Wharton Robinson, we read that she
was "altogether more impressive than
the usual wife of a Margate
schoolmaster; and she knew it." As to
her husband, George, "whether he
inspired passionate love in her or
simply gratitude...she blessed him for
giving her this second chance to blot
out the shadowy shames and miseries
of the past." That she concealed her
past life could justify the use of the
phrase "shadowy shames", but "she
blessed him" is purely gratuitous. There
are not a great many such phrases, but
more than there should be, for they are
unnecessary and more acceptable in a
novel.
But this is nevertheless a good
biography in that a great mass of
information is assembled in readable
form; it is well documented and, unlike
the new Ackroyd biography of Dickens,
we not only have footnotes, but useful
footnotes. Nor it is perhaps surprising
that the figure that here comes most
alive is Dickens himself, and he cannot
but remain the central figure even in a
book ostensibly about Ellen Ternan. It
is not for nothing called The Invible
Woman.
D.R.M. Wilkinson
55
The Staplehurst railway disaster
