The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

by Diane Johnson

  8.Maid Marian, a Robin Hood story, contains another of the sprightly, independent, and intellectual heroines Peacock so admired. When she grew old enough to read, Peacock gave a copy of this work to his own Mary Ellen:

  To Miss Mary Ellen Peacock

  From the Author, her dear Papa.

  Later, George Meredith writes a poem entitled “Marian,” which describes Mary Ellen. It has been suggested that he meant to associate the heroine of the poem with Peacock’s heroine. Still later, after Mary Ellen has left him, Meredith calls a succession of mad or degenerate women in his books “Marian.”

  9.Hogg never seemed to follow his minister’s advice and associated all his life with “advanced” women. So did Peacock, feeling, in the words of his own fictional character, “I can answer for men, Miss Melincourt, that there are some, many I hope, who can appreciate justly that most heavenly of earthly things, an enlightened female mind; whatever may be thought by the pedantry that envies, the foppery that fears, the folly that ridicules, or the wilful blindness that will not see its loveliness.” (Melincourt: Works, 2, p. 167.)

  10.It is hard for us not to wonder at the conventions of Victorian domestic address. Here is a fictional episode from Charlotte Yonge’s Heartsease, which Mary Ellen read. A young couple has been married for a few weeks and is just coming home to meet his relatives for the first time. The husband is the younger son, not technically entitled, according to Victorian usage, to be called “Mr. Martindale”; he would be called “Mr. Arthur.”

  “I am glad I have seen Mr. John Martindale,” sighed she.

  “Don’t call him so here. Ah! I meant to tell you you must not Mr. Martindale me here. John is Mr. Martindale.”

  “And what am I to call you?”

  “By my name, of course.”

  “Arthur! Oh! I don’t know how.”

  “You will soon. And if you can help shrinking when my aunt kisses you, it will be the better for us. . . .”

  11.As an index of Peacock’s own views on female dress and nudity, we may perhaps consult Mr. Crotchet, in Crotchet Castle:

  MR. CROTCHET: Sir, ancient Sculpture is the true school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; . . . And, sir, to show my contempt for cant in all its shapes, I have adorned my house with the Greek Venus, in all her shapes, and am ready to fight her battle against all the societies that ever were instituted for the suppression of truth and beauty.

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: My dear sir, I am afraid you are growing warm. Pray be cool. Nothing contributes so much to good digestion as to be perfectly cool after dinner.

  MR. CROTCHET: Sir, the Lacedaemonian virgins wrestled naked with young men: and they grew up, as the wise Lycurgus had foreseen, into the most modest of women, and the most exemplary of wives and mothers.

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Very likely sir; but the Athenian virgins did no such things, and they grew up into wives who stayed at home,—stayed at home sir; and looked after the husband’s dinner,—his dinner, sir, you will please to observe.

  MR. CROTCHET: And what was the consequence of that, sir? that they were such very insipid persons that the husband would not go home to eat his dinner, but preferred the company of some Aspasia, or Lais.

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Two very different persons, sir, give me leave to remark.

  MR. CROTCHET: Very likely, sir; but both too good to be married in Athens.

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Sir, Lais was a Corinthian.

  MR. CROTCHET: ‘Od’s vengeance, sir, some Aspasia and any other Athenian name of the same sort of person you like—

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: I do not like the sort of person at all: the sort of person I like, as I have already implied, is a modest woman, who stays at home and looks after her husband’s dinner.

  MR. CROTCHET: Well, sir, that was not the taste of the Athenians. They preferred the society of women who would not have made any scruple about sitting as models to Praxiteles; as you know, sir, very modest women in Italy did to Canova: one of whom, an Italian countess, being asked by an English lady, “how she could bear it?” answered, “Very well; there was a good fire in the room.”

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Sir, the English lady should have asked how the Italian lady’s husband could bear it. The phials of my wrath would overflow if poor dear Mrs. Folliott—: sir, in return for your story, I will tell you a story of my ancestor, Gilbert Folliott. The devil haunted him, as he did Saint Francis, in the likeness of a beautiful damsel; but all he could get from the exemplary Gilbert was an admonition to wear a stomacher and longer-petticoats.

  MR. CROTCHET: Sir, your story makes for my side of the question. It proves that the devil, in the likeness of a fair damsel, with short petticoats and no stomacher, was almost too much for Gilbert Folliott. The force of the spell was in the drapery.

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Bless my soul, sir!

  MR. CROTCHET: Give me leave, sir, Diderot. . . .

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: . . . Sir, Diderot is not a man after my heart. Keep to the Greeks, if you please; albeit this Sleeping Venus is not an antique.

  MR. CROTCHET: Well, sir, the Greeks: why do we call the Elgin marbles inestimable? Simply because they are true to nature. And why are they so superior in that point to all modern works, with all our greater knowledge of anatomy? Why sir, but because the Greeks, having no cant, had better opportunities of studying models?

  THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT: Sir, I deny our greater knowledge of anatomy. But I shall take the liberty to employ, on this occasion, the argumentum ad hominem. Would you have allowed Miss Crotchet to sit for a model to Canova?

  MR. CROTCHET: Yes, sir.

  God bless my soul, sir!” exclaimed the Reverend Doctor Folliott, throwing himself back into a chair, and flinging up his heels. . . .

  12.The first of the two letters that follow (addressed to “My kind dear father”) is not, in fact, in Mary Ellen’s hand, and seems to have been copied by someone else (perhaps Peacock), perhaps with a view to suppressing some passage in it. Victorian families were most unscrupulous in this respect. It is just possible that the second letter (to “My own darling Eddy”) is written to her brother Edward rather than to her fiancé, for Victorian siblings were effusively affectionate and loverlike in their addresses. Both letters are unpublished and are quoted here by permission of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library.

  13.Victoms. “I fear,” remarks his descendant, Lady de Montmorency, “that his early entrance into Service did not improve his spelling.” That Fighting Nicolls was a man of action is demonstrated by this account, from Colonel C. Field’s Britain’s Sea-Soldiers, pp. 237–239.

  It was the year 1803, and the Blanche frigate, Captain Zachery Mudge, was cruising off the Island of San Domingo. Intelligence had been received that the French armed cutter Albion was at moorings in the roadstead of Monte Christi on the North coast of the Island, and an attempt was made to cut her out by daylight, three boats being sent in under Lieut. Braithwaite, R. N., but the boats were driven off by the fire of a battery which covered her. It was in the early part of November, the nights were long, and it was determined to take advantage of them, and make another attempt to cut her out under cover of the darkness. Lieutenant Nicolls of the Royal Marines volunteered to carry out the job if he could have one of the cutters and twelve men. His offer was accepted, and late on the evening of the 4th of the month, he shoved off from alongside the Blanche on his little expedition. He had not long left the ship when Captain Mudge, fully aware of Nicolls’ daredevil disposition, conceived the idea that he might attempt more than his diminutive force would possibly be able to do, for the object of their attack was lying within a hundred yards of a shore battery, mounting four 24-pounders and three field guns. He therefore called away the barge with her crew of twenty-two men, and putting Lieutenant the Hon. Warwick Lake, R. N., in charge of her, ordered him to reinforce Nicolls and take personal charge of the attack.
The bigger boat having come up with the Red cutter—Nicolls’ boat—the two pulled steadily in together until the Marine officer was able to point out the dim form of the Albion as she lay close under the land. He had probably located her before he volunteered to cut her out and had taken her bearings. Lake, however, would not have it that the craft they could see was the one of which they were in search. He maintained that the Albion was lying right away at the opposite side of the Bay. However, although he was in command, he did not insist on the red cutter accompanying him when he headed his boat in the new direction, but told Nicolls to keep an eye on the vessel they had already discovered. This was about half past two in the morning, and though the bay was overshadowed by high mountains there was not very much time to waste if the Albion was to be captured and taken out before there was a glimmer of light in the East. Besides, there was now a favourable breeze for bringing her out, and this might very likely drop or change its direction at daybreak. Anyway, Nicolls felt quite certain that the vessel he was watching was the Albion and headed his boat towards her. An attack was evidently looked for—the Blanche had probably been seen standing off and on in the offing at sundown, and as soon as the red cutter was within pistol shot she was hailed by the French look-outs. Three rousing cheers was the answer from the little boat, whose crew, bending to their oars, dashed along-side. One volley from the Albion whistled overhead, a second badly wounded the coxswain, the bow oar and a Marine. Before the compliment could be repeated the red cutter had hooked on, and Nicolls had sprung on board. As he jumped on deck the French Captain’s pistol cracked and the ball pierced the skin of the Marine’s stomach, came out and lodged in his sword arm. Nicolls, or one of his men, instantly shot the French officer, and after a short scuffle with cutlass, bayonet and boarding pike, the crew were driven below with the loss of five men wounded, one mortally. So far, so good; the Albion was taken and Nicolls now had to get her out. But the battery close by could easily blow her out of the water, once the gunners became aware of Nicolls’ success. A stratagem was necessary to throw dust in their eyes, and Nicolls therefore ordered his Marines to continue to discharge their muskets in the air in order to produce the impression that the French crew was still holding its own, while the seamen of his little party cut the cables and got sail on the prize. All would have been well, had not the barge, attracted by the firing, now come bumping alongside. Lake, of course, at once assumed command. There was nothing for him to do, but he, by way of taking a hand in the proceedings, ordered the Marines to cease firing. Instantly followed the red flash and boom of the battery guns, round and grape shot came humming and whistling on board, and two of the Blanche’s seamen fell dead. But the wind was fair, and with both boats towing ahead the Albion was soon out of gunshot, and lost in the darkness.

  There is no doubt that Nicolls had done the whole thing “off his own bat,” but Captain Mudge, in his report, put quite a different colour on the affair. He said that the Albion was “gallantly attacked” by two boats, Lieutenant Lake in the cutter, and Lieutenant Nicolls of the Marines, in the barge. Here are no less than three misstatements to begin with. Neither did he make any mention of Nicolls being wounded, although he had been pretty seriously hurt. The Admiralty, misled by Zachery Mudge’s “terminological inexactitudes,” naturally selected Lieutenant Lake, the senior of the two officers, for promotion, while the Committee of the Patriotic Fund, although they presented Nicolls with a sword of the value of £30 for “having commanded one of the boats,” gave Lake one valued at £50 for “his gallantry.” How the latter could have accepted it, without suggesting that it ought to have been given to Nicolls, is a question which can never be answered.

  14.Of course, we all know that experiences described by novelists in their novels are not often verbatim accounts of things that have happened to them. Strictly speaking, it is not fair to infer Mary’s lifestyle from George’s books. At the same time, it is true that a writer has nothing but his own experience to fuel his imagination; when certain scenes or characters recur in his work, and when they resemble the people he is known to have known in his life, it is fairly safe to say that the latter inspired the former. We may say that the scenes in a novel are fundamentally true to the life experience of the author and superficially distorted. Meredith’s witty femmes du monde have different coloring, various personal histories. But consider how their names—Bella, Mary, Marian—play variations on “Mary Ellen.”

  15.And Mary Ellen must have been like Bella and Mrs. Lovell; “She was a brilliant, witty, beautiful woman, thirty years of age, and a widow. . . . Meredith was immediately attracted by Mrs. Nicolls and she to him, but the mutual attraction was probably only of a physical nature,” explains Cousin Stewart Ellis disapprovingly (George’s second cousin and first biographer).

  16.I have provided the translation for Mary Ellen’s essay that appears in the text, with thanks to Toni Roby:

  LA MORT

  Qu’est-ce que la mort? Ce voyage, cette peine inconnue au milieu de laquelle nous vivons, mais que nous craignons tous; et cette crainte d’où vient-elle? car nous la trouverons dans le coeur de tous les hommes, même dans ceux qui désirent le plus d’être morts; ils désirent être morts, mais ils craignent de mourir. Cette crainte n’est-elle pas une sentinelle que Dieu a placee à la porte de la seconde vie, ou comme nous la nommons l’autre monde, elle est là pour nous en défendre l’entrée jusqu’à ce que notre heure nous appelle et quand elle arrivera peut-être cette crainte abandonnera-t-elle la porte qu’elle ne devait plus garder quand on présente le billet d’admission signé du doigt de l’Éternel.

  Ordinairement on regarde la mort comme un arrêt final, comme la fin de la vie, la cessation de tout ce que nous avons connu et senti: arrêt suivi d’un état nouveau où nous n’avons rien de ce qui fait notre bonheur ou notre malheur ici-bas; mais il ne peut en être ainsi, nous voyons que dans la nature toute mort est naissance. La plus vilaine corruption qui pourri [sic] sur la terre a-t-on fini avec elle? Non, et on voit au contraire que la terre bienfaisante la change en quelque nouvelle vie. Les feuilles de la jolie fleur ne tombent-elles pas pour donner place à la nouvelle vie du fruit? et le fuit ne jette [sic] il pas ses riches sucs pour que la graine prende [sic] naissance? et elle, quand elle tombe, n’est-ce pas pour créer une nouvelle vie? Or la nature qui par ses belles analogies nous révèle si souvent le surnaturel, ne nous montre elle pas l’infaillibilité de ce principe, que la mort est aussi la naissance. Quand nos âmes sont mûres, quand elles ont gagné des chaleurs ou des froids de ce monde tout ce [sic] peuvent ou les nourrir, ou les détruire, la nouvelle naissance ne brise-t-elle pas les liens qui ne peuvent plus la contenir; la mort n’est qu’un passage, un moment, mais elle est suivie de l’éternité! Et dans cette éternité autant de joie pour celui qui vient de naître, qui’ici-bas de douleur pour celui qui vient de mourir.

  Mais, pourtant il y a beaucoup d’inconnu, de mystérieux pour nous dans ce passage de la vie. Qui sait quel changement, quelle division elle a pu mettre entre ceux que nous avons perdus de vue par cette action étrange: nous sont-ils enlevés à jamais? nous poursuivent-ils avec les mêmes regards d’affection qu’ils nous prodiguaient ici-bas? nous n’en savons rien, mais pour donner ce qui manque à la connaissance avons l’ange de la foi, et elle nous enseigne que Dieu n’a créé rien en vain, et assure qu-il ne nous a pas donné les affections que pour un moment ou pour un jeu.

  17.The cookery book was probably The Science of Cookery, which is mostly in Peacock’s hand, but which Mary Ellen was apparently readying for print by adding a preface and more recipes. Among his wise sayings in the Preface:

  It is said that there are Seven chances against even the most simple dish being presented to the mouth in absolute perfection; for instance a Leg of Mutton

  1st—The mutton must be good

  2nd—Must have been kept a good time

  3rd—Must be roasted at a good fire,

  4th—By a Good Cook

&nbs
p; 5th—Who must be in good temper,

  6th—With all this felicitous combination you must have good luck, and

  7th—Good appetite—the meat and the mouths which are to eat it must be ready for each other.

  Clement Shorter, in The Sphere (vol. 64, March 25, 1916, p. 328), remarks of a cookery article of Mary’s, “Here Mrs. Meredith shows so amazing a knowledge of cookery that one half suspects that she inspired the book, although the fact that much of it is in Mr. Meredith’s hand-writing suggests a joint authorship.” This remark, in turn, suggests a second cookery manuscript, with more evidence of participation by George; the one from which I have quoted above is largely Peacock’s. But I have been unable to locate this second manuscript, which was sold at Maggs in 1916. The Maggs catalog describes it as extracts from an unpublished manuscript in Meredith’s hand, “extending to some 19 pages, and interspersed with occasional notes” by Mary Ellen.