Commonplace 220 George & His Leap From Mrs Coward to Mrs Frederic Harrison. PART TWO.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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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.
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The Poem of the Soul and the Angel and the Mother by Louis Janmot c 1840s
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Miss Nightingale's influential chart.
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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.
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Booth map - Lambeth and its environs
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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!
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