Bamber Gascoigne on Nellie Ternan
Time Out
I knew nothing
about Nellie Ternan until I recently read a wonderful
biography by Claire Tomalin called ‘The Invisible
Woman’. Nellie had a 13-year affair with one of the most famous figures of the
nineteenth century, yet she nearly vanished from history – I was fascinated as
to how and why this happened, and what it says about the Victorian era.
Born in 1839 and 27
years Dickens’ junior, she was from a theatrical family. Her father, mother and
two sisters were all in the theatre, a morally dicey profession in those days,
but they were a respectable family who travelled all around the country to
perform. Dickens was obsessed with the theatre and organised amateur
theatricals. He and author Wilkie Collins put on a
play in
The main reason for
this was to protect her future. When Dickens died she was still in her early
thirties so it was important for her to emerge with respectability and build a
normal life, which she did miraculously. She met an undergraduate in Oxford
called George Wharton Robertson, married him and they ran a school together and
had two children, so she suddenly became an ultra-respectable woman, never
mentioning anything about her past to her new family. The fact that she managed
to completely erase a significant part of her life so she could lead this
bourgeois, relatively boring existence is extraordinary. As Tomalin
points out, the fashions in sin change along with everything else – nowadays for
someone to have an ‘affair’ after their marriage breaks would be completely
obvious. In those days it would have ruined his reputation and ruined her life
because she would have been seen as a fallen woman. Even when her son
discovered her secret life in the 1920s he was outraged and destroyed all her
correspondence with Dickens.
I suppose she’s the
exact opposite of a kiss-and-tell story. She lived part of her life in houses
bought for her by Dickens and the neighbours thought she was his wife, but he
was considered a pinnacle of virtue among his peers so was terrified of anyone
hearing he was having an affair. Whenever they were seen together he introduced
here as his goddaughter – the only people who knew the truth were his wife’s
sister
There’s another
tantalising piece of evidence uncovered by Tomalin. After
the hardback edition of her book was published, someone wrote to her saying
that his ancestor was a pastor at a church in Peckham and passed down the story
that Dickens had died in a house there in ‘compromising circumstances’ and had
been removed to Gad’s Hill (his house in Kent) by the
church caretaker and others. Everyone believed the family accounts that his
last days were at Gad’s Hill. There’s no proof of
that, but it’s certainly a convincing story. Until Tomalin
published her book, no one knew that Dickens had acquired a house in Peckham for
Nellie under the name of Mr and Mrs Stringham. After
All of this was
done to avoid scandal – the Victorian age was such an odd time. It’s like a pendulum,
isn’t it? In the eighteenth century the mistress of William IV had ten children
with him. It was all so much more open then, whereas in Victorian times everything
was so suppressed. All the classes in society in Victorian years worked so hard
trying to maintain respectability, and Nellie Ternan
did it brilliantly. She’s a fascinating character who even now is only
glimpsed.
The bare
facts
1812 Charles Dickens born
in
1839 Nellie, born Ellen Ternan in
1845 Father, William Ternan dies
1857 Plays Lucy in Dickens
and Wilkie Collins production of ‘The Frozen Deep’ at
the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Dickens is smitten, they begin an affair.
1865 Injured in fatal Staplehurst train crash while returning from
1870 Dickens dies.
1876 Marries Rev George
Wharton Robertson and settles in
1914 Dies in Fulham.
1922 Son Geoffrey discovers
his mother’s hidden past from Dickens’ only surviving son Henry.
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