit to include some other pieces: William Jennings Bryan's unconsciously hilarious rules for oratory; Cardinal Gibons' recipe for longevity; and an interview with Mark Twain written by Twain himself. Their 40-page introduction to Dunne and Gissing is unexpectedly fascinating. The voluminous footnotes explain so much, and in such style, that they are an integral part of the reading experience. This beautifully produced, amusing, and illuminating miscellany should attract all Gissing readers, and they will be rewarded by more than they bargained for.

I stumbled onto George Gissing two years ago through his travel classic "By The Ionian Sea: Notes on a Ramble Through Southern Italy." I had not read much late-Victorian writing, except for brief forays into Thomas Hardy. Now I have found a new champion -- George Gissing -- and am discovering that post-industrial era through his works. In this process, I discovered Dunne's delightful memoir and was drawn to it because it recalled a time in Gissing's life when he seem most happiest: his 1897-1898 tour of Southern Italy, the setting for "By the Ionian Sea." Dunne's memoir -- wonderfully edited to fully explain all references, from obvious to obscure -- can be read on more than one level. First, it gives a vivid recounting, through an innocent young journalist's eyes that miss little, of a golden three or four months or so in Rome, hobnobbing with Gissing and two other Victorian writers, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also can be seen as "a work in progress" where the reader can examine how Dunne, by now in middle age and an accomplished writer in his own right, moved from diary through drafts of memoirs. And particularly important for the Gissing enthusiast is the introduction, which puts the era in perspective and paints a vivid picture of the players in Dunne's Roman holiday.

As a long-time student of George Gissing's work and one of his first biographers, I was delighted to read this vivid and perceptive first-hand account of his activities and opinions. Few people who knew Gissing personally have left memoirs of him, and Dunne's is certainly the fullest up-close portrait that we have. He describes Gissing's writing and eating habits, his attention to clothes, his reactions to Italy and his people, and his opinions of other writers, and all this helps to clarify the novelist's character. I especially appreciated the excellent informative notes, which provided much needed background, and brought Dunne himself forward as an interesting and significant figure.

The author of this book is Brian Boru Dunne (1878-1962). The editors of this remarkable memoir want to point out that it is unlike anything we might expect from one writer memorializing another. Brian Dunne was a very young man from an Irish-American family, who had recently studied in a Belgian college with princes of the aristocratic de Croy family, met Gissing by accident in Siena, and then spent several months with him in Rome. The Roman period was an unusually happy one for Gissing, who entertained H.G. Wells and socialized with many important people there, including such other writers as Arthur Conan Doyle and Ernest Hornung. As Gissing's frequent companion, Dunne wrote it all down in his diary, preserving a record of their daily escapades and quotidian conversations in the fresh, unguarded manner of a young man whose mind was uncluttered by any adult protocol, social philosophy, or professional agenda. He went on to become the city editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, met and interviewed most of the leading figures of the day, and wrote several memoirs which will be published in due time. In Gissing's case, he remained faithful to his diary and produced a lively, vivid, and patently authentic account aof a man who was regarded as one of the leading novelists of the time. Paul F. Mattheisen