[3] They were married on 2 April 1836 in St Luke's Church, Chelsea, going on their honeymoon in Chalk, near Chatham in Kent and setting up a home in Bloomsbury.

During their trip, Dickens wrote in a letter to a friend that Catherine never felt gloomy or lost courage throughout their long journey by ship, and "adapted to any circumstances without complaint".

To ensure no more children could be born, he ordered their bed to be separated and put a bookshelf in between them, then completely moved out of their bedroom and had the connecting door boarded shut.

[14] The exact cause of the separation is unknown, although attention at the time and since has focused on rumours of an affair between Dickens and Ellen Ternan and/or Catherine's sister, Georgina Hogarth.

A bracelet intended for Ellen Ternan had supposedly been delivered to the Dickens household some months previously, leading to accusation and denial.

[14] On 12 June 1858, Dickens published an article in his journal, Household Words, denying rumours about the separation while neither articulating them nor clarifying the situation.

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 ... 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 ...

He would not and wrote back to Couts that: "a page in my life which once had writing on it, has become absolutely blank, and it is not in my power to pretend that it has a solitary word upon it".

[14] Dickens arranged for their sons to take up jobs in the British colonies without consulting their mother, and Catherine was deeply upset by their departures from England.

[14] Their son Sydney Smith Haldimand Dickens, a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, nevertheless chose to live with his mother during his periods of leave.

[13] While on her deathbed in 1879, Catherine gave the collection of letters she had received from Dickens to her daughter Kate telling her to "Give these to the British Museum – that the world may know [Charles] loved me once" and correct the historical record.

[7] Shirley Brooks reflected in her diary that Catherine "was resolved not to allow... any biographer to allege that she did not make D[ickens] a happy husband".