The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens (18 page)

It has been said often that I carry myself as though I am always on the stage. The passion that I had for theatre when I was young has been constant throughout my life. In the year after I was married, I wrote four plays. They were ordinary, and I acknowledged to myself that my literary gifts lay elsewhere. Thereafter, I acted in amateur theatrical productions and founded a theatrical company.

In 1857, I produced a play called
The Frozen Deep
at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Most of the actors and actresses in the cast were amateurs. But I engaged the
services of three professionals: Frances Ternan and two of her daughters, Maria and Ellen.

Queen Victoria had ascended to the throne twenty years before. The Victorian era was characterised by a new moral restraint. Ladies of the aristocracy did not work in any occupation or engage in any other activity for pay. It was understood that some women were forced by circumstances to work. But acting—the display of a woman's body to men who paid for the pleasure of looking at her—was considered in some circles to be only one step removed from prostitution.

Ellen Ternan was graceful, witty, and charming—the antithesis of Catherine. I was forty-five years old when we met. “Nelly” was eighteen.

The passage of time had made it ever more difficult for Catherine and I to live together. My marriage had become a cold, bitter, taunting truth that bound me down as if with leaden chains. No two people were ever created with such an impossibility of interest, sympathy, or tenderness between them. Domestic unhappiness lay so heavily upon me that, for the first time in my life, it was difficult for me to write. Our marriage was no longer a matter of trial or will or sufferance or making the best of it. It was a blighted dismal failure that had to end.

In October of 1857, I instructed that the master bedroom and adjacent dressing room at Tavistock House be divided by a partition into separate bedrooms for Catherine and myself. But there was need to put a wider distance between us than could be found under one roof.

In May of 1858, negotiations for a marital separation began. In the end, an agreement was reached. Catherine left the marital residence and made a new home at 70 Gloucester Crescent. I agreed to pay the sum of six hundred pounds annually to her for the duration of her life. Our oldest son chose to live with his mother. The others, in accord with the deed of separation that Catherine and I signed, were given no choice and remained with me. Catherine's sister, Georgina, took my side and stayed at Tavistock to help look after the children and the running of the house.

I have been guilty on occasion of self-righteous behaviour. When things go wrong, I am inclined to portray myself as the sufferer and victim of others. I acknowledge that there were times when I conducted myself poorly during my marriage to Catherine. Too often, my passion was only for myself. I was cruel in ways that I should not have been. How much of my ungracious condition of mind was my own fault and how much of it was hers is of no moment now to me or to anyone else. Excusably or inexcusably, well or poorly done, the marriage was ended.

After Catherine and I separated, I was a friend to Ellen Ternan, her mother, and her sisters. I also developed a more personal attachment to Nelly. She was both purity and forbidden fruit.

A proper single woman did not have relations in bed with anyone, including the man she was engaged to marry. To do so would brand her as little more than a whore in the convention of the time. Nelly did not bend to my will as I had hoped she would. I kept after
her and, by force of will, wore down her resistance. Finally, we had relations at my urging. But my attentions were a burden upon her. In the end, she told me, “It is over. It never should have begun.”

Through it all, my fame continued to grow. The invention of the daguerreotype enabled the mass reproduction of images. By the late 1850s, the appearance of my photograph in newspapers and monthly publications was common, and my face was known throughout England. At times, I felt as though my visage had been sufficiently printed and distributed to haunt mankind forever.

My public readings continued. I advanced in fame and fortune to the approving roar of the crowd. I was the only author that many among England's deprived classes knew.

I also became a property owner. When I was a boy, my father brought me often to look at a house called Gad's Hill Place. “Do you see that house?” he told me. “If you grow up to be a wealthy man, perhaps you shall own that house or another like it.”

The Gad's Hill property was put up for sale. I paid the purchase price. The leasee's term expired. In September of 1860, I moved in.

My intense activity continued.

A Tale of Two Cities
. . .
Great Expectations
. . .
Our Mutual Friend.

I rarely relaxed. I was never fully at rest. I was always dissatisfied and trying after something that I was never able to find.

The seasons passed. More years went by. A field of flowers bloomed by a river that flowed sparkling in the
summer sun. Then snow covered the field and the river rolled to the sea, ruffled by the winter wind and thickened with drifting ice.

I grew older. My health began to fail. I suffered at times from prolonged colds, sore throats, congestion of the chest, and weariness that lasted for weeks. There were days when my left foot was so swollen from gout that I could not put on my boot. On some nights, I relied upon opium to sleep.

On the ninth day of November in 1867, I set sail from London for a second American tour. Twenty-five years earlier, I had visited America to see the country and its people and gather notes for a book. The motivation for this trip was profit alone. Eighty-four readings were planned for a guarantee of ten thousand pounds with the likelihood of earning twice as much.

I arrived in Boston on the nineteenth of November. Within a day, every ticket for my readings there had been sold. I travelled next to New York, where it seemed as though my bust or portrait was in every shop I entered. In Washington, President Andrew Johnson reserved seats for each performance for his family and himself. A quarter century earlier, President Tyler had greeted me with the encomium, “I am astonished to see so young a man, sir.” Now there were whispers that I looked old.

For much of the tour, I suffered from a cold. My gout flared, and my left foot was painfully swollen. Because of my condition, readings in Chicago and Canada were cancelled.

The journey closed with a return to Boston followed by five farewell readings in New York. My last
appearance was on the twentieth of April, 1868. I rose, as was my custom, at seven in the morning and had fresh cream with two tablespoons of rum. At noon, I partook of a sherry cobbler and a biscuit. Then I visited the hall to review the surroundings one last time.

A maroon carpet had been placed on the stage with a large maroon screen as a backdrop. Gaslights were aligned in a manner that would present me in the most dramatic light possible while the rest of the stage receded into darkness. A reading desk stood at the center of the stage, covered by a crimson cloth. Late in the day, I put on my evening clothes, affixed a boutonniere to the satin lapel on my tailcoat, and ate an egg mixed into a glass of sherry.

The reading began at eight o'clock. I was greeted by enthusiastic applause. I felt well. My energy was uncharacteristically strong. I read from
The Pickwick Papers
and
A Christmas Carol
, gesturing with both hands, grimacing, glaring, and rolling my eyes as I performed. At the end, I addressed the crowd.

“In this brief life of ours, it is sad to do almost anything for the last time. It is a sad consideration with me that, in a very few moments, this brilliant hall and all that it contains will fade from my view for evermore. When I first entered on this interpretation of myself, I was sustained by the hope that I could drop into some hearts some new expression of the meaning of my books. To this hour, that purpose is strong. In all probability, I shall never see your faces again. But I can assure you that yours have yielded me as much pleasure as I have given to you.”

There was thunderous applause. As a matter of course, I usually left the stage at that moment, went to my dressing room, and did not return. But on this, my last night in America, I lingered.

The applause grew louder. I stepped down the stairs into the space between the stage and the front row to mingle with the crowd. People were pushing their way down the aisle, shouting my name, struggling to come close to me within the mob. There was chaos.

Then I saw an apparition.

I stood transfixed.

My face grew flush.

The apparition came closer.

All time seemed suspended.

And the apparition spoke.

“You've done quite well for yourself, Mr. Dickens,” Amanda Wingate said.

CHAPTER 11

She was changed, of course. Time had set some marks upon her face. Her fine figure was a shade less upright than when I had known her, and her hair was gray. But the passing years had given her their blessing. If her beauty was no longer in the spring of life, it was certainly not in winter. There was a contentment in her eyes that I had not seen before.

The woman I had longed for my entire life was standing in front of me. In that moment, I would have died for her.

“You were always beautiful. But you are more beautiful now than ever.”

“Father Time does his work honestly,” Amanda said with a smile. “I do not mind him.”

The crowd was pushing in around us.

“May I take you to dinner tonight?”

“Thank you, but that is not possible.”

“I must see you again.”

“I simply wanted to tell you that I am happy for your success and wish you well.”

A stout red-faced man inserted himself between us and clamped his hand on mine. The smell of onions was heavy on his breath. He resembled a slobbering, overfed cow.

“Mr. Dickens. It is an honour and a pleasure—”

I cut him off.

“And I say to you, Mr. Dickens, to have you in our city and to shake your hand—”

More people were closing in. I struggled to free myself from his grip.

“The hand that has written so many fine books, the hand—”

I broke free. Amanda was gone. I searched frantically for her with my eyes, but she had disappeared into the crowd. I tried to move to where she might be and was swallowed up by the mob.

An hour later, I returned to the hotel. I was wet with sweat. My heart was pounding. My emotions were in turmoil. The concierge called my name.

“Mr. Dickens, a package for you.”

I accepted a box wrapped in paper the colour of gold.

“When did this come?”

“Early in the evening.”

“By whose hand?”

“A woman, sir. She did not leave her name.”

“What did she look like?”

“Not a young woman, sir. But extremely attractive and nicely dressed. There was an elegance about her.”

I took the package hurriedly to my room, tore off the paper . . . and held a book in my hands. Exquisitely
and freshly bound in soft brown leather with marbled end boards and gold letters on the cover:
Sketches by Boz, Volume I
.

I turned to the title page and, beneath the title, read:

For Amanda Wingate,

a woman of uncommon beauty and grace.

My fondest good wishes,

Charles Dickens

She had kept it. All these years, down every road she had travelled, I had travelled with her.

A letter sealed with red wax lay nestled between the pages. The stationery was the colour of cream, edged in cobalt blue:

Dear Mr. Dickens,

For many years, I have read your books with happiness for your success. It is an extraordinary world, and I have followed your passage through it with great joy. I know of your life through the newspapers and reading your books. Let me tell you of my own years.

Long ago when we knew each other, I was in chains. I loathed my life but had gone too far to turn back. I was obligated under the law and in the eyes of God to fulfill my marriage vows. Geoffrey was a broken man when we left England. The fear of punishment that was instilled in him caused the wounds of which he died. His life ended by his own hand.