George Eliot (22 page)

But Chapman was incapable of living without the painful complications of Marian’s presence. Within days of Elisabeth’s tearful request he was busy contriving a situation which would require Miss Evans to return to The Strand. Just as Bray had bought the
Coventry Herald
as a platform for his views, so Chapman had long dreamed of owning and editing a liberal journal in which the ideas that he and his business stood for might be more widely circulated. A few months previously he had talked about buying the ailing
Westminster Review
, but was unsure whether he could raise the money – a dilemma which was to dog his career. Now Edward Lombe, a wealthy and liberal eccentric who was already subsidising the
Westminster
, wrote to Chapman offering to help him set up a quarterly journal. With Lombe’s financial support, Chapman quickly agreed on a price for the magazine with the proprietor, W. E. Hickson.

Although he had long had fantasies about editing the
Westminster
, Chapman was just about realistic enough to know that he was not up to the job. If he were not to look ridiculous then he needed to find a right-hand man who had the intellectual scope and depth to shape a publication that only a decade
previously had been put together by J. S. Mill. Luckily he already knew that man, who was living in Coventry and called Marian Evans. On 27 May he visited Marian at Rosehill to discuss her future involvement with the
Westminster
. He found her ‘shy calm and affectionate’,
²⁰
although this did not last when over the next few days he spelled out the terms of her return to The Strand. He made it clear that his first priority was to keep Elisabeth living with him, even if this meant giving up his sexual relationship with Marian. A couple of days later, during an excursion to Kenilworth Castle, he tried to expand on the way he felt about her. Clumsily, he moved the conversation round to ‘the wonderful and mysterious embodiment of all the elements characteristics and beauties of nature which man and woman jointly present. I dwelt also on the incomprehensible mystery and witchery of beauty.’ Quick to take the hint, Marian burst into tears and ‘wept bitterly’.
²¹
In the gentlest way he knew, Chapman was telling Marian that she was not pretty enough to make him risk losing Elisabeth by continuing their affair.

Why did Marian agree to return to The Strand on such demeaning terms? There could be no question of her becoming the official assistant editor of the magazine. Advanced thinkers were not so advanced at mid-century that they were able to accept a woman at the head of a distinguished publication like the
Westminster
. Potential benefactors and contributors would shy away if they knew who was really in charge. In time, Marian’s identity was bound to leak out, but by then it was hoped that the reputation of the new
Westminster Review
would be sufficiently secure to withstand the gossip. At this delicate stage in the proceedings it was essential to be discreet. Which is why when Chapman went to see Thomas Carlyle on 10 October to persuade him to write a piece for the first issue, his assistant editor was obliged to walk up and down on the pavement outside.
²²

Odd though it might seem to anyone who saw Marian hovering outside Carlyle’s Chelsea home on that day, it felt quite natural to her. From the moment she had first taken up Vinet to translate under the direction of Francis Watts, she had been in training for just this kind of transparency. As the
Westminster
’s uncredited assistant editor she would once again become the medium through which a man might deliver his important message to the
world. When she wrote to the Brays from Geneva about needing to find a vocation, she had talked about sweetening and easing the life of another. By agreeing to help Chapman she would be doing just that. The fact that she would receive neither his sexual love nor public acknowledgement nor any pay beyond her board and lodging appealed to Marian’s growing pleasure in resignation. Just as Maggie returns to face the censure of the townspeople after her apparent elopement with Stephen, so Marian embraced the opportunity to return to 142 The Strand and face Susanna’s and Elisabeth’s continuing suspicions. This time, noted Chapman in his ever-open diary, she was determined to come not as a combatant but as a penitent.

But there were more practical considerations pulling Marian back to The Strand. As an educated single woman of modest means she was no different from the 20,000 or so who worked as governesses, trading educational ‘accomplishments’ for a roof over their heads. She could not live with the Brays for ever and Chapman was offering board and lodgings in return for her editorial and administrative help. There would also be the chance to make extra money by contributing articles to the magazine.

Shortly after that miserable day at Kenilworth, Marian dried her tears and agreed to become Chapman’s ‘active co-operator’ in the
Westminster
.
²³
A couple of nights later, with a theatricality which had become the signature of this whole exhausting business, she and Chapman ‘made a solemn and holy vow which henceforth will bind us to the right’.
²⁴
Their affair, if it could be called that, was over. The mood of delicious sacrifice continued throughout Chapman’s stay at Rosehill. On her return from Kenilworth, Marian took up Thomas à Kempis’s
De lmitatione Christi
, which had been a comfort during her father’s last days, and recommended it to Chapman who scribbled down an extract about resignation in his diary.
²⁵
She was careful not to let anyone see her unhappiness, singing especially well during a musical evening with the Brays’ other guests, the Thornton Hunts, whose destiny was so strangely tangled with her own. The next night, 2 June, she went without dinner so that she might get on with the Prospectus, a document that was part mission statement and part fund-raiser, aimed at potential benefactors of the new
Westminster Review
.

Over the next few weeks Marian stayed in Coventry, while Chapman negotiated her return to The Strand with Elisabeth and Susanna. The distance and stability afforded by Rosehill allowed Marian to come to terms with the changed nature of her relationship with Chapman. As she disengaged from him sexually, she found a new detachment and authority in her professional dealings with him. Her letters over the next weeks are restrained and practical, concerned mainly with
Westminster
business. Chapman, by contrast, had plunged straight back into the emotional maelstrom of 142 The Strand. On 15 June 1851 a row with Susanna about whether she could use three drawers in his desk ended up with her setting fire to her letters.
²⁶
The following day, Chapman’s birthday, was ‘made wretched by Elisabeth’s positive assurance that she will not live in The Strand after Miss Evans comes to London’.
²⁷
In the midst of this hysterical flap, Marian started to seem like a distant and cool oasis. A very ordinary letter she sent him on 20 June had him dizzy with rapture: ‘Miss Evans’ little note is inexpressibly charming, so quick, intelligent and overflowing with love and sweetness!’ And then, because he could never just enjoy things the way they were, ‘I feel her to be the living torment to my soul.’
²⁸

In a carefully stage-managed rapprochement with the ladies of The Strand, Marian arrived in London with the Brays in the middle of August. On the 15th Chapman spent the day with them at the Great Exhibition before bringing Marian home to ‘make a call’ on Susanna. From Chapman’s point of view it all went splendidly: after dinner he and Marian got through a great deal of
Review
business. Elisabeth and Susanna were less happy, predictably dissolving into headache and tears respectively.
²⁹
None the less, during that evening an emotional and social Rubicon was crossed. By the end of it, without anything specific being said, the way had been cleared for Miss Evans to return to The Strand.

The Prospectus for which Marian had gone without dinner on 2 June mapped out a brave future for the once great
Westminster Review
.
³⁰
Ever since the high water mark of John Stuart Mill’s editorship in the 1830s, the magazine’s performance and prestige had been in decline. Now Marian, writing as ‘the Editors’,
promised a journal which would once again engage fully with the transforming intellectual landscape of mid-Victorian Britain. The guiding philosophy would be both gradualist and radical, advocating change, but insisting on its organic nature. Sharp scrutiny of ‘established creeds and systems’ would, it was maintained, lead not to their destruction but to their re-emergence in a stronger, refined form. For instance, although the implications of the new biblical criticism would be pursued to their logical conclusion, the editors promised to ‘bear in mind the pre-eminent importance of a constructive religious philosophy, as connected with the development and activity of the moral nature’. Fearless and unsentimental assessment of the
status quo
would, it was hoped, reveal the wondrous connectedness of all things: ‘opposing systems may in the end prove complements of each other’. And although they had no doubt that the best change was snail slow, the editors had no objections to helping things along. They were, announced the Prospectus, in favour of extending the suffrage, reforming the judiciary, ending religious discrimination and, in a restatement of the
Westminster
’s most hallowed principle, freeing trade from every kind of restriction.

Marian’s growing emotional detachment from Chapman allowed her to see clearly that if people thought he was the active editor of the
Westminster
they would dismiss it out of hand. But if it became known that he was relying on a woman to do the work, even if it was the clever lady translator of Strauss, then there would be even greater unease. Rightly convinced that Chapman was not fully aware of the delicacy of their situation, Marian nudged him towards discretion, suggesting a formula if anyone pressed for details: ‘With regard to the secret of the Editorship, it will perhaps be the best plan for you to state, that for the present
you
are to be regarded as the responsible person, but that you employ an Editor in whose literary and general ability you confide.’
³¹

But even with the public relations sorted out, the Prospectus pleased no one. John Stuart Mill thought it too conservative. James Martineau, Harriet’s brother, Unitarian minister and longtime contributor, sneered that it was too low-brow and worried about its atheism – a charge which had dogged the magazine since the days of Bentham.
³²
And Hickson, who at this point
still owned the
Westminster
, was naturally annoyed by Chapman publicising the coming changes so far in advance.
³³
It was left to Marian, still in exile in Coventry, to guide Chapman through the squalls that the Prospectus had created. With brisk authority, she substantially corrected the draft of his response to Mill, changing the punctuation and altering the phraseology. The fearsome James Martineau needed even more careful handling. Despite his grudging remarks about the Prospectus, Martineau had agreed to write a piece for the first issue on ‘Christian Ethics and Modern Civilisation’ and now wrote to Chapman asking for guidelines. Unable to respond confidently, Chapman went all the way to Coventry on 23 August to get Marian’s advice.
³⁴
She drafted a letter for him to send to Martineau in which she explained exactly what was wanted.

If Marian had not realised it before, the experience of supervising Chapman’s responses to Mill and Martineau made her see just how shaky was his grasp of intellectual detail. Chapman, however, seems still to have been labouring under the delightful illusion that his work was capable of standing alongside that of his most distinguished contributors. In September he started to make worrying noises about writing a piece on national representation for the first issue. Using blatant flattery, Marian persuaded him to stick to what he did best, which was being a figurehead. He was vain enough to swallow her argument, writing complacently in his diary on 21 September: ‘Miss Evans thinks I should lose power and influence by becoming a writer in the Westminster Review, and could not then maintain that dignified relation with the various contributors that she thinks I may do otherwise.’
³⁵

All the while that Marian was in charge of the
Westminster
she managed to keep Chapman out of its pages. But by 1855 he was once again chafing at the bit. One evening, after dining with her and Lewes, he produced an article which he said was intended for the July issue. Although the
Westminster
was no longer her responsibility, Marian found it hard to sound encouraging. The next day, 25 June 1855, having read his article, she wrote a careful letter in which she pointed out the continuing weaknesses in his writing style: ‘whenever you pass from narrative to dissertation, certain old faults reappear – inexactness of expression, triads and
duads of verbs and adjectives, mixed metaphors and a sort of watery volume that requires to be reduced by evaporation’.
³⁶
As always, Chapman took Marian’s comments to heart. He dejectedly withdrew the article from the magazine and begged for general reassurance about his writing. She wrote back in the nicest way she knew how: ‘There is no reason for you to be desponding about your writing. You have made immense progress during the last few years, and you have so much force of mind and sincerity of purpose that you may work your way to a style which is free from vices, though perhaps you will never attain felicity – indeed, that is a free gift of Nature rather than a reward of labour.’
³⁷
Chapman revised the article along the lines she suggested and finally put it in the October 1855 issue of the
Westminster
.