September 27, 2015 by judeknight

Dennis O’Kelly on Wanton Weekends

Today’s famous courtesan is not the beautiful horse, though Eclipse certainly performed extremely well as a stallion: 80% of thoroughbreds today carry his genes. No, our featured stud is the horses owner, one Captain Dennis O’Kelly (the rank was possibly self-granted, and certainly the promotion to Lieutenant Colonel by the time Dennis wrote his memoirs was entirely fictional).

Given Dennis’s way with a story, little is certain. He was the lover of one of London’s more prosperous madams (who he met while they were both incarcerated in Fleet Street for bankruptcy). He and she both did win their way back to prosperity fairly quickly, and Dennis did buy Eclipse, who went on to sire three of the first five Derby winners as well as many other fine racehorses.

Dennis’s story of how he got his start makes him worthy of a place at our event. He was working as a sedan chair man in London, carrying the front poles . One day, a lady passenger looked him up and down and liked what she saw. Shortly after, Dennis was approached by a woman who offered him a full time job in the same profession, but for a single employer. Imagine his surprise when he found his employer was the same lady passenger.

His surprise turned to delight when his new mistress sent him to wait for further instructions at a townhouse, where she joined him in disguise (and in precisely the sense you immediately imagined. “As this publication is intended for the virtuous, as well as vicious eye,” he says, we must conceal from the one, what the experience of the other may easily supply. Some hours were spent in mutual happiness.”

Receiving a purse of 25 guineas for his exertions, Dennis found it well worth his while to return, and over several months, he says, he saved a considerable sum of money. Gaining a taste for the highlife, he immediately lost it all again, and was arrested and thrown into prison, where he met “That well known priestess of the Cyprian Deity, that love and mirth admiring votress, to pleasing sensuality, the well known Charlotte Hayes, was then an inhabitant of the same mansion.”

He comments that his attributes soon caught Charlotte’s eye “and the same services soon obtained… the same kind remunerations.” He claims to have devoted himself for the rest of his life to Charlotte, and – while ‘Charlotte had many friends, it is true… Her affections were still centred in our Hero, and on him were all the pecuniary favours which she received from others, bestowed with unbounded liberality.’

They spent the rest of their lives together, though Charlotte continued to have many friends (by way of business), and rumour at the time said the same of Dennis. He definitely qualifies to be here.

September 20, 2015 by judeknight

Nell Gwynne on Wanton Weekends

One Eleanor Gwyn (or Gwynn or Gwynne – they didn’t take their spelling nearly as seriously as we do) is something of a folk heroine. She was, even in her own time.

She was probably born in 1650 (or possibly as early as 1642). Her mother was the alcoholic proprietor of a bawdy house, and it is possibly she was herself a child-prostitute. Certainly by 1662, she had an acknowledged lover who paid for her rooms in a tavern near a newly opened playhouse.

Here, Nell and her sister sold oranges to theatre-goers, and here, less than a year later, Nell became an actress. She made her first recorded appearance on stage in 1665, in a dramatic part, but soon found her niche as a comedic actress, playing opposite Charles Hart, who also became her lover.

The theatres at the time had trouble keeping leading actresses, as the aristocracy delighted in tempting them away to be kept mistresses. In 1667, Nell became the mistress of Charles Sackville, then Lord Buckhurst.

In 1668, she began an affair with King Charles the Second (she called him her Charles the third), and spent less and less time acting, and more time with the King.

HSP185015 King Charles II (1630-85) and Nell Gwynne (1650-87) (oil on canvas) by Ward, Edward Matthew (1816-79)
oil on canvas
© Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, UK
English, out of copyright

She had her first son, Charles, in 1670. There’s a story that she demanded a title for him . Charles refused, and Nell hung him out the window, threatening to drop him. “Someone catch the Earl of Burford,” said Charles. I like the story, but I also like the alternative story, that Nell said to her son, “Come here, you little bastard, and say hello to your father.” When Charles objected to the word, she told him he’d given her no other name by which to call him.

James, her second child, was born in 1671.

Nell is remembered for her wit, as much as for her beauty. She died in 1687, three years after her eldest son was created Duke of Argyll, and two years after the death of her royal lover.

September 13, 2015 by judeknight

Belle Brezing on Wanton Weekends

I’ve another poet for you this weekend.

Belle Brezing is supposed to have been the inspiration for the character Madame Belle in Gone with the Wind. Born in 1860, raised by a drunken, violent mother and a series of stepfathers, she was seduced at 12, pregnant at 15 and married shortly after. Her husband left town after the murder of one of her two other lovers, and before the birth of her daughter.

At 19, Belle became a resident at a ‘bawdy house’, and so excelled in her new career that she started her own enterprise two years later.

She went on to open bigger and better houses until, in 1891, she opened her last and greatest.

In the book ‘Madame Belle: Sex, Money, and Influence in a Southern Brothel’, Maryjean Wall describes the opening night.

“Megowan Street had never seen commotion like Belle’s opening night in 1891. All varieties of horse-drawn vehicles pulled up in front of no. 59, dropping off male passengers wearing formal evening dress. Drivers shouted to their horses. Cabs departed as quickly as they had arrived, the drivers turning their horses sharply back toward the Phoenix Hotel to pick up more fares. In the trickle-down effect the evening had on the local economy, hack drivers made a small fortune in tips on this memorable night.

“Belle had invited physicians, lawyers, judges, horsemen, businessmen, and bankers to this fete. Sweet orchestral strains poured into the street every time the door opened to admit another caller. She had hired musicians for her opening, foregoing her mechanical nickelodeon. Her staff had prepared an elegant buffet. Her bar served the finest wines and champagne.”

Belle was highly successful, though she was also indicted more than any other citizen of Lexington.

She continued to run houses for the sale of entertainment for the next 25 years, until all the houses of disrepute were closed during the first World War by order of the army. By the time they opened again, Belle’s long-time lover and her sister had both died, and she lived out her retirement as a recluse until her death in 1940.

Belle wrote this poem in her teens, perhaps before she was wed.

Kisses
Sitting tnight in my chamber, a school girl figure
and lonely, I kiss the end of my finger, that and that only.

Reveries rises from the smokey mouth. Memories linger surround
me. Boys that are married or single. Gather around me. School boys
in pantalets roumping, Boys that now are growing to be young lands,
Boys that kiked to be Kissed; and like to give kisses.

Kisses. I remember them: Those in the corner were fleetest:
Sweet were those won the Sly in the Dark were the sweetest.
Girls are tender and gentle. To woo was almost to win them.
They lips are good as ripe peaches, and cream for finger.
Girls are sometimes flirts, and coquettish; Now catch and Kiss if
you can sin: could I catch both – ah, wasent I a happy Girl.

Boys is pretty and blooming sweetly, yea sweetness over their rest!
Them I loved dearly and truely. Last and the best.

Writing by Belle Brezing, Lexington Ky

August 23, 2015 by judeknight

All the ladies (and some of the gents) love a soldier on Wanton Weekends

When I was researching wanton women (and men) for my release party, I set out to write a post on London rent boys and the molly brothels of Georgian England. I will do that at some point, but I was distracted by a reference. Shiny fact, shiny fact… and there went I, chasing off at a tangent.

The research articles I found talked about the coffee houses and private rooms that provided a safe haven for those with same sex attraction to meet and socialise. A heavy on the door checked that only members and their guests could enter, keeping patrons safe from spies. And when acting on same sex attraction could attract the death penalty, such security was essential.

And here’s my shiny fact. One of the uses to which such safe havens were put, said several of my sources, was as a place to bring lovers hired for the night: rent boys, they said, and soldiers.

Well. Who could resist such a clue? Not I, certainly. A bit more investigation, and I found that quite a number of soldiers supplemented their income by hiring themselves out – a fact well known at the time. And yesterday I discovered a reference to a Victorian gentleman from Venice, and his soldier friend. The quote that follows is from Prostitution, an article by Judith Flanders.

A diary tells on one such meeting, its author an Englishman living in Venice, but visiting London in the late 1840s. He cruised regularly: ‘Fine. Tried my luck once more. I sat in the Park; but so shy that I cd make [illegible] nothing.’ ‘Fun & Folly…Saw J.B. We went up to Albany St.’ Later he filled in the scanty details of his meeting with ‘J.B.’, a trooper named Jack Brand: ‘I saw you in all your beauty, smiling as your gallant charger reared & pranced…And then in the [sentry] Box I spoke to you, & after Parade we met for five minutes, & you told me your name’ That evening, ‘at the Arch at Hyde Park Corner met my poor Boy,’ where they rented a room.[4] The story continued, a casual commercial pick-up transforming into a relationship. But after only a few months Brand died of cholera, leaving his grieving lover behind.

I became diverted into a discussion about uniforms. Were they so ornate, some researchers speculate, to appeal to women? Or to potential male patrons?

To my mind, the either/or nature of the question is not appealing. Maybe uniforms were flashy because armies are conservative institutions and uniforms harked back to a time when being a peacock in dress was a sign of wealth and power, not a subtle hint about sexual preferences.

However, by the Regency era, dress uniforms and court dress were the last bastion of extreme fashion for those who liked a surplus of flash and glitter.

So today’s post is dedicated to uniforms and those within them for whom a visit with a friend to a friendly coffee house may have been a useful way to earn an extra coin or two.

August 15, 2015 by judeknight

Phyrne of Athens on Wanton Weekends

For today’s courtesan, we’re stepping back 2,500 years, to the hetaera Phryne of classical Athens. The hetaerae were independent, educated and shrewd at a time that wives were kept confined and ignorant.

Phryne apparently tailored her fees to her client, charging very high prices to some, and giving herself to the philosopher Diogenes free of charge, because she admired his intellect.

She became so wealthy at her profession that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes after Alexander the Great destroyed them. Her only condition was that they be inscribed ‘Destroyed by Alexander, restored by Phryne the courtesan’. This was a step too far for the city government, however.

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She ran afoul of her own city government — they did not like wealthy independent women. And they had their chance to put this one in her place when she stripped naked as an offering to the god Poseidon during a festival. She was put on trial for blasphemy, the punishment for which was death. Things were looking grim when her lawyer stripped off her gown. “How could a festival in honour of the gods be desecrated by beauty they themselves bestowed,” he said.

It worked. Rather than offend the goddess Aphrodite, the judges acquitted the courtesan, prompting this letter to her lawyer from one of her friends:

We courtesans are grateful to you, and each one of us is just as grateful as Phryne. The suit, to be sure…involved Phryne alone, but it meant danger for us all, for…if we…face prosecution for impiety, it’s better for us to have done with this way of living…you have not merely saved a good mistress for yourself, but have put the rest of us in a mood to reward you on her account.

August 9, 2015 by judeknight

Veronica Franco on Wanton Weekends

In the weeks before the launch of A Baron for Becky, I wrote a number of vignettes about courtesans, concubines, mistresses, prostitutes, sex slaves, and others who were kept for their bodies or who used their bodies to win a place in the world. It was interesting material, and I’ve saved it all, so today I’m beginning a series called Wanton Weekends. Each week, I’ll post another vignette, and when I’ve run out, I’ll research and write some more. So if I don’t cover a period or a wanton you’d like to hear more about, just comment and I’ll add to my list.

The life of a courtesan may seem glamorous, but my character Becky hopes to save enough money to leave it. How about you? Courtesan or Bride? Before you answer, consider the following quote from a letter written by Renaissance courtesan, Veronica Franco:

I’ll add that even if fate should be completely favourable and kind to her, this is a life that always turns out to be a misery. It’s a most wretched thing, contrary to human reason, to subject one’s body and labour to a slavery terrifying even to think of.

To make oneself prey to so many men, at the risk of being stripped, robbed, even killed, so that one man, one day, may snatch away from you everything you have acquired from many over such a long time, along with so many other dangers of injury and dreadful contagious diseases; to eat with another’s mouth, sleep with another’s eyes, move according to another’s will, obviously rushing toward the shipwreck of your mind and your body- what greater misery?

What wealth, what luxuries, what delights can outweigh all this? Believe me, among all the world’s calamities, this is the worst. And if to worldly concerns you add those of the soul, what greater doom and certainty of damnation could there be?

(Letter 22,’ A Warning to a mother considering turning her daughter into a courtesan’ Veronica Franco, Poems and Selected Letters, edited and translated by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal, Chicago University Press, 1998, pp.37-40)

Veronica was a courtesan and the daughter of a courtesan. Given a fine education, she was trained for marriage, but her union with a wealthy physician ended badly. Needing to support herself, she turned to the sex trade, and quickly became highly regarded. She was listed (in a guide to courtesans of Venice) as one of the leading courtesans of the day.

She was a celebrated member of literary circles, and a poet in her own right, publishing often erotic, sometimes sexually explicit, poetry as well as a collection of 50 letters.

The movie, Dangerous Beauty, based on Margaret Rosenthal’s book The Honest Courtesan, opens with this one of her poems.

We danced our youth in a dreamed-of city,
Venice, paradise, proud and pretty.
We lived for love and lust and beauty,
Pleasure then our only duty;
Floating then twixt heaven and Earth
And drunk on plenty’s blessed mirth.
We thought ourselves eternal then,
Our glory sealed by God’s own pen.
But heav’n, we found is always frail,
Against man’s fear will always fail.

May 7, 2015 by judeknight

A thriving tourist trade and a deadly volcano

In the 1880s, the geothermal area of Rotorua was home of New Zealand’s first thriving tourist trade. People came from all over the world to see the famous Pink and White Terraces. Formed over thousands of years, they comprised two staircases of terraces and terraced pools cascading down from two large geysers that sent silica-laden water down the hills at the end of Lake Rotomahana.

Hotels sprung up to hold the tourists, and the local Maori people cornered the guide and transportation business, escorting parties on the walk to Lake Tarawera, shipping them by whale boat to the other side of the lake, then escorting them on foot over the hill on the final 1 kilometre to the terraces.

In June 1886, aurges in the water caused some concern, but people ignored the warnings of the local tohunga (wise man), who said that his people were becoming too fond of the tourist dollars and were upsetting the ancestors.

Then travellers on the lake saw a war canoe – and none had travelled the lake in many years. Many saw it appear, come towards them, and then vanish.

Eleven days later, people in the nearby village of Te Wairoa were woken by a series of increasingly powerful earthquakes. By 2.30, craters the length of the mountain were venting scoria and ash, mud and steam, along a 17 kilometre rift.

As wet mud began to fall, many buildings where people had taken shelter began to collapse in the six villages around the lake. By morning, upwards of 100 people had died, though many had survived in the stronger buildings in Te Wairoa.

New Zealand’s first tourism operation had gone down in flames.

Jude Knight Storyteller

Creating determined heroines and the men who appreciate them

Other research