Video: How Charles Dickens tried to hide his wife in a mental hospital instead of filing for divorce
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
When love ends in a relationship, you can get a divorce or try to improve your relationship. For 45-year-old Charles Dickens, both options were unacceptable. He did not want to stay with his unloved wife - the writer fell deeply in love with the 18-year-old actress. And divorce would mean censure in society. Putting his wife in a psychiatric hospital seemed to the Englishman the most acceptable option.
“He said that she was completely unsuitable for the life she was leading, and if she went somewhere far away, it would be better,” says Claire Thomas, author of the biography of Charles Dickens. - When a break in relations became inevitable, his behavior was frankly ugly. I think he later regretted it."
You can learn about the events of that time from numerous letters written by Charles Dickenson himself, as well as by his friends, and even neighbors. Charles was 45 years old, his wife Catherine 41 years old. By that time she had given birth to ten children and frankly looked ugly in appearance. Charles fell in love with 18-year-old actress Ellen Ternan. The divorce would have been a big blow to the writer's reputation at that time. And the relationship with his wife after long quarrels definitely required a logical solution. And Charles thought that if his wife was declared insane and locked up in an asylum, where she would stay for the rest of her life, it would be better for everyone.
Edward Dutton Cook, a novelist and literary critic, who at the time kept in touch with the couple, but most closely with Catherine, as she often came to visit them at the house. In his letter to another critic, William Moy Thomas, he described the whole situation in detail, describing also why it did not work: “He [Dickens] even tried to close the poor thing in a mental hospital! This undertaking was not crowned with success, since according to the law it was still necessary to prove that there are grounds for this."
Catherine herself knew what her husband was up to, and therefore, when she was brought in for examination by a commission of doctors, she behaved more than dignified, not giving a single chance to doubt her adequacy.
I must say that since rumors really existed about such intentions and were voiced in different letters, it was Edward Cook's letter that confirmed that the rumors had a basis. This letter was found by John Bowen, professor of 19th century literature at the University of York. “On the one hand,” says John, “this is a great find. Before me there was a proof, where everything was written in black and white about which I used to be a god only to reason. On the other hand, this is a terrible find. 160 years later, she suddenly turned the image of the writer into a completely different dimension."
As a result of their quarrels, Charles and Catherine parted. She received a maintenance fee of £ 600 a year, which is about $ 33,000 today, and has lost her right to see her children. Only the eldest, Charles Dickens Jr., had permission to visit his mother.
Despite the fact that Dickens met Ellen when she played in his play, after the beginning of their relationship, she left the stage and never returned to her. Charles Dickens rented an apartment for Ellen Ternan, where he visited her. Their relationship lasted more than 13 years, until his death. Together they traveled through Europe, being caught in a train disaster that greatly influenced Dickens. The very fact of their relationship was carefully hidden by Dickens's relatives, and after his death, their letters to each other were destroyed.
How the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen came to visit Charles Dickens, we wrote in our article "Delight, depression, binge".
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