Geraldine in particular shows herself here a far more profound and daring speculator than ever I had fancied her. I do not believe there is a woman alive at the present day, not even Georges Sand herself, that could have written some of the best passages in this book ... but they must not publish it – decency forbids!
There was, Mrs. Carlyle complained, an indecency or “want of reserve in the spiritual department”, which no respectable public would stand. Presumably Geraldine consented to make alterations, though she confessed that she “had no vocation for propriety as such”; the book was rewritten, and it appeared at last in February 1845. The usual buzz and conflict of opinion at once arose. Some were enthusiastic, others were shocked. The “old and young roués of the Reform Club almost go off into hysterics over – its INDECENCY”. The publisher was a little alarmed; but the scandal helped the sale, and Geraldine became a lioness.
And now, of course, as one turns the pages of the three little yellowish volumes, one wonders what reason there was for approval or disapproval, what spasm of indignation or admiration scored that pencil mark, what mysterious emotion pressed violets, now black as ink, between the pages of the love scenes. Chapter after chapter glides amiably, fluently past. In a kind of haze we catch glimpses of an illegitimate girl called Zoe; of an enigmatic Roman Catholic priest called Everhard; of a castle in the country; of ladies lying on sky-blue sofas; of gentlemen reading aloud; of girls embroidering hearts in silk. There is a conflagration. There is an embrace in a wood. There is incessant conversation. There is a moment of terrific emotion when the priest exclaims, “Would that I had never been born!” and proceeds to sweep a letter from the Pope asking him to edit a translation of the principal works of the Fathers of the first four centuries and a parcel containing a gold chain from the University of G?ttingen into a drawer because Zoe has shaken his faith. But what indecency there was pungent enough to shock the roués of the Reform Club, what genius there was brilliant enough to impress the shrewd intellect of Mrs. Carlyle, it is impossible to guess. Colours that were fresh as roses eighty years ago have faded to a feeble pink; nothing remains of all those scents and savours but a faint perfume of faded violets, of stale hair-oil, we know not which. What miracles, we exclaim, are within the power of a few years to accomplish! But even as we exclaim, we see, far away, a trace perhaps of what they meant. The passion, in so far as it issues from the lips of living people, is completely spent. The Zoes, the Clothildes, the Everhards moulder on their perches; but, nevertheless, there is somebody in the room with them; an irresponsible spirit, a daring and agile woman, if one considers that she is cumbered with crinoline and stays; an absurd sentimental creature, languishing, expatiating, but for all that still strangely alive. We catch a sentence now and then rapped out boldly, a thought subtly conceived. “How much better to do right without religion!” “Oh! if they really believed all they preach, how would any priest or preacher be able to sleep in his bed!” “Weakness is the only state for which there is no hope.” “To love rightly is the highest morality of which mankind is capable.” Then how she hated the “compacted, plausible theories of men”! And what is life? For what end was it given us? Such questions, such convictions, still hurtle past the heads of the stuffed figures mouldering on their perches. They are dead, but Geraldine Jewsbury herself still survives, independent, courageous, absurd, writing page after page without stopping to correct, and coming out with her views upon love, morality, religion, and the relations of the sexes, whoever may be within hearing, with a cigar between her lips.
Some time before the publication of Zoe, Mrs. Carlyle had forgotten, or overcome, her irritation with Geraldine, partly because she had worked so zealously in the cause of the Mudies, partly also because by Geraldine’s painstaking she was “almost over-persuaded back into my old illusion that she has some sort of strange, passionate ... incomprehensible ATTRACTION towards me”. Not only was she drawn back into correspondence – after all her vows to the contrary she again stayed under the same roof with Geraldine, at Seaforth House near Liverpool, in July 1844. Not many days had passed before Mrs. Carlyle’s “illusion” about the strength of Geraldine’s affection for her proved to be no illusion but a monstrous fact. One morning there was some slight tiff between them: Geraldine sulked all day; at night Geraldine came to Mrs. Carlyle’s bedroom and made a scene which was “a revelation to me, not only of Geraldine, but of human nature! Such mad, lover- like jealousy on the part of one woman towards another it had never entered into my heart to conceive.” Mrs. Carlyle was angry and outraged and contemptuous. She saved up a full account of the scene to entertain her husband with. A few days later she turned upon Geraldine in public and sent the whole company into fits of laughter by saying, “I wondered she should expect me to behave decently to her after she had for a whole evening been making love before my very face to ANOTHER MAN!” The trouncing must have been severe, the humiliation painful. But Geraldine was incorrigible. A year later she was again sulking and raging and declaring that she had a right to rage because “she loves me better than all the rest of the world”; and Mrs. Carlyle was getting up and saying, “Geraldine, until you can behave like a gentlewoman ...” and leaving the room. And again there were tears and apologies and promises to reform.