Claire Tomalin
The Invisible Woman
Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,
Don’t put your daughter on the stage
The lyrics of Noël Coward‘s famous song were echoing in my head as I read Claire Tomalin‘s detailed description of the perils and hardships of the acting life for women and children in the 1800s in her biography: The Invisible Woman. Actresses were equated with exhibitionism and sin, but Tomalin draws out the virtues and dignity and courage of families who eked out a meagre living from this occupation and the extreme hardships they endured in so doing.
The invisible woman of the title is Ellen/Nelly Ternan, who was put on the stage as a toddler along with her sisters, by their mother, Frances/Fanny Jarman herself an actress. No less a personage than Charles Dickens took a keen interest in the family and did what he could to protect and sponsor them. There was nothing remarkable in this initially since he was known for his philanthropic actions, and he himself was a married man with ten children.
[He had] a genuine wish to do good by reclaiming lost innocents.
But at the same time he was indulging a need of his own, a curiosity about another world, and particularly a world of pretty young women who existed on the margins of society.
So when, after his son caught him out and about with a young lady, he suddenly separated himself from his wife of 22 years, Catherine, blaming her (a mental disorder; a long standing wish on her part to go their separate ways; deep incompatibility), everything changed. And pretty innocent Nelly Ternan, a girl 27 years his junior, was the reason. He was infatuated by her and went to inordinate lengths to establish a relationship with her without leaving a trace. So successful was he indeed in the latter mission, that Tomalin admits she has struggled to piece together the fragments from here and there, and some of what she has recorded is speculative though based on strongly suggestive evidence.
Before his liaison with Nelly, Dickens himself had already established a complicated life with frequent absences, extensive travels, multiple abodes, and these now helped him to obscure his split life and rendezvous with Nelly. A diary which Dickens somehow mislaid has since been found and reveals that he managed somehow to spend a third of his time with or near Nelly, one third at his main country residence and his social circle, and one third serving his adoring public.
I am here, there, everywhere, nowhere.
Given that Nelly was a billed actress, the muse of Dickens, and sister-in-law of Anthony Trollope‘s brother, it’s remarkable that she has been omitted from the many biographies and accounts of the famous names of her day. But such was the fear of scandal or disgrace at the time, and Dickens had all to lose. His reputation was very high indeed. He himself did much of the work in obliterating his middle-aged obsession from the records, with his consummate skill in reconstructing history and the world around him to fit with his will and wish, obliging and expecting everyone else to conform to his account of things. He easily deluded himself when the facts didn’t suit him.
Dickens had no difficulty in throwing out high-sounding phrases when the situation demanded … He used every weapon to get his own way.
Nelly herself was a complicated and resourceful woman who was very nearly crushed by the weight of Dickens in her life. Small, pretty, and well deveoped, she was only a moderate performer though a good mimic, but was naturally clever and read voraciously. It was flattering for a ‘nobody’ to be courted by a distinguished and famous older man.
The love of the great man, which must have seemed to promise so much when she was twenty, had become both destructive and a barrier cutting her off from any future of her own … he had also become a millstone round her neck.
Even after his death everyone colluded with the myth about his virtuous life.
[They remained] intent on giving the world an image …
which, if not sanctified, was at least most scrupulously sanitized.
The nation mourned and sang his praises.
Nelly was now free. Free to reinvent herself as a cultured, well-read literary lady, with enough to live on comfortably, initially abroad where society was notably more relaxed about single women with unknown or questionable antecedents. She shed twelve years from her official age, and before long in Oxford she had a brief dalliance with a young man many more years her junior, George Wharton Robinson, an undergraduate destined for the Church, before returning to a busy social whirl in Europe. But she became quickly bored with a life without purpose and five years after meeting him, she married Mr Robinson, dissuaded him from entering the Church, and instead they together acquired a boy’s school in a seaside town.
[She was] altogether more impressive than the usual wife of a
Margate schoolmaster; and she knew it.
Two children of her own followed, only Nelly herself knowing that she was in her forties by this time. Indeed she shed a further two years in the 1881 Census, a reduction of fourteen years, making her two years younger than her husband! At last she had found happiness and purpose in her life, and she could use her acting skills to good effect both with her children and her pupils. And indeed subsequently she returned to the stage as an actress again.
Strange then that she should choose this time to drop hints to select people about her time as Dicken’s mistress. But so she did. However, her revelations gained little traction and in time the couple again fell on hard times and plummeted down the social ladder once more. After George’s death the two remaining Ternan sisters grew very close again, and indeed lived together until their deaths within a few months of each other. It was only then that her son, Geoffrey, discovered amongst her papers information that revealed his mother was not the person she had claimed to be; it damaged him cruelly.
The rewriting of history is a central theme in this whole story, since Nelly, too, almost succeeded in her attempt, also abetted by Georgina [Dickens’ sister-in-law] and with the support of her sisters. Likewise many Dickensians … have been determined to maintain the version of Dickens they regard as accetable, even … when they know it to be untrue.
Meticulous detective work, elegant writing, and plenty of illustrative photos, make this book, by one of the best female biographers of our time, absorbing and fascinating.
More Jane Austen … why not!
It’s that time of year again – Festival time. As someone once famously said to all actors/performers/dramatists: ‘If you aren’t in Edinburgh in August you might as well be dead.’ And we are fortunate enough to live here.
Chez nous we have a stack of tickets for a whole range of shows still to come but this week’s star performance goes to a one-woman show featuring the brilliant actor Rebecca Vaughn with Austen’s Women. I loved her faultless eloquence and brilliant stagecraft with Jane Eyre last year, so she was a must-go-to this time.
And she didn’t disappoint. She took on the characters and mannerisms of fourteen different women from nine of Austen’s novels and linked them all with wise statements about life through the all-seeing eyes of the ubiquitous Austen narrator, all without pausing even while she donned her next costume. She segued from twittering Miss Bates, to a petulant Mary Musgrove, to simpering Harriet Smith, to snooty Mrs Elton to vivacious Lizzy Bennet with consummate skill. And the entire 70 minutes was in Jane Austen’s own words, a patchwork of commentary from her whole canon. Put together by Rebecca Vaughn herself. Amazing skill and an enviable memory!
Though I’ve read all the Austen novels and watched several films of these classics, it seemed fitting to prepare for this particular event by reading Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin to understand better the author’s influences and backstory. Sobering to think Jane herself was so little acknowledged in her lifetime, but critical literature about her now ‘runs to thousands of volumes and tens of thousands of articles’ and that ‘between 1952 and 1972 alone there were 551 books, essays and articles published, not to mention 85 doctoral dissertations‘ written about her … although it has to be said, that many of us who love her work would probably prefer to protect this quietly unassuming young woman from this relentless scrutiny and critical dissection and just enjoy her writing.
In telling Austen’s life story Tomalin has done her best to preserve the intimacy and spirit of her subject. I particularly liked her assessment of those now-famous Austen fictional women and how time influenced their development and sometimes contributed to little inconsistencies in the final published versions – time while Jane waited … and waited … and waited for others to appreciate her writing.
When she first drafted Pride and Prejudice she was 20. By the time it was published in 1813 she was 37. Imagine! Seventeen years between composing it and seeing it in print! Sense and Sensibility took sixteen years to achieve the same goal. Northanger Abbey only found a publisher after twenty years by which time the author was dead. How sad is that? A sobering lesson for the rest of us who’re frustrated by a couple of years delay while agents or publishers do their stuff. And her edits and revisions weren’t simple cut-and-paste jobs either!
Two hundred years on, we accept her ‘exquisite touch’ and ‘vitality of voice‘ but even once she was published, Jane had to endure some pretty vitriolic criticism and quite unjust treatment. Only over time and posthumously did she gain the recognition she so richly deserved.
Then there were the periods of writers’ block. Displacement, bereavement and depression in real life stilled her pen for ten years between the ages of 25 and 35. Without familiar and predictable routines – ‘the same views from the same windows; the same household routines and daily walks in the garden or to the church or the village; the same sounds and silences’ – and bogged down with the relentless care of other people’s children and relatives, she was bereft of the secure and peaceful environment in which her imagination could take flight. Adrift without anchors. She had lost father, home, any prospect of marriage, and all hope of getting anything published. Penniless, she was dependent on her brothers, obliged to accept whatever living arrangements were chosen for her, feeling very much like an awkward parcel.
More than enough vicissitudes to make a writer give up for good, you’d think. How much more should we value the resilience and determination that brought her amazing and enduring work to us.
Celebrating Jane Austen
I promised you a short and easy post this week after the long serious one last week. So relax!
As I’m sure you’re aware, 2017 marks the bicentenary of the death of one of this country’s greatest writers: Jane Austen. You’ve probably seen references to some of the special tributes and events marking this date. A number of papers and magazines have invited celebrities to chose their favourite Austen books or characters, and since the Telegraph didn’t come calling chez nous, I contented myself with revisiting my own collection and rereading Persuasion (not my favourite, but I have a lot of sympathy for Anne Elliott).
What a phenomenally successful author this unassuming daughter of the manse was; wise, humorous, astute, despite a very limited and sheltered 41 years of life. And yet only really revered after her death. What would she have made of her image being used on the forthcoming new polymer £10 note, I wonder? It won’t be in circulation until September but last week it was unveiled to the public in Winchester Cathedral, the very place when Jane was buried precisely 200 years before.
Her words and perspicacity endure; we still love her stories, quote her best aphorisms. She’s still deemed worthy of translation into films and TV series. Who doesn’t know about Mr Darcy’s dip in the lake, or Mrs Bennett’s campaign to marry off her daughters to rich young men, or Emma’s incompetent matchmaking, or … (insert your own favourite excerpts). Long may she be respected and loved.
Can’t wait to get stuck into this little treasure.
Super Thursday
Have you heard of Super Thursday? Nor me. A least I hadn’t until this week.
This year Super Thursday fell on September 29th. And on that day a raft of books were launched onto a unsuspecting public, books that the publishers (and authors) hope will become Christmas bestsellers. Titles by folk like Robert Harris, Joanna Lumley, Alan Sugar, Lee Child. Hmm. Three months early. But apparently these contenders need to build up a head of steam, and be seen in bookshops, on coffee tables, on trains and planes, etc. ‘Seep into the public consciousness.’ Seep, not zoom, because if they fly off the shelves too quickly the book’s in danger of dying prematurely. Riiight.
Anyway on Super Thursday this year, more than 225 books were published. And more big names are on the way in the next few weeks, to stagger the impact. Again a fair smattering of famous faces from the small screen rather than literary giants. Jeremy Paxman, Rob Brydon alongside Claire Tomalin. You can find the whole list at the link above. What does that say about people and Christmas, eh? Hey ho.
No prizes for guessing that my new novel is not among them. But then McHaffie is not a household name – in case it had slipped your busy notice. I do not appear in quiz games or political rallies. I do not grace the front pages of the glossies or make a double page splurge in Saga magazine. Yet.
However, Saving Sebastian is scheduled for January, when I hope lots of people have Christmas-gift vouchers and money to splurge out on lesser known authors. Hey, come on! A girl can dream, can’t she?
But I’m not just dreaming. I’m actually being diligently proactive at the moment. What am I up to? I’m converting my back-list into ebooks. Yep, really, truly, I am. And having a lot of pleasure in the process. It feels good. At last I’m taking back some kind of control over my novels. But I’m anxious to get them right – I hate muddled formatting and missing capitals and all the other errors that creep in when conversion isn’t done efficiently. So there’s a lot of browsing through how-to texts and consulting experts and editing and generally pfaffing about going on. It’s almost as compulsive as writing the books in the first place.
I’ll keep you posted.