Commonplace 73  George & Mrs Annie Coward PART ONE

The Temptation of Christ
by Ary Scheffer 1854

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken. Simone de Beauvoir
One of the great disappointments in a woman's life is the realisation men are all, at heart, sexual predators. What separates the rapist from the chevalier, and the continent from the adulterer is opportunity - some of us might say. We know George was no different. Though he might have dressed up his motives much as a wolf dons sheep's clothing, he was clear on the subject of his sexual needs and how he could go about satisfying them.

He was not looking for romance. He took his chances wherever he could, preying on less than socially confident and worldly women. The three wives he got through in his short life are testament to a man who lacked sincerity and grace where women were concerned, who relied on the insecurities and precarious position in society those women occupied, all of them much weaker than himself and likely to be unable to withstand his domineering persistence. He lacked HG Wells' brio and playful charm (or was that playful smarm haha?) with the ladies; you can't imagine George flirting (given his dire performance in the letters to Gabrielle) in a convincing, stirring fashion, can you?

In the last year of their time together, George was forced into the position of being his first wife Marianne's carer, which he resented. Let's face it, he was never cut out for that sort of role - in order to fulfil that remit, one has to have empathy and unselfish devotion to duty. Not George's strong suits, and neither was he motivated to develop them. Throughout his life, he ran from responsibility when it was up close and personal, preferring to deal with life's moral conundrums by throwing money at them. As long as he was paying for something, his job was done. Algernon, Marianne aka Nell, Walter, Edith, Alfred... George demonstrated his 'caring' ways by handing out cash. He never really got the concept of what people really want from their supporters - which is authentic concern plus time - but then he can never be accused of not helping out the easiest, cheapest way of all. As Henry Ryecroft, that weird mouthpiece George invented to speak his reactionary worst, said: With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman. Paying for someone else to do the caring for his disabled wife had the dual benefits of appearing to care whilst ensuring maximum time for him to indulge his love of reading. The misery of having no time to read a thousand glorious books. Never listen to anyone who claims George wanted time to write - if you add up all the hours that took up over his lifetime, you wouldn't amass much. He hated writing, and saw it as a means to an end - the 'end' being time to read.

One of The Family by Frederick George Cotman 1880

Biographers claim Marianne was a drunk and this was what eventually came between them - poor George was unable to keep her off the bottle. Utter claptrap, of course, but it was a convenient lie that George told Miss Collet when he needed her help to ditch Edith. And everyone else ever after sees it as truth. It's clear from the Letters, Marianne was not suffering from any effects of alcohol-related illness. For a start, hospitals for the poor would not entertain to admit anyone with drink-related problems - because these were not seen as medical diseases, but as self-inflicted side effects of a dissolute lifestyle. Poor people did not have access to the kind of care that supported this - unless it was in a designated hospital for inebriates. As Marianne was never taken into one of these (and there was one in the area of north London where they mostly lived together), we can assume what she required in terms of in-patient care for was not alcohol-related. Such services as were provided for anyone with an alcohol-related problem was usually paid for by Christian-based charities, all of whom held temperance in high esteem. George never mentions she spent time in any hospital for alcohol-related problems - any talk of Marianne being a heavy drinker starts with the policeman who called on George and offered to spy on Marianne so George could obtain a divorce. This was in 1883. As this self-serving policeman didn't unearth any evidence in the form of witnesses to her drunken behaviour, we can assume there wasn't any drunken behaviour to witness. Much later, when George, was manipulating Miss Collet with all the skill he had to muster (which, in terms of manipulative behaviour, was considerable!) when he was desperate to attract that (shamefully un-British) drug of sympathy he constantly craved, was when he framed Marianne as a drunkard. This is the only reference George makes to the subject of her being a drunk, but biographers have clung to it resolutely - whilst refusing to see the evidence for his syphilis haha. Still, there's none as blind as those...

Satan from Milton's Paradise Lost
by William Blake 1808

Throughout 1882, George and Marianne lived at 15, Gower Place, 29, Dorchester Place, and at 17, Oakley Crescent. It is clear from his letters to Algernon, going as far back as the beginning of the year, George was tired of Marianne. Her health was beyond poor, and no doubt it was becoming apparent to medically savvy George that she was not going to get better. In 1881, Marianne was 24 but the ravages of her disease must have already begun affecting her appearance, her personality and her state of mind. She had some years before developed epilepsy, for which there was no effective treatment, and that seemed to have become more profoundly disabling; her scrofula was becoming systemic and so was making itself known in various parts of her body, as it insidiously destroyed her vital organs. There was no cure, and no way of estimating the prognosis: it might be two or twenty years before it consumed her. At times, she required what is termed in the nursing trade as 'all nursing care' and required hospitalization; there was a raft of ailments connected to her scrofula, some of which required surgery, and all of which would be recurring, growing ever more disabling. With no NHS to draw on, George was caught between being too rich to qualify for what financial help there was available, and too poor to be able to afford the very best of treatment for Marianne. 

In May, 1879, he had sent her to stay with his brother, William, and that had been hugely beneficial to her health. But, by 1882, William was gone, and George's solution was to farm out her nursing support to various landladies who posed as carers. This might seem unkind, but there was a roaring trade in private health care - even George's old friend, Dr Henry Hick, did it (for HG Wells and George, himself). In order to understand this type of arrangement, it is important to remember the nursing profession was unregulated, and anyone with a spare room could set themselves up as a private home for convalescents. This had been the case with psychiatric patients, until the XXX introduced legislation to monitor the way residents were treated within the confines of private asylums and small, often single-patient, residences. Again, and it seems logical but is often overlooked, Marianne was sent to live with little old ladies and single women - who would not have tolerated a drunk under their care. She was never thrown out of these places, but always left when she felt well enough to return to her real life - with its freedom and independence. She had every legal right to cohabit with George and it does not seem at all a selfish and thoughtless thing for a wife to want to live with her husband - well, not to me! In September 1882, George boasts to Algernon that Marianne will have a servant in the new 'place of abode' that he had found for her - like that would appeal to the likes of Marianne, who was used to being George's servant. 

The Discobolus of/by Myron 460-450 CE click for link to British Museum video

The couple moved into Oakley Crescent, Chelsea (now 33 Oakley Gardens) in September, 1882. The landlady was Mrs Annie Coward. Her husband, a commercial travelling salesman (travelling in ladies' underwear, as the old music hall joke used to say??), was often away from home. This was not a flop house - Mrs Coward employed two servants - as George boasted to Algernon. And, in a letter of November 26th to his sister Madge, George wrote:

I am glad to say I am very well off in these present lodgings, have every attention, & get good cooking. The landlady relieves me of all trouble as to meals, & gives me for dinner at night just whatever she likes. It matters little what it is, as long as one's hunger is satisfied.  It sounds like Mrs Coward was very accommodating. 

George has begun to refer to Marianne as 'Helen'; the old familiar 'Nell' is no more. Was this rampant snobbishness or a sign he was desperate to see her as not on familiar terms?). On November 2nd 1882, he writes to Algernon:

A step has at last been taken. They have consented to receive Helen into Westminster Hospital, where in all probability they will operate upon her arm. She goes on Tuesday (that was 7th). This is not a day too soon. For more than a week I have scarcely slept more than half an hour at a time through the night, & the results are most appreciable. I have, in the meantime, got Mrs (Frederic) Harrison's help in searching for a permanent home. This will be made use of when she leaves Hospital. As he made use of anyone with excess 'sympathy', George had dragooned in Mrs Fred Harrison to help. Shameless. 

Mrs Frederic Harrison
by William Blake Richmond 1882 

George was going through a Gilbert and Sullivan phase (but you can't hold that against him haha). Algernon was staying in London (though, tellingly, and despite an invite, not at Oakley Crescent), and the two were out 'on the town' together. Whilst the cat's away, the mice will play - as they say. On December 11th, George went to visit Marianne in Westminster Hospital. On December 14th, he wrote to Algernon:
I hear that there is to be a return from the Hospital tomorrow. This, of course, alters all prospective arrangements, & I don't exactly know the next step. Presumably, Marianne returned home as predicted, on December 15th, and George and Algernon would have to curtail their bachelor ways for a while. 

On Christmas Day, George took his dinner at a cafe in Oxford Street and did not have it at home. On December 27th, Marianne moved out of Oakley Crescent and took half the furniture with her. She went to live with 'some people' in Brixton. This was a decisive step for Marianne, coming so close on the tail of a stay in hospital, and in the midst of the necessary convalescence period. What had happened to bring on this rupture? Had she come across something George might not have wanted her to discover? Mrs Annie Coward, perhaps, stepping up and filling in for her whilst she was in hospital? Husband away - George lonely and incompetently struggling at looking after himself? Long winter nights... sympathy given and received? Maybe Marianne stumbled upon some sort of liaison dangereuse and decided to call it a day on her less than ideal husband. 

George's plan was to find a small rented room of his own somewhere cheap - but Mrs Coward would have none of it; she 
...stepped in as my saviour by proposing that I should have a little back room of their own, & so save all the fearful trouble of removal, &c. ... My rent will be 7/- weekly, including all attendance! My wife receives £1 weekly; so that my expenses are still heavy enough.  Good old Mrs Coward - such a good egg. Her much older husband would have been proud of her. 'All attendance' covered a multitude of sins, no doubt. And, how selfless of her, to make it possible for George stay under her roof...

Something was changing - George decided to drop the 'R' from his authorial signature; Positivism was losing its allure. And Mrs Coward was demonstrating her sympathy. What a trouper she was! But, by March 1883, George was ailing, and he was complaining of his room being cold. Was clever Mrs Coward keeping his room freezing so he would seek out warmth like some feral alley cat... and find it along her back passage - I mean, in her parlour*? George, peacock-like, begins to use hoity-toity phrases - 'what the deuce!' slips into his letters to Algernon. He says this: By the way, is not Carlyle sadly gone off? I met him the other day, & he did nothing but blaspheme, & pour out a torrent of bad language against blackguards, fools & devils, that was appalling to listen to. I kid you not. Was he channelling Samuel Johnson, prithee, haha. And, then the man flu is rampant - he can't work for the sake of fretting over his publishers's lack of communication. Later, a nasty bout of lumbago means he can't turn his head - which is odd, as lumbago is a generic term for lower back pain. What has George been up to that has damaged his lower back right up to his neck??? Hmmm... 
By April, he has to decamp down to Hastings because of 'general seediness'. Whatever that is - I have my suspicions the emphasis should be on the 'seed' part of that!

The Woman, The Man And The Serpent
by John Liston Byam Shaw 1911

Then, developments. A curious entry on July 18th 1883, to Algernon:
My holidays have begun rather unpromisingly, with headache and inability to work, due to various strange complications & bedevilments in which no one has any interest but myself. (Then why mention it??) Is Mrs Coward exercising too much sympathy?? He adds: 
Have I told you yet that I have changed my quarters in the house here? At the proposal of the Cowards I have quitted my downstairs room, which was after all damp & unwholesome, & am fixed in the back parlour (*what did I tell you??), - the room, you remember, where we used to have tea. It really is very comfortable, quite dry, & - joy of joys - the chimney does not smoke even when the door is closed! I am convinced this saves me many a quinsy next winter.  
By July 21st, he is talking about going to a party with the Cowards. A party?? And, by jingo! He HAS been channelling Sam Johnson, for he is reading Boswell and Mrs Piozzi. But, there is a swelling in the veins of one leg he has to contend with.
My own position at present is not a little deplorable. For a week I have been laid up a somewhat serious malady, - a varicose (ie swollen) vein in one leg. It is very likely that I may have to give up any thought of leaving the house for some weeks to come. Of course the situation makes me feel generally out of sorts. It is to be hoped that I shall be in a safe state before the Harrisons come back ...  What was the origin of this business is hard to say. 

Now, whatever could be wrong with our man? A simple case of varicose veins?? Nah. He attributes the problem to too much walking - which is unlikely to cause it; rather, it would help prevent it. No-one is ever totally housebound by varicose veins - when walking is the recommended first line of relief - and few people have the psychic gift that can predict for how long they will last in a troublesome state. Here I sit or lie all day long, more or less head-achy, & as yet, incapable of getting on with my work. Luckily, Eduard Bertz is back from his American sojourn, extolling the virtues of communes and Walt Whitman, and he helps nurse George by doing any little things abroad for me that I may need.  What might these be? What 'little things' might he prefer a man friend to do, and not a landlady?? What might cause such an ailment, about 90 days after initial infection with a bacterium?? Hastings, like all seaside towns, had landladies with needs... and women desperate for love and money.

Satan As A Fallen Angel (detail) by Sir Thomas Lawrence 1797

In George's day - and probably even now because there's nowt as thick as folk, and ignorance and superstition worldwide is a heavy burden for the human race - there was a mistaken belief you couldn't catch syphilis twice - that a primary infection gave you immunity. As syphilis is a bacterium and not a virus, you can catch it as many times as you like - if experience doesn't teach you anything useful. But, what was a person to do, when desire needed to be fulfilled? George knew the consequences of risking his sexual health indiscriminately, but he had needs - heavens, he had needs!!

It is to be hoped that I shall be in a safe state before the Harrisons come back ...

JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 74 TO FIND WHERE ALL THIS BUSINESS WITH ANNIE COWARD LEADS OUR MAN.

Commonplace 72 George & Landladies.

Our (Land) Lady of Lourdes 
by Eric Gill 1929

At Owens College, we know George saw himself as something of a bohemian. Was this based entirely on the social milieu surrounding his sexual encounters, or his fondness for poesy, his flowing locks, the social set in which he moved? Or, was it that he had a home of his own for the first time, albeit a single room in a lodging house, where he was free to collect books, pin up his etchings and practise the art of smoking his pipe?

53 Grafton Street was a normal suburban house in a normal street, nothing out of the ordinary. The area subsequently became run down but it wasn't in George's day, so we are not talking about a doss house. Though George tended to make mileage of the lack of supervision in his Owens days - so we might assume he was free to come and go as he liked - he wasn't exactly a child when he got there - he was about 18. I suspect he was a tad immature for his years, and he was always a bit of a wuss, and we know he was generally pretty inept at the old self-help skills, so one of the key people in his life would have been his landlady.

In terms if what they provided, in George's time, landladies came in all shapes and sizes. Boom boom. Even when limited finances dictated the kind of lodgings that could be afforded, there still must have been a fairly wide choice, as the renting out of a room and offering a bit of food was a common way for poor people to eke out a living. Women, and widows in particular, especially if they had children to support, were limited in what they could do to earn money, and so turning a spare room into a source of income made sense.


The place of the lower middle class landlady in society was fraught with insecurity on many levels. There were the economics of a sometimes peripatetic clientele (in the case of travelling salesmen), and the uncertainties of not really knowing much about your lodger's background, to contend with (he might be an ex-con petty thief wife abandoner, for example haha). Guests might not pay their rent and then do a runner - you might recall one holiday landlady holding George and Edith's luggage against them paying their bill when they left one lodgings in high dudgeon (that's not a place haha) which prompted George to summon a policeman for arbitration. That scene would have not looked out of place in a Carry On flick. Or an Alfred Hitchcock click.

Then, there was the need to provide cheap food - or, food that cost a little for which you could charge a lot. Some landladies will have given ample portions, others would have skimped. Meals might be just breakfast, or, for a higher rent, include an evening meal. In the case of the seaside landlady, lodgers had to be out of the premises all day and fend for themselves, whatever the weather and whatever the state of health of the lodgers - which made the Ionian Sea a better holiday destination than Southport, as George found out.

Whatever the services provided, the landlady was an immensely powerful police force of her own, taking control of her lodgers' lives and making all manner of decisions for them. A young landlady taking in lodgers of the complementary gender was setting up a milieu fraught with social danger - what would the neighbours think? If you were elderly (whatever that age might be in the late nineteenth century - 50?), you might be seen as beyond temptation, and more of a mother to your younger male residents. But, in the case of a young landlady and male lodgers, things would need to be seen to be 'above board' in order to deflect any criticism... however, it is only in the minds of those who think anyone from the nineteenth century lower middle classes still aspired to live like Lizzie Bennett and Mr Darcy who believes people didn't mix socially in rather saucy ways.

Here is a section from click, an account of the culture of lodgings from Henry Mayhew's London Characters and the Humorous Side of London Life; this is from the chapter on Outsiders of Society and Their Homes in London.

I said something about boarding-houses just now. A great many of the homeless who have not tried these establishments---or having tried them are unwilling to renew the experiment---live in furnished lodgings. On the Continent they would probably put up at hotels: but hotels in this country are not adapted for modest requirements, and furnished lodgings take a place which they have not yet learned to occupy. The mode of life is anomalous. It is neither public nor private. You may be independent in an hotel; you may be independent in your own house; in lodgings you can be independent by no possibility. If you spend rather more money than you would either in an hotel or your own house, you obtain comfort and attention; but the object of most persons who take lodgings is to be rather economical than otherwise, so that the reservation is of very little avail. Lodgings are of two classes---those that profess to be so, and those that solemnly declare they are not. The former are decidedly preferable, apart from the immorality of encouraging a sham. In the former case, if you occupy---say as a bachelor---only a couple of rooms in town, and the rest of the house is let to other people, you will obtain but precarious attendance from the solitary servant, and the chances are that you will never be able to get a decently-cooked meal. The food that they waste in such places by their barbarous mode of dealing with it is sad to think upon. Your only resource is to live out of doors as much as possible, and consider your rooms only as a refuge---the logical consequence of which is that it is best to abandon them altogether.

    But you are better placed even under these conditions than if you go to a house in one of the suburbs---a pretty villa-looking place---knowing nothing about it beyond the information offered by the bill in the window. A not very clean servant opens the door, and does not impress you favourably at first glance. You are hesitating, under some discouragement, when the mistress of the house---presenting in her decorated exterior a considerable contrast to the servant---appears upon the scene and reproves the domestic sternly for her neglected appearance, sends her away to restore it, and meantime proceeds to transact business upon her own account. You ask her if she lets apartments. She gives a reproving look, and says "No," ignoring the announcement made by the bill. You mention that you knocked in consequence of seeing that intimation in the window; upon which the lady says---
    "Oh, is it up? I was not aware. The fact is, I wish to receive a gentleman to occupy part of the house, as it is too large for us"---the old story---"and my husband being a great deal out, I find it rather lonely. But my husband is very proud and objects to having strange company."
    You remark that you need not have applied in that case, and will go elsewhere. This brings the lady to the point.
    "Oh, I did not mean to say that you could not have any apartments here. I intend to have my own way in that matter"---this is said in a playful, fluttery manner, with a running laugh. "If you will step in I will show you the accommodation we have. All I meant to say was, that we are not accustomed to let lodgings."

    Rather amused than annoyed, you submit to be shown the rooms. They are pretty rooms---light and cheerful, and ornamental to a fault---and the garden at the back is alone a relief from the pent-up place you have been occupying in town. So, after a few preliminary negotiations---conducted on the lady's side in the same playful manner---you agree to take the place, say for three months. The lady is evidently pleased at your decision, and avails herself of the opportunity for renewing her assurance that the house is not a lodging-house, and that you may expect all the comforts of a domestic life.
    "There are no other lodgers," she added; then, as if suddenly recollecting, she corrects herself: "That is to say, there is a commercial gentleman who is a great deal away, sleeping here for a night or two---a friend of my husband's---and yes, let me see, a medical gentleman to whom we have allowed the partial use of a bedroom to oblige a neighbour just for the present, but I do not count either of them as lodgers."
    A commercial gentleman sleeping for a night or two, while he is a great deal away, does not seem an ordinary lodger at any rate; and from the distinction drawn in the case of the medical gentleman who is only allowed the partial use of a bedroom, you are inclined to think that he is permitted to lie down but not go to sleep. However, you make no objection to these anomalies, and take possession of your new abode.
    There never was such an imposter, as you find out only next day. The bagman and the medical student---as those gentlemen must be described, if the naked truth be respected---turn out to be regular lodgers, and as thorough nuisances as a couple of noisy men addicted to late hours and exaggerated conviviality can well be. And the woman never mentioned a discharged policeman---her father, I believe---to whom she affords a temporary asylum in the kitchen, in return for intermittent attentions in the way of blacking boots and cleaning knives---when he happens to be sober. For the rest, there is nobody in the house who can cook even such a simple matter as a mutton chop without spoiling it; and there seems to be everybody in the house who is determined that your private stores shall not be allowed to spoil for want of eating and drinking. Nothing is safe from the enemy, who combines forces against you, and they take care that you shall have no protection, for not a lock which can give shelter to any portable article will act after you have been two days in the house. As for your personal effects, they are in equal danger. The average amount of loss in wearing apparel is one shirt and two handkerchiefs a week; and miscellaneous articles are sure to go if they are in the least degree pretty or curious. And the coolest part of the proceeding is, that the mildest complaint on your part brings down a storm upon your devoted head, such as you could not have expected from the playful and fluttering person who had given you such pleasant assurances when you took the rooms. She claims to be Caesar's wife in point of immunity from suspicion, and asserts the same privilege for everybody in the house. "No gentleman was ever robbed there," she says; and she plainly hints that no gentleman would say he was, even though he said the fact.

    This is no exaggerated picture of many suburban lodgings to which outsiders of society are led to resort for want of better accommodation; and a large number of persons who are not outsiders in the sense in which I have employed the term, but who are simply not settled in the metropolis, are exposed to a similar fate. For those who are prepared for an ordeal of another nature, the "cheerful family, musically inclined," offers, one would think, a far preferable alternative. But it is not everybody who is prepared to have society thrust upon him, either in this quiet domestic way or in a large boarding-house, and there ought to be better provision than there is for the floating mass of casual residents in London. In Paris not only are there hotels suited to the requirements of all classes of persons, but the maisons meubles are places where they may live almost as independently as in their own houses. In London, the only realization of the luxury short of an entire house is in what we call "chambers;" and a man's chambers are most certainly his castle, whatever his house may be. That the want is being appreciated, is evident from the rapid extension of the "chambers" system, in the way of the independent suites of rooms known as "flats." But the flats, as now provided in Victoria Street, and elsewhere, cost as much as entire houses, while the latest additions, the Belgrave and Grosvenor mansions, are even more costly, and beyond the reach of the classes to whom I have been referring. The latter would be deeply grateful for accommodation of the kind on a more moderate scale, and the investment of capital in such an object could not fail to be profitable. Besides the desolate people into whose sorrows I have entered, there are in London, it must be remembered, many hundreds of outsiders of society of a different kind, who are outsiders only from that conventional society in which it takes so much money to "move," and who ought to command greater comfort than they do while they are working their way in professional pursuits. For those actually in want of companionship, I suppose they will always incline to the hotel, or the boarding-house, or the "cheerful family, musically inclined".

George was always moving home and though some biographers blame either Marianne aka Nell or Edith and disputes with neighbours for this tendency to flight, it is unfair to think George was not the instigator of these changes of dwelling place. His constant dream of finding a home on the right soil with the right wind and weather and the right sort of rain, was as desperate as his paranoid need to not connect with his neighbours for fear of them finding out about his dubious past. However, connect he did - with one landlady in particular: Mrs Annie Coward.

JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 73 AND SEE WHAT ROOM SERVICES MRS COWARD PROVIDED!

Commonplace 71 George & The Lie of Hypogamy/Hypergamy.

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts: Marcus Aurelius.

The Mill At Tidmarsh by Dora Carrington  1917

When George met Edith, she had no underlying mental health difficulties. I take this as read because of the low incidence of mental illness in society in general, and the fact she was 'sane' enough (and that can also be intended ironically!!) to be considered marriageable. As George tended to think all women were mad/unstable/hysterical, he would have been on the lookout for any tell-tale signs of instability. But, Edith had nothing to hide. She was unremarkable in every way - and that's exactly what he wanted. He thought of her as semi-literate, but he would probably say the same about me (and he wood not be rong haha), but that was good, too - no chance of an intellectual debate. He found nothing odd or weird about her - except for the fact she was a woman and so, almost mentally from another planet, as far as he was concerned. Still, with his hand on a woman's tiller (!) he had every confidence he could steer her in the direction he wanted her to go: straight along the passage to the back parlour where she could sit for hours unattended: quiet, unobtrusive, undemanding, invisible. Mrs Yule, Marian's mother, forever expected to be grateful for being yanked from the slum, condemned to a life of being constantly debased.

Les Abeilles by Joseph Cornell 1940 (abeilles = bees?)

A suitable for George woman had to be sexually available, able to accompany him when it suited him, stay at home out of the way when he said so, be efficient at home-making, good with servants, well able to know where her bread and butter came from (to almost quote our man). A woman who must put up and shut up, then give it up whenever he felt the need. Not a looker - he didn't want to draw competition from other men, or attention from anyone; besides, plain girls are always grateful, aren't they? He wanted a shy little mouse who would keep him clean, well-nourished and know where his socks were - put him first in all things and step back into the shadows whenever it suited him. In amongst George's many good personal qualities, uxoriousness never reared its pretty, loving head.

Salammbo by Gaston Bussiere 1907

George was famous for hypogamy - which is the term used by sociologists to describe marrying beneath you in social class. George always claimed this was purely a financial reality-check decision - that decent women of his own class (to coin his phraseology) would not countenance a union with a man with less  than £400 income per annum. Anthony West claimed his father, HG Wells, thought it to be something altogether more sinister - working class women were more likely to put up with George's weirdness, and by this, he implies sexual weirdness - his sadomasochistic tendencies. Maybe so. It might have been his syphilis that kept him from aspiring to women of his own class...

It wasn't that he didn't have options of middle-class-and-above women - the chance to practice a bit of hypergamy (the opposite of hypo). Miss Sichel was a candidate, and, on the surface, was very much what George claimed to find alluring. She was beautiful, intelligent, creative, well-connected to the literati, independently wealthy, interested in him, and available. But, there was a downside: apart from the fact Miss Sichel was Jewish (George was a tad anti-semitic), she towered above him both intellectually and educationally. Forgetting his anti-semitic tendency, was it just a matter of his feelings of inadequacy in the face of competition for top dog spot in a marriage union, that put him off her? Or did she reject his less than compelling personal qualities?

Even with his restricted (self-imposed, of course) social life, George liked a bit of a go on the ladies. Mrs Gaussen, the mother of some of his pupils, was a great influence; was she out of bounds to him? She was certainly above him in all sorts of ways - in class, wealth, age and sophistication. But, she took him on and advised him on decor - George liked nice, decorative things, and she helped him zhoosh up his living space with some interior design tips, and no doubt schooled him in fine manners like flower arranging and in elements of etiquette like how to get a winkle out of its shell with more than a hat pin. She would never have condescended to entertain him any other way - for the middle classes, love might be blind, but it wasn't stupid. George may have carped on about his 'less than £400 a year' salary not attracting the right calibre of wife, but he would have been offended at himself keeping a middle class woman on £500 or £1,000 - much of his self-regard was based on visible status, so much so that a grand a year would not have given him joy, despite what he said. All it would have done would be to increase his irritation at distractions and interruptions, and then accentuate the fact he didn't earn 2 grand a year!

The third 'lady' with whom he had a 'thing', was Mrs Rosalind Williams, a sister of Beatrice Potter who went on to be Beatrice Webb. In some ways, she was the most likely of this trio of posh ladies to consummate a union. She is also the most tragic of the three women.

The Potter family to which Rosie belonged was wealthy and had already produced ten children by the time she arrived in July 1865. The first sadness in her life was that she was born just after her only brother Dicky died; the second was that she was born a girl when her mother really wanted a boy to replace the child she lost. Still, Rosie became her parents' favourite and spent her childhood sheltered away in the vast houses in which the Potters spent their time, never attending school for more than a few months (she couldn't stand the commonness of her peers), but received tutoring at home from a governesses, under the close supervision of her mother. The pressure proved too much and she began to manifest signs of neurosis. She was emotionally needy and highly-strung and developed a series of psychological problems such as anorexia and amenorrhoea, from which she never really recovered. She was particularly close to her father, and had to be physically exiled from him at one point in order to improve her wellbeing.

Boreas Abducting Orithyia by Peter Paul Rubens 1615 (she doesn't look too bothered here!)

Rosie was an outsider in the family of girls and spent a good deal of time alone, watercolour painting landscapes. When it was time to marry, she chose badly - or was steered in the wrong direction by sisters anxious for her to be married off - to a man who was not only totally unsuited to her emotional and physical needs, but was also suffering from tertiary syphilis' tabes dorsalis which he kept a secret until their wedding night. Dyson Williams was a bounder and a cad.
He insisted on my drinking some glasses of champagne which added to the one I had at breakfast had considerable effect on me. Over dinner he told me about his past life - the many affairs he had with women of all classes both married and single. His latest was the wife of a well-known Member of Parliament, a friend of the Courtneys in which he narrowly missed being co-respondent in a divorce case which would have caused a great scandal and perhaps prevented out marriage... Dyson then begged my forgiveness for his past life and promised always to be faithful to me, a promise he kept substantially during our short married life...

The Triumph of St Perpetua
by Eric Gill 1928

Needless to say, hers was not a happy marriage, and Dyson broke his word on the faithfulness front. Their only child, Noel, was born in 1889. Soon after, Dyson developed immense pain in his legs for which he took morphia and chloroform. From 1894, he was paraplegic. Rosie helped nurse him, but not very effectively or empathically. She was jealous by nature and soon developed a hatred for her husband's nurse. Noel was a sickly child and also required nursing care. Later, Rosie was to claim she virtually starved her husband to death to speed along his passing, and she felt the remorse and horror of it haunt her last years. She suffered a complete breakdown after he died, and needed full nursing care.

She met her prospective next husband very soon after this, a doctor who liked her and her son, and he soon proposed marriage. But she found him repugnant physically and sexually, and so turned him down, even though her family were desperate for her to remarry - they were of the belief all Rosie needed was regular, therapeutic sexual intercourse and her mental problems would solve themselves. After a period of reflection, Rosie came to agree with them but said she also realised this could be accomplished without getting married. She then embarked on a two-year whirlwind grand tour of Europe and romance - with intimate liaisons with friends of the family, school headmasters, random tourists. In Capri, legend has it that she tipped the head waiter of her hotel to seat her next to handsome men at dinner, and there she met George Cumberland Dobbs. They became an item. Rosie knew he was smitten.
That afternoon in a fit of repentance and rather hysterical emotion I confided all to GCD and told him the story of the past three years of my life, and so forged a link between us that ultimately sealed our fate. He was evidently shocked by my story for though he himself was my lover he did not know that I had others, and though no puritan, he was a clean-minded young man and had strict Irish ideas about the purity of women.

George Dobbs had to return home to Ireland, and Rosie was alone and vulnerable to temptation. Enter George Gissing.

1898 - George was in Rome on the run from Edith and hobnobbing with his pals HG wells and co, and suffering from lumbago and diarrhoea. The next day (March 23rd) he met Rosie Williams; in the Diary:
Mrs Williams, widow with little boy, sister of Mrs Sidney Webb (Beatrice Potter). Unfavourable impression; loud; bullies waiters; forces herself into our conversations. 

This didn't stop George going to the Barberini and Medici Gardens with her on March 26th. And on March 29th, to the Vatican Sculpture Galleries; on the 30th, to the Colosseum, and later that day, to a party with her at the Cafe Nazionale. March 31st was rain all day. On April 1st, Mrs Williams left for Venice - but she gets a mention in the Diaries! And she writes to him the moment she gets to Venice. Tellingly, there is no mention of his reply. That's a lot of one-on-one for a woman he didn't like.
April 22nd, back in London, he dines with Mrs Williams... at her rented home.
July 26th, Gabrielle  Fleury visits George to discuss translating New Grub Street for him.
July 31st - Lunched and dined with Mrs Williams, at Holmwood, where she has a cottage for the summer. 
August 14th Lunched at Mrs Williams' ...
November 3rd Mrs Williams came for the afternoon. 
On November 17th, a letter from her tells George she has scarlet fever. He sends her a parcel of books on November 18th. This is the last time she gets a mention in the Diaries. George had been corresponding with Gabrielle Fleury and they are an item, so Mrs Williams is cast out.

In Barbara Caine's account of the Potter sisters, Destined to Be Wives: The Sisters of Beatrice Webb, she writes:
After Rosie met Dobbs, she had an affair with George Gissing, to whom she was also strongly attracted. Gissing and Dobbs represent the essential conflict which underlay Rosie's life at this stage and subsequently - and which she never managed to resolve. She always wanted to marry a man who would be comparable to her brothers-in-law, and who would 'have some real and permanent interest in life and be doing something in the world'. Moreover she sought a mentor and intellectual guide.

Barbara follows this with the words often quoted from Rosie herself:
Since my first great affection and intimacy with my father I have had a great longing to understand and enter into the mind of some man who was my intellectual superior and to make my mind as if it were a mirror of his. I have little or no independent intellectual life or originality of my own, and am, in fact, a sort of mental parasite and when I have no one to cling to my mind sinks into a sort of stupor. 

The Fairytales of Kings by Mikalojus konstantinas Ciurlionis 1909

Barbara makes the point that our George was looking for an open marriage on account of Edith being his legal wife, but Rosie was not prepared to flout convention openly. There is doubt over the consummation of this relationship - of course, George doesn't mention anything. Rosie wrote that the sexual side of her relationship with him was not quite all she wished. As he was constantly plagued with the effects of his paresis throughout his time with her, maybe she knew what she was potentially going to be up against if she did nail her colours to his mast (!). As George probably had some of the life story that George Dobbs had been treated to, he may have realised Rosie was emotionally fragile; and, as it is reported he did not like her son Noel - the one on whom she doted - and as he already had two surplus sons going abegging, George was not likely to want to set up home with Rosie, whatever her yearly income. Besides, the substantial weight of the Potter family women was more than the average chap could bear. So, he settled for Gabrielle Fleury, and died three years later. Rosie married George Dobbs, who died in 1946. 

It seems our man had a lucky escape - because Rosie's mental decline was so severe over the forthcoming years, her sister Beatrice wrote this about her:
Another tragedy of a worse kind is the torture of George Dobbs. Mad or bad is his wife or both. She never had any good and now she is developing positive evil. Sounds like our Mr Gissing had a very lucky escape indeed!

Commonplace 70 George & His Devoted, Slightly Not Very Objective Fans (you know who you are!).      

CLICK!! GO ON!!! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO click

Recent posts have covered George and syphilis and how he passed this on to Edith. Not everyone will appreciate the views expressed therein and will be experiencing some sort of mental meltdown at the effrontery of it all. To compensate the critics for not being able to hunt me down and shoot me like a mad dawg, here is a resource from Arthur Schopenhauer to help ease the effects of cognitive dissonance. Enjoy.

Schopenhauer's The Art of Being Right or 38 Ways To Win An Argument.  

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was no stranger to arguing, and so he came up with these 38 Stratagems - excerpts from "The Art of Controversy", first translated into English and published in 1896 - to aid the wannabe controversialista. 

Schopenhauer's 38 ways to win an argument are:

1.     Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow his or her propositions remain, the easier they are to defend by him or her.

2.     Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his or her argument.

3.     Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to a particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than that which was asserted.

4.     Hide your conclusion from your opponent till the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. By this circuitous route you conceal your game until you have obtained all the admissions that are necessary to reach your goal.

5.     Use your opponent's beliefs against him. If the opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.

6.     Another plan is to confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.

7.     State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent's admissions.

8.     Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgement or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9.     Use your opponent's answers to your questions to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10. If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek them to concede.

11. If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12. If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favourable in your proposition.

13. To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him or her an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.

14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favour of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily succeed.

15. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he or she suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject a true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your own for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what the opponent accepted. For this, an extreme degree of impudence is required.

16. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions, or lack of action.

17. If your opponent presses you with a counter proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him or her to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his or her argument, and you have nothing much to say, try to make the argument less specific.

20. If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial, refute it by setting forth its superficial character. But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him or her. For it is with victory that you are concerned, and not with truth.

22. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating his or her statements. By contracting your opponent you may drive him or her into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement's limits.

24. This trick consists in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition and by false inference and distortion of his or her ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears the opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.

25. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition.

26. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against him or herself.

27. Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal. Not only will this make the opponent angry, it may be presumed that you put your finger on the weak side of his or her case, and that the opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28. This trick is chiefly practicable in a dispute if there is an audience who is not an expert on the subject. You make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes the opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If the opponent must make a long, complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen.

29. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had bearing on the matter in dispose. This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he or she generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have invented entirely yourself.

31. If you know that you have no reply to an argument that your opponent advances, you may, by a fine stroke of irony, declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.

32. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.

33. You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.

34. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is a sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without knowing it. You have as it were, reduced the opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35. This trick makes all unnecessary if it works. Instead of working on an opponent's intellect, work on his or her motive. If you succeed in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem distinctly to his or her own interest, the opponent will drop it like a hot potato.

36. You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If the opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he or she has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him or her some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37. Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way which bad advocates lose a good case. If no accurate proof occurs to the opponent or the bystanders, you have won the day.

38. A last trick is to become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular trick, because everyone is able to carry it into effect.

How many of the rampant syphilis deniers will be making use of number 38?  

George was a big fan of Schopenhauer and no doubt made use of these tactics when managing his women. Which is probably (one of the reasons) why he didn't have much luck with them haha.