England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [39]
Sometimes Emma had only to be a pleasant companion for dinner, drinks, and cards, talking of horses and hunting with the aristocrats, stocks and shares with the businessmen, and politics with everybody, as it looked increasingly likely that England would lose the American war of independence. When attempting to take refuge in a brothel from the English obsession with politics, Lord Tyrconnel was so infuriated by the zeal of the "nymphs" for politics that he "left them in a passion and the next day returned to France."4 Those who ruled the country came to Arlington Street, and many claimed that St. James courtesans bartered their favors for votes.
Kelly often paraded her staff around the Ranelagh and Vauxhall pleasure gardens and took them to the theater or opera. As one commentator noted, the girls were often "superbly clothed at public places; and even those of the most expensive kind." Clients sometimes hired them simply as escorts for parties or days out. One rake, William Hickey, took three Kelly girls in a coach to Turnham Green, "to drink tea at the Pack Horse, and treat the misses to a swing." On fine days, Emma perhaps visited the tea gardens at Sadler's Wells and Highbury or concerts in Hanover Square.
Emma was beginning to make friends, and she soon found a protector. Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, a spoiled young squire, was characterized by gossip columns as the brothel regular "Sir Harry Flagellum" and "The Sporting Lover." Kelly listed him as Baron Harry Flagellum in a daybook for another of her brothels. He had become interested in Emma and asked to take her for long-term hire at his house, Uppark, to entertain him and his friends. He would have had to shell out a lot of cash to Kelly to cover Emma's "debts" and the madam's loss of earnings, and he had to agree to buy her clothes. Many girls, after being rented out, became kept mistresses. Kelly expected to be able to extract an even larger amount when Fetherstonhaugh demanded Emma's ultimate release.
Emma hoped Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh might be her escape. In her year or so at Kelly's, Emma had found out about glamour and the kind of tricks to tempt a man's passion, and she had also learned to rely on herself and to hide her emotional needs. Her hard, brilliant exterior hid a secret longing for a man to cherish her, who she could believe loved her for herself
CHAPTER 12
Life in the Country
Emma found herself on long-term hire to a stag party set to last the entire summer. Uppark is a graceful Queen Anne-style country house, situated in a rich agricultural estate on the South Downs, the expanse of rolling hills near England's southwest coast. Almost as soon as Sir Harry inherited Uppark, he turned his new home into a venue for wild drinking and hunting parties. Fifteen-year-old Miss Lyon was hired to entertain the host and his guests, serve at dinner, dance, and smile. She meant to work hard, confident that she would persuade Sir Harry to take her as his long-term mistress.
Emma had her own suite of apartments in the house and was dispatched to a cottage in the grounds only when Sir Harry's mother visited or respectable guests arrived.1 The Morning Post noted that “the little Bird of Paradise, whose amorous indiscretions have been so often held up to the public view in a light rather too serious to be entertaining, is about to produce fresh matter of envy, admiration, or ridicule… by a connection that does not seem even to be dreamed of by the most knowing”—perhaps his long-suffering mother.2 Charles Greville later accused Emma of behaving at Uppark with “giddiness and dissipation,” but, proud at being chosen out of all the other Kelly girls and anxious to prove herself worth the high price Sir Harry had paid, she was striving to be the life and soul of the party.
Sir Harry, in the words of