brief history. And untill the odd letter,
say, or other information, turns up, she
will remain a blank
At least in relation to Dickens she will,
but in the third part of the book, which
is about Nelly after his death, she does
come to life a little. What is curious is
that she comes most to life, as it were,
by reason of what she contrived to
conceal from both husband and
children, viz. her whole theatrical
connexion, her relations with Dickens
and her age - giving it out that she was
12 years younger than in fact she was.
This is known of her, even if the
motives aren't.
"She had, in effect, to re-invent herself,
writes Tomalin, and to this extent she is
alive. Only after her death does her
son, Geoffrey, become suspicious, and
visits Sir Henry Dickens and is told,
apparently, that Nelly had indeed been
Dickens's mistress and had had a son
by him, which had died. Geoffrey is the
most damaged, perhaps, by Nelly's
covering her tracks, whatever they
were.
But it is Sir Henry who provides one of
the remaining puzzles: he is alleged to
have volunteered this information to
Geoffrey: at the same time he is known
to have denied that Nelly was in the
train accident with Dickens. Why did
he deny what was true and what was
in any case not in itself grounds for
scandal, and yet confess that Nelly had
had a son by Dickens, which was
grounds for scandal? How are we to
look on Sir Henry in the witness box?
After all, it is this comment of his, and
what the Rev. Benham disclosed - he is
supposed to have had the whole truth
from Nelly herself incuding her
confession that she had loathed the
very thought of her intimacy with
Dickens - that make up the main
evidence. Or did Gladys Storey
fabricate the bit about Sir Henry? These
are questions not even Claire Tomalin
can yet answer.
If there is a weakness in the book, it
lies in the tendency to speculate on
what people felt, regretted, hoped, etc.
It was no doubt almost unavoidable
where the evidence is so often thin or
lacking, but it does not seem that the
purest of purposes are served by such
statements as:
"For Nelly, thrilled as she was by his
devotion, any idea that he hoped to
seduce her must have seemed at this
stage as unlikely as..(my italics).
The intention here is to bring Nelly
closer to us, but hypothesis offered as
fact may even distort her image. Then
of sister Maria, who eventually left her
most respectable husband, we learn
that she "acquired a pet dog and
dreamed of another life altogether."
When Nelly later married George
54
Ellen Ternan
