The Trial of Elizabeth Cree (15 page)

G
eorge Gissing returned to his lodgings in Hanway Street, by the Tottenham Court Road, without any hope of finding his wife returned; he had seen Nell upon the streets of Limehouse and knew well enough that, despite their recent marriage, she would now be in the vicinity of some wretched public house. He was not sure how long they could remain in their present place if she came back drunk again; their landlady Mrs. Irving, who lived on the ground floor, had already suggested that they find “dwellings elsewhere.” She had rushed out of her rooms one evening to find Nell lying upon the stairs in a stupor, trailing a cloud of gin, and demanded “what this ’ere was”—to which Gissing had replied that his wife had been knocked down by a hansom and was given drink to recover herself. He had, over the years, proved an adept liar. He also realized that Mrs. Irving was afraid that they would, in the phrase of the period, “shoot the moon” and cheat her by absconding after dark; he suspected that she listened carefully every night for any sign of sudden removal.

It was not as if she entertained her tenants on a lavish scale, however; some bare wooden furniture, a bed and a sink were the sum of their comforts. It might be thought that a young man of Gissing’s abnormal sensitivity would find such conditions intolerable, but he was accustomed to very little else. Some people accept the circumstances of life with a resignation and sense of defeat which are rarely, if ever, lifted; Gissing himself had created a man of that sort in his first novel, and had described how he
had eventually sunk to the level of his surroundings. But others are so buoyed by energy and optimism that they pay very little attention to such things and are, as it were, blind to the manner of their present life in the constant struggle towards the future. George Gissing, curiously enough, represented both of these attitudes; there were occasions when he was so weighed down by depression and lethargy that only the prospect of imminent starvation forced him back to work, but there were also times when he was so exhilarated by the idea of literary fame that he quite forgot his poverty and luxuriated in the promise of eventual respectability and renown.

But there was another element involved in his recognition of his surroundings; sometimes he looked upon them as a form of experiment, with his own life as a self-conscious exercise in realism. He had been reading Émile Zola’s volume of essays,
The Experimental Novel
, published a few months earlier, and it had confirmed all his latent faith in
“naturalisme, la vérité, la science”
—to the extent that he congratulated himself on leading a thoroughly modern and even literary life. In such a light even Nell could be considered a heroine of the new age. There was only one difficulty and it was, appropriately, a stylistic one; despite Gissing’s interest in realism and unstudied naturalism, his own prose encompassed the romantic, the rhetorical and the picturesque. Within the narrative of
Workers in the Dawn
, for example, he had bathed the city in an iridescent glow and turned its inhabitants into stage heroes or stage crowds on the model of the sensation plays in the penny gaffs. Even now, as he settled down in his small room and began looking through his notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, he might have noticed that he referred to it as a “towering Babylonian idol” which “faces out towards the heaving masses.” This was not the language of a realist.

He could not begin writing this essay, however, until he had
eaten. There was nothing in his lodgings except a suspect piece of ham left beside the sink, so he permitted himself a visit to a chophouse on the corner of Berners Street where he knew he could dine for less than a shilling. Of course it was not a fashionable setting—it was the haunt of the local cabdrivers who came in at midday for their pies and porter—but it served its purpose. Gissing could sit here undisturbed (except for the occasional, sporadic raids of a young waiter) and write, or dream, or reminisce. This chophouse was also a favorite resort for the performers who appeared at the Oxford Music Hall down the road, and on many occasions Gissing noticed how those “out of a crib” were supported by their more fortunate colleagues; he had even thought of writing a novel upon a music-hall theme, but realized just in time that the subject was too light and frivolous for a serious artist. Instead he spent this particular evening sitting in the chophouse and contemplating the inventions of Charles Babbage. Even as he waited to be served, he began a paragraph on the nature of modern society which anticipated almost exactly the words of Charles Booth who nine years later, in
Life and Labor of the People of London
, defined “the numerical relation which poverty, misery and depravity bear to regular earnings and comparative comfort.” This was the statistical grid about to be stretched across London, and over the next two days George Gissing composed an essay in which he attempted to explain the role of data and statistics in the modern world. Here, against his better instincts, he also extolled the virtues of the Analytical Engine.

Nell did not come home that night, and so he slept very soundly amid the noises of the Tottenham Court Road. He woke up at dawn, breakfasted on bread and tea, and then at ten minutes before nine set off for the Reading Room of the British Museum. He had in fact chosen these lodgings because of their proximity to the library, and he always considered this area of
London to be his true home. He had been born in Wakefield, he had lived for a while in America, he had lodged in the East End and south of the river, but only within this small neighborhood of Coptic Street and Great Russell Street did he feel entirely at ease. It was the spirit of the district itself which, he supposed, affected him so profoundly. Even the tradesmen he passed on his walk to the Museum—the map-seller, the umbrella man, the knife-grinder—seemed to share his sense of place and to accommodate themselves to it. He knew the porters and the cabmen, the strolling musicians and the casual street sellers, and he considered them as part of some distinctive human family to which he also belonged.

Of course the interpretation of any area is a complicated and ambiguous matter. It was often remarked, for example, how magical societies and occult bookshops seemed to spring up in the vicinity of the British Museum and its great library; even the Superintendent of the Reading Room in this period, Richard Garnett, was attached to the practice of astrological forecasting and had remarked, very sensibly, that the occult is simply “that which is not generally admitted.” Mr. Garnett might even have speculated on the coincidence of this particular September morning, when Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, and George Gissing himself, all entered the Reading Room within the space of an hour. But such speculations are nevertheless hazardous; the connection between occult bookshops and the British Museum might simply be explained on the grounds that libraries are commonly the home of lonely or thwarted people who are also likely to be attracted to magical lore as a substitute for real influence or power.

Gissing was one of the first to enter the Reading Room when its doors were opened at nine; he went immediately to his customary seat, and continued work upon his essay on Charles Babbage. He hardly thought of Nell at all while he sat over his
desk, since in this place he felt himself to be protected from the vulgar life he was constrained to lead beyond its walls; here he could mingle with the great authors of the past, and imagine a similar destiny for himself. He wrote until evening, covering the pages of his bound notebook with the thin black ink which the library provided; he always signed and dated the first drafts of his essays as soon as they were finished and, after he had completed his signature with a flourish, strolled beneath the dome to recover himself.

It was already dusk by the time he left the Museum, and he bought some chestnuts from the street seller who stood with his brazier beside the gates during the autumn and winter months. He passed a boy selling newspapers, but paid no attention to the “Terrible murder!” he was announcing in a hoarse voice. Then, when he turned into Hanway Street, he saw two policemen outside the door of his lodgings. He realized that something must have happened to his wife and, curiously enough, he felt quite calm. “Do you wish to see me?” he asked one of the officers. “I am the husband of Mrs. Gissing.”

“So you are Mr. Gissing?”

“Naturally. Yes.”

“Could you come with us then, sir?”

Gissing, to his surprise, found himself being escorted up the stairs of his lodgings exactly as if he were under arrest; then, even before he could reach his door, he could hear Nell’s voice raised in argument with some other person. “You fucker!” she was screaming. “You fucker!”

He closed his eyes for a moment before they led him into the room he knew so well, but which now seemed quite changed. There was another police detective with his wife but Nell was not, as he had feared, under any form of restraint. She had been crying, and Gissing knew that she had been drinking gin, but as soon as he entered the room she looked at him with
an interest that he found peculiar. “Are you Gissing?” the detective asked him.

“I have already told these gentleman my name.”

“Are you acquainted with an Alice Stanton?”

“No. I have never heard of any such woman.”

“Were you aware that she was unlawfully killed yesterday evening?”

“No, I was not.” Gissing was becoming more and more puzzled; he glanced across at his wife, who shook her head from side to side with an expression he did not understand.

“Can you tell me where you were, yesterday evening?”

“I was here. I was working.”

“Is that all?”

“All? That is a great deal.”

“I gather that your wife was not with you?”

“Mrs. Gissing—” It was a delicate matter, but he assumed that the police already knew her profession. “Mrs. Gissing was with friends.”

“I believe she was.” It was clear to Gissing that these men did not know how to address him. He was sensitive about such matters and guessed, correctly, that they were surprised by his manner: he was the husband of a common prostitute, and yet his speech and dress (threadbare but clean) were those of a gentleman. But he was also in an anomalous position: they had come to his lodgings, and he still could not discern their purpose. “There are several questions we must put to you, Mr. Gissing, but we cannot do so here. Would you be so good as to come with us now?”

“Have I any choice?”

“Not in this matter. None.”

“But what is this matter?” They did not answer him but took him down at once into the street, where a closed cab was waiting for them. Nell did not accompany them and, when he
turned around to look for her, they simply told him that she had already “identified the body.”

“What body? What do you mean?”

They led him into the cab, saying nothing else, and Gissing sank back into the stale leather seat with a loud sigh. He closed his eyes and did not open them again until the cab stopped and its door was opened quickly; he found himself in a small courtyard and heard someone shouting, “Take him through.” He was escorted into a building of dark yellow brick, and followed the three policemen into a narrow room lit by a row of gas jets. There was a wooden table in front of him, with a cheap cotton cloth laid across it. He knew well enough what it covered, even before Detective Paul Bryden pulled it away. The face had been partially disfigured, and the head lay in an unnatural position, but Gissing recognized her at once: it was the young woman who had come to the door in Whitecross Street when he was searching for his wife. “Do you recognize this person?”

“Yes. I recognize her.”

“Will you follow me, Mr. Gissing?” He could not resist looking down at the face again. Her eyes, which had been turned towards the home of the Analytical Engine in Limehouse, were now closed; but her expression, sealed at the time of her death like some hieroglyph upon a tomb, was one of pity and resignation. Bryden led him away, and together they walked down a brightly lit passage; there was a green door at the end, and Bryden cleared his throat before knocking gently upon it. Gissing had heard no one reply, but Bryden opened it and then suddenly pushed him forward. He was inside a room which had barred windows; another police detective was seated at a desk and he directed Gissing to sit opposite him.