Commonplace 139 George & The End.
Today, December 28th, is the 112th anniversary of George's death. Legend has it that, already feeling a bit peaky, he insisted on accompanying friends on a strenuous walk in shitty weather; he caught cold and this led to a chest infection that produced some sort of crisis involving his heart. It seems an unlikely medical scenario in a middle-aged man, until a picture of tertiary syphilis is taken into account, as this can eventually lead to devastating effects on the heart. During the year up to his end, he had been growing progressively more frail, spending most of his time apart from Gabrielle and taking things easy whatever way he could. Tertiary syphilis can have devastating consequences on all the bodily systems, though the most fearful of its cruelties is reserved for the brain and nervous system. George's love of Alphonse Daudet's writing will have acquainted him with the pains of paresis, and George's second wife, Edith, was already beginning to manifest the first signs of the brain version of paresis from the infection she had caught from George.
George tended to believe he had been living on borrowed time for years, but also unluckily for him, by the time his own end was nigh, he was living too far from a decent doctor to find the best of cutting edge medicine or treatment. At the back of his mind for most of the time he lived in France with Gabrielle Fleury, he longed to return home to the trappings of his old literary life, but he left it too late, and bad weather finally caught up with him. Ironically, George had spent a lifetime obsessing about weather and its effects on health.
In the end, he was proved right. He always dreaded warm and sunny weather, and said he preferred cold climates to temperate. He chased round after what he he was advised was the best sort of weather for his physical complaints. This blaming weather for ill-health seems bonkers, but along with the newish sciences of epidemiology and medicine, the nineteenth century encouraged people to think of themselves as vulnerable to any sort of uncontrollable external influence. Knowledge on diseases was limited, and factors such as heredity and environmental factors affecting physical development and the effects of disease meant people were often unaware of what caused conditions such as tuberculosis, heart murmur, strokes or cancer.
George was often misguided by his own counsel, and was quite capable of making the wrong decision even after wrangling with his conscience or his better judgement. And, once he'd made his mind up, he rarely changed that mind - typical of those who believe they are in control of all the cards in the deck. The prolonged fatal stay in France is a case in point.
Within a few weeks of the 'marriage' union with Gabrielle Fleury, George regretted his decision to leave England. In his biography of his father, HG Wells' son, Anthony West, wrote that George was never happy in France, and quickly realised he had overestimated Gabrielle's wealth, social status and place in the literary set he had planned to be a part of. Anthony West, reporting what his father told him, related a case of both George and Gabrielle somewhat misrepresenting themselves each to the other, George wanting to be seen as a well-respected writer who chose to write books few wanted to read, who blamed his unhappy home life on an evil woman, and blaming an ignorant reading public for his lack of financial success. Gabrielle wanted to be taken for someone with literary friends and who deserved more from life than being a nurse to ailing parents. West suggests George looked at Gabrielle's ailing father as being about to pop his clogs - swiftly to be followed by the aged crone of a mother - which would leave Gabrielle free to be his own exclusive slave and nurse. And, as she would inherit whatever property the Fleurys owned, his future would be solid - money, a housekeeper-cum-nurse-cum-secretary-social hostess to his little literary soirees, in a house he owned care of his common-law wife. (One of his life's ambitions was to own a house.), In this family home, where he was boss and with all his domestic needs catered for, he would be free to spend the money he had saved or earned, and maybe gather strength to finish Veranilda - because what the world lacked more than anything else at that time was another novel about Goths vs Romans. Haha. He assumed Gabrielle would bite off the hand (a quaint English phrase to denote great enthusiasm!) of any man who showed romantic interest in her. She was beaten down by his emotional blackmail, and probably the notion of one day finally having someone to help her look after her aged parents. With great - humongous - reluctance, and after exhausting all her arguments to counter his deluge of neediness, she assented to his request, and George's fate was sealed.
He had abandoned his wife Edith to the care of his female minions (Misses Collet and Orme) who policed her with the zeal typical of the lickspittle ratfink snitch class; his abandoned children were living in separate places, being raised by paid carers or inept family members (who had no experience of child-rearing). His past as a sneak-thief wife-beater and wife- and child-abandoner was being airbrushed into the anodyne tosh that suggested he spent his whole life as a victim of circumstance and his struggle had been made worse by the exploitation of family and 'inferior' wives, his only fault being his misplaced heroic idealism. (Utter tosh, but some have fallen for it haha). Was George of the belief that he had finally outrun his demons?
George did some bad things in his life (and sometimes behaved in some pretty unheroic ways), but this does not make him a bad person. Gissing enthusiasts are always happy to cut him some slack. Somewhere, is he sat in his chesterfield armchair, puffing on his pipe, with an open Homer in his lap, surrounded by warm and fuzzy feelings of peace? I certainly hope so.
Today, December 28th, is the 112th anniversary of George's death. Legend has it that, already feeling a bit peaky, he insisted on accompanying friends on a strenuous walk in shitty weather; he caught cold and this led to a chest infection that produced some sort of crisis involving his heart. It seems an unlikely medical scenario in a middle-aged man, until a picture of tertiary syphilis is taken into account, as this can eventually lead to devastating effects on the heart. During the year up to his end, he had been growing progressively more frail, spending most of his time apart from Gabrielle and taking things easy whatever way he could. Tertiary syphilis can have devastating consequences on all the bodily systems, though the most fearful of its cruelties is reserved for the brain and nervous system. George's love of Alphonse Daudet's writing will have acquainted him with the pains of paresis, and George's second wife, Edith, was already beginning to manifest the first signs of the brain version of paresis from the infection she had caught from George.
George tended to believe he had been living on borrowed time for years, but also unluckily for him, by the time his own end was nigh, he was living too far from a decent doctor to find the best of cutting edge medicine or treatment. At the back of his mind for most of the time he lived in France with Gabrielle Fleury, he longed to return home to the trappings of his old literary life, but he left it too late, and bad weather finally caught up with him. Ironically, George had spent a lifetime obsessing about weather and its effects on health.
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| A Street At Night In Wet Weather by Edward Steel Harper II c 1941 |
George was often misguided by his own counsel, and was quite capable of making the wrong decision even after wrangling with his conscience or his better judgement. And, once he'd made his mind up, he rarely changed that mind - typical of those who believe they are in control of all the cards in the deck. The prolonged fatal stay in France is a case in point.
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| Men of Skagen On A Summer Evening In Good Weather by Martinus Rorbye 1848 |
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| Showery Weather, Dartmoor by Ernest Harrington (Might be Haytor) |
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| Snow Storm: Steam-Boat Off A Harbour's Mouth by Joseph Mallord William Turner January 1st 1842
Imagine how difficult it was going to be for George to admit that fleeing from all his many misdeeds and cock-ups, his egregious treacheries and that holing up in obscurity in France was, quite simply, a bad mistake. All his chickens were bound to come home to roost, even if he was abroad; self-imposed exile fooled no-one, because the logical conclusion was that he must have had something to hide from. Well, he had! Many things. Having to admit that he was wrong on so many fronts about his life choices, and the bad decisions that affected the lives of his dependents, plus his lack of insight into his own weaknesses, arrogance and egotism, would have been impossible without the admission that he had made mistakes - REAL mistakes, not the fake and phoney 'blaming others for his problems' sort he usually used. In order to accept his mistakes he would have to accept that some of his troubles were self-inflicted and unnecessary, and that if only he had sought advice, or accepted that he was not an expert on anything, he might have had less driving him towards this disastrous final scene of being away from all that he really wanted.
George will also have been aware that his relationship with his chief supporters - Mr and Mrs HG Wells - was becoming increasingly strained. In fact, it had been tainted by what was, on the part of the Wells', an increasing anxiety that George had constructed a house of cards of deceit that was about to topple. HG also disapproved of the way George treated Edith and his children. George needed to get back home to mend that rift, and get them back on his side; after all, with Wells becoming increasingly famous as a writer, George never knew when having them in his life might be useful. Then there was the writing of 'Veranilda', which was always going to be a labour of love destined to disappoint because it was out of time with the tastes of the day. George had long ago missed the fad for Roman-centric stories. Add to this a parlous state of health, with little or no chance of an improvement, and you can see how desperate and anxious George was when he went out for that walk in the cold and wind, anxious to prove he was on top of his game - especially to himself.
As George had spent a good deal of their relationship not actually living under the same roof as his 'wife', perhaps Gabrielle was already aware of what life without him would be like. Gabrielle's mother outlived George, and so he never got Gabrielle's undivided attention, but if he had, he might have gone off her quicker, because he was not one for sticking around when there wasn't much in it for him. Luckily, poor Gabrielle didn't fully understand how bored and disillusioned George really was, and how close she was to being consigned to the ex-wives club. According to HG Wells, whose own inadequate response to George's impending end was to haunt him for the rest of his life, claimed she disintegrated in the face of George's imminent demise. Wells sees this as a weakness (he never much liked Gabrielle), but we all take this sort of serious threat in our own, unique way. Some of us become cool and calm in the face of adversity, whilst others do not. The ones who can cope, do. Those who can't, don't. Failure to cope is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of vulnerability. Being inept at George's death scene doesn't make Gabrielle anything but beleaguered, and in need of sympathy - that great emotional catnip George so demanded from one and all. And, so, it was more a case of 'Poor Gabrielle' almost as much as it was a case of 'Poor George'.
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Not In Vain
If I can stop one heart from
breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Emily Dickinson click
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