George Gissing

“ Not a piece was produced at any West-end theatre but Isherwood saw it on the first night; every music-hall of repute had a share of his attentions. Yet he had long ago ceased to care genuinely for these entertainments; for the most part, he neither saw nor listened, but sat dreaming of the things his soul desired—a home, a wife, a child, and respectability. Music often affected him to tears, and then he would make noble resolutions, always involving a departure for distant lands, where a "new life" might be entered upon. ”

“ Never allowing himself to exceed his income, he never spent less than the weekly fractions into which he had exactly divided it. He neither owed nor lent to any man. And every night of his life he came home—not exactly drunk, but alcoholically cheerful.
Since he left the country, in his eighteenth year, the man had never known domestic life; a common enough case, and generally fraught with great perils. Isherwood's temperament, and the peculiar cast of his mind, protected him in a singular way. ”

“ At this time of the day it was not easy to find men at leisure; at all events, the kind of men with whom he cared to associate in his daylight mood, which always tended to the rigidly moral, and, as years went on, grew tinged with a certain penitential gravity. Consequently, his afternoon was spent in "private" bars, where he conversed with the young woman who supplied his chosen beverage. Among a score or two of barmaids to whom his pleasant, though plain, countenance was very familiar, Isherwood felt himself privileged to distinguish some half-dozen as his intimate friends ”