Katie Hickman - Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century

This book is for A.C. Grayling

From Epitaph for Thas, by John Heath-Stubbs.

From John Heath-Stubbs, Collected Poems 19431987.

Carcanet, 1988

SOPHIA BADDELEY 17451786
The Actress Courtesan

ELIZABETH ARMISTEAD 17501842
The Woman of Pleasure

HARRIETTE WILSON 17861845
The Demi-Rep

CORA PEARL 18351886
The Parisian Courtesan

5. CATHERINE WALTERS 18391920
The Courtesans Courtesan

O N THE SULTRY EVENING of 26 June 1771 a new play by the comic actor-playwright Samuel Foote opened at the Little Theatre* in the Haymarket. The Maid of Bath was a satirical comedy inspired by the true-life story of a young actress, Elizabeth Linley, whose parents had forced her into a marriage contract with the elderly Sir William Long, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

On the opening night the house was packed, not only by crowds of regular theatre-goers, but by friends and colleagues of the playwright, amongst them as many London luminaries as he had been able to muster. As well as being a clever comedian, Foote was a brilliant showman. In the audience that night sat Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds and David Garrick (who had written the prologue for Footes play himself).

Chief among them, however, carefully positioned by Foote in the most ostentatiously public of the theatres boxes, was Sophia Baddeley, the most fashionable and beautiful actress and courtesan of the day.

Despite the improvements in theatre design innovated by David Garrick the previous decade, in the 1770s a London theatre was still an exceptionally rowdy place. The areas around the two principal theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, were dangerous stews infested with brothels, bagnios and accommodation houses. Despite this, all classes avidly attended the theatre, even the King and Queen. The most fashionable aristocrats and their ladies, primped, pomaded and patched, filled the expensive private boxes, while their servants and the ordinary London folk, from the orange-sellers to the painted pimps and ladies of the town, squeezed into the pit or the upper galleries, where they sang, jeered, ate, spat, threw fruit at one another, and chatted the whole night long. The English theatre-going public was an opinionated, argumentative, and occasionally violent mob, passionate in its enthusiasms, devilish when riled. Its uninhibited interaction with the players on the stage was a peculiarly English habit which often shocked foreign visitors to London. But Mrs Baddeley, surveying this seething, smelly, rowdy scene from her private box that midsummer night, was as cool and resplendent as a duchess.

At twenty-six years old, Sophia Baddeley was at the very height of her demi-mondaine glory. Made famous first by her exquisite beauty, and then by the scandalousness of her many amours, she was a notorious figure. And, as was only to be expected, when she went to the theatre she went not just to see, but to be seen. The box reserved for us was next to the stage box, remembered Mrs Eliza Steele, Sophias constant companion in those days, that commanded a sight of the whole house.

And what a sight she was. Her dress and jewels, and the good taste which she displayed in wearing them, made her appearance equal to a woman of the first rank. Her brilliants alone were worth a small fortune. She always wore two watches, an expensive one and a little beautiful French watch, that hung by way of a trinket to a chain, set with diamonds, the value of which could not be less than two hundred pounds. In addition, she had four brilliant diamond necklaces, the least of which cost three hundred pounds; two were of near double the value each, and the fourth was the one Lord Melbourne paid Mr Tomkins four hundred and fifty pounds for. She had a pair of beautiful enamelled bracelets, as large as a half-crown piece, set round with brilliants, which cost a hundred and fifty pounds, and rings out of number.*

But Sophia Baddeleys dress and jewels were as nothing to the incomparable allure of her face. She was absolutely one of the wonders of the age, the Duke of Ancaster once told her; no man can gaze on you unwounded. You are in this respect like the Basilisk, whose eyes kill those whom they fix on.

It was not only men who were so beguiled. The ladies of the nobility, too, spoke of her with rapture: Theres that divine face! That beautiful creature! Others would cry out Here is Mrs Baddeley what a sweet woman! Half the world is in love with you, her admirer Lord Falmouth told her. And he was hardly exaggerating.

The play began at last, with Samuel Foote himself performing. It went off with immediate clat. Encouraged by his success, Foote began to improvise: About the middle of the piece, recalled Mrs Steele, where Mr. Foote enlarged much on the beauty of the Maid of Bath, he added, Not even the beauty of the nine Muses, nor even that of the divine Baddeley herself, who there sits (pointing to the box where we sat,) could exceed that of the Maid of Bath. At his words a thunder of applause burst from all parts of the house. Such was the delight of the audience that Foote was encored not once, not twice, but three times. Thrice he repeated the words, to the same ecstatic applause. Every eye was on Mrs Baddeley, wrote Mrs Steele, and I do not recollect ever seeing her so confused before. Blushing at this trick of Mr. Footes, Sophia rose to her feet and curtsied to the audience, and it was near quarter of an hour before she could discontinue her obedience, the plaudits lasting so long.

By 1785 just fifteen years later the notorious courtesan was dead: a pauper and a hopeless laudanum addict, the fabulous riches bestowed upon her by her many lovers blown, the jewels, the diamonds, the silks, the carriages, squandered or sold. But all that was in the future. In 1771, on Samuel Footes opening night, Sophias candle burned steadily and bright.

I N HIS ESSAY La Vie Parisienne Sacheverell Sitwell tells a story of two small boys who were taken for a walk by Prince Paul Murat one Sunday morning in Paris in the 1860s. In their stiffly starched sailor-suits they followed the Prince into a big house in the Bois de Boulogne, where they found the famous English courtesan Cora Pearl relaxing on a sofa,