Free Dickens' Women by Miriam Margolyes Page B

to equal salvation.
    One yearns to know more about Miss Mary Pearson Strong and her influence on Dickens. Dickens’ son, Charles, recalled how Miss Strong fiercely defended her property from donkeys, which inspired the brilliant set piece:
    â€˜I won’t be trespassed upon, I won’t allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!’ and I saw from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood, resisting everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to lead him round by the bridle, Mr Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with her parasol, and several boys who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey’s guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding into the ground into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt has no conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impression of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in triumph with him.
    If one were to disagree with Kate that her father ‘didn’t really understand women’, it would be in contemplation of Betsey and her continuing love for her cruel husband. She is not corroded by her love, as is Miss Havisham. The errant husband is a recurring , mysterious presence in the novel. Betsey confides in the young David:

    â€˜Betsey Trotwood don’t look a likely subject for the tender passion,’ said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart. So she put all that sentiment in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.’
    â€˜My dear, good Aunt!’
    â€˜I left him,’ my aunt proceeded laying her hand as usual on the back of mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left him, generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman. I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he is now you see. But he was a fine looking man when I married him,’ said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone, ‘and I believed him – I was a fool! – to be the soul of honour!
    â€˜â€¦ I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals , when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.’
    My aunt dismissed the matter, with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.
    â€˜There my dear,’ she said. ‘Now you know the beginning , middle, and end, and all about it. We won’t mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story and we’ll keep it to ourselves, Trot.’  

Philanthropic Ladies
    In The Miracle of Christmas, a collection of Christmas stories by Charles Dickens and others, there is a story of strange sentimentality by Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American