Dickens' tormented marriage caused outrage
Comments |
The Ternan family, from
left, Nelly’s sister Fanny, her mother Frances,Nelly with the pet
dog and sister Maria
In the second of our series of
articles on Dickens' life and legacy we look at the great author's
less than perfect private life.
We find him caught up in rumour and
controversy centring on the Ternan family - and a marriage falling
apart.
Dickens came under the spell of the
Ternan family in the summer of 1857.
By October he had humiliated his wife
by instructing her maid to put a partition between the bedroom and
dressing room in Tavistock House.
It was made clear to Catherine and the
rest of the household he would no longer be sharing the marital
bed.
By June 1858 Charles and Catherine
were separated.
“It is all despairingly over,” he told
his friend John Forster.
To his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts he
wrote the marriage was “for years and years as miserable a one as
ever was made”.
He told her the children did not love
their mother and accused Catherine of
‘weaknesses and jealousies’.
Dickens, renowned for his good works,
morals and family values, began to show his dark side.
Against the advice of his friends, he
issued a statement of separation in The
Times and in his own magazine, Household
Words.
He even demanded that his publisher,
Bradbury and Evans, print the same
statement in Punch magazine. When they
refused, he ended his relationship with them.
In public Dickens had always been able
to charm and sparkle but his behaviour to Catherine was nothing
short of cruel, making her out to be a mad and a bad mother.
The woman who had given him 10
children and had suffered two miscarriages, was cut off. He told
Miss Burdett-Coutts: “I have now
– God help me – only one course to
pursue.
"One day, though not
now, I may be able to tell you how hardly I have been used.”
Dickens severed all relations with
Catherine’s family, the Hogarths, except
her sister Georgina, who became his
housekeeper at Gad’s Hill.
He stopped his charitable work with
Miss Burdett-Coutts. He punished his children if they visited their
mother, barely speaking to daughter Katey for two years because she
spoke to Catherine. There were no more family holidays.
The news about Dickens’ marriage
fedrumours about his friendship with Nelly
Ternan.
Gossip swept through London. When
Thackeray heard word that Dickens was
having an affair with his
sister-in-law Georgina he contradicted it, saying the woman was
anactress.
Gad's Hill Place -
Dickens' last home
The friendship between the two great
novelists came to an end.
On May 27, Dickens’ Coutts bank
account shows a payment of four guineas to N.
In December it showed he bought Nelly
a Christmas present – CDET £10.
Dickens’ idea to let Tavistock House
to the Ternans was reversed by his friends, who told him this
misjudgement would bedamaging.
For once during this turbulent
time he listened. As rumours continued to
circulate Dickens published a denial
in The Times, on June 7, 1858.
The world was divided over Dickens’ separation and as his life
changed he started a second career, giving public readings of his
works.
A new love - a new
life
Despite all of Dickens’ commitments,
when his friend Wilkie Collins asked him to take the lead role in a
new play, The Frozen Deep, the theatre-loving author threw himself
into learning the part.
He was to play Richard Wardour, the
hero of a polar expedition.
As well as overseeing works at Gad’s
Hill and writing the novel Little Dorrit, Dickens learned his lines
during a single 21-mile walk.
He
was a natural showman. The Times published a glowing review of the
play and Thackeray raved “if that man would go upon the stage he
would make his £20,000 a year.”
Dickens was in his element, not only
as an actor but in the company of a family of actresses (mother
Frances and her daughters Fanny, Maria and Ellen), whom he had
hired to perform alongside him.
The on-stage drama and emotion spilled
off-stage. Dickens became infatuated with the women and fell in
love with the youngest daughter, 18-year-old Ellen.
Ellen, known as Nelly, was born in
Maidstone Road, Rochester, and this may have triggered Dickens’
intrigue.
The relationship was kept secret –
such was Dickens’ saintly public reputation; and the Ternans, too,
would have wanted to keep their name virtuous.
Nelly’s reputation would be
irreversibly tarnished so the couple played out a platonic
friendship in public, the truth of which was never made public, not
even after Dickens’ death in 1870.
The KM Group's Dickens: A Love
Affair with Kent supplement is free in all KM Group paid-for
newspapers this week. It will also be available from Linda
Evans levans@thekmgroup.co.uk
Monday, February 06 2012
The KM Group does not moderate comments.
Please click here for our house rules.