George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 205  George & The Curse of the Bohemians PART ONE

With pictures from Simeon Solomon (1840 - 1905).

The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love
by Simeon Solomon 1865

'Nothing but terror and despair at first; then, gradually, the mind, like the body, adjusts to this appalling condition.' So said French author Alphonse Daudet when he was describing his experience of syphilis. He had contracted the disease very young, at age 17, when he was mixing with the bohemians of the demi-monde of Paris, not from a lady of the night, but from a posh woman who worked at the French Imperial court. Towards the end of his life, the agony of syphilitic bones made Daudet's life a misery, though he did his best to always seem to the outside world as cheerful and phlegmatic - unlike George, who was a wimp whenever he was ill. Daudet's struggle with syphilis is wonderfully imagined in Julian Barnes’ translation of notes made by Daudet, published in 2002 as ‘Alphonse Daudet: In the Land of Pain’.

Daudet was one of George’s favourite writers, for his simple way of expressing observations he made of villagers and farm workers, more than what he wrote of the life he lived beside a full range of intellectuals with whom he associated. When George heard of his death in 1897 (he was on holiday in Italy), he wrote in his Diary (December 18th) that Daudet was as great a writer as Dickens – which is the way I am choosing to interpret what he actually wrote: The Italian paper tells me today of the death of Alphonse Daudet. It is a most remarkable coincidence that he fell down senseless at the dinner table (7.30 pm.) – thus completing the resemblance of his life to that of Dickens. It is characteristic of George that he has little to say by way of a eulogy; he never really praised anyone he saw as competition. 

A little flavour of George doing his best to copy Daudet can be heard in ‘The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’ (1903), though without fully capturing either the charm of Daudet or the affection with which the Frenchman regarded his fellow humans. See Daudet’s ‘Letters From My Windmill’ (1869) to see the writer George could never be but would have settled for. 

Study of a Girl 1873

George would have known that Daudet suffered from syphilis and died of it – after all, he followed the cultural doings of the French and prided himself on his knowledge of all things literary, and Daudet’s illness followed the same fate suffered by Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert, Maupassant and Baudelaire. By late 1897, George was fighting a losing battle with his own disease. His journey to Italy gives us one of the best accounts of this, when he took to his bed at Cotrone, and was treated by Dr Enrico Sculco with quinine, a drug we now associate with malaria, but which was used in the days before effective antibiotics to treat symptoms of paretic fever. All of the paretic manifestations George experienced – skin rashes, joint pains, fever, delirium and malaise, suffered for a short intense period are all symptomatic of paresis. And Dr Sculco knew this.   

After George's death, when his second wife, Edith, was committed to Fisherton House asylum, it was the ravages wrought on her mind by syphilis – and the nightmare of living with George and his controlling, hard-hearted cruelties – that undid her. Information about Edith's time at Fisherton Asylum is to be found in the Gissing Journal of July 2010 (Volume XLVI Number 3) written by Anthony Petyt.

The Fisherton House Asylum records (Anthony Petyt discovered) show clinical reviews every three months - these would have been the doctor's notes. Nursing notes on patients' care and treatment would have been made weekly, at least, usually on a Sunday, but all kinds of basic things would be recorded by nurses, including weight measurement, bowel movements (vitally important when nursing epileptic patients!), baths taken, treatments administered (such as wound care and dressings); injuries, doctors' deliberations and examinations, medication given, monthly menses; food and drink taken/refused, visitors received, and pocket money expenditure - all standard depending on hospital policy and the thoroughness of staff to record such happenings. 'Incidents' would be recorded - these would include entries for how compliant vs troublesome the patient was with regard to staff and other patients. Woe betide any patient who pissed off a nurse by handing out too much backchat - it would all be recorded; if a patient attacked a fellow patient, that would be described and logged. If a patient attacked a nurse...that would be dealt with summarily and harshly. It should be remembered, psychiatric nursing was not the noble profession it is today - staff working in institutions then were little more than gaolers and had no real sense of vocation. In Edith's time, of course, some nursing staff were compassionate and caring, but the system was not set up for too much identification with the feelings of the patient - unlike the bedrock of today's more empathetic and humanistic service - but as a form of containment and supervision. For a good understanding of asylums in Edith's time, read Sarah Wise's book: click. Another thing to dwell on - even today, in psychiatry, once a patient is given a diagnosis it is very hard for anyone to change it - or challenge it.

The Angel of Death 1896

What we have to go on, from the Fisherton House notes on Edith, is illuminating, but it needs looking at in terms of definitions and frequency of occurrence of observable signs of illness. However (and this is the voice of experience speaking!), what we have has been recorded by different doctors with differing levels of knowledge and skill in their specialism, some of whom possibly never sat and spoke to Edith but used nursing notes, and a chat with the ward superintendent over a cup of tea and a finger biscuit, as references. Or, they might read the previous doctor's entry, and add odd comments, with their rationale being: 'Well, this patient has an intractable condition; she won't have changed much since last quarter, will she?' and just cut and paste what was previously in the file. 

Superficially, it looks impossible to pick apart the Fisherton notes and make any sort of a diagnosis - so some might assume Edith was just 'mad' - that dreadful, powerfully negative term now rightly out of use. But, we can find clues even in these brief entries - some of them amount, in the Gissing Journal's rendering to five words for three months' reflections on doctors' expert observations! 'Seems well' or 'seems unchanged' were frequent comments recorded by doctors almost habitually when I was a mental health nursing practitioner. 

 

Untitled 1905

From the time of her admission (to Fisherton House) September 1904, and through to June 1905, Edith was described as excited, deluded, threatening and dangerous and violent.  We might take 'excited' as meaning hyper-manic or over-active, or even anxious. But, some people are highly strung by nature and 'live on their nerves', as they say in common parlance. However, this can also be a symptom of paresis (see below). Delusions are false beliefs or erroneous translations of internal thoughts or memories which become confused in the mind. They are not lies - the patient believes them to be true. In Edith's case, she maintained George Gissing was her husband - which he had been, so it is an example of  how the people in charge of her care had little understanding of her as a real person. It also highlights how dangerous it is to jump to conclusions about what you think you understand about a patient's mind. Edith also thought he was still alive as she may not have known he was dead. So, her delusions are not entirely false beliefs, are they? 'Threatening and dangerous' sounds much worse than it probably was - based on the fact Edith did not do much damage to anyone - or it would have been recorded in the notes. I seriously doubt if she was 'dangerous and violent' to any degree (any more than any of us might be when detained against our wishes and surrounded by demented people) - again, there would have been serious repercussions to this sort of behaviour and she would have been medicated or 'dealt with' to suppress this sort of behaviour by order of the medical staff. If it is not recorded, it must have been trivia, because anyone injured could claim 'danger money', still an aspect of psychiatric pay even today. Besides, 'dangerous', used here, is meaningless - unless we are told in which way she is dangerous, it could mean anything and nothing. Generally, any threats to staff are treated with a zero tolerance approach - and patients tend to be penalised either legitimately, or in underhand ways. If Edith was free to move around the ward, and if she wasn't restrained by any manual restraint (straitjacket, etc) she can't have been that much of a handful. 

As Edith tended to be a bit verbal, she probably specialised in spoken insults and sarcasm. Before the days of the 'liquid cosh' click, physical punishment was meted out behind closed doors, and solitary confinement and restrictions were used to penalise troublesome people. Unless Edith was punished - which would normally have been recorded in the incident log - the chances are she was never much of a challenge, except for being stubborn and uncooperative. However, it must remembered, being stubborn and uncooperative amounts to making a stand against perceived tyranny, and most persons committed to an institution against their will feel aggrieved and persecuted, so anyone who makes a stand is considered a troublemaker. Edith always stood up to George's bullying, even though it didn't get her far, but she was no shrinking violet (unlike Marianne aka Nell had been), but her rebellion was just another thing George hated about her. However, any patient who tried to claim they were being bullied or abused by staff would be accused of... what else but a persecution complex! 

Something happens in or about June 1905. Edith is described as quieter and better behaved since the last note but continues full of delusions, will not believe her husband is dead, says she got carbolic acid in her tea previous to coming here, etc. In the September, she is described as obstinate and troublesome at times... in the December: Has quite a depressed air, states that she tasted carbolic acid in her tea, that her husband is in this asylum & that he writes on the ward door. As the tea claims involve the sense of taste - which is an external-stimulus response - the chances are this might have been an hallucination, not a delusion. Hallucinations are based on sensory input being wrongly processed either physically (by an altered or abnormal brain) or cognitively. However, carbolic acid as a disinfectant in hospitals was becoming standard in the early 1900s and was of particular interest to psychiatric settings as it masked the smell of urine. Patients who were 'difficult', in terms of behaviour, were often housed with others who were difficult - and many of these would have been incontinent of urine and faeces. Carbolic acid 'gets in the mouth', as we call it, and produces an aftertaste - as strong odours tend to do. Maybe that smell is what tainted the tea - to Edith's taste buds? Smell is the last sense to die - and it is, therefore, the strongest to persist in memory. This sort of instant diagnosis of signs that could have alternate significance illustrates how easy it is for staff to make diagnostic pronouncements that could by counter-productive or iatrogenic because they are just plain wrong. 

JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO SEE HOW EDITH ENDED HER DAYS.