The amazing link between Jane Austen and the real courtesan who inspired ~ The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, Jane Lark’s best selling historical novel

Last week I began sharing the true stories which Harriette Wilson, the real 19th century courtesan, left out of her memoirs, and this week’s truth is truly amazing. I was really surprised when I discovered it.

I am going to carry on my tradition of a little background though 😉 so below is the background I posted last week, if you read it last week, skip to the text marked with bold type.

If you have been following my blog for a little while, you will know that Harriette Wilson, the real Regency courtesan who published her memoirs in 1825 as a kiss and tell series, inspired the first novel in the Marlow Intrigues series, The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, I have been sharing the version of her life she told in her memoirs here for about a year, but over that year so many times people have told me – but it’s known she lied in them.

Well recently, I discovered the work of someone who has researched Harriette’s real life, and so I can now share with you some of the things she did not include.

As to whether or not she lied, well I will also cover that… But… I will say now, I have used her memoirs as a wealth of insight into the Regency world, her writing is like looking in through a window to see how life was for someone who lived then, and yes, you can definitely spot the scenes where there is some embellishment, either because she was writing for an audience, or because she wished to hurt someone who had hurt her… But overall, many of her scenes are from truth. Plenty more of this in the next couple of weeks, including some insights which I have found really upsetting.

I left Harriette last week as she ran away from home with her first gentleman lover (or maybe not her first, that we don’t know for sure, but definitely the first man she agreed to become the recognized mistress of). Her memoirs began at the point she was living with the man she ran away with in Brighton, but that was not where he took her to first. What she doesn’t mention at all in her memoirs is where her relationship with Lord Craven began…

So where did Harriette Wilson start her first affair and begin to learn the artistry of a courtesan…? At Ashdown House.

Ashdown House is an isolated hunting lodge, up on the top of the Wiltshire downs, it sits in acres of grounds, in the hollow of a hill, with amazing views. It was built as a love nest by the 1st Earl of Craven, who received his earldom for his funding and loyal support of the Stuart family, even during their exile. But Lord Craven had a reason for his devotion, he was in love with the Queen of Bohemia, known as the Winter Queen, and when her nephew allowed her to return to England, Lord Craven supported her and kept her at his home in London. Ashdown was to be his gift to her… Their love nest in the country… However she died before it was completed. I shared their story a while ago, here, with no idea Ashdwon had any link to Harriette Wilson, or Jane Austen…

When the Queen of Bohemia died, after Ashdown was completed, it became a lordly playground, and instead of a love nest, a den of iniquity. King Charles II was entertained there often, among his group of courtiers who, like the Lord Craven of that time, all enjoyed women and wine, there is a huge wine cellar, which was filled for there hunting visits, and women would be brought in, or mistresses brought with them. There are many accounts of the debauchery of King Charles II’s court in Samuel Pepy’s diaries.

So how do we know Harriette was there – at this stately house with its history of love and sin. Well here is another stunning link… Jane Austen wrote about Harriette in a letter… How bizarre is that?!

William Craven, the 7th Baron, and 1st Earl of the second creation was oddly linked to Jane Austen… Tom Fowle was Jane Austen’s sister’s, Cassandra’s, fiancé, and Lord Craven, the Earl, was Tom Fowle’s uncle and patron, he’d funded Tom’s education. Had Tom lived to marry Cassandra, he would have likely been given a job on one of Lord Craven’s estates. Tom’s father had been appointed Reverend on an estate having married Lord Craven’s sister. Cassandra would have obviously lived with Tom there. Tom died of yellow fever serving as a Chaplin to Lord Craven’s private regiment. So like other lesser sons and high society family members who had no actual status or income themselves – just like Jane Austen’s father, and his own – Tom would have probably taken on a parish on one of Lord Craven’s estates. Lord Craven had several.

Ashdown was one of his smaller, minor properties. The perfect place to tuck away a mistress, who at that time, was considered boyish, and little more than a child.

So, when Jane Austen heard rumours of Lord Craven’s extremely young new mistress, she included the news in a letter to her sister. Jane’s letter was dated, Thursday, January, 8th, 1801, “Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, & probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week. – She found his manners very pleasing indeed . – The little flaw of having a Mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park, seems to be the only unpleasing circumstances about him.” Jane Austen was speaking of Harriette Wilson. Then Harriette was just fifteen years of age.

Strangely, just to add to all the bizarre links in this, I grew up about seven miles from Ashdown House, in a village below the downs, looking up from my bedroom window at the White Horse on a hill Harriette was known to have walked to in her time at Ashdown. I used sit on the windowsill when I was really young, looking up at the Horse, daydreaming all sorts of nonsense. The teacher who told me I would write a novel when I was eight, lived in a bungalow opposite that house. So weird… Anyway, I have spent hours of my young life up on the hills where Harriette began her career as a courtesan, how odd then to discover this link to Harreitte, especially as Harriette’s Memoirs have been so influential in the development of The Illicit Love of a Courtesan and all of the Marlow Intrigues series, which have brought me writing success.

I’ve always loved the hills and the countryside, my soul needs it. When I have lived in towns, I’ve walked miles, caught buses and caught ferries to get out into the countryside for days here and there. I am like Jane Austen… Who loved country life and hated her years in Bath…

Ashdown House from the air, the Uffington, White Horse is on a hill about 3 miles to the right

Harriette, though, how would she have felt…? We can only imagine. But her memoirs frequently say how bored she was whenever she became isolated or lived away from London, or Brighton, or somewhere with many forms of entertainment and a lot of people. But she had escaped a house full of noisy siblings at the time, been freed from a life of labour and then deposited in a huge house, filled with luxuries. I am sure at first she must have felt like crowing – Look at me! She’d beaten her sisters. She was the mistress of an Earl, and living in a huge house, with acres of grounds to wander about… and she had many servants to wait on her, and order about… as if she was the lady of the house. But… She was the mistress of an old man, who wore a night-cap to bed – her memoirs told us she was unimpressed with that – and her memoirs also indicate he treated her like a child. He must have talked down to her, she tells us he drew her pictures nightly of the cocoa trees on the shores of the countries he’d visited in his years in the navy, telling her stories of his successes in battles at sea.

Everything implies Harriette did not find him physically attractive at all, the role she had taken on must have been a duty, she cannot have enjoyed it, and she must have been bored stiff, it is no wonder then that at the beginning of her memoirs, she talks more about the other men who called on her while she lived with Lord Craven in Brighton. I am sure there were no love scenes of the sort I write about in The Illicit Love of a Courtesan.

When she left Lord Craven, it was to take up with a man who gave her no money at all, and had nothing to offer her financially, not even a home to put her up in, she had to lodge with her old nurse when she was Frederick Lamb’s mistress, and he came to visit her there, and gave her no income either. But she was back in London, and the one thing he could offer was influential friends, he was the second son of an Earl, poor, but very well-connected, and his network of friends presented possibilities…

Harriette said she was extremely glad to leave Lord Craven and his cocoa trees behind…

Next week – were the stories she did tell in her memoirs true, or not?

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance stories, and the author of a No.1 bestselling Historical Romance novel in America, ‘The Illicit Love of a Courtesan’.

Look at the index to discover all the true stories Jane has discovered during research, and to find links to excerpts and a FREE novella ~ A Lord’s Desperate Love

Click here to find out more about Jane’s books, and see Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

Lord Worcester’ s youthful adoration of a courtesan

In recent weeks I’ve been telling you about Harriette’s affair with a young heir to a dukedom, and my belief that she hoped to gain a happy ending from the relationship, in the form of a ring on her finger and financial security for the rest of her life. She frequently declares in her memoirs, that Lord Worcester constantly called her his wife, as well as treating her like his wife… But before I continue, as usual, here’s a quick recap for anyone joining this series of posts today. If you’ve read it before then skip to the end of the italics.

In 1825 Harriette Wilson, a courtesan, published a series of stories as her memoirs in a British broad sheet paper. The Regency gentleman’s clubs were a buzz, waiting to see the next names mentioned each week. While barriers had to be set up outside the shop of her publisher, Stockdale, to hold back the disapproving mob.

Harriette was born Harriette Debochet, she chose the name Harriette Wilson as her professional name, in the same way Emma Hart, who I’ve blogged about previously, had changed her name. Unlike Emma, it isn’t known why or when Harriette changed her name.

She was one of nine surviving children. Her father was a watchmaker and her mother a stocking repairer, and both were believed to be from illegitimate origin.

Three of Harriette’s sisters also became courtesans. Amy, Fanny and Sophia (who I have written about before). So the tales I am about to begin in my blogs will include some elements from their lives too.

For a start you’ll need to understand the world of the 19^th Century Courtesan. It was all about show and not just about sex. The idle rich of the upper class aspired to spending time in the company of courtesans, it was fashionable, the thing to do.

You were envied if you were linked to one of the most popular courtesans or you discovered a new unknown beauty to be admired by others.

Courtesans were also part of the competitive nature of the regency period too, gambling was a large element of the life of the idle rich and courtesans were won and lost and bartered and fought for.

So courtesans obviously aspired to be one of the most popular, and to achieve it they learnt how to play music, read widely, so they could debate, and tried to shine in personality too. They wanted to be a favoured ’original’.

The eccentric and outspoken was admired by gentlemen who liked to consort with boxers and jockeys, and coachmen, so courtesans did not aim for placid but were quite happy to insult and mock men who courted them, and demand money for any small favour.

The Marquis of Wiltshire. 7th Duke of Beaufort. in later life

Harriette tells us numerous stories of Lord Worcester’s devotion through the period of their three-year engagement (which is what she called any contractual relationship she entered into). Some examples are that he would get out of bed and make their toast for breakfast himself, in the morning, rather than let a footman touch the food she was to eat; that he insisted on lacing her corset himself so that no maid hurt her by pulling it too harshly; that he took over the ordering of the house (usually a woman’s duty) including meeting with the housekeeper to agree dinner menu’s because Harriette once said she preferred not to know what she was going to eat; that he went deathly pale when she had to have a back tooth pulled and then wore it about his neck for a long while. He even refused to attend any gatherings of the gentry locally, because Harriette, of course, would not have been received, so if she could not go, then he would not go. His view was, ‘having bound myself to you for my life, for better or for worse, and with my eyes open, I feel that we two make but one… and I hate to go to any place, where you may not accompany me.’

There was one night though, when Lord Worcester’s uncle, who lived locally, had invited Lord Worcester to attend a ball in honour of his birthday, and Lord Worcester refused to go. But Harriette says she urged him to attend. Apparently Worcester’s uncle had been threatening to tell Worcester’s father about Harriette, as he was concerned they really were married. So to prevent the interference of Worcester’s father, the Duke of Beaufort, Harriette encourages the young lord to go.

He says he cannot go because he always serves her dinner himself and if he goes who will serve her? Harriette declares that he can serve her before he leaves then. But when they carry out this plan, after dinner, he was in no mood to leave her, ‘why am I to be dressed up, there, while the person for whom alone I exist, or wish to live an hour, is left in solitude… I will not go, let the consequence be what it may.’

When his angry uncle then sent a servant to fetch Worcester, Lord Worcester ran upstairs, put a nightcap on and shouted out the window that he was too ill to go, and in bed, so he did not wish to be disturbed.

One other time though, when the invitation came from the Prince Regent, who was visiting Brighton, and at the time commanded Lord Worcester’s regiment, the 10^th Hussars, Lord Worcester could not then refuse.

Harriette says, this was the first time he did leave her alone. But again he served her dinner first, then sighed for a long while before he did go, and when he returned claimed that although the music was beautiful, because Harriette could not listen to it, he’d found somewhere to hide and stuff his ears, so he could not hear it, because she could not. But the visit earned him a nightly invitation from the Prince Regent. So Lord Worcester declared that he would learn to limp, and then claim he could not attend the Prince because he was terribly lame. He spent the rest of the night then practicing his limp.

I don’t think Harriette could have asked for any greater devotion, but even then she does not speak of love he never won that from her, she speaks of gratitude, she says in response to all this attention, ‘my gratitude, which he yet believes in, because I proved it, not only in words but by all actions….’ – I can only imagine 🙂

Their story isn’t over by a long way though, more next week…

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

See the side bar for details of Jane’s books, and Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark