Dickens Quarterly

The fact that Charles Dickens's putative mistress, Ellen Ternan, was born in Rochester in Kent is often mentioned as a pleasing, albeit minor, coincidence in biographies. The cathedral city was of course known to Dickens as a child, and in adulthood he made frequent visits there, eventually buying a house at nearby Gads Hill. It also serves as a setting for a number of his fictions. Hitherto unreported, however, as far as I am aware, are references in newspapers and in the 1851 census return which suggest that Ellen also spent time, possibly some considerable time, in the city in the early 1850s. The advent of readily searchable public records also enables the discovery that Ellen had two sets of family connections residing where a number of Dickens's fictional creations do, on Rochester High Street–her own uncle's household and that of her aunt's brother– and that this aunt belonged to a recently-assimilated Jewish family who became prominent in the neighborhood. Here, then, are several additions to Claire Tomalin's excellent biography of Ellen, offering additional possible links between Ellen's life and Dickens's later novels and arguably strengthening the position of those who assert her importance as a muse and inspiration.¹

Ellen's father Thomas Ternan worked the Kent theater circuit early in his stage career; so too, for a short period, did his brother William. William left the stage, settling in Rochester and, in 1830, marrying a local woman whose name is given on their marriage certificate as Catherine Haymen.² William worked variously as a barge hauler, secretary to a mining company, and agent for patent manure, becoming involved in local politics as a radical.³ [End Page 83] He is the reason why, in March 1839, Ellen was born in Rochester rather than elsewhere; her parents were staying in William Ternan's household.⁴

As is known, after a disastrous investment in the northern theaters, Thomas Ternan vanished into an asylum, dying in 1846 and leaving behind a widow and three prepubescent daughters, Fanny, Maria, and Ellen.⁵ Mrs. Ternan, a well-regarded actress who was well connected in theatrical circles, managed at first to find fairly frequent work for herself and her offspring, particularly the eldest, Fanny, who had enjoyed a reputation as a child prodigy. As the new decade opened Mrs. Ternan continued busy, having moved on to more mature roles, but work for the girls proved more difficult to come by.

Of the few references to the Ternan girls which appear in the press between 1850 and 1854, two place them in Rochester. In March 1850, we learn that "Mrs and the Misses Ternan" were at "the Rochester Theatre."⁶ In January 1851 they were there again, involved in a semi-amateur performance "under the patronage of the Cobham troop of West Kent Yeomanry Cavalry." Mrs. Ternan played "Julie de Mortimer" in "that most beautiful play of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's, entitled Richelieu," and the play was apparently a "benefit" for her. A comic piece followed, in which we are told of one "H. Haymen delighting the audience in the part of Paragon." This is possibly Henry Haymen, William Ternan's nephew by marriage. William's nieces, meanwhile, performed a "dance between the play and farce" and were "encored."⁷

The 1851 census return, taken on the night of 30 March, raises the possibility that the two younger Ternan daughters, Maria and Ellen, remained in the city. While they appear on their mother's census return for lodgings in St. Clement Dane's, on the Strand in London, both are also listed as members of their uncle William's household, as "nieces," not visitors, living with him at 13 Rochester High Street. Such duplication is not particularly unusual, but in this case suggests the pair may have been paying a lengthy visit to Rochester, perhaps even making their home there [End Page 84] for a time.⁸ In autumn of that year Mrs. Ternan and two of her daughters acted in Richard III, the girls as the two princes–speaking parts, and not...