Emma and Charles

Piecing together The Two Worlds for 1890, it seems that Emma was in a name-dropping mood. The business offices of the newspaper having been moved to E. W. Wallis' address, I fancy Emma was feeling a bit...reckless as she read the writing on the wall.

I'll have more to say -- or summarize, rather -- when 1890 gets released (tonight or tomorrow), but for now, I'd like to recall readers' attention to a speculation I made at the beginning of the year, based on admittedly scant evidence, and then have you read this snippet, from the 30 May 1890 issue of The Two Worlds.

(larger version)

This is, as far as I know (and Spotlight tells me) the only direct reference Emma makes to Dickens in her own work.

Charles Dickens: mesmeric doctor; a man with a possessive sexual appetite so large it's believed he kept multiple flats in London for multiple, simultaneously-kept women; a writer for the theatre, whose Christmas play The Chimes marked Emma's debut (if my memory serves) at the Adelphi. Working hypothesis: Emma was, for some period of time, Dickens' mistress and he is our best candidate for the "baffled sensualist" who ended Emma's career on the London stage.