Life on board the pirate ship

When, in 1825, Harriette Wilson began her Memoirs with ‘I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of 15, the mistress of the Earl of Craven’ an avid readership settled down to revel in what was clearly going to be the work of an old pro. So perhaps it is as well for Eleanor Berry’s personal reputation that at the end of Cap’n Bob and Me the reader feels somewhat short-changed.

Many, of course, taken aback that the ‘Bouncing Czech’ could be an object of wild sexual desire to anyone, will be relieved that the wilful Miss Berry spares us the details – if details there were. It is enough to know that time has not dimmed her adoration for the man who threw her into his swimming pool on their first encounter and 23 years later took the plunge into altogether deeper water himself.