The Invisible Woman

by Claire Tomalin

  10. It has been suggested that ‘Loss’ refers to bleeding caused by Dickens’s piles; possibly, but there is no similar entry for February, when he was so worried by them that he wrote to his doctor and Georgina on the subject.

  11. Information from the papers of Madeline House in Dickens House.

  12. See Dickens Incognito. The conclusive rebuttal made by Graham Storey in the Sunday Times, 13 December 1959, of its suggestion that Dickens and Nelly had a child which was given for adoption, has tended to obscure the originality and cleverness of the other part of Aylmer’s detective work. It was he who saw the meaning of the abbreviated names of the railway stations in the diary, who worked out how Dickens must have used them to avoid being recognized too often, who found the entries relating to ‘Charles Tringham’ in the local rate books, and who pointed to local newspaper references to the fact that Charles Dickens had ‘lodged’ in Slough for a time.

  For those who are unfamiliar with Aylmer’s book, here is an extract from p. 15:

  An entry which closes the account of many days in the first half of the year is: ‘to Sl:’. That these letters represent a place and not a person is made plain by the slightly less frequent entry: ‘At Sl:’. There are also recorded various routes by which Dickens travelled between Sl: and London. On the mornings following his visits we find him usually going ‘to off:’ (which we may reasonably take to be his office) not from S.:, but from either ‘W’ or ‘P’. The return journey is on one occasion made by the route: ‘To D from Wat. (for Sl:)’; and on two others: ‘To W from V’. There cannot be many places which satisfy all these conditions at once, and I was able to think of only one: Slough, in Buckinghamshire [Slough was moved into Berkshire after Aylmer wrote his book].

  Slough, two miles from Windsor, is on the main line of the former Great Western Railway, of which the London terminus is Paddington. A branch line takes passengers the further distance to Windsor. Windsor is also served by the old London and South-Western Railway, with London termini at Waterloo and Victoria. On this line the station next before Windsor is Datchet and, owing to the curve in the railway, this station is little further from Slough than Windsor itself. Dickens could, therefore, either take the train from Slough to Paddington, and find himself with three miles of crowded London between himself and his office … or he could walk or drive two miles to Windsor, take the train to Waterloo, and reach his office in a ten-minute walk over Waterloo Bridge. If he found himself at the end of the day near Victoria Station, he could still travel to Windsor from there, probably changing at Clapham Junction. If he felt like a walk at the end of his journey, he could alight at Datchet, whence his way would be by country lanes and fields, and he would be home in less than forty-five minutes. Identifying these stations by their initial letters, and reading for ‘W’ sometimes Waterloo, and sometimes Windsor, we find the diary routes all fall neatly into place.

  On p. 38 Aylmer explains a further point of interest:

  The diary record of his journeys suggests a regular precaution. Journeys to Slough were commonly made direct to Slough station; those to London usually from Windsor. Making all allowance for his love of walking, one cannot ignore the fact that arrival after dark at a station from which the alighting crowd make a quick exit to their homes, involves much less chance of recognition than the daylight wait upon the up-platform for the morning train that is so often late. Strangers who identified the famous man during his journeys would be likely to infer that his quarters were in the town of Windsor rather than the small village of Slough.

  13. Alison Adburgham, Shops and Shopping (1989), p. 130: ‘From the 1830s until the end of the crinoline, the enormously full skirts conveniently hid a lady’s “interesting condition” until the last.’ See also M. Llewelyn Davies (editor), Life as We Have Known It (1977), p. 17, for the testimony of Mrs Layton who, as a child, was pushed under her aunt’s crinoline on the train when the ticket inspector came, to save the fare.

  14. This is clear from a comparison of the diary and the Trollope letters.

  15. Quoted in Ada Nisbet, Dickens and Ellen Ternan, p. 57, from letter in the Huntington Library.

  16. 4 July 1867, Nonesuch Edition, The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. III, pp. 475–6.

  17. Windsor Lodge was built between 1860 and 1862. It was knocked down and replaced by a council estate soon after the Second World War, but some of the villas built at the same time are still standing, and, although they are now dilapidated, you can see what fine, solid houses they were. There is an interesting description of the house known as Windsor Lodge in Linden Grove, given by Ernest J. Marshall, who lived there from 1926 to 1937, in a letter to Felix Aylmer held at Dickens House Museum, dated 17 January 1960. The house was called ‘Holmdene’ during his occupancy: the name is clearly visible in the only known photograph. He left it after a compulsory purchase by the LCC in 1937.

  Mr Marshall describes it as a detached house with a large garden and stables on one side, prompting the thought that Nelly may have kept a horse, since she was a keen rider. There was also a covered glass sideway. The house was on four floors: a semi-basement, with four rooms, pantry and coal cellar; a first floor with three rooms; a second floor with three rooms, bathroom and WC; and an attic floor with two more rooms.

  Mr Marshall was visited by Thomas Wright in 1935, and told him in a letter dated 14 December of that year (also held at Dickens House Museum) that he ‘had heard’ that Dickens was associated with the property.

  Two other letters are also worth recording here. Both were printed in the Sunday Times of 22 March 1953, following two long articles by Earl Jowitt in which he discussed the forthcoming publication in England of both Edgar Johnson’s biography of Dickens and Ada Nisbet’s Dickens and Ellen Ternan. The first is from Gladys Storey:

  Sir, My book, Dickens and Daughter (1939), was written in fulfilment of a promise I made to Charles Dickens’s younger daughter Kate, Mrs Perugini, who, suffering intense remorse, revealed to me the facts of her father’s intimacy, until his death, with Ellen Ternan – to tell the truth from her own lips to vindicate her mother of false accusations.

  Earl Jowitt says, ‘Miss Storey … accepts the “Peckham” version,’ a pronouncement he bases on the data he takes from Mr Wright’s autobiography – which I have neither seen nor read.

  I asked Mrs Perugini very few questions, but when she was telling me that her father made a settlement on Ellen Ternan, and kept her in a house with two servants, I did ask her – where? She immediately replied, ‘Peckham.’ I yet recall her tone of voice as she said it.

  Lord Jowitt goes on to say that I finally record that ‘Mrs Perugini said the association of Dickens and Nelly resulted in the birth of a son who died in infancy. This fact – if fact it be – is plainly outside Mrs Perugini’s personal knowledge …’

  On what grounds but that of supposition and almost, it would appear, wishful belief could Lord Jowitt have written those last few words? Mrs Perugini could not help knowing about the child, being as she was in the centre of things.

  The second letter is from a Mr H. J. Chilton of West Bridgford:

  Sir, The second of Earl Jowitt’s most interesting articles recalls a story my grandmother used to tell. She lived in a house immediately opposite Peckham Rye, and employed Mrs Goldring, referred to by Lord Jowitt, for several years in the late eighties and early nineties. [Jowitt was dismissive of some evidence Thomas Wright derived from another employer of Mrs Goldring.]

  Mrs Goldring told my grandmother that she was employed by Dickens at the time of his death, but was totally unaware of his identity. When she saw his portrait reproduced in a newspaper, she was taken completely by surprise, and said to her husband, ‘Well, if it isn’t the master!’ This story has always rather puzzled me, but now it appears that there may be a simple explanation of the reason she did not know she was working for Dickens.

  Since the assumption is often made that Dickens’s fame meant that everyone recognized him whenever he appeared i
n public, it is worth citing a story of his manager, Dolby. Dolby was present when Dickens took a party, including his American publisher James Fields, through Rochester – his local town – in two post-carriages with scarlet-liveried postilions; they stopped for a while in the centre of town, and a man in the crowd that collected to observe the very striking equipages confidently pointed to Fields, saying, ‘That’s Dickens.’

  18. These rate entries were found by Thomas Wright when he was researching his Life of Charles Dickens; the rate books were subsequently destroyed.

  19. Quoted in Ada Nisbet, Dickens and Ellen Ternan, p. 55, from letter in Huntington Library.

  20. All these quotations are given by Ada Nisbet, Dickens and Ellen Ternan, pp. 55–6, from letters in the Huntington Library.

  12 ‘THIS LIFE IS HALF MADE UP OF PARTINGS’

  1. Fanny Trollope to Bice, letter quoted by permission of Robert Cecil Esq.

  2. These remarks from the diary of Annie Fields for 2 May 1868 are quoted in George Curry, Charles Dickens and Annie Fields, p. 27.

  3. These are the words of Anthony Trollope, written just after Dickens’s death, in July 1870, in St Paul’s magazine. The article is reprinted in The Dickensian (1910).

  4. This is Annie Fields’s description of Kate Perugini dancing with her father all evening, when Annie visited Gad’s Hill in the autumn of 1869, quoted in George Curry, Charles Dickens and Annie Fields, p. 4.

  5. Thomas Trollope wrote to his publisher William Blackwood on 15 October 1869, sending a story which he said could be returned if unsuitable c/o Mrs Ternan, 32 Harrington Square, Hampstead Road; the following January, Trollope wrote to Bentley, asking him to send some numbers of the Temple Bar magazine c/o Mrs Ternan, 305 Vauxhall Bridge Road.

  6. Dickens to Plorn, 26 September 1868, Nonesuch Edition, The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. III, p. 667.

  7. Dickens’s purchase of silk stockings from Mr Long made such an impression on him that it has been remembered in his family to the present day, as well as forming the main feature of his obituary notice in the Hull Daily Mail at the time of his death in 1927.

  A Hull link with the famous author, Charles Dickens, was broken by the death of Mr Ed. Simpson Long, on Thursday of last week … Mr Long, who was a son of Mr Simpson Long, farmer, was born at Gateforth, near Selby in 1842. When about 25 years of age, he came to reside in Hull, and became an assistant to Mr Henry Dixon, silk mercer, of Whitefriargate. It was while Mr Long was employed with this firm that he had a red-letter day in his life.

  Mr Charles Dickens, the famous novelist, who came to Hull to give some readings on his own works at the Assembly Rooms, called at Messrs Dixon’s shop and asked to see some ladies’ hosiery. Mr Long, unaware of the customer’s identity, went forward to serve Mr Dickens, and while the latter was making his choice, the following conversation took place:

  Mr Dickens: What do you do with yourself, young man, in an evening?

  Mr Long: Well, I sometimes go to the theatre, if there is a good Shakespearean play on, or dramatic readings, same as tonight. But it is by subscription, so I shall not be able to go.

  Mr Dickens: Why, have you read of Dickens’s books?

  Mr Long: Yes, I have read most of Dickens’s books, and can find many characters to fit them.

  Charles Dickens then asked Mr Long which of his books he liked best, and when the latter had given several titles, the novelist asked him if he would like to go to the reading, and thereupon wrote on one of his cards ‘Please Admit Bearer’. One can imagine Mr Long’s surprise when he turned over the card and saw that it bore the name of one of the most famous writers of the day.

  When Mr Long went to his seat, he found that it was on the platform, close to the reading desk from which Dickens delivered his reading. During his performance the novelist kept turning round to see how Mr Long was enjoying himself, and purposefully chose passages from Mr Long’s favourite books.

  Thus ended one of Mr Long’s most enjoyable days. But one thing he was never able to understand: why Dickens was buying ladies’ stockings.

  Mr Long’s granddaughter, who remembers him well, says the stockings were black; but it was not thought quite suitable to mention this in the obituary.

  8. Quoted in N. John Hall (editor), Letters of Anthony Trollope, Vol. I, p. 423n, from letter in the Free Library of Philadelphia.

  9. Diary of Annie Fields, 8 June 1869, quoted in George Curry, Charles Dickens and Annie Fields, p. 42.

  10. Philip Collins, ‘William Charles Macready and Dickens: Some Family Recollections’, Dickens Studies (1966).

  11. See p. 201 for Forster’s letter about ‘Provident sums’ for Miss T.

  12. This information is derived from unpublished papers by Mrs Madeline House at Dickens House.

  13. See William C. Clarke, The Secret Life of Wilkie Collins, p. 122 and notes.

  14. It has been suggested by Michael Slater in his Dickens and Women that the story Dickens wrote at Peckham, George Silverman’s Explanation, in which an old man narrates his unhappy life story, and in particular describes how he rejected the love of a girl he also loved, because he felt she would do better to marry another man, reflects Dickens’s anxieties about Nelly’s situation. There is, however, no indication that Dickens sought to weaken the ties between himself and Nelly at any point.

  15. 4 November 1868, quoted in L. Szladits, A Dickens Anthology (New York, 1970), from letter in Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

  16. 23 January 1870, quoted in Ada Nisbet, Dickens and Ellen Ternan, p. 57, from a letter in the Huntington Library.

  17. 26 February 1870, R. C. Lehmann (editor), Charles Dickens as an Editor: Being Letters Written by Him to William Henry Wills, p. 396.

  18. Speech to Royal Academy, 30 April 1870, K. J. Fielding (editor), The Speeches of Charles Dickens, p. 421.

  19. See account by Constance Cross, who visited him in April 1870 at Hyde Park Place, quoted in Philip Collins, Dickens Interviews and Recollections, Vol. II, p. 345.

  20. See Philip Collins, Dickens Interviews and Recollections, Vol. II, pp. 246–7, which gives Charles Kent’s account of this conversation, first written down in 1872 in his Charles Dickens as Reader.

  21. 29 March 1870, Nonesuch Edition, The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. III, p. 769.

  22. Dickens to Mrs E. T. Dallas 2 May 1870, Nonesuch Edition, The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. III, p. 773.

  23. Gladys Storey, Dickens and Daughter, pp. 133–4.

  24. Nonesuch Edition, The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. III, p. 784.

  25. See Una Pope-Hennessy, Charles Dickens (1945), p. 464: the author had her information from Gladys Storey, who was told by Kate Perugini. On the other hand Walter Dexter wrote to the Comte de Suzannet (22 February 1939, letter in Dickens House) that Gladys Storey told him on Mrs Perugini’s authority that it was Georgina who sent for Nelly: ‘Mrs P. said she would never have allowed it had she been there.’ Malcolm Morley also states that Gladys Reece told him her mother was present; see The Dickensian (1960).

  26. See P. H. Ditchfield and G. Clinch, Memorials of Old Kent (1907), p. 251.

  13 ANOTHER LIFE BEGINS

  1. Fanny Trollope to Bice, 28 June 1870, letter quoted by permission of Robert Cecil Esq.

  2. Georgina Hogarth to Frederic Ouvry, letters held by Messrs Farrer. It is perhaps worth noting that Farrers filed letters from other beneficiaries of the will, but there is no letter from Nelly filed.

  3. The cheque book is in a box of papers held by Messrs Farrer.

  4. Letter held by Messrs Farrer.

  5. Letter held by Messrs Farrer.

  6. See Edward C. McAleer (editor), Dearest Isa: Letters of Robert Browning (1951), p. 349.

  7. Diary of Annie Fields, August 1870, quoted in George Curry, Charles Dickens and Annie Fields, p. 58.

  8. Careful researches conducted by Miss K. M. Longley have turned up nobody bearing either of these names among the deaths recorded in England during this period.


  9. Information from Miss K. M. Longley, who had it from Rosalind Brown’s daughter Helen Wickham.

  10. All material from the commonplace books is transcribed from Miss K. M. Longley’s ‘A Pardoner’s Tale: Charles Dickens and the Ternan Family’, unpublished typescript.

  11. Claire Clairmont, Shelley’s friend and the model for James’s The Aspern Papers, was still living in Italy at this point; she died in 1879, and he wrote the story in 1888.

  12. The letters were first printed in The Dickensian for January 1965, transcribed by its then editor, Leslie C. Staples, to whom the originals were given by a friend who found them in a packet inserted into a book purchased from a second-hand stall in the Farringdon Road; Staples does not say when, simply that it was a few years earlier. All Nelly’s letters are originals, her writing attested to by her daughter Gladys Reece, who was consulted by Staples. The two letters from George Smith are, however, copies, which indicates that it was he who preserved the letters, for reasons of his own, apart from the firm’s files; and this suggests in turn that he knew of their curiosity value, and knew the history of ‘Nelly Ternan’. Smith died in 1901, while Austin was serving as poet laureate; but the DNB had its crack at Austin later, suggesting that he got his position chiefly as a reward for his journalistic services to the party of Lord Salisbury.

  13. The author has seen the books, inscribed by Mrs Ternan to Nelly, and now in private possession.

  14. Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in 1879; the first English version appeared in 1884.

  15. All quotations from letters in possession of Robert Cecil Esq. and quoted by his permission.

  16. The following year Anny Thackeray came in for her disapproval when she married her cousin, eighteen years her junior: ‘Very risky,’ she pronounced, ‘even a few years disparity on the wrong side is dangerous – because a woman is always older than a man, even if they are the same age.’ Georgina Hogarth to Annie Fields, quoted in Arthur A. Adrian, Georgina Hogarth and the Dickens Circle, p. 200, from letter in the Huntington Library.