In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  ‘And to be honest,’ Ann continues, depressively, like a balloon losing air, ‘I think she half despised mothers.’

  I look questioning.

  ‘Oh, it’s all in Armgart,’ she sighs. ‘You know, Eliot can’t bear to be an ordinary person. The millionth woman in superfluous herds.’

  There is the sound of the front door, footsteps. And then Hans is coming in, holding Ben’s hand. Oh it’s good to see him. ‘I thought I heard voices,’ he is saying.

  I say I’m going, and hurriedly walk downstairs, out into the open air. It’s raining.

  12

  While the Leweses were in Witley, the summer was very long for Edith. A single day she had seen them, on that one visit to Witley. Since then she had walked to the Priory in September, again in October. In November she received news of the impending return.

  The time draws near — I cannot express the passion of glad longing that possesses me. There is only Sunday and Monday! I mean to be so good and make the time fly by translating furiously. I dream of all sorts of new ways of wooing her — if I could feel that she was learning to know and love me more! — after all I have never given myself a chance with her.

  She would see them, she guessed, in about a week. Her old enthusiasm returned — she was planning a history of ancient property ownership, inspired by socialist theory.

  The days went by, she was ringing the Priory bell at last. She entered, with a quick step. There! — there they were — but — and she stopped. In a terrible few seconds she registered the change. She saw Lewes’ altered face, and Marian’s expression, and felt the sadness of the room. The doctor came. She saw it all. She was moved. At the same time, rolling through her, was her own sickening, overwhelming disappointment. For months she had looked forward to this day.

  Back in Douro Place she sat in her chair, then took out her diary. Each time she saw Marian, the visit remained in her mind, but as she wrote about it, she saw it better still. In her diary she was telling her story, and fusing her story with Marian’s:

  Monday came at last, but hardly the greeting I had dreamt of: the first thing I saw was Lewes stretched upon the sofa, and in concern for him I lost something of the sight of her. He was affectionate and when I said I wanted to kiss her feet he said he would let me do it as much as I liked — or — correcting himself — as much as she liked. He could enter into the desire though she couldn’t. I did in spite of her protests lie down before the fire and for one short moment gave the passionate kisses that filled my eyes with tears; — and for the rest of the evening her feet avoided the footstool where I had found them then. She was unhappy about him, I cried all the way back — at the intense pain of her anxiety — which I was tempted to share. I was sorry for myself too: all one’s gladness turned to pain.

  ***

  Sir James Paget came, old friend and doctor. He examined Lewes, described the problem as a thickening of the mucous membrane. Marian asked if it would pass. ‘The actual trouble will soon be allayed,’ said Sir Paget. After he had gone Marian went over and over his words. Everything bewildered and frightened her now — the extent of George’s pain, the impossible future. ‘You must look after yourself,’ he said to her. She could not reply. Paget came each day early. Lewes’ bed had moved into a different room. Their lovely house — it was like a picture of a lovely house now — nothing more.

  ***

  Edith kept calling. She could think about little else. Marian’s life was the centre of hers, she felt.

  Today I went in the morning and the answer was the same. In the afternoon I went again, trying to hope she would let me be with him in the night. I sent up a written line with the prayer. It came down I think unread in the servant’s hand — she could not attend to anything. ‘Mr Charles’ would write to me! I could not expect anything else, and yet her intense excitement and distress — the servant said she could do nothing but cry and fret — make it cruelly unfit for her to be alone. God forgive me! I feel as if I would give my mother’s life for his! There is nothing left but tears — and duty.

  ***

  Marian sent a note to Johnny, asking him to come. His own mother was on her deathbed, but he appeared.

  ‘Give my cigars to Willie,’ said Lewes, holding out his hand to Johnny, from his bed; before discussing finance.

  Edith came on November 30.

  I reached the house about half past three, a private cab was driving up and down slowly before it, I waited till that was gone and then rang at the gate. Brett with a white face and dark eyes answered me: ‘He is very ill —’ then ‘there are no hopes’ — I stood stupefied, without word or sign, without feeling, and so turned away. It was as if something quite different from my fears had come.

  I could not leave the place and walked up and down, and almost immediately a carriage like a doctor’s drove up fast and two men got out. I hastened after them and they entered the gate: the other carriages followed and the two, with 4 sleek horses stood a few paces back. The coachmen talked and laughed, cabs and coal carts and men and women on foot passed by as I stood behind the carriages, watching the gate down the fog-bound road.

  Then — in about 20 minutes, the 2 figures came in sight. I strode towards them and as they stood speaking together, I asked was there no hope. A tall man — probably Sir James Paget answered kindly: None: he is dying — dying quickly. Then again I could not speak, but the tears rushed up — shading my face with a hand I cried hard with this worst of griefs. She cannot bear it: there have been unendurable sorrows, but I do not see how any can equal hers — who can feel as she does, who could have so much to love? But whether she lives or dies — there is no comfort for her left on earth but this, to know that their love and life have not been in vain for others.

  At five forty-five, on November 30, George Henry Lewes died.

  Part Four

  1

  After George died, Marian stayed in her room for seven days. She didn’t go to his funeral, she stayed within those four walls, on the bed or the floor or in a chair. But wherever she was in that room, whichever wall she faced, whether she was prone or upright, there was no relief to be had.

  She couldn’t eat, and for a day she couldn’t cry; then tears came, as if a physical flap had opened: she heard her own noises, but the pain in her chest seemed only to grow, moving her into a new darkness. And then on again.

  It was possible she was having a fit.

  Charles and Brett were both holding her and moving her to the bed. Each on one side, they stayed with her until she was quiet.

  On the fifth day, Marian allowed Brett to help change her clothes. Like a doll, a very old doll, thought Marian, she sat inert on the edge of the bed, as, with Brett’s help, the dress she had worn for four days was removed. Across the room, rain was falling outside the window. After Brett left, the fact that she was in clean clothes didn’t comfort her. She’d hoped it might. She began to weep.

  Downstairs, Charles heard the cries and shook his head. Letters had been pouring in. He was dealing with them, answering and saying that Marian was unable to communicate but would do so at some point. Brett said, ‘The lady’s been again: Miss Simcox.’

  ‘Again,’ said Charles.

  On December 6, Marian went for the first time down the stairs. She held tight to the banister. Step by step. Her legs were trembling. Crossing the hallway, peering around her like a stranger, in fear, at the door, walls, floor, all now without George, she entered George’s office. His things, they were all here: the picture of the small girl in red, his books, his pen. She knelt in front of the bookcase, found, on the lowest shelf, two piles of manuscript. She took the larger pile — his handwriting cruelly dear and distinctive — to the desk. The first ten pages were notes from an asylum in Florence. Dimly, she registered surprise that he had made so many notes on that visit. Below that — yes — the unfinished manuscript, with crossings-out, additions in the margins. It was what
he had been working on when he died, the last two parts of Problems.

  She made herself read the first paragraph. It was an effort to try to let her mind receive a thought, an idea. She continued, pushing herself. The tightness in her chest continued too.

  For the rest of December, from when she woke to when she slept, she sat in her room, one curtain gaping open to let in light on the desk, dragging her dishevelled mind to George’s words, focusing as clearly as she could. This is what she would do for him, it was her act of love. She would finish his work. She read and corrected and amplified. She had an aching head, pains in her upper back and side. She pushed her mind to the matter. Increasingly, with practise, she could stay in the line of his thought. Yes, she had her capacity.

  Parallel, too, was the sensation in her chest.

  Snow was falling.

  In early January, for the first time since his death, she stepped outside, into the garden. It was covered in white frost, in the pale sunshine. The grass crunched under her feet. She walked like an ill person, slowly, carefully. She blinked in the daylight. She was very thin, she realised. But she had now read through Lewes’ manuscript twice.

  She had written in her diary: Here I and Sorrow sit, from Shakespeare’s King John.

  She quoted Heine:

  Einst ich wollte fast verzagen

  Und ich dacht’ich trug es nie,

  Und ich hab’es doch ertragen,

  Aber frag’mich nur nicht wie.

  At first I was almost in despair, and I thought I could never bear it, and yet I have borne it — only do not ask me how.

  And she copied out these lines from King John:

  Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,

  And breathing to his breathless excellence

  The incense of a vow, a holy vow,

  Never to taste the pleasures of the world,

  Never to be infected with delight,

  Nor conversant with ease and idleness …

  She would keep working until she had his manuscript fit for publication.

  Of the mountain of letters that had come, she had read none. She began to read a select few. Two days after going outside, she wrote her first letter, to Barbara.

  Dearest Barbara,

  I bless you for all your goodness to me, but I am a bruised creature, and shrink even from the tenderest touch. As soon as I feel able to see anybody I will see you.

  Your loving but half dead

  Marian

  The idea of seeing anyone was painful. Bessie Belloc, Johnny, Georgiana Burne-Jones had all called, Edith incessantly, but she had refused to see them. She would dedicate herself to Problems of Life and Mind until it was finished, as a memorial to him; she was reading and re-reading Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and writing out verses from it; no other poem expressed so fully what she felt.

  2

  A letter had come, from Dr Foster, a Cambridge physiologist — offering Marian help in finishing Lewes’ book should she need it — that had given her a memorial idea. She could found a studentship in his name, enabling young scientists to get the kind of training that Lewes had lacked.

  But now she had another source of bitterness: all her securities, which amounted to more than £30,000 — the money in her bank account, the shares, and the two houses, were in Lewes’ name. She needed access and control of her money. That month she went through the exquisitely sad process of changing her name by deed-poll to Mary Ann Evans Lewes, with George dead.

  Yet gradually her seclusion was being broken down. Matters demanded her attention: besides George’s book, there was her own — Theophrastus Such, completed the previous summer, which had arrived in proof five days before George died. She needed to correct and return the proofs.

  It was a bitter winter. When the snow began to melt, she wrote to Georgiana: The world’s winter is going, I hope, but my ever-lasting winter has set in. You know that, and will be patient with me.

  I can trust to your understanding of a sorrow that has broken my life, she wrote to John Blackwood.

  ***

  Edith Simcox had gone to Lewes’ grave in Highgate, and lain down behind the bushes to cry. She had cried for Marian’s grief, and for the dead Lewes’ understanding.

  Charles Lewes said in his letter, that she would never be able to endure any caress — I knew that — and so was not specially hurt by his saying it — though I cried behind my veil all the way across the Park yesterday.

  Outside the Priory:

  l was looking vacantly eastward when I saw a tall reddish bearded man coming up, I stared without moving and when he had come within two or three paces he made some sign of recognition and I knew it was Johnny. I had thought we should never meet so again. It was an intensely painful moment; there is nothing much more pathetic than a look of set gravity on a habitually cheerful face. I was faintly pleased at the strange chance which brought us there together, because I thought, servant-like, Brett would tell her of the fact and I hoped it would please her to think of our meeting as friends.

  Edith knew that Johnny’s sombre face was not on account of Lewes, but his mother, who had died just recently, too.

  ***

  Marian corresponded with publishers, and began to deal with financial matters alongside Charles and to realise all that Lewes had done for her, in a practical way. She had to monitor the payments still being made to Agnes Lewes in Kensington, and Bertie’s widow Eliza in Natal, for instance; she had to make sure cheques were banked.

  It was reassuring to remember Johnny, who had handled their money matters so efficiently for years. In emergency she could turn to him.

  Brett, Charles, Sir Paget, and Dr Clarke all told her that she must start receiving visitors. A note arrived from Johnny, saying he looked forward to the end of her isolation. She must not stay isolated forever; it would be fatal for her. She wrote back:

  Dearest Nephew,

  Some time, if I live, I shall be able to see you — perhaps sooner than any one else. But not yet. Life seems to get harder instead of easier.

  She read articles written by George, early in his career, and late, too. She spent a day writing out remembrances of herself and Lewes — the time in Jersey, the first months in Weimar and Berlin. Wrote memories, she jotted in her diary, and lived with him all day. Read in his diary 1874 — Wrote verses to Polly — Wrote verses on Polly.

  It was agony to be reminded of him; she wept. She wanted to sleep, to empty herself and her mind.

  Late February, Charles came upstairs to tell her that Johnny was below. She said she could not see him.

  She took pen to paper:

  Dearest Nephew,

  When I said ‘some time’ I meant still a distant time. I want to live a little while that I may do certain things for his sake. So I take care of my diet, and try to keep up my strength, and I work as much as I can to save my mind from imbecility. But that is all at present. I can go through anything that is mere business. But what used to be a joy is joy no longer, and what is pain is easier because he has not to bear it.

  Then, in a sudden mood of contrition:

  I bless my friends for all their goodness to me. You will not mention to anyone that I wrote about seeing you. I know your thoughtful care.

  Was that enough? She added:

  But if you feel prompted to say anything, write it to me.

  Always your affectionately and gratefully

  M.E.L.

  Barbara was also urging her to come out. Dearest Barbara, she replied,

  Bless you for your loving thought. But for all reasons, bodily and mental, I am unable to move. I am entirely occupied with his manuscripts and must be on this spot among all the books. Then, I am in a very ailing condition of body … have never yet been outside the gate. Even if I were otherwise able, I could not bear to go out of sight of the things he used and looked on. Bless you once
more. If I could go away with anybody I could go away with you.

  Your ever loving

  Marian

  3

  The morning after she wrote to Barbara, she had the usual waking — a slow coming of consciousness, embalmed at first, and then all over again, as if it were new, the piercing fact of George being dead. She closed her eyes. It was hardly light. He would not be here, he would not be here to speak to. The door was opening, she kept her eyes shut, it would be Brett, and there were the usual sounds of the fireplace being swept, freshly stocked, and then lit, all the while the sounds of Brett’s exertions and breathing.

  Some time later, she was dressed — this morning, she had let Brett help her put on the warm woollen stockings, as her left hand seemed thick-fingered and stiff. Going down the staircase, the odour hit her nostrils again, a return of the noisome smell that had been there since the day the pipes froze. In the dining room she ate half a piece of toast, and part of a watery egg. Charles came in with the post, and pushed a letter her way. It was from Johnny, a reply to her weary letter of some days before. He had perfectly understood her desire to stay alone — was sorry for importuning her — and he referred to the strangeness of grief, the difficulty of imagining that anything could ever be joyful again. And in the same letter, he said that they talked of her every day — he and his sisters.

  She had a flicker of relief at this. The idea of Johnny, Eleanor, Florence, Mary, Emily and Anna, all the Cross siblings, talking about her every day — did suddenly give her a tiny burst of something like pleasure. And at the back of her mind she was worried about the studentship and the finances. Quickly she wrote: