Kate Dickens Perugini
Kate Macready Dickens, the daughter of Charles Dickens was born on 29th October, 1839. Her mother, Catherine Dickens, had been in labour for twelve hours. Dickens' named her after his friend, the actor, William Macready .
Dickens gave a great celebration for her christening in August, 1839. "Rather a noisy and uproarious day." Dickens got drunk and ended up having an argument with his friend, John Forster. Her mother was so upset by the dispute that she burst into tears and ran from the room."
Kate had nine brothers and sisters: Charles Culliford Dickens (6th January, 1837), Mamie Dickens (6th March, 1838), Walter Landor (8th February, 1841), Francis Jeffrey (15th January, 1844), Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson (28th October, 1845), Sydney Smith Haldimand (18th April, 1847), Dora Annie Dickens (16th August, 1850) and Edward Bulwer Lytton ( 13th March 1852).
As a child Kate developed a worrying illness. According to her biographer, Lucinda Hawksley: "It began with a dreadful sore throat, which her nurse assumed would pass, but then developed into a pronounced swelling on her neck that continued to grow larger. The bewildered little girl was in a great deal of pain and distress and her screams and tantrums could be heard all over the house. There was no shortage of female servants and relatives able and willing to nurse her, yet despite their attentions Katey could not be pacified. She didn't want the desperate ministrations of her mother, or those of her capable young aunt or the comfortable governess, she wanted her father.... Charles had been dabbling in the newly fashionable art of mesmerism (the precursor to hypnosis) and had had several successes, notably with his wife. He tried to mesmerize little Katey in order to calm her, but to no avail. He put this lack of success down to his and Katey's temperaments being too similar (it is notable that whenever he tried to mesmerize the more compliant Mamie, he was always successful)." It is now belied that Kate was suffering from scrofula (tuberculosis of the neck).
In 1853, who showed a talent for drawing, began to attend art classes at Bedford College in Regent's Park. Claire Tomalin , the author of Dickens: A Life (2011) has argued: "She seems to have been well taught and she became an accomplished painter, the only one of the Dickens children to follow their father into the arts." Kate and her sister, Mamie Dickens, were also sent to Paris in 1855 to have dancing lessons, art classes and language coaching. They also had Italian lessons from the exiled patriot, Daniele Manin.
1856 her father's friend, Wilkie Collins, wrote The Frozen Deep. The inspiration for the play came from the expedition led by Rear-Admiral John Franklin in 1845 to find the North-West Passage. Charles Dickens helped Collins with writing of the play and offered to arrange its first production in his own home, Tavistock House. Dickens also wanted to play the part of the hero, Richard Wardour, who after struggling against jealousy and murderous impulses, sacrifices his life to rescue his rival in love.
Dickens, who grew a beard for the role, also gave parts to three of his children, Kate, Charles Culliford Dickens, Mamie Dickens and his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. Dickens later recalled that taking part in the play was "like writing a book in company... a satisfaction of a most singular kind, which had no exact parallel in my life". Dickens invited the theatre critic from The Times to attend the first production on 6th January, 1857 in the converted schoolroom. He was very impressed and praised Kate for her "fascinating simplicity", Mamie for her "dramatic instinct" and Georgina for her "refined vivacity".
The star of the play was Charles Dickens, who showed he could have had a career as a professional actor. One critic, John Oxenford, said that "his appeal to the imagination of the audience, which conveyed the sense of Wardour's complex and powerful inner life, suggests the support of some strong irrational force". William Makepeace Thackeray , who also saw the production, remarked: "If that man (Dickens) would go upon the stage he would make £20,000 a year."
The temporary theatre held a maximum audience of twenty-five, four performances were given. A private command performance, with the same cast, was also given for Queen Victoria and her family on 4th July and three public benefit performances were given in London in order to raise money for the widow of Dickens's friend, Douglas Jerrold.
In May 1858, Catherine Hogarth Dickens accidentally received a bracelet meant for Ellen Ternan. Her daughter, Kate Dickens, says her mother was distraught by the incident. Charles Dickens responded by a meeting with his solicitors. By the end of the month he negotiated a settlement where Catherine should have £400 a year and a carriage and the children would live with Dickens. Later, the children insisted they had been forced to live with their father.
Charles Culliford Dickens refused and decided that he would live with his mother. He told his father in a letter: "Don't suppose that in making my choice, I was actuated by any feeling of preference for my mother to you. God knows I love you dearly, and it will be a hard day for me when I have to part from you and the girls. But in doing as I have done, I hope I am doing my duty, and that you will understand it so."
Dickens claimed that Catherine's mother and her daughter Helen Hogarth had spread rumours about his relationship with Georgina Hogarth . Dickens insisted that Mrs Hogarth sign a statement withdrawing her claim that he had been involved in a sexual relationship with Georgina. In return, he would raise Catherine's annual income to £600. On 29th May, 1858, Mrs Hogarth and Helen Hogarth reluctantly put their names to a document which said in part: "Certain statements have been circulated that such differences are occasioned by circumstances deeply affecting the moral character of Mr. Dickens and compromising the reputation and good name of others, we solemnly declare that we now disbelieve such statements." They also promised not to take any legal action against Dickens.
On the signing of the settlement, Catherine moved to a house in Gloucester Place, Brighton, with her son Charles Culliford Dickens. Charles Dickens now moved back to Tavistock House with Georgina and the rest of the children. She was put in command of the servants and household management.
In June, 1858, Charles Dickens decided to issue a statement to the press about the rumours involving him and two unnamed women (Nellie Ternan and Georgina Hogarth): "By some means, arising out of wickedness, or out of folly, or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, this trouble has been the occasion of misrepresentations, mostly grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel - involving, not only me, but innocent persons dear to my heart... I most solemnly declare, then - and this I do both in my own name and in my wife's name - that all the lately whispered rumours touching the trouble, at which I have glanced, are abominably false. And whosoever repeats one of them after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully as it is possible for any false witness to lie, before heaven and earth."
Dickens also made reference to his problems with Catherine: " Some domestic trouble of mine, of long-standing, on which I will make no further remark than that it claims to be respected, as being of a sacredly private nature, has lately been brought to an arrangement, which involves no anger or ill-will of any kind, and the whole origin, progress, and surrounding circumstances of which have been, throughout, within the knowledge of my children. It is amicably composed, and its details have now to be forgotten by those concerned in it."
The statement was published in The Times and Household Words. However, Punch Magazine, edited by his great friend, Mark Lemon, refused, bringing an end to their long friendship. William Makepeace Thackeray also took the side of Catherine and he was also banned from the house. Dickens was so upset that he insisted that his daughters, Mamie Dickens and Kate Dickens, brought an end to their friendship with the children of Lemon and Thackeray.
Dickens also wrote to Charles Culliford Dickens insisting that none of the children should "utter one word to their grandmother" or to Catherine's sister, Helen Hogarth, who had also been accused of talking falsely about his relationship with Ternan: "If they are ever brought into the presence of either of these two, I charge them immediately to leave their mother's house and come back to me." Kate Dickens later recalled: "My father was like a madman... This affair brought out all that was worst - all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us. Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home."
Charles Allston Collins, the artist brother of Wilkie Collins, wanted to marry Kate. At first Charles Dickens refused permission because he disapproved of Wilkie living with Caroline Graves, a shop girl who had an illegitimate child. Kate was also unsure but as she later recalled, that he had left her mother, Catherine Dickens, after beginning a relationship with Nellie Ternan : "My father was like a madman... This affair brought out all that was worst - all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us. Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home."
Eventually her father agreed to Kate's marriage. He wrote to his friend, W.W. F. de Cerjat, about his thoughts on the matter: "My second daughter (Kate) is going to be married in the course of the summer, to the brother of Wilkie Collins the novelist. He was bred an artist (the father was one of the most famous painters of English green lanes and coast pieces), and was attaining considerable distinction, when he turned indifferent to it and fell back upon that worst of cushions, a small independence. He is a writer too, and does the Eye Witness in All The Year Round. He is a gentleman, and accomplished.... I do not doubt that the young lady might have done much better, but there is no question that she is very fond of him, and that they have come together by strong attraction. Therefore the undersigned venerable parent says no more, and takes the goods the Gods provide him."
Charles Allston Collins married Kate on 17th July 1860, at Gad's Hill Place. Dickens's biographer, Claire Tomalin , has pointed out: "Kate married Wilkie's brother, Charles Collins, thirty-two to her twenty, a good-natured man but a semi-invalid, who was giving up art to try to write. Dickens blamed himself for Kate's decision, knowing she was marrying without love and to get away from home, but he put on a showy wedding at Gad's with a semi-invalid, who was giving up art to try to write." That evening Mamie Dickens found her father weeping into her sister's wedding dress, and he told her how much he blamed himself for the marriage.
The couple moved to Paris. In December 1860, Kate told her mother-in-law about the early months of their marriage: "To begin at the beginning then, we are economizing. We keep no servant and we do almost everything for ourselves, not everything though, we pay the cook of the house something to wash up the dishes for us, and the servant of the house makes the beds and does the rooms for us, that is to say pretends to do the rooms, really we do them. Without this help of course we should be obliged to keep a servant of our own, as we shall do if we stay here, when we have a little recovered from the expense of our journey. We have cleaned everything with our own hands and have scrubbed away like two hard working servants. We cook our own food, no one in the world could cook a chop better than Charlie does, and I am very great indeed at boiled rice. In the morning Charlie lights the fire and I lay the cloth, while he fries the bacon I make the tea. After breakfast I clear away, put his writing materials out on the table and he sets down to work while I wash up the breakfast cups in the kitchen, put away everything, sweep up the crumbs and the hearth and get the room neat. Then Charlie goes on working all the morning till about two, and I darn, or mend, or write letters. At two we have our lunch, then a little more work & then we go out for a walk, get what things we want for dinner, come in, cook our dinner and eat it."
The marriage was not a success. Gordon H. Fleming, the author of John Everett Millais (1998) claims that "Charles Collins was incurably impotent". This story is backed-up by Peter Ackroyd, in his book, Dickens (1990): "Dickens was very much opposed to the match, not least because he was unsure of Collins himself... It has been suggested that he was homosexual. Kate herself seems to have told her father that her husband was impotent. Certainly they had no children, and in addition he suffered from a mysterious, wasting illness throughout most of their married life."
Kate became very close to Frederick Walker. According to the author of Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006) : "Fred Walker may have been a lover, or he may just have been a friend who took her out for romantic walks on the Embankment late into the night. A more likely candidate as Kate's lover is the artist Valentine Prinsep... There is no definite proof (how does one find proof of an affair when, by its very definition, it is something the two participants struggle to keep secret?), but Prinsep was a close friend of the Thackeray girls and Kate and it was said that he was in love with her and she with him."
Wilkie Collins has pointed out: "The last years of Charles's life were years of broken health and acute suffering, borne with a patience and courage known only to those nearest and dearest to him." On 7th July, 1867, Dickens told his friend, James T. Fields: "Charley Collins is - I say emphatically - dying. Only last night I thought it was all over. He is reduced to that state of weakness, and is so racked and worn by a horrible strange vomiting, that if he were to faint - as he must at last - I do not think he could be revived." Charles Allston Collins died on 9th April 1873 at 10 Thurloe Place, South Kensington, aged forty-five, from a cancerous tumour in the stomach.
Charles Dickens died on 8th June, 1870. The traditional version of his death was given by his official biographer, John Forster. He claimed that Dickens was having dinner with Georgina Hogarth at Gad's Hill Place when he fell to the floor: "Her effort then was to get him on the sofa, but after a slight struggle he sank heavily on his left side... It was now a little over ten minutes past six o'clock. His two daughters came that night with Mr. Frank Beard, who had also been telegraphed for, and whom they met at the station. His eldest son arrived early next morning, and was joined in the evening (too late) by his youngest son from Cambridge. All possible medical aid had been summoned. The surgeon of the neighbourhood (Stephen Steele) was there from the first, and a physician from London (Russell Reynolds) was in attendance as well as Mr. Beard. But human help was unavailing. There was effusion on the brain."
John Everett Millais was invited to draw Dickens's dead face. On 16th June, Kate wrote to Millais: "Charlie - has just brought down your drawing. It is quite impossible to describe the effect it has had upon us. No one but yourself, I think, could have so perfectly understood the beauty and pathos of his dear face as it lay on that little bed in the dining-room, and no one but a man with genius bright as his own could have so reproduced that face as to make us feel now, when we look at it, that he is still with us in the house. Thank you, dear Mr. Millais, for giving it to me. There is nothing in the world I have, or can ever have, that I shall value half as much. I think you know this, although I can find so few words to tell you how grateful I am."
Kate Dickens secretly married Charles Edward Perugini at a registry office on 11th September 1873. The witnesses, Henry Thomas Mitcham and Ernest Edward Earle, were strangers and friends and family did not attend the service. However, they did not live together after the wedding. It is assumed that the reason for this secret marriage was because Kate thought she was pregnant.
The official wedding of Carlo and Kate took place on 4th June 1874 at St. Paul's Church in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge. The only guests were Georgina Hogarth, Mamie Dickens, Francis Jeffrey Dickens, Henry Fielding Dickens and John Everett Millais . Kate's mother, Catherine Dickens, was not invited because of her conflict with her sister, Georgina. John Forster gave them a wedding gift of £150 and John Everett Millais offered to paint Kate's portrait as a wedding present. However, it took six years to finish.
Kate gave birth to a son, Leonard Dickens Perugini on 28th December, 1875. Aged 36, she had a very difficult pregnancy and suffered greatly in childbirth. Georgina Hogarth described the child as being alert, intelligent and happy and predicted that he would grow up to be a genius, like his grandfather. "I am always thinking how proud and pleased her father would have been - and how delighted (we are) with Katey's little boy." In July 1876 the baby became suddenly violently ill. He began vomiting and suffered from constant diarrhoea. The doctor diagnosed a bowl inflammation but he was unable to help and he died two days later. Georgina wrote: Her love for the child was a revelation to herself, of a power of loving she did not know she had in her.... He was a fine, noble engaging creature - with the sweetest nature - so patient in his suffering! I think he was one of those children who are not meant to live."
Perugini painted a large number of portraits of Kate, including A Labour of Love, Kate, Doubt (also featuring Mamie Dickens) and Kate Perugini. The author of Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006): "After their marriage, Carlo painted Kate regularly, but frustratingly few of the pictures are dated. In the year of their official marriage he exhibited a portrait of her, entitled A Labour of Love, at the Royal Academy. She stands beside an arrangement of roses, looking down, her attention absorbed in her task... Carlo also painted a stunning scene entitled Doubt, for which the sitters were Kate and Mamie. Kate sits at a desk, having stopped pensively while writing a letter. Mamie leans over her. Both sisters look exceptionally pretty - with Mamie coming across as far more attractive than she is depicted in other paintings or photographs... but one must remember that posing for a photograph in the mid-nineteenth century took several minutes of standing absolutely still. Quite often, in photographs, Kate looks bored or irritable. Photographs taken towards the end of her life, by which time photographic technology had improved vastly, show her to have been commandingly attractive even in advanced old age."
Claire Tomalin , the author of Dickens: A Life (2011) has pointed out: "Even the loss of their only child in infancy did not darken their days permanently. They lived a hard-working and sociable life among their artistic and literary friends and, although they never made much money, by the late 1870s Kate had established herself as a painter, and her pictures were accepted by the Royal Academy." Gladys Storey, a friend of the Peruginis, argued: "Although Mr. and Mrs. Perugini enjoyed the friendship of many, it may be said that they lived a somewhat cloistered though happy life, devoting themselves to the art they loved so well."
Georgina Hogarth described Perugini as "a most sensible, good, honourable and upright man, and devotedly attached to Kate. She added: "Every one likes him - he is so perfectly unaffected, simple and straightforward... He will be a good and tender guardian for her future life and happiness." She also suggested that Charles Dickens would have liked Perugini: "This blessed change in her existence would have greatly eased and brightened him, I know - and he would have much liked her husband who I know would have appreciated and loved him."
In 1879 Kate exhibited A Little Woman at the Royal Academy. It sold on the very first day to someone who was not a friend or a relative. At about this time she began to receive commissions to paint children's portraits. Lucinda Hawksley has pointed out: "It had long been fashionable among the rich and titled to commission portraits of their children, many of which depicted a Victorian ideal of childhood, rather than a true glimpse at how these children lived."
Kate wrote to George Bernard Shaw, claiming: "He (Charles Edward Perugini) is, as many Italians are, a little formal and conventional in manner, but in manner only; and he is so modest a man that he never forces himself upon any one, indeed I think this same modesty has been much against his getting on in his profession as modesty is a quality which is neither appreciated nor wanted in these days!"
Charles Edward Perugini established himself as one of the most important portrait painters of the period. This included Miss Helen Lindsay (1891), the daughter of Coutts Lindsay, founder of the Grosvenor Gallery. Another important portrait was of Sophy Gray, the sister-in-law of John Everett Millais. He also painted, John Forster, the long-time friend of the Dickens family.
During the First World War Perugini's health began to go into decline. He suffered from angina and a problem with his bladder. Kate wrote to a friend: "Carlo who looks all right but is not really well, is afraid of going away for a whole day - for various reasons which you may perhaps understand. If he gets quite better I will let you know but for the present, perhaps it is wiser for him to stay at home." Perugini, aged 79, died at his home on 22nd December 1918. Perugini's funeral was held at St. Nicholas's Church in Sevenoaks and was buried in the same grave as his baby son.
Kate told friends such as George Bernard Shaw about her father's relationship with Nellie Ternan . She also gave a long interview to Gladys Storey (1897-1964) about her relationship with her father. She also provided information on Ternan: "Nelly was a small fair-haired pretty actress... She had brains, which she used to educate herself, to bring her mind more on a level with his own. Who could blame her? He had the world at his feet. She was a young girl of eighteen, elated and proud to be noticed by him." She also admitted that she felt guilty about not staying with her mother, Catherine Dickens, "we were all wicked not to take her part." Kate argued: "My father was a wicked man - a very wicked man... I loved my father better than any man in the world - in a different way of course... I loved him for his faults."
Kate Perugini died on 9th May 1929. Her death certificate, registered that one of the causes of death was "exhaustion". Storey published her book, Dickens and Daughter in 1939.
Primary Sources
(1) Gladys Storey , Dickens and Daughter (1939)
Katie and her sister occupied a garret-room at the top of the house, in which they were free to do what they pleased in the way of arrangement and decoration, and were permitted to indulge in their separate tastes in the choice of prints, which they pinned unframed to the walls-so long as the room was kept tidy and neat. This neatness also applied to their drawers, which their father periodically inspected-at one time every day-in common with his visits to other rooms in the house - and if their contents were not found to be in apple-pie order, they quickly had to be rendered so.
(2) Lucinda Hawksley , Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006)
A couple of months after the family left England, Katey developed a worrying illness. It began with a dreadful sore throat, which her nurse assumed would pass, but then developed into a pronounced swelling on her neck that continued to grow larger. The bewildered little girl was in a great deal of pain and distress and her screams and tantrums could be heard all over the house. There was no shortage of female servants and relatives able and willing to nurse her, yet despite their attentions Katey could not be pacified. She didn't want the desperate ministrations of her mother, or those of her capable young aunt or the comfortable governess, she wanted her father. Moreover, with a force of character that would remain with her into cantankerous octogenarianism, she insisted upon being nursed by her father. On another floor of the pink-stoned villa, Katey's father had appropriated what Katey's undiagnosed illness continued unabated. None of the usual remedies - including the use of leeches - worked to bring down the swelling or to soften it and they had little faith in Italian medics. Charles had been dabbling in the newly fashionable art of mesmerism (the precursor to hypnosis) and had had several successes, notably with his wife. He tried to mesmerize little Katey in order to calm her, but to no avail. He put this lack of success down to his and Katey's temperaments being too similar (it is notable that whenever he tried to mesmerize the more compliant Mamie, he was always successful). To the family's relief, an eminent British doctor, Sir James Murray, was staying nearby; he agreed to examine his famous client's `pet little daughter' and was able to reassure them the illness would not prove fatal. There are several possible diagnoses for Katey's illness. She may have been suffering from scrofula (tuberculosis of the neck), which can be caused by proximity to cows or from drinking untreated milk, both of which Katey was doing every day.
This diagnosis could also explain why Katey often suffered from bouts of poor health as an adult. Or her illness may have been diphtheria, which can manifest itself in a condition known as 'bull neck'. Alternatively, it could have been an abscess, probably a quinsy, also known as a`peritonsillar abscess', which happens when a severe case of tonsillitis leads to infection in the surrounding area. The fact that no one else in the household caught Katey's illness suggests it was a quinsy, but the other two cannot be ruled out.
By the middle of August, Katey was recovering, although she had become pitifully thin and altered in appearance (the use of leeches to drain her blood would have left her even weaker). Not yet strong enough to walk, she was taken out for exercise every evening on a donkey. Charles wrote to a friend of her illness: `She would let nobody touch her; in the way of dressing her neck or giving her physic; when she was ill; but her Papa. So I had a pretty tough time of it. But her sweet temper was wonderful to see.' His obvious pride in being her chosen nurse and his willingness to push aside his work schedule in order to care for her reveal a compassionate, tender side to his character.
(3) Charles Dickens, letter to W.W. F. de Cerjat (May, 1860)
My second daughter (Kate) is going to be married in the course of the summer, to the brother of Wilkie Collins the novelist. He was bred an artist (the father was one of the most famous painters of English green lanes and coast pieces), and was attaining considerable distinction, when he turned indifferent to it and fell back upon that worst of cushions, a small independence. He is a writer too, and does the Eye Witness in All The Year Round. He is a gentleman, and accomplished.... I do not doubt that the young lady might have done much better, but there is no question that she is very fond of him, and that they have come together by strong attraction. Therefore the undersigned venerable parent says no more, and takes the goods the Gods provide him.
(4) Kate, letter to her mother-in-law, Harriet Collins (December, 1860)
We are quite settled here now, and if the place was only a little less dirty we should be very comfortable. Now I am going to tell you about the queer sort of life we are leading. To begin at the beginning then, we are economizing. We keep no servant and we do almost everything for ourselves, not everything though, we pay the cook of the house something to wash up the dishes for us, and the servant of the house makes the beds and does the rooms for us, that is to say pretends to do the rooms, really we do them. Without this help of course we should be obliged to keep a servant of our own, as we shall do if we stay here, when we have a little recovered from the expense of our journey. We have cleaned everything with our own hands and have scrubbed away like two hard working servants. We cook our own food, no one in the world could cook a chop better than Charlie does, and I am very great indeed at boiled rice. In the morning Charlie lights the fire and I lay the cloth, while he fries the bacon I make the tea. After breakfast I clear away, put his writing materials out on the table and he sets down to work while I wash up the breakfast cups in the kitchen, put away everything, sweep up the crumbs and the hearth and get the room neat. Then Charlie goes on working all the morning till about two, and I darn, or mend, or write letters. At two we have our lunch, then a little more work & then we go out for a walk, get what things we want for dinner, come in, cook our dinner and eat it. As soon as dinner is over, we dine generally at a little after six, we get out the Account book and our journal book, enter in the account book (how much money) we have spent in the day, and write down in the journal book all that we have done in the day. Then comes tea, and then another great tidying of the room, and sweeping up of crumbs and putting away of things. Then we put on our things & go out for a long walk, and look at all the beautiful things in the shop windows and enjoy ourselves as much as we can. If it rains in the evenings we stay at home of course, then Charlie draws and I work. This is our life, this is how we spend our time. Your letters are a great amusement to us so are Mamie's and Auntie's. Charlie received a very nice letter from Wilkie this morning long and amusing.
(5) Kate Dickens, interviewed in Dickens and Daughter (1939)
When mind and body had become overstrained and tired after struggling through some difficult part of a long story, he would walk through the busy, noisy streets, which would act on him like a tonic and enable him to take up with new vigour the flagging interest of his story and breathe new life into its pages...
His passionate love of fresh air and sunshine had changed his once pale skin to a florid complexion ; his hair, formerly chestnut brown and flowing, became almost daily darker and was worn shorter ; the beard and moustache he had allowed to grow, which was a mistake for not only did it cover his very mobile sensitive mouth but it seemed in a curious way to detract from the beauty of the upper part of his face and make his features look often grave, though never self-conscious.
(6) Lucinda Hawksley , Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006)
Her husband's health was erratic: some days he would feel fine, but at other times she would be scared he was dying. As her father wrote to a friend at the end of 1868, "Charles Collins continues in the same state and his pretty young wife's life is indeed a weary one." Although it is impossible to be certain, it seems very likely that Kate had at least one affair during her marriage. Fred and Nina Lehmann's many letters hint that Kate was "intensely eager... to find other lovers". Fred Walker may have been a lover, or he may just have been a friend who took her out for romantic walks on the Embankment late into the night. A more likely candidate as Kate's lover is the artist Valentine Prinsep. This idea was mooted by Caroline Dakers in her fascinating book The Holland Park Circle. There is no definite proof (how does one find proof of an affair when, by its very definition, it is something the two participants struggle to keep secret?), but Prinsep was a close friend of the Thackeray girls and Kate and it was said that he was in love with her and she with him.
Although not a handsome man - in fact he was 'quite odd looking', as his descendant Sue Meynell was the first to admit to me - Val Prinsep appears to have been physically attractive and a truly interesting personality, as well as a talented artist. As mentioned earlier, he had been tutored in art by G. F. Watts, and encouraged and assisted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti - both of whom were great artists whose works Kate would have known and admired. Val was unusual in that he was an artistic chameleon: he could - and frequently did - change his artistic style depending on which influences he was currently inspired by. This ability must have been tantalizingly seductive for one who was still struggling to create her own distinct style. Val was very tall for a man of his era, about six feet two inches tall, and his extremely well-muscled physique was so well regarded that it would even be commented on in his obituary. One cannot imagine a man less like the ascetic Charlie Collins and - unlike Charlie - Val was only eighteen months older than Kate. In addition, he was passionate about art and fascinating to spend time with. He had grown up in an Anglo-Indian family and was connected, either by blood, marriage or sympathy, to many of the most famous names of the day. His family were allied to the Kiplings, the Tennysons and those who were to become known as the Bloomsbury Group. He spent holidays with Julia Margaret Cameron; G. F Watts; Tennyson and the Thackeray girls. Army Thackeray recalled going regularly to the Prinseps' second home on the Isle of Wight; on one occasion she wrote in an amusing letter to a friend, `We then went on to the Prinseps' next door... Everybody is either a genius, or a poet, or a painter or peculiar in some way, poor Miss Stephen says is there nobody commonplace.'
That Kate was in love with Val Prinsep was confirmed by Lady Lucy Mathews, one of Kate's oldest friends and one of the few who lived almost as long as Kate did. In 1925, Lucy revealed that Kate had been so `deeply in love with Val Prinsep' during her marriage to Charlie that 'it made her very ill'. This could explain her debilitating poor health around Christmas 1866.
Another indicative factor in the assumption that Kate and Val had an affair is that he did not get married until relatively late in life. Not until 1884, by which time he was in his mid-forties and Kate was no longer available, did he marry. An eligible bachelor, wealthy and with exalted family connections, Val must have been sought after by many match-making parents. He had no aversion to the wedded state, so perhaps he married so late in life because until then he was in love with Kate and didn't want to marry anyone else.
(7) Claire Tomalin , Dickens: A Life (2011)
Charles Collins died of cancer in 1873. The marriage had not been a success and Kate was too sensible to pretend to grieve for long. She was working hard at her painting, she had several admirers, and within six months of his death she married another fellow artist, Carlo Perugini, with whom she was happy. Even the loss of their only child in infancy did not darken their days permanently. They lived a hard-working and sociable life among their artistic and literary friends and, although they never made much money, by the late 1870s Katey had established herself as a painter, and her pictures were accepted by the Royal Academy.
(8) Kate Dickens to John Everett Millais (16th June, 1870)
My dear Mr. Millais, - Charlie - has just brought down your drawing. It is quite impossible to describe the effect it has had upon us. No one but yourself, I think, could have so perfectly understood the beauty and pathos of his dear face as it lay on that little bed in the dining-room, and no one but a man with genius bright as his own could have so reproduced that face as to make us feel now, when we look at it, that he is still with us in the house. Thank you, dear Mr. Millais, for giving it to me. There is nothing in the world I have, or can ever have, that I shall value half as much. I think you know this, although I can find so few words to tell you how grateful I am.
(9) Lucinda Hawksley , Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens's Artist Daughter (2006)
Despite her own ill health and emotional sadness, Kate remained a celebrated beauty and, after she and Charlie returned to London in spring 1865, family friend and fellow artist Marcus Stone painted her portrait. The picture reveals a pretty young woman, pensive but with her lips starting to shape into a slight smile. She fulfils all the ideals of the many women depicted in her father's books as the epitome of feminine beauty. Her hair is thick and well styled, her features, including her exposed left ear, are all ideally proportioned - not too big, the ideal shape and all carefully defined. Her neat, straight nose, prominent cheekbones and eyebrow bones highlighting her expressive eyes and the small but prettily shaped mouth may perhaps have been idealized, but, if so, all paintings of Kate, by several talented artists, must have been similarly idealized. In photographs taken during this period of her life, she seldom looks as pretty as in paintings, but one must remember that posing for a photograph in the mid-nineteenth century took several minutes of standing absolutely still. Quite often, in photographs, Kate looks bored or irritable. Photographs taken towards the end of her life, by which time photographic technology had improved vastly, show her to have been commandingly attractive even in advanced old age.
