In Bed with the Georgians Read online

  On 18 June, 1763 the journal records:

  At night I took a street-walker into privy Garden, and indulged sensuality. The wretch picked my pocket of my handkerchief; and then swore that she had not. When I got home, I was shocked to think that I had been intimately united with a low abandoned perjured pilfering creature. I determined to do so no more; but if the Cyprian fury should seize me, to participate my amorous flame with a genteel Girl.

  By then, Boswell had just made the acquaintance of Dr Johnson, a man he instantly admired. Later, in 1791, Boswell would write a biography of Johnson, entitled Life of Samuel Johnson. The good doctor convinced him that ‘promiscuous concubinage is certainly wrong. It is contributing one’s share towards bringing confusion and misery into Society.’ He was, so he says, a changed man. ‘Notwithstanding of the Reflections, I have stooped to mean profligacy even yesterday. However, I am now resolved to guard against it’ he wrote, but within the fortnight his resolve crumbled:

  3 August, 1763 I should have mentioned that on Monday night [two days earlier], coming up the Strand, I was tapp’d on the shoulder by a fine fresh lass. I went home with her. She was an Officer’s daughter, and born at Gibraltar. I could not resist indulging myself with the enjoyment of her. Surely, in such a Situation, when the Woman is allready abandoned, the crime must be alleviated, tho’ in strict morality, illicit love is allways wrong.

  He wrote no more of amorous conquests in his Journal. That is not to say he became a celibate monk, but that he no longer wished to record something which he accepted was anti-social and bad, not simply for his own health, but for the health of society.

  WILLIAM HICKEY, 1749–1830

  Hickey was a contemporary of Boswell, and, like Boswell, published memoirs giving a remarkable insight into eighteenth century life – not just in London, but in India where he had spent his working life as a lawyer. His Memoirs, although written in the years leading up to 1810, were eventually published between 1913 and 1925. He was the seventh son of a successful Irish lawyer, and went to Westminster School in London. He was, however, expelled for his dissolute behaviour, not least in keeping a mistress. On one occasion he describes being given a guinea by one of his father’s friends, resolving to spend it at the theatre and in making love to his mistress. As he says:

  Having discovered the residence of my wanton little bedfellow, Nanny Harris, I directly went to her lodgings … there I was, a hopeful sprig of thirteen, stuck up in a green box [at Covent Garden]. From the theatre she took me home to supper, giving me lobster and oysters, both of which she knew I was very fond of, and plenty of rum punch.

  Things got out of hand when he started training as a lawyer – he lived way beyond his means, gambled and drank to excess. Nanny was never ‘an exclusive relationship’ and in 1765, aged 16, he records that his main concern in life was running after the maid servants, including one named Nancy Dye, ‘a fine little jade.’

  His Memoirs go on to give details of how he and a group of extravagant young men ‘of his own stamp’ took rooms together. His description of roistering life in Covent Garden brothels is set out in Chapter Three. Hickey went on to describe how he passed his evenings and nights in ‘theatres, taverns and brothels, amidst abandoned profligates of both sexes, and in every species of folly and intemperance’.

  He was of course living way beyond the means of a solicitor’s articled clerk. Over a period of some seven months he augmented his income by fiddling the accounts at his father’s office, but having embezzled some £500, was caught and sent in disgrace to India to atone for his sins. His Memoirs recount his life in India, and in Canton. On occasions he returned to England, giving an opportunity to resume his association with the low life of London. It was an opportunity which was pounced on eagerly, and expensively. Once more he ran up debts, and borrowed money on the strength of his father’s credit. Once more he helped himself to client’s money held by his father’s firm, and once more he was caught. This time his father announced that he wished to banish his son for ever, making it clear that he never wanted to see him again.

  However, the father relented after a short while and agreed that William should be sent to Jamaica to practice Law. His stay there lasted less than two years. He was then packed off back to India, where he remained until his retirement in 1808, apart from a two-year spell back in London while preparing a petition to Parliament. Hickey never married, but in addition to his countless affairs he did have a number of longlasting relationships. One of these was with a Charlotte Barry, who adopted the name ‘Hickey’ until her death in 1783. Another was Jemdanee, one of his Indian mistresses. He was devoted to her – they had a son but he died in infancy. However, it is for his ‘intrigues’ that he will be remembered, including his affair with one of the most famous courtesans of the day called Emily Warren. Reynolds had painted her as ‘Thais’ and commented on her ‘faultless and finely formed’ figure. As previously mentioned, she was the mistress of Hickey’s friend Bob Potts, but when William bedded her he complained that she was unfeeling and unresponsive. To her, it was just a job.

  William Hickey died in the Spring of 1827, and was buried at St John the Evangelist, Smith Square, Westminster.

  GEORGE HANGER, 1751–1824

  Writing about his life, George Hanger summarises it as follows:

  I was early introduced into life, and often kept both good and bad company; associated with men both good and bad, and with lewd women, and women not lewd, wicked and not wicked; in short, with men and women of every description, and of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, from St. James’s to St. Giles’s; in palaces and night cellars; from the drawing-room to the dust cart. Human nature is in general frail, and mine I confess has been wonderfully so.

  No regrets there then, from a man who eventually became Fourth Baron Coleraine, having succeeded to the title after his equally dissolute brothers William and John passed on. William had figured in one of the Histories of the tête-à-tête annexed in the Town & Country Magazine of 1772 with the celebrated actress Sophia Baddeley. For his part, George seemed to have kept James Gillray in business single-handed, with the National Portrait Gallery listing some twenty of his caricatures.

  Other caricatures include one by Rowlandson showing him as a lecherous boxoffice lounger chatting up a pair of young ladies in the theatre foyer, and one where he was apparently floored by an irate fishwife who he pushed out of the way while accompanying the Prince of Wales on a trip to Plymouth.

  He had made the army his career, and amazed his army colleagues by going off and marrying a gypsy girl. All was well until she ran off with an itinerant tinker – for her, a lucky escape. George became a macaroni, spending huge sums on his immaculate wardrobe. As befits a true rake, he is rumoured to have fought three duels by the age of 21, although one suspects that these were over his own honour rather than over the honour of some affronted lady.

  His army career, both in Britain and America, seems to have been marked by more action in the bedroom that ever took place on the battlefield and it is as a womaniser that he became famous. However, he served throughout the American Revolutionary War, transferring to forces under the command of Sir Banastre Tarleton as a major and as commander of its light dragoons. He himself claimed to be the best shot in the British Army. He returned to England in 1784 and joined the ‘Prince of Wales set’ being made equerry to the Prince. However his finances were in a mess and he served time in the debtor’s prison before raising enough cash to start a business. Seeing him ‘in trade’ astonished his friends, especially as he chose to be a coal merchant. He was, no doubt, the best dressed coal merchant in the land.

  He was one of the closest friends of the Prince of Wales, and had a reputation for being a ladies man par excellence. He was also extremely eccentric. One time he made a £500 wager on a ten mile road race between turkeys and geese. Hanger lost the bet when the twenty turkeys dropped out after three miles. Eventually the Prince tired of his exploits, finding them ‘too free
and coarse.’

  Hanger wrote a rambling autobiography in 1801 and in it put forward the view that marriage was a device invented by a priesthood with ‘no authority whatever in Scripture.’ He thought marriage was quite unnecessary, but that if you had it you should also allow polygamy because otherwise ‘it would lead to fornication, adultery and whoredom’. He also saw fit to lecture ‘the Cyprian ladies’ on what he described as the:

  …three predominant passions which reign in the female breast, -- gambling, intriguing, and drinking. The courtly dame of St. James’s, the city belle, the St. James’s and St. Giles’s Cyprian, are equally addicted to them. In general, they are linked thus: they either drink and intrigue, or game and intrigue; for drinking does not suit with those who play for large sums. Some there are, the most perfect of the female sex, in whom all the three cardinal virtues unite, and are equally predominant: there are very few that are not influenced by two, and scarce any without one, of these craving passion.

  He died in 1824 at the age of 74 leaving behind a woman described by him as his wife. By all accounts he had omitted to marry her, and no mention of her appears in his obituary notice in The Gentleman’s Magazine.

  BANASTRE TARLETON, 1754–1833

  Hanger had been a close friend and army colleague of Banastre Tarleton, another of the ‘set’ with which the Prince of Wales mixed. Ban, as he was known in Britain, had been born in Liverpool to wealthy parents – his father was the mayor, and the family had built its fortune on the slave trade and its associated businesses of rum and tobacco. He was one of six children, but not the eldest. He was therefore expected to find a career in the army, which he did most successfully. Although his first commission was purchased for £800, all his subsequent promotions were on merit, and he was made up to lieutenant-colonel in 1782. Later he was member of parliament for Liverpool, and ended up as a general and a baronet. His exploits in the American War of Independence made him a national hero – whereas he was reviled in America and given the soubriquet ‘Butcher of the Carolinas and ‘Butcher Ban’. The phrase ‘Ban’s quarter’ grew to mean giving no quarter at all. As history is written by the victors, suffice to say that nowadays he would be seen as an advocate of ‘total war’, and a ‘scorched earth’ policy.

  Whatever his fighting prowess he was always rumoured to have made more bedroom conquests than military ones. The man was ludicrously good looking, as attested to by the portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, held by the National Gallery in London, with his tight trousers, green jacket and plumed hat; he was always described as being handsome, a charmer and a ladies’ man. He hit the party scene with a vengeance when he returned after the American war. He was a regular attendee at dinners, balls, the theatre and so on, and was invariably the centre of female interest. The gossip mongers had a field day trying to keep up with his amorous conquests, and he was featured in the Tête-a-Tête histories of the Town & Country Magazine as ‘the intrepid patriot’ having an affair with a Miss Emily Webb.

  Emily was the daughter of a prominent solicitor, and she succumbed to Ban’s charms and moved in with him. As the Town & Country Magazine coyly remarked, ‘they sleep under the same roof, and the colonel has not been once at the war office for some time.’ Other well-publicised affairs took place, with the magazine reporting that ‘he certainly did not confine his amours to those private intrigues which honour stamps with secrecy; for we find him roaming at large with …. the Bird of Paradise, and the Arm---d.’ In other words, he enjoyed the company of those eminent Toasts of the Town described previously, namely Gertrude Mahon and Elizabeth Armistead.

  By this time the Prince of Wales had finished his relationship with ‘Perdita’ that is to say, Mary Robinson, and she had been taken under the protection of Lord Malden. She was at the height of her fame, a beautiful and popular figure, and Lord Malden was immensely proud of having captured her affections. Rashly he boasted to Ban that her loyalty and faithfulness were unbreakable, a challenge which Ban rose to immediately. He bet Lord Malden that he could seduce her – and promptly won the bet. As can be imagined, the lady was much displeased when she subsequently heard that she had been the subject of such a wager, but extraordinarily she forgave Ban and entered into a relationship with him which lasted fifteen fiery years.

  Image 66 is of the print called The Thunderer. In it James Gillray shows Tarleton outside a brothel with the Prince of Wales (identified by his plumed ostrich feathers). Above the front door of the brothel is an effigy of Mary Robinson as a whirligig, legs apart, and with the words ‘This is the Lady’ll kiss most sweet. Who’d not love a Soldier?’ The door bears the inscription ‘The Whirligig – Alamode Beef, hot every Night’ – in other words, ‘she was a dish regularly enjoyed by military personnel’.

  That Mary loved Ban to distraction is not at issue, and she wrote poem after poem pouring out her love for him on those occasions when they argued and split up. Over and over again they re-united, always to the horror of Ban’s mother, who thoroughly disapproved of the young hussy. It got to the stage that Ban’s gambling and horse racing debts had got so out of hand that he was faced with the debtor’s prison unless he could raise immediate funds. His mother agreed to provide finance on condition that he gave up his mistress. At first he refused, but eventually worn down by family and financial pressures, he agreed to the split and to travel to France. What he did not know is that his loyal mistress, by then pregnant with their child, would ride to try and head him off at Dover, with £300 in her pocket to pay his debts. She, poor thing, guessed his port of departure wrongly – he was headed for Southampton, not Dover, and he crossed the Channel unaware of her devoted gesture. Worse still, Mary suffered a miscarriage during the journey and the resulting botched midwifery left her semi-paralysed below the waist. When Ban heard, he came to her immediately and for a time the on-off relationship continued. It has to be said that Ban was not as faithful a partner as Mary perhaps deserved. There is a birth record to show that he fathered at least one child, called Banina, with an un-named woman, and rumours also abounded that he had an unhealthy interest in Mary’s 18-year-old daughter.

  After one final split in 1798 Tarleton went and married Susan Bertie, the illegitimate daughter of the Fourth Duke of Ancaster. He was 44 and she was 20, but more to the point she was an heiress with a fortune of £20,000. Mary was devastated at the betrayal and wrote a novel called The False Friend, clearly alluding to Tarleton, describing him as ‘A Being, who lived only for himself, who, wrapped in the flimsy garb of vanity, and considering every woman a creature formed for his amusement, marked each succeeding day with a new crime….’

  He died, riddled with gout rather than guilt, in 1833.

  RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1751–1816

  A man practically born on stage (his father was a Dublin actor-manager and his mother a playwright) Richard Brinsley Sheridan went on to become a successful playwright, an MP, a brilliant orator, a theatre manager and, as a confidante of the Prince of Wales, a gambler, a heavy drinker and a womaniser. Four years after leaving Harrow school the 21-year-old Sheridan had fought a duel over the love of Elizabeth Ann Linley, with a man called Captain Thomas Mathews. Although married, Mathews had been pursuing Elizabeth and when he placed an advertisement in the Bath Chronicle which defamed Elizabeth, the young Sheridan had no alternative but to defend her honour and to challenge Mathews to a duel. The pair met in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, but the sword fight was bloodless because Mathews lost his sword. He was forced to sign an apology and retract his allegations against Elizabeth, who was already famous both for her beauty and for having an exquisite singing voice. However, that was not the end of the matter, because Mathews then demanded another duel. They fought again, at Kingsdown near Bath, and this time the ferocious encounter left both men bloodied and injured. Both swords were broken in the duel, but the fight continued for some time before Mathews fled from the scene. Sheridan recovered, and then eloped with Elizabeth to France. When they returned he married
Elizabeth, and promptly banned her from ever singing again in public.

  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship, and while Sheridan achieved considerable fame and success with The Rivals and The School for Scandal (published in 1775 and 1777 respectively) his wife went on to have various affairs. Sheridan had bought a share in the Drury Lane Theatre, but in 1780 he gave up writing for the theatre and stood as member of parliament for Stafford. He was alleged to have paid the ‘usual’ bribe of five guineas to each of the burgesses in return for their votes, and therefore had to spend his maiden speech defending the allegation of bribery. His staunch support for Charles James Fox brought him into contact with the Prince of Wales and before long he was an accomplice in many of the escapades which brought the Prince into the spotlight. Sheridan was not particularly good at holding his drink; he was a poor businessman, and at times a heavy gambler. He was consistently living beyond his means, but the one thing that he and his wife had in common was that they loved holding fashionable parties at their London home. They spent much time living apart, and he had a number of affairs. He did not seem unduly worried when his wife became pregnant, apparently by her lover Lord Edward FitzGerald. Elizabeth died three months after giving birth to the baby (Mary) but Sheridan honoured his promise to his dying wife to the effect that he would look after the infant. Mary was a sickly child and she too died, in 1793.

  Sheridan re-married two years later. His loyalty to the Prince was rewarded when he was made Receiver-General to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1804 and became Treasurer to the Navy in 1806. However, he continued to live beyond his means and made no attempt to settle his debts. Being an MP protected him from enforcement proceedings, but when he failed to secure re-election in 1812 the circling vultures closed in with a vengeance. He died impoverished in July 1816. As one writer said at the time: ‘the more nearly he approached towards poverty, the more grossly did he abandon himself to sensual indulgences’. A more general view is that he squandered his talents, both as a playwright and as a parliamentary orator, because of his failure to control his finances and of his determination to ‘keep up an appearance equal to that of his opulent associates’. In truth, you needed to be wealthy to be a real rake, and simply sharing life’s excesses with the Prince of Wales was never going to be enough to make him a true roué. However, as Sheridan put it: ‘In marriage if you possess anything very good, it makes you eager to get everything else good of the same sort’.