Ah, yes, cup an ear.
You hear that?
Wedding bells.
Or… perhaps we should say… warning bells.
Because there’s a bit of old English folk wisdom about April weddings.
Marry in April, they say,
and you’ll rue the day.
A curious thing, that, because April was sacred to Venus.
Love.
Desire.
Union.
The whole business.
And yet –
Well.
Let’s go to Chelsea.
April the 2nd, 1836.
Picture the scene.
Chelsea, still half-village, half-London.
A bit of space about it.
A bit of air.
The Thames not far off, doing its slow, tidal breathing.
And there, rising fresh and confident,
St Luke’s Church.
Newish.
Vast.
Light-filled.
One of the biggest parish churches in London.
Built for a city that’s swelling, pushing outward,
getting bigger by the minute.
And into that space walks a young man on the brink.
Not yet the great Victorian colossus.
Not yet the bearded sage.
Just Charles Dickens.
Twenty-four years old.
Journalist.
Scribbler.
Upstart.
Ink on his cuffs.
Ambition in his bones.
London fizzing through his bloodstream.
And, crucially,
standing on a trapdoor that’s about to spring.
Because two days earlier,
the first instalment of The Pickwick Papers has appeared.
He doesn’t know it yet.
But he is about to wake up famous.
In just over a hundred days that’ll happen.
The bride?
Catherine Hogarth.
Let’s bring her properly into the picture.
Pretty.
Gentle.
Musical.
Amiable.
The daughter of George Hogarth – editor of the Evening Chronicle. Dickens’s boss.
So yes,
there’s affection here.
Warmth.
Sociability.
But is it a grand passion?
No.
Not like the earlier heartbreak with Maria Beadnell.
This is steadier.
Softer.
More… practical.
And perhaps –
there’s your first faint crack.
They marry.
They honeymoon.
They set up home.
And then –
The whirlwind.
Because – come the summer – Dickens doesn’t just become successful.
He becomes Dickens.
The phenomenon.
Dickens introduces the cockney bootblack Sam Weller into the fourth monthly number of the Pickwick Papers and overnight the sales go from 400 to 40,000.
That’s one number.
But there’s the number that matters.
Children.
Ten of them.
Dickens and Catherine have
ten children in fifteen years.
Let that land.
Ten.
And alongside them –miscarriages. Losses. Pregnancies that didn’t result in surviving children.
Which means, in effect, Catherine spends almost all of her married life pregnant.
Or recovering.
Or about to be again.
And Dickens’s view of this?
Well…
He spoke of Catherine’s “peculiarity” – he called it her “perversity” – that she was forever pregnant.
As if he were merely… observing.
As if this were something
that simply happened to her.
You can feel, can’t you,
the modern intake of breath.
Now hold that domestic picture.
Inside the house:
Fatigue.
Strain.
A woman worn down.
Outside the front door:
Applause.
Celebrity.
Adulation.
They move through London houses.
Furnival’s Inn.
Doughty Street.
Devonshire Terrace.
And finally, Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square.
The family grows.
The noise grows.
The pressure grows.
And something else grows too.
Discontent.
By the 1850s,
the marriage is in serious trouble.
Dickens restless.
Dissatisfied.
Persuaded he has somehow been short-changed in companionship.
Catherine –
exhausted.
outmatched.
increasingly alone.
And then –
Enter Ellen Ternan.
Young.
Eighteen when they meet.
An actress.
Young enough to be his daughter.
Dickens falls for her.
Hard.
What follows is not pretty.
Rows.
Whispers.
A bracelet meant for Ellen mistakenly delivered to Catherine.
And then –
the moment that chills.
At Tavistock House,
husband and wife have adjoining bedrooms.
A connecting door.
Dickens doesn’t just lock it.
He brings in workmen.
And has it… bricked up.
Think about that.
Not just emotional separation.
Architectural separation.
A wall where once there had been a door.
If ever there were a metaphor that didn’t need explaining –
that’s it.
Soon after, Catherine is effectively turfed out.
Set up in a separate house.
Given an allowance.
Separated from most of her children.
Dickens keeps the household.
Keeps the story.
Keeps the public.
Even publishes statements defending himself.
It is –
by any measure –
an ugly business.
And Catherine?
Years later, dying, she gives her letters from Dickens to her daughter.
With a simple instruction:
“Give these to the British Museum, that the world may know he loved me once.”
And just like that –
we’re back in Chelsea.
April 2nd, 1836.
Spring light.
A wedding.
Hope in the air.
No one in that church –
no one –
could possibly have heard what we can hear now.
Not just wedding bells.
But warning bells.
Marry in April…
and you may rue the day.
And tomorrow?
We leave broken marriages behind…
and step into power.
April 3rd, 1721.
Robert Walpole is handed the seals of office as First Lord of the Treasury –
and quietly invents a job.
Prime Minister.
Britain’s first prime minister.
Former prisoner in the Tower.
The man who gives his name to an age.
The Robinocracy.
Now that…
is a story.
OK, Signing off now on your London fix for today.
Compliments of London Calling.
Compliments of London Walks.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
London time.
See you tomorrow.