![]() We know Ternan figured in the drama of Dickens' life. This, of course, is not incompatible with a sexual relationship. Some have suggested that if Dickens had conceived a chaste passion for Ternan, then the manoeuvrings and accusations of the Hogarth family and the estrangement from his wife must have made the situation intolerable.ĭickens' best-known biographer, Peter Ackroyd, says that though Dickens spoke of Ternan as a princess, she became ''less a living human being than a creature from his imaginary world''. No one has ever been quite sure what was going on. ''I am going to take the little - riddle - into the country this morning … So let the riddle and the riddler go their own wild way.''Ī little later he wrote: ''The Doncaster unhappiness remains so strong about me, upon me, that I can't write.'' In letters to his intimates at this time, he wrote not so much about as around her. Not long afterwards, he followed the Ternan family to Doncaster, where they were performing. ''I have never known a moment's peace or content since the last night of The Frozen Deep,'' he wrote. In a letter to Collins, Dickens was clearly, though not explicitly, writing about Ellen Ternan. ![]() Ternan and her mother and sisters were professional actresses brought in to bolster the celebrity amateur performances of these writers and their friends. ![]() But what of young Ternan? She came into his life when he was performing in a play, The Frozen Deep, by Wilkie Collins, Dickens' friend and the author of The Moonstone. The press spoke of ''the odious - we must almost add unnatural - profligacy of which he's been accused'' and how this ''could brand him with lifelong infamy''.Īs it turned out, Dickens was not having an affair with his sister-in-law. ''Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home.''ĭickens made the mistake of attacking the innuendos as ''grossly false, almost monstrous and most cruel''. The Hogarths encouraged rumours of this affair, as well as stories about the young actress, Ellen Ternan.ĭickens' daughter Kate once said her father was ''like a madman'' at this time. For the Victorians, sexually infidelity with a sister-in-law was seen as analogous to incest and constituted one of the few grounds on which a wife could divorce her husband. ![]() Suspicions lay with his wife's sister, Georgina Hogarth, who was subjected to the indignity of a virginity test. Many people at the time believed the Dickenses split because of another woman. After they finally separated in 1858, they barely corresponded and their children moved between parents, none of which meant the writer had lost his intense need for women. She bore him 10 children, but Dickens came to abhor her, subdividing their bedroom with a wall so he could be as far away from her as possible. His wife, Catherine Hogarth, seems in some ways to have had as commonplace a mind as Dora in David Copperfield. Most people with some interest in Dickens know in the back of their minds that his marriage turned out to be unhappy. The book focuses not on the author of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist but on the girl who came to haunt him and whose name has been all but erased from the record. Unlike many biopics, this one has its roots in a formidable and unusual biography (of the same title) published in 1991 by Claire Tomalin. The relationship between the great Victorian novelist and the young actress is shrouded in mystery, but one version of the story will play out in the film, The Invisible Woman, directed by Ralph Fiennes. But is it possible he kept a young woman as his mistress?ĭickens first came across Ellen Ternan when she was just 18 and he was 45. He was the most celebrated writer of English since William Shakespeare, and a passionate crusader with a great compassion for the oppressed. Charles Dickens can seem like the best of men and the worst of men.
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