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His wife bore him ten children, but husband and wife soon drifted apart. He was by no means immune to the charms of other women, and at the age of 45 he made the acquaintance of Nelly Ternan, an actress who was still then in her teens. He was immediately smitten, and the rift in the Dickens' marriage eventually widened into separation and a public statement by him in The Times, although any thought of divorce was out of the question. It caused considerable bitterness within the family, and according to his daughter Katey, ''He did not care a damn about what happened to any of us. Nothing could surpass the misery and unhappiness of our home.''
For some time, a certain amount of mystery surrounded his liaison with Ternan. Was it a full-blown love affair between two people, or was Dickens merely the protector and platonic lover of an innocent young girl, and one who helped to look after her widowed mother and fatherless sisters? According to Katey, the couple had a son in secret who died in infancy. Ternan later admitted to the local parish priest that she had indeed been the author’s mistress, but remorse made them both miserable, and that she now ""''loathed the very thought of this intimacy""''. This information was kept a closely-guarded secret, and did not find its way into print until 1935, after the last of Dickens’s Dickens's children had died.
A platonic, yet invaluable, relationship was formed between Dickens and the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, who was thought to be the richest woman in the land after Queen Victoria. Together they were responsible for various good works, including the setting up of schools for the free education of destitute children, and Urania Cottage, a home for 'fallen women' in which they could be trained for domestic service. Miss Coutts also tried to reconcile Charles and Catherine, but without success.
