Commonplace 220 George & His Leap From Mrs Coward to Mrs Frederic Harrison. PART TWO.

Detail from Ethel's 1882 portrait by WB Richmond
entered for the 1883 Summer Exhibition.

Mrs Ethel Bertha Harrison, at the time George really needed to win her sympathy was probably the only woman of the middle classes he knew well enough to treat like a mother-surrogate. She was not much older than him, but she would have carried the air of authority he recognised as parental - and as he often socialised with her and the Harrison boys, it was natural to regard her as a more maternal, rather than a sexual, presence (though the two are not mutually exclusive!). His own mother (he reported) was a sphinx he could not get close to emotionally and did not connect with intellectually, and yet his ideal of womanhood would have been - if Freud is to be believed - based on her. 

Here, the portrait of Ethel has something of a gentle dreamy faraway look, though that was very much the middle class lady persona in vogue in 1882, when the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood  was still hanging on for dear life in the British middle and upper class aesthetic collective consciousness. When this portrait was shown in the Royal Academy Summer exhibition George made sure every one of his correspondents knew about it - that this was the mother of two of his pupils. She was an ideal mother - from his time spent with the Harrisons in their family group, he would have observed her loving and encouraging relationship with her sons and wondered why his own mother (he said) never behaved so effortlessly toward him and his brothers.

His own mother was less of a subject for portraiture, judging by this unflattering cabinet snap, but the severe look of the no-nonsense woman is eternal and sends out a message of independence and solidity - much needed in Wakefield where she was doomed to soak up any criticism or shame drawn down by her aberrant son. Her capacity for levity and fun (if either were ever present) would have been smothered by the realisation she could be regarded as an outcast based on George's dreadful deeds - enough to wipe the smile off any mother's face. However, Mrs Gissing's sombre dress and lack of feminine gussying up no doubt conceals more beauty than it reveals. Mrs Harrison vs Mrs Gissing - if George ever wondered at the stork delivering him to the wrong address, it must have been reinforced by these two opposites. 

George was now moving in the sort of social circles he felt he was born to, but his interpersonal skills were shaped in more unpretentious surroundings, and so the business of cultivating the appropriate tastes in order to fit in with this new set of associates would have been a necessity. 'Suave' is a word George uses throughout his novels to describe the effortless grace with which these self-assured and self-confident middle class persons conducted themselves, and becoming an ersatz version of such a creature of elegance must have taken a lot of his energy. Superficially, it might be possible to act it out in matters of dress and manners, but the innate attitude of urbane poise is born, not created. Still, George never allowed much contact between his real world and this more sophisticated persona, and pretending to be posh when he wasn't was a sort of scam he pulled with the dual purpose of being useful for his career and a sort of passive/aggressive getting one over on his 'betters'. But, if the Wakefield Gissings carried on like this in their patch, they'd be seen as little more than vulgar snobs. William Gissing once wrote in high dudgeon to George about a gathering he had attended wearing the wrong sort of dress (not the frock sort haha) where he had to endure being patronised about it. Normally a steady sort, William was outraged such a thing as dress code was important. 

The Poem of the Soul and the Angel and the Mother by Louis Janmot c 1840s 

Cultivated tastes and radical thinking were all the rage in the late nineteenth century, and stepping into that milieu took some confidence. In his early years, George was a social chameleon who could chop and change his personas and project these in any given situation. The Harrisons were exactly the sort of people he wanted to be 'in' with, but he must have been acutely aware that, in their minds, he was an employee and never up to their sort of standard. In a Positivist family, it behove them to appear to accept him - socialism and sociology with basic Christian doctrine demanded a sort of demonstration of faith in the concept of social mobility - but George was a highly sensitive sort when it came to offended tender sensibilities and would never have felt truly at ease. His ego defences would ensure he would always feel superior to this charmed group of materially spoilt yet intellectually mediocre minds. Breaking with Positivism was the first step to his own emancipation from the role of employee to the suave front of assumed class, from Wakefield 'back' streets to Piccadilly eateries and clubs.   

The Firebird Design
by Leon Bakst 1910

Elegant, sophisticated worldly Ethel Harrison was much of what George aspired to in a woman. She was attractive, socially at ease, cultured, supportive, well-educated and articulate. Her sons were conspicuously loved and treated affectionately, and were a credit to their parents. There was nothing of the emancipated woman about Ethel in the sense of her behaving like a heroine in a Gissing novel - she had nothing of The Whirlpool's Alma Frothingham in her, and would not have wanted to spend time with Ida Starr, unless it was to offer her a cup of hot soup and an improving pamphlet. She carried out typical social functions in her community of like-minded souls - the middle class woman's drive to help the needy was the bedrock of middle class Victorian life. Where would the working classes have been without them? Probably no worse off. Where would the working classes be today without the ministrations of a well- (some might say over-) educated workforce of social workers, university teachers, community workers? And where would these middle class 'enablers' be without their pay cheques? Identifying social need keeps thousands in work even now!

Girl in a White Kimono
by George Hendrik Breitner 1894

The Harrisons were committed Positivists, which was a creed as much as a philosophy, melding as it did Christianity with Socialism plus a sprinkling of eugenics and various new age ideas - new in the nineteenth century, of course. Positivism was a way of incorporating all the best bits of religion and science - at a time when many assumed Nietzsche was right to claim God was dead (1882's 'The Gay Science' was the first time Fred Nietzsche used that line - gay in the exuberant sense, of course), but we were all headed for Hell in a handcart unless the leading class made a stand. No good leaving it to the elected (by those lucky enough to have the vote) representatives because they were all war-mongers and Empire-builders.

Positivism was a new comprehensive package that would save the civilized world from itself. Being very science-friendly, it was involved in quantifying things and explaining everything in terms of systems and observable phenomena. Society was a series of cogs and wheels that ran the humanity machine and required appropriate mechanical tinkering to work efficiently. Humans could be improved and made more productive and good if only the genius of these aspects could be quantified and replicated. 

Positivists were keen to apply their systems to all aspects of life and George developed his interest in sociology from his involvement with their teachings. The causes and effects of society's ills were clearly spelt out - people can be redeemed and developed, shaped and formed to become useful and law-abiding, and it behoves the rich to support the less well off, the strong to help the weak. By studying social groups, we can understand them and eradicate the bad in them. Poverty was a clear case of a quantifiable state - give it a structure by observing its intricacies and we can begin to address it. Everything could be explained away if only there was data to represent things - data and empirical observation. This concept of gathering information in order to affect outcomes can be seen in the work of Florence Nightingale and her pie charts (originally referred to as polar charts click) to demonstrate the need for sanitary conditions in war zones, through to the poverty maps Clara Collet worked on with Charles Booth. 

Miss Nightingale's influential chart.

Ethel Harrison committed to the cause, and mobilised her friends to provide services for the disadvantaged - not the real ones at the bottom, but the artisan class who were 'decently' poor. She instituted and ran a series of social clubs for young men and women workers (mostly non-integrated sessions). Shaping their behaviour and 'civilising' them - by setting an example for them to follow - you could improve their ways. Education was at the forefront of the drive to develop the resources of the working class, but as we saw in Commonplaces 54 and 55, the various education acts of the Victorian age were designed to upskill a (male) workforce capable of operating the new technologies - but what education is for and why it is useful in terms of what we now call 'self-actualisation' is still a philosophical debate all of its own. However, it would take the twentieth century to realise there is something abhorrent lurking in the core of every social engineering experiment.

When George needed a home for his first wife, he turned to Ethel, who, with her connections among those caring for the disadvantaged, was probably in the know about homes for unwanted chronically ill wives, though we don't know if he 'sold' Marianne aka Nell to her as such. Marianne was a sort of social science experiment gone wrong and the Positivist in the Harrisons would have understood the Gissing marriage in these terms: George had 'married' beneath him to try and better a girl's life and then through no fault of his own it had failed. I doubt he told them the truth - why would he when he wanted the Harrisons on his side? The truth was ugly and non-Christian and ignoble. The baseline for the experiment was built on the incorrect premise that George cared enough to make his experiment work. Lack of accurate vision - a lifelong George trait.

Booth map - Lambeth and its environs

No doubt whatever sob story he told Ethel, he made sure she knew at the bottom of whatever he spoke about, he was suffering and that was why she had to help him. She was a pioneer in this cohort of women he surrounded himself with throughout his life, all of them gullible enough to take whatever tosh he spewed out as gospel truth. Ethel Harrison was in no position to suspect he was guilty of being disingenuous - the middle classes never lie!!! 

At the beginning of his relationship with his mother-surrogate George was still a character in construction, developing his personality and building up the fund of resentment and bitterness his middle age consolidated. He was greedy for more than Ethel could offer in terms of networking and kudos. When Mrs Gaussen turned up, she blew Ethel out of the water. But that's another post!

George grew away from the sanctimonious influence of the Positivists and their drive to improve the world. From mid-1883, he writes that he has fallen out of love with all philosophies and has become as 'artist' - and can only follow the creative muse as his guiding principle. His relationship with Mr and Mrs Harrison carried on in a more distanced way. In April 1889, he writes in his Diary: To dine at the F Harrisons. Usual cordiality. No one there. No one except the Harrisons, his one-time employers and sometime friends (when he needed them) and now mere acquaintances. Everyone in George's 'World of George' was disposable. 

La Japonaise au Bain
by James Tissot 1864

The Harrisons' work for the Positivist cause continued their whole lives and Ethel's was a vociferous voice in many worthy causes. However, it is clear we are not talking of a modern and reforming emancipator of the female cause here. The new vogue for social sciences shone its light on the role of women in society - and once again decided women were to blame for the ills of the world. The dissection of the vital role of women as mothers, home-makers and carers was one George held dear - in The Whirlpool, Alma Frothingham/Rolfe has to kill herself to get over how unmaternal she was to her son and Mrs Abbott has to be redeemed through foster child-rearing in order to be forgiven her sins of failing to keep her own child alive. George had no real belief in the politics of emancipation - but the topic was fair game for attracting the interest of all those young women needing books from Mudie's to ease the boredom en route to their offices and factories. He followed trends that others had debated to death - he never did trail-blazing. 

Think of 'Our Friend The Charlatan' for a while - where the 'hero' Dyce Lashmar discovers a book on sociology and steals its ideas for his own devious purpose, but gets found out. Forget Godwin Peak as an aspect of the real George and look to Dyce Lashmar as the closest we get to seeing him in his fiction! Books on sociology? - pooh!

For all the talk of the Rights of Women bandied about in the late 1800s, precious little could be countenanced that replaced the traditional role of woman as mother and nurturer. And the situation today is not that much improved. George was no trail-blazer for the Rights of Women, and anyone who thinks otherwise just hasn't done the research  or the reading. He was far too much of a deeply conservative mind to think women were the equals of men, simply because the status quo decreed women to be inferior. He was too much of a misogynist to think of women as fully human - remember that quote about women being as smart as the average male idiot? That was the sort of remark that used to be made about people of colour, back in the old colonial slave owning days. But, mostly, George was too unsure of his own intellectual abilities to dare to approach a woman as an equal. He kept away from most men because he didn't want to meet anyone smarter than he was and so to consider half the population as a potential source of intellectual rivals was a step too far. That is why he set his sights on women he considered inferior and when he trapped the likes of Marianne aka Nell, poor Edith, and desperate Gabrielle: he was ensuring his partner was always going to be an un-threatening presence and a doormat. That Edith did her best to fight back and make him think twice about the doormat thing, makes me like her and wish she had been able to survive her marriage to him with her mind intact. She deserves to be remembered and celebrated as the woman who gave him hell!

Commonplace 219 George & His Leap From Mrs Coward to Mrs Frederic Harrison. PART ONE

Hare as token of Love?

In recent posts (Commonplaces 73 & 74) we looked at the role of Mrs Annie Coward in our man's life. She was the Oakley Crescent landlady with whom he had an adulterous affair - if Morley Roberts is to be believed. 

There had been talk of the Cowards leaving the Oakley Crescent house in the summer of 1884 (possibly because their lease was up?) and so George knew he was going to have to move home. But, he actually left in the May, a few months before the Cowards intended to go. Why did he flit? He gives the rather weak excuse that he had grown too comfortable in the Cowards' home, to the detriment of his work, but were there deeper, darker currents flowing? We can assume George wasn't the only tenant Mrs Coward catered to, and, besides, he had the competition of the Cowards' children to soak up Annie's time, so maybe whatever benefits he received were rationed out on a strict basis of how easy his needs fitted in with her busy schedule. Perhaps he felt neglected, with Marianne aka Nell in Brixton and Annie too busy to cater to his particular, peculiar needs. 

William Morris fabric 

In June 1884, wrote to Frederic Harrison to thank him for his pay cheque, but also to smooth the way over Mr and Mrs Harrison's reading of the newly published 'The Unclassed' which shocked and (possibly) offended them. And, as Harrison was his employer (as tutor to their children) there was every chance his livelihood was at stake, so he needed to do some emotional manipulation to win the precious dose of 'sympathy' he so desperately needed and save his metaphorical (and literal!) bacon.

I must do more than merely acknowledge this cheque. I must ask you to let me try & express something of the gratitude I feel for your persistent kindness, - kindness holding on in spite of everything. I came away to-day feeling very miserable: it all looks so like wanton disregard of your feelings & opinion. Yet in every deed I am open to no such charge. No one ever did me such kindness as you have repeatedly, nor in all likelihood will anyone again; & I feel that more strongly to-day than ever. It is simply my fate to outrage those whom I most respect & would most gladly please. It must be hard for you to believe in my sincerity...I write these social passages in a fury; but I scribbled in precisely the same temper when I was ten years old... If only I could hear someone speak a word for a tendency which is an instinct in me. 
What on earth was he writing about when he was aged ten that merited fury?? Nothing - it just sounds good when you are trying to worm yourself out of a hole, and, as with 'fate' in these early days of psycho-babble, it was easy to blame defects on heritage and not own them as free will gone awry.

Rabbits by Johann George Seitz 1870

Frederic Harrison was his father-figure, but George was already beginning to see - in Freudian terms - the old duffer was no longer King of the Hill; his 'son' had outgrown him intellectually and was now more powerful. As it happened, Fred Harrison had, according to Anthony West's account, already begun to smell a rat where George's 'sincerity' was concerned. The details of his marriage to Marianne aka Nell had been kept a secret, and then when George needed advice and practical help, Harrison felt manipulated and deceived - reactions George would not have anticipated, such was his confidence in his ability to construct believable realities and then punt them on to sympathetic souls. Frederic Harrison was a man of the world - up to a point - but George was never half as clever as he thought he was at dissembling. But Mrs Harrison was a powerful figure in her own right and quite capable of discussing all George's little matters with her husband, even to the point of being able to represent him to her husband as one in need of special understanding and support.

Feeding White Rabbits by Frederick Morgan c 1904

Winning Mrs Harrison over to his cause became vitally important if he was to manage the old man. She represents one of George's first demonstrations of his ability to exploit the innate nurturing tendency in women - a role previously abdicated (he claimed) by his own mother, but previously filled by Marianne, and Annie Coward. And she was probably the first truly middle class English woman with whom he spent social time. We know he was invited to join the family on many occasions and ate with them on the days he was teaching the boys. Some of what he learned about social etiquette and the role of women in society - from an actual off the page of a novel woman's perspective - would have come to him from the way Mrs Harrison conducted herself.

It must be remembered George claimed he was not on good terms with his own mother when Mrs Harrison hove into view, and so he would have responded to her as a child does to a mother - because his own was absent. He may have been an adult professional employee when he was teaching, but in social 'family' time such as meals, he would have 'transacted' as a child. This is a normal piece of intergenerational behaviour between older women and younger men, but might have been of particular significance to George as he was a needy boy his whole life long, one who relied on women to fulfil all manner of roles including completing the useful tasks he set them, plus his emotional wants. In fact, in the social time he spent with the Harrisons, he might well have unconsciously taken on the role of Number One Son - the same place he enjoyed in his own family, now sadly denied him as he had shattered the hopes of the Gissings towards a 'normal' family life with his aberrant behaviour at Owens College. This might explain why the Harrison boys considered George to be great fun as a tutor, and why he was happy to supervise them and entertain them when he joined the Harrisons for holidays.

Madonna With White Rabbit by Titian c 1530

George focused his attentions - not necessarily unconsciously - on persuading Mrs Harrison he was a 'good son', and part of this would have been over-compensating when he thought he might have offended her. He had grossly offended his own mother, so he already knew how badly these things can go when they are not well-managed. Making use of her womanly nurturing traits, he wrote to Mrs Harrison to deflect any anger she might be feeling by making her focus on his health - or lack of it. This is the sort of behaviour we learn as children - partly because children tend to expect others to stop all negative thoughts and punishments in the face of incapacity, but also because we get more tender loving care and more attention for being ill than for being well.

Poor poorly George lays it on with a trowel here in this letter - skillfully bidding to deflect any negative views she might have based on her reading of  'The Unclassed', which he knew was not her cup of tea. Focusing on the hard work of his day job (implying it was her fault, she employed him!), leaving him no energy and time for decent work (again, her fault, she employed him!), not saving him from being alone with his ordeal (her fault again for not anticipating his needs) or supplying tender unconditional loving care (her fault for not spontaneously mothering him properly) then leaving him to wither way almost to nothing (her fault for not rushing round with a sympathetic bosom on which to rest his weary head), all alone in a grotty room with no-one to notice him ailing - that nice Mrs

Coward wouldn't have let that happen! O, the monstrous iniquity of it! Forced to fend for himself, it was a miracle he survived - no thanks to HER, that heartless mother-figure of a woman: Bad Ethel Harrison. He writes:

Young Hare by Albrecht Durer 1505

I fancy this attack will prove the climax. The night before last I had, in addition to the neuralgia, a struggle with what I would think would be called bilious fever, - if the name exists. It is cheerful to be alone under such circumstances. I left my old abode in Chelsea solely because I had grown too friendly with the people in the house, & found it increasingly difficult to force myself to solitary work after the other day's work was over; - the last day or two, however, I have wished myself back again. Still, the worst is over now, & nothing but weakness remains. I am taking quinine each morning, & doubtless it does me good.

This is so rammed full of clever little barbs to hook her in - his health; his lonely life; his lack of tender loving care; his commitment to his Art; his continuing need for sympathy; his symptoms of syphilis - for which he is taking quinine. Of course, this last one would probably have been a mystery to George - by 1884, his disease would have been latent, but the physical afflictions it caused would have been emerging. In Commonplace 64, we covered the time George suffered his attack of paresis when in Cotrone and was treated by Dr Sculco - with the quinine powders George habitually carried. Quinine we know as an anti-malarial, but in the days before the full nature of syphilis had been established it was used for the more systemic conditions that were syphilitic in origin, when mercury was contraindicated. In George's day, there was no cure for syphilis, and the treatment of it was largely based on empirical observation by practitioners who had gained experience of the disease 'in the field'. With the dispersal of armed service personnel throughout the British Empire, much of this knowledge was gained in places where quinine was used to treat many fevers and acute conditions. By the 1920s, quinine treatment for syphilis was mainstream click and was said by some to be more effective than Salvarsan (the so-called 'magic bullet'). It remained the drug of choice for some practitioners up until the development of antibiotic therapy. One of its benefits was the relative lack of visible effects - no smell, no unsightly staining of the skin or 'fauces' click and kind to the 'economy' of the bodily system. It was also less toxic and caused far less permanent damage to the nervous system. Notice here George is not claiming to be treating malaria - hardly, as he is living in north London! - so the quinine was being used for another ailment - something he feared might be serious.

So was his flight from Oakley Crescent because Mr Coward discovered the affair or was it because the signs of syphilis had returned, and George was afraid a scandal might ensue? If visible signs of the disease emerged, experienced types like Frederic Harrison would recognise them and the likes of Mrs Harrison might not want George near her children. This would not be the transmissible, infective form of the disease, but the skin lesions and various physical problems that characterise the later, 'latent' phase. The Cowards might not know what was wrong with him, but might not appreciate the gunge and the mess - the other tenants might complain. And, one of his most significant secrets risked being exposed - just when he wanted to attract attention for his writing. A more private lodging where he could avoid contact with others would allow him to regain his apparent health. Annie, too, would be spared the knowledge she had been sleeping with a man with a chronic disease. 

Venus and Mars by Piero di Cosimo 1515

This letter to Mrs Harrison contains some deeper concerns...

Of course all this only means that the conditions of my life are preposterous. There is only one consolation, that, if I live through it, I shall have materials for darker & stronger work than any our time has seen. If I can hold out till I have written some three or four more books, I shall at all events have the satisfaction of knowing that I have left something too individual in tone to be neglected. What was the nature of this 'darker and stronger material'? His disease process is clearly not phthisis (he wouldn't be taking quinine for that) - he mentions no pulmonary concerns whatsoever. He is 27 years old - so something already known to be progressively debilitating and degenerative is troubling him, otherwise he wouldn't allude to it being potentially likely to cut short his life and his life's work. There really is only one possible diagnosis - given his history. Unless, of course, it was all a mighty scam to gain Mrs Harrison's affections. 


JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO SEE HOW MRS HARRISON MADE USE OF GEORGE! 

Commonplace 218  George & Demos' Alleged Failure to Appreciate The Arts.

The Agony In The Car Park by Grayson Perry 2012

George was of the opinion that the only 'culture' of any merit was the stuff appreciated by the middle and above classes. or those exposed to the influence of the Greeks - though where he stood on the cultural sensibility of the working class Greeks is unknown haha, except we know he considered that Italian 'peasants' were innately much better than their British equivalents. This is an odd point of view, for, as in the case of the visual Arts before his own time, as now, many artists came from humble beginnings, yet made stonking work. In fact, during the Renaissance, the production of painting and sculpture was considered as part of the realm of crafts and artisan services, much as wheelwrighting, shepherding, and straw thatching, and so those who practiced it were not generally assumed to be from wealthy, 'aristocratic' beginnings.

Lais of Corinth by Hans Holbein 1526

It was only with the rise of a nouveau riche middle class, with its greater disposable income, and with more bare walls to fill (and more social peers to impress), that Art fell victim to those with snobbish, reactionary tendencies who see things in terms of sorting culture into high and low, good and bad, worthy and vile. In reality, it became a sheep and goats division into worth money or not; only hardcore aficionados realised or admitted we all either like a work of Art, or we don't, we appreciate what it does to us, or we don't, and any other division is largely bullshit. I can admire the work of certain Artists, without liking their work and so never seek it out - Cezanne, for example, leaves me cold, but I admire his craft and value his contribution to Modern Art. However, I would never have a Cezanne print on my wall. But I would have a Tretchikoff to accompany my Flandrin, Warhol, Hockney, Corbet, Rodchenko, Kahlo, Blake, Paul Nash, Chapman Brothers, Van Gogh, Beuys, Turner, Grant Wood and Durer posters. If there was wall space.

Chinese Girl aka The Green Lady
by Vladimir Tretchikoff 1952-3

This insistence that we have to apply a monetary value to Art is a form of cultural fascism, and has reduced most of us to only appreciating Art that is promoted as 'good' by the likes of dealers who price the work, or whoever it is that decides what should be allotted gallery space in the latest blockbuster mega exhibition at the Tate Gallery (or whatever equivalent capital city's main gallery). Sadly, the general public rarely gets to see works that are truly representative of what is 'Art', now, and don't have a say in what shows are mounted at major galleries. Anything challenging or revolutionarily new is frozen out and kept marginalised, for fear it won't put bums on seats and make money for the gallery. This sort of excluded Art is then assumed to be unpopular and that's how the Catch 22 justification for not putting on shows that are mainly about making money comes into play. But how can it become popular if no-one gets to view it? Anyhoo, Art is further commodified by those who choose what sponsorship underpins all large Art shows, ensuring Art becomes nothing more than a master-stroke of advertising copy for Big Corporations. Shame on us all.

Of course, this is another way of separating a group of people into 'them' and 'us' - a necessary thing to do only for those usually insecure types with a need to manifest their social status. To some, having a refined sensibility for Art is dubiously seen as a marker of 'aristocracy' in the sense that George meant it (as in superior to his fellows), but the fact is the producers of Art rarely see themselves as anything like aristocratic. In fact, most Artists want to be democratically available to the widest possible audience, and shudder at the sort of elitism George championed. But George used his affection for Art as a cloak to mask his less than refined credentials - his very humble beginnings could not be exculpated by wealth (he never made much money) and his lack of literary success could not be addressed by his own talents, neither could he demonstrate any superior attributes (not having any!) so the only place he could make a stand was in proclaiming himself to be an Artist, above the ordinary and commonplace, with special talents only a few could appreciate. As it turned out, very few haha. But the ego is a very diligent Jiminy Cricket on our shoulders, and so he couldn't help himself out of this world view, once he was in it. Poor George seems to have missed out on all the modern Art he might have viewed in his travels, presumably because it was radical and challenging and required the viewer to form new patterns of thinking about all things creative - ideas being one of the modern concepts inherent in the new work. George was not one to stick his neck out and pronounce an opinion, for fear of being wrong. But, old masters/mistresses of Art were universally acclaimed and so George just hitched himself to their wagon, knowing his opinion was not expected to be original or intrinsically his own point of view. In fact, to deviate from the received wisdom amounted to cultural heresy, and George would never have sanctioned that.

Boy and Dog by Jean Michel Basquiat 1982

To hijack culture and introduce artificial parameters and boundaries and to make hard and fast rules about what is accepted as good/bad, or valuable/worthless, is a thought crime. I can't think of a single Artist I have ever read about who is made or is making work for the enjoyment of a few rich toffs, no matter how 'cultured' these toffs be. Yes, they want to make a living from Art, but few want to appeal to people who don't genuinely 'get' them and their work. And, as aesthetic sensibility is cultural and not genetic, anyone can be a receptive and appreciative audience for Art, as long as they are exposed to it, and get to see a lot of it - and from an early age - and providing no-one puts them off by criticising their personal preferences. Most ordinary folk don't 'get' Art because no-one has ever talked them through an Artwork, and opened up its possibilities, perhaps because the self-proclaimed 'aristocrats' want to keep it all for themselves.

Portrait of Peter Higgs (he of the boson and shared winner with Francois Englert of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics) by Ken Currie 2008 click

And, so, the bottom line is, you either like Art, or you don't; liking it is not a sign of special skills or uncanny capabilities, inborn nobility or intellectual insights, just as not liking Greek poetry or football or oysters is not a sign you are a numbskull dingbat. Because, what we are really talking about here is TASTE - which means preference.

Laying Down the Law by Sir Edwin Landseer 1840

However there is one group who probably find Art quite a challenge to truly understand, and that is your sociopath. These are the outlaws from society who find it difficult to empathise and identify with their peers, and who have to struggle to make emotional life compute; the sort of people who make unsuccessful petty thieves, occasional wife beaters, some-time adulterers, habitual liars, who are self-centred and secretive and who are generally incapable of holding down a steady job. Hmm... does that remind you of anybody???

Commonplace 217  George & His Valentines - The Tricky Business of Finding A Wife. Warning! Contains Mucky Pictures.

Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains - daisy chains - of interactivity. Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'his,' 'her' or 'their' wish and yours. Andy Warhol.

The divine Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windermere's Fan, famously says that a cynic 'knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing'.

American Gothic by Grant Wood 1930 (Such a subversive image.)

In one way or another, George spent a good deal of his time and precious energy tangling with the ladies. It must have been a supreme annoyance to him that he was a hopeless pawn in the chess game of woman/man bonding, but he never thought the life of a bachelor held much allure. What was the cause of his failure to find the perfect lady to love?

He seems to have indulged in some fairly magical (ie deluded) thinking when he thought that if you just put in enough effort you can make a silk purse from a thing that isn't a silk purse to begin with. I don't mean any disrespect to any of his women, just that all of them were inappropriate to the task of being 'Mrs Gissing' - that booby prize in the game of life George dangled as a seductive inducement in front of three Odd Women. Maybe if they had joined forces and all married him at the same time these three would have had a better time of it.

The Misses Vickers by John Singer Sargent 1884 (Interestingly, the girl on the right is doing the British Sign Language sign for vagina! By accident, no doubt!)

We know from Freud's Oedipus complex that men are attracted to their mothers as a type - and then conflicted over having sex with them for the same reason. George had
a small gene pool to draw a wife from because he hardly met any single women - Miss Curtis (Eastbourne tobacconist heiress!) and Miss Ash (friend of his sisters') were optioned because they were in his line of fire. And both were that child-like type of girl that he lusted after (though hopefully not in a sinister way!). Both seem to have turned him down, which was the right choice to make. Not every young girl prefers the scouring of a gruff walrus moustache when she can get a tickle from some silky pencillings! Miss Curtis was far too young and gauche, and Miss Ash would have known about the Owens incident - though biographers cling to the notion he was rejected by her family because of his unconventional religious views - utter tosh, of course, or wishful thinking, in order to be kind.

Was it that he needed a live-in carer to do all those icky little jobs around the home that he either couldn't or wouldn't do and didn't want to pay anyone to complete? Perhaps he needed an in-house pupil to fulfil his pedagogic fantasies? Maybe a subject in his own little kingdom? Or, was it a loved-up, phthisis-fuelled sex drive that drove him? For who claimed to be dedicated to aesthetics, was it the natural beauty of the nubile female form - the soft, pliant, yielding flesh, the mounds and valleys exuding sweet odours of the feminine, the hair, the mouth, the dimples at the back of the knees, the cuppable breasts... that kept him dangling and interested? Or was it that he simply couldn't stand his own company? It's hard to live alone - you have no-one else to blame when you screw stuff up haha.

Roman Phallus knick-knack

First of all, what could he offer a lady as an inducement? He was relatively handsome in an un-macho way, if a little seedy-looking and a bit ratty if seen from a certain angle (in photos, his short-sightedness gave him an air of cross-eyed gormlessness); he was clean-ish, thanks to cold baths (though he was a tad slovenly around the house); he was quiet (and resented others making noise); he had a sort-of job for which he was paid reasonably well, but never really put in the hours required to make a decent living; he was fertile. He liked animals, birds and cats in particular and positively melted to mush in the presence of a kitten. He worked from home, so you would never have been able to relax and grab a cup of coffee and a morsel of walnut cake when you wanted. Bummer.

Added to these was a comprehensive collection of personality tics (most annoying to anyone who had to spend extended time with him) of which I can only think of a few, such as ridiculous pedantry, social ineptitude, solitary vices, obsessional traits, imagined and real poor health, extensive bigotry, arrogance, fastidious anally retentive pickiness, illogical parsimony, self-pity, flexibility with the truth, neuroticism,
snobbery, reactionary tendencies, lack of empathy, grumpiness, ineptitude with basic self help skills, cynicism, selfishness, bossiness, mawkish need for sympathy, inability to learn from mistakes, misogyny, poor teeth, addiction to tobacco, bibliomania, conflicted but overwheening mother-love... All this would have unveiled itself over a few months of close proximity, but might not have been apparent to the young and inexperienced in the ways of the world, at an initial meeting. Perhaps Mr Underwood, Edith's father saw it; perhaps Mr Curtis and Mr Ash saw it, too.

Roman offerings from Pompeii
Sculpted from life, it seems.

George made a great deal of fuss about not being able to win a middle-class 'equal' for a mate, but, let's face it, it wasn't his lack of money that stopped him: it was his criminal record. And his failure to accept he was born to modest, lowly folk. So, George was reduced to finding a woman from the sort of background he assumed would not be shocked at his criminal past, and he assumed that would be the lower middle classes or even the working classes, who were all basically uncivilised, to his dreadful Tory pretentious views. Did he ever take Edith into his confidence about his criminal past? Did he heck!! Did she ever find out about it? Possibly. All his hoity-toity ways and then he turns out to be an ex-con!! That would have seriously undermined his position as social superior - it's not about your regional accent, it's about your integrity, in the game of moral high ground. If she knew and ever breathed a word to anyone outside their household... Is that why he took Walter away? Did she tell the boy his father was a thief? George claimed she criticized and insulted him to Walter; telling this sort of truth might have been too much for George to bear. Did he begin to frame her as mentally unsound from this - he wouldn't be the first man to cast aspersions on his wife's sanity in order to gain himself some advantage, and keeping George's good name (such as it was) would have been enough of an incentive. And, he had form: he often claimed Marianne aka Nell's mind was unsound because of her normal feminine traits like making female friends and chatting, and he resented both women talking to neighbours, disapproved of them making friends, and referred to all their conversation as 'gossip'.


A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros
by William-Adolphe Bougeureau 1880

We know some of his peers knew about his prison record but were too polite to mention it, but a maltreated wife with a grievance might want to make him squirm. However, I don't think Edith was a hundredth as bad as the biographers claim she was - even taking into account what George feeds us.
You will see from this click serious light-hearted superficial in-depth scientific exploration of all things amour, it demonstrates irrefutably that George was doomed to failure because he failed to make use of these three basic rules:
1. Play up to whatever makes you different.
2. Go out and get what you want.
3. Speak up if something bothers you.
George spent a good deal of his time pretending to be something he wasn't and desperate to avoid anyone finding out about his past. He hated going out unless it was on his own terms and he couldn't stand up and assert himself in a positive way. And he demanded his women abandon their roots, preferences and opinions and conform to his view of what they should be, think and do.


A Tiny Token of a Mighty Love

When meeting a prospective mate, I expect George thought he came across as suave, genteel and cultured, a little formal and a tad reserved. Often he had already paved the way, by letter, with his confounded need for sympathy, which he realised is catnip (kitten nip?) to most women. For an example of Gissing on the pull, let's look at how he drew in, then rejected out of hand, Miss Edith Sichel.

Edith Helen Sichel (note the forenames!), five years younger than George, had a vast social circle, mostly wealthy intellectuals. She was a renowned philanthropist and social reformer, and opened a home for orphan girls. She was a writer, with an interest in the French Renaissance, Catherine de Medici and Michel de Montaigne. She authored and reviewed books, wrote letters on the social evils of the day and was not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get stuck in. It was her article in the Murray's magazine of April 1888 that drew George's attention, but his first letter to her was on June 8th 1889, ostensibly to thank her for it and explain his oeuvre. Marianne had been dead over a year, and he had no female muse; his trips to Europe had left him feeling lonely, and came to realise Miss Sichel was a useful contact to have. Being a weak woman (!) with a bent for philanthropy, she probably oozed precious sympathy.

Edith Sichel aged around 25,
about the time she met George.

He inveigled her into inviting him to her modest home at Chiddingfold in Surrey, and he went on September 28th 1889. He writes to sister Ellen: 'Miss Sichel did not greatly interest me, but she is intellectual and sharp-witted. A very Jewish face. ... Now you remember the problem we once talked over, - Are these London women of larger brain than women in the country? Both these persons (Miss Sichel and Miss Ritchie who shared the house) read French, German, Italian, & have a wide acquaintance with the literature of each language.... Well, the explanation of course is that they have always lived in intellectual society. It is not remarkable brain-power that distinguishes them, but opportunity.' (He misses the point that lack of opportunity is what denies Demos a better life!)

Here on display, we have some of George's worst traits: a tendency to be dismissive of anyone he suspected of being his intellectual equal or better; his inability to accept women as intelligent in their own right; a tendency he had for needing to bring down a peg or two anyone he felt threatened by; failure to look beyond the superficial where women were concerned. Add to this a touch of anti-Semitism, and you can see why she was lucky she 'did not greatly interest' him. But, ever ready to add a name to his address book, George kept Miss Sichel on Team Gissing for a future time of need - which time occurred when he was desperate to offload Edith and Alfred.

A Boy, Greatly Interested in Miss Sichel, Prepares.

Marcus Aurelius wrote that sex "is the friction of a piece of gut and, following a sort of convulsion, the expulsion of some mucus". This is the sort of depressing macho guff George might have taken on board. Did he turn to the Classics for guidance on all things romantic, or stay very much at home with the English take on it? He will have seen a fair bit of Antique Erotica on his travels, but he could always come home to this sort of malarkey...


The New Pygmalion by Thomas Rowland 1800

So, why did George make such a lash up of courtship? Well, he never loved anyone, so that will have been a factor. His emotions were so controlled as to be absent - even he had insight into this, and once said he was 'unlovable' - though that could have been one of his psychological ploys to get sympathy, making the listener immediately respond with 'of course you are'. But perhaps his biggest failing was he just didn't like other people. Even his longest-serving and loyal male friends - Eduard Bertz and Morley Roberts - were judged and found wanting and failed to live up to his standards. He went on record as saying that both of them were beneath him, didn't understand him, and were inferiors. He never let on to them that they had failed - that would have meant losing their affection and approval, and these two dough bags were too useful to his ego for him to jettison them completely. Dumping people was a lifelong trait - outlive your usefulness and you got thrown away. Wives, friends, and children all went to the wall when he weighed their contribution to his life and found they came up light. If you ask me, they were all better off without him.  

Commonplace 216 George & The Muse of Poetry.

Lyric Poetry by Henry Oliver Walker 1896

Like any good song - or Art work in general - a poem is an immediate ping of recognition, as if thoughts (and, more often, feelings) have coalesced, and things unexpressed in the reader or hearer have suddenly been revealed by another. As someone who has never written a poem - ever - I wonder: what is it that tells a poet to go fetch a pen? However, I do read poetry - not academically, or with any subtextual literary overview of the genre - but poems are my go-to when I need a certain resolution to a mood, much like I turn to Leonard Cohen when flirting with the Darkness (not the rock band) is required, and I want a bit of a nostalgic sing-along.

Erato

George liked to show off his knowledge of the workings of poetry; he thought it tragic that some of us don't know the following information about lyric poetry - that it all hangs on meter and stress of syllables. As poetry is meant to be read out loud, the structure, like a good sentence with punctuation in the;right:places' helps us scan the piece. Is this useful when it comes to reading it, or only when writing it? According to this click lyric poetry can be divided into:

• Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable.
• Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable. In English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry.^[3]
• Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables
• Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.
• Dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.
• Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables.

Some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain.

Polyhymnia

The Muses were female personifications of aspects of the Arts in Ancient Greece. These sculptures of the three responsible for poetry, are shown with their associated symbols - Erato, the Muse of lyric poetry, is shown with a lyre - lyric poetry was often sung; we get the word 'lyrics' from her. Polyhymnia, the Muse of sacred poetry, is seen with a veil, or dancing. Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry and appears carrying a writing tablet.

In common parlance, a muse is (usually) a woman with very great presence who exerts a sensual, sensory, or psychic influence over another - usually, a man. Women could not be permitted access to the power of making Art (women have babies; men have Art), but the passive role of being a catalyst in the creative process and facilitator of creativity, men consider acceptable. Even now, women Artists tend to be the exception, and their creations are generally looked down on by the mainly male Art Establishment.

George was a poet who needed his Muse. His first wife, Marianne aka Nell, was that person for a little while - for a year or two. I doubt if Edith was freighted in to fulfil that role, and poor Gabrielle Fleury was not really muse material. He made use of women to spark him into action, but he was so conflicted about how to deal with his emotions, he really wasn't able to woo a woman in anything like a romantic, non-needy way - he seemed to frighten off girls who might have developed an interest in him (Miss Curtis, Miss Ash) possibly because of his emotional and intellectual intensity.

Here is a poem by one of George's favourite poets, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856);
            I love this white and slender body

           I love this white and slender body,
            These limbs that answer Love's caresses,

Passionate eyes, and forehead covered

With heavy waves of thick, black tresses.

You are the very one I've searched for

In many lands, in every weather.

You are my sort; you understand me;

As equals we can talk together.

In me you've found the man you care for.

And, for a while, you'll richly pay me

With kindness, kisses and endearments -

And then, as usual, you'll betray me. 

Calliope

In essence, this is George's ideal girl - pale-skinned, raven-haired, fragile, needy, sympathetic... and then because George is a pessimist by nature, and a Masochist by inclination, his dream can only end in bitter regret. His faith in women was less than zero, which is only to be expected as he did not think his mother loved him enough, and that she was a cold and distant presence in his life. But he employed a 'get them before they get you' attitude and always dealt the first blow in any battle with his womenfolk, usually inflicting maximum harm with all-out war the inevitable consequence. In fact, it was a 'betray them before they betray you' situation and it was only death that stopped him turning on wife number 3, after the first two Mrs Gissings were routed..

In 1883, he wrote 'Hope in Vain', at a time when his relationship with Marianne/Nell appeared to be over - they were living apart and Marianne was making no effort to return. George regarded himself as a single man. According to the Coustillas biography Volume 1, it was written after a trip to Hastings. Now, we know George liked the south coast seaside towns (see Commonplaces 90 and 91) and Hastings was where he had sent Marianne (back in the days they lived together) to a private arrangement which sounds like a single patient lunacy home, possibly a place that specialised in epileptic care. When he went back there on one of his little breaks, did he have the strength to reflect on his failed love affair with Marianne?

Hope In Vain
Mine O love, you were mine for an hour,

You and the world for an hour were mine;

For the world with its beauty and joy and power

Lay there, flung at my feet as dower,

In the hour when life had grown divine,

And you, O love, were mine, all mine.

Flowers of face and fire of soul,

Breath of your life for an hour was mine;

And the gods of gods in whose control

Is the lightening flash and the thunder’s roll

Knew never a joy that was more divine,

Than mine in the hour when I call’d you mine.

Honey of lips and the bosoms beat,

And the warm, soft arms for an hour were mine,

And the eager pulse of hastening feet

Whose echoes the words of love repeat,  

And the sweet, low voice, and the eyes’ star-shine

All of them, all, for an hour were mine.

All that the years to come could show

throng’d in the hour when you were mine;

Rapture of meeting and parting’s woe

Tears and passion’s sunset glow,

Till I drank the wine of a death divine,

from the lips whose kisses were mine, all mine.

Alas, alas, that it all was a dream,

Only a dream that you were mine,

And the one hour with its golden gleam,

Floated past, like a rose on the stream,

Tells me that never an hour shall shine,

Never for ever, to make you mine

His biographer, when explaining the background to the poem, claims 'the inspiration is unknown, but... isn't it obvious?

Rapture of meeting and parting’s woe

Tears and passion’s sunset glow,

Till I drank the wine of a death divine,

from the lips whose kisses were mine, all mine.

Isn't this  a line about falling in love with Nell and then having to leave her when he was in America? And, the tears and passion is the falling out of love, and is the 'wine of a death divine' a reference to her incurable scrofula that cost Marianne her beauty, and, eventually, her life?

Heinrich Heine 

Here is one of Heine's about something similar - but shorter and more punchy:

I can’t forget I had you,

Dear woman, sweet to hold,

That I once possessed you,

Your body, and your soul.

I still want your body,

That body young and true,

They can bury your soul, love,

I’ve soul enough for two.

I’ll cut my soul in pieces,

And breathe half into you,

And hug you: we must be, yes,

One soul and body too.          

And, here is one of Heine's most famous works:

Death and His Brother Sleep (Morphine).           

           There’s a mirror likeness between those two

           shining, youthfully-fledged figures, though

           one seems paler than the other and more austere,

           I might even say more perfect, more distinguished,

           than he, who would take me confidingly in his arms –

           how soft then and loving his smile, how blessed his glance!

           Then, it might well have been that his wreath

           of white poppies gently touched my forehead, at times,

           and drove the pain from my mind with its strange scent.

           But that is transient. I can only, now, be well, 

           when the other one, so serious and pale,

           the older brother, lowers his dark torch. –

           Sleep is good, Death is better, yet

           surely never to have been born is best. 

For more Heine click

And, speaking of Muses, here is Marianne Faithfull's version of her own and Mick Jagger's song: Sister Morphine click 

George wrote quite a lot of verse. And much of it is rather forgettable, and long. But, he was never short of cock-sureness when it came to poetry; after all, he had won prizes at Owens for his 'Ravenna' (not to be confused with the Divine Oscar Wilde's prize-winning work) which made his reputation there - before that other matter went and rewrote it haha. Anyhoo, George's father was a poet, and so his boy had something to prove. Besides, George was not one to ever hide his light under a bushel, and, so, in 1883, he wrote to Algernon Swinburne asking for an honest appraisal of his work. 

Algernon Swinburne in the 1890s - nominated 4 times for a Nobel Prize!