In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  The two women had decided to visit the Palm Building together. It was still early in the day, but as soon as they walked in, Marian was hit by the strangely hot, exotic air, she could feel the palpable moisture, too; and what plants! Great, green, monstrous tropical plants rising to the ceiling, putting out their thick rubbery leaves like creatures with tentacles, in the warm smokily damp air, in this miraculous building of glass and iron, with its vast high arches. Marian’s hand crept to her hair: yes, it was damp: probably forming unbecoming frizzy tendrils. Maria Congreve did not seem to notice. Surreptitiously, Marian wiped her brow. They sat on the bench. For a minute Marian could hardly speak — the damp, febrile, warm atmosphere made her lightheaded. Outside the English spring had yet to acquire warmth; inside, it was tropical summer: all around, the densely sweet, heavy smell of white-yellow jasmine.

  ‘I was very happy at what you said, the other day, about Mr Lewes,’ said Marian, thoughtfully; beginning their conversation as she often did, by picking up the threads of a former one. They were now accustomed to speak frankly of personal matters. ‘Because of his free-thinking views, he is often misperceived. But no one could be more — true, loyal, devout.’

  Marian spoke with intense earnestness.

  ‘Devout?’ said Maria Congreve, with a crease of puzzlement.

  ‘Oh!’ said Marian, laughing, and colouring a little. ‘I don’t mean religious. I don’t know why I said that. I really just meant, devoted.’

  ‘He is devoted to you, and I like him very much,’ said Maria Congreve.

  Marian was annoyed at her slip of the tongue. It implied that Lewes was in some way not just her husband, but a worshipper at her shrine; and for some reason she was blushing.

  ‘He is a good man’, said Marian, in an attempt to regain her equilibrium. ‘I couldn’t have been happy but for him. There is so much I would never have attempted!’

  Maria Congreve coughed. ‘I have meant to ask,’ she said, with a suddenly timorous, embarrassed smile, ‘about your writing. I know you translated two most extraordinarily difficult texts from the German. And of course, I read you in the Westminster Review! The range and depth of your pieces struck me. And I wondered how you are spending your time these days, now that you are no longer writing for the Review.’

  ‘Ah — well,’ said Marian, clearing her throat, ‘it is always hard to describe how one is spending time.’

  What mendacity! But the younger Maria had her eyes fastened on her, in that nearly worshipful way, and was nodding as if she had spoken something oracular.

  ‘I know just what you mean. Time goes past each day, and you do not know where the day has gone.’

  Marian bent her head to examine her fingernails. ‘How is Mr Congreve? Is his cold better?’ she enquired, politely.

  ‘Oh, he is fine,’ said Maria Congreve, almost impatiently, as if something beautiful had been spoiled by the mention of her husband. ‘As a matter of fact, Mr Congreve is worried that — that — by — uniting with Mr Lewes — you have forfeited your writing. He has expressed pity for you. He says this is what happens in almost all marriages and unions, that a woman becomes submerged, like a rock within the sea, and is no longer visible. I hope the fact that you do not write any more is not connected to the world’s misperception of your bond with Mr Lewes.’

  ‘The world does misperceive it. But it is a sacred bond,’ said Marian, gravely. She had got used to saying this phrase.

  ‘It is!’ agreed Maria Congreve. ‘I have never seen two people so truly in sympathy with each other. And the very fact that you have been willing to bear the pain of public disapproval, bears witness —’

  ‘— to the strength of the bond,’ put in Marian. They looked at each other in the same mutual instant; Marian struck by Maria Congreve’s beauty. Yes, she was beautiful. The light flush caused by the warm tropical moist atmosphere made her skin translucent, the colour in her cheeks fluctuating; and the sheer beauty of her eyebrows, those perfect arches, compelled Marian, and everything else went from her mind.

  But Maria Congreve was obviously determined to pursue the matter of what she was doing with her time, and repeated her question.

  ‘I have —’ began Marian ‘— plans,’ she finished, lamely.

  ‘Do you have anything specific in mind?’ asked her newly acquired friend, who was more than ever seeming like a protégé, the eyes so willing to drink in wisdom, with their soft brown eager glow.

  ‘Ah — not at this moment,’ said Marian.

  Marian opened and shut her reticule, opened it, clipped it shut for a second time. It would be so pleasant to confide in Maria. Tell Maria her hopes, what she felt about writing, expand on the potential moral power of fiction, and as for the splendid reviews — why, she could quote great chunks of them, word for word! ‘I —’ she began, and then paused.

  ‘Life has been … good to me,’ Marian went on slowly, enigmatically.

  ‘Has it?’ asked Maria, staring at her, as if hypnotised by the truly unfathomable aspect of her statement.

  ‘It has,’ said Marian, in the same slow, painful way.

  A work of true genius.

  The next second, her sister Chrissey’s words came to mind.

  My object in writing to you was to tell you how very sorry I have been that I ceased to write and neglected one who under all circumstances was kind to me and mine.

  Chrissey had died nine days earlier.

  They began the long walk home; Marian no longer talking, just hurrying forward to be home in time for lunch and Spencer’s visit. Her spirits had abruptly sunk, her mouth tasted bitter. Chrissey had been ill for eighteen months. While her work was acclaimed, her sister had lost her life — at this thought, she walked even more quickly. ‘Wait!’ Maria Congreve was saying, laughing. Marian made herself slow her step. She had told Maria about Chrissey’s illness, but not yet of her death. She’d tell her soon. She tried to concentrate now on what Maria Congreve was saying. Chrissey’s words came again.

  … who under all circumstances was kind to me and mine.

  Each time she thought of Chrissey’s generous, honest words, at the end of her life, she swallowed and set her mouth. As they walked by the river, the high trees, with the new pale leaves, formed a long bower; Marian kept glancing at the gleaming darkness of the water below, slow, snake-like: an oppressive sight. Grief, and lies. She was suddenly tempted to be open with Maria.

  But you could ruin everything, said a voice at the back of her mind.

  Aloud she said: ‘I do believe everyone perceives the world differently, Maria; that we all look through an individually shaped prism. But I also believe that where truth is struck, the reader, or —’ hastily ‘— the viewer, if it is a picture, will respond. That person will feel the spark of truth; and the smaller sympathy can enlarge.’

  They stopped walking, on the river bank, by the tall reeds. What on earth had she been saying? She had a tipsy, dizzying moment, as if she’d peered down a precipice and lost her balance. She had let her mind unfurl as it would with Lewes. ‘My dear Maria, I am sorry for boring you,’ she murmured, patting Maria’s hand.

  ‘Boring me! On the contrary,’ said Maria: and for a strange moment, Marian had the notion that Maria might be about to kiss her.

  10

  Marian returned just in time for lunch with Herbert Spencer. At the sight of him, her spirits began to revive.

  She had met him through the Brays seven years earlier, at the exhibition at the Crystal Palace, where she’d been immediately struck by his conversation: a polymath, Herbert Spencer combined several disciplines in his work — philosophy, biology, anthropology, sociology, and liberal political theory. The friendship developed through the autumn. At evenings in the Strand at Chapman’s, while she played the piano, they sang together; she remembered the time his jacket thrillingly kept brushing her shoulders, while she played Schubert’s ‘An
die Musik’, and warbled along above his tenor vibrato. There was a period when they saw each other every second day; visiting Chiswick or Kew, discussing pieces for the Westminster Review, which she was editing.

  Spencer had been highly intrigued by Marian. In his characteristic style, he wrote to his friend Edward Lott about her, as the translatress of Strauss, and the most admirable woman, mentally, I ever met. We have been for some time past on very intimate terms. I am very frequently at Chapman’s, and the greatness of her intellect conjoined with her womanly qualities and manner, generally keep me by her side most of the evening.

  Marian’s feelings had as usual become strong. In the summer, she boldly rented two rooms in a cottage in Broadstairs on the Kent coast. Spencer visited, they went for walks by the peaceful summer sea; over supper, on the second night, he placed his palm over her hand. The loosening, the warming that had kindled inside her, that he could take this step — as if by magic, they both rose from their chairs, he took her hand, drew her to the sink, and they kissed.

  As abruptly as he had put his knuckle into the small of her back, to draw her further into the kiss — he had then disengaged himself, gently pushing her away; to her everlasting humiliation, he had given a strange little chuckle; said goodnight; and gone with an insouciant air, up the stairs, to sleep in the other bedroom.

  Well! The friendship had survived, and it was Spencer who had introduced her to George. And after she had begun living scandalously with George, he had visited them just at the time she had started writing Clerical Scenes, she had confided to him that she had begun writing fiction. He was the one other person in the world who knew, apart from Blackwood and Lewes.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to confide in him — some months before, irritatingly, it seemed he had let John Chapman prise the secret out of him. Still, it was pleasant to anticipate being with an old friend, in front of whom there was no need to dissemble.

  ***

  Just after the clock chimed one, the philosopher arrived, with his keen eyes, strong, beak-like nose, and the forehead that seemed to declare him an intellectual before he’d even opened his mouth — a great expanse, made all the more so by his receding hair, which still curled, dark, under his ears. Lewes wrung his hand in greeting, Marian was able to forget Chrissey and lies, Lewes said that in his honour they were having beef for lunch, and were going to drink a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. Spencer, meanwhile, was surveying the room, going to the window, looking out, scanning the road; then they clinked glasses, sat down, Spencer hitching up his trousers as he did so.

  ‘Congratulations to the author,’ he said, raising his glass in Marian’s direction. ‘I hear it’s a success. So this is the new abode!’ he continued, changing the subject at once. ‘Well, the ceilings are a reasonable height. How many rooms?’

  ‘Rooms? We’ve got the whole house!’ said Lewes.

  ‘The whole house. Really.’

  ‘You must realise,’ pleaded Marian, smiling, ‘that this is an unusual treat for us. Up until now we have been working side by side, in the same room, driving each other mad with the sound of our scratchy pens! At last, we can each work in solitude.’

  ‘I imagine it’s an agreeable contrast. Because, if I remember rightly, the amenities have not always been so forthcoming. I seem to remember you eating bread and dripping for lunch!’

  They laughed. It was true — until recently, they’d been very badly off.

  Marian asked how Spencer was, but Spencer, sniffing his glass, and sipping it carefully, briefly holding it up to the light with a suspicious air, seemed disinclined to talk about himself. When Lewes went to speak to Caroline about the beef (he favoured, he said, the French method of cooking it), Marian and Spencer were left alone. Marian regarded her old friend. On his last visit, at the end of January, his mood had been forthcoming: today he seemed more withdrawn. She leaned forward.

  ‘My dear Spencer, I was re-reading you only last week, and was very impressed with your writing on ritual, its fundamental importance, as preceding those more developed constraints such as law.’

  For the first time since his arrival, his eyes acquired some warmth.

  ‘Thank you — thank you.’

  He considered, and then said: ‘I think I said that the modifications of behaviour that we call “manners” and “good behaviour” precede those modifications wrought by law and religion.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Marian.

  Ah, she was remembering.

  ‘The great advantage of studying primitive societies,’ Spencer was saying, warming to his theme, ‘is that we see human rituals laid bare. But even in a society such as ours, primitive rituals persist. When I entered your house not thirty minutes ago, Lewes and I extended our arms, and shook each other by the hand. Why? We could as well extend our legs and rub knees. We think the handshake civilised, but the relationship to older ritual is very visible, to my way of thinking. We thereby announce that we are friends, not enemies. We will not murder each other. Just as a man in a railway carriage might offer his newspaper to a stranger when he has finished with it: he too is saying, we will not kill each other, though we are strangers.’

  It was a relief to see her old friend animated at last. But what a lecturer he was — interested and happy in his own thoughts, above everything else! He turned to her.

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me that those passages interest you,’ he said, eying her with a suddenly malicious, gleaming smile. ‘You were always an observer of social ritual — not just in others, but in yourself.’

  Marian looked questioningly at him.

  ‘Ah, you don’t remember!’ he said, laughing. ‘You said to me, one day, that you suffered from a double consciousness. That you were constantly aware of whatever you were saying, as you were saying it. That you listened to yourself in a critical way. You were, in your own words, split in two. When you told me that, I pitied you from the bottom of my heart.’

  Marian smiled thinly.

  She did recognise what he described, and remembered confiding in him, too. Foolish. Fortunately, lunch was ready. Spencer seemed more cheerful now, attacking his meal with good humour, while she felt damped down. He up, she down, like a seesaw. She must recover herself.

  They had a good lunch of roast beef, cabbage with cream, potatoes; for once, Caroline had excelled herself. They drank and moved on to a second bottle at Lewes’ suggestion, though Spencer at first demurred. Caroline had put coal on the fire in the parlour; they retired there after lunch. Once again Lewes said what a pleasure it was to see Spencer.

  ‘And,’ said Lewes, indicating the lunch, the room, ‘if we live like this, it’s all down to Polly. What a success, eh, Spencer? The sales of Adam Bede … I still find it hard to believe!’

  ‘It is really very good news,’ murmured Marian.

  ‘I congratulate you both,’ said Spencer, earnestly.

  ‘But no saying anything, eh, Spencer? I know you say that Chapman wheedled it out of you —’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘— but that has been a nuisance for us, as you can imagine. He’s written to Polly making all sorts of insinuating hints, which we’ve had to deny. Because Marian feels strongly, as do I, that we need to keep the incognito.’

  Marian sat forward intently, to hear what Spencer had to say. She half hoped he would disagree.

  ‘No doubt about that. No doubt whatsoever,’ said Spencer, with an expression of the utmost gravity. ‘If the authorship of the book were to become known, it would be impossible to vouch for its continued success.’

  ‘You think so?’ said Marian.

  ‘I do, I’m afraid.’

  He had folded his arms, in the manner of an inexorable judge. Lewes shrugged, found his cigars, offered Spencer one, but Spencer declined, saying he never smoked, he was convinced it was injurious to the heart. ‘Fine,’ said Lewes carelessly, taking one for himsel
f and lighting it.

  Marian looked restlessly at the clock. She wondered when Spencer would leave.

  Abruptly Spencer said: ‘I may have exaggerated. Please don’t take it to heart, Miss Evans —’

  ‘Mrs Lewes, not Miss Evans!’ said Lewes. ‘You have no idea the problems we have — half of Polly’s old friends keep addressing her as Miss Evans, and if the Captain and his wife were to hear of this, life could become very difficult. The landlord,’ he added.

  Spencer apologised. Puffing on his cigar, Lewes waved a hand to indicate he was mollified. ‘Yes, my dear fellow,’ went on Lewes. ‘The success of Adam Bede is unprecedented. Mudies has had to increase the supply of the book. Nearly all of the first edition — eighteen hundred copies! — have been sold. And even though the type’s been distributed, it’s just been re-set for a second edition! Yes — the whole of London talking about it.’

  ‘I have heard talk about it, too,’ admitted Spencer. ‘Very admiring talk.’

  ‘Like —?’ said Lewes. He looked like a parent keen to hear more about his favourite child.

  Spencer cleared his throat, then said: ‘I’ve heard many tributes, as you can well imagine. At the same time, it must be said, the book has its detractors.’

  Marian and Lewes looked at him.

  ‘I would be a liar if I didn’t mention it,’ went on Spencer, with a sanctimonious air.

  ‘But being the good friend that you are,’ said Lewes, smiling, ‘you’re not going to repeat those edifying remarks.’

  ‘But of course you are.’

  The words came clear, spoken by Marian. She was sitting suddenly very upright, pale-faced, staring at Spencer.

  ‘No, I hesitate to elaborate —’

  ‘Then don’t,’ snapped Lewes.

  Marian said, ‘You’d better tell me.’

  ‘My dear Mrs Lewes, as I say, your book has many admirers, but also its detractors. I shall not name names —’