The Great Charles Dickens Scandal

September 10, 2012
Even the reputedly spotless reputation of the much revered Charles Dickens couldn’t get through his bicentennial celebration without an eminent Dickens scholar bringing the skeletons out of the novelist’s closet. Biographer Slater (Charles Dickens) once again raises the old-news rumors—to which a previous biographer, Claire Tomalin, devoted an entire book, Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (1991)—of Dickens’s scandalous relationship with a young woman after the breakup of his marriage in 1858. This terse, plodding, exhaustive effort, more suited to an academic article than a full-length book, chronicles that relationship and the life of the rumor, examining both Dickens’s own efforts to contain it as well as its long afterlife. After 1934, when his last living heir died, amateur Dickens sleuths, biographers, journalists, and critics—notably George Orwell and Edmund Wilson—attempted to ferret out the facts behind Dickens’s relationship with this mystery woman. Was this indeed the young actress Nelly Ternan, or could it have been his younger sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth, or perhaps his first crush, Maria Beadnell? After surveying the more than 150 years of speculation, Slater admits that we may never be able to solve the nature of Dickens’s relationship with Nelly (did they have a child together? was this merely a platonic relationship?), though he’s convinced, based on recent evidence, that Dickens and Nelly were indeed lovers.

Starred review from September 15, 2012
A noted Dickens scholar and biographer traces the story of Dickens' relationship with young actress Nelly Ternan, an affair that has titillated Dickens fans and scholars since the mid 19th century. Slater (Victorian Literature Emeritus/Birkbeck Coll., Univ. of London; The Genius of Dickens, 2011, etc.) begins and ends with recent news and headlines related to the story--the story that, as the author shows convincingly, is not likely to go away soon. The two principal questions remain: Did Dickens and Ternan have a sexual relationship? Did she deliver Dickens' child? Slater begins by sketching Dickens' early romantic attachments and disappointments followed by his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, a marriage that by the late 1850s was essentially over. Dickens and his wife separated, and the story spread everywhere. One early (and false) story was that Dickens had become involved with his wife's sister. But gradually, eyes turned to Ellen "Nelly" Ternan, a young woman in a family of actors who'd met Dickens in 1857 while performing with him in a play, The Frozen Deep. She was more than two decades younger than the phenomenally popular writer. A friendship and much more ensued. As Slater proceeds, he examines the Dickens-related biographies and scholarship and journalism to show us how each work portrayed the relationship and how each little documentary discovery prompted inference and theory. (Dickens and his heirs had done much to destroy and cover up; letters and other documents disappeared in flames.) Slater is evenhanded in his assessments and has solid praise for the work of Claire Tomalin, whose book The Invisible Woman (1991) first propelled the story toward a more general audience. Slater concludes: surely sex, probably no child. A sexy story resting on a bed of comprehensive scholarship and pursued with Sherlock-ian imagination.

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November 1, 2012

Slater (Victorian literature, emeritus, Birkbeck Coll., Univ. of London; Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing) here focuses on the famous author's relationship with the young actress Ellen Ternan, begun when Dickens was 45 and she still a teenager. Dickens's preoccupation with Ternan likely prompted his separation from his wife, the mother of his ten children, in 1858. References to Ternan were suppressed after Dickens's death by those seeking to maintain his wholesome image as the conscience of English domestic life. Slater digs into how the relationship/probable affair was handled over the years up to the present, but his own exhaustive detailing of the scandal and its history comes off sometimes as gossipy and jumbled. VERDICT Given existing work on the subject, both in full biographies and on its own (Claire Tomalin wrote The Invisible Woman about Ternan over 20 years ago), it's not clear why Slater undertook this work. Some Dickensians harboring a special interest in the history of the author's liaison with Ternan may wish to read it, but Robert Garnett's recent Dickens in Love, with its enlightening and up-to-date evidence of the passionate penman's life with the young actress, covers much of the same material and is more highly recommended.--Lara Jacobs, Brooklyn, NY

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