George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 163  George & HG Wells' Experiment in Autobiography. PART ONE.

With pictures by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)

HG Wells is one of the few to write a version of George's life from the perspective of one who was a friend. When it came out, George was already a footnote in literary history, but, then as now, held dear by a loyal few who took the old misery guts to their hearts. Many of his works were out of print, and George's literary legacy was based on one or two of his longer novels - New Grub Street in particular - and his Dickens criticism. Wells' 'Experiment in Biography' was published in 1934, over thirty years after George's death, and contains a smallish chunk of a chapter on their friendship. You can read the whole book here for free click

The Trail Riders 1965

First, we have to go back to George's end. HG Wells (and Morley Roberts) had been summoned by Gabrielle, George's third wife, to what would be George's last few hours. Wells didn't much like Gabrielle for a raft of reasons, but mostly because, being French, she did a very un-British thing and tried to involve the Wellses in her 'marriage' by writing to HG and his wife to pour out all her complaints about this impossible, demanding and ultimately emotionally unavailable man. Despite the reassurances he gave when he lured her into his web, George spent most of his relationship with Gabrielle being his usual selfish, pernickety self, whilst giving her the slip to spend as much time alone as possible.

Train On The Desert 1926 or 1927

When he arrived in France, Wells immediately undermined her control of the situation. According to Gabrielle, it was Wells' regime of forced food and medicines that finished off the dying man, and she made haste to let HG know how she felt. Exasperated by what he saw as her inadequate and over-emotional response to the situation that bordered on neglect, when he felt no more could be done and he was sure Morley Roberts was on his way, Wells left George's side, a decision he would regret for the rest of his life. Wells would forever think he had let down his friend and could have - should have - behaved with more consideration to the woman who was losing her life partner. However, at the time, he was mostly angry with George for putting himself in harm's way by living so far from civilisation and for being such a coward as to not assert himself with Gabrielle or her mother (whose influence George never managed to undermine) by insisting he return to England.

Sheep-herder 1955-60 (Brokeback Mountain ahoy!)

To be fair, HG had gone off George a little, as compared to their heyday of bicycle rides and Omar Khyyam dinners. He disapproved of the way George treated his wife and children, and had begun to suspect lies had been told about Marianne aka Nell, George's first wife, and the legend of poverty and want spread by our man in pursuit of the dreaded sympathy he demanded from anyone he latched on to. Commonplaces 56-61 show this falling out of love with George, according to what HG told his son, Anthony West.

Wells felt guilty that he had left before the very end (and so could not prevent the religiosity of the funeral) and had failed to wrest George from Gabrielle's hands. To make amends, he arranged to petition (along with Edmund Gosse, another George friend) the British government to give the two Gissing boys, Walter and Alfred, Civil List pensions. In order to do this he prepared a biographical sketch that might answer some of the controversial points that had always surrounded George. It was probably widely known that George had been in prison for theft; it was becoming better known that he lived in either a bigamous relationship (if you considered him married to Gabrielle) or an adulterous one (if you considered his wife was still very much alive). And, it was known that George had died of the consequences of syphilis. These were three good reasons for not spending public funds on the boys. Wells had consulted with Frederic Harrison, then a man of great influence, who filled him in on George's early Positivist/Socialist years. It came as a surprise to Wells to hear something more like the truth on the pre-1888 George and the death of his first wife. He patched together a sketch that carefully edited out the very worst of George's behaviour, and made the most of what he introduced as mitigating circumstances. As it happened, he was successful and the boys' education was paid for. Public funds used to finance private education - George would have approved, but would he have thanked the generosity of the tax payers? The hell he would! He would have assumed it was the least the state could do for the sons of such an artist and aristocrat.

Open Country 1952

One useful thing HG did was to try and get some of George's work either published or re-issued. When Veranilda was ready for launch, he offered to make it more marketable by writing an introduction. The Wakefield Gissings were not impressed, but it was Ms Collet who finally put the kibosh on it. This was the Ms Collet who had been George's minion for so long and who had acted out of self interest against Edith, and who probably felt more like George's widow than Gabrielle did. (She had offered to be one of the guardians to the boys so that she would have access to George's family as if they were her own - weird.) In the end, Frederic Harrison was called on to do the preface which was an odd choice but led to the remarkable claim that Veranilda was George's best book! To read this grim offering first would put any new fans off the rest of the works - trust me on that. Anyhoo, the publication of new work was meant to garner as much money as possible towards the Gissing estate; Ms Collet's interference lost the boys income which irked HG and proved to be a step too far. He withdrew from the matter and more or less cut himself off from George's other friends and his family.

West Texas 1952

Wells subsequently published his unwanted preface as 'George Gissing: An Impression' in the August 1904 edition of the The Monthly Review. Between this and Experiment in Autobiography, came two biographies of George in 1912 that claimed to shed light on his life. They both did, in an inaccurate way: Morley Roberts' The Private Life of Henry Maitland' (a semi-fictional account presenting falsehoods, conjecture and hearsay especially about George's first wife, whom he never actually met. Lazy biographers and academics have been copying the lies ever since without checking their facts - you know who you are!). The other was Frank Swinnerton's 'George Gissing: A Critical Study', a scathing commentary that smacks of one who has fallen out of love with a hero. On reviewing the Roberts offering, HG seems to want to prove that he knew George more intimately than did the author. HG describes George as a snob and a humourless prig (pretty much the same conclusion Frank Swinnerton reached in the end); he adds: There was about him something of the magic one finds at times in an ungracious pitiful child. I have no idea what this means but I don't like the sound of it!

JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO READ MORE OF WHAT HGW SAID ABOUT GRG.