George Eliot (23 page)

After spending the summer of 1851 rearranging Chapman’s tangled thoughts and bad prose, it must have been exhilarating for Marian to see a piece of her own work in print. A late-September edition of the
Leader
carried her review of William Rathbone Greg’s
The Creed of Christendom
, which ironically had been turned down by the
Westminster
earlier in the year. She was broadly sympathetic to Greg’s work, which displayed exactly that kind of robust common sense she so admired. Chapman noted in his diary on 23 September that the
Leader
’s co-editor, George Henry Lewes, ‘called in the afternoon to express his high opinion of Miss Evans’ Article’.
³⁸

Lewes, who always seemed to be everywhere in literary London, was also a contributor to the January 1852 issue of the
Westminster
, the first for which Marian and Chapman were responsible. He was in excellent company. Although Mill and Carlyle had turned Chapman down, there was the Unitarian cleric William Johnson Fox on ‘Representative Reform’, Edward Forbes of King’s College on shellfish, Greg on labour relations, Francis Newman on suffrage, Froude on Mary Stuart and, of course, James Martineau on ‘The Ethics of Christendom’. Marian’s particular responsibility was the lengthy book review section for which the
Westminster
became celebrated. Every month she sifted through the huge number of books newly published in Britain, America, Germany and France, and selected about a hundred for review – a process which kept her keenly
up to date with the latest developments in philosophy, literature and history. The review essays are composite efforts and although she occasionally contributed some copy herself – in the first issue she covered Carlyle’s
The Life of John Sterling
– Marian’s hand is seen mainly in the passages which link one contributor’s work to another’s. Anyone scouring the
Westminster Review
of 1852–4 for examples of George Eliot’s early writing will find only a handful of pieces and they, according to current practice, are anonymous. At this stage the bulk of Marian’s responsibilities consisted of coaxing and pruning the work of others. She came up with the topics, advised Chapman which writer to commission, proof-read the copy and followed its progress safely through the press.

The weeks leading up to the first issue were fraught. Writing to Cara, Marian describes her bedroom table groaning with books ‘all to be digested by the editorial maw’ and predicts ‘terribly hard work for the next 6 weeks’.
³⁹
A few weeks on, with publication looming, she is racked with headaches ‘just when I ought to have been working the hardest’.
⁴⁰
Three days later, on 23 December, she reports to the Brays that work is ‘so heavy just for the next three days – all the revises being yet to come in and the proof of my own article – and Mr. Chapman is so overwhelmed with matters of detail that he has earnestly requested me to stay till Saturday’.
⁴¹
In the event she agreed, staying in London over Christmas Day, before returning to Rosehill on 27 December.

Although the first issue received a mixed response, within nine months the
Westminster Review
had re-established itself as the leading intellectual quarterly of the day. The phrenologist George Combe, admittedly a huge fan of Marian’s at this point, praised her to the skies. Marian delightedly repeated to the Brays: ‘he says, he thinks the
Westminster
, under
my
management the most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence – the Edinburgh, under Jeffrey, nothing to it etc. etc.!!!’
⁴²
Lewes, not yet Marian’s lover, also told the readers of his periodical the
Leader
that ‘It is now a Review that people talk about, ask for at the clubs, and read with respect. The variety and general excellence of its articles are not surpassed by any Review.’
⁴³
To read the ten issues for which Marian Evans was responsible is to be
presented with a snapshot of the best progressive thought at mid-century. The way forward in education, industry and penal reform is mapped out. Science is well covered, especially those pathways which lead inexorably towards Darwin – geology, botany, biology. Herbert Spencer introduces his theory of evolution over four issues. Theology, philosophy and history provide the heart of the magazine, the most notable success, with hindsight, being a piece on the hitherto unknown Schopenhauer. Apart from the long review section, there are articles on Shelley, Thackeray, Balzac and many others. Foreign affairs are covered with pieces on British policy in Europe and Russia. The difficult problem of Ireland, currently in the grip of a famine, is returned to again and again.

As the stature of the magazine grew, so did Marian’s confidence in her ability to run it. Although her role was still formally unacknowledged, it was increasingly clear that she was the driving force. The dowdy woman from Nuneaton was now in her element, picking and choosing between some of Britain’s and Europe’s finest minds who offered their work to the
Westminster
. William Hale White, who worked as a sub-editor, remembered a woman in her absolute element: ‘I can see her now, with her hair over her shoulders, the easy chair half sideways to the fire, her feet over the arms, and a proof in her hands, in that dark room at the back of No 142.’
⁴⁴
A letter Marian wrote to Chapman during a holiday in Broadstairs in August 1852 shows just how familiar she had become with the foibles of different contributors and how confident she was in dealing with their squabbles, demands and small vanities. Briefing Chapman on the October 1852 issue, she briskly instructs him to give Froude twenty-six pages, warns that Mill and Martineau will inevitably clash and suggests he forward a note to Charlotte Brontë. Then she turns her attention to future issues, throwing out comments which would not sound out of place from a magazine editor today. ‘Don’t suggest “Fashion” as a subject to any one else – I should like to keep it.’ And, again, ‘I have noticed the advertisement of the British Q[uarterl]y this morning. Its list of subjects is excellent. I wish you could contrive to let me see the number when it comes out. They have one subject of which I am jealous – “Pre-Raphaelism in Painting and Literature”. We have no good
writer on such subjects on our staff. Ought we not, too, to try and enlist David Masson, who is one of the Br[itish] Q[uarterly] set?’ She then adds a few funny remarks about James Martineau’s endless complaint about the
Westminster
not toeing the Unitarian party line, before going on to make the serious point that it is precisely this heterodoxy which is the magazine’s greatest strength.

But it was not simply the editorial content of the
Westminster
which concerned Marian. At many points it looked as if the magazine was about to fold. In part, this was because Chapman was a hopeless financial manager, mixing up the accounts of his various different businesses into a giant tangle. But even an immaculate administrator would have found it hard to make the figures add up. The
Westminster
sold only 650 copies every quarter, which did not bring in nearly enough to cover the £250 contributors’ bill. To make matters worse, Lombe, the chief backer, had died in March 1852, while Dr Brabant had been forced to call in a loan to Chapman of £800. The magazine continued thanks only to Chapman’s uncanny luck in getting other people to bail him out. The
Westminster Review
still had a symbolic presence in the nation’s intellectual landscape and men of a progressive persuasion felt uneasy about letting it fade away without making some kind of effort. Donations dribbled in, topped up by substantial loans from the Unitarian brewer Flower and the wealthy manufacturer Samuel Courtauld.

Chapman did not help himself by the combative approach he adopted towards the rest of the publishing industry. In 1852 he protested against the Booksellers Association’s right to fix book prices and found himself outlawed as a result. The majority of
publishers now refused to supply him with their books. Loving every minute of his notoriety, Chapman ran a piece in the April issue on the whole sorry business, and organised a meeting of well-known authors to gather at The Strand on 4 May. Dickens was in the chair, and intellectual stars like Wilkie Collins, F. W. Newman, Lewes, Spencer, Henry Crabb Robinson and Richard Owen were there to hear the excellent speeches. Letters from Mill, Cobden and Carlyle were read out. The meeting went off splendidly and at midnight Marian struck up ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ on the piano to acknowledge Chapman’s genius at having turned the difficult situation into some kind of triumph. But the greatest achievement of all that night belonged to her. For in a room containing the cleverest, most influential people in Britain, she was the only person wearing a dress.
⁴⁶

No amount of intellectual excitement and professional fulfilment could make up for the fact that, for the first time since spring 1851, Marian’s life was devoid of sexual affection. Her short infatuation with Froude had been followed by six months with D’Albert Durade over the winter of 1849–50, which in turn had been succeeded by the exhausting Chapman affair. Now there was no one. Terrified of provoking a situation whereby his assistant editor would once again be sent to Coventry, Chapman had been scrupulous in sticking to the terms of their ‘holy vow’. Although Marian did nothing to try to make him change his mind, she could not help feeling flat, plain, loveless. Was this how the life of a professional woman had to be? As she established herself at the
Westminster
, she realised that the chance of achieving the satisfactions of ordinary womanhood – a husband, a family – were becoming increasingly remote. Her anxiety about how her life might be continued in overwrought identifications with other women in similar situations. For instance, after reading a memoir of Margaret Fuller, an American feminist who came late to family life, she wrote to a friend, ‘You know how sad one feels when a great procession has swept by one, and the last notes of its music have died away, leaving one alone with the fields and sky. I feel so about life sometimes. It is a help to read such a life as Margaret Fuller’s. How inexpressibly touching that passage from her journal – “I shall always reign through the intellect,
but the life! the life! O my God! shall that never be sweet?”’
⁴⁷

On various occasions these identifications with other professional women provoked angry denials. Thus, when the distinguished fifty-year-old Swedish novelist and feminist Frederika Bremer turned up at The Strand, Marian recognised her as a possible future model for her life and lashed out in dismay. Bremer was, according to Marian, ‘extremely ugly, and deformed.… Her eyes are sore – her teeth horrid … She is to me a repulsive person, equally unprepossessing to eye and ear.’
⁴⁸
Harriet Martineau, whom she had met before and who had been the catalyst for this move to London, was also taken to task for the ‘vulgarity’ of her looks and gestures.
⁴⁹

But if it was hard to draw inspiration from the handful of older women who lived by their wits, Marian found herself increasingly becoming a role model to a new generation of younger girls. Bessie Rayner Parkes was a member of the Rosehill – Strand circuit by virtue of her father, the Radical Midlands MP Joseph Parkes who had bankrolled Marian’s Strauss translation. Hugely cosseted yet ardently feminist, Bessie developed a crush on the clever, independent Miss Evans, who thrillingly answered to neither husband nor father. Marian, in turn, seems to have been less taken with Bessie, who was ten years younger than her, especially when she pestered for advice on her competent but derivative poetry. Marian responded as she increasingly would when forced to read someone’s work – refusing easy praise and insisting that Bessie practise, practise, practise: ‘Work on and on and do better things still’.
⁵⁰
Chapman proved a softer, more politic touch: later that year he published Bessie’s poems to tepid reviews.

Marian was reluctant to encourage Bessie’s ardent friendship because she knew perfectly well that the Parkeses worried about the amount of time their daughter was spending at The Strand. A reputation for godlessness would not harm a girl who moved in Bessie’s circles, but a hint of sexual scandal could. Marian was known not just for being clever, and ‘advanced’ in her religious views, but also for quite possibly having slept with Bray, Brabant and Chapman. And while all this doubtless only added to her glamour in Bessie’s eyes, Marian was anxious that she should not be accused of leading anyone astray. Adopting the tone she
had once used in similar circumstances to Mary Sibree, she admonished Bessie, ‘Now, dear child, don’t be playing pranks and shocking people, because I am told they lay it all to me and my bad influence over you.’
⁵¹
She understood better than Bessie that while no one cared if Joseph Parkes lived a sexually irregular life – and he did – it was quite another thing for his daughter to be suspected of doing the same. Her experience of seeing how avant-garde households like the Brays, the Chapmans and now the Parkeses organised these matters provided a vital foretaste of how she would herself be treated once she went to live with Lewes. While male writers, intellectuals, academics, doctors and politicians were increasingly happy to visit the unofficial ‘Mrs Lewes’, they felt quite differently about allowing their wives and daughters to do the same. Even at the end of her life, conventional matrons stayed away.