In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  ‘Then don’t speak at all,’ interrupted Lewes again, red in the face, holding himself straight.

  ‘I shall not name names,’ proceeded Spencer, smoothly, ‘but as I say, there are some who feel that the subject of infanticide is intrinsically tactless. And also that your treatment of it is questionable — in danger of arousing quite the wrong sort of attitude in the public at large. Now, I must at once say — this is, of course, not my feeling. I myself am, as I always have been, an admirer of your writing, whether for the Westminster Review or otherwise.’

  ‘The Westminster Review be damned!’ shouted Lewes. ‘Polly, take no notice,’ he added, scowling, in a deliberately audible aside.

  The two men’s eyes met, and Spencer lowered his. Now there was a ritual, thought Marian, mechanically. Soon afterwards, Spencer left.

  ‘Good riddance!’ burst out Lewes, once the door had shut. ‘I would be happy never to see him again.’

  ‘And I,’ confessed Marian.

  ‘He’s jealous, that’s the truth of it. He can’t stand your success. He may even baulk at mine; after all, Physiology’s been selling well too. Where are you going?’

  Marian was going to bed, saying she had a headache.

  Upstairs, Marian’s thoughts were running hard. Spencer’s petty smallness of heart, and it was with this creature that she’d been in love! Lewes was right, he was jealous. Was this what she had to look forward to? Was this how people would respond when they knew?

  When Lewes came in to the bedroom. the curtains were drawn, the room was in deep shadow. It was March; outside, the spring blackbirds were twitting. He sat on the bed and without saying anything held her hand.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lewes.

  And she, lying there, knew what he was thinking. That it was like an illness, she was so sensitive to put-downs. It didn’t matter that The Atheneaum talked of genius, that Owen Jones was praising this book to the skies, that public demand had outstripped supply: a few words from an envious old friend and she lost her way. They sat in silence in the darkened room.

  ‘It was a mistake to have confided in him,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t even know if he’ll keep it a secret.’

  ‘Very likely not.’

  ***

  By early evening she was back in the wing-back armchair she liked. Lewes grimaced when he saw her shawl. It usually indicated a certain mood.

  To cheer her, he suggested she read aloud her story to him. For the last few weeks, with Chrissey dying, she had put her Mill book to one side. There was too much of her own family life in it for comfort just now. Instead she’d begun working on a story — the Veil, it was called, or rather ‘The Lifted Veil’.

  ‘Really?’ she said, and she turned her beautiful grey-blue eyes on him, as if emerging from a dream.

  ‘Really.’

  They liked to read aloud in the small sitting room. Lewes asked Caroline to stoke up the fire and make scrambled eggs, then poured out two brandies, the inevitable prelude to a reading of her work. The evening would work as the antidote to Spencer. When the fire was burning nicely, and Caroline had lit the oil lamps — lighting also helped her mood, he noticed — Lewes sat himself expectantly in the wing-back chair opposite hers.

  ‘Did I tell you it’s a Gothic tale? A Gothic tale of an outré kind?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  Holding her manuscript in front of her, she began speaking in the tone that never failed to charm him — still the most musical, low, pleasing voice he had ever heard. He listened carefully: the hero, Latimer, is rejected by his family because of his poetic, shudderingly sensitive nature. But how odd! In an unusual departure from realism, Marian had created a hero not merely sensitive, but supernaturally gifted — able to see with magical clarity into other people. He hears their thoughts, experiences their feelings. The essential gap that shuts off one person’s consciousness from another’s, is missing.

  At the end Lewes was silent. Then he asked her to read again the paragraph, early on, where Latimer summed up his supernatural abilities.

  Marian leafed back through her pages; as she read, her colour rose:

  I saw the souls of those who were in a close relation to me … as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision, that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague capricious memories, and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge like leaflets covering a fermenting heap.

  Lewes had shut his eyes while she spoke.

  ‘What a vision! It’s really worthy of Bosch. This calls for a cigar,’ he added, feeling in his pocket for one. Then he squatted down by the fire, held it out to the flame, puffed, so that the end of it glowed; then resumed his seat.

  ‘It is a little sour,’ she admitted; but it seemed to George that her eyelids lowered just then.

  ‘It sounds like our Friend,’ said Lewes.

  ‘The Not-Friend.’

  Marian said she felt lighter for working on it. ‘It is an odd, reflexive tale,’ she added, enigmatically.

  Soon after that, Marian went walking alone on the Common. She found it conducive to thinking, both of the brother and sister book, to which she had returned; but also of her strange story. She was reaching the end of the walk when the word ‘morbidity’ came to her. Was she — ‘morbid’? Was she — different from other people, with her too-volatile feelings? She could remember the hall in Coventry, being escorted out by her aunt, sobbing. She had had a fit of hysteria because no one had asked her to dance. No one would love her, not with her nose, her chin, her long face.

  Was she still ‘morbid’? She had noticed Lewes’ attempts to stop Spencer from voicing criticisms of Adam Bede the other day. She was reminded of the time in Jersey, before she met Blackwood in person. She had come across a letter by Lewes to Blackwood, as yet unsent, on the table.

  Entre nous, let me hint that unless you have any serious objection to make to Eliot’s stories, don’t make any. He is so easily discouraged, so diffident of himself, that not being prompted by necessity to write, he will close the series in the belief that his writing is not relished. I laugh at him for his diffidence and tell him it’s a proof he is not an author. But he has passed the middle of life without writing at all, and will easily be made to give it up. Don’t allude to this hint of mine. He wouldn’t like my interfering.

  The ease with which George diagnosed her! The freedom with which he explained her to Blackwood! She didn’t know whether to be irritated, or amused.

  11

  Ann and I keep meaning to meet to talk about the George Eliot conference, and finally do so at the small Greek restaurant off Queen Square. After lukewarm kebabs, hers without meat, we move outside so she can vape. It’s a mild night for early February, but still quite cold, so we put our coats back on. At least they have a heat lamp above. I explain we should have a list of speakers soon, but first we have to grab the star — ! — so I’ve asked Hans to be keynote speaker. I say this with a pleasant expression, although I’m still irritated at his veto. I assume she’ll smile back, at this reference to her husband, but she pulls at her vape, exhales, saying thoughtfully, ‘But he’s a man.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘It’s a conference on George Eliot. The name George Eliot says it all.’

  At the end of this sentence, her upper lip twitches involuntarily.

  ‘You feel it’s repeating the problem.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she says, another spark of anger in her eyes.

  Ann takes her coat off, and in the strong lighting I am struck by her dress. Everything about it is carefully calculated. It’s vintage, of white smock-cotton, with baggy pockets, edging in the style of lace, above Dr Martens boots, dark tights. The Victorian look is compounded by her hair, which is long and straight. She is watching me carefully o
ut of her small but pretty eyes. She has the skin of an English rose: pale, so that fluctuations of colour are as visible as blood behind glass.

  I explain. I have no leeway here. The Chair is keen for Hans be the keynote speaker, he is a big name, this conference is supposed to attract the paying public, not just students and academics. We are holding it in the great hall, we need to fill it.

  I don’t add that the last conference I organised had been a failure, with scanty attendance, the two best speakers cancelling just before; and that when I raised this conference with Marcus he looked at me over his spectacles, and said with a friendly smile, ‘But make it work this time.’

  I don’t refer, either, to the email I received this morning from him.

  Be reassured — I’m already talking to management about the promotion. But let’s have a five-star conference first.

  Marcus

  I reach for my glass of Domestica. I am going to be drinking a lot of Domestica in the next few months. When you put on a conference with someone, you’re thrown together, you get to know how willing the other one is, how selfish or unselfish, efficient or sloppy, flexible or rigid. I try to change the subject. ‘What about you,’ I ask, ‘will you speak on a topic related to your book?’

  ‘Still thinking about it.’

  Books. Our books on George Eliot are the elephants in the room. We still haven’t discussed them.

  ***

  Over the next weeks, the temperature changes between us. We exchange neutral emails to do with themes and matters like the goodie bag (when people are paying £40 for an event, they quite like a bag with a pen and a pad, a map, a list of events, tangible return for money). And then a fortnight later, after an inaugural dinner, Ann suggests a drink and we end up at midnight in the Doubletree Bar on Southampton Row. Cheesy orange lighting, over-varnished tables, brown-orange-green carpet, drinks at tourist prices. ‘I’ll get these,’ says Ann. As I sit in my plush velour chair, I hear her grilling the barman about kahlua. Does he know how to make Black Russians? Properly? Black Russians. She doesn’t ask me if I want one; she comes back with two wicked black drinks, and plonks mine on the table. ‘You’ll enjoy this,’ she says, with perfect certainty, drawing another chair up, to put her feet on it. After she’s drunk what looks like all of it in one go, she lets her head flip right back, runs her hands luxuriously through her hair, and says, ‘That feels ver-ry good.’

  I feel, in some mysterious way, that she has gone beyond me; as if I am standing dustily on the shore. I follow her then, drink mine fast too. I don’t know how much alcohol is in it, I think it’s a double or triple, but I feel my head reel and suddenly I am feeling good, extraordinarily good, and outright happy. All worries dissolve. Ann has her head resting back in the chair, and now, without lifting it in the slightest, simply turning her neck, so her face is towards me, she smiles a slow, unabashedly drunken smile. Then she is frowning as she is smiling. ‘I realise I don’t know anything about you. Do you live with someone?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Divorced,’ I say. I add, for good measure, ‘You could pay me money and I wouldn’t go back to a “relationship”!’ — doing air quotes with my fingers.

  ‘Good for you!’ she laughs. There is a mood of sisterly solidarity in the air.

  I am lightheaded the next day at work; I feel tired, but as if my head has been hoovered out and cleaned. I see her at a staff meeting. Our eyes meet, her smile a coded reference to the night before.

  Only now do we talk about our books on Eliot. ‘A novel!’ she says, her eyebrows shooting up. She admits she is surprised. Hers is a critique, a revisionary critique, she says, of Eliot from a political, feminist viewpoint. She rather dislikes Eliot, in fact. ‘Lewes is my favourite,’ she admits. ‘You know he was into Free Love?’

  12

  In early April, Marian heard from her old Coventry friend Sara Hennell.

  I want to ask you if you have read Adam Bede or the Scenes of Clerical Life, and whether you know that the author is Mr Liggins, wrote Sara.

  ‘George!’ Marian called out, from the breakfast table.

  He shouted from the bathroom, saying he would be there in a minute. Marian continued to read. The letter was fascinating. Sara was talking about the man called Liggins, who was currently rumoured to be the mystery author of Adam Bede.

  More, Sara was giving her an account of a group of parsons actually approaching this man Liggins in the local town, washing his slop-basin at a pump.

  (Well. That wasn’t very dignified.)

  He has no servant, went on Sara, and does everything for himself, but he inspired them with a reverence that would have made any impertinent question impossible. The son of a baker, of no mark at all in his town, so it is possible you may not have heard of him, but he calls himself ‘George Eliot’. They say he gets no profit out of ‘Adam Bede’, and gives it freely to Blackwood, which is a shame.

  (Giving it away to Blackwood! Why would any author do that?)

  We have not read him yet, went on Sara, but the extracts are irresistible.

  Irresistible. Sara thought they were irresistible.

  ‘George!’ she called out, louder, in high good humour.

  George arrived, and they laughed over the letter together. Since Spencer’s visit, they both feared their malicious old friend might further leak her identity; and though Marian had the occasional yearning to come out and declare herself, as soon as the idea of exposure began to seem imminent or real, it was enough to wake her up at night — and last week had done so. Just in time, Liggins, that bragging imposter, was coming to the rescue. He was, they agreed, the perfect smokescreen.

  Marian wrote back to Sara, saying gaily that she hadn’t read Adam Bede, but would do soon, as Lewes had liked it a lot. Straight after that, she copied out Sara’s letter to send to Blackwood — he’d be amused at the idea of this strange fellow Liggins declaring himself the author, boasting he didn’t take any payment for it!

  But the following day, Marian re-read Sara’s letter again.

  She’d lied to Sara freely, even with relish. In fact, she’d been lying to her for some time. Do not guess at authorship — it is a bad speculation, she had written reprovingly to her, seven months before, when Sara asked what she was doing. Her old friends were clearly curious at the lack of journalism. Charles Bray — married to Cara Bray, who had been the third great friend, along with Cara and Sara — had written also, suggesting jocularly that she might be writing a novel; she wrote back asking, also jocular, when his poem was going to come out. Seriously, I wish you would not set false rumours, or any other rumours, afloat about me. They are injurious. Several people have spoken to me of a supposed novel I was going to bring out. Such things are damaging to me.

  The four of them had not been together in one room since the day she left England for the continent with Lewes.

  Rosehill had been the start. Rosehill was one of the big houses in Coventry, where people of note met — writers, thinkers; Marian had heard gossip about their progressive ways, conversations, and social connections. Now, as she sat in the high-ceilinged sitting room — it was nearly dark outside, and Lewes was still not back — she thought back to the first time she ever visited. She had changed her blouse three times before. I am going I hope today, she wrote with dry loftiness, and portentousness, to her teacher-friend Maria Lewis, to effect a breach in the thick wall of indifference behind which the denizens of Coventry seem inclined to entrench themselves, but I fear I shall fail.

  How stiff she was.

  Two hours later, in the early afternoon, she had arrived at the gate, and there was the house itself, at a small distance, and it made her stop. The size of it — and the beauty of it too. Yes, it looked beautiful in the mellow sun, white, low, two-storeyed, terrifyingly gracious; with its small spreading trees on either side. Coming closer, the doorway had two columns, a portico showing two
urns.

  The maid had shown her in, she’d walked into the drawing room. A man with abundant dark hair rose abruptly from an armchair. A look of open, frank good-natured tolerance — a little dogged, and a little hopeless, yet warm. Her own nervousness began to recede. And the two women — the sisters Cara and Sara — seemed to be looking at her kindly. Soon she had an even better sensation: when she talked, their interest was stirred. She herself was entranced by them, particularly by Sara’s voice: there, Marian, with her quick ear, detected all kinds of subtle modulations of vowels and phrasing, intimating a new hinterland of culture, different to anything she had yet heard. Sara had been, she later learned, friend and governess in the Bonham Carter family in London.

  Now Marian went to the bedroom, and returned to where she was sitting, Sara’s letter on her lap. She had in her palm the brooch, cool and heavy, a garnet set in blackened silver, gift from Sara. She still had it. Yes, they’d been generous. How many hours she had spent with them, how she had quickly learned to share both affection and ideas. She had lost her bumpkin-ness. Shutting her eyes, Marian could see the garden at Rosehill, the bearskin under the acacia tree on which they talked in the afternoons, the wood pigeon making his curious muffled, rootling, repetitive sound in the chimney, a soothing sound she liked. The sheer elation of being in this new kind of company: her initial conviction that pleasure like this wasn’t possible, couldn’t be — to sit in the warm shade, Charles Bray, shirtsleeves rolled up, waistcoat open in louche fashion, bringing glasses of wine (against Cara’s protests), to ‘help the talk along’. Florid-faced Charles spitting (the more intense the talk, the more he spat) with reformist zeal. Education, contraception, labour relations, atheism, literature, phrenology (Charles’ passion), Free Love. Anything. They talked, all four of them. She was twenty-one. Her own views about religion had already been shifting.

  They had cracked her provincial shell open and let in the light. She had learned the priceless freedom to think as she chose.