The Honeymoon

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by Dinitia Smith


  Heinrich brought out pastries. Liszt passed around cigars. The princess took one — perhaps that accounted for her black teeth. Cigars gave Marian a terrible headache and she hoped she could endure the smoke filling the air. Liszt asked Herr von Fallersleben to recite some of his poetry and the poet, a big man, began declaiming some sort of bacchanalian piece in a gusty voice, but she couldn’t concentrate on it. All of them, she realized, were hanging on the unanswered question: would Liszt play for them? Nobody said anything for fear perhaps of disrupting some plan that the Maestro had made. George was telling the princess about his Goethe biography and Marian heard her cry, “But Goethe was such an egoist!”

  All she could do was stare at Liszt, who was sitting back in his chair, legs crossed, enjoying Herr von Fallersleben’s recital and benevolently surveying his guests. The little dog cavorted among them. Liszt fed him scraps from the table. “He completely spoils that animal!” the princess said. “When he’s upstairs composing, Rappo stands down in the garden barking up at him.”

  “He’s my harshest critic,” Liszt said, smiling and giving the dog a pat.

  “So much for genius,” said the princess.

  Marian felt a drop of rain on her cheek, then another. They all glanced at one another. Soon the rain was pelting down on them and the princess was hurrying them up a flight of stairs at the rear of the house. Liszt and the princess led the way into a drawing room, which opened into the music salon, in which stood two grand pianos. “Please, sit,” Liszt said, indicating chairs placed around the edges of the room.

  He sat himself down at one of the pianos. “This is a piece I wrote during my first winter at Woronince, the princess’s estate in the Ukraine,” he said. “It’s called ‘Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude.’ It’s inspired by Lamartine’s poem of the same name.”

  The only sound now was the rain pouring down outside the windows. Then, just as Liszt was settling himself on the bench, Marian quickly, fearfully, stood up and dared to move her chair forward closer to his piano. She wanted to see his hands. He didn’t seem to notice, thank goodness, and wasn’t annoyed.

  The beginning of the piece was slow, almost naive, like a child’s song. There was a clear melody underneath it, the undercurrent of a gently trilling stream, lyrical and melodic, repeated in a minor key, the themes earnest and supplicating. Gradually, though, the music rose to an ecstatic pitch as Liszt played, his long hair flew around his shoulders, he threw back his head, compressed his lips, his nostrils dilated. His hands were a blur.

  There were pauses, contemplative and thoughtful. And it was done. Liszt lifted his hands from the keys and held them in midair, on his face an expression of transcendence.

  Returning to their rooms in their carriage, she and George sat in a stunned state. They didn’t speak.

  Then she broke the silence. “I think that’s the first time in my life that I’ve beheld true inspiration,” she said, “the perfect fusion of inspiration and execution.”

  “You’ve got it in you,” George said. “You have that gift in your writing.”

  “You have no evidence of that.”

  “I have complete and utter confidence in you.” He grasped her hand and held it tightly the rest of the way back to the city, as they gazed out at the pine woods and the meadows glittering green and washed fresh by the rain.

  For the rest of their stay in Weimar, George ran about the city doing his research on Goethe’s life, inflamed with purpose, so happy to be immersed in it.

  They went on to Berlin. The weather was bitingly cold, snow alternating with rain. George had friends in Berlin from previous visits, the art historian Adolf Stahr and his mistress, the novelist Fanny Lewald, another champion of the women’s cause. They had lived together as man and wife for nine years while Stahr tried to get a divorce from his wife. In Berlin, the couple’s union was accepted and they went about freely.

  At night in their rooms on the Dorotheenstrasse, as the wind howled and the snow built up outside their window, she and George sat cozily while she translated Goethe for him for his book.

  Meanwhile, letters were coming from London with news of gossip about them. People were saying George had abandoned Agnes and seduced Marian and he would surely abandon Marian next. Carlyle wrote and reported that people were saying Marian had made him leave Agnes.

  That night they lay together in bed in the darkness. She could tell by the silence and stillness of his breathing that he wasn’t asleep either.

  “I can’t sleep,” she told him.

  “Neither can I,” he said. “I’ll write to him in the morning and set it right.”

  The next day he showed her the letter he had written: “My separation was in no ways caused by the lady named. It has always been imminent, always threatened.”

  She wrote to Chapman in an effort to get paid for an article she had written, and added at the end, “I have counted the cost of the step that I have taken and am prepared to bear, without irritation or bitterness, renunciation of all my friends.”

  Only Barbara Smith wrote to say how wonderful it was that she’d decided to live with George. Marian was so profoundly grateful to Barbara, always there when she needed courage, supporting her with an almost physical lift. Barbara was irresistible. She made her ashamed of being afraid. Marian wrote back at once that the letter was “a manifestation of your strong, noble nature.”

  Every day she loved him more, and the more she loved him, the more frightened she was that one day she could lose him. She knew now that she needed something, which, unlike love, unlike George himself, could never be taken from her: the indestructible attributes of talent and genius, the ability of intellect and imagination to forge a link between present and past, between the pain and the happiness she had known; the capacity to give coherence to her existence through language, through the music and the variability and the flexibility of words. She wanted to write from her imagination, but she was afraid that she lacked the talent to do so.

  They stayed in Germany eight months. In early spring, they sailed back to England, husband and wife now, in their own eyes. They found rooms for “Mr. and Mrs. Lewes” on Park Shot in Richmond. It was an out-of-the-way place, where they were unlikely to run into any acquaintances. There was always the danger that the landlady, Mrs. Croft, would discover they weren’t married and throw them out, so Marian warned those few friends who knew about them to be careful to address all letters to her as “Mrs. George Lewes.”

  That autumn, George’s Life and Works of Goethe was published. The British Quarterly praised it for a felicity “rare in the annals of biography.” It sold a thousand copies in the first three months, but it didn’t make them rich. Still, it surrounded George with the warm glow of success.

  At Park Shot, they established a beloved routine, up at half past eight, quiet reading until ten a.m., writing until half past one, a walk in the park, back for supper at five.

  She plowed on, churning out articles to make money. She wrote a review of Ruskin’s Modern Painters for the Westminster: “The truth of infinite value he teaches is realism,” she said, “the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling.” If she ever became a real writer, she’d adopt these words as her code. She sent funds to Chrissey and gave part of her earnings to George for his boys and for Agnes and her other children with Thornton.

  Amid the piles of books that arrived daily for review she came across a novel, Compensation, by an anonymous author — a woman, it was said. In it a four-year-old child supposedly says ridiculous things such as “Oh, I am so happy, dear gran’mamma; — I have seen, — I have seen such a delightful person: he is like everything beautiful, — like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben Lomond …” The silliness of these female authors, their fatuous dialogue.

  She wrote an essay for the Westminster on “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” novels of
“the mind and millinery species,” she called them, with their frothy heroines, their manly heroes, their insipid curates. It wasn’t as if women couldn’t write great works. Look at Mrs. Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, and Currer Bell. Surely, even she could do better than these women who’d published such nonsense.

  George, having published his Goethe biography, decided that he wanted to write a book on science, on marine biology. They went down to Devon so he could do research for it. She was thirty-six now and he was thirty-nine, but they were like two children that spring, clambering over the rocks in their fishermen’s boots, she carrying the landing net and he the hamper with the specimen jars.

  “Look!” he cried, spotting a sea anemone with long, swirling tentacles. “It’s an Anthea Cereus, I think.” There was such joy in naming things, defining them, categorizing them, creating order and meaning through language. “Anthea,” “Cereus.” All things on God’s earth could be given names and thereby made part of the larger whole.

  At night, their room was stacked with jars filled with specimens of sea creatures. George read Coriolanus aloud to entertain her, in full voice with all dramatic emphasis, making her laugh. “Thus we debase the nature of our seats!” he declaimed, “and make the rabble call our cares fears …”

  They fell asleep in one another’s arms, lulled by the rustling of the waves below their window. In the morning they were awakened by the cries of the gulls.

  They moved on to Tenby. On Saturday, Barbara Smith arrived to visit. She’d become increasingly active on “the woman question.” That winter she’d persuaded Marian to sign a petition to Parliament demanding that married women be granted the right to own their own property. Despite Marian’s worries about the radical emancipation of women, that it would come too fast and interfere with their roles as mothers, as keepers of their families, the laws on property rights were so unjust that she’d had no trouble joining Barbara’s petition.

  Barbara had written she wanted to discuss something important with her. Marian guessed it was something about John Chapman. While Marian and George were in Germany, Chapman had fixed his new attentions on Barbara. He proclaimed that he was in love with her. He wanted to set up a household with her, and have children. Chapman was sure her father, Ben Smith, would approve — after all, he hadn’t been married to her mother. When Barbara told Marian, she’d snorted with disgust. Barbara had been one of the few people she’d confided in about her own relationship with Chapman, and she’d been appalled to hear that someone as strong and confident as Barbara had given in to him.

  Barbara’s father, Ben Smith, was outraged too, by Chapman’s proposal; if she wanted to live in an unmarried state with a man, he said, she should go to America! It may be all right for a man to live this way, but not a woman. (He apparently didn’t mention his own relationship with Barbara’s mother.) Anyway, he said, Chapman was an irresponsible lout, just after her money. Barbara tore herself away from him, and he was devastated.

  When Barbara arrived in Tenby, Marian noticed at once that she wasn’t her usual ebullient self. But she was so glad to have her there. Barbara loved George now, and he her, and to share her love of him with someone else warmed Marian’s heart.

  They set out at once for the beach. Barbara settled herself with her easel and paints while she and George searched for specimens.

  At noon, the inexhaustible George was still out on the far stretches of the sand hunting. Marian and Barbara walked along the shoreline, dipping their toes in the oncoming tide, watching the clear water spread over them. Barbara was silent and preoccupied. Marian said, “You must be very happy after Ruskin’s praise.”

  Ruskin had seen Barbara’s painting of a cornfield after a storm and called her one of the preeminent female artists of the times.

  “I’m happy about it,” Barbara said, without smiling.

  “Dear heart, you’re troubled, aren’t you?” Marian said. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Barbara didn’t answer but continued looking down, frowning. “I can’t give him up. I made my decision. And yet — I miss him. I — I love him. I keep wondering if I did the right thing. He kept describing you and George as an example of a love relationship without legal bonds —”

  “An example!” cried Marian. “There is no parallel whatsoever between him and George. Whatsoever. That is insulting. George is a different man entirely. How dare he!” She stopped walking and turned to Barbara. “And by the way, he told me that George was a scoundrel and would surely leave me too.”

  Barbara shook her head. “I know. But … I can’t help thinking … that I’ve given up something important…. He’s the only man I’ve ever met who believes as strongly in the things I believe in as I do, in the cause of women …”

  “Important!” Marian said. “Oh, he is so awful.”

  Barbara said, “He’s very worried about my health. He knows a great deal about women’s health. He says he trained as a doctor and he insists the act of love would be beneficial … for my ‘irregularities’ …”

  “Perhaps,” Marian said grimly. “But not with him.”

  Barbara went on. “But do you mind if I ask? The act of love, ‘the Master Passion,’ if you will, it completely terrifies me.” Her face was anguished.

  “When there’s true love,” Marian said gently, “then it’s a very different thing.”

  “You … and George …, is it as bad as I’ve heard?”

  Marian clasped her hand and smiled. “No. It’s beautiful because he’s the kindest, most considerate of men.” She gazed fondly at George’s figure in the distance, swooping down over his specimens and sweeping them up into his net.

  “Will you have children?” Barbara asked.

  Marian felt the sorrow move over her. “We’ve discussed it. We don’t want to bring an illegitimate child into the world. And George is already taking care of Agnes’s children that aren’t even his, and given them his name. I’m helping him provide for them. We both feel strongly that we must do that.”

  “That’s so good of you.”

  “It isn’t good of me. I love him — and his sons.” She smiled, saying the names aloud, “Charley, Thornie, Bertie. I haven’t met them yet but I already love them because they’re his. He’s sent them away to school in Switzerland to get away from Bedford Place and all the chaos there. As for the others, I agree with him. You can’t let an innocent child suffer just because he was born by an accident that had nothing to do with him. And I’m thirty-six now anyway. There are ways to stop it, you know. Or you should know if you don’t.”

  “I do know, I think. Do George’s children know about you?”

  “Not yet. But we hope, one day.” She gripped Barbara’s arms. “Don’t punish yourself for giving up Chapman. He’s relentless, but he’s incapable of true love and commitment.”

  “But I feel he did love me. Does love me.”

  “I’m sure he thinks he does.”

  They walked along together. In the distance, George looked up, saw them, and waved. Then he began striding toward them. They waited. “Look!” he cried, when he’d caught up with them. “I got an Aeolis too!”

  For the remainder of her stay, Barbara continued her painting, quietly concentrating on her work. Marian could feel her turning over the question of Chapman in her mind as she worked. But they didn’t discuss him anymore.

  As Marian helped George collect his specimens, the idea for a story began to take form in her mind. Again, she saw images from her childhood, of the Chilvers Coton church, and of the Reverend Gwyther, and she remembered all the stories she’d heard about him. There’d be a young curate — “Amos Barton,” she’d call him, with a sweet wife, “Milly.” The church is poor. The Reverend Amos invites a rich countess to live with them, hoping she’ll give money to it. But people think wrongly that she’s Amos’s mistress …

  The window of their bedroom faced east. The early sun woke her. The room was flooded with white light, the curtain swaying softly in the morning breeze. She
felt as if she were floating on the bed. From outside came the sound of the ineluctable back and forth of the waves, the cry of the gulls. George lay with his back to her, breathing steadily in his sleep, his thin, narrow shoulders naked, his dark hair on the pillow, his body warm with the pulse of his life. He liked to fall asleep as close to her as possible, then, in the night, he would turn away.

  Looking at him, she thought, one day he wouldn’t be there, to warm her when she was cold, his flesh solid and moist next to her. Then her life would be at an end too. There was no eternity, not of love, nor of the body. She had nothing of her own, except him. No reason to live should he ever leave her. She edged toward him and kissed his shoulder.

  He woke up, turned over, smiled lazily and drew her to him.

  “Darling?” she whispered. “What do you think of this for a title for a story? ‘The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton.’ ”

  He rose up on his elbow. “That’s a capital title!”

  She lay back. “I’m afraid.”

  He sat up excitedly, his bony chest covered with wiry hairs, his arms thin but strong, trying to seize her enthusiasm before it faded. “Think of it this way,” he said. “It might be a failure, but it might also be a chef d’oeuvre!”

  “A chef-d’oeuvre! I don’t think there’s much worry about that.”

  “You can’t write a bad novel — you’ve got wit, description, philosophy. And those go a long way. Though you may lack the most important thing, drama. Try it as an experiment.”

  Then they rose into the glorious white morning, and breakfasted. Soon they were heading down Bridge Street to the South Sands, with their nets and their bottles and the hamper.

  That autumn, in London, she wrote the words “Chapter I.” Then, “Shepperton Church was a very different-looking building five-and-twenty years ago …” Mrs. Hackit and the town doctor, Mr. Pilgrim, and some neighbors, are having tea and complaining about the Reverend Amos. “ ‘Rather a lowbred fellow, I think, Barton,’ said Mr. Pilgrim.” “(Reason to hate him: Reverend Amos had called in a new doctor who’d cured a patient of Mr. Pilgrim’s.)”

 

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