Commonplace 36 George & the Curious Incident of the Police Sergeant in the Night-Time. PART TWO.
Gentle readers, cast your minds back to Commonplace 35. My contention was/is that George framed Marianne aka Nell as an alcoholic/debauched character to suit his own purpose - to justify his abandoning of her because she was too ill for him to care for; too time-consuming for him to maintain, and too likely to draw attention to what he wanted to keep secret. I am not saying he was a bad man - just a selfish one. As he put it on January 19th 1882, 'No-one is called upon to sacrifice everything in life to a weak-minded person's whims, and it is clear that this place cannot possibly be a home for her henceforth.' Somehow, George is allowed to get away with this. What would be the reaction if Gabrielle had said the same thing about our man when he was ailing in France? She would have been burned as a witch! George, as the husband, had a moral responsibility to Marianne - he reneged on the deal. To have and to hold from this day forth, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health... No-one forced him to say those words.
The only reference made, prior to September 1883, linking Marianne to drinking alcohol, was a letter to Algernon in which George wrote of finding a gin bottle in her box (January 16th 1882). Marianne said it was not a new bottle but it had been in her box for some time. If it was unopened, or totally empty (ie just a glass vessel), we don't know - the reality of its contents isn't important to George and his propaganda. It is enough that he links her name with the word 'gin' to establish the idea in Algernon's mind: he knows all the middle class preconceived ideas will coalesce and terraform into the stereotype in his younger brother's consciousness. It had to be this subtle because Alg knew Marianne personally and already had enjoyed a warm relationship with her.
When Marianne attended hospital for her various health conditions, she was out from under the Gissing thumb. She made friends; they chatted, much as women do, swapping life stories, beauty tips, cake recipes, ways to keep a man happy... we girls discuss the same things, today. Women are the main carriers of language to children but men are the self-appointed moderators of what we should be talking about. He writes to Algernon on May 18th 1881 '...I am convinced the atmosphere of vulgar gossip is congenial to her'. Now, George liked gossip himself - when he was in charge of it and it featured his own information. He was quick to gossip about Thomas Hardy, for example, and JM Barrie... and his letters are riddled with posh people's doings - he loved being able to name drop, which is a form of gossip. So, it was just women's gossip, and working class women's gossip - which meant he was absolutely against Marianne doing it. But that does not make her debauched. It makes her a communicator and quite NORMAL. In a June 19th 1881 letter to Alg, George makes this harsh remark about Marianne: '... she has about as much idea of entertaining a visitor (his grandfather) as my writing-chair has, - indeed, the chair would do it better, at least being able to keep from foolish & prejudicial gossip'. ...' What a dick he could be!
To recap: there is no evidence in the Letters (Vols 1&2) that Marianne drank alcohol to excess. There is one mention of a gin bottle, one of associating with drunken girls (with no mention of Marianne being drunk), then comes the Curious Incident of the PS in the N-T. After this, there is the mention (which I believe was fabricated) from Mrs Sherlock that Marianne spent all her money on drink, and then the ridiculous nonsense of George telling Clara Collet (February 1897) his wife was a drunk who died in 1881/2. George mentions all sorts of maladies and spells in hospital or convalescing - but never mentions Marianne drank in his presence or was ever drunk in his presence.
At the end of December 1882, George and Marianne finally stopped living together. In his letter to Algernon (December 27th 1882) George does not say it was because Marianne was drinking to excess; in fact, she had just been discharged from Westminster Hospital (admission date November 7th according to a letter to Alg written on November 2nd.) and had come home on December 15th to recuperate from an operation on her arm. In the November 2nd letter, George mentions asking Mrs Fred Harrison to find Marianne lodgings; we don't know if this was to be the accommodation Marianne moved to on December 27th - which was in Brixton.
There is no mention of Marianne again in the Letters until The Curious Incident of the Police Sergeant in the Night-Time. (This does not mean there was no contact between them, just that we don't have the evidence for it.) On Monday, September 24th, 1883 George wrote this to his brother:
Before we go on, let's look at this part.
Here's what I think:
George was told by a police sergeant that Marianne had been attacked. George admits himself he thinks the police sergeant is opportunistically hoping to be hired for pay to help George procure a divorce. Here we have a public official touting for work and attempting to make money on the back of a crime victim's suffering. What a cowardly, felonious blackguard.
We don't know the location of this incident or Marianne's address, so how far she was from home when this happened is unclear. She moved to Brixton in December 1882, but we don't know if she stayed there. George says it was in a 'place where business could not have taken her', but this is worthless as evidence because this might just mean in a residential street local to her home, her own street, or where shops were shut. Some might take this as Marianne doing something illicit but that is misogyny and the infamous determination to always see Marianne as at fault. She may very well have been on her way back from a hospital, following another admission, or from a dispensary after buying medication. She might have been enjoying a night out with her pals to the music hall or theatre; perhaps she was visiting a sick friend. She was a free agent living in a democracy where she could, but for the constraints of social norms, please herself where she went. In thinking anything other than an innocent reason for her being out of doors at 1.30 am is the same as blaming the victim for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, much as women are today often blamed for inciting lust in rapists by wearing certain clothing. Or walking home alone.
There is every chance Marianne could have been recovering from an epileptic fit and trying to get home to safety when she was set upon by three men. As women usually get the blame for men abusing them (see above), it is clear Marianne was behaving with great courage in following the crime through to the point of two of the attackers being taken to the police station. It was not a sexual assault as some biographers claim (physical assault and sexual assault are different charges), but it might have headed in that direction if help had not been on the scene quickly. There attack might have been discovered by a passing beat constable because one of the men ran off and only two were arrested. Of course, if the man who ran off was innocent of any crime, why didn't he stick around to defend his good name and that of his friends?
1. The attackers would be able to know her identity and them come after her for revenge.
2. Being a grass is not a good idea when you have no-one to back you up.
3. The men might defend themselves by claiming she was soliciting. This might lead to her being forced to undergo a gynaecological exam, which would have been distressing.
4. It was 2 against 1 plus the police officers were all men. Only another woman would really understand how intimidating that might be.
5. Would they believe her? She was poor and working class and at the bottom of the power league - not a strong place from which to mount an attack on assailants.
6. She must have been extremely frightened by the experience and desperate to get home. The adrenalin would have been wearing off and she might even have been afraid she might have a seizure. If she was seen as incapable she might have been locked up or sent to an asylum.
7. If she was unwell, perhaps she couldn't think through her statement coherently. Epilepsy causes a range of cognitive difficulties, and Marianne might have thought she would not be able to remember everything that happened if she had to appear as a witness. Remember, epilepsy was seen by the ignorant as libidinous in origin and even a sign of having indulged in masturbation, and a person pre- or post-seizure is particularly vulnerable to being mistaken for being inebriated. click
8. She got talked out of it. Perhaps she was told if she lost in court she would be in serious trouble and face prison or some sort of fine for wasting police and court time.
9. She acted to protect George. If it went to court, George's name might be reported in the press. Marianne might have preferred to withdraw her charges to prevent his criminal past from being exposed or exploited by blackmailers.
10. She might have preferred George not to know about it - if Marianne thought George might have at some point wanted a reconciliation, this sort of business would have put him off.
Marianne wasn't allowed to back out of it, says George in the letter. Well, perhaps she was induced to pursue it by a policeman who thought the case had a chance in court. The police sergeant with the moonlighting job as a private detective needed to make Marianne look (to George) like she would lose on account of her 'notoriety' - which he proceeded to fabricate.
George said the police sergeant arrived at the door to ask 'what light I could throw upon the prosecutor's character'. As the man goes on to tell George about Marianne's alleged bad reputation, it seems he didn't really need to come to George at all.
'He told me she was described in the neighbourhood, as an habitual drunkard, well known in all public-houses, & generally regarded as in all respects a bad character'. This is just a corrupt policeman trying to give a husband ammunition with which to divorce a wife he no longer wants. To be known in all public-houses just meant she went into pubs. Pubs were more than purveyors of alcohol - they did all kinds of services. For example, George redeemed the wedding ring pawn ticket in one, so Marianne had borrowed money in a pub. When I was a child growing up, people used pubs for all sorts of what now seem bizarre things: to deliver life assurance payments; to leave and collect dry cleaning; to make use of the Provident savings scheme; to swap paperback books; to leave football pools coupons; to place orders for Xmas hampers; to use the telephone; to buy potatoes in bulk. Many of these transactions I had to do as part of my chores duties - so I was well-known in public-houses. There is no reason to assume because Marianne went into pubs that she emerged from them drunk. Unless you choose to make that assumption to paint her as debauched.
The policeman already knew about the class difference between George and Marianne and would be able to conjure up in his mind all the possible problems that might engender. By playing to that he could widen that gap with some scandalous claptrap that would underline the need for a George to proceed with a divorce. Claiming someone has a bad character is an easy thing to say and never really requires proof - give a dog a bad name and you might as well hang him, as they say. Of interest is the fact that obviously Marianne didn't have a criminal record for vagrancy or drunk and disorderly conduct in a public place or anything else (such as theft or soliciting or vagrancy). In fact, it was the husband, not the wife, who had the criminal record - makes you wonder what the policeman would have made of that if he'd known about it! I suspect the 'evidence' the policeman wanted paying for was precisely this sort of stuff about searching criminal records, as he would have bought time to go away and check the files for Marianne's name.
Do you really believe Marianne had become a 'bad character' in the space of a few months? Whatever that phrase means (and the term seems very much like something George would think up), there is nothing in the Letters to suggest she was anything but the opposite. She got on well with his brothers - particularly William - liked poetry, read books, had done her best to fit in with George's high standards. Their relationship did not fail because she was a 'bad character'; it failed because she was an invalid whose husband did not want to care for her in any way but financially. And he didn't do a very good job of that!
'The officer told me he very much doubted her innocence'. Whoa! Marianne is the victim, here, not the accused!! This is outrageous and George should never have stood for it - if it is an accurate account of what the policeman said. He follows this with 'In any case, her bad character will go against her'. What bad character is this? The one the policeman has just constructed! We have the word of a corrupt policeman touting for business as a moonlighting private detective prepared to sell confidential government information - and he has the cheek to say Marianne has a bad character!! Would you take his word for it? How can he be trusted to report accurately on anything? Following it up with the suggestion it might be mentioned in the press was obviously to reinforce the notion George should file for divorce and would have need of evidence, but may also have hinted at something else. The crime of extortion comes from Latin extortionem, “a twisting out.” The crime involves obtaining something, usually money, from a person by force or wrongful use of authority or power. That's what is going on here. click
George mentions the policeman commenting on the £1 a week he allows his wife. He doesn't 'allow' her, of course - it is alimony. Why did they discuss this? What business was it of the policeman's? As I said in Commonplace 32 Marianne could have gone to court to be officially paid alimony and she might very well have been awarded more than £1 and certainly more than the 15/- he was paying her at her death. Perhaps this is George opportunistically using the policemen to mouth the words he wants to hear - cut her alimony. Reducing it by 25% was not the act of a poor man but a mean one, but, as usual with George, he abdicates his responsibility (see the next instalment in Commonplace 37 for more of this sort of malarkey) to someone else's shoulders to come up with it. Sadly, this begs the question: was this the start of him dropping the payment to 15/-? If so, Marianne subsisted on 15/- a week for four and a half years. Which is heart-rending, isn't it? That's about £45 a week by the year 2007's equivalents click. £45 for everything, regardless of her health or the season of the year or what clothing etc needs replacing. And this was while George was hobnobbing with his toffs and holidaying at the drop of a silk hat, buying books and smoking cigars. Imagine what his middle-class friends would have said about it - George's shameful scandal wasn't that he'd been to prison for theft or that he married a working class girl. It was that he kept his wife in dire poverty and condemned her to a miserable existence so that he might dabble with his bourgeois notions of Art.
The only reference made, prior to September 1883, linking Marianne to drinking alcohol, was a letter to Algernon in which George wrote of finding a gin bottle in her box (January 16th 1882). Marianne said it was not a new bottle but it had been in her box for some time. If it was unopened, or totally empty (ie just a glass vessel), we don't know - the reality of its contents isn't important to George and his propaganda. It is enough that he links her name with the word 'gin' to establish the idea in Algernon's mind: he knows all the middle class preconceived ideas will coalesce and terraform into the stereotype in his younger brother's consciousness. It had to be this subtle because Alg knew Marianne personally and already had enjoyed a warm relationship with her.
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| Cup of Coffee by Victor Gabriel Gilbert c 1890 |
To recap: there is no evidence in the Letters (Vols 1&2) that Marianne drank alcohol to excess. There is one mention of a gin bottle, one of associating with drunken girls (with no mention of Marianne being drunk), then comes the Curious Incident of the PS in the N-T. After this, there is the mention (which I believe was fabricated) from Mrs Sherlock that Marianne spent all her money on drink, and then the ridiculous nonsense of George telling Clara Collet (February 1897) his wife was a drunk who died in 1881/2. George mentions all sorts of maladies and spells in hospital or convalescing - but never mentions Marianne drank in his presence or was ever drunk in his presence.
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| Rape of the Sabine Woman by Giambologna 1583 |
There is no mention of Marianne again in the Letters until The Curious Incident of the Police Sergeant in the Night-Time. (This does not mean there was no contact between them, just that we don't have the evidence for it.) On Monday, September 24th, 1883 George wrote this to his brother:
'I have very loathsome matters to write to you about. I address you as my legal advisor. Bad as they are, they may prove the beginning of a day of freedom for me.
I was visited this evening by a sergeant of police, who informed me that my wife had preferred a charge of criminal assault against three men, two of whom had been taken into custody, - the other escaping. These two were remanded until next Thursday. He came to ask me what light I could throw upon the prosecutor's character.
As it proved, the light came rather from him. He told me she was described in the neighbourhood, as an habitual drunkard, well known in all public-houses, & generally regarded as in all respects a bad character. The assault took place at 1.30 am., in a place where business could not possibly have taken her. At the station she wished to back out of the charge; but of course was not allowed to. The officer told me he very much doubted her innocence. In any case, her bad character will go against her. Either the men will be discharged on Thursday, or committed. Of course the case will be in the papers.
Now, you see what all this points to. I think there is little doubt that the man called on me in the idea that I might employ him to collect evidence, with view to a divorce. He smiled at my folly in allowing her a pound a week. Doubtless he will call on me again, &, if he does, I shall certainly make enquiries to see whether I can afford to employ him. He said that he thought the matter would not be very difficult.'
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| Selling Violets by Victor Gabriel Gilbert c, 1897? |
Here's what I think:
George was told by a police sergeant that Marianne had been attacked. George admits himself he thinks the police sergeant is opportunistically hoping to be hired for pay to help George procure a divorce. Here we have a public official touting for work and attempting to make money on the back of a crime victim's suffering. What a cowardly, felonious blackguard.
We don't know the location of this incident or Marianne's address, so how far she was from home when this happened is unclear. She moved to Brixton in December 1882, but we don't know if she stayed there. George says it was in a 'place where business could not have taken her', but this is worthless as evidence because this might just mean in a residential street local to her home, her own street, or where shops were shut. Some might take this as Marianne doing something illicit but that is misogyny and the infamous determination to always see Marianne as at fault. She may very well have been on her way back from a hospital, following another admission, or from a dispensary after buying medication. She might have been enjoying a night out with her pals to the music hall or theatre; perhaps she was visiting a sick friend. She was a free agent living in a democracy where she could, but for the constraints of social norms, please herself where she went. In thinking anything other than an innocent reason for her being out of doors at 1.30 am is the same as blaming the victim for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, much as women are today often blamed for inciting lust in rapists by wearing certain clothing. Or walking home alone.
There is every chance Marianne could have been recovering from an epileptic fit and trying to get home to safety when she was set upon by three men. As women usually get the blame for men abusing them (see above), it is clear Marianne was behaving with great courage in following the crime through to the point of two of the attackers being taken to the police station. It was not a sexual assault as some biographers claim (physical assault and sexual assault are different charges), but it might have headed in that direction if help had not been on the scene quickly. There attack might have been discovered by a passing beat constable because one of the men ran off and only two were arrested. Of course, if the man who ran off was innocent of any crime, why didn't he stick around to defend his good name and that of his friends?
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| Hercules Killing the Hydra by Antonio del Pollaiolo c1452 |
Now, why might Marianne have wanted to get out of bringing charges when she got to the police station? 1. The attackers would be able to know her identity and them come after her for revenge.
2. Being a grass is not a good idea when you have no-one to back you up.
3. The men might defend themselves by claiming she was soliciting. This might lead to her being forced to undergo a gynaecological exam, which would have been distressing.
4. It was 2 against 1 plus the police officers were all men. Only another woman would really understand how intimidating that might be.
5. Would they believe her? She was poor and working class and at the bottom of the power league - not a strong place from which to mount an attack on assailants.
6. She must have been extremely frightened by the experience and desperate to get home. The adrenalin would have been wearing off and she might even have been afraid she might have a seizure. If she was seen as incapable she might have been locked up or sent to an asylum.
7. If she was unwell, perhaps she couldn't think through her statement coherently. Epilepsy causes a range of cognitive difficulties, and Marianne might have thought she would not be able to remember everything that happened if she had to appear as a witness. Remember, epilepsy was seen by the ignorant as libidinous in origin and even a sign of having indulged in masturbation, and a person pre- or post-seizure is particularly vulnerable to being mistaken for being inebriated. click
8. She got talked out of it. Perhaps she was told if she lost in court she would be in serious trouble and face prison or some sort of fine for wasting police and court time.
9. She acted to protect George. If it went to court, George's name might be reported in the press. Marianne might have preferred to withdraw her charges to prevent his criminal past from being exposed or exploited by blackmailers.
10. She might have preferred George not to know about it - if Marianne thought George might have at some point wanted a reconciliation, this sort of business would have put him off.
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| Boreas by John William Waterhouse 1903 |
George said the police sergeant arrived at the door to ask 'what light I could throw upon the prosecutor's character'. As the man goes on to tell George about Marianne's alleged bad reputation, it seems he didn't really need to come to George at all.
'He told me she was described in the neighbourhood, as an habitual drunkard, well known in all public-houses, & generally regarded as in all respects a bad character'. This is just a corrupt policeman trying to give a husband ammunition with which to divorce a wife he no longer wants. To be known in all public-houses just meant she went into pubs. Pubs were more than purveyors of alcohol - they did all kinds of services. For example, George redeemed the wedding ring pawn ticket in one, so Marianne had borrowed money in a pub. When I was a child growing up, people used pubs for all sorts of what now seem bizarre things: to deliver life assurance payments; to leave and collect dry cleaning; to make use of the Provident savings scheme; to swap paperback books; to leave football pools coupons; to place orders for Xmas hampers; to use the telephone; to buy potatoes in bulk. Many of these transactions I had to do as part of my chores duties - so I was well-known in public-houses. There is no reason to assume because Marianne went into pubs that she emerged from them drunk. Unless you choose to make that assumption to paint her as debauched.
The policeman already knew about the class difference between George and Marianne and would be able to conjure up in his mind all the possible problems that might engender. By playing to that he could widen that gap with some scandalous claptrap that would underline the need for a George to proceed with a divorce. Claiming someone has a bad character is an easy thing to say and never really requires proof - give a dog a bad name and you might as well hang him, as they say. Of interest is the fact that obviously Marianne didn't have a criminal record for vagrancy or drunk and disorderly conduct in a public place or anything else (such as theft or soliciting or vagrancy). In fact, it was the husband, not the wife, who had the criminal record - makes you wonder what the policeman would have made of that if he'd known about it! I suspect the 'evidence' the policeman wanted paying for was precisely this sort of stuff about searching criminal records, as he would have bought time to go away and check the files for Marianne's name.
Do you really believe Marianne had become a 'bad character' in the space of a few months? Whatever that phrase means (and the term seems very much like something George would think up), there is nothing in the Letters to suggest she was anything but the opposite. She got on well with his brothers - particularly William - liked poetry, read books, had done her best to fit in with George's high standards. Their relationship did not fail because she was a 'bad character'; it failed because she was an invalid whose husband did not want to care for her in any way but financially. And he didn't do a very good job of that!
'The officer told me he very much doubted her innocence'. Whoa! Marianne is the victim, here, not the accused!! This is outrageous and George should never have stood for it - if it is an accurate account of what the policeman said. He follows this with 'In any case, her bad character will go against her'. What bad character is this? The one the policeman has just constructed! We have the word of a corrupt policeman touting for business as a moonlighting private detective prepared to sell confidential government information - and he has the cheek to say Marianne has a bad character!! Would you take his word for it? How can he be trusted to report accurately on anything? Following it up with the suggestion it might be mentioned in the press was obviously to reinforce the notion George should file for divorce and would have need of evidence, but may also have hinted at something else. The crime of extortion comes from Latin extortionem, “a twisting out.” The crime involves obtaining something, usually money, from a person by force or wrongful use of authority or power. That's what is going on here. click
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| The Fury of Achilles by Charles-Antoine Coypel 1737 |
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| The Rape of the Sabine Women by Pablo Picasso 24/10/62 |
JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 37 FOR PART THREE
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