Far Above Rubies (3 page)

December 1835  

York Place, Chelsea  

December arrived, my health was restored and my spirits were lifted by the approaching festive season. I had planned to buy Charles a silver pen tray, but to my consternation, Mary had had the same idea. I petulantly pointed out that as Charles’s intended the gift should be from me and, true to her nature, Mary agreed without opposition. Papa was to make Charles a present of an ivory-handled letter opener which had been his father’s, and I thanked him saying that it would make a most handsome gift. But Mama, who was of an anxious nature, said she hoped that Charles would not cut himself on it.  

‘We’ll no’ want a groom wi’ a missin’ finger!’ she warned in her Edinburgh lilt, with a shudder.  

Papa stroked his sandy moustache, trying to hide a smile, and said, ‘I have every confidence that the young man has a steady hand, my dear.’  

On Christmas morning Mama hurried about, hastily straightening cushions and pushing clutter into overcrowded cupboards and under the sofa. ‘I canna’ see why we always ha’ to make such a fuss when he visits us,’ Mama complained. ‘It’s not as if we even know who the laddie’s parents are.’  

‘Now, now, my love,’ Papa counselled gently. ‘Remember I too was once a struggling journalist with only my hopes and
dreams for a wage. London has been good to me and I hope that it will look upon young Dickens as kindly.’

The ground and the rooftop were thick with snow and Charles arrived just before lunchtime shouting, ‘Merry Christmas to the Hogarths!’ We laughed as we realized that his hair had frozen to his scarf and while Mary led him to a fireside chair I fetched him a warm brandy. When I returned, he was deep in conversation with Papa.

‘Do you know, sir, I spent most of the morning walking and thinking, and I never noticed the cold at all. Don’t you find that this time of year makes you reflect on both the past and the future? And I found myself ruminating on an idea for a Christmas story. It was just a whisper of an idea, the beginning of something, something that I could not quite lay a hold of, but when it finally comes to me I shall capture it and put it down on paper for all to read.’ He signed with frustration. ‘But I am too caught up with
Sketches
at present to concentrate on anything else at all.’

Sketches by Boz
was a collection of short stories that Charles had written over the last two years. They were now being put together in volume form, and he hoped that the money he earned from this might enable us to marry soon.

Papa stood up and patted him fondly on the shoulder. ‘You keep at it, young man. If you carry on as you are, this will all just be the beginning for you, I am sure of it.’

Shaking off his momentary melancholy, Charles called us to his side saying, ‘Hurry up everyone, I have presents for you all.’

Charles handed Papa a fine bottle of port, to Mama he gave some linen handkerchiefs and Georgina, a china doll. Only Mary and I were yet to open our gifts. Excitedly I unwrapped my own and took out a fringed shawl that was beautifully embroidered. I set it about my shoulders and glanced at Mama, who nodded and smiled with approval. I was just about to thank Charles, when Mary opened her gift and gasped as she took out of a small box a silver locket in the shape of a heart. I watched with dismay as Charles placed it around the neck of my sixteen-
year-old 
sister who blushed and thanked him shyly.

There had to be some confusion: surely Charles had mixed up the gifts? Surely the heart-shaped locket must have been meant for me? My face flushed with the heat of my anger and I stared at the locket hanging at my sister’s throat, longing to tear it from her. But a series of recollections stilled my hand. I recalled Charles’s previous admonitions to mind my hasty temper. I thought again about his disapproval when I had been short with Mary on our visit to the theatre and lastly I remembered the embarrassing scene that I had caused over Maria Beadnell. So what did I do? I swallowed my resentment and said nothing. And here was a beginning: the first of many times that I would suppress my own feelings in search of Charles’s approval. But wasn’t this the role of a good and loyal wife, the yielding of her own will and opinion?

That evening, I said to Mary what could never be said to Charles.

She had not removed the locket from around her neck and even now, as she lay in bed, she caressed it gently between her finger and thumb, deep in thought.

My voice broke into her reverie. ‘Mary, if I were ever to consider giving Charles up, could you see yourself in my place? As his love, I mean?’ I tried to mask the bitter note of jealousy that my voice betrayed.

Mary sat up in bed abruptly.

‘Catherine, whatever are you implying? How could you say such a thing? Charles is yours and yours alone. It is true that I had a girlish fancy for him once, but I can only think of him now as a much-loved brother, and nothing more.’

‘Are you sure, Mary? Are you sure that you have not unknowingly encouraged any intentions he may have towards you?’

‘Catherine, you don’t know your own sister if you could entertain such thoughts. How can you doubt Charles’s love for you? Remember the beautiful bracelet he sent you, and his letters of devotion?’

I knew that her words were true, and I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me. How could I doubt Mary’s loyalty and integrity? But of Charles I was still not sure.

Over the holiday, I watched him closely as he seemed ever more drawn to Mary’s side, laughing at her jokes, complimenting her on her musical accomplishments, bombarding her with ideas for stories that he vowed he would one day put down on paper. When the New Year arrived Charles told me that he had decided to leave Selwood Terrace and return to Furnival’s Inn as it was closer to his work in the City. My heart sank at the thought of starting our married life in those dull grey lodgings, but what he said next drained the colour from my face.

‘Kate, I have been thinking – it is selfish of me to take you further away from your family as you will be spending a good deal of time on your own once we are wed. Perhaps it would be good for Mary to come and live with us at Furnival’s Inn so that she can keep you company.’

A feeling of panic flooded through my veins; I could see the silver locket twirling before my eyes, once again I saw Charles fasten it tenderly around Mary’s neck; lastly I saw the look of adoration in his eyes.

‘Charles, I do not—’

He lifted his hand. ‘No, Kate, you do not have to thank me. I shall not change my mind. In fact, Mary has already agreed to it.’

It was nothing unusual, I knew. Many young sisters lived with an older sibling until their own wedding day, but I did not want it. I did not want it at all. I feared that Mary would continue to outshine me under my very own roof; however, what Charles had decided I could only concede to. But how could he know that it was his ambiguous feelings about Mary that continued to lie at the heart of all my insecurities?

2 April 1836  

St Lukes’s Church, Chelsea  

The day of the wedding arrived. I had not been able to eat one mouthful of the kippers and poached eggs that Alice had put before me that morning, and no amount of cajoling on her part could induce an appetite in me.  

‘Well don’t come a-blamin’ me, lassie, if ye faint away in the middle of the vows!’ Alice scowled, taking the plate away.  

I sat at my dressing table struggling with trembling fingers and thumbs to pin a piece of heather onto my dress. Mama had given it to me for good luck, but it stubbornly refused to be fixed as if withholding its blessing on my future happiness. It is naturally every young woman’s dream to reach this day in her life, yet I wondered, is it possible? Can one person really make another happy for a whole lifetime?  

I thought about my parents’ marriage. It had been twenty-one years since they wed in their native Scotland, both of them barely twenty years old. Papa had grown steady and wise, with a good head for business, and Mama, well, Mama was not steady or wise at all, but Papa loved her nonetheless and indulged her histrionics. So perhaps there was no perfect pairing. Perhaps the most that one could hope for was a mutual acceptance of one another’s shortcomings.  

And what of the shortcomings of my own intended? I loved
him deeply, so would that not cover ‘a multitude of sins’? I hesitated to answer, realizing how little I truly knew him, his fears, his secrets. I wondered what lay hidden in that dark place, the secret person of the heart that no one really knows, except God and ourselves? True, I had witnessed his ambition for success, but hard work is not a vice, is it? And I had also been on the receiving end of his temper. But should a man not show righteous indignation when his integrity is questioned? Had I not unduly provoked him? I reassured myself that this was true and that I should give him absolutely no cause to be angry with me once we were wed.

Yesterday, Mama had spoken to me late into the evening, advising me of a wife’s responsibilities and how I should never permit Charles to be concerned about domestic matters.

‘Ye must allow him to concentrate entirely on his work, m’dearie. Your haime should be a place of peace and refuge for him.’

Fine words coming from Mama! But true even so. However, I feared that I too should somehow be inadequate; I had never run a house before and I was not in the least organized by nature. I sighed wearily, and addressed my reflection in the
dressing-table
mirror.

‘Come now, Catherine, these sober thoughts are subduing all the romantic fancies that should accompany such a day. No more of this gloomy mood, do you hear? This is your wedding day, after all.’

There was a gentle tap on the door which brought me to my senses.

‘Are you quite well, my dear?’

‘Yes, of course, Papa,’ I called hastily. ‘I was just coming.’ I attempted to secure my corsage once more and, at last, I succeeded.

‘There!’ I smiled to myself. ‘You see, everything will be just fine.’

Papa had spared no expense in arranging the wedding of his eldest daughter. I had chosen cousin Elizabeth, Mary, and little
Georgina to be my bridesmaids, and when Papa saw us together, he pronounced himself to be ‘the proudest man in all England’.

We stepped out onto the pavement of York Place to find that the day was sunny but breezy, and I feared that the wind might tug at my bonnet and snatch it away completely, but Mary, with her calming touch, came to my aid with a pin to secure both my hat and my confidence.

I grasped at her wrist, ‘Mary, I—’

She put a finger to my lips. ‘Catherine, it is far too late to give way to doubts now. Marry him and determine to be happy.’ And she and Papa assisted me up into the waiting carriage.

As Papa walked me down the aisle, I watched Charles’s face intently to see whether his eyes wavered to Mary, following behind me radiant with the bloom of youth. But his eyes never left mine for a moment and after saying my vows all my anxieties faded away.

‘Dear, sweet, clumsy Kate, at last we are wed,’ he whispered in my ear. The vicar proclaimed that he may kiss the bride, and I blushed as the congregation rang with applause.

The wedding breakfast held at York Place was an array of temptation: cooked hams, lobster salad and game pie laid out alongside champagne, trifles, blancmange and fruit jellies. After I had thought that I could smile and shake hands no more, I noticed a portly, ruby-cheeked man who was helping himself to a rather large portion of game pie. He whistled chirpily, as if he had not seen a spread like this in a good while, and then put a leg of chicken in each of his pockets for good measure.

Charles’s face went pale at the sight of him, and then
blood-red
. ‘What the blazes is he doing here? That man will be the undoing of me!’ He excused himself from my side and, with a purposeful stride, crossed the room to where the fellow was now wrapping another portion of pie in his oversized handkerchief. My eyes grew wide as I watched while Charles remonstrated with him, and the man, looking sheepish, took the offending items from his pockets and handed them back to Charles. I could not hear what was being said but my husband behaved in the
manner of a disappointed father scolding his child. The man, thoroughly shamed, nodded apologetically at each admonition, and after giving one last emphatic nod, he meekly followed Charles to my side.

In a moment, he had regained his buoyancy, wiped his greasy fingers on his waistcoat and held out his hand in greeting.

‘John Dickens, ma’am,’ he enthused, ‘pleased to make your h’acquaintance at last.’

His clothes looked as though they had seen the inside of a pawnbroker’s shop on more than a few occasions and I turned to Charles for an explanation.

‘My father.’ Charles coughed with embarrassment.

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, taking the greasy hand as graciously as I could manage. ‘And your dear wife, sir, is she here too?’ which was the only thing that I could think to say, feeling quite perplexed by the situation.

Standing with Fanny was a slightly built woman with sharp features, who, I was alarmed to note, picked up the wedding gifts one by one from the table and examined each one with a squinted eye.

‘That’s my Lizzie, over there,’ said Mr Dickens proudly, and when he called his spouse she jumped, as if being caught
red-handed
in some shady act.

She joined her oily husband’s side and exclaimed joyfully, ‘Fancy! My Charles marrying the daughter of a gentleman! Who would have believed it?’ and she rubbed her hands together in a most gleeful manner. Charles quickly dispatched his errant parents to a table in a distant corner of the garden with a hissed warning that they should touch nothing, and that under no circumstance should his mother dance.

When it was time to leave for our honeymoon, it was hard to say goodbye to my family and to the life that I had known before.

‘Look at her, George,’ my mother sniffed. ‘Our wee lassie, all grown up and now a wife.’

While Papa embraced me, Mr Dickens chanced to
congratulate his son and whispered discreetly in Charles’s ear. Charles rolled his eyes skywards, sighed wearily and took out a coin from his pocket which he deposited in his father’s ready hand.

Mr Dickens tipped his hat in appreciation. ‘Lord, bless you, Charlie. I knew you wouldn’t refuse your old pa. Not now you’re a-makin’ your way in the world.’

We stepped into the waiting carriage to set off for the village of Chalk where we planned to spend a week in a small cottage.

Here, at last, we could lose ourselves in each other’s company without distraction, interruption or thoughts of anyone else and, apart from brief moments when Charles would slip away to that distant place in his mind – a place where not even I could reach him – he gave me his undivided attention and said that he could never have imagined that he would find such contentment in his life.