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Blackmail and the boudoir make an interesting combination in both Courtesans and The Courtesan's Revenge, writes Sarah Burton
The Courtesan's Revenge: Harriette Wilson, the Woman who Blackmailed the King
by Frances Wilson
368pp, Faber, £20
Courtesans
by Katie Hickman
352pp, HarperCollins, £20
"I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of 15, the mistress of the Earl of Craven." This is the tantalising opening line of the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, which her latest full-length biographer claims rocked the British establishment when it was published in 1825. In The Courtesan's Revenge, Frances Wilson draws on an impressive range of contemporary sources to distinguish fact from fiction.
Harriette's principal mistake, it soon emerges, was "believing that she was appreciated beyond her sexual celebrity, that those she was closest to valued her as a friend as well as a courtesan". Being given ample proof of this seems to have made no difference to Harriette. The Duke of Lorne transferred his interest seamlessly from Harriette to her sister Amy. The one man with whom Harriette fell deeply in love, Lord John Ponsonby, dumped her and then began an intrigue with another of her sisters, 14-year-old Fanny.
At least three and possibly five of her many sisters were also courtesans: only Sophia joined the select few whom their aristocratic protectors married, becoming Lady Berwick at the age of 17. In common with other courtesans, Harriette's economic security depended on her lovers keeping their promises to provide for her even after the relationship ended - which they signally failed to do. (This again was not uncommon. Wilson reminds us that the long-term mistress of the Prince of Wales, having been promised £20,000 which never materialised, died a pauper.) Harriette's attempts to hold her ex-protectors to their word earned her the reputation of "being difficult and a menace", a label that threatened to jeopardise her appeal to potential protectors. As her debts mounted, she proposed a radical solution.
Harriette's common opening strategy when she aimed to seduce a man was to write him an intriguing letter. She was now to turn her literary talents to darker work: "Having no other power or public voice, the betrayed woman reaches for her pen," Wilson observes. Harriette's great advantage as a "top" courtesan was that she had slept with an impressive number of establishment figures - none of whom was keen to have the world know of it. However, Harriette's purpose was not simple revenge; her idea was more subtle and more profitable: blackmail. Any of her conquests who preferred that their name did not appear in her book could simply pay up.
The strategy produced mixed results; while many readily reached for their purses and were duly scratched from the record, others chose to ride out the storm. Wellington famously scribbled in reply to her proposal: "write and be damned". George IV, on the other hand, would "do anything to suppress what Harriette had to reveal of [his mistress] Lady Conyngham".
More interesting than the excesses of conspicuous consumption are Wilson's and Hickman's reflections on the unique social and economic position of the courtesan. At a house-party in November 1813, Wilson notes, all but one male guest had been involved with Harriette: "While she describes each of these men as being possessive of her, sharing her body would seem to have consolidated rather than challenged the camaraderie between them. Having enjoyed the same woman, they were on an equal footing ... Having had a taste of Harriette created between her lovers a sort of homoerotic fellowship ..."
Yet while such women could contribute to the cohesion of male hegemony, they also exposed gaps in the double standard, which could provide space for subversion. Wilson mentions the cartoon that had John Bull, cheered on by a proletarian crowd, castigating Harriette's upper-class critics with the words: "Ye ought to be ashamed of yourselves! First to seduce the poor wretch, and then to ill use her."
Hickman emphasises the unique place such women claim in history, not only by virtue of the economic autonomy that distinguished them from respectable women, but by "their moral and spiritual autonomy - the freedom to think and speak for themselves", which they all appear to have valued at least as much.