Commonplace 149  George & His Uncle Paul  PART TWO

So, Uncle Paul 'blotted his copy book'. This is an old English phrase to describe one who has forever tarnished something that was good - a copy book was where you practised your best writing. How did Paul fall so far from grace? We know George disliked his garrulous ways and love of dominating a social crowd; we can appreciate George didn't like being asked to lend him money that was a long time in being repaid. George was never one for wasting his time on friendships (even familial ones) that bored him or gave him no arena in which he could show off his love of literature and prodigious knowledge of Greek lyric poetry. However, he was one for making use of those who might have connections he could exploit (that list is very long!) or who could be put to good use on his behalf. We can include all his wives in that second category. And his minions, Collet and Orme. And his sisters.

So, what  was the final straw that broke the camel's back? In Commonplace 146 we saw how George had to go cap in hand (this seems to be a post composed of adages and cliched sayings, but, as Nikola Tesla once said, 'The harness of waterfalls is the most economical method known for drawing power from the Sun' haha) to ask for a favour of Paul to secure Marianne aka Nell a place in the German Hospital when she needed it. But this bit of jobbery was a matter that made George beholden to a man he had no time for, and so his pride would have been a factor in resenting this bit of a helping hand. Whatever Paul's motives, he did something helpful, but it could be used against him. To be constantly reminded he was in some sort of moral indebtedness to someone he considered inferior would have irked George beyond belief. However, long before this, Paul fell out of favour with his pretentious, snobby nephew.

We only have George's word for how it unfolded. His Diaries were redacted (possibly as an ongoing process, but certainly done in depth in those last couple of years living with Gabrielle Fleury) and his letters reflect what he wanted the recipient to believe, and our man was adept at re-writing his own and everyone else's history - after all, he was a (fairly) creative writer. To get out of the relationship with his uncle required a very big rift and it had to be caused by Paul - it would have to leave George blameless. The Wakefield Gissings would need to know what happened and accept that there was no turning back, and the differences between him and his uncle were irreconcilable.

Two (related) things Paul did that George could use as an excuse to ditch the Rahardts - 1) Paul opened a grocery shop and tried to coax Marianne into working in it; 2) Paul made too many connections between the snippets of biography George - or Marianne - let slip, and had grown too inquisitive. And the conclusions he made reflected very badly on George.

We know from 'Born in Exile' how he felt about relatives opening embarrassing businesses near to over-sensitive snobby male protagonists - Godwin Peake's uncle was dealt summary shunning for such a crime. The potential for humiliation at having his wife work in a grocery shop would have almost finished George off - his play-acted Socialist credentials did not stretch to anything that plebeian. Then, there was the insult at Paul ever thinking this would be acceptable. And, yet... George had made the point on more than one occasion that Marianne was lonely and would benefit from socialising a bit more. She seems to have been quite normal in that respect - she made friends wherever she went and William Gissing, George's brother, got on well with her. But, George did not like her to mix with anyone who might be an influence - the sort of influence that might observe to her that her husband was not exactly a catch and was, in fact, going to be the death of her. Incidentally, George's Aunt Maria would have been working in the shop, so Marianne would have had her for company. So, obviously, Aunt Maria and Uncle Paul must have thought Nell was good enough to front their business. George's biographers overlook this fact. As with my observation that William's landlady would not have tolerated Nell under her roof (when she went to stay with George's brother in Wilmslow) if she had any shred of a doubt about her respectability. Paul and Maria Rahardt, who must have gotten to know Marianne/Nell well, had no qualms about offering her employment in a public position - and, if Marianne had a drink problem (as biographers insist), wouldn't the Rahardts have avoided her and wanted her as far away from their business as possible?  

The shop was situated at 12, Upland Road, East Dulwich. We know George's opinion on the opening of the shop because he wrote about it in his letter to Algernon (June 7th 1880):
Rahardt has at length got his money from Germany, & taken a small provision shop. Thinks of giving up engineering. Hopes to open the place in a short time with a brass band, flags, &c a la Bonser & Rayment. It is to be called 'The Noted Little Provision Shop'. !!
Below is the site today - the dwelling on the right-hand corner is the refurbished shop once known as The Noted Little Provision Shop. You can see from number 16 (with the green painted frontage) how the place might have looked, back in 1880, when these would have been quite, if not totally, new.

The shop was very close to Peckham Rye click, then a very large area of open ground, now more of a park. But, in 1880, there with extensive market gardens growing produce; some of the fruit and veg could have been on sale in the shop. Peckham Rye is most famous for being the place where William Blake saw a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars. Nowadays, Peckham is most associated with Trotters' Independent Traders, the business (if that be the term!) operated by Del Boy and Dave aka Rodney Trotter of the BBC tv show 'Only Fools and Horses' click. 

By June 23rd of 1880, George, ever the armchair psychiatrist, refers to Paul once more and declares in another letter to Algernon:

I enclose a paper which will explain itself. The man is gone completely mad, is trying to borrow £500 to buy the house he lives in, & tells us that everybody he passes in the street takes off his hat to him, because 'I look like a gentleman, you know'.  

In July, he reports to Alg:

There have been visits to relatives, - visits which I grow to dread more & more, & which, I fear, will some day have to come to an end. The worst was to the Rahardts, who now live in Peckham Rye. They have opened their grocer's shop, & begin to fear that their capital will not suffice. I can see that there is constant quarrelling between them, & things seem likely to go from bad to worse. Altogether, we spent a very hateful afternoon there.

After the summer, Marianne's health requires in-patient care, and this is when Uncle Paul lends his helping hand. A letter of October 24th:

...Nell is now in the German Hospital, - about the best hospital in London. 

On November 3rd, a long letter is sent to Algernon, and all the gory details are unveiled:

I will get rid of the annoying and disgusting matter of which I wish you to be informed. I think I told you that Rahardt exerted himself to get Nell into the Hospital. Well, I daresay you know how hateful it is to be indebted to a grossly vulgar person, & the result of this present business has shown me that I ought rather to have gone to any extremity than ask Reinhardt's assistance. I may say by way of preface that Nell & I both know (now) that the man has systematically calumniated us for a long time on every possible occasion, that he has tried his utmost to make us disagree, & that he very nearly succeeded by making Nell believe some time ago that he knew Bertz personally (of course a lie,) & that Bertz was a dissipated scoundrel whose companionship could only lead to the gallows! At present, he has taken advantage of Nell's removal to the Hospital, to make all the authorities there believe that I starve & beat her, (literally,) & to do his best to persuade Nell to go away from me & serve in the shop with Maria. You will ask in amazement what can be the cause of all this. We are at a loss to determine, unless it is perhaps that I some time ago refused to lend him £30 to set up in his business. Moreover, to silence these people's eternal impertinent questionings, Nell has told them that she had an Aunt in Manchester (of course non-existent) &, since then, Rahardt has done his utmost to discover this fictitious aunt's address, that he might write calumnies to her, & has even gone to the length of bribing a woman (who came to us to do coarse work) to hunt round the house in search of said address. 

Let's stop and consider this. Paul, no longer 'Uncle Paul' is being described now as some sort of adversary making outrageous claims and insulting George at every turn. But... what if all or some of what Paul claimed, is true? We know he was probably physically abusive to Marianne and once quipped that stair carpet rods make good weapons for use on a woman. HG wells told his son that George beat his first wife. What if Marianne has shared some of her experience of abuse with Maria, who in her own marriage, according to George, was on the receiving end of violence? And what if Maria mentions it to Paul? Or is it Paul getting revenge for being turned down for a loan - which seems unlikely. And, whatever is going on does not include Marianne, so Paul seems to be on good terms with her. Would Paul have helped with the German Hospital admission if he genuinely bore a grudge? Perhaps he wanted that Manchester address in order to tell Marianne's aunt how badly she was being treated. And, telling the Hospital authorities that Marianne was being badly treated - well, she will have been examined on admission and any injuries or marks on her from bruising would have been recorded. Maybe they did find something and George was covering his tracks in case Mrs Gissing, his mother, ever found out about it via the wider family network. 

Mural at Goose Green (not the Falkland Islands one!) commemorating William Blake's vision. 

George writes on:

Well, since Nell has returned home , the man's gossip & slander to both of us has been so intolerable, that I yesterday wrote him a letter, saying that we were very grateful to him for what he had done, (NB I paid him all his expense long ago,) but that I feared  he was pursuing the best course to make my wife ill again, as she was in constant distress & agitation at things he kept telling her. I begged that these matters might never be touched on again, My letter was perfectly friendly and polite (I think you can believe that,) but tonight I receive this reply 'Sir! In answer to your insulting letter, I have only to inform you that I & my family will keep in Peckham, & you & your wife will keep in Islington - Paul Rahardt.' - And he encloses my open letter!!

Well, there, is the whole matter. Whether he will persuade Paddington people to taboo us remains to be seen. In any case I think you will agree with me that the rupture is a great relief, for I cannot blame myself in the least in the matter; & really the man is such an intolerable vulgarian & (I think I may add,) scoundrel, that I knew the connection must somehow cease. I only regret much that he helped Nell into the Hospital.

Well, what is true here? It sounds as if Paul has got wind of George's criminal past and wants to uncover the secret life he had in Manchester. So, it is ironic George refers to him as a scoundrel! 

Then, he goes on ranting:

You will be amused to hear that the man vilifies Mother & you constantly to all his acquaintances because you won't write letters to them, - a most laudable abstinence on your part. I have told you all this for two reasons; first. because I think you will be rather glad to avoid even the appearance of intimacy with the Rahardts when you come to London; next because I should not be in the least surprised if he were impudent enough to write to you or Mother the blackguardisms he has been circulating here. I rather think I should like you to read all this to Mother.

And we see how George has taken over everyone else's right to make their own mind up on the subject. Which is very typical of our man when in the face of opposition or when he feels weak - he rallies others to his point of view, robbing them of an unbiased account with which to make up their own minds. Algernon is being used to disseminate George's position to the Wakefield set, with no chance they will ever know otherwise. The need to control others' perceptions of him and his doings are at the core of his Diaries and Letters, and we see it here beginning what will become a lifelong pattern of reacting to any form of opposition with character assassination and his 'poor me' mentality.  

1960 First edition cover

This was a time of change for George. This letter also contains news he has a new-found interest in Positivism, and that he is about to start social climbing with the help of the Frederic Harrisons. Bertz, his man-wife, is undertaking the London Matric (presumably in order to find employment in the 

government or as a teacher), and Nell has at last been given a diagnosis - Scrofula. 

He ends the letter with this manifesto, vis-à-vis his commitment to writing:

I mean to bring home to people the ghastly condition (material, mental and moral,) of our poor classes, to show the hideous injustice of our whole system of society, to give light upon the plan of altering it, &, above all, to preach an enthusiasm for just and high ideals in this age of unmitigated egotism & 'shop'. I shall never write a book which does not keep all these ends in view. 

What can we make of this clarion call? To paraphrase the Divine One aka Oscar Wilde, when commenting on the death of Little Nell (she of The Old Curiosity Shop): One would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. 

Commonplace 148  George & His Uncle Paul. PART ONE

With works by the bona fide (and bona in the Polari sense) German genius that is Jonathan Meese.

The Yellow Baron 2004-5

Paul Rahardt was the German uncle who pulled strings so that George's first wife Marianne aka Nell could be admitted to the German Hospital (see commonplace 146). Not that Paul received effusive thanks from George, who hated being beholden to anyone, least of all those he considered to be his social inferiors. And George had other reasons for choosing to distance himself from his uncle, and his London family.

SAALKONDITOREI STOFFWECHSEL de LOLLYLOLLYLOLLY 2008

We know about Paul Rahardt mostly from Volume 1 of George's letters, and it's clear from his first appearance that Uncle Paul is going to be a perceived threat to George's peace of mind. Paul was married to George's father's sister, Aunt Maria. There was some communication between the older members of the Gissing family and the Rahardts, who lived in London, but George and his siblings had less physical contact.

After George's gap year in the States, his brother, William, wrote to suggest the Rahardts might be a useful source of support - George was intent on making a base in the capital. William was also worried about how to explain the recent past, with regard to the massive change in George's situation; he needed guidance on how to field questions from their relatives. So, we can assume George's shame at being convicted for theft and the gaol sentence was not widely known amongst the entire Gissing clan. The shame would reflect badly on the Wakefield Gissings, and so William wanted to know what the party line should be. As William was not naturally deceitful (unlike George), it is clear he would find this sort of malarkey stressful, but he was loyal and decent, and wanted to do the right thing for all of them.

In 1878, Paul Rahardt and his family were living in Hackney, then a semi rural part of north east London. Have a look at this click to get some sense of the place it was. Now, it is a wholly different sort of a thing, and can be truly appreciated by dipping into the book 'Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire' by psychogeographer Iain Sinclair click. George had some contact with them - he reported to Algernon (July 24th 1878) the birth of their child, though he seemed underwhelmed by it, himself.

On July 6th 1879, William wrote to George partly to thank Marianne for a violin bag she had made for him. A few months earlier that year, she had spent a very happy holiday with William (and his landlady!), and they were clearly very fond of each other. Anyone who believes the propaganda that George's first wife was some kind of degraded slut must take themselves to the letters from William, who was no fool and certainly no push over when it came to understanding human nature. Reading William's thoughts on Marianne, it is clear she is a much more refined and genuinely socially acceptable person than most of George's biographers allow. George's unheroic defamation of her character - to rationalise his own faults - is one of his greatest failings as a human being. Commonplaces 109/110 address this short holiday - do have a read. Both William and Marianne suffered very bad health and died in what should have been their prime, but what a thing it might have been if they had been a romantic couple, and she had never met George. We will never know how she might have fared if she had never been singled out for George's version of love.

BLUTHUNDINNINBABY mit STOFFTIERWECHSEL IM SAALBLUT 2008

William's July 6th letter includes his views on Paul Rahardt. He wrote:

I was pleased to hear you had been to Aunt Maria's. I think I like Paul the best, his talking powers are great. Have you ever noticed a little peculiarity of his? It struck he had a strange habit of wetting his finger ends in his mouth & drawing his handkerchief through the fingers.

Perhaps George hated Paul's funny little habits... or maybe he was jealous of his centre of attention speaking skills. Pierre Coustillas (in the Heroic Life volume1) suggests this is exactly the sort of flashy cove George disliked, but he also suggests George's lack of affection for Paul was based on the latter being less than left-wing. As George was going through his Socialist phase, maybe this is true, though it doesn't really hold water when you think of the deeper strain of reactionary right-wingness George always held in his heart. But, George was trying to make a small wave for himself in Socialist circles, so perhaps he felt association with an outed right-winger might tarnish his embryonic political career. As hardly any politician really believes what they espouse, it shows George could be very naive when it came to the real world - the right and left are in bed (figuratively and literally!) with each other all the time. 

On December 7th 1879, George writes to Algernon with something like sympathy for his Uncle Paul. It seems Paul had asked George's grandfather to lend him £30 so he could take up a position in engineering (presumably for tools). He was refused, but then, the grandfather lent £40 to a total stranger. George was incensed at the unfairness of it, and goes on to say he once had to borrow £10 from the man and was charged £1 interest over four months - an outlandish amount. The old adage 'blood is thicker than water' did not seem to apply to grandad. For all his faults, George was generally not tight - in the British sense of the word as in being mean with money - where his family were concerned, with the exception of the pittance he paid in alimony to Marianne aka Nell. Still, her dying in poverty preyed on his conscience (I hope) which is another reason he subsequently had to make her out to be a debauched waster and architect of her own misery after her death.

Fish Baby Food With Fixed Stars (the closest google translate came up with) 2008

In January 1880, Paul is in Berlin and has written to say what a good time he is having. Relations are cordial, if not intimate, so George is happy to pass this snippet of family info on to Algernon. The trip was funded by a loan from George, but there are signs their relationship is about to change. In March, George explains all:
We have had rather unpleasant dealings with Rahardt lately. I think I told you he borrowed £20 of me to go to Germany with. Of this he paid back £10 some months ago. Now the other day he came to me with the news that he had receives £30 from his brother-in-law in Germany (a loan, I suppose,) & that he intended to set up Maria in a small grocer's shop, but wanted an additional £30 to do it. Would I lend? I regretted &c, but, of course, found myself quite unable to comply. And the man is grievously offended. He never made the least allusion to the £10 he owes me, & which I should be extremely glad of. We have been discovering lately that we have been somewhat deceived in his character. I am afraid he treats aunt very badly occasionally, & certainly he has a blackguard circle of acquaintances. 

By April 23rd, Paul has repaid the £10 loan, which is a godsend as George is broke from publishing 'Workers in the Dawn'. But, that spat over the loan was just the beginning of the end, and Paul would soon be persona non grata.

HighNoonNonnyNay 2012

JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO FIND OUT HOW PAUL BLOTTED HIS COPYBOOK FOREVER.

Commonplace 147  George & The Pig and Whistle.

The Pig and Whistle is one of George's slighter, more unconvincing and improbable short stories, from The House of Cobwebs, the collection published after his death. Nothing much happens in it and no great nuggets of insight or wisdom are imparted - it's a bland piece in a very low key. Download for free here click.

Though it is set in a small country pub, it seems to have been conjured up by someone with limited experience of the publican trade, written for people who have never ventured out of a large conurbation and who probably nurse romantic, idealised views on what constitutes 'country life'. However, it does contain one of those very rare Gissing gems: a more or less happy ending, though the author can't come out and say as much.

It concerns a maths teacher, Mr Ruddiman, who exploits the vulnerability of a thirty-something spinster, Ms Fouracres, who lives in a country pub with her dipsomaniac father, the landlord of the Pig and Whistle. Maths man's strong maths point is setting his pupils problems to solve that focus on budgets and economics. He is generally dissatisfied with his position in life, partly because he has no prospects for advancement in his school, and he is 45 years old. Underachievement is his middle name, but he is shrewd enough to not look a gift horse in the mouth when it arrives in the shape of Ms. Fouracres. He has visited the inn as a day tripper, but then one summer, he decides to spend his holidays in the Pig and Whistle inn, a very small establishment situated on the outskirts of the town of Woodbury. (Presumably, not to be confused with the picturesque Devon village of Woodbury, a place George knew well.) Though Ruddiman - a name guaranteed to be mocked mercilessly by his students - can hardly be said to have his eye on Ms Fouracres at the start of his holiday, he spends quite a bit of time talking to her. His interest is not captured by her physical attributes (she doesn't have any), or her cracking conversation (ditto) but because she can run a small country pub with a certain amount of aplomb. And she always refers to him as 'sir', so she knows her place - or, as George said that his second wife didn't, she 'knew which side of her bread is buttered'.


Old Fouracres has an unbelievable fixed idea that he once met the Prince of Wales, but this part of the story is so dumb and dull, we need not linger on it. It is really only a device to 1) get him out of the pub overnight (and Ruddiman's hair so he can have a turn behind the bar to see if he likes the publican trade); 2) kill him off, and leave the single daughter with the prospect of running the pub on her own. George lets us know Ms Fouracres is a good housekeeper (did he ever see a woman he couldn't classify by her home-making skills??) who can balance the books and work with an eye to eeking out a limited budget - George's kind of gal. She is a Superwoman who can tend the garden and guard the poultry (and despatch them with her bare hands no doubt); according to her creator 'demonstrative mirth was not one of her characteristics'.

On the night the landlord goes off gallivanting after the Prince of Wales, Ruddiman helps out behind the bar. And, when the cat's away, the mice do play. He finds he has a liking for the work. George's usual contempt for shop-keeping doesn't kick in, but we have the snobbery he represents when Ms Fouracres makes the distinction that her father has bad-mouthed the pub by calling it a 'pot-house' whereas she prefers to call it an inn. After all, it has two rooms for rent. Ruddiman, the creep, agrees, because he is a rampant snob like Ms Fouracres (and their creator), and he is on the make. The more he gets his feet under her table, the more he likes the thought of running a country inn.

Then sudden news comes that the father is dead. In what is probably the least convincing element of the tale, old Mr Fouracres has drowned in a pond (what is it with George and drownings?? Many of his tales feature death by water). His daughter hardly misses a beat when she finds out - just a slight touch of weeping, as befits a (would-be) lady. There is no sign she is bereaved or distressed, after she returns from claiming/identifying the corpse. Luckily, distant relations deal with the messy bit of the wake and burial (he owned a pub, died within a day's travel of it, and yet the wake is conducted miles from home!), but maybe Ms F is a cold fish and has no familial feelings.

But George does not allow the grass to grow under Ruddiman's feet. Very swiftly, after assessing that a mere woman can't possibly function without a man and assuming she hasn't got the wit to employ one to do the heavy lifting, he makes her an offer she can't refuse: he will ditch the teaching and join her in running the inn/pot-house as her assistant. She demurs, so he ratchets up the pressure and, though it isn't stated baldly, we assume he proposes marriage, they join together in matrimony or its approximate, and ride off into the sunset, together.

So what are we to make of this tale? Contentment at one's lot in life is not really George's creative world, is it? The Pig and Whistle is a mini Henry Ryecroft scenario - George, convincing himself that he might enjoy a quiet life in the back of beyond selling beer to random tourists and uncouth locals - with a woman he doesn't love by his side. Tosh, of course, because he never sought out such an existence out of the story (with the exception of having a woman he didn't love by his side haha). Unrealistically, how could they make a living - you would expect a mathematical wizard who loved drawing up fictional national budgets might have realised that. Ruddiman seems to like the stronger female - was George ever hankering after an assertive Wonder Woman to become an assistant to himself, a sort of PA to his talent? This story was written when he was shacked up with Gabrielle Fleury, so perhaps he expected her to step up to that particular plate?

What about the coded names? George liked to give his characters names that held a secret insight - Ruddiman could be a red man (ie red-faced, bucolic, a typical country bumpkin) or it could be an allusion to the British swear word 'ruddy' which is an anodyne form of its rhyming swear word, 'bloody'. Fouracres may be a shrunken version of the mythic 'Forty acres and a mule' associated with the emancipation of the slaves in the US click. We never get to know their first names.

And the Pig and Whistle pub name?
Here (click and click) we see these two terms might originate from a number of sources.

The Pig might be a drinking vessel and the Whistle a bastardization of 'to wassail' - meaning to party party. As you can see from the above Butlin's post cards, partying is close to the hearts of all Brits. And, partying was very much the domain of the Butlin's internment - er, I mean holiday - camps click patronised by the working class, back in the day. These were quintessentially British, like Carry On films, Morrissey, the thwack of leather on willow, Wall's ice cream, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist... oo, er, I'm channeling former PM John Major now. Time to go.

For George Orwell's views on the Great British Pub click

Commonplace 146 George & The German Hospital.

The original building - picture from the Wellcome Collection.

George claimed not to approve of 'jobbery', a term now fallen out of common parlance (if it was ever in common parlance!) often applied to the political arena, that once described graft or nepotism or back-scratching that gave an unfair advantage over those without useful contacts to help them find preference. The Gissing boys were benefactors of how much their father meant to the Wakefield community when enough money was raised by public subscription to pay for them to be boarders at Lindow Grove School, Alderley Edge (click to see how times have changed at Alderley Edge!). If they hadn't had that bit of jobbery to rely on, they might have all found other paths to follow.

Vlad the Jobber.

George would never have admitted that being given financial help of any kind with school fees for himself and his two brothers was preferential treatment, or that his sisters' education with the school where family friend Lucy Bruce was a governor, might constitute jobbery. Neither would he have considered being offered a letter of introduction to the total stranger Lloyd Garrison (when George ended up in the US after his prison stint), but then George never was a man to think anyone might be helping him or doing him a favour.

So it comes as no surprise to find him neck-deep in denial making use of his contacts when he could. One such occasion was the help he received in 1880 from his German uncle, Paul Rahardt, who had a legitimate right to care at the German Hospital in Dalston. Marianne aka Nell had been suffering from the effects of scrofula, a disease she had probably picked up in her childhood, or teens, and probably needed surgery requiring great skill, and nursing care of the highest order. Nell needed treatment for a tumour on her face. Scrofula is the glandular form of tuberculosis; in scrofula, the glands of the face are particularly susceptible to tumours and lesions. As the procedure involved operating on the inside of the mouth and the top of the throat, great skill is required to operate and keep the patient oxygenated. Postoperative care would focus on maintaining airways and not allowing infected matter to travel to the lungs in particular, or infection occurring to any of the cranial nerves, or onward to the brain.

Facial glands according to Gray. Scrofula could affect any or all of them. 

Worldwide, every large city with a significant German population had its German Hospital. In 1845, London's was constructed in Dalston, with a remit of serving the needs of the large German immigrant population of that part of the city, and any locals who were in urgent need of help. The majority of these would be the general urban poor, but the German was a place that excelled in care for women and children. Marianne would have qualified for reasons of gender and not because she was poor, because in 1880, she was living with her husband and they were both earning a living and so could pay. In fact, even the very poor were willing to pay what they could afford - the pride of the working class is legendary. Only the unemployed and really destitute received totally free care, and that would have been a cause of shame to them.

A full account of the early days is to be found in the British National Archives click and here is some of the history as posted on their website, and I thank them for lending it:

Kaiser Wilhelm Stiftung (German Orphanage). Convalescent homes in Dalston, London, and in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Associated Hospitals: Convalescent Home, Dalston Lane 1883 - 1908. Convalescent Home, Hitchin, Herefordshire 1908 - 1948. The German Hospital For the last forty years newcomers to Dalston have been surprised to learn that there is a hospital building in their midst which is known as the 'German'. Yet for the first 100 years of its existence there was no such surprise. Originally founded 'for the reception of all poor Germans and others speaking the German Language', the German Hospital also cared for the local English-speaking population in the case of emergencies. It was supported by subscriptions and donations, many from Germany or the German community in England, and run by a dedicated band of German nursing sisters and doctors. And when, in 1948 the Voluntary Hospital became part of the NHS, first as a general hospital and more recently as a psychiatric hospital, the 'German' continued to enjoy both in professional circles and among the general public the highest reputation for skilled staff and hospital care. In the 1840s it is estimated that some 30,000 Germans were living in England, making up by far the largest immigrant community. Many of them lived and worked in poor conditions in the East End of London, where poverty and the language barrier left them little chance to make use of the limited medical resources available at that time. The work of a German pastor and a doctor to establish a hospital for 'poor German Sick' was taken up by the Prussian Ambassador, the Chevalier Bunsen, who succeeded in enlisting the support of the rich and influential in Germany and England, including both Royal Houses, so ensuring that the hospital was built. On 15 October 1845 the German Hospital opened, with just 12 beds. An early outstanding feature of the hospital was the nursing care provided by the Protestant Deaconesses from the Kaiserswerth Institute near Wessendorf. It was their example at the German which prompted Florence Nightingale to visit the hospital on two occasions and then to enrol for training at the Institute in Germany in 1851. New hospital buildings, constructed according to the highest standards in hospital design, were opened in 1864 and provided to be invaluable in the epidemics which swept London in the 1860s and 1870s. The German Royal family took a keen interest in the hospital, as did the von Schroder family who were so often to provide funds for the hospital over the years.

A more recent wing built in 1863 - now (of course) made into apartments.

Dalston was a genteel place at the time the German Hospital first opened its doors, and before the arrival of the railway, it was little more than a rural backwater. An association with helping the sick and needy had been established in that area as long ago as the thirteenth century when a leper hospital was opened around what became Dalston Lane. This was eventually affiliated to St Bartholomew's Church and it might well have once existed on the site on which the German Hospital was built - we know that sites associated with sickness and healing were often recycled and re-used for newer establishments. Similarly, hospitals were often built on old plague pits or cholera pits - for example, Exeter used to have an NHS building built on a cholera pit. The Dalston Infant Orphan Asylum stood on the site immediately before the German was constructed.

The German Hospital is above the word Bartholomew in this Booth Map of 1898

The level of care provided at the German was considered to be of the very best. Miss Nightingale (as all nurses of a certain age hopefully still address Florence Nightingale) was so impressed with the model of care employed there, that she travelled to Kaiserswerth click in Germany and enrolled in the Deaconesses' Institute to learn their craft. From this training she formulated her own approach to nursing care - and the rest, as they say, is history...

According to the website click Lost Hospitals of London:

A Hospital with a particularly complicated history, it was founded in 1845 in Dalston Place, on the south side of Dalston Lane.  It offered free treatment to German-speaking immigrants, regardless of religion or origin, many of whom worked and lived in poor conditions in the East End of London, although it did not discriminate and also cared for English-speakers in emergencies.  In fact, most of its out-patients were the English poor. The Hospital occupied three houses converted from the Dalston Infant Orphan Asylum, and had 12 beds.  By 1850 the building of the North London railway track had progressed through the area; the cutting ran behind the Hospital, severing it from its garden.  This no doubt stimulated the Governors to build new premises in the garden.  The new building opened in 1864, and the Dalston Lane frontage was rented out. The Hospital now had 100 beds with a front entrance in Alma Road (which was renamed  Ritson Road in 1877). Access from Dalston Lane was restored in 1867, when a bridge was built over the railway line.  

This shows part of the existing German Hospital site, and gives a flavour of its size. 

1888 click

Commonplace 145  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 that 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 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 didn't have 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. 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...

Commonplace 144  George & The Shame of Serial Publication.

Poor George. He moaned about not being published then when he was asked for contributions to magazines and periodicals, apart from the Russian experience when he wrote for Turgenev, he complained about being published at all. One of his particular bugbears was the serialisation of his novel A Life's Morning.

Effie Gray (reading the Cornhill) by her husband,
John Everett Millais 1877

Let us begin at the beginning, and here we pay tribute to Michael Collie and his excellent George Gissing: A Bibliography (1975). Here is what he has to say about it:
According to the letters Gissing started to write A Life's Morning in August 1885, though in the Diary he noted that it had been written between September and November of that year. Despite the fact that Smith, Elder liked it, there were snags to be overcome including, according to Roberts, the request that Gissing should rewrite the ending. Eventually it was published in the Cornhill in twelve monthly instalments between January 1888 and December 1888 and in book form on 15 November 1888 (Diary) in what, for Gissing, and Smith, Elder, was a normal edition of 500 copies. Adams confirms that Gissing received £50 for the serial and £50 for the book.
Probably as soon as it was written and certainly by the time it was published, Gissing recognized A Life's Morning as one of his weaker works. The Diary, with the mention of his having received proofs to correct at two quite different times, perhaps provides the clue to the fact that he revised it. If so the novel cannot have been very satisfactory when he wrote it hurriedly in 1885 before beginning Demos. With Isobel Clarendon, A Life's Morning has to be regarded as apprentice work.

'Apprentice work' is probably Collie being kind. A Life's Morning is a slight and unmoving tale containing some pretty rotten purple prose, and some fairly forgettable characters. Pretentious, vapid and boring, would be too harsh, but...

Cornhill magazine was published between 1860-1975, and its name comes from a part of the financial area of the City of London, a ward that has many illustrious associations with the likes of Sir Christopher Wren, Pepys, Mrs Thrale, Samuel Johnson and the Stock Exchange. A link between a Victorian popular magazine with a readership of inquiring minds and the intelligentsia of the previous century was that Cornhill is where the first ever London coffee house was sited in 1652.

This is allegedly the site
of the original coffee house, click

Coffee, of course, was the drug of choice back in the days when Samuel Johnson and James Boswell did their thing with Mrs Thrale, and coffee houses were the places revolutionaries and Artists, scientists and philosophers met to introduce the Enlightenment to Britain. Cornhill Magazine maybe did not have such an impact on British cultural life, but, as its first editor was William Makepeace Thackeray, creator of Vanity Fair and Barry Lyndon perhaps it was more dedicated to amusement than George would have liked. Thackeray often went under the pseudonym M.A.Titmarsh, a Freudian slip of a name evoking both Oedipus and breast paraphilia, though maybe he just wanted to be paid to edit and make contributions, and thought the word 'tit'  might appeal to a certain readership. The sort of readership that might be described as tits - in English vernacular, a tit is a useless person - usually male, natch. Thackeray's The Snobs of England by One of Themselves click is a satire on all things snobbish, but like many satires, is a secret homage. Free download here click

Cornhill Magazine was published by Smith, Elder, so George didn't have to go far to ply his wares. Serial publication was a good move for writers who found it difficult to find an audience, but George tended to see it as akin to back-door advertising copy. After all, there was no guaranteeing the calibre of its readership, or where that magazine would surface - as periodicals are easy to swap and pass round, they might find their way into some very dubious coat pockets - people who don't know their anapaests click from their elbows (a reference to George's dismissive remarks about the sort of scum who don't understand Greek poetry made to Morley Roberts). But, as all printed matter was expensive, people tended to hang on to the magazines, and pass them round to anyone trusted enough to read them with care. (My inner city junior school gave us a 'how to read a book' lesson designed to teach us how to hold a book, turn a page, and store books - things were SO different in the 1950s!).

Study at a Reading Desk by Sir Frederick Leighton 1877

To keep their copies in good condition, readers would often have the year's editions bound in hard covers, so as to keep it on a bookshelf. I have a two volume copy of the Cornhill Magazine for 1888, each volume containing 6 months of editions, and the first piece out of the starting block in January is George's first two chapters of A Life's Morning. By February, George's next portion closes the month. The title at the top of the magazine page reads: The Cornhill Magazine January 1888 A Life's Morning by the author of Demos, Thyrza, etc. In pencil, some previous owner has added 'by George Gissing'. To be honest, my copy looks like it's never been read. I wonder why...

The Japanese Mask
by Gustave Claude Coutois 1884

On this first page, we have one of George's more purple passages, and, sadly, a sign of what is to come in the rest of the thing, which, in the case of the magazine version, will take a whole year to unfold. Will George's reading public have been on tenterhooks queuing at WH Smith's each month eager to purchase the latest edition?? You be the judge: George writes, on the first page (the second paragraph!!) apropos the male protagonist, Wilfred:
He had been delicate in childhood, and the stage of hardy naturalism which interposes itself between tender juvenility and the birth of self-consciousness did not in his case last long enough to establish his frame in the vigour to which it was tending. There was nothing sickly about him; it was only an excess of nervous vitality that would not allow body to keep pace with mind. He was a boy to be, intellectually, held in leash, said the doctors. But that was easier said than done. What system of sedatives could one apply to a youngster whose imagination wrought him to a fever during a simple walk by the seashore, who if books were forcibly withheld consoled himself with the composition of five-act tragedies, interspersed with lyrics to which he supplied original strains.  Well, there was obviously one thing Wilf could have tried... but his parents might not have wanted to catch him doing it.

Fortunately, Cornhill Magazine did not rely on George's offering for its continuing success. After the first installment finally closed, readers could enjoy a piece on the evolution (!) of the Theory of Evolution. melding fact with mild satire, but linking Charles Darwin to his grandfather, Erasmus, via the interesting things both had to say about plants - Erasmus helped translate the works of Linnaeus and everyone knows about him click. Then there is a short story about a girl from the Hard, the seafaring side of Portsmouth, who exudes charm, sass and intelligence. Cass, for that is her name, meets a sad end when she tries to save a love rival in a lodgings fire, only to find her friend has already departed, having rushed out of the building without raising the alarm. Alas, Cass is too late to save herself. It is a competent and diverting short story in two brief chapters - handy if you only have a few moments to invest in your reading, written in plain prose with no pretensions, and Cass has a touch of George's Hester from Fleet-Footed Hester about her. A case of in and out with a thought-provoking tale ably delivered, with no sign the author has swallowed a dictionary.

The Three Sisters by Balthus 1954

Among those of George's peers who made contributions to the Cornhill was Arthur Conan Doyle. Remembered now mostly for his Sherlock Holmes, Doyle himself was more interested in writing historical fiction. Though not attributed as its author, Doyle's short story 'John Huxford's Hiatus' appeared in June 1888. To read it and so much more about ACD, click. Doyle was a committed magazine contributor, having written to augment his meagre doctor's salary when he was a GP in Portsmouth - at a house not far from The Hard. By the time this story was published, Doyle had been a doctor on a whaling expedition, had worked in many medical settings including as a surgeon in ophthalmology, lived in Germany for a year, been to university, worked on a ship that went to Guinea in West Africa, married, become a spiritualist, and brought the world Sherlock Holmes. In short, Doyle had given himself something to write about. If George has any literary faults (haha) it is that much of what he wrote came from a very limited perspective. He had not really lived enough or extended himself enough to write truly captivating scenes, and his social circle was extremely limited, so his creations were often stifled and restrained. And he sometimes focused on subjects that were going out of fashion. As Morley Roberts and even, to some extent, George's brother Algernon, proved, there was a broad interest in adventure stories and mysteries and a growing band of potential readers desperate for something engaging to read, people who would not have climbed over the likes of Doyle in order to get their mitts on A Life's Morning, even in manageable bite-sized monthly chunks. Poor George was too preoccupied and hamstrung by his need to produce 'Art' to give us something a little more... accessible/entertaining than this...

THREE Volumes!!!!!!