Germany (1854–1855)

Abstract

The decision to go abroad was taken for many reasons. Lewes wished to avoid contact with Agnes, and Marian Evans hinted at circumstances in Lewes’s relationship with his wife which made him determined to separate from her. Before they met, Lewes and Marian Evans each had lamented their sense of alienation from society; their liaison led to the circulation of rumours in literary circles, and this increased their feeling of being outcasts. Scandalous stories were widespread, as Combe told Bray in November 1854. Thomas Woolner wrote to Lewes’s old friend, William Bell Scott, denouncing ‘the filthy contaminations of these hideous satyrs and smirking moralists — these workers in the Agapemone — these Mormonites in another name — stink pots of humanity’. Lewes’s friends, who were acquainted with his views on relations between the sexes, were inclined to view him as the blameworthy seducer, although they also felt that he was justified in leaving Agnes. Harriet Martineau told vicious tales about Marian Evans and Lewes, the first sign of a hostility which lasted for the rest of her life, despite Marian Evans’s respect for her.² Absence from the scene of the rumours was perhaps contrived to give them a fresh perspective on the furore.

if there is any one action or relation of my life which is and always has been profoundly serious, it is my relation to Mr. Lewes …From the majority of persons …we never looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except indeed, that being happy in each other, we find everything easy.

No society can be so intimate as that admirable primitive combination by which two natures become almost fused into one.¹