Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs
introduced by Lesley Blanch
Phoenix, £9.99, pp. 471, ISBN 1842126326
What do a modern New York psychoanalyst and a Regency London courtesan have in common? Both offer escape, relaxation and individual attention; both are expensive. ‘In place of the alcove there is the analyst’s office. But basically the functions of both analyst and courtesan have the same principle,’ explains Lesley Blanch in her expansive introduction to the memoirs of the most famous of English courtesans, Harriette Wilson.
For some 15 years Harriette Wilson was all the rage in London political society. Men were desperate for her favours, just for a night if they could not be her long-term protector. She was not beautiful —although she cheekily told the Prince Regent, hoping for a meeting with him, that she was — but exuded sex appeal and vivacity. Barely educated, she studied hard to ensure that she was attractive to gentlemen of a more intellectual bent, reading in short order, Seneca, Rousseau’s Confessions, Racine’s tragedies and Boswell’s Life of Johnson. ‘I allowed myself only ten minutes for my dinner,’ wrote this ambitious young girl, who craved love, admiration, power over men and money, especially the latter, of which, thanks to her expensive tastes, she never had enough. But, although it was an accusation that later dogged her, she was far too independent to be a prostitute.
Harriette Dubouchet (Wilson was her chosen name), one of 15 children of John Dubouchet and Amelia Cook, stocking cleaners, was born on 2 February 1786 in Shepherd Market, Mayfair ‘at ten minutes before 8 o’c’, one of the only dates of certainty in her memoirs. The rest she omitted in order to convey a virtuous insistence that one lover never overlapped with another.
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