Charles Dickens: A Life (86 page)

  
7.
D to Macready, 23 Feb. 1866, telling him about Beard diagnosing ‘great irritability of the heart’, and that ‘Rest is enjoined, but an occasional Reading rather encouraged than objected to.’
P
, XI, p. 163.

  
8.
From
From the Porch
(1913), given in Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, II (London, 1981), pp. 178–9. This was Lady Ritchie recalling her experience as Annie Thackeray in 1870.

  
9.
D to F, [?6 Sept. 1866],
P
, XI, p. 243; D to Frank Beard, 6 Sept. 1866,
P
, XI, pp. 242–3.

10.
D to Dolby, 4 Sept. 1866,
P
, XI, p. 239.

11.
D to Wills, 21 Oct. 1866,
P
, XI, p. 257. For Dickens’s payments see Arthur A. Adrian,
Georgina Hogarth and the Dickens Circle
(Oxford, 1957), p. 110, citing the
Dickensian
(1939), p. 145.

12.
D to GH, 6 Nov. 1866,
P
, XI, p. 265. A sign that Thompson might be getting above himself is in the 1861 census, where he describes himself as a ‘publisher’, living with his wife, children and one servant at No. 26 Wellington Street, Strand.

13.
According to Marcus Stone. ‘Marcus Stone, R. A., and Charles Dickens’,
Dickensian
(1912), p. 216, gives Stone’s statement, made to the
Morning Post
, 4 July 1912. Dickens may have felt it best to help Thompson, who knew much about his private arrangements with Nelly. Thompson’s two daughters, Emily (born 1854) and Matilda Dorrit (born 1857), were both christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields. In the 1871 census he is listed as unemployed, sharing a house in Shoreditch with a new wife, Mary Anne, who works as a dressmaker, assisted by his younger daughter, a collar-dresser, and in partnership with two women doll-makers, Henrietta Adams, who lives with them, and Anna Watson, a visitor. The elder daughter, Emily, now worked as a servant in Hackney. Information from Nicholas P. C. Waloff, who suggests that the ‘small business’ in which Dickens set up Thompson could have been the dress- and doll-making carried out by the women.

14.
D to GH, 5 Nov. 1866,
P
, XI, p. 263.

15.
D to Mamie, 17 Feb. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 315; D to Frank Beard, 18 Feb. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 316; D to GH, 19 Feb. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 317.

16.
D to Station Master, Paddington, 20 Apr. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 357. This is the ‘Loss’ marked in the diary. People lose things when they are tired or stressed. Whether the ‘Tourist’s Knapsack’ was returned is not known.

17.
He lost the diary, a very small notebook bound in leather, in America and it turned up in New York in 1922 from an unnamed private collector. It was bought by the Berg brothers, great collectors, and remained unexamined in their collection for twenty-one years until 1943, when the curator saw how interesting it was.

18.
D to GH, 8 May 1867,
P
, XI, p. 364.

19.
D to F, [?20–25 May 1867],
P
, XI, p. 372.

20.
According to Gladys Storey’s notes Katey talked of ‘an establishment with two servants for her at Peckham’ – see
Chapter 27
below.

21.
Philip Collins, always perceptive, believes Dickens ‘must have felt a certain satisfaction in so ably playing his part in a really good mystery-plot of his own invention: not written, this time, but lived’.
Dickens and Crime
(London, 1962; my edition 1994), p. 316.

22.
‘Silverman’ was written for the American market and serialized in the
Atlantic Monthly
, Jan.–Mar. 1868, while he was in the US, and from Feb. 1868 in
AYR.

23.
They appeared in Ticknor & Fields children’s magazine
Our Young Folks
, but not in volume form. The Americans paid the very large sum of £1,000 each for ‘Silverman’ and ‘Holiday Romance’.

24.
Sir Henry Thompson, a well-known surgeon, said the bunion was made worse by erysipelas, an inflammation characterized by red skin.

25.
D to Dolby, 9 Aug. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 410.

26.
Nelly was described by a friend, Helen Wickham, as sometimes making ‘extraordinary scenes’ when she did not get her way, in the 1890s. ‘She could be quite a little spitfire.’ Katharine M. Longley, to whom this description was given, in ‘The Real Ellen Ternan’,
Dickensian
(1985).

27.
D to ed. of
The Times
, 2 Sept. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 416; D to ed.
Sunday Gazette
, 3 Sept. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 420.

28.
James Fields, head of the publishers Ticknor & Fields, was five years younger than Dickens. He had heard him speak in Boston in 1842. In May 1860 he and his much younger (second) wife, Annie, visited Dickens in England, friendship was established, and Fields began to press Dickens to come to America to read. The four years’ duration of the American Civil War, Apr. 1861 to Apr. 1865, obliged him to put the plan aside.

29.
Fanny Trollope was aware of this plan by 8 Oct.

30.
D to Ouvry, 20 Oct. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 458.

31.
K. J. Fielding (ed.),
The Speeches of Charles Dickens: A Complete Edition
(Brighton, 1988), p. 370.

32.
He barely mentions it in his
Life
of Charles Dickens
, III (London, 1974),
Chapter 13
. See Adrian,
Georgina Hogarth and the Dickens Circle
, p. 103, for one account, and Fielding’s
The Speeches of Charles Dickens
, pp. 368–74, for another.

33.
D to Catherine D, 5 Nov. 1867,
P
, XI, p. 472.

34.
Huntington MS, HM 18394.

35.
Henry James to William James, 22 Nov. 1867, Leon Edel (ed.),
Henry James: Letters
, I (London, 1974), p. 81.

36.
James’s description from many years later, given by Collins,
Interviews and Recollections
, II, p. 297, from
The Notebooks of Henry James.
James also came face to face with Dickens at Norton’s house, and found that ‘the offered inscrutable mask was the great thing, the extremely handsome face, the face of symmetry yet of formidable character, as I at once recognised, and which met my dumb homage with a straight inscrutability, a merciless
military
eye’. This is from Henry James’s
Notes of a Son and Brother
of 1914.

37.
Worth something like fifty times as much today, i.e., close to a million. Precise conversion is not possible because it depends on whether you are using the retail price index, average earnings, per capita Gross Domestic Product, share of GDP or GDP deflator.

38.
D to F, 5 Jan. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 5. He also told Forster, 3 Jan. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 2, ‘My landlord invented for me a drink of brandy, rum and snow, called it a “Rocky Mountain Sneezer,” and said it was to put down all less effectual sneezing; but it has not had the effect.’

39.
D to F, 14–15 Jan. 1868,
P
, XII, pp. 14–15.

40.
D to GH, 21 Jan. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 20.

41.
D to F, 30–31 Mar. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 86.

42.
Forster’s
Life
, III,
Chapter 15
and fn.

43.
D to F, 13, 14 Mar. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 75.

44.
Dolby,
Charles Dickens as I Knew Him
, p. 341. In July 1868 Dickens presented his godson with a massive silver bowl, plate, fork and spoon, at Marylebone Church. See D to Fields, 7 July 1868,
P
, XII, p. 150.

45.
A Child’s Journey with Dickens
by Kate Douglas Wiggin (Boston and New York, 1912).

46.
Only a few of the letters to Wills have survived, with many inked-over passages, later deciphered with infra-red photography. All are now printed in
P
, XI and
P
, XII.

47.
These payments to Wills were noted by Edgar Johnson,
Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph
(Boston, 1952) – see notes xc–xci. He mentions another to ‘Wills Trust’ for £250 on 7 Nov. 1867. He writes that he found no other record showing how the sums were invested and that ‘the reader may give these payments totalling £2,250 what significance he wishes.’ The editors of the
Pilgrim Edition
mention only the £1,000, which is referred to in a letter to Georgina, saying it was ‘probably intended for Nelly’.
P
, XII, p. 6, fn. 7.

48.
Both these quotes from Annie Fields’s diaries are taken here from Collins,
Interviews and Recollections
, II, pp. 320, 321, 322.

49.
The promise was kept.

  
1.
D to Alfred Dickens, 16 May 1868,
P
, XII, p. 110.

  
2.
D to Macready, 20 July 1868,
P
, XII, p. 378. D to Morley, 2 Oct. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 192. Morley went on to teach literature at University College, London. His views are given in Philip Collins (ed.),
Dickens: Interviews and Recollections
, II (London, 1981), p. 193.

  
3.
Forster’s
Life of Charles Dickens
, III (London, 1874),
Chapter 8
, quoting from D to Fields, 7 July 1868,
P
, XII, p. 149.

  
4.
Lady Molesworth,
née
Andalusia Carstairs (1803–88), an Irish singer and actress who played at Drury Lane in the 1840s, was married and widowed before marrying Sir William Molesworth, Bart., and becoming a rich and enthusiastic lion-hunting hostess. Dickens was fond of her and enjoyed her dinners.

  
5.
D to Mamie Dickens, 26 Sept. 1868, XII, p. 188.

  
6.
D to Plorn Dickens, 26 Sept. 1868,
P
, XII, pp. 187–8.

  
7.
D to Dolby, 25 Sept. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 187.

  
8.
D to GH, 7 Nov. 61,
P
, IX, p. 500; D to P. Cunningham, 15 Feb. 1865,
P
, XI, p. 16.

  
9.
D to Dr Hewison, 23 Oct. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 207.

10.
D to Dolby, 29 Sept. 1868,
P
, XII, p. 190.

11.
D to F, given in
Life
, III,
Chapter 17
, and [?10–15 Oct. 1868],
P
, XII, p. 203.

12.
These quotes from George Dolby,
Charles Dickens as I Knew Him
(London, 1885; my edition 1912), p. 351.

13.
Forster,
Life
, III,
Chapter 17
, and [?15 Nov. 1868],
P
, XII, p. 220.

14.
Philip Collins,
Dickens and Crime
(London, 1962; my edition 1994), p. 269.

15.
Edgar Browne,
Phiz and Dickens, as They Appeared to Edgar Browne
(London, 1913), p. 146.

16.
Dolby,
Dickens as I Knew Him
, p. 347.

17.
Dickens’s friends accepted Georgina’s part in his life, but she was not generally invited with him, and among neighbours in Kent and some of his American friends there was uneasiness about her position.

18.
D to Cerjat, 4 Jan. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 267.

19.
D to Ouvry, 12 Jan. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 273.

20.
D to Dolby, 19 Feb. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 294.

21.
D to GH, 26 Feb. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 299.

22.
The young man, Edward Young, told his family about his meeting with Dickens, and an account of it was printed in his obituary in 1927. His granddaughter remembered him well and told me that he said they were black stockings, but it was not thought suitable to mention this in the obituary.

23.
D to Frank Beard, 19 Apr. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 336; D to Norton, 20 Apr. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 337.

24.
D to GH, 21 Apr. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 339.

25.
This was his final will, appointing Forster and Georgina his executors, responsible for managing his personal estate and copyrights and holding the proceeds to be distributed equally among all his children when they should reach the age of twenty-one. All the children were over twenty-one when he died except Edward (Plorn), who was eighteen. He left £1,000 to ‘Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place, Ampthill Square’, settled money on Georgina and on Mamie, and made Charley and Henry responsible for the capital that would provide their mother with an income for life. To Forster (‘my dear and trusty friend’) he left all his manuscripts and his watch, and to Georgina his private papers. To Charley he left his library, engravings and various knick-knacks. There were small bequests to servants. He wanted Gad’s Hill to be sold as part of the estate.

26.
D to W. J. Farrer, 15 Dec. 1869,
P
, XII, p. 451.