CATHERINE WALTERS and DIPLOMAT WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT : HIS FIRST EROTIC OBSESSION ENDS IN HEARTBREAK AND A LIFETIME OF FIGURING OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

He was twenty-three and unconventional for a diplomat attached to the British Embassy in Madrid, Spain. She was twenty-four. Her relationship with Marquis of Hartington - Spencer Compton Cavendish was over and, if she didn't overspend, she had decent financial support for life from his family. The beginning of their relationship was played out in the luxury society resort of Biarritz

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt fell immediately in love with Catherine, who he called Esther in some of his poems, as if to keep some privacy for the two of them. Not inexperienced sexually, he was also erotically obsessed with Catherine. When they first met, he was honored that she showed off that she was with him. He was sure she loved him back and never imagined that their relationship would end.  She had seduced him and she shut out all others to concentrate on him - at first.

He was young but had been posted in three capitols and he had even kept a mistress himself in Madrid for a while.  How innocent could he be?  He believed himself to be special because she had chosen him.  Doubt and jealousy began to plague the man, however, and what made it all worse was that he insisted in going back to Paris with her and there could be no doubt that she was not his at all. They broke up and he was devastated. Catherine Walters was not about to give up her life as a courtesan because she aspired to the rich life. So when he got posted to Paris in 1864 he didn't seek her out right away.

When he did meet up with Catherine again, it was she who summoned him and suggested they find a place to live together. She was in charge. Wilfrid saw that she was living in lesser circumstances than she had lived in before and Catherine claimed that she no longer wanted luxury. They found a suitable four room apartment and he moved in. But first, before she went to live with him, she had to take care of some business in London. That business was obviously a contract to be kept by yet another man of wealth, an old friend she said, an Englishman.

When she returned to Paris, Blunt realized that once again Catherine had allowed him to live in fantasy. He stayed in the four room apartment while she again lived in luxury. Just as Sophia Baddelely had her Mrs. Steele who lived with her and played many roles in her life including intermediary, Catherine had her Julie who was to explain the change to Blunt.  Catherine now had her young sister living with her, she said.  As if her teenage sister, sixteen and her age when she first became a kept woman, needed to be kept from the truth?

One day Blunt walked in and there he was - her English patron - comporting himself as Catherine's owner. One does wonder if Catherine allowed this to happen.  Maybe Blunt took some time to get used to the idea of sharing her with this man.  What was worse was seeing that she was also entertaining other men.

Blunt was willing to have Catherine however it effected him emotionally. While she received from her rich English patron, who Blunt thought of as a man who needed to spend to show off his wealth, Blunt benefited by her generosity to him. If she had not said so, somehow he had not realized the obvious, and yet it is clear that she did value him as a confidant for some time and then he spent his life trying to understand her and what had happened to him.  She trusted Wilfrid enough to talk about her life with him and he would preserve much of what we know about Catherine Walters.

One of her personal policies was to not have any women friends.

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