Writers of Influence - Fanny Burney

Throughout her career as a writer, her wit and talent for satirical caricature were widely acknowledged: literary figures such as Dr Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hester Thrale and David Garrick were among her admirers. Her early novels were read and enjoyed by Jane Austen, whose own title Pride and Prejudice derives from the final pages of her novel Cecilia. William Makepeace Thackeray is reported to have drawn on the first-person account of the Battle of Waterloo, recorded in her diaries, while writing Vanity Fair.


Fanny’s first novel, Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, was published anonymously in 1778, without her father's knowledge or permission. It was unthinkable at the time that a young woman would deliberately put herself into the public eye by writing, and Burney had to commandeer the assistance of her eldest brother, who posed as its author to her publisher,  Lowndes. Inexperienced in negotiating, Burney only received twenty guineas as payment for the manuscript.

I had great fun reading this book when I first started my researches into the lives of 18th century women.

The novel was a critical success; admired for its comic view of wealthy English society, and for its realistic portrayal of working-class London dialects. It was even discussed by some characters in another epistolary novel of the period: Elizabeth Blower's The Parsonage House published in 1780.

Evelina Book Review by Kate Howe The Book Nomad

The novel brought Fanny to the attention of patron of the arts Hester Thrale, who invited the young author to visit her home in Streatham. Though shy by nature, Fanny impressed those she met, including Dr Johnson, who would remain her friend and correspondent throughout the period of her visits, from 1779 to 1783. Mrs Thrale wrote to Dr Burney on 22 July, stating that: "Mr. Johnson returned home full of the Prayes of the Book I had lent him, and protesting that there were passages in it which might do honour to Richardson: we talk of it for ever, and he feels ardent after the dénouement; he could not get rid of the Rogue, he said." Dr Johnson's best compliments were eagerly transcribed in Fanny’s diary.

Burney went on to write three more best sellers: Cecilia: Or, Memoirs of an Heiress, 1782; Camilla: Or, A Picture of Youth, 1796; and The Wanderer: Or, Female Difficulties, 1814. Although her novels were hugely popular during her lifetime, Burney's reputation as a writer of fiction suffered after her death at the hands of biographers and critics who felt that the extensive diaries, published posthumously in 1841, offered a more interesting and accurate portrait of 18th-century life. Today critics are returning to her novels and plays with renewed interest in her outlook on the social lives and struggles of women in a predominantly male-oriented culture. Scholars continue to value Burney's diaries as well for their candid depictions of English society in her time.

Sources: Wikipedia

Roxana - Moral ambiguity, sex, and murder

Published anonymously, and not attributed to Defoe until 1775, the novel Roxana was a popular hit in the eighteenth century although many readers find it hard going today.

Roxana was Defoe’s last, darkest, and most commercial novel about a woman who trades her virtue for survival and, once she is secure financially, continues to sacrifice her virtue for greater and greater riches writes John Mullan in the introduction to the Oxford World Classic edition of Roxana.

Money, or lack of it, is the root of Roxana’s and many female literary characters until the present day.

The book is supposed to be a biography of one Madamoselle Beleau, the lovely daughter of French Protestant refugees, brought up in England and married to a good-for-nothing son of an English brewer.

Fictional biographies, an oxymoron if ever there was one, were all the rage in 18th century literature and Defoe’s story of Roxana was a particularly salacious one filled with moral ambiguity, sex and murder; a sure fired recipe for success even in today’s literature market.

The plot has many twists and turns but begins when after eight years of marriage, our heroine’s spendthrift husband leaves her penniless with five children to look after. Receiving no help from her relatives, she abandons her children to the care of an old woman; a sure sign a woman is about to become morally and socially persona no grata but Roxana justifies abandoning her children on the grounds that they were starving, confessing, ‘the Misery of my own Circumstances hardened my Heart against my own Flesh and Blood.” Of course, her husband has already abandoned them but there is no moral approbation for him.

The penniless Roxana starts up an affair with her landlord whose wife has left him when he offers to share his wealth with her, bequeathing her five hundred pounds in his will and promising seven thousand pounds if he leaves her. Her relationship with the landlord is often condemned by critics as a relationship based on personal gain and not love going against the English romantic ideal; an ideal that was more honoured in the breach than in reality especially when it came to families with money in the eighteenth century.

Anyway the fictional  pair settle down together but Roxana fails to produce a child for her new lover so she sends her maid to do the job for her, which she does. Roxana takes the child as her own to save her maid’s reputation and two years later, Roxana has a daughter of her own but she who dies within six months. A year later, she pleases her lover with a son. So far, Roxana’s actions are a curious mixture of adhering to and breaking the social, religious, and cultural norms of the day but with the death of her common-law husband, the landlord,  she becomes a true libertarian devoid of morality and sexual restraint.

In the next part of the book Roxana becomes a greedy hedonist and the mistress of a French prince with whom she has a son. She could have stopped her whoring when the landlord died, she had enough money to live as a quiet widow but she did not. She likes money and sex and seems to have little or no feeling for the children she produces along the way. Finally, she marries a Dutch merchant who has been her long time lover and friend and has another son.

Roxana’s new and respectable life is threatened by the reappearance of her oldest daughter, Susan, who wants to claim her place in the upper classes besides her mother but Roxana is saved from exposure when Amy, her long serving maid and confidant, murders the bothersome child.

When her husband dies soon after Susan’s murder Roxana enters the final phase of her fall from matronly virtue to a common harlot famed for her Turkish dancing.  She returns to England with her bloom has well and truly gone but she still believes she has sexual power over men. Gradually she sinks to working as a common prostitute receiving a multitude of different clients to maintain her lifestyle.

Interestingly, the ending of Roxana is shrouded in dispute. In Defoe's original version Roxana does not die, but repents for the life she has lived, and that too—according to Roxana herself—only because she comes to an unhappy end after the death of her husband. However, with the book being published anonymously, as was often the case with fictitious histories in those days, it went through several editions with various endings, in all of which Roxana dies repenting of her sins.

The novel’s influence in feminists’ eyes comes from the fact that it examines the possibility of eighteenth century women owning their own estate despite a patriarchal society, as with Roxanna's celebrated claim that "the Marriage Contract is...nothing but giving up Liberty, Estate, Authority, and every-thing, to the Man".  It further draws attention to the incompatibility between sexual freedom and the responsibilities of motherhood in a world without contraception.

Some say the character of Roxana is a proto-feminist like Defoe's other great female character, Moll Flanders, because she works at prostitution for her own ends as a way of gaining her  independence from men. Indeed Defoe would have been aware of women all over London doing the same but probably with less success than his female characters neither of which succumb to the pox.

Roxana is however, a novel of its time more focused on themes Defoe’s readers would have recognised than feminist ideals I'm sorry to say but I do think Defoe at least recognised an abandoned woman's plight.

Roxana is a mashed up Restoration Comedy character. She carries both the hope and optimism of the young that things will turn out well for her financially and in love but she is also burdened by the corruption of those who went before her with her greed, moral corruption, and self-delusion; perhaps the same mixed feelings Defoe would have experienced himself from his work as a political satirist.

The happy ending of these Restoration plays is supposed to be a restoration of order from the chaos and confusion fostered by the older generation’s dishonesty and greed. This is perhaps why Defoe’s conclusion to the novel does not seek to punish Roxana with death as so many of its more puritanical publishers did when they re-wrote the ending.

I think he knows there is no escape from the corruption of power and money and he wants to reprieve Roxana from his own Calvinist judgement in the same way he hopes for forgiveness for his own deceptions in the world of politics and for his own personal ambition and avarice. Roxana repents and lives like Defoe himself. The presence of morality does not ensure the good succeed and the wicked are punished. (See my Facebook page to find out more.)

Sources:
Defoe, Daniel. Roxana, ed. John Mullan. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxana:_The_Fortunate_Mistress

Princess Sophia - Seduced, Abandoned and Blackmailed

This is the sad story of Princess Sophia. An unworldly and shy woman who was seduced by a man 33 years her senior, gave birth to his illegitimate child, and was blackmailed by her son to pay his father's debts.

Princess Sophia, aged 5 in 1782
by Thomas Gainsborough
The Royal Collection

According to biographer Christopher Hibbert, in her young adulthood Princess Sophia, the 5th daughter of King George III, was a "delightful though moody girl, pretty, delicate and passionate." She was devoted to her father, though she occasionally found him exasperating. She wrote that "the dear King is all kindness to me, and I cannot say how grateful I feel for it."

The King had told his daughters he would take them to Hanover and find them suitable husbands despite misgivings concerning marriage; he was well aware of his sisters’ experience. His eldest sister, Augusta had never fully adapted to life in Brunswick after her marriage to Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. She did not like the German court and they did not like her. Her situation was made worse by the fact that her eldest sons were born with disabilities.

George’s sister Caroline had suffered a far worse fate; at the age of 15 she was married to her cousin, Christian VII of Denmark in 1766. A year later her husband abandoned her for his mistress Støvlet-Cathrine publicly declaring that he could not love Caroline, because it was "unfashionable to love one's wife". Caroline was left neglected and unhappy as her young husband sank into a mental stupor of paranoia, self-mutilation and hallucinations.

A Royal Affair is a 2012 historical
drama film directed
by Nikolaj Arcel, starring
Mads Mikkelsen, Alicia Vikander
and Mikkel Følsgaard.

She took comfort with her husband’s doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee, and Enlightenment man who ran Denmark with the half-crazed King introducing widespread reforms. The affair between Caroline and Struensee resulted in Caroline giving birth to his child, her divorce, and Struensee’s execution in 1772. Caroline, retaining her title but not her children, eventually left Denmark and passed her remaining days in exile at Celle Castle in Hanover. She died there of scarlet fever on 10 May 1775, at the age of 23.

Princess Sophia, 1792
 by Sir William Beechey
The Royal Collection

George was unable to keep his promise due to his own ill health but when Sophia was born the King went to Parliament to negotiate allowances for his daughter and his younger sons. Like her siblings Sophia was to receive an allowance of £6,000 a year either upon her marriages or the king's death.  This would have made her an attractive marriage prospect but Sophia ruined what prospects she had when she met and fell in love with one of her father’s equerries, Colonel, Thomas Garth, a man thirty-three years her senior.

Garth had a large purple birthmark on his face, causing Sophia's sister Mary to refer to him as "the purple light of love." Courtier and diarist Charles Greville, on the other hand described
him as a "hideous old devil," and one of her ladies-in-waiting wrote, "the princess was so violently in love with him that everyone saw it. She could not contain herself in his presence."

Princess Sophia, 1825
by Thomas Lawrence in
The Royal Collection

Sophia’s downfall came when she found herself pregnant with Garth’s child. Although there has been much debate amongst historians as to whether the child was Garth’s or her uncle’s, the Duke of Cumberland’s, Thomas Garth adopted the child, educated him and brought him into his regiment calling him his nephew.

Sophia never married and remained at court until her mother Queen Charlotte died. After the queen's death, Sophia lived in Kensington Palace next to her niece Princess Victoria of Kent, the future Queen Victoria. Like her sister-in-law the Duchess of Kent, Sophia fell under the spell of Victoria's comptroller Sir John Conroy and let him manage her money. The lonely and unworldly Sophia fell under Conroy’s spell and he used her affection to rob her.

Her son, Tommy Garth of the 15th Hussars (1800-1873), learned of his true heritage when his father thought he was on his deathbed in 1828. With the family deep in debt he tried to blackmail the royal family with evidence of his mother’s true identity. As historian Flora Fraser writes, all parties played unfair. The royal family offered young Garth £3,000 for his box of evidence; they took the box but did not pay him so he went to the papers. The press dug up the gossip concerning the possibility of the Duke of Cumberland being his true father making the latter part of Sophia’s life very difficult.

Charles Greville summed Sophia up with he wrote in his diary in May 1848, shortly after she died: "The Princess Sophia died a few days ago, while the Queen [Victoria] was holding the Drawing-room for her Birthday. She [Sophia] was blind, helpless, and suffered martyrdom; a very clever, well-informed woman, but who never lived in the world."

Sources:

Fraser, Flora (2004). Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III. London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-6109-4.

Hibbert, Christopher (2000). George III: A Personal History. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-02724-5.

Hibbert, Christopher (2001). Queen Victoria: A Personal History. De Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81085-9.

The Swan and the Prince

Princess Dorothea von Lieven (1785 – 1857) was the wife of Prince Khristofor Andreyevich Lieven, Russian ambassador to London from 1812 to 1834. Considered cold and snobbish by London Society Dorothea was not an instant success when she arrived fresh from the Russian court.

Her long elegant neck earned her the nickname, “the swan” by those who loved her and “the giraffe” by those who did not. Reputation did not bother her however; she was not after friendship she was after power and she used all her intelligence, charisma, and social skills to get what influence she could for the Tsar and the Holy Alliance in negotiations concerning the defeat of Napoleon and reestablishment of absolutist monarchy in Europe.  Not only did she become the Austrian Chancellor, Prince Metternich’s lover she was also reputed to have had affairs or at least very close friendships with Lord Palmerston, Lord Castlereagh and Lord Grey while she was in London.

Her hard work paid off and soon invitations to Dorothea’s home became the most sought after in capital. She was the first foreigner to be elected a patroness of Almack's where she is said to have introduced the waltz, a dance considered riotous and indecent, to England, during Tsar Alexander’s visit in 1814. It was during that visit she first met Metternich. It seems they took an instant dislike to one another. She thought he was cold and intimidating and far too self- important. He dismissed her as just a pretty woman travelling in the Tsar’s wake and treated her with complete indifference.

Some four years later, the pair met again at the Dutch Ambassador’s party at Aix-La-Chappelle. Sitting next to each other they found they had much in common  – they both hated Napoleon.  Their notorious liaison began a few days later when Dorothea entered the Prince’s apartment incognito.

Prince of Metternich-Winneburg-Beilstein;
(1773 – 1859)

In Metternich Dorothea had found her equal, a man who could satisfy her physically, emotionally and intellectually. She wrote, “Good God! My love, I know how to rejoice in so few things, do you understand what makes me feel true happiness, it is you, only you! My Clement, if you cease to love me what will become of me?  ... My dear friend promise to love me as much as I love you; our lives are pledged in this promise.”

In Dorothea, Metternich had met the woman of his dreams; she could match his intellect and his passion. He wrote, “My happiness today is you. Your soul is full of common sense your heart is full of warmth ... You are as a woman what I am as a man.”

Their heated, clandestine affair soon succumbed to the requirements state; they met occasionally but corresponded frequently. Like many illicit lovers, they were tortured by their separation and the knowledge they could never be together.

Dorothea was well aware of Metternich's reputation as a libertine seducer but she continued the relationship for eight years until she heard he had thrown her over for a younger woman. Desolate, she broke off their relationship in 1826. By the end references to Metternich in her letters were cold and spiteful and it seems time did not heal her broken heart. She had nothing good to say about him or his third wife when she saw him in Brighton in 1849 describing him as "slow and tedious" and his wife as "stout and well-mannered."

She ended her days in Paris as the ‘wife’ of the French politician Guizot. It was said that although  she was a widow she refused to marry Guizot because it would mean giving up her title ‘Serene Highness’ something the proud and regal woman was never going to do. Like her former lover, she was ancien regime through and through.

Dorothea died peacefully at her home in Paris, aged 71, in January 1857. She is a recurring minor figure in many historical novels, notably those of Georgette Heyer. Heyer portrays her as a haughty, formidable, and unapproachable leader of society, but in The Grand Sophy she is described as "clever and amusing", and there is a passing reference in that book to her role in political intrigues. Metternich died in Vienna two years later aged 86 the last guardian of the ancien regime, which had long since passed into history.

Princess Dorothea von Lieven (1785 – 1857) 

Sources:

Dorothea Lieven: A Russian Princess in London and Paris, 1785-1857 By Judith Lissauer Cromwell

The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics After Napoleon By Brian E. Vick

1815: The Roads to Waterloo By Gregor Dallas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemens_von_Metternich

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2015-01-28-sluga-en.html

Guest Blog - A Highly Unsuitable Marriage

I am delighted to welcome Joanne Major and Sarah Murden as my guests today.

Sarah and Joanne

Joanne and Sarah are genealogists, historians and co-authors of An Infamous Mistress: The Life, Loves and Family of the Celebrated Grace Dalrymple Elliott and A Right Royal Scandal: Two Marriage that Changed History.

They are also joint hosts of the blog, 'All Things Georgian', where they publish twice weekly with a wide remit of writing about ‘anything and everything’ connected to the Georgian era. Expect everything from extra and exclusive information relating to their biographies to articles about false bums and tums (fashion victims are nothing new!) and local murder mysteries. If it grabs their attention, then they hope it will interest their readers too. Nothing is off limits!

Guest Blog - A Highly Unsuitable Marriage

Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick
with her son
by Angelica Kauffmann, 1767

Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was born on 17th May 1768 at Brunswick in Germany, the daughter of Charles William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Princess Augusta, elder sister of George III. Family life was awkward; Caroline’s father neglected her mother for a series of mistresses and Augusta brought up her daughter strictly and in seclusion.

In 1794, despite being his first cousin, Caroline was chosen to be the bride of the dissipated George, Prince of Wales; heavily in debt, he agreed to marry in return for an increased allowance. The choice of suitable Protestant princesses was limited and the prince’s lover, Frances, Countess of Jersey, encouraged his suit for the hand of Caroline of Brunswick, knowing full well that the two would be ill-matched. James Harris, Baron Malmesbury (later the 1st Earl of Malmesbury) was despatched to Brunswick to escort Princess Caroline to her new life in England.

Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821)
when Princess of Wales
by Gainsborough

Lord Malmesbury first met Caroline on 20th November 1794 and was tolerably pleased with what he saw. He recounted his first impressions in his diary. 'The Princess Caroline much embarrassed on my first being presented to her – pretty face – not expressive of softness – her figure not graceful – fine eyes – good hand – tolerable teeth, but going – fair hair and light eye-brows, good bust – short, with what the French call “des epaules impertinentes” [impertinent shoulders]. Vastly happy with her future expectations. The Duchess full of nothing else – talks incessantly.'

Almost a week later, Malmesbury recorded that, ‘Princess Caroline improves on acquaintance, is gay and cheerful, with good sense’ but, worried by her lack of tact and tendency to talk too much and too indiscreetly, he set about ‘coaching’ the princess, fearing her education inadequate to her new position. The Duke of Brunswick’s opinion of his daughter was that ‘she's not stupid, but she has no judgement - she was raised sharply, and it was necessary.’

The Princess Augusta was not known for her tact, nor for keeping her tongue still and had happily regaled Malmesbury with anecdotes about her royal relations. Caroline was made in the same mould but her particular fondness was for matchmaking.

Blankenburg, Brunswick Duchy
by Johann Heinrich Bleuler

'Princess Caroline very missish at supper. I much fear these habits are irrecoverably rooted in her – she is naturally curious, and a gossip – she is quick and observing, and she has a silly pride of finding out everything – she thinks herself particularly acute in discovering likings, and this leads her at times to the most improper remarks and conversation.'

Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821),
in her wedding dress.

All the German princesses had been taught to speak English, in anticipation of becoming Princess of Wales, and so Caroline was reasonably fluent in the language and spoke French. But other aspects of her education had been woefully neglected. Lord Malmesbury tactfully addressed the issue of Princess Caroline’s toilette and cleanliness.

'On these points I endeavoured, as far as was possible for a man, to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress, as well as to what was hid, as to what was seen. (I knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, and these never well washed, or changed often enough.) I observed that a long toilette was necessary, and gave her no credit for boasting that hers was a “short” one.'

Despite all this, Caroline was charming company; Malmesbury noted that ‘she improves very much on closer acquaintance – cheerful, and loves laughing.’ But poor Caroline faced a losing battle at the outset. She had an exuberant personality but had led a sequestered existence; just when she saw a chance to enjoy herself she was being told to rein herself in. George III wrote to his sister saying he hoped his niece would not have too much vivacity, and would lead a sedentary and withdrawn life. With Lady Jersey meddling behind the scenes back in England, desperate to keep the Prince of Wales’ affections, it was no surprise that the marriage was to prove a disaster.

A miniature of Caroline.

The scheming Lady Jersey was to be the new Princess of Wales’ Lady of the Bedchamber and was there to meet Caroline when she stepped off the royal yacht at Greenwich on 5th April 1795. Instantly, Lady Jersey set about humiliating her new mistress, criticising her clothes and insisting, against royal protocol, on sitting facing forwards in the carriage she was to share with Caroline, claiming she felt sick travelling backwards. Lord Malmesbury was having none of it and took Lady Jersey into his own carriage while Caroline travelled with Mrs Hervey Aston (a Woman of the Bedchamber who dutifully accepted her allotted position in the carriage) to the Duke of Cumberland’s apartments at St James where she was to meet her new husband for the first time. As the Prince of Wales entered the room, Caroline sank into a curtsey from which George raised her, before leaning in to embrace his bride-to-be. And then he left, quite abruptly. At dinner that evening, Lord Malmesbury was outraged by Caroline’s behaviour (it would seem that the princess had the measure of Lady Jersey by this time).

[Caroline] was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse vulgar hints about Lady [Jersey] who was present, and though mute, le diable n’en perdait rien. The Prince was evidently disgusted, and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when left to herself, the Princess had not the talent to remove; but, by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm, increased it till it became positive hatred.

The Marriage of George IV (1762-1830)
when Prince of Wales by Henry Singleton, 1795

The marriage went ahead three days later, the prince rolling drunk at the ceremony. Despite (or maybe because of) his drunkenness, he managed to consummate his marriage despite his revulsion before, as Caroline claimed, ‘he passed the greatest part of his bridal night under the grate, where he fell, and where I left him.’ George later claimed that he had been intimate with Caroline only three times, twice on his wedding night and once more on the following evening. It proved to be enough; Caroline gave birth to a daughter, Princess Charlotte Augusta, nine months later.

Her Royal Highness Caroline,
Princess of Wales and the Princess Charlotte,
engraving by Colnaghi, 1799

Caroline and George lived separately and the prince cruelly restricted Caroline’s access to her daughter; the Princess of Wales, hugely popular with the British people, led an increasingly erratic life. The ‘Delicate Investigation’ in 1806 looked into claims of her infidelity and she was later accused of being the mistress of her Italian servant, Bartolomeo Pergami, with whom she lived in Italy. In 1817, when Princess Charlotte of Wales died in childbirth, her child perishing with her, Caroline was not informed of her daughter’s death and only heard of it from a passing courier. George, now the Prince Regent, instigated proceedings against his wife, determined to find evidence of her adultery in order to divorce her (his own adultery did not count!) and while this was ongoing George III died; Caroline was now a queen.

George IV’s coronation was held on 19th July 1821. Caroline was determined to be there but, on the day, she was refused admittance to Westminster Abbey and denied the chance to be crowned. She fell ill and died shortly thereafter, on the 7th August 1821.

Our book, A Right Royal Scandal: Two Marriages That Changed History charts a forgotten chapter in the history of the British royal family. Almost two books in one, A Right Royal Scandal recounts the fascinating history of the irregular love matches contracted by two successive generations of the Cavendish-Bentinck family, ancestors of the British Royal Family. The first part of this intriguing book looks at the scandal that erupted in Regency London, just months after the Battle of Waterloo, when the widowed Lord Charles Bentinck eloped with the Duke of Wellington's married niece. A messy divorce and a swift marriage followed, complicated by an unseemly tug-of-war over Lord Charles' infant daughter from his first union. Over two decades later and while at Oxford University, Lord Charles' eldest son, known to his family as Charley, fell in love with a beautiful gypsy girl, and secretly married her. He kept this union hidden from his family, in particular his uncle, William Henry Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 4th Duke of Portland, upon whose patronage he relied. When his alliance was discovered, Charley was cast adrift by his family, with devastating consequences.

 A love story as well as a brilliantly researched historical biography, this is a continuation of Joanne and Sarah's first biography, An Infamous Mistress, about the eighteenth-century courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, whose daughter was the first wife of Lord Charles Bentinck. The book ends by showing how, if not for a young gypsy and her tragic life, the British monarchy would look very different today.

Sources:
Diaries and Correspondence of James Harries, First Earl of Malmesbury, volume III, London, 1844
The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline, Flora Fraser, Macmillan, 1996

Image credits:
Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick with her son by Angelica Kauffmann, 1767. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016
Blankenburg, Brunswick Duchy by Johann Heinrich Bleuler. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016
The Marriage of George IV (1762-1830) when Prince of Wales by Henry Singleton, 1795. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016
Queen Caroline (1768-1821), when Princess of Wales, miniature by Philip Jean, 1795. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016
Caroline of Brunswick (1768-1821) when Princess of Wales by Gainsborough Dupont, 1795/6. The Princess is depicted in her wedding dress, wearing a miniature of her husband on her breast. Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016
Caroline of Brunswick (1768–1821), Queen of George IV by Thomas Lawrence, 1798. Victoria and Albert Museum
Her Royal Highness Caroline, Princess of Wales and the Princess Charlotte, engraving by Colnaghi, 1799. Biblioteca Nacional de España

The prostitute who married a duke

English society expected, even encouraged, men to pay for sex in the 18th century. Prejudice and the law barred women from all but the most menial of jobs so prostitution with all its dangers was a career option worth exploring for some becasue a typical harlot could earn in a month what a tradesman or clerk would earn in a year.

For a few beautiful and savvy women, the gamble of this dangerous occupation paid off. Some became successful matrons of ‘Disorderly Houses’ while the occasional woman came up trumps and married a duke.

The Harlot's Progress,
The death of Moll Hackabout by William Hogarth

Unfortunately, the majority were destined for a life of disease, despair and early death much like William Hogarth’s Moll Hackabout in  The Harlot’s Progress (1731-2).

 

Portrait of Lavinia Fenton, actress

One girl who got her man was Lavinia Fenton. She was born in 1708; the illegitimate daughter of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, her mother’s name is not recorded. When her mother’s lover died at sea she married a Mr Fenton, a man who ran a coffee house near Charring Cross. Mr Fenton it seems was a good sort who sent his adopted daughter to boarding school. Therefore, Lavinia had the advantage of not only her beauty but of education and wit.






By 1725 she had attracted the attentions of a Portuguese nobleman who, having run up debts catering for her desires, ended up in the Fleet Prison. It was after this, in 1726, that another unnamed aristocrat used his influence to launch her career on the London stage.

Hogarth's parody of Gay's The Beggar's Opera
with Lavinia and the Duke of Bolton

Her first appearance was as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan: or The Unhappy Marriage, in March 1726 .









Shortly after she appeared as Cherry Boniface in The Beaux Stratagem and went onto join the company of players at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields but it was as Polly Peacham in John Gay's Beggar's Opera, she found her greatest success.

The play was a runaway success. Politicians smarted at being portrayed as highwaymen, fences, pickpockets and molls, but the public loved it and bought playing cards, fans and parlour screens imprinted with scenes or lyrics of the dashing MacHeath, or of Polly Peachum's true-love.In her first season as Polly Peacham, Lavinia became the talk of the town and the object of Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton’s desire.

Portrait of Anne Vaughan, the abandoned wife
of Charles Duke of Bolton

Like many men of his rank he was locked in a loveless marriage to Lady Anne Vaughan, a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Carbery. Lady Anne, Lady Montague wrote, was "educated in solitude with some choice books, by a saint-like governess: crammed with virtue and good qualities, she thought it impossible not to find gratitude, though she failed to give passion; and upon this she threw away her estate, was despised by her husband and laughed at by the public."





Contemporary accounts describe Bolton as "a handsome, agreeable libertine” and, "absolutely a fool" and a rogue. Memoirs of the Reign of George II records him as  "being as proud as if he had been of any consequence besides what his emploments made him, as vain as if he had some merit, and as necessitous as if he had no estate, so he was troublesome at Court, hated in the country, and scandalous in his regiment. The dirty tricks he played to cheat the Government of men, or his men of half-a-crown, were things unknown to any Colonel but his Grace, no griping Scotsman excepted." So, perhaps he wasn’t that much of a catch after all.

Charles, 3rd Duke of Bolton

Lavinia became Bolton’s mistress during the first season of The Beggar’s Opera in 1728 and gave up the stage to become a ‘kept woman’ in 1729. William Hogarth used the scandal in his series pictures of the Beggar’s Opera showing Lavinia looking past Mackheath, to the Duke standing in his box.

Lavinia in stout good health later in life.

The pair eloped to the continent in 1729.  John Gay commented on the event in a letter to Jonathan Swift: "The Duke of Bolton, I hear, has run away with Polly Peachum, having settled £400 a year on her during pleasure, and upon disagreement £200 a year."

Lavinia gave the Duke three illegitimate children. When his wife Anne died in 1751 Lavinia finally got her man and the pair were married in Aachen. By then the Duke had lost most of his income. He died three years later in 1754.



Their sons Charles, Percy, and Horatio had no estate or wealth to inherit. Consequently, Charles went into the church, Percy the navy, and Horratio the army.  Lavinia, now the duchess, died in 1760. She spent her last days at Westcombe House in Greenwich which she and Charles had shared since their marriage, and was buried in the nearly church of St Alfege. Peachum Road, close to the site of Westcombe House, was named in honour of her role as Polly Peachum.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavinia_Fenton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Paulet,_1st_Duke_of_Bolton
Character's Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage, Lisa A. Freeman
http://thepeerage.com/ Cokayne, and others, The Complete Peerage, volume II, page 214.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westcombe_Park
http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=1/29/1728
http://www.smk.dk/en/visit-the-museum/exhibitions/william-hogarth-a-harlots-progress-and-other-stories/

The World’s Most Successful Pirate was a Woman!

Jun Ichikawa in the film Singing Behind Screens, 2003
which is based on the life of Ching Shih

Ching Shih, the world’s most successful pirate was born in 1775. Although not much is known about her birth, she was a known prostitute who worked in floating brothel in the city of Canton where she caught the eye of the renowned pirate Zheng Yi. Some stories say that she was taken by force, others that she struck a bargain with the man she would marry for control of half of his Pirate Empire before she agreed to the marriage. Whatever happened the two worked together to run the most successful pirate operation ever seen in the South China Sea.

In the six years they were married their fleet grew from about 200 ships to more than 400. They formed alliances with other pirate leaders creating the Cantonese Pirate Coalition giving them effective control over much of the merchant traffic in the area by 1807 who they forced to pay protection money for safe passage. Zheng Yi’s ship was caught in a storm in 1807 and he lost his life.

His ferocious widow took up the reins of their criminal enterprise and continued to run the empire they had created together. With her newly appointed military commander Chang Pao leading her loyal band of some 400 pirates in raids Ching Shih focused on the “business” side of things. With her pirate army and navy she had effective control of Guangdong province, a vast spy network within the Qing Dynasty; and domination of the South Chinese Sea. This was not a situation the authorities in China would tolerate for long and soon the Emperor raised a fleet against her.

Unfortunately for the Emperor, Ching Shih was a brilliant military strategist and rather than running from her assailants she met them head on taking 63 of the Emperor’s ships and terrifying their crews into joining her by threatening to have them nailed to the deck by their feet then beaten to death if they did not join her. The Admiral in command of the debacle, Kwo Lang committed suicide rather than suffer further humiliation of being beaten and captured by a woman.

The Qing Dynasty government then enlisted the aid of the super-power British and Portuguese navies, as well as many Dutch ships, paying them large sums for their assistance to drive her into submission but although this international task force waged war on Ching Shih’s organisation for two years it met with little success. She won battle after battle until finally the Emperor decided to take a different tack and instead of trying to defeat her, he offered her and most of her organisation an amnesty.

Ching Shih initially rejected it but she wisely changed her mind and signed in 1810. The deal she struck disbanded her fleet but granted amnesty to most of her followers and allowed her to keep her loot. She sacrificed 126 members of her 376 crew who were executed and the other 250 received some punishment for their crimes. Her commander and new husband #ChangPao was given command of 20 ships in the Qing Dynasty navy.

As for Ching Shih herself, not only did she negotiate the rights to keep the fortune she acquired she got a noble title, “Lady by Imperial Decree”, which entitled her to various legal protections as a member of the aristocracy. She then retired at the age of 35, opening a gambling house cum brothel in Guangzhou, Canton, which she managed until her death at the age of 69. She died an aristocrat, a successful business woman, a mother and a grandmother.

Since her death her infamy has led to the creation of several fictional and semi-fictionalised accounts of her pirate years. She first appeared in the 1932 book ‘The History of Piracy’, by Philip Gosse then in Jorge Luis Borges's short story ‘The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate’ in 1954.

In 2003, Ermanno Olmi made a film, 'Singing Behind Screens’, loosely based on Borges's retelling of her story. In 2006 she was re-created as a guardian who fights demons to protect the denizens of the underworld in the graphic novel Afterlife. She appears in book eight of L.A.Meyer's Bloody Jack series, ‘In The Wake of the Lorelei Lee’ and finally makes it mainstream cinema in 2007 in the third film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, where a character called Ching, one of the nine Pirate Lords played by Keira Knightly is loosely based on her.

APirates of the Caribbean franchise, where a character called Ching, one of the nine Pirate Lords played by Keira Knightly is loosely based on her. 

Her most recent incarnation is in a Hong Kong television drama called Captain of Destiny starring Maggie Q.

What should you say in a love letter?

Anne-Catherine de Ligniville Helvétius
by Louis-Michel van Loo.

In 1779 Benjamin Franklin, when serving as the U.S. envoy to France, fell in love with Anne Catherine Helvétius, the widow of the Swiss-French philosopher, Claude-Adrien Helvétius. 

Nicknamed "Minette", she maintained a renowned salon in Paris using her dead husband’s accumulated wealth and among its habitués were France’s leading politicians, philosophers, writers and artists.

 In courting her attention, he sent her many letters expressing his love, admiration, and passion. 

In one, he claimed that he had dream that their dead spouses had married in heaven and that they should avenge their union by doing the same on earth! 

In another passionate plea, he wrote:

 “If that Lady likes to pass her Days with him, he in turn would like to pass his Nights with her; and as he has already given her many of his days…she appears ungrateful never to have given him a single one of her nights.”

Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago comes on strong when he writes to Lara saying; 

“Don't be upset. Don't listen to me. I only meant that I am jealous of a dark, unconscious element, something irrational, unfathomable. I am jealous of your toilet articles, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the germs in the air you breathe which could get into your blood and poison you. And I am jealous of Komarovsky, as if he were an infectious disease. Someday he will take you away, just as certainly as death will someday separate us. I know this must seem obscure and confused, but I can't say it more clearly. I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.”

I think you'll agree that's powerful stuff but how would you feel if you got a letter like that? Would it please you or make you run a mile? I think I'd make a run for it. So what should you write to your love? Well if want to woo your love successfully science has some tips for you.

Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg’s theory of love, suggests that the ideal love letter should include the following components—intimacy, passion, and commitment. 

To test this hypothesis Donelson Forsyth and Kelli Taylor constructed a number of letters and asked people what they thought of them.

They discovered that, when it comes to love letters, commitment conquered all.

The letter that proclaimed, “I know we will be happy together for the rest of our lives” and “I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it,” was rated much higher, in terms of expressing love, than one that made no mention of commitment. 

Adding language that spoke of closeness and caring increased the letter’s good impression with readers, but it was commitment that left readers feeling loved and in love.

As to expressing passion in a letter; frisky letters, which went on for too long about the sender’s sexual passions, were viewed generally negatively by both genders; perhaps because they were more about lust than love. 

They also discovered that a message of commitment need not be delivered in a traditional love letter or a card; a simple email will do which is lucky as so many of us have lost the art of putting pen to paper. 

However, research shows that people think that letters are more trustworthy, and a hand written letter shows effort and care too. 

Therefore, if you want your love letter to get results you need to write it yourself, show your commitment to the relationship and put it in an envelope. Call me old fashioned but a bunch of flowers wouldn’t go amiss either.

For more see:

https://spsptalks.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/the-science-of-relationships/

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Love Letters

Like my hero Sinclair, the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) studied to become doctor but unlike Sinclair’s his heart was not really in it. . Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne are among the most famous love letters ever written. As next-door neighbours, they exchanged numerous short notes, and occasionally more passionate letters.

Keats trained as an apothecary at Guy's Hospital from 1815 to 1816 and attended lectures on the principles and practice of surgery by the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper who also makes a brief appearance in my novel. In 1816, Keats received his apothecary's licence, which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon.

Poet and surgeon John Keats

Keats's desire to become a poet led him to abandon medicine soon after he completed his training. In his 'Ode to a Nightingale' recalls his experience of caring for the dying:

The weariness, the fever and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows spectre-thin, and dies.

Ironically, it was his medical training that made him such a good carer for his brother Tom when he died from tuberculosis. In giving that care Keats became infected with the disease himself; there was no inoculation at the time, the now well-know BCG vaccine was first used in humans in 1921. Infection for Keats meant certain death but not before, he fell in love and wrote some of the world’s greatest poetry and love letters. Here is one of them.

“25 College Street, London

My dearest Girl,

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else – The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life – My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love – You note came in just here – I cannot be happier away from you – ‘T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet – You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great – My Love is selfish – I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever

John Keats

Fanny, John Keat's great love

For more see:

http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/love-letter-to-fanny-brawne-13-october-1819/

Outlander's Clair Fraser has jumped from second world war nurse, to eighteenth century healer cum witch to surgeon and that's what's great about fiction but the real story of female doctors, in Britain at least, is one of profound struggle and individual persistence. 

When Charlotte Leadam, in my up coming novel Sinclair, a story based on the real Leadam family who lived and worked as apothecary surgeons in Tooley Street from the late 18th century to the mid nineteenth century, inherits her husband's apothecary shop she was not allowed to run the shop on her own account - only men were allowed to be licensed as apothecaries.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836 – 1917) was the first woman in Britain who qualified as a physician and surgeon and she did this when in 1865, she finally obtained a licence (LSA) from the Society of Apothecaries.

Garrett's life's work was opening the medical profession to women. She started her quest by working as a surgery nurse at Middlesex Hospital, In 1860 she attempted to enrol in the hospital's Medical School. She was not accepted but was allowed to attend private tuition in Latin, Greek and materia medica with the hospital's apothecary, while continuing her work as a nurse.

She employed a tutor to study anatomy and physiology three evenings a week. Eventually she was allowed into the dissecting room and the chemistry lectures.

Gradually, Garrett became an unwelcome presence among the male students, who in 1861 presented a memorial to the school against her admittance as a fellow student, despite the support she enjoyed from the administration.

She was obliged to leave the Middlesex Hospital but she did so with an honours certificate in chemistry and materia medica.

Garrett then applied to several medical schools, including Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and the Royal College of Surgeons, all of which refused her admittance.

Having privately obtained a certificate in anatomy and physiology and in 1862, she was finally admitted by the Society of Apothecaries who, as a condition of their charter, could not legally exclude her on account of her sex.

She continued her battle to qualify by studying privately with various professors, including some at the University of St Andrews, the Edinburgh Royal Maternity and the London Hospital Medical School.

She co-founded the first hospital staffed by women, was the first female dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France.

She was the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, she was the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain.

Pictures: 1. Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) in Outlander Season Two Finale "Dragonfly in Amber"
2. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

June - is it the most romantic month of the year?

Tourism promoters on the Caribbean Island of Nevis have declared June the island’s Official Month of Romance. Nevis is undeniably gorgeous but where did this tradition of June romance and weddings come from? 

Let's start at the beginning - was it the Romans? 

The month of June gets its name from the Latin name for the month which was Junius which in turn is named after the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the daughter of Saturn and sister and wife to the chief god Jupiter (the ancient immortals were prone to incest. I suppose it comes from having so few immortals to choose from!)  Juno was the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire she was called Regina ("queen") and, together with Jupiter and Minerva their daughter she was worshipped on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome. As well as being the goddess of marriage she was also the goddess who watched over the finances of the empire and her temple on the Arx (one of two Capitoline hills), was the Roman mint, so she had her hands on the purse strings too.

In ancient Rome, the period from mid-May through mid-June was considered inauspicious for marriage. Ovid says that he consulted the Flaminica Dialis, the high priestess of Jupiter, about setting a date for his daughter's wedding, and was advised to wait till after June 15. Plutarch, however, implies that the entire month of June was more favourable for weddings than May. This may have been because there are several meteor showers disturbing the heavens in May. So it seems that the Roman’s were not too keen on June weddings despite the name of the month.

Was it the Medievals?

There is a popular belief that the tradition of June brides in northern Europe began in 1500s and that it is associated with bathing. Folklore dictates that the common people took a bath once a year, in May, when the weather was warm enough for a young person to take off their clothes and wash and that with this annual grooming ritual out of the way they could get on with the business of marriage and mating.

It is certainly true that many people, especially the poor, covered their chests in goose fat and sewed themselves into their clothes for the winter in an effort to ward off the cold and diseases. They were then cut out of them in the spring when they washed, the fetid clothes were burned and new ones were put on. Which must have made anyone feel better and smell more fragrant. Of course there is no denying that a clean vest is better than a rancid one if you’re after a bit of loving but it’s hardly enough to get someone to the altar.

In her book, A General View of the Rural Economy of England, 1538-1840 (CUP, 1990), Ann Kussmaul concludes that there was no immutable season for English weddings, they happened at all times of year but having said that she goes on to identify a trend but it was not for weddings in June even though the term 'honeymoon' referred to the first moon of after the summer solstice on June 21, a term which became synonymous with 'time following the wedding.'  

Was it the weather?

It seems that our ancestors got married either in early spring before the main agricultural work of the year had begun or in the autumn when it was over. What is more it seems also that after dancing around the Maypole and having a bath our ancestors were prone to a bit of illicit frolicking in the hay. 

Over the summer months when our young ancestors were clean and fragment and they could get out into the fields and woods away from their parents’ supervision they frequently got themselves pregnant. So their romantic frolics under the summer sun and the honeyed moon led them to altar in the autumn and christenings in spring.

So perhaps June was the most romantic month. It was a time when young people discovered each other, discovered sex, formed bonds that would last the rest of their lives. Today a June a wedding is a beautiful thing whether it's in Nevis or the local Town Hall.

See my collection of 18th century inspired wedding dresses and gowns 

https://uk.pinterest.com/juliaherdman107/

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