CATHERINE WALTERS INTO OLD AGE : WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT and THE PRINCE OF WALES FIGURE INTO HER SURVIVAL

Perhaps the most surprising thing about courtesan Catherine Walter's story is that ex-lover, poet, and confidant Wilfrid Scawen Blunt figured in it to the end.

After her brief time in Paris, Catherine returned to England.  In the 1880's she featured in the goings on in Mayfair - London, as she had twenty hears earlier when her beauty and horsemanship made her career. She set herself up in a house in 1882 and began writing with Blunt once more, despite the ending of their romance which had been horrible for him. It turns out that she and Wilfrid wrote letters back and forth to each other for forty years.  Perhaps her instincts had been right that he would make for a loyal friend all along.  

At her house in Mayfair, Catherine became the hostess of a salon, which was the more fashionable way to be 'at home' to receive friends on a certain day and hour, as had been the custom. It was because of this salon that she began to be included again in society at least a little bit, as the class structure and notions of womenhood began to change slowly. She held teas on Sunday afternoons, when she knew that men would be able to come and women would generally not be able to. Both Blunt and the Prince of Wales came to visit as did the Prime Minister Gladstone. The women who showed up tended to be artists, writers, and actresses. 

It's not known who all were her 'protectors' were in her years as a courtesan in England, but what is known through Blunt is that in his last visit to her, when he and she were both debilitated with age, she showed him a drawer full of letters which proved that she also had been writing back and forth with the Prince of Wales, who seemed interested also in her welfare. Implied is that possibly the Prince had been one of the men who had once had a relationship with her and provided for her.

Catherine Walters had the gift of making old lovers into friends. (This reminds me of the woman who may be considered the most famous courtesan of the 21st century, Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman who also remained friends with the various men who kept her.)

She kept a friendship with Marquis of Hartington - Spencer Compton Cavendish, now in politics, who had been a man she once wanted to marry, and whose family had provided a liveable, life-long annuity.

However, as she aged she had increasing trouble with her lungs and at one point it was HRH, the Prince of Wales who sent a doctor to attend to her.  In 1889 the cure was the South of France, and months away from cold, rainy London.  Both Hartington and the Prince of Wales came to visit her as she lived in the South of France.  In her mid sixties her health had declined to the point where was in pain and took daily medications. She grew thin and was half deaf and half blind by 1918. She still wrote, using pencil instead of pen, her handwriting difficult to read. In 1920 she had a fatal stroke and died.

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HOW COURTESANS TOOK ON MALE PRIVILEDGE FOR THEMSELVES

One of the fascinating aspects of Katie Hickman's book about courtesans, which focuses on the women of England who came into this lifestyle, is her reportage on other aspects of a courtesan's lifestyle. She reports on finances, on contraception, and on the character and personalities and values of the successful courtesan.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt moved on from his fraught relationship with Catherine Walters in Paris.  When it seemed that his association with Catherine would cause scandal, his boss removed him to another diplomatic post.  He was considered an eligible bachelor and even became the unsaid fiancee of a young woman whose parents approved of the match but, reminded of his love for Catherine and seeing how it compared for his feelings for this other woman, he was unable to make the proposal.

These excerpts from pages 308 and 309 have much to say:

"In many ways Blunt's behavior was not at all unusual for a man of his class and times.  The ability to separate what he himself would call "practical romance" from either idealized romance or sexual conquests was a perfectly acceptable way for a man to conduct his affairs, so long as he was discreet: and Blunt who later quite consciously made the decision to marry for money, saw no shame in it. ..."

***

He was aware of the double standard - one for men - another for women.

***

Page 309:  "It goes without saying that when women tried to emulate this masculine behavior it became an "immorality" for which society could not forgive them.  The only women who were in some measure outside these constraints were courtesans.  The penalties melted out by society could not touch the demi-monde (although some would say that being part of this shadowland , was the penalty) and as a social group they were thus almost uniquely free.

It was not just sexual chastity that was the issue here, but also, by extension, a woman's whole autonomy. Blunt, who in his way, was in many ways a forward thinker about women, never really blamed Catherine for her promiscuity, or even for the fact that she accepted money for it (although he did not like it).  His blame was for something altogether more subtle, something that he himself could barely articulate: the fact that she could accept him as a lover, but still desire to keep her independence from him. This was the really tormenting fact for him about their liaison. And it was this which, in his eyes, made her 'unvirtuous.'

Ask your self this question (and maybe you'll want to leave me a comment) :  Do you compartmentalize one relationship from another and why?

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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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CATHERINE WALTERS : IRISH-ENGLISH HORSEWOMAN WHO EVEN IMPRESSED THE FRENCH and RETIRED WELL

Continuing with author and historian Katie Hickman's book, we now focus on another English Courtesan she profiles, Catherine Walters, who was called The Courtesan's Courtesan and rose to fame in Victorian England and, of course, Paris.

CATHERINE WALTERS

"Skittles"

1839-1920

Though the Parisians and the French in particular were skeptical of the English Courtesans, and Paris therefore would seem an unlikely place for an English Courtesan to rise, this is where Catherine Walters did indeed become famous, though she wasn't there for long.  

The astonishingly beautiful Catherine was first kept at the age of sixteen. Then in London, in 1863, she began a relationship with a young man who was inspired to write poetry by her, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who, it was said, was so obsessed with her that he could never really love another woman again after Catherine. Some of the information we have about Catherine's life comes from Blunt who played a supportive role in her life but also seems to have been tremendously swayed by idealism, unable to fully face the reality of Catherine's lifestyle.

Catherine was reportedly a blond with deep blue eyes, though photographs show her to be brunette and her hair was also called auburn. (Perhaps she had dyed her hair?)

Her body was so exquisite that she was considered to be perfectly formed. She most impressed others - in particular the French. with her style as a horsewoman for when she was riding sidesaddle, she wore a garment so well cut to show her body that it was rumored she was naked beneath the cloth.  People were in awe to see her as she joined the parade of other courtesans who rode to show off their fine clothing, jewelry, horses and carriages.

Page 279 : ... "And how smart, how elegant, what a horse woman, what an air of originality and honesty in the presentation of her carriages!' wrote Zed in his portrait of her. 'When she appeared on the avenue de L'Imperatrice driving herself with two beautiful sparkling pure-blooded horses, followed by two grooms on horseback in splendid and elegant uniform... every head turned, and all eyes were on her.'...

She gave off aristocratic bearing but she was born in Liverpool to a sea captain and his Irish wife and was raised as a Catholic.  Blunt, who claimed to be her confidant, said her mother died when she was four and that as a girl Catherine was sent off to be raised in a convent school. After running away from the school she worked for a horse stable and rode the horses to display them to customers, earning a percentage. Her nickname 'Skittles' came from that time.

At sixteen she was already a mistress of a man named George Lord Fitzwilliam, the master of the Fitzwilliam Hounds.  When she separated from him after a year, he gave her a settlement if 300 pounds a year plus a lump sum of 2000 pounds.

Her story reminds us a bit of that of CoCo Chanel, who was also motherless at a young age and raised in a convent school, and who left there in need of earning her own keep, becoming a a young kept woman in the process.

Walters' career as a courtesan did not end in her teenage years with a first lover, who, it could be argued, provided her enough money to settle into a different, more modest lifestyle. Like many a courtesan, she desired to experience more, to own more,  to take it as far as it would go, and her beauty plus her horsemanship attracted many potential suitors.  

Though we know the names if some of them, money she was given in her teens and early twenties may have allowed her to leave fame behind and settle into a house in Mayfair where she continued to maintain old friendships with some of the noteworthy men she'd had relationships with and possibly attract more such suitors.  She was able to retire well, with the attention of some of those she had met years earlier seeming to care about her welfare and continuing to provide in some way.  

Catherine Walter's will described her as a 'spinster.'  She had never married and had no children. Unlike Sophia Baddeley she had not spent herself into poverty, though she surely had some times in her life when she had to budget carefully.

Something we always wonder is how or if or when a courtesan is in love or loves the man who has set her up in luxury.  If not, how does she separate that relationship, in which she must show special devotion and often be on call for him from other relationships? Is she an expert at compartmentalization? Or is it that she separates love from sex? Or is it that she can love more than one person at a time? In the case of Blunt, author Katie Hickman gives us the impression that Catherine knew to keep him around because she needed him and his devotion to her, prioritizing the men who could provide for her as he, a mere diplomat, could not.  As I see it, to do so took some diplomacy, keeping some air of mystery, some ability to not tell the whole truth perhaps, or to allow a man to think what he might while she took care of herself. Is that manipulative or is it simply that we cannot be fully responsible for what someone else is thinking or feeling?

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The image on the book cover of Courtesans by Katie Hickman is not Catherine Walters but is a portrait of actress Sarah Bernhardt..

Wikipedia is the source for the photo of Catherine Walters used above.