Charles Dickens in Love

by Robert Garnett

  All that alacrity: Letters 10:100 (2 July 1862).

  very far from well: Letters 10:93 (13 June 1862).

  a very long: quoted in Collins, Interviews and Recollections 2:282.

  I have been so anxious: Letters 10:95 (20 June 1862).

  on my way to Paris: Letters 10:95 (20 June 1862).

  constantly disturbed: Letters 10:153 (4 Nov. 1862).

  supposed to be: Letters 10:148 (22 Oct. 1862).

  had a fancy: Forster, Life 2:245.

  I cannot go now: Letters 10:153 (4 Nov. 1862).

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

  I went … to hear Faust: Letters 10:205-6 (1 Feb. 1863).

  No! I want a treasure:

  Non! je veux un trésor

  Qui les contient tous; je veux la jeunesse!

  A moi les plaisirs,

  Les jeunes maîtresses!

  A moi leurs caresses!

  A moi leurs désirs!

  A moi l’énergie

  Des instincts puissants,

  Et la folle orgie

  Du coeur et des sens!

  (Gounod, Faust, 1.2)

  After Marguerite: Letters 10:215 (19 Feb. 1863).

  I read tonight: Letters 10:201 (29 January 1863).

  You have never: Letters 10:205 (1 Feb. 1863).

  We saw that the knocker: “The Four Sisters,” Journalism 1:19.

  go on a little: Letters 10:204 (1 Feb. 1863).

  I don’t want to pin: Letters 10:207 (1 Feb. 1863). During this ten-day holiday Dickens again kept himself almost incommunicado: “With the exception of letters to Georgina and Forster from Amiens on 12. Feb, no letters are recorded between 8 and 17 Feb” (Letters 10:201n.).

  for good: Letters 10:201 (29 Jan. 1863) and 10:207 (1 Feb. 1863).

  I do not come back: Letters 10:209 (4 Feb. 1863).

  for good: Letters 10:218 (26 Feb. 1863).

  on coming to town: Letters 10:224-25 (17 March 1863).

  a hasty summons: Letters 10:230 (9 April 1863).

  I have been away: Letters 10:235 (22 April 1863).

  None of his letters: On April 22, 1863, after returning from his fourth mysterious absence in a month, Dickens wrote a long letter to Wilkie Collins which makes no mention of any recent trips to France (or anywhere else). Had he actually traveled to France four times in the previous four weeks, his silence on the subject would be curious in a letter to his old traveling companion Collins (who was himself in southern France at the time).

  I am but in dull spirits: Letters 10:227 (31 March 1863).

  I have been absent: Letters 10:245 (16 May 1863). In fact, he had been in London for at least the two days preceding, and apart from his own assertion there is no evidence that he had been out of England in the week prior.

  I have not been anywhere: Letters 10:281 (9 Aug. 1863).

  a short holiday: Letters 10:315 (15 Nov. 1863).

  I am a dangerous man: Letters 7:545 (22 Feb. 1855).

  My being on the Dover line: Letters 10:445 (25 Oct. 1864).

  Charles Dickens was once: Byrne, Gossip of the Century 1:225.

  his profits: Patten, Charles Dickens and His Publishers, 251-2, 391-93.

  wavering between: Letters 10:153 (4 Nov. 1862).

  I have had ambassadors: Letters 10:269 (6 July 1863).

  I am always thinking: Letters 10:281 (9 Aug. 1863).

  Think what a great Frozen Deep: Letters 10:238 (22 April 1863).

  I am exceedingly anxious: Letters 10:300 (?12 Oct. 1863).

  hard at work: Letters 10.341 (15 Jan. 1864).

  She tried hard: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 3:6.

  I love you: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:15.

  with a bent head: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:11.

  The more you see of me: Letters 7:224 (5 Dec. 1853).

  an immoveable idea: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:11.

  Far better that I never did!: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:15.

  Do you suppose: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:6.

  I have had stern occasion: Letters 8:608 (22 July 1858).

  You could draw me: Our Mutual Friend, 2:15.

  a large dark man: “Travelling Abroad,” Journalism 4:88.

  The feet were lightly crossed: “Some Recollections of Mortality,” Journalism 4:224.

  one under-lying expression: Ibid., 4:223

  The air was black: “Down with the Tide,” Journalism 3:114-15.

  You will have read: Letters 8:598 (7 July 1858).

  untreated sewage: Philpotts, Companion to Little Dorrit, 64-65

  The rose and honeysuckle: Oliver Twist, ch. 32.

  Pharoah’s multitude: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:3.

  Everything so vaunted: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:14.

  The very fire: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:1.

  Whenever I am at Paris: “Travelling Abroad,” Journalism 4:88.

  To please myself: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:1.

  a dark girl: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:1.

  rich brown cheek: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:3.

  a deep rich piece: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 1:13.

  fell in a beautiful shower: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:11.

  loosened her friend’s dark hair: Ibid.

  pure of heart: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:2.

  upon my soul and honour: Letters 8:741 (25 May 1858) (Appendix F).

  there is no better girl: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 2:6.

  She knows he has failings: Our Mutual Friend, 2:11.

  Her heart—is given: Ibid.

  has made a change: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 3:9.

  So, in the rosy evening: Our Mutual Friend, ch. 4:6.

  so earnest a character: Ibid.

  you are in love: Hemingway, Farewell to Arms, ch. 35.

  He was making love: Annie Fields Diaries, Massachusetts Historical Society. In 1869 Dickens wrote an article, “On Mr Fechter’s Acting,” which echoes these spoken remarks (probably dating from about the same time). The article’s description of Fechter playing Armand, the lover in La Dame aux Camélias, suggests Dickens himself in love:

  There is a fervour in his love-making—a suffusion of his whole being with the rapture of his passion—that sheds a glory on its object, and raises her, before the eyes of the audience, into the light in which he sees her.… A woman who could be so loved—who could be so devotedly and romantically adored—had a hold upon the general sympathy with which nothing less absorbing and complete could have invested her. When I first saw this play and this actor, I could not in forming my lenient judgment of the heroine [a courtesan], forget that she had been the inspiration of a passion of which I had beheld such profound and affecting marks. I said to myself, as a child might have said: “A bad woman could not have been the object of that wonderful tenderness, could not have so subdued that worshipping heart, could not have drawn such tears from such a lover.” (“On Mr Fechter’s Acting,” Journalism 4:406)

  Dickens first saw Fechter on stage in 1859, two years after meeting Ellen, and his admiration for Fechter’s acting (“in the highest degree romantic”) may have been owing in part to a vicarious participation in Fechter’s stage passions.

  Chapter 8

  The older I get: Letters 12:268 (4 Jan. 1869).

  He is known: Dickens’s connection with Condette is explored in Carlton, “Dickens’s Forgotten Retreat in France.”

  a visiting Methodist minister: Carrow, “An Informal Call.”

  Billiards, croquet: Letters 11:47 (26 May 1865).

  Ellen Ternan came: Storey, draft TS, Dickens and Daughter, Storey papers, Dickens House Museum.

  A friend of Ellen’s: Helen Wickham, in conversation with Katherine Longley, Longley papers, Senate House Library. The daughter of a longtime friend of the Ternans, Helen Wickham became a sort of surrogate daughter of Ellen after Ellen’s marriage, and a “sister” to Ellen’s actual daughter, Gladys Robinson.

  You know how: Letters 10:455 (17 Nov. 1864).

  a little run: Letters 10:351 (
3 Feb. 1864).

  I expect to be: Letters 10:405 (17 June 1864).

  a ten or twelve days: Letters 10:408 (26 June 1864).

  I have been working: Letters 10:409 (26 June 1864).

  a pretty little town: “Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy,” Christmas Stories, 422.

  What would you say: “Mugby Junction,” Christmas Stories, 522-23.

  I will turn over: Letters 10:409 (26 June 1864).

  Every evening: “Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy,” Christmas Stories, 428.

  away for a week’s run: Letters 11:12 (28 Jan. 1865).

  The mysterious ‘arrangement’: Letters 11:13 (31 Jan. 1865).

  away for 6 days: Letters 11:25 (7 March 1865).

  a little uncertainty: Letters 11:33 (22 April 1865).

  There is nothing: Letters 11:36-37 (28 April 1865).

  I can throw anything: Letters 11:36 (27 April 1865).

  I have been away: Letters 11:41 (17 May 1865).

  Work and worry: Letters 11:48 (?End May 1865).

  The moment I got away: Letters 11:48 (?Early June 1865).

  The carriage was: Letters 11:54 (12 June 1865).

  I have a—: Letters 11:57 (13 June 1865).

  Two ladies: Ibid.

  the breaks were applied: Letter to the Editor, The Times (London), 12 June 1865, 5.

  A lady who was in the carriage: Letters 11:53 (12 June 1865).

  I took to London: Letters 11:60 (17 June 1865).

  other errands of business: Letters 11:60 (17 June 1865).

  on my cause of anxiety: Letters 11:62 (18 June 1865).

  Take Miss Ellen: Letters 11:65 (25 June 1865).

  Patient immensely better: Letters 11:70 (12 July 1865).

  Patient much better: Letters 11:83 (16 Aug. 1865).

  Patient much the same: Letters 11:86 (25 Aug.1865).

  Would you like to know: Fanny Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 16 Feb. 1866, Trollope Papers, Princeton.

  This is not at all: e.g. Letters 11:53 (12 June 1865) and 11:55 (13 June 1865).

  I write two or three notes: Letters 11:58 (13 June 1865).

  The noise: Letters 11:60 (17 June 1865).

  My escape: Letters 12:175 (26 Aug. 1868).

  the Railway travelling: Letters 12:232-33 (6 Dec. 1868).

  offensive and disgusting details: “Report of proceedings in Arches’ Court, Thursday, Jan. 20., Geils v. Geils,” The Times (London) 21 Jan. 1848, p. 6.

  I can hear no more: “Report of proceedings in Arches’ Court, Saturday, Jan. 22., Geils v. Geils,” The Times (London) 24 Jan. 1848, p. 6.

  that adventure with the Doctor: Letters 10:281 (9 Aug. 1863).

  the marriage: Letters 10:281 (9 Aug. 1863).

  old friends: Letters 10:399 (26 May 1864).

  Are you quite sure: Letters 9:288 (19 Aug. 1860).

  I can not read it: Letters 12:441-42 (23 Nov. 1869).

  black hair: Dixon, As I Knew Them, 29.

  she takes a resentful bounce: Letters 10:462 (11 Dec. 1864).

  I have not yet decided: Letters 11:166 (2 March 1866).

  Don’t come: Letters 11:310 (4 Feb. 1867).

  a half hour’s supper: Letters 11:325 (4 March 1867).

  Judge how much: Letters 11:386 (1 July 1865).

  his letter replying to Mrs. Dickinson: Letters 11:389 (4 July 1867).

  I don’t in the least care: As the widow of Thomas Ternan, Ellen’s mother was also “Mrs. T. T.” Thomas Ternan had died twenty years earlier, however, and his widow would by now more likely be addressed as Mrs. Frances Ternan. Dickens’s use of “Mrs. T. T.” seems to emphasize Fanny’s recent acquisition of those initials, and the final paragraph of his letter, with its sharp animus against her, makes it almost certain that “Mrs. T. T.” is Fanny herself and not her mother.

  How it came to pass: McAleer, Dearest Isa, 348-49.

  Browning admitted: To Isa Blagden’s explanation of Dickens’s connection with Fanny Trollope, Browning replied: “The relationship between Mrs T. [Fanny] and “Miss T.” [Ellen] never crossed my mind: I must have heard it—very likely from yourself—but it took no hold of me: had it done so,—I should have been very ‘green’ indeed, to give no better a guess at the solution of the riddle” (McAleer, Dearest Isa, 348-49). Fanny Trollope was paid the substantial sum of £500 for Mabel’s Progress.

  chastity of honour: Edmund Burke, characterizing the age of chivalry in Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

  I must travel: Bleak House, ch. 36.

  habit of suppression: Letters 7:543 (22 Feb. 1855).

  Stanfield died yest: This and all subsequent references to the 1867 pocket diary are drawn from the manuscript in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

  Felix Alymer: Aylmer explains his decoding of the abbreviations and train stations in Dickens Incognito, ch. 1.

  The rate collector: Upton-Cum-Chalvey Ratebooks. The various names listed as householder for the two cottages in Slough in 1866-67 are tabulated in Longley, A Pardoner’s Tale, Appendix A (Longley Papers, Senate House Library).

  although I date: Letters 11:348 (2 April 1867).

  a very trying week: Ibid.

  in the worst: Ibid.

  I cannot get down: Letters 11:364 (8 May 1867).

  Jane [Wheeler] first went: Gladys Robinson Reece to Felix Aylmer, Aylmer Papers, Dickens House Museum. In early 1866 the Ternans let out their house at 2 Houghton Place, and Mrs. Ternan and Fanny moved to 14 Lidlington Place, Harrington Square N. W., “only a stone’s throw from our old house” (Fanny Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 16 Feb. 1866, Trollope Papers, Princeton).

  a small black bag: Letters 11:357 (20 April 1867).

  When walking: Dolby, Dickens As I Knew Him, 58.

  a tiny ball of white fluffy fur: Mary Dickens, My Father as I Recall Him, 82.

  little interest in more abstruse topics: In 1860 an unidentified guest made detailed notes on two separate Gad’s Hill dinner-table conversations. Judging from these notes, Jerome Meckier, who first studied and printed them, concluded that “conversation at Gad’s Hill was lively, literary, political, and anecdotal, seldom if ever speculative, theoretical, or philosophical” (Meckier, “Some Household Words,” 19). What was true of the Gad’s Hill table talk probably applies to Dickens’s conversations with Ellen as well.

  I think I mentioned: Letters 11:323-24 (2 March 1867).

  Finlay’s wife: Letters 11:341 (22 March 1867).

  In the 1950s: Aylmer, Dickens Incognito, ch. 3.

  For many years: Wright, Autobiography, 239-40.

  Down the south side: Ibid., 243.

  enormous: Letters 11:366 (10 May 1867).

  knew all about the tradition: Wright, Autobiography, 242.

  A book of verses: Edward FitzGerald, “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”

  with the view: Letters 11:406 (2 August 1867).

  I employed a job-master: Wright, Autobiography, 241.

  Chapter 9

  my wife’s income: Letters 11:377 (6 June 1867).

  The greatest pressure: Dolby, Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, 88-89.

  has my instructions: Letters 12:6 (10 Jan. 1868). Dickens made a £1000 bequest to Ellen in the second sentence of his will. If he had been making annual £1000 contributions to an endowment for her, this legacy would have represented, apart from its symbolic value, a final, valedictory installment.

  I really do not know: Letters 11:194 (2 May 1867).

  I begin to feel myself drawn: Letters 11:366 (10 May 1867).

  very miserable prospect: Letters 11:439n.

  The prize looks: Letters 11:372 (?20-25 May 1867).

  it would take years: Letters 11:375 (6 June 1867).

  I am really endeavouring: Letters 11:374 (3 June 1867).

  The Patient, I acknowledge: Letters 11:377 (6 June 1867).

  I should be wretched: Letters 11:374 (?End May 1867).

  you know I don’t like: Letters 11:377 (6 June 1867).

  cleared off one obstacle: Letters
11:382 (18 June 1867).

  If I decide to go: Letters 11:389 (4 July 1867). As Dickens feared, Mrs. Dickinson saw Thomas and Fanny Trollope later that summer when they visited her Berkshire estate in August.

  Madame sends you: Letters 11:410 (9 Aug. 1867).

  I go!: Letters 11:441 (30 Sep. 1867).

  Yes. Go ahead: Letters 11:441 (30 Sep. 1867).

  I am sorry: Meckier, “Two New Letters,” 180.

  I have to fix: Letters 11:425 (12 Sep. 1867).

  CUNARD LINE: The Times, 30 Sep. 1867, 2.

  jotted a memorandum: 1867 Pocket Diary, Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

  I don’t worry you: Letters 11:410 (9 Aug. 1867).

  like a pleasant voice: Letters 11:444 (3 Oct. 1867).

  Dolby is charged: Letters 11:444 (3 Oct. 1867).

  Now he wrote to Cunard’s: Letters 11:455 (16 Oct. 1867).

  very far from well: Frances Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 20 Oct. 1867, Trollope Papers, Princeton.

  for a time: Frances Ternan Trollope to Beatrice Trollope, 8 Oct. 1867, Trollope Papers, Princeton.

  It may be a relief: Letters 11:455-56 (16 Oct. 1867).

  all that I hold dear: Letters 11:425 (12 Sep. 1867).

  a letter of instruction: Letters 11:475 (Early Nov. 1867).

  Seven thousand: New York Herald, 21 Nov. 1867, 6.

  a perfect ovation: Dolby, Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, 155-59.

  discuss arrangements: Letters 11:481 (21 Nov. 1867).

  Dolby! Your infernal caution: Dolby, Charles Dickens as I Knew Him, 388.

  bubbled over with fun: Annie Fields Diaries, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  a more central position: Letters 11:496 (1 and 3 Dec. 1867).

  Your respected parent: Ibid.

  Tremendous success: Letters 11:503 (4 Dec. 1867).