104 KNOWING DICKENS
everything about Thompson’s affairs. Meanwhile Dickens is carrying on
with Mr. Weller, who is trying to use his acquaintance with Dickens as an
entrée to a London debut for his talented daughter. Dickens gives advice,
promises to bring her together with his father-in-law the music critic,
and hosts the Wellers while she performs for George Hogarth. Christiana
makes a successful debut in June, and Dickens writes to congratulate her:
“I felt a pride in you which I cannot express” (4.148). By that time she and
Thompson are engaged, and Dickens cannot prevent himself from remind-
ing Thompson that he “Dick, the energetic Dick, devised the visit!” to the
Wellers that morning in Liverpool. He writes as if he is an indispensable
part of the couple: “Shall we ever cease to have a huge and infinite delight
in talking about the whole Romance from end to end!” (4.89). Then the
plot thickens; the course of romance does not run smooth; it appears that
Christiana loves Another—“a prior attachment—kept secret by her,” Dick-
ens notes to Catherine on 6 April. Two days later, he writes a long letter to
the girl herself, pleading Thompson’s case in a fairy-tale-like narrative that is
really a love letter in not-very-good disguise (4.98–100).
The affair rested, from Dickens’s point of view, during his year in Italy,
where he moved with his family at the beginning of July in order to econo-
mize in the face of financial stress. (It is not impossible that his attraction to
Christiana had been the final straw in coming to that decision.) When he
returned, he reconnected with Thompson and his ongoing courtship, invit-
ing further confidences, and offering him the role of Wellbred in his amateur
production of Every Man in His Humour. What Thompson thought about
Dickens’s interventions may be surmised from a letter to Christiana about
the play, which Thompson hated; he felt he was “sacrificing myself to the
vanity of others” (4.345n.). Nevertheless both Dickens and Catherine seem
to have been part of what Christiana’s diary called the “fatal discussion
at Dickens’ ” which laid the last-minute objections of Mr. Weller to rest
(4.398n.). The Thompson marriage finally took place on 21 October 1845.
Dickens was in attendance, wearing a waistcoat especially designed after the
vivid pattern of one Macready had worn onstage, and intended—as he raved
to Macready—to “Eclipse the Bridegroom!” (4.406).
Dickens’s involvement in his friend’s romance received its own punish-
ment when a mirroring sub-plot developed: his younger brother Frederick
fell in love with Christiana’s younger sister Anna, and insisted on marrying
her over Dickens’s strong objections. With his irresponsible younger brother
on course to grasp what the great man could not, Dickens had no more use
for the Weller family. He informed Fred that their style of life would not
support domestic tranquility: “They are very amiable, but especially uncom-