George Eliot (39 page)

The character of Edmund Tryan was based on the Revd John Jones, whose popular Sunday evening sermons on the outskirts of Nuneaton both Maria Lewis and Robert Evans had attended back in the late 1820s. Jones’s particular brand of Evangelical fervour had brought him into conflict with the local lawyer James Buchanan, husband of the former Nancy Wallington whose mother was headmistress of the school Mary Anne attended. Inevitably called upon by Blackwood to ‘soften’ her story, Marian maintained that ‘the real Dempster was far more disgusting than mine; the real Janet alas! had a far sadder end than mine’. Once again sounding like a seasoned novelist instead of a beginner, she maintained grandly, ‘as an artist I should be utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and character’.
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She then tells Blackwood that she quite understands if he wishes not to print ‘Janet’s Repentance’ in
Maga
. Blackwood did not know – how could he? – that ‘George Eliot’ was currently undergoing a painful and final ‘divorce’ from her brother Isaac because of her adulterous relationship with Lewes. In her mind Blackwood’s mild criticism of her work had become merged not only with the condemning choric voice of literary London, but also the specific rejection by Isaac, so that it seemed as if the whole world disapproved of her. In a hurt and self-righteous flounce, she threatened to withdraw from the game completely. Luckily
Blackwood, coached by Lewes, responded with just the right emollient touch: ‘I do not fall in with George Eliots every day and the idea of stopping the Series as suggested in your letter gave me “quite a turn” to use one of Thackeray’s favourite phrases.’ Most important, he made it clear that he believed there would be ‘many years of happy friendly and literary intercourse before us’.
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Marian caught the change of tone and replied with matching optimism, hinting that one day she might be able to step out from behind the pseudonym ‘George Eliot’ and reveal herself to him, hoping that in the process he would become ‘a personal friend’.
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On 4 February 1857 Marian had written to Major William Blackwood:

Biographers have long speculated about how the baby girl christened Mary Anne Evans turned into George Eliot. At the end of her life Marian told her husband John Cross that she picked the name because ‘George was Mr Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot was a good mouth-filling, easily-pronounced word’.
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There are other, more fanciful, explanations, but this seems the most likely. More difficult to unravel are the complex psychological negotiations which lay behind Marian Evans clinging to her
nom de plume
for a full twenty years after her true identity became known.

When Lewes first approached Blackwood with the manuscript of ‘Amos’ it made sense for him to conceal the author’s real name. Marian Evans Lewes was the most infamous woman in literary Britain and Blackwood was running a family magazine. The shock of who she was could well have coloured Blackwood’s response to the story, especially given its frank tone about sexual
matters. But there was another reason. Although her journalism appeared anonymously, everyone who mattered – editors, publishers, friends – knew who had written it. If Marian were to produce novels under her own name which went on to fail, there was a danger that she might damage her reputation as a writer of serious non-fiction. Using a
nom de plume
allowed her to protect her reputation as a journalist, a point she made obliquely to John Blackwood on 14 March 1857: ‘if George Eliot turns out a dull dog and an ineffective writer – a mere flash in the pan – I, for one, am determined to cut him on the first intimation of that disagreeable fact’.
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The fact that Marian continued to author all her books under the name ‘George Eliot’ – a practice which continues to the present day – suggests that there were other, more enduring, reasons behind her adoption of a pseudonym. Morbidly sensitive to criticism, she would likely have been unable to continue to write if reviewers had been publicly assessing the work of Marian Evans Lewes. There was already more than enough opprobrium directed towards that particular name. As the years went by and her real identity became generally known, ‘George Eliot’ developed into a brand name, a ‘logo’, which allowed Marian to keep a crucial psychological distance from any criticism directed towards her work and, by extension, her person. And given that the response from reviewers and readers was not always good, it was often only this distance which allowed her to go on writing.

There remains, though, the question of why the pseudonym had to be male. Women like Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Martineau, who wrote under their own names and were far from ‘silly’, were having great success in both the full-length and periodical fiction markets. Marian may have been afraid that her fiction might not be included in this illustrious small band of women whose work was judged as ‘cavalierly as if they had been men’.
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Anxious to avoid having her fiction praised and patronised as the work of a woman, she followed the example of the Brontës in placing her work in the domain occupied by male, that is genderless, writing. But while there always seemed to be an odd and obvious disjuncture between the male
noms de plume
‘Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell’ and the work which went out under them, in Marian’s case there was something entirely fitting about the
soubriquet ‘George Eliot’. Her main complaint about lady novelists in her ‘Silly Novels’ essay had been that they wrote on subjects – from theology to tradesmen – about which they had no real knowledge. Spoonfed a scrappy education and confined to the drawing-room, their partial experience of the world showed up in books which were rooted in nothing but impoverished imagination. Marian had lived a different kind of life, earning her living among clever men. She had had access to the broadest and richest culture, and had mastered its influences and nuances. She understood why Amos’s Cambridge education would have made him Low Church, why ribbon weavers had narrow chests, why it was Watteau who would best be able to capture the gothicised charms of Cheverel Manor. Taking a male pseudonym was not so much a request to be judged as a male writer as a recognition that she was writing from a unique perspective in English literature, neither wholly male nor female but transcending both.

At the most intimate levels of Marian’s psyche a male identity fitted. Her phenomenal erudition placed her firmly within the mid-Victorian stereotype of the bluestocking, whose book-learning was supposed to have shrivelled her ovaries and turned her into a surrogate man. She fell foul, too, of that curious double-thinking which suggested that a woman who was sexually ‘fallen’ was also de-sexed, stripped of those feminine attractions that would make a decent man desire her. Whether Marian absorbed these images from her environment or the seeds were planted more deeply within her, it is certainly the case that she struck those who met her as masculine. When Blackwood first saw her, admittedly on the occasion of being introduced to ‘George Eliot’, he reported back to his wife, ‘She is a most intelligent pleasant woman, with a face like a man.’
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Years later, Edith Simcox recalled that her beloved’s features were ‘too large and rugged for womanly beauty’.
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Physical comparisons were always being made with Dante, Locke, Savonarola. Just as Lewes had a strong female side, so Marian had a corresponding male part. While he nurtured and protected her, she assumed the role of paterfamilias, bringing in an income to support not only the two of them but also a string of hapless Lewes and Clarke relatives.

From the start, Lewes tried to throw Blackwood off the scent. On 15 November 1856 he described the author of ‘Amos Barton’
as ‘my clerical friend’ and, to further confuse matters, submitted a piece on biology by ‘another friend’, the Revd George Tugwell – the naturalist curate from Ilfracombe.
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Blackwood took the bait, for three days later he told Lewes, ‘I am glad to hear that your friend is as I supposed a Clergyman.’
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This explicit assertion left Lewes in a difficult position. To allow Blackwood to labour under such a misapprehension was straining the parameters of good conduct, even by Lewes’s shaky standards. So in his next letter a few days later he tried to sound casual – and failed – when he said, ‘Let me not forget to add that when I referred to “my clerical friend” I meant to designate the writer of the clerical stories, not that he was a clericus.’ Then he made things worse by adding, ‘I am not at liberty to remove the veil of anonymity – even as regards social position. Be pleased therefore to keep the whole secret – and not even mention
my
negotiation or in any way lead guessers – (should any one trouble himself with such a guess –
not
very likely) to jump from me to my friend.’
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In his nervousness Lewes had surely signposted to Blackwood exactly who ‘George Eliot’ was – none other than his most notorious and closest ‘friend’. In any case, as early as 27 January Blackwood’s London manager, Joseph Langford, was writing anxiously to his boss, ‘Who wrote Amos Barton? Can you tell me? I have heard a hint that I dare not entertain and from no bad judge.’
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It suited the Blackwoods to play along with the fiction that they did not have a clue who George Eliot might be. As a family firm they were taking a risk publishing work by the notorious Marian Evans Lewes, especially since this was turning out to be increasingly explicit about sexual matters. Just as Marian found it useful to keep a second persona going, so did the Blackwoods. Apart from enabling them to pretend to the rest of the world that they did not know whom they were publishing, it shielded them from the reality themselves. Even once the Blackwoods had been introduced to Marian Lewes they found it more comfortable to think of her as ‘George Eliot’, and continued to write to and about her under this name.

For eighteen months after receiving ‘Amos Barton’, the Blackwoods paid lip-service to the idea that George Eliot was a particularly shy friend of Lewes who wished to stay anonymous. They made out Eliot’s cheques to Lewes and expressed no surprise
when it turned out that ‘he’ was accompanying Lewes on his holiday to the Scilly Isles in 1857. On 10 February John Blackwood pushed the joke even further by telling ‘My Dear George Eliot’ that he had been struck by the similarity between the handwriting of his newest author and an old contributor called ‘Captain George Warburton’. However, said Blackwood, ‘I found a remarkable resemblance but not identity, nor does Amos seem to me anything like what that good artillery man would or could write.’
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The fact that Marian and, more especially, Lewes really thought the Blackwoods believed their subterfuge suggests how their social isolation had cut them off from reality. In December 1857 when Major Blackwood, who ran the business side of things, called on them in Richmond Marian seems genuinely surprised to discover that ‘it was evident to us when he had only been in the room a few minutes that he knew I was George Eliot’.
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Still she did nothing, perhaps feeling that she should wait until she had a chance to reveal her identity to John Blackwood. The first opportunity came two months later. According to Marian’s journal: ‘On Sunday the 28
^th
Mr. John Blackwood called on us, having come to London for a few days only. He talked a good deal about the “Clerical Scenes” and George Eliot, and at last asked, “Well, am I to see George Eliot this time?” G. said, “Do you wish to see him?” “As he likes – I wish it to be quite spontaneous.” I left the room, and G. following me a moment, I told him he might reveal me. Blackwood was kind.’
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During the first few months of Marian’s novel-writing career, the
nom de plume
came under no particular pressure. Criticism of
Scenes of Clerical Life
, which was released as a two-volume book in January 1858, concentrated on the quality of the writing rather than the identity of the author.
The Times
’s notice was ‘highly favourable’ and got the point entirely. Samuel Lucas praised Eliot’s ‘pathos in depicting ordinary situations’ and did not seem the least put off by the sniffy noses.
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The
Saturday Review
notice also understood what Marian was trying to do and she must have been particularly pleased by the spontaneous reference to Ruskin, who was quoted as saying that a good book should bring one ‘to love or reverence something with your whole heart’.
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Even more gratifying were the responses of Jane Carlyle and Charles Dickens, both of whom Marian had requested should be sent copies of the book by Blackwood. Dickens immediately guessed that, ‘George Eliot’ or no, this was clearly written by a woman. If not, ‘I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself, mentally, so like a woman, since the world began.’
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Jane Carlyle, on the other hand, took ‘George Eliot’ at his face value, imagining for him ‘a wife from whom he has got those beautiful
feminine
touches in his book’.
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There is something disturbing about this often-quoted letter. The flirtatious, prattling tone which Mrs Carlyle uses to the middle-aged clergyman she has imagined as its recipient feels odd directed towards a woman whose partner and his first wife she had once known very well indeed.