A courtesan’s little deceit for the sake of propriety

Harriette gives us another fabulous insight into Regency life this week, but before I share it, as usual, here’s the recap for anyone joining the blog today, if you’ve already read it as always, 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.

After Harriette wrote the letter I spoke about last week, she then tells us how the post arrived in the village. This is one thing that has always been a mystery to me when I’ve researched it, but here, Harriette says…

‘Two days after I had dispatched this letter, the little postwoman (for we had no postman), a good old soul, trotted… down the hill with a lanthorn (I think she means lantern); the mail used to come into Charmouth at ten o’clock at night, and Eliza Edmond and I had watched this poor creature, every night, during almost a fortnight, from my little window, as the light of her lamp appeared for an instant, and was lost again, while she stopped to deliver her letters. At last she stopped at our door, and presented two heavy packages for Mrs Wilson.’

Eliza’s mother rushed upstairs with Harriette’s mail, and then Eliza revealed Harriette’s deceit, last week we knew Harriette had not admitted she was a courtesan but now her outright lie is revealed when Eliza said, ‘One of these is a foreign letter, and, no doubt, from your husband.’

Harriette admits she ‘answered in the affirmative’, and then her new friend Eliza drifted from the room.

It was from Lord Worcester, who had already been involved in one battle, ‘He had prayed for me, as to his tutelar saint, kissed my chain, which he wore about his neck, and his party had been successful.’ He wrote the details of the battle to her and said he’d already learned Spanish, and promised eternal love and fidelity.

Then she turned her attention to the second letter. That was from Mr Meyler, the young man who had previously condemned her but was now trying to seduce her away from Lord Worcester. He said he’d sought to forget her, as there was little chance of them meeting while she was in the country, but then he said there was no question of that, and as he was unwell, he might travel down to Devon.

Harriette describes his letters as unaffected, and very different to the gushing she’d received from Lord Worcester for several years. Mr Meyler ‘was anything rather than romantic: his manner and voice were particularly pleasing at all times; but the former had, generally, something of melancholy, till he had drank a few bottles of claret, though not all noisy, ungentlemanlike, he appeared all animation and happiness.’

Harriette immediately wrote back to Mr Meyler – not to Lord Worcester.

‘I can candidly confess that I am glad you have not forgotten me; and I wish you happy, with all my heart and soul; but, believe me, I cannot prove myself more desirous of being liked and esteemed by you, than I have and shall continue to do.

As I keep faith with Worcester, so hereafter will you be inclined to trust me, if unexpected circumstances should oblige me to separate from him…’

She goes on to tell Meyler, if he should come to Devon, she would leave, and she could not imagine him there with her anyway, as she walked to church on a Sunday wearing her straw bonnet, and helping the elderly and the poor – Pushing him away, but encouraging him not to go too far away, just in case she would like to call him back again, keeping a bird in the bush as it were 😉

She does also ask him if he still sees Lord Worcester’s mother, and speaks of Lord Worcester’s family, which makes me wonder, if had he not been a friend of the Beauforts, she might actually have been tempted to see him regardless.

Perhaps at this point she still had some hope of being Lord Worcester’s future duchess, but equally knew the odds were long and so just in case she lost him, wished to keep another pretty young man on her tether. Good old Harriette.

More next week…

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance 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

Marriage at Gretna Green

I’m putting another comma in Harriette’s story today, and sharing something else I discovered recently.

Last month I travelled up to Gretna Green to do a little research. I’d been trying to find out what actually happened when couples arrived there for ages, and I’d found nothing valuable on the internet so I thought, right, get in the car and go there, and they’ll be something around there I’m sure. Oh, I can’t tell you how right I was. We discovered this fabulous little museum set up in an old ironmonger’s forge, one of the places where marriage ceremonies used to take place.

I learned so much I didn’t know.

Prior to the 12^th Century, a man could just take a woman to his home and call it marriage. But the church, being more powerful than kings at the time, wanted some control over who married who, and so they began introducing formal religious ceremonies.

In 1563, the Church then became even more defiant over its role in marriage, and said that marriages would only be deemed valid if they were recognised by the Church. But even so Civil Law still stated that if a man and woman made a declaration before two witnesses, that was enough.

So there was a divide then, in places where the Church had no sway, people could be deemed officially married under civil law, on ships for instance. But what I didn’t know was about the industry which developed in London for quick marriages, in the Fleet Prison.

Apparently by the 1700’s jailed priests, who did not care about any reprisal from the church, had expanded their illicit marriage business from the prison chapel to sixty ‘Fleet marriage rooms’ outside the jail. They’d set themselves up there to perform hurried weddings, and people would elope and run to the Fleet Prison. Men even went out touting for business to encourage couples in off the street. And there was no care about who they married, numerous bigamous marriages took place, and marriage certificates might be backdated, to avoid having an illegitimate child. Or marriages, as they were performed anytime of the day or night, might be a drunken couple, who’d regret it in the morning.

So in 1754, Hardwicke’s Marriage Act was voted in by the House of Lords, whose daughters were often caught out by the seduction of penniless men, and when they only had to persuade the woman to go as far as the Fleet, their angry family didn’t have much chance to catch them up before the deed was done.

The Act introduced three distinct changes to marriage law. Couples had to marry in a church, and secondly, they had to be 21 to marry without the written consent of their parents, and lastly they had to give notice of their marriage, so bans would be read in parishes, to ensure both couples were eligible for marriage.

In a rush to beat the deadline for the new law 217 marriages took place in and around the Fleet Prison on 25^th March 1754. But the law only changed in England, and once it had, so Gretna Green came into its own. As Gretna was the first place people reached when they came over the eastern Scottish border, this was the place couples wishing to marry without parental consent started rushing up to. Scottish marriages were recognised in England, and Scottish law still allowed anyone over sixteen to marry, just with a statement before witnesses.

Therefore anyone could set themselves up as the person to host marriages, and many people did in Gretna, to satisfy demand. Including the ironmonger, at the forge I went to. The museum had records of thousands of marriages, and details of the history of some of those who undertook marriages there. And here’s a picture of the anvil the ironmonger used.

The ironmonger ‘the anvil priest’ is believed to be the most remembered because of the symbolism of metal being forged together, as two people might be in marriage, and a mystical element grew up around this. There were letters there, written to the ironmonger of Gretna, mostly by women, asking for good luck in winning the man they chose, or advice, or even asking him to help plot their elopement.

An artist eloped with the daughter of a friend he’d been staying with in Carlisle, in the early 1800s. And later he painted pictures of his experience, they were the most telling thing for me. There was an image of their hurried coach ride. Then one of the couple arriving at the ironmonger’s forge, standing on a mud track outside as he walked out with his leather apron on, wiping his hands. They merely stood before the man in the squat old building as they made their declaration and he declared them forged together in marriage, and then banged his anvil to declare it. There weren’t a lot of houses around the forge, and no one else there, just the ironmonger and his family. When her father arrived the couple are merely walking back and the ironmonger is turning his back and leaving the couple to it.

So that’s the experience of a couple visiting Gretna Green, until in 1856, when the cooling off Act was introduced and Scottish marriages only became recognised in England when one of the marriage parties had been born in Scotland, or had resided there for 21 days. And that was the end of the booming marriage trade in Gretna Green…

More of Harriette’s story at the weekend.

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