Dickens, Kate

PAINTER (ENGLAND)
BORN 29 Oct 1839, London: 48 Doughty Street - DIED 9 May 1929, London
BIRTH NAME Dickens, Catherine Elizabeth Macready
GRAVE LOCATION Sevenoaks, Kent: St. Nicholas churchyard, Rectory Lane (extension at the back: family grave)

Daughter of Charles Dickens, named after his friend Charles MacReady. As a child she was called "Lucifer Box" because of her temper. When Dickens divorced his wife she sided with her mother and she married the painter Charles Collins to be able to leave home. Dickens was aware of this and blamed himself for her marriage. Opinions differ on how much she may have loved Charles and it is possible that the marriage was never consummated. Charles health detoriated further and it was only in a late stage that he was diagnosed with the stomach cancer that had caused him pain for several years. Kate nursed him until he died in 1873.

She probably conducted an affair with the painter Val Prinsep during her marriage, but the year after Collins' death she married the painter Carlo Perugini. She secretly married him on 11 Sep 1873 but they didn't live together until they married officially on 4 Jun 1874. Perhaps she may have thought that she was pregnant in 1873. Kate and Carlo had only one child, Leonard, who died in infancy in 1876.

From 1877 onwards she exhibited at the Royal Academy. She was best known for painting children buy the whereabouts of most of her paintings are unknown. Kate was the model for Millais' painting "The Black Brunswicker" and Millais painted her portrait in 1880. She was also the person who revealed Dickens' secret relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan in "Dickens and Daughter", a book by Gladys Storey.

Family
• Father: Dickens, Charles
• Mother: Hogarth, Catherine
• Husband: Collins, Charles Allston (1860-1873, Gad's Hill Place, Kent)
• Husband: Perugini, Charles Edward (1874-1918, London: St. Paul's Church, Wilton Place, Knightsbridge)
• Brother: Dickens, Charles Culliford Boz
• Sister: Dickens, Mary
• Brother: Dickens, Alfred Tennyson
• Brother: Dickens, Henry Fielding

Related persons
• worked as a model for Millais, John
• was painted by Millais, John
• was painted by Perugini, Charles Edward
• had a love affair with Prinsep, Valentine
• was a friend of Thackeray Ritchie, Anne

Events
3/9/1859Charles Dickens burns 20 years of correspondence. Three of his children, among them Kate, helped him. Kate begged her father to keep at least some some letters. Dickens burnt letters from Washington Irving, Thomas Carlyle, William Makepeace Thackeray, Alfred Tennyson and others. Henry Dickens observed later that he and his brother 'roasted onions on the ashes of the great'. [Dickens, Charles][Dickens, Henry Fielding ][Irving, Washington][Thackeray, William Makepeace]

Images

'Kate Perugini' by John Everett Millais.
(1880)

 

The grave of Kate Dickens and Charles Perugini at St. Nicholas churchyard, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Picture by Androom (06 Feb 2012)

 

The grave of Kate Dickens and Charles Perugini at St. Nicholas churchyard, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Picture by Androom (06 Feb 2012)

 

The grave of Kate Dickens and Charles Perugini at St. Nicholas churchyard, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Picture by Androom (06 Feb 2012)

 

The grave of Kate Dickens and Charles Perugini (left) and the grave of Mary Dickens (right) at St. Nicholas churchyard, Sevenoaks, Kent.
Picture by Androom (06 Feb 2012)

 

Sources
• Hawksley, Lucinda, Charles Dickens' Favorite Daughter, The Life, Loves and Art of Katey Dickens Perugini, Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2013
Kate Dickens Perugini


Dickens, Mary

Published: 01 Jan 2006
Last update: 04 Jul 2022