Commonplace 140 George & A Happy New Year
It's another year and, to paraphrase Albert Camus, we who are here are already winning. Hurrah for us!
Though he destroyed his Diaries up to the point in time where his first wife, the neglected and abandoned Marianne aka Nell, died of poverty and scrofula, what entries we have left, albeit in self-serving edited form (and edited by others), allow us to see (almost) where George spent the festivities on each New Year's Day between 1888-1903.
It is odd that George moaned about being lonely yet refused most of the social invites he received, usually blaming the wrong sort of wife for his refusals. In reality, this was nothing more than a finely-crafted bid for a double-whammy of sympathy - firstly for being denied access to parties, and secondly for having a freakishly anti-social wife dragging him down. Both of these were lies. As Nell seems to have been quite normal in her relationship with George's brother, William, and seems to have been popular and friendly to people she met, for example, when she was an in-patient in hospital, and as Edith was always blamed for everything that happened to George post-Nell (and so his biased opinion cannot be believed) we can see that wives 1&2 were denied the chance to mix socially, but were blamed by George for his own stand-offishness. Imagine having to be locked up in the house with Mr Chuckles 24/7 and then stopped from the light relief of attending a party! How did those women put up with him?
So, let's look at George and those brand New Years...
1888 - Finds him recording that he has been reading Thucydides (probably the History of the Peloponnesian Wars) and Great Expectations. He has a date with Morley Roberts, and notes that he berates Roberts about always writing 'morbid' stories. This is a beguilingly peaceful time for George - within two months, Marianne aka Nell will be dead, and things will never be the same again.
1889 - One of the happiest. George is in Italy, in the Florence area. He is happy to wander about the ruins and enjoy the warm sunshine. He is still feeling peaky after his usual bout of man flu. On the evening before, he had dined in a place where revellers were enjoying the imminent New Year celebrations. He writes: ...in vast discomfort, owing to the place being full of Italians in exuberant spirits, who were supping at table d'hote. It made me feel wretched.
1890 - A special day as George was in Italy once more. Wandering about, he found a Roman coin. George always kept a small collection of special items about his person, items so charged with the vibes of where they were located that they had the power to transport him back to where they were found. No doubt this coin was one of them. He eats with the Shortridge family, friends he had made on his first Italian trip who often offered him hospitality. John Shortridge, the head of the household, was from Yorkshire, but had married an Italian girl and set up home far from the moors and mountains of the north of England. George tells us that at the meal they gave him, he turned down a side dish of pig's blood, cinnamon, raisins, brodo (a broth made of bones) and oil. Good call!
1891 - Romance is in the cold, frosty air: Edith is being wooed. Xmas had been spent with Edith's family; she had given him a silk muffler as his gift. He gave her a pair of gloves. Gloves were quite an intimate item for a first Xmas gift - an item, in fact, with many erotic associations, as they could be removed by a lover, toyed with, and held the fragrance of the wearer. And things can be inserted into them.
1892 - Walter's first Xmas. Edith suffered so much during childbirth she took weeks to recuperate. This meant she couldn't tend to the baby, leaving George very much in the firing line. Of the many roles George was not cut out for, parenthood was probably up there with husband in terms of what he should have avoided. Moaning about it already, George is seething with resentment and self-pity, with Walter just 3 weeks old. Complaining about the medical fees and the cost of the bassinet, etc, he is contemplating a novel entitled 'The Laughing Doctor'.
1893 - The previous years saw him writing 'The Odd Women', but the new year finds George hollow and pessimistic about it as he corrects proofs. Later in January, he was to write the infamous piece that summed up exactly where he went wrong with his first two marriages: Condemned for ever to associate with inferiors. This kind of attitude would have been impossible to suppress, and will have leaked into the way he treated both Marianne aka Nell and Edith. He went on: Never a word to me, from anyone, of understanding sympathy - or of encouragement. Few men, I am sure, have led so bitter a life. Almost everything that was wrong with George is in this dreadful outpouring of self-pity. He was, in fact, surrounded by supporters in the form of his family, Morley Roberts, Eduard Bertz, and umpteen others with whom he was in contact. No-one made him go an live in Exeter, so far away from London as to make it impossible for his friends to visit him.
1894 - Miss Collet was worming her way into his consciousness. She was so not his type - being dumpy and plain - so he must have wondered what to do with her. Whatever that turned out to be, Miss Collet obviously thought she was in with a chance. She connived her way into the private world of George and Edith's marriage, and suddenly, the point of her became clear - he would use Miss Collet to side with him against Edith. The Diary entries now are very brief, indicating heavy redaction to stage-manage the legacy and present his own version of events. Shameful.
1895 - On the previous day he records that he made an overall profit, when household expenses were factored in, of over one hundred pounds from his work in 1894. Bravo! he tells himself. Back in the London area once more, he complains about not being able to find a decent servant. If he had spent some of that profit on paying decent wages, he might have attracted decent applicants. He never understood that fine Latin proverb: si rem bene peanuts vos adepto simiae.
It's another year and, to paraphrase Albert Camus, we who are here are already winning. Hurrah for us!
Though he destroyed his Diaries up to the point in time where his first wife, the neglected and abandoned Marianne aka Nell, died of poverty and scrofula, what entries we have left, albeit in self-serving edited form (and edited by others), allow us to see (almost) where George spent the festivities on each New Year's Day between 1888-1903.
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| Papa and Albert see in the New Year - the latter in drag, it seems. |
So, let's look at George and those brand New Years...
1888 - Finds him recording that he has been reading Thucydides (probably the History of the Peloponnesian Wars) and Great Expectations. He has a date with Morley Roberts, and notes that he berates Roberts about always writing 'morbid' stories. This is a beguilingly peaceful time for George - within two months, Marianne aka Nell will be dead, and things will never be the same again.
1889 - One of the happiest. George is in Italy, in the Florence area. He is happy to wander about the ruins and enjoy the warm sunshine. He is still feeling peaky after his usual bout of man flu. On the evening before, he had dined in a place where revellers were enjoying the imminent New Year celebrations. He writes: ...in vast discomfort, owing to the place being full of Italians in exuberant spirits, who were supping at table d'hote. It made me feel wretched.
1890 - A special day as George was in Italy once more. Wandering about, he found a Roman coin. George always kept a small collection of special items about his person, items so charged with the vibes of where they were located that they had the power to transport him back to where they were found. No doubt this coin was one of them. He eats with the Shortridge family, friends he had made on his first Italian trip who often offered him hospitality. John Shortridge, the head of the household, was from Yorkshire, but had married an Italian girl and set up home far from the moors and mountains of the north of England. George tells us that at the meal they gave him, he turned down a side dish of pig's blood, cinnamon, raisins, brodo (a broth made of bones) and oil. Good call!
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| Weird! |
1893 - The previous years saw him writing 'The Odd Women', but the new year finds George hollow and pessimistic about it as he corrects proofs. Later in January, he was to write the infamous piece that summed up exactly where he went wrong with his first two marriages: Condemned for ever to associate with inferiors. This kind of attitude would have been impossible to suppress, and will have leaked into the way he treated both Marianne aka Nell and Edith. He went on: Never a word to me, from anyone, of understanding sympathy - or of encouragement. Few men, I am sure, have led so bitter a life. Almost everything that was wrong with George is in this dreadful outpouring of self-pity. He was, in fact, surrounded by supporters in the form of his family, Morley Roberts, Eduard Bertz, and umpteen others with whom he was in contact. No-one made him go an live in Exeter, so far away from London as to make it impossible for his friends to visit him.
1894 - Miss Collet was worming her way into his consciousness. She was so not his type - being dumpy and plain - so he must have wondered what to do with her. Whatever that turned out to be, Miss Collet obviously thought she was in with a chance. She connived her way into the private world of George and Edith's marriage, and suddenly, the point of her became clear - he would use Miss Collet to side with him against Edith. The Diary entries now are very brief, indicating heavy redaction to stage-manage the legacy and present his own version of events. Shameful.
1895 - On the previous day he records that he made an overall profit, when household expenses were factored in, of over one hundred pounds from his work in 1894. Bravo! he tells himself. Back in the London area once more, he complains about not being able to find a decent servant. If he had spent some of that profit on paying decent wages, he might have attracted decent applicants. He never understood that fine Latin proverb: si rem bene peanuts vos adepto simiae.
1896 - George in
minimalist mode gives us a very brief entry (later redacted?). Gloom/gloomy gets a mention 7
times on this page alone. Edith is pregnant with Alfred, and this birth will send George into another spiral of self-pity. Still, he has groomed the enthusiastic Miss Collet well, and is using her as a shoulder to cry on. In the coming April, he will kidnap Walter and force him to stay in Wakefield, away from Edith and his family life. This is done to punish and control Edith, after a row where he claimed she slagged him off in front of the boy. George did some very low things in his life, this being just one of them. Walter never fully recovered, and it started the hate fest against Edith that Misses Collet and Orme enjoyed taking part in. If they were too stupid to realise George was using them to do his dirty work, then they are to be pitied as well as scorned. George had no intention of ever offering Walter a parental home again - he turned down Gabrielle Fleury's offer of a home for the boy in France. Edith was only allowed to keep Alfred because George thought she would be more biddable if she had something to lose. What a tosser he could be - and not at all the British definition of 'heroic'.
1897 - The weather is beautiful.
George decides to visit George Meredith unannounced, having discovered the old chap has undergone an operation for his deafness. George walks to Box Hill from Epsom, but Meredith isn't home. Shame.
1898 - George is back in Italy and suffering the effects of tertiary syphilis, for which he is given quinine. Read more about this in Commonplaces 62-69. Still, he felt well enough the day before New Year to write to Edith threatening to remove Alfred if she didn't do as she was told. Happy New Year, George. Later in this year he would meet Gabrielle Fleury and seal his fate.
1899 - He has already made a pact with Gabrielle and has persuaded her to live in sin with him, as he can't divorce Edith. His letters to the Frenchwoman are so toe-curlingly cringeworthy, they almost undo some of his literary legacy. Lies upon lies, are just the beginning of his inglorious charm offensive. He will leave England in the spring and follow his misguided plan to win his 'Crown of Life'. Be careful what you wish for, George.
1900 - No January 1st entry. It starts in February, and he mentions he has finished a novel called 'Among The Prophets'. We have been spared it - he considered it very poor stuff. It is no more. He is in Paris, which he hates. So much for him ever being a bohemian. Paris is getting ready for the Exposition Universelle, and Gabrielle and her mother (and George) let their flat to visitors to the event, and they go on holiday to the country.
1901 - He is writing 'Veranilda' - working title: 'The Vanquished Roman'. He is working on his Dickens pieces and his short stories and is basking in success and what will be increased recognition back in Blighty. Diary entries are sparse and not very illuminating, but this is the year when 'Our Friend The Charlatan' and 'By The Ionian Sea' are published, and so George is finally going places, though neither yet brings home Big Money. But the entries in the Diary end in April, and we don't pick up again for a year. His shameful harassment by proxy of Edith continues. with his minions ratcheting up the pressure.
1902 - Entries start on April 7th when George is overcome with a dose of nostalgia - or maybe a frisson of foreboding for what will be his final couple of years of decline. He admits to redacting the diaries and this has taken up much of his time, but he is also struggling with the Roman thing. This is a year of torpor and ennui; work is not pressing, and he spends most of his time idling. Few letters arrive, so little or no correspondence to deal with. The beginning of the end. The Diary entries peter out in November. This is the year that sees Edith finally begin to succumb to the paresis she will die of, and son Alfred sent to live with strangers in the West Country when she is committed to an asylum. George has much to expunge from the historic record and to much redact from the Diaries if he is not to be recognised for what he really is - a cruel, bitter, bullying control freak who destroyed the lives of two wives and two sons. Karma is gathering.
1903 - No Diary entries all year. In December, George dies singing mad ecclesiastical chants and hallucinating scenes from 'The Vanquished Roman', finally tertiary syphilis ending the struggle. He is mistaken for a Christian and receives the sort of last rites and services he claimed his whole life to despise.
1899 - He has already made a pact with Gabrielle and has persuaded her to live in sin with him, as he can't divorce Edith. His letters to the Frenchwoman are so toe-curlingly cringeworthy, they almost undo some of his literary legacy. Lies upon lies, are just the beginning of his inglorious charm offensive. He will leave England in the spring and follow his misguided plan to win his 'Crown of Life'. Be careful what you wish for, George.
1900 - No January 1st entry. It starts in February, and he mentions he has finished a novel called 'Among The Prophets'. We have been spared it - he considered it very poor stuff. It is no more. He is in Paris, which he hates. So much for him ever being a bohemian. Paris is getting ready for the Exposition Universelle, and Gabrielle and her mother (and George) let their flat to visitors to the event, and they go on holiday to the country.
1901 - He is writing 'Veranilda' - working title: 'The Vanquished Roman'. He is working on his Dickens pieces and his short stories and is basking in success and what will be increased recognition back in Blighty. Diary entries are sparse and not very illuminating, but this is the year when 'Our Friend The Charlatan' and 'By The Ionian Sea' are published, and so George is finally going places, though neither yet brings home Big Money. But the entries in the Diary end in April, and we don't pick up again for a year. His shameful harassment by proxy of Edith continues. with his minions ratcheting up the pressure.
1902 - Entries start on April 7th when George is overcome with a dose of nostalgia - or maybe a frisson of foreboding for what will be his final couple of years of decline. He admits to redacting the diaries and this has taken up much of his time, but he is also struggling with the Roman thing. This is a year of torpor and ennui; work is not pressing, and he spends most of his time idling. Few letters arrive, so little or no correspondence to deal with. The beginning of the end. The Diary entries peter out in November. This is the year that sees Edith finally begin to succumb to the paresis she will die of, and son Alfred sent to live with strangers in the West Country when she is committed to an asylum. George has much to expunge from the historic record and to much redact from the Diaries if he is not to be recognised for what he really is - a cruel, bitter, bullying control freak who destroyed the lives of two wives and two sons. Karma is gathering.
1903 - No Diary entries all year. In December, George dies singing mad ecclesiastical chants and hallucinating scenes from 'The Vanquished Roman', finally tertiary syphilis ending the struggle. He is mistaken for a Christian and receives the sort of last rites and services he claimed his whole life to despise.
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