Commonplace 222 George and Marianne PART TWO: The John George Black letters.
The John George Black letters are some of the most fascinating documents relating to George's early days at Owens College in Manchester. To unravel the facts from the often repeated supposition we have to go to the matter of how these was interpreted by the Owens principal, the college authorities, and the Gissing industry. All these letters are reproduced in The Collected Letters of GG Vol One click
The four letters are a real nightmare for anyone who seeks to see George as some sort of studious idiot savant autisitcally gifted dough bag who led a monastic, sheltered life at Owens. He is not, it seems, a special needs case after all. Rather, he was a typical youth of his Age and age when he was at Owens. He developed the carapace of solitary, pessimistic obdurate self pity after things in life did not go as planned. But, at Owens, he was the real George - who made bad choices as often as good ones - as behoves a youth of 18.
George made much of his brush with the lives of the poor, but the wilder claims of his life of want and deprivation have long ago been debunked as nonsense by those who had a more balanced view of him (Austin Harrison, his pupil; and Bouwe Postmus, a renowned Gissing scholar). He never knew poverty in its truest sense - because poverty does not mean choosing to live on lentils while you smoke and buy books; it does not mean having to live in a squalid garret when you have a nice bedroom waiting for you any time you choose in Wakefield. It does not mean choosing to live among poor people when you can up sticks and go home to mother. You can't claim to be starving when your employer feeds you slap up dinners after you've taught his children for a few hours. George Orwell knew this when he set off to Paris and Wigan, and kept this very much in his mind when he washed pots and pans or dossed in spikes with itinerants. George's poverty is as meaningless as his alleged bohemianism - farcically shallow but they look good on the old cv. Apart from his year in America when he might have been hard up (but which according to Bouwe Postmus in George's 'American Notebooks' - page 13 - was much exaggerated) Marianne was the only legitimate link he had to a world of deprivation that wasn't self-inflicted. Marianne's experience of poverty was authentic, and there was no Romance (in the aesthetic sense) in it. No doubt her version of it informed George's writing and allowed him to describe elements of it - from her life story, certainly not his!
The Black letters demonstrate George might have been as a vital, energetic, rambunctious young hedonistic, irresponsible, amorously predatory, sexually experienced young ruffian; a boy who courted controversy and was not afraid to baulk authority, an arch manipulator, a liar and a delinquent who had scant respect for his teachers and the authorities of the college. So far, a typical undergraduate with 'street' credentials and brains.
Today, George would be the sort of student who skipped lectures, went out on the piss as often as his student loan would allow, poured scorn on the establishment, ate on the hoof, slept until noon, tossed off a brilliant essay by the last seconds of the deadline, showed off at every opportunity, had no plans for the future, valued his social life over all else, could charm the birds off the trees, and who was a 'ledge' - as in 'legend' - to all who came within his orbit. No wonder John George Black adored him!
These letters do reveal embarrassing facts about the sort of time George was having in between the easy-peasy odds and ends of college work he managed to trot out and the vast amounts of girl action he pursued. John George Black was an older fellow who seems to have genuinely worshipped George as some sort of hero figure, and there is a touching hint of mild homoeroticism about his devotion - though we only have John's POV. As most boarding school boys will have been exposed to boy-on-boy crushes and emotional intrigues, this is not surprising, and in no way should be interpreted as signs of overt homosexuality - in fact, this gushing stuff (!) is rather endearing. John has only recently become friends with his hero - he states in the first letter, 'My dear fellow, you don't know me yet, you don't know how I have felt towards you. Gradually we have come together, & gradually an affection has sprung up in me for you such as I never felt for any other...' Perhaps no-one was ever more in love with George than JGB - except for that old repressed queen, Eduard Bertz!! However, we must bear in mind, John was writing to wriggle out of a deeply embarrassing situation, and his prime motive is to keep in with George - the hero he worships. Can we rely on him to be 100% truthful?
Letter 1. Dated February 30th (!) but probably March 1st 1876.
The first of these letters John concerns some sort of encounter with a girl George fancied. By letter (being the passive-aggressive that he is, avoiding a face-to-face confrontation) George has restated an interest which John previously did not take seriously, and John is panicking. 'I have suffered in body, and now that I receive your letter, I am utterly downcast & full of anguish at its tone', he writes. John wants to apologise and make George believe spending time with the girl was not his fault, he was persuaded to stay by the girl (the girl is always to blame is she not?), and now he desperately wants to make amends for what might be seen as disloyalty in muscling in on his hero's squeeze. It went like this:
Probably on Monday, February 21st 1876, John called at a house in Water Street, allegedly hoping to find George there, possibly visiting a girl. He writes that, on arrival at the house, 'I felt unusually miserable and ill (you will hear more of this)'. He goes on: 'They told me there she had gone out with a young person.' He is told to come back in an hour when the girl is due back for her tea. When he returns, the landlady shows him in and John can see George is not in either of the reception rooms. Then John decides he wants to spend time with the girl, and she 'came up' to the reception room. They chatted and she lets John know that George confided in her that he was an Owen's student, which John hurriedly denies - he thinks George 'could not have known what you were doing'.
He does not say exactly what happened. 'I had no desire for her, - I never felt so peculiar in my life; my head swam, & I hardly knew what I was doing. I am not saying this in excuse, for I saw no reason then why you should care in the least. I had great difficulty in leaving her; & as I was going, she made me promise I would say nothing to you.' (Obviously he is not a man of his word as here he is telling George all about it.)
'On Tuesday, after getting home (John lived in Crumpsall, about 3 miles north of George's digs), I felt peculiarly weak & went to bed early. In the morning I woke with my heart beating hard, & had just strength to call before I fainted away. What is the matter with me, I don't know; but I tremble, cannot eat, & am utterly prostrated, whether from the effects of Monday night or not, I cannot say: I fear I have caught some disease, & intended coming down to see you & let you know all about it to-day...'
Some points to remember:
1) John George turned up at the girl's house feeling 'unusually miserable and ill', so he is clearly coming down with something before he sets foot inside the door. This is important because it suggests whatever subsequently ailed him was already making him ill before he visited the girl - so, it can't be that the girl he visited was to blame for whatever sickness he had.
2) The reference to having 'caught some disease' is usually taken to mean he caught an STD - however, if this supposition is correct - then it can't possibly be anything to do with this girl as no STD flares up before you do anything. There is always the possibility John was a serial chaser after girls, in which case he might have contracted an STD any time prior to visiting the girl, from someone else. Or, that George told John he was on familiar terms with the girl and John wanted to try his luck with her - and so he is being disloyal.
3) It is always assumed by biographers that sexual intercourse occurred but John does not say what went on. What he describes is his somatic reaction to an experience, but is this any more than guilt for what he was doing after realising George was interested? Maybe what really happened is that he got so excited by being in the presence of a girl that he didn't need sexual intercourse after all. This kind of unplanned event might have been a deep shock to his young mind - akin to being caught masturbating. We know the Victorians worked themselves up into all sorts of states of combustion about young people having sexual feelings, and, even worse, sexual experiences. Nocturnal emissions were considered a sickness - and it was termed 'spermatorrhoea' to give it a medical name. Masturbation was seen as a sign of perversion aligned to madness, and all young men would have been drilled in the evils of 'self abuse' at school. A whole industry had grown up around tackling this 'vice', and it would all sound terribly amusing if we didn't know the amount of cruelty, torture and assault that went into the 'treatment' of this healthy and zestful behaviour. For example, Kellogg - he of the famous breakfast food - advocated female genital mutilation and male circumcision without anaesthetic for girls and boys caught masturbating, or even to deter them from contemplating it.
4) The ailment John complains of - palpitations, syncope (fainting), anorexia, malaise... it sounds like textbook anxiety state, to me click. John does not emphatically link his illness to the visit - 'whether from the effects of Monday night or not, I cannot say.' We don't know to which part of Monday night he refers, but the encounter with the girl is clearly not the reason he is feeling unwell - because he has already told us he felt ill when he arrived at the house. He seems to need to let George know he is being punished for betraying the friendship he values, but as this is self-serving it is impossible to know how truthful it is.
5) 'I fear I have caught some disease...' John's concerns might be linked to some sexual matter, but that does not have to involve sex with a girl - any girl. Think of all those conflicted feelings coursing round a young mind - girls were so near, and yet so far away. The body was not always under the control of the mind - it did strange, wanton things to humiliate and shock. Shame and fear of exposure must have been unbearable - at least girls are afforded some secrecy because they don't manifest clear outward signs of arousal. One of the ways Victorians terrified their young over sexual matters was to emphasise the lethal results of unclean sex - and sexual thoughts. John wants to be seen as being deeply affected by it in a negative way - how true this is we don't know - but he cleverly incorporates a little histrionics into his performance when he says, 'I have almost felt the pangs of death to-day when I fainted again.... You must forgive everything now you see how it happened.' Is this an authentic account of what went on, or a desperate bid to dig himself out of a hole?
6) and 7) are two small points worth mentioning: there is no proof the girl in the Water Street lodgings was Marianne, and there is no talk of money or payment in kind changing hands. The girl is never named or described, so she could be any girl George took a shine to. The girl doesn't seem to know George very well, so, if the letter is written on March 1st - and if it is Marianne - this means she and George are only recently acquainted. If so, then how come she is blamed for the mini crime spree that Morley Roberts states plagued the college locker rooms - thefts of books, coats and money- all term? Pierre Coustillas in the Heroic Life Vol 1 states the thefts went on throughout the winter of 1875-6. If George had only just met Marianne (if she was the girl in Water Street), then Marianne can't have been the reason he stole. And, why had she been crying? Did it have anything to do with George?
Letter 2. Dated March 23rd.
Three weeks later, another letter concerns two important schemes - the first is George's plan for a holiday in Southport over Easter; John sends suitable addresses of landladies (he knows Southport well). He then tells the amusing tale of nearly damaging himself over moving this machine with another chap. This is always assumed to be a sewing machine that George bought for Marianne, and this has the added value for biographers of making it seem that George stole from his peers to subsidise her wanton lifestyle. John writes: 'I am nearly slain; the gross man of cowardly kind came to help with that machine & I forced him to go first. About half way down I saw his eyes begin to roll & his face look apoplectic; so I tugged with all my might, careless of brace buttons, and any mortal thing, and thus prevented the thing from running down, & and making a jelly of the clod. Only one limb was broken, ie of the machine.'
Now, it is obvious John is helping to carry a machine down, not up. So, is it being bought or sold? We simply don't have enough information to make any conclusion. Why is John doing it and not George - if it involves Marianne? If it did involve her, you would think John would want to avoid anything to do with her for fear of inciting his true love's ire. And, why buy an expensive machine when you can rent? We know all manner of things could be rented in those days - much later, George hired a piano, and whilst on holiday, a pram for Walter. Perhaps this sewing machine belonged to an employer of a totally different girl. Maybe if it was Marianne's, she rented it or paid for it herself. The first mention of it (as far as I know) is in the Henry Maitland fantasy, but its inclusion in this questionable account could well have been used to make us think his knowledge of George's life and friendship with him at Owens ran deeper than it did, and he could have learned about it much later than 1876 - he wrote Maitland in 1912.
Letter 3. 26th March
This is the one that has caused the most uproar. John asks George for advice about some small blebs on his penis. This letter comes about five weeks after the encounter with the girl. JGB says: 'The irritation continued growing worse, & on examination, I found the prepuce swollen, & on turning it down, I found the whole of the inside salmon-coloured, as you called it, only little spots as though the skin had been eaten away so as to show the flesh, & almost looked as though it were bleeding. I applied a little of the subtilissimus, but the end continues to be irritated. The prepuce is a little hard as well; & there was a drop or two of yellow matter near the red spots. I don't know what an ulcer should look like. Are these anything like the symptoms of soft chancre? Or is it like your inflammation? Or do you think it is only balanitis?'
Subtilissimus is a very old treatment for syphilitic chancre, made from a desert-dwelling plant, much used as a complement to ingested mercury (it helps offset the gastro-intestinal side effects of mercury) or mixed with animal fat to make an ointment in its own right. John asks for George's doctor's address. Dr Wahltuch click was a Russian émigré who had a practice in George's neighbourhood. Perhaps he favoured the old-fashioned cures, but we cannot assume this medication was prescribed for venereal disease. Many medications have more than one use - think of aspirin and we use it in pain, fever, to reduce swelling and to thin blood. A heart patient and someone with a sprained ankle might both be prescribed aspirin. Perhaps subtilissimus is just very good with penis problems of all stripes. And, mercury was prescribed for more than syphilis - it is still used in the proprietary medicine Mercurochrome, marketed as a topical antiseptic used for 'minor cuts and scrapes'. click
The three main venereal disease contenders are syphilis, gonorrhoea and herpes. (Some biographers have suggested George suffered from syphilis, and this is an old claim going back to Morley Roberts and Frank Swinnerton and the Gissing Biography wars of 1912. Much more on this in future posts!!) The Complete Letters editors have added a footnote to this March 26th letter saying what John describes is 'nonspecific balanitis' and I tend to agree (wow! Am I losing my touch?). What he describes does sound more like balanitis than an STD. It can be caused by poor personal hygiene particularly when a prepuce is too tight, but can also be caused by too much attention to personal hygiene or by excessive masturbation (define 'excessive', I hear you ask). For a look at a penis afflicted by balanitis click (no-one can say I don't bring you educational content!) Soft chancre is (I am lifting this more or less entire from here click) 'a usually painless local genital ulcer that follows an infection by Haemophilus ducreyi. It is accompanied by suppuration of the inguinal lymphatic nodes, or inguinal buboes. Complications may include phimosis, urethral stricture or fistula, and marked tissue destruction'. What John describes is not this - he would be very aware of a bubo if he had one, and he doesn't mention pain. The remark about 'yellow matter near the red spots' is probably referring to the exudate of white blood cells that accumulate as they rid the wound of waste cells - a good sign of healing. However, JGB's query 'is it like your inflammation or only balanitis?' suggests George suffered from something else - ie, something known to be not balanitis.
Whether or not George contracted a venereal disease at Owens or anywhere else is a contentious issue amongst Gissing scholars. The word JGB uses to identify George's problem is 'inflammation' - but this is a generic word used for redness and swelling, sometimes involving infection. George might have been, like guilty John, afraid any sexual experience might infect him with an STD and as a consequence of this vigilance, he might have been over-enthusiastic with his personal hygiene. Plenty of over-the-counter medicines and preparations played into this guilt with sexual matters, many of them were toxic or caustic and did more harm than good.
Letter 4, Dated April 11th 1876.
John writes in an amusing vein to ask 'What art thou doing? My soul desireth thee as the bird does the mountain.' Easter that year was 14-16th April, so vac has already started, and John is anxious to see his true love before going to Blackpool for a weekend of dissipation. Then as now, Blackpool was the Las Vegas of England, and a step down from snooty Southport. This is a jokey letter about George being missed from lectures by his tutors, it lampoons teetotallers, and ends with: 'Let me hear from you, I beseech, I shall be gone on Thursday; so write instanter. Delicacy forbids me to commend myself to anyone but yourself, I suppose.' It seems John has lost touch with his best friend. Six weeks later, George would be wrenched from his bosom when he was arrested for theft.
The John George Black letters are some of the most fascinating documents relating to George's early days at Owens College in Manchester. To unravel the facts from the often repeated supposition we have to go to the matter of how these was interpreted by the Owens principal, the college authorities, and the Gissing industry. All these letters are reproduced in The Collected Letters of GG Vol One click
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| The Promise by Henry Scott Tuke 1888 |
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| Helen Vary (detail) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1889 |
However, the biographers who want George to be a victim, who prefer to think George was living in some sort of precarious second inner circle of hell in a squalid slum while he was in Manchester, need only look at this click to realise it was not a sordid, failing neighbourhood when George lived there. The authorities at Owens said Marianne lived in a house of ill repute - but what evidence is there for this other than the landlady allowed male guests to visit and sit in a reception room? Should we not factor in the prejudices of straight-laced narrow-minded middle class tutors and a principal who taught exclusively male students, in order to understand their stance on the subject? Anywhere that allowed young people to mix socially would have been considered a place of 'ill-repute' to these cloistered tutors who probably feared the wrath of parents who might seek to blame the college if their sons went off the rails. We know the whole topic of Owens' student accommodation was being debated at this time, so the college authorities were probably fearful a scandal involving this sort of malarkey would not look good in the press. But, once again, if you want to frame Marianne as a prostitute, then you say she lived in a cat house.
%2BBruni.jpg) Two Male Models by Fyodor Bruni 1813 What are they up to? |
Today, George would be the sort of student who skipped lectures, went out on the piss as often as his student loan would allow, poured scorn on the establishment, ate on the hoof, slept until noon, tossed off a brilliant essay by the last seconds of the deadline, showed off at every opportunity, had no plans for the future, valued his social life over all else, could charm the birds off the trees, and who was a 'ledge' - as in 'legend' - to all who came within his orbit. No wonder John George Black adored him!
These letters do reveal embarrassing facts about the sort of time George was having in between the easy-peasy odds and ends of college work he managed to trot out and the vast amounts of girl action he pursued. John George Black was an older fellow who seems to have genuinely worshipped George as some sort of hero figure, and there is a touching hint of mild homoeroticism about his devotion - though we only have John's POV. As most boarding school boys will have been exposed to boy-on-boy crushes and emotional intrigues, this is not surprising, and in no way should be interpreted as signs of overt homosexuality - in fact, this gushing stuff (!) is rather endearing. John has only recently become friends with his hero - he states in the first letter, 'My dear fellow, you don't know me yet, you don't know how I have felt towards you. Gradually we have come together, & gradually an affection has sprung up in me for you such as I never felt for any other...' Perhaps no-one was ever more in love with George than JGB - except for that old repressed queen, Eduard Bertz!! However, we must bear in mind, John was writing to wriggle out of a deeply embarrassing situation, and his prime motive is to keep in with George - the hero he worships. Can we rely on him to be 100% truthful?
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| The Green Waterways by Henry Scott Tuke 1926 |
The first of these letters John concerns some sort of encounter with a girl George fancied. By letter (being the passive-aggressive that he is, avoiding a face-to-face confrontation) George has restated an interest which John previously did not take seriously, and John is panicking. 'I have suffered in body, and now that I receive your letter, I am utterly downcast & full of anguish at its tone', he writes. John wants to apologise and make George believe spending time with the girl was not his fault, he was persuaded to stay by the girl (the girl is always to blame is she not?), and now he desperately wants to make amends for what might be seen as disloyalty in muscling in on his hero's squeeze. It went like this:
Probably on Monday, February 21st 1876, John called at a house in Water Street, allegedly hoping to find George there, possibly visiting a girl. He writes that, on arrival at the house, 'I felt unusually miserable and ill (you will hear more of this)'. He goes on: 'They told me there she had gone out with a young person.' He is told to come back in an hour when the girl is due back for her tea. When he returns, the landlady shows him in and John can see George is not in either of the reception rooms. Then John decides he wants to spend time with the girl, and she 'came up' to the reception room. They chatted and she lets John know that George confided in her that he was an Owen's student, which John hurriedly denies - he thinks George 'could not have known what you were doing'.
He does not say exactly what happened. 'I had no desire for her, - I never felt so peculiar in my life; my head swam, & I hardly knew what I was doing. I am not saying this in excuse, for I saw no reason then why you should care in the least. I had great difficulty in leaving her; & as I was going, she made me promise I would say nothing to you.' (Obviously he is not a man of his word as here he is telling George all about it.)
'On Tuesday, after getting home (John lived in Crumpsall, about 3 miles north of George's digs), I felt peculiarly weak & went to bed early. In the morning I woke with my heart beating hard, & had just strength to call before I fainted away. What is the matter with me, I don't know; but I tremble, cannot eat, & am utterly prostrated, whether from the effects of Monday night or not, I cannot say: I fear I have caught some disease, & intended coming down to see you & let you know all about it to-day...'
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| The Genius of Art by Karl Brullof 1817-1820 |
1) John George turned up at the girl's house feeling 'unusually miserable and ill', so he is clearly coming down with something before he sets foot inside the door. This is important because it suggests whatever subsequently ailed him was already making him ill before he visited the girl - so, it can't be that the girl he visited was to blame for whatever sickness he had.
2) The reference to having 'caught some disease' is usually taken to mean he caught an STD - however, if this supposition is correct - then it can't possibly be anything to do with this girl as no STD flares up before you do anything. There is always the possibility John was a serial chaser after girls, in which case he might have contracted an STD any time prior to visiting the girl, from someone else. Or, that George told John he was on familiar terms with the girl and John wanted to try his luck with her - and so he is being disloyal.
3) It is always assumed by biographers that sexual intercourse occurred but John does not say what went on. What he describes is his somatic reaction to an experience, but is this any more than guilt for what he was doing after realising George was interested? Maybe what really happened is that he got so excited by being in the presence of a girl that he didn't need sexual intercourse after all. This kind of unplanned event might have been a deep shock to his young mind - akin to being caught masturbating. We know the Victorians worked themselves up into all sorts of states of combustion about young people having sexual feelings, and, even worse, sexual experiences. Nocturnal emissions were considered a sickness - and it was termed 'spermatorrhoea' to give it a medical name. Masturbation was seen as a sign of perversion aligned to madness, and all young men would have been drilled in the evils of 'self abuse' at school. A whole industry had grown up around tackling this 'vice', and it would all sound terribly amusing if we didn't know the amount of cruelty, torture and assault that went into the 'treatment' of this healthy and zestful behaviour. For example, Kellogg - he of the famous breakfast food - advocated female genital mutilation and male circumcision without anaesthetic for girls and boys caught masturbating, or even to deter them from contemplating it.
4) The ailment John complains of - palpitations, syncope (fainting), anorexia, malaise... it sounds like textbook anxiety state, to me click. John does not emphatically link his illness to the visit - 'whether from the effects of Monday night or not, I cannot say.' We don't know to which part of Monday night he refers, but the encounter with the girl is clearly not the reason he is feeling unwell - because he has already told us he felt ill when he arrived at the house. He seems to need to let George know he is being punished for betraying the friendship he values, but as this is self-serving it is impossible to know how truthful it is.
5) 'I fear I have caught some disease...' John's concerns might be linked to some sexual matter, but that does not have to involve sex with a girl - any girl. Think of all those conflicted feelings coursing round a young mind - girls were so near, and yet so far away. The body was not always under the control of the mind - it did strange, wanton things to humiliate and shock. Shame and fear of exposure must have been unbearable - at least girls are afforded some secrecy because they don't manifest clear outward signs of arousal. One of the ways Victorians terrified their young over sexual matters was to emphasise the lethal results of unclean sex - and sexual thoughts. John wants to be seen as being deeply affected by it in a negative way - how true this is we don't know - but he cleverly incorporates a little histrionics into his performance when he says, 'I have almost felt the pangs of death to-day when I fainted again.... You must forgive everything now you see how it happened.' Is this an authentic account of what went on, or a desperate bid to dig himself out of a hole?
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| Inject into the !? |
Letter 2. Dated March 23rd.
Three weeks later, another letter concerns two important schemes - the first is George's plan for a holiday in Southport over Easter; John sends suitable addresses of landladies (he knows Southport well). He then tells the amusing tale of nearly damaging himself over moving this machine with another chap. This is always assumed to be a sewing machine that George bought for Marianne, and this has the added value for biographers of making it seem that George stole from his peers to subsidise her wanton lifestyle. John writes: 'I am nearly slain; the gross man of cowardly kind came to help with that machine & I forced him to go first. About half way down I saw his eyes begin to roll & his face look apoplectic; so I tugged with all my might, careless of brace buttons, and any mortal thing, and thus prevented the thing from running down, & and making a jelly of the clod. Only one limb was broken, ie of the machine.'
Now, it is obvious John is helping to carry a machine down, not up. So, is it being bought or sold? We simply don't have enough information to make any conclusion. Why is John doing it and not George - if it involves Marianne? If it did involve her, you would think John would want to avoid anything to do with her for fear of inciting his true love's ire. And, why buy an expensive machine when you can rent? We know all manner of things could be rented in those days - much later, George hired a piano, and whilst on holiday, a pram for Walter. Perhaps this sewing machine belonged to an employer of a totally different girl. Maybe if it was Marianne's, she rented it or paid for it herself. The first mention of it (as far as I know) is in the Henry Maitland fantasy, but its inclusion in this questionable account could well have been used to make us think his knowledge of George's life and friendship with him at Owens ran deeper than it did, and he could have learned about it much later than 1876 - he wrote Maitland in 1912.
%2BReclining%2BNude%2Bon%2Ba%2BDraped%2BSofa.jpg) |
| Reclining Nude on a Sofa by Sergei Semenovich Egornov 1907 |
This is the one that has caused the most uproar. John asks George for advice about some small blebs on his penis. This letter comes about five weeks after the encounter with the girl. JGB says: 'The irritation continued growing worse, & on examination, I found the prepuce swollen, & on turning it down, I found the whole of the inside salmon-coloured, as you called it, only little spots as though the skin had been eaten away so as to show the flesh, & almost looked as though it were bleeding. I applied a little of the subtilissimus, but the end continues to be irritated. The prepuce is a little hard as well; & there was a drop or two of yellow matter near the red spots. I don't know what an ulcer should look like. Are these anything like the symptoms of soft chancre? Or is it like your inflammation? Or do you think it is only balanitis?'
Subtilissimus is a very old treatment for syphilitic chancre, made from a desert-dwelling plant, much used as a complement to ingested mercury (it helps offset the gastro-intestinal side effects of mercury) or mixed with animal fat to make an ointment in its own right. John asks for George's doctor's address. Dr Wahltuch click was a Russian émigré who had a practice in George's neighbourhood. Perhaps he favoured the old-fashioned cures, but we cannot assume this medication was prescribed for venereal disease. Many medications have more than one use - think of aspirin and we use it in pain, fever, to reduce swelling and to thin blood. A heart patient and someone with a sprained ankle might both be prescribed aspirin. Perhaps subtilissimus is just very good with penis problems of all stripes. And, mercury was prescribed for more than syphilis - it is still used in the proprietary medicine Mercurochrome, marketed as a topical antiseptic used for 'minor cuts and scrapes'. click
The three main venereal disease contenders are syphilis, gonorrhoea and herpes. (Some biographers have suggested George suffered from syphilis, and this is an old claim going back to Morley Roberts and Frank Swinnerton and the Gissing Biography wars of 1912. Much more on this in future posts!!) The Complete Letters editors have added a footnote to this March 26th letter saying what John describes is 'nonspecific balanitis' and I tend to agree (wow! Am I losing my touch?). What he describes does sound more like balanitis than an STD. It can be caused by poor personal hygiene particularly when a prepuce is too tight, but can also be caused by too much attention to personal hygiene or by excessive masturbation (define 'excessive', I hear you ask). For a look at a penis afflicted by balanitis click (no-one can say I don't bring you educational content!) Soft chancre is (I am lifting this more or less entire from here click) 'a usually painless local genital ulcer that follows an infection by Haemophilus ducreyi. It is accompanied by suppuration of the inguinal lymphatic nodes, or inguinal buboes. Complications may include phimosis, urethral stricture or fistula, and marked tissue destruction'. What John describes is not this - he would be very aware of a bubo if he had one, and he doesn't mention pain. The remark about 'yellow matter near the red spots' is probably referring to the exudate of white blood cells that accumulate as they rid the wound of waste cells - a good sign of healing. However, JGB's query 'is it like your inflammation or only balanitis?' suggests George suffered from something else - ie, something known to be not balanitis.
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| Used as a genital wash. |
Whether or not George contracted a venereal disease at Owens or anywhere else is a contentious issue amongst Gissing scholars. The word JGB uses to identify George's problem is 'inflammation' - but this is a generic word used for redness and swelling, sometimes involving infection. George might have been, like guilty John, afraid any sexual experience might infect him with an STD and as a consequence of this vigilance, he might have been over-enthusiastic with his personal hygiene. Plenty of over-the-counter medicines and preparations played into this guilt with sexual matters, many of them were toxic or caustic and did more harm than good.
Letter 4, Dated April 11th 1876.
John writes in an amusing vein to ask 'What art thou doing? My soul desireth thee as the bird does the mountain.' Easter that year was 14-16th April, so vac has already started, and John is anxious to see his true love before going to Blackpool for a weekend of dissipation. Then as now, Blackpool was the Las Vegas of England, and a step down from snooty Southport. This is a jokey letter about George being missed from lectures by his tutors, it lampoons teetotallers, and ends with: 'Let me hear from you, I beseech, I shall be gone on Thursday; so write instanter. Delicacy forbids me to commend myself to anyone but yourself, I suppose.' It seems John has lost touch with his best friend. Six weeks later, George would be wrenched from his bosom when he was arrested for theft.
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| Blackpool before the electric lights went up. |
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