Commonplace 173 George & Owens College PART TWO
With paintings by Boris Grigoriev (1886-1939)
As we saw in the last Commonplace, George was a big fish in a little pond when he was at Owens College, but his ambition to prove himself to be just as good as his middle class peers spurred him on to succeed. George's humble origins brought more than a lowly class burden; he was also relatively hard up. His father's business affairs were not set up for an untimely sudden death, and so the family were left in serious financial difficulty after his demise. As a student, George received money from his mother on a regular basis, but the amount given was dependent on a mother's assessment of his needs. She probably didn't factor in drinking in pubs, smoking, expensive off-curriculum books, gadding about to seaside resorts and the general mayhem George enjoyed as a student. To fund these extra-curricular activities, he turned to two time-honoured methods: competitions/games of chance and crime. The games of chance were the College's literary and Greek competitions that paid good money for success. The crime was stealing from the coat pockets of his peers.
When he was first at Owens, George still lived at Lindow Grove and commuted to Manchester. He earned extra money tutoring the boys in languages, including Greek, and keeping an eye on them overnight. But for reasons of either lack of time to go back and forth to Alderley Edge, or because his increasingly active social life was interrupted by having to catch the last transport home, he moved into digs of his own in the academic year 1875-76, so the tutoring money dried up. This move was to the legendary Grafton Street, still the heart of Manchester student life.
Of course, he could have searched out some honest labour - after all, Manchester was a massive city of industry, and work will have be available for those who applied themselves to the task of finding it. But George chose the lazy way out, showing a pattern he followed his whole life of refusing paying work in order to please himself with filling his time - reading and whatever he deemed worth doing. He had the sociopath's attitude that work (as in paid activity you don't really want to do) is for dummies, and bosses are an affront to one's primal need for freedom. Sadly, he lacked the millionaire's access to funding.
In his early days at Owens, George won poetry and composition prizes of books and modest amounts of money and was known as something of a prodigy. The College Shakespeare Prize, set up in 1864, was awarded every two years to commemorate Shakespeare's birth (1564). In 1874, sixteen year-old George entered. This was a very rigorous competition to demonstrate a solid understanding of history, philology, knowledge of and dissertations about the text. George researched his subject and immersed himself in the task of winning the enormous prize of £40 for each of the two years until the next prize, a total of £80. To get some idea of what this amount is worth, consider that George paid his first wife, Marianne aka Nell alimony per annum 52x75pence=£39 throughout most of the 1880s. You can see this was either a huge amount for a student to win in 1874/6, or George should have been paying his wife a whole lot more. You decide; I know what I think. As she died of poverty and scrofula, it's clear he should have paid more. Which he could have afforded.
Anyhoo, he didn't win this competition, and he wrote to a friend that the contest was very close, and the other entrants (all three of them!) were working on their B.A's, implying that he was up against unfair competition, not surprising considering his young age - perhaps he hoped his precocity would add a few points to his score and win him favour with the judges. Then, rather disparagingly, he writes that he does not begrudge the winner his triumph: I am not sorry the fellow got it that did, for he really is badly in want of money. (Obviously the winner hadn't thought of turning his hand to thievery haha). No mention made of the best man having won, of course. When George entered the next Shakespeare competition, he came first.
By 1876, George had won about £90 in prizes, with a promise of another £60 for the next year of the biennial competition, and the Shakespeare second year £40, so it looked like a reasonable, steady income could be made from studying. He had passed the first part of his degree, and was possibly on his way to one of the great universities. How he might have paid for this, is unclear. By this time, it seems he feared he had a reputation around Owens of a being 'pot-hunter' - one who is only in it for the money - so he cut back on his prize winning... actually, he probably netted enough money by now from stealing so he gave up the hard work and study associated with the literary competitions, in favour of dirty money and a life of petty crime. He stole from his peers' pockets when they had left their coats in the cloakroom. This crime wave carried on for so long that the authorities finally resorted to setting a trap. George got caught red-handed, and the jig was up. He was held on remand, then sent to prison, sent down from Owens, and stripped of any prize money outstanding. He was old enough to know better - but not half as smart as he always thought he was, because he was caught so easily; greed might have gotten the better of him. By doing it on a regular basis, the crimes were the talk of the College so he must have bluffed and bullshitted his way through gossiping about it to his chums, pretending that he was as outraged as they and as baffled, and that it was a sorry state of affairs. Was it that famous Frenchman Bonaparte who said we should never underestimate our enemy - the way George underestimated the authorities and the law?? It was definitely Bonaparte who said:
George's success at Owens in the Shakespeare, poetry and essay competitions is presented by biographers as signs of a deep and abiding academic mindset. Real talent might have yielded more stamina for the enterprise, but was George exceptional? The frantic pace of his study could not be sustained on into Oxford or Cambridge, where he would have been a very small fish in a massive pond, so it is a matter of speculation that he would have done well there, surrounded by brighter lights and better intellects. Biographers seem to make two contradictory things of his success at prize-winning - either George was highly talented and he had natural amazing ability; George drove himself to the point of collapse with the punishing study schedule he set himself, crescendoing in a nervous breakdown. If he had found the work easy, because he was innately brilliant, would he have had to work so hard? Isn't it more likely that, as biographer Frank Swinnerton suggests, George had to drive himself on because he was less talented than his peers.
George's most ardent apologists insist it was a form of mental breakdown that forced him to steal. But, as the crimes took place over an extended period, these can hardly be termed as acts of an 'unsound mind' - every other aspect of his life was hunky dory and he was enjoying his social life. And, a good amount of low animal cunning went into them. Just not enough for him to get away with it haha. What happened after he got caught will have dented his ego and perhaps given him pause to think he had ruined his chances of future success, but what if the thefts, the getting caught, were an unconscious scheme to remove him from the possibility of having to apply for Oxford or Cambridge, where the competition from students much better than he would have been too much to endure? By failing at Owens not academically, but morally, he never had to be tested in a field of equal ability. This was a pattern George rolled out his whole life - using the cloak of an 'aristocratic'' sensibility to explain why he disdained popular success was just another way of admitting he was too scared of failing to compete with the likes of RL Stevenson or HG Wells or Conan Doyle. It was emphatically the reason he preyed on women he found inferior - and I am including Gabrielle Fleury here, because she would never have been his 'type' if he had been younger and fitter in health. By blaming his poverty for not being able to find a decent enough wife, he failed to display any insight or see how this underachieving was a comment on a fear of failure - failure to find someone because you are not seen as an attractive mate. Not in the superficial appearance way (George was reasonably physically attractive) but in terms of personality and ability to share emotional bonds and become a friend and companion.
His academic success also affords some the chance to incandesce with rage towards George's first wife, Marianne aka Nell, the one they blame for encouraging the thefts. Now, Nell is usually blamed for his crime spree because... because why? Because she is supposed to have been the reason he needed to steal. The typical biographer (low on imagination and evidence) claims that she was a scheming minx who made George break the law and betray the trust of his friends and that, really, the poor lad was just a pawn in her money-grubbing game. Two things: 1) there is no evidence to suggest this is true; 2) George was a free agent who made his own decisions and was never one to be forced in any direction he didn't want to go in.
'Love' is often offered as the explanation for his lack of judgement - or, as we ordinary folk call it, 'lack of morals' - but this is a bit of a hard one to swallow. It would be fair to say George was incapable of acknowledging any feelings that left him vulnerable and out of control. Even with his two sons, there is very scant evidence to suggest his feelings were those of a typical father, and his behaviour towards them both was cruel and selfish, mean-hearted and lacking in emotional warmth. A few guilt-ridden letters to his son Walter can't make up for the cruelty of what George did to the boy. In his letters to his son he mentions love, but that is self-serving as he needs to exculpate his responsibility for kidnapping and abandoning the boy. By claiming he has done it because he loves him make sit impossible for Walter to ever hold it against him. George was, if nothing else, a studied manipulator of others and a spin doctor for his own agenda.
In fact, after George was released from prison and until the day she left him, there is no evidence in his letters that Nell was anything but a woman who shared the financial burden as much as she could and who did her best to comply with his regime. All she seemed to want from him, was his time. And that was one thing George would not award to anyone on anything but his own terms. Of course, to make Nell out to be a whore, as most biographers do, is a very misogynistic solution to the problem of why Nell had a hold on George. It is also an exercise in class warfare. HG Wells' son, Anthony West, maintained his father understood that George took advantage of Nell's youth and vulnerability for his own ends, and was drawn to her because of her gamine appearance. Nell was an epileptic with serious medical issues, alone in Manchester, and with the parlous economic situation of the times, likely to have to resort at some time, to prostitution to make her way in the world, as thousands of girls had to. George sought to save her from this fate by making her his mistress, despite the fact that many - including his biographers - would see this as Nell prostituting herself. George made a similar offer to his second wife, Edith, who refused to live in sin with him; he made it again to his third significant other, and she accepted. None among his biographers ever refer to Gabrielle Fleury as a prostitute. Why? Might it be because Gabrielle wasn't working class and Nell was?
With paintings by Boris Grigoriev (1886-1939)
As we saw in the last Commonplace, George was a big fish in a little pond when he was at Owens College, but his ambition to prove himself to be just as good as his middle class peers spurred him on to succeed. George's humble origins brought more than a lowly class burden; he was also relatively hard up. His father's business affairs were not set up for an untimely sudden death, and so the family were left in serious financial difficulty after his demise. As a student, George received money from his mother on a regular basis, but the amount given was dependent on a mother's assessment of his needs. She probably didn't factor in drinking in pubs, smoking, expensive off-curriculum books, gadding about to seaside resorts and the general mayhem George enjoyed as a student. To fund these extra-curricular activities, he turned to two time-honoured methods: competitions/games of chance and crime. The games of chance were the College's literary and Greek competitions that paid good money for success. The crime was stealing from the coat pockets of his peers.
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| Woman Reading 1922 |
Of course, he could have searched out some honest labour - after all, Manchester was a massive city of industry, and work will have be available for those who applied themselves to the task of finding it. But George chose the lazy way out, showing a pattern he followed his whole life of refusing paying work in order to please himself with filling his time - reading and whatever he deemed worth doing. He had the sociopath's attitude that work (as in paid activity you don't really want to do) is for dummies, and bosses are an affront to one's primal need for freedom. Sadly, he lacked the millionaire's access to funding.
 |
| Self Portrait With Chicken and Rooster 1922-24 |
Anyhoo, he didn't win this competition, and he wrote to a friend that the contest was very close, and the other entrants (all three of them!) were working on their B.A's, implying that he was up against unfair competition, not surprising considering his young age - perhaps he hoped his precocity would add a few points to his score and win him favour with the judges. Then, rather disparagingly, he writes that he does not begrudge the winner his triumph: I am not sorry the fellow got it that did, for he really is badly in want of money. (Obviously the winner hadn't thought of turning his hand to thievery haha). No mention made of the best man having won, of course. When George entered the next Shakespeare competition, he came first.
By 1876, George had won about £90 in prizes, with a promise of another £60 for the next year of the biennial competition, and the Shakespeare second year £40, so it looked like a reasonable, steady income could be made from studying. He had passed the first part of his degree, and was possibly on his way to one of the great universities. How he might have paid for this, is unclear. By this time, it seems he feared he had a reputation around Owens of a being 'pot-hunter' - one who is only in it for the money - so he cut back on his prize winning... actually, he probably netted enough money by now from stealing so he gave up the hard work and study associated with the literary competitions, in favour of dirty money and a life of petty crime. He stole from his peers' pockets when they had left their coats in the cloakroom. This crime wave carried on for so long that the authorities finally resorted to setting a trap. George got caught red-handed, and the jig was up. He was held on remand, then sent to prison, sent down from Owens, and stripped of any prize money outstanding. He was old enough to know better - but not half as smart as he always thought he was, because he was caught so easily; greed might have gotten the better of him. By doing it on a regular basis, the crimes were the talk of the College so he must have bluffed and bullshitted his way through gossiping about it to his chums, pretending that he was as outraged as they and as baffled, and that it was a sorry state of affairs. Was it that famous Frenchman Bonaparte who said we should never underestimate our enemy - the way George underestimated the authorities and the law?? It was definitely Bonaparte who said:
Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.
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| Portrait Of The Artist BM Kustodiev 1917 |
George's most ardent apologists insist it was a form of mental breakdown that forced him to steal. But, as the crimes took place over an extended period, these can hardly be termed as acts of an 'unsound mind' - every other aspect of his life was hunky dory and he was enjoying his social life. And, a good amount of low animal cunning went into them. Just not enough for him to get away with it haha. What happened after he got caught will have dented his ego and perhaps given him pause to think he had ruined his chances of future success, but what if the thefts, the getting caught, were an unconscious scheme to remove him from the possibility of having to apply for Oxford or Cambridge, where the competition from students much better than he would have been too much to endure? By failing at Owens not academically, but morally, he never had to be tested in a field of equal ability. This was a pattern George rolled out his whole life - using the cloak of an 'aristocratic'' sensibility to explain why he disdained popular success was just another way of admitting he was too scared of failing to compete with the likes of RL Stevenson or HG Wells or Conan Doyle. It was emphatically the reason he preyed on women he found inferior - and I am including Gabrielle Fleury here, because she would never have been his 'type' if he had been younger and fitter in health. By blaming his poverty for not being able to find a decent enough wife, he failed to display any insight or see how this underachieving was a comment on a fear of failure - failure to find someone because you are not seen as an attractive mate. Not in the superficial appearance way (George was reasonably physically attractive) but in terms of personality and ability to share emotional bonds and become a friend and companion.
His academic success also affords some the chance to incandesce with rage towards George's first wife, Marianne aka Nell, the one they blame for encouraging the thefts. Now, Nell is usually blamed for his crime spree because... because why? Because she is supposed to have been the reason he needed to steal. The typical biographer (low on imagination and evidence) claims that she was a scheming minx who made George break the law and betray the trust of his friends and that, really, the poor lad was just a pawn in her money-grubbing game. Two things: 1) there is no evidence to suggest this is true; 2) George was a free agent who made his own decisions and was never one to be forced in any direction he didn't want to go in.
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| Portrait of Maria Yasnaya 1917 |
In fact, after George was released from prison and until the day she left him, there is no evidence in his letters that Nell was anything but a woman who shared the financial burden as much as she could and who did her best to comply with his regime. All she seemed to want from him, was his time. And that was one thing George would not award to anyone on anything but his own terms. Of course, to make Nell out to be a whore, as most biographers do, is a very misogynistic solution to the problem of why Nell had a hold on George. It is also an exercise in class warfare. HG Wells' son, Anthony West, maintained his father understood that George took advantage of Nell's youth and vulnerability for his own ends, and was drawn to her because of her gamine appearance. Nell was an epileptic with serious medical issues, alone in Manchester, and with the parlous economic situation of the times, likely to have to resort at some time, to prostitution to make her way in the world, as thousands of girls had to. George sought to save her from this fate by making her his mistress, despite the fact that many - including his biographers - would see this as Nell prostituting herself. George made a similar offer to his second wife, Edith, who refused to live in sin with him; he made it again to his third significant other, and she accepted. None among his biographers ever refer to Gabrielle Fleury as a prostitute. Why? Might it be because Gabrielle wasn't working class and Nell was?
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