The Crisis of 1863 ("the Invisible Woman"‪)‬

In her biography of Ellen Ternan, The Invisible Woman, Claire Tomalin titles the chapter dealing with the years 1862 to 1865, "Vanishing Into Space." During these years, no concrete evidence of Ellen's whereabouts or activities survives. Tomalin suggests, however, that "If Nelly ... bore a child, a likely time for it seems to be 1862 or 1863, and France a likely place" (140). Surveying Dickens's correspondence for the same period, Graham Storey, editor of volume 10 of the Pilgrim Letters, concludes that "The letters ... point strongly to some crisis centred on Ellen in January 1863: probably an illness, just possibly a pregnancy" (Letters 10: xii). One of the great benefits of the recently completed Pilgrim edition is that the scattered letters which diligent scholars in the past had to chase down one by one can now be read not only conveniently, but sequentially and connectedly. When read so, the letters of 1862 and 1863 tell the tale of a major crisis in the lives of Ellen Ternan and Dickens. Most of that tale will forever remain shadowy, but from the Pilgrim Letters, supplemented by a few other sources, the outline of the tale emerges distinctly. For years, scholars have been justifiably cautious in speculating on the nature of Dickens's and Ellen Ternan's relationship, but volume 10 of the Pilgrim Letters reveals that such tentative speculations as Tomalin's "if Nelly bore a child" and Storey's "just possibly a pregnancy" are too cautious; that the evidence can scarcely be read in any other way.