Dickens Part IV

Dickens and his wife separated in 1858.  Divorce at the time was very rare. 

In spite of the separation being due to his affair with Ellen Ternan, he tried to put the blame on his wife to the point where he alienated some of his friends.  They felt that he had been very selfish, quite unlike the “supporter of families and virtue” that he claimed to be. 

Catherine had been his wife for many years, and borne several children to him, yet Dickens just cast her off.  He claimed that they were separating because she was an inefficient housekeeper, not a great mother and that she and he had nothing  in common.  Most of the children remained with Dickens, all except their eldest son Charley, who lived with his mother. 

Dickens turned angrily on friends whom he regarded as “not supporting him” or sympathising too much with his wife. He fell out with Thackeray who was an old friend, because the other novelist had said at his club that “Dickens was having an affair with an actress”.  Rumours had gone around that Dickens had split up with his wife because of an affair with her sister Georgina, who remained with the family as housekeeper and aunt to the children.  She took her brother in law’s side and many people thought badly of her, or that she might have been the cause of the break up.

 She lived with the family for the rest of her life and showed more loyalty to Dickens than to her sister. Dickens was angrily self-justifying in his behaviour and he was very anxious, as the novelist of “family life” and a campaigner for various social reforms, to conceal his affair, which made him the “guilty party”.