George Merrill

George Merrill (16 August 1867 – 16 January 1928) was the life partner of Edward Carpenter, an English utopian socialist, poet, philosopher and early activist for gay rights.

Early life George Merrill was born on 16 August 1867 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England and grew up there in the slums. He was a working-class man who had no formal education.

Edward Carpenter George met Edward Carpenter on a train in 1891. When the head of his household, George Adams, retired in February 1898, Merrill moved in.

Carpenter owned a small holding at Millthorpe, Derbyshire. Merrill arrived at Millthorpe that February in a blizzard, "trundling with the help of two boys all his worldly goods in a handcart over the hills, and through a disheartening blizzard of snow."

Life with Edward Merrill had previously worked in a newspaper office, a hotel, and an ironworks. He was always officially Carpenter's servant, and he undertook the cooking and cleaning in the home, decorating and placing flowers in every room. Carpenter noted that "George in fact was accepted and one may say beloved by both my manual worker friends and my more aristocratic friends." He had a fine baritone voice and liked to sing comical songs.

The two lived openly as a couple for almost forty years, until Merrill's death in 1928. Carpenter died the following year and was buried beside Merrill at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford, Surrey.

Carpenter and Merrill's rural lifestyle was another influence for Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Similar to Merrill, Lady Chatterly’s Lover involves a working class gamekeeper becoming the lover of a member of the upper classes.

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