Commonplace 236 George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead PART TWO.

For a very illuminating place to discover all things WT Stead go to this website click and wallow in the wonder of the man.

Whenever we think of Stead, we see in our mind’s eye that lanky weasel-eyed bearded spiv with a colossal sense of smug self-importance oozing out and illuminating the space around him. Hubris, chutzpah, cojones, rampant ego mania, over-weaning self-importance are terms that almost encompass his utter belief in his own judgement and the validity of his own world view. Only the conviction that his god was firmly on his side could have offered that kind of will to succeed. Only an evangelist, a psychological terrorist for that god, could have invoked the necessary drive. It’s as if the hunt for fresh victims is his life’s work. The vulpine twinkle in the eyes is for the many victims – the politicians, hypocrites, sinners in general, and women he preyed on – who provided the stepping stones required to move him onwards and upwards in his journey to greatness. 

WT Stead
with Pope Leo XIII 'on the brain'
by legendary cartoonist Phil May

Stead, for a time, was one of the most influential characters in British public life. His opinion was sought on the main controversies of the day, and even when his views were not solicited, he freely ploughed in with his opinions and made sure his views were broadcast. He was famed for how quickly he could turn out copy and how swiftly he could sum up situations and then offer solutions for them. He knew his reading public inside out - what would make them outraged, offended, sympathetic, patriotic, angry and hopeful. He liked to create the impression he was a 'man of the people', that he spoke for the ordinary woman or man in the street - an illusion,of course, and we are much more savvy these days about anyone who sets themselves up as spokespersons for the unrepresented, the ignored and the undervalued. 

Common sense plain-speaking prose was WT's preferred journalistic style, as if the story itself required no embellishment to make it any more sensational. This is not to say his writing was simplistic - he carefully manipulated his readership into coming to his opinions very quickly. Offering solutions to the problems he raised - problems some people didn't know existed until he told them they did - was a strength, even when those solutions made things worse, as they occasionally did. Framing the problem in religious terms as if he was an evangelist preacher as much as a journalist compounded by the assertion that the truth was an instrument of his creator, gave added gravitas to all his causes. This is why his campaign to expose the sexual predation of young girls (and boys) by those who considered innocent children to be fair game as long as they were innocent working class children captured the imagination of the woman and man on the Clapham omnibus click. 

Lifted from the above cited website (with thanks):

Published in the Pall Mall Gazette in July, 1885, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon was Stead's highly scandalous expose of child prostitution. A tour de force of late nineteenth century journalism, it exposed in graphic detail the entrapment, abduction and 'sale' of young under-privileged girls to London brothels. Written in successive instalments, Stead's 'infernal narrative', as he called it, revealed to a respectable readership a criminal underworld of stinking brothels, fiendish procuresses, drugs and padded chambers, where upper-class paedophiles could revel 'in the cries of an immature child'.

The scandal was also known as the Case of Eliza Armstrong: the criminal prosecution of Stead and his accomplices for the abduction and indecent assault of thirteen-year-old Eliza Armstrong. From the impoverished Marylebone area of London, Eliza was the real face behind the character of Lily, whose tragic fate in 'A Child of Thirteen Bought for £5' concluded the first instalment of The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. Having heard during his investigations that unscrupulous parents were willing to sell their own children into prostitution, Stead sent his agent, reformed prostitute Rebecca Jarrett, into Marylebone to purchase a child, to show to how easily young girls could be procured. The child procured was Eliza Armstrong, allegedly sold to Jarrett by her own mother for just £5. Though never physically harmed, Eliza was nonetheless put through the motions of what a real child victim would have had to experience, including being "certified" a virgin by an abortionist midwife and being taken to a brothel where she was drugged with chloroform. She was then packed off to France under the care of the Salvation Army, leaving Stead to re-invent her as Lily in the Pall Mall Gazette. The subterfuge, however, did not prevent Eliza's mother from recognising the character of Lily in the The Maiden Tribute as her daughter. Claiming she had been duped into parting with Eliza, she went to the police, who brought charges of abduction and indecent assault against Stead and his accomplices. After two lengthy trials, Stead and three others, including Jarrett, were convicted at the Old Bailey and incarcerated. Stead was sentenced to three months in Coldbath-in-the-Fields prison, but was later transferred to Holloway as a first class inmate. 

Stead in his fancy dress of choice

Publishing the sordid facts after a sting operation amounting to kidnap and white slavery, Stead failed to see that his actions amounted to a crime. The fact that he used deception to kidnap the girl passed him by. But, he rationalised and claimed to have been acting for the greater good. In fact, unlike George and his stint in prison, WT celebrated his 'martyrdom' every year by donning his prison uniform. However, I can't imagine the Prison Service allowing him to keep his prison clothes, so he probably had a replica run up when he was freed. 

Stead's approach to exposing this story is said to have changed the face of journalism forever - for the worst. Was his motivation to rescue the vulnerable or to sell newspapers? Was he as bad as the sexual predators? This type of reporting was referred to as 'new journalism', but looking back it doesn't seem so far removed from what in the twentieth century became known as the 'gutter press'. Newspapers that rely on predominantly titillating sex stories for their copy are termed 'scandal sheets' and even the legitimate exposés are often seen as the worst form of investigative reporting. The farce that was the UK's Leveson Inquiry click pretty much demonstrated how reviled the press are these days - Stead's methods now refined into cross-platform surveillance techniques and phone hacking seen as legitimate journalistic tools. As it happened, Stead's reputation was forever sullied by the Maiden Tribute, and his judgement called in to question, especially when he became more deeply drawn to Spiritualism. And there was no end of child exploitation, as we all know. 

Back in 1884, Stead cast his gaze on the British Royal Navy. His 'What Is The Truth About The Navy By One Who Knows' click was the result of his research into the woefully under-funded and under-outfitted RN. Ever the amateur sailor (he kept a small place at Hayling Island near Portsmouth and was often to be found sailing the Solent and developing Chichester into a working sailing harbour), Stead initially had an interest in defence issues more than the actual Senior Service, but he recognised the precarious nature of Britain's place in the turbulent world of disputed international borders, reneged on political agreements, broken alliances and the potential for wars. The general sense of impending doom that haunted the late Victorian mindset had replaced the complacent view that Britain Ruled the Waves, but Stead was one of the first to realise technology had brought innovations to sea-going forces, but investment in the Navy had stagnated. By asking publicly in the Pall Mall Gazette (September 15th 1884) a series of very basic questions about the maintenance of the fleet and the readiness of the naval ports, the number and strength of the ironclad warships, and the preparedness of the dockyards for refitting in a time of war, and the state of the supply network to service the Navy's need for coal to fuel the ships, Stead brought the spotlight immediately down on what he considered to be an enormous area of national vulnerability. By sharing his concerns with the reading public - as opposed to going through the representatives of the Admiralty or MPs in the House of Commons - he raised public interest and promoted an Empire-wide debate. The upshot was a review of the Navy and the implementation of a vast amount of investment.

To read more about it click. And here is Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem about the concern he had for the Royal Navy:

The Fleet

You, you, if you shall fail to understand

    What England is, and what her all-in-all,

On you will come the curse of all the land,

    Should this old England fall

                Which Nelson left so great.

II.

His isle, the mightiest Ocean-power on earth,

    Our own fair isle, the lord of every sea—

Her fuller franchise—what would that be worth—

    Her ancient fame of Free—

                Where she . . . a fallen state?

III.

Her dauntless army scatter’d, and so small,

    Her island-myriads fed from alien lands—

The fleet of England is her all-in-all;

    Her fleet is in your hands,

                And in her fleet her fate.

IV.

You, you, that have the ordering of her fleet,

    If you should only compass her disgrace,

When all men starve, the wild mob’s million feet

    Will kick you from your place,

                 But then too late, too late.

'Heart of Oak' click is the official march of the Royal Navy click and we see below that WT Stead was ready to do his maritime bit - Steady Boys, Steady! 

Stead feeling a bit Stead-y in his Hayling back garden.

The Titanic sinking saw Stead off, when he was on his way to a religious conference in New York. Ironic as much as Titanic. 'Nearer My God To Thee' indeed! click. For most of his adult life, WT Stead was an advocate of Spiritualism. This sort of malarkey always marks a person down as a gullible fool, much as Scientology and believing some of us are space lizards does, but Arthur Conan Doyle and Alfred Russell Wallace click also believed the dead could speak to the living. I suppose Spiritualism isn't any less believable than any other form of religion, but why hasn't WT Stead come back to tell us what to do about the Migrant Crisis or Daish or whether or not the UK should remain in the EU?? He must be bursting with good advice and we on the Clapham omnibus are very much in need of it.

Commonplace 235    George & His Contemporaries: WT Stead. PART ONE.

For all of George’s career as the unappreciated amateur delusional-aristocrat legend of Victorian English literature, a parallel life was being lived by one of the towering figures of British cultural life: journalist; news editor; social activist and campaigner; outspoken critic of injustice and hypocrisy; scourge of everyone he disapproved of; deviser of the publication The Review of Reviews; part-time maritime sailor; promoter of coitus interruptus as a form of birth control; several time Nobel Peace Prize nominee proto-feminist; occasional employer of the Divine Oscar Wilde; religious zealot; forthright peace campaigner; ego-maniacal diplomat; friend and advisor to kings; outrageous sexist flirt and sporter of an exorbitant beard, the force of nature that was William Thomas Stead (1849-1912). 

His death at the sinking of the Titanic was the entirely fitting end for a man who would not have gone gentle into that good night on sea or land, or even in the air or outer space if those options had been available. Stead would have gone kicking and screaming, singing songs exulting his maker – ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’, praising his Eternal Father as he sank beneath the waves click. Ever the lover of a headlining news story, and always intent on making history as much as reporting on it, as he was drowning, WT will have realised what a scoop he was living, and what an historic event he was forced to be part of - and probably not for the first time.

The NY Central Park Memorial to WT Stead click

Stead was never a shrinking violet, even as a boy touched by strong Protestant faith and a determination to demonstrate his special relationship with his god. That he turned his hand to doing (mostly) good was a great loss to the criminal world – he would have made a great con artist or international jewel thief, or a Gangs of New York style leader of assorted ruffians. He was aggressive, focused, ruthless, relentless, and he had that deep vein of sentimentality so beloved of Mafia dons and East End psychopaths. 

We know he was a fan of George’s ‘realist’ fiction, but that may have been down to the mistaken belief that what George was writing about was heart-felt and informed by a sympathy for the underdog. In this, Stead would have been projecting his own motives in reporting the scandal of the British political and class system as oppressor of the poor onto George’s need to capture an audience to buy books in a time when 'poverty' fiction was a fad - much as 'misery' fiction enjoyed a vogue ten years ago. But George offered no redemptive resolution to any sort of problem. He was the dispassionate onlooker and social anthropologist Positivist fatalist who thought nothing could be done because the ‘natural order’ of this chaotic world requires – demands! – there always be a suffering underclass who are born to endure, even enjoy, their suffering. WT Stead was an ‘if you’re not part of the solution you are part of the problem’ kind of chap, but he was never soft on those who (in his opinion) did little to better themselves or struggle their way out of the sloughs of deprivation, and had harsh views on how they should be treated. His attitude was ‘God helps those who help themselves’ – that ludicrous Sunday school text that fails to understand the causes of deprivation as thoroughly as it proves that religious faith does not by default make for empathy – and he also thought the workhouse should be denied those who refused to scratch a meagre living from the gutters and refuse tips of life. Like many who claim to have a working relationship with a deity, accepting what that deity hands out is part and parcel of that faith – if life awards you the shitty end of the stick, you better make a good job of holding on to it and thank your lucky stars (and your deity) there is any sort of stick to hold on to. And, like many influential Victorians, Stead thought help should only be extended to what they termed 'the deserving poor' - and woe betide anyone not considered 'deserving'.

Stead was sure the right person in the right place at the right time can change the course of history and improve the fate of millions. WT usually considered himself more or less always to be the right person for whatever he considered needed to be done, and his successes were often down to his forthright manner, lack of deference for any form of social class system, and a genius for knowing who to speak to about his various causes. 

He was never short on confidence, and was something of a child prodigy, particularly with Latin which he was initially taught by his Congregationalist minister father at home in Embleton in Northumberland. As with all small, underdeveloped poverty-rich places, Embleton was a somewhat savage place; the Anglican vicar of the Holy Trinity church Mandell Creighton click wrote in his published letters of 1904: 

In many ways the moral standard of the village was very low, and it was a difficult place to improve. There was no resident squire, the chief employers of labour were on much the same level of cultivation as those they employed, and in some cases owned the public-houses and paid the wages there. Such defeatist talk was the antithesis of the Congregationalist movement, a very 'hands on' set with self-determination at its heart. No doubt the opportunities for change and the possibilities for redemption Stead so carefully promoted in his working life were seeds sown in those early days at his father's knee, working the uphill struggle on the folk of the northern badlands. Speaking of which... in 1861 when he was twelve, Stead was sent to Silcoats School in Wakefield, sited between that town (now a city) and Morley, a suburb town of Leeds in West Yorkshire. George, just up the road in the centre of the dirty town, was four, and his brother, William was two; Algernon was a babe in arms.  

On leaving school, he found work as a clerk back right up north in the city of Newcastle, before landing the job opportunity of a lifetime as editor of the Northern Echo, based in Darlington. He began submitting stories to the paper at its inception in 1870, and when no-one else was available to fill the post - and work for free - he was offered the top job. Recruiting an editor this way might seem a rash act, but Stead had received an apprenticeship of sorts from the previous editor, John Copleston, and when the proprietor felt an editorial change was needed, he offered the job to Stead, who said of the job that it was a glorious opportunity of attacking the devil. Unlike our George, Stead regarded his power as a man of letters was a mission: I felt the sacredness of the power placed in my hands, to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed.  

Stead, more than most, realised that the rise in literacy brought about by the 1870 Education Act would require increases in the availability of things to read - and, by extension,something to spend wages on other than the basics of life, and the daily newspaper was the most accessible of reading matter to sell and buy. And, because of its availability, a newspaper could reach a wide and relatively uneducated population ripe for leading in whatever direction an editor wanted to take it. Like the shrewd businessman that he was, Stead did not aim his editorials at the poor themselves - after all, they were unlikely to be buying newspapers, though they could access them at libraries (as George and his family did). His preferred targets were the powerful who could make the necessary changes to the system, or who abused the system they ruled, observed by a readership who could be stirred up to follow down any path that would support Stead's point of view. But, like George, Stead stopped short of advocating on behalf of those at very bottom of the pile. These he saw as the rejects of society who existed in life's primordial slime, virtually un-evolved from the rabble of the Dark Ages. As with many Victorian self-confessed experts on the lower orders Stead feared (as did George) that encouraging such dregs of humanity would weaken the bloodline of the more capable. And who was there to counter this argument? After all, the poor underclass are always the least powerful group in any society, and realists might argue someone has to be at the bottom, just as someone has to be at the top, so why waste resources on fate? And, for one as touched by Christianity as was Stead, Christ's teachings on the subject will have resonated: Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces (Matthew 7:6). 

A quick summary of things Stead started (as listed in Saint or Sensationalist? The Story of WT Stead by Victor Pierce Jones): newspaper advice columns; village lending libraries; penny per copy editions of the Classics of English literature; pen pals; baby adoption agencies; hostels for working women; the Peace Palace in The Hague; the Civic Federation in Chicago – and many sorts of social clubs and self-help organisations. Add to this his work exploring Spiritualism, and it's clear his was a broad church when it came to addressing the needs of his fellow-humans. But it was his work with the young children who were forced or duped into prostitution that offered him his greatest publicity coup, prove to be his most controversial crusade and score for him his most infamous victory.

It was when Stead put the plan of The Maiden Tribute To Modern Babylon into action that he knew his destiny was set. JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO LEARN ABOUT THE MAIDEN TRIBUTE.

Commonplace 234  George & Nietzsche's Greek Musings.

With pictures by Bernard Buffet (1928-99) click.

Le Clown 1957

Even though they never met, George and Friedrich Nietzsche were 'brothers of another mother' in quite a few ways. For one thing, they both had luxurious facial hair. And both had syphilis which biographers try to claim as something more sanitised and less common-or-garden and not sex-related. As if some terminal neurologically catastrophic illnesses are nicer or more acceptable than others! No-one wants to contract syphilis and anyone who does is unlucky, not depraved.

Oh, and both adored the Greeks.

'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks' is an unfinished work by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was put together in 1873, worked on for a while, abandoned and then published after his death. It contains his thoughts on several of the lesser known (to the average person) Greek philosophers, and would have included several more if the author had finished it. 

Death 1999

George would have enjoyed a long chat about the Greeks with Nietzsche though he would have been wary of the German's startlingly superior intellect. In his limited social circle, Eduard Bertz, the German man-wife and devoted fan, was the one George probably regarded as almost his intellectual equal, though he never was really likely to truly think so. Morley Roberts was never in the running for that role, but he was sometimes geographically closer at hand; Bertz gets the long letters from George full of notes about what he's been reading and his constant grumbles about the world, life and all living things he meets.  

Anyone would be intimidated by Fred Nietzsche, firstly for the originality of his ideas, but also the force with which he usually delivered them. George was neither original nor forceful, but would have liked to be either. He did not like to mix with anyone smarter or with more inventive, creative ideas, but he would have liked to compete with Fred to prove his own vast knowledge of the Greeks, a source of immense personal pride. In fact, it could be argued that all George's self esteem was rooted in his extensive reading of the Greeks (and Romans); but as knowledge does not always transmute into wisdom, he didn't always benefit from what he knew. 

Nietzsche is always worth taking a look at because he is a Titan of philosophy; and in the range and scope of his thinking, speaks deep truths. Even when he is talking like a paretic madman - which he was apt to do - he makes us think. Perhaps he and George would have compared notes on their shared experience of syphilis; luckily for George, his ate at his heart more than his brain, and he was spared what Fred had to endure. 

La Chauve-souris 1997

The 1870s were a busy time for both Nietzsche and George. Nietzsche served as a medical orderly in a war, contracted syphilis, took up teaching, published his first book, saw a decline in his health and fell in and out of love with Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer, whilst mixing with philosophers and intellectuals. George went to prison, spent a gap year in America, contracted syphilis, got married, took up teaching, published his first book, saw a decline in his health, fell in love with Schopenhauer, and mixed with philosophers and intellectuals. Nietzsche worked on establishing the Bayreuth Festival, but eventually became disillusioned with the way German nationalism was being confused with German culture, and he despised both as concepts. George became disillusioned with almost everything and was never a nationalist, though he did feel he was an expert on all things the very best in culture - as long as it was the sort of thing a small minority of 'aristocrats' could enjoy. The sort of aristocrats whose fathers ran shops in industrial small towns.

Tower Bridge 1960

Both George and Fred spent a good deal of their time chasing the optimum weather to ameliorate their various physical ailments, and moved from place to place to get the perfect wholesome home. Both suffered from a range of problems - on top of those brought on by their syphilis - and were always sick or worried about their health. Fred and George were conflicted about their attachment to their sisters, and both relied on the support of their mothers, whilst despising them. Both had what might be termed 'contempt' for women, mostly because both craved the love, adoration and support of them but hated to admit it. There was never enough love in any woman for either of them - and both thought any woman would be content to sacrifice herself just to be chosen as a mate. Both fell in love with girls who turned down marriage proposals from them and both felt hard done by because of it. Both dabbled in poetry of the Greek bent. Both used the word 'eheu' to express dismay. Nietzsche, in one of his most paretic moments, claimed to be the entity from which Shakespeare, Dionysis, Julius Caesar and the Buddha were reincarnated (or transmogrified); George claimed to be an undervalued and under-appreciated creative genius born with special 'aristocratic' genes. Both were delusional, bordering on the grandiose at times, but then, both were men. Haha.

The Giantess 1968

In his 'Birth of Tragedy' (1872) Fred gives us the dualism of Apollo and Dionysus, the Greek gods he said exemplified the human condition, the former being all about considered reason and mental wisdom under control, with the latter being all about spontaneous and sensual reflexes. Nietzsche puts forth the argument that both have to be in balance in order to be truly human, and if we snuff out the Dionysian in our souls, we lose half of ourselves. As much as he advocated Dionysus, he abhorred alcohol for its power to numb emotional pain. For him, suffering is what makes us full human beings because the human condition is defined by pain. George would agree. 

Amongst the many gems that spilled from Nietzsche's big beautiful bonkers at times brain that George might have wished he had written is this, taken from 'The Will to Power' (1901): 

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities - I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not - that one endures." 

How George would have agreed! Suffering is what much of his work is about - and his life was riddled with self-inflicted torture - loneliness, unhappy marriages, failure, penny-pinching, disillusionment, lack of recognition... It's there in the constant themes of George's work but it's what makes George such a fascinating writer. And, in his autobiographical works, it makes him more of a real human being, and less of a figment of some biographer's florid imagination. George, for all his whingeing and pussying about knew a thing or two about endurance. But, isn't this one of the truly over-estimated personal qualities? Endurance is not always the best way to deal with life - as organised religion has taught us - suffer now to get a reward later is such a pants rip off scam! Endurance smacks of an inability to effect change, or to strive towards empowerment. Not that we have to be empowered but endurance is not the stuff of self-actualisation. It is the stuff of masochism and the acceptance of the status quo; of complacency and self-pity. It is the realm of Bad Faith, as Sartre sees it. Not that I want to argue with Friedrich Nietzsche!!

Self Portrait 1981

Handy Nietzsche websites don't get much better than these: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHWbZmg2hzU

http://www.thenietzschechannel.com/correspondence/eng/nlett-1889.htm  

http://www.iep.utm.edu/nietzsch

Commonplace 233 George & Love.

'Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, This I tell you, brother: you can't have one without the other.' So says Sammy Cahn. But, which is the horse and which the carriage? Think about it: one in the driving seat with all the power; the other being forced to go wherever the driver wants, having to endure whatever is doled out by the one with the whip.

To those who see George as a hapless doofus with a heart of gold who sacrificed a promising academic career to help a young damsel in distress, then romantic love was his undoing. For those who accept what a manipulative, deceitful, self-serving opportunist he really was, doubt is inevitable when it comes to the quality of his attachment to his first, second and third wives. George did love  - dead things: dead cultures, dead languages, dead poets/philosophers; but things with heartbeats and pulses left him blank.

No Thank You by Roy Lichtenstein 1984

You have only to read his excruciating observations of his relationship with his son, Walter, to realise how alien a concept love was to him. Apart from some quasi-sociological guff about child development, and a few random observations written when Walter was a toddler, George doesn't even seem to like his first born until that moment when he gave him away to the Wakefield crowd. Then, of course, George has to manifest paternal love in order to deflect criticism for this cruel act - and then the focus becomes George's suffering, never Walter's or Edith's or baby brother, Alfred's. Here is the Carefully Constructed Legend: poor, pitiable George, missing his boy, sacrificing his own feelings and wants for the good of his first son. Which is, of course, rubbish. George got rid of Walter from the boy's family home to piss off Edith, because he hated her. End of. Anyone who thinks otherwise, is a fool. Did Miss Collet ever fall for it - this 'poor George what a self-sacrificer he is' malarkey? Did Miss Orme? Of course not - unless they were pretending to be dumber than they were (believe it or  not, some women do this so as not to present a threat to the male ego. I know - silly, isn't it??).

Ohhh, Alright by Roy Lichtenstein l964 

Perhaps Gabrielle Fleury, did believe it, but she doesn't come across as all that stupid. Perhaps needy, and lonely, kind and trusting - but not stupid.

In line after the shameless exploitation of friends and family; the abuse of two wives; the deceits, manipulation and lies; the shameless emotional cruelty inflicted on his two sons - of all George's grossest examples of the self-serving impulse is his wooing of Gabrielle Fleury. We know this because his letters to her were published in 1964 - in a shocking pink cover with gold lettering. 1964 was a good year for Beat Fiction books click, and a great year for Pop Art so a pink and gold cover would have sung out on the book store shelf. And, in between the copies of what are now, classic '60s novels, the soft porn cover would have tempted browsers to at least dip into the text inside - before delivering a comprehensive disappointment to all but the most strong-stomached fan of the middle-aged, lower middle-class George and his poor little French victim. er, girlfriend.

Pink Marilyn by Andy Warhol 1964

In order to understand George's modus operandi when it came to wooing a woman, we can turn to an entry in 'George Gissing's American Notebook, Notes - GRG - 1877', a collection of quotes and snippets of information gleaned from his readings. On page 36, George gives us this:

Of all the paths lead to a woman's love

Pity's the straightest.  

This comes from John Fletcher and his collaborators' play The Knight of Malta included in the Fletcher and Beaumont collection of 1647 click for a free copy.

So, this is how George set about wooing his women: passive-aggressively control their thoughts by getting them to feel sorry for you. As a naive and fresh-faced boyish nineteen year-old, this might have been cute; in a mature man, it comes across as manipulative and downright dishonest- if not a smidgeon creepy. If George ever stepped back and thought about it, he might have realised how peculiar it was to begin a relationship with a female by screwing sympathy out of her. And, if he had stepped back and wondered about the moral rightness of this approach, he might have had the insight to blush and stop himself from acting in such a feeble and emasculated way; but, of course, he didn't do that.

Gabrielle and friend

In the pink-covered edition of the letters to Gabrielle Fleury, we see from the start the extraordinary, embarrassing, deceitful, manipulative way he set about wooing his third wife.

The background to their initial meeting: In June, 1898, George's received a letter from Edith Gabrielle Fleury, who wanted to translate 'New Grub Street' into French. He replied to her letter on June 23rd, and the old Pity Ploy cranked into action:
Pardon me for replying to you in English. I of course speak French, but have not sufficient practice (sic, tut tut) either in writing or speaking it... I am sorry to be rather late in replying. This is due to a delay in the forwarding of your letter, which has reached me indirectly... I do not live in London, but about 25 miles away, here at the little town of Dorking, in Surrey. The uncertain state of my health forbids me to breathe the air of great cities, and I am able to see very little society. But if it were possible for you (if you cared) to come down to Dorking and have tea with me, I should be very pleased.   

Oh, paleeze! The uncertain state of my health?? Not according to the Diaries - he had an insect bite on his hand (naturally, George would make this into a serious health issue), he was writing (unproductively) a play, and evading poor second wife and second son, whilst Edith was desperately trying to find her first son, Walter. He did have a doctor's exam on June 26th, which confirmed what George already knew - he had a touch of phthisis and emphysema. He mentions eczema, and no doubt the heat was giving him gip and making him over-sweat - perhaps it was all nothing more than a touch of syphilis. Anyhoo, it was not something he complained of. And, able to see very little society??? By July 3rd, George was being taught to ride a bike by HG Wells, attended a party with Wells on July 4th, and was doing quite a bit of dining out in people's houses, too - this recluse whose parlous health required sympathy from Gabrielle, and who was virtually housebound. And, then in August, he went to London in the devilish heat to visit his tailor. So, he was fibbing when he said he wasn't well enough to travel to meet her and that he had to avoid big cities. (Incidentally, according to the Diaries, it took George three days to learn how to ride a bike! Pathetic!)

So, Gabrielle made the fateful journey to the dark suburbs and met up with George and then took tea with him. Of course, she wasn't Gabrielle at this point - she was 'Edith' - because that was the name she used until George changed it for her on account of you-know-who being a thorn in his side. Of course, this deception would come back and bite him in the bum because he had to back-pedal like stink to convince Gabrielle his health was excellent and he was healthy enough to survive marriage for a third time, though he accomplished this with another tranche of lies, when she queried it. This was just one of her many concerns - it can hardly be claimed that Gabrielle was in any shape or form, smitten with the stinky old geezer George was in 1898.

Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein 1963

So, he met with her and you can almost hear the wheels of his devious little mind whirring in the pages of the Gabrielle Letters. He writes to her at the end of July:
To say that I thank you for your letter is to give you little idea of how it has affected me. It is the kindest and sweetest letter I ever received. I know it by heart, and shall never forget one of its sentences as long as I live. But, - do you know how sensitive I am to kindness from anyone? And what can be the effect upon me of words such as these from a woman whose face has charmed me, whose voice has thrilled me, and in whom I divine something very like my ideal of womanhood? 

'...a woman whose face has charmed me'??

HG Wells described Gabrielle as having a mouth like a letterbox, thus betraying his own lack of knowledge of Freudian symbolism, and an obvious want of gentlemanly charm, especially when he was, as my old mother would have said, 'no oil painting' himself. Fortunately, women are not quite as 'lookist' as men and so even George, aged 41 and looking every day of 51, managed to break down Gabrielle's resistance with his persistence - and desperate neediness.

Commonplace 232 George & Slumming

With paintings by Abbot Handerson Thayer (1848-1821) who liked his angels click. 

When viewed through the prism of twenty-first century politics, slumming is an ugly word for an unattractive practice. The idea of visiting a locality or population to gawp at its residents is abhorrent to our way of thinking about privacy and human rights. In George's time, visits to places of 'social interest' such as mental asylums, workhouses, and areas of economic deprivation were almost part of the normal run of things for people in a slightly better position than the people on display - a sort of domestic alternative Grand Tour click. As we know from George's fiction, many 'ladies' involved themselves in the needs of the poor, and though George tended towards thinking this was an utter waste of time and effort, he was not averse, himself, from exploiting what might be a woman's natural tendency towards empathy and communication, especially when he manipulated the women he knew he could make use of - Clara Collet and Miss Orme, take a bow - into doing his bidding.

The Angel 1887

Who were these people who liked to study the disadvantaged? Were they philanthropists or scopophiliacs? And what were the factors that made slumming popular?

1) The scientists.
After the shock that was the Chartist Movement, and despite its reasonable aims, the most pressing matter for the ruling classes was controlling the masses. The Natural Selection theory of Charles Darwin raised notions of inherited traits which suggested to some that the deprived were innately beyond the pale, and as such, beyond change or redemption. Indeed, some saw them as surplus to requirements, and a drain on the economic system. Eugenics was the result of a misreading of many things, including Darwin, though the man himself was of the opinion that 'inferiors' are inferior for a reason, and he often cited women as the classic example of how inferiority manifests itself when judged against the other humans - the ones with the cocks. However, according to Darwin, men and women, like all living things, adapt to their environments, and so women, to succeed, must fit into their prisons, or perish. By extension, it also proves that if you are born into squalor, it makes sense to behave in squalid ways; born into violence, you have to adopt violence.

Slumming had an acceptable face when it was done in the name of bringing about social change for the better. In order to study the poor, there had to be a methodology that served the purpose of those who wanted to control the masses. France gave us Auguste Comte and his philosophy of Positivism. George was, for a time, one of the British Positivists under the tutelage of Frederic Harrison. Positivism contended that all human behaviour subscribes to predictable systems and if you know what the systems are and how they work, you can control people and explain and then influence their behaviour. This became what we would now recognise as sociology - the study of people and social groups click. Sociology speaks via statistics, and so became what is taken for a useful tool in describing and containing the poor and needy. Not with the aim of making them happy, but to make them useful and acceptable, because to Positivists, that would mean they would be malleable and self-sufficient. Sociologists went out gathering their statistics and reporting back to those who debated the figures. Miss Clara Collet, sometime love botherer and all-round minion to George and scourge of Edith the second wife, was a government sociologist-cum-statistician for the Board of Trade. No doubt she honed her skills as a grass via this role, the old Tom Tale Tit that she was.

Winged Figure 1889

2) The Evangelists.
For a couple of centuries, the Church had been increasingly forced to adapt its presentation style, leading it to phase out the 'fire and brimstone' approach and introduce the idea that philanthropy would ensure Christianity prevailed. Befriending the poor was a core value of Methodism and the various 'new' sects such as Unitarianism and Quakerism and the best of them worked to get the better of the revolting masses by attempting to win them over to the Right Path by providing food, shelter, education, support, medicine, family guidance, leadership - I know! Christians actually doing what Jesus would have done!! Some worked for the greater good of the people, and some for the maintenance of the status quo in ensuring the prominent position the Church enjoyed in British society, but it can't be denied that genuine 'good' was done. Slumming in the name of God was a popular way for women to rise to their potential, and allowed access to experiences and challenges no other activity could offer them.

However, one dark cloud on the Church's horizon arrived in the form of Charles Bradlaugh click who unofficially stood for a humanistic alternative to theism, representing a modern take on individual responsibility towards one's  fellows and one's conscience. Atheism was seen as akin to the godlessness of the poor and the Church needed to get to the tens of thousands of potential religion avoiders in the slum areas to prevent a slide towards the end of religion and the rise of atheism as a force of influence. Again, by working in areas of deprivation to directly influence the poor, religious groups rolled out their own form of sociology with direct action to influence the behaviour of the masses. There was a degree of competition, too, to make sure the many sects were able to boost numbers; competition from secular groups with no religious affiliations, especially the increasingly influential trades unions and Socialists posed another threat. Slummers gathered information about where to site churches and charitable institutions, and money could be raised to offset deprivation if it was targeted to a specific, preferably notorious, locale or identifiable group.

Winged Figure Seated on a Rock
1903

3) The Curious.
Freak shows were also popular, and gave everyone something to stare at. However, the life of John Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man click, shows us how exploitation gave a lifeline, albeit of the most basic and abusive sort, to a class of unfortunates who, if they lived in a village, might have had a support system to sustain them, but who found themselves alone and left to their own devices in the uncaring metropolis.

The inherent entertainment value in staring at the poor, disadvantaged and disabled was not a Victorian invention, but it would be wrong to think it is a particularly old concept. In Suzannah Lipscomb's informative piece, click, she makes the point that 'fools' were often persons with learning difficulties, and not the clever posing as wise that Shakespeare gave us. We now tend to think the care of anyone who does not subscribe to the mean of human behaviour requires some form of institutionalisation, but before that was the case, communities supported and protected their harmless mentally ill and disabled members, and no-one in genuine want would be left without shelter or sustenance. When the newspapers were full of stories of an exotic place George termed the 'Nether World'. it was no surprise anyone might seek to have a look for themselves. Today, we have 'Jack the Ripper' walks round Whitechapel, complete with dramatic reconstructions of the murders. As they say in the English north, 'there's nowt as queer as folk'.

4) The Perverse.
Some people do like to look at suffering and dirt, and derive sexual pleasure from it. It's what the French term 'nostalgie de la boue'. HG Wells thought this explained George's desire to marry both Marianne aka Nell and Edith, both supposed to be unsophisticated working class women. (This is unfair to the pair of them, but we will leave that for another day.) HG Wells knew something about sexual desire as he had so much of it in himself, and was a man not afraid to extend his rutting territory in any direction that presented itself. Though George would never have spoken about it to anyone, he must have put himself under the social microscope when he sought to explain his pretended interest in the lives of the poor. Perhaps he was afraid of what he saw?

In 1886, the new science of studying people had given the world sexology in the form of Germany's Richard von Krafft-Ebing, with his 'Sexualis Psychopathia'. Krafft-Ebing's pioneering study of his psychiatric patients gave an introduction to some of the many ways sexual feelings may be experienced and expressed. In one interesting chapter, he links religious martyrdom to masochism and hysteria. Those who disapproved of the physical freedom women were enjoying when they went out into poor areas to administer relief (no pun intended!) often misrepresented the drive for independence as a form of repressed sexuality by linking women's usually repressed sexual desire with guilt, and the need for self-punishment through wallowing in filthy lives and doings. George made good use of this in Demos, when he had his female protagonist, Adela, an irritatingly smug dabbler in dirt for reasons of social conscience, feel revolted when it arrived in the form of the priapic needs of her husband, the working class and, to George (though probably not to any of his readers) loutish Richard Mutimer. Her decision to marry a man she didn't like, who she regarded as being socially beneath her, suggests she had a capacity for Darwinian pragmatism all women would recognise. It takes Richard's death for her to realise he was one of her successful social projects, and that she might have loved him. Which is fiction.  

The Angel 1914

5) The writer in search of material.
The journalist looking for a good story fed off the anguish and pain of the deprived London boroughs. A trend was started with a major work that introduced a new genre: undercover journalism. After the death of Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) the inevitability of enfranchisement for the poorer classes seemed inevitable. The anxiety this provoked in the monied classes led to some novel ways of explaining the real world to the ignorant bourgeoisie. In 1866, the investigative work of James Greenwood in his 'A Night In A Workhouse', was published in the Pall Mall Gazette. Greenwood disguised himself as a pauper and joined the queue for admittance to Lambeth Workhouse, posing as a man in need of a bed. His article was so popular in the Gazette that it was published as a stand alone work, with a special penny edition for the poor to read about themselves - or about those who were below them socially without a penny to waste on newsprint.

George took tours of the Paris Morgue, and the Marylebone Workhouse he lived near, looking for good copy for stories. Before him, Charles Dickens had done something similar, with his tours round Bedlam and various prisons, including the prison at Coldbath Fields click, a place George would have passed many times on his rambles. Have a look at this to read about one of its inmates click. Dickens' great friend John Forster (of the famous 'Life' revised by George) was a prominent Unitarian - a sect that prided itself on its work with the disadvantaged. Forster was head of the Lunacy Commission from 1861-1872, though his tenure was not considered enlightened. George certainly made a lot of his superficial association with the poor, even though he never really had anything new to say about their plight, or cared enough to challenge the status quo of their predicament. In fact, he quickly ditched the poor in favour of the educated strapped for cash as the focus of his fiction. His concentration on this class's struggles was every bit as voyeuristic as his temporary preoccupation with the poor, but brought to it the shared perspective of a dispassionate outsider looking in: still slumming, but with toffs under the microscope. A case of 'big fleas and little fleas' click?

Boy and Angel 1918

 Commonplace 231   George & Christmas Bah! Humbuggery!

“Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times… 
We are going to have a Very Merry Xmas.