by Fred Kaplan
In early May Dickens had begun action to “put a wider space” between himself and Catherine “than can be found in one house.” Whether any specific event precipitated what was to be an unshakable resolution is unclear. Perhaps the misdelivered-necklace incident occurred now. Perhaps he had attempted to force her to pay a social call on Ellen, as his daughter years later claimed. Perhaps Mrs. Hogarth put heavy pressure on him to redress her daughter’s grievances, with the threat of publicity or even legal action. Perhaps the immediate success of the readings raised his spirits and determination to free himself from what seemed interminable conflict. Perhaps Catherine again expressed her preference for being discarded rather than humiliated. Her aunt claimed that “the affair was brought to a compromise, to avoid a public court, that she should agree to a separate maintenance, after various absurd proposals he made, of her going abroad to live alone, or keeping her to her own apartment in his house in daily life, at the same time to appear at his parties, still as mistress of the house … and to visit their friends in turns with him, and at another time proposing that when he and his family lived in the town house, she should occupy with a servant the country house or vice versa.” Everyone’s nerves may have been stretched so far that any resolution seemed better than perpetuating the anxiety. Over a month before, Dickens had told Forster that “nothing can put” this marriage “right, until we are dead and buried and risen. It is not, with me, a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer. It is all despairingly over. Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this association. A dismal failure has to be borne, and there an end.”14
When it came, the termination was a heavier burden than Dickens had anticipated. Practical arrangements had to be made, emotional scores settled, other people’s as well as his own anger dealt with. The thought of divorce was instantly dismissed. He could not afford it. Despite recent simplification of the law, divorce threatened irretrievable damage to any public man who needed broad support, whether for office or art. He held a unique position that demanded the constant approbation, expressed in sales, of his constituency, for whom he represented a value system, a way of life. Divorce seemed too great a risk. The dangers of a separation were fewer. Of course there would be private talk. There would be broader rumors. He had high hopes, though, that the damage could be readily controlled. To negotiate the practical terms, he turned to Forster. With weary loyalty, he took on the charge. They readily agreed to Catherine’s request that Mark Lemon, the genial, domestic Uncle Porpoise, represent her. It was to be a family affair.
By the middle of May 1858, the negotiations were in progress. Now that he had made up his mind to do it, having it done quickly seemed of desperate urgency. The legal niceties would be attended to by lawyers. The terms, though, would be negotiated between husband and wife through their appointed emissaries. Evans was proposed as a trustee. Suspicious that he was hostile, Dickens and Forster vetoed that. Legally, Dickens’ property and other resources were neither the family’s nor the marriage’s. They belonged to him alone. With all the cards in his hands, he dealt them in a way he thought reasonable, even generous. He would “do anything for her Comfort, and spend anything upon her.” He would maintain her at the same level of support, as if the marriage still existed, except that she would live in a new residence of her choice. The initial draft of the deed of separation provided her with “£400 a year and a brougham.” Charley would live with his mother, in a place in London to be determined later. At a meeting on May 21, everything was “as good as settled.” The next day Lemon wrote to Forster that “Mrs. Dickens thankfully accepts the proposal.”15
While the negotiations proceeded, Dickens took some pains to justify his decision. The effort was entirely private, and done with the low-keyed urgency of minimally threatened self-interest. Catherine’s mother and youngest sister, Helen, fumed in the background. Dickens told Miss Coutts, who he believed was “not quite unprepared for what I am going to say,” that his marriage had been for a long time “as miserable a one as ever was made.” They were incompatible on every level. She was the only person he had ever known with whom he could “not get on somehow or other.” There was no “interest, sympathy, confidence, sentiment, tender union of any kind between them.” Probably all this was news to Miss Coutts, who had seen them over the years provide a reasonable facsimile of getting on. It was shocking news to be told that Catherine was estranged from all her children, that she was an incompetent, unnatural mother, that her children “harden into stone” in her presence. Georgina, “the best, the most unselfish, and most devoted of human Creatures,” knew this. Within months of their marriage, the long-dead Mary Hogarth had recognized it. “It is her misery to live in some fatal atmosphere which slays every one to whom she should be dearest. It is my misery that no one can ever understand the truth in its full force, or know what a blighted and wasted life my married life has been.” He asked her not to “think the worst” of Catherine, who could not help being the way she was. “If she had married another sort of man she might however have done better. I think she always felt herself to be at a disadvantage of groping blindly about me, and never touching me, and has so fallen into the most miserable weaknesses and jealousies. Her mind has, at times, been certainly confused besides.”16
At best, it was an ungenerous letter, presenting a position that he had repeated frequently enough over many years to attest to his having persuaded himself of its truth. It is unlikely that he persuaded Miss Coutts, who made an effort ten days later to reconcile the couple. “But nothing on earth—no, not even you—no consideration,” he told her, “human or Divine, can move me from the resolution I have taken.” To his American friend Cornelius Felton, he wrote more coolly. “I have been much distressed for some weeks past, by domestic matters. Although they are not yet finally arranged, they were last night … as good as settled; the end being, that Mrs. Dickens and I have agreed to live apart henceforth.… It is all for the best. We have tried all other things, and they have all broken down under us.” Life would not be substantially different. Everything would remain the same, except for Catherine’s absence.
His distress, though, was far from over. Rumblings of trouble had surfaced in the previous week. Naïve and overconfident, he was hardly prepared for them. Inevitably, there would be talk about his relationship with Ellen Ternan. That he had some sort of involvement was the obvious conclusion friends and acquaintances reached. Dickens wanted the relationship described in nondamaging terms. Even his immediate community, though, was not likely to cooperate. By mid-May there was comment that the separation had occurred because he had fallen in love with another woman. Some of the remarks identified her as an actress. Some specifically mentioned Ellen. Suddenly he was additionally distressed to learn that the charges might be coming from the Hogarth family, particularly Mrs. Hogarth, Helen, and Catherine. Certain that his wife, both by personality and principle, would not attempt to do him public damage, he began in the middle of May to believe that “her wicked mother” and sister had no such scruples. Apparently Mrs. Hogarth and Helen had gone with Catherine to see Miss Coutts. His sweeping rejection of her effort to mediate was strengthened by his anger at what seemed a cabal, with overtones of blackmail. “I can not enter—no, not even with you,” he told Miss Coutts, “upon any question that was discussed in that woman’s presence.”17
“That woman,” though, had raised a more shocking consideration, either as inference or as accusation. Word now reached him that people were saying the marriage was breaking up because he and his sister-in-law had been having an incestuous affair. That he believed the rumor to have originated with Georgina’s own family added bitterness to outrage. The allegation had more fascination for curious minds than any consideration of mere adultery with an actress. Reverberating with the horrors of a sacred taboo, it transferred with a vengeance from literature to life his fascination with the female who combines the qualities of b
oth sister and wife. The charge had its basis in the awkward situation that forced Georgina to decide to stay with her idolized brother-in-law in the only home she had known since her youth. Her sole other alternative would be to move into some shadowy, undefined Hogarthian world in which the main consolation would be an affirmation of solidarity with her sister and family. The affirmation would have struck her as meaningless. She had little in common with Catherine. Her parents had relieved themselves of responsibility for her years before. In her brother-in-law’s home, she had a role, a future, a rationale for being. She had the love and respect of nieces and nephews. She had the love and respect of her brother-in-law. She had the congenial atmosphere of literary life, the companionship of artistic people. Whatever the awkwardness, she seems not to have hesitated long, if at all. She chose to stay with Dickens. To the Hogarths, it seemed like a blood betrayal.
To her brother-in-law, her decision could not have been surprising. It had been inherent already in the early 1850s in her rejection of Augustus Egg’s marriage proposal. Perhaps she had also turned down a proposal from John Forster. As it became apparent that she would remain unmarried, her alternatives had narrowed. Her future seemed irretrievably cast with Dickens’ world. That she was Catherine’s sister became increasingly secondary. Her efforts to smooth things over, to keep the marriage together, had been at least partly motivated by her awareness that the end of the marriage would force her to make such a choice. The decision would be no less inevitable than the awkwardness. Probably he had no doubt about what her decision would be and counted, in fact, on her remaining with him. That may have been understood between them, silently or not, in the months before the separation. He had not anticipated, though, that they both would have to pay the price of such a decision—the charge that she had been and was his mistress, that the marriage was being ended to facilitate their incestuous relationship.
By the end of the third week in May the allegation had become a public sotto voce of scandalous proportions, soon to become the property of strangers throughout England and the innuendo of newspaper gossip. The threat to his career and livelihood frightened him. The assault on an aspect of his character and honor that he had believed beyond reproach shocked him. Thackeray, aware that “all sorts of horrible stories” were “buzzing about,” was told “that D is separated from his wife on account of an intrigue with his sister in law. No says I no such thing—its with an actress.” He would “have said nothing about it but that I heard the other much worse story whereupon I told mine to counteract it.” He soon heard from an unhappy Dickens authorizing him “to contradict the rumour on his own solemn word and his wife’s authority.” Though he would have liked to kill two birds with one stone, Dickens must have been hard put to determine whether he should focus on denying incest with Georgina, adultery with Ellen, or both. Despite an immediate campaign of damage control, composed mainly of vigorous denials of both allegations, the rumor concerning Georgina spread rapidly, pregnant with subrumors. Even by October it still had force, coming back to him in the allegation that “he was the outcry of London,” and that his “sister in law had three children by him.”18
There had already been tensions in the negotiations. That was inevitable. They had partly to do with the role of the wicked mother, an archetype that always had his emotions on edge, in pushing for what she believed were her daughter’s interests and probably included the mention of Ellen. Some aspect of the negotiation troubled Lemon sufficiently for him to limit his role as intermediary on the twentieth. “I shall never refuse to see Mrs. Dickens but whatever she may do for the future must be done without my interference.” On May 25, Dickens composed a long statement, which he gave to Arthur Smith, instructing him to show it where he thought appropriate. It gave an account of the reasons for the separation, strongly praising Georgina in order to emphasize Catherine’s incompetence, claiming that family support of Dickens’ position was unanimous, and complaining that “two wicked persons who should have spoken very differently of me, in consideration of earned respect and gratitude, have (as I am told, and indeed to my personal knowledge) coupled with this separation the name of a young lady for whom I have a great attachment and regard. I will not repeat her name—I honor it too much. Upon my soul and honor, there is not on this earth a more virtuous and spotless creature than that young lady. I know her to be innocent and pure, and as good as my own dear daughters. Further, I am quite sure that Mrs. Dickens, having received this assurance from me, must now believe it.”19 The two wicked people were Mrs. Hogarth and her daughter Helen, the spotless creature probably Ellen. That Catherine accepted her husband’s assurances was a dubious, self-serving claim. Also on the twenty-fifth, Dickens told Collins that soon he would give him the details of this “rather long story—over, I hope now.”
Late that same day or early the next, Dickens withdrew the proposal that Catherine had “thankfully accepted” on the twenty-first. He now felt certain that the rumors about Georgina and himself had originated with the Hogarths. Counterattacking, he declined to provide any financial support unless he received their unstinting cooperation in counteracting an allegation more damaging than any that had been made before. Through his lawyer, he insisted that they deny the rumors. Realizing how harmful they were even to his own client’s interests, Catherine’s lawyer urged compliance. Genial, amiable George Hogarth immediately wrote a memorandum denying the charge of an affair between Dickens and Georgina. Believing this insufficient, Dickens and his lawyer, Frederic Ouvry, demanded that the two alleged perpetrators, the originators of the accusation, sign a statement exculpating him. Reluctantly, under pressure, aware of the interests at stake, on May 29 Mrs. Hogarth and Helen stated in writing that since, “in reference to the differences which have resulted in the separation of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens, certain statements have been circulated that such differences are occasioned by circumstances deeply affecting the moral character of Mr. Dickens and compromising the reputation and good name of others, we solemnly declare that we now disbelieve such statements. We know that they are not believed by Mrs. Dickens, and we pledge ourselves on all occasions to contradict them, as entirely destitute of foundation.”20
Aware that the statement might be interpreted as having been elicited by economic pressure, Dickens had Ouvry delay drawing up the final deed of separation. The disclaimer was immediately attached to the statement that he had written on the twenty-fifth and put in Smith’s hands. Together they dealt with the allegations about both Ellen and Georgina. No written statement, though, had the power to deal effectively with damaging rumors. The initial intent had been that it be shown only privately to interested, even friendly, people, whose denial of the rumors could then be ever the more persuasive because based on authentic statements by the interested parties. Later, when the statements did become public, they turned out to be more damaging than helpful. Those who valued him tended to disbelieve or to think irrelevant the first of the charges. The second was immediately dismissed. To antagonists, both provided amusement or self-righteous but titillating shock. The general public, despite the publicity, had sufficient skepticism about such things to suspend judgment, to forget reasonably quickly, and to continue to value him highly for the same reasons that they had previously.
In late May 1858, Dickens continued to defend himself, counterattacking in letters to friends and acquaintances. The letter campaign drew some snickers from the neutral and the hostile. To Maria Beadnell, an odd, unpromising choice, he had Georgina write, though probably he dictated the letter, that for reasons of incompatibility, “by mutual consent and for the reasons I have told you, and no other,” he and Catherine had come to this arrangement. The point of the letter, though, was practical. “To a few of our real friends Charles wishes the truth to be stated, and they cannot show their friendship better than by quietly silencing with the real solemn truth any foolish or wicked person who may repeat such lies and slanders.” Many were to supporters. “The change had become indispe
nsable and unavoidable,” he told Macready, “and … we must all be the happier for it.” With his extraordinary capacity for being willful once a decision had been made, he did not have “the faintest lingering doubt upon the subject … and I steadily desire to dismiss it.”
To Mary Boyle, who had “seen something of the great misfortune of my life” and who knew “the truth,” he responded, probably about Ellen, that “my only surprise in the matter of your note, is, that you have heard nothing worse!!! I have been the hero of such bewildering and astonishing lies during the last week, that this merely infernal one seems quite a favor. It is the penalty I pay for my conspicuous position. It is a very heavy one; but it is what I owe to the knaves and fools, and I must take their receipt for it.” There was nothing to be done “but to circulate the truth. And if you will do that … you will gratify your own earnest and generous nature in serving the friend who loves you.” To another sympathizer, he confessed that he had “heard such bewildering and thronging multitudes of wonderful and inexplicable lies about myself during the last week, that it almost bewilders me to find you in possession of the truth.” At some length he rehearsed his version of the facts of the separation, for “it would be a poor example to be driven mad myself or to drive Mrs. Dickens mad; and one or both of the two results must have happened, if we had gone on living together.” It was a consolation to him to claim that “there is no anger or ill-will between us … that it is calmly and moderately done; that whatever doubt or passion there has ever been on either side, has already died out; that I am sure we only want to forgive and forget, and live at peace.”21
There was no peace, though. The rumors did not desist. The private-letter strategy did not work, or was not working quickly enough. Speculation about his separation rippled outward from semiprivate discussions into public newspapers. He felt frantic with being attacked by forces that he could not control, as if he were under siege or being held hostage to ignorance and maliciousness. The circle of rumor widened from England to the Continent and to America. Some of the private response was contemplative and compassionate, if not for Dickens then for Catherine. “I’d give £100 if it weren’t true,” Thackeray said. “To think of the poor matron after 22 years of marriage going away out of the house!” From Paris, Elizabeth Barrett Browning bewailed “this sad story about Dickens and his wife. Incompatibility of temper after twenty-three years of married life!—What a plea!—brook then irregularity of the passions, it seems to me … taking the mother from one child and the father from another, and the sense of family love and union from them all.… Poor woman!—She must suffer bitterly.”22 Much of the impersonal public comment, though, delighted in a thoughtless nastiness, some of it gossip for its own sake. Some of it, however, expressed the puzzlement, even bewilderment, of those attempting to reconcile their view of him derived from reading his novels and the view of him implicit in this scandal. To this latter group he decided to address himself publicly.