George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 194  George & His American Notebook PART ONE.

One of the great myths about George is that he was a 'victim of circumstance', and battled insurmountable foes that saw his literary talents wrecked on the shores of adversity. This is simply not true. It suited George to create the impression he was a victim and to let others think he had faced unique challenges no man could overcome, despite his best efforts. He had, what is termed in common parlance, a 'chip on his shoulder', because life didn't go the way he wanted, and rather than use his abilities to abide such experiences, he threw in the towel and put everything down to 'fate', thereby exonerating himself whilst abdicating his responsibility for his own predicament. If you ever doubt this, then think again about that lifelong craven need he had for 'sympathy', voiced when he once included in his Commonplace Book this: More than most men am I dependent on sympathy to bring out the best that is in me. Why is he especially deserving? No idea; and George gives us no clues as to why he is a special needs case.

Cupid's Span by Claes Oldenburg and Coojse van Bruggen 2002

This plea for special treatment was the work of a major psychological game-player who needed, possibly more than anything else, to manage how the public formed its opinion of his persona. Why? Because the reality was too out of sync with what educated, middle class intellectuals were thinking and putting into action, at that time. His private life - his real Private Life, and not that odious pile of tosh that is The Private Life of Henry Ryecroft - was informed by a nature that was spiteful, selfish, spineless, ruthless, vengeful, mean-hearted, secretive, petty-minded and self-serving, and, at times, amoral. George was living at a time when men were beginning to abandon such barbarism, but he could not evolve and join the social revolution. Even in his own lifetime, George was an anachronism.   

Leaning Fork With Meatball and Spaghetti by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen 1994

George spent a little over a year in America (1876/7) after he was released from prison having served a sentence for stealing from fellow Owens College students. Despite making good money from winning cash prizes, and no doubt receiving some sort of financial support from his mother, George felt the need to steal money and books, and probably anything he could lift without getting caught. Those who think George was some kind of innocent dope who stole for the good of others are in denial. He stole for his own purposes - because at the bottom of it, even if he had stolen money Robin Hood style to give to the poor, giving other people's money away serves the giver's purpose (in feeling powerful) first and the recipient's, second. This is an early example of how George's primary defenders smooth over the cracks in their hero's facade. They tell us he stole to give the money to his girlfriend to prevent her from being a prostitute, but they have no proof of his motivation or what he spent the money on, or even if his girlfriend knew he was a thief. And, more importantly, there is no proof that she ever considered a career in the sex trade.

Floor Cake by Claes Oldenburg 1962

Whilst in America, George kept a small book of jottings known now as The American Notebook. Like many of his personal ideas notebooks, it reveals more about his inner workings than he probably ever thought it might. Let's start at the beginning, with an extract from its introduction by renowned Gissing scholar, Bouwe Postmus, who warns us that the book's contents don't really live up to the hype - most of the jottings were written after George's return to the UK. Already we see the emergence of a conflict between the reality and the myth - so often with George, what you see/read is not what you get. Take, for example, that part where Mr Postmus gives us what he refers to as the 'riddle' of George's claims to have been dirt poor in America, to the point of near starvation. He writes:
One wonders whether these particular hardships - so frequent and constant a feature of Gissing's life over the years - were in any way based upon the young writer's own serious shortage of funds. For, let us consider the evidence: A conservative estimate of Gissing's income for the period January-September 1877 alone amounts to a sum of around $500. There was his teacher's salary for January and February, $130 for two months, plus the proceeds of the twenty short stories he published (estimated at ca $325) and the sum of $45 that he received for the sketch he wrote for Appleton's Journal, which comes to a grand total of $500. If we leave out of account any additional income he may have earned from his photographic 'efforts', the fact remains that $500 ought to have been more than sufficient to keep a single person. If we put the rate of exchange in 1877 at £1=$4.80, Gissing's American income would have been equivalent to ca £105 in nine months. Now, with regard to the size of incomes in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in England, it has been established that the average earnings of a working-man's family of four and a half persons was reckoned at about 30s a week (£78) in 1882. In 1875, of the 215 white-collar workers employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, in middle-class occupations, such as commercial clerks, accountants, cashiers and book-keepers, 179 received no more than £150. and 96 of these were in receipt of less than £100. Furthermore, to put Gissing's 'poverty' into perspective, the average salary of a professor at Owens College in 1875 was £500. And, to end with a striking example of the level of contemporary American incomes, the first Secretary and Acting Librarian of the Chicago Public Library, who entered upon his duties in July 1872, was appointed on a salary of $600 per annum. 

Gissing in his first letter from America reported to his brother William that he paid $10 per week for room and board. And, after his move to Waltham, he found himself a very comfortable place, living with a private family, for which he only paid $8 a week, including washing. Given Gissing's fairly minimal needs, one is hard put to account for the persistent complaints about threatening bankruptcy, actual or imagined. Or should we resort to educated guesswork in order to explain his poverty, such as his continuing to send money to Nell in Manchester? Or, missing a month's salary in Waltham, as a result of his sudden departure? The riddle remains.

Flying Pains by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen  2000

So here we have a distinct difference between how George presented his economic situation, and the facts. Of course, to be taken for a hero, one has to overcome great trials - it's just George didn't really have any, except for those he courted by his own inherent weakness of character or the ones he invented. Poverty in America just didn't happen, yet he dined out on that myth and used the lie to create his 'hard done by' persona. Perhaps he thought it would sell more books - after all, his early works were set in the worst neighbourhoods of the most impoverished parts of London. But, back to George being an anachronism - he was competing with the likes of James Greenwood, the famous 'Amateur Casual' journalist who disguised himself as a pauper to report back to the legendary Pall Mall Gazette on what life was like in a workhouse or on the mean streets. It was one of the first 'undercover' investigations, akin to the Maiden Tribute undertaken by WT Stead (See Commonplace 180). But Greenwood had done it 1866, fourteen years before the publication of George's first novel, 'Workers in the Dawn'. Maybe George saw his own USP as pretending at being The Authentic Voice Of One Who Has Endured Great Suffering And Want and that would be what sold his books to the discerning reading public.

This publicity stunt only lasted until he grew fed up with imagining the doings of the poor, but by then, he simply couldn't jettison it for fear of being revealed as a hypocrite and a liar as well as a thief, which is why he clung to it until the day he died, ending his days in relative financial security, yet leaving his sons to be educated thanks to the public purse. Not very noble; definitely not heroic!

As for the suggestion George was sending money back from America to England to pay for Nell's upkeep.... more of this in PART TWO.