crush

I've been meaning to 'pen' a George Meredith appreciation post. He has been mentioned in passing in earlier posts, but I've never fully explained his 'story', or touched on why he is my favourite writer. [Disclaimer: What follows is entirely unacademic, filled with gossip, and is based on a romantic attachment to a dead person.]

George Meredith is all but forgotten today. A quick google search brings up a few flimsy biographies, and poor Meredith lacks the true gauge of popularity in our modern, digital world: a fake myspace page created in his honor. Not much of a buzz for the man Oscar Wilde once cited as his favourite novelist, saying: "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illuminated by flashes of lightning."

Perhaps you have never heard of Meredith the writer, or read one of his novels, but you may have actually gazed at his face without knowing it. Meredith, as a favour, modeled for the painter Henry Wallis, in his most famous painting, The Death of Chatterton, an event that changed the course of his life.

Henry Wallis, The Death of Chatterton, 1856
oil on canvas, Tate Gallery

Meredith sat several times for the artist, who, for accuracy's sake, wanted to use an actual poet for his depiction of Chatterton. Best known as the Romantic Movement's poster boy, Chatterton committed suicide by swallowing arsenic after repeated failures at getting his poetry published, rather than face starvation at the tender age of 17.



Henry Wallis, Study for The Death of Chatterton, 1856
pencil on paper, Tate Gallery

Despite the long hours, George Meredith was more than happy to sit for his friend; and even brought his wife, Mary Ellen Meredith, along. She was older, from an affluent, artistic family, and had plenty of time to chat with Wallis as her husband lay stretched out pretending to be dead. In an irony of epic Romantic proportions, Mary Ellen left Meredith for the dashing painter.

Her agonizing departure from his life was far from swift. It was in fact slow, complicated, tortuous even, as most break-ups are wont to be. In an age when divorce was nearly unheard of, the transference of her affections to the artist took time. This horrifying period of Meredith's life inspired what is perhaps his greatest work, a series of sonnets called Modern Love, written in 1862. If you're feeling especially energetic, you can read the poem in its entirety (all 50 sonnets!) here; but I think the first sonnet is enough to recognize Meredith's amazing ability at capturing the death of a love, using some of the most beautiful phrases I've ever read...


I.

By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:
That, at his hand's light quiver by her head,
The strange low sobs that shook their common bed
Were called into her with a sharp surprise,
And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,
Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay
Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away
With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes
Her giant heart of Memory and Tears
Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat
Sleep's heavy measure, they from head to feet
Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,
By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.
Like sculptured effigies they might be seen
Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;
Each wishing for the sword that severs all.