Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Gordon comes from “the most dismal of all classes, the middle-middle class, the landless gentry” (37). His family became prosperous during the Victorian era; his grandfather made his fortune exploiting the proletariat, the urban working class, and immigrant workers. He also exerted tight control over his children’s lives: “Gran’pa Comstock had been at the greatest pains to drive all of [Gordon’s uncles] into professions for which they were totally unsuited” (38). Only Gordon’s father, John, defied Gran’pa Comstock by marrying while Gordon’s grandfather was still alive. However, even John Comstock, who had a “slight literary turn” (40), obliged Gran’pa Comstock by becoming an accountant—a career he failed at.

Gordon describes his relatives as “grey, shabby, joyless people” who squandered the family fortune not through reckless spending sprees but on bad investments and failed businesses (39). Gordon’s uncles and aunts either never married or married only in old age. Gordon himself attended a series of “wretched, pretentious” boarding schools where he was bullied for not being as rich as his classmates (41). His sister Julia received barely any education at all. Instead, his mother and sister worked to help pay for his tuition.

In school, Gordon developed “unorthodox opinions” and read the books the headmaster of the school banned (43). He and his friends in school even ran a newspaper titled the Bolshevik, which advocated against the British Empire and promoted socialism and free love. Also, he concluded that “all modern commerce is a swindle” and “money-worship has been elevated into a religion” (43). Gordon’s response to this worship of money was to realize “You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich […] the only fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it” (44).

After graduating at age 18, Gordon initially refused to apply for an accounting job his Uncle Walter had arranged for him. Instead, Gordon decided he wanted to be a writer. When Gordon’s mother became sick, Gordon took the accounting job, but he quit it after his mother’s death despite opposition from his family. He lived in poverty and found that the stress harmed his creativity. He also relied on money from Julia and his impoverished Aunt Angela. Eventually, Gordon was able to get a job in an advertising firm, New Albion. His coworkers mocked him for being a poet, but it was this that earned him a promotion to apprentice copywriter.

Gordon was horrified at his success and decided that he had “to get out of it—out of the money-world, irrevocably, before he was too far involved” (54). With the help of his friend Ravelston, Gordon published Mice and took his current job at a bookshop owned by Mr. Kechnie. At first, Gordon was happy, but eventually he discovered that “Life on two quid a week ceases to be a heroic gesture and becomes a dingy habit” (57). Things have gone no better for Gordon’s living relatives. Julia works at a tea shop, does sewing on the side, and continues lending money to Gordon. Uncle Walter is running a failing office while living in a boarding house. Aunt Angela is living on welfare and relying on food Julia gives her. No one in the family “ha[s] ever been out of England, fought in war, been in prison, ridden a horse, travelled in an aeroplane, got married or given birth to a child” (61).