Abstract
This chapter deals with parenthood, with Meredith’s relationship with his own father, and with his two children by his second wife, but it focuses on his relationship with Arthur, his son by the first Mrs Meredith. Meredith removed Arthur from his wife’s care before the birth of her son by Henry Wallis, and did not allow him to see her again until she was on her deathbed. In the years before his second marriage Arthur was, according to Meredith, his only joy on earth, but quite soon after he remarried he became estranged from his son, and Arthur died before the relationship was repaired. The sad trajectory of his relationship with his son repeated the trajectory of Meredith’s relationship with his own father.
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Notes
- 1.
Notebooks, 31.
- 2.
The Works of Thomas Love Peacock, 3 vols (London: Richard Bentley, 1875), 1, l.
- 3.
Quoted by Johnson, 88–9.
- 4.
Letters, 1, 21.
- 5.
Letters, 1, 29.
- 6.
The letter was first published by Nicholas A. Joukovsky, ‘New Correspondence of Mary Ellen Meredith’, Studies in Philology, 106.4 (Fall, 2009), 483–522.
- 7.
Joukovsky and Diane Johnson suggest she is referring to wine, but surely it must be beer. She has laid in a firkin.
- 8.
Notebooks, 37.
- 9.
The letter survives in a transcription by Anne Ramsden Bennett, Mary’s friend in the last years of her life, and the omission may be hers.
- 10.
Wilkie Collins, No Name, ‘The First Scene’, chapter 15.
- 11.
Letters, 1, 103–4.
- 12.
Ellis, 91.
- 13.
See The Times, January 25, 1862, 6.
- 14.
Letters, 1, 131.
- 15.
Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne, chapter 12.
- 16.
Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne, chapter 29.
- 17.
The Works of George Meredith, Memorial Edition, 22, 172.
- 18.
Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne, chapter 46.
- 19.
Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne, chapter 34.
- 20.
Letters, 2, 371.
- 21.
The Amazing Marriage, chapter 29.
- 22.
Hardman, 127–37.
- 23.
Letters, 1, 433. I suspect the reference is to William Sandys Wright Vaux, who was a Tractarian and the first keeper of coins and medals at the British Museum. He married Louisa Rivington in 1861.
- 24.
Ellis, 94.
- 25.
Letters, 1, 131.
- 26.
Letters, 1, 93–4.
- 27.
Lord Ormont and His Aminta, chapter 5.
- 28.
Letters¸ 1, 92–3.
- 29.
Letters¸ 1, 105.
- 30.
Letters, 1, 97.
- 31.
Hardman, 115.
- 32.
Letters, 1, 306.
- 33.
Emilia in England, chapter 2.
- 34.
Emilia in England, chapters 12, 13 and 10.
- 35.
Vittoria, chapter 38.
- 36.
Hardman, 50.
- 37.
Letters, 1, 158.
- 38.
Ellis, 94.
- 39.
Letters, 1, 250.
- 40.
Evan Harrington, chapter 2.
- 41.
Le Gallienne, 40.
- 42.
Janet Ross: The Fourth Generation: Reminiscences (London; Constable, 1912), 49–50.
- 43.
Introduction to Lady Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt (1902), Works of George Meredith, Memorial Edition, 23, 59–64.
- 44.
Letters, 1, 106.
- 45.
Letters, 1, 107–8.
- 46.
Schools Inquiry Commission Report (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1868), 363.
- 47.
Letters, 1, 177.
- 48.
Letters, 1, 180.
- 49.
Letters, 1, 188.
- 50.
Letters, 1, 168–9.
- 51.
Letters, 1, 198–9.
- 52.
Letters, 1, 224.
- 53.
Letters, 1, 226.
- 54.
Letters, 1, 239–40.
- 55.
Letters, 1, 255.
- 56.
Letters, 1, 263.
- 57.
Letters, 1, 263.
- 58.
Letters, 1, 311.
- 59.
Letters, 1, 313.
- 60.
Letters, 1, 446.
- 61.
Ellis, 43.
- 62.
Clodd, 141.
- 63.
Letters, 1, 430.
- 64.
Ellis, 139.
- 65.
Hardman, 50 and 149.
- 66.
Letters, 1, 165.
- 67.
Letters, 1, 177.
- 68.
Letters, 1, 198.
- 69.
Letters, 1, 80.
- 70.
Letters, 1, 160.
- 71.
Letters, 1, 181.
- 72.
Letters, 1, 260.
- 73.
The Egoist, chapter 37.
- 74.
Letters, 1, 308.
- 75.
Letters, 1, 331.
- 76.
Letters, 1, 337.
- 77.
The Egoist, chapter 7.
- 78.
The Egoist, chapter 14.
- 79.
Letters, 2, 658.
- 80.
Quoted by Johnson, 173–6.
- 81.
Letters, 1, 375.
- 82.
Letters, 1, 379–80.
- 83.
Letters, 1, 387–8.
- 84.
Letters, 1, 389.
- 85.
Letters, 1, 392.
- 86.
Letters, 1, 398.
- 87.
Letters, 1, 413.
- 88.
Letters, 1, 480.
- 89.
The Adventures of Harry Richmond, chapter 14.
- 90.
The Adventures of Harry Richmond, chapter 16.
- 91.
The Adventures of Harry Richmond, chapter 56.
- 92.
Letters, 2, 625–6.
- 93.
Letters, 2, 627.
- 94.
Letters, 2, 671.
- 95.
Letters, 2, 714.
- 96.
Letters, 2, 946.
- 97.
Letters, 2, 953.
- 98.
Letters, 2, 1017.
- 99.
Notebooks, 55.
- 100.
Letters, 1, 398.
- 101.
Letters, 2, 625.
- 102.
Le Gallienne, 41–2.
- 103.
Letters, 2, 848–9.
- 104.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 1.
- 105.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 12.
- 106.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 16.
- 107.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 12.
- 108.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 13.
- 109.
‘Novels with a Purpose’, Westminster Review, 26.1 (July 1864), 24–49, 32.
- 110.
Letters, 1, 446 and 466.
- 111.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, chapter 13.
- 112.
Letters, 3, 1478. Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, Meredith refers to Sir Austin’s failure to forgive his wife in an expression, ‘the unforgivingness of his wife’, that might be read just as easily as referring to his wife’s inability to forgive him.
- 113.
Letters, 1, 40.
- 114.
The Egoist, chapter 34.
- 115.
Emilia in England, chapter 55.
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Cronin, R. (2019). Sons. In: George Meredith. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32448-3_6
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