This Much Is True

Every scene was filmed inside the studios. Delightful dressing-rooms were created in the old warehouse; every morning there was a vase of flowers in everyone’s room. Cast and crew ate lunch and supper together in the canteen prepared by Molly, an expert chef; we became the Little Dorrit family. Hair and make-up were brilliantly done by ex-BBC Pam Meager. Harry Ellam sewed the embroidery for the costumes, based entirely on original pictures. He called it ‘painting with threads’ and did his exquisite work on countless shawls, waistcoats, purses, braces, flounces, collars, ribbons, and even the slippers worn by Sir Alec Guinness. Marion Weise was my dresser. Every day she had to lace me into my corset. She’d never done it before and her face, the first time I had to strip off, was a picture. She did recover eventually. There has never been a production like it: Christine was nominated for a screenplay Oscar; Derek Jacobi and Alec Guinness won awards for their brilliant work — and so did I!

It wasn’t the first time I’d played a Dickens character: I had been Mrs Corney (who becomes Mrs Bumble) in the 1985 twelve-part BBC dramatisation of Oliver Twist. But it was the critical acclaim for my portrayal of Flora Finching that made me think it was the right time to try to put my ideas on Dickens into theatrical shape.

Sonia Fraser and I went to see Frank Dunlop, who was then running the Edinburgh Festival, with the idea for a one-woman show telling the story of Dickens’s life through his characters. This was certainly the most respectable production I’d ever proposed to Edinburgh Festival. The first time I had appeared at the Festival was in Ubu Roi at the Traverse in 1963, directed by Gordon McDougall. I played Ma Ubu. I remember the costumes were designed by Gerald Scarfe in the shape of the male and female genital organs. So I really was a cunt, and wore the costume! It caused a great fuss at City Hall — the usual uproar from the Edinburgh aldermen trying to protect their citizens from filth.

I made lists of the female characters I wanted to play: there had to be Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, of course; and drunken midwife Sarah Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit. But I also included the lesbian Miss Wade, from Little Dorrit, a figure of twisted power and pathos; Miss Mowcher, the dwarf manicurist from David Copperfield; Mrs Corney, the workhouse matron from Oliver Twist; and Dickens’s tenderest portrait, Miss Flite from Bleak House, a crazy little old lady — a ward of the court and victim of the interminable lawsuit Jarndyce v. Jarndyce — who goes every single day to the High Court of Chancery, awaiting a judgement on her inheritance. There was also a trio of blokes: the beadle Mr Bumble from Oliver Twist; Towlinson from Dombey and Son; and Pip from Great Expectations. In total, I played twenty-three Dickens characters.

Then Sonia and I started to piece the script together, linking the characters with the figures from Dickens’s life who had inspired them, with lots of cutting and pasting, and printing. Remember, we didn’t have a computer then. We also talked to Claire Tomalin, who was writing her biography of Dickens. Claire was incredibly generous and talked openly and without reserve, not withholding any of her insights for her own book. We also spoke to the great Dickensian scholar and professor of Victorian literature at Birkbeck, Michael Slater, whose book Dickens and Women provided so much meat for our play. Michael gave me hours of his time and vast knowledge. We’ve become close friends and never stop talking Dickens.

It was clear that Dickens’s relations with women informed his work: the damage caused by his mother; his unsuccessful first great passion, Maria Beadnell; his Scottish wife Catherine Hogarth, whom he married in 1836, and with whom he fell out of love; Mary Hogarth, his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law, who died in his arms. His sorrow at losing Mary was so great that he wanted to be buried with her ashes; and finally, in 1857, his meeting with Ellen Ternan, his last love, who was to be his mistress until his death.

Michael doubted that Dickens’s relationship with Ellen Ternan was consummated; he is convinced she never allowed him to sleep with her. I said, ‘Michael, I can’t agree with you. Of course they slept together!’ It is unproven that Ellen may have had a child who died, but of course they had sex. It took us nine months to finish the script. We worked all hours — sometimes, I was so overwhelmed and exhausted that I would fall asleep on the floor: that’s always my escape when I’m frightened of something, but that’s how we did it. It was a true collaboration; without Sonia, it could never have happened.