Breaking with tradition among the elite, William and Catherine’s wedding ceremony took place at St James’s, Piccadilly, on 14 March 1812. On arriving at the church, the Marquess of Wellesley handed the bride down from her carriage and led her to the altar.1 Filled with her hopes and dreams for the future, Catherine radiated happiness as she floated down the aisle.
Everyone was impressed by the bride’s stunning wedding garments, which exuded glamour. Catherine wore a pelisse of white satin, open at the front to reveal an exquisite gown underneath, made from delicate Brussels point lace. The pelisse was elaborately trimmed with swansdown, with a luxurious sweep of soft white feathers swishing at her ankles. On her head she wore a chic bonnet made from satin and lace, and ornamented with two ostrich feathers and a long lace veil.2 The bridegroom looked equally stylish in top hat and tails, which comprised of ‘a plain blue coat with yellow buttons, a white waistcoat, buff breeches, and white silk stockings’.3
London newspapers were quick to report on the events of the big day. On 17 March 1812, the Morning Chronicle supplied titbits of gossip, remarking on the prodigious cost of Catherine’s outfit: ‘The Lady looked very pretty and interesting . . . The dress cost 700 guineas, the bonnet 150, and the veil 200.’ The total outlay for this ensemble was more than the average labourer earned in twenty years, demonstrating precisely why marriage ceremonies were usually low-key. Details of Catherine’s extraordinary generosity in regards to the marriage settlement also emerged as the Morning Chronicle outlined the bequests she had made to her sisters and how ‘every domestic in the family has been liberally provided for; they all have had annuities settled upon them for life’.
White weddings were a relatively new trend reserved for the rich and fashionable. Most women simply got married in their best gown, regardless of the colour. Details of Catherine’s outfit caused a sensation and made the white wedding dress desirable at all levels of society. From this moment onwards, brides increasingly wore white as a symbol of romantic love and purity.4
Proud of his sense of style, William had taken the utmost care with the arrangements, ensuring that everything was perfectly coordinated. He had commissioned a swanky new carriage, emblazoned with ‘the united arms of the Wellesley and Tylney families . . . It was a singularly elegant chariot, painted a bright yellow and highly emblazoned, drawn by four beautiful Arabian grey horses, attended by two postilions with superbly embroidered jackets in brown and gold.’5
The church service did not proceed entirely smoothly, however, because William somehow overlooked the most important detail. Much to the amusement of the press, proceedings at the altar came to an abrupt halt because the bridegroom had forgotten to purchase a wedding ring. One newspaper recorded that ‘a messenger was in consequence dispatched to Mr Brown, a jeweller, in Piccadilly, opposite the Church, who immediately attended with an assortment, and then the ceremony proceeded without further interruption’.6
One thing William did get right was the stunning diamond jewellery he chose for his wife as a wedding gift. The necklace was a superb row of thirty diamonds of unparalleled size and brilliance – the stone at the centre was one of the rarest yellow diamonds ever seen.7 As the Hull Packet verified, the necklace was of ‘first water and magnitude that cannot be matched in England, and probably not in Europe’.8 The set included a magnificent tiara and a pair of drop earrings, purchased at the enormous cost of 25,000 guineas. Apart from the diamonds, Catherine’s trousseau was a treasure trove of jewels, containing matching sets of necklaces, bracelets and earrings made from precious stones. Newspapers published descriptions of the hoard: her rubies were exceptionally large and rich in colour; her emeralds were tastefully set and truly elegant; her amethysts were as rich and fine as could be procured; and her pearls were unique in colour and lustre.9 The Lancashire Gazette reported that the emerald set was particularly extraordinary, containing ‘the largest emerald ever seen . . . imported from the East Indies, it was one of the most valuable stones of [Tipu] Saib’s crown’.10 One of the casualties of Wellington’s Indian campaign was Tipu Sultan of Mysore, so the jewel from his crown was probably a spoil of war. Whenever Catherine wore the trophy it would be a talking point, serving as a powerful reminder of the valour and might of the Wellesley family.
All Catherine’s jewels were fit for a queen, but the dazzling diamonds were easily her favourite and they became her trademark, silently proclaiming her enormous wealth. The total cost of the jewellery was estimated at £50,000,11 and everyone complimented Mr Wellesley on his style and taste. Only the most cynical gossiped about the fact that the £50,000 had not come out of William’s purse.
When the ceremony was over, Catherine linked arms with her dashing husband, impatient to leave the gathering. They left through a back doorway, to avoid the eager curiosity of the crowd that had assembled outside. This was a rare treat for the public – a high-society marriage taking place in church – and they were keen to catch a glimpse of the action. As the bells rang, the happy couple held hands and raced out of the church, emerging in Jermyn Street, where their smart new equipage awaited. William lifted his bride into the carriage and ordered the coachman to hurry on. The newlyweds drove off at great speed, laughing with delight as they headed for their honeymoon in Blackheath.12
The wedding captured the public imagination: the bride’s white wedding dress, the groom’s top hat and tails, the church ceremony and the fine carriage to transport the newlyweds. Perhaps this formula had been used before, but never with such pomp or publicity. It was a defining moment in the history of the British wedding, establishing a blueprint that remains popular today.
Mr and Mrs Long Wellesley became the celebrity couple of their era, setting the trends that others followed. As individuals they were newsworthy, but as a couple they were even more compelling. The public were curious to read the next chapter in their story, to discover what would happen to their sweet Cinderella now that she had married a thrill-seeking libertine. Before the wedding, William had changed his name by Royal Licence to something suitably impressive – William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley. Officially, his wife became Mrs Catherine Pole Tylney Long Wellesley, although the press would use variations. With the Wellesley family riding high, it was beneficial to emphasize this connection so the newlyweds called themselves Mr and Mrs Long Wellesley.
The cult of celebrity was a relatively new phenomenon and blossomed as the media increasingly developed the means to broadcast the minutiae of private lives. The era was a time of tremendous innovation, when advances in technology such as mechanized paper-making (1803) and the steam-powered press (1814) enabled low-cost, high-speed dissemination of images and the printed word. This mass production resulted in daily newspapers reaching a wider audience than ever before. No longer confined to single-page broadsides, reporters could comment at length on society gossip, providing daily updates to tantalize the public. Scandal sold well, which meant that publishers paid handsomely for scurrilous information about people in the public eye. Gossip had become a tradeable commodity.
With this explosion in information technology and mass media around the time of their wedding, William and Catherine were perfectly placed to become the first ever ‘celebrity couple’. They excited the public interest on an unprecedented scale – people wanted to read about them simply because they were attractive, glamorous and innovative. Famous for being famous, carefully branded and packaged for consumption, the public fed on delicious titbits about their private lives.
Private letters reveal that the press printed surprisingly accurate accounts about the couple. This was probably because William craved publicity to such an extent that he kept the media supplied with news by leaking information about himself, or inviting journalists to his parties so they could report in colourful detail. This was unusual for the time, as many of his contemporaries were deeply suspicious of newsmen. William quickly learned how to harness the power of the press to his own advantage, becoming one of the first to dedicatedly manipulate the media for his own ends. But he would later discover the impossibility of keeping control when the public become involved in private concerns.
Fascination with the Long Wellesleys continued in the weeks after the wedding; even when there was nothing in particular to report, the press could not resist writing about them. The Morning Chronicle followed them most enthusiastically and regularly featured the pair in a daily gossip column entitled ‘Mirror of Fashion’. Shortly after the marriage, the Morning Chronicle published a thinly veiled skit of the wedding. This article tickled Catherine’s sense of humour sufficiently for her to cut it out to keep among her private papers:
It is with great satisfaction, we can at length announce the long expected nuptials of Mr William Simpson Soames Wilkins and Miss Soames Simpson. The ceremony took place at St Giles in the Fields. At eight o’clock, the procession approached the church by Hog lane, in order to avoid the crowd assembled . . . [The Bride] was handed from the Hackney coach (No 254) by Mr Soames, who led her into the vestry. She was simply dressed in a flowered gingham, with a belcher handkerchief carelessly tied over her shoulders.13
Lampooning William for his ridiculously long surname, the article goes on to mock him for his blunder with the wedding ring:
On Mr Wilkins approaching the altar, it was discovered that he had forgotten to put on any small-clothes, and a friend was dispatched to a neighbouring shop in Monmouth Street, from which a pair were quickly procured, and the ceremony proceeded.14
With countless reports and caricatures of the couple in circulation, they became household names, instantly recognizable to the public. Newspapers such as the Hull Packet and Manchester Iris picked up the stories from the London press, reprinting extracts and spreading their fame throughout England. As the Lancashire Gazette pointed out, their courtship had ‘created more fashionable conversation and conjecture than any marriage project that has been on the tapis for many years’.15
The ironies of courtship were of great amusement to the Regency public, as the runaway success of Jane Austen’s novels demonstrated. Newsmen were not alone in exploiting Catherine – Jane Austen herself also capitalized on her popularity. The author was busy making major revisions to several of her manuscripts at precisely the time Catherine was constantly in the news. Owing to the widespread obsession with the famous heiress, Austen changed the name of her heroine in Northanger Abbey from Susan to Catherine. Her many devoted readers would have made the connection instantly, especially with the other main character being called Tilney. The name Catherine invoked a more vividly real debutante for the reader, a modern woman with celebrity associations whose image appeared widely in the media. At the conclusion of the novel ‘the bells rang and everybody smiled’ as Catherine Tilney finally got her happy ending, calling to mind the recent social spectacle of the Long Wellesleys’ marriage.16 The similarities between Catherine and her fictional counterpart are striking: in Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland is a naive parson’s daughter plucked from a sheltered existence in Wiltshire and thrust into the predatory marriage market at Bath. Her charm lies in the naturalness and sweetness of her nature, her loyalty to her family and her lack of guile or mercenary instincts as she determines to marry for love not status.
Just like her namesake, Catherine had learned many valuable lessons. Since coming of age, she had matured into a capable and confident woman, with a mischievous sense of humour. It seemed that she was well equipped to deal with the challenges of married life, including the ability to handle a man as raffish as William.
He, too, seemed a reformed character, ready to settle down and take on responsibility. As the bells tolled for the newlyweds, Colonel Merrick Shawe rightly commented that Mr and Mrs Long Wellesley had ‘as fair a chance of happiness as any [couple] in England’.17