Alexander Main and Edith Simcox: The Passionate Worshipers

give you a spoiler right now. George Elliott was a woman. There are something like three dozen plus biographies about George Elliott. But here's the thing, there are still questions about her. We don't know everything, but we do know quite a bit. Elliott was born as Mary Ann Evans in November of eighteen nineteen in the English countryside. But in eighteen fifties she moved to London, and that's really where her story,

certainly as a public figure, truly begins. Absolutely so, her move to London is what kicked off the time in her life when Mary Anne Evans transformed from her father's quote little Wench into the urban intellectual that we know her as today. A few years later, in London, in about eighteen seven, Mary Anne published her first work fiction, which was called Scenes of Clerical Life in Blackwood's magazine.

And it's in this moment she became George Elliott, which was the name she continued to go by even after everyone knew that she was using a pseudonym. Yes, Scenes of Clerical Life, by the way, is actually three short stories that initially ran separately in the magazine, and now they're kind of grouped together as one larger piece of fiction. And each story features a character that is a member of the clergy. It's all set in the same fictional town,

which is Milby. That clergy character isn't always like the most prominent or important character in the story, but each one has a member the clergy, and those three together were eventually published as a two volume set under the title Scenes of Clerical Life Outside of the Magazine. Also in eighteen fifty nine. Just two years later, um George Elliott turned forty, and when she turned forty, she also published her first novel, which became an instant best seller.

It was known that even Queen Victoria was a fan of this novel, and because of this instant best seller, um one of her best known works, in Milana Philoss, was published almost immediately after. So you may have some questions because it is probably pretty clear to you by this point that George Elliot's life was not really at all like most women at this time. The Victorian era was, of course, a time when women were supposed to be

the mistresses of the household. They were often called and we have used this phrase on the show before and we likely will again. The Angel in the House, Virginia Wolf described these so called old angels as quote, immensely sympathetic, immensely charming, and utterly unselfish. I am reminded of Queen Victoria's writing where she kind of equates like being a woman, even if you are the ruler of an empire, at the end of the day, you're still a woman, you know.

She compares like, once you become pregnant, you're just like livestock. Like she it's a great equalizer being a woman up. Actually right, But these angels also did not have the right to vote, sue, or own property. Also super weird when you consider that the head of the empire was a woman. And during the emerging Industrial Revolution in England,

many of these women worked under abysmal and dangerous conditions. Elliott, on the other hand, was really pursuing a more radical life, taking a role that at that point was strictly the domain of men. She proposed marriage to a renowned palling math, Herbert spencer Um, and he ultimately did reject her. But she also then stirred up scandal when she and the writer George Henry Lewis began a romance. George, by the way,

was married to a woman named Agnes Jarvis. But when George and Elliott met in eighteen fifty one, by eighteen fifty four they'd moved in together. And here's the thing, that moved in together openly while Louis was still married. And this was such a big deal that Elliott's female friends refused to see her anymore because seeing her might tarnish their own reputations. It was was that big um. Elliot and Lewis were together for more than twenty five years,

right up until he passed away in eighteen seventy eight. Yeah, I always love to remind people that when we think of the state and formal and rule, laden periods that have gone before us, there were always things like this going on. It's never quite as codified as you may think. So we really should talk for a minute about why Mary Ann Evans chose to publish her work under the

more masculine sounding pen name of George Elliott. She believed that when female novelists wrote anything other than lighthearted romance novels, that they just weren't taken seriously. And she is not the first. We have a few examples, certainly, of other female authors who wrote secretly as males. In the early nineteenth century, Amentine Lucille roy du duvon Ne Dupin wrote under the male pseudonym, Oh, and I love her George Son.

I'm so glad she goes by her pseudonym, because I'm also so glad you were the one say her real name. She's a favorite of mine. The Bronte sisters, also Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, very commonly known, first published their works under the male pseudonyms of Kerr Ellis and Acton Bell, respectively, Though Luisa May Alcott's Little Women, which is often considered her best known work, was published under her own name. She also used to the more ambiguous name am erred

to write her gothic thrillers. They were considered let's say, unladylike for a nineteenth century female writer or reader, so she did not use alcohol. But a fascinating aside to her story is that her secret pseudonym actually wasn't discovered until the nineteen forties, if you can believe it, and it was a rare book dealer together with the librarian who figured that out. I think you've just written like a fabulous new thriller. It's the book dealer in librarian

and they solve literary crimes of history. Could be great. I know what my next project is. I would watch that show. As for why so many women writers took this particular path, we're going to use Charlotte Bronte as

an illustrative example. So in late eighteen thirty six, when Charlotte was just twenty years old, she sent a selection of her poetry to poet laureate Robert Southey, and soThe responded with the following very sexist quote quote literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought

not to be soup. Yeah. In fact, I really have no response to In fact, Elliott herself wrote an anonymous essay that she called Silly Novels by Leady Novelists, where she criticized the works of her female contemporary authors, saying that they were all confusing We quote vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality. She generally considered this genre to be full of those cliches and far

fetched romantic endings that we all know from Hollywood stories. Um. But then there was also perhaps her biggest accusation about it. She believed that they made educated women ultimately look foolish. Uh yeah, not so much in the women Uplifting Women category. On this women don't need to be educated, they need to be at home. Not alternate forms of literature is valid.

It's a little snooty, by which I mean it's completely snooty. Today, of course, we still see modern female authors using male pseudonyms. This is not exclusive to the Victorian era. For example, there's a contemporary female author, Nora Roberts, who comes to mind. She's certainly not the only one, but she has written more than two hundred romance as well as crime novels, but she uses the pseudonym J. D. Rob when she

writes her suspense novels. Gender bias was alive in Victorian literary circles certainly, but it has yet to be eliminated from today's publishing industry, literary circles, and even among audiences. So using pseudonyms to get these works published, whether it was Victorian era or even today, Um, it is interesting and we could spend a ton of time talking about it, but we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about George Elliott's biggest and I'm going to

quote unquote this here admirers, UM. And they were Alexander Maine and Edith Simcox. And that's right. Elliott attracted two stalkers. So we're gonna take a quick break and then when we come back, we're going to talk about how Elliott met Alexander Maine. Welcome back to Criminalia. So this all started when a man named Alexander Maine asked George Elliott a very simple question in the summer of eightev one, and this was while she was working on her very

famous novel Middle March. George Elliott received a short letter from a young Scott named Alexander Main. So, Alexander Main a little bit about him before we get into his letter. UM. He was about thirty year years old when he started his correspondence with Elliott. He lived with his elderly widowed mother in a really small town on the eastern coast

of Scotland. And what we know of him is that he gave lectures on various literary subjects to grad students and perhaps undergrad as well, but he didn't really share much of his occupation with her. UM. We also know that he was really not very well off financially UM, and he would wait for Elliott's novels to be published in discounted editions and then he would buy and read them.

It said that he preferred to walk along the cliffs and sit on the beach, and this is where he would read these books, and he would read them aloud to himself. So Alexander had a pretty simple and a fairly benign question in his initial correspondence with the author,

what was the correct pronunciation of Romola? Elliott, super pleased that someone would ask about the title of a novel that she had published years earlier, that was back in eighteen sixty three, wrote back with the correct pronunciation, letting

him know that you stress the first. Oh, and we actually have an excerpt from her correspondence, and you might imagine when you hear this that later she regretted the final sentence here, which is quote, my dear sir, I am grateful for, indeed deeply affected by your assurance that my writings have been long precious to you and others.

I have not much strength and time for correspondence, but I shall always be glad to hear from you when you have anything in your mind, which it will be a solace to you to say to me that at some foreshadowing. So that opened a door she could not close,

and opened like a black hole anyway. She also went on to share some of her thoughts beyond her own work, specifically about Florentine literature, as well as Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish historical novelist and poets, and instead of moving along or just sending a quick thank you, Maine replied almost instantly with another letter. This time it was much longer.

Within its eleven pages, he told Elliott, quote, you are doing a work in and upon this age such that future generations shall rejoice that you have lived, laying it on pretty thick. Alexander called the novels prologue we quote, the sublimest piece of writing, thinking, and historical word painting, all in one that the pen of a human being has ever yet achieved in prose. This letter has since been referred to as Maine's Rhapsody of Romola. Sorry, it's

quite rhapsodic. I think that's an apt name. I think so too, And I also was thinking, can you imagine if this man had email? Oh no, I mean he's already writing back pretty quickly, one quick interjection about that novel. Today, she's probably best remembered for writing the now classic books Middle March and Silas Marner. Yet these days is considered one of the least known among her works. But at the time she received a then record payment for her novel,

and it was fairly popular. So these letters from Scotland, they just kept coming, and they began coming at a rather extraordinary rate. Again and again Alexander Main wrote Elliott long heartfelt letters, and then he would follow up with letters of a very different tone, demanding that she reassure him that he had not offended her with his previous letters.

And after that then his letters would turn into apologies, and this cycle continued where he would kind of sense he had gone too far, asked her to tell him that he had not gone too far, and then apologize in case he had, and the cycle starts right. She tried to distance herself from her admirer, except that is when she did not um in act, because strangers would often physically touch her when they encountered her, in particular her cloak, and she allowed it and seemed okay with it.

As these things played out, some of her contemporaries kind of thought Elliott was encouraging that sort of closeness from her fans. Alexander continued to write, of course and um. In one of his next letters, he praised Elliott and specifically praised her poem The Spanish Gypsy, telling her, and I'm gonna quote this. I have felt myself face to face with the highest in humanity by reading that poem. So Elliott Radiant in this feedback wrote back, which we

all know she shouldn't have done what she did. Um. It was not a simple thank you. She wrote to Maine to tell him that he through the understood her intentions in that poem and that she believed he clearly had perfect insight into her writing, also encouraging him. Oh Joe Orge, Okay, so in Alexander's mind, this was his moment.

He wrote her back with a proposal for Elliott, he wanted to do her writing justice by turning the wider public onto her work and wisdom, and specifically highlighting her poetry. At that point, she was known pretty much as a novelist. But he was like, people need to be reading your poems, girl, and he wanted to do this by compiling them all in a single volume. He would then edit it. And he told her that she had done for the novel

what Shakespeare did for the drama. So he was full of praise and then wanted to edit her poetry anthology. And yeah, here's the thing. Elliott agreed to do it. Um, there are a few things here that may have been going on when she made that decision, and it probably wasn't the like the chapter after chapter of letters that she was getting from Alexander m So, first, there's no doubt that she saw that this had potential as a

marketing tool for her novels, because it did. But then there's the harder piece to it, which is the more emotional piece. So George, her longtime partner that we mentioned earlier, once referred to Elliott as having quote a shy, shrinking, ambitious nature and added that she was susceptible to crippling

self doubt. So think about what it must have been like for her to be trying to distance herself from Alexander main while at the same time he's a man whose words have brought her to tears and made her feel validated as a writer. So this is where John Blackwood enters the scene. John was Elliott's publisher, and when Alexander became the editor of the Elliott Collection, which was titled Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse selected from the works of George Elliott, John was also

going to publish that work. John wasn't really fond of Alexander, and he dismissed him as a sycophant. So privately he had a few nicknames for him, such as the gusher and the worshiper of Genius, the gutsher Ah. Yeah, So after their first encounter, John referred to Alexander as again another quote, a little fellow, dark with bright, clear looking eyes who and this is the best part of the quote and maybe the best part of this episode for me um that Alexander used his knife in a dangerous

manner at lunch. We don't know the details of my imagination. Has taken it from me here, Sarah. Yes. John also wrote once to his nephew, who was a fellow publisher, saying, my dear Willie, the worshiper of genius appeared soon after eleven today and has just left. This has destroyed my day's work. You everybody who hangs around your desk for too long. Yeah, so a distraction as well as being a little too a brilliant in his praise. So Blackwood's

not a fan. Regardless of all of this, though, and John not enjoying working with him, Alexander did get his collection published, and of course he dedicated the book to Elliott in we quote recognition of a genius as original as it is profound, and a morality as pure as it is impassioned, And in the preface he declared that she had and again we're quoting forever sanctified the novel by making it the vehicle of the grandest and most

uncompromising moral truth, just like Shakespeare. So so if we fast forward this recognition of genius to the I have modern day criticism. Um, there's a journalist named Rebecca Meade who writes for The New Yorker, and she is one of Elliott's biographers and she's a critic as well, and she summed this in such a way. Alexander's book is the nineteenth century equivalent of the refrigerator Magnet, which I felt like I learned so much about that book just

from that one sentence. And the reason for this assessment that me gives is that poetry was not really Elliott's strength. The wit and wisdom promised in the title never really delivers in the text. Yeah, she wants to give a really great lecture where she talked about seeing a refrigerator magnet with a George Elliott quote on it about I don't remember the exact quote, but it's basically like about your life's work can start later on, like you can

achieve the actually know exactly what you're talking about. And uh, And how she was reading this compilation about that magnet, Sure she was. She was like, I knew it. But here's the thing. That compendium was very popular in its time. It was published in multiple editions. It sold out. Unfortunately, though Alexander story kind of ends for us here. For all we know he had a long, successful life or the opposite after his involvement with getting this book of

poetry and wit published. But the details outside of his admiration of Elliott, as far as it goes in his biography, have really not been well preserved. Let's go ahead and take a quick sponsor break right now, and when we come back, we're going to talk about who Edith Simcox was in relation to Elliott. Welcome back to Criminalia. So we've talked about Alexander Main, but he was not George Elliot's only admirer. Meet Edith Simcox. Edith Simcox is perhaps

best remembered as one of Elliott's most passionate admirers. But if you were living in the Victorian era in England, you would have been familiar with Edith's works or at least her name, because of her passion for her work. Edith had an amazing life and that is outside of her nearly lifelong infatuation with George Elliott. Um. She promoted women's suffrage and was active in the trade union movement.

She was a shirtmaker with Hamilton's and Company, which is a company that she established with a woman named Mary Hamilton's. They ran their business as a women only co op that provided women with employment under humane conditions, which was not a common thing in Victorian England. She was really just engaged in making her community better. Yeah, she was an advocate for workers rights for women, really admirable work, and she also worked as an author and a critic.

She herself, as many of the authors we've talked about, often wrote under a male pseudonym. Hers was h. Laurine, and she was a friend and an admirer of George Eliot, calling her, we quote the love passion of my life, which sounds like a very intense relationship, except there was no relationship between these two women other than a fairly

superficial one. So what we do know about Edith and George Eliott is all basically from Edith's personal journal, and she started that in eighteen seventy six and she wrote it until about a few months before her death, which

was in nineteen hundred. Um. Although many of her private entries are about things that are really mundane, like business issues, handling, personnel problems, dealing with customers, not all the entries are like that, though it's also where she detailed and she worked through emotional turmoil and frustration from her love for

Elliott that was not returned. And as early as the very first entry in her journal, she sensed she was on a mission to and I mean quote that first entry, a mission to love rather than to be loved, and she called her journal the autobiography of a shirt Maker. So Edith and Elliott did meet in a teen seventy two and shortly after Edith had written a glowing review of Middle March, and then Elliott invited her to one of her renowned parties, and Edith quickly became kind of

part of Elliot's circle. But while Elliott was open to developing a friendship initially, it said that she began to grow uncomfortable with Edith's intense professions of devotion. Though she was quite successful before meeting Elliott, Edith referred to Elliott as her quote idol, and attributed all of her late accomplishments to Elliott's influence, even though this was not a person that was actually in her life in any significant way,

and she was highly successful without Elliott. You know, none of this needed to be there, but yet it was. And three days after Elliott's death, which happened in December of eighty, Edith wrote in her journal, um, and this is a quote. I hope to build your monument in

the lettering of words and deeds to come. And in an effort to create a tribute to Elliott, the complete edition of her Autobiography of a Shirtmaker was published with the title changed to um a Monument to the Memory of George Elliott, and many hailed it as a monument to George Elliott. After her death, one literary biographer named Lyndall Gordon dubbed Elliott as a quote wise angel. And then two years after Elliot's death, Edith published another tribute

to her. This was titled Episodes in the Lives of Men, Women and Lovers, and the work, which was made up of eleven sort of loosely connected tales, indirectly explores her love for Elliott, but only in fictional terms. This ends where Edith and Elliott have a relationship or lack of relationship.

Edith passed away in September of nineteen o one, and she hoped to be buried at Highgate Cemetery, which was where George Eliot was, and she hoped to be buried near her instead, though she was buried with her mother, with whom she had lived with from most of her life. So those are George Elliott's two stalkers, neither of whom seemed particularly dangerous, yet just uncomfortable. Right. That means it's time for the chaser. It is it is time for

the chaser. Why don't you take it to it? Of course, and thinking about George Elliott, what really struck me in both of these stories, but particularly in the Alexander main story, was this kind of duality in her reception to them, that in some ways she felt uncomfortable, but in other ways she clearly, I mean, like any human enjoyed praise

and you know, felt validated by attentions in some ways. Right, And it did sound like from from Louis that she she maybe liked a little bit more, you know, she was a little insecure. It really played into her and then she would feel weird about it. So I came up with a cocktail that I all mixed feelings to reflect that duality. So it starts with butterfly pea flower tea. I don't even know what that is like, it's easy to get. You can buy it online. A lot of

specialty grocery stores have it. It's beautiful because it is blue, like it literally turns a bright blue when you grew it. Beautiful, it's absolutely beautiful. So you want to brew a lit cup of tea, you want to let it cool off and actually pop it in the fridge. Let it get chilled, and you're gonna use three ounces of that. Then you will add an ounce less if you don't like it as sweet. But I like a little sweetness of simple syrup or vanilla syrup. I like a vanilla syrup for

this one. Just one ounce of vodka, so it's not a heavy cocktail at all, and you're just gonna combine this in a glass over ice. It's an absolutely gorgeous, deep like sapphire blue color. I like to put it in a martini glass just because it's pretty, because I was gonna say it because it's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty.

But here's the thing I promised you duality. So just before serving it or drinking it, maybe like if you put it down in front of a friend, you're gonna add a half of an ounce of lemon juice, and this drink completely changes before your eyes and it goes from its beautiful blue color to a magenta purple. It really is kind of the drink version of a stalker a chaser. Yes, and I see why you're saying that you were inspired by Alexander. I did put some thought

into it. I just want to know how to pronounce the title. And then there you are years later, starts out, fine, this this seems great. This person thinks some of me. It's like, wait, it's something different. Although I will say the purple, the magenta purple color is also absolutely beautiful and lovable. Um and it is a very immediate change, so you kind of feel like a magician. I like to feel that way in the kitchen, right. It's the acidity and the lemon juice just changes its color and

it makes it for the eiver. The flavoring of the tea on its own is a pretty earthy, soft flavor. It's not like a rose tea, or like a lavender tea or any of those other kind of botanicals. It's not even like a hibiscus. It's not quite that sweet to my palate. I think it it is used. Is it in Thailand that it's often used. It's served as an iced tea as like a greeting for visitors. It's super beautiful. I love it. I use it as an

evening drink. I'll make a warm cup of it with milk, and it's like the best way to just chill out before bed blue milk. There's no caffeine in it, so if you're a person affected by caffeine, it's not going to hit you that way. The flavor doesn't have a full body if you taste it without the lemon juice. But once you have the lemon juice, it just adds that extra something and gives it another dimension and it

becomes a cocktail worth consuming. Excellent. I was wondering about the addition of the lemon juice more than just the color, like if it added a little bit of pomp, Yeah, a little little paper rouni. I always have to ask about the press. So that is the mixed feeling, which I had a delightful time testing yesterday. Excellent. So did you did you stop it one or did you know? Well? No, only because the first one, my my proportions were off

on the first one. I had to shift some things around a little bit too much vodka really distorts the taste of it. I was just about to say, please tell me that the proportions were too much vodka. Well, it's um. I had initially both too much vodka and too much lemon juice, and it just it kind of tasted like a tart mistake. Like it wasn't like a yummy oh vakay, lemon juice sometimes can be yummy. This was like the combination just was like, Holly, no, you're

doing it wrong. So we but the the Titan second draft was we dialed those back and now and it's you know, like I said, it's only a few ounces, so it's not a big drink anyway. So if you wanted to double it and make yourself an iced tea version of it, that would also work just fine. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H