Mrs Skewton: Dombey and Son, 1846–48
Major Bagstock and Mr Dombey beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her carriage by a kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by some unseen power in the rear. Although the lady was not young, she was very blooming in the face – quite rosy – and her dress and attitude were perfectly juvenile.
‘Major Bagstock,’ drawled the lady in the chair. ‘You false creature! Where do you come from? I can’t bear you. You perfidious goblin, how long have you been here, bad man? And can you be a day, or even a minute in the garden of what’s-its-name – I never can remember those frightful names – without having your whole Soul and Being inspired by the sight of Nature?
‘Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature I trust. I assure you Mr Dombey, Nature intended me for an Aracadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.
Mrs Skewton – Phiz
‘What I want is heart. What I want, is frankness, confidence, less conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully artificial.’
We were indeed.
Later in the novel, Dickens punishes Mrs Skewton.
Flowers, the Maid, appeared with a pale face to Edith Dombey, saying: ‘If you please, Ma’am, I beg your pardon, but can’t do nothing with Missis! She’s making faces.’
Edith hurried with her to her mother’s room.
Cleopatra was arrayed in full dress, with the diamonds, short-sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and other juvenility all complete, but Paralysis was not to be deceived, had known her for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where she lay like a horrible doll that had tumbled down.
One of the most terrifying fates which could befall a respectable Victorian woman was to remain unmarried – to be a spinster. Dickens certainly thought so; his description of Rosa Dartle: ‘I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated – like a house – with having been so long to let…’
And Miss Knag, who ‘still aimed at youth, though she had shot beyond it years ago’.
And Miss Lucretia Tox: ‘a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen drapers call “fast colours” originally, and to have little by little washed out’.
Miss Tox had great experience in Hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generally a work of time as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements.
‘Have the goodness, if you please Towlinson,’ said Miss Tox, ‘first of all to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Towlinson.
‘I’ll trouble you also, if you please Towlinson,’ said Miss Tox, ‘with this card and this shilling. He’s to drive to the card and is to understand that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.’
‘No, miss,’ said Towlinson.
‘And – I am sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,’ said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively.
‘Not at all, Miss,’ said Towlinson.
‘Mention to the man, then, if you please Towlinson,’ said Miss Tox, ‘that the Lady’s uncle is a magistrate and that if he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if you please Towlinson, in a friendly way and because you know it was done to another man, who died.’
As you probably know, Dickens’ works were first published in serial form, in monthly instalments, and in one episode of David Copperfield, he introduced an extraordinary character.
Her name is Miss Mowcher and she’s a dwarf manicurist and hairdresser. She’s based on a real, diminutive chiropodist called Mrs Seymour-Hill, whom Dickens had met when she’d attended his wife, Catherine.
Miss Mowcher: David Copperfield, 1849–50
I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, and a pair of roguish grey eyes.
Miss Mowcher – Sol Eytinge, 1867
‘What! My flower! You’re there are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you do so far away from home? Up to mischief I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another ain’t I? Ha, ha, ha!
‘You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere.
‘I’m here and there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers – and talking of ladies – what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!
‘Oh my stars and what’s-their-names! I’m of too full a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of water.
‘If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a fine woman, wouldn’t you?
‘Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Copperfield, I’m sure. Face like a peach! Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches.
‘What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!
‘Look here! Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails. I keep his nails in order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes. The Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort, than all my talents put together.
‘I always carry ’em about. They’re the best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be alright. I give ’em away to the young ladies. They put ’em in albums, I believe.
‘Well, well! this is not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and have it over.
‘If either of you saw my ankles say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself. Well then, I’ll consent to live. Now ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs Bond and be killed.
‘If Mr Copperfield will take the chair I’ll operate on him. And dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I volatile, Mr Copperfield?
‘Now, I know I’m going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr Copperfield! Take care of yourself, Jockey of Norfolk!
‘“Bob swore!” – as the Englishman said for “Good night”, when he first learned French, and thought it so like English. “Bob swore”, my ducks! Ain’t I volatile?’
When the original Miss Mowcher (Mrs Seymour-Hill) read that episode of David Copperfield she was mortified. She wrote angrily to Dickens: ‘all know you have drawn my portrait – I admit it but the vulgar slang of language I deny.’
Dickens had not meant to hurt her and for once his compassion overcame his genius. He wrote to her lawyer apologising and offered ‘to alter the whole design of the character’. He did – and the next time Miss Mowcher appears in the novel, she’s a completely different character – utterly saintly and very boring – so I shan’t do her!
A woman’s portrait – startling in its modernity – is the lesbian, Miss Wade, from Little Dorrit – making no apologies for anything.
Miss Wade: The History of a Self-Tormentor, Little Dorrit, 1855–57
‘I have the misfortune of not being a fool. From a very early age I have detected what those about me thought they hid from me. My childhood was passed with a grandmother; that is to say, with a lady who represented that relative to me, and who took that title on herself; she had no claim to it.
‘She had some children of her own family in the house, and some children of other people. All girls; ten in number including me. We all lived together and were educated together. I must have been about twelve years old when I began to see ho
w determinedly those girls patronised me.
Miss Wade – Sol Eytinge, 1867
‘One of them was my chosen friend. I loved that stupid mite in a passionate way that she could no more deserve than I can remember without feeling ashamed of, though I was but a child.
‘She had what they called an amiable temper, an affectionate temper. She could distribute, and did distribute, pretty looks and smiles to every one among them. I believe there was not a soul in the place, except myself, who knew that she did it purposely to wound and gall me! Nevertheless, I so loved that unworthy girl that my life was made stormy by my fondness for her. I loved her faithfully; and one time I went home with her for the holidays.
‘She was worse at home than she had been at school. She had a crowd of cousins and acquaintances, and we had dances at her house, and went out to dances at other houses, and both at home and out, she tormented my love beyond endurance.
‘Her plan was to make them fond of her – and so drive me wild with jealousy.
‘When we were left alone in our bedroom at night I would reproach her with my perfect knowledge of her baseness; and then she would cry and cry and say I was cruel, and then I would hold her in my arms ’til morning: loving her as much as ever, and often feeling as if, rather than suffer so, I could so hold her in my arms and plunge to the bottom of a river – where I would still hold her after we both were dead.’
You see, he is such an extraordinary writer: he can create a woman like that with such power and truth and understanding I think, and yet, at the same time be such a male chauvinist that if he hadn’t made us laugh so much when we were researching this, he’d have made us very angry.
This, for example, is his perfect wife – Mrs Chirrup from Sketches for Young Couples.
[Music.]
Mrs Chirrup, Sketches for Young Couples, 1840
Mrs Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest little smile, and the tidiest little curls, and the brightest little eyes, and the quietest little manner, and is, in short, altogether one of the most engaging of all little women, dead or alive.
She is a condensation of all the domestic virtues – a pocket edition of the Young Man’s Best Companion – a little woman at a very high pressure, with an amazing quantity of goodness and usefulness in an exceedingly small space.
But if there be one branch of house-keeping in which she excels… it is in the important one – of carving!
Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and the most extraordinary thing about the marriage was its ending.
A friend of theirs, Henry Morley, described her:
Dickens has evidently made a comfortable choice. Mrs Dickens is stout, with a round, very round, rather pretty, very pleasant face, and ringlets on either side of it. One sees in five minutes that she loves her husband and her children and has a warm heart for anyone who won’t be satirical, but meet her on her own good-natured footing.
Anyone who won’t be satirical!
Well, the years went by, and the children kept coming – twelve births in sixteen years. Catherine grew older and stouter and clumsier. Dickens wrote in 1842, ‘Catherine is as near being a donkey as one of her sex can be.’
And Harriet Martineau, a noted feminist of the time, who came to stay with them, wrote: ‘Dickens has terrified and depressed her into a dull condition and she never was very clever.’
Now one of Dickens’ abiding enthusiasms was the theatre. If he hadn’t had a cold on the morning of his audition at Drury Lane Theatre, he would have become a professional actor and throughout his life he adored putting on plays and acting in them.
In 1856 he produced, directed, and starred in a melodrama called The Frozen Deep, written by his friend, Wilkie Collins. His two daughters played the female leads. But the following year when the production was re-staged in Manchester, he decided to use professional actresses instead.
He was introduced to and engaged two sisters – Maria Ternan, and her younger sister, Ellen.
Ellen was a young, slender, beautiful, little thing – Dickens fell madly in love with her. He was forty-five years old. She was… seventeen.
[Music.]
He bought Ellen a bracelet as a present. It was delivered by mistake to his wife, Catherine. One day their daughter, Kate, came into Mrs Dickens’ bedroom and found her mother tying on her bonnet, with the tears pouring down her face…
‘Your father insists that I call on Ellen Ternan.’
Kate said, ‘You shall not go’ – but she did.
You see, Dickens’ most passionate enduring relationship was with his public, and he was terrified of losing their affection.
He was determined to devise an acceptable separation. He suggested to Catherine that she should go and live in their country house – Gadshill – while he remained in London, and she should only come to London when he went to the country. Catherine refused.
Then he suggested she should live in France while he remained in England. Catherine refused.
Finally – and most bizarre of all – he suggested that Catherine should live in the upstairs rooms of their house in Tavistock Street, and only come downstairs when they were entertaining visitors.
He got rid of Catherine, but he kept on her sister, Georgina (Mary’s replacement), who’d come to live with them when she was fifteen and she never left. She stayed on in Dickens’ house, looking after him and her sister’s children till the day he died – in fact, he died in Georgina’s arms, and she is the principal beneficiary in his will.
I don’t think they were ever lovers, but he described her, just as he had described her sister, Mary, as ‘the best and truest friend man ever had’. Dickens had a strange affinity with his sisters-in-law.
Further to retain that precious affection of his public… Dickens published a letter on the front page of his own magazine Household Words, in The Morning Post, in The Times, and later in The New York Tribune, a letter to the public, in which he said that Catherine and he had ‘lived unhappily together for many years’, that she had been a bad mother and had lost the affections of her children and that she was of unsound mind. Catherine never responded to these calumnies.
He wanted to publish the letter also in Punch, the foremost comic magazine of the day, but the editor, his great friend Mark Lemon, refused because he didn’t think it was very funny. Dickens didn’t speak to him again for twelve years.
Finally a separation settlement was drawn up. Dickens gave Catherine £600 a year, her own house, Number 70, Gloucester Crescent, her own carriage, and one of her nine children – the eldest son, Charlie – chose to live with his mother. At the time that they left, her youngest child, Edward – known as ‘Plorn’ – was only six years old.
So the carriage bearing Catherine rolled away for her long stay in Gloucester Crescent. She lived there for twenty-two years. She never saw Dickens again. She only saw her two daughters when they would come for their music lessons to the house opposite.
Catherine would stand at the upstairs window, looking through the lace curtains, waiting for her daughters to turn and wave at her as they went inside. But they never did.
They were reconciled only after Charles Dickens’ death and Kate was with her mother when Catherine was dying: Catherine handed her daughter a bundle of letters tied up in blue ribbon – they were Dickens’ first letters to her. She said: ‘give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once’.
Catherine is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to her baby daughter Dora. The letters are in the British Museum. Ellen Ternan married a clergyman and lived on ’til 1914. By an extraordinary coincidence she is buried in Southsea, in the same graveyard as Dickens’ first love, Maria Beadnell – only Maria lies in an unmarked, pauper’s grave.
At the time of the separation, Dickens was writing Little Dorrit.
‘So, the Bride had mounted into her
hansom chariot… and after rolling for a few minutes smoothly over a fair pavement, had begun to jolt through a Slough of Despond, and through a long, long avenue of wrack and ruin.’
Other nuptial carriages are said to have gone the same road, before and since
[Music under – ‘Autumn Leaves’.]
Miss Havisham: Great Expectations, 1860–61
In an armchair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.
She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks – all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil, and bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white.
She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on; the other was on the table near her hand.
I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone.
‘Who is it?’
‘Pip, ma’am.’
‘Pip?’
‘Mr Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come to play.’
‘Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.’
When I stood before her avoiding her eyes I took note of the surrounding objects in detail. I saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
‘Look at me. You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born? Do you know what I touch here?’
Dickens' Women Page 5