Pale Ruby and Blossom-Coloured Cheeks: April 1814 Fashion

Spring has finally sprung in my nook of the world, and these gorgeously flushed cheeks and breezy dresses are exactly what the doctor has ordered. From Ackermann’s Repository:

“PROMENADE DRESS A fine cambric round robe, with high bodice and long sleeves, not so full as of late; embroidered stomacher front and high collar, trimmed with muslin or lace; Tuscan border of needle-work the feet.  A Cossack mantle of pale ruby, or blossom-coloured velvet lined with white sarsnet and trimmed entirely round with a broad skin of light sable, ermine, seal, or the American squirrel; a short tippet of the same, the mantle confined at the throat with a rich correspondent silk cord and tassels, very long. A mountain hat of velvet, the colour of the mantle, finished round the verge with a narrow vandyke trimming; a small flower placed in the hair beneath, on the left side.  Half boots colour of the mantle and glove of primrose kid or pale tan.”  

“MORNING DRESS A petticoat and bodice of fine jaconot muslin, finished round the bottom in vandykes and small buttons.  The Rochelle spencer composed of the same material, appliqued with footing lace down the sleeve, and trimmed at each edge with a narrow, but full border of muslin.  Double fan frill of muslin round the neck, very full, continuing round the bottom of the waist, where it is gathered on a beading  of needle-work.  Bourdeaux mob cap, composed of lace, with treble full borders, narrowed under the chin.  A small flower placed backward, on the left side.  Hair much divided in front, and in full waved curls on each side.  Necklace of twisted gold and pearl, with pendant cross in the centre.  Spring Greek kid slippers; and gloves of the same.”

Ackermann’s Repository, April 1814

A Carriage to Match Milady’s Dress: Ethereal blue in 1818-1819

“Bridal morning robe of fine cambric, richly embroidered, and trimmed with puckered muslin round the border and down the front, which folds over á la Sultan.  Elizabeth spenser and bonnet of etherial blue; the spenser elegantly ornamented in a novel style with white satin, &c.  The bonnet of blue satin and fine net, crowned with a superb bouquet of full blown white roses; a Brussels lace cornertte is worn with this elegant bonnet.  Cachemire shawl drape, with a rich variegated border: triple ruff of broad Brussels lace.  Half-boots of etherial blue kid, the upper part of fine cachemire coloured cloth.” From Ackermann’s Repository, May 1818

“Patent moveable axles for four wheeled carriages.” From Ackermann’s Repository, March 1819

Review of ‘The Flower of Empire’

To call the Flower of Empire an exhaustive work on “how it [the Amazonian water lily] touched nearly every aspect of Victorian life, art, and culture,” is not an understatement.  It is a 328 page promise.

And this promise is a good thing, mostly.  Beyond writing an elegant account, Tatiana Holway ties a thread round a diverse group of characters and events surrounding the Amazonian water lily, from eventual extraction in the wild to arduous bloom in captivity. For those who enjoy the historical intricacies of progress, have a soft spot for botany and adventure, and are intrigued with personality quirks of say, a bachelor duke, a taciturn German plant hunter, and an ingenuous head gardener, this is a welcomed book in the enthusiast’s library.

The story begins during an 1837 geographical expedition into British Guiana when Schomburgk, the German plant hunter, discovers a monstrous lily in the Berbice River.  His plan?  Name the discovery in Queen Victoria’s honor and have it sent back to England, but what follows is extreme plant bureaucracy.  The water lily was not just a botanical specimen, but emblematic of a national passion for imperialism.   It caused bitter fights among scientists, contributed to England’s revival as a public garden nation, and influenced the building of the Crystal Palace.  All on account of a flower?  Well, sort of.

The Flower of Empire focuses on the water lily in the same manner the tulip mania of 1637 focused on tulips: it’s the backdrop for character study.   The mad scurry to get the water lily to germinate and flower in England delves into the hearts involved, and sparks the public’s hunger for virgin discoveries.  Ultimately, The Flower of Empire presents a cultural climate of obsession, power, and triumph.  It’s not for the impatient or for those who dislike process, but for the most part Holway balances the scholarly with flashes of pop entertainment, offering character idiosyncrasies when the wait for the water lily feels drawn out.

The Flower of Empire Releases Today

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An 18th Century Perspective on Elizabeth Bennet

In anticipation of an upcoming review I’ve been reading Susannah Fullerton’s Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece.  I’ll be posting the full review on December 16^th, Jane Austen’s 237^th birthday, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you an 18^th century perspective that shows just how incredible the character of Elizabeth Bennet truly was.

Unproven portrait of Jane Austen at Bath, age 15 | Johann Zofanny

Jane Austen started writing Pride and Prejudice in October 1796 at the age of twenty.  She would no doubt have been exposed to the popular publications of the period, including the ever so entertaining Lady’s Magazine: or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex.  A few years prior to Austen putting pen to paper for what was then called First Impressions, The Lady’s Magazine published in their 1791 edition “A Letter from a Father to his Daughter on Relative Duties,” part of which is excerpted below.

“Of all the weaknesses the younger part of your sex are most prone to are pride and affectation, and there are none scarce which render more contemptible in the eyes of the thinking and sensible part mankind; therefore as you value the esteem of your friends, crush them in the bud.  The ingenious Mr Addison says “Pride in a woman destroys all symmetry and grace; and affectation is a more terrible enemy to a fine face than the small pox.  

And yet there is no passion so universal or steals into the heart more imperceptibly than pride; at the same time, there is not a single view of human nature, under its present condition, which is not sufficient to extinguish in us all the secret seeds of pride.  As nothing appears more odious and disgusting than pride and affectation, to nothing is more amiable in your sex than humility; it adds a beauty to every feature and a luster to all your action.”*

These epistolary tutelages served as continual nudges against youthful waywardness, advising sons on achievement in politics and education, and daughters on obedience and humility.  Based on works they produced, writers like the young Jane Austen must have felt the thorn in these infuriatingly narrow instructions at one time or another.

From ‘Pride and Prejudice’ film showing Jane and Elizabeth | 2005

Elizabeth Bennet was a character written from the breed of proud, independently-minded women who were mightily disapproved of by the majority of gentlemen (and a whole lot of gentlewomen) during the 18^th century. She is, in many ways, diametrically opposed to the ideal gentlewoman and her genius, of course, is in being appealing nevertheless.  As Fullerton says, “She was a highly unconventional, new sort of heroine, and it is easy for modern readers to underestimate just how astonishing she was for readers of the time.”  What’s interesting is that Austen made Elizabeth THE favorite daughter of her father and despite all obstacles of temperament, she is our heroine.  As Fullerton points out, according to the values of the time Jane Bennet would’ve been the appropriate choice.  I think we can all say thank goodness she wasn’t Austen’s choice, as today only Elizabeth would be ours.

*Find the full letter on page 42 here

Borovikovsky’s Blue Sashed Ladies

It’s been ages since the first Lady Brawlers of Sarah Siddons v. Anonymous Lady v. Mary Robinson and I think it’s about time we’ve another taste of dueling fashionistas.  This offering, I admit, relies on simplicity and is not so much a copied look as it is composed of basic fashion staples.  The ladies each don a white gown, two of muslin or lawn, and one of satin.  The sashes range from sky blue to royal blue, and the similarities might be blamed on Borovikovky, who we can assume favored the look and maybe even conceived of it before he acquired his sitters.  I do have a surprise for you, however, with the entry of a young sitter by Gainsborough.  This sitter, in addition to the necessary white gown and blue sash, has added a black hat and red shoes to the ensemble.

Fashionista #1 – Docile Young Lady with Pearl Arm Band

Portrait of Elena Aleksandrovna Naryshkina – Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1799)

Fashionista # 2 Precocious Young Lady  with Golden Bracelet

Portrait of Marie Ivanovna Lopukhina – Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1797)

   Fashionista # 3 Young Mother with Brocaded Shawl

Portrait of E.B. Rodzianko – Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky (1821)

Fashionista #4 Young Master with Saucy Red Shoes

Master John Heathcote – Thomas Gainsborough (1771/1772)

Time to vote ladies and gents.  Who wore it best?

Artful Deceit: Italian Picture Dealers

Italian Picture Dealers by Thomas Rowlandson (1812)
Lithograph, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

The stereotype of the Italian picture dealer lasted from before Rowlandson’s time to well after.  Contemporaries warned that those with more beauty than brains had best beware: “The simple fact [is] that every third man in Italy is a picture dealer, and that no picture dealer is supposed to find any impediment to his fortune in his conscience . . . ” The Atheneum, Volume 18 (1826)

Copies were in wide circulation and it wasn’t always an expensive suit that was preyed upon.  Enthusiasm was dangerous as well:

“Instances have been known of English connoisseurs, in their anxiety to secure a genuine picture, paying an enormous sum to the head of a religious community, whose chief treasure it has been considered; and to make assurance doubly sure, they have, at his reverence’s instigation, affixed their seals at the back of the picture. On its coming into their possession, they find the seal untouched, and take no small credit to themselves for having secured to their country another invaluable Rafaelle or Corregio. The fact is, that an admirably executed copy was fitted with great nicety into the back of the original picture, and on this the reverend father got his generous customer carefully to affix his seal. The original picture in front was then removed, and the connoisseur carries the copy into his own country for a genuine production!” New Monthly Magazine, 1841

A Woman with a Parasol

Come summer I am absurdly jealous of ladies and their parasols.  What modern accessory marries charm and practicality half so well?  I have not discovered it, though I do have a tendency to reach for my collection of floppy hats once the sun rides high.  Sunscreen and my face are frenemies with a capital F, you see, and while I hope to maintain the Nicole Kidman aesthetic of limiting direct exposure whenever possible, brims that stretch to my shoulders get rather ridiculous looks, not to mention they are impossible to keep on one’s head in the wind.

Thus the want of a modernized parasol.

Vertumnus and Pomona – Jean Ranc (1710-1720)

A Bit of Sunshade History

Once an object of royal privilege, the parasol had its origins in the ancient east, migrating from China to Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.  It eventually spread to the arid climes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, but after the collapse of the Roman Empire it fell out of favor with the public until the Italian renaissance.  In the centuries’ gap in between, the parasol shaded the holy heads of popes, bishops, and doges from the eighth to the 16^th centuries.  Its use was largely ceremonial.

Northern(ish) Europe was late to the parasol party.  The French style mavens adopted it around the 17^th century, but their early parasols were a far cry from the silk sunshades of Versailles.  When the first engravings of the parasol appeared in France in the 1620s, the parasol was still reserved for the wealthy.  These iterations, though evolved from the first creation, were unwieldy and required the assistance of a brawny servant who could manage its weight.

Measurements from the 1650s tell of parasols weighing 1600 grams or about three and a half pounds—three and a quarter pounds too heavy for a gentle lady to prop on her shoulder or hold over her head.  Stripping the parasol to its bones would have rendered whalebones at lengths of 80 centimeters that were held together by a copper ring; a handle of solid oak; and a choice of heavy fabrics made of oilcloth, barracan, or grogram.  In cheaper parasols, one might have used straw.

Around 1688 ladies parasols matured into an elegant accessory used much like a fan.  An engraving from Nicolas Arnault shows “…the appearance of a mushroom, well developed and slightly flattened at its borders, the red velvet which covers it is divided into ribs or rays, by light girdles of gold, and the handle, very curiously worked, is like that of a distaff, with swellings and grooves executed by the turner.  Altogether, this coquette’s Sunshade is very graceful, and of great richness.”

Luxury in sunshades became the thing.  Silk fringes and feather plumes, handles of Indian bamboos and changing silks, replaced dull practicality and fashionable ladies ran after their whims.  By the middle of the 18^th century, the Parisians preferred taffety to all other fabrics and preferred the convenience of picking up a parasol along the way over the danger of going without.  In 1769 parasols were so trendy that a small business sprang up on the Pont Neuf where, at the cost of two farthings, those crossing the bridge could rent a parasol and return it on the other side.  The French, one must assume, did not walk fast.

A couple under a parasol in a garden - Jean-Baptiste Mallet (1791-1793)

England’s affair with the parasol was somewhat less enthusiastic.  You may have noticed by now that I’ve excluded men from all our parasol talk.   Historical accounts claim they stuck to manly accessories like cloaks and hats to fend off the elements.  Jonas Hanway, an English doctor who must have trudged through more than one rainy afternoon with a scowl on his face, thought this prejudice absurd.  Even though parasols and their umbrella cousins were considered effeminate, Hanway was a doctor, damn it all, and he was not going to risk his health on some silly society opinion.

Above:  Jonas Hanway being heckled for his parasol/umbrella.  

Below: looking proud.

Starting in 1756 he would walk through the London streets, brash as Robinson Crusoe, umbrella in hand, recalling perhaps: “I covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a penthouse, and kept off the sun so effectually that I could walk out in the hottest weather, with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest. . .”  (Daniel Defoe’s lines written in 1719, one of the first references by an Englishman to the umbrella)

Never mind that to carry a parasol or umbrella was to risk announcing that one was without a carriage.  Dr. Hanway was a thinking man who spurred on England’s umbrella revolution because he dared and it paid off.  Thirty years after his spirited jaunts about London, ladies were stepping out in the park, twirling pretty handles over their shoulders, and gentlemen weren’t looking at umbrellas so scornfully.  Well, almost.

Parasols for 1795

All images except except Mallet’s and Ranc’s are from the NYPL digital gallery. Go browse and discover.  Their collection is marvelous.

Also, for those who like a bit of amusement with their history:

Hands free!  ”The newest thing in umbrellas”

The next newest thing.  Be an umbrella

From 1890 . . . when gentlemen really gave in

 And lastly, which umbrella type are you?

Peach and Persimmon

Craving fresh peaches this time of year is dangerous.  Fortunately, persimmons are available through the rest of February, but these peaches and persimmons (including one dapper duke with cheetah cuffs) are tasty all year long.

Baroness de Neubourg-Cromiere – Alexander Roslin  (1756)

 Portrait of Grand Duchess Maria Fiodorovna - Alexander Roslin  (1777)

Princess Anna Alexandrovna Galitzin - Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun  (1797)

Johann Joachim Winckelmann – Anton von Maron (1768)

 Varvara Ladomirsky – Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun

 Madame Bouret as Diana – Jean Marc Nattier (1745)

 Victor de Rochechouart, Duc de Mortemart – Jean-Marc Nattier (1756)

Portrait of a Woman, possibly Madame Claude Lambert de Thorigny – Nicolas de Largillierre (1696)

 Grand Prince Pavel Petrovich - Virgilius Erichsen

 Lady Hamilton as a Bacchante - George Romney (1784)

Lady Caro Crops Her Hair

The worst I can say about Lady Caroline Lamb is that she suffered from erotomania.  This is the medical euphemism for saying she was sexually, intellectually, and psychically besotted with Lord Byron to a degree that made him squirm in his trousers.

Lady Caroline Lamb – Thomas Phillips

Their short affair lasted from March to August of 1812 and made an indelible impression on his poetry.  A number are direct rejoinders to Caro’s immoderate behavior.  (*Sigh* All the years I spent at university learning about Romantic poets and never once encountered Byron’s “Remember Thee”.  The poem was a stab at his ex-lover when, in a fit of desperation, she descended upon his household and scribbled in the flyleaf of one of his books “Remember thee!”)

 Lord Byron – Thomas Phillips

For the man she had initially spurned as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Caro had it bad.  She is credited with being the first celebrity stalker, running her sprightly self around London trying to enflame Byron by Any Means Necessary.  She even impersonated Byron in writing, requesting his favorite miniature portrait of himself from his publishers.

Mimicry was nothing new for Caro.  As Lady Morgan recounts in her memoirs, Caro’s childhood at the Duchess of Devonshire’s household:

Caro’s unconventional education was her solace amid the madness of the aristocracy.  Her perspective turned her into a novelist and poet, and to Byron’s annoyance, a damn good copyist.  He criticized her for modeling the great originals in her work, lamenting over her ability to capture voice—especially his own.

Although history relegates her to the archives of the sexually diseased, she was witty and singular.  Her work and legacy deserve a closer look.  Dickens called her “One of the most interesting stories of fashionable life . . . [a] really clever woman—a heroine in a way. . .”  Byron recognized her eccentricity saying, “I do not at all know how to deal with her, because she is unlike everyone else.” (BLJ 2:222)

Lady Caroline Lamb – Sir Thomas Lawrence (1805)

Caro’s reputation, through much her own fault, was defamed by her peers.  In a letter of November 1824 written to Captain Thomas Medwin, Byron’s biographer and close friend, she imparts her version of a salacious tale following their breakup:

“. . . unhappily, we continued occasionally to meet. Lord Byron liked others, I only him–The scene at Lady Heathcote’s is nearly true–he had made me swear I was never to Waltz. Lady Heathcote said, Come, Lady Caroline, you must begin, & I bitterly answered–oh yes! I am in a merry humour. I did so–but whispered to Lord Byron ‘I conclude I may waltz _now_’ and he answered sarcastically, ‘with every body in turn–you always did it better than any one.  I shall have a pleasure in seeing you.”–I did so you may judge with what feelings.  After this, feeling ill, I went into a small inner room where supper was prepared; Lord Byron & Lady Rancliffe entered after; seeing me, he said, ‘I have been admiring your dexterity.’ I clasped a knife, not intending anything. ‘Do, my dear,’ he said. ‘But if you mean to act a Roman’s part, mind which way you strike with your knife–be it at your own heart, not mine–you have struck there already.’ ‘Byron,’ I said, and ran away with the knife. I never stabbed myself. It is false.”

Take the tale out of context and Caro does seem crazy, but if we are to trust her word, Byron taunted her nearly as much as she harassed him.  They were that broken couple, terrible together, terrible apart.

It didn’t help that Caro refused to shrug off her individuality.  Her inability to comport like other ladies made the ton jittery and even estranged her friends.  She possessed an artful way of living but was artless, by her own account “not a woman of the world.”

Physical and emotional hardships persisted throughout her life.  At age 19, she married William Lamb for love.  By 26, she’d lost a daughter and tried to raise her mentally handicapped son.  She’d turned from her former piety, aped the ton’s moral ambiguities, and taken Byron as a lover.  She was a woman like no other, cropping her hair when hair, no matter how tightly wound upon the head during the day, was long and heavy against the neck at night.  As she said about herself once:

“…everybody wishes to run down and suppress the vital spark of genius I have, and in truth, it is but small (about what one sees a maid gets by excessive beating on a tinder-box). I am not vain, believe me, nor selfish, nor in love with my authorship; but I am independent, as far as a mite and bit of dust can be.” *

Further Information:

• November 1824 letter from Caro to Captain Thomas Medwin
• Charles Dicken’s on Caro from All The Year Round, April 15, 1882
• An unbiased assessment of Caro, including a biography, links to her works, and a vast array of resources
• Tart of the Week: Lady Caroline Lamb from The Duchess of Devonshire’s Gossip Guide

The Magnificient Cheek of Harriette Wilson

Harriette Wilson liked to insult her suitors.  Early on in her career she discovered the fastest way to get a man on his knees was to show him how little he could succeed the first go around.  Courtesans, of course, were famous for this.

For a certain caliber of female, hardships birth wit, and to the gentleman trapped in a stratum of dull, mannered ladies, wit was an aphrodisiac.  So, it seems, was cheek.

Harriette’s method was ridiculously simple.  She laid siege to powerful men by writing queries like the one she “half in humour” dashed off to the Prince of Wales: “I am told that I am very beautiful, so perhaps you would like to see me. . .”  When his  reply was returned to her in the affirmative, she further wrote,

This sauciness inspired the ardor of many influential men during her reign, including the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Worcester, the Duke of Argyll, and Lord Melbourne’s son, the Honorable Frederick Lamb.  One can scarcely leave out her first lover, the Earl of Craven.

At the age of 15, Craven introduced her to the pursuits of pleasure, but she was no more enamored of him than of his cocoa trees from the West Indies.  By her own account, he would amuse her by drawing pictures of his “fellows” along with the dreaded trees, a practice Harriette called a “dead bore.”  It didn’t help that she despaired of his cotton night cap.  “Surely,”  [she] would say, “all men do not wear those shocking nightcaps; else all women’s illusions had been destroyed on the first night of their marriage.”

Harriette Wilson’s dismal opinion of marriage was borne from early experience: “. . .my dear mother’s marriage had proved to me so forcibly the miseries of two people of contrary opinions and character torturing each other to the end of their natural lives, that, before I was ten years old, I decided in my own mind to live free as air from any restraint but that of my own conscience.”

Although Harriette forbore blaming her parent’s marriage, and indeeded stressed that her dear mother did not influence her choice in profession, an unhappy home life seemed to affect the family at large.  Among her sisters, three of them turned Cyprian—Amy, Sophia, and Fanny.

The closest in age, Harriette and Amy spent their careers competing for affections with the latter sister stealing lovers from the former.  Harriette blamed Amy for instigating the strain between them, once stating, “Amy’s virtue was something like the nine lives of a cat.”  Amy later bore a son by the Duke of Argyll, Harriette’s third lover.

Fanny and Sophia are, by degrees, less interesting.  Fanny was described by a mutual acquaintance as “. . .the sweetest creature on earth.”  Harriette had nothing but affection for her, saying she was “. . . the most popular woman I ever met with.  The most ill-natured and spiteful of her sex could never find it in their hearts to abuse one who, in their absence, warmly fought all their battles . . .”  Settled for seven years after the death of her lover and the father of her three children, Fanny died young after a three week illness.

The youngest sister, Sophia, endowed the family with honor by marrying her protector, Lord Berwick, in 1812.  She, however, inspired much exasperation in Harriette before she retired into matrimonial bliss.  On one occasion, her sisters were in hysterics when the 14 year old Sophia “…went away with Lord Deerhurst [that prince of hypocrites], being innocent as an infant as to the nature of seduction and its consequence . . . Sophie was a child, and not a very clever one…”  The situation sounds strikingly similar to Lydia’s flight with Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice.

A connection between Jane Austen and Harriette’s first lover, Lord Craven, can be found here.

 S.W. Fores of Piccadilly printed a caricature by H. Heath in 1825 called ”La Coterie Debauché”  

Harriette is writing while her cadre of lovers watch on.

Although a well-known courtesan in Regency times, we have Harriette’s memoirs to thank for her enduring legacy in ours.  The memoirs were published in 1825, a move she describes as a “desperate effort to live by my wits.”  This is a marked contrast from the manner in which she formerly earned her living.  The memoirs gained her a reputation far exceeding that of a demimondaine.  Rather than earning admiration for her enterprise in a sticky situation, she was scorned by her methods.

Harriette was nearing old age–in truth, her thirties–when her protectors decided she wasn’t worth the jangle in their pockets.  Denied the annuity promised by the Duke of Bedford upon her agreement to forsake his heir, the Marquess of Worcester, Harriette was left penniless.  Her beauty diminishing along with her funds, the woman who later wrote, “I will be the mere instrument of pleasure to no man.  He must make a friend and companion of me, or he will lose me,” dared blackmail the feckless gentlemen who had thrown her off.  The famous reply by the Duke of Wellington, “publish, and be damned,” arises from Harriette’s request for funds in exchange to leave his name out of her memoirs.

Regardless of who paid up, the suprisingly tasteful history of her love life earned her a small fortune.  Her publisher, John Stockdale, was forced to queue the crowds that stormed his shop upon the latest print installments.  This nail biting manuever served Harriette well.  The installments tested the nerves of her former lovers while they awaited the appearance of their names in the next issue.  How many cried off at the last minute, we can only imagine.  From the date of their publication, her memoirs increased in notoriety and exceeded Harriette’s hope of twenty editions. reaching thirty in its first year as well as the six volume French version.

Even today they are great reading.  Harriette may have resorted to blackmailing and thereby acquired a reputation for unreliability, but she has an intelligent wit.  She vilified some of her lovers, yes, but treated others with a fair pen.  And she did not always spare herself in the telling.

The eBook format for Harriette’s memoirs can be downloaded free here.

Various plates from a set of eight satirical illustrations to the memoirs of Harriette Wilson from The British Museum

• Harriette Wilson – A Parody on Collins’s Ode – “The Passions”
• Wilsoniana, or Lust levels all distinctions
• Harriette Wilson’s last letter-or a new method of raising the wind!!
• Disappointment! The Duke of W… Alais the Rat Catcher refused admittance to H.Wilson
• Employment! the Marquis of W-r laceing H.Wilson’s Stays, & makeing toast for breakfast

Further Sources:

• The Courtesan’s Revenge:  Harriette Wilson, the Woman Who Blackmailed the King by Frances Wilson
• Tribute for Harriette: The Surprising Career of Harriette Wilson by Angela Thirkell (out of print but available for a trifle on amazon us)
• Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs: The Memoirs of the Reigning Courtesan of Regency London (the edited version if you’re so inclined) US  UK