In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

‘You did.’

  He waited while she collected a cheque for a disappointing sum, and they left together. As they walked he said he hoped she was coming to see them soon.

  ‘I am intending to.’ She was shy of admitting she had even hoped to come today; they knew well she had called two days before.

  But Lewes said, ‘Why not now? Madonna is a little low in spirits.’ He would not take no for an answer. Who was she to go against Mr Lewes! He began to hail a hansom.

  Did he not want to walk, she asked.

  A smile of disbelief appeared. ‘My body is a ragged thing these days, Miss Simcox. On no account.’

  The hansom went at a good trot, but on Farringdon Road there had been an accident, and a ghoulish crowd had gathered.

  ‘That reliable human instinct,’ sighed Lewes, as an injured man and what could be a corpse were taken up from the road. ‘You should hear Mrs Lewes on the subject.’

  ‘Of accidents?’ said Edith, curious.

  ‘No no,’ laughed Lewes. ‘Biographers! She hates the idea of people writing about her.’

  Edith looked out of the window.

  The cabman apologised for the horrible sight. ‘No matter,’ said Lewes, waving his hand.

  It was clear the journey was going to be slow. Lewes lit a cigar. Edith was thinking. How strange it was, that she was not jealous of Mr Lewes. She coveted Marian, yet she adored them as a couple. It did not make sense. Lewes was talking to her, asking about reviewing.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He put his question again. Edith admitted she didn’t use a pseudonym any more.

  ‘Do you miss it?’ asked Lewes. He was thinking not just of Marian but of Charlotte Brontë and the name Currer Bell, whom he had championed decades before.

  ‘I think I have a man’s brain,’ said Edith. She cracked her knuckles, a habit she had recently acquired.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I won’t bore you,’ said Edith, stiffly.

  ‘I like people to tell me things,’ Lewes announced, puffing on his cigar.

  Edith regarded him. She would tell him a little.

  ‘It is nothing interesting.’ She used to think she was a boy — that the doctors would diagnose her as a boy. It wasn’t so unusual, in her view. The hansom was beginning to pick up speed.

  ‘Physiognomy, psychology, the question is certainly begged,’ murmured George Henry Lewes, whose work was on body and mind.

  They were approaching the Priory.

  But on arrival, Marian’s headache was worse — George was sorry for having dragged Edith here. He offered the carriage to take her home. Edith refused.

  ***

  In her room, Edith lay on the bed, her eyes shut, in rigor mortis position. She put her hands together like the brass knights in church floors. She would let time pass. Five minutes later she sprang up, pulled out her green book from her desk, put the key in (why did she bother to lock it?). She had an urge to look over herself, to understand herself, this was why she wrote this diary, she said to the room.

  Yesterday I had a few lines bidding me come on Wednesday at 3.30 … Oh! how sweet to sit by her alone, to be folded in her arms. My darling, my darling!

  Very good. Marian did sometimes fold her in her arms. She flicked back further.

  I have been looking over my journal — acta diurna amoris — and counting the days till I may hope to see her again. I do not hope for anything else.

  The same as now. What progress was she making?

  … in the rest I have written finis on my tombstone and in sanguine moments force myself to mutter ‘Sat est vixisse’ — I have lived for a few seconds now and then. I love her just as much as ever and a touch would bring me back to unconsciousness of everything but the love.

  The struggle for existence is an infernal process.

  Really, in all these five years of loving Marian, what had changed?

  She read some more, but her left temple was beginning to ache, so she fetched water from downstairs to drink. Another entry:

  Dearest, Dearest. Day by day let me begin and end by looking to Her for guidance and rebuke … make a dread rule to myself out of the vow that every night what has been done ill or left undone shall be confessed on my knees to my Darling and my God.

  She did want Marian’s advice, in the deepest sense, on everything. She wanted absolution from her too. She read on.

  On Friday I went with fresh patterns of silk; Johnny was there and she — asked me to come some other day, Sunday or Monday or Tuesday. Returning home through Kensington Gardens, if the truth must be told I sat down under a spreading tree and cried.

  Ah, she was too vulnerable, too easily upset.

  She did dislike Johnny Cross though. She had once caught a look between Johnny and Marian as he bid her goodbye, where they both seemed to be unconsciously smiling.

  After this she could not be polite to Johnny. Marian and Mr Lewes often reproached her for being rude to him. But they also teased her for her jealousy.

  She said they had laughed at the fatality of my crossing with Johnny last week: I said I knew I should poison his shirts some day, and she hoped I would not, he saved them a great deal of trouble about money affairs, besides being the best of sons and brothers — I said of course, that was just why; I was jealous.

  Johnny was conniving, she was sure.

  I had just begun to despair of reaching more interesting topics when the fatal Johnny came in, he had missed his train yesterday and had a book to return by way of pretext. I stayed about half an hour, all told, and left the field for Johnny.

  ***

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ said Lewes, genially, when Edith appeared. She had taken her courage in her hands and come.

  ‘Don’t look like that, child,’ said Marian, mildly and kindly.

  Edith said, ‘Mother, I am happy to see you,’ — dropping her eyes, then her knees. Then she took Marian’s hand close to her cheek.

  They discussed Hamiltons, Goethe, Goethe’s treatment of love, marriage. The mother of her friend, Edith said, wanted her daughter to be married.

  ‘What about you?’ said Marian suddenly. ‘Don’t you want to be married?’

  Edith let go of Marian’s hand.

  ‘Marriages,’ went on Marian, briskly, ‘are happening later and later. People who go on developing have a much better chance of marriage after thirty than at twenty; and you, Edith, have never been so ready to marry as now.’

  ‘That is not saying much,’ said Edith, in a scarcely audible voice. She had started rubbing at a hole in her stocking.

  Lewes unaccountably added his voice to the chorus, saying it would be good for Edith, and make her less ‘anti-men’.

  They both laughed and agreed heartily. Together, they often accused her of being prejudiced against men.

  ‘Did you have an opinion about Natural Law?’ said Edith, desperately. She had given Marian a copy of her book, about ethics, with a riskily personal message inscribed. For several months Marian had said nothing about it. Now she met Marian’s eyes full on. Marian hesitated, then said she did like it. ‘Nothing jarred.’

  On the way home Edith stumbled at a pothole. The author of Middlemarch had suggested she get married. She could not understand it.

  But within days she was thinking, what does all that matter? The month was June; any moment Marian and Lewes would disappear for a hideous amount of time, to their summer house in the country, at Witley.

  The following morning, Edith pulled out her green diary, picked up her pen:

  June 16, 1878

  Last night came one of those sweet envelopes — bidding me come tomorrow for the dreaded farewell: after which life becomes a blank for alas! nearly 5 months.

  10

  On the longest day of the year, Marian and Lewes arrived at Witley. Everything was as
they hoped. The pictures were tastefully hung, the new William Morris wallpaper was in the drawing room. The cottage was ready for the coachman. Outside, Lewes walked to the end of the terrace and threw his arms open to the view: the garden, the fields, the hills in the distance and the wood. The sun was not too hot; Marian removed her shawl, felt the air on her arms. They spent the evening outside in a replete, quiet mood, drinking wine, absorbing the small sounds, with a sense of release and peace after London.

  Marian woke some time in the night, in the confusion of sleep and a dream, in which there was a crying child, a boy, and an arrival of some kind of animal, a badger, possibly — and then she was waking properly, the room was in fact dimly illuminated, and she saw Lewes out of bed, seated by the wall. At the sight of his face, her stomach contracted. She got up to help him. Slowly, his pain eased, and he made his way back to bed.

  Lewes was cheerful at breakfast, he wanted to walk round ‘the property’, all nine acres of it. He said the phrase with relish, which made her smile. But while dressing she could not forget his face in the night: when the silent countryside around them, that had seemed so glorious only hours before, had become frightening.

  Doctors had come and gone in London; Sir James Paget had seen him, but nothing was clear.

  ***

  In the summerhouse they made themselves comfortable, the new matting pleasant underfoot: Marian was reading Theophrastus Such aloud. Privately, Lewes wearied of the ironic pedantic narrator — Casaubon, he thought, without the fun.

  But soon the cramps of the night returned. He stood up — said sorry — went out. The sensation in his lower stomach and bowels was as if a thread had been run through him, and was now being tightened. Walking, though, seemed to ease him. He began getting up at dawn and going out to walk, and Polly came with him, a woollen shawl over her nightdress. They went together on these anxious dawn walks. There was great beauty in the silent fields.

  He was better, he was worse, then he was better. The pain was intermittent, but he could not read as he used to. At the back of his mind he was afraid of not finishing Problems. They continued to socialise, and sometimes, even if they wanted solitude, a garrulous neighbour, Mrs Greville, from up the hill, stopped by unasked. Lewes suggested inviting Edith for two days, Marian said one would be enough: Edith’s recent rudeness to Johnny bothered her more and more. Edith came for the day. Mrs Greville visited, leaving the newest novel by Mr James, The Europeans.

  ***

  In October, the weather changed, the pains were back in force. Lewes was often out of bed at dawn, but now it was cold and dark. At the start of November, the rains came in earnest. The rain fell on the roof, the house was noisy with it. They sat in the drawing room. No fire was lit, water had come down the fireplace.

  Unexpectedly, the doorbell chimed, and Brett announced Mrs Richard Greville and Mr Henry James. Marian and Lewes glanced at each other, in a moment they had read each other’s faces.

  They greeted the guests without enthusiasm, and resumed their seats. Talk was halting. They did not offer tea. This visit, thought Marian, is perhaps the most undesirable of my life.

  The night before, the bleakest realisation had been dawning on both sides. Sitting in an armchair close by, Mr James was making efforts at small talk. Marian glanced at him: his heavy-lidded eyes were half smiling, and, she could see, registering everything. Yet — perhaps not. Could he sense anything of what was going on, this fellow author? She had glimpsed, on the table next door, his volumes. James wore a complicated expression of tension knit with goodwill; as he had taken his seat, it seemed to her that he moved with particular deliberation, possibly, she speculated, the product of an intense self-consciousness. Then his manner had become more urbane.

  Just as they were leaving, Lewes rushed to find The Europeans, catching James as he entered the carriage. ‘Ah,’ cried Lewes, ‘take them away, please, away, away!’ — and he thrust the volumes into James’ hands.

  It was good to return those books — they were going to London soon. Then he remembered he had enjoyed talking to Henry James, not so long ago, in April. It was the birthday Johnny had hosted for Lewes, in the Devonshire Club. So, things were like that, he thought; they changed without warning.

  11

  It’s the beginning of June. In the soiled warm air of Bloomsbury people walk without their jackets and coats. Students camp out with their lunch in Russell Square Gardens; traffic stalls in Southampton Row, there are sirens, but tables are on the pavement, people linger outside pubs, cafes, restaurants. Talk drifts on the air as it gets dark.

  At home the packing cases are emptied and gone. Light comes in at the western and southern windows, stronger now.

  The main hall is ready for the conference, chairs in rows; the room next door has tables up for caterers. The conference will begin as Ann wants it to, with a sprightly attack on Eliot’s conservative remarks about women. Posters have sprung up, with Eliot’s face, and the words: Saint or Hypocrite? And below:

  She recommended

  SUBLIME RESIGNATION

  Tickets sell out for the Saint or Hypocrite day. Marcus, the chair, waltzes Ann round his office at the news.

  ***

  At the start of the year, I don’t remember seeing Hans often at work. But now most days I glimpse him, as if chance is constantly placing him in my orbit, and the days have a lightness they didn’t before. There he is, walking along the corridor, abstracted usually, then we spot each other, slow, stop, talk, talk just a bit more; go our separate ways. Sometimes we exchange a text. We know we will meet for our hour on Thursdays, preparing the class; and then there’s the class itself. If I go into the canteen, my eyes — as if they have a will of their own — are scanning for that figure, with the slightly bowed shoulders as he reads alone, the light-coloured hair falling forward.

  I print out my air ticket to Venice.

  Three days before the QEC conference, Ann asks me to come round.

  She is in the study upstairs, in the armchair, feeding Michael. Ben is standing near, begging for a story. ‘A very, very little one,’ Ben is saying wisely. ‘This big,’ — and he holds out his third finger and thumb.

  She tells Ben to go to bed, and asks if I can wait — Michael is about to fall asleep.

  I take the chair opposite her.

  Michael is in a white towelling garment. I can just make out his cheeks going minutely in and out as he sucks. His eyes are beginning to close. On the floor are his Moses basket, and two soft animals, a floppy cow with a pink nose, and a caramel-coloured dog with black nose and ears. The lamp is shining its light on the walls. His sucking is getting slower.

  My eyes are drawn to the cork board: pieces of paper with big words on them. The day is short and the work is great is printed out in bold, across three pieces of A4, above the capitals, EDITH SIMCOXTALMUD. Below it is another large-printed sentence: I say, Philo! how is it that most people’s lives somehow don’t seem to come to much? And below that, in the same red scrawl — it looks like it’s been done in a permanent marker — EDITH SIMCOX.

  The baby is sleeping. Even from where I am, I can see under his small pink eyelids the REM moving pattern.

  Ann is wearing a black dress, I notice, and black tights. She tells me she wants to give a paper on Simcox rather than Eliot at the conference, and maybe also at Venice.

  ‘Simcox!’

  ‘I wrote it in two days. It’s the easiest thing I’ve done.’

  ‘That’s a very interesting idea,’ I say, slowly.

  I’ve also become rather obsessed with Simcox. I look at Ann, her complacent mouth, and suddenly feel tired. As usual she’s jumped ahead of me.

  ‘In many ways Simcox is like Eliot,’ she is saying, looking at me intently. ‘She’s gifted, not on the same level, obviously, but gifted. They’re both intellectual and ambitious, they both want to make the world a better place. Eliot wants to do it by chan
ging the way people understand others; but Simcox faces what she sees right under her nose — squalor of London, these terrifying children not going to school.’

  ‘Why have you got candles as well as lamps?’

  ‘The power-cut. You must have had it too, three days ago. No?’

  I did.

  ‘Hans wanted to go and collect candles from you. He was sure you had a good supply. I said, don’t bother her.’

  ‘Right. Right. Why are you wearing black?’

  ‘I feel like it. I get sick of white. And I think I’m at a kind of crossroads,’ she adds, with an enigmatic look. ‘My whole soul is a longing question — Simcox on Eliot! Isn’t that great? Her passion.’ She smiles, as if thinking about something else.

  I ask if she’s writing about Simcox and Eliot together.

  ‘Odette and Odile,’ she says, at once. ‘Eliot so good, Simcox so desperate. Simcox the outsider. So ambitious, but she doesn’t know what to do! She’s like a twentieth-century ghost in the wrong century. Questioning everything — the family, society, capitalism, gender. She’s the first female delegate at the Trades Union Congress. Did you know that?’

  ‘Along with Emma Paterson,’ I say, automatically. I’m thinking how conservative Eliot’s going to look, put next to Simcox.

  ‘Yes, questioning everything. She even asks, what would wives really say about sex with their husbands, if they could speak? In Victorian England, she’s asking this! So free in her thinking.’

  I drop my eyes. ‘But it’s an Eliot conference,’ I say faintly, looking at my knees. ‘Why Simcox?’

  ‘Because I can relate to her,’ says Ann bluntly.

  She starts to speak, then closes her mouth.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  After a moment, Ann says: ‘She’s struggling to be something, and I know what that’s like. Simcox moves me. She’s like all the women who never got their voices out there, voices in the dark. You may say this is a cliché but it’s true. The only reason she was found was because she kept her obsessive diary, documenting every crevice of her feeling — and later, in 1951, someone listening to a Woman’s Hour programme on Eliot realises she’s got this book lying around her house, with references to Eliot in it, and sends it to the BBC — it’s Simcox’s diary! I mean, who can honestly relate to Eliot? Eliot was like a god.