The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (5 page)

It was linen money, in part, that fuelled the expansion of Dublin during what would become its Georgian golden age. The sturdy terraced houses with their delicate fanlights soon became the homes of the city’s successful tradesmen. Street upon street and square upon square appeared in the thriving quarter around Temple Bar, and across the Liffey near Oxmanstown Green. These houses were occupied by Protestant families, who by contrast with their Catholic counterparts could afford to indulge in Dublin’s luxuries. Their houses would have been well appointed, not only with the finest linen, but with the objects that indicated wealth during the eighteenth century: fine dark wood furnishings, imported carpets and china, silver tea services and stern-faced portraits. This was the comfortable existence that Sam Derrick would have known, at least for part of his youth.

When and under what circumstances Mrs Creagh’s nephew entered her household, Sam never discloses. Whatever the story may have been, whether one of illegitimacy, hardship or untimely death, Sam had been chosen to become the heir of his aunt’s substantial fortune, a hoard that had been spun from the trade of linen. Her husband’s toils as a draper had yielded a comfortable profit, and although the precise amount of what she intended to pass on to her nephew is never mentioned in Sam’s correspondence, he certainly remained under the impression that it was a considerable sum. While she lived, Derrick also stood to benefit from her generosity. The expenses of his maintenance and his education were absorbed into her accounts, as were the costs of his prestigious linen-draping apprenticeship. In spite of standing to inherit, Sam, like most boys of the successful class of merchants and the younger sons of the gentry, was expected to turn his mind to some form of worthy
profession.
Generally, the future careers of such boys were non-negotiable. The highly esteemed avenues of the law, the clergy or the military, along with the top end of trade for those of the middle classes, were the only acceptable options. In eighteenth-century Ireland, a linen-draping apprenticeship was one of the more expensive training schemes available to young men. A tradesman or a master craftsman would expect some financial compensation from a young man’s family for taking a boy into his home, for feeding him, watering him, putting up with his adolescent antics and teaching him a craft. During the early part of the century, Daniel Defoe wrote of the extortionate size of indentures demanded by London apprentice-masters, and that it was ‘very ordinary to give a thousand pound with an apprentice to a Turkey merchant, £400 to £600 to other merchants; from £200 to £300 to shop-keepers, and wholesale dealers, linnen drapers especially; and so in proportion to other trades’. In Dublin, however, an apprenticeship with a linen draper or merchant would have required one of the more sizeable deposits. By the standards of the day, these were enormous sums, more than most middle-class family’s yearly incomes, but they were passports to a guaranteed living and the position of prestige that would one day accompany it.

Mrs Creagh had also seen to it that her nephew received schooling suitable for the heir to a merchant’s fortune. In the eighteenth century, the calling card of any man who considered himself to be a gentleman was a classical education. Those who could quote from Virgil and Pliny, who could debate the worth of Socrates and hurl insults in Latin, found that they could more easily acquire access to the drawing rooms of their superiors. As a boy he would have been sent to a respectable grammar school and placed under the tutelage of a clergyman, as was the practice among middle-class Dubliners. It is possible that Sam, alongside his lifelong friends, the future actors Francis Gentleman and Henry Mossop, attended Butler’s School on Digges Street, where he would have been immersed in Latin declensions and Greek philosophy. French also played a large role in his education. As the language of diplomacy and the refined man, Derrick’s grasp of it was necessary for his success in the world at large. Instruction in these subjects, along with the study of mathematics, geography, religion and history, with a cursory nod to the
sciences
and perhaps some of the more significant works of literature, would have formed the essence of his educational endeavours. Irrespective of how much he may have enjoyed his hours with Shakespeare and Milton, Latin poets and French philosophers, his future was not designed for leisured contemplation, a privilege reserved for the titled and exceptionally wealthy.

Even in his early years, as he yearned to write poetry, Sam must have recognised that his soul was not that of a cloth merchant’s. His position, however, was not one he could argue. What Mrs Creagh expected of him had always been clearly expressed, but no matter how diligently Samuel Derrick applied himself to his prescribed profession, an errant instinct bucked within him. Sam could not and would not shelve his aspirations alongside his schoolbooks. While he should have been labouring as an apprentice, instead he continued reading Rousseau and John Donne. By the light of his candle stubs came more pages of verse, scrawled out in the hours when he should have given in to sleep. Derrick accumulated these poems for years, filling enough sheets by the age of twenty to begin laying the ground for their publication. It is likely that his aunt never knew the extent of Sam’s interest in writing. While the composition of poetry was deemed a worthy pursuit for the ennobled landowning classes, it could only slow the progress of a man of trade. Poetry, however, was to be the least of Sam’s distractions.

Given what the wits would one day write about Sam Derrick’s excitable temperament, it would be surprising if his aunt didn’t at some point harbour serious doubts about her nephew. Throughout his life he displayed none of the characteristics requisite in a level-headed master of business. He was reckless, impassioned, and at times deeply irreverent. If a person can be judged by the company he keeps, then even at a young age Sam was gravitating towards those who, like him, would end up casting off their respectable livelihoods for morally reprehensible existences. Francis Gentleman, several years Derrick’s junior and just as impassioned about literature and theatre, was to become his closest companion in his youth. Enoch Markham, another friend bound for the clergy, was already in his teenage years displaying a tendency towards thoughtless philandering. Like Sam, these young men opted to live according to their hearts rather than their minds,
choosing
immediate gratification over thrift or prudence, a creed which not only coloured their behaviour but the state of their finances. Sam, it seemed, was not interested in the conventionality that life offered him, which may go some way towards explaining why many found him so crass and offensive. In the year of his death, an unnamed wag compiled a number of the more memorably profane gems to have fallen from his lips.
Derrick’s Jests; or the Wit’s Chronicle
remains one of the only legacies left to the world by Sam Derrick, a man who was until the end an inveterate hard-drinking, bailiff-dodging charmer who delighted or insulted society according to his whim. How much of this side he displayed while living under his aunt’s protection may never be known, although it would be hard to believe that his adolescence came and went without incident. Whatever the situation, Mrs Creagh would eventually come to believe that the corruption of her nephew occurred through the influence of his vice-tainted friends. The finger of blame, however, would not be pointed at Sam’s literary associates, but rather at those dwelling in a much lower sphere: that of the theatre.

It was only a matter of time before the enticement of the stage with all of its fire and fiction was to captivate Sam Derrick’s imagination. Outside of London, he could not have found a better place to experience the thrill of live performance than in Dublin. Each autumn and winter, packet ships filled with a peculiar cargo would depart from Liverpool or Holyhead bound for Ireland. Their hulls would be packed with an entire season’s entertainment, from set machinery and costumes to acrobats and actors. Dublin’s literati, men and women like Mary Delany and George Faulkner, were among many who eagerly awaited their arrival as a kind of cultural lifeline from artistically vibrant London. Fortunately for Irish enthusiasts of the stage, Dublin’s playhouses acted as a receptacle only for London’s most successful theatrical productions. While audiences remained sceptical about Italian opera, they delighted in productions of John Gay’s
The Beggar’s Opera
, in Congreve and Vanbrugh’s plays and, most devotedly, in revivals of Shakespeare. Irish plays, much to the discouragement of home-grown talent, were not performed, forcing those with ambition to seek their fortunes in London.

During the winter season, all of Dublin society, respectable or otherwise, packed into the thinly lit, poorly ventilated playhouses at Smock Alley and Rainsford Street. An evening at the theatre offered the best entertainment available in the eighteenth century, not only for what appeared on the stage but for the entire spectacle that unfolded all around. Night upon night, top-billed plays such as
Miss in Her Teens, The Recruiting Sergeant
and
Richard the Third
, featuring celebrated names such as David Garrick, Peg Woffington and Charles Macklin, drew audiences onto the benches. Stage managers employed the most technologically advanced set designs and special effects, springing actors from trapdoors, bringing storms to the stage and cries of wonder from the spectators. They offered what seemed like an endless round of performances, including comedy and tragedy, singing, dancing, acrobatics, fire-eating and magic, all of which continued throughout the evening, from half-past six until close to midnight.

The activity on stage, however, was just a part of the theatregoing experience. The early-eighteenth-century playhouse was more of a circus than a seat of refined cultural activity. All night full-scale battles raged between actors and audience members. Hooting and heckling flowed liberally from the pit, the acknowledged haven for drunken men. Whores and female orange sellers circulated among the crowd, offering both edible and sexual refreshment. On a bad night, this volatile combination of rowdiness, alcohol and lust could erupt without warning. The consequences were sometimes devastating, as audiences degenerated into violent mobs intent on ripping apart the theatre’s gilded interiors. When not dangerous, a night at the playhouse was generally a lively experience, and even the threat of such perils never managed to keep genteel society from its doors. Provided they stayed clear of the pit, where they were likely to be spat or urinated upon, they could enjoy the evening’s events from the sanctity of their boxes. Dublin’s mercantile and trade classes were also careful to keep their distance, choosing to occupy the upper and middle galleries.

In every direction there was something to see or someone to observe, turning an evening’s outing into an occasion for flirting, gossip and conversation. For many, the activity on stage was a mere sideshow to the main event of socialising. Under the dripping wax chandeliers a
perpetual
din rose from the house, as actors struggled to perform over shrieks of intoxicated laughter, shouts, jibes, coughs and the constant movement of bodies in and out of the playhouse. Contributing to the sense of mayhem were the obstructions of audience members, who until 1747 were even permitted to stand on stage during a performance. There was nothing sanctimonious about the theatre. Amidst the noise and spectacle, it provided a carnival-like atmosphere of abandon. The colourful audience of women in paint and men unrestrained in their manners competed with elaborate stories of love, betrayal and courage played out on the stage. As an apprentice, Derrick would have attended the theatre whenever he had the opportunity. Scraping together the necessary pennies to secure himself a seat and slipping out, perhaps against the orders of his apprentice master, would have added to the thrill. There, both in the pit and backstage, he would have met with some of his more wanton companions and their thespian circle. The easy lifestyle of loose sexual morals and seemingly endless laughter would have been a profound enticement to a young apprentice. Above all, it would have presented him with an opportunity to chatter with those who shared his love for words and poetry.

Remarkably, given the myriad distractions and temptations, Sam successfully completed his period of apprenticeship. A fear of the consequences of his failure to do so may very well have been the only impetus he required. Presumably Sam saw his occupation as a means by which he could achieve his greater aims. For all of the dullness entailed in a life based around the exchange and production of cloth, the profession did offer the benefit of frequent travel to London. The draper’s trade would have presented numerous opportunities for visits abroad and given him an ideal vehicle for peddling his poetry to potential sponsors. While Dublin was home to a small publishing industry, London offered far larger prospects. All forms of creative output in the eighteenth century required patronage or sponsorship, and any such meaningful financial backing was a luxury bestowed by society’s most influential. Although Ireland had its share of well-endowed aristocrats and fat merchants with social-climbing ambitions, this class of person existed in a much higher concentration in England, and especially in London. The bustling capital of the English language offered a wealth of opportunity with which
Dublin
simply could not compete, a message that Sam would have heard repeatedly from his friend and mentor, George Faulkner.

As Dublin’s literary society was a close circle, it is likely that Sam’s acquaintance with George Faulkner began through the introductions of school tutors while he was still a boy. Although twenty-five years his senior, Faulkner felt a great affection for Derrick and took the young man under his wing in the hope of encouraging his career. As a friend not only to the estimable Swift but to Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson and Lord Chesterfield, Faulkner’s was a useful name to drop in London circles. Undoubtedly, it was his letters of introduction that opened the few significant doors to Sam’s literary future in London. The rest he prised open by himself.