Commonplace 82 George & His Contemporaries - Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill 

We have seen (in Commonplaces 80 and 81) how Frederic and Ethel Harrison - whose influence over George's early adult years was immense - were staunch anti-suffrage supporters, happily invoking George's name post-death to support their views. I'm not sure George would have been happy with the reference Ethel made in her letter to Queen magazine, though all it paired him with was the widely-held view that 'a woman's place is in the home' - utter tosh, we know, but there you have it. One of George's wider set who was very for Votes For Women was Israel Zangwill, a prolific and extremely successful author, playwright and political commentator click (though he disapproved of arson and the more dangerous of the Suffrage movement's tactics).

George and Israel might seem to be natural confederates, as both covered superficially similar ground, particularly in their writings about the lives of the impoverished and marginalised from the poorer districts of London. George had his Workers in the Dawn and The Nether World and Israel gave us, amongst other influential works, Children of the Ghetto: A History of Peculiar People. In February 1895, long after poverty ceased to be a topic of interest for George and his writings, he read 'Children' and wrote of it in his Diary: 'a powerful book'. Which, for George, was high praise.

Israel Zangwill was writing from the sort of experience George could only imagine, being as how he was born in one of the country's poorest areas (Whitechapel), and into one of the world's greatest disadvantaged groups (the Jewish faith), which gave his work an authenticity and feel for his subject that is more akin to Dickens by way of Henry Mayhew. George's colder, more distant responses and his stance of critical, middle class sociologist observer, seem all the more judgemental for this lack of emotional connection.

Israel proudly backing the women.

Israel's Children of the Ghetto click is a series of snapshots of life lived under great stress and privation in the poverty and deprivation of London;s poorest district. Israel clearly has great affection for these disadvantaged souls, and encourages the reader to feel at ease in their company. This is partly due to the humour and the wealth of detail about the many instances of neighbourly goodness between his characters, but it is also because the author gives reasonable explanations in mitigation for the behaviour of his people. We feel he likes his characters and we can see he might sit with them and take tea.

George's jaundiced world view, apparent at the beginning of his writing career and only eradicated much later in his life, cannot mask his distaste for his characters, even though they live in similar situations to Israel's. George's 'ironic' critical voice, cold and analytical, not concerned with offering a defence for their predicament except for the 'fate' he relied on to defend the indefensible in life, makes us feel he despises his characters - the ones who fail in his 'Poverty' books. Isaac throws us in with his folk and makes us feel the texture of their lives, allowing us to see some intrinsic value in the culture they represent. George gives up the ghost to 'fate' and almost sneers at the poor as having no culture to celebrate. For George, the only culture seems to be the one approved of by white, middle class well-educated males who live in London. Israel allows his to be intrinsically worthwhile and full of potential. For George, the poor are a burden on those who are 'natural' aristocrats - and he includes himself in that category, of course - who will rise up and smash whatever they can get their greedy mitts on. To get a feeling for the differences in approaches to similar subject matter: Israel describes the tragedy of losing children in childbirth as 'worse than barrenness' - George says it should be a cause for celebration. In comparing the two, in her book about Zangwill: A Jew in the Public Arena', Meri-Jane Rochelson (2008) refers to George's writing about poverty as 'brutal' when compared to Israel's click.

The Woman of Fashion - La Mondaine - by James Tissot 1885

George's first Diary entry (July 15th 1893) mentioning Israel comes when Algernon sends a cutting of a piece written in the third edition of the brand new Pall Mall Magazine. George has recently moved home to leafy Brixton and is getting the house ready for Edith and Walter to join him. Miss Collet has begun their whatever it was she enjoyed with him and George is about to start his drive to groom her for the future role as minion and eternal sympathetic maternal bosom offerer. It is summer so George is moaning about the heat and the amount of sweating he is doing. (Makes you wonder how many layers of clothes he kept on, even at home, poor chap, though hyperhydrosis is a recognised medical condition, and does not affect the aprocrine sweat glands, the ones that produce odours, so he was not smelly).

Algernon's cutting, according to the editor's (Pierre Coustillas) note in the Diary:
In a series of paragraphs about Gissing Zangwill wrote: Gissing has this supreme distinction: he is the only man of the age who has never been paragraphed - not even meticulously. His movements are a mystery, his style of dress is known only to his tailor. Shakespearean in his range of character, he is Shakespearean also in his incorporeality. But unlike Shakespeare, he has not kept his personality out of his books - and in so doing he has missed being the Shakespeare of our day.

Evening On Karl Johan Street by Edvard Munch 1892

Superficially, George was not much impressed by over-praise - presumably, he had surfeited on that during his school-days! - but he was impressed enough to read, and admire, Zangwill, and, on June 25th 1896, records that he finally met his fellow-writer at a Cosmopolis dinner, and subsequently paid him a couple of social calls. Can we take this praise at face value, or is hyperbole meant as facetious sarcasm? Or, was there something more spiteful behind the piece?

It was after the first of these that Israel wrote the famous letter to Montagu Eder (September 2nd 1896) where it is revealed quite a few people knew about George's past colourful life:
The mysterious Gissing has come within my ken at last and sitting in my study poured out his sad soul. He is a handsome youthful chap but seems to have bungled life in every possible way, and after a terrible uphill fight to be still burdened with some woman who, I suspect, breaks out in drink. He hates woman and is not in love with life. From another source I hear that the cloud on his career had its origins in imprisonment for stealing money from overcoats &c when he was the pride of Owen's College, Manchester. This statement being 'libellous' please do not 'publish' this letter. He is now making a fair income but unfortunately he has no interest in his old books and he will probably never write anything again as good as Thyrza or New Grub Street or Demos or the Nether World. Still, I encouraged him to go on, in his old groove, and not now knuckle under to the popular demand. 

The Tyger of Wrath by William Blake 1790-93

It's interesting to note that George has given the impression Edith (his wife in 1896) 'breaks out in drink'. Was he up to his old trick of assassinating his current wife's character - to a virtual stranger - to get sympathy? (Creating the impression she was a drunkard? And yet some biographers fail to notice this tendency in George to portray his wives as drunks! Hmm... ) Anyhoo, it is clear George gave enough of himself away for Israel to form the opinion George had issues with 'woman' (let's park the bit about not being in love with life - George was such a whinger about how miserable he was, we can take it as read he was a sad sack all of the time he wasn't in Italy haha). 

Did George see Israel as a fellow traveller in the world of misogyny, and so feel free to expand on his pet subject? If so, it back-fired. He would not have known that anyone but his closest confidantes (as Paul Delany notes in his biography, Frederic Harrison might have been the ratfink source) knew about prison and Owens' - which is a blessing, but also a legitimate qualification for our sympathy. To not know people talked about it behind his back - and may have judged him negatively on it - is a sad state of affairs. However, if he was reckless in his choice of confidante (though he would have trusted Harrison, and if he couldn't trust Fred, who could he trust??) in order to screw that ridiculous sympathy out of them, he only had himself to blame - again! If only he had adopted the approach Stephen Fry uses when he discusses his youthful crimes click - to 'fess up and say he has moved on, George would have lived it down by turning it into part of his legend. (If only he had had me for an agent... haha).  

Composition 7 by Wassily Kandinsky 1917

One of the great unknowns of George's life, is how his contemporaries' knowledge about his Owen's debacle affect his writing career - did publishers hold it against him and pay less for his work because they knew he would not argue and risk becoming associated with wrangling over money, because money was a touchy subject? George certainly didn't seem to make much for of his work - unlike Israel Zangwill who ended his days in the exact sort of home George would have loved for himself 
(East Preston in West Sussex click - and died in Midhurst, HG Wells' literary 'Wimblehurst'.) 

Fairy by Arthur Rackham 1918

Israel went on to tremendous success both sides of the Atlantic and George went on to France and his place in our literary hearts. One is hardly read any more and one is now a National Treasure who is hardly read any more. Kismet.

Commonplace 81 George & Post-Death Positivism. How Ethel Harrison Memorialised George. PART TWO

This is the 1908 letter Mrs Frederic Harrison wrote to the 'Queen' click, an influential (amongst the middle classes) women's magazine mainly focused on fashion and domestic trivia. To explore more click about the Suffrage movement and the Antis. In the second cutting, Ethel invokes the name of her one-time employee: George Gissing.

By the time Ethel decided to make use of George to back up her ideas, a reasonable enough job had been done on managing his legacy and attempts to whitewash out the mistakes and blemishes in his character had been mainly successful.

Ironically, emphasis here is on women not doing 'traditional roles' - and yet we know George hardly ever fulfilled his traditional masculine role! If enfranchised women were likely to be 'failing in their special work' - which we can interpret here as the traditional female role within the family - what about the 'special work' of men - which was primarily to provide for a family of dependants and to nurture their spouses? George abandoned two women who were not able to fend for themselves. He abandoned two children to the care of others, even though he could have brought them to live with him. True, he paid for things - but the real business of being a husband and father was of no interest to him - and he always acted out of self-regard, unless it was with his blood relatives - remember, George had said in his Commonplace Book I strongly doubt whether husband & wife ever become as much to each other as relatives by blood. And, yet, he allowed Alfred to go to strangers in Cornwall, rather than bring him to live with him in France, and Walter spent most of his childhood reaping the whirlwind of George's unheroic character. 

Presumably Mrs Harrison realised that hardly any of the readership of the newspaper she wrote to would know the dirty secrets of George Gissing's life. 

What Ethel should have said is this: Watch out, girls! If you have the vote then men will treat you like muck, much as George Gissing treated his wives and deserted his children when he sodded off to France with his mistress. Because men will always blame you for their woes, and because at bottom, it will always be about money - which they will always regard as theirs - you have to keep your mouths shut. But carry on letting them think they run the world - or they will come after you with vengeance.  

Amongst the anti-suffrage propaganda we find some pretty horrifying concepts. Women who wanted the vote were demonised as unfeminine, unmarriageable, hideous viragos whose lack of intelligence and seriousness of mind would soon undermine the country should they be allowed to decide anything of significance. George blamed women for their situation whilst failing to lay the fault at thousands of years of oppression. Doing nothing in his fiction to offer a solution - George, the inveterate fence-sitter who didn't care enough to get involved in anything too contentious or likely to help situations he treated as copy - could only be a cold, distant observer. He never cared much for the public - the private was his territory. The infantilizing of women is bound up with attitudes to power and sexuality, and George's biggest personal concern was who would do his housework cheaply and nurse him through his sickness - and so the 'servant situation' - the large number of girls turning away from domestic work and entering business and manufacturing - probably affected him more than the Rights of Women. His views were expressed coldly and with a sort of philistinism that became apparent when he fell to wooing Gabrielle Fleury. He back-pedalled like stink to undo the concept she had of him (based on reading his books) as a misogynist, but, like many men with monstrous ideas, he blamed all that on the stupid public's misreading of his 'irony'. In the end, he did not have the courage of his convictions with his own convictions - we cannot expect him to be all that bothered about the convictions of others!

Here, we see one of the biggest concerns - women outnumbering men in the population. This was made worse after the First World War when there were even less men to vote. Maybe the war work women undertook swung it in our favour - as is the received wisdom - but maybe men realised if they were outnumbered, they had better smarten up their attitude and recognise women were only going to rise up and claim what they previously had asked for. 

Typical privately-funded 'Anti' propaganda - and the Suffragists were the peaceful ones!

Commonplace 80 George & Post-Death Positivism. How Ethel Harrison Memorialised George. PART ONE

from The Song of Songs by Eric Gill 1925

The Harrison family came into George's life when he took up Positivism, a philosophy that probably has had more impact on our current everyday lives than it ever did on the lives of George and his contemporaries, albeit to us in a subtle, even pernicious, sort of a way.

Following on from Darwin's work on Natural Selection, a whole new approach to fathoming the mind of the human animal was required. If we were all descended from ape-like critters (I'm simplifying) there was a need to make clear how we differed from our forebears - how else could humans maintain their dominance over the natural world if they had no understanding of how they managed to find themselves in the lucky position of running the show? Religion had lost its grip on the western mind and many feared society would collapse without a god as a moral compass. Science was expected to step in and offer rational explanations and schemas for how to organise and manage this new situation. What those in power feared most was the 'enemy within' - its own people rising up and overthrowing the status quo, leaving what might be termed 'civilization' or 'progress' in ruins.

Girl Playing With A Dog by Pierre Bonnard 1913

From this state of fear, three specialisms emerged: psychology, sociology and anthropology (a fourth, eugenics, is now rightly viewed as a heinous pseudo-science - I will cover this in a future post). In order to accrue credibility, these three joined the ranks of the sciences, much as medicine had been forced to migrate from being the work of men with a love of all things dead and ready to cut up, to the pristine apartments of Harley Street and legitimate professional qualifications.

At least with a physical, anatomical living or dead body you have something tangible - with psychology and sociology, mostly all you have is hypothesis built on empirical observation. Positivism click rejects intuition and introspection, which must be a challenge for a Positivist psychotherapist, as much of what is known about human interaction is based on indefinable qualities that might be termed 'intuitive'. No-one can see inside the mind, or even give a definition of what constitutes a mind (or really understands how the brain functions), having acute intuition aids the work of the therapist. Much of what we take as fact in both disciplines is almost impossible to prove, and yet we hold both in high regard when it comes to legitimizing how a society moulds and controls its citizens, from constitutional matters to selling soap powder.

We certainly judge people and award them differing social values based on the rules of psychology and sociology, and are encouraged to focus on differences and not samenesses to apply a taxonomical checklist of what constitutes 'normal' This is a kind of 'divide and conquer' style of people management much favoured by the Greeks, the Romans and Machiavelli and it makes issues such as discrimination based on race, culture, sexual orientation and gender possible. The identification of 'women' as a sub-group - a problem group - came into sharp focus in the Victorian age when women were blamed for all manner of society's ills - the rise of venereal diseases associated with female (never male!) prostitution, for example, and the way this was dealt with click - shines a light on how women were classified as lower in worth and, as such, fair game as the eternal scapegoat. As most organised religion also tends toward this point of view, women have first place in the history of oppression. Still.

Bicycle National Gallery by Robert Rauschenberg 1991

George's ideas about 'woman' are sometimes mistakenly seen as being in support of the cause of women's suffrage but anyone who has read any of his novels will soon suss that the reverse is true. He patronisingly conceded that women could be the equal of some men, but were unlikely to stay the course of that lofty situation. Like most men who are not as lucky in love as they would like to be, he blamed women for many of the things he found detestable in the human condition - his own failures of moral nerve, for example, were generally laid at the feet of whatever female he was with or wasn't with. When he didn't have a scapegoat to persecute.. I mean woman in his life... he pined for one, and prowled the streets looking for a victim - oops, wife. Whereas many of his written male characters are excused their foibles and faults, their shortcomings are never described as a failure in masculinity, George comes down hard on female characters and their struggle to find their way in the world, gender being their greatest weakness. Not that this is a predilection peculiar to George Gissing - many men blame women for their own inadequacies. Maybe it's because God is written as a male character who cunningly creates Eve as the ultimate fall gal, offering his own gender a free pass to wreak havoc and lord it over Creation. 

Worries about who would run the home if women decided they would rather not marry or even dabble in relationships with men, worried many of those who put their energies into the debate. And, then, what if women turned their backs on traditional roles completely and rejected motherhood and its responsibilities? The Whirlpool's Harvey Rolfe might navel-gaze about it and harbour resentment towards his wife over it, but the simple fact remains: who else would do it? Women know most men just didn't want to do child-rearing - as George proved with his own children. Most men find it too difficult to pick up and bag their dog's poop off the pavement - how would they deal with an endless stream of nappies? But, imagine, for a moment, what sort of book it would be if Alma Frothingham had been a brilliant violinist and a willing mother. Could George have written about a gifted, successful, creative, fulfilled, happy woman? No - his competitive nature would not have allowed a woman to be everything he wasn't. Though, maybe buried deep within the 'irony' he claimed was in his novels and stories, perhaps he is Alma and is writing about his own pretentious talents?

Waiting At The Bar -
Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt
by Georges Bottini 1907

Much of what George 'knew' about the cause of women's suffrage was gleaned from the pages of newspapers and periodicals - he did not study sociology any more deeply than did Dyce Lashmar in 'Our Friend the Charlatan', and had a very narrow gene pool of women with whom to discuss the issues. When he strolled about the ghetto, he wasn't really immersed in the rich culture of it - even in his early days he kept himself apart, and he did all he could to keep both Marianne aka Nell and Edith away from social groups they might have enjoyed. And, when he read about these new sciences (having stated that he had no 'feel' for science!), he critiqued the books to allow for the content that reinforced his personal prejudices, and dismissed what did not chime with his own personal world view. In this, he is exactly the sort of mind that sociology was born for!

Whereas he might not have said out loud 'a woman's place is in the home', his female characters generally end up, like the cast of a fairy tale who have strayed into danger, being taught the basic life lesson that we should stay home if we want to be safe. But women are rarely safe at home in a Gissing novel unless they are steeped in the enculturation of their times. In the case of women, this means we should not worry our weak heads about learning or self-actualising, or - heaven forfend!! - creating anything artistic, or being seduced into thinking we can do more than reproduce.

Mrs Ethel Harrison and her husband agreed. Her good works in the name of Positivism and the new 'science' of sociology - and via the mass media of what we now term 'print' journalism - came into sharp focus over the matter of the Women's Movement. And she dragged George's ghost into the debate.

Anti Suffrage Propaganda 
from 1906

Within the suffrage movement were two camps - the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. Basically, the former were meek and mild and took the long, slow route, prepared to wait around for men to offer them crumbs of democracy; the latter were terrorists, every bit as committed to their cause as only true freedom fighters can be. Before the class war there was the gender war - and neither conflicts have yet to be resolved. In George's day, of all the debates that arose from the new sciences, from social change, the fall out from the Industrial Revolution and so-called 'progress', it was the rise of the emancipated woman that was the most challenging to the established status quo. Britain as a world power was helter-skeltering to conflict and destruction, and the nation could not survive a bigger war on its home front.


There was, by no means, universal enthusiasm for female emancipation. By the beginning of the twentieth century, with George long in his grave, Mr and Mrs Frederic Harrison became spokespersons for the British Positivist view that women's suffrage was a dangerous, pernicious evil. Ethel took up the leadership role in the National League For Opposing Woman Suffrage click. This was a cross-class movement, but the predominantly middle class women who did most of the campaigning were not the worldly intellectual equals of those who campaigned for suffrage, who had been organised for many years and who were prepared to bomb buildings and sacrifice their lives to the cause. Ethel Harrison lobbied many of her personal contacts, but the project was doomed. This is from the BBC's entry for the Anti Suffrage Review publication click:
This is an Anti-Suffrage pamphlet (cost 1d), published by the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League which was founded on 21 July 1908 to oppose votes for women. There were branches all over the UK. Membership of the branches cost 1s to 5s and men were admitted as subscribing or affiliated members. The League gathered signatures on an anti-suffrage petition, and published the Anti-Suffrage Review from 1908 to 1918.
However they ran out of funds and were taken over by the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage to form the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.
The pamphlet attacks the Suffragette movement and describes a demonstration at the Queens Hall on March 26th where speeches were made and ladies dressed in white, wearing carnations and the colours of the League, white rose and black, 'flitted about selling leaflets and literature'.
Attitudes towards women at the time are illustrated by comments about the sensitive nature of women making them unsuitable for political conflict, mens' work fetching a higher price because it was worth more, the grave danger to the Empire and womanhood of women having Parliamentary franchise.

Along the way, Ethel Harrison worked tirelessly for her cause. In one of her letters published in a newspaper, she invokes the name of George Gissing to reinforce her point.

JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 81 TO READ THAT LETTER.

Commonplace 79 George & His Leap From Mrs Coward to Mrs Frederic Harrison. PART TWO.

Detail from Ethel's 1882 portrait by WB Richmond
entered for the 1883 Summer Exhibition.

Mrs Ethel Bertha Harrison, at the time George really needed to win her sympathy was probably the only woman of the middle classes he knew well enough to treat like a mother-surrogate. She was not much older than him, but she would have carried the air of authority he recognised as parental - and as he often socialised with her and the Harrison boys, it was natural to regard her as a more maternal, rather than a sexual, presence (though the two are not mutually exclusive!). His own mother (he reported) was a sphinx he could not get close to emotionally and did not connect with intellectually, and yet his ideal of womanhood would have been - if Freud is to be believed - based on her. 

Here, the portrait of Ethel has something of a gentle dreamy faraway look, though that was very much the middle class lady persona in vogue in 1882, when the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood  was still hanging on for dear life in the British middle and upper class aesthetic collective consciousness. When this portrait was shown in the Royal Academy Summer exhibition George made sure every one of his correspondents knew about it - that this was the mother of two of his pupils. She was an ideal mother - from his time spent with the Harrisons in their family group, he would have observed her loving and encouraging relationship with her sons and wondered why his own mother (he said) never behaved so effortlessly toward him and his brothers.

His own mother was less of a subject for portraiture, judging by this unflattering cabinet snap, but the severe look of the no-nonsense woman is eternal and sends out a message of independence and solidity - much needed in Wakefield where she was doomed to soak up any criticism or shame drawn down by her aberrant son. Her capacity for levity and fun (if either were ever present) would have been smothered by the realisation she could be regarded as an outcast based on George's dreadful deeds - enough to wipe the smile off any mother's face. However, Mrs Gissing's sombre dress and lack of feminine gussying up no doubt conceals more beauty than it reveals. Mrs Harrison vs Mrs Gissing - if George ever wondered at the stork delivering him to the wrong address, it must have been reinforced by these two opposites. 

George was now moving in the sort of social circles he felt he was born to, but his interpersonal skills were shaped in more unpretentious surroundings, and so the business of cultivating the appropriate tastes in order to fit in with this new set of associates would have been a necessity. 'Suave' is a word George uses throughout his novels to describe the effortless grace with which these self-assured and self-confident middle class persons conducted themselves, and becoming an ersatz version of such a creature of elegance must have taken a lot of his energy. Superficially, it might be possible to act it out in matters of dress and manners, but the innate attitude of urbane poise is born, not created. Still, George never allowed much contact between his real world and this more sophisticated persona, and pretending to be posh when he wasn't was a sort of scam he pulled with the dual purpose of being useful for his career and a sort of passive/aggressive getting one over on his 'betters'. But, if the Wakefield Gissings carried on like this in their patch, they'd be seen as little more than vulgar snobs. William Gissing once wrote in high dudgeon to George about a gathering he had attended wearing the wrong sort of dress (not the frock sort haha) where he had to endure being patronised about it. Normally a steady sort, William was outraged such a thing as dress code was important. 

The Poem of the Soul and the Angel and the Mother by Louis Janmot c 1840s 

Cultivated tastes and radical thinking were all the rage in the late nineteenth century, and stepping into that milieu took some confidence. In his early years, George was a social chameleon who could chop and change his personas and project these in any given situation. The Harrisons were exactly the sort of people he wanted to be 'in' with, but he must have been acutely aware that, in their minds, he was an employee and never up to their sort of standard. In a Positivist family, it behove them to appear to accept him - socialism and sociology with basic Christian doctrine demanded a sort of demonstration of faith in the concept of social mobility - but George was a highly sensitive sort when it came to offended tender sensibilities and would never have felt truly at ease. His ego defences would ensure he would always feel superior to this charmed group of materially spoilt yet intellectually mediocre minds. Breaking with Positivism was the first step to his own emancipation from the role of employee to the suave front of assumed class, from Wakefield 'back' streets to Piccadilly eateries and clubs.   

The Firebird Design
by Leon Bakst 1910

Elegant, sophisticated worldly Ethel Harrison was much of what George aspired to in a woman. She was attractive, socially at ease, cultured, supportive, well-educated and articulate. Her sons were conspicuously loved and treated affectionately, and were a credit to their parents. There was nothing of the emancipated woman about Ethel in the sense of her behaving like a heroine in a Gissing novel - she had nothing of The Whirlpool's Alma Frothingham in her, and would not have wanted to spend time with Ida Starr, unless it was to offer her a cup of hot soup and an improving pamphlet. She carried out typical social functions in her community of like-minded souls - the middle class woman's drive to help the needy was the bedrock of middle class Victorian life. Where would the working classes have been without them? Probably no worse off. Where would the working classes be today without the ministrations of a well- (some might say over-) educated workforce of social workers, university teachers, community workers? And where would these middle class 'enablers' be without their pay cheques? Identifying social need keeps thousands in work even now!

Girl in a White Kimono
by George Hendrik Breitner 1894

The Harrisons were committed Positivists, which was a creed as much as a philosophy, melding as it did Christianity with Socialism plus a sprinkling of eugenics and various new age ideas - new in the nineteenth century, of course. Positivism was a way of incorporating all the best bits of religion and science - at a time when many assumed Nietzsche was right to claim God was dead (1882's 'The Gay Science' was the first time Fred Nietzsche used that line - gay in the exuberant sense, of course), but we were all headed for Hell in a handcart unless the leading class made a stand. No good leaving it to the elected (by those lucky enough to have the vote) representatives because they were all war-mongers and Empire-builders.

Positivism was a new comprehensive package that would save the civilized world from itself. Being very science-friendly, it was involved in quantifying things and explaining everything in terms of systems and observable phenomena. Society was a series of cogs and wheels that ran the humanity machine and required appropriate mechanical tinkering to work efficiently. Humans could be improved and made more productive and good if only the genius of these aspects could be quantified and replicated. 

Positivists were keen to apply their systems to all aspects of life and George developed his interest in sociology from his involvement with their teachings. The causes and effects of society's ills were clearly spelt out - people can be redeemed and developed, shaped and formed to become useful and law-abiding, and it behoves the rich to support the less well off, the strong to help the weak. By studying social groups, we can understand them and eradicate the bad in them. Poverty was a clear case of a quantifiable state - give it a structure by observing its intricacies and we can begin to address it. Everything could be explained away if only there was data to represent things - data and empirical observation. This concept of gathering information in order to affect outcomes can be seen in the work of Florence Nightingale and her pie charts (originally referred to as polar charts click) to demonstrate the need for sanitary conditions in war zones, through to the poverty maps Clara Collet worked on with Charles Booth. 

Miss Nightingale's influential chart.

Ethel Harrison committed to the cause, and mobilised her friends to provide services for the disadvantaged - not the real ones at the bottom, but the artisan class who were 'decently' poor. She instituted and ran a series of social clubs for young men and women workers (mostly non-integrated sessions). Shaping their behaviour and 'civilising' them - by setting an example for them to follow - you could improve their ways. Education was at the forefront of the drive to develop the resources of the working class, but as we saw in Commonplaces 54 and 55, the various education acts of the Victorian age were designed to upskill a (male) workforce capable of operating the new technologies - but what education is for and why it is useful in terms of what we now call 'self-actualisation' is still a philosophical debate all of its own. However, it would take the twentieth century to realise there is something abhorrent lurking in the core of every social engineering experiment.

When George needed a home for his first wife, he turned to Ethel, who, with her connections among those caring for the disadvantaged, was probably in the know about homes for unwanted chronically ill wives, though we don't know if he 'sold' Marianne aka Nell to her as such. Marianne was a sort of social science experiment gone wrong and the Positivist in the Harrisons would have understood the Gissing marriage in these terms: George had 'married' beneath him to try and better a girl's life and then through no fault of his own it had failed. I doubt he told them the truth - why would he when he wanted the Harrisons on his side? The truth was ugly and non-Christian and ignoble. The baseline for the experiment was built on the incorrect premise that George cared enough to make his experiment work. Lack of accurate vision - a lifelong George trait.

Booth map - Lambeth and its environs

No doubt whatever sob story he told Ethel, he made sure she knew at the bottom of whatever he spoke about, he was suffering and that was why she had to help him. She was a pioneer in this cohort of women he surrounded himself with throughout his life, all of them gullible enough to take whatever tosh he spewed out as gospel truth. Ethel Harrison was in no position to suspect he was guilty of being disingenuous - the middle classes never lie!!! 

At the beginning of his relationship with his mother-surrogate George was still a character in construction, developing his personality and building up the fund of resentment and bitterness his middle age consolidated. He was greedy for more than Ethel could offer in terms of networking and kudos. When Mrs Gaussen turned up, she blew Ethel out of the water. But that's another post!

George grew away from the sanctimonious influence of the Positivists and their drive to improve the world. From mid-1883, he writes that he has fallen out of love with all philosophies and has become as 'artist' - and can only follow the creative muse as his guiding principle. His relationship with Mr and Mrs Harrison carried on in a more distanced way. In April 1889, he writes in his Diary: To dine at the F Harrisons. Usual cordiality. No one there. No one except the Harrisons, his one-time employers and sometime friends (when he needed them) and now mere acquaintances. Everyone in George's 'World of George' was disposable. 

La Japonaise au Bain
by James Tissot 1864

The Harrisons' work for the Positivist cause continued their whole lives and Ethel's was a vociferous voice in many worthy causes. However, it is clear we are not talking of a modern and reforming emancipator of the female cause here. The new vogue for social sciences shone its light on the role of women in society - and once again decided women were to blame for the ills of the world. The dissection of the vital role of women as mothers, home-makers and carers was one George held dear - in The Whirlpool, Alma Frothingham/Rolfe has to kill herself to get over how unmaternal she was to her son and Mrs Abbott has to be redeemed through foster child-rearing in order to be forgiven her sins of failing to keep her own child alive. George had no real belief in the politics of emancipation - but the topic was fair game for attracting the interest of all those young women needing books from Mudie's to ease the boredom en route to their offices and factories. He followed trends that others had debated to death - he never did trail-blazing. 

Think of 'Our Friend The Charlatan' for a while - where the 'hero' Dyce Lashmar discovers a book on sociology and steals its ideas for his own devious purpose, but gets found out. Forget Godwin Peak as an aspect of the real George and look to Dyce Lashmar as the closest we get to seeing him in his fiction! Books on sociology? - pooh!

For all the talk of the Rights of Women bandied about in the late 1800s, precious little could be countenanced that replaced the traditional role of woman as mother and nurturer. And the situation today is not that much improved!

JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 80 TO SEE HOW GEORGE ROSE FROM THE GRAVE TO JOIN ETHEL IN HER LATER WORK. 

Commonplace 78 George & His Leap From Mrs Coward to Mrs Frederic Harrison. PART ONE

Hare as token of Love?

In recent posts (Commonplaces 73 & 74) we looked at the role of Mrs Annie Coward in our man's life. She was the Oakley Crescent landlady with whom he had an adulterous affair - if Morley Roberts is to be believed. 

There had been talk of the Cowards leaving the Oakley Crescent house in the summer of 1884 (possibly because their lease was up?) and so George knew he was going to have to move home. But, he actually left in the May, a few months before the Cowards intended to go. Why did he flit? He gives the rather weak excuse that he had grown too comfortable in the Cowards' home, to the detriment of his work, but were there deeper, darker currents flowing? We can assume George wasn't the only tenant Mrs Coward catered to, and, besides, he had the competition of the Cowards' children to soak up Annie's time, so maybe whatever benefits he received were rationed out on a strict basis of how easy his needs fitted in with her busy schedule. Perhaps he felt neglected, with Marianne aka Nell in Brixton and Annie too busy to cater to his particular, peculiar needs. 

William Morris fabric 

In June 1884, wrote to Frederic Harrison to thank him for his pay cheque, but also to smooth the way over Mr and Mrs Harrison's reading of the newly published 'The Unclassed' which shocked and (possibly) offended them. And, as Harrison was his employer (as tutor to their children) there was every chance his livelihood was at stake, so he needed to do some emotional manipulation to win the precious dose of 'sympathy' he so desperately needed and save his metaphorical (and literal!) bacon.

I must do more than merely acknowledge this cheque. I must ask you to let me try & express something of the gratitude I feel for your persistent kindness, - kindness holding on in spite of everything. I came away to-day feeling very miserable: it all looks so like wanton disregard of your feelings & opinion. Yet in every deed I am open to no such charge. No one ever did me such kindness as you have repeatedly, nor in all likelihood will anyone again; & I feel that more strongly to-day than ever. It is simply my fate to outrage those whom I most respect & would most gladly please. It must be hard for you to believe in my sincerity...I write these social passages in a fury; but I scribbled in precisely the same temper when I was ten years old... If only I could hear someone speak a word for a tendency which is an instinct in me. 
What on earth was he writing about when he was aged ten that merited fury?? Nothing - it just sounds good when you are trying to worm yourself out of a hole, and, as with 'fate' in these early days of psycho-babble, it was easy to blame defects on heritage and not own them as free will gone awry.

Rabbits by Johann George Seitz 1870

Frederic Harrison was his father-figure, but George was already beginning to see - in Freudian terms - the old duffer was no longer King of the Hill; his 'son' had outgrown him intellectually and was now more powerful. As it happened, Fred Harrison had, according to Anthony West's account, already begun to smell a rat where George's 'sincerity' was concerned. The details of his marriage to Marianne aka Nell had been kept a secret, and then when George needed advice and practical help, Harrison felt manipulated and deceived - reactions George would not have anticipated, such was his confidence in his ability to construct believable realities and then punt them on to sympathetic souls. Frederic Harrison was a man of the world - up to a point - but George was never half as clever as he thought he was at dissembling. But Mrs Harrison was a powerful figure in her own right and quite capable of discussing all George's little matters with her husband, even to the point of being able to represent him to her husband as one in need of special understanding and support.

Feeding White Rabbits by Frederick Morgan c 1904

Winning Mrs Harrison over to his cause became vitally important if he was to manage the old man. She represents one of George's first demonstrations of his ability to exploit the innate nurturing tendency in women - a role previously abdicated (he claimed) by his own mother, but previously filled by Marianne, and Annie Coward. And she was probably the first truly middle class English woman with whom he spent social time. We know he was invited to join the family on many occasions and ate with them on the days he was teaching the boys. Some of what he learned about social etiquette and the role of women in society - from an actual off the page of a novel woman's perspective - would have come to him from the way Mrs Harrison conducted herself.

It must be remembered George claimed he was not on good terms with his own mother when Mrs Harrison hove into view, and so he would have responded to her as a child does to a mother - because his own was absent. He may have been an adult professional employee when he was teaching, but in social 'family' time such as meals, he would have 'transacted' as a child. This is a normal piece of intergenerational behaviour between older women and younger men, but might have been of particular significance to George as he was a needy boy his whole life long, one who relied on women to fulfil all manner of roles including completing the useful tasks he set them, plus his emotional wants. In fact, in the social time he spent with the Harrisons, he might well have unconsciously taken on the role of Number One Son - the same place he enjoyed in his own family, now sadly denied him as he had shattered the hopes of the Gissings towards a 'normal' family life with his aberrant behaviour at Owens College. This might explain why the Harrison boys considered George to be great fun as a tutor, and why he was happy to supervise them and entertain them when he joined the Harrisons for holidays.

Madonna With White Rabbit by Titian c 1530

George focused his attentions - not necessarily unconsciously - on persuading Mrs Harrison he was a 'good son', and part of this would have been over-compensating when he thought he might have offended her. He had grossly offended his own mother, so he already knew how badly these things can go when they are not well-managed. Making use of her womanly nurturing traits, he wrote to Mrs Harrison to deflect any anger she might be feeling by making her focus on his health - or lack of it. This is the sort of behaviour we learn as children - partly because children tend to expect others to stop all negative thoughts and punishments in the face of incapacity, but also because we get more tender loving care and more attention for being ill than for being well.

Poor poorly George lays it on with a trowel here in this letter - skillfully bidding to deflect any negative views she might have based on her reading of  'The Unclassed', which he knew was not her cup of tea. Focusing on the hard work of his day job (implying it was her fault, she employed him!), leaving him no energy and time for decent work (again, her fault, she employed him!), not saving him from being alone with his ordeal (her fault again for not anticipating his needs) or supplying tender unconditional loving care (her fault for not spontaneously mothering him properly) then leaving him to wither way almost to nothing (her fault for not rushing round with a sympathetic bosom on which to rest his weary head), all alone in a grotty room with no-one to notice him ailing - that nice Mrs Coward wouldn't have let that happen! O, the monstrous iniquity of it! Forced to fend for himself, it was a miracle he survived - no thanks to HER, that heartless mother-figure of a woman: Bad Ethel Harrison. He writes:

Young Hare by Albrecht Durer 1505

I fancy this attack will prove the climax. The night before last I had, in addition to the neuralgia, a struggle with what I would think would be called bilious fever, - if the name exists. It is cheerful to be alone under such circumstances. I left my old abode in Chelsea solely because I had grown too friendly with the people in the house, & found it increasingly difficult to force myself to solitary work after the other day's work was over; - the last day or two, however, I have wished myself back again. Still, the worst is over now, & nothing but weakness remains. I am taking quinine each morning, & doubtless it does me good.


This is so rammed full of clever little barbs to hook her in - his health; his lonely life; his lack of tender loving care; his commitment to his Art; his continuing need for sympathy; his symptoms of syphilis - for which he is taking quinine. Of course, this last one would probably have been a mystery to George - by 1884, his disease would have been latent, but the physical afflictions it caused would have been emerging. In Commonplace 64, we covered the time George suffered his attack of paresis when in Cotrone and was treated by Dr Sculco - with the quinine powders George habitually carried. Quinine we know as an anti-malarial, but in the days before the full nature of syphilis had been established it was used for the more systemic conditions that were syphilitic in origin, when mercury was contraindicated. In George's day, there was no cure for syphilis, and the treatment of it was largely based on empirical observation by practitioners who had gained experience of the disease 'in the field'. With the dispersal of armed service personnel throughout the British Empire, much of this knowledge was gained in places where quinine was used to treat many fevers and acute conditions. By the 1920s, quinine treatment for syphilis was mainstream click and was said by some to be more effective than Salvarsan (the so-called 'magic bullet'). It remained the drug of choice for some practitioners up until the development of antibiotic therapy. One of its benefits was the relative lack of visible effects - no smell, no unsightly staining of the skin or 'fauces' click and kind to the 'economy' of the bodily system. It was also less toxic and caused far less permanent damage to the nervous system. Notice here George is not claiming to be treating malaria - hardly, as he is living in north London! - so the quinine was being used for another ailment - something he feared might be serious.

So was his flight from Oakley Crescent because Mr Coward discovered the affair or was it because the signs of syphilis had returned, and George was afraid a scandal might ensue? If visible signs of the disease emerged, experienced types like Frederic Harrison would recognise them and the likes of Mrs Harrison might not want George near her children. This would not be the transmissible, infective form of the disease, but the skin lesions and various physical problems that characterise the later, 'latent' phase. The Cowards might not know what was wrong with him, but might not appreciate the gunge and the mess - the other tenants might complain. And, one of his most significant secrets risked being exposed - just when he wanted to attract attention for his writing. A more private lodging where he could avoid contact with others would allow him to regain his apparent health. Annie, too, would be spared the knowledge she had been sleeping with a man with a chronic disease. 

Venus and Mars by Piero di Cosimo 1515

This letter to Mrs Harrison contains some deeper concerns...

Of course all this only means that the conditions of my life are preposterous. There is only one consolation, that, if I live through it, I shall have materials for darker & stronger work than any our time has seen. If I can hold out till I have written some three or four more books, I shall at all events have the satisfaction of knowing that I have left something too individual in tone to be neglected. What was the nature of this 'darker and stronger material'? His disease process is clearly not phthisis (he wouldn't be taking quinine for that) - he mentions no pulmonary concerns whatsoever. He is 27 years old - so something already known to be progressively debilitating and degenerative is troubling him, otherwise he wouldn't allude to it being potentially likely to cut short his life and his life's work. There really is only one possible diagnosis - given his history. Unless, of course, it was all a mighty scam to gain Mrs Harrison's affections. 


JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO SEE HOW MRS HARRISON MADE USE OF GEORGE! 

Commonplace 77 George & The Real Reason He Left Waltham, Massachusetts?

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit
by John Singer Sargent 1882

George went to the US after his Owens College/Belle Vue gaol escapades. There is some dispute about why he went to America - either it was a shrewd move from choice, or a forced exile in a land far, far away - from Wakefield. As it would seem difficult to see him agreeing to anything he didn't want to do, even at that young age, he may have volunteered to go just to get away from the controlling influence of his mother and the Wakefield circle, and the having of his nose rubbed in his disgrace. 

First, he went to Boston to come under the influence of William Lloyd Garrison, and soon moved to Waltham to a teaching post. He was living with Reverend Benton Smith in a private house arrangement, so he was 'one of the family' and enjoyed close proximity - and no privacy, we can assume. 

To Waltham folks, he was something of a curiosity, drawing down much local interest as being a former Owens College alumnus - not a good idea when you are running from your past. He may have been exaggerating when he wrote to his brother 'Everyone is astonished at me'. However, a bizarre recollection of one of his less than astonished pupils suggested otherwise: Most teachers are popular or unpopular, but Gissing was neither', he wrote about our man. But George can easily be forgiven for bigging up his success in America - to Algernon, and the family. He wanted to believe that his life was back on track. It wasn't. On March 1st 1877, George failed to turn up to teach his classes. He'd done a flit. 

Snap The Whip by Winslow Homer 1872 

Pierre Coustillas writes in the Heroic Life Part One: 
Still Gissing, none of whose letters from February to March 1877 has been preserved, obviously had serious personal difficulties on his mind, of which nobody in Waltham... was aware... The scarcity of biographical material is too great for a definite explanation to be possible  but then goes on to speculate George's motives for this incident and decides (surprise, surprise!) it must be Marianne aka Nell's fault. She might be 3,145 miles away (approx distance Manchester to Boston), but her hold on the boy was powerful enough to derail his mental faculties, according to his heroic biographer. Which is not really likely, is it? Not when you think he had absolutely no reason to leave Waltham for Marianne's sake - in fact, he was earning good money and the business of saving up for his future wife's passage to join him was on the cards. Did something spook him, or did he just get tired of the sanctimonious claptrap at home and the boredom of teaching?

George did a bunk without giving notice at the school - most unprofessional, and a possible sign of panic, rather than a planned retreat. As the local Waltham Free Press newspaper reported:
It is the opinion of those who knew him best, that a great disappointment has greatly unsettled his mind, and that in this unfortunate condition, he left town with no clear purpose. In fact, they 'knew' him not at all!

Portrait of Madame X
by John Singer Sargent 1884

Another theory for George leaving so abruptly is put forward in the Heroic Life - George was 'involved' with one of his pupils, Miss Martha McCulloch Barnes. Fleeing from Waltham was the only means of remaining faithful to Nell. It is quite repulsive to think George might have been exploiting the special relationship between adult/figure of authority and vulnerable/hero-worshipping child for his own sexual gratification. But, as the heroic biographer would do anything to suggest George and Marianne were never really in love, we can take it with a pinch of salt. Was George capable of blurring those moral lines? Well M. Coustillas seems to think so. Double-standards at play, or what?? Nowadays, teachers who do this sort of thing are locked up in sex offender gaol for it - here in the UK. 

So, what exactly went wrong for our man? What immense upset made him run for his life? Two possibilities suggest themselves, then morph together into a possible third option: 
1. George was outed in the local press as being a former Owens College alumnus. There is a possibility he told his employer he had graduated from Owens - when he hadn't. It is to be assumed the school that employed him knew nothing of his imprisonment for thefts, but if he could be identified from this newspaper report, then his whole world could come down hard around his ears. If the school found out he was an ex-con, he might very well be sacked and then publicly shamed. As a very young nineteen year-old, he had precious little life experience to guide him through this. On paper, it would seem very bad - a thief and a liar (by omission) and a man who consorts with low-lifes like John George Black and Morley Roberts. Ha ha. The rejection he would experience would be crushing to his fragile self-esteem and self-confidence - all alone in a strange land, with no-one who would understand his rationale for giving up his academic career - no-one to give him sympathy. Much better to simply disappear like a character in a very bad novel. 

2. If George had been suffering from the ravages of a venereal disease in the spring of 1876, he might still be subject to physical signs of infection. If sores or rashes broke out, he would have a lot of explaining to do. The usual recommendation for such contingencies was bed rest and smelly, noxious, conspicuous mercury ointments and rubs - which stained the clothes, made the skin smell bad and affected the gums, sometimes even leading to oral lesions so sore the sufferer couldn't eat or even speak. Not a good look for a school teacher. And, in a small community, where would he discreetly buy medicines? 

Lotus Lilies by Charles Courtney Curran 1888

There is quite a bit of tosh spoken of George and his reasons for all sorts of things in the first couple of years of his adult life. As he destroyed all the letters he sent Marianne, we have no real idea what happened between them when he was in America. But to blame Marianne for anything he endured there is yet more evidence of the vilification she has undergone in order to explain away George's aberrant, self-destructive and spineless behaviour. To justify this version of his life, he is put forward as some brainless dingbat who was manipulated by a cunning little vixen. Even Morley Roberts told Frederic Harrison he didn't think Marianne was the instigator of their relationship, and was more passive than most biographers will have it. George was never a naïf - never. His mind was sharp and calculating, and he tended to act out of self-interest and not for the good of others - but his judgement was poor. That is down to him, and is not anyone else's fault. He is not a character in one of his short stories - such as 'The Sins of the Fathers' (which does not contain the 'vital clue' to his departure from Waltham as claimed in Heroic Life - at best, you can project whatever you want on it but that doesn't make it true) - any more than he is the dope in this dreadful piece he composed here (Oscar Wilde he ain't, but you can see why Gilbert and Sullivan appealed): 

The Candy Store

Thickly lay the snow and frost on 

Those long winding streets of Boston

Where I wander'd all engross'd on

Some enigma, little worth, 

When there suddenly ascended 

To my nostrils undefended 

An aroma, sweetly blended 

Of all savours upon earth. 

Stopping short and upward gazing
I beheld a sight amazing,
Past description, blinding, dazing,
I shall ne'er forget it more;
For there all close at hand I
Saw a beauteous figure stand, I
Saw a someone putting candy
In the window of a store!

O that dear, that hateful someone ,
O that obstinately dumb one,
O there ne'er again will come one,
Half so cruel, half so sweet; —
'Twas a maiden, — nay a goddess,
In a tightly fitting bodice,
Sweetly smiling on the noddies
That were watching from the street.

As I stood in admiration,
In a sort of fascination
With a look of invitation
She turned round to me and smiled,
And so pleasantly she bent her
Eyes on me, as if she meant a
Special hint for me to enter,
That, alas, I was beguiled.

In I went, and she attended.
This and that she recommended
And I'm sure that I expended
Three whole dollars at the least;
What I did I've no idea,
I could neither see nor hear,
And I'm sure that she thought me a
Very curious sort of beast.

From that day began my sorrow, —
I was there upon the morrow,
Every day that I could borrow
Beg or steal a little cash;
There I sat from hour to hour
In a sort of spicy bower,
Munching on with all my power,
O how could I be so rash!

For I thought not of expenses,
Had no heed to consequences.
She had mastered all my senses
With the magic of her eye;
And I thought I should ensure her
If I could but kneel before her,
And declare I did adore her,
But I never dared to try!

Very many weeks passed, and I
Every day sat munching candy, —
Till in body, foot and hand I
Seemed to feel a curious change.
I seemed altered in dimension,
Altered past my comprehension,
And I felt a sort of tension
Most uncomfortably strange.

I consulted on the matter
Both my tailor and my hatter;
Said: "I fear I'm growing fatter " ;
Said the hatter: " Guess that's so;
For your hat, you see sir, pinches
And your head too closely clinches,
'Tis too small by three good inches,
Here's another, that'll do. "

And the tailor said: " You're right, sir,
All your clothes are much too tight, sir,
But you used to be so slight, sir,
When we made them, don't you see;
Round the middle you've increased, sir,
Twenty inches at the least, sir,
And your pantaloons have ceased, sir,
To hang loosely round your knee " .

So I left them in a hurry,
In a most confounded flurry,
And as fast as I could scurry
Made my way along the street;
After terror and confusion
Came the sudden resolution,
I would seek for a conclusion
Of my pain at Mary's feet.

Gasping, panting, puffing, blowing,
On I hurried, little knowing
That I never more should go in
That infernal candy-store, —
For I found the windows shut up,
All the decorations cut up,
And a piece of paper put up:
" Left the town, apply next door. "

In a terrible excitement,
Wondering what on earth the flight meant,
I inquired what the sight meant
Of that paper on the door;
And they told me that the late man
Was so bothered by a fat man
That 'twas on account of that man
He had flitted from the store.

O, how could you be so cruel,
Mary, if you only knew all,
How I'm now reduced to gruel
You would not have left me so,
Through all your shameful tricks I
'm in a fearful, fearful fix, I
Hope for nought but apoplexy,
And it's all through you, you know.

And, this leads me to 3: This poem is taken as George describing how he came to steal at Owens - particularly this: 

From that day began my sorrow, — 
I was there upon the morrow, 
Every day that I could borrow 
Beg or steal a little cash; 
There I sat from hour to hour 
In a sort of spicy bower, 
Munching on with all my power, 
O how could I be so rash! 

If this really is a veiled 'confession' of how he came to steal at Owens, he shows a remarkable lack of remorse for what he did. If this is his justification for his mini crime spree then it has to be extrapolated that he had no sexual self control, so perhaps he is at it again in Waltham. Perhaps he is stealing again, too. Sado-masochists like George often steal to give them power in powerless situations (see Commonplace 26 for more). Or, maybe he is attempting a comic verse with sexual innuendo, possibly for sale to certain publications that might publish 'men's' topics? There are Americanisms in it to fix it decidedly in America - and you don't have to be a disciple of Sigmund Freud to see the true meaning of the piece. Candy, for a start, is a word the English have never commonly used for anything, but it is an Americanism for sweets and sex, and was in the mid-nineteen hundreds. Sugar, ditto. Entering a candy store could be construed as entering a building (a brothel) or a vagina. A 'sort of tension' is sexual arousal... getting bigger is... need I go on?? This isn't the work of a hopeless dope who sexually knows nothing - it's 'clever' - in the bad sense of the word. And, it is no 'confession'. Unless he was visiting brothels in his Waltham days - and feared getting caught! Or, had visited a brothel and contracted another dose of venereal disease. Both, just as plausible as George leaving Waltham so as not to be tempted away from Marianne, because he had fallen out of love with her.

The Bone Player by William Sidney Mount 1856

So, why did George flit from Waltham, ditch his well-paid high status job (leaving Miss Martha weeping??) and hop on a train for Chicago? Let the last word go to Pierre Coustillas: 

The scarcity of biographical material is too great for a definite explanation to be possible.