Vulgar History - So This A＊＊hole： Charles Dickens Was A Terrible Husband

00:00:00.000 hello tits out brigade it's me ann foster and this is the vulgar history podcast feed and this is a 0.57

00:00:14.640 special presentation so as i talked about in the super special doña gracia nasi episode i'm on

00:00:22.200 hiatus for the next little bit getting ready for next season which is going to be called there's

00:00:26.920 something about Mary, Queen of Scots. And there's going to be some super special episodes every now

00:00:32.160 and then between now and I'm going to estimate the beginning of March when I'm hoping that the

00:00:38.100 Mary Queen of Scots season will be ready. And so this is one of those special episodes. So as I

00:00:42.440 talk about at the end of every episode, I have a Patreon, which you can join at patreon.com

00:00:47.200 slash Anne Foster Writer. And so part of what I have available there to the Patreon subscribers

00:00:52.340 is about every month or so I post an episode of a series called So This Asshole, where I talk about 0.93

00:00:58.920 just, I don't know, just kind of men who signify the patriarchy, as much as that's a villain in 0.82

00:01:05.540 kind of all of our lives and also all the stories we tell on regular Vulgar History episodes. So

00:01:10.880 every month or so I talk about just kind of like, quote, a great man from history. There's this

00:01:15.220 article I get a lot of my ideas from for that show because I'm not, I don't know a lot about

00:01:18.780 men's history. I have consciously avoided learning about it as much as I can my whole life because

00:01:24.500 there's enough people talking about that stuff. Anyways, there's this Time Magazine poll that was

00:01:29.060 like the hundred most significant people of all time. And it's like a hundred people. And I think

00:01:35.140 they're almost all men except for three women that are like, I don't know, Joan of Arc, Queen

00:01:39.180 Victoria and Queen Elizabeth, maybe Marie Curie or somebody is on there. Anyway, so I'm just like,

00:01:43.300 okay, if these are the great men of history, I'm going to go through, I'm going to learn about them 0.99

00:01:46.920 and I'm going to call them out for all their bullshit. So anyway, that happens on Patreon. 0.98

00:01:52.700 And what I'm sharing with you today is one of those So This Asshole episodes. This is So This

00:01:56.760 Asshole Charles Dickens, a man who I didn't know anything about his personal life until I started

00:02:01.280 looking up about him for this. Turns out, huge asshole, actually. Anyway, so what you're going 1.00

00:02:08.480 to hear is one of these Patreon recordings. These are a bit more casual than the regular

00:02:14.460 vulgar history episodes. And because these quote, great men of history, there's so much written

00:02:18.640 about them. I don't do the deep dive into multiple sources that I usually do for vulgar history,

00:02:23.640 because guess what? Information about them readily available, easy to find. So if you like

00:02:28.840 what you hear, you might want to consider joining patreon.com slash and foster writers. So that's

00:02:34.600 where if you pledge at least $5 a month, I think it's in us currency, then you get access to the

00:02:39.660 whole back catalog of. So this asshole where like this Charles Dickens episode is there, but also I 0.96

00:02:44.200 talk about. I don't know. I should have looked up how many episodes there are on that. I'm going 0.99

00:02:47.220 to guess there's at least 20, but I've got like, so this asshole, like Robert Dudley, Lord Darnley, 0.99

00:02:52.920 Henry VIII, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortez, Napoleon, just a lot 0.98

00:02:57.280 of men from history, but looking at it from my point of view. Anyway, so I hope you enjoyed this

00:03:01.200 super special presentation of So This Asshole Charles Dickens brought out from behind the

00:03:05.540 Patreon paywall for you to all listen. And yeah, consider joining the Patreon and there's going to

00:03:11.340 me more super specials coming up. All the announcements about what's coming up on the

00:03:14.840 show, I'm sharing on social media, on Instagram at, or sorry, Instagram at vulgarhistorypod.

00:03:22.500 I'm also on TikTok at vulgarhistory. Anyway, I hope you're staying warm. If you live in a place

00:03:28.580 where it's cold this time of year, where I live, it's like minus 30. So I'm basically in full

00:03:34.120 hibernation research mode. Anyway, enjoy this super special presentation and you'll hear from

00:03:40.400 me again soon pants on tits out fuck you charles dickens here we go hello everyone out there in 1.00

00:03:50.080 patreon land patreon land patrons hello it's me this is another episode of so this asshole it's 1.00

00:03:59.400 a special christmas slash festive holiday slash winter episode and i found it very interesting i

00:04:05.900 was thinking I wanted to do something sort of like Christmasy. So I gave several options to

00:04:10.720 vote on and the wild majority, not every single person who voted, but most of the people who

00:04:15.980 voted all voted for Charles Dickens. So I was like, well, clearly you all know something I

00:04:20.240 don't about this guy. I vaguely have a sense that he did something shitty to his wife, 0.94

00:04:26.100 but I wasn't sure about it. And then I read about it and I'm just like, oh my God.

00:04:29.680 so this asshole like title very apt we're looking at um yes the life of charles dickens um there's 0.83

00:04:38.560 a lot written about him on wikipedia because he's one of the great white men of literature and that's 0.91

00:04:43.400 sort of person who gets a lot of write-ups in wikipedia i could be talking about his like

00:04:48.020 books i'm talking about him as a person which was a multifaceted person with

00:04:54.660 some considerable negative qualities. This is the first time that I've done an episode of So This

00:05:01.200 Asshole, where I'm like, oh, but I kind of like some of what this person did. Like, is this the 0.90

00:05:06.020 first time I've done a writer? It's usually just kind of like a king or whatever. Like, A Christmas

00:05:10.560 Carol is a book I read as an audiobook every Christmas, or I have for the last two or three

00:05:16.180 years. There's a recording of it by Sir Patrick Stewart, which is so good. Tim Curry does one.

00:05:21.620 I think Dan Stevens does one. It's a really good book and story, but you know, one can separate the

00:05:27.780 art from the artist, but I'll see if I'm able to after I go through all this. About Charles Dickens,

00:05:32.620 the reference here is Wikipedia. There is another book that I was like, oh, I should read this book

00:05:37.840 and like get a bit more info on his wife. And I will later, but I wanted to record this podcast

00:05:42.580 right now because you'll get the gist of it. Okay. So early years, Charles John Huffham Dickens was

00:05:48.780 born on February 7th, 1812, the second of eight children of Elizabeth and John Dickens. When he

00:05:55.700 was three, his dad, John, who worked for the Navy, was called. So they lived in Portsmouth.

00:06:01.600 And then his dad was called back to London. And so the family moved to London. A year later,

00:06:06.960 they relocated to Sheerness and then to Chatham, Kent, where he spent his formative years until

00:06:13.540 the age of 11. His early life seems to have been idyllic, though he thought himself a very small

00:06:19.020 and not overly over particularly taken care of boy. But this period of nice life came to an end

00:06:27.940 in 1822. So when he was 10 years old, his dad was recalled to Navy pay. There's a lot of things in

00:06:34.800 this that are like specific places in, I guess, London that mean very little to me, but perhaps

00:06:39.920 to do to you, but the gist of it is John Dickens was recalled to Navy pay office headquarters at

00:06:44.940 Somerset house and the family moved to Camden town in London, except for Charles who stayed

00:06:49.280 behind to finish his final term at school. His dad, like seemingly everybody I talk about on

00:06:54.400 the podcast lately was bad with money, rapidly mounting debts. Um, his dad was living beyond

00:07:00.340 his means and he was forced by his creditors into debtor's prison in 1824. So Charles was 12 years

00:07:06.340 old. His wife and youngest children joined him there as was a practice at the time to all live

00:07:11.480 together in debtor's prison, I guess, like a little family suite in debtor's prison. Charles

00:07:16.240 was not one of his youngest children. So he, 12 years old, boarded with a family friend called

00:07:21.400 Elizabeth Roilands. To pay for his board and to help his family, Charles was forced to leave school

00:07:27.060 and work 10-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, where he earned six shillings a week

00:07:32.940 pasting labels on pots of boot blacking now this is like when we get to the significance like

00:07:39.280 Charles Dickens really um helped create an impression of what Victorian London was like

00:07:45.940 but a 12 year old boy spending 10 hours a day pasting labels on pots of boot blacking is like

00:07:53.320 the most Dickensian thing I can imagine so the strenuous and this clearly is why um so the

00:08:01.500 working conditions made a lasting impression on him and later influenced his fiction essays.

00:08:06.980 And it's part of why he was, for most of his, like all of his adult life, he was interested

00:08:12.260 in reforming labor conditions because he felt like poor people were unfairly treated.

00:08:18.680 A few months after his father was sent to debtor's prison, his mother died and bequeathed

00:08:23.560 Charles 450 pounds. Oh no, bequeathed the dad 450 pounds. So because he had money,

00:08:28.960 The dad was released from debtor's prison, and then he paid his creditors with this inheritance, and they left to go all of the family friend, Mrs. Roy Lance.

00:08:38.080 This is sort of like out of order, but whatever.

00:08:40.920 Charles's mother, before she died, did not immediately support his removal.

00:08:45.340 Wait.

00:08:47.620 Oh, I'm so sorry.

00:08:48.800 No, sorry.

00:08:49.240 It's not Charles's mother who died.

00:08:50.660 Charles's grandmother, who has the same name as Charles's mother.

00:08:55.600 so the grandmother died bequeathed charles dickens's dad 450 pounds and that's why he's

00:09:01.580 able to get out of debtor's prison so the whole family is going to live with mrs roylance but

00:09:06.160 charles's mother did not immediately support charles being removed from the boot blacking

00:09:10.180 label putting on warehouse this influenced dickens's view that a father should rule the

00:09:15.240 family and a mother find her proper sphere inside the home so this is the beginning or

00:09:19.840 the first notation of his misogyny because he didn't like his mother kept him at the boot

00:09:25.440 Blacking Warehouse. So this was a factor in his dissatisfied attitude towards women,

00:09:30.200 which we will learn more about later. Then he went to another school and then he went,

00:09:35.660 graduated. He worked at a law office as a junior clerk. He was a gifted mimic and impersonated

00:09:41.220 those around him, clients, lawyers, and clerks. He's got like this big sort of show off slash

00:09:45.240 actor attention seeking thing that lasts through his whole life. He went to theaters obsessively.

00:09:49.940 he claimed for at least three years he went to the theater every day then he learned shorthand

00:09:55.760 and became a freelance reporter a distant relative helped him get a job there to be like a court

00:10:02.740 reporter and then in 1830 he met his first love maria or british people say mariah beadnell

00:10:11.040 mariah's parents disapproved of him understandably because he was a terrible person and ended the 0.92

00:10:16.520 relationship by sending her to Paris to get away from him, I would say that probably was a good

00:10:23.840 choice. So in 1832, age 20, Dickens was energetic, increasingly self-confident. He enjoyed theater,

00:10:31.680 he enjoyed doing impressions of people, but he lacked a clear, specific sense of what he wanted

00:10:35.840 to become. All he knew was he wanted to be famous. He landed in an acting audition at Covent Garden,

00:10:41.480 but ultimately missed the audition because he had a cold. Before another audition came up,

00:10:45.820 he had set out on his career as a writer instead. So he benefited from family friends. He's not like

00:10:51.660 a bootstrap, make your own thing, thing. Like he like had connections, even though he, you know,

00:10:58.000 worked in a boot blocking factory before. So his uncle on his mother's side offered him a job

00:11:02.400 on the Mirror of Parliament and he worked in the House of Commons. He worked as a political

00:11:07.540 journalist reporting on parliamentary debates, traveled across Britain to cover election

00:11:11.540 campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. And then the Morning Chronicle launched an evening edition

00:11:16.200 and he was invited to contribute. So the Chronicle's music critic was called George Hogarth

00:11:24.040 and they became friends. He invited Charles over to hang out at his house and that is where he met

00:11:28.820 George Hogarth's daughters, particularly the oldest two, or no, there's three daughters,

00:11:36.300 Georgina, Mary, and Catherine. Catherine is 19 years old and that is going to be his wife. So

00:11:41.400 Catherine. Who is she? What is her deal? Catherine Hogarth was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1815. 0.58

00:11:49.780 Moved to England with her family in 1824. She was the eldest daughter of 10 children. Oh, sorry. So

00:11:56.040 it's not just the three girls. There are 10 children, but they were the oldest three.

00:11:59.740 Her father was a journalist. That's how they met. Dickens immediately took a liking to the

00:12:04.740 beautiful 19-year-old Catherine, invited her to his 23rd birthday party. They later became engaged

00:12:09.880 and were married in 1836 on April 2nd. They went on their honeymoon in Chalk, which is a place,

00:12:20.560 set up a home in Bloomsbury. During that period, Charles wrote that even if he were to become rich

00:12:25.840 and famous, he would never be as happy as he was in that small flat with Catherine, which was a lie,

00:12:31.600 as we are going to unpack. Around the same time they got married, Dickens wrote the Picnic,

00:12:36.700 what was it called the pickwick papers and became super famous and successful like

00:12:41.840 unprecedentedly successful successful in this like marvel cinematic universe like huge way

00:12:47.460 where like everyone was about the pickwick papers so he became a source for sort of like author

00:12:53.920 entrepreneur authorpreneur so there were spin-offs and merchandise like pickwick cigars playing cards

00:13:00.380 figurines, puzzles, boot polish, and joke books. So he was a creature of capitalism. Despite the

00:13:08.240 fact he was a writer who made his reputation crusading against the squalor of the Industrial

00:13:12.080 Revolution, he saw that capitalism was a system and he was like, I'm going to become rich from it.

00:13:17.260 So he ensured that his books were available in cheap bindings so lower class people could buy

00:13:23.760 them, as well as in foncier editions for rich people. His ideal readership included everyone

00:13:30.000 from pickpockets to Queen Victoria. And frankly, they all read his shit. So Catherine's sister, 1.00

00:13:36.720 Mary, joined their household to offer support to them as just like a household helper, which was

00:13:42.280 like not unusual for the Unwood sister of a new wife to live with and help a newly married couple.

00:13:47.900 Charles Dickens became very attached to Mary, but she was sick and she died in his arms after a

00:13:53.020 brief illness. As a consequence of the shock of her death, he stopped working and he and Catherine

00:13:58.760 went off and lived on a farm for two weeks. In fact, his grief was so great, he was unable to

00:14:03.440 meet the deadline for the June installment of the Pickwick Papers. But he got back to writing and

00:14:07.880 continued to be very popular, etc. And I guess a lot of the like tragic, young, dying women in 0.98

00:14:13.980 his books were inspired by Mary Hogarth. And then he went on a two month tour of Scotland where he

00:14:19.500 would just like read from his books and like do funny voices and it's very popular. And then in

00:14:24.960 June 1841, he went on a two-month tour of Scotland, but then after it ended in September,

00:14:29.680 he telegraphed, he decided to go to America. So he just kind of liked wandering around,

00:14:34.280 doing, like showing off, doing readings, getting money and abandoning his wife and children.

00:14:39.360 He was an avid and even compulsive walker. Scarcely a day went by, the Dickens didn't

00:14:46.840 flee his desk and take to the streets of London and its suburbs. He routinely walked as many as

00:14:50.700 20 miles a day. He once set out at 2 a.m. to walk from his house in London to his country

00:14:55.140 residence, 30 miles away. As several of his walking companions described it, he had a

00:15:00.280 distinctive swinging gait. His walk served him in two ways. On one level, there were fact-finding

00:15:05.640 missions during which he recorded with his keen eye the teeming urban landscapes whose descriptions

00:15:09.880 were his stock and trade. So he just like wanders everywhere to see everything. And that is an

00:15:15.580 interesting habit, but also he would just like go out wandering and like abandon Catherine and

00:15:20.580 their children, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. He, cause he, it's like night and he's

00:15:24.580 like, well, I'm, you know, miles away from home. I guess I'll just stay in this pub or whatever.

00:15:27.860 So he just like wandered off all the time. So after Mary's death, Catherine's younger sister,

00:15:33.440 Georgina joined the family household while Charles Dickens and Catherine sailed to America.

00:15:41.740 So they had left their children behind, and Georgina, Auntie Georgina, watched them.

00:15:46.820 They had four children by this point, Charles Jr., Mary, Kate, or Catherine Jr., and Walter.

00:15:52.800 And then, let's see, Charles Dickens produced a play.

00:15:57.260 He's still really interested in theater.

00:15:59.720 His wife had a minor role.

00:16:01.400 She fell through a trap door during one performance, which sounds very dramatic.

00:16:06.760 And then she herself wrote a book.

00:16:08.480 She used the pseudonym Lady Mariah Clutterbuck.

00:16:10.940 which is a great name. Her book was called What Shall We Have for Dinner? Satisfactorily

00:16:15.880 Answered by Numerous Bills of Fair for from two to 18 persons. So like a book of recipes.

00:16:22.400 It contained many suggested meals, menus for meals of varying complexity with a few recipes,

00:16:27.720 and it was published and republished for like 10 years. So she was successful as a writer as well.

00:16:33.220 And then we're up to 1851, by which point they'd had six more children. So this is like 10 children

00:16:39.920 in total. Same as her. She grew up with 10. There's 10 siblings in her family. So in addition

00:16:45.260 to the previous four children I already named, they now have Francis, Alfred, Sidney, Henry,

00:16:49.100 and Dora. But in 1851, Dora died eight months old, and Catherine was understandably upset.

00:16:56.420 They had one more child after this called Edward. So nine children who survived infancy. And this

00:17:02.120 is where, well, now we learn about how the heading I have here is Dickens is a dick to Catherine. 0.97

00:17:08.720 So, allegedly, he, even though he was never home, he started, like, telling people that Catherine was an incompetent mother and housekeeper.

00:17:17.420 He blamed her for the birth of their 10 children because having so many children caused him financial worries.

00:17:23.340 Like, Charles Dickens, like, you had a role to play in the conception of these children.

00:17:29.820 Like, come on.

00:17:31.420 He had hoped that Walter, their fourth child, would be their only one.

00:17:34.760 but then surprise she had six more children because like he kept impregnating her. Like

00:17:39.840 that's her fault. He claimed that she wanted a lot of children because she came from a big family

00:17:44.640 and maybe she did. And maybe they should have had this discussion before they started having

00:17:48.180 children. He even tried to have her diagnosed as mentally ill and to have her committed to an

00:17:54.520 insane asylum. Like he was never home. She was grieving her child. She was like perpetually

00:17:59.800 pregnant or postpartum. And he's like, Oh, this is inconveniencing me. I don't like this woman.

00:18:04.760 To ensure no more children could be born, he ordered their beds to be separated and 1.00

00:18:09.320 put a bookshelf in between them. 0.99

00:18:11.680 So like, Charles Dickens, like, fuck off, basically. 0.99

00:18:15.380 So he flirted with a person called Eleanor Picken, the young fiancé of his lawyer's 1.00

00:18:20.840 best friend.

00:18:22.260 One night he grabbed her and ran with her down to the sea.

00:18:24.720 He declared their both to drown there in the sad sea waves.

00:18:27.800 She, uh, un-entangled herself from him and afterwards kept her distance, obviously, because

00:18:33.700 he's uh not a person you want to be around so when he was in america by the way he condemned

00:18:44.000 slavery correlating the emancipation of the poor in england with the abolition of slavery abroad

00:18:50.060 citing newspaper accounts of runway slaves disfigured by their masters um but in spite of

00:18:56.240 the abolitionist sentiments that he shared after a trip to america modern commentators have pointed

00:19:01.620 out inconsistencies in Dickens' view on racial inequality. So, for instance, he subsequently

00:19:09.940 was okay with Governor Eyre doing a harsh crackdown during the 1860s Morant Bay Rebellion

00:19:15.760 in Jamaica. He did not join other British progressives in condemning this act. And now

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00:22:28.520 The popularity he gained.

00:22:29.700 So he just got more and more popular from all these like tours of his performances because

00:22:32.860 he was like an actor slash writer.

00:22:34.280 So his readings were like really like a David Sedaris moment.

00:22:37.600 Like his readings were just like a big people liked reading his books, but they loved seeing

00:22:40.980 him read his books out loud.

00:22:42.820 he wrote a christmas carol which was very popular it did much to promote a renewed enthusiasm for

00:22:50.320 the joys of christmas in britain and america so he was also like the story was so popular

00:22:54.980 and his readings of it that it sort of like made christmas more of a big deal than it had been

00:23:00.500 before so in that way he kind of invented the modern concept of christmas as this like major

00:23:06.320 situation. He lived briefly in Italy, traveled to Switzerland, like continued to not be around

00:23:13.220 his wife, but say that she was a terrible mother, even though he wasn't there. And clearly he was

00:23:17.480 a terrible father. What else did he do? He did some okay things. For instance, he helped set up

00:23:25.400 a home for the redemption of fallen women of the working class. So this was a home that would

00:23:30.180 replace the punitive regimes of existing institutions with a reform, reformative

00:23:34.680 environment conducive to education and proficiency in domestic household chores. So he founded this

00:23:41.960 home called the Urania Cottage, and he managed it for 10 years. Around 100 women graduated

00:23:48.300 during the time that that was running. His religious views, he expressed a distaste for

00:23:55.560 certain aspects of organized religion. He disapproved of Roman Catholicism and also

00:24:02.240 19th century evangelicalism. He referred to the Catholic church as that curse upon the world. 0.76

00:24:10.780 So he just had opinions on everything. If he was on Twitter, he would be like a picture like a

00:24:14.800 Piers Morgan type person. He would just be like, here's what I think and what I think is correct.

00:24:20.400 And I have opinions on everything. Following the Indian mutiny of 1857 in India, he joined

00:24:30.540 and widespread criticism of the east india company for its role in the event but reserved his fury

00:24:35.480 for the rebels themselves wishing that he was the commander-in-chief in india so he would be able to

00:24:40.320 quote do my utmost to exterminate the race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested and

00:24:47.100 then because frankly what i find most interesting about this is him and katherine so 1857 he hired

00:24:55.920 professional actresses for a play called the frozen deep which was written by him and his

00:25:00.160 protege, Wilkie Collins. Charles Dickens fell in love with one of the actresses, Ellen Turnin,

00:25:06.000 who was 18 years old and he was 45 years old. And there's a movie called, I think it's The

00:25:12.220 Invisible Woman with Ralph Fiennes is in it. And Felicity Jones plays her. And it's a movie all

00:25:18.980 about how they're in love and it's okay because his wife is a terrible shrew. So it's kind of 0.50

00:25:23.800 like if Charles Dickens made a movie, how he would have explained the situation, which actually was

00:25:28.380 just a 45 year old man leaving his wife for an 18 year old because he didn't like grown women

00:25:34.220 because he didn't like people he didn't like female people seemingly except for very malleable

00:25:42.540 18 year olds so what happened just the same way that at least according to the crown princess

00:25:47.340 diana found out that charles was with camilla again she found a bracelet so charles dickens

00:25:52.600 had ordered a bracelet for ellen turnan and it was delivered to the household and catherine i guess

00:25:56.960 like was the one who got accepted the parcel. So there are also rumors that he was having an

00:26:01.860 affair with Georgina, Catherine's sister, but I, it seems like maybe he did also, but the

00:26:08.660 Elton Turnin thing was definitely happening. And to the point that Charles Dickens and Catherine

00:26:14.020 separated in May, 1858, divorce was unthinkable for someone as famous as him. So they just kind

00:26:20.600 of like officially stopped living together. Catherine left. She took with her their oldest

00:26:26.180 child, Charles Jr. The other eight children remained behind with Charles, but really he was

00:26:31.740 wandering off doing readings all the time. So really it was Georgina, the aunt, was taking

00:26:35.320 care of them. There were lots of rumors about his affair with this teenager and Charles Dickens

00:26:40.260 wrote op-eds in the newspaper sort of explaining like, I'm totally not having an affair, but also

00:26:46.000 if I did, who can blame me? Because Catherine, my wife, was actually a terrible wife. She was a 0.88

00:26:52.040 terrible mother. She was incompetent. I tried to get her sent to an insane asylum because she's so 1.00

00:26:56.520 useless. And it was only her sister Georgina who held the family together all this time. Catherine 0.99

00:27:01.720 sucks. So he really did his very best to paint his wife as a horrible mother slash human being 1.00

00:27:06.620 to justify running off with a younger woman, although he said he hadn't done that, but like

00:27:10.940 he had. After separating from Catherine, he did a bunch of reading tours just to sort of remind

00:27:16.600 everybody like, hey, you know, forget about the scandal. I'm this charming guy who does

00:27:20.940 impressions and voices. And he just really focused on his touring and reading career. He only,

00:27:26.920 quote, wrote two more novels during this next period. In early September 1860, Charles Dickens

00:27:32.840 made a bonfire for most of his correspondence. Only the letters on business matters were spared.

00:27:39.480 Ellen Ternan also destroyed all of his letters to her. So the extent of the affair between them

00:27:44.200 remains speculative. So that's quite a choice to make for someone who wanted to be famous and

00:27:49.740 wanted everyone to know what he was doing to burn them all. There is a rumor that he and Ellen

00:27:54.760 Ternan had a son who died in infancy, but no evidence, contemporary evidence exists. That was

00:27:59.780 just Charles Dickens' daughter decades later claimed that this had happened. When he died,

00:28:06.160 he left a bunch of money to Ellen Ternan, which made her financially independent.

00:28:10.660 So the book, The Invisible Woman, which I guess the movie was based on, argues that Ellen Ternan

00:28:15.500 lived with Charles Dickens secretly for the last 13 years of his life. In the same period,

00:28:20.020 Charles Dickens got very interested in the paranormal, and he became a member of a thing

00:28:24.220 called the Ghost Club. So, in 1865, when returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, a woman who he was

00:28:31.800 totally not having an affair with, they were involved in a rail crash, like a train accident.

00:28:37.660 The first seven carriages of this train plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair.

00:28:41.940 horrifying the only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one dickens was traveling in

00:28:47.600 before the rescuers arrived he tended and comforted the wounded and the dying with a flask of brandy

00:28:52.960 and a hat refreshed with water and he saved some lives so this is what i mean like he did some okay

00:28:57.300 things before leaving he remembered that he had left the unfinished manuscript for his new book

00:29:03.180 and he returned to the carriage to retrieve it but then he avoided appearing at the inquest about

00:29:09.160 the accident because he didn't want to disclose that he had been traveling with Ellen Ternan and

00:29:12.880 her mother, which would have caused a scandal. He was nervous when traveling by train after this,

00:29:19.180 understandably, and would use alternative means when available. Like, again, understandably.

00:29:25.200 How I sort of knew that he had an affair with a younger woman before I started reading up on

00:29:29.140 Charles Dickens was when the movie came out. Let me just look it up so you can know the title.

00:29:34.100 The movie is called, yeah, it's called The Invisible Woman. So I guess based on that same

00:29:37.540 book. So the thing is, in this movie, Felicity Jones plays Charles Dickens' 18-year-old soulmate.

00:29:45.180 Ralph Fiennes plays Charles Dickens. And Kristen Scott Thomas plays the mother

00:29:49.440 of Ellen Ternan. And why I remember this happening is because in The English Patient

00:29:55.220 several decades earlier, Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas played love interests of

00:30:00.280 each other. Then they reunited in this movie where Kristen Scott Thomas plays the mother

00:30:04.520 of his love interest and it's just I came across it because it's just one of those like fucked up

00:30:08.400 things where like Hollywood men their love interests always stay the same age even as the

00:30:12.900 men get older so like what Charles Dickens was up to it's like still I don't know just just a

00:30:20.620 shitty thing of men dating like because um Catherine was 19 when they met and then he later

00:30:28.680 left her for a 19 year old, like almost like he prefers women who are girls who are still

00:30:35.040 developing as human beings, more malleable so he can groom them better. Perhaps he doesn't like a

00:30:41.340 woman who's like an actual wife who like has 10 children with him and then blames her. God,

00:30:46.240 Charles Dickens. Anyway, so nervous about trains. After the civil war in America ended,

00:30:53.100 He went to America for another reading tour and let's see, he got very sick there.

00:31:01.100 So by the end of the tour, he could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne

00:31:05.580 and eggs beaten in sherry, which is quite an interesting thing for, to be the only thing

00:31:11.940 he was able to eat.

00:31:13.420 It reminds me of Percy Shelley's or Lord Byron's vegetarian diet, which was like wine only.

00:31:20.300 and then he went back to Britain to avoid having to pay taxes for the success of his tour in

00:31:30.760 England so I guess he knew that he was sick so he gave a series of farewell readings in England

00:31:35.700 Scotland and Ireland he was showing more and more symptoms of I'm not sure what but he was affected

00:31:41.600 by apparently giddiness and fits of paralysis he suffered a stroke in April 1869 and then collapsed

00:31:49.020 a few days later. And then the rest of the farewell tour was canceled. He began work on

00:31:55.100 his final novel. Once he regained some strength with medical approval, he did one final series

00:32:00.640 of readings to make up because people had like, he had sponsors for the tour. And then I guess

00:32:05.780 he had to pay them back because he had canceled it. He made his last public appearance on May 2nd

00:32:11.080 of that year. And then one month later, June 1870, he suffered another stroke at home.

00:32:17.020 He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gads Hill Place, aged just 58.

00:32:22.600 Like, what a body of work he had, considering he died aged 58.

00:32:27.780 One of his biographers suggested Charles Dickens was actually in Peckham when he suffered the stroke,

00:32:31.820 and his mistress Ellen and her maids had taken him back to Gads Hill so the public would not know the truth about their relationship and that he had been with her.

00:32:40.100 His wish was to be buried at Rochester Cathedral in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner.

00:32:46.400 but that is not what happened.

00:32:48.400 Instead, someone, I don't know, Ellen or somebody decided

00:32:50.960 that he should be laid to rest in the poet's corner of Westminster Abbey.

00:32:55.180 His last words were on the ground in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.

00:33:01.460 So he left money to his longtime colleague, John Forster.

00:33:07.480 He left money to Georgina, as well as two of his sons, or his two sons.

00:33:14.160 There's not, he didn't just choose two of his many sons.

00:33:16.900 The rest were daughters, I guess.

00:33:18.680 Although he and Catherine had been separated for several years, he provided her with an

00:33:22.000 annual income and he also bequeathed some money to each servant in his employment at

00:33:28.500 the time of his death.

00:33:30.200 Dickens and Catherine had little correspondence after their separation, but she remained

00:33:33.480 attached and loyal to her husband.

00:33:35.260 And this is the thing that is just like truly heartbreaking about all of it, which is that

00:33:40.040 She tied up her entire identity as being like the wife of Charles Dickens.

00:33:46.680 This was like her whole, like being his wife was so important to her.

00:33:51.720 And then he dumped her, but she never stopped loving him.

00:33:54.420 And it's really sad.

00:33:55.480 So if you want to read more about her, there's a book called The Other Dickens, A Life of

00:33:58.840 Catherine Hogarth by Lillian Nader, which sort of explains who she was, what her whole

00:34:03.680 deal was, and how it sucks the way that she was treated.

00:34:07.500 so she still kept considering herself his wife is like her most important job she died nine years

00:34:14.680 after him on her deathbed catherine gave the collection of letters she had received from

00:34:18.740 dickens which she did not burn she gave them to her daughter kate and said give these to the

00:34:23.800 british museum so the world may know that charles loved me once so all the letters between charles

00:34:29.060 and ellen were burned up but she kept the ones where he back when he used to love her remember

00:34:34.340 one, he was like, I could never be more happy than living in this little flat with Catherine

00:34:37.920 and not being famous, which was untrue. Catherine Dickens was buried alongside their infant daughter,

00:34:46.480 Dora, who had died in 1851. And yeah, she really still saw herself as Mrs. Charles Dickens. That

00:34:53.000 was like really important to her. But she did retain her social status. Ellen Ternan, 0.89

00:35:00.860 like after charles dickens died queen victoria wrote a note like of condolences to catherine

00:35:06.760 and you know ellen did not get that even though ellen was the one who charles had been living

00:35:12.140 with at that point allegedly so his mixed legacy he pushed victorian mythos in a big way ugliness

00:35:19.320 included and was extremely successful at it so he really mythologized what the victorian era in

00:35:25.100 london was like to the point that we all we all i don't know i think a lot of people understand

00:35:31.380 like when we say like victorian london like what comes to mind is a very much the kind of stuff he

00:35:35.720 wrote about like both the sort of like awful child labor stuff and then also the sort of like

00:35:39.920 family wholesomeness and stuff he invented and reinforced most of the mythology of the victorian

00:35:45.160 era that is still stifling society and culture to this day where people are like well victorian

00:35:50.540 you know like family values etc it's like well like no that's not true or real but it's kind of

00:35:57.580 what he wrote about he was a very serious advocate for the poor at the time when they had far too

00:36:03.780 few advocates although his advocating is that the word for them was sort of like it was sort of the

00:36:12.840 sort of like well-intentioned like rich white person way of advocating for the poor like he

00:36:20.520 was himself for sure like his father's and dad was prison he was like working 10 hours a day in a

00:36:24.260 shoe label factory age 10 so like he lived through it but then he became rich and successful pretty

00:36:30.120 early on through a lot of family connections so he advocated for the poor but also it was kind of

00:36:35.000 like on his terms his work influenced the development of just like the novel in like

00:36:40.980 english language he was also a good editor of other people he advocated for other writers

00:36:47.080 including some women writers. However, in his writing, he's very few strong female main

00:36:53.000 characters. And although he includes a lot of working class characters, most of them are not

00:36:57.080 that smart and are very pleased to be subservient, which is kind of part of the whole like Victorian 0.89

00:37:02.320 mythology that he sort of popularized. He did get it in the sense of like, he didn't think like,

00:37:11.020 oh, you know, pull yourself up at the bootstraps. Like if you work hard enough, you'll succeed.

00:37:14.060 He was actually very against that as a concept because he saw how that didn't work.

00:37:18.500 He sort of wrote about how it's a problem to just leave people to advocate for themselves

00:37:22.760 when actually the system is stacked against them.

00:37:25.620 So this is where he's got like, there's a lot to dig into with him.

00:37:31.500 He was really concerned about the plight of children, especially poor children, as a result

00:37:35.240 of his personal experience where he was thrown into supporting himself at a young age.

00:37:39.700 He just wasn't that concerned about, I guess, his own children who he abandoned. 0.88

00:37:44.060 when somebody was a shitty person to him, or he saw someone being shitty, he would make a 0.95

00:37:48.960 character based on them in his next book. And then that, in that sort of like a subtweet sort 0.94

00:37:54.960 of way that I sort of admire, like his characters, his like awful characters are so awful. Like a

00:38:00.840 lot of like Scrooge, for instance, who redeemed himself and I think is misunderstood, but

00:38:05.220 that's the only one I really know off the top of my head, but you can still trash awful people by

00:38:09.580 comparing them to Dickens characters. So he did a lot to address horrible, you know, factory owners

00:38:15.640 and things. Working conditions were just like ghastly back then. And he, through his books,

00:38:21.340 he kind of made rich people aware that things were kind of shitty. And that was good to make 0.73

00:38:25.720 people maybe try to help. So every time, well, these days you still see when there's some sort

00:38:31.000 of like shitty legislation goes through, for instance, US Congress, critics still bring up

00:38:37.660 maybe it's not unusual to see somebody bring up a Dickensian character to sort of like explain why

00:38:44.020 this is a shitty sort of legislation he also did like because he burned a lot of his letters but

00:38:52.780 a lot of stuff does still survive so he did accept criticism and try to improve in some ways

00:38:58.480 for instance there's a whole exchange of letters that are still around he had with a Jewish fan

00:39:04.020 who is who is a woman who pointed out like the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist was

00:39:10.480 clearly anti-Semitic. And they back and forth for a little bit. And he eventually not only

00:39:15.620 apologized, but wrote Our Mutual Friend, the book, which is a major subplot about a pure and

00:39:20.700 noble Jewish character who is unfairly targeted because of the exact kind of anti-Semitic

00:39:24.760 stereotypes that Charles Dickens had written into the character in Fagin and Oliver Twist.

00:39:29.340 so it's not like oh you know he was he solved racism but it's like he did listen and he was

00:39:37.280 kind of trying so this is what i mean like he's got a mixed legacy to me though the way he treated

00:39:45.040 katherine is i could i don't know i like a christmas carol he treated katherine so badly

00:39:49.980 he did some cool stuff he did some shitty stuff it's not as like clear-cut to me as it has been 0.99

00:39:57.860 with some of the other assholes. Is he awful or not? But anyway, time for some scoring. His 0.99

00:40:02.840 scandaliciousness. So the whole thing with Ellen Ternan, leaving his wife, trying to have her

00:40:07.720 committed is shitty. And it was clearly scandalous at the time, to the extent he had to like write

00:40:13.940 newspaper articles about it. But like, I'm going to say he's not very scandalicious in and of

00:40:19.940 himself. I'm going to give him a three for scandaliciousness. His scheminess. I'm going

00:40:25.040 gonna give him okay marks for that because i'm gonna like his scheminess just he wanted to be

00:40:29.340 rich and famous and he became rich and famous he found ways to like market his books in clever ways

00:40:34.180 he figured out that this like reading tours was a way to make himself famous which made his books

00:40:38.380 more famous isn't i don't know if this is true or not but doesn't wasn't he paid by the words so he

00:40:42.380 like made his books be like really wordy i could give him a seven for scheminess because the other

00:40:48.340 scheme is like trying to get rid of his wife which he never effectively did because she still loved

00:40:54.100 him you know if he had like murdered her i'd give her to him a 10 for scheminess but he just

00:40:58.380 abandoned her which is just shitty his significance is very high i'm gonna give him a 10 for significance

00:41:03.720 because charles dickens super famous his books highly influential not just to like reading and

00:41:10.140 writing but the whole thing about like the victorian era and stuff his sexism is a 10 because

00:41:16.580 he I you know he did support some women writers but he also demonized his own mother um he was

00:41:26.120 cruel and so awful to Catherine like just discarded her entirely blamed her for everything um and but

00:41:35.180 just sort of like put on a pedestal like her sisters left her for a teenager like god Charles

00:41:43.500 So again, if you want to read more about Charles Dickens treating his wife horribly, there's this book called The Other Dickens, A Life of Catherine Hogarth by Lillian Nader, which I have acquired and I just have not yet personally read it, but I will.

00:41:58.800 I mean, to be perfectly honest, it's Christmas season, which is a season that I celebrate through watching numerous cheesy films and reading books that I really like.

00:42:08.160 And one of the books that I really like to read at Christmas is A Christmas Carol.

00:42:10.900 So like in January, when I get back into reading or consuming anything non-Christmas related, perhaps I will look at that book and get mad at Charles Dickens all over again.

00:42:22.940 Yeah, that's your little Patreon episode for the month of December.

00:42:26.680 I'm going to have a poll soon to see who you want to hear about in January.

00:42:30.860 Or maybe I'll just find something interesting and I'll just post that for you.

00:42:34.520 But I truly appreciate, like, from the bottom of my heart, all of you Patreons out there listening to this.

00:42:41.420 I started the Patreon, I didn't know how it would go if anyone would support me, and now several people are.

00:42:48.660 And that's lovely, and I don't take it lightly, and I really appreciate it.

00:42:55.360 So again, that was a special treat for you.

00:42:57.600 I just brought out that Patreon, previously Patreon-exclusive episode of So This Asshole, Charles Dickens,

00:43:02.680 for you to enjoy. And there are going to be some more super specials coming up over the next

00:43:07.540 several weeks. I don't know if it's going to be every week or every other week, just like when I

00:43:12.300 have new stuff, I will be posting it in January and February. And then the new season, there's

00:43:18.280 something about Mary Queen of Scots will probably kick off around March. So yeah, consider joining

00:43:22.680 the Patreon. So if you pay at least $5 a month, then you get access to the whole back catalog and

00:43:27.820 to one new episode of So This Asshole every month. And if you join the Patreon at $1 per month,

00:43:35.080 then what you get is early access to all the new episodes, early ad-free access, I should say,

00:43:40.180 to all the new episodes of Vulgar History. And yeah, thank you all for listening. You can keep

00:43:46.900 up with me on Instagram, FullGroseryPod on TikTok at Vulgar History. And yeah, keep your pants on,

00:43:54.280 tits out and I'll talk to you all again real soon 0.99

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Vulgar History - January 11, 2023

So This A＊＊hole： Charles Dickens Was A Terrible Husband

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