JULY 1824
It took six days for Catherine’s letter to reach Savile Row. Dropping everything, Lord and Lady Maryborough headed directly to France. Arriving in Paris late in the evening of 9 July, they immediately sent a note to their unsuspecting son. William was lounging in his hotel drawing room nursing a glass of port when the messenger arrived. On reading the communication from his parents, he roared so loudly he could be heard all around the Place de Vendôme. He burst into such an ungovernable fury, Bulkeley felt compelled to protect Catherine, so he stepped forward to place his considerable frame between the couple. Flinging his parents’ note into the fireplace, William grabbed two heavy candlesticks and hurled them across the room. Picking up a book, he started to bang it on a table while screaming abuse at his wife, yelling, ‘You damned bitch. You have set my own father and mother against me.’1 He continued to rave in a most dreadful, menacing manner while Catherine stood silently, flinching at the abuse. Eventually William asked Bulkeley to leave the room, but the doctor refused to go because he believed that Catherine was in actual bodily danger and it was therefore his duty to stay with her. On hearing this, William turned his wrath upon the physician, unleashing a torrent of profanity. As Bulkeley delicately put it, ‘[Mr Long Wellesley] uttered every opprobrious epithet which language could furnish.’
Suspecting that his note would cause considerable disharmony, Lord Maryborough decided that it would be prudent to follow immediately behind it. Calling at the Hôtel de Londres, he heard the commotion in the drawing room and barged straight in. Lord Maryborough did not need to speak even one word; William stopped dead in his tracks, disarmed by his father’s steely blue glare. The air was heavy with disapproval, the patriarch standing firm, while his son squirmed like a small boy. Seized with irrational panic, William decided that the best course of action was to escape. Squealing like a pig, he grabbed a candlestick and bolted out through the French doors into the gardens. As Catherine watched her husband disappearing into the dark night, the flame from his candle fading into the distance, she could not have guessed that it would be the last time she ever saw William.
The following day Lord and Lady Maryborough attempted to see their son, but he refused to meet with them, insisting that he would not negotiate with his wife through a third party. As a result, a temporary agreement was reached through a series of curt notes. On 10 July, William wrote to Catherine, ‘I will allow no one to interfere between me and my wife. Now write to me yourself and tell me what you want.’2
She replied:
The treatment which I have endured from you for many months past has been such as I can no longer submit to . . . I have resolved to separate myself from a husband who already in conduct has abandoned me. It is horribly necessary for me to mention that I allude to your degrading connection with that abandoned woman, Mrs Bligh.
Although Catherine mentioned her intention ‘to separate’ she did not want to involve solicitors at this early stage. If anything, she simply wanted William to give up his mistress.
Trying to intimidate her, William countered, ‘My lawyers as you well know are Messrs Lightfoot & Robson and they shall receive instructions from me to meet yours.’
Later that day he dashed off another note:
I deny your ever having been treated by me in ‘a degrading manner’ or ever having been in conduct ‘abandoned by me’. I have only to end this communication between us, by praying to God you may not live, to repent every hour of your life your folly . . . Whatever further communication you have to make to me had better be made through legal persons.
Unperturbed by his veiled threats, Catherine replied, ‘It is my intention to go to England as early as possible . . . and I request you will appoint a lawyer who may communicate with mine on my arrival there.’
In a magnanimous moment William wrote, ‘It seems to me you may want money, I shall therefore request Daly to give you any you may require.’
Catherine’s reply drips irony: ‘I am very much obliged to you for your offer of money through Mr Daly. But as the command of a large sum is within my own power and entirely at my own disposal, I shall not have occasion to take advantage of your offer.’
Just five days after the arrival of her in-laws, travel plans had been made and Catherine was ready to leave for England. Her good friend Sir George Dallas had arrived to accompany her home. This sudden turn of events prompted William to attempt reconciliation, but Catherine kept the upper hand by refusing to see him before her departure. Filled with regret, William made frantic promises to his father, to Mr Daly and to Sir George Dallas, solemnly vowing that he would make amends to ‘win back the affections of my wife’. Pledging on his honour, William resolved to immediately separate from Mrs Bligh, insisting he would never see her again. This was exactly what Catherine wanted to hear. On 14 July, she sent a conciliatory note to her husband:
I cannot leave Paris without expressing to you the great satisfaction I feel at my children being allowed to accompany me, nor without assuring you that as far as is in my power, I shall be happy to attend strictly to the wishes you have expressed and the instructions you have given in your letter for their management.3
William’s tone was equally appeasing when he replied:
I received yesterday your note, in which you condescend to express your satisfaction, at being accompanied by your children. Their separation from me has broke my heart, but the interests of my family require the subjection of all feeling.4
Ending with a heartfelt postscript, underlined for emphasis, William implored, ‘PS Don’t let the children forget me.’
Huge crowds were waiting at the docks when Catherine arrived back in England with her children. The throng recognized them and a cheer erupted as they stepped off the boat, leaving Catherine totally bemused until someone told her that they were waiting for the ship carrying the remains of Lord Byron. Life is fragile – Byron was merely thirty-six years old when he succumbed to a fever in Greece. William was the same age as the poet and Catherine felt a pang of regret as she remembered his recent ill health, including the debilitating eye infection he had been suffering for over a year. Despite all that had happened, Catherine did not relish returning to England alone.
Chivalrous Lord Maryborough had come to Catherine’s rescue and worked wonders. Less than a month after writing to him, she was back living at Draycot House in Wiltshire. She was also pleased that William had behaved generously in the end, allowing the children to come home with her. It was a good sign. Lord Maryborough had also performed miracles in relation to William’s financial affairs, settling debts much more quickly than anticipated. The arrangement with William’s creditors was due to be completed on 29 September, which meant that he would soon be able to return to England. Two or three months apart would give them both time to reflect, and Catherine felt sure that he would give up his mistress and join her at Draycot very soon.
The media was unaware that William’s intrigue with Mrs Bligh had continued after he left Naples, so there was no hint of a separation in the press. Newspapers confirmed Catherine’s version of events, reporting, ‘Mrs Long Wellesley and the three children are now at Draycot, where Mr Wellesley will join them on his return to England in September or October this year.’5
Everything seemed set for an amicable reconciliation. All William needed to do was to disentangle himself from his relationship with Mrs Bligh and win back Catherine’s affections. But this would prove to be more difficult than he imagined.