Letters reveal Charles Dickens’ dastardly plan for his wife
Charles Dickens was a master of the big reveal, unveiling the hidden depths and buried secrets of apparently benign characters to shock his audience.
Devotees of the novelist and social reformer may be similarly surprised to hear of new and damning evidence about how he attempted to rid himself of his frumpy wife by committing her to a mental asylum.
Letters written by a friend of Catherine Dickens that have been overlooked by scholars for 160 years provide the first account of the incident from her point of view.
Dickens scholars already knew that the author circulated rumours that Mrs Dickens had ‘‘a mental disorder’’ but they assumed that this was merely an idle threat to get her out of his life after he fell in love with a young actress, Ellen Ternan.
John Bowen, professor of 19th century literature at the University of York, has described in the Times Literary Supplement how he found letters claiming Dickens went much further but was thwarted.
The missives, acquired by Harvard University in 2014, were written by Edward Dutton Cook, a novelist and drama critic who became Mrs Dickens’ neighbour after her separation from her husband. Cook and his wife Lynda befriended Mrs Dickens, who eventually shared her distress at the way her husband had treated her in 1858.
Cook wrote to a fellow critic, William Moy Thomas, in January 1879, less than a year before Mrs Dickens’ death, that she had described the
‘‘He even tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, poor thing. But bad as the law is in regard to proof of insanity he could not quite wrest it to his purpose.’’ 1879 letter by Edward Dutton Cook
breakdown of her previously happy marriage.
‘‘[Dickens] discovered at last that she had outgrown his liking,’’ Cook wrote.
‘‘She had borne ten children and had lost many of her good looks, was growing old, in fact.
‘‘He even tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, poor thing. But bad as the law is in regard to proof of insanity he could not quite wrest it to his purpose.’’
Professor Bowen said that he was thrilled and shocked when he read the letter, and had no doubt of its authenticity. ‘‘In one sense it was wonderful,’’ he told The Times. ‘‘The thing that I had suspected was there in black and white in front of me. On the other hand it was a terrible discovery, so the hairs were going up on the back of my neck for two reasons. Here’s a different dimension to his character that has been hidden for 160 years.’’
He said there were good reasons to believe Cook’s assertion. Dickens had written a letter in 1858 that was leaked to newspapers in which he claimed that his wife was mentally ill.
Helen Thomson, Mrs Dickens’ aunt, claimed that the novelist had tried to get a doctor to corroborate his accusation but he ‘‘sternly refused, saying he considered Mrs Dickens perfectly sound in mind’’.
Cook considered making his discovery public but concluded he ‘‘could not say what I thought just without offending the family’’.
He told his friend: ‘‘I have been discreet if not valorous or upright.’’
Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life, said it was convincing evidence that Dickens did something ‘‘shameful’’.
‘‘This is a great man who set out to do good in life and he did do great things. But when he went off the rails, he started behaving very badly,’’ she said. ‘‘I think he did regret what he’d done. Katey, his daughter, said he went mad for a bit, which is what we do when we fall in love, and he behaved therefore like a madman. Catherine was such a defenceless, sweet-natured person and not very bright. It was terrible what he did to her.’’ – The Times