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

by Rubenhold, Hallie

  With a child on its way, Charlotte began to take stock of her and Dennis’s life together. The purchase of Clay Hill, which had been contemplated for some time, seemed most appropriate now, as the prospect before them was to shift. Just as 1769 proved to be a momentous year for Charlotte, for Dennis it would be equally so. Over the past several years, Dennis’s realm of interest and revenue generation had begun to move from the gaming tables of Piccadilly to the Newmarket and Epsom turf. His friendships among the noble black leg set, men such as the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Egremont and Lord Grosvenor, had begun to solidify, helped along no doubt by the warm welcome they received as frequent patrons of Charlotte’s establishment. But in order for Dennis to garner any genuine respect among these men of great influence, he had to prove that he was more than a lowly adventuring Irishman, ‘with the broadest and the most offensive brogue that his nation, perhaps ever produced’. He had to become a landowner, and serious about his success on the turf. Acquiring a title of some description had been easy enough. In the early 1760s, not long after his release from the Fleet, O’Kelly had bought himself a commission in the Westminster Regiment of the Middlesex Militia and eventually ‘rose, by regular gradations … to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel’, but something more substantial than a military sinecure was needed in this case. In the spring, Dennis was hatching a plan to remedy the situation: he had his eye on an impressive horse belonging to a boisterous Yorkshireman called William Wildman. The horse, known as Eclipse, outran everything on the course and succeeded in terrifying his owner. By the time O’Kelly had purchased a share of one leg, Wildman was becoming desperate to get the unpredictable beast out of his stables, and within a year Dennis had acquired the horse outright. It would be the single most profitable venture O’Kelly was ever to pursue.

  A new horse and a new child both required what only the open vistas of the countryside could provide, and what the estate of Clay Hill coud offer. The demesne lay near Banstead Downs at Epsom, roughly fifteen miles south of London, in the heart of untouched, pastoral Surrey. While not a particularly grand estate, Clay Hill had all of the accoutrements required by a status-minded property owner. A recently renovated manor house, impressive expanses of land and sizeable stables demonstrated to Dennis’s acquaintances that his fortune was on the increase. Most importantly, it was Clay Hill’s location that had made it an ideal acquisition. No more than a short jaunt from the Epsom races and just under a day’s ride from the capital, Clay Hill became a perfect venue for entertaining. Charlotte and Dennis (the O’Kellys as they were now called, although there is no evidence to suggest that they ever sanctified their union) had placed themselves at the geographical heart of the racing scene. After the extension of the stables and outbuildings, Dennis was determined to fill his estate with championship winners, runners that would attract so much attention that his distinguished associates would become his constant visitors. He began with Eclipse, and after a short and highly successful season decided to retire him as a stud. Horse breeders across the land transported their mares to his paddock in the hope of producing another animal with legs as dynamic as those of the chestnut-brown champion. It has been suggested that this side of Dennis’s venture alone earned him ‘at least £25,000’. By the end of the 1780s, Dennis and his brother Philip, who had been invited from Ireland to manage his storehouse of thoroughbreds, had possession of some of the most heroic horses of their age.

  But Clay Hill was intended for the rearing of more than just colts. Beyond the sulphuric air of London, the eighteenth-century English countryside offered clear water, hearty exercise and easy breathing, an ideal environment in which to raise a child. The life that Charlotte had known, born directly into the circus of carnal commerce, was not what she had intended for her infant. Undoubtedly, her greatest wish would be for her baby to be born a boy. A boy, irrespective of his parentage, would be able to slide easily into his position as a landed gentleman. He would inherit Clay Hill and a prize-winning stable block. No expense would be spared on his education; he would be raised as an heir to a fortune. It was said that at the time of her ‘retirement’ Charlotte’s business had earned her ‘upwards of twenty thousand pounds’, while Dennis had ‘kept pace’ with his own takings from the gaming tables and race courses. The couple’s total worth before the purchase of Clay Hill was thought to be ‘at least forty thousand pounds’, a sum that by today’s standards would render them millionaires. A son would reap the benefits of this in every way. All of her life, Charlotte had catered to men of this class. She had placed their interests and happiness at the centre of her existence for nothing more lasting than the glint of coins. If the baby she carried proved to be a son, he would walk among them, a gentleman blessed with respectability and influence; he would take her blood into the highest circles and merit respect rather than condemnation. At Clay Hill, their child could live its life away from the evils of the city and truth of its parentage. Guarded by servants, nursemaids and tutors, its early years would be coloured by innocence rather than depravity.

  The purchase of Clay Hill alone, however, did not bring about a solution to all of Charlotte’s problems. The life that Dennis pursued, moving within a circle of wealthy, profligates, was as likely to breed trouble as it was to open doors. Although united in their own eyes and regarded as husband and wife by all who were intimate with them, Charlotte and Dennis could never lead an ordinary existence. She would always bear the stain of whoredom, and he the mark of an untrustworthy Irish sharper. The conventions of society barred the O’Kellys from participating fully in public life and their background was apt to prejudice upstanding members of the community against them. Dennis may have counted among his friends some of the era’s most powerful nobleman and, towards the end of his life, even the Prince of Wales, but irrespective of his significant contribution to racing, he was prevented from becoming a member of the elite Jockey Club. On the track, his name, like that of Charlotte’s, was viewed with suspicion. Shortly after the purchase of Eclipse and the O’Kellys’ bid to enter the ranks of the landowning class, Dennis was to learn the limitations of his recently acquired status.

  As is generally the case with stories that involve the compromise of a person’s character, there are two versions of events. Dennis had been at the York races in August 1770 and, after a celebratory night spent ‘with a few friends at the coffee house at that innocent and amusing diversion called hazard, which engaged him till near three in the morning’, he returned to the room he had hired at a local inn. According to O’Kelly, when he opened the door to his chamber, there, lying deep within the embrace of sleep, was ‘a most enchanting female countenance’ whom ‘he conjectured and perhaps with probablity that … being enamoured of the vast sums he was publically known to have won at the meeting devised that method of securing by artifice and agreeable surprise what a more regular plan might have failed in effecting’. Having spent so much of his life around Charlotte and women of her caste, Dennis could only assume that any woman who had found her way into his bed was of a similar character. How mistaken he was. Miss Swinbourne was the young and chaste daughter of a local landowner with a number of especially influential friends. In the public apology they required him to publish in the newspapers, he admitted that he ‘commenced such violent hostilities as soon awoke the terrified, unknown object of his sensuality’, and that ‘In an instant she started up screaming with extreme vociferation’ which ‘soon alarmed the house’. But, contrary to the tattle of rumourmongers and irrespective of O’Kelly’s lustful attempts on her honour, he could confirm that no, he had not been successful in his approaches and that, thankfully, ‘… she remained untouched’. Naturally, Miss Swinbourne remembered it differently. Apparently Dennis, his brain addled by a night’s worth of alcohol, forced his way into her room mistaking it for his own. In any case, the injured party demanded that in addition to his apology he make a gift of £500 to the lady, ‘to be disposed of for such charitable purposes as she shall direct’. As might be imag
ined, the eighteenth-century gutter press loved this scandal. One publication printed, with an artful flourish of irony, a supposed letter from an offended Charlotte, lamenting O’Kelly’s infidelity and accusing him of ‘flinging away in a drunken frolic – in the ridiculous attempt of an amour – more money, aye, far more money than I have cleared in my honest industry for a month …’. Irrespective of their wealth or land, the O’Kellys could never make reputable society forget who they really were: a prostitute and a rogue.

  The problem with shouldering the burden of a disgraced character was that, without an honourable aristocratic lineage to mitigate the shortcomings of the parents, social stigmas were easily transferable to one’s offspring, especially female children. With the birth of her baby, Charlotte’s hopes would have been dashed. Rearing a boy would have presented no obstacles. Were his person to be compromised by the exposure to gaming and racing, to women divested of morals and clothing, it would not hinder his progress in the world; it might even advance it. Were a girl exposed to the same, it would be her ruin. On the occasion of the birth of Charlotte’s daughter, she must have been reminded of her mother’s own situation and how she, fresh from Elizabeth Ward’s womb, was already destined to lie under men for money. When Charlotte looked at her own daughter, whom she and Dennis named Mary Charlotte O’Kelly, she determined that this girl should not be sacrificed as she had been. While her mother had spent Charlotte’s childhood scheming how she might best utilise her daughter’s virginity for her own gain, Charlotte would defend her daughter’s honour with every ounce of her maternal instinct. This, however, by virtue of Charlotte’s reputation, would prove to be a difficult and painful course to follow.

  If Charlotte was committed to elevating her daughter above the tainted life bequeathed to her, she would have no other choice but to part with Mary. Respectable society would not receive into its ranks the daughter of the most notorious brothel-keeper in London as a virtuous lady. The incompatibility between the acceptable face of society and the depraved countenance of the sexual underworld was one which could not be easily traversed by women. Charlotte dwelt within the shadow world of the demi-monde, a place in which gentlemen might discreetly sojourn, but where their sisters, daughters, wives and mothers would never dare tread. Less than a century after Charlotte’s death, Lady Augusta Fane’s comments indicated that the situation had not changed, and that ‘these ladies of the half-world’ were still ‘only mentioned in private and in a whisper’. Furthermore, ‘… it was unheard of for any respectable dame to acknowledge that she knew such ladies … existed, and even the little squares and streets where they lived were completely out-of-bounds’. In an era where virginity among unmarried women of the wealthy classes was an essential possession, a mere hint of the reprehensible about a girl’s character might render her damaged goods in the eyes of companions and suitors. It was therefore crucial that Mary was seen to have been raised respectably and quietly. As an infant she could be cared for in her mother’s home, either on Great Marlborough Street or at Clay Hill, sequestered in the nursery under the auspices of the O’Kellys’ staff. But as maturity came upon her she would have to be passed into the hands of another, more fitting specimen of female virtue, capable of imparting morality and an appropriate example. This role fell to Dennis’s family.

  Upon the purchase of Clay Hill, it is noteworthy that a number of O’Kellys made an appearance in Dennis’s life. In 1769, his brother Philip, along with his wife Elizabeth and the youngest of their three children, Andrew, arrived at the Epsom estate. For several years, Dennis had been charitably subsidising his brother’s family, funding Andrew’s education and contributing to the marriage settlements of his two nieces. His elder niece, also called Mary, described as ‘a lady of great beauty and fortune’, had wed an established Dublin printer, Whitfield Harvey, in 1765. Philip’s younger daughter was to make an equally estimable match to Sterne Tighe, a wealthy property owner. With an air of respectability to preserve, when the Philip O’Kellys came to live on the Clay Hill estate it would have been with some reservation. It is unlikely that Elizabeth O’Kelly would have had much to do with the manor’s shadowy mistress. As Clay Hill was also the venue of numerous parties frequented by Charlotte’s nymphs, it is hardly surprising that the couple and their son took up residence in one of the estate’s outlying houses. From the perimeters of propriety they acted as the stewards of Dennis’s affairs. Philip engaged himself in the management of his brother’s stables, while his wife presided over the rearing of Charlotte’s child. Throughout her girlhood, Mary Charlotte was passed around quietly within the households of the O’Kelly family, frequently ferried from her Clay Hill nursery to the Dublin home of her cousin, Mrs Harvey. It was only when alone, and within the private boundaries of Clay Hill, that the child would have come to know her mother. Here, removed from the critical eye of society, Charlotte would have spent some of the only meaningful hours she was to enjoy with her daughter.

  As she began to blossom into womanhood, the dangers that Mary faced from any association with her mother would have increased. As Charlotte sought to raise her daughter respectably and to endow her with the hallmarks of gentility, the problem of appropriate schooling would have reared its head. Knowledge of Charlotte’s name and face among the upper ranks of society would have prevented her from placing Mary at one of the more elite schools for young ladies. The only truly safe haven for her daughter lay outside England, where she might enjoy the advantages of anonymity. Among wealthier parents, it was a common practice to place one’s daughters in convent schools across the Channel, in France and Belgium. Ironically, it was at such an establishment that the Abbess of King’s Place decided to educate her own child, entrusting her virtue to the care of a bona fide sisterhood. Perhaps swayed by the sentimentality of the occasion of her daughter’s departure for school, Charlotte took the risky decision of personally delivering Mary to the convent in Ostend. Believing that she was unlikely to encounter any of her London acquaintances on her journey, Charlotte, Mary and two of her King’s Place nuns set out for Margate in her carriage. Unfortunately, and much to her chagrin, she encountered William Hickey, his brother and a number of their associates, who had come to the coast for a few weeks of diversion. Hickey, when spotting her ‘smart landau with four post horses’ from his window at an inn, immediately set out to greet them. The pitfalls of Mary’s precarious situation became apparent during a meal they enjoyed together, after the gentlemen ‘made rather too free with the champagne’. Hickey’s brother, described as being ‘beastly drunk’, could not prevent himself from making overtures towards the twelve-year-old Miss O’Kelly, ‘at which the mother was greatly enraged’. Regardless of Charlotte’s anger, Joseph Hickey ‘continued his nonsense, swearing the young one’s bosom had already too much swell for a nun, and no canting hypocritical friar should have the fingering of those plump little globes’. Hickey’s brother then lunged at the girl, ‘clapping his hand upon Miss’s bosom’. Much to the male guests’ surprise, Charlotte was visibly horrified. Shaking with anger, she entreated that ‘he would cease to use such indecent language and action before her innocent child’. ‘Innocent’, echoed Joseph Hickey, ‘oh very innocent to be sure; but she knows a thing or two. However I’ll take her to bed with me and ascertain how matters are’. With that, a struggle ensued; Joseph Hickey attempted to pull the girl away from the table, while Charlotte, parting with her usually polite demeanour, immediately jumped from her chair and with a wrathful voice ‘bestowed some tolerably vulgar abuse upon us all’. Wresting Mary from the clutches of Hickey’s brother, who at that point had collapsed upon the floor, ‘she seized rudely hold of [her daughter] and made her exit’. It was unlikely to have been the first of such scenes, and sadly it served as a reminder as to why they were en route to Ostend in the first place.

  Although the birth of her daughter and the purchase of Clay Hill allowed Charlotte some respite from the duties of her profession, the great Abbess of King’s Place was not yet
in the position that she had hoped for. By the 1770s, Charlotte had begun to weary of her role, particularly as the houses and streets that surrounded her were beginning to fill up with competitors. Although only in her mid-forties, within her profession Charlotte was considered old and began to speak more earnestly about severing the ties that kept her tethered to her position. Her thoughts were increasingly in Epsom, where Clay Hill was becoming a venue for entertainment to rival her houses on King’s Place. Unfortunately, her rural residence was also giving her some anxiety. There were expenses involved in maintaining the lifestyle that Dennis had created for them. Their gatherings, although popular, were expensive events, and the stabling and training of horses still too young for racing (and therefore earning) had begun to wear holes in their pockets. To complicate matters, Dennis’s passion for the gaming tables continued to bring about as many wins as it did losses. Although Charlotte was growing impatient, if she were to make an exit from her lucrative career neither she nor Dennis would be in a position to pay their expenses. During the mid- to late 1770s, finances were stretched to their thinnest point. Every transaction that passed between a nun and her devotee assisted in maintaining that which the O’Kellys had built for themselves; every guinea earned by a ‘Polly Nimblewrist’ or banknote brought in for a night with ‘Nell Blossom’ was transubstantiated into horse feed or servants’ pay. For the first time since her imprisonment at the Fleet, Charlotte found herself in debt. In what must have been a mortifying incident, she was apprehended while in the company of Dennis’s nephew Andrew, then a young man in his late teens. The debt, which she had acknowledged on 1 August 1776, had been accrued as a business expense and amounted to a mere £50, not an exceptional sum for an establishment like Charlotte’s, which might make that in an evening. According to the haberdasher James Spilsbury, who accused the Abbess of bankrupting him, the bill had been for ‘making fitting adorning and trimming divers cloaths Garments and Masquerade dresses’, in which Charlotte dressed her nymphs. By the time that Dennis, who had been at York races, learned of the situation, Charlotte had already been thrown into the Marshalsea Prison. It was only upon his arrival that her bail was raised.