Ellen Ternan
January 12, 2025 5:18 AM   Subscribe

A bright, penniless girl of eighteen who found herself admired by a rich older man had good reason to be excited. The role laid down by her society were suddenly reversed: having been always powerless, she now began to be in command. In Nelly's case the man she might command was also brilliant and famous, a charming and entertaining companion, and in a position to transform her life, which in any case held few counter-attractions.
posted by Lemkin (13 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
What an interesting and sordid little tale. Thanks for posting this!!
posted by saladin at 5:38 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]


I have read several times of how badly Dickens behaved during his marriage, but it’s always fresh. I’m reminded of Neil Gaiman now, his charisma, his public readings, and the behavior that contradicted his image on every level. He was canny enough to model himself on the man, I am sure.

More interesting are the linked biographies of the women involved. Ellen Ternan and Georgina Hogarth both joined the Anti-Suffrage League in their old age. Why on God’s earth would they do that when they saw how badly the Victorian ideal worked? But they were only human, and they were never educated in critical thinking. I suppose they thought that if they had just behaved better, all the men would have too, and they would not have had to suffer.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:20 AM on January 12 [10 favorites]


I was curious about Ellen's sister being identified as "Fanny Trollope". She was apparently the second wife of T.A. Trollope, an author of some merit but not the best known of that name — that would have been his brother Anthony. Guess literary circles in England were pretty small, but it's not clear that Anthony Trollope himself knew that his brother's sister-in-law was Dickens's mistress.
posted by jackbishop at 7:50 AM on January 12 [4 favorites]


What a read. Despite the elaborate verbiage and somewhat quaint social sensibilities, the story (and especially the psychologies involved) feel very contemporary to me.

I wasn't sure where we were going until I got to this passage:

Dickens wrote to Angela Burdett-Coutts about his marriage to Catherine: "We have been virtually separated for a long time. We must put a wider space between us now, than can be found in one house... If the children loved her, or ever had loved her, this severance would have been a far easier thing than it is. But she has never attached one of them to herself, never played with them in their infancy, never attracted their confidence as they have grown older, never presented herself before them in the aspect of a mother."

Asshole.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 8:32 AM on January 12 [11 favorites]


Neil Gaiman may have modeled himself on Dickens, but he's certainly not the writer Dickens was, and he's definitely a much worse human being, from what I can tell. It's astonishing just how bad a person Gaiman is. And of course, Neil Gaiman is alive; Dickens, however bad he may have been, has done us all the courtesy of dying, so there's no real worry that his continued celebrity will allow him access to people he can victimize in the event of a convenient-to-IP-rights-holders bit of reputation rehab.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:40 AM on January 12 [8 favorites]


Wasn't a fan of Dickens...and still not. Thanks for sharing. Feeling vindicated.
posted by Toddles at 8:59 AM on January 12 [2 favorites]


He was treacherous to his publishers as well.
posted by Lemkin at 9:07 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]


Incidentally, I had forgotten the name of the book where I read about this situation originally. Now I remember that it was Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose. I don’t know if it’s up-to-date now as far as scholarship goes, but I enjoyed it.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:59 AM on January 12 [3 favorites]


Wasn't a fan of Dickens...and still not. Thanks for sharing. Feeling vindicated.

On the other side of the ledger: Charles Dickens, social reformer and activist.

Not least of which was his strident opposition to workhouses, child labor, debt prisons and solitary confinement.
posted by storybored at 12:32 PM on January 12 [7 favorites]


Also tended to dying victims in the aftermath of the Staplehurst rail crash.
posted by Lemkin at 2:14 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]


On the other side of the ledger: Charles Dickens, social reformer and activist.

The Gaiman parallel continues!
posted by away for regrooving at 3:07 PM on January 12 [4 favorites]


I agree with the theory that Ellen Ternan was his secret daughter. Out of all the 2020s conspiracy theories, I like this one because it is harmless and irrelevant. Everyone involved has been dead for a very long time.

Whatever the relationship, Georgina Hogarth definitely used the situation with Ternan to get rid of Catherine. Leaving her a snake ring in her will was a message.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:46 PM on January 12 [2 favorites]


Paging Nate Dimeo
posted by blendor at 1:29 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]


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