George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 76  George & His Starstruck Luvvie Affair With Miss Julia Gwynne.

George was fancy free from Christmas 1882, when Marianne aka Nell left her home to live a life alone in Brixton. He was a gay bachelor once more, if not legally or morally, then in his own mind - we know he never took those silly, legally morally binding things seriously (honesty with others' cloakroom pockets, marriage vows...).

Throughout 1883, George pitched himself headlong into the whirlpool of London Theatreland. He loved going out, if only to get away from himself, and so he joined the crowds for the shows. In fact, he loved it so much he thought he might be a closet playwright, and mentions thinking he can turn his hand to writing plays, even going so far as to start a couple of works, then abandoning them. There seems to have been a tendency in George to think certain things must be as easy-peasy as falling off a log - starting a periodical (with Algernon), for example - based on the fact he sees what he regards as his intellectual inferiors successfully doing it, so how hard can it be? This kind of immature arrogance is what got him into trouble on more than one occasion - though some (including George) might regard his cock ups as Fate, they were usually the result of the over-estimation of his own abilities. The early realisation he was smarter than his father (at the crucial time of Oedipal development), and too much praise in his schooling where he was top of the academic food chain, might have been to blame for this misplaced and superficial self-confidence.

Judging from his Diaries and Letters, he steered clear of attending quality productions as far as drama was concerned - so perhaps his sensibilities were skewed in a musical theatre bent. He often went to see proper plays not to experience them - as in to immerse himself in the form - but he did like a belly laugh, unsubtle and (he would deny it, of course!) somewhat vulgar though that broad humour is - and so farces and musicals were right up his Tin Pan Alley. I am no dramaturge, but did his love of all things of this ilk begin with his reading of the Greeks? click


It takes all sorts to make a world, and thank goodness for it, say I, and we are rightly encouraged to be tolerant of others' harmless foibles. But... can it be right that we have to share a planet with those who find Gilbert and Sullivan entertaining?

If one had to look for signs of middle-classness in all its crassness then Gilbert and Sullivan might be a marker to guide you on. Like Glyndebourne and The Last Night of the Proms, G&S is not for the likes of me, guv - it's for nobs. Or is that knobs? Now, George berated Edith for letting Walter hear working class songs (they were on holiday but obviously not in holiday mode) and yet he assailed his own ears with the tosh of G&S. As if he needed any encouragement, the D'oyly Carte crew brought out the inner snob in him. And the starstruck fan.

Odd as it may seem, George was a bit of a luvvie click when it came to certain actors... well, actresses. For a short while, his pin up dream girl crush was Miss Julia Gwynne. Luckily for Julia, she was thinking of marriage to George Edwardes, the manager of the D'Oyly Carte and later, the Savoy where she subsequently performed. But our George was much taken with her, and allowed this to seep out of his normally suppressed, secretive consciousness into his correspondence.

This little piece of self-revelation allows us to see how confident he was that women would fall for his 'charm' offensive. And how wrong he was on that score!

The first we hear of George's passion for Miss Gwynne is in an exchange of letters published February 5th 1883, in the Daily News. where George joins a debate on the woeful state of 'the farce' in English theatre, but sings the praises of his crush in her performance in 'The Little Sentinel'. It is distressing to see an actress of promise, like Miss Julia Gwynne, doing her best in an intangible part. (Is it me, or is this an odd use of the term 'intangible'?). As she had been doing Gilbert and Sullivan and other light drama pieces for some time, she was hardly 'an actress of promise' - she was, in fact, delivering central performances. George says in this letter that he has been to see 'Iolanthe' and would see it and 'Patience' again. For an example of this horrible genre - and I apologise unreservedly for sending you there - click which is from 'Patience'. Forgive me.

'Mock Turtles' was a one-act fluffer of an operetta that went on to warm up the audience before the main event - unless it was equal billing as a two-hander pair of operettas. It was mainly for those who were 'first come first served' for seats, and so had to arrive early. Here is an interesting little bit of info about the short plays put on before the main events click. George was so chuffed with his letter to the Daily News, he wrote to Algernon and told him all about it, wondering if the brains behind the Turtles piece would join battle in the letters page.

They didn't. Still, George was in good spirits, he says. But, he had begun to fall out of love with Frederic Harrison and Positivism, so he was obviously in a smidgen of turmoil, and the evidence for this is to be found in his lackadaisical attitude to work - he reports that his writing goes 'slowly' but, he writes to Alg: I have that which never fails one - confidence in myself. The day will come when I shall smile at the recollection of these initial difficulties. Preserve this letter, & look back on it in the year 1890! For anyone who ever thinks Algernon did not earn every penny George gave or loaned him, think again. How did Alg put up with his older brother's immense ego?? 

It seems Algernon wasn't the only one George told about his letter to the Daily News - he sent a clipping of it to Miss Gwynne, and, on February 20th, he writes to Alg to tell him so: A fortnight ago, I cut my letter out of the DN, & sent it to Julia Gwynne, together with a few complimentary comments on her playing. At length a reply comes. I have written again to tell her to let me know by all means, if she plays 'Polly'. It would be a treat.

The editors of the Collected Letters suggest 'Polly' might be Polly Peachum from 'The Beggar's Opera'. Now, this is an interesting choice of a role for George to want to see Miss Gwynne play - Miss Peachum is the love interest of Macheath, the antihero of the piece, a thief and a varmint who is torn between sweet Polly and the darkly seductive likes of Suky Tawdry, Lucy Lockit, Jenny Diver and Molly Brazen. Signs of George's tendency to reduce nice girls (Miss Gwynne) down to the gutter - as Anthony West might say? Here is a free copy of the original John Gay story click and here is a fabulous 1931 film version of the Brecht/Weill 'Threepenny Opera' version of the story click and here is Lotte Lenya's (Mrs B Brecht's) version of 'Mack The Knife' click.

On February 27th, two days after his wife's birthday, George wrote to his sister Ellen aka Nelly about his love of the music in 'Iolanthe' and 'Patience': The airs in it (Iolanthe) are not so taking as in 'Patience', but I am not sure that much of it is not of a higher character. On the stage, it is wonderfully beautiful.  Then he leaps to a mention of Wagner's death and a longing to visit Germany to hear one of the great composer's operas. If you recall, George's brother, William, had been a fan and saw Wagner as the 'coming man' of music. George tells Nelly he has been spending a lot of time looking at DG Rossetti's pictures (all that luxuriant, free-flowing hair will have appealed to our man!). He ends asking her to tell Alg that 'Mock Turtles' has been taken off - because of his Daily News letter! It seems George is pinballing between the cultural delights of the day, but by-passing the Aesthetic Movement - except for the piss-taking, execrable 'Patience' (which we have to thank for helping to launch the career of one Oscar Wilde.) 

The dedicated fan of Thalia and Melpomene click has to wait until May 23rd to see Miss Gwynne once more, this time in the Sartou play 'Fedora'. He writes to Alg: I went to see Fedora the other night. The somewhat vulgar critique in Punch was true on the whole. Mrs B Beere is simply Sara Bernhardt. Julia Gwynne has a wretchedly small part, a page's. To my amusement, there entered a stage box 'Albert Edward Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, & All the Royal Family'.  He can't resist that bit of name-dropping, can he haha??

Mrs B-Beere in a future performance
c 1884. 'Bernie' was a true friend to Oscar 
Wilde, and refused to shun him. 

On July 21st 1883, he writes again to Algernon: On Thursday  I was surprised by a note from Julia Gwynne, saying that she was going to play in a matinee at the Adelphi to-day, & would send me a stall if I liked. So I established myself in the stalls at 2 o'clock, & certainly beheld 'surprising things'. The piece was called 'Retaliation'. It was meant for melodramatic comedy, but proved outrageous farce. Throughout the three acts the house roared heartily, - always at the serious parts. No description could give an idea of the monstrosities of this piece... Fortunately, Julia had an inoffensive part, & was not ridiculous, about the only person who was not. 'Julia'? 
Here click we can see Julia was often fined for corpsing on stage - so it's hard to believe she was keeping a straight face throughout. 

Then we have to wait until February 27th 1884 (exactly a year to the day of a previous letter - see above!) to see how this romance rolls out. He has been to see 'Peril', another Sardou play with his Julia in the flesh, on stage, before his very eyes. George writes, in effusive luvvie praise: 'Peril'... is inimitably played. Such perfect acting I never saw... However, as noted by the Letters editors, the Athenaeum review said Julia Gwynne 'is seen to no special advantage'. That's the thing about being a fan - you tend to view your crush through rose-tinted spectacles. 

May 1884 sees George writing to Algernon: I have seen a good deal of the Theatres of late. You notice they are going to revive 'The Rivals' at the Haymarket, & with a most extraordinary cast. What he meant, was that Julia Gwynne was cast as Miss Lucy. George has definitely got the drama bug - he is talking of writing plays that will come to something and now subscribes to The Era, not exactly a theatrical publication, but a weekly newspaper with a strong commitment to stage reviews and actor-y gossip click. Not George's usual sort of publication, and at 6d a week, not cheap - an equivalent, based on today's UK median weekly wage puts this at about £9 per week for one paper. Still, he needed his fix of theatreland news, and the latest gen on his favourite thespian, and he was hoping to dwell in theatrical circles (not just the pits!) and so he needed to know who were the movers and shakers - the competition he would have to out-manoeuvre. From the Wiki entry:   
The theatrical historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope described The Era as "The Actor's Bible", with the theatrical coverage gradually assuming prominence over all else. By degrees and largely because of increasing advertisements, The Era began to take more and more interest in theatrical affairs and gave weekly reports of theatrical happenings in London and the great provincial cities.... [A]s Music Hall grew so the space devoted to it grew; The Era became the great theatrical journal and every member of the profession, stage or hall, just had to buy it although the price was steep, it remained at 6d. for many years. However, to be seen walking along the street with The Era under the arm, its title displayed for the passer-by to read, proved to all that the person carrying it was a "Pro".click

Of course, it wasn't to last, this obsession with Julia. She didn't reciprocate his attention and he probably never realised theatres give the stars free tickets to hand out when the house is nearly empty - it's better to have non-paying bums on seats and not look empty. There is one Diary entry (November 19th 1894) - when George reports that, upon leaving an Author's Club dinner he was stopped and asked for his address for 'Mrs George Edwardes', - 'who has kept me in remembrance'. It must have done his miserable old heart good to know Edith maybe had a little competition for his affections.

And George never wrote a play. It isn't easy to be a playwright any more than it is to be an actor; both just appear to be easy - to the uninitiated. It's difficult to think of George writing a farce - unless it was the story of his life haha - and one wonders what he would have thought of the twentieth century's Theatre of the Absurd click with its intellectual seriousness and the originality and courage it took to write such challenging works.

Last word must go to the Divine One who could write plays - hell, could he write amusing, learned, compassionate, wise and witty uncynical plays - and Newdigate-winning eternally loved inspirational poems and ground-breaking novels, and sparkling literary criticism and... letters. Beautiful, beautiful letters.

“The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.” 

― Oscar Wilde

An homage to Oscar's line: I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.