A series of unpublished letters is going on display in London, casting serious doubt on Charles Dickens’ notorious claims that his wife was an uncaring mother to their children.
Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and, over the years, were to have ten children and at least two miscarriages. During the marriage, Charles wrote that even if he were to become rich and famous, he would never be as happy as he was in that small flat with Catherine.
However, something changed in later years, with Charles blaming her for having so many children, while he was having an affair with other women. They separated in 1858 after Catherine mistakenly received a bracelet meant for Charles’ mistress.
With the media abuzz with gossip, Charles sent an open letter to the press, which has since become known as the “Violated Letter”, which denied the allegations swirling around at the time — but also claimed that Catherine had been a poor mother to their children.
That cemented her reputation in life and with revisions ever since as well.
However, letters between the family after Charles died have now come to light, which cast a very different image of Catherine as a mother than the public caricature would suggest, and the letters are going on display at the Charles Dickens Museum.
The museum acquired the letters at an auction earlier this year, when the library started by William Foyle, co-founder of the eponymous Charing Cross Road bookshop, was put up for sale.
The abiding impression left by the whole collection is a feeling of mutual warmth between Catherine and her children. Full of expressions of love and concern for their well-being, the letters strongly counter Charles Dickens’s assertion in his infamous ‘Violated Letter’ that Catherine was a cold and distant mother.
The palpable depth of feeling is, perhaps, best exemplified by a letter sent on Christmas Eve 1878, in which Catherine mentions the – eventually fatal – illness that had prevented her from writing to her youngest son, Plorn for a while. The illness was cancer and would lead to her death just nine months later.
In the letter, Catherine writes: “I know that dear Mamie has told you of the reason for my silence. I have had a painful and tedious illness and am still obliged to lie almost constantly on my sofa but darling you must not be anxious about me, for thank God, I am slowly improving and my Doctor gives me hope that with patience and time I shall be all right again. I must just express my most affectionate good wishes of the season although the New Year will be in some time before you receive this. I cannot tell you the devoted love and kindness I receive from all my dear children in my illness. God bless you my own Plorn.”
Plorn was Edward Dickens’s unusual nickname, itself a shortened version of Plornishmaroontigoonter. Edward moved to Australia when he was just 16 years old to join his older brother Alfred, who had moved there three years earlier.
Despite the distance, they maintained a long correspondence with their family back in England.
In one letter, sent in February 1873, Catherine writes, “I miss dear Charley, Bessie and the children more and more and I am almost selfish enough to wish sometimes they had never gone to Gad’s Hill to live altogether. Of course I can go there, whenever I feel inclined, but that is not so comfortable as having them so near as Gloucester Road. It is not however right in me to repine at this separation, as I know it is a great advantage to them all, especially the children, to live in the country, and it is very delightful for me to see them so well and flourishing down there when I go to visit.”
Apart from family affairs, the letters also offer insights into what the public thought of contemporary public affairs, such as the notorious Tichborne Claimant trial, the arrival of Coggia’s Comet, and the arrival of the Shah of Persia’s in London. Elsewhere, the letters cover Charles Dickens’s estate, Christmases, birthdays and weddings, sisterly concern for a younger brother, exchanges of gifts and take-downs of other writers, including Wilkie Collins and Anthony Trollope.
The album of forty letters – plus a cheque for £200 (circa £20,000 today) from Charles to Plorn tucked inside – is now on display until 10th November 2024 at the Charles Dickens Museum in Holborn, the only house in which Dickens lived in London that survives.
This article was published on ianVisits
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