The Secrets of Charles Dickens
by Julia M. Klein
NOVEMBER 8, 2011 TAGS:
Sadness and irony infuse Claire Tomalin’s engrossing new literary biography, Charles Dickens: A Life (The Penguin Press), whose publication coincides with the approaching bicentennial of Dickens’s birth.
The book portrays Dickens (1812-70), whose novels delineate such a clearly defined moral universe, as a master of secrets and lies. Though Tomalin never states it quite this baldly, he turns out to be just the sort of character he would have condemned as a reprobate: a wayward husband who abandons the mother of his 10 children for a much-younger mistress whom he can never publicly acknowledge.
The adultery claim is certainly not new, but in recent years it has been disputed. In his massive 1990 biography, Peter Ackroyd argued that Dickens and Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, an actress he initially recruited for his amateur theatricals, had something akin to a brother-sister relationship. But Tomalin, author of The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (1991), is authoritative on the subject. She adroitly lays out the evidence for a sexual and romantic bond, relying on Dickens’s surviving letters, a recovered personal diary, his daughter Katey’s recollections, and more. As a capstone to the case, Tomalin cites reports by both Katey and her brother Henry that Dickens and Ternan had a son together who died in infancy.
The award-winning biographer of both Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys, Tomalin writes with both force and sympathy about the moral difficulties this must have occasioned for Dickens. The marital rift was bad enough. But Dickens seemingly made matters worse by publicly vilifying his wife, Catherine, and shunning any friends who failed to take his side.
“Having specialized in being a good man for so long and been known as such to the public, he was intent on keeping his good reputation: hence the public statements putting others in the wrong. But he could not entirely hide the truth from others or from himself,” Tomalin suggests. “You can feel sorry for him as he struggles, but it is impossible to like what he did, or on occasion to believe what he said.”
Even before he settled on Ternan, nearly three decades his junior, there was an incestuous cast to Dickens’s relationships. While he ultimately rejected Catherine, a compliant woman who fell far short of being an intellectual peer, he openly adored Catherine’s sister, Mary Hogarth, who died young. He also maintained an intimate friendship with another Hogarth sister, Georgina, who joined the Dickens household to help care for their growing brood. When Dickens left Catherine, in 1858, the worshipful Georgina left with him, rupturing her ties with her sister.
The novelist’s relationship with Georgina remained platonic, according to Tomalin – rendering her loyalty to him at the expense of family all the more astonishing. Then again, Dickens was a formidably charismatic character, a theatrical personality who attracted fierce devotion from both male and female associates, as well as the general public. Once he became famous, Dickens parlayed his iconic status and considerable acting skills into reams of cash by enacting dramatic adaptations of his novels across both Britain and the United States.
Tomalin’s biography sometimes rushes along like a freight train, its energy suggesting that of her subject, and she stops only intermittently to elucidate the work. But she does offer a lively, complex view of the man himself. The Dickens who emerges from this biography is an uncontested genius, an often exasperated but mostly dutiful son, an alternately indifferent and caring father, a loyal and demanding friend, and a moral reformer of real passion and originality. (Some of these aspects of Dickens are further illuminated in an exhibition at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, “Charles Dickens at 200,” on view through Feb. 12.)
It was to his best friend and future biographer, John Forster, that Dickens first confided the most traumatic, and creatively fruitful, incidents of his childhood – his one-year stint in a blacking factory and his father’s confinement to debtor’s prison. Without mucking about unduly in psychobiography, Tomalin demonstrates how Dickens transformed the dross of his own life into compelling characters and situations. In David Copperfield’s Mr. Micawber, for example, Dickens creates a philosophical spendthrift who mouths aphorisms purloined from his father, John Dickens. But Mr. Micawber is portrayed with comic affection, without the anger that Dickens felt for Mr. Micawber’s model.
Dickens’s feats of serialization continue to astonish. The author of 15 novels, he wrote most of his works in weekly or monthly installments, with each serial snapped up by an eager public. That form of publication meant constant pressure, tight deadlines, and little opportunity for revision. Even more remarkable, Dickens often juggled two novels at a time, composing his plots in his head.
Meanwhile, his other activities were prodigious: editing and writing for various journals; philanthropic pursuits, including setting up a home for recovering prostitutes; prolific letter writing, and pleasure trips around Europe with a varying cast of male friends. Overall, Tomalin is admiring. “Too mixed to be a gentleman – but wonderful,” she concludes, echoing the verdict of Katey Dickens.
Thanks to the judicious use of letters and her own vivid writing style, Tomalin brings us as close as we are likely to come to Dickens, making us simultaneously wish to have known him – and feel almost as though we have.
Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently for Obit. Follow her on Twitter @JuliaMKlein.
The book portrays Dickens (1812-70), whose novels delineate such a clearly defined moral universe, as a master of secrets and lies. Though Tomalin never states it quite this baldly, he turns out to be just the sort of character he would have condemned as a reprobate: a wayward husband who abandons the mother of his 10 children for a much-younger mistress whom he can never publicly acknowledge.The adultery claim is certainly not new, but in recent years it has been disputed. In his massive 1990 biography, Peter Ackroyd argued that Dickens and Ellen “Nelly” Ternan, an actress he initially recruited for his amateur theatricals, had something akin to a brother-sister relationship. But Tomalin, author of The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (1991), is authoritative on the subject. She adroitly lays out the evidence for a sexual and romantic bond, relying on Dickens’s surviving letters, a recovered personal diary, his daughter Katey’s recollections, and more. As a capstone to the case, Tomalin cites reports by both Katey and her brother Henry that Dickens and Ternan had a son together who died in infancy.
The award-winning biographer of both Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys, Tomalin writes with both force and sympathy about the moral difficulties this must have occasioned for Dickens. The marital rift was bad enough. But Dickens seemingly made matters worse by publicly vilifying his wife, Catherine, and shunning any friends who failed to take his side.
“Having specialized in being a good man for so long and been known as such to the public, he was intent on keeping his good reputation: hence the public statements putting others in the wrong. But he could not entirely hide the truth from others or from himself,” Tomalin suggests. “You can feel sorry for him as he struggles, but it is impossible to like what he did, or on occasion to believe what he said.”
Even before he settled on Ternan, nearly three decades his junior, there was an incestuous cast to Dickens’s relationships. While he ultimately rejected Catherine, a compliant woman who fell far short of being an intellectual peer, he openly adored Catherine’s sister, Mary Hogarth, who died young. He also maintained an intimate friendship with another Hogarth sister, Georgina, who joined the Dickens household to help care for their growing brood. When Dickens left Catherine, in 1858, the worshipful Georgina left with him, rupturing her ties with her sister. The novelist’s relationship with Georgina remained platonic, according to Tomalin – rendering her loyalty to him at the expense of family all the more astonishing. Then again, Dickens was a formidably charismatic character, a theatrical personality who attracted fierce devotion from both male and female associates, as well as the general public. Once he became famous, Dickens parlayed his iconic status and considerable acting skills into reams of cash by enacting dramatic adaptations of his novels across both Britain and the United States.
Tomalin’s biography sometimes rushes along like a freight train, its energy suggesting that of her subject, and she stops only intermittently to elucidate the work. But she does offer a lively, complex view of the man himself. The Dickens who emerges from this biography is an uncontested genius, an often exasperated but mostly dutiful son, an alternately indifferent and caring father, a loyal and demanding friend, and a moral reformer of real passion and originality. (Some of these aspects of Dickens are further illuminated in an exhibition at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, “Charles Dickens at 200,” on view through Feb. 12.)
It was to his best friend and future biographer, John Forster, that Dickens first confided the most traumatic, and creatively fruitful, incidents of his childhood – his one-year stint in a blacking factory and his father’s confinement to debtor’s prison. Without mucking about unduly in psychobiography, Tomalin demonstrates how Dickens transformed the dross of his own life into compelling characters and situations. In David Copperfield’s Mr. Micawber, for example, Dickens creates a philosophical spendthrift who mouths aphorisms purloined from his father, John Dickens. But Mr. Micawber is portrayed with comic affection, without the anger that Dickens felt for Mr. Micawber’s model.
Dickens’s feats of serialization continue to astonish. The author of 15 novels, he wrote most of his works in weekly or monthly installments, with each serial snapped up by an eager public. That form of publication meant constant pressure, tight deadlines, and little opportunity for revision. Even more remarkable, Dickens often juggled two novels at a time, composing his plots in his head.
Meanwhile, his other activities were prodigious: editing and writing for various journals; philanthropic pursuits, including setting up a home for recovering prostitutes; prolific letter writing, and pleasure trips around Europe with a varying cast of male friends. Overall, Tomalin is admiring. “Too mixed to be a gentleman – but wonderful,” she concludes, echoing the verdict of Katey Dickens.
Thanks to the judicious use of letters and her own vivid writing style, Tomalin brings us as close as we are likely to come to Dickens, making us simultaneously wish to have known him – and feel almost as though we have.
Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic and a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently for Obit. Follow her on Twitter @JuliaMKlein.
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