In Bed with the Georgians Read online

  Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

  Kitty Fisher found it;

  Not a penny was there in it

  Only ribbon round it.

  NELLY O’BRIEN, 1738–1767

  An exact contemporary of Kitty was Nelly O’Brien. Little is known about her upbringing, but she shares the limelight with Kitty because she too was painted on more than one occasion by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and became the subject of mezzotint copies bought by the public in their hundreds. Men bought the prints so that they too could ‘have a piece’ of a beauty who was otherwise unattainable except for the extremely rich; women bought the prints because they illustrated the very latest fashion trends, and were the fore-runners of fashion plates.

  Nelly had been a minor actress and, like many on the stage, had used her skills to attract the attention of wealthy admirers. One was the naval hero Augustus Keppel (later Admiral Keppel and First Viscount Keppel). He brought Nelly to the Great Newport Street studio used by Reynolds in 1762. Here she had her portrait painted, commissioned and paid for by George Richard St John, Second Viscount Bolingbroke. By then she had been the mistress of ‘Bully’ Bolingbroke for some months. He was unhappily married to Lady Diana Spencer (the first one) and both he and his wife were extremely active in extra-marital affairs. Ironically Reynolds was commissioned to paint a portrait of Lady Diana at much the same time as he was painting Nelly, which must have led to some interesting scheduling in the artist’s diary if embarrassing encounters in the outer office were to be avoided…. The Bolingbroke marriage was dissolved in 1768 after a crim. con. case involving Topham Beauclerk. Lady Diana would subsequently go on to marry Beauclerk, but her divorce was a major scandal of the time.

  Nelly gave birth to Bolingbroke’s child in 1764 before drifting into an affair with Sackville Tufton, Eighth Earl of the Isle of Thanet. She bore him two children, Alfred in 1765 and Sackville in 1766. She presumably felt ‘secure’ as Tufton’s mistress (he was unmarried) and so must have been devastated when the Earl suddenly kicked her out of the house he had provided for her, and announced that he was getting married. The announcement came at a time when Nancy was heavily pregnant. She miscarried, and died in agony when complications set in. There is a burial record for St Ann’s, Blackfriars with an entry made four days after Christmas 1767 – ‘Eleanor O’Brien aged 29.’ If that is the same Nelly O’Brien, it meant her life-span mirrored Kitty Fisher precisely, both dying in the same year, aged 29.

  GERTRUDE MAHON, 1752–1808 – aka the Bird of Paradise

  When Kitty Fisher resigned from her role as Queen of Tarts there was no shortage of applicants ready to step up to take her place. None really attained her fame and status until Grace Dalrymple Elliott – mentioned later. But there was a host of women keen to head the list of ‘Great Impures’, as this fun-loving group of libidinous women was called. The Press delighted in reporting on the plumages of these glamorous ladies and named them after birds – The Rambler magazine set out a list of ‘The most fashionable Votaries of Venus’ and listed the Avians as being Gertrude Mahon (the Bird of Paradise); Polly Greenhill (the Greenfinch); Sally Wilson (the Water Wagtail); Mrs Irvine (the White Swan); and not forgetting Maria Corbyn (the White Crow). Image 29 is entitled The Bird of Paradise and shows the lady in her finery and enormous headdress.

  Gertrude Mahon was a veritable pocket Venus at just 49 inches tall. From a fairly privileged, if chaotic, background (both her parents had been married before, and neither seemed to have the vaguest idea of how to bring up a young daughter) she had to cope when her father, James Tilson, went off on his own to Cadiz to take up the post of consul – and died in under a year. It was 1764, and Gertrude was 12 years old. Her mother, who had previously been married to the Earl of Kerry, was more interested in pampering her cage birds and lap-dogs than in giving guidance to the impressionable Gertrude, and besides, there was little money despite the aristocratic connection, as Mr Tilson had lived way beyond his means.

  At the age of 17 Gertrude went off the rails – falling head-over-heels for an itinerant Irish musician called Gilbreath Mahon. What little money he earned from fiddling he lost at cards, but nothing would put off the coquettish little Gertrude. She eloped with him to Dover, hoping to get married in France, but her mother sent a pair of Bow Street Runners to intercept them. They were stopped, but the enterprising Gilbreath Mahon invited the posse for a libation and promptly drank them both under the table. The couple sailed off to France, got married, and within a year Gertrude had a daughter. That was just about all she did get – Mr Mahon went off with another woman, leaving Gertrude penniless. Worse was to follow when her mother died in 1775.

  She did what she had to do to survive – she used her charm, her brilliant complexion, her tiny frame and her dark eyes to entice a string of men into her bedroom. She was especially active at masquerades and balls, where she was often to be seen as a close companion of Grace Elliott – nick-named ‘Dally the Tall’ – towering over her. Perhaps it was the height difference which prompted the diminutive girl to wear increasingly vertiginous and brightly coloured plumed headdresses – hence her soubriquet ‘The Bird of Paradise.’ Together this unlikely pair appeared on the arm of Lord Cholmondeley at the grand masquerade at The Pantheon held in January 1776. The Morning Post was happy to conjecture that His Lordship shared the bedroom delights of both companions, long and short.

  Other, more louche, gatherings saw her enmeshed in an ever-more disreputable crowd of admirers. Through a friendship with the disgraced Henrietta, Countess Grosvenor, she was introduced to a Captain John Turner and quickly moved in with him. He soon suspected that she was sharing her favours with his brother – time for her to move on. Or, as the Morning Post of 19 April 1777 put it:

  the Bird of Paradise broke through the upper part of her cage two days ago, flew from her military keeper and perched on the shoulder of Sir John L..d as he was driving his phaeton and four through Knightsbridge, who carried her home to Park Place. The forsaken captain is disconsolate.

  Her rescuer was a baronet called John Lade, aged just 17, with an inheritance of £50,000. The infatuation did not last longer than it took to spend the entire inheritance – two years – at which point the couple went their separate ways, forcing Gertrude to turn to the notorious Lord March (see chapter Seven) for assistance.

  The Press revelled in making avian puns – she was seen at Brighton ‘wetting her plumage.’ On another occasion it was reported that ‘The Bird of Paradise is seen hopping about in rather a disconsolate manner. We fear she has had too much saffron administered in the waters of her cage lately.’ On another, she was described as a bird of prey, and another spoke of the time when ‘The Bird of Paradise appeared at Vauxhall in glittering plumage, her waist not a span round, her stature four feet one inch, with black hair truly Mahomedan, delicately arched eye-brows smooth as mouse skin, and soft pouting lips.’

  In 1780 she appeared on stage at Covent Garden, and was generally well-received. Her love of bright clothing, and in particular her choice in millinery, made her a popular figure, never out of the limelight. Aged 29, she decided she wanted to go after a bigger prize – the heir to the throne. No matter that the Prince of Wales was a mere 17 years old; she stalked him at the opera, in Hyde Park, and wherever she could gain advance notice of his whereabouts. In time he duly made her acquaintance, but it was rumoured that he was not prepared to pay for her services and in time she turned her attention in other, more profitable, directions.

  Gertrude drew attention to herself by driving a vis-à-vis (see Image 30). This fashionable conveyance involved the two occupants sitting facing each other. It was in the summer of 1782 that Gertrude took to driving her small covered phaeton along the Hampstead Road. Coachmen quickly dubbed her ‘Lady Hard and Soft’ and the records show that she was wealthy enough to own two carriages and six horses, and employ eight servants. The good times, when she headed the demi-monde, lasted perhaps eleven years, but fame did not last. She moved constantly arou
nd England, with a spell in Bath and another in Margate, before going to the continent, and then over to Ireland, with a succession of lovers. She was still appearing on stage into the 1790s, but by then the Press had lost interest in this most colourful of birds, and when she died it was without trace or obituary.

  GRACE DALRYMPLE ELLIOTT, 1754–1823 – aka ‘Dally the Tall’

  Grace Elliott did not come out of the same drawer as the other Toasts of the Town – and her life took a decidedly different turn. She was born in 1754, and her father was a prominent Scottish lawyer. Her parents split up before she was born and when she was 11 years old, Grace was sent to a French convent to finish her education. She was witty, vivacious, and sophisticated, as well as being regarded as good looking. She was also willowy and tall, cut a most elegant figure, and no doubt young suitors collected round her like bees around the proverbial honey-pot when she returned to live with her father in London at the age of 17. It was all the more surprising that she elected to marry a very much older man – Dr John Elliott was fourteen years her senior. He was rich, dedicated to advancing his career in the medical profession, but he was also short, unattractive and not especially attentive to the needs of a young wife. She soon got bored. She embarked on numerous affairs, culminating in one particularly reckless and public liaison with the married roué Arthur Annesley, eighth Viscount Valentia. The papers were full of gossip about her indiscreet behaviour and in 1774, her husband applied to the ecclesiastical courts for a legal separation, sued in crim. con. and was awarded damages of £12,000. He then applied to Parliament for a divorce. The marriage had lasted five years.

  Her family were highly embarrassed at her conduct and packed her off to a French convent to reflect on her wicked ways, but almost immediately she was ‘rescued’ by Lord Cholmondeley. He provided her with ‘high keeping’ and for a number of years she was his mistress, although this was not an exclusive arrangement for either party. In her case, Grace had affairs with the Prince of Wales, with George Selwyn and with Charles William Wyndham (brother of Lord Egremont). When she gave birth there was much speculation as to which of the lovers had fathered the child. She claimed it was the Prince, called the baby Georgiana Augusta Frederica Seymour, and had his name entered on the christening certificate. But whereas The Morning Post of January 1782 reported that the Prince accepted paternity, he never did so openly and the child was brought up in Lord Cholmondeley’s household. Indeed when Georgiana died in 1813, leaving a young child, that child was also brought up by Lord Cholmondeley and his family. Arguably, that was simply a measure of how far Lord Cholmondeley, one of the Prince of Wales set, would go to in order to protect his royal friend from scandal.

  For Grace, this time marked a watershed in her life. She could, like her companion Gertrude Mahon at so many masked balls, sink into libidinous obscurity and die before reaching old age. Or she could use each affair as a stepping stone to new protectors, networking her way through a succession of wealthy patrons both in England and in France. She chose the latter route and in 1784 ended up as the mistress of the Duc d’Orleans. Come the Revolution and it appears that she and her lover were on opposite sides – he supported the revolutionaries and abandoned his title; she was staunchly royalist and was a firm friend of Madame du Barry, the maîtresse en titre of Louis XV.

  All her royal friends lost their heads during the Reign of Terror. She narrowly escaped the same fate, and instead languished in a series of French prisons until her release in 1794. If her own memoirs are to be believed, she bravely acted as an informer to the British government during her French sojourn. Grace remained in France, occasionally returning to England, and the fact that the Prince of Wales started paying her an annuity of £200 in 1800 suggests that this may have been linked with her agreement to live abroad. She died aged 69 in 1823 and was buried in the sprawling Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her memoirs were published as the Journal of my life during the French Revolution by her grand-daughter in 1859, and although some of the events recounted are inaccurate, or are composites of actual events, they do reveal a brave and fascinating woman, who lived life on her own terms. Her portrait appears at Image 27.

  FRANCES ABINGTON, 1737–1815 – aka ‘Prue’

  Born Frances Barton to a father who was either a mercenary soldier, or a cobbler, Frances was put to work selling flowers in the streets near Covent Garden, earning her the name ‘Nosegay Fan’. By her early teens she was using her fine singing voice as a street singer, and then became a child prostitute operating from a brothel. At around fifteen, she appears to have got a job working for a French milliner in Cockspur Street – important in her later life because there she acquired a smattering of French and Italian, as well as learning about fashion in general, and hats in particular. Being fashion-conscious added to her strong sense of ambition and helped propel her on to the stage.

  In 1755 she made her stage debut at The Haymarket, and came to the attention of David Garrick, who had a soft spot for the elfin-like chanteuse. He enticed her away to the Drury Lane Theatre, where she quickly became famous for her comedic roles especially as Miss Prue, in the play Love For Love (see Image 28, showing the coquettish ‘Prue’, thumb to lip, looking back suggestively at the viewer over the back of her chair).

  She travelled to Dublin, and promptly married a trumpet-playing music teacher, but the marriage was a disaster and Fanny quickly turned to other liaisons. Multiple affairs culminated in one with the Irish MP Francis Needham. She accompanied him back to England in 1765 but he died the following year. She received a legacy under his will and went back on the stage. Her fame and impish face made her a favourite of Reynolds, who painted her portrait on half a dozen occasions. However, acting was a precarious profession, and she continued to bolster her income as a prostitute. She is believed to be the Miss Abington appearing in the 1773 edition of Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies.

  At the height of her fame she had been renowned for her dress style and sense of fashion. No sooner that she wore a particular type of headdress in High Life Below Stairs than it was universally copied and became known as the Abington cap. Then, as now, if an outfit was seen on a fashion icon, it appeared in shops on the High Street a matter of a few days later. The theatre companies pandered to this fame, since people would come to the theatre just to see what she was wearing, and gave her a dress allowance accordingly, i.e. over and above her salary as an actress.

  She retired from the stage in 1790 but came out of retirement seven years later for a final two-year stint on the boards. She retired at the age of 60 and spent her last seventeen years in comparative wealth, thanks to having invested Needham’s legacy wisely. She died in 1815.

  SOPHIA BADDELEY, 1745–1786

  As an actress, what Sophia lacked in talent she made up for in good looks; as a courtesan she lacked for nothing, either in the quality or the quantity of her conquests. Indeed it seems that aristocrats everywhere admired and lusted after her. She had been born in 1745 in London as Sophia Snow. Her father was an army trumpeter. At 18 she eloped with an actor working at the Drury Lane Theatre called Robert Baddeley and two years later she too appeared on that stage, in a variety of Shakespearean roles. Her acting was terrible, but in spite of this, audiences loved her.

  Her singing voice made her a particular favourite with the crowds at Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens. After seven years her marriage broke down – small wonder given that her husband encouraged her to accept the advances of a wealthy Jewish friend called Mendez. Sophia sought solace and support from a variety of male admirers. She had an affair with the actor Charles Holland, and when he died she lived with his doctor, a Dr Hayes, for nine months. Then there was Lord Grosvenor, George Garrick, William Hanger and the Duke of York. Lord Ancaster described her beauty as ‘absolutely one of the wonders of the age’. While likening her to a basilisk, he commented: ‘No man can gaze on you unwounded…whose eyes kill those whom they fix on.’

  Sophia’s problem was money – she lived way be
yond her means. She thought nothing of spending a fortune on hot-house flowers, on jewellery, and on fine clothes. In due course she was forced to flee to Dublin, and later Edinburgh, to escape her creditors. Possibly she should have been a bit more discerning with her choice of lover – she caused great consternation by having affairs with both Lord Coleraine and his younger brother John and, when John left her, she was so devastated that she took an overdose of laudanum. She survived, but was left addicted to laudanum for the rest of her life.

  She also had a long affair with Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne. In 1769 he had married Elizabeth Milbanke, a woman who had, to say the least, ‘put it about a bit’ and of her six children, only one was definitely sired by his lordship. The others may well have been a result of her liaisons with the Prince of Wales and Lord Egremont. Elizabeth was therefore presumably not too perturbed when her cuckolded husband took up with Sophia Baddeley. At one stage Sophia became pregnant but suffered a miscarriage. She turned down a proposition from the Duke of Northumberland (‘not attractive enough’) and embarked on an affair with a particularly worthless individual called Stephen Sayer. When he got her pregnant, he left her for another woman – who had more money. Sarah returned to the stage and began an affair with a Mr Webster and had two children by him. Unfortunately Mr Webster then died, leaving Sophia to take up with the late Mr Webster’s manservant. Two more children followed.

  At the age of 40 she appeared on stage for the last time. The following year, 1786, she died of consumption, her looks and money all gone. It is likely that she was buried in Edinburgh. The following year saw the publication of her memoirs, recounted by her friend and companion Elizabeth Steele. In the memoirs, which run to four volumes, she describes the domestic violence and sexual double standards which Sophia encountered throughout her life. Much has been made of the fact that Sophia and Elizabeth openly lived together as companions. The fact that Elizabeth was apt to dress in a man’s clothes, (she also carried a pistol) has led some to assume that theirs was a lesbian relationship.