The Covent Garden Ladies: The Extraordinary Story of Harris's List (33 page)

Above the bickering between Bath’s grandees, each of whom had their list of favourites to promote for the disputed title of Master of the Ceremonies, came a lone but quite influential voice of support for the unlikely figure of Samuel Derrick. It had all occurred quite by chance. During a social gathering at which a number of individuals charged with solving the crisis of Nash’s succession were present, the talk turned to the current stalemate. The situation had reached breaking point. For weeks, lists of potential appointees had been presented and rejected, one after another. Exasperated at the mention of the last candidate’s name, the husband of Lady —, the eponymous Lord —, threw up his hands in dismay. The entire selection process was a shambles. It seemed as if every aspiring, macaroni-mannered dancing master in Bath had been put forward as a suitable candidate. The absurdity of it all! So many inferior suggestions! Why, they might as well nominate Samuel Derrick for the position!

At that moment, Lady—stepped forward ‘and seriously seconded this ludicrous motion’. The room, filled with gentlemen who knew better and ladies who didn’t, fell to murmuring. Derrick’s reputation among the wives and daughters of the gentry was immaculate: a friend of Lord Chesterfield, Lord Charlemont, Lord Orrery and Cork, all men of taste and breeding. His reputation was such that he had even been offered a living in the Church. He dressed well and spoke with heartfelt deference, he was a gentleman, a poetic man of sensibility: what was there not to like about him? For most of his adult life, Derrick had dedicated his efforts to the female sex, charming and flattering them, and in the end, it was the women of England who provided him with the opportunities. No gentleman worth his manners would venture to explain to these ladies of high birth why Samuel Derrick was not all that he seemed. There was no appropriate way to inform Lady—that the same hand that composed verses on the virtues of her daughters ascribed similar graces to the whores of Covent Garden. The humiliation of the situation would have been compounded by the revelation that the man whom she had come to favour as a charming, witty and talented poet had not only been disinherited for his profligacy but had made a habit of sleeping on the street like a beggar. Certainly, among the male contingent of Bath society, many would have witnessed or heard
stories
of his antics. The more lurid sexual tales might easily be brushed aside, along with accounts of his drinking and gaming habits, none of which were judged to be social sins among men of fashion. Providing gentlemen took their pleasures tempered with a degree of moderation and a helping of discretion, their public characters might remain untarnished. The problem was that Sam was neither moderate nor discreet in his enjoyments. As Boswell had so succinctly put it, Derrick was in the eyes of many gentlemen no better than ‘a little blackguard pimping dog’, a lewd, poorly washed, immoral, lowborn Irishman. If his character was not in itself enough to raise dissent, then the flames were surely fanned by the whispers that circulated among those who recognised Sam as the author of the
Harris’s List
. Although this may only have been a select few gentlemen, it nevertheless was enough to deposit Sam’s secret in the public domain. To women of Lady —’s gentle birth, even the title
Harris’s List
would never have so much as formed part of their comprehension. She couldn’t have possibly understood that by putting Derrick’s name forward, she had unwittingly nominated a pimp for Master of the Ceremonies.

Derrick’s rise to this position of prominence was assisted on the one hand by those ignorant of his unsavoury reputation, and on the other by those who were fully apprised of it. Those buckish comrades who had shared his Covent Garden secrets alongside bottles of wine found the prospect of his appointment novel, if not amusingly delightful. Additionally, his supporters among the Irish aristocracy, whom he had so successfully seduced with his well-mannered demeanour only a year earlier, stood resolutely behind his nomination and influenced others of their class to do the same. As Samuel Johnson sagely explained to Boswell, Derrick had owed his triumph to the contacts he had cultivated as a patron-hunting author, adding that ‘Had he not been a writer, he might have been sweeping the crosses in the streets and asking half-pence from everyone that passed’. In the minds of another group of Bath society, however, the fine line that existed between Derrick and a mendicant street-sweeper was negligible. Collette, for one, was incensed that he should be made to stand down in favour of one who bore such an ignoble name. For support in his indignation, the Frenchman turned to a rather unlikely ally.

James Quin had been a titan of the stage in the days before David Garrick rendered his stiff, recitative style of acting virtually laughable. Like Derrick, Quin was an Irishman, although more senior in years than Sam. He had come to Bath, like many of the thespian set, to settle into a peaceful retirement while still enjoying the veneration of numerous admirers who looked to him as one of the resort’s resident celebrities. As Bath housed a large and highly esteemed theatre, which hosted performances of top London plays, Quin placed himself at the centre of this sphere, making pronouncements and passing judgments on productions with Doge-like authority. He had come to view himself as a kind of alternative ‘King of Bath’. Collette therefore saw fit to air his grievances at the foot of Quin’s throne. Perhaps Quin and Derrick were too similar in disposition, or Quin believed it necessary for fashion’s sake to cultivate a rival, but the veteran actor never much cared for ‘the little Irish poet’. So when Collette came to him venting his spleen on the injustice and ‘impropriety of choosing Derrick’, he found a sympathetic ear. According to
Town and Country Magazine
, ‘… After expatiating upon all the errors of his conduct, and his want of knowledge in polite life’, and ultimately ‘concluding with an observation on the insignificancy of his figure and the disagreeableness of his smell’, Collette turned to the aged actor for a word of advice. Quin memorably responded with the damning phrase, ‘If you have a mind to put Derrick out, do it at once, and clap an extinguisher over him’. The battle lines had been drawn.

As many of Derrick’s critics had noticed, once ‘the Little King of Bath’ had been crowned with Beau Nash’s white hat, any remaining vestiges of humility in Sam’s character vanished. ‘Vanity had no small share in the composition of our master of the ceremonies’, wrote the author of his obituary. If he could not prove to the world that he was ‘a man of the most gallantry, the most wit and the most politeness of any in Europe’, then he also ‘insisted upon … keeping the best company’. Sam had spent much of his life having to endure the insults and disdain of those who regarded him as nothing better than a bottom-feeding hack, an indigent lowlife bereft of breeding and morality. Enough was enough. As he had done so many years earlier when contending with his rival Tracy, Derrick chose to voice his emotions
through
his pen, this time exerting ‘his talents in ridiculing those who had been instrumental in … [attempting] to dethrone him’. Unable to forgive his enemy for his vitriolic attacks or to ‘forget the advice Quin had given others’, the King of Bath ‘wrote the following epigram upon that gentleman’:

When Quin of all grace and dignity void,

Murder’d Cato, the censor, and Brutus destroy’d;

He strutted, he mouth’d – you no passion cou’d trace

In his action, delivery, or plumb-pudding face;

When he massacred Comus, the gay god of mirth,

He was suffer’d because we of actors had dearth,

But when Foote, with strong judgement and genuine wit,

Upon all his peculiar absurdities hit;

When Garrick arose, with those talents and fire

Which nature and all the nine muses inspire,

Poor GUTS
¹
was neglected, or laugh’d off the stage;

So bursting with envy, and tortur’d with rage,

He damn’d the whole town in a fury, and fled,

Little Bayes
²
an extinguisher clapp’d on his head

Yet we never shall Falstaff behold so well done

With such character, humour, such spirit and fun,

So great that we knew not which most to admire,

Glutton, parasite, pander, pimp, letcher, or liar –

He felt as he spoke; – nature’s dictates are true;

When he acted the part, his own picture he drew.
³

Derrick’s poem had its desired effect: he had offended Quin enough to make him a sworn enemy. Theirs was a mutual disgust that lasted until shortly before the actor’s death in 1766, when all was forgiven over a rift-healing dinner of John Dory, Quin’s favourite fish.

Upon his election as Master of the Ceremonies, Sam seemed determined to establish himself once and for all in the eyes of society as a man of importance and gentility. He sought to recast his character and invent a public persona flawless in his knowledge of propriety. Many of those whom he had duped about his moral fibre remained none the wiser, but
others
who knew Sam Derrick for Sam Derrick saw the transparency of his charade and found it hilarious. Not only was Sam ‘very fond of pomp and show’, as John Taylor wrote in his
Records of My Life
, but when his position at last enabled him to acquire a household of servants, Derrick ensured that ‘he kept a footman almost as fine as himself’. In order to demonstrate to the world that he was a gentleman of consequence, ‘his footman always walked behind him, and to show that he was his servant, he generally crossed the street several times, that the man might be seen to follow him’. Derrick now lived more extravagantly than ever, boasting of an enormous wardrobe and a luxurious ‘modern’ Bath townhouse filled with expensive furnishings. He travelled between his regular engagements at Bath, Tunbridge Wells and London in his own coach, drawn by his own horses. In spite of being in receipt of an income that amounted to ‘upwards of £800 per annum’, a very comfortable sum, Derrick had refused to change in one crucial respect: he continued to live well above his means. With his usual bravado, he gambled for significantly high stakes at the card tables. The gifts he made to friends were more lavish than ever, and the loans he issued more indulgent.

But Derrick’s proud displays of puffed-up plumage served as a mask to hide something else. The more absurdly polite he became, the more mannered airs he assumed, the more lavish equipage he acquired, the less likely it was that those whose respect he needed to maintain would be inclined to believe any uncomplimentary tales concerning his underlying character, should they come to light. In truth, Sam juggled two diametrically opposed personas, an acceptable and an unacceptable face – a situation which must have provided him with no end of trouble. Some of his friends, including his naïve correspondent Tom Wilson, believed that his position as Master of the Ceremonies meant that Sam would pack in the slightly grubby practice of writing. ‘The happiest circumstance in your affairs is to be released from the vile drudgery of authorship, to be subject to the clamorous demands of devils and booksellers’, he sighed in sympathetic relief. But Sam had no intention of giving up his unshakable desire to become a renowned poet. If anything, his role provided him with virtually unlimited access to the drawing rooms of every patron of consequence in the British
Isles
as they came to sojourn on his doorstep. Sadly, when at last provided with a scenario ideal for creating his
magnum opus
, the reality of Derrick’s abilities was made perfectly apparent. In the eight years of his reign, Sam did manage to produce a handful of works which might loosely be described as his most respectable: edited collections of verse by recognised poets, as well as his own letters and an attempt at epic Irish poetry,
The Battle of Lora
, but none of these publications gathered enough interest to construct a reputation of literary greatness. Of all his attempts, only one volume continued to sell year upon year at the kiosks in Covent Garden and the bookstalls that cluttered Fleet Street.

Like Tom Wilson, another of Sam’s correspondents given to moralising had wished him congratulations on his appointment to office, but also offered an interesting benediction. He ‘hoped with great sincerity’ that ‘… whatever you publish hereafter will be an honour to your name and character.’ Derrick chose to ignore these well-intentioned words. After 1762, there was no need for Sam to continue as editor of the
Harris’s List
; his duties as Master of the Ceremonies would have consumed most of his time. Moreover, his connection with such a publication was not an ideal one, in light of his recent promotion in society. With his comfortable life and the income of a gentleman, he would no longer have been reliant upon the revenue generated through the
List
’s sale. However, the
Harris’s List
had been for Derrick not merely a money-spinning opportunity that had broken him out of a spunging house but, remarkably, it also became a responsibility that he owed to a community of women. His role in the
List
’s creation was one he took seriously and regarded as a contribution to the betterment of the lives of the women who over the years had become some of the truest friends he was ever to know. For all that Bath offered, Derrick felt that he owed something more significant to those in the Garden. He never forgot the
filles de joye
who not only supported him but to whom he owed his first and only literary success.

For most of his reign, Derrick led a double life, appearing upstanding in the eyes of his subjects and continuing in much the same vein as he always had in the company of his loose-living friends. If anything, he had become better at concealing his true nature. When
not
under the gaze of his public, he joined in the spirited fun of Bath’s drinking and dining societies and dabbled in producing plays at Bath’s Theatre Royal (much to the annoyance of its theatrical manager). Now at liberty to travel in his own carriage, he also made frequent visits to London, where he called upon both male and female friends from his past. In spite of his posturing and attempts to hide his slightly rough-edged personality behind deep bows and flattery, he had no more abandoned his vices than he had gained religion. Inevitably, Sam could not prevent the wags from revealing his secret side to the public, although thankfully they waited until he was comfortably in his grave to blow his cover. If there had been any doubt as to the true nature of the seemingly well-polished Master of the Ceremonies, then
Derrick’s Jests
soon put an end to it. This was the man who many of the male visitors to Bath remembered from the Bedford Coffee House: a slightly ludicrous beau-nasty with poor personal hygiene and a sparkling wit. This was a man with a foul mouth, who in this compendium of quotes revealed a disdain for the elaborate codes of propriety, who liked to abandon formality with the claim that he ‘was only paid for being ceremonious in the Long-room’. This Sam Derrick revelled in his sharp retorts to dreary matrons, and announced with no pretension ‘when I … die, I desire only a foot-stone to my grave, inscribed,
Pray don’t piss here!
’ What
Derrick’s Jests
laid bear was that this Sam Derrick, in spite of his convincingly polished demeanour, was in his heart more at ease in the disreputable circus of Covent Garden than the glorious parade of Bath.