The reason for the separation remains unclear, though rumours have focused on the close relationship between Charles Dickens and Ellen Ternan, an actress many years his junior, and/or Georgina Hogarth.

The Peruginis were active in artistic society and maintained friendships with J. M. Barrie and George Bernard Shaw amongst other celebrities of their era.

However, George Bernard Shaw wrote to The Times Literary Supplement to say that Kate had told him everything in the book forty years before.

At the age of 12, Kate Dickens began studying art at Bedford College, the first institution of higher learning for women in Britain.

In showing the picture at the Grosvenor, "Perugini advertised herself as part of a cultured, educated and artistic family" [14] Millais had previously used her as a model for his painting The Black Brunswicker (1860).

[14] Perugini exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

[15] Perugini is particularly known for her portraits of children, which include: A Little Woman (1879), Feeding Rabbits (1884), Dorothy de Michele (1892), and A Flower Merchant.