The Invisible Woman and the visible fiction

Claire Tomalin is one of the most prolific (and popular) biographers writing today, having written lives of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys, and several others. Now, the story of Nelly Ternan, Dickens’ mistress, but never publicly acknowledged by him during his life, is a major discovery, and well worth writing about. So compelling was the story that the book was rapidly turned into a film.

However, there are difficulties in writing the life of Nelly Ternan. She left hardly any letters or account of herself, and Dickens made sure to keep details of her hidden. For a major part of her life, 1862-65, there appears to be no written record of her whatsoever. Hence this biography has to be based on tantalizingly little evidence of her life: the moments when she is recorded are often by mistake for example when she was in the Staplehurst train crash of 1865, when Dickens was travelling with her on the train that went off the rails. Even then, he managed to keep her anonymity, even though he was interviewed after the event.

What does a biographer do in the absence of firm evidence? I’m afraid to say Ms Tomalin starts writing fiction. In fact, with reference to that period 1862-65, Ms Tomalin is not afraid to state confidently what Nelly Ternan might have been doing: “This is to be a chapter of guesses and conjectures, and those who don’t like them are warned.”  So that’s all right, then. The truth is that Ms Tomalin has made things up. Of course, any biographer has a temptation to describe what might have happened; it’s common. Perhaps a more serious fault for a biographer is to make your story into something more melodramatic than it is. Ms Tomalin doesn’t hesitate, first to guess, then to conclude that the result is melodramatic. That three-year absence was while Nelly Ternan was having Dickens’ child (although there is no evidence for it). 

A sensational story

Sadly, if there is an opportunity in this biography to imply a sensational act or fact, Ms Tomalin grabs it. Worse, once a sensational inference has been made, more fiction is added: drawing further conclusions becomes very straightforward. For example, being an actress in Victorian England was, she claims, very close to prostitution. Perhaps that was true; but she then goes on to state that “the stage was virtually the only profession in which this sort of independence was possible for women at this time.” That seems rather sweeping; a woman could run a school (and the Ternans did, for a while). A woman could be a governess. But Ms Tomalin returns again and again to the situation of the actress, emphasising the social ostracism and dubious status: “Their position was seen to be especially anomalous. They were certainly not ladies, since ladies, by definition, did not work.”  There is almost an admiration of the sheer naughtiness of it all, an element that recurs throughout the book.

Guesswork

If you can write a good story, why diminish its impact by including unwarranted assumptions? It’s not much of a problem to read “Mrs Jordan, whose charm and beauty no other actress could equal” (although how is such as statement justified?). But what about over 70 uses of the phrase “must have”? When Nelly’s father died, the cause of his death, states Ms Tomalin with confidence, “we now know must have been syphilis” - yes, this is the accepted interpretation of the 19th-century diagnosis “general paralysis of the insane”. But, continues Ms Tomalin, “no doubt Ternan contracted the disease in his bachelor days and was unaware of the fact”. No doubt. 

Readings of Dickens

Tomalin’s view of Dickens is a mixture of insight and repetition of stereotypes, like her judgements of Ternan herself. For instance she describes Bleak House as “essentially a tragic story peopled by a cast of comic characters”, a judgement that forms a good description of Dombey and Son and other novels by him. Nonetheless, caricature can produce great art: A Christmas Carol is an example. But many of her claims about Dickens’ female characters are unwarranted and simply repeating stereotypes. Describing Dickens’ heroines, he writes, “she [Estella in Great Expectations] is made frigid by her upbringing as part of the plot. All the others are inoculated against sexuality by their creator before their stories begin; they are about as tempting as wax fruit.” All the others? What about Edith, pushed by her mother into a loveless marriage with Dombey, but not afraid to tell him what she thinks of him? She has no compunction in speaking her mind.

In all, a fascinating story, but fatally weakened by an over-imaginative biographer, with passages of pure conjecture, such as: "There is no reason to think she was not responsive to his charm, which dazzled so many young women, or grateful for his devotion. Indeed, it’s perfectly possible she was in love with him.” This biography, in other words, is not so much a presentation of the facts, more an excited and romantic reconstruction of a possible life by a very imaginative biographer.