The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (13 page)

Due to his approachable disposition and chivalrous manner, Sam became quite a favourite among the higher orders of the sisterhood. He was, more than anything, a true friend to women such as Kitty Fisher and Lucy Cooper who, even at the height of their influence, experienced periods of utter loneliness. For his kindness, Sam was handsomely rewarded by his meretricious companions. Lucy Cooper took it upon herself to feed Derrick whenever he was in need of sustenance, which was quite a regular occurrence. After Sir Orlando Bridgeman installed her in a set of elegant lodgings, Sam became a feature at her table, indulging in Lucy’s hospitality and hobnobbing with the most fashionable profligates of the mid-eighteenth century. It was whispered that Derrick was repaid horizontally as well, which is not inconceivable when considering that the roles of male protector, friend and client were frequently defined as one and the same by most prostitutes.

In later years, once he had attained a degree of celebrity, Derrick looked back on his youthful days in Covent Garden with some trepidation. Perhaps he had been too ubiquitous in the taverns, too immoderate in his habits, too interested in the company of whores. With hindsight he admitted to indulging himself with ‘large draughts of pleasure’, supping too greedily on the available delights when he could have been cultivating his talents. By the time of this epiphany, however, it was too late. Although Sam had been networking his way around the Piazza even prior to his arrival, his subsequent behaviour had the effect of souring the faith of many of his contemporaries. Sam was friendly and entertaining, a jester and a wit, but he displayed a profusion of these qualities rather than any tangible proofs of his poetic skill. He was merely one of many, one more hack without a patron, one more among the legions of the mediocre, one more tempted by the lifestyle of Covent Garden. What lay in Sam’s favour, however, was that the more hours he spent around the tables of the Bedford and the Shakespear, the better known his name became and the better he came to know others. More than any aptitude for rhyme, these two advantages would be the making of his career.

It may have been Derrick’s constant presence at these locations that provided him with the few literary breaks he received. In 1755, after approximately eighteen years in the devising, and due to the generosity of his friends in Covent Garden, Sam was able to see his
Collection of
Original
Poems
in print. The list of subscribers prefacing it reads like a
Who’s Who
of eighteenth-century Britain. As well as gaining support from his friends Garrick, Johnson and Foote, Sam had collected subscriptions from Charles Macklin, John Cleland, Tobias Smollett, Ned Shuter, George Anne Bellamy and Peg Woffington. This roll call also included the noble support of the Earls of Chesterfield and Hillsborough, the Dean of Durham, Sir Francis Dashwood and several noted Covent Garden ‘ladies’. Through his minor successes, Sam was able to cultivate further relationships with a number of those mentioned as subscribers, including Dr Johnson, who hired Sam to assist him with his
Life of Dryden
. Unlike some, Johnson always claimed to have ‘a kindness for Derrick’, and was able to see beyond those characteristics that so irritated others. Tobias Smollett also championed Sam and provided him with employment writing for his
Critical Review
. Perhaps one of the most unlikely alliances to blossom from Sam’s endeavours was his collaboration with the poet Christopher Smart. The partnership, formed over a mutual interest in the bottle, appeared doomed to failure from its outset. Both men brought out the worst of each other’s excesses at the card tables and at the tailor’s shop. Matters were complicated further by the unpredictability of Smart’s mental disorder, which threw him into sudden fits of religious ranting. The coupling produced little in the way of memorable work besides inspiring the sniping of a punster:

Contradiction we find both Derrick and Smart,

Which manifests neither can write from the heart;

The latter, which readers may think somewhat odd,

Tho’ devoted to wine, sings the glories of God:

The former lives sober, altho’ no divine;

Yet merrily carrols the praises of wine.

At times, it may have seemed to Sam Derrick that he was the only person who truly believed in his merits as an author. Neither Johnson nor Smollett nor any other leading figure in England thought his calibre of writing exceptional. His critics saw in him something absurd, a dissipated, puffed-up Irishman with assumptions that outshone his abilities. The antiquary and friend of Johnson, Dr William Oldys, found Derrick
and
his ‘familiar conversation’ offensive. ‘Oldys thought him a flippant fellow and never spoke to Derrick when he was in the room’, and if addressed, the Doctor gave him only ‘short discouraging answers’. James Boswell was far more treacherous towards a man he once considered a friend. After successfully ingratiating himself into Johnson’s circle, Boswell promptly discarded Derrick and then began to ridicule him. Johnson would have none of it, but Boswell found a willing conspirator in the poet John Home who, after a dinner at Eglingtoune Castle, mocked the lines of Derrick’s ‘Eblana’ with something he believed more apt:

Unless my deeds protract my fame,

And he who passes sadly sings,

I knew him! Derrick was his name,

On yonder tree his carcase swings!

While Boswell and Home may have sniggered at their mean-spirited ditty, sadly even a number of Sam’s more sympathetic contemporaries would have been inclined to agree with the assessment of his future prospects. Unless he changed direction, Sam Derrick was heading towards the rapids.

7

THE
COMPLEXITIES
OF
Love

OF THE MANY
bad influences within Sam Derrick’s circle, not every character leading him down the path of temptation was either a prostitute or a bohemian reprobate. Sam’s popularity, his willingness to gamble and whore, made him a choice companion of high-born rakes, with whom, as an heir, he felt an affinity. But what Derrick neglected to consider when sitting down for a game of cards or making purchases from his tailor was that the lives of his associates, men like the debauched Sir Francis Dashwood, were supported by a deep well of family funds. After the bottles were emptied, the games of whist lost, the cold suppers ordered and the whores paid for, carousing with the eighteenth century’s young bucks was a costly business. During the period of some of his worst excesses both in expenditure and judgement, Derrick had by his side a man considered to be ‘one of the most dissipated men of his age’: Robert Tracy. As the grandson of the esteemed judge, also called Robert Tracy, his origins lay not with the established Tracys of Stanway Park but with a more recently created limb, fairly new to the amphitheatre of
conspicuous
wealth. Due to the untimely death of his father, his grandfather’s fortune as well as his Gloucestershire estate of Coscombe (or ‘Coxscombe’ as his friends later dubbed it) were passed to him as a child. Tracy had grown up as an heir, denied nothing and, as the only surviving son, spoilt rotten. Blessed with all of life’s advantages, ‘Beau’ Tracy, as he was known, was not only rich but strikingly handsome and unbearably self-obsessed. By his early twenties, he had emerged into society ready to hone his full set of degenerate traits on every temptation available.

By the time that Sam had made his acquaintance, Tracy’s bulging purse had already gained a reputation for leaking money all across London. He had established a trail, which ran from his set of chambers in the Middle Temple through the doors of Covent Garden’s watering holes and brothels and into the boxes of both theatres. Needless to say, a devil-may-care approach to spending, when combined with his devastatingly fine features, earned the Beau many friends of both sexes. Actors and writers were especially keen acquaintances and Tracy, who one suspects concealed a desire to go upon the stage himself, whiled away much of his time at the Bedford Coffee House in the company of the thespian set. He counted among his closest friends the theatrical celebrity Arthur Murphy, in addition to Sam Derrick, who benefited from his generosity on a number of occasions.

As much as it would have suited moralists to paint such a wastrel as an empty-headed ninny, Tracy was nothing of the sort. Like his grandfather before him, he had been trained as a barrister and received the classical education of a gentleman. Contemporaries thought him to be ‘a man far above mediocrity with regard to sense and learning’ and commented upon his sharp scholastic ability and ‘very pretty library’. Tracy also subscribed to the tenets of self-improvement and made a point of never succumbing to idleness; even ‘whilst he was under the hair-dresser’s hands’ he took the opportunity to ‘peruse some favourite author’, later remarking that ‘whilst the outside of his head was embellishing, the interior region of it should be polishing; or else the powdered fop could be considered in no better predicament than a barber’s block’. But in spite of feeding his
mind
on literature and the rhetorical quandaries of the law, Tracy still suffered from the unavoidable affliction of those who have everything. The Beau was bored. There was nothing he couldn’t buy, no one he couldn’t charm, and with his father long in his grave, no one of any consequence to reprimand him for his reckless behaviour. In fact, as far as his mother’s relations were concerned, if the Beau managed to ‘destroy himself by his vices before he had attained his thirtieth year’, all the better. His maternal cousin and sole heir, Robert Pratt, was poised in the wings, eagerly awaiting the arrival of his fortune.

Of all of Tracy’s vices, none cost him as much as ‘his weakness with regard to the fair sex’. Dominion over the objects of his attention was straightforward enough, as the generality of women found it rather difficult to resist his appearance. ‘He was’, as the author of the
Nocturnal Revels
writes, ‘about 5 foot 9 inches high, of a Herculean form with a remarkably agreeable countenance’. Many gave their hearts as willingly as their bodies, a grievous mistake for any lady of pleasure, as the Beau tended to weary quickly of his conquests and cast them off as readily as the unwanted items of his enormous wardrobe. As an inveterate philanderer, his ego dictated that he was entitled to the choicest ‘pieces’ as they arrived on the market, so that by the time of his premature death in 1756, he could lay claim to having loved his way through the bedchambers of virtually every fashionable Thais in London. For most of 1750 he had been seen dangling Covent Garden’s current reigning lovely, Fanny Murray, off his arm, but by the early part of the following year
ennui
had begun to get the better of him. His lusts had already strayed in the direction of another Impure
de jour
.

How long the Beau had designs on Charlotte Hayes no one can say. While he was parading Fanny Murray through the boxes of Drury Lane and Vauxhall Gardens, Charlotte was being maintained in her elegant Pall Mall residence at the expense of her keeper, Edward Strode. Strode, like Tracy, was a restless lover, but without a fortune of his own to squander he had little reservation about raiding his wife’s. As his divorce proceedings later state, in order to fund his exploits he beat Lucy Strode until she yielded her jewellery, valuables which he
then
pawned to pay his debts and keep Charlotte in comfort. Just as Robert Tracy’s interest in Fanny Murray had gone into decline, Strode had also entered the market in search of another mistress. As it happened, whether by accident or intention, Strode ended up with Fanny and Tracy with Charlotte. For whatever havoc he had wrought upon ladies’ affections in the course of his womanising progress, Charlotte was about to reap the ultimate revenge. Fickle by nature, Tracy was not in the habit of falling in love with his meretricious companions, but Charlotte had seemed to work her magic on his senses and, by employing her renowned charms, ensured that Tracy became enthralled to her. Consumed by his adoration, Charlotte would become the last woman he ever pursued, and his great love, a conspirator in his ruin.

Only several years earlier, the Beau had found himself in a similarly compromising situation. Alcohol had combined with urgent passion and induced him to make a quick ‘Fleet marriage’ to Susannah Owen, the daughter of a washerwoman. Before the union was annulled, the debacle had made Tracy the laughing stock of his more experienced rakish set. Any gentleman of his standing should have known better than to let one’s emotions prevail over reason in such circumstances. Male commentators could never comprehend how a man far from being ‘devoid of parts and understanding’ could possibly allow himself to become the fool of women. After this embarrassing incident, Tracy took pains to evade the snares of love, although he found himself incapable of avoiding those laid by Charlotte. Young, and with more money than sense, Mrs Ward could not have invented a better keeper for her daughter. His susceptibility made him an ideal lover, one who spared no expense on a mistress he adored and who was too absorbed in his own vanity to concern himself as to whether his affections were reciprocated. Although she may have flattered Tracy, and did her best to convince him that her pulse raced at his sight, for Charlotte this was yet another straightforward mercenary arrangement. Not even Tracy’s handsome face could sway her passions, and his famous allure left her cold.