Regency England Undressed

Lesley Blanch’s novella-length introduction to the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, the reigning courtesan of Regency London, was first published in 1955 in New York, where she was then living with her diplomat-novelist husband, Romain Gary. The Wilder Shores of Love, for which Blanch is chiefly remembered, had been published to acclaim the previous year.

 

Harriette Wilson lived among and was an integral part of a wealthy society where privilege, arrogance and leisure flourished. The greatest courtesan of her age, her patrons included many of the distinguished men of her day, from the Duke of Wellington to Lord Byron. Her weapons of allure were beauty, style and wit. She held court in a box at the opera and competed with her courtesan sisters for status and prestige.

 

“Harriette Wilson’s life was deplorable – but how readable!” Blanch exclaims. The motive for writing the Memoirs, published in 1825, was blackmail, or “a desperate effort to live by my wits,” as Wilson put it. She was in her thirties, her looks were fading away as were her admirers, and the annuity she had been promised by the Duke of Beaufort in exchange for leaving alone his heir, the Marquis of Worcester, had been cut off.


Wilson offered to edit out of her Memoirs any lovers who paid 200 pounds, thereby holding the British aristocracy to ransom. Certain men who bought her silence were excluded, while others who paid highly were hugely flattered. Those who were brave enough to stand up to her were ridiculed and shamed - most famously the Duke of Wellington: “Publish and be damned!” he cried. She did and she was.

 

Regency England Undressed: Harriette Wilson, the Greatest Courtesan of her Age also offers intimately detailed portraits of eccentrics, individualists and the demi-monde.  Blanch’s Biographical Notes in the Appendix read like a raffish Who's Who of Regency England, and Europe too. She brings the distant past to life so it reads like a novel; precise in its curious detail and bold in its historical panache.

 

MAUREEN CLEAVE, DAILY TELEGRAPH — A scholarly romantic in a school of her own, the depth of Lesley Blanch’s research is such that other writers plunder her books shamelessly.

 

LESLEY BLANCH — Today, in America, the courtesan may be said to have been replaced by the psychoanalyst. In place of the alcove there is the analyst's office. But basically the functions of both courtesan and analyst have the same principle. Both offer escape, relaxation and individual attention; both are expensive. And the couch is still there.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lesley Blanch was a distinguished writer, artist, drama critic, and features editor of British Vogue during World War Two. In 1946 she sailed from England to travel the world with her diplomat-novelist husband, Romain Gary. By the time they reached Hollywood in the 1950s they were literary celebrities. Their  marriage of eighteen years ended when Gary left her for the young actress, Jean Seberg. Blanch headed East to travel across Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Turkey, Iran, Samarkand, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Sahara.


Born in 1904, she died aged 103, having gone from being a household name to a mysterious and neglected living legend. The author of twelve books, including Journey into the Mind's Eye, Pierre Loti, The Sabres of Paradise, and Round the World in Eighty Dishes, her memoirs – On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life – are published by Virago and La Table Ronde in France. A follow up collection of travel pieces, pen portraits and journalism, Far To Go and Many To Love, is published by Quartet Books.