Commonplace 189 George & His Manifest Destiny PART ONE.
America has a philosophy as old as the days of the prairie schooner crossing the plains. 'Manifest Destiny' they call it, and it still informs much of what they do today, except they now think more globally. To find out more see this click.
In the summer of 1876, after the Owens College debacle and one month hard labour in Manchester's Belle Vue gaol, George had pause to reflect on his Next Big Move. For the first time, his future was uncertain in a major way, and those personal qualities he'd perfected - knowledge of English literature and the Classics, facility with language, and an unfailing faith in his own superiority over others - were going to be the only qualifications he could carry with him on the road to greatness. Having disgraced his family possibly even more than himself, failed to maximise on the social advantages that had been handed to him on a plate, and proved beyond doubt he had a dodgy moral compass, there was only one place such a creature could insert himself: Australia. As it happened, he turned west instead of east, and took himself off to that other realm of the exile and social misfit: America. As he boarded the SS Parthia, a steam and sail ocean liner that went from Liverpool to New York City and Boston carrying passengers and freight, it looked like Wakefield's loss would be the USA's gain, and what a turn up for the books might that have been.
Of course, the plan did not go to... plan. Back then (not now; definitely NOT now) America was a lawless maelstrom of danger and privation, peopled by lovely, friendly and cheery optimists with a strong work ethic, side-by-side with disgruntled religious fundamentalists, all of them co-existing with outlaws and trigger-happy sociopaths... so why George thought himself equipped for that ordeal, is a mystery. It's a sign of the sheltered life he had led thus far which brought him to such an end - did he assume America was one big Manchester? (In some ways, it is!) But, it's that unstinting faith in his own superiority once more rearing it's egomaniacal, self-deluded head, coupled with a large dollop of 'in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king' thinking. Let's explore the clues we have, and get our heads round the choice he made.
Henry Hick, George's childhood playmate from Wakefield, later supporter, friend and medical adviser, wrote in his little book, 'Henry Hick's Recollections of George Gissing':
George was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and was released at the expiration of his sentence. My father met him when he came out of prison and I expect got what help was to be had for him, but I know little of this, nor who gave him letters.
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| George, in about 1884 |
In the summer of 1876, after the Owens College debacle and one month hard labour in Manchester's Belle Vue gaol, George had pause to reflect on his Next Big Move. For the first time, his future was uncertain in a major way, and those personal qualities he'd perfected - knowledge of English literature and the Classics, facility with language, and an unfailing faith in his own superiority over others - were going to be the only qualifications he could carry with him on the road to greatness. Having disgraced his family possibly even more than himself, failed to maximise on the social advantages that had been handed to him on a plate, and proved beyond doubt he had a dodgy moral compass, there was only one place such a creature could insert himself: Australia. As it happened, he turned west instead of east, and took himself off to that other realm of the exile and social misfit: America. As he boarded the SS Parthia, a steam and sail ocean liner that went from Liverpool to New York City and Boston carrying passengers and freight, it looked like Wakefield's loss would be the USA's gain, and what a turn up for the books might that have been.
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| SS Parthia in her glory days. George set sail on August 29th, 1876 |
George was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and was released at the expiration of his sentence. My father met him when he came out of prison and I expect got what help was to be had for him, but I know little of this, nor who gave him letters.
Anthony West, in his biography of his father, HG Wells, 'Aspects of a Life', tells us a job was found for George in Liverpool by Henry Hick's father:
On his release, Dr Hick's father had found him work as a clerk in Liverpool, but he hadn't liked that, and had soon cleared out, to go to the United States to try his luck there.
In that self-pitying and over-long effort, George's first published (albeit by his own hand) novel 'Workers in the Dawn', the under-achieving doofus, Arthur Golding (whom some take for an autobiographical version of its author, which to my mind, is a bit of an insult!) ends the book with a chapter entitled (in a stroke of inspired genius) 'The End'. Arthur has decided to leave all his cares behind and sail for America on the SS Parthia (I can see why they are fooled into thinking Arthur is George, honest I can, as Parthia was the name of the ship George sailed on - see Commonplace 190). Arthur is given this rationale:
He would go to the New World, not to its civilised parts, but out into the extreme West where in arduous struggle with the powers of Nature, he might forget all his past existence and - he could conceive it possible - in time, lead a happy life.
NB Only George would still refer to the US as 'The New World' nearly 400 years after Columbus, and 800-ish after Leif Erikson - and 100 after its Independence.
We don't really know why George he went to the States. His biographers tend to think he was given no choice but to emigrate to America, and that his decisions were made for him by friends of the Gissing family who stepped in to sort out the mess he'd made in order to ease the shame for his mother and siblings. Europe was a common destination for those who had fallen foul of the established way of British life, it being a place of cultivation and relative civilisation. But with no connections there, and very little by way of cash, that would have been a leap too far, psychologically, if not geographically, for George. In the age-old tradition of what he later described as 'jobbery' (aka 'advantage'), a bad thing in his opinion when others did it, but acceptable when it furthered his own agenda, making use of family connections to put him in touch with anyone who might help made sense. Having letters of recommendation would guarantee some sort of support network in his new place of settlement, and so the wheels of influence turned up William Lloyd Garrison, a legend of a man whose life had been dedicated to social reform (an abolitionist from the early days of the movement) who lived in Massachusetts. Money was raised from well-wishers and sympathetic supporters, and so George set off with much more than the average exile would have had in his gander bag.
What might he have found to interest him there? 1876 was the centenary year, and below is the flag used at the time, reflecting the number of states in the United States as 38. It's strange to think of George being in the States when the likes of Jesse James and Wyatt Earp were around doing their things, but he was. The US was in a deep recession, but that didn't stop the entrepreneurial muse bringing the world the first telephone call and Heinz ketchup, and the first Trans-continental Express train arriving in San Francisco 83 hours after leaving New York. This was the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And it was the year Jack London, writer, adventurer and reporter back from the Abyss was born. George would never achieve as much or travel as far, but for a brief while Jack and George shared a country.
JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO SEE WHERE THIS BRAVE STEP TOOK HIM.
On his release, Dr Hick's father had found him work as a clerk in Liverpool, but he hadn't liked that, and had soon cleared out, to go to the United States to try his luck there.
In that self-pitying and over-long effort, George's first published (albeit by his own hand) novel 'Workers in the Dawn', the under-achieving doofus, Arthur Golding (whom some take for an autobiographical version of its author, which to my mind, is a bit of an insult!) ends the book with a chapter entitled (in a stroke of inspired genius) 'The End'. Arthur has decided to leave all his cares behind and sail for America on the SS Parthia (I can see why they are fooled into thinking Arthur is George, honest I can, as Parthia was the name of the ship George sailed on - see Commonplace 190). Arthur is given this rationale:
He would go to the New World, not to its civilised parts, but out into the extreme West where in arduous struggle with the powers of Nature, he might forget all his past existence and - he could conceive it possible - in time, lead a happy life.
NB Only George would still refer to the US as 'The New World' nearly 400 years after Columbus, and 800-ish after Leif Erikson - and 100 after its Independence.
We don't really know why George he went to the States. His biographers tend to think he was given no choice but to emigrate to America, and that his decisions were made for him by friends of the Gissing family who stepped in to sort out the mess he'd made in order to ease the shame for his mother and siblings. Europe was a common destination for those who had fallen foul of the established way of British life, it being a place of cultivation and relative civilisation. But with no connections there, and very little by way of cash, that would have been a leap too far, psychologically, if not geographically, for George. In the age-old tradition of what he later described as 'jobbery' (aka 'advantage'), a bad thing in his opinion when others did it, but acceptable when it furthered his own agenda, making use of family connections to put him in touch with anyone who might help made sense. Having letters of recommendation would guarantee some sort of support network in his new place of settlement, and so the wheels of influence turned up William Lloyd Garrison, a legend of a man whose life had been dedicated to social reform (an abolitionist from the early days of the movement) who lived in Massachusetts. Money was raised from well-wishers and sympathetic supporters, and so George set off with much more than the average exile would have had in his gander bag.
What might he have found to interest him there? 1876 was the centenary year, and below is the flag used at the time, reflecting the number of states in the United States as 38. It's strange to think of George being in the States when the likes of Jesse James and Wyatt Earp were around doing their things, but he was. The US was in a deep recession, but that didn't stop the entrepreneurial muse bringing the world the first telephone call and Heinz ketchup, and the first Trans-continental Express train arriving in San Francisco 83 hours after leaving New York. This was the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. And it was the year Jack London, writer, adventurer and reporter back from the Abyss was born. George would never achieve as much or travel as far, but for a brief while Jack and George shared a country.
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| The flag in use 1877-1890 |
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