Dickens's Artistic Daughter Katey by Lucinda Hawksley

Author:Lucinda Hawksley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women
ISBN: 9781526712325
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2018-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

A Time of Mourning

On Christmas Eve 1863, Kate and Charlie Collins’ breakfast was interrupted by an agitated servant from the Thackerays’ home. The servant brought a desperate message from Anny and Minny, asking them to come at once. Their father, aged only fifty-two, had been found dead in his bed following a brain haemorrhage. The grieving daughters had sent immediately for a doctor and for their closest friends.

Just a few nights previously, Thackeray had dined with the Collinses and had been in high, lively spirits. Shortly before his death, he had asked Kate to visit him, but she hadn’t been feeling well so had postponed the visit. She was devastated that she had turned him down and now could never have the chance to talk to him again. The only thing with which Kate could console herself was the knowledge that Thackeray and her father had made up their quarrel.

Kate rushed to Palace Green, and Charlie rushed to tell his father-in-law the news, before Dickens heard it from anyone else. Later, Charlie joined Kate in consoling Thackeray’s distraught daughters and mother. He wrote to his brother Wilkie, ‘I shall never forget the day which we passed at the house … or the horror of seeing him lying there so dreadfully changed.’ Thackeray’s grieving valet, Charles Pearman, had discovered the body. He later commented that the anguished wailing of the bereaved women was calmed almost as soon as Kate arrived. She remained with them all day until she had persuaded Anny, Minny and Mrs Carmichael-Smyth to go and stay with her and Charlie until the funeral.

The Collinses’ house had only one spare bedroom, which was given to Thackeray’s mother. It is unrecorded whether Kate and Charlie usually shared a bedroom (with two beds) or slept in separate rooms. It is likely that Kate slept in one room with Anny and Minny, and Charlie either slept in the other or, if there was no third bedroom, that he slept up in the little attic studio. Anny, who had always been the strongest member of the family, the one on whom all the others relied, was utterly broken by her father’s death; it was the usually flighty Minny who proved the steadiest in a crisis. Kate held Anny as she cried heartbrokenly for her father. For the next few months, Anny and Minny were regular guests at the Collinses’ house while they picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and searched for a new home.

By the evening of 24 December, the news had spread. On Christmas Day, Millais, apparently spending the festive season alone in London, wrote to his wife Effie:

‘I am sure you will be dreadfully shocked, as I was, at the death of Thackeray. I imagine, and hope truly, you will have heard of it before this reaches you. He was found dead by his servant in the morning, and of course the whole house is in a state of the utmost confusion and pain. They first sent to

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