Girl In A Blue Dress

Synopsis: Alfred Gibson's funeral has taken place at Westminster Abbey, and his wife of twenty years, Dorothea, has not been invited. Dorothea is comforted by her feisty daughter Kitty, until an invitation for a private audience with Queen Victoria arrives, and she begins to examine her own life more closely.She uncovers the deviousness and hypnotic power of her celebrity author husband. But now Dodo will need to face her grown-up children, and worse, her redoubtable younger sister Sissy and the charming actress Miss Ricketts.In Alfred Gibson, the fierce energy and brilliance of the most famous of the Victorian novelists is recreated, in a heart warming story of first love - of a cocky young writer smitten by a pretty girl in a blue dress.

Review: Another historical fiction book, this time about Charles Dickens (re-named Alfred Gibson) and, more importantly, his wife Catherine (here called Dorothea, or more commonly Dodo).

I read Peter Ackroyd's book on Dickens last year and so was fairly familiar with the story of Catherine. She was married to Dicken's for twenty two years and bore him ten children. But towards the latter half of their marriage, the things he had once found so attractive in her - her placid temperament and docile nature - have begun to irk him, he now thinks her dull, stupid and lazy. This coupled by the fact that she has been worn down by the birth of their ten children (he is constantly irritated at her for becoming pregnant .. as if she is all to blame) and has become plump and matronly, leads to him cutting her out of his life, and as far as possible, their children's.The novel follows this line pretty closely, Alfred Gibson (or the 'One and Only' or 'Great Original' as he is called, mostly by himself) has just died, and his widow is reflecting on their life together. The chapters are a mixture of flashback and present day (though of course, present day is sometime in the 1870's), Dorothea thinks back to the time when Alfred first courted her and how, when they were forbidden to continue seeing each other by her parent's, they set up a clandestine correspondence, using a hole in the garden wall as a postbox, and Dodo's younger sister Alice, as their postman.

Back in the present day, Dorothea has not been invited to Alfred's funeral, she sits in the modest room's that she has lived in ever since Alfred persuaded her, ten years or so ago, that they would be better living apart ... 'I fear Dodo, that we were never made for each other from the beginning, and with each year we become more unsuited'. Dorothea, hoping that their separation was going to be of short duration, and that his obsession with the actress, Miss Ricketts would soon be over, agreed to leave ...

'Two days later I left my house for the last time. I went out by the side door while it was still dark. My belongings - such as they were - were already in the carriage. No servants were yet up except Bessie (who stood in her nightgown at the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to her face) and John the coachman, who was silent as usual. No other member of the household was awake. Alfred was not at home.'

The only people who she has had constant contact with since then are her daughter Kitty, who following an unsuitable marriage has fallen out with her father, and Dorothea and Alfred's old friend Michael O'Rourke. Kitty is in a wild temper after the funeral, absolutely incensed that her mother should have been kept away from it and that his 'blessed public' should have so overtaken it.

Alfred was a literary genius and a tireless campaigner for those less fortunate. He was also vain, punctilious, sarcastic, insensitive, exacting, flirtatious and arrogant. He was extremely sharp and witty but could sometimes use this wit to hurt or belittle others. He was a total control freak and couldn't endure anything which didn't go according to his plans and wishes. Dickens I know shared many of these attributes, but I don't think he was quite as bad as Alfred, he would've been completely insufferable if he had been. I have to admit that Alfred was another literary figure that I wanted to 'box the ears of' (that makes three in a row!).Dorothea tries to look for ways in which she can reassure herself that the love Alfred once showed her was real, she is wife now in name only. She cannot bear to think ill of him, she tries to justify his actions and quell the bitter resentment that she feel's. This leads her, after his death, to visit her sister Sissy who has long since usurped her as matriarch of the family and who chose to stay on with Alfred after Dorothea left, and Miss Ricketts, the young actress who Alfred had for many years been so enamoured with, and who Dorothea believes to have been his mistress.

As well as being about Dickens, it has all the flavour of a Dicken's novel, though not much of their complexity it has to be said. Gaynor Arnold has invented some new characters and new situations (including, following Alfred's death, a visit by Dorothea to Queen Victoria) but there is a lot here that will be familiar to anybody who has read a Dicken's biography. I remember feeling a great sadness for Catherine when I read that after the separation she used to buy her own copy of Charles's new books and would write and tell him how much she enjoyed them only to receive back terse little notes of acknowledgment. She also, upon her deathbed, urged her daughter Kate to give her collection of Charles's letters to the British Museum, that the world might know 'he loved me once'. I felt similarly sad here for Dodo, publicly humiliated and estranged from those she loved. It's hugely readable but you can't help but feel that some of the fictionalised situations are so unlikely as to be almost preposterous, like the one involving a spectral visitation à la Jacob Marley. Good job this was near the end because I almost lost the will to continue with it.