Commonplace 118 George & A Letter To His Sister, Margaret. November 2nd 1883.
Of his two sisters, George claimed he felt less attached to the elder of them, Margaret - known as Madge. She was six years younger than George, and, as the older of the two girls, may well have been closest in outlook to their mother, identifying with her and adopting some of her attitudes to George's unconventional lifestyle. In turn, George will have transferred much of how he felt about his mother onto Margaret, and seen her as a mother-surrogate in temperament and character. Her closeness to the parent figure made her less malleable than Ellen, and George did not like to waste energy on women who were not under his sway, and so the encouragement to think independently he encouraged in Ellen was never manifested in his mentoring relationship with Madge.
She seems to have been the most religious of the Gissing siblings, and the one who derived the most consolation from her faith. Unfortunately, she suffered chronic bouts of ill-health and this tended to undermine her attempts to lead an independent existence. The bid to become a teacher/governess had to be abandoned because of her health, and she then set up the school in Wakefield with Ellen that so disastrously failed to do justice to Walter's potential. Neither girl married or even seemed to consider it.
1883 was the year when George set about trying to get over his split from Marianne aka Nell. Despite appearances, he was in turmoil. His first self-published book, Workers In The Dawn, was met with less than jubilation from a reading public that was tired of three-volume humongous doorstops - hard to carry on the Clapham omnibus to and from the office or department store workplace - and the work he had been doing for another novel 'Mrs Grundy's Enemies' fell below George's own rigorous standards and eventually got shredded (well, 'lost' - burnt, used as kindling?).
There is evidence of a frenzied whirl of social outings - Bertz came back from America in the June, but the Dynamic Duo was a thing of the past - the German commune-dodger had seen the Light and come back touched by Glory, and devoted to the world of evangelical teetotalism and tambourine-bashing. George was appalled, of course, and wondered if Bertz were mad. George suspected lunacy in many of those he disagreed with especially the women (including Nell, Madge, and Edith), so Bertz, his former man-wife, would not have been surprised had he found out about this allegation. The Hughes-run commune was a cult, and so Bertz probably just needed a bit of de-programming to become rehabilitated back into normal life, and he did go on to lead a relatively normal life when he returned to Germany.
We saw in Commonplaces 76 that, in 1883, George had dreams of becoming a Stage Door Johnny to Miss Julia Gwynne and considered himself something of a budding playwright, thanks to a few trips to the theatre and an over-estimation of his abilities. In 1894, he was to write 'Madcaps' (I told you he was obsessed with people being insane haha!) but it never saw the light of day. To be fair, 1883 was the same year the Divine Oscar Wilde (it's Oscar's birthday today, October 16th - Happy Birthday, Dear Boy!!) gave us 'Vera', which bombed. That George went on to be a committed novelist and Oscar went on to be a committed legend, is theatrical and every other kind of history.
So, 1883 was a formative year for our boy. For a start, he ditched the 'R' in his signature and stopped being George Robert Gissing (not to me, he didn't!). He was 'delighted beyond all utterance' at an exhibition of Rossetti pictures - and had begun to talk like he'd been whacked over the head with the 'aesthetic poseur' stick. By good fortune, he had been living with a very accommodating, obliging and sexually frustrated landlady (see Commonplaces 72-74) for some time, and his shoes were, as they say, well and truly under her particular table. Her husband worked away from the family home, so George was king of the heap.- or, cock of the walk! George became a devoted fan of Gilbert and Sullivan (for which there was no cure!) and raced about advising his siblings on what to read, say and think - poor Algernon came within the direst influence as he spent some time living with and visiting George whilst studying for his exams. He locked horns with Frederic Harrison and never again treated his former mentor with total deference. Weirdly, for one who hated journalism, he thought of setting up a periodical with Algernon, but confessed he couldn't do it for less than £3 a week salary. He wrote poetry. It got published. He name-dropped that his pupils, The Lushington Girls' portrait was in the Royal Academy Show; he went on and on about Julia Gwynne, and dissed Mrs Bernard Beere (who had taken on some of Julia's roles) but as Ms Beere stood by Oscar in his hour of need, we shall praise her name here, as a pillar of generosity and devotion. And good taste. The summer saw him 'seedy' and fleeing to Hastings but his health was never going to be the same again. He doted on Ruskin, and advised his siblings on all things as if he was some sort of expert on anything.
In the late summer he had what he thought was a chance to divorce Nell for good and all. See Commonplaces 35-37. The only cause for divorce open to him was if he could prove she was committing adultery. He was approached by a policeman and presented with a wicked scheme to surveil her and gather evidence that she was soliciting or behaving in a bad way. No evidence was ever found, and so George very quickly dropped the plan. I firmly believe he never had any real interest in divorcing Nell - after all, he didn't object to paying alimony, though he claimed the policeman told him he paid her too much. And he may have paid her visits and demanded his conjugal rights from time to time. He never lost contact with her during their separation, and destroyed all reference to her in his pre-1888 diaries probably in order to obscure his exact relationship with her (and his treatment of her) after she was cast out to survive by her own devices.
On this police spy's advice, he subsequently reduced her alimony by 25% from £1 to 15/- a week. Remember, he told Algernon he couldn't live on less than £3 a week himself, so to give her a quarter of that to live on - with all her medical bills - was hardly generosity personified. In fact, it's worth remembering he was paying alimony here - a legal requirement - and not doling out free money. Nell could have sued for more - theirs must have been an informal arrangement, and she probably never realised she could have legally bound him to pay more. But I think she never took him to court in order to spare him another performance in the dock. Incidentally, on January 11th 1884, George writes to Algernon about a message he received from Poole, the solicitor he had engaged to represent him against Nell if it came to a divorce court:
A note from Poole, expressing his regrets, & saying he has no charges to make. So much the better.
This is after the firm arranged for their spy to gather evidence against her which was an investigation that had carried on from the previous late September click. Which means this alleged prostitute and drunk had not transgressed any laws in four months, had not come to anyone's attention, and hadn't made anything like a scene or any form of trouble in her neighbourhood, or amongst the locals such as publicans; she had not fallen out with or offended her landlady... does it seem likely to you that if she was, as biographers claim, a working girl with a drink problem, that she would be so invisible in her community and beyond the reach of a police investigator? We are talking post-Maiden Tribute, Contagious Diseases Act London here. The lies told about Nell to make George look better... do the research yourself. See if you can find that single, verifiable source that proves she was ever a prostitute and a drunk and make me into a liar! Nell was to remain on 15/- for the next 5 years, right up to the time she died of acute laryngitis in 1888. HG Wells maintained she had starved to death.
November 2nd 1883:
Madge has recently moved to work as a governess in 'Gladstone' country (ie where Gladstone retired to Hawarden near Chester) George approves of this:
... one always likes to get a glimpse of people who are of the inner brotherhood of those who rule the world, - after all a vastly simpler, & easier business than one is apt to think.
This is an odd statement - Gladstone was a Tory, who reclaimed monies lost when the slave trade was abolished (something he opposed) and who worked as minister of war, and of course, campaigned against the interests of the common woman and man. And, what is this 'world'? Talk about a Little Englander! George was 26 when he wrote this, and he moved ever closer to the political Right until the day he died. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft could not have been written without this sort of tosh deeply ingrained in George's mind - some bohemian, eh? Haha. However, that 'inner brotherhood of those who rule the world' - was George alluding to the Illuminati who are now suspected of ruling everything - and who are alleged to have amongst their number our own HRH? As if...
He goes on in his letter to Madge:
You remind me...of Charlotte Bronte. She had that same shrinking from people who might be supposed to look down upon her, & the same half-defiant withdrawing into herself. I myself understand it also. Still, I repeat: there can be doubt that that person who commands most respect who stands simply on his or her dignity as a human being, &, through pretending nothing, disguises & yields nothing. In very deed, this is what is meant by 'good breeding'. The well-bred creature is perfectly at ease, I suppose in any kind of company. 'Any kind of company'?? Not working class company, or course.
I actually think he was much more fond of Madge than he liked to admit - she was his type (small, sickly, unspectacular) and should have worshipped him if his judgement of female horse flesh was accurate. Which means her censure of his many foibles and flaws must have irked him and made him want to lash out; and she might have been indifferent to his pleas for sympathy, which would have vexed him. Was his lack of connection a subterfuge to get her to make more effort to adore him, like younger sisters are supposed to do?
As 1883 dragged to its close, George had to defend his novel The Unclassed (by the publishers Bentley & Co) from the charge it was a sewer of filth. George was outraged at such philistinism; Margaret would never have read it - Unclassed's Ida Starr was the opposite end of the spectrum, even after her stint in a laundry trying to wash her soul clean. Madge would never have taken to children the way Ida did - with open arms and a spare handkerchief for snotty noses - but she might have differed from her mother, and known George well enough to not blame Nell for his disgrace at Owens College.
In the UK, we have been enjoying a poetry season on the BBC. To join in with this and to celebrate the life of the Divine Oscar, here is Paul Muldoon's The Gate (about Oscar's release from prison) from the year 2000, which I feel Margaret would have understood.
THE GATE
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| Madge aged 16-17 years |
She seems to have been the most religious of the Gissing siblings, and the one who derived the most consolation from her faith. Unfortunately, she suffered chronic bouts of ill-health and this tended to undermine her attempts to lead an independent existence. The bid to become a teacher/governess had to be abandoned because of her health, and she then set up the school in Wakefield with Ellen that so disastrously failed to do justice to Walter's potential. Neither girl married or even seemed to consider it.
1883 was the year when George set about trying to get over his split from Marianne aka Nell. Despite appearances, he was in turmoil. His first self-published book, Workers In The Dawn, was met with less than jubilation from a reading public that was tired of three-volume humongous doorstops - hard to carry on the Clapham omnibus to and from the office or department store workplace - and the work he had been doing for another novel 'Mrs Grundy's Enemies' fell below George's own rigorous standards and eventually got shredded (well, 'lost' - burnt, used as kindling?).
 |
| Santa Rosa by Pierre and Gilles 1990s |
We saw in Commonplaces 76 that, in 1883, George had dreams of becoming a Stage Door Johnny to Miss Julia Gwynne and considered himself something of a budding playwright, thanks to a few trips to the theatre and an over-estimation of his abilities. In 1894, he was to write 'Madcaps' (I told you he was obsessed with people being insane haha!) but it never saw the light of day. To be fair, 1883 was the same year the Divine Oscar Wilde (it's Oscar's birthday today, October 16th - Happy Birthday, Dear Boy!!) gave us 'Vera', which bombed. That George went on to be a committed novelist and Oscar went on to be a committed legend, is theatrical and every other kind of history.
 |
| From 'An Ideal Husband' 1895 (ironic, considering the sort of husband George made haha) |
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| click |
In the late summer he had what he thought was a chance to divorce Nell for good and all. See Commonplaces 35-37. The only cause for divorce open to him was if he could prove she was committing adultery. He was approached by a policeman and presented with a wicked scheme to surveil her and gather evidence that she was soliciting or behaving in a bad way. No evidence was ever found, and so George very quickly dropped the plan. I firmly believe he never had any real interest in divorcing Nell - after all, he didn't object to paying alimony, though he claimed the policeman told him he paid her too much. And he may have paid her visits and demanded his conjugal rights from time to time. He never lost contact with her during their separation, and destroyed all reference to her in his pre-1888 diaries probably in order to obscure his exact relationship with her (and his treatment of her) after she was cast out to survive by her own devices.
On this police spy's advice, he subsequently reduced her alimony by 25% from £1 to 15/- a week. Remember, he told Algernon he couldn't live on less than £3 a week himself, so to give her a quarter of that to live on - with all her medical bills - was hardly generosity personified. In fact, it's worth remembering he was paying alimony here - a legal requirement - and not doling out free money. Nell could have sued for more - theirs must have been an informal arrangement, and she probably never realised she could have legally bound him to pay more. But I think she never took him to court in order to spare him another performance in the dock. Incidentally, on January 11th 1884, George writes to Algernon about a message he received from Poole, the solicitor he had engaged to represent him against Nell if it came to a divorce court:
A note from Poole, expressing his regrets, & saying he has no charges to make. So much the better.
This is after the firm arranged for their spy to gather evidence against her which was an investigation that had carried on from the previous late September click. Which means this alleged prostitute and drunk had not transgressed any laws in four months, had not come to anyone's attention, and hadn't made anything like a scene or any form of trouble in her neighbourhood, or amongst the locals such as publicans; she had not fallen out with or offended her landlady... does it seem likely to you that if she was, as biographers claim, a working girl with a drink problem, that she would be so invisible in her community and beyond the reach of a police investigator? We are talking post-Maiden Tribute, Contagious Diseases Act London here. The lies told about Nell to make George look better... do the research yourself. See if you can find that single, verifiable source that proves she was ever a prostitute and a drunk and make me into a liar! Nell was to remain on 15/- for the next 5 years, right up to the time she died of acute laryngitis in 1888. HG Wells maintained she had starved to death.
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| Joan of Arc by John Everett Millais 1865 (the year of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies!) |
November 2nd 1883:
Madge has recently moved to work as a governess in 'Gladstone' country (ie where Gladstone retired to Hawarden near Chester) George approves of this:
... one always likes to get a glimpse of people who are of the inner brotherhood of those who rule the world, - after all a vastly simpler, & easier business than one is apt to think.
This is an odd statement - Gladstone was a Tory, who reclaimed monies lost when the slave trade was abolished (something he opposed) and who worked as minister of war, and of course, campaigned against the interests of the common woman and man. And, what is this 'world'? Talk about a Little Englander! George was 26 when he wrote this, and he moved ever closer to the political Right until the day he died. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft could not have been written without this sort of tosh deeply ingrained in George's mind - some bohemian, eh? Haha. However, that 'inner brotherhood of those who rule the world' - was George alluding to the Illuminati who are now suspected of ruling everything - and who are alleged to have amongst their number our own HRH? As if...
 |
| Her Maj - an Illuminati Satanist or a cuddly, if occasionally grumpy, very wealthy great-gran? |
You remind me...of Charlotte Bronte. She had that same shrinking from people who might be supposed to look down upon her, & the same half-defiant withdrawing into herself. I myself understand it also. Still, I repeat: there can be doubt that that person who commands most respect who stands simply on his or her dignity as a human being, &, through pretending nothing, disguises & yields nothing. In very deed, this is what is meant by 'good breeding'. The well-bred creature is perfectly at ease, I suppose in any kind of company. 'Any kind of company'?? Not working class company, or course.
I actually think he was much more fond of Madge than he liked to admit - she was his type (small, sickly, unspectacular) and should have worshipped him if his judgement of female horse flesh was accurate. Which means her censure of his many foibles and flaws must have irked him and made him want to lash out; and she might have been indifferent to his pleas for sympathy, which would have vexed him. Was his lack of connection a subterfuge to get her to make more effort to adore him, like younger sisters are supposed to do?
 |
| St Margaret of Cortona by Jacopo Alessandro Calvi - she is the patron saint of those ridiculed for their faith, those falsely accused; orphans; the insane; and the sexually tempted. |
In the UK, we have been enjoying a poetry season on the BBC. To join in with this and to celebrate the life of the Divine Oscar, here is Paul Muldoon's The Gate (about Oscar's release from prison) from the year 2000, which I feel Margaret would have understood.
THE GATE
As I roved out between a gaol
and a river in spate
in June as like as January
I happened on a gate
which, though it lay wide open,
would make me hesitate.
I was so long a prisoner
that, though I now am free,
the thought that I serve some sentence
is so ingrained in me
that I still wait for a warder
to come and turn the key.
and a river in spate
in June as like as January
I happened on a gate
which, though it lay wide open,
would make me hesitate.
I was so long a prisoner
that, though I now am free,
the thought that I serve some sentence
is so ingrained in me
that I still wait for a warder
to come and turn the key.
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