The Ternan family, from left, Nelly’s sister Fanny, her mother Frances,Nelly with the pet dog and sister Maria

In the second of our series of articles on Dickens' life and legacy we look at the great author's less than perfect private life.

We find him caught up in rumour and controversy centring on the Ternan family - and a marriage falling apart.

Dickens came under the spell of the Ternan family in the summer of 1857.

By October he had humiliated his wife by instructing her maid to put a partition between the bedroom and dressing room in Tavistock House.

It was made clear to Catherine and the rest of the household he would no longer be sharing the marital bed.

By June 1858 Charles and Catherine were separated.

“It is all despairingly over,” he told his friend John Forster.

To his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts he wrote the marriage was “for years and years as miserable a one as ever was made”.

He told her the children did not love their mother and accused Catherine of

‘weaknesses and jealousies’.

Dickens, renowned for his good works, morals and family values, began to show his dark side.

Against the advice of his friends, he issued a statement of separation in The

Times and in his own magazine, Household Words.

He even demanded that his publisher, Bradbury and Evans, print the same

statement in Punch magazine. When they refused, he ended his relationship with them.

In public Dickens had always been able to charm and sparkle but his behaviour to Catherine was nothing short of cruel, making her out to be a mad and a bad mother.

The woman who had given him 10 children and had suffered two miscarriages, was cut off. He told Miss Burdett-Coutts: “I have now

– God help me – only one course to pursue.

"One day, though not now, I may be able to tell you how hardly I have been used.”

Dickens severed all relations with Catherine’s family, the Hogarths, except

her sister Georgina, who became his housekeeper at Gad’s Hill.

He stopped his charitable work with Miss Burdett-Coutts. He punished his children if they visited their mother, barely speaking to daughter Katey for two years because she spoke to Catherine. There were no more family holidays.

The news about Dickens’ marriage fedrumours about his friendship with Nelly

Ternan.

Gossip swept through London. When Thackeray heard word that Dickens was

having an affair with his sister-in-law Georgina he contradicted it, saying the woman was anactress.

Gad's Hill Place - Dickens' last home

The friendship between the two great novelists came to an end.

On May 27, Dickens’ Coutts bank account shows a payment of four guineas to N.

In December it showed he bought Nelly a Christmas present – CDET £10.

Dickens’ idea to let Tavistock House to the Ternans was reversed by his friends, who told him this misjudgement would bedamaging.

For once during this turbulent time he listened. As rumours continued to

circulate Dickens published a denial in The Times, on June 7, 1858.

The world was divided over Dickens’ separation and as his life changed he started a second career, giving public readings of his works.

A new love - a new life

Despite all of Dickens’ commitments, when his friend Wilkie Collins asked him to take the lead role in a new play, The Frozen Deep, the theatre-loving author threw himself into learning the part.

He was to play Richard Wardour, the hero of a polar expedition.

As well as overseeing works at Gad’s Hill and writing the novel Little Dorrit, Dickens learned his lines during a single 21-mile walk.

He was a natural showman. The Times published a glowing review of the play and Thackeray raved “if that man would go upon the stage he would make his £20,000 a year.”

Dickens was in his element, not only as an actor but in the company of a family of actresses (mother Frances and her daughters Fanny, Maria and Ellen), whom he had hired to perform alongside him.

The on-stage drama and emotion spilled off-stage. Dickens became infatuated with the women and fell in love with the youngest daughter, 18-year-old Ellen.

Ellen, known as Nelly, was born in Maidstone Road, Rochester, and this may have triggered Dickens’ intrigue.

The relationship was kept secret – such was Dickens’ saintly public reputation; and the Ternans, too, would have wanted to keep their name virtuous.

Nelly’s reputation would be irreversibly tarnished so the couple played out a platonic friendship in public, the truth of which was never made public, not even after Dickens’ death in 1870.

The KM Group's Dickens: A Love Affair with Kent supplement is free in all KM Group paid-for newspapers this week. It will also be available from Linda Evanslevans@thekmgroup.co.uk

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