Catherine Dickens numerous—all of which he strenuously denied. In June 1858 Charles and Catherine Dickens separated. The exact cause of the separation is unknown, although attention at the time and since has focused on rumours of an affair between Dickens and Ellen Ternan and/or Catherine's sister, Georgina Hogarth. A bracelet intended for Ellen Ternan had supposedly been delivered to the Dickens household some months previously, leading to accusation and denial. Dickens' friend, William Makepeace Thackeray, later asserted that Dickens's separation from Catherine was due to a liaison with Ternan, rather than with Georgina Hogarth as had been put to him. This remark
The Bench (Hogarth) added. Willes' eyebrows, which had been black in the painting, are white in the engraving. The print was accompanied by a second sheet of the same size with a lengthy inscription detailing Hogarth's motives for creating the piece. In a letter to Hogarth, a correspondent identified only as "B" noted that the print seemed of minor importance compared to the inscription, indeed it was the only written work that Hogarth released under his own name after the completion of "The Analysis of Beauty"; Paulson suggests it may have been a rejected passage from that book, and Trusler, a nineteenth-century commentator