Charles Dickens in Love

by Robert Garnett

  In a utilitarian age: “Frauds on the Fairies,” Journalism 3:168.

  As the shining stars: Hard Times, ch. 1:13.

  so dark-eyed: Hard Times, ch. 1:2.

  Lover for Sissy?: Stone, Working Notes, 257. In the novel’s final chapter, a single phrase, “happy Sissy’s happy children,” implies that she eventually marries.

  Carry on Sissy: Stone, Working Notes, 255.

  The child-like ingenuousness: Hard Times, ch. 3:2.

  struggling through: Hard Times, ch. 1:3.

  she sat so long: Hard Times, ch. 1:15.

  like the faintness of death: Bleak House, ch. 1:2.

  As I was reading: Letters 7:532 (10 Feb. 1855).

  toothless, fat, old, and ugly: Letters 7:544 (22 Feb. 1855).

  I have always believed: Letters 7:538-39 (15 Feb. 1855).

  my head really stings: Letters 8:40 (30 Jan. 1856).

  It was the shadow: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:24.

  impelled by love: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:7.

  with infinite tenderness: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:9.

  The least, the quietest: Ibid.

  paid three francs: Letters 8:96 (22 April 1856). It seems unlikely that he would encounter the woman as he haphazardly strolled the streets of Paris; a better course would likely have been to revisit the “ball” on another evening. But the prowl itself was perhaps much of the attraction.

  However strange it is: Letters 8:89 (13 April 1856).

  I find Mrs. Dickens: Letters 8:87 (13 April 1856).

  Last Friday: Letters 8:95 (22 April 1856).

  I have visions: Letters 7:428 (?29 Sep. 1854).

  the top of the Great St. Bernard: Letters 8:33 (20 Jan. 1856).

  An unsettled feeling: Forster, Life 2:193.

  I don’t know: Letters 7:428-29 (?29 Sep. 1854).

  a grave dark man: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:2. Speaking to Amy Dorrit, said to be twenty-two at novel’s opening, Clennam asks rhetorically: “Why do I show you, my child, the space of years that there is between us, and recall to you that I have passed, by the amount of your whole life, the time that is present to you?” (ch. 1:32). The arithmetic of this convoluted question would make Clennam about forty-six, as Little Dorrit would now be twenty-three. But perhaps Clennam exaggerates his own age or mistakes that of the youthful-looking Amy—or perhaps Dickens himself had forgotten.

  I counted up: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:32.

  walked on the river’s brink: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:28.

  a fair girl: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:2.

  We were all of us: “The Wreck of the Golden Mary,” Christmas Stories, 154.

  She came towards him: Little Dorrit, ch. 2:29.

  But pray, pray, pray: Ibid.

  To believe that all: Ibid.

  with all my thoughts: “Dickens’s Diary,” Letters 1:629 (Appendix A).

  a very near and dear friend: “The Holly-Tree,” Christmas Stories, 106-7. Dickens’s regular dreams of Mary Hogarth had ended about seventeen years earlier, after he wrote of them to his wife in February 1838.

  the very last words: Letters 1:259 (17 May 1837).

  a single man: “The Wreck of the Golden Mary,” Christmas Stories, 134.

  her hands—though she was dead: “The Wreck of the Golden Mary,” Christmas Stories, 155.

  Chapter 6

  When the Play: Berger, Reminiscences, 22.

  reported great additional risk: Letters 8:230 (3 Dec. 1856).

  and half the Bench Letters 8:230 (3 Dec. 1856).

  Judges enow to hang us all: quoted in Slater, Douglas Jerrold, 265.

  It has been the talk: Letters 8:265 (19 Jan. 1857).

  Our audiences: Letters 8:262 (14 Jan. 1857).

  As to the play itself: Letters 8:256 (9 Jan. 1857).

  in the depressed agonies: Letters 8:262 (16 Jan. 1857).

  a mere chaos: Letters 8:265 (19 Jan. 1857).

  The Queen and her party: Georgina Hogarth to Maria Beadnell Winter, 21 July 1857, Dickens Family Correspondence, Huntington Library.

  Why are you here: The Frozen Deep, act 3, in Brannan, Under the Management, 157.

  He’s footsore: Ibid., 158.

  Nearer, Clara: Ibid., 160.

  first-rate tragedy man: Nicholas Nickleby, ch. 48.

  Most awful: The Leader, 10 January 1857, quoted in Berger, Reminiscences, 27-28.

  no mere actor: quoted in Brannan, Under the Management, 81.

  all last summer: Letters 8:488 (7 Dec. 1857).

  I keep her face: quoted in Brannan, Under the Management, 81.

  It cannot be done: Letters 8:358 (23 June 1857).

  in effect but a great Drawing Room: Letters 8:388 (25 July 1857).

  sheer profit: Letters 8:401 (3 Aug. 1857).

  out of the question: Letters 8:397 (2 Aug. 1857).

  The Free Trade Hall: Letters 8:401 (3 Aug. 1857).

  he was all business: Herman Merivale, in Kitton, Supplement to Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil, 30.

  I see you: The Frozen Deep, act 1, in Brannan, Under the Management, 116.

  Kiss me, sister: The Frozen Deep, act 3, in Brannan, Under the Management, 160.

  She came to see: Letters 8:432 (5 Sep. 1857).

  how much impressed: Letters 8:432-33 (5 Sep. 1857).

  in his own eyes: Little Dorrit, ch. 1:28.

  The restlessness: Letters 8:423 (29 Aug. 1857).

  I want to escape: Ibid.

  Dickens surpassed himself: Collins, The Frozen Deep and Other Stories 1:5.

  Partly in the grim despair: Letters 8:423 (29 Aug. 1857).

  to out-of-the way places: Letters 8:425 (?1 Sep. 1857).

  odd corners of England: Letters 8:426 (2 Sep. 1857).

  we have not the least idea: Letters 8:427 (2 Sep. 1857).

  Poor Catherine and I: Letters 8:430 (?3 Sep. 1857).

  there is no sign: Letters 8:430n.

  a gloomy old mountain: Letters 8:439 (9 Sep. 1857).

  I don’t believe: Letters 8:442 (9 Sep. 1857).

  horse jockeys, bettors: Letters 8:447 (15 Sep. 1857).

  can’t walk out: Letters 8:448 (17 Sep. 1857).

  I was at the Theatre: Letters 8:472 (23 Oct. 1857).

  A walk in the wrong direction: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:469.

  We will be with you: Letters 12:679 (16 Sep. 1857).

  We breakfast: Letters 8:448 (15 Sep. 1857).

  But Lord bless you: Letters 8:449 (17 Sep. 1857).

  I am going to take: Letters 8:450 (20 Sep. 1857).

  not certain: Letters 8:429 (3 Sep. 1857).

  I think I shall leave: Letters 8:450-51 (20 Sep. 1857).

  To me you are an absolutely: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:448.

  He is suspected: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:471.

  Why may not: Ibid.

  curly light hair: “The Haunted House,” Christmas Stories, 246.

  a young lady: Tale of Two Cities, ch. 1:4.

  They have each: Frances Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 16 Feb. 1866, Trollope Papers, Princeton.

  Ellen is a first-rate horsewoman: Frances Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 28 June 1870, Trollope Papers, Princeton.

  a most odious tendency: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:472.

  grim … a bit of Diablerie: Letters 8:458 (4 Oct. 1857).

  “The Bride’s Chamber”: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:453-60.

  The dream of felicity: Stone, Night Side, 323.

  Who could blame her: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 94.

  Although there are nice people: Ibid., 133.

  the Doncaster unhappiness: Letters 8:536 (21 March 1858).

  Arab drums: “A Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,” Journalism 3:471.

  The House of Commons: Letters 8:292 (1 March 1857).

  As you refer: Letters 8:386 (23 July 1857).

  I am a man: Letters 8:717 (9 Dec. 1858).

&nbs
p; I have now no relief: Letters 8:464 (?Early Oct. 1857).

  my celebrated feat: Letters 8:489 (7 Dec. 1857).

  I have never known: Letters 8:536 (21 March 1858).

  I wish I were: Letters 8:459 (4 Oct. 1857).

  Believing that I hold: “The Perils of Certain English Prisoners,” Christmas Stories, 179.

  I wish I had been born: Letters 8:488 (7 Dec. 1857).

  make a prodigious noise: Letters 8:482 (24 Nov. 1857).

  for days and days: Letters 8:507 (23 Jan. 1858).

  I need hardly tell you: Letters 8:465-66 (13 Oct. 1857).

  told me that Dickens’s god-daughter: Whiffen, Keeping Off the Shelf, 53-54.

  all sorts of horrible stories: Thackeray to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth, May 1858, in Thackeray, Letters and Private Papers 4:86.

  some row about an actress: Ibid.

  Papa says: Ritchie, Journals and Letters, 58.

  I worked hard to prevent it: Georgina Hogarth to Maria Beadnell Winter, 31 May 1858, Dickens Family Correspondence, Huntington Library.

  I have been exquisitely distressed: Letters 8:656 (10 Sep. 1858).

  My father was: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 94.

  If you could know: Letters 8:581 (8 June 1858).

  I have been heavily wounded: Letters 8:597 (7 July 1858).

  To Mrs. Dickens: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 96.

  unwholesome: Letters 8:687 (25 Oct. 1858).

  Only last night: Letters 8:531 (15 March 1858).

  in the best of humours: The outing to Hampton Court is described in “Please to Leave Your Umbrella,” Journalism 3:484-88.

  I have a bad cold: Letters 8:684 (22 Oct. 1858).

  if there is not a large let: Letters 8:684 (22 Oct. 1858).

  My suspicion is: Letters 8:687 (25 Oct. 1858). Other quoted passages from Dickens’s account of this incident are from the same letter.

  Upon my soul: “The ‘Violated’ Letter,” Letters 8:740 (Appendix F) (25 May 1858).

  the fatigue: Letters 8:677 (10 Oct. 1858).

  I have been: Letters 8:718 (13 Dec. 1858).

  My bachelor state: Letters 9:84 (25 June 1859).

  I don’t think: Letters 9:87 (30 June 1859).

  I am very little better: Letters 9:99 (29 July 1859).

  20 miles: Letters 9:106 (16 Aug. 1859).

  I am not quite well: Letters 9:111 (25 Aug. 1859).

  Unfortunately I am in the Doctor’s hands: Letters 9:189 (1 Jan. 1860).

  I pass my time: Letters 9:354 (28 Dec. 1860).

  Now understand: Letters 9:356 (28 Dec. 1860).

  spent their money: Great Expectations, ch. 34.

  Your letter gives me: Letters 8:623 (11 Aug. 1858).

  essays of topical: Rosenberg, “Launching Great Expectations,” in Great Expectations (Norton Critical Edition), 392.

  I have so far verified: “Preface,” Tale of Two Cities.

  it gives me great pleasure: Letters 9:89 (7 July 1859).

  Will you send round: Letters 9:87 (30 June 1859).

  a curious letter to Wills: Letters 9:10-11 (14 Jan. 1859).

  such a step: Letters 9:lln.

  I will no longer doubt: Letters 9:10-11 (14 Jan. 1859).

  In February: Letters 9:29 (17 Feb. 1859).

  my clear profit: Letters 8:689 (27 Oct. 1858).

  three of its four floors: In addition to four floors of family rooms, 2 Houghton Place had a basement kitchen and a garret.

  took the Ellen Ternan affair: Collins, “W. C. Macready and Dickens,” 52-3

  I cannot help: Letters 9:92 (9 July 1859).

  Driven into a corner: Letters 9:106 (16 Aug. 1859).

  I should be one: Letters 9:91-92 (9 July 1859).

  Dickens talked very much: Annie Fields journals, 6 May 1860, Annie Fields Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  5 very good rooms: Letters 9:289 (19 Aug. 1860).

  a sitting-room: [Hogarth & Dickens], Letters of Charles Dickens, 490.

  I purpose living: Letters 9:289 (19 Aug. 1860).

  as comfortable, cheerful: Letters 9:315 (23 Sep. 1860).

  I think I shall run: Letters 9:292 (21 Aug. 1860).

  By one account: Wright, Life, 280, citing Canon Benham, a friend of Ellen Ternan after Dickens’s death and her marriage.

  knew the Ternan family very well: DeTernant, “Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan,” 87-88. With respect to his testimony on a different matter DeTernant has been called “a compulsive liar” (Patrick Spedding, “The Many Mrs. Greys: Confusion and Lies about Elizabeth Caroline Grey, Catherine Maria Grey, Maria Georgina Grey, and Others,” Publication of the Bibliographic Society of America 104 (2010), 327).

  Your first request: Letters 9:415 (15 May 1861).

  small fair-haired: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 93-94.

  a very great advance: Letters 9:194 (7 Jan. 1860).

  The exquisite truth: Letters 8:506 (18 Jan. 1858).

  It is inexpressibly delightful: Letters 9:229 (30 March 1860).

  Or would you like: Letters 9:318 (25 Sep. 1860).

  heavily cancelled: Letters 9:318n.

  I well recollect: Panton, Leaves from a Life, 143.

  On one occasion: Storey, draft TS, Dickens and Daughter, Storey Papers, Dickens House Museum.

  You will find the hero: Letters 9:325 (Early Oct. 1860).

  I am afraid: Letters 9:15-16 (?25 Jan. 1859).

  In a provocative essay: Greene, “The Young Dickens.”

  the ghost of my own childhood: “The Haunted House, Christmas Stories, 252.

  She would make: Letters 9:247 (3 May 1860).

  although she respected: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 105.

  I do not doubt: Letters 9:246 (3 May 1860).

  went off with the greatest success: Letters 9:273 (19 July 1860).

  After the last: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 106.

  never … a husband: Storey, draft TS, Dickens and Daughter, Storey Papers, Dickens House Museum.

  Yesterday I burnt: Letters 9:304 (4 Sep. 1860).

  Would to God: Storey, Dickens and Daughter, 107.

  You will get me: Great Expectations, ch. 44.

  For now, the very breath: Great Expectations, ch. 35.

  the least unkindness: Letters 8:665 (18 Sep. 1858).

  The unqualified truth: Great Expectations, ch. 29.

  I could never: Great Expectations, ch. 39.

  you will not have to complain: Letters 9:325 (Early Oct. 1860).

  In her face: The original (canceled) ending of Great Expectations is printed as an appendix in most modern editions (for example the Norton Critical Edition, with Edgar Rosenberger’s comprehensive discussion of the endings, “Putting an End to Great Expectations,” 491-527).

  Chapter 7

  The rippling of the river: Our Mutual Friend, ch 4:6.

  I went one evening: Loy and Loy, Emma Darwin: A Victorian Life, 185.

  In early April: Stokes, “Charles Dickens: A Customer of Coutts & Co.,” 28.

  some affection of the heart: Letters 10:95 (20 June 1862).

  a week’s wandering: Letters 10:102 (3 July 1862).

  some years since: Letters 10:103 (7-8 July 1862).

  on a little Tour: Letters 10:104 (7 July 1862).

  his sister Letitia: Letters 10:105 (8 July 1862).

  obliged to go away: Letters 10:108 (20 July 1862).

  Coming home here: Letters 10:122 (1 Sep. 1862).

  I shall be away: Letters 10:124 (9 Sep. 1862).

  my French wanderings: Letters 10:160 (11 Nov. 1862).

  “The Calais Night Mail”: Journalism 4:211-18.

  The new cause of anxiety: Letters 10:99-100 (2 July 1862).

  much better: Letters 10:120 (23 Aug. 1862).

  go over the water: Letters 10:139 (12 Oct. 1862).

  leisure for adventure: Letters 10:147 (17 Oct. 1862).

  She was intensely emotional: Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan: Life-Story, Letters, and Reminiscences, 51-52.

  course of restaurants: Leh
mann, Memories, 4.

  a wonderful dinner: Ibid., 78.

  Another friend, Arthur Sullivan: Sullivan’s reminiscences of Dickens in Paris are printed in Lawrence, Sir Arthur Sullivan, 51-52.

  At the end of October: [Hogarth & Dickens], Letters of Charles Dickens, 538-39.

  sundry ties and troubles: Letters 10:154 (4 Nov. 1862).

  There, I remain: Letters 10:173 (7 Dec. 1862).

  to see a sick friend: Letters 10:191 (6 Jan. 1863).

  I have been sorely worried: Letters 10:88 (31 May 1862).

  I have some rather miserable anxieties: Letters 10:129 (20 Sep. 1862).

  There is no period: Letters 10:xii.

  I really have had: Letters 10:196 (18 Jan. 1863).

  I had been meaning: Letters 10:198 (20 Jan. 1863).

  An odd birthday: Letters 10:212 (7 Feb. 1863).

  at short notice: Letters 10:105 (16 July 1862).

  I should like: Letters 10:124 (9 Sep. 1862).

  I have some engagements: Letters 10:173 (7 Dec. 1862).

  There is no likelihood: Letters 10:178 (20 Dec. 1862).

  Mr. Dickens is in Paris: Georgina Hogarth to an unidentified recipient, 14 Jan. 1863, Pierpont Morgan.

  I shall be at this address: Letters 10:201 (29 Jan. 1863).

  Who knows but that: Letters 10:187 (1 Jan 1863).

  serious enough: Letters 10:198 (20 Jan. 1863).

  visiting in the country: Letters 10:201 (29 Jan. 1863).

  I have to dine out: Letters 10:204 (1 Feb. 1863).

  having avoided: Letters 10:204n.

  it is plainly a case: Letters 10:109 (20 July 1862).

  wonderfully better: Letters 10:157 (7 Nov. 1862).

  all but quite well now: Letters 10:233 (13 April 1863).

  submitted to his advances: Adrian, Georgina Hogarth and Her Circle, 80. For the assertion that Ellen Ternan responded coolly to Dickens, Adrian cites Thomas Wright’s 1935 Life. Wright had gathered most of his information about Ellen from an Anglican clergyman, William Benham, who had met her after Dickens’s death. Somewhat as Great Expectations’ Pip ends his memoir by returning to the subject of Estella, Wright ended his biography of Dickens by returning to Ellen: “Miss E. L. Ternan continued, after Dickens’s death, to brood over her connection with him. At last she disburdened her mind to Canon Benham. She told him the whole story and declared that she loathed the very thought of this intimacy” (Life, 356). In his memoirs, Wright elaborated: Benham (“Canon Benham,” as an Honorary Canon of Canterbury), “seated in his study in Finsbury Square [in 1897 or ‘98], told me the whole story of Dickens’s liaison with Miss Ternan. ‘I had it,’ said Canon Benham, ‘from her own lips, and she declared that she loathed the very thought of their intimacy’” (Autobiography, 67). The Ternan-Benham-Wright connection proved fateful in exposing Dickens’s secret, but some of the details may be suspect. Benham’s conversation with Ellen occurred some twenty years before Benham repeated it to the eccentric antiquarian and pedant Wright, who in turn waited more than thirty-five years to publish it (soon after the last of Dickens’s children had died). Whatever Ellen told Benham of her affair with Dickens, moreover, was likely to have been colored by her situation at the time; she was by then Mrs. George Wharton Robinson, respectable wife of a clergyman schoolmaster and mother of two children.