Actors - Ellen Ternan

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	Actors - Ellen Ternan

Ellen Lawless Ternan (3 March 1839 - 25 April 1914, familiar name Nelly, married name Robinson) was an English actress who is mainly known as the woman for whom Charles Dickens left his wife Catherine.

Ternan was born in Rochester, Kent. She was the third of four children, including a brother who died in infancy, born to her parents who were both actors of some distinction. Ternan made her stage debut in Sheffield at the age of three, and she and her two sisters were presented as "infant phenomena". Ternan was considered the least gifted of the three sisters, but she worked extensively in the provinces and in 1857 she was spotted by Dickens performing at London's Haymarket Theatre. He cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, in a performance of The Frozen Deep in Manchester.

Dickens was forty-five when he met Ellen Ternan, and she was eighteen. He became passionately attached to her, but the relationship was kept secret from the general public, which would have been shocked. At that time the British press could be relied upon not to pay close attention to such matters. Dickens had become disllusioned with his wife, who lacked his energy and intellect. Ternan on the other hand was clever and charming, forceful of character, undomesticated, and interested in literature, the theatre, and politics. Matters came to a head in 1858, when Catherine Dickens accidentally received a bracelet meant for Ternan, and the Dickens separated that May.

Ternan left the stage in 1860, and was supported by Dickens from then on. She sometimes travelled with him, though he abandoned a plan to take her on his visit to America in 1867 for fear that their relationship would be publicised by the American press. She lived in houses he took under false names at Slough and later at Nunhead, and may have had a son by Dickens who died in infancy, although this isn't certain (neither Dickens, Ternan, nor Ternan's sisters left any account of the relationship, and most correspondence relevant to the relationship was destroyed). At his death Dickens provided her with a £1,000 legacy and sufficient income from a trust fund to ensure that she would never have to work again.

In 1876 Ternan married a clergyman called George Wharton Robinson, who was twelve years her junior. She presented herself as several years younger than her actual age to cancel out her years with Dickens. The couple had a son and a daughter and ran a boys' school in Margate. Ternan spent her last years in Southsea, and died in Fulham, London.

Ellen Ternan is sometimes confused with Ellen Terry, who was a much more distinguished actress but did not have an affair with Charles Dickens.

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