George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 28   George & Whatever Happened to His Mojo? A bit of a ramble, but, Gentle Reader, go with me awhile...

How did George go from this...

To this...

Le Chant De La Violette (The Stone Men) 1979 Rene Magritte.

In twenty five years?

I've said it before - some readers, biographers, and academics select scenes and characters from George's books and make them into true life stories of their hero - they make fact out of fiction. Of course, writers who create fiction can't help but write about what they know: any notion of 'objective' in a work is, itself, subjective, so there will always be some sort of personal detail unconsciously dropped into a story. Often, these 'Easter Eggs' bring the reader closer to the writer, if only in a make-believe sort of imaginary way. If you are not familiar with the term 'Easter Eggs' (apart from the yummy variety) Google's definition is: an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD, included as a joke or a bonus.

Rarely is painting and sculpture scrutinized for signs of autobiography the way that novel-writing seems to be - Tracy Emin and Marc Quinn, even Anthony Gormley (who all use their bodies or body parts in their work), aside. George discovered that a writer has severe limitations on what she/he produces, imposed by editors, the publisher and readership and in ways that a painter does not. A painter is free to demolish all preconceived ideas about what Art is, and evolve a personal visual language, preferably one that no-one has used before. A writer has to be as clear as possible whilst remaining within strict guidelines of what a reader thinks is readable. Publishers think in markets and genres that sell: a visual artist can do whatever she/he likes and call it 'Art', even if it doesn't sell. Is a painting or sculpture more accessible than a book? From the consumer's point of view it's easier to do - a split-second like/dislike or I get it/I don't get it choice. A book takes a chunk of your life - it's not a reflex action. Is a book still a book if no-one reads it? Or, is it just a paper brick? Someone, somewhere must be debating this, just as someone somewhere is debating 'Is writing Art or a craft?' - the sort of thing my Art history college tutor would set us as an assignment. I don't know the answers to any of this, by the way.

Blood Head by Marc Quinn. It's shocking, but is it Art? No idea. I'm vegetarian.

So, in George, thanks to the Letters and Diaries, we have an illusion of a life: the George that he wanted us to think he was and the George we want him to be. I am against taking what George writes as 100% reliable truth as he isn't always honest. And, my logic is this: if he can't tell the truth in his Diary and Letters, why would he reveal his secrets in the fiction? George was 'spinning' his persona as much in his fiction as he was in his factual stuff, so why can he be trusted to reveal anything intimate at all? That was very much not our boy's style: he was secretive and inhibited and suppressed (even repressed at time) - the confessional style was not his forte, and certainly not his conscious motivation to write. Much more Dyce Lashmar than Arthur Golding? A chancer (a roll of a Dice) chap who gets metaphorically thrashed (Lash-mar) or a legendry (King Arthur) Superhero (Gold-man)? A very careful self-serving spin is put on everything George writes - his mind was a little human Enigma machine for turning fibs into fiction, not facts into fiction. (And then there was the editing out of the Diary entries. More of that later.) But, we select who we want George to be - poor, doomed Arthur (the heroic Golden Child: vanquished) or Dyce (the Silver-Tongued Devil: all spin. I like both - and Dyce is one of my favourite Gissing characters. Only a woman could say that, perhaps. His very transparency - all that pompous front barely hiding the little boy beneath - is exactly the thing we women are supposed to think we can nurture out of a man-child waster. Pooh! to that.

But, let's look at one random little piece - one of the short stories. Now, in terms of plot, action and message, George's short stories superficially seem simplistic to the point of banality. They stroll by, hardly creating a stir; apparently anodyne, often deep in pathos, some worked up bits from his longer works. 'Dour' is a Scots' word (not 'Scotch', as George would say) that sums up the short stories: miserably gloomy, downbeat. Is this a reflection of the real George or the resentful artist grumpy at wasting his time on trifling bagatelles? He often decried his work but that was all part of the hype; the getting of sympathy. He toys with us, of course.

Spellbound is an odd little tale of not very much happening. A geezer pulls a fast one over his squeeze and her dopey brother to wind up living the life of Reilly as a kept man, all in very drab circumstances - their name is Dunn  - 'dun' being a very un-colourful colour as well as slang for asking for money in slightly dubious circumstances.

Health and safety update: the perils of reading a newspaper whilst smoking are obvious - it makes you saucy.

What makes Spellbound of interest is the set-up: there is this poor, lower middle class couple, the man is a reader and general dosser (with ideas above his very mediocre station), and the woman is easy-going and makes mantles. Sound familiar? Percy pulls a fast one over her to secure his right to be a lazy, feckless reader while she goes out to work to support him. She is too trusting by far (though George would say 'stupid') to see any selfish motive in him - she falls for his patter hook, line and sinker, and assumes his daily perambulations are to look for work that doesn't materialise through no fault of his. Percy employs what is known in psychotherapeutic circles as 'paradoxing'. Instead of telling her outright he wants to give up the search for work and read papers all day long in the local lending library - which he will enjoy - and that sponging off her would suit his style, he presents the notion that sitting reading in the library is an ordeal, an unpleasant and wearying chore. Maggie Dunn encourages him to keep at it - talks him into it! Percy's conceit is a ruse often employed by the passive-aggressive. Instead of asking you to make them a cup of tea, they mention they are thirsty so you offer to make them a cup of tea - sort of thing. They are absolved from criticism - you volunteered so you can't complain about being a waitress. Clever, eh? Weak, too. Anyhoo, Dunn bravely agrees to carry on the library searches and the daily fix of newsprint is maintained. In fact, Mr Dunn is addicted to this sort of reading matter the way some are addicted to pubs or betting shops or porn websites (you know who you are!), or George Gissing ha ha. The same way George was to reading high end literature and the Classics (so maybe he is mocking himself a little?).

Man Reading a Book 1916 by JC Leyendecker

So, off Percy goes and finds a sort of position that requires he live away from home. Now, the concept of the long-distance family was one George considered as attractive. A part-time husband; a part-time father, much as he was a part-time friend, sibling, son... Part-time writer, some might say! Not me, of course. All that reading he did was research ;).

After this stab at working away from home Dunn (unsurprisingly) falls out with the boss and comes home to a situation where his wife and brother-in-law work to support him. Finally, a man has won the domestic war! He is now living the dream: left to read all day and not have to earn a living. I have a sneaking suspicion this would have been George's preferred life - not a writer at all, but a reader (with a competence, of course!) Why, Percy Dunn is Henry Ryecroft in working-class embryo! Gone to seed? The name Percy Dunn - does that equate to sex is over as in the man has reached the end of his masculine life? Percy is slang for penis, though more often used back in the Joe Orton Entertaining Mr Sloane or the Confessions of a Window Cleaner outing starring Robin Askwith days (go to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071357/ if you have no shame and want to check out that one). 'Pointing Percy at the porcelain' still means a man urinating in a toilet - in some social circles (fortunately, not mine).


Satyr gazing at his navel. And possibly wondering why his Percy is so curly. He's just washed it and now he can't do a thing with it.

Spellbound was written in March 1896 when life with Edith was toxic and crushing. We don't really know much about their relationship - do we? What we have is George's version and his long catalogue of moaning about the way she acts towards him and the boys - but mostly, it's poor him. If she drove him to distraction imagine what he was like to live with! She probably desperately wanted him to be a better financial provider - if he was worried about his income, imagine she was equally as stressed over it. And he was a man who was constantly ill - but how would he be able to care for her if she fell ill? She probably wondered why he didn't get a job and write in his spare time - the security of a steady income might liberate his muse, - especially when all she saw of the creative process was George sitting reading Heine and Homer. Words like 'lazy' and 'useless' might have sprung from her lips... I'm beginning to sound like Amy Reardon, now ha ha.

Homer(s) Mural

George admitted himself he was sometimes weak, spineless and indecisive. At others, he was insensitive, implacable and cruel (funny how this melange of traits often goes hand-in-hand). To balance karma he was also generous, funny, intelligent, creative, courageous and unique in the world of late Victorian fiction. In the marriage (as in all his life) he tried to be assertive; he often failed. He tried to be macho; he often failed - but he was using very narrow parameters - success, money, recognition, moustache... He was a victim of a character that could allow itself to be taken over by others and subsumed by ideas that struck him as useful - usually that backed up his prejudices and fixed ideas -  hence the number of times he admits to associating with people he doesn't much like, or doing things he doesn't much want to do. Again, we turn to Morrissey: 'Why do I smile at people I would much rather kick in the eye?', from 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUjZjyIyNoE) Or, in George's world: 'I was looking for a wife and then I found a wife, and heaven knows I'm miserable now'. He has become, by the time of writing Spellbound, a mess of a man-child, neurotic, insecure, bitter, fearful, plagued by real and imaginary ills, fretful and needy. What the feck happened to turn him from the man who survived Bellevue, yomped round America like a lower middle class Woody Guthrie (actually, Woody Guthrie was lower middle-class, too, so scrub that) self-published Workers, and owned a damned fine moustache into a quivering jelly-fish? Not that jelly-fish aren't people, too.

This Charming Man, Himself: Stephen Patrick Morrissey - Moz to his fans. Moz, the son George and Oscar Wilde never had?

Spellbound isn't really about Edith; it's about Marianne aka Nell (it was always about Marianne). She worked 'at the mantles' she supported him in the early days, and had to return to work even though he didn't want her to and she was probably too ill to be out of the house. George wrote to Algernon on February 25th 1879, 'I am sorry to say she (Marianne) has just begun to work again.' While he toiled over Workers, out she went to earn their keep. It's about now that lentils enter the scene for their brief fifteen minutes of Gissing fame. These were the days when he had enough love in him to care for someone else. It was short-lived, but it was glorious for a while.

George returned from America in late 1877, just before his twentieth birthday, after an abortive overnight stay in Wakefield (where he wasn't made welcome) he set off for London to follow in Charles Dickens' footsteps to make his living as a writer. America had taught him the horrors of poverty so at least what he found in the capital could not have shocked him. He managed to find a tiny slum dwelling into which he crawled, to then set about trying to find work of any kind. He must have been set up with funds possibly from his mother, as he seems to have returned to England on borrowed cash and would not have brought much with him from his year of exile. His attempt at Bohemian life was basic but good for copy.

In London, what could he turn his hand to until the writing paid off? What would young George's USP be? I'm talking about work skills here, not the other high-falutin' stuff. A cv, were it to be manufactured, could not be too accurate of course (what cv is?) for obvious reasons. Though he was a stranger in town and could have selectively used Wakefield people as referees. We know Owens gave him a certificate of attendance for the work he did before exile, and it would be obvious this young man was a cut above the usual lower middle class job applicant. What could you put on a reference for George? Well, apart from leaving out the embarrassing bits, you could say he was diligent, quick-witted, intelligent, hard-working, with good literacy skills, a bent for drawing and the visual Arts and a good knowledge of botany. You could emphasise his time-keeping was good (obsessives tend to be punctual), and he would be a reliable worker if allowed some leeway to 'do his own thing', so as his slight tendency to be a bit of a know-it-all could be harnessed. On the down side, you could say he was stubborn, wilful, arrogant, not a people person, but relatively socially skilled; a man who accepted duty as the norm and would rise to a challenge if given one (a challenge, I mean!). What I might not mention (apart from the obvious) would be a degree of what might be term PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder that might render him unreliable, especially under pressure.

Death, the Knight and the Devil; 1513, by Albrecht Durer. A work of utter genius. I spent two years at primary school sat right next to a poster of this - which explains a lot.

PTSD is not confined to survivors of war zones. Any stress perceived as a persistent threat can escalate to an incapacitating level. Being shamed at Owens, four weeks in prison, a lonely, scary, destitute stint in America, the shame and rejection in Wakefield, the loss of all his hopes and dreams - the possible end of his love affair with the girl he left behind in Manchester- if that's not enough to shatter one's psyche. However...

According to the Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/basics/symptoms/con-20022540): PTSD symptoms are generally grouped into four types: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, or changes in emotional reactions.

We would not know if George suffered from intrusive thoughts about Owens and the days before he arrived in London. All that disappointment needed a counter-balance - was the woman he married and his fledgling writing career enough to blot out the pain of the memories? Did he have to immerse himself totally, selfishly, decisively rigidly, obsessively in order to prove it had all been worthwhile (he considered himself a genius writer after all the Owens fuss died down) or to keep the black thoughts at bay? In an already depression-prone mind (according to his sister Nelly) how did he battle those demons? Avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, or changes in emotional reactions - well that could be the story of the rest of his life.

George soon abandoned the old socialist side of his nature, the part so carefully crafted by his father. The way he ditched Marianne is cruel beyond belief - it's no wonder biographers manufacture her story to absolve George for his shameful wickedness. Making her into an alcoholic, despite the lack of proof, condemns her to be in the bracket of a woman deserving of his treatment because she brought it on herself through her own wanton fallibility. (Of course, if it were true then she would be a victim of a recognised illness, but I digress into an area where rational thought rarely tiptoes.) Was all George's subsequent perfidy an attempt to cover over just exactly how self-servingly ruthless he could be, not how weak he was? Was he so threatened by his own egotism and failings of character that to raise himself up in his own eyes (to the level where he could realise his genius) he had to resort to Darwin for approval of his decision to cast Marianne aside to her fate, sully her good name in the process and then have the cheek to want sympathy when she died?

As well as being a betrayal of their wedding vows, turning her out to live in digs on her own or with paid carers - this horrendous pattern of removing himself from any situation that stood between him and his damned reading (he spent more time reading then he ever did writing) started here, with this abnegation of every principle or moral he previously held dear and I think this one act of cruelty is what dragged him down. The guilt, the regret, the utter shame of abandoning a sick woman guaranteed his banishment from all his father believed in - even from his entitlement to a father's love. Stealing is understandable and forgivable; cruelty is a stain on the soul. In a lifetime of some pretty hefty unheroic moments, this one act ended the era of the optimistic, loving, unselfish (even heroic) George and started the era of the callous selfish, cold martinet. His soul was never to recover. It was only his own sickness and dependency that accorded him a smidgen of insight into how much Marianne had needed him. And I think this is why he destroyed the Diaries. Not because they were risqué and salacious, and he wanted to spare Gabrielle's blushes (she was French, FFS!) but because he was deeply, deeply ashamed of himself. How he must have mourned for the old George.