Commonplace 177
George & Money PART ONE
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| The Moneylender And His Wife by Quentin Matsys 1514
George had money on
his mind all of the time. All that he was to himself, depended on it. It
was the chief reason he wrote - because he was the sort of writer who created
until he had a large enough income to be able him to give up the work. The
pursuit of money, the spending of it, the lack of it, the earning of it, the
value of it to your self-image if you had it or lacked it, the doling out of it
to 'dependants' were his major preoccupations. Any pleasure George derived from
the imaginative creative process was offset by the misery of having to do the
thing he found difficult, claimed he didn't much enjoy, and which was innately
poorly paid. Fear of Freedom meets Masochism - see previous Commonplaces!
Drawing to himself financial burdens like his wider family ensured he was
forced to keep at it, 'nose to the grindstone', which was itself a valuable
thing as it gave him something to moan about, rebel against, and resent. He had
contempt for women... he had contempt for women whom he considered 'wasted
their husband's money' (I will let that pass just this once!) on fripperies and
then himself went out and bought books by the tonne, tobacco and evening dress
suits when he claimed to have no social life. If you dabble in
online quotes searches, you might find these George quotes on money:
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1) Time
is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth.
Money is time.
George enjoyed quite a lot of 'time' - if by the word he means bits of life
spent not actually working. He may have lacked the funds to do all the things
he wanted to do, but he never stinted himself on time spent reading; even time
he could have spent writing things that made him more money (magazine articles,
for example) couldn't entice him away from the solitary vice of reading books.
In fact, it could be argued that he worked to pay for time to read. Nothing in
George's life ever gave him the pleasure that reading did. Even when he was low
in funds and living with Marianne aka Nell, he kept them both (he claimed)
half-starved in order to buy books. This is not rational behaviour. Which is
why it stinks of untruth. We know he greatly exaggerated his poverty - Austin
Harrison (son of Frederic) blew this claim out of the water early when he
described George as being reasonably well paid for his tutoring, and never
really poverty-stricken - that his claims to poverty were 'a
fiction of fictions'. Roger Milbrandt has made a study of George's
bogus claims to poverty, published in the Gissing Journal of October 2007 click and makes the point that, even when George was as his lowliest
paid (1877, newly arrived in London and working as a clerk for St Vincent
Mercier), he was likely to be sharing wage-earning with Marianne aka Nell. She
might have worked as a seamstress though we don't know enough about her to be
sure of her source of income. It seems the only mention we have of her possibly
being in the needle trade is the John George Blacks' letter telling George
about the struggle he had moving a sewing machine - George was clearly not
involved in this venture and there is no evidence this was Nell's sewing
machine, and though Morley Roberts tells us George bought her a sewing machine,
he is wrong on so many things, he should not be trusted on specifics,
considering he never actually met Nell in the flesh, and so had no experience
of her as a real person, and wrote his self-serving fake biography in 1912,
nine years after George died. But, this alleged 'buying of a machine for her'
is touted as evidence she sponged off George and forced him into becoming a
thief, but, really...?
Marianne probably made money sewing - as ten of
thousands of women had to and still do - but there were hundreds of factories
in Manchester and London that needed employees to do piecework and make
all manner of items, and work doled out on a 'first come first served' basis to
those queuing outside factories at the start of the shift made earning a day's
wage not too difficult, so she could have been employed at any sort of unskilled
factory work. In fact, when George was working as some sort of clerk, there
were probably a variety of jobs he could have taken, if he had parked his
aspirations to be considered bona fide middle-class. However, he no doubt
lacked the strength and temperament for hard labour and would have starved if
all he had to rely on was manual skills, so presumably that will have impacted
on his sense of masculinity. Not that we often associate him with that trait.It
is considered a bonus if you enjoy your money-making activity click - and
being happy in your working life is still an aspiration worth advocating: 'it
doesn't matter what you do as long as you feel fulfilled, enjoy it and by
honesty, it pays the bills' it is not a bad bit of advice to give to young folk
setting out on their career journey. Doing well in education is touted as a way
to guarantee more options, and help avoid working as a toilet attendant, but
being a toilet attendant who loves their work is a happier bunny than a
university don who loathes her/his post. Choice is a huge part of happiness, it
seems.
2) Money
is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not
in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman.
In fact, George did very little actual 'work' - if we take that to mean activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result. Most of his 'effort' went into reading, a solitary activity guaranteed to appear to be self-improving, but which really kept him away from the sort of people he didn't want to be with. He once opined that his life had been led in the sort of company he found 'inferior', and that was his great tragedy. The business of writing was little more than a means to an end - the end being the solitary life.
George was a classic case of under-achiever, whether from design as a product of deep-rooted anxieties about being judged by his peers and found wanting, or because his natural haughty temperament kept his sense of self safe from outside influence. His fiction is a psychodrama hard copy of this sensibility. One comment we frequently see about his style is the intellectual distance he puts between himself and his creations; another is the failure to express any opinions or explain the inner workings of his characters' minds. All his posturing about being an impartial observer when describing events that unfurl for his characters is in fact, George showing us his reaction to the sort of person he really wouldn't have wanted to associate with if they were real living, breathing people. And, remember: without his self-inflicted financial hardships, George would have had very little to complain about - and complaining is what kept him going. Lack of money was the metaphorical grit in his oyster that made him do more than sit about reading and smoking and reflecting on his wasted genius. Perhaps we should take him at face value when he told Gabrielle Fleury he had no respect for his own works, and that they were all inferior.
3) That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.
In fact, George did very little actual 'work' - if we take that to mean activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result. Most of his 'effort' went into reading, a solitary activity guaranteed to appear to be self-improving, but which really kept him away from the sort of people he didn't want to be with. He once opined that his life had been led in the sort of company he found 'inferior', and that was his great tragedy. The business of writing was little more than a means to an end - the end being the solitary life.
George was a classic case of under-achiever, whether from design as a product of deep-rooted anxieties about being judged by his peers and found wanting, or because his natural haughty temperament kept his sense of self safe from outside influence. His fiction is a psychodrama hard copy of this sensibility. One comment we frequently see about his style is the intellectual distance he puts between himself and his creations; another is the failure to express any opinions or explain the inner workings of his characters' minds. All his posturing about being an impartial observer when describing events that unfurl for his characters is in fact, George showing us his reaction to the sort of person he really wouldn't have wanted to associate with if they were real living, breathing people. And, remember: without his self-inflicted financial hardships, George would have had very little to complain about - and complaining is what kept him going. Lack of money was the metaphorical grit in his oyster that made him do more than sit about reading and smoking and reflecting on his wasted genius. Perhaps we should take him at face value when he told Gabrielle Fleury he had no respect for his own works, and that they were all inferior.
3) That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.
On
the surface, it's hard to know how he came to this conclusion - after all, he
was raised in a Christian tradition and would have heard the parable of The
Widow's Mite click. However, it is a line lifted from The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
(Winter III); taken out of its context, it can be misread. George is talking
about how, when he was poor, he had feelings of dread when giving to beggars
because he might one day be in a position where he had to beg, himself. He
rightly notes giving is an empowering enterprise, and in the rest of the
paragraph extols his own generosity (as Ryecroft, he gives away £50 to a needy
friend) and sings his own praises and declares 'I feel myself a man' when
he gives. Freud would no doubt concur, because to him man is the symbolic giver, woman the receiver.. However, George's view that giving is
impossible to do when one is poor, is not borne out by the statistics click. This article suggests poor people identify with the struggling
disadvantaged and so give more in order to distance themselves from the
calamity of being identified as needy themselves. George's belief that money wouldn't solve the poor's problems misses the point that, what really will help us all is the spirit of generosity inherent in giving - that by showing we notice the suffering of others and make a financial gesture of support is as important as the monetary value of what is donated.
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| Dollar Signs by Andy Warhol 1981 |
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