Kate Williams Read online

  Kelly girls were ornately styled and carefully groomed. Emma’s dress was a highly fashionable imitation of French court dress: stiff wide skirts of embroidery and brocade worn over heavy corsets, finished off with a heavy train. At Kelly’s, however, the bodices were cut much lower. Charlotte’s girls looked like impressive brocaded ships and had to turn sideways to pass through doors. Courtesans usually wore pink—peach, coral, sugar pink, and rose—which suited Emma’s creamy complexion perfectly. A tightly laced bodice opened over a piece of different-colored material called a stomacher, and a rigid skirt that resembled a jeweled lampshade was worn with a different colorful underskirt. Dresses were padded with false hips and bottoms made from cork, fake breasts were fashioned from porcelain or cloth, and sometimes even a fake stomach bulge was added. Magazines made ribald jokes about the cork rump, showing men finding that their lover was “corked.” The overall impression was of an impossibly curvy woman squeezed into a silk dress two sizes too small. Stays were pointed and boned down the front in a way that prevented the wearer from bending forward and made crossing the legs while sitting impossibly uncomfortable. Anyone wearing them always had to sit very upright, and moving from a sitting to a standing position was usually rather painful.

  Thick makeup was also very much in vogue, so much so that in 1770 the government passed a law allowing a man to divorce his wife if he could prove that she had fooled him into marrying her by using makeup to hide her ugly looks or even her true age. Courtesans were the most heavily painted women of all. A Kelly girl first applied a base of cold cream and then smoothed a thick layer of white lead paint over her face. Her eyebrows were shaved off and replaced by false ones made from mouse skin and darkened with black lead. Cheeks were ornamented with beauty spots cut from silk and glued on. She coated her mouth with a dilution of red plaster of Paris, painted blue cream on her eyelids, rouged her cheeks brightly, and sometimes whitened her teeth with lead or chalk. Despite all this ornamentation, nail polish was not used, and we would find ladies’ hands surprisingly bare, in contrast to their ornate makeup and hairstyles. Rose or orange water was used as a perfume. Under the light of flattering candles, sumptuously dressed, and loaded with jewelery, Emma was a beautiful piece of art.

  In the morning, the Kelly girls had to don plain clothes to scrub the rooms (somewhat difficult with their three-foot hairdos) and wash the linen, an interminable task in a brothel. While most hygienic Londoners changed their sheets three times a year, one attraction of Kelly’s was the cleanliness of both the sheets and the staff—one writer claimed that men went to prostitutes because they were cleaner than their wives. In the afternoon, Kelly girls retired to the parlor. No fire was lit until a client arrived, so they huddled with blankets over their opulent dresses, whiling away the hours gossiping and playing cards. Arguments broke out over men, clothes, and their positions in the hierarchy and sometimes descended into fights before the brothel bouncer or “bully man” broke it up. They all waited until the sound of a bell signaled the arrival of a gentleman.

  Some clients were nervous first-timers escorted by friends, or drunken men on a spending spree. Others were jaded regulars or dissolute debauchees. St. James was still buzzing about the recent death of Mr. Damer, the privileged only son of Lord Milton. Damer visited a bagnio and commanded twelve of the most handsome women of the town to be brought to him, with “all manner of delicacies.” He locked the door, “made them undress one another, and, when naked, requested them to amuse him with the most voluptuous attitudes. About an hour afterwards, he dismissed them, and then, drawing a pistol from his pocket, immediately put an end to his existence.“2

  In the receiving room, Kelly discussed prices and requirements, and the gentleman either took a girl immediately or a servant led him through to the salon. Candles were lit, the fire quickly kindled, and the girls stuffed their blankets and cards under the sofas and arranged themselves beguilingly. Buzzing with ideas borrowed from erotic novels such as John Cle-land’s Fanny Hill, the men settled down as the girls served them wine and fine meats and took turns dancing or singing. Arlington Street also entertained rich, independent women who came to watch the show. The evening usually began with civilized chatter, music, and flirting, but it could turn rowdy: one army captain and his men broke china and mirrors there seven nights in a row.

  Emma had a chance to refine her natural grace as she danced, sang, and perhaps played the guitar. “Lewd Posture,” a form of erotic dance, was the most popular form of entertainment. The performer wore a light dance dress or less and drew shawls across herself as she performed twirls, extended her leg behind her, and bent and stretched while others played a guitar or sang. Sometimes the women danced in twos or in groups. The employees also staged impromptu plays or recited speeches, often tales of seduced women that filled the pages of bawdy contemporary books such as Nocturnal Revels, which allowed them to pretend to be ruined girls remembering their seduction while kneeling to beg for forgiveness. Other girls took men upstairs, sometimes up to three a night. One contemporary book instructed, “You must not forget to use the natural accents of dying persons…. You must add to these ejaculations, aspirations, sighs, intermissions of words, and such like gallantries, whereby you may give your Mate to believe you are melted, dissolved and wholly consumed in pleasure, though Ladies of large business are generally no more moved by an embrace, than if they were made of Wood or Stone.“3 The women had to stay awake and, as one visitor noted, “sit up every Morning until Five o’clock to drink with any straggling Buck who may reel in the early Morning and bear with whatever behaviour these drunken Visitants are pleased to use.”

  Sometimes Emma had only to be a pleasant companion for dinner, drinks, and cards, talking of horses and hunting with the aristocrats, stocks and shares with the businessmen, and politics with everybody, as it looked increasingly likely that England would lose the American war of independence. When attempting to take refuge in a brothel from the English obsession with politics, Lord Tyrconnel was so infuriated by the zeal of the “nymphs” for politics that he “left them in a passion and the next day returned to France.“4 Those who ruled the country came to Arlington Street, and many claimed that St. James courtesans bartered their favors for votes.

  Kelly often paraded her staff around the Ranelagh and Vauxhall pleasure gardens and took them to the theater or opera. As one commentator noted, the girls were often “superbly clothed at public places; and even those of the most expensive kind.” Clients sometimes hired them simply as escorts for parties or days out. One rake, William Hickey, took three Kelly girls in a coach to Turnham Green, “to drink tea at the Pack Horse, and treat the misses to a swing.” On fine days, Emma perhaps visited the tea gardens at Sadler’s Wells and Highbury or concerts in Hanover Square.

  Emma was beginning to make friends, and she soon found a protector. Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, a spoiled young squire, was characterized by gossip columns as the brothel regular “Sir Harry Flagellum” and “The Sporting Lover.” Kelly listed him as Baron Harry Flagellum in a daybook for another of her brothels. He had become interested in Emma and asked to take her for long-term hire at his house, Uppark, to entertain him and his friends. He would have had to shell out a lot of cash to Kelly to cover Emma’s “debts” and the madam’s loss of earnings, and he had to agree to buy her clothes. Many girls, after being rented out, became kept mistresses. Kelly expected to be able to extract an even larger amount when Fetherstonhaugh demanded Emma’s ultimate release.

  Emma hoped Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh might be her escape. In her year or so at Kelly’s, Emma had found out about glamour and the kind of tricks to tempt a man’s passion, and she had also learned to rely on herself and to hide her emotional needs. Her hard, brilliant exterior hid a secret longing for a man to cherish her, who she could believe loved her for herself

  CHAPTER 12

  Life in the Country

  Emma found herself on long-term hire to a stag party set to last the entire summer. Uppar
k is a graceful Queen Anne-style country house, situated in a rich agricultural estate on the South Downs, the expanse of rolling hills near England’s southwest coast. Almost as soon as Sir Harry inherited Uppark, he turned his new home into a venue for wild drinking and hunting parties. Fifteen-year-old Miss Lyon was hired to entertain the host and his guests, serve at dinner, dance, and smile. She meant to work hard, confident that she would persuade Sir Harry to take her as his long-term mistress.

  Emma had her own suite of apartments in the house and was dispatched to a cottage in the grounds only when Sir Harry’s mother visited or respectable guests arrived.1 The Morning Post noted that “the little Bird of Paradise, whose amorous indiscretions have been so often held up to the public view in a light rather too serious to be entertaining, is about to produce fresh matter of envy, admiration, or ridicule… by a connection that does not seem even to be dreamed of by the most knowing”—perhaps his long-suffering mother.2 Charles Greville later accused Emma of behaving at Uppark with “giddiness and dissipation,” but, proud at being chosen out of all the other Kelly girls and anxious to prove herself worth the high price Sir Harry had paid, she was striving to be the life and soul of the party.

  Sir Harry, in the words of one contemporary, was “not a man to control any Inclination that he can gratify.” Twenty-six, tall, and athletic, he had a thin face, sandy hair, blue eyes, and a typically English complexion, made more florid by heavy drinking of wine and spirits. An only child, he soaked up attention from his friends as he had from his doting parents. The exercise book he used as a teenager is beautifully inscribed with signatures in large looping script, but the work is sporadic and soon tails off: he begins to write out some Anglo-Saxon history in French and manages to list all the counties of England, but gives up on a mathematics diagram and then discards the book altogether.3 Sir Harry was lazy, unreliable, and selfish, but he was tremendous fun, with a voracious appetite for late-night drinking, dogs, and gambling, and bags of charisma to charm the ladies. He expected to be forgiven his bad behavior—and he always was. While visiting Naples as part of his grand tour, he tempted the young Duke of Hamilton into a debauched spree. A genteel woman fell pregnant and Sir Harry fled, leaving Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to Naples and the duke’s distant relation, to pay off the woman with £300, a “loan” Sir Harry would never repay4 The duke’s disgruntled tutor described Sir Harry as “good natured, formal, effeminate, and obliging, without violent Passions or Ambition, a negative character who will rather be acted upon than act for himself.” Solely motivated by the love of an easy life, fluff-headed Sir Harry avoided anyone who might challenge him in any way.

  Despite being preoccupied chiefly with hunting and drinking, Sir Harry was MP for Portsmouth, a nearby town on the south coast, and the surrounding area. Like many of the younger MPs, he allied himself with the Whig set (against the Tory incumbents), a group who advocated wider representation in Parliament. He supported Charles James Fox, the de facto leader of the group. Most of the guests at Upparkwere Fox’s supporters. Despite his jowly, slovenly appearance and aversion to baths, the gadabout Fox was wildly charismatic, with the appeal of a young Bill Clinton, and commanded fervent loyalty from his followers. So spoiled as a child that he was allowed to paddle in bowls of cream, as an adult he was addicted to gambling and fun. Fox and his friends focused their hopes on the accession to the throne of the Prince of Wales, for he supported them and promised to further their goals when king.5 To his exhilarated supporters, Fox was the young, vibrant leader of a radical Whig faction, the harbinger of a new social order based on ambition and riches rather than birth and blood.

  In London, Emma could hardly see the sky for smog, but the Uppark windows surveyed the radiant South Downs. Deer, foxes, and rabbits thrived on the nine hundred acres of land, and thousands of sheep grazed the sloping grounds. The house recently suffered a severe fire, but it has been restored and it is still possible to appreciate how it would have appeared to Emma. Uppark was initially built by Ford Grey, Earl of Tankerville, notorious for seducing his young sister-in-law in 1682, a scandal exploited by Aphra Behn in Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. The libertine earl dedicated his later life to home improvements, demolishing the original Tudor structure of the house and rebuilding it in a Queen Anne style.

  Sir Harry’s grandfather became rich through trade and marriage to a merchant’s daughter, and he instructed his son, Matthew, to buy a grand house and a baronetcy. When Matthew bought Uppark from the Tankervilles in 1747, he used the money earned from factories and warehouses to create aristocratic splendor, then traveled to Italy to buy matching furniture. Sir Harry inherited Uppark on the death of his father in 1775, but he had just recently returned from Europe to enjoy his prize. Only three years before Emma arrived, Sir Harry’s mother found he had spent more than £3,000 in three months. Their stately home in Northumberland was sold the following year, possibly to fund Harry’s debts. Unrepentant, he continued to live beyond his means. In Europe, he bought beautiful antiques, artifacts, and paintings, including many of himself by the (expensive) artist Pompeo Batoni. Uppark gave young Miss Lyon her first experience of real Italian art.

  An establishment on such a scale was new to her. Behind the graceful fagade, armies of workers, controlled and disciplined by Sir Harry’s powerful steward and housekeeper, slaved to keep up appearances. More than fifteen footmen and upper servants waited on Sir Harry, and thirty or so below them did the dirtier work. Housemaids scrubbed floors, laid fires, cleaned rooms, and made the beds. Scullery maids scoured the hearth and washed the dishes, and cooks feathered and skinned the catches for dinner, while laundresses dealt with the piles of hunting outfits, sheets, and linens. In the lower rooms, valets scrubbed boots and specialist servants cleaned and prepared guns. At times, more than one hundred servants were employed in the house. Outside, grooms and stable hands tended to Sir Harry’s horses, and dog handlers cared for his hounds.

  Uppark had its own large and efficient dairy as well as a smithy, which Sir Harry and his friends called on frequently to shoe their horses, and it probably had a brewery, granary, carpenter’s, and candlemaker’s. An additional fifty men came in from the village to work in the grounds as herdsmen, shepherds, laborers, carters, and wheelwrights. Only ships and army platoons had so many employees. Their uniforms and livery alone cost thousands.6 Sir Harry’s return from Europe combined with the visits of his friends and their packs of servants trebled the expenses.

  Emma’s clothes added to Sir Harry’s costs, for on many days she would have been expected to change her outfit four times a day: a breakfast gown, a riding habit, a tea dress, and an evening dress. An employee of Sir Harry’s but able to command the servants like any visiting lady, Emma’s position in the household was ambiguous. Sir Harry probably hired her a lady’s maid, but his servants would have had ways of making their resentment known toward the impostor by “forgetting” to bring up her water or lay her fire.

  Emma spent over a year at Uppark. Every day followed a similar pattern. Sir Harry and his friends rose at around eight, two or three hours after their servants, and breakfasted together from nine. As they ate, servants polished saddles and bits, brushed, fed, and exercised the horses. Soon after breakfast, the party of perhaps up to thirty men, now changed into riding habits, accompanied by servants, grooms, and their horses, set out over the estate with packs of hunting dogs in search of some of the eight hundred deer that roamed free. Occasionally they charged off to other estates. At around noon, servants arrived bearing crockery and a fortifying meal of meat and wine. The housekeeper and her maids had to stay alert: if the hunting proved poor or if it rained heavily, Sir Harry and his friends would return to the house expecting a hearty lunch. Emma grew up associating the country with dirt, squalor, and poverty, but for Sir Harry it was a place of pure pleasure, created to fit his needs.

  Emma had never ridden before, but fear irritated Sir Harry and she made a determined effort to lear
n. She soon became an expert equestrienne, riding sidesaddle as all women did in the eighteenth century. When the hunt set off, she followed behind on a smaller lady’s mount (to hunt required specific male servants, and they would not work for a woman). Accompanying the hunt conferred high status; Sir Harry would allow his steward to dine with him on occasion but never to hunt. Emma delighted in wearing a fashionable riding habit and was eager to go out with the men because this made it clear to everyone that she was a guest and not a servant.

  When she did not accompany the hunting parties, Emma remained at Uppark to stroll through the grounds and prepare herself for the evening’s work. Her maid could brush and air her dresses, but she had to supervise the grudging laundresses as they washed her stockings, shifts, and dancing costumes. Then she had to put on her makeup in preparation for the long, boozy dinner to come. By early evening, Uppark’s graceful dining room was a riot of drunken men, rowdily using the chamber pots, which were out on display, and shouting for more wine. Stuffed with fine venison and beef, they gambled eagerly at cards and watched Sir Harry’s beautiful mistress dance and sing. In the candlelight, their eyes glinted with pleasure— and desire. Emma smiled gaily, but she was far less delighted to have them catch at her dress than she seemed. She was going through the motions, well aware that her job was to keep up the pretense that the guests were attending a wild society soiree, rather than a mundane gathering of hunting-obsessed men. Her life at Upparkwas one long theatrical performance.

  She was lucky to be out of London. In early June 1780, a protest about giving Catholics the vote blew up into the biggest riot the capital had ever seen. King’s Bench prison was burned down, the distilleries at Holborn burst into flames, and escaping gin turned the water supply alcoholic. For four nights, the London sky blazed as houses were torched. Four hundred fifty people died and swaths of the city lay in ruins. Sir Harry and his MP friends stayed well away and kept on hunting.