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

by Rubenhold, Hallie

  Play-actors are the most profligate wretches, and the vilest vermine, that hell ever vomited out; … they are the filth and garbage of the earth, the scum and stain of human nature, the excrements and refuse of all mankind, the pests and plagues of human society, the debauchees of men’s minds and morals.

  Under such a hail of condemnation, an appearance on stage would have marked one’s official exit from an acceptable life.

  Far removed from the gossipy circles that dominated Dublin’s drawing rooms, Derrick must have believed that news of his decision to accept the part of the Duke of Gloucester, in a performance of Nicholas Rowe’s Jane Shore, would never reach Ireland. As long as Mrs Creagh knew nothing of his activities in London, the inheritance upon which he staked his future happiness would be safe. This might have been a difficult charade to maintain if through a stroke of good fortune Derrick’s debut had been triumphant but, mercifully, this wasn’t to be the case. Sam’s days of performing were to be short-lived, although his reputation as an actor would endure. Years later, when Sam wore the hat of the Master of the Ceremonies at Bath, he was approached by a gentleman who had experienced the misfortune of sitting in the audience when Derrick had graced the stage. ‘As a player’, Sam was told, ‘he might justly be called an original, for any other man might labour all of his life, and, at last not get into so bad a method of playing’. Although his experiment with the theatre had proven disastrous, the playhouse continued to possess a certain magnetism that drew him back. Failure never deterred him from making further attempts as an actor, or even as a playwright, a critic or a dramatic coach.

  For some time Sam maintained a double life, balanced precariously between two cities. When he could escape to London, he was the author and actor he had always hoped to become. He knew Dr Johnson, Davy Garrick and others of consequence in the literary and dramatic world. When in Dublin, he was simply Sam Derrick, merchant of linen. To George Faulkner and his other friends he would have expressed his growing dissatisfaction and his impatience. In 1751, when he could tolerate it no longer, Sam, with enough money reserved from his trade, resolved to set himself up in London on a more permanent basis. For the meantime, Elizabeth Creagh would know nothing of this scheme, but how long he could maintain the deception, how many lie-soaked letters he would have to concoct in order to placate her, would prove to be the real challenge.

  By the early 1750s, with the friendship of numerous London personalities to bolster his ego, Sam was more convinced than ever of his ability to become ‘a poet of the first rank’. Inspired by the sight of Dublin, perhaps on the occasion of one of his final voyages between England and Ireland before settling permanently in Covent Garden, he poured out his sentimental hopes for immortality:

  Eblana! Much lov’d city, hail!

  Where first I saw the light of day,

  Soon as declining life shall fail,

  To thee shall I resign my clay.

  Muses, who saw me first your care;

  Ye trees, that fostering shelter spred;

  The fate of man you shall see me share;

  Soon number’d with forgotten dead.

  Unless my lines protract my fame,

  And those who chance to read them, cry

  I knew him! Derrick was his name,

  In yonder tomb his ashes lie.

  Of course Derrick would be remembered in death, but not for his verses.

  4

  THE BIRTH OF A Venus

  IT IS A rare occasion when men who have gorged themselves on carnal pleasures, who have moved between the silk-lined walls of courtesans’ boudoirs and the underskirts of streetwalkers, can single out one particular Impure to hold so universally in high regard. Even in her old age, when the final traces of beauty had left her weathered face, gentlemen of noble birth and influence gathered around her. They called her ‘inimitable’ and ‘respectable’, words that are not usually squandered in descriptions of elderly brothel-keepers. What they saw in her, the manifestations of a pure heart, generosity, warmth and an unaffected honesty, had gripped all who came into her presence, from her earliest years in the trade until the last days of her life. But this was only a part of Charlotte Hayes, and a fanciful one at that. The truth, that which they would never know, she hid behind a fluttering fan of deception bequeathed to her from the day of her birth.

  That specific day, like the occasion of her death, has since slipped into the recesses of history; only the year, 1725, and the location are known. It was in the Italian port of Genoa that an Englishwoman brought her baby girl into the world. Her father, a wealthy English gentleman, had through the folly of his own lust made his mistress pregnant and his life far more complicated. The precise circumstances of the delivery are not recorded, but it is curious to consider how the child’s mother, a Londoner by the name of Elizabeth Ward, arrived in her situation. Abandoned with a rapidly rounding belly, did she attempt the journey over the Alps to find the father? Or, young and impassioned, did he defiantly bring his inamorata on a foreign posting, or in the entourage of his grand tour? The truth will never be known. What is certain, however, is that shortly after the birth, the young mother and the infant she named Charlotte Ward soon found themselves on a homeward-bound ship, packed off by a man eager to dispose of his mistress and the embarrassment of an illegitimate child. Before her departure, the self-styled ‘Mrs Ward’ was paid a handsome settlement to ensure that all future connections were to be severed, that a degree of discretion was to be maintained and that the child, should it live to adulthood, would not come in search of paternal favours. As far as Charlotte Ward was concerned, she only ever had one parent and one guide in the ways of the world.

  Wherever Mrs Ward’s origins lay before her Italian interlude, whether she had been plucked from a brothel or an apple seller’s cart, once she had returned to the capital she had no intention of suffering a demotion in her status. Having gained worldly wisdom and contacts among the more affluent element of society, she turned her hand, and what remained of her lover’s allowance, to the opening of a brothel. Moving from the denomination of prostitute to procuress, once one’s physical charms had begun to flicker out, was a marked promotion of rank: a retreat from the immediate dangers of the front line of active sexual service and into the protection of the background. Those women who, from a young age, had sold their services to a nation of men could in future look forward to utilising the charms of others in order to reap their livelihood. Whether or not she herself had at one point worked from the confines of a brothel, Elizabeth Ward had observed the trade closely enough to determine how she would conduct her own business. London’s streets were lined with ramshackle examples of filthy, poorly run brothels where barely-lucid, diseased girls received their beau’s three pennies in a drafty garret. ‘Mother’ Ward had no interest in operating such a disreputable enterprise. The type of clientele she sought were more discerning in their tastes and considerably more particular when it came to their venereal well-being. Equally, she was not interested in competing with the large emporiums of flesh based in Covent Garden; instead it was her plan to find a select niche in a burgeoning area of the west end.

  Spring Garden, a location that would one day be consumed by Trafalgar Square and its surroundings, was a quiet and genteel spot, just off the lip of St James’s Park. It was near enough to Pall Mall to assume an air of exclusivity, but also close enough to the new Little Theatre that had sprung up in the Haymarket to attract a more indulgent and lascivious crowd. Above all, it was the modest nature of the area that appealed most. Elizabeth Ward’s business was a small-scale one but with a preferred collection of patrons, quite possibly drawn from those contacts she had made while residing in Genoa. Only those who knew of the brothel’s existence were able to identify it behind the façade of shop fronts. To the unannounced visitor who arrived at her doorstep, Mrs Ward’s establishment appeared as a simple milliner’s business, not unlike that operated by Mrs Cole, the madam featured in John Cleland’s novel Fanny Hill. At Elizab
eth Ward’s, young ladies innocently toiled away in the front room ‘making capuchins, bonnets, &c’, a useful cover for ‘a traffic in more precious commodities’.

  But in spite of the tidy and welcoming appearance of her operation, the realities of life under her roof would not have been a pleasant experience. As any bawd knew, whores were not to be trusted and had to be observed at all times. Money and gifts should never be placed directly into their care; they should not be permitted to slip away on errands or enjoy the company of visiting friends. Granting liberties had a way of leading to trouble – namely, employees cheating their employer, rather than the other way around. If Mrs Ward was in any way intent on securing her and her daughter’s future, the ship she ran needed to be a tight one. An effective madam used all means available in order to keep her women on board, including various forms of punishment and coercion. In the eighteenth century, those in the procuring trade also employed the law in order to keep that which they felt belonged to them within their rightful possession. Any girl foolish enough to bolt from her madam’s premises was likely to be hauled before a magistrate and prosecuted for the theft of her clothing. In most cases, the items with which she absconded were those given to her by her procuress as suitable apparel in which to see clients. Such was the case with Ann Smith, who in 1752 was accused by Mrs Ward of running off with ‘one holland gown … one pair of laced ruffles … one pair of silk stockings … one satin hat and one pair of paste earrings …’ – essentially, the clothes on her back. After only a short period in practice, Elizabeth Ward had gained a notoriety among the brothel-hopping set for the severity of her methods. What catalogue of horrors prompted Ann Smith’s hasty flight from there can hardly be imagined.

  As a very young girl, Charlotte would have stood on the periphery of these dramas. For many years she would be far too inexperienced to understand that what Mrs Ward did, every penny she prised out of her harlots’ hands, she did in order to ensure Charlotte’s comfort and future. A brothel must have been a strange nursery for a growing child. Her earliest memories would be of her small but irregular family of females, who sat and embroidered, gossiped and occasionally giggled. Men would come and go like shadows, while animal grunts and gasps swept under doors and passed through walls. Sometimes great storms of emotion would buffet the home, and these faces seen previously simpering and sewing would heave into sorrowful wails and acts of violence. Charlotte may also have remembered the tempest of her mother’s anger, and how their fatherless family would have cowered at its appearance. As a child she would have learned much through the observation of her mother and of the well-ordered routines of her strange home, but the life Mrs Ward envisioned for her daughter required a more appropriate education than this.

  As evidenced in her later life, Charlotte’s schooling bore the hallmarks of a slightly more privileged background. Whereas the curriculum at local charity schools would have been based entirely on comprehension of the basics – reading, writing, figuring, religious study and preparation for an apprenticeship – the slightly more up-scale, although not necessarily more academically rigorous, academies for young ladies would have included inculcation in female ‘accomplishments’. In addition to literacy and numeracy, pupils would have received instruction in French, dancing, deportment and music. If especially fortunate, they might also be exposed to Italian, needlework, accountancy and perhaps a hint of history, geography and the works of classical antiquity. As the social reformer Francis Place mentions, Georgian London contained a number of ‘respectable day schools’ for girls that offered just such an academic regime, for a small fee. However, given the manifest pitfalls of her mother’s profession, it would have been in Charlotte’s best interest if she were to attend school as a boarder.

  Mrs Ward would not have been the first procuress or courtesan to place her daughter into the care of a school’s matrons. Given gentlemen’s predilections for pubescent virgins, simply the presence of a nubile girl in the indecent surroundings of a brothel would have raised too many temptations. Elizabeth Ward did not want her daughter’s most precious commodity squandered in a rape, or through the softly-whispered persuasions of a love-struck but penniless suitor. Instead, the disposal of Charlotte’s maidenhead would have been planned in meticulous detail, as one of her mother’s greatest business transactions. For approximately fourteen years Mrs Ward would have cultivated her daughter’s charms and funded her education, in preparation for what would become the most important day of her life: her initiation into the rites of Venus.

  When the time was deemed appropriate, usually upon the onset of womanhood, Charlotte, like any society daughter, would have been introduced into a public whirl of spectacle and entertainment. As a new face seen beside Mrs Ward at the theatre or in the pleasure gardens, the signals would become clear: Charlotte was the latest object on offer. Although her airing would have aroused interest from a variety of curious parties, Mother Ward would have had her own shortlist of especially wealthy, high-ranking customers already in mind to perform the two essential roles ahead.

  No sexual experience was more coveted in the eighteenth century than intercourse with a virgin. A genuine maidenhead was a delicacy to the carnal connoisseur and commanded a hefty price. As untouched young women were not in the habit of wandering accidentally into disorderly houses, any bawd would know that the expense of procuring such treasures was considerable. The going rate for the privilege of spending the night with a chaste girl could vary from £20 to 50 guineas. Particularly skilful bawds with especially beautiful young recruits might even manage to raise this sum to £100. And it was not simply the selfishly erotic pleasure of introducing an innocent to the sin of fornication that commanded these fees; it was also the guarantee of what might be considered the only truly safe sexual encounter available. Whoever he was, Charlotte’s deflowerer was likely to have been comfortably wealthy, and certainly not of her personal choosing. As the author of the Nocturnal Revels would have his readership believe, with regard to the pawning of her daughter Mrs Ward’s devious reputation was not unfounded. Charlotte, it seems, was ‘passed off as a virgin’ several more times to the unsuspecting, undoubtedly for similarly exorbitant prices.

  Upon her entrance into the profession Charlotte was passed around like a dish to be sampled by the ranks of her mother’s clients. Even one night with the brothel’s novice would have brought Mrs Ward a healthy ladleful of cash, in addition to gifts of jewels and other bits of frippery. Enticing as these first proofs of her success were, her mother sought the ultimate prize for her daughter; an offer to be placed in ‘high keeping’.

  In the eighteenth century, all whores were not created equal. Some came into the profession by chance, others through a specific determination to scale the ladder of society. Those of the meretricious sisterhood ranged in rank from the destitute and diseased ‘bunter’ or ‘bulk-monger’ at the bottom, to the high-living, silk-and-jewel-bedecked ‘kept mistress’ (later more commonly referred to as a courtesan) at the top end. Like a luxury item, the company of an accomplished, charming and beautiful mistress might be borrowed for an exclusive price, but could be owned outright, at least in theory, if her lodgings and living expenses were covered by an admirer. If the admirer was very wealthy, a young woman fortunate enough to ‘enter into keeping’ could have access to any extravagance money could procure. In order to demonstrate his own financial prowess, fashion demanded that a gentleman of influence keep a mistress as lavish in her spending habits as he. Kept mistresses were given free rein with shop-keepers and dressmakers, at the gambling tables, taverns and theatres, placing all expenses on their lovers’ generous credit accounts. Much to the dismay of the era’s moralists, kept mistresses lived as well as the noble wives they mirrored, dressing in the same clothing, wearing the same jewellery and riding in the same private coaches. They lived at some of the most modish addresses, in lodgings decorated with gilded furniture and walls lined with damask. They kept entire households of servants, often attired in th
eir own unique livery. They threw lavish dinners and parties and offered an alternative existence to the more staid world inhabited by virtuous wives and daughters. It was for this life that Mrs Ward was equipping her daughter, not for one of street-trawling, or even dependency upon a bawd. Prostitution of this sort presented the only means by which a low-born, illegitimate daughter of a whore might raise herself from the chamber pot of society, as it was not entirely unknown for devoted keepers in time to become legal husbands.

  While Charlotte was to be the primary beneficiary of a life in high keeping, her mother stood to gain as well. Brothel convention dictated that in order to compensate a madam for parting with a woman who earned her house great repute among the debauched, a sufficient gratuity was required. Bawds preferred these parting gestures to be paid in banknotes – the higher the amount, the better. Even after the event, this would not be the last favour that Mrs Ward received from her daughter. Any devoted child was sure to provide for a parent from her lover’s unbounded pocket, making expensive gifts of clothing and food as well as paying the bills. Most ladies in keeping had entire retinues of needy family members and friends who followed closely behind, living off the scraps of her endowment. A bountiful lover would have permitted such expenses in moderation, but Charlotte’s uncomfortably close association with the notorious Mrs Ward would not have sat easily with her patrons. Instead, they would have been apt to watch her with a sceptical eye, wary of the tricks that mother may have instilled in daughter. The choice of a professional name, free from associations with the bawd who commandeered the brothel in Spring Garden, was necessary to ensure Charlotte’s success in the pleasure-seeking arena.