In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

  ***

  When Brett came to brush her hair early evening before supper, Marian was impatient, saying sharply, it’s enough — it’s fine — so that Brett stopped, helped her instead into her black silk dress. Brett said, ‘It’s guests you are having tonight, ma’am.’

  ‘Yes Brett, Miss Cross and her brother are coming to dine.’

  Marian embraced Eleanor Cross, not wishing to look at Johnny, but she was aware of his taller presence behind, lifting her head she caught his eyes, enough to see that their expression was open and directed at her. They sat down with drinks, Barbara talking about Girton College, saying, ‘I am in a dilemma.’

  ‘Please tell us, Madame Bodichon,’ said Johnny respectfully. Marian kept glancing at him; he was sitting forward towards Barbara, as if nothing else in the world interested him.

  I can’t believe he is really so intrigued, Marian was thinking. But he’s certainly very expert at presenting that kind of façade. And she found herself disapproving of Johnny, condemning him as a cunning social performer.

  Barbara talked about Hertha Marks. Her real name was Sarah, she was the daughter of a Jewish refugee from Poland. ‘Maestro here,’ said Barbara, indicating Marian, ‘has been a kind support to Hertha, and found her, I hope, an aid when writing Deronda.’

  ‘True,’ said Marian, and she listened while Barbara explained about Hertha wanting to give up her studies to nurse her sister, even though Barbara was prepared to pay someone else to nurse the sister.

  ‘There is surely no question,’ said Johnny, warmly. ‘If you’re willing to do that — why shouldn’t Miss Marks continue her studies?’

  ‘I agree with you!’ said Barbara.

  For some reason, both Barbara’s remark and the glad glance she flashed at Johnny, and Johnny’s own remark, so certain, acted on Marian like an irritant. ‘It seems to me, Mr Cross, that you are disposing of this sister’s needs in a cavalier way.’

  ‘But as I understand it, Miss Marks’ education has been struggled for —’

  ‘But you can’t just cut out this segment of the larger reality, bending life to fit your view,’ said Marian, with a sinking sense that she had somehow spoken with unnecessary harshness.

  Brett announced supper.

  ***

  The guests had gone, Barbara lay stretched full length on the sofa opposite the fire, looking up to the ceiling, one arm dangling down. For a minute or two, no one spoke. Then Barbara lifted herself onto an elbow, to look at Marian.

  ‘Isn’t Mr Cross a close friend? I recall Mr Lewes being intensely fond of him. I had the impression tonight that you actively disliked him.’

  ‘He’s very ignorant,’ said Marian, aware of her own almost sly, mysterious half-smile.

  ‘Why should you mind that? I have never seen you so cold. Has he lost you money?’

  ‘He lost his mother,’ murmured Marian, and her own view of the room, in the firelight, began to slide, everything condensing, as if between the squeezing handles of an organ grinder. Compressed, elongated, now spreading wide again.

  ‘Did he lose you money? He’s a fine talker. I liked what he said about Tennyson.’

  ‘He has his favourite poems.’

  A small, dry, unpleasant smile began to play about Marian’s mouth.

  ‘If I talk about Kant, he thinks I am saying cant — the bibles, both bibles, were written originally in Latin …’ Marian rolled her eyes.

  But a moment later, her tone changed. ‘My dear Barbara, when one is grieving, everyone is a disenchantment. Myself,’ she said, with a sudden curious smile, ‘most of all.’

  12

  Marian had an impression of sliding shifts, of awarenesses that were vague and then piercing. When marriage had been raised by Johnny, a pleasant dream had been interrupted. The sense of interruption didn’t go, either — it morphed into something much, much larger, like an indescribably frightening plant that was growing in front of her.

  The next morning she was woken by Brett’s knocking — Brett had heard cries, apparently. Staring at Brett, all Marian could think of was her dream. She had been walking down a street like a river, Johnny at her side; strangers applauding, then Benjamin Jowett — Master of Balliol and translator of Thucydides — had drawn up close. She was too near for comfort, seeing all of him: receding hair, hair tufting fluffily at the sides; colour in his cheeks, stray broken vessels; his usual wise, penetrative, sympathetic look; tears of laughter on his cheeks.

  Through the morning and the day, the thoughts pursued her. What had she been doing? — what had she been doing with Johnny, ‘Nephew’, stand-in son, this banker twenty years her junior? She, George’s widow, known everywhere for her moral vision, and her love for him — that once despised, illegal social atrocity, which had then, like a broken bird, been mended and become beautiful in the eyes of others, as the best example of love.

  She had seen again and again the look on friends’ faces when they visited. It was pity, but with a kind of reverence. Love has happened, their eyes seemed to say, we are thankful to have seen it in you and Mr Lewes. We feel for you, but we honour you.

  Opening her folder of letters upstairs, she recognised Turgenev’s handwriting. I don’t dare to trouble the very deep grief you must feel … May you find in your own great mind the necessary fortitude to sustain such a loss! All your friends, all learned Europe mourn with you.

  All learned Europe mourn with you.

  She put it down, picked up others. Everyone talked of the dreariness and isolation she had to face. Yet … she had found a way to live.

  The two realities didn’t belong together. She loved and grieved for George; she also loved this man. There was no other way to think about it. And yet, did she quite believe her own account of things?

  She was ill again. From her sick bed she could see the splendid dark-yellow lilies Johnny had brought, on the table in front of the window. They spread a drifting, thick sweet smell. Lying on the bed, the lilies, in their stately, undulating beauty, blocked the view; she could see nothing beyond those dark yellow petals, with their serpentine outline. She asked Brett to throw them out. Brett protested they were still good. ‘Please discard them.’ Those flowers with their diabolical yellow stamens, that stained where they touched.

  ***

  Barbara and Marian took the carriage to Thursley. Rain had made the road more uneven than usual, but the day was sunny with a low breeze. Barbara was talking again about Hertha. By the time they reached the churchyard, Marian was giving Barbara her verdict.

  ‘She must do what is right,’ said Marian, as they walked past the railing, behind which were the mossy tilting gravestones, and she was gripping Barbara’s arm. To herself, she said, if I go ahead, my legacy will be nothing. They were entering the shadowed interior of the church, with its dense cold and smell of incense. Through the gloom — there were only two windows at the end of the aisle — they could see the massive black timber beams, and Marian led Barbara to the slender timber-framed bell-tower, rising out of the centre of the nave floor. They walked up and down, Marian feeling the smoothness of the thick great oak arches with her hand. Emerging into the light, she was suddenly aware of the warm air on her face. ‘Non fiere li occhi suoi lo dolce lume?’ she murmured, smiling. Just like that, her troubles had slid away. She was thinking of Dante, when the father in hell, seeing the visiting poet, asks him about his son in the world. Does he not still live? Doesn’t the sweet light strike his eyes?

  ‘Non fiere li occhi suoi lo dolce lume?’ Marian was saying again, liking the words in her soft voice. The sweet light of the world. How green it was, she thought, on this late September day — and she blinked. How green it was.

  13

  Rain came, heavily. The house smelled of wood smoke and damp. Drops fell singly, loudly, from the eaves — The Heights was designed with gables in all directions.

  Always a long gap, somehow, in t
he afternoons before supper. Fires were laid, it was October, dusk was falling earlier, the twilights had a different smell — wet, earthy, the land so brown. Under the lamp, Marian read: Plato, Sainte-Beuve, Xenophon, Hercules choosing between pleasure and virtue. She thought about the separation between the two. There was strength, and then again, there was strength. It depended on the point of view.

  On this morning it was raining again. She was irritable when Brett helped her dress, annoyed at herself for not having replied to Johnny’s note from the day before. He needed to talk to her about the Baltimore investments, and in a postscript had mentioned that a copy of the deed to the Priory was missing and he had to find it. Brett was visibly nervous at doing up her stays.

  Downstairs, it was dreary, the light flat, white, chill. And what did she have to look forward to? Herself. It was almost comic. What a prospect.

  There was no fire — the fireplace had not even been cleaned from the night before, she knew another spasm of irritation, before remembering that Brock was away. She must reply to Mr Cross, as she tried now to call him; everything was a great effort. She rang the bell, asked Mrs Dowling to bring coffee quickly.

  Johnny came the following day, and she signed the papers without once meeting his eyes. Then he was gone.

  Walking round the rooms, she was aware of her own footsteps. The rooms were large. The house was not designed for one person.

  During the days that went by, she read, wrote letters.

  Johnny wrote again, saying he needed to see her about the gas and coke shares, which had fallen in value. But she knew, if she knew anything, that it was better he did not visit her at all. She did not reply, but guessed he would come. Before he did so, she positioned her black widow’s lace cap prominently on her head. When he appeared — it was a gusty, rainy morning — he passed her the form, she read it without taking in a word, and signed it automatically.

  That was the last time she saw him for seven days.

  ***

  Her sense of him grew, in proportion to his absence. She could think of nothing else. She was caught. Time would deal with it, she said to herself. But the mornings in the house seemed extraordinarily long. She read Plato again; she read again Sainte-Beuve.

  The rains were back, the drops from the eaves loud. Then she realised they were not just from the eaves. She had seen the darker bits of the wall and realised they were wet; she looked upwards, saw the ceiling, went upstairs, found the source, the hole in the roof of her bedroom. Brett put a bucket under the drip. The rain dropped loudly into the bucket. Brock was still away.

  She wrote to Johnny, asking if perhaps his coachman or servant could help. The rain continued. The night before, she could hardly sleep because of the drops falling into the bucket.

  In the early evening she heard a sound that gave her a start. It lifted her feelings instantly — the noise of carriage wheels. She got up. Yes, the carriage, it was stopping, the doorbell.

  Brett was opening the door: ‘Mr Cross, ma’am.’

  He stood in the doorway with his look of arrogance, as if savouring his height, chin raised — an illusion, a misleading prelude to the modest person he was. (Was this a fragment of an earlier Johnny?)

  He asked her where the leak was, he went upstairs. She heard him come downstairs, then the front door was opening. Then she heard sounds that seemed to come from one of the outhouses. Those footsteps, purposeful, even the rhythmic intake of breath, as he was going upstairs again. There was the sound of the hammer. She sat quite still, in the wing-back chair. She concentrated on preserving her composure. The door was opening, Johnny had come in. He was saying he had fixed the roof, it was a temporary job only, but it would do for now. He would check in a few days that it was still in place.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said.

  ‘But why,’ he was saying, ‘are you crying?’

  He was taking both her hands. Still her tears fell.

  ‘I miss seeing you so much,’ she heard him say. ‘The last month has been the most difficult of my life. Please,’ — he was taking her to the sofa.

  He was looking intently into her face, handing her his handkerchief. She wiped her eyes and face.

  He stayed for a late supper.

  ***

  He was an innocent, he was modest and kind. He had said: we are not hurting anyone; she heard the truth. Again, she kissed his hands, and life seemed possible. Now she could tell him freely, truthfully, how her days had been. The relief was tremendous. He came the next day and the next. He called her his Beatrice. He brought her the New Quarterly journal, which featured a review of George’s book. When he went to London, she missed him. She had a cold, her head ached. She wanted to write to him.

  She used the nearest paper to hand — mourning paper. She wrote within those stark black borders.

  Best loved and loving one — the sun it shines so cold, so cold, when there are no eyes to look love on me. I cannot bear to sadden one moment when we are together, but wenn Du bist nicht da I have often a bad time. It is a solemn time, dearest. And why should I complain if it is a painful time? What I call my pain is almost a joy seen in the wide array of the world’s cruel suffering. Thou seest I am grumbling today — got a chill yesterday and have a headache. All which, as a wise doctor would say, is not of the least consequence, my dear Madam.

  Through everything else, dear tender one, there is the blessing of trusting in thy goodness. Thou dost not know anything of verbs in Hiphil and Hophal or the history of metaphysics or the position of Kepler in science, but thou knowest best things of another sort, such as belong to the manly heart — secrets of lovingness and rectitude. O I am flattering. Consider what thou wast a little time ago in pantaloons and back hair.

  Triumph over me. After all, I have not the second copy of the deed. What I took for it was only Foster’s original draft and my copy of it. The article by Sully in the New Quarterly is very well done.

  I shall think of thee this afternoon getting health at Lawn Tennis, and I shall reckon on having a letter by tomorrow’s post.

  Why should I compliment myself at the end of my letter and say that I am faithful, loving, more anxious for thy life than mine? I will run no risks of being ‘inexact’ — so I will only say ‘varium et mutabile semper’ but at this particular moment thy tender —

  Beatrice

  14

  From the aeroplane window I can see banks of white and gold cloud, soft as cotton-wool, as if for some godly child to play in. We are crossing the Alps, and land an hour later. From Treviso, I take a coach to Piazzale Roma. By the time I am on the ferry it is dusk, and raining. Because of the rain, the seats at the front of the vaporetto are empty. I have my raincoat, and manoeuvre my suitcase and sit in the open. The boat enters the Grand Canal, I am sitting out there, in the dark and the rain at the front.

  The boat is making its way steadily through the water: we round the first corner, the dome and front of the San Simeone Piccolo church appear, white-bright, brilliantly lit, strange, lovely. The church is actually rising from the water. Within the hour we reach my stop. I wheel my suitcase in and around streets, across a bridge — carrying it over the wide, shallow steps — to the Pensione Accademia.

  At the hotel reception, I bump into Professor Gruber, he introduces me to his wife. I go on upstairs. I have a shower, then slip between the tightly stretched clean white sheets of the bed. Now I take out my phone. Hans has texted, asking if I’ve arrived. I consider before replying.

  Hans has come out a day early to see his closest friend, Bruno Seabright, who’s running the conference.

  I think, and finally text: Going straight to sleep — exhausted! K

  Now I feel nauseous. I get up and eat crackers from the plane.

  In the dawn I don’t remember where I am. Water noises, a splash, a motor churning, silence, splash, a distant shout. And then I remember. And again that small te
xt I sent to Hans comes into my head. I turn at once onto my other side, and try to go back to sleep. After a hurried breakfast I make my way to the Ca’ Foscari, also on the Dorsoduro, where the conference is being held. It is not far; I have to weave round corners in the secretive streets and cross three bridges.

  The Ca’Foscari, once a palace, is now a university.

  It is still raining, but there is a strong, warm wind. Inside, the conference room is on the first floor, with a grandly decorated ceiling, magnificent tall windows overlooking the canal. Gilt chairs are in rows, enough for a hundred. About twenty are sitting, the rest are milling around. I introduce myself to Bruno Seabright. ‘Katie Boyd! I’ve heard quite a bit about you,’ he says, in an easy, friendly way. He is tanned, has a spectacularly healthy American look. He tells me where to get coffee, on the long dais. Cup in hand, I turn to find Hans beside me.

  ‘Hi.’

  I get a sort of shock. I’ve forgotten how much I like to be near him. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, I see his forearms, mechanically notice the light hairs on them. His sandals make me smile. They look like something a European explorer might wear circa 1940.

  ‘Have you had a nice time?’ I say.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Accademia.’

  I drink my coffee quickly, then ask where he is staying, though I know. ‘Pensione Wilder. Don’t hurry,’ says Hans, seriously. ‘You’ll spill your coffee.’

  Talks follow in quick succession. By some process about which I’m not clear, I am standing beside Hans in the small break, and I ask automatically how he is. ‘To be honest with you,’ he says, doing that funnelling movement with his lips, ‘I feel like a smoke. I’ve seen the inside of too many conference rooms in the last two months. Is it still raining?’

  I can’t tell. Through the windows, I seem to see some sun.

  ***