In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  The morning was a success.

  ‘I understand why you have Mr Ruskin’s approval,’ commented Marian. ‘The sky and the sea, in these subtly varying lights — a rhapsody, Mr Bunney.’

  Water and air, vaporous mists, changing colour, poetry of mood: did the changes seem infinite in their possibility? Infinite, as human variety is infinite, no two people being in personality identical?

  Marian spoke without self-consciousness. At once, Mr Bunney was intrigued. They were talking now as if they had known each other a long time.

  ‘But is this what Ruskin thinks?’ demanded Johnny, interrupting.

  ‘We were not talking of Ruskin,’ said Marian, in mild surprise, smiling.

  ‘But he is very sure of himself,’ cried Johnny. Johnny wanted to press this important point home. Marian’s hat was on the point of falling — he adjusted it, she turned round, again looking surprised.

  ‘We are on the second floor,’ said Johnny. ‘As heat rises, it is bound to be hot.’

  Mrs Bunney entered with a tray. It was while he was drinking the white wine that Johnny noticed the smell from outside, the power of it. He went to the window and looked out. This was a dismaying fact to absorb. All this beauty, and the smell.

  ***

  Opening the shutters in the morning, it was hot, humid, but it was raining. Good heavens, he said aloud. The lagoon’s pretty pale green was now darkish and unlovely. Even the rain here was hot. But the foulest smell was present. He had heard that the rains in Venice made the smell worse. Standing in his room, he realised then that he had already put on his jacket, but he was too hot, he took it off, tearing the lining as he did so. It did not matter. None of his clothes fit him now. In Marian’s larger room, the white tablecloth was laid. He had a heart-breaking sensation that the deliciously appointed breakfast table, with the fragrant coffee in the pot, the bread rolls, hams, was, poignantly, a façade. Marian was asking how he was. ‘I am exhausted, to say the truth,’ he said. It was true. Far from rested, the night had left him feeling hollowed out, half broken with tiredness.

  ‘The rain is stopping,’ she said. She was right. The clouds were breaking, bits of light and sunshine were coming through. A servant announced that the Bunneys had arrived, and Johnny’s heart lifted. They stopped for some minutes to admire the rooms, Mr Wharlton Bunney picked up the small clay figure of St Mark’s, he too was charmed. ‘It is the colour, the painting, that is so intricate,’ he marvelled.

  ‘Did you have a successful day yesterday?’ Johnny asked Mr Bunney.

  ‘So-so,’ smiled Mr Bunney, a touch melancholy. He was not a complacent man. Johnny warmed to him again.

  ‘Having seen your work,’ Johnny said, ‘I suspect you are more successful than you allow.’

  ‘Kind words,’ said Mr Bunney.

  The clouds were gone, the sky was blue — regal, without peer. And what was he, John Walter Cross, so distressed about? It was a storm in a teacup, after all. He was childishly glad Mr Bunney seemed to like him. He was himself again. ‘Good god, the weather changes in a heartbeat!’ he said, cheerfully, and the ladies, Marian in her straw hat, Mrs Elizabeth Bunney, glanced at him. Profound relief made him yawn. Corradini was waiting, chewing something which he spat out of his mouth recklessly, in front of them. ‘Al-lora!’ On the lagoon, the rising warm breeze was pleasant, and the buoyant swell. The women chatted, thought Johnny cynically, as if they had known each other all their life. He realised Mr Bunney was asking him about their journey. ‘We had a marvellous time, to say the truth,’ confided Johnny in an undertone. ‘I became in a small way an art expert. All through the eyes of Mrs Cross, of course. But I felt as if I understood the forces that produced Mantegna, and I can vouch for Kugler — though it is my wife who reads him in the German. But no doubt you have read him. Though I fear he is a little dry?’

  ‘I cannot say I have read Kugler,’ said Mr Bunney, with a puzzled expression. ‘But you would recommend him?’

  ‘Oh, heartily. Though you might do better to talk to Mrs Cross about him. She is very wise,’ he added, sadly. ‘We have been reading Alfieri.’

  ‘Now you’ve lost me!’ laughed Mr Bunney.

  ‘His autobiography, And my Italian improves apace. Does it not, mia donna?’

  Still melancholy, he appealed to Marian, who turned to look at him in the penetrating way he disliked. Blushing, Johnny turned away. The water had been churned by a larger tugboat at some distance; a loud slap of sea on the gondola. Johnny stood up, nervous.

  ‘Non — non,’ said Corradini. ‘E meglio sedersi.’

  Mr Bunney, smiling, was helping him to sit. Marian looked pale.

  They returned to have lunch, the four of them, at the hotel; then resumed their seats in the gondola, for further sight-seeing.

  ‘I have a confession to make, and that is, I do not like Tintoretto. His colours — they fog the eye and bring the soul down,’ cried Marian. ‘Especially the red.’ She shuddered. Johnny was alert to the note of suffering, from his own increasing darkness. Looking at Marian, a vestige of tenderness stirred. At the same time — how she drew attention to herself. His slow repulsion returned. My soul is in revolt, said Johnny to himself.

  With joy, meanwhile, Mr Bunney had gone into the fray, arguing that Tintoretto was the giant of Venetian art, the one who brought movement and life to Venice, with his death-defying energy.

  (Corradini was slily guiding them in the still, silent back-waters of Venice. The heat, incredibly, was intensifying.)

  Johnny was exhausted just listening to Mr Bunney, even if he did like him. It was tiring, being able to see the posturing so clearly. Mr Bunney, he said to himself, wants to show Mrs Cross that he is interesting.

  He preferred Mrs Bunney, suddenly. Her silence was admirable.

  Out of the blue, he remembered that cry the other night, in the middle of the night, from Marian. It was depraved. At the same time, he had grown, he could not fail to notice, excited at this idea. He shifted in his seat, sunk in new self-loathing.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ said Marian softly, under the preposterously large hat, the brim of which was wide as a platter.

  ‘I am hot.’ He forced a smile, and pulled out his handkerchief and applied it to his forehead. The little girl was correct. He was a stranger. Stranger. His misery was bottomless. The water was a soft green, secretly still, and what was it? Good heavens. Effluvia — human waste, doubtless. The heat was making him faint.

  ‘I say,’ came Mr Bunney’s voice, and Johnny became aware that Mr Bunney was passing him his hat. ‘You’d better put this on, before you get sunstroke.’

  Johnny recalled his manners. ‘What about yourself?’

  It was painful. He had put on his old self like a jacket, in the moment of courtesy, and it reminded him of everything he had lost. It was going so fast, his self. He glanced at Marian. Alas, it was possible. Then he glanced at the water. He did not know how deep these secretive silent waters were, but the lagoon was deep.

  But they were still talking! Was there never an end? Mr Bunney on Tintoret, as he called him, with a knowing air of familiarity. Was everyone a braggart? Was it all about power and posturing? Madonna speaking now, in her most musical voice, about Ruskin.

  ‘Ruskin,’ Johnny announced, interrupting them, ‘is altogether too sure of himself. He thinks he is the only one to see Carpaccio’s merit. He is a schoolboy showing off.’

  No one spoke. Corradini, round shoulder bent in his goblin-like way, was drawing them swiftly out of the high-walled water alleys, with the concentrated stench — out, out, and in a last bolt southwards, they were released into the lagoon, the open light. A gust of fresh air, the boat lifted.

  5

  They went to the Accademia again the next day, with a plan to meet the Bunneys later. By now, the Bunneys had discovered that Marian was in fact George Eliot, but they had promised to keep
it secret. Johnny said: ‘What would you say to lunch al fresco, or perhaps at the little place Mr Bunney mentioned?’

  Courteously voiced, the answer was no, as Johnny had guessed it would be. It was a rotten test. Yet he had wanted to avoid eating in their apartment again. But they returned to the hotel, the Palazzo, where the obsequious flunkeys waited on them instantly. Johnny had given Corradini an outsize tip: he had no idea why. In their rooms he saw the bed, and some memory, some terrible intimate memory, was pushing its way through his mental membranes. Yesterday, he remembered again, the Bunneys had found out that Mrs Cross was also George Eliot.

  ‘I will not,’ said Johnny, aloud.

  ‘You will not what?’

  Johnny said, ‘You are angry.’ His tone was outright sullen. In truth, he was defeated. ‘What?’ he now demanded. His eyes took her in. It was not her physical blemishes he minded.

  ‘You are not yourself.’

  The jury was out. He walked through the double doors to his room, lay down on the bed. Jury out. She was sincere, he supposed. Now she came to his room to talk to him. He was all ears.

  ‘Mr Bunney is making a special effort, so that we can see the Carpaccio.’

  ‘We’ve seen the Carpaccios.’ His voice was unclothed now. Brutal. Looking at her, he saw a woman, not much more. Not so much between them, if God was on his side.

  ‘I am talking about Due Cortigiane, at the Correr, that is not publicly on view. Ruskin describes it as the finest picture in the world. Mr Bunney has put himself out, and arranged a private viewing.’

  ‘I care this much for it,’ sighed Johnny. He had sat up in bed and he put his thumb and index finger together to indicate zero space. He was insolent. Then he saw beside him the exquisite painted clay object, St Mark’s with its strange tower. He picked it up, held it out, dropped it. It smashed into pieces.

  Marian started to cry. ‘My dear Johnny,’ she was saying, fearfully, looking at him. She had turned pale.

  ‘I want to sleep.’ He motioned her out with his head. She had consumed him. Well, she could see what it was she had consumed. She might not like it.

  ‘I have made you angry,’ she said, still fearful.

  He saw tears in her eyes, but he was not moved a jot. ‘I am so tired of pretense, of lies,’ he said.

  He was disgraceful, he sank lower. He closed the shutters, shut the double doors. Hours later, a maidservant tiptoed in, and swept up the broken pieces. It was all cleared away. No affect, he would be better dead. Towards midnight, she came to sit by him. She looked appallingly sad.

  ***

  ‘How are you?’ she asked, the next morning, as she sat beside him.

  ‘It is intolerable,’ he said, thoughtfully. It was already suffocatingly hot, the sun slanting in, potent. ‘I did not sleep all night, and my head is light and heavy at once. It is better if you leave me alone. Altogether better,’ he added, meaningfully.

  First, she looked at him; then she opened the shutters on to the balcony. ‘This is one of the loveliest views in the world,’ she said, sorrowfully. She wore her emotions like clothes. He shut his eyes and waited. The back of his head hurt as usual, he put the pillows behind him, sat up. Even from here he could smell it, the tang of urine in the air. He had never been more homesick in his life. The modest green gardens of home. Good God. Already he was sweating: his brow, under his arms, his back. She sat by him, touched his arm, he pulled it away quickly. ‘You are my husband,’ she was saying, wonderingly. She was reminding him that he belonged to her, he thought, in sickness and in health. He shut his eyes, tears squeezing stickily out from behind his lids.

  Some time later, he woke, and he heard a strange man’s voice in the next room. ‘Ma che cos’è? To what … do you …’

  ‘Madness,’ came Marian’s voice, clear, from the same room. He heard the tone of knowledge. ‘He has a mad brother.’ Johnny got out of bed, the doctor was speaking. He no longer cared. He went out of the French doors, he was on the balcony, in the sun. Facing the sky and the Santa Maggiore: the glittering splendour of Venice and the lagoon, radiant in the heat. As quietly as possible, he moved the table to the stone balustrade; mounted the chair to mount the table; registered two — no — three gondolas below; then stepped on to the balcony edge, and with sudden stupendous energy, from a simian crouch he leapt — over the gondolas, into the waters of the Grand Canal.

  6

  Back in London, my flat looks different. It is both better and worse, smaller and bigger: every single aspect of my existence has been bent out of shape. In my retina’s scope, there are images to be pushed away, then pulled back, then pushed away. I say to Hans, it will be impossible with me, you will have to cope with infinite demands, and chronic jealousy. He says it will be fine. I say the reality will not be fine. He says it will. I like him in every way. I think he and Ann are a bad fit.

  Hans talks about Jo Devlin, but mainly his marriage. I don’t believe every atom of Hans’ representation — in any case he is careful to find fault with himself — but his account feels true. That it’s grey, inflected with other, wilder colours, of which I can’t possibly have knowledge, I take for granted.

  And writing this book, I have been fascinated when Eliot finds herself sprouting feelings and sensations, like some impossible plant, growing from her own chest, arms, hands for Cross. But just now I have half an eye on myself. I think what will happen if I stay with Hans and his marriage breaks up. What will the department think? What will Ann feel? And the bomb for the kids, with its long, long emotional fuse. ‘It’s easy to judge,’ I say to Hans, when he comes to my flat. ‘Here.’ I pass him my Mill on the Floss.

  We agree that the ending, Maggie and Tom reunited in the flood, is incredible. She’s written herself into a corner, Hans says. Where can she go? Who doesn’t want Stephen Guest and Maggie to be together? Impossible to part two people who love each other, push the love away. There is no good way out of it. Eliot kills Maggie off, but not before pointing her finger at the most dangerous emotion — righteous indignation.

  It is lovely to talk to Hans about her. We are lying in bed and I read aloud this section:

  To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, ‘I will not believe unproved evil of you … I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater; let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling,’ — to have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning …

  ‘Isn’t it superb?’ I say. ‘Isn’t it needed more than ever in our personal, public, political life?’

  (I suppose Eliot, who kept a figure of the crucified Christ on her desk while she translated a text that would help unravel Christianity in her own century, could have said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’)

  I say to Hans, that part of Mill is my favourite bit of Eliot’s soul. He likes it too, we kiss some more.

  I meet Ann for a coffee at work. After a few minutes, she tells me she is pregnant. My coffee cup rattles loudly as I put it down. She is explaining: they had done her bloods because she complained in hospital of being tired, and found her HCG was sky high. She only heard at the end of yesterday. I say slowly, congratulations.

  She says, thank you. ‘At first I was hysterical with fear and loathing. I am not exaggerating. I was going straight for an abortion. But now —’

  She looks around her with a puzzled, almost dreamy air.

  ‘I’m kind of pleased. I just am.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I say, haltingly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she says, looking at me suddenly. ‘You just — your colour.’

  I say I’m fine. And then I ask: ‘And work? What about your book?’

  ‘I
t will be set back a little,’ she admits, cautiously.

  ‘What do you mean, a little?’

  ‘Work, life,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to get the balance right. Everyone finds that hard.’

  I am silent.

  ‘I was wondering, in fact, if you’d like to be a godparent.’

  ‘No.’

  Ann looks at me in surprise.

  ‘No.’ I get up, but I knock my tea as I reach for my bag. The tea goes flying. There is tea pooling under the table, and around the chair. I kneel on the floor, mop it up with napkins; then I need more napkins, to soak it all up. It takes several minutes, by which time I have a pile of tea-stained, crumpled napkins which I put in the bin. Then I say I have to go; I begin walking, and find my way out of the building. I walk down Southampton Row, and then east. I do not know where I am walking to. I think I recognise the Inns of Court.

  I suddenly need to sit down. There is no bench, but there are steps.

  I sit on them.

  I sit for a long while. I can see the sky, the trees, the houses. No — I want to go on for the moment. I get up and start walking again. And I keep walking, until I reach the river. It’s a grand width. My eyes aren’t dry and I reach in my pocket. It’s a crumpled napkin, I realise. I hold it up, and then I see, in scrolling letters, Cafe Tomaso, Venezia.

  The Thames is not like the grand canal. But still.

  A text comes. It’s Hans.

  You are not to worry. Meet at 9?

  I will be there.

  Because, what a lovely man. What a lovely man he is.

  7

  He couldn’t put them together: not this couple, with the couple he’d seen a month before. Willie Cross had received a telegram from Marian, and had come to Venice the next day. Apparently Johnny had jumped into the Grand Canal, and Corradini and a couple of waiters from the hotel had rescued him. He had heard privately that Johnny begged them not to rescue him.