0:00:04 > 0:00:07FESTIVE MUSIC
0:00:07 > 0:00:10It's that time of the year again.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14- That festive season... - Fabulous.
0:00:14 > 0:00:16..that family, home and hearth time.
0:00:16 > 0:00:21If there's one man responsible for our notion of the modern Christmas,
0:00:21 > 0:00:24it's quill-wielding, polymath, Charles Dickens.
0:00:24 > 0:00:28He romanticised and popularised our notion of Christmas.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30in a series of stories he released every year,
0:00:30 > 0:00:35the most loved of which launched a thousand Muppets -
0:00:35 > 0:00:36A Christmas Carol.
0:00:39 > 0:00:41Dickens loved acting and all year round
0:00:41 > 0:00:43he read out his Christmas Carol to packed theatres.
0:00:45 > 0:00:47He was the English Santa.
0:00:48 > 0:00:52The audiences saw Charles Dickens as the epitome of Yuletide spirit.
0:00:52 > 0:00:55They warmed to his descriptions of the Cratchit family,
0:00:55 > 0:00:58huddled around their meagre goose and Christmas pudding.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04"Mrs Cratchit entered, flushed, but smiling proudly with the pudding
0:01:04 > 0:01:07"like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm,
0:01:07 > 0:01:11"blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy
0:01:11 > 0:01:14"with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18"'Oh, what a wonderful pudding,' Bob Cratchit said.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22"He regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit
0:01:22 > 0:01:23"since their marriage.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26"'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears.
0:01:26 > 0:01:31"'God bless us.' Which all the family re-echoed.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35"'God bless us every one,' said Tiny Tim, the last of all."
0:01:43 > 0:01:47We all know the fiction - puddings the size of space hoppers,
0:01:47 > 0:01:52cheeky Cockneys made good by the patronage of their class overlords.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55But what about the truth behind the fiction?
0:01:55 > 0:01:58And that is that Dickens spent over two decades
0:01:58 > 0:02:00with his loyal wife Catherine,
0:02:00 > 0:02:03who's largely been air-brushed from his history.
0:02:03 > 0:02:06It's a great irony that this country's greatest author
0:02:06 > 0:02:09couldn't simply write himself the happy ending
0:02:09 > 0:02:10he created for his characters.
0:02:10 > 0:02:14Instead his marriage collapsed in heartbreak and betrayal.
0:02:14 > 0:02:17Welcome to Mrs Dickens' family Christmas.
0:02:17 > 0:02:19Cheers!
0:02:22 > 0:02:24Ooh, I love a cold tea.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26I think that one's a '72.
0:02:58 > 0:03:01Middle class London in the early 1830s.
0:03:01 > 0:03:05The tail end of the Georgian era, soon to see the dawn of Victorian England.
0:03:08 > 0:03:12Genteel, safe. Not a bad place for a respectable young woman
0:03:12 > 0:03:14on the hunt for a husband.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17Like the future Mrs Dickens.
0:03:22 > 0:03:24Catherine Thompson Hogarth came from a large
0:03:24 > 0:03:27sophisticated Scottish family that had settled in the capital.
0:03:29 > 0:03:33Wife, mother, home-maker, domestic goddess.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37Just four of the things least likely to be inscribed on my tombstone.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39But for Catherine they were vital.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43While men could disport themselves in the public sphere,
0:03:43 > 0:03:45women had to shine in the private sphere,
0:03:45 > 0:03:48where they created a happy and harmonious household
0:03:48 > 0:03:52full of kids - the ultimate in middle class respectability.
0:03:55 > 0:03:5819-year-old Catherine had been well-trained.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01She could sew, speak French, play the piano
0:04:01 > 0:04:03and her family was a "good" one.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05A literary editor, her papa had been friends
0:04:05 > 0:04:08with one of Britain's greatest novelists, Sir Walter Scott.
0:04:10 > 0:04:11Catherine wasn't a genius.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14How could she be, she didn't have advantage of an education
0:04:14 > 0:04:16and she wasn't a stunner either.
0:04:16 > 0:04:20But she was blue-eyed, and bonny, well-informed and witty
0:04:20 > 0:04:22and her family had excellent literary connections.
0:04:22 > 0:04:26All in all, for a man looking for a secure and cultured life
0:04:26 > 0:04:28she was the perfect catch.
0:04:28 > 0:04:30Enter Charles Dickens.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33No, not this one. That was later on.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36No, in 1835, when Catherine met him,
0:04:36 > 0:04:39Charles John Huffam Dickens looked like this.
0:04:47 > 0:04:49No one would have guessed he was the son
0:04:49 > 0:04:52of an obscure naval clerk with money problems.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57A campaigning journalist and budding playwright,
0:04:57 > 0:04:59Dickens was a dandy and man about town.
0:05:02 > 0:05:03In his early 20s,
0:05:03 > 0:05:08Dickens decided he wanted to achieve a look as sparkling as his wit.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10And so he invested in a brand new outfit.
0:05:10 > 0:05:13It was an image that would serve him very well.
0:05:19 > 0:05:24This is the young Dickens getting dressed up for a night on the town
0:05:24 > 0:05:28or maybe just a day's shopping.
0:05:28 > 0:05:30- It's a little big.- It is.
0:05:30 > 0:05:34- We can take that in...- You can do that?- ..to suit your svelte self.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37Don't worry. I can always take this out! Always a battle!
0:05:37 > 0:05:40We want something like this, we want something...
0:05:41 > 0:05:43..like this.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46Oh, yes. That's very dashing.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51So this is the uniform he adopts when he's young
0:05:51 > 0:05:54and he sticks with it for the rest of his life.
0:05:54 > 0:05:56What's interesting is when he's younger
0:05:56 > 0:06:00he does a lot of amateur theatricals and this is like a costume.
0:06:00 > 0:06:05This is the young Dickens on the verge of moving from amateur actor
0:06:05 > 0:06:09to a professional writer. This is what covers that transition.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11But he sticks with it?
0:06:11 > 0:06:14So basically it's like the stonewash denim of a Top Gear presenter.
0:06:14 > 0:06:18They will never alter, you know, fashion cannot change them.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22Exactly. This is the Dickens' brand.
0:06:22 > 0:06:23He was confident.
0:06:23 > 0:06:26He was borderline cocky but it was a shell.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29It was something he could hide behind like a suit of armour.
0:06:29 > 0:06:33Inside Dickens, there is this wounded child whose wounds never heal,
0:06:33 > 0:06:38who is the 12-year-old sent to work in a blacking factory
0:06:38 > 0:06:41where he spends maybe a year, maybe more, maybe less,
0:06:41 > 0:06:45slapping labels on pots of shoe polish.
0:06:45 > 0:06:48He feels he will never escape, finally he does,
0:06:48 > 0:06:51but there's always that great fear, that anxiety
0:06:51 > 0:06:56he's never going to make it and that's what is inside the waistcoat.
0:07:03 > 0:07:05Charles was only just middle class.
0:07:05 > 0:07:08He'd fought his way to respectability.
0:07:08 > 0:07:11Catherine, his social superior, knew nothing of this.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14No one did.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19"Mr Dickens improves very much on acquaintance," she wrote,
0:07:19 > 0:07:22"He is very gentlemanly and pleasant."
0:07:28 > 0:07:32Judging by his early letters to her, now in the British Library,
0:07:32 > 0:07:34they were very much in love.
0:07:36 > 0:07:40He adoringly calls her, "Dearest Mouse",
0:07:40 > 0:07:42"Darling Tattie",
0:07:42 > 0:07:43"Darling Pig".
0:07:44 > 0:07:48What is so exciting about reading these letters
0:07:48 > 0:07:52is that although we don't get her voice, we get their relationship.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55There is definite love and affection here.
0:07:55 > 0:07:59He's not trying to convince an audience of anything at this point.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03Whatever he writes here is for one person's eyes only.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07"I have never ceased to love you for one moment,
0:08:07 > 0:08:10"since I knew you," he writes, "Nor shall I."
0:08:12 > 0:08:16There's a page which leaps out at you
0:08:16 > 0:08:20because, firstly, there's this ridiculous, grotesquely florid signature,
0:08:20 > 0:08:24and underneath it he's written 99 zero, zero, zero.
0:08:24 > 0:08:26There are 33 zero kisses.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32I didn't realise there was a number bigger than the American national debt.
0:08:32 > 0:08:34But if there is, it's here.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37It's the sort of handwritten equivalent of,
0:08:37 > 0:08:40You put the phone down, no you put the phone down!
0:08:40 > 0:08:43I don't believe he's in his 20s, I don't believe it.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47but here he is. To me it says, 13-year-old boy.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51"If you knew how much delight it would afford me
0:08:51 > 0:08:54"to be able to turn round to you at our own fireside
0:08:54 > 0:08:58"when my work is done, and to seek in your kind looks and gentle manner
0:08:58 > 0:08:59"the recreation and happiness
0:08:59 > 0:09:04"which the moping solitude of chambers can never afford."
0:09:04 > 0:09:05I'm almost jealous.
0:09:05 > 0:09:09Most of the time all I have to show after my relationships
0:09:09 > 0:09:12even the long ones, is a couple of e-mails and a writ.
0:09:12 > 0:09:13There you go.
0:09:17 > 0:09:22On 2 April 1836, Catherine and Charles married in style
0:09:22 > 0:09:28at Chelsea's cathedral, the new mock Gothic marvel of St Luke's.
0:09:32 > 0:09:35She told Charles she'd be happy anywhere with him
0:09:35 > 0:09:37and they set up home in his bachelor pad
0:09:37 > 0:09:41at this fashionable block in Holborn, London.
0:09:41 > 0:09:46With them a cook, a maid and Catherine's younger sister (!)
0:09:50 > 0:09:56Mary Hogarth was blue-eyed and red lipped, 16 and very sweet.
0:09:56 > 0:09:59For Dickens, there was definitely something about Mary.
0:10:01 > 0:10:06I think the best deal for him was when he could have a wife and sister
0:10:06 > 0:10:09in the same home as he did with Mary Hogarth.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12Which is normal for the time but it's odd with him.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15I think the way he deals with that is odd, psychologically.
0:10:15 > 0:10:17The way he refers to it too.
0:10:17 > 0:10:19"My pair of petticoats" he calls them.
0:10:19 > 0:10:21That's his wife and his sister-in-law.
0:10:21 > 0:10:25I think he would have been happiest as a Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt.
0:10:25 > 0:10:27I think they married their sisters regularly.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Christmas 1836 was the Dickens' first as a married couple
0:10:38 > 0:10:40and one of their happiest.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44Charles had the home, wife and sister of his dreams.
0:10:44 > 0:10:47Catherine was expecting their first child
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and another new arrival had burst upon the world -
0:10:51 > 0:10:52The Pickwick Papers.
0:10:54 > 0:10:59Completed in 1837, this runaway bestseller contains a blueprint
0:10:59 > 0:11:04for the cheery family Christmas Dickens had never had as a child,
0:11:04 > 0:11:06the Pickwick Club's visit to the Wardle family
0:11:06 > 0:11:09for a splendid seasonal knees-up.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11APPLAUSE
0:11:11 > 0:11:13Happy, happy Christmas!
0:11:13 > 0:11:15CHEERS
0:11:15 > 0:11:19"This," said Mr Pickwick looking round him,
0:11:21 > 0:11:24"This is, indeed, comfort.
0:11:24 > 0:11:27"Our invariable custom," replied Mr Wardle
0:11:27 > 0:11:30"Everybody sits down with us on Christmas Eve,
0:11:30 > 0:11:33"servants and all, and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve,
0:11:33 > 0:11:37"to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and stories.
0:11:37 > 0:11:41"Trundle, my boy, rake up the fire."
0:11:41 > 0:11:44Up flew the bright sparks in myriads as the logs were stirred.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47The deep red blaze sent forth a rich glow,
0:11:47 > 0:11:50that penetrated into the furthest corner of the room,
0:11:50 > 0:11:54and cast its cheerful tint on every face.
0:11:54 > 0:11:56APPLAUSE
0:11:58 > 0:12:02Family reality and public fiction were perfectly matched.
0:12:05 > 0:12:07On the 12th night of that first Christmas,
0:12:07 > 0:12:12Catherine gave birth to their first child, Charley.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16The birth, in the home, as usual in those days, went smoothly.
0:12:16 > 0:12:18But not the aftermath.
0:12:18 > 0:12:20Catherine was unable to breastfeed.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23She just cried whenever she saw Charley.
0:12:23 > 0:12:27She was subject to the medical thoughts and views of the time.
0:12:27 > 0:12:30This is Thomas Bull's Hints To Mothers
0:12:30 > 0:12:33which suggests that all new mothers should lie prone
0:12:33 > 0:12:38between two to four weeks, in case their wombs fell out.
0:12:42 > 0:12:44Bored now!
0:12:44 > 0:12:45After just a few minutes,
0:12:45 > 0:12:49I would have got up and created a fallopian tube landslide.
0:12:49 > 0:12:51In all seriousness,
0:12:51 > 0:12:54it's very easy to put yourself in the place of Catherine.
0:12:54 > 0:12:57There were so few roles given to Victorian women
0:12:57 > 0:13:00and she's failed already at the first hurdle of the primary one,
0:13:00 > 0:13:02that of being a mum.
0:13:02 > 0:13:04Imagine her here lying in the silence
0:13:04 > 0:13:07listening to the sound of her child cry
0:13:07 > 0:13:09wanting to help it but not being able to do anything.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12Meanwhile, her husband is gallivanting and shopping
0:13:12 > 0:13:15with her younger sister.
0:13:15 > 0:13:17It's so easy to understand how she could have succumbed
0:13:17 > 0:13:20to the black dog of depression.
0:13:20 > 0:13:22BABY CRIES
0:13:22 > 0:13:25In his fiction, Dickens made a joke of it.
0:13:25 > 0:13:29When Little Dombey has no mother to breastfeed him
0:13:29 > 0:13:32in Dombey And Son of 1848, Mr Chick asks,
0:13:32 > 0:13:36"Couldn't something be done with a teapot?"
0:13:38 > 0:13:42In real life, Charles later claimed that a mental disorder
0:13:42 > 0:13:45made Catherine a bad wife and mother.
0:13:45 > 0:13:48A travesty of the truth, according to recent scholarship.
0:13:49 > 0:13:55You have to remember she's locked up in her room for a month
0:13:55 > 0:13:58but only with the first two deliveries.
0:13:58 > 0:14:03After the first two deliveries when she gets out of confinement earlier,
0:14:03 > 0:14:05she has no depression at all.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08Biographers and critics are still talking about
0:14:08 > 0:14:13how Catherine was weak, and talking about how she was a nonentity,
0:14:13 > 0:14:17and talking about how she had a nervous disability,
0:14:17 > 0:14:20and the rest of it, and they've bought it hook line and sinker.
0:14:20 > 0:14:26There's no indication at any point she had some nervous disturbance,
0:14:26 > 0:14:30that she was mentally ill, that she was incompetent.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40The fact is, they were a happy couple and he loved her.
0:14:40 > 0:14:45In 1837 they moved to a bigger home, 48 Doughty Street.
0:14:45 > 0:14:49Fully recovered, Catherine was a loving mother.
0:14:49 > 0:14:55"My darling boy," she wrote, "grows sweeter and lovelier every day."
0:15:04 > 0:15:06The couple were avid theatre-goers.
0:15:06 > 0:15:10In May 1837, accompanied by Mary, they went to see a one-act farce
0:15:10 > 0:15:15which Charles had recently completed on their second honeymoon.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20Called Is She His Wife?
0:15:20 > 0:15:26it features the newly-married Mr Lovetown already bored stiff with his missus.
0:15:31 > 0:15:35I repeat, my dear, that I am very dull in this out of the way villa,
0:15:35 > 0:15:39- confoundedly dull, horridly dull. - LAUGHTER
0:15:39 > 0:15:42And I repeat that if you took any pleasure in your wife's society,
0:15:42 > 0:15:44or felt for her as you once professed to feel,
0:15:44 > 0:15:47you would have no cause to make such a complaint.
0:15:47 > 0:15:51If I did not know you to be one of the sweetest creatures in existence, my dear,
0:15:51 > 0:15:55I should be strongly disposed to say that you were a very close imitation
0:15:55 > 0:15:57of an aggravating female.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02That's very curious, my dear, for I declare that,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05if I hadn't known you to be such an exquisite, good-tempered,
0:16:05 > 0:16:10attentive husband, I should have mistaken you for a very great brute.
0:16:10 > 0:16:12LAUGHTER
0:16:12 > 0:16:14My dear, you're offensive.
0:16:14 > 0:16:17My love, you're intolerable.
0:16:17 > 0:16:19CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
0:16:26 > 0:16:28In the marriage, as in Dickens' books,
0:16:28 > 0:16:32comedy and calamity were often bedfellows.
0:16:33 > 0:16:36That night, back home, Catherine's sister Mary
0:16:36 > 0:16:39unaccountably collapsed, never to recover.
0:16:44 > 0:16:47Catherine was so shocked by Mary's sudden death
0:16:47 > 0:16:50she ended up having a miscarriage.
0:16:50 > 0:16:54"We've often said," she wrote, "we had too much happiness to last."
0:16:54 > 0:16:57She probably would have written it in this very room
0:16:57 > 0:17:00which up until then had been full of so much promise.
0:17:00 > 0:17:04With a newborn baby and another on the way, his career taking off
0:17:04 > 0:17:08and her loyally by his side, and in one night that is wiped from them
0:17:08 > 0:17:13and this place becomes transformed into a place of sadness and bereavement.
0:17:16 > 0:17:20Charles' reaction was, well, very odd.
0:17:20 > 0:17:22Rather dramatic and self-centred.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29Dickens said, "Thank God she died in my arms,
0:17:29 > 0:17:33"and the last words she whispered were of me."
0:17:33 > 0:17:38Which I think remains the most singularly narcissistic statement
0:17:38 > 0:17:41I have ever heard in my entire life.
0:17:41 > 0:17:43As if the greater tragedy would have been
0:17:43 > 0:17:45she died and Charles wasn't there to hold her
0:17:45 > 0:17:51or that she died and hadn't managed in her final and dying breaths to mention him.
0:17:57 > 0:18:00Mary was laid to rest at the then brand new cemetery
0:18:00 > 0:18:03at Kensal Green, North London.
0:18:06 > 0:18:09"Young, beautiful and good, God in His mercy,
0:18:09 > 0:18:14"numbered her with His angels at the early age of seventeen."
0:18:14 > 0:18:16Wrote Charles Dickens.
0:18:19 > 0:18:24He wanted to be buried in the same grave lying above her for eternity.
0:18:25 > 0:18:29Unfortunately, Mary's brother was given the slot instead.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34Now Mary was dead, it seemed in some strange way
0:18:34 > 0:18:37to give Charles permission to be in love with her.
0:18:37 > 0:18:41Very odd, even by Victorian standards.
0:18:43 > 0:18:46Thank God she died before she did anything as grubby and fun
0:18:46 > 0:18:48as actually having sex.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51He idealised her, he was obsessed with her.
0:18:51 > 0:18:53In fact a family friend remarked,
0:18:53 > 0:18:56"One cannot doubt that his romantic love was given to Mary."
0:18:56 > 0:18:59He'd call her "his ideal" to anyone who'd listen,
0:18:59 > 0:19:01including his own wife.
0:19:01 > 0:19:03Nice!
0:19:05 > 0:19:08Mary was replaced in the home by Georgina,
0:19:08 > 0:19:10another of Catherine's little sisters.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14Virgins played a big role in the Dickens's marriage
0:19:14 > 0:19:17and in Charles's fiction.
0:19:18 > 0:19:24In 1841, he completed The Old Curiosity Shop starring Little Nell.
0:19:24 > 0:19:29This virtuous young maiden looks after her ailing grandpapa
0:19:29 > 0:19:31while she's lusted after by one of Dickens's
0:19:31 > 0:19:37most creepy creations - the oversexed dwarf, Mr Quilp.
0:19:37 > 0:19:39"When the child looked up again
0:19:39 > 0:19:43"she found that he was regarding her with extraordinary favour and complacency.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49"'You look very pretty today, Nelly, charmingly pretty.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52"'Are you tired, Nelly?'
0:19:53 > 0:19:55"'No, sir, I'm in a hurry to get back,
0:19:55 > 0:19:57"'for he will be anxious while I am away.
0:19:57 > 0:20:02"'No hurry, Little Nell, no hurry at all,' said Quilp.
0:20:02 > 0:20:05"'How should you like to be my number two, Nelly?'
0:20:05 > 0:20:07"'To be what, sir?'
0:20:07 > 0:20:12"'My number two, Nelly, my second, my Mrs Quilp,' said the dwarf.
0:20:12 > 0:20:16"The child looked frightened, but seemed not to understand him,
0:20:16 > 0:20:22"which Mr Quilp observing, hastened to make his meaning more distinctly.
0:20:22 > 0:20:27"'To be Mrs Quilp the second, when Mrs Quilp the first is dead, sweet Nell,' said Quilp
0:20:27 > 0:20:32"wrinkling up his eyes and luring her towards him with his bent forefinger.
0:20:32 > 0:20:36"'To be my wife, my little cherry-cheeked, red-lipped wife.
0:20:36 > 0:20:39"'Say that Mrs Quilp lives five year, or only four,
0:20:39 > 0:20:42"'You'll be just the proper age for me.'"
0:20:47 > 0:20:52When Little Nell dies, her grandfather keeps her clothes.
0:20:52 > 0:20:55In real life, Dickens kept Mary's, saying,
0:20:55 > 0:20:58"They will moulder away in their secret places."
0:21:03 > 0:21:07A troubled, mercurial soul, for now he held his demons at bay
0:21:07 > 0:21:10often by transmuting them into great fiction.
0:21:13 > 0:21:15In the 1830s and '40s,
0:21:15 > 0:21:19Charles Dickens became the most famous writer on earth.
0:21:20 > 0:21:22From Oliver Twist to Martin Chuzzlewit,
0:21:22 > 0:21:25from Nicholas Nickleby to David Copperfield,
0:21:25 > 0:21:29Catherine's husband produced some of English literature's masterpieces.
0:21:29 > 0:21:34He explodes onto the scene. Nobody had seen anything like it.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37He became a public celebrity, there were commercial spin offs
0:21:37 > 0:21:42like sweets, pastries and a certain kind of trousers
0:21:42 > 0:21:46which you could buy, all of which were adverts for his novels.
0:21:46 > 0:21:51He's like a modern rock star. He has that kind of recognition.
0:21:53 > 0:21:56"The fame of his talents," wrote Catherine,
0:21:56 > 0:21:58"are now known all over the world,
0:21:58 > 0:22:01"but his kind, affectionate heart is dearer to me than all."
0:22:03 > 0:22:07She, in her own way, was equally productive.
0:22:07 > 0:22:11Catherine had another child, and another, then another and another,
0:22:11 > 0:22:17and another, so that by 1852, she'd spent nearly half her married life pregnant.
0:22:17 > 0:22:22That's nearly 3,000 days up the duff. Ouch!
0:22:22 > 0:22:25First up, Charley.
0:22:25 > 0:22:26Mary. Katey.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29Walter. Francis. Alfred. Sydney.
0:22:29 > 0:22:31Henry. Dora.
0:22:31 > 0:22:34And, at number ten, Edward.
0:22:35 > 0:22:37Or as their father liked to nickname them -
0:22:37 > 0:22:38Flaster Floby.
0:22:38 > 0:22:41Mild Gloster. Lucifer Box.
0:22:41 > 0:22:44Young Skull. Chickenstalker.
0:22:44 > 0:22:46Skittle. The Ocean Spectre.
0:22:46 > 0:22:49Mr H. Dora.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52Plornish Maroon.
0:22:55 > 0:22:59To fit them all in, in 1851, they moved to Tavistock House,
0:22:59 > 0:23:02a spacious North London mansion.
0:23:02 > 0:23:05Now broods of this size were not entirely unusual
0:23:05 > 0:23:08because couples didn't really do contraception.
0:23:08 > 0:23:13The vulcanisation of rubber in 1844 meant condoms more widely available
0:23:13 > 0:23:18but they were thick and had heavy seams and they were reusable.
0:23:18 > 0:23:20Think of them as intimate wellies.
0:23:20 > 0:23:23Gentlemen wore them when they visited prostitutes
0:23:23 > 0:23:26but they didn't want to present that kind of grotesque inner tube
0:23:26 > 0:23:30to their spouses in the more intimate environments of the home
0:23:30 > 0:23:33which meant everybody from the Archbishop of Canterbury
0:23:33 > 0:23:35to the Queen had large families.
0:23:37 > 0:23:40But how should Victorian mothers feed their huge clans
0:23:40 > 0:23:43not to mention their guests?
0:23:47 > 0:23:51Domestic goddess Catherine came up with the answer.
0:23:51 > 0:23:53Before anyone had heard of Mrs Beeton,
0:23:53 > 0:23:57Mrs Dickens wrote a successful book on entertaining in the home,
0:23:57 > 0:24:00the very sensibly titled, What Shall We Have For Dinner?
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Written under the theatrical pseudonym of Lady Maria Clutterbuck,
0:24:03 > 0:24:06it's still in print today.
0:24:08 > 0:24:12She produced this incredible series of menus which are very inventive.
0:24:12 > 0:24:15Some of them were for a mere six or eight people.
0:24:15 > 0:24:18Bt these menus for 20 people, five courses,
0:24:18 > 0:24:20very incident packed,
0:24:20 > 0:24:22lots of character and colour.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26In a way, they're her version of her husband's novels, really.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30We're going to make something from the book, which is what?
0:24:30 > 0:24:36It's a leg of mutton stuffed with oysters and some herbs.
0:24:36 > 0:24:41Interestingly, with the oysters it says take off beard and horny parts
0:24:41 > 0:24:45because this is Victorian England and there's no horny parts allowed!
0:24:45 > 0:24:48No horny parts. These are lovely cleaned oysters...
0:24:48 > 0:24:50Wholesome oysters.
0:24:50 > 0:24:52What should I do to start?
0:24:52 > 0:24:56If you wanted to chop some chervil, some marjoram...
0:24:56 > 0:25:00This was one of Charles' favourites and according to Lady Clutterbuck,
0:25:00 > 0:25:03"Good food is a sure-fire way to a husband's heart.
0:25:03 > 0:25:07"My attention to the requirements of his appetite" she wrote,
0:25:07 > 0:25:10"secured me the possession of his esteem until the last".
0:25:10 > 0:25:15And then these amazing oysters. I know it's fantastic, isn't it?
0:25:15 > 0:25:18The way Catherine uses them in her recipes,
0:25:18 > 0:25:21we'd find probably quite extravagant.
0:25:21 > 0:25:24She's got recipes for oyster curry, and oyster sauce.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28I'm tempted to just throw half of them down my throat.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31For me, this dish is the perfect metaphor for Victorian life,
0:25:31 > 0:25:35the aphrodisiac, the sexy, kind of sheathed in the wholesome.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39- So I, sort of, I think it's perfect. - Dickens knew their reputation.
0:25:39 > 0:25:42When Catherine was pregnant, he said, "I'd better stop eating oysters."
0:25:42 > 0:25:47So, here's this lovely, beautifully jointed mutton.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50If I spoon there, do you want to invade the cavity,
0:25:50 > 0:25:53- in politest way possible?- Yes!
0:25:55 > 0:25:57- We can have some down here as well.- Oh, yeah.
0:25:57 > 0:25:59So this is the fun bit. We need to tie it up.
0:25:59 > 0:26:01I'll think of it as a Christmas parcel.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04Do a little bow on the top, or something.
0:26:05 > 0:26:10Ladies were warned at the time that gentlemen had clubs to go to,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13- if didn't give proper hot meal when they cam home.- Right.
0:26:13 > 0:26:16- You know that expression, "The cold shoulder"?- I do.
0:26:16 > 0:26:18That's where that comes from.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21So give your husband the cold shoulder of mutton, you won't see him.
0:26:21 > 0:26:24Simply because you provided a cold cut, that would be it?
0:26:24 > 0:26:29Well, we've done some great Japanese rope bondage that should keep any husband happy there, I think.
0:26:31 > 0:26:35- Right, let's give it a go, shall we?- Yes.
0:26:39 > 0:26:41Delicious.
0:26:41 > 0:26:42Well done, Mrs Dickens.
0:26:42 > 0:26:46- Well done. She does know what she's talking about.- That is good.
0:26:46 > 0:26:49I feel gout forming in my big toe as I eat it.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57Every Christmas, the family ate Twelfth Night Cake,
0:26:57 > 0:27:00which doubled as Charley's birthday cake.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04The more children his parents had, the bigger it got.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08This a very old trick, a Tudor trick.
0:27:08 > 0:27:12- If you get the bean in the cake, you're the king for the evening. - Right.
0:27:12 > 0:27:15And a pea, which would make you the queen for the evening.
0:27:15 > 0:27:20- And the king and the queen decide who does what for the celebrations. - OK.
0:27:20 > 0:27:24And then if you're a little less lucky, you might get the clove.
0:27:24 > 0:27:26The nave, the naughty boy.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29What does it mean when you got this windsock in your cake?
0:27:29 > 0:27:34- This rag means you're the slut. - Surely not in Victorian England.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38So you'd have your slut, your king, your queen, your servant.
0:27:38 > 0:27:40That's a party. Right, OK.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43- Get creaming.- Yep.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48I mean, you'd have forearms like Vin Diesel doing this, would you?
0:27:48 > 0:27:51The scullery maid would have been a real beefcake, wouldn't she?
0:27:51 > 0:27:53- Cooks became a real beefcakes.- Yeah.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56I think they became quite tough ladies, really.
0:27:56 > 0:27:58- There we go, exhausting.- Yeah.
0:27:58 > 0:28:02There are 14 pounds weight of ingredients in this one.
0:28:02 > 0:28:04Probably big enough even for the Dickens' tribe at its peak.
0:28:04 > 0:28:06- That's for the king.- The king.
0:28:06 > 0:28:09- The queen.- The queen.
0:28:09 > 0:28:13- That's the nave going in. Finally, the old slag rag.- Slag rag!
0:28:13 > 0:28:16- So I'm going to just embed that like that?- I think so.
0:28:16 > 0:28:17We just mix it all up a bit.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19- Happy days.- Yeah, put it in.
0:28:21 > 0:28:25Looks so angelic. Who'd have thought there's a slut inside?
0:28:25 > 0:28:29That goes in the oven for about four hours.
0:28:29 > 0:28:31So, how is it? Is it delicious?
0:28:33 > 0:28:35- It really is good. - Well, that is Christmas.
0:28:35 > 0:28:36It really is great.
0:28:38 > 0:28:43- Look at that.- One Twelfth cake. - That's an incredible thing.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46Twelfth Night cake morphed into Christmas cake
0:28:46 > 0:28:47and that's because Dickens,
0:28:47 > 0:28:51I wouldn't say single-handedly created the Christmas meal we know about,
0:28:51 > 0:28:55but everything, all the food that was in a Christmas Carol,
0:28:55 > 0:28:58so roast turkey and plum pudding,
0:28:58 > 0:29:02that became the standard idea of Christmas food
0:29:02 > 0:29:06whereas before then goose would have been much more common for poor people, for example.
0:29:06 > 0:29:09So he's the bane of every poor woman's life
0:29:09 > 0:29:12as she contemplates putting the turkey on
0:29:12 > 0:29:14at nine o'clock in the morning?
0:29:14 > 0:29:17(Just finish that bit off there.)
0:29:17 > 0:29:18This is incredible.
0:29:18 > 0:29:22This is Mr and Mrs Dickens and you can buy it and there the are.
0:29:22 > 0:29:23Happy and in love.
0:29:23 > 0:29:26Happily married. On their Twelfth cake.
0:29:26 > 0:29:28Right, shall we see who gets to be slag?
0:29:33 > 0:29:36As Catherine's husband grew ever more famous,
0:29:36 > 0:29:41the Dickens family Christmas became an integral part of his brand.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44Dickens was a wonderful Father Christmas father figure
0:29:44 > 0:29:47for the nation because of the Christmas Carol, above all,
0:29:47 > 0:29:51then after the Carol, he went on writing every Christmas
0:29:51 > 0:29:57as some rather fed-up reviewer said, "The appearance of Mr Dickens
0:29:57 > 0:30:03"on the publishing stage every Christmas is as predictable and inevitable
0:30:03 > 0:30:07"as the appearance of Mr Grimaldi the clown in the pantomime."
0:30:07 > 0:30:09So there's always repeats at Christmas?
0:30:09 > 0:30:11Yes, yes. I mean, Dickens was like the pantomime.
0:30:11 > 0:30:13He came back at Christmas.
0:30:13 > 0:30:17He always wrote a Christmas story, a Christmas book or story,
0:30:17 > 0:30:21until within a couple of years of the end of his life, then he got fed up.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26For many years, the Dickens family Christmases
0:30:26 > 0:30:29were just as cheery as anything in his fiction.
0:30:29 > 0:30:33With his first love, theatre, right at the heart of it.
0:30:34 > 0:30:36For most people, exerting yourself at Christmas
0:30:36 > 0:30:40means rolling off the sofa headlong into an aluminium tin of chocolate.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43But for Dickens it was an entirely different affair.
0:30:43 > 0:30:46By the early 1850s, he was corralling his entire family
0:30:46 > 0:30:49into appearing in these vast theatrical productions.
0:30:49 > 0:30:53Himself, surprise, surprise, centre stage.
0:30:53 > 0:30:55Of course! It's Dickens.
0:30:57 > 0:30:58He was the ultimate ham.
0:30:58 > 0:31:02He did everything, from lights, lyrics, stage management.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04He even handed out the tickets.
0:31:06 > 0:31:09They'd have these stellar family theatricals
0:31:09 > 0:31:11and Dickens would work on these for months.
0:31:11 > 0:31:12It was wonderful.
0:31:12 > 0:31:14They had carpenters appear in the house
0:31:14 > 0:31:16and turn the children's schoolroom
0:31:16 > 0:31:19into what Dickens called The Smallest Theatre in the World.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22- So no expense spared. - No expense! He even hired a policeman
0:31:22 > 0:31:25to check people's invitations to prevent gate-crashing.
0:31:25 > 0:31:27But how wonderful that family time!
0:31:27 > 0:31:31Here, people sit around the television. Imagine the whole family for weeks on end...
0:31:31 > 0:31:35- We'd kill each other. - ..building towards this. I was thinking more of the camaraderie
0:31:35 > 0:31:37and the joy but you're right.
0:31:37 > 0:31:39I'm exhausted just hearing about it!
0:31:46 > 0:31:49But the sad thing was, as the years went by,
0:31:49 > 0:31:52there was an increasing mismatch between the Christmas
0:31:52 > 0:31:56of Charles' fiction, and the reality at home with Catherine.
0:32:00 > 0:32:0416 relentless years of childbearing,
0:32:04 > 0:32:09no doubt topped off by all that good food, had changed her from this,
0:32:09 > 0:32:10to this.
0:32:12 > 0:32:15In her matronly mid-30s,
0:32:15 > 0:32:18the bloom of her youth was a thing of the past.
0:32:18 > 0:32:20It's hard to say just how much weight she'd gained,
0:32:20 > 0:32:23but she was certainly heavy.
0:32:28 > 0:32:32Charles made barbed jokes about it to his friends.
0:32:32 > 0:32:36He reported that the carriage transporting her around town "staggered"
0:32:36 > 0:32:38under the weight of her and she "nearly killed herself"
0:32:38 > 0:32:40after gorging herself on a meal in Paris.
0:32:40 > 0:32:45If it was me, I'd call him a repressed Rasputin look-alike with an over-fondness for adverbs.
0:32:45 > 0:32:47But this was the 19th century.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51Catherine did what she was supposed to do. She put up and demurely shut up.
0:32:51 > 0:32:53Bleak House, please!
0:32:53 > 0:32:56Poor Catherine. And Poor Charles.
0:32:56 > 0:32:59It wasn't just Celebrity First Wife Syndrome.
0:32:59 > 0:33:02It was far more deep-seated than that.
0:33:04 > 0:33:07The core diagnosis you would probably make of him
0:33:07 > 0:33:09is that he has an attachment disorder.
0:33:09 > 0:33:11That is that he feels very insecure
0:33:11 > 0:33:13in the moment he starts to depend on anyone.
0:33:13 > 0:33:16I strongly smell neglect here
0:33:16 > 0:33:19that his mother didn't tune in to him when he was a baby,
0:33:19 > 0:33:22didn't meet his needs, didn't respond to him,
0:33:22 > 0:33:27wasn't connected, so he's somebody who feels a bit needy and unloved.
0:33:27 > 0:33:29There's a lot of repressed anger there.
0:33:29 > 0:33:31What's the prognosis for someone who can't let it go?
0:33:31 > 0:33:34He can't deal with the idea of a three-dimensional woman,
0:33:34 > 0:33:38certainly not of a strong independent, mature one,
0:33:38 > 0:33:40sexually mature or emotionally,
0:33:40 > 0:33:44so I think any woman that is with him,
0:33:44 > 0:33:49as she ages, will increasingly come to be confused with his mother.
0:33:53 > 0:33:56Somewhere in that brilliant and complicated mind of his,
0:33:56 > 0:33:59Charles was still a child.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02A child who blamed his mother for that early trauma,
0:34:02 > 0:34:05slaving away in the blacking-factory.
0:34:05 > 0:34:06As he himself wrote,
0:34:06 > 0:34:11he couldn't and wouldn't ever forgive her for sending him there.
0:34:11 > 0:34:15Woe betide anyone who reminded him of his mother.
0:34:17 > 0:34:21And in his novels, middle-aged women are usually ridiculous
0:34:21 > 0:34:24and never romantic. Like Mrs Gamp,
0:34:24 > 0:34:28the boozy eccentric midwife in Martin Chuzzlewit of 1844.
0:34:28 > 0:34:30The ultimate frump.
0:34:30 > 0:34:32So Catherine is sharing her home
0:34:32 > 0:34:35with a man who only really understands two types of women.
0:34:35 > 0:34:37The virgin or the frump.
0:34:37 > 0:34:40And everything in between those two polar opposites
0:34:40 > 0:34:42is pretty much a mystery to him.
0:34:42 > 0:34:44In that regard, he's like most Victorian men
0:34:44 > 0:34:47who can only really hope to understand the wonders
0:34:47 > 0:34:51of the feminine psyche by applying blunt archetypes.
0:34:51 > 0:34:55But the problem is because he only understands that and that,
0:34:55 > 0:34:57there's a woeful lack of real women in his books,
0:34:57 > 0:35:01and there's potential nightmares lurking in his marriage.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13By giving Charles the family life he craved,
0:35:13 > 0:35:19Catherine was always doomed in his eyes to turn from angel to frump.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23His disenchantment intensified in 1854,
0:35:23 > 0:35:26when an old flame from before the marriage got in touch.
0:35:29 > 0:35:31Maria Winter.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36Charles, who'd so loved Catherine, then Mary,
0:35:36 > 0:35:41now convinced himself that in fact, he'd loved Maria all the time.
0:35:41 > 0:35:43I think she'd just written the sort of thing, "Remember me?"
0:35:43 > 0:35:48And then she gets these passionate letters back from one of the most famous men in England,
0:35:48 > 0:35:50married with umpteen children
0:35:50 > 0:35:53saying, "I never loved anybody as I loved you," and, you know,
0:35:53 > 0:35:58"See what I've carried in my heart through all these years and all these changes," and so on.
0:35:58 > 0:36:00She gets nervous and she writes and says,
0:36:00 > 0:36:02"Well, I'm toothless, fat and 40," and so forth.
0:36:02 > 0:36:06He says, "I don't believe it! You're exactly as I remembered you."
0:36:06 > 0:36:08Um...And then he meets her.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14Maria was just as she'd described.
0:36:14 > 0:36:17All these passionate letters, "To my dearest Maria."
0:36:17 > 0:36:21And then the minute after he's met her, the next letter is "My dear Mrs Winter," you know.
0:36:21 > 0:36:28Somehow that image of this pure love that he had once for Maria
0:36:28 > 0:36:30having cherished it in his heart all this time,
0:36:30 > 0:36:34it somehow made the marriage tolerable, more than tolerable,
0:36:34 > 0:36:38made it work, but when that is smashed,
0:36:38 > 0:36:44within a couple of years he's writing to Forster
0:36:44 > 0:36:47saying, "Why is it with me, like poor David Copperfield,
0:36:47 > 0:36:51"I always feel this old unhappy loss or want of something,
0:36:51 > 0:36:54"the one friend and companion I've never made."
0:36:54 > 0:36:58And that the marriage is doomed, really.
0:36:58 > 0:37:03With the fat middle-aged gossip Flora Finching in Little Dorrit,
0:37:03 > 0:37:05started the following year,
0:37:05 > 0:37:07Dickens lampooned Maria.
0:37:07 > 0:37:10And, perhaps, Catherine herself.
0:37:18 > 0:37:23The final death-blow to the marriage was delivered by a romantic melodrama
0:37:23 > 0:37:29that started out as just another Dickens family Christmas theatrical production.
0:37:29 > 0:37:30The Frozen Deep.
0:37:32 > 0:37:38Starring Dickens, it won glowing reviews. In 1857, it went on tour.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42Family amateurs were replaced by professionals.
0:37:42 > 0:37:43One was Ellen Ternan.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46A slim 18-year-old actress.
0:37:48 > 0:37:50Everything Catherine was not.
0:37:53 > 0:37:55She wasn't a great actress,
0:37:55 > 0:37:57but as Mrs Crayford,
0:37:57 > 0:38:00she had a prophetic encounter with Dickens,
0:38:00 > 0:38:02the Arctic explorer, Wardour.
0:38:09 > 0:38:11Who is it you want to find? Your wife?
0:38:11 > 0:38:15Who, then? What is she like?
0:38:15 > 0:38:20Young with a fair, sad face, with kind, tender eyes,
0:38:20 > 0:38:25with a soft, clear voice. Young and loving and merciful.
0:38:25 > 0:38:31I must wander, wander, wander restless, sleepless,
0:38:31 > 0:38:34homeless over the ice and over the snow.
0:38:34 > 0:38:37Tossing on the sea, tramping the land,
0:38:37 > 0:38:40awake all night, awake all day,
0:38:40 > 0:38:44wander, wander...
0:38:44 > 0:38:46wander, till I find her!
0:38:53 > 0:39:00"You have no idea," he wrote about Ellen, "how intensely I love her!"
0:39:01 > 0:39:05From the racy theatrical world he so adored,
0:39:05 > 0:39:08Ellen was small and pretty.
0:39:08 > 0:39:09He called her Nelly.
0:39:09 > 0:39:12And he pursued her with all the vigour of Mr Quilp.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18"Be my wife, my little cherry-cheeked, red-lipped wife.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21"Say that Mrs Quilp lives five year, or only four,
0:39:21 > 0:39:24"you'll be just the proper age for me."
0:39:29 > 0:39:31The marriage was now in deep crisis.
0:39:31 > 0:39:35That October, Dickens ordered "some little changes"
0:39:35 > 0:39:36to be made at Tavistock House,
0:39:36 > 0:39:39namely the conversion of his dressing-room into HIS bedroom,
0:39:39 > 0:39:42thereby effectively sealing him off from Catherine.
0:39:42 > 0:39:45It was D-I-V-O-R-C-E, DIY.
0:39:45 > 0:39:48He no longer wanted to play the part of her husband,
0:39:48 > 0:39:52and she was no longer required to play the part of wife.
0:40:01 > 0:40:04Everyone in the house knew, all the servants, all the children,
0:40:04 > 0:40:07everybody knew, it's an extraordinary thing to have done.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10I mean, she was profoundly wounded, obviously,
0:40:10 > 0:40:12and she was bewildered, I think.
0:40:15 > 0:40:18What must she have thought when, a week or so later,
0:40:18 > 0:40:23Dickens' The Lazy Tour Of The Two Idle Apprentices was published?
0:40:23 > 0:40:25It features a disenchanted husband
0:40:25 > 0:40:28trying to hypnotise his wife into an early grave.
0:40:28 > 0:40:31APPLAUSE
0:40:31 > 0:40:33"He had nothing but contempt for her.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36"She'd been long been in the way and he had long been weary.
0:40:36 > 0:40:41"He sat before her, day after day, night after night,
0:40:41 > 0:40:45"looking the word at her when he did not utter it.
0:40:45 > 0:40:48"As often as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from her hands
0:40:48 > 0:40:50"in which she rocked her head,
0:40:50 > 0:40:51"towards the stern figure,
0:40:51 > 0:40:55"sitting with crossed arms and knitted forehead in the chair,
0:40:55 > 0:40:59"they read in it, 'Die!'
0:40:59 > 0:41:02"When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned,
0:41:02 > 0:41:04"she was answered, 'Die!'
0:41:04 > 0:41:08"When she'd out-watched and out-suffered the long night, and the rising sun
0:41:08 > 0:41:12"flamed into the sombre room, she heard it hailed with,
0:41:12 > 0:41:14"'Another day and not dead?'
0:41:15 > 0:41:16"Die!"
0:41:29 > 0:41:31It's hard to look at Catherine and not feel sadness
0:41:31 > 0:41:34because ultimately she did exactly what it said on the tin.
0:41:34 > 0:41:38She was an ideal wife and mother, she looked after hearth and home,
0:41:38 > 0:41:40she was the ultimate domestic manager.
0:41:40 > 0:41:42Perhaps it was Catherine more than Charles
0:41:42 > 0:41:46that created all those elements formalised in the pages of A Christmas Carol.
0:41:51 > 0:41:53For Christmas 1857,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56Tavistock House just wasn't the same.
0:41:56 > 0:42:00There was no party. No family play. And no Twelfth Night Cake.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06It was Catherine's last Christmas with the family.
0:42:17 > 0:42:22Salacious rumours about Dickens and his Other Woman swept literary London.
0:42:23 > 0:42:28To prove it wasn't HER, Catherine's sister Georgina had a virginity test.
0:42:28 > 0:42:30The knives were out.
0:42:30 > 0:42:33And for Charles, there was only one villain in the piece.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38You see this in marriages all the time.
0:42:38 > 0:42:43Charles projects onto his wife a lot of the problems that he has.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46He uses her as a garbage truck, basically, for all the bad things in him,
0:42:46 > 0:42:48and the consequence is
0:42:48 > 0:42:52once you've created somebody who's this ogre,
0:42:52 > 0:42:54you can't live with an ogre any more.
0:42:54 > 0:42:59Charles went for the kill, making Catherine look bad and mad,
0:42:59 > 0:43:02to make himself look good.
0:43:02 > 0:43:05Dickens intimated that the children loathed their mother,
0:43:05 > 0:43:07and she in turn wasn't too fond of them either.
0:43:07 > 0:43:11And any appearance of them having affection for her was merely that,
0:43:11 > 0:43:14an appearance or performance. He wrote to a family friend,
0:43:14 > 0:43:18"The little play that is acted in the drawing-room is not the truth,
0:43:18 > 0:43:22"and the less the children play it, the better for themselves."
0:43:22 > 0:43:26The Tavistock family drama was truly unravelling.
0:43:34 > 0:43:39"My father was like a madman," wrote the Dickens' eldest daughter Kate.
0:43:39 > 0:43:41"He did not care a damn what happened to any of us.
0:43:41 > 0:43:46"Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home."
0:43:52 > 0:43:56Charles wrote a statement, later leaked to the American Press.
0:43:56 > 0:43:59In it, he made the outrageous claim that Catherine
0:43:59 > 0:44:03had "a mental disorder" and that she wanted to leave the family.
0:44:03 > 0:44:06He addressed his British public with protestations of innocence.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12Now, everybody knows the best way to deflect attention from a scandal,
0:44:12 > 0:44:14to draw fire away,
0:44:14 > 0:44:18is to print a major denial in a national newspaper.
0:44:18 > 0:44:21The bigger, the better, louder and more furious.
0:44:21 > 0:44:25That way, everyone will absolutely know you've done nothing wrong.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28Nothing to be ashamed of. Dickens did exactly this.
0:44:28 > 0:44:30This The Times of London,
0:44:30 > 0:44:33which my manservant has woefully forgotten to iron.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36June 7th, 1858.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39And this is the retraction that gentlemen across London
0:44:39 > 0:44:41would be waking up to read.
0:44:42 > 0:44:45"I most solemnly declare,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47"and this I do both in my own name and my wife's name,
0:44:47 > 0:44:51"that all the lately whispered rumours touching the trouble at which I have glanced,
0:44:51 > 0:44:53"are abominably false!"
0:44:53 > 0:44:55You can hear the righteous indignation.
0:44:55 > 0:44:58"Whoever repeats one of them after this denial,
0:44:58 > 0:45:01"will lie as wilfully and foully as it is possible
0:45:01 > 0:45:05"for any false witness to lie, before heaven and earth.
0:45:05 > 0:45:07"Charles Dickens."
0:45:07 > 0:45:11I think that's the dictionary definition of protesting too much.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21On the very day Charles publicly denied
0:45:21 > 0:45:24"any anger or ill-will" towards Catherine,
0:45:24 > 0:45:27behind the scenes, his lawyers were drawing up a telling document.
0:45:31 > 0:45:36It's now kept at Doughty Street, once the couple's happy home.
0:45:50 > 0:45:53This is the deed of separation, which is, you know,
0:45:53 > 0:45:56impenetrable, almost, full of legalese.
0:45:56 > 0:45:58And deeply intimidating.
0:45:58 > 0:46:02Decades of marriage ends not with a bang or a whimper
0:46:02 > 0:46:05but with this, sort of, austere legal document.
0:46:07 > 0:46:11It says here, "The said Catherine Dickens shall not and will not
0:46:11 > 0:46:17"at any time or times hereafter molest or disturb the said Charles Dickens.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20"Nor shall commence or prosecute
0:46:20 > 0:46:23"any suit or suits in any court or courts
0:46:23 > 0:46:26"for compelling or obliging him,
0:46:26 > 0:46:31"the said Charles Dickens, to cohabit or live with her."
0:46:31 > 0:46:35She signs that and she signs the end of her marriage.
0:46:37 > 0:46:40Under Victorian law, he couldn't divorce her
0:46:40 > 0:46:43because she hadn't committed adultery.
0:46:43 > 0:46:46So Charles pushed through the separation,
0:46:46 > 0:46:49paying Catherine the substantial sum of £600 a year
0:46:49 > 0:46:52to get her out of his life.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55She's not free to remarry.
0:46:55 > 0:46:57She has no role.
0:46:57 > 0:46:59She has no role as wife, she has no role as mother.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03What role is she to have as an uneducated woman,
0:47:03 > 0:47:07who has spent the entirety of her life supporting her husband?
0:47:07 > 0:47:08It's extraordinarily powerful.
0:47:10 > 0:47:12And she's been somebody pivotal
0:47:12 > 0:47:17in the role of wife for decades and now...
0:47:17 > 0:47:18sidelined.
0:47:20 > 0:47:22It folds up to something almost negligible
0:47:22 > 0:47:24but in the effect it has,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27it must have been like a whirlwind, wrecking her life.
0:47:28 > 0:47:32It's a pretty poor show from our national treasure, isn't it?
0:47:40 > 0:47:42Forced out of the family home by Charles,
0:47:42 > 0:47:47Catherine began her new life here in Camden, North London.
0:47:49 > 0:47:52Under Victorian law, the children stayed with their father.
0:47:52 > 0:47:56Only Charley, now an adult, could opt to stay with her.
0:47:58 > 0:48:02The Dickens' two daughters took piano and singing lessons opposite.
0:48:02 > 0:48:06But in thrall to their father, they never visited Catherine.
0:48:10 > 0:48:15"I have now, God help me, only one course to pursue,"
0:48:15 > 0:48:17Catherine wrote to a friend.
0:48:17 > 0:48:22"One day, I may be able to tell you how hardly I have been used."
0:48:27 > 0:48:29In the Victorian age, men had all the power.
0:48:29 > 0:48:34Wives had absolutely no rights at all. So when he kept the children,
0:48:34 > 0:48:37when he separated, that was what would have happened at the time.
0:48:37 > 0:48:41There would have been no suggestion to anybody that she'd have kept them.
0:48:41 > 0:48:44The suggestion was she should not have been forced out in the first place.
0:48:44 > 0:48:50Some of his closest friends openly ran a mistress as well as a wife.
0:48:50 > 0:48:53But, as the nation's Father Christmas and family icon,
0:48:53 > 0:48:56Dickens could do no such thing.
0:48:59 > 0:49:02Even now, he couldn't be seen with a mistress.
0:49:02 > 0:49:07In 1858, he forced Ellen off the stage and out of the public eye.
0:49:11 > 0:49:15Just as he ended HER theatrical career, Dickens started a new one,
0:49:15 > 0:49:19propelling himself into the spotlight as never before.
0:49:19 > 0:49:22APPLAUSE
0:49:22 > 0:49:25He began touring the nation,
0:49:25 > 0:49:28performing extracts from his novels in dazzling one-man shows.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31CHEERING
0:49:31 > 0:49:34APPLAUSE
0:49:38 > 0:49:42He did so, he wrote, "to wear and tear my storm away."
0:49:42 > 0:49:48Now he was back with the family he hadn't cut in two - his audience, the great British public.
0:49:48 > 0:49:49APPLAUSE
0:49:49 > 0:49:52He felt terrible, he knew he'd done something wrong.
0:49:52 > 0:49:56He's a guilty man who's haunted by his wrongdoing
0:49:56 > 0:49:59and he tries to make amends...
0:49:59 > 0:50:01six times a week with matinees.
0:50:03 > 0:50:05Criss-crossing the country
0:50:05 > 0:50:09also gave him perfect cover for seeing Ellen Ternan.
0:50:09 > 0:50:11Dickens was SO odd,
0:50:11 > 0:50:14some biographers believe they never consummated their relationship,
0:50:14 > 0:50:18although two of his children said Ellen had a baby by him.
0:50:18 > 0:50:20If so, it seems it died young.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26Whatever the truth, he now led a crazy itinerant life,
0:50:26 > 0:50:29with multiple addresses and several identities.
0:50:29 > 0:50:34One was Charles Tringham, named after his local tobacconist.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37I find it ridiculous that basically a man
0:50:37 > 0:50:40who was so accomplished at creating great names for his characters
0:50:40 > 0:50:43couldn't think of a decent one for his own nom de plume.
0:50:43 > 0:50:47I mean, that's pathetic. It just shows a total lack of imagination.
0:50:47 > 0:50:51It's like me calling myself Sue Costcutter.
0:51:00 > 0:51:06His late novels are imaginative triumphs that reflect his torment.
0:51:06 > 0:51:08In Great Expectations of 1861,
0:51:08 > 0:51:12it's the torture of unrequited sexual longing.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15In The Mystery Of Edwin Drood of 1870,
0:51:15 > 0:51:20it's a murderous guilty secret that no-one must discover.
0:51:24 > 0:51:27These were also dark years
0:51:27 > 0:51:30for the woman he'd driven out of their home.
0:51:30 > 0:51:33Catherine referred to the 1860s as her period of widowhood.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36And also claimed that if she saw Dickens, it would kill her.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39And in fact, she did see him - she saw him at the theatre.
0:51:39 > 0:51:42She was so distressed, she was taken home in floods of tears.
0:51:46 > 0:51:48In her self-styled widowhood,
0:51:48 > 0:51:51Catherine couldn't share Christmas with most of her children.
0:51:51 > 0:51:55She used to hold parties for local youngsters,
0:51:55 > 0:51:58as if trying to recreate the family she'd lost.
0:51:59 > 0:52:02The rest of the family spent their Christmases here,
0:52:02 > 0:52:06at the new home in Kent, run by Catherine's sister Georgina.
0:52:15 > 0:52:19A dozen years' manic writing and performing aged Dickens fast.
0:52:19 > 0:52:23By 1870, only 58, he was a sick man.
0:52:27 > 0:52:30That March, his last-ever public readings
0:52:30 > 0:52:33included one of his audience's favourites,
0:52:33 > 0:52:37Sykes and Nancy, the prostitute's brutal murder by her lover.
0:52:38 > 0:52:41Over 30 years before,
0:52:41 > 0:52:46Catherine had been the first person ever to hear him read it.
0:52:46 > 0:52:49She'd wept and wept.
0:52:57 > 0:53:01The girl was lying, half-dress'd upon the bed.
0:53:01 > 0:53:03"Get up!"
0:53:03 > 0:53:06The girl rose to withdraw the curtain.
0:53:06 > 0:53:07"Let it be.
0:53:07 > 0:53:10"There's light enough for what I've got to do."
0:53:10 > 0:53:14"Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have the heart to kill me.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18"Think of all I've given up, for you. Bill.
0:53:18 > 0:53:21"Bill, for dear God's sake, for your own, for mine,
0:53:21 > 0:53:24"stop before you spill my blood!"
0:53:24 > 0:53:26The housebreaker freed one arm,
0:53:26 > 0:53:28grasped his pistol
0:53:28 > 0:53:33and beat it twice upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.
0:53:34 > 0:53:37She staggered and fell,
0:53:37 > 0:53:41but raising herself to her knees breathed one prayer,
0:53:41 > 0:53:42for mercy to her Maker.
0:53:42 > 0:53:47The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the light with his hand,
0:53:47 > 0:53:51seized a heavy club, and struck her down!
0:54:12 > 0:54:18On June 9th, 1870, Dickens died, with Ellen Ternan at his side.
0:54:21 > 0:54:23Catherine was kept away.
0:54:26 > 0:54:30A friend wrote, "Her sorrow was overwhelming."
0:54:36 > 0:54:39Dickens was buried at Westminster Abbey,
0:54:39 > 0:54:42mourned by the public he'd courted all his life.
0:54:42 > 0:54:46It was said one devastated little girl asked,
0:54:46 > 0:54:49"Will Father Christmas die, too?"
0:54:51 > 0:54:54His daughter Kate was relieved he was dead
0:54:54 > 0:54:57as she was convinced he was going insane.
0:55:04 > 0:55:06Published soon after his death,
0:55:06 > 0:55:12an early biography contains an astonishing appendix. His will.
0:55:12 > 0:55:16The first thing that strikes me is the first bequest.
0:55:16 > 0:55:22"I give the sum of £1,000 to Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan."
0:55:22 > 0:55:27And then after all the various provisions for his children, we get this.
0:55:27 > 0:55:30"I desire to record that fact that my wife since our separation
0:55:30 > 0:55:35"by consent has been in receipt of me of an annual income of £600
0:55:35 > 0:55:40"while all the great charges of a numerous and expensive family have devolved wholly upon myself."
0:55:42 > 0:55:45Even on his deathbed, he's saying, "I did everything I could,
0:55:45 > 0:55:48"it wasn't my fault, I gave her loads of money, massive income,
0:55:48 > 0:55:52"I had to look after all the kids." Oh, poor you, Charles!
0:55:52 > 0:55:54The great shame is, you know,
0:55:54 > 0:55:57even at the end, even as he calls her his wife,
0:55:57 > 0:56:00he humiliates her one last and final time.
0:56:02 > 0:56:04After Charles' death,
0:56:04 > 0:56:07Catherine got her family Christmas back.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10But most of her children had now flown the nest.
0:56:10 > 0:56:12Many of her sons were far overseas,
0:56:12 > 0:56:15sent to the colonies by their father.
0:56:15 > 0:56:17"Young Skull" had already died there.
0:56:19 > 0:56:23How the Ghosts of Christmas Past must have haunted her,
0:56:23 > 0:56:25especially on Twelfth Night.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28"Oh, What a wonderful pudding!"
0:56:28 > 0:56:30LAUGHTER
0:56:30 > 0:56:32"Happy, happy Christmas."
0:56:33 > 0:56:35As for The Other Woman,
0:56:35 > 0:56:39Ellen finally had her family Christmases, too.
0:56:39 > 0:56:41She married a vicar and, as Mrs Robinson,
0:56:41 > 0:56:42had two children.
0:56:46 > 0:56:49Catherine never remarried.
0:56:49 > 0:56:53Charles had burnt her letters to him but on her deathbed in 1879,
0:56:53 > 0:56:58she left the British Museum his letters to her.
0:56:58 > 0:57:01"That the world may know," she said,
0:57:01 > 0:57:04"he once...loved me."
0:57:07 > 0:57:11She inhabited two completely different Christmases.
0:57:11 > 0:57:16Firstly, the technicolour morality play of the Christmas Carol,
0:57:16 > 0:57:20with its plum puddings and goodwill amongst men and turkey dinners.
0:57:20 > 0:57:24But she also experienced a much more modern Christmas,
0:57:24 > 0:57:26one that's certainly familiar to me,
0:57:26 > 0:57:28full of family bitterness and recrimination,
0:57:28 > 0:57:32of cold shoulders, and silence and awkwardness.
0:57:32 > 0:57:35But the sad and bitter irony for her
0:57:35 > 0:57:38was that it could se said both of those experiences
0:57:38 > 0:57:41were authored by her husband, Charles Dickens.
0:57:48 > 0:57:54CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:57:54 > 0:57:58It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well,
0:57:58 > 0:58:01if any man alive possessed the knowledge.
0:58:01 > 0:58:04May that be truly said of us, all of us!
0:58:04 > 0:58:10And as Tiny Tim observed, "God bless us, every one!"
0:58:10 > 0:58:12APPLAUSE
0:58:12 > 0:58:17CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:58:55 > 0:58:57Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:57 > 0:58:59E-mail: subtitling@bbc.co.uk