In Love with George Eliot
Page 1
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraphs
Prologue
1
2
3
Part One
1857
1
2
3
4
1859
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Part Two
1869
Epigraphs
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Part Three
1872
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1878
8
9
10
11
12
Part Four
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
1880
15
16
17
18
19
Part Five
Epigraphs
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Epilogue
Epigraph
Epilogue (text)
Author’s Note and Selected Bibliography
In Love with George Eliot
Kathy O’Shaughnessy has reviewed books for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Financial Times, Independent, The Observer, TLS, New Statesman, The Spectator, and others. She has worked as Deputy Editor on the Literary Review, Arts & Books Editor of Vogue, Literary Editor of The European, and Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Arts & Books. Her stories have been published in Faber’s First Fictions, and she edited and introduced Drago Stambuk’s poems, Incompatible Animals.
Scribe Publications
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Published by Scribe in 2019
Copyright © Kathy O’Shaughnessy 2019
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
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For William,
Patrick, Tom, and Beatrice
What shall I be without my Father? It will seem as if a part of my moral nature were gone. I had a horrid vision of myself last night becoming earthly sensual and devilish for want of that purifying restraining influence.
Marian Evans, Letters, 1, 284
I say, Philo! how is it that most people’s lives somehow don’t seem to come to much?
Edith Simcox, Episodes in the Lives of Men, Women and Lovers
Prologue
1
The train had shuddered to a halt. Clatter of doors opening and shutting, noise echoing in the huge vault of Euston station, a smell of oil-flavoured steam and soot. A last door opens, and a woman neither young nor old, slightly round-shouldered, descends to the platform. She looks round, possibly she is short-sighted; a tall man walks towards her. Everything about his stride and the way he greets her suggests a contrasting certainty and vigour.
A minute later, they are in a hansom. ‘I have looked forward to this,’ says John Chapman, as it jolts along. ‘With you at my side, it will be the best of its kind.’
The pale and plain-faced woman, who’s been looking down as if preoccupied, while her left hand surreptitiously sets her collar straight, murmurs, ‘Kind of you to say so.’
He gives easy voice to his emotion, she thinks, in the way of the beautiful. Another country. But still — the proximity to him — they are sitting opposite each other, and the cab is so small their knees are practically touching. And she is aware, each time she encounters his glance, of him looking at her, with the keenest interest. Yes, this is why we live, she thinks, with a sort of joyous sigh, an inner trembling and sensation of release. Suddenly she is smiling, as she sees the sights, hears the cries, the thundering rattle of wheels, the indescribably varied din of the city. Then they are turning in to the Strand, where the newspapers have their offices, lit all night. This is the path, she knows, from the City to the nexus of power, Parliament. They draw to a halt at No. 142.
The year is 1851, the day is January 8. London is the capital of the empire, a centre not just of power, but of ideas: education, women’s rights, positivism, atheism, evolution, workhouses, prostitution, to name a few.
Marian Evans is shown to her room, down a long corridor, overlooking the Thames. The window is small; the room is small too. In the diminutive grate is a fire, giving little heat. Sitting on the bed, the excitement of the journey is fading, her naturally depressive tendency is asserting itself. So, this is the beginning. She is come from Coventry to make her way in London. John Chapman is hoping to be the next publisher and editor of the Westminster Review, but he has not bought it yet. She will help him, but her exact role is unclear.
Marian’s spirits revive later in the day when tea is taken in the drawing room. She has washed her hands and face, tidied her hair. Her reflection — one look is enough.
She is seated, as the newcomer, nearest to the fire. It’s a biting cold January afternoon, already dark outside. The oil and gas lamps have been lit, and on sideboards and small tables there are more lamps than she would have thought possible in one room. Mrs Chapman is fourteen years older than Mr Chapman, and it is rumoured that he married her for her money; there are rumours, too, that she might help finance the Westminster Review. They have three children. Mrs Chapman says, without even the appearance of sincerity, that she’s privileged to have Marian to stay. ‘Thank you ma’am,’ replies Marian, her own mood peculiarly restoring as she registers Mrs Chapman’s sourness.
The door opens, and Miss Tilley, the governess who also helps with housekeeping, enters the room. She didn’t know tea was being taken, she says, as she seats herself. Mrs Chapman doesn’t glance in Miss Tilley’s direction. Marian is now a spectator. The two women form a contrast. Susanna Chapman has a tiny cap perched on the top of her large chignon. Her face resembles a floury milk-pudding, mouth downturning, and she blinks constantly. Miss Tilley is wearing a snug-fitting bodice, tight-waisted above a flowing maroon skirt. Her front ringlets sit as if glued to her forehead above her small, strangely perfect — like
a cat’s — nose.
Mrs Chapman [looking straight ahead of her]: Did you speak to Mr Hodgson and Mr Janis?
Miss Tilley [also looking straight ahead of her]: I did.
Mrs Chapman: And Cook?
Miss Tilley: She is clear about supper plans.
Now Chapman speaks. ‘Great heavens — my dear Miss Evans,’ — he briskly exits the room, returning with the Westminster Review, which he gives to Marian. ‘It bears the first piece by your hand.’
Impossible to suppress the bright wave of pride and pleasure filling her. She is aware of two pairs of female eyes watching her.
‘It is a long book, surely,’ — Mrs Chapman.
Miss Tilley, regarding her, finally bursts out with: ‘What is it, Miss Evans?’
‘I wrote a review of Mackay’s book, The Progress of the Intellect.’
‘It is a long book, I am sure.’
‘It is an anti-Christian book?’ asks the governess.
‘That would be a simplification,’ says Marian, in her musical, low, cultivated voice. She hesitates before adding: ‘I tried to argue that if we cannot still learn from earlier ways of thought, our way forward must be the more circumscribed.’
Total silence has fallen. Miss Tilley and Mrs Chapman are staring at her.
‘Quite so,’ puts in John Chapman, quickly. ‘Miss Evans argues that erudition on its own can be mere sterility.’
‘Not exactly,’ smiles Marian. (Either he hasn’t been listening, or he has the fuzziest of intellects.) ‘I said — I think I said — there is always a place for erudition and knowledge of the past, but alone they won’t suffice. But this is very dry matter for the present company,’ — introducing a note of humility, she bows her head.
‘You’re right, as ever, Miss Evans — Miss Evans here has such remarkable clarity of outlook, and compass — I am not fearful, with her support, of failing with the Review. I can say that quite confidently. Eh, Mrs Chapman? Good news, my dear, eh?’
‘Doubtless,’ said Mrs Chapman, looking ahead of her now, one eyebrow slanting in a wild new direction.
Marian is murmuring about flattery when Miss Tilley gets up from her seat, scarlet-faced, and leaves the room.
Chapman soon takes Marian with him to Hunt’s to rent a piano for her — eastwards, to the City. On the way, he asks what she thinks of the romantic scenes in Eliza Linton’s novel, Realities, which he, as London’s most radical publisher, has promised to print. ‘I have doubts about the moral tone of certain scenes of intimacy. Do you concur?’
‘Most certainly.’
‘In my view, such passages are intended to excite nothing less than the sensual nature of the reader.’
Marian wants to see his face in the gloom of the cab as he says these words. She just manages to catch his expression of solemnity.
They enter the piano shop. ‘Your choice,’ he says, turning to look, from his height, with fearful Byronic intensity, into her eyes, as they stand in the back room with its low ceiling, its array of uprights and grands, wood gleaming in the scattered pools of light. There is the smell of beeswax.
‘This is too kind,’ she says in an undertone, choosing the small Blüthner for its sweetness of tone, and because the keys are not resistant, which will make it easier to play.
Later that day five men take it up to Marian’s room. Alone, Marian begins playing Mozart’s Mass in D minor. Soon the door opens, as she secretly expected it might; Chapman, tall, hair tousled, with a troubled, fascinated look on his face, moves to sit on the chair. Now Marian plays with special feeling. To have Chapman close by, that dynamic, extraordinarily handsome presence — he is listening to the music, and to the expression she is putting into the music. She is exhibiting her sensibility, of which she has no doubt.
In the following days he comes often to listen to her play, spending long hours alone with Marian in her room.
A week later a grand piano is delivered to the drawing room. Duets and singing can now take place there, in public. ‘And I hope very much,’ says Mrs Susanna Chapman, ‘that you, Miss Evans, will play for us also.’
The message is clear.
Three days later, walking in St James’s Park, Chapman murmurs to Marian: ‘It is a privilege having you in the house, with your — mind — learning — so close to hand. Your knowledge of German —’
His hand steals into hers.
‘I can teach you, if you like.’
‘Could you? Could you really?’
The next day, Chapman spends two hours studying German with Marian in her room (she has translated the radical German text, Das Leben Jesu by Strauss, into English). Three days after that Elisabeth Tilley, the governess, declares she wants to learn German, too.
***
‘Yes … it’s true … it’s true … Elis — Miss Tilley — is my mistress — God forgive me. But mentally — you understand — it’s a desert — To be in your company — feel the effects — your understanding — humour — incomparable …’ — his voice trails off as his mouth finds her mouth.
He’s kissing her; the smell of tobacco — his hands are beginning to move, over, in, under.
‘Wait —’ she says, gently pushing him away, and catching her breath. She bends her head to listen intently.
‘They’re out!’ he says, desperately. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The servants —’
She has an idea that Alice, who had been looking at her coldly at breakfast today and the day before, is reporting to either Mrs Chapman or Miss Tilley.
They are breathing heavily. Marian has a pleasant feeling of her neck and cheeks being flushed, of life being underway.
‘You don’t understand,’ he says, in an urgent undertone. ‘My soul is in a state of deprivation — to be able to talk, to be understood, as you understand me; to talk about more than the mundane — is like being given food when you are hungry.’
He is passionate, and his conviction feels sincere. In fact, she feels a spark of pity for him. He has the dynamism of a dog kept on a too-constraining leash; a sort of pent-up vigour and hunger. He is the publisher of radical books in London: the downstairs floor of the house is dedicated to this enterprise; he hosts weekly literary parties. Like Marian, he hasn’t been to university, he has educated himself — and his ambition, to create a forum for new ideas, is all of a piece with his personal dynamism. But each time they talk, she is aware of his effortful formulations, that then lead him into an intellectual tangle. Whereas she, by marshalling her mind, as with a scalpel, can simply cut these interfering threads, and the thought, the important thought, can be seen. She knows this, he knows this.
He is pulling her to him.
‘Dear Mr Chapman,’ she whispers.
‘John. John.’
‘Dear — John,’ — the stairs creak; they break away.
He stands close against the wall; they wait in the darkness. Before he leaves the room, where they have spent fifteen minutes kissing, he takes her wrist. ‘It was the right decision — Realities — it was right not to publish it,’ he says, hoarse with a combination of excitement at his new bond with this lodger who will also be his helpmate, and fear of the two other reigning women in the house. ‘I hope you agree —’
***
On January 18, it is the servants’ day off. By ten in the morning, Mrs Chapman and the children have left for Brighton. By two-thirty, Miss Tilley has gone to visit her sister in Greenwich. The house is strangely silent. Marian is in her room, aware of the silence as of another person. She can hear the clock ticking. Footsteps, a knock on the door, and Chapman enters. ‘I can be with you now,’ is all he says, drawing off his gloves, putting his coat on the chair, but his look tells her everything. He loves her. He has been suffering from the mental chasm that exists between himself and the other, hopelessly uneducated women of the house. He draws the curtain, they kiss, he
draws her to the bed, they kiss more, move down —
2
John Chapman kept Pepys-like diaries, detailing his hopes, his humiliating sense of failure, his confused sexual relations with women. At his death they disappeared. But in 1913, in Nottingham, they turned up on a small book stall. From there they made their way to Yale, and now the first volume is on temporary loan to the British Library, which is where I sit, with my colleague, Ann.
There’s a slight awkwardness as we sit there. A growing damp patch has appeared on Ann’s chest, on my right — where her left nipple is, to be precise — and I am shifting my eyes to try to stop noticing it.
Ann Leavitt is my new colleague at QEC, Queen Elizabeth College. She has just joined the literature department, along with her husband, Hans Meyerschwitz. He is the one we actually wanted, but he wasn’t going to come unless she came too. It can be tricky being the lesser half of a spousal hire, but it must be a good move for them; they live in Finsbury Park, and previously were commuting outside London.
I don’t know Ann well, but I’d like to. I’m moving to Finsbury Park myself; we’re organising the conference on Eliot together this summer; and we’re both writing books about her. Ann’s book is a critique of Eliot’s feminism, which sounds quite political. Mine is a novel, but a novel based on fact — biography, letters, diaries.
Still, there are certain things we can never quite know.
Chapman uses his diary, for instance, to record his private life. He notes with a small number each time he has sex with Miss Tilley (whom he calls E. in his diary), and with a cross when Miss Tilley is menstruating. And Marian, too, finds her way into this coded account, when Chapman writes M. P.M. on January 18, and M. A.M. on January 19 — both of which references were later erased.
‘It’s likely she slept with him, but it’s not certain,’ concludes Ann, with a sigh.
I agree. Saying I won’t be a moment, I slide the diary gently to my part of the desk, and start photographing pages with my phone.
‘Kate — why are you doing that?’ whispers Ann, with an uncertain smile.
I murmur the word ‘evidence’. I haven’t yet told Ann I’m writing a novel.