The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (12 page)

In the beginning, the prospect of a writing life had thrilled Sam Derrick, but after a stint at the grist mill of Grub Street the unsavoury face of his chosen path emerged into full view. It was here that Sam’s momentum began to grind to a halt. The slush of inconsequential articles, puff pieces and essays that he churned out was, in his eyes, only another temporary expedient until an eager patron came to his rescue. Although much of what Derrick produced would have appeared in journals under pseudonyms, making it virtually impossible to extract a full catalogue of the pieces that he authored, a handful of his early works can be identified, including a dramatic critique of
The Tragedy of Venice Preserv’d
(1752), translations of two French dramas,
Sylla
(1753) and
A
Voyage to the Moon
(1754), a translation of the
Memoirs of the Count Du Beauval
(1754) and the translation from Latin of the
Third Satire of Juvenal
(1755). As a poet, Sam may not have excited many positive responses, but as a translator his skills were more valued. What he never came to recognise was that his true talent lay not in twirling words into rhymed verse, but in analysing, observing and documenting the peculiarities of human nature.

It was only down to Derrick’s tireless subscription-hunting that any of his worthier works ever made it into print. To add to his frustration, Sam soon learned that patrons tended to favour his translations above his poetic productions. So, the endless, soul-destroying rounds of subscription-raising continued, a practice that compelled prospective authors to ‘… wait upon the nobility and the gentry with proposals for printing books … soliciting the honour of their names to the work’. Even then, after the initial flattery and lock-tugging had taken place, it was only with ‘… perseverance and frequent teasing’ that ‘many gentlemen will give a guinea to get rid of an impertinent fellow’. The cultivation of patrons could be a slow and arduous process, which might delay the publication of a writer’s proudest efforts for years before the costs of printing a work were raised. Eighteenth-century Britain abounded with aspiring poets and essayists, novelists and satirists, and not every gentleman or lady of means was interested in supporting them.

Although Sam’s relationship with Grub Street may have begun with a tentative dip of the toe, after several years its constant tide would be the only force bringing him income. Sadly, Derrick’s name had made no more of an advance into the pantheon of English authors than those of his friends and fellow-hacks, David Mallet, Soame Jenyns, Aaron Hill, or even Francis Gentleman. The pecuniary rewards were sparse and, when they did come, were quickly siphoned off by shop-keepers, taverners or his creditors. In keeping with his unfailing faith in the size and impending receipt of his inheritance, Sam refused to temper his spending. While he was enjoying himself, debating the merits of Charles Macklin’s theatrical abilities or Samuel Johnson’s opinions in the booths of the Bedford or the Shakespear’s Head, he lost himself in the present. As his circle of acquaintances began to swell, so his purse began to shrink. He boasted to his new comrades, whom he watered liberally with drink and
nourished
with food, to whom he loaned money and made gifts, that he was an heir to a fortune. People took him at his word and were not especially forthcoming in making good on their debts. Sam was never able to recoup the sum he had advanced to friends such as the theatrical manager, Thomas Harris, or his young rakish correspondent, Tom Wilson. Like a man of means, he took great pleasure in sending tokens of his esteem to potential patrons, such as a large and expensive wheel of cheese he had delivered to Lord St Leger at the height of one of his more impecunious periods.

The difficult truth was that, in spite of professing to be an heir, Sam was no more a man of means than any other struggling hack. His boasts, however, did succeed in convincing merchants and shop-keepers to extend his credit, at least until the larger bills required payment. In keeping with his profligate lifestyle, Sam harboured an unfortunate penchant for expensive clothing. What remaining portions of his inconsistent earnings weren’t squandered on entertainment went straight into his tailor’s coffers. He adored the elaborate coats rimmed with gold frogging, intricately-wrought buttons, silk waistcoats and well-cut britches. He wore only the most recent and foppish fashions, but never wasted a penny on those items that couldn’t be seen hanging on the outside of his person. The actor Samuel Foote found Derrick’s peculiar preferences for dress to be wholly irrational. Why would anyone opt to own ‘five embroidered coats’, while only possessing one clean shirt to wear underneath them? The practicality of owning fresh underwear never served his purposes as well as did a variety of ‘sumptuous cloaths’ in which to promenade. Derrick dressed as he lived; he had no interest in sensible choices. As a result his wardrobe ebbed and flowed with his unpredictable fortune. A promise of publication yielded a celebratory new suit of clothes which invariably, after only a few months’ wear, ended up in the window of a pawn shop. Such an unbalanced wardrobe resulted in a great deal of sartorial distress when the chips were down. On one occasion, seeing that Derrick had neglected to invest in appropriate legwear and was struggling to maintain decency beneath his hole-riddled stockings, Tobias Smollett ‘slipt a guinea into his hand, to equip his legs and feet for the next day’.

Increasingly and not surprisingly, Sam’s prodigious spending habits began to bear adversely on other areas of his life. No longer able to afford
comfortable
lodgings, his residences became increasingly downmarket. The fire in his hearth became smaller and then, as he was unable to afford the coal necessary for even the shallowest glow of warmth, non-existent. At times, when he had not been able to sell a poem or was in the midst of writing his next review, food became very scarce. Although Sam had always been small in stature, Smollett began to notice that he had also grown ‘lank’. During his lean times, both literally and figuratively, he saw fit to call in a number of favours owed to him by his Covent Garden associates. With no money in his pocket, his destitution made him the grudging guest of fellow literary lights, such as the author and scientist Dr John Taylor. Desperate enough to sleep anywhere, Derrick’s visits to the Taylors’ cottage in Highgate were not deterred by the lack of a bed. In a pinch he was willing to doze in John Taylor junior’s cradle with his feet propped up on a chair. When acquaintances had not even a baby’s cot to offer him, Derrick found himself on the street. On his way back to his own apartments, the author Thomas Floyd was quite startled to have stumbled across Sam asleep against a shop hoarding. ‘My Dear Floyd, I’m sorry to see you in this destitute state’, Derrick was rumoured to have said, as the actor stood over him, a bit worse for wear after a night of drinking. Sam then gestured to the filthy patch beside him: ‘Will you join me at my lodgings?’ Although, as Dr Johnson claimed, his wit in such situations lent him a reputation for a particularly resilient ‘presence of mind’, the reality of Sam’s predicament, heightened by his irresponsible behaviour, was beginning to exact a toll on the estimation others held of his character.

Even when he was down on his luck, the distractions of Covent Garden made starving in London preferable to living a comfortable, dull existence as a Dublin linen draper. Faulkner, who worried frequently about his friend’s prospects, was not averse to reminding Derrick that he could always ‘quit the Muses for sordid pelf’, adding that he wouldn’t mind seeing Sam back ‘in Ireland, and at the Linen Hall, buying vast quantities of Irish Manufacture to be exported to England’. This, however, would never happen, as long as the roar of the taverns and playhouses could still be heard from the Piazza. In spite of the hardship Sam suffered, the bitter edge of his lifestyle was sweetened by the presence of many underfed and poorly paid kindred spirits. It was an
existence
peopled by those like him, from struggling actors, dancers and musicians to impoverished painters and dramatists, all of whom were pulled into the orbit of Covent Garden. Unlike the Linen Hall, Covent Garden was also a place dominated by youthful energy. While home to a number of established veterans, the majority of those drawn to its flame were in their teens and twenties. The abundance and influence of aspiring players and poets, in addition to ‘greenhorn’ apprentices, fresh-faced prostitutes and hot-blooded young heirs, cannot be underestimated. What lent Covent Garden its vigour and its reputation for high-spirited fun had as much to do with its activities as with those who partook of them. All the drama of adolescent angst, the emotional outbursts, the infidelities, the romances and the complicated friendships, when brewed with large quantities of alcohol, made the Piazza’s establishments the centre of some of London’s best unscripted performances, as well as being the ultimate precursor to the modern student union bar. With a keen eye for both observation and histrionics, Derrick could not have found a more suitable or inspirational home.

When not writing or attempting to gain access to a patron’s drawing room, Sam was generally to be found in the watering holes of the Piazza, and more specifically at the Bedford Coffee House or the Shakespear’s Head. Whether for the purposes of drinking or seeking shelter when he hadn’t the resources to pay for accommodation, Covent Garden’s coffee houses offered respite. In the worst of times, they provided protection from inclement weather and the opportunity to be bought refreshment by some passing acquaintance. There he remained, presumably until he was shunted along, reading the newspapers, writing and receiving letters, chatting, and warming his notoriously bad-smelling feet by the fire. In the quiet moments, he sat and took in the surroundings. Coffee houses and taverns were, as they are today, delectable venues for people-watching, and as a regular fixture he was in a prime position to catch snatches of gossip as they blew in his direction. Derrick became a master of scandalous information, scribbling down anecdotes and tales of carnal conquest. If his works for the stage ‘were not calculated to succeed’ then Sam resolved to record rather than to create drama. As he watched a certain renowned waiter transact his business with his gentlemen clientele, and silk-clad young ladies with
heavily
painted faces flounce up the tavern stairs, an idea started to germinate.

It helped, of course, to have more than a passing acquaintance with the noted female faces of Covent Garden. The borrowed money that Sam generously spent on food and drink and merrymaking was not solely for the entertainment of his male companions. A large quantity of it was lavished on women. If Sam had one weakness which far exceeded his passion for fine velvets and silk brocades, it was his insatiable attraction to the female sex. Derrick adored women, both the tawdry harlot and the blushing lady, although given his usual situation in Covent Garden he was more likely to meet with the former than the latter. In the midst of a loud evening, when the audiences of both theatres had emptied into the surrounding taverns and the whores were busy plying their trade from booth to table, singing bawdy songs and supping porter with their swains, Sam Derrick would have been just another cull whom they flirted with and occasionally honoured with a favour, whether he could pay or not. With Sam, it was often a
quid pro quo
arrangement. Poets and playwrights were shamefully bad clients and more likely to bilk a girl than even the rowdiest ‘buck’. Unlike the buck, who was simply a disrespectful young womaniser sufficiently well endowed to afford the services of a prostitute, the tender-hearted, struggling author who wooed his Moll by eulogising her beauty or promising her a lead role in his play was perpetually penniless. With a skilled tongue that flowed with Shakespeare and Milton, he often succeeded in acquiring sexual encounters for free. But Derrick’s success with the votaries of Venus could be attributed to more than just his seduction technique. He offered the ladies of Covent Garden something that the majority of their fee-paying patrons did not: empathy.

Hacks and whores shared much common ground, and both were likely to see through each other’s constructed veneers and into one another’s despairing hearts. Interestingly, the traditional home of the hack writer around Fleet Street and the Temple Bar was also that of the streetwalker, one of the lower-ranking members of the meretricious hierarchy. While one group loitered in the doorways and byways around Fleet Street, the other stared down at them from their garrets. Each occupied their respective places out of necessity, compromising their integrity
out
of a desperate commercial need. Dr Johnson, who lived on Gough Square, cheek by jowl with nests of hacks, commented that such authors were simply ‘drudges of the pen’ who ‘have no other care than to deliver their tale of wares at the stated time’, not wholly unlike the whore, who mechanically produced her sexual offerings upon payment. Indifferent and detached from their labour, hacks parted with their intellectual principles as readily as the streetwalker shed her physical honour. Sam Derrick was not the first, nor the last, of his kind to feel a distinct compassion for the plight of the downtrodden girl who peddled herself to the public. However, true to the spirit of his age, he never advocated that whores should abandon their calling, but rather he appealed to society’s wealthy patrons to lift these frail and fallen women into ‘high keeping’. Under such protection, and with a generous cash allowance, they would enjoy a liberation otherwise unavailable to them. In Sam’s view, all that either profession required was someone to pay their bills.

As Sam perched on his tavern chair through the daylight and evening hours, avoiding the slanting rain that wetted his street-corner bed, or the prospect of returning to a fireless hearth, he would have seen many of his night-time companions bearing their ‘after-hours’ personas. He would listen gallantly to their tales of woe and share in their small happinesses. In addition to friendship, Sam’s protection would have also been solicited by women whose vulnerable position required the assistance of a male voice. A gentleman defender may have been called upon to speak on a woman’s behalf, whether her persecutor was a magistrate, a bailiff or a vengeful lover. The better connected a man, the more benefits he could offer. As Sam Derrick had managed to insinuate himself into the company of a variety of influential men, he was better able to intercede in the interest of a friend than the friend could have on her own behalf. And a friend of Sam Derrick’s who regularly popped into the Shakespear or the Bedford might also find herself in a position to further her own interests. Most prostitutes with a degree of ambition sought to choose their own clientele. Naturally, the most favoured were those handsome young men with large estates and allowances at their disposal. The ever-roving subscription-hunter and the ever-enterprising harlot were stalking the same prize, and who better to provide the tip-offs and the introductions than a well-connected acquaintance?