Commonplace 217 George & His Valentines - The Tricky Business of Finding A Wife. Warning! Contains Mucky Pictures.
The divine Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windermere's Fan, famously says that a cynic 'knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing'.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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!)
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...
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.
 |
| American Gothic by Grant Wood 1930 (Such a subversive image.) |
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!) |
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 |
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. |
_-_A_Young_Girl_Defending_Herself_Against_Eros_(1880).jpg) |
| A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros by William-Adolphe Bougeureau 1880 |
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 |
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. |
.jpg) |
| 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment