Commonplace 83 George & Exile - or was it something else?
It should have happened that, post-Owens College, George carried on being a bohemian with eclectic tastes that flame into life at the creative impulse, engaging in existence as a study in possibility, cocking a snook at any censure of his unconventional lifestyle, and loving all things Art and self-expression. As it turned out, that didn't happen. He became narrower, more of a reactionary, and fearful of the world and its potential view of him. The bohemian will always strive to be an outcast who revels in their differences, but it is a position of choice, one with superior motives and ideals, not to be confused with sociopathy, which is another ballgame altogether click. But being an outcast is not quite the same as being an exile. Outcasts exist in all cultures and all times, and are stigmatized when their worth or value is judged against prevailing cultural norms. Exiles are forced out of their group and not allowed to return. George clung to the notion he was the latter because he dreaded the implications of the former. But, can he really claim to have been 'Born in Exile'?
So, what is exile? In the name of clarity, here is Wikipedia's click definition: Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. It can be a form of punishment and solitude.
We might argue that George was an exile from Wakefield - because shame (and snobbery?) kept him from setting up home there. But, as he had no intentions of living anywhere as industrial and far from London's influence as Yorkshire, it wasn't really much of a loss to him to only be there for short holidays. Even being lucky enough to spend a year travelling in the States wasn't really exile - unless he was forced to go. If we accept that it was a journey completed under duress, then that was a year of 'exile' which ended with his unexpected but definitive return, from his own free will. As he seems to have had no intentions of staying in America, and did not make much of an effort to put down roots, it looks like a typical - if early - example of George over-estimating his capabilities, and underestimating the challenges in a situation, then giving up the ghost and losing heart when it suited him.
Notoriously, and if we can believe his version, George's mother sent him packing when he unexpectedly returned from America, so he could view himself as being an exile from his family group. But we know he was in constant contact with them all throughout his life, and didn't ever want to go back to live too closely with them - so not really banishment from the bosom of a loving family, because the whole shooting match of it always revolved around him. Even Algernon's heroic, if desperate, bid for freedom to run a life of his own was dependent on George's material generosity. He claimed to have shared very little with his family in terms of intellectual diversion, and he was not grounded in religious faith as were his mother and sisters, but George did his best to keep them nose to the grindstone of cultural pursuits. Besides, do Artists really want to be understood by their family?
Was George ever truly 'exiled'? It certainly wasn't from any class he was born into - his father ran a shop, which in George's day, was not the sign of success that it is today. The context of the time George's father was making his living in Wakefield has to be kept in mind when we think of George's evolution. Thomas Weller Gissing arrived in the town in the mid-1850s at a time when chemists were not the exalted scientists we now think of when we go to a dispensing pharmacy. This was still a time when physicians were regarded as little more than barber/surgeons, and the Medical Act of 1858 (the year after George's birth) was the first attempt to regulate what it meant to be a doctor. Anyone could set themselves up to be a dispensing chemist - you just bought a copy of Culpeper click, gathered some flowers and bought some lethal chemicals, and let the market do the rest. Thomas Gissing's natural bent was towards science - botany in particular - but we don't know if this was because he sold remedies based on plant extracts and so collected materials for medicines or if he had a truly enquiring mind. As he published works on ferns, it would seem he was very much a scientist at heart, trapped in a shopkeeper's existence (George used this in his writings as a sign that a man was a failure in life). He wrote poetry and was moved by, and acted to counteract, human suffering - and there would have been a lot of that in Wakefield - but, essentially, the Gissings would be seen as incomers, and so different and peculiar - in fact, outcasts. They would not quite fit into either of the social classes with whom they mixed; early experience of this may have shaped George's ability to feel at ease anywhere. But most of us have to face this sort of a challenge, and evolution is all about rising to occasions and adapting, and George was less of an adaptor than might be expected of such an intelligent creature.
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| Dante in Exile by Domenico Peterlini 1860 |
So, what is exile? In the name of clarity, here is Wikipedia's click definition: Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return. It can be a form of punishment and solitude.
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| The Journey of a Modern Hero to the Island of Elba 1814 |
Notoriously, and if we can believe his version, George's mother sent him packing when he unexpectedly returned from America, so he could view himself as being an exile from his family group. But we know he was in constant contact with them all throughout his life, and didn't ever want to go back to live too closely with them - so not really banishment from the bosom of a loving family, because the whole shooting match of it always revolved around him. Even Algernon's heroic, if desperate, bid for freedom to run a life of his own was dependent on George's material generosity. He claimed to have shared very little with his family in terms of intellectual diversion, and he was not grounded in religious faith as were his mother and sisters, but George did his best to keep them nose to the grindstone of cultural pursuits. Besides, do Artists really want to be understood by their family?
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| The Outcast by Richard Redgrave 1851 |
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| Satan, Summoning His Armies by Thomas Stothard 1790 |
When George moved to London, he did so because it was the place to be. It was not a form of exile as he wanted to be there, needed to find work and London offered the most opportunities; besides, where else can you find the British Library but in our nations' capital? That he started his life with Marianne aka Nell in London in relative poverty - very short-lived as he came into a small but useful inheritance in 1879 - was a situation he soon rectified, and so he was forced to endure only temporary dire straits.
George actively chose to be a writer, but he was not content to follow in the footsteps of Dickens, Oscar, or Daudet by supporting himself with journalism whilst writing the Great British Novel in his spare time. This kind of snobbery kept him from making useful contacts and from building an audience, and almost guaranteed a restricted market for his work. He was 'niche' at a time when it was not fashionable to be so - today, it is all the rage. But even 'niche' does not get you noticed unless you have access to a market that likes your product. George did not want to reach just anyone - he wanted to be read by like-minded souls who shared his world view - he was never strong on defending his argument within the pages of his novels, and lacked the emotional depth to sway converts to his cause by winning their affectionate attachment. By removing himself from the ranks of the popular as if being read by many might somehow cheapen his endeavours, he becomes the author who is to be pitied - as in, poor old George Gissing - all that effort and no-one reads him, let alone pays him for his work. Most readers like to feel at one with their favourite authors - that they share some common ground. From the examples of the fan letters George mentions in his Letters, his devotees were quite like the faithful of today in over-estimating the artistic worth of their hero.
Was this drive towards not being popular engaged in unconsciously because the reverse would have been too hard to deal with, as it might be too invasive of his privacy? If he came out of the shadows and claimed his place beside Meredith and Hardy (as was mooted with some justification) he would have been under scrutiny, and risked being revealed as an ex-con. As the likes of Israel Zangwill always knew he was a former convict, it was a waste of time thinking he was keeping it secret, but the real down side was that it guaranteed he was forever going to act like an outcast because he rejected the things that would have brought him into company and a like-minded social set. Was it really necessary to reject the Frederic Harrisons and move on from Mrs Gaussen because he was fed up with what he regarded as trivia and banality at their social gatherings? It seems a case of intolerance based on arrogance, to think he has nothing in common with these people, after years of sucking up to them. Unless, of course, he was tired of mixing with people who were his equals and more, in terms of their debating skills and intellectual competence...
Intentionally choosing to marry Edith - when he had no intentions of making much of a go at marriage - was an unforgivable demonstration of monstrously selfish egotism, when he knew that if she could not bend to his training, she would be rejected and her life totally ruined. But, marrying her, going off to Exeter, rejecting his friends, was all part of the need he felt to be left out of society - did he think it might make him seem more worthy of sympathy, and ensure everyone would try harder to keep him happy or excuse him his funny little ways? HG Wells made the point that Edith was - like Marianne - never allowed to be viewed by his friends as a proper wife by entertaining George's friends. George always described his home life in such dreadful terms it was clear he was ashamed of Marianne and Edith but his friends were mostly decent types, who wouldn't have cared much if Edith was working class. Only the truly crass think in such terms as class when they interact with fellow human beings - even in George's time, 'noblesse oblige' was the order of the day, and making others feel comfortable is the bedrock of good manners.
George used the word 'exile' on himself, but this is a bit of a con, as it romanticizes his position. There is some sort of nobility in the word 'exile' mainly because it is a state that is earned by rebelliousness or truculence and nonconformity and it can be undone - exiles can be rehabilitated and returned more or less in the state in which they were when they were forced to flee. Outcasts are rejects from society because they don't fit in and can only be brought back when they are no longer beyond the pale - when they have reformed. George - if he ever reformed - did it too late for it to matter. He just kept adding crimes to his status as outcast - and probably realised the more questionable things he did - such as abandon wives and children and endlessly tell lies (all much worse than petty theft IMO), enter into a bigamous/adulterous relationship - the less likely he was to ever be rehabilitated into the class he wanted so much to impress, and so he convinced himself he didn't care what people thought about it because he didn't think anyone (at least, in his lifetime) would join up the dots and make a clear picture of all his mistakes. Fleeing to France was not the act of an exile - it was the act of a man who had made himself an outcast - who had 'cut his own nose off to spite his face'.
Godwin Peak - the 'Exile' George is so often identified with - was, like George an exile mostly in his own mind. Despite his successes at school and at Owens, George never really felt he lived up to the hype of his academic prowess. His kind of hothoused learning generally has no solid basis, and George had enough intelligence to see there were massive gaps in his knowledge of the academic world - he spent his whole life catching up. Perhaps he feared failure and so welcomed it with open arms as a strategy for controlling his fears: paradoxing himself. Was it, for our man (and Godwin), all a question of not having enough money (as George Orwell claimed when he described what George's books were about) that separated George from the world, or was it a gross superiority complex - which has its roots in feelings of inferiority? You decide!
So, what have we learned?
George actively chose to be a writer, but he was not content to follow in the footsteps of Dickens, Oscar, or Daudet by supporting himself with journalism whilst writing the Great British Novel in his spare time. This kind of snobbery kept him from making useful contacts and from building an audience, and almost guaranteed a restricted market for his work. He was 'niche' at a time when it was not fashionable to be so - today, it is all the rage. But even 'niche' does not get you noticed unless you have access to a market that likes your product. George did not want to reach just anyone - he wanted to be read by like-minded souls who shared his world view - he was never strong on defending his argument within the pages of his novels, and lacked the emotional depth to sway converts to his cause by winning their affectionate attachment. By removing himself from the ranks of the popular as if being read by many might somehow cheapen his endeavours, he becomes the author who is to be pitied - as in, poor old George Gissing - all that effort and no-one reads him, let alone pays him for his work. Most readers like to feel at one with their favourite authors - that they share some common ground. From the examples of the fan letters George mentions in his Letters, his devotees were quite like the faithful of today in over-estimating the artistic worth of their hero.
Was this drive towards not being popular engaged in unconsciously because the reverse would have been too hard to deal with, as it might be too invasive of his privacy? If he came out of the shadows and claimed his place beside Meredith and Hardy (as was mooted with some justification) he would have been under scrutiny, and risked being revealed as an ex-con. As the likes of Israel Zangwill always knew he was a former convict, it was a waste of time thinking he was keeping it secret, but the real down side was that it guaranteed he was forever going to act like an outcast because he rejected the things that would have brought him into company and a like-minded social set. Was it really necessary to reject the Frederic Harrisons and move on from Mrs Gaussen because he was fed up with what he regarded as trivia and banality at their social gatherings? It seems a case of intolerance based on arrogance, to think he has nothing in common with these people, after years of sucking up to them. Unless, of course, he was tired of mixing with people who were his equals and more, in terms of their debating skills and intellectual competence...
Intentionally choosing to marry Edith - when he had no intentions of making much of a go at marriage - was an unforgivable demonstration of monstrously selfish egotism, when he knew that if she could not bend to his training, she would be rejected and her life totally ruined. But, marrying her, going off to Exeter, rejecting his friends, was all part of the need he felt to be left out of society - did he think it might make him seem more worthy of sympathy, and ensure everyone would try harder to keep him happy or excuse him his funny little ways? HG Wells made the point that Edith was - like Marianne - never allowed to be viewed by his friends as a proper wife by entertaining George's friends. George always described his home life in such dreadful terms it was clear he was ashamed of Marianne and Edith but his friends were mostly decent types, who wouldn't have cared much if Edith was working class. Only the truly crass think in such terms as class when they interact with fellow human beings - even in George's time, 'noblesse oblige' was the order of the day, and making others feel comfortable is the bedrock of good manners.
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| Young Bacchus by Caravaggio 1596/7 |
Godwin Peak - the 'Exile' George is so often identified with - was, like George an exile mostly in his own mind. Despite his successes at school and at Owens, George never really felt he lived up to the hype of his academic prowess. His kind of hothoused learning generally has no solid basis, and George had enough intelligence to see there were massive gaps in his knowledge of the academic world - he spent his whole life catching up. Perhaps he feared failure and so welcomed it with open arms as a strategy for controlling his fears: paradoxing himself. Was it, for our man (and Godwin), all a question of not having enough money (as George Orwell claimed when he described what George's books were about) that separated George from the world, or was it a gross superiority complex - which has its roots in feelings of inferiority? You decide!
So, what have we learned?
To quote Dr Seuss: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
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