"Surely This is Not Right:": Contemporary Reaction to Dickens's Will

Thus, an open letter to a short-lived weekly provincial British newspaper early in 1871:

DEAR SIR, – Will you allow me, as a woman, to say a few words on behalf of another woman, whose name years ago, and recently, has been held up to reprobation as far as the English tongue reaches. Privately, I know absolutely nothing of the lady in question, Mrs. Charles Dickens, and I base my judgment of the merits of the case on her husband's published ex parte statements concerning their separation. I have never heard a hint of criminal misconduct of any kind against this lady, yet, the manifesto of her husband, published in his journal, and the terms of his will, place her, by inference, almost beyond the pale of moral toleration. Surely this is not right. The public cannot help remembering that the woman, whose name has never been heard during the recent lamentation, was his companion for twenty-five years and the mother of his twelve children. We do not honour him the less in remembering her, who, surely, must have suffered enough in having once possessed the love of such a man, and then lost it.

Nothing is so difficult to adjudge upon as a quarrel between man and wife. After half a century the Byron affair has set the literary world in envenomed contention:¹ and the Dickens' separation may be as hotly discussed by our grandchildren. Even now, with the weight of the recent loss heavy on our hearts, we cannot help asking ourselves if this lady has not suffered some injustice. No one has raised a voice for her. She is exiled from her children, the sympathy of society, her husband's grave: and he, the rich, popular, famous and honoured, is her accuser; and the bitter feeling comes out most conclusively in his last will. He desires in this that the world should know he allowed her £600 per annum. This was no great liberality with an income of £10,000. He adds that he alone supported his numerous and expensive family. I cannot see that he exceeded the common duty of a married man in so doing. It is not likely that he bargained with her to asist [sic] in their maintenance when he made her his wife.

There is a pettiness of mind in his published statements that must deeply pain hundreds, who, like myself, have almost worshipped Dickens; and I assert emphatically that these statements betray an undue personal estimate that must exceptionally lead to undue demands on others. I am sure that most women will agree with me that the bearing of twelve children is almost a hard life's work, and will not leave much spare energy for higher work or metaphysical speculations […] Moreover, the accusations as to Mrs. Dickens's domestic management, which went the round of the papers, were such as a large per cent of exigeant husbands might make out. Her husband evidntly [sic] desired qualities he had not looked for in the first instance; and we know that for many men a woman loses her greatest charm when she becomes theirs. Her graces soon cloy. Her good points are taken, as a matter of course. We women know especially how hard it sometimes is for the mother to maintain her due position in a family of growing daughters; and I am sure that hundreds of my countrywomen will join me in thinking that he who had had the bloom of her life, to whom she had borne twelve children, might have had more forbearance to her loveless middle age. Mrs. Dickens left her husband, as it seems, by her desire. No wonder, since it is plain that her sister long occupied the place in his esteem that should have been hers. It is with pain I bring up the name of this worthy lady, but the indirect stigma flung on Mrs. Dickens in the last will must provoke world-wide comment. Say that she lost her position by her own incapacity (nothing more is asserted), is it well...