In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  Later that night, once the Congreves had gone, Marian reached for Adam Bede. Lewes had pursued Maria Congreve about liking the author’s ‘approach to life’, and when pressed, she had mentioned the Rector Irwine, his ‘reluctance to judge’.

  Marian was curious to see precisely what had stirred her young friend, and she eagerly turned the pages until she reached the passage where the reader meets the Rector Irwine, playing chess with his mother. The Rector, explains the author, is sometimes criticised by the local methodists, as being too lax. He has no zealous preference for the Bible over poetry; he’s partial to enjoying life; thinks the custom of baptism more important than its doctrine; is decidedly not an earnest man; fonder of church history than divinity. Has no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasms. Feels no serious alarm about the souls of his parishioners, in fact.

  On the other hand, the narrator says (and how pleasurable it had been for Marian to write this defence):

  I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality towards the Rector’s memory, that he was not vindictive — and some philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant — and there is a rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious virtue — he was tender to other men’s failings, and unwilling to impute evil.

  She was satisfied. Although Maria Congreve hadn’t recognised her in the book, she had, unknown to herself, pinpointed a precise example of Marian’s philosophy of tolerance and compassion. Here, in short, was her argument against the world.

  14

  Towards the end of April, the Congreves left for their five-month stay on the Continent. Some days later, Lewes found Marian reading a letter, expression rapt.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  She had a letter from Mrs Congreve — that’s all.

  ‘Well, it may be that’s all, but you look remarkably like the cat with the cream.’

  When Marian went to walk Rough on the Common — the Congreves’ dog — Lewes noticed she had pocketed the letter. He guessed she was taking it with her to read again on her favourite bench.

  He had noticed that after Marian met up with Maria Congreve, her mood was improved, even until the next day. He had noted, too, the adoring looks Maria Congreve sent Marian. All, he thought, to the good.

  ***

  The red-bound book of Letters edited by Gordon Haight is in my dusty hand, I’m sitting on the floor in my dusty flat. I want to read again that letter from Maria Congreve that meant so much to Marian. I flick through the years until I reach May 1859. Up floats Maria Congreve’s gentle voice, writing to Marian from Dieppe:

  I slept about a dozen times I should think, and woke once with a full persuasion that I was coming to call upon you in the afternoon. You must have a very strong influence over me. I usually wake so entirely mistress of the situation, but you do make such a difference to me in my rising up and lying down and in all my ways — now I actually know you, and that you will let me love you and even give me some love too.

  I usually wake so entirely mistress of the situation — but no longer. Maria Congreve has been disturbed by Marian. Deeply, but perhaps joyously. Marian makes a difference to her in her rising up and lying down and in all her ways. This is a love letter of sorts. Perhaps not sexual, but passionate and involved. Marian has a powerful, bewitching presence.

  Since that one time I saw you years ago very frequently I have thought of you and often said to myself that if you were living still near Coventry I would have gone to you and told you my troubles and difficulties, and I never felt that towards any one else except of course Richard. Sometime I should like to talk over my difficulties, past though they are, with you. I should never be afraid of your misunderstanding them or me. I have such a perfect confidence in you.

  And suddenly I remember. I did too — have such perfect confidence in her.

  It was in my teens, my first boyfriend had left me. Nothing made me feel better. My brother fed me hashish from a water-pipe, which didn’t help at all. I went to stay with an older male friend at Cambridge. That seemed a glamorous idea, until, sitting cross-legged as we rolled joints, he confided that his ex-girlfriend had ‘made love like a whore’. Everything seemed darker and chillier still. But on the floor in my sleeping bag I pulled out George Eliot, Middlemarch. And it was she, and only she, who comforted me. Her voice told me that she knew what it was to suffer and go wrong. And I’m sure Maria Congreve was comforted, too, when she talked to her; just as I suspect Adam Bede, with the author’s fame spreading like wildfire, was enchanting and comforting readers by the thousand. I’m thinking, that voice couldn’t have come from the male sphere of life: could it have been brewed by female friendship?

  ***

  I receive a text from Ann one night, asking if she can come round. She appears, and in ten minutes she is drinking tea and whisky, alternately, on my sofa. She has her legs tucked under her like a girl. She has had a row with Hans. ‘Do you row a lot?’ I ask politely.

  ‘Yes.’

  Then she adds, simply, ‘He’s fabulously selfish.’

  Sipping her tea, I can see she isn’t seeing me. She is seeing tall, lanky Hans, German, with his straw-coloured hair, his slightly Aryan chalk-and-poppies complexion. Hans, who wears a tracksuit at work, and trainers. The clothes that seem a mark of freedom, I can’t say why. She ticks his faults off on her fingers. He doesn’t give the kids a tenth of the thought she does. He is doing a new seminar, today has announced he won’t be taking Ben to karate for three weeks. The ironic thing is, he is furious with her. Do I mind if she has some more whisky?

  Preferably in a small shot glass?

  She goes on talking, in her picturesque tweed suit with its long skirt. The problem is, the department. She’s so behind in it! She feels this constant pressure, her breathing is shallow.

  ‘Do you think I’m behind?’ — anxiously.

  ‘What do you mean, behind?’ I say.

  She’s stuck as a lecturer. She never gets promoted. She’s published one book, but that was ten years ago. But maybe if she gets on with this book —

  ‘— exactly!’ I say. ‘Get that published and then see.’

  She is thoughtful, half frowning as she looks at her whisky, holding it this way and that in the light.

  ‘What about you?’ she says suddenly. ‘You were married, weren’t you?’

  There is an insistent glow about her small eyes as she says this. And I realise something then — Ann possesses, like an aura, a slight yet constant atmosphere of drama about her.

  ‘What about me,’ I repeat. I say I am happy. Sort of.

  I end up confiding in her. I was married to a lawyer, a ‘kindly’ lawyer. Maybe we both worked too hard. To sum it up: he left me for his assistant, who I really liked.

  Ann says, ‘Grim,’ and for some reason we laugh.

  ‘On the other hand,’ she says, ‘marriages aren’t always a piece of cake. I seem to have lost all interest in mine.’

  ‘Right.’

  That’s quite a statement, I think.

  She tells me more about herself. She was brought up by her father, who was subtly dominating. Her views were his until she went to university.

  Just before she leaves, she asks me if I will read two chapters of her book. I say, fine.

  15

  During May, George would often return in the mornings holding the newspaper, his moustache looking especially drooping as he set the paper down on the table. Usually this meant he was about to show Marian another letter either about Liggins, or the supposed originals, in Warwickshire. They would discuss it after supper, and agree once again that the authorship must remain a secret. ‘We don’t want to kill the
goose that’s laying the golden egg,’ warned Lewes, a trifle tactlessly.

  ‘True, true.’

  The sales were tremendous. So was the book’s reputation. ‘Still, I find myself rather minding about Liggins!’ added Marian, with a laugh. The laugh sounded forced.

  By now, as soon as she saw the name Liggins in a newspaper, she’d flush and turn the page. All these people believing in Liggins! What could she do?

  A letter from Barbara in Algiers set her thinking. Barbara wrote to say that she had read Adam Bede extracts in an obscure Algerian newspaper. The passages instantly made me internally exclaim, that is written by Marian Evans, there is her great big head and heart and her wise wide views … it is an opinion which fire cannot melt out of me, I would die in it at the stake!

  Marian coloured with pleasure as she read her friend’s words. The book’s fame had reached as far as Algiers! More, Barbara had found her in the writing, as no one else had — not Maria Congreve, and certainly not her old Coventry friends, Charles, Cara, and Sara. Barbara went on to list what especially pleased her.

  1st. That a woman should write a wise and humorous book which should take a place by Thackeray. 2nd. That YOU, that you, whom they spit at, should do it! I am so enchanted so glad with the good and bad of me! both glad — angel and devil both triumph!

  Marian wrote back immediately:

  God bless you, dearest Barbara, for your love and sympathy. You are the first friend who has given any symptom of knowing me — the first heart that has recognised me in a book which has come from my heart of hearts. But keep the secret solemnly till I give you leave to tell it. You have sense enough to know how important the incognito has been, and we are anxious to keep it up a few months longer.

  Re-reading the letter, Marian frowned — Barbara’s language was a fraction displeasing. You whom they spit at — she quickly shifted her gaze. And then Barbara’s tone, in its wild, tribally female gleefulness … She was counted a heroine by friends who actively promoted the position of women, Bessie Parkes and Barbara, for having flouted convention so openly, the same friends who wilfully insisted on introducing her as ‘Miss Evans’ instead of ‘Mrs Lewes’, no matter how often she asked them not to. Still, she admired what they did: Bessie Parkes, whom she had first met at Rosehill with the Brays, edited the progressive English Woman’s Journal, while Barbara generously used her private income to provide most of its funding. In fact, Bessie Parkes, when taking the journal over, had consulted Marian, as a more experienced editor.

  Marian had replied crisply to Bessie:

  It is a doctrine of Mr Lewes’, which I think recommends itself to one’s reason, that every new or renovated periodical should have a speciality — do something not yet done, fill up a gap, and so give people a motive for taking it. But I do not at all like the specialité that consists in the inscription ‘conducted by Women’, and I am very glad you are going to do away with it. For my own taste, I should say, the more business you can get into the journal — the more statements of philanthropic movements and social facts, and the less literature, the better. Not because I like philanthropy and hate literature, but because I want to know about philanthropy and don’t care for second-rate literature.

  Art and politics, Marian felt, were uneasy bedfellows.

  16

  Barbara’s letter set her off on a new train of thought. Barbara was now the fifth person who knew the secret. As Marian walked Rough over Wandsworth Common, she said to herself that she would give a lot to kill the Liggins rumour — and stopped walking in surprise. Was she really ready to announce herself and take that risk? After all, she’d talked it to death with George, and John Blackwood’s recent letter had stated, KEEP YOUR SECRET, in capital letters, which was typical, and disheartening.

  But what about Barbara? Surely the ideal person to talk it over with: a sympathetic interlocutor, interested in the best way, and disinterested too. At the same time, returning Rough to the Congreves’ housekeeper, admiring the trees in their fresh May leaf, she found herself questioning Barbara’s reliability. Might Barbara be taken up with radical zeal on her behalf, to the exclusion of more careful thought? Still, when a letter announced Barbara’s return to London, Marian suggested they meet.

  Marian took the train from Putney to Charing Cross, then a hackney carriage to Princes Street, Barbara having persuaded her to come to the offices of the English Woman’s Journal near Cavendish Square. The two friends embraced each other, with Barbara murmuring congratulatory exclamations about Adam Bede in her ear. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Marian! I must show you round. Follow me!’ She was duly taken into the Journal’s office, Barbara opening the door with a grand flourish, and a mock-bow, laughing — evidently she was very proud of the premises. The room was book-lined, with a fireplace and several chairs, and a large desk, behind which a woman in a riding jacket was seated. Marian’s eyes narrowed: she recognised her as a journalist she’d previously encountered, Matilda Hayes. At the same time, Marian couldn’t stop looking at the way she was smoking — the wrist so theatrically, oddly flung back.

  ‘Bessie’s co-editor, Max Hayes,’ Barbara was saying. ‘Marian Evans.’

  ‘Mrs Lewes,’ corrected Marian, glancing irritably at her old friend. ‘I think we met some years ago.’

  The three women chatted, before Marian followed Barbara out. As she followed Barbara’s flowing, attractive, deep-russet skirts down the corridor, she mused on her friend’s look of pride as she was introduced, as if she, Marian, were a trophy-figure for women now; and of course she had registered the automatic look of respect on ‘Max’ Hayes’ face. She was, she thought drily, a legend.

  She could remember Max Hayes submitting a number of poorly written, poorly thought-out pieces to her for the Westminster Review, which Marian had rejected, urging Chapman to reject them also, saying they were full of ‘feminine ranting of the worst kind’. It didn’t bode well for the English Woman’s Journal, she thought now, that she was co-editing alongside Bessie.

  The premises at Princes Street consisted of the editorial office, as well as a large room emulating a gentleman’s club, where women could read in comfort and quiet. They went into this room now. There were low tables, two plump armchairs upholstered in red twill, the wallpaper a discreet but pleasing pattern, a grey background with a twisting flower motif. After Barbara had shut the door, Marian explained why she wanted Barbara’s counsel.

  ‘I have a lot to tell you,’ said Barbara, at once, meaningfully. ‘The other night, I visited Mr and Mrs Owen Jones. As soon as I walked in the room, they attacked me as knowing all about you! They’re convinced you’re the mystery author of Adam Bede.’

  Slowly, Marian sat down.

  ‘Anyhow,’ went on Barbara, ‘I denied it and demanded to know their evidence. Mr Spencer, I’m afraid, seems to have been a source, with all sorts of leading remarks about knowing the authoress.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  Edward Pigott, another friend, had apparently commented on the change in their style of living. And Owen Jones had seen the way Lewes’ eyes lit up at any mention of her books.

  ‘Quite likely,’ admitted Marian.

  But then Mrs Owen Jones had spoken. She had said that Marian, in her circumstances, was right to keep it secret.

  ‘My dear Marian,’ said Barbara, passionately, ‘what she said made me so angry. She said that the book couldn’t have succeeded if it had been known to be yours. Every newspaper critic would have written against it. And she also thinks that when it is known to be yours, it will be seen differently.’

  Barbara had stood up; framed by the long curtains at the windows, with her statuesque figure and her glorious reddish-golden hair, gesticulating, she reminded Marian of an indignant goddess.

  ‘Apparently,’ concluded Barbara, ‘all the literary men are now certain it’s you! But they’re not saying so in public, because they thin
k it won’t help your position if you’re known to be the author. I suppose that’s at least generous.’

  The words were so awful that they were momentarily unintelligible.

  ‘They thought you would do the book more harm, than the book do you good, in public opinion —’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Marian, unable to keep the agitation out of her voice. She wanted Barbara to stop talking. Barbara offered to bring her water. While she sipped it Barbara regarded her with concern.

  ‘I’ve said too much.’

  Which way shall I go? Marian was thinking.

  Barbara was walking restively around the room. ‘What cowards people are! No — Marian — I won’t be quiet. I actually tried to make Mrs Jones say she would like to know you, given that she thinks so highly of your book, but I swear, she looked afraid! I mean it, Marian. The purest fear in her eyes, I saw it!’

  Barbara’s voice was shaking now with emotion.

  ‘Here is this book,’ continued Barbara, breathless, ‘everyone in London — England — talking about it — but this woman still wouldn’t call on you even if she knew you were George Eliot! — I told her about my visits,’ added Barbara, proudly.

  ‘You didn’t have to say that.’

  ‘I didn’t do it for you. I am interested for myself, to see how much people can see — how much freedom they have. Oh Marian, Marian, what cowards people are!’

  ***

  Marian walked back down Regent Street. Some crows were gathered in the gutter, excitedly picking at a carcass. The carcass was a trampled bird. An acrid smell had risen; she held her handkerchief to her nose. The handkerchief had been given to her by Chrissey, with an embroidered apple in the corner.

  As the train to Putney rumbled along — she preferred the walk from Putney station to Holly Lodge — she saw Barbara in her mind’s eye. She felt, she thought gloomily, as confused as ever. She mused on her friend. Barbara meant so well; yet it had been excruciating to listen to her.