Charles Dickens in Love

by Robert Garnett

  But there was an obstacle, and no light one—Ellen.

  “The Patient [Ellen], I acknowledge to be the gigantic difficulty,” he admitted to Wills (in a letter written on Ellen’s monogrammed stationery). The very prospect of six months without her sank him into gloom. “I should be wretched beyond expression” in America, he told Forster. “My small powers of description cannot describe the state of mind in which I should drag on from day to day.” The obvious solution was to take Ellen with him to America. It would be difficult to do so without scandal, “but you know I don’t like to give in before a difficulty, if it can be beaten,” he told Wills, and began scheming. One prerequisite was Ellen’s willingness; had she read Dickens’s account in American Notes of his distressing 1842 voyage across the North Atlantic, she might well have been hesitant to make the venture herself. But she promptly gave her consent, a decision which “cleared off one obstacle that stood in my way,” he announced with relief. Ellen’s family, on the other hand, or her sister Fanny at least, disapproved; or at any rate Dickens anticipated their disapproval. Writing to his friend Mrs. Dickinson in July 1867, he mentioned the proposed American tour, which she had evidently heard about: “If I decide to go to America, it will not be within my means to form a determination until the middle or latter end of September,” he told her, and warned: “You will be strictly on your guard, if you see Tom Trollope—or his wife [Fanny]—or both—to make no reference to me which either can piece into anything.” The strong-willed Fanny, “infinitely sharper than the Serpent’s Tooth,” was to be kept in the dark as long as possible.

  In August, the trusty Dolby was dispatched to America to confer with Fields, a Boston publisher, and to reconnoiter. Sending his readings manager for an impartial assessment was setting the fox to guard the chickens, for Dolby was eager for an American tour.

  One of Dolby’s assignments during his reconnaissance had nothing to do with the financial prospects for readings, but involved a more personal issue: Would it be possible for Ellen to accompany Dickens? After Dolby sailed for Boston on the Cunard steamer Java, Dickens wrote him: “Madame sends you her regard, and hopes to meet you when you come home.” (Does “Madame,” rather than the “Mademoiselle” more appropriate for a young unmarried woman, hint at Ellen’s wifely status?) “She is very anxious for your report, and is ready to commit herself to the Atlantic, under your care. To which I always add:—‘If I go, my dear; if I go.’” Should he make the tour, Ellen would cross the Atlantic and slip into America with Dolby, several weeks in advance of Dickens himself—or so went the initial plan.

  “If I go, my dear; if I go”—these come down to us as Dickens’s only surviving words to Ellen, written or spoken, and it is fitting that they should include the affectionate “my dear.” His cautionary note implies that she was eager to go; that he, rather, was the voice of restraint. She had not been to America. Shortly after their marriage, her parents had made an extended acting tour in America, and her eldest sister Fanny had been born in Philadelphia. Over the years, Ellen had perhaps been regaled with her mother’s American recollections.

  In September 1867, seven weeks after embarking on his American reconnaissance, Dolby returned to England, optimistic and eager. Dickens’s American friends, led by Fields, had easily won him over. Hearty and gregarious, Dolby had been warmly greeted as Dickens’s agent, but he was also an experienced promoter and brought back facts and figures. As he and Dickens did the calculations, the anticipated profit rose from the early guess of ten thousand pounds to a more precise estimate of fifteen thousand, five hundred pounds. It was more than Dickens could resist.

  After the objections of the forceful, peremptory Forster were overcome (for Dickens felt obliged to obtain the sage’s blessing), the great decision was announced. “I go!” he informed family and friends, and by way of the recently completed undersea cable he telegraphed Fields in Boston: “Yes. Go ahead.” He made plans to sail to Boston in early November. Fields had suggested he extend his tour for as long as three years; but Dickens had no such lengthy exile in mind. “I am sorry to say that his residence in that country [America] will be but limited as he must be home here in the month of May,” Dolby advised Fields. Dickens himself certainly did not want to be away longer than six months nor, it seems likely, did Ellen.

  The weeks before sailing were feverish with activity. To his friend Mrs. Dickinson he elaborated on how much he had to do:

  I have to fix my disturbed mind on the Xmas story I am doing with Wilkie [Collins], and to hammer it out bit by bit as if there were nothing else in the world; while the regulation of my personal affairs, the six months’ prospective management of a great periodical published every week [All the Year Round], the course to be taken in America, the apportionment of 100 nights of hard work—tug at my sleeve and pull at my pen, every minute in the day.… Add a correspondence which knows no cessation, and a public position fraught with appointments of all sorts and people of all kinds, and count my hours for a visit to a friend of mine (and a dear one) down in Berkshire!

  But while too busy to visit his dear friend Mrs. Dickinson in Berkshire, he found time for frequent visits to Ellen in Peckham. In the four weeks after his decision to go to America, he spent fourteen nights at Windsor Lodge.

  Unresolved was a great question, however—Ellen herself.

  Scanning The Times on the day he decided to go to America, Dickens would have run across this notice:

  CUNARD LINE. BRITISH and NORTH AMERICAN ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIPS, appointed by the Admiralty to sail between LIVERPOOL and NEW YORK and between LIVERPOOL and BOSTON, the Boston ships calling at Halifax to land and receive passengers and mails.…

  Passage money, including steward’s fee and provisions, but without wines or liquers:—To Halifax and Boston, chief cabin, £25; second cabin, £20. To New York, chief cabin £31; second cabin £23. Apply to J. B. Foord, 52, Old Broad-street, London.

  Perhaps it was at just this moment—Dickens was not one to procrastinate—that he took out his pocket diary and jotted a memorandum on a blank page:

  J. B. Foord

  52 Old Broad St. City.

  In reference to Lady’s State room 2 berths for’ard

  in front of machinery

  While Dolby was responsible for getting himself and Dickens to America, Dickens would make arrangements for Ellen—smuggling her into the States was not, after all, a business matter. For his own crossing, Dolby reserved a berth on the Cunard steamship China, sailing on October 12; for Dickens he reserved a cabin on another Cunarder, Cuba, sailing four weeks later. When and with whom Ellen might cross remained uncertain.

  After Dolby departed for Boston on his August reconnaissance, Dickens had written to assure him that “I don’t worry you about our American affairs, because all I have to say or write respecting them, I have said and written.” Dolby’s instructions had no doubt included guidance on whether and how to introduce the question of Ellen in his negotiations with Fields. In the event, Dolby apparently did not raise the issue; perhaps it seemed indiscreet or impolitic to introduce this difficult personal question into a business calculation, when as yet Dickens had made no decision even to go to America.

  Nonetheless, the eager Dickens was determined that if he went, Ellen would go too, and when he made the decision she became a foremost consideration. He and Dolby began to conspire, Dolby encouraging or at least humoring his chief on the possibility of getting her to America. But the initial plan of sending her ahead with Dolby was abandoned, and in October Dolby embarked on China for Boston, alone. Ellen’s American prospects remained uncertain.

  But Dickens, as he reminded Wills, did not give up easily. Soon after dispatching the telegram to Fields announcing his decision to go, he wrote a longer, fuller letter. Fields and his wife Annie had invited Dickens to stay with them in Boston; in reply Dickens cited his rule of abjuring private hospitality during his reading tours—he always stayed in hotels. This rule was a professional discipline, allowing him to
focus his attentions and energies on the readings; but looking ahead, he perhaps recognized another advantage of hotels. Should Ellen accompany him, hotels would allow them relative privacy, while he could not possibly take his mistress to a respectable private home like that of the Fieldses even for dinner, let alone as an overnight guest. Thanking Mrs. Fields for her letter of invitation, “like a pleasant voice coming from across the atlantic, with that domestic welcome in it which has no substitute on earth,” he politely declined.

  The matter of Ellen, indeed her very name, was too dangerous to entrust to the mails. He avoided writing of her in letters crossing London; far less would he take the risk in a letter crossing the Atlantic. Yankees were aggressive and many of them, certainly most journalists, coarse; an American newspaper catching wind of a female companion could cause great awkwardness. Dolby, preceding Dickens to Boston, was directed to investigate the Ellen question when he arrived, and Dickens wrote to warn Fields that “Dolby is charged with a certain delicate mission from me, which he will explain to you by word of mouth.” The charge was to solicit Fields’s views on whether Ellen might safely accompany Dickens, or whether the risk of scandal was too high. Though not yet a confidant, Fields was sufficiently well-informed to know of Dickens’s irregular circumstances. Did Fields suspect that Dolby’s mysterious mission might involve the young woman of whom he had heard?

  After consulting with Fields, Dolby was to send their joint verdict on the Ellen question. Meanwhile, Dickens began making hopeful arrangements for her to cross the Atlantic, perhaps with him on the Cunarder Cuba, sailing from Liverpool in early November. Dolby had reserved an officer’s cabin on the main deck for Dickens; in making his pocket diary note about a lady’s stateroom, Dickens may have hoped to book passage for her on the same sailing. In any case, soon after Dolby sailed for Boston in October, Dickens made a curious change to his accommodations on Cuba. For economy’s sake, he had planned to share his cabin with his servant Henry Scott. Now he wrote to Cunard’s London booking agent to alter this arrangement: Scott was removed from Dickens’s cabin and shuffled down to a second-class berth. Explaining the change to Dolby, Dickens cited a concern about Scott’s cleanliness, but his expectation or at least hope may have been that Ellen would take Scott’s place in his cabin; or that if she shared a stateroom with another woman, perhaps a maid, his own personal cabin would allow them some privacy together.

  But there were more complexities than even the questions of whether, when, and how Ellen might sail to America: for as soon as Dickens made the decision to cross the Atlantic, Ellen and her mother had made plans to travel in the opposite direction—to Florence, for a visit to Ellen’s sister Fanny at Villa Trollope. Fanny anticipated their arrival at the end of October. But Dickens was booked to sail from England on November 9, making it unclear whether he expected that Ellen might return from Florence in time to sail with him. Mrs. Ternan, “very far from well,” may have been traveling to Florence to spend the winter in a milder climate; and perhaps Ellen was going along simply to escort her ailing mother, planning to return to England as soon as Mrs. Ternan was safely deposited at Villa Trollope. Fanny told her stepdaughter that she expected Ellen and her mother to stay in Florence “for a time,” a vague phrasing suggesting that the plans were indeterminate or contingent.

  Contingent, perhaps, on word from Dolby, crossing the Atlantic. Arriving in Boston on October 23, he consulted with Fields on the “delicate mission” concerning Ellen, while back in England Dickens anxiously awaited their verdict. The 1867 pocket diary preserves his anxiety in a jotted memorandum, “Expect Telegram,” with a line drawn to the crucial date, October 26—two weeks before he himself was due to sail on Cuba.

  Fretting about Dolby’s momentous telegram, Dickens steeled himself for bad news. “It may be a relief to you when you get this [in Boston],” he wrote Dolby, “to know that I am quite prepared for your great Atlantic-cable-message being adverse.… I think it so likely that Fields may see shadows of danger which we in our hopeful encouragement of one another may have made light of,” he reflected grimly, “that I think the message far more likely to be No than Yes.” Only near the end of the letter, after unburdening himself on the paramount Ellen question, did he think to add a perfunctory wish that Dolby “may have had a reasonably fair passage” across the Atlantic.

  Dolby’s telegram arrived on schedule—on October 26, a Saturday. “Dolby telegraphs,” Dickens recorded laconically in the pocket diary, a noncommittal comment concealing a dramatic moment, when a messenger or servant had handed him the telegram he had been anticipating for weeks with a mixture of eagerness, dread, hope, and pessimism. Perhaps when the telegram was finally in his hands he hesitated to read it. But he was not one to put things off. Ellen was probably with him when he received it, for he spent the day with her at Windsor Lodge, Peckham, and later they went into London together. It was an important telegram for her, too.

  The message was No—or perhaps “Not now, maybe later.” Fields coolly judged that Dickens and Ellen should not arrive in America together. With all the welcoming hoopla, fêtes, and publicity attending his advent, it would be impossible to conceal a young woman traveling with him. Even before Cuba landed, every other passenger aboard would have noticed the great novelist’s attractive young companion; rumors would be afoot before the ship was moored to the quay. Fields may have left open the possibility of Ellen following on a later ship and slipping into Boston unnoticed, after the sensation of Dickens’s own arrival had slackened. Dickens at any rate seized on this consolatory notion. With Nelly at his side, the American tour would be almost a holiday; without her, wretchedness beyond expression, a dreary six months’ absence from “all that I hold dear.”

  On the evening of the dismal telegram’s arrival, he took her to his favorite London restaurant, Verrey’s on Regent Street, for dinner. The pocket diary generally records events impassively; but this dinner is a striking exception, the most emotionally charged of all its entries. Boxed in with bold double lines, perhaps a mourning border, he wrote:

  Dine Verrey N.

  It was the last time he would see his beloved Nelly for weeks—at the best, until she could follow him across the Atlantic; perhaps for much longer, until he returned to England in the spring. After the dinner and a melancholy parting, he took a train to Gad’s Hill. Guests were expected, and he dutifully resumed his role of country squire and genial host. Ellen meanwhile left with her mother and sister Maria to join Fanny in Italy. By November 9, when Dickens sailed on Cuba from Liverpool, all four Ternan women were together in Florence.

  There Ellen would wait for further word, for Dickens had by no means abandoned his hope of getting her to America. Pending his own arrival in the States, he had deferred to Fields’s judgment; once in Boston, he would judge for himself. No one could be more determined than Dickens: if it were possible to bring Ellen to America, he would do so.

  And he had a plan. As he crossed the Atlantic, landed in Boston, and assessed the situation, Ellen would remain with her mother and sisters at the picturesque Villa Trollope, enjoying the mellow Tuscan autumn—and awaiting a telegram from America announcing Dickens’s arrival.

  The telegram would be in cypher; perhaps he and Ellen had devised the code as they sat together at Verrey’s on their last evening together. The precise wording of the message was critical, and Dickens made a careful memorandum of it in his pocket diary:

  In any case. Tel:

  Tel: all well means

  You come

  Tel: safe and well means

  You don’t come

  The crucial telegram would be sent to Wills in London, who would forward the message to Ellen in Florence.

  Before leaving, Dickens had given Wills a letter of instruction on business and personal matters to attend to during his absence, such as the conduct of All the Year Round (which was to make no reference to America while Dickens was there), and arrangements for his youngest son, Plorn (who was to be taught sheep-far
ming preparatory to emigrating to Australia). A most important item in Wills’s agenda was:

  NELLY

  If she needs any help will come to you, or if she changes her address, you will immediately let me know if she changes. Until then it will be Villa Trollope, à Ricorboli, Firenze, Italy.

  Wills received explicit directions about the important telegram:

  On the day after my arrival out I will send you a short Telegram at the office. Please copy its exact words, (as they will have a special meaning for her), and post them to her as above by the very next post after receiving my telegram.

  Alongside the code itself, Dickens noted in a straggling, barely legible scrawl that “N” in Florence could expect to receive his message between the twenty-third and thirtieth of November.

  Should its wording be “all well,” she would return to England and sail to America—with whom, if anyone, is unclear. Wills was given no instructions about an Atlantic crossing; Forster, also to be informed of the telegraph’s wording, was presumably charged with arrangements for her sailing. The conspiracy was complete.

  Cuba landed in Boston on November 19. “Seven thousand of the philosophers of ‘the Hub,’ in breeches and in petticoats, awaited his arrival on the dock,” the New York Herald mocked, “but they lost the opportunity of welcoming him with the usual demonstrations of toadyism, inasmuch as he left the steamer on a tug, and directly he landed hastened to his hotel in School street.” Arriving at his hotel, the Parker House, Dickens was greeted by “a perfect ovation” from “all the notabilities of Boston,” Dolby reported, “besides the ordinary crowd to be found in a large American hotel in the evening. Through such a crowd as this, Mr. Dickens made his way … to his apartments.” This tumultuous reception might have been gratifying and promised well for the readings, but it did not augur well for any privacy with Ellen. As he ate supper in his hotel sitting-room that first evening, the waiters left the door partially open so “that promenaders in the corridor of the hotel might take a peep at him, through the crack between the door and the doorpost, whilst he was sitting at table.” No wonder he was “very depressed in spirits” (Dolby recalled), as he became aware that prying eyes would be fastened on him for the next five months. His celebrity was double-edged.