The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List

by Rubenhold, Hallie

  Mrs Creagh had also seen to it that her nephew received schooling suitable for the heir to a merchant’s fortune. In the eighteenth century, the calling card of any man who considered himself to be a gentleman was a classical education. Those who could quote from Virgil and Pliny, who could debate the worth of Socrates and hurl insults in Latin, found that they could more easily acquire access to the drawing rooms of their superiors. As a boy he would have been sent to a respectable grammar school and placed under the tutelage of a clergyman, as was the practice among middle-class Dubliners. It is possible that Sam, alongside his lifelong friends, the future actors Francis Gentleman and Henry Mossop, attended Butler’s School on Digges Street, where he would have been immersed in Latin declensions and Greek philosophy. French also played a large role in his education. As the language of diplomacy and the refined man, Derrick’s grasp of it was necessary for his success in the world at large. Instruction in these subjects, along with the study of mathematics, geography, religion and history, with a cursory nod to the sciences and perhaps some of the more significant works of literature, would have formed the essence of his educational endeavours. Irrespective of how much he may have enjoyed his hours with Shakespeare and Milton, Latin poets and French philosophers, his future was not designed for leisured contemplation, a privilege reserved for the titled and exceptionally wealthy.

  Even in his early years, as he yearned to write poetry, Sam must have recognised that his soul was not that of a cloth merchant’s. His position, however, was not one he could argue. What Mrs Creagh expected of him had always been clearly expressed, but no matter how diligently Samuel Derrick applied himself to his prescribed profession, an errant instinct bucked within him. Sam could not and would not shelve his aspirations alongside his schoolbooks. While he should have been labouring as an apprentice, instead he continued reading Rousseau and John Donne. By the light of his candle stubs came more pages of verse, scrawled out in the hours when he should have given in to sleep. Derrick accumulated these poems for years, filling enough sheets by the age of twenty to begin laying the ground for their publication. It is likely that his aunt never knew the extent of Sam’s interest in writing. While the composition of poetry was deemed a worthy pursuit for the ennobled landowning classes, it could only slow the progress of a man of trade. Poetry, however, was to be the least of Sam’s distractions.

  Given what the wits would one day write about Sam Derrick’s excitable temperament, it would be surprising if his aunt didn’t at some point harbour serious doubts about her nephew. Throughout his life he displayed none of the characteristics requisite in a level-headed master of business. He was reckless, impassioned, and at times deeply irreverent. If a person can be judged by the company he keeps, then even at a young age Sam was gravitating towards those who, like him, would end up casting off their respectable livelihoods for morally reprehensible existences. Francis Gentleman, several years Derrick’s junior and just as impassioned about literature and theatre, was to become his closest companion in his youth. Enoch Markham, another friend bound for the clergy, was already in his teenage years displaying a tendency towards thoughtless philandering. Like Sam, these young men opted to live according to their hearts rather than their minds, choosing immediate gratification over thrift or prudence, a creed which not only coloured their behaviour but the state of their finances. Sam, it seemed, was not interested in the conventionality that life offered him, which may go some way towards explaining why many found him so crass and offensive. In the year of his death, an unnamed wag compiled a number of the more memorably profane gems to have fallen from his lips. Derrick’s Jests; or the Wit’s Chronicle remains one of the only legacies left to the world by Sam Derrick, a man who was until the end an inveterate hard-drinking, bailiff-dodging charmer who delighted or insulted society according to his whim. How much of this side he displayed while living under his aunt’s protection may never be known, although it would be hard to believe that his adolescence came and went without incident. Whatever the situation, Mrs Creagh would eventually come to believe that the corruption of her nephew occurred through the influence of his vice-tainted friends. The finger of blame, however, would not be pointed at Sam’s literary associates, but rather at those dwelling in a much lower sphere: that of the theatre.

  It was only a matter of time before the enticement of the stage with all of its fire and fiction was to captivate Sam Derrick’s imagination. Outside of London, he could not have found a better place to experience the thrill of live performance than in Dublin. Each autumn and winter, packet ships filled with a peculiar cargo would depart from Liverpool or Holyhead bound for Ireland. Their hulls would be packed with an entire season’s entertainment, from set machinery and costumes to acrobats and actors. Dublin’s literati, men and women like Mary Delany and George Faulkner, were among many who eagerly awaited their arrival as a kind of cultural lifeline from artistically vibrant London. Fortunately for Irish enthusiasts of the stage, Dublin’s playhouses acted as a receptacle only for London’s most successful theatrical productions. While audiences remained sceptical about Italian opera, they delighted in productions of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, in Congreve and Vanbrugh’s plays and, most devotedly, in revivals of Shakespeare. Irish plays, much to the discouragement of home-grown talent, were not performed, forcing those with ambition to seek their fortunes in London.

  During the winter season, all of Dublin society, respectable or otherwise, packed into the thinly lit, poorly ventilated playhouses at Smock Alley and Rainsford Street. An evening at the theatre offered the best entertainment available in the eighteenth century, not only for what appeared on the stage but for the entire spectacle that unfolded all around. Night upon night, top-billed plays such as Miss in Her Teens, The Recruiting Sergeant and Richard the Third, featuring celebrated names such as David Garrick, Peg Woffington and Charles Macklin, drew audiences onto the benches. Stage managers employed the most technologically advanced set designs and special effects, springing actors from trapdoors, bringing storms to the stage and cries of wonder from the spectators. They offered what seemed like an endless round of performances, including comedy and tragedy, singing, dancing, acrobatics, fire-eating and magic, all of which continued throughout the evening, from half-past six until close to midnight.

  The activity on stage, however, was just a part of the theatregoing experience. The early-eighteenth-century playhouse was more of a circus than a seat of refined cultural activity. All night full-scale battles raged between actors and audience members. Hooting and heckling flowed liberally from the pit, the acknowledged haven for drunken men. Whores and female orange sellers circulated among the crowd, offering both edible and sexual refreshment. On a bad night, this volatile combination of rowdiness, alcohol and lust could erupt without warning. The consequences were sometimes devastating, as audiences degenerated into violent mobs intent on ripping apart the theatre’s gilded interiors. When not dangerous, a night at the playhouse was generally a lively experience, and even the threat of such perils never managed to keep genteel society from its doors. Provided they stayed clear of the pit, where they were likely to be spat or urinated upon, they could enjoy the evening’s events from the sanctity of their boxes. Dublin’s mercantile and trade classes were also careful to keep their distance, choosing to occupy the upper and middle galleries.

  In every direction there was something to see or someone to observe, turning an evening’s outing into an occasion for flirting, gossip and conversation. For many, the activity on stage was a mere sideshow to the main event of socialising. Under the dripping wax chandeliers a perpetual din rose from the house, as actors struggled to perform over shrieks of intoxicated laughter, shouts, jibes, coughs and the constant movement of bodies in and out of the playhouse. Contributing to the sense of mayhem were the obstructions of audience members, who until 1747 were even permitted to stand on stage during a performance. There was nothing sanctimonious about the theatre. Amidst the noise and spectacle, i
t provided a carnival-like atmosphere of abandon. The colourful audience of women in paint and men unrestrained in their manners competed with elaborate stories of love, betrayal and courage played out on the stage. As an apprentice, Derrick would have attended the theatre whenever he had the opportunity. Scraping together the necessary pennies to secure himself a seat and slipping out, perhaps against the orders of his apprentice master, would have added to the thrill. There, both in the pit and backstage, he would have met with some of his more wanton companions and their thespian circle. The easy lifestyle of loose sexual morals and seemingly endless laughter would have been a profound enticement to a young apprentice. Above all, it would have presented him with an opportunity to chatter with those who shared his love for words and poetry.

  Remarkably, given the myriad distractions and temptations, Sam successfully completed his period of apprenticeship. A fear of the consequences of his failure to do so may very well have been the only impetus he required. Presumably Sam saw his occupation as a means by which he could achieve his greater aims. For all of the dullness entailed in a life based around the exchange and production of cloth, the profession did offer the benefit of frequent travel to London. The draper’s trade would have presented numerous opportunities for visits abroad and given him an ideal vehicle for peddling his poetry to potential sponsors. While Dublin was home to a small publishing industry, London offered far larger prospects. All forms of creative output in the eighteenth century required patronage or sponsorship, and any such meaningful financial backing was a luxury bestowed by society’s most influential. Although Ireland had its share of well-endowed aristocrats and fat merchants with social-climbing ambitions, this class of person existed in a much higher concentration in England, and especially in London. The bustling capital of the English language offered a wealth of opportunity with which Dublin simply could not compete, a message that Sam would have heard repeatedly from his friend and mentor, George Faulkner.

  As Dublin’s literary society was a close circle, it is likely that Sam’s acquaintance with George Faulkner began through the introductions of school tutors while he was still a boy. Although twenty-five years his senior, Faulkner felt a great affection for Derrick and took the young man under his wing in the hope of encouraging his career. As a friend not only to the estimable Swift but to Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and Lord Chesterfield, Faulkner’s was a useful name to drop in London circles. Undoubtedly, it was his letters of introduction that opened the few significant doors to Sam’s literary future in London. The rest he prised open by himself.

  At around the age of twenty-two, in 1746, Samuel Derrick undertook one of his first exploratory journeys to London. Although he would have left port with a consignment of linen, his thoughts probably did not dwell long upon its sale. Instead, his mind was occupied with the poetry he hoped to publish and the friendships he sought to renew among the travelling actors he had met in Dublin. Those he intended to visit included Francis Gentleman, now a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Army. Like Derrick, Gentleman was also passing frustrated days in his appointed profession, waiting for deliverance in the form of an inheritance which might allow him to pursue his ambitions upon the stage. Having only recently completed his apprenticeship, Sam was elated at the prospect of his newly acquired freedom and the liberties his presence in London might allow him. En route to the capital, he composed a stream of verses addressed to ‘dear Frank’, his ‘first among friends’, which lyricised his choppy sea passage and the lameness of his hired horse. Upon his arrival in London, Derrick promised Gentleman that they would enjoy ‘the gay pleasures of the town’ together but, unwilling to abstain entirely from those joys for which he already seems to have gained a taste, Derrick broke his southward journey at the Falcon Tavern. There, he not only ‘sup’d and drank some claret’, but partook of the favours offered by Miss Kenea, a ‘fair lady’ whose ‘hand extends to ev’ry customer’, before returning to the road.

  At about the time Sam’s hired mount ambled into London, the city was home to roughly 650,000 people. Although Dublin bustled with a population near 150,000, nothing could match the breadth or confusion of the scene that awaited him. By comparison to the city of his birth, London’s streets and neighbourhoods sprawled in all directions. Its length ran to the banks of the Thames and then exceeded it, splashing into Southwark and Lambeth. It stretched backwards, pushing its expanding districts of Marylebone, Bloomsbury and Islington further north. The ferocious scent and roar of London would have met him before he so much as laid foot upon its cobbles. The traffic of those entering its limits – foot passengers, coaches, herders with flocks, carts packed with saleable goods – congested its inward-bound arteries. Once Sam had found his way into the centre of town, he would have been overwhelmed by the mêlée of faces and accents, the noise and the spectacle. The theatricality of the capital was something he would never cease to find inspirational. Dublin, George Faulkner had warned him, was a place unappreciative of either authors or actors; London, by contrast, was saturated with men of talent.

  Like Sam, men and women who believed in their abilities to perform or create arrived through London’s gateways regularly. Although he possessed the advantage of Faulkner’s letters of introduction, whatever assistance they were able to provide was likely to have been superseded by several evenings spent in lively Covent Garden conversation. While Fleet Street, the hub of London’s publishing enterprise, had its own share of convivial taverns and coffee houses, some of the more intellectual haunts were based in the nearby Piazza. Here, at the Bedford Coffee House and the Shakespear’s Head, gathered a complete cross section of noted authors, old hacks, affluent publishers and small-time booksellers. As the Piazza was also, by proximity, the principal turf of actors, theatrical managers and a variety of professions linked to the playhouses from set painters to musicians, the resulting social scene was one of the most stimulating in all of London. It was also prime hunting ground for patrons. After a night at the theatre, wealthy landowning gentleman could be found in abundance, attracted by the Garden’s bacchanalian delights and the lures of the gaming tables. The area’s watering holes also played host to a range of smaller, but equally desirable, catches. The ears of moneyed city bankers, merchants, important visitors, as well as established personalities such as David Garrick, Dr Johnson, and Samuel Foote, were all available for the cost of a mere tankard of ale or glass of claret. Covent Garden was a networker’s dream, a honeypot of promise for those hoping to earn distinction by their art. Not surprisingly, it was on the itinerary of every literary visitor to town; it was the first stop of the dramatist or the poet who had leapt off the London-bound wagon.

  When not tending to the business of linen trading, Sam Derrick was passing most of his time in the Piazza. Increasingly, over the course of his visits, the time devoted to spending his living began to outweigh the hours dedicated to earning it. A good deal of Sam’s days and nights were passed at the Bedford Coffee House, brushing elbows with the literati and the leading lights of the London stage. At the Bedford, wrote the Connoisseur magazine, ‘Almost everyone you meet is a polite scholar and a wit. Jokes and bon mots are echoed from box to box; every branch of literature is critically examined, and the merits of every production of the press or performance of the theatres weighed and determined’. Even more so than at the Shakespear’s Head, those who filled the rooms at the Bedford represented a type of London ‘in-crowd’, by whose glamour Sam was entirely seduced. The excitement that he found in such an environment could not have been matched by anything comparable in Dublin. With its lively characters, spirited discussion and easy morals, Covent Garden was his ideal spiritual home, and the longer he remained there, the less likely his return to Dublin became.

  It has been suggested that Sam’s ultimate decision to abandon his trade was taken when he was offered a role in a play. While succeeding as a poet had always been his primary objective, the possibility of treading the boards was an interest that had grown from his f
ascination with the theatre. Since many playwrights gained experience as actors before creating their dramatic works, this opportunity would have been accepted with gusto. It did, however, present a number of obstacles.

  Until this period in his life, his aunt believed him to be devoted to the linen trade. While she may have tolerated his interest in poetry, provided it did not detract from his abilities to earn an honest living, she would have never countenanced Sam’s desire to act. In spite revelling in theatrical entertainment and even following the lives and loves of the players when off-stage, in the eyes of reputable society the playhouse was a seat of moral degradation. No self-respecting gentleman or lady would be seen exhibiting themselves so brazenly in public. Actors and actresses compromised their virtue; the very fact that they were willing to assume the roles of vulgar characters, reciting lewd lines and spewing curses, was unconscionable. Theirs was a profession where every concept of decency was flaunted, particularly by actresses who displayed a complete disregard for modesty, willing to appear in men’s clothing on the stage, and partially clothed off it. In addition to being noted for their violent tempers, actors were renowned for their marital infidelity and their sexual rapacity. One moralist wrote in 1757 that: