In the notes he wrote for Nana, his novel about a courtesan in Second Empire Paris, Zola imagined ‘a whole society hurling itself’ at her body, ‘a pack of hounds after a bitch, who is not even on heat and makes fun of the hounds following her’. This might also describe the life of Harriette Wilson, whose unguarded pursuit by the leaders of the British aristocracy, the army, the government and opposition made her the most desired, and then the most dangerous, woman in Regency London.
As a courtesan, Harriette Wilson belonged to a sexual underworld whose existence is rarely admitted to in the lives of the nineteenth century’s great men, and as a blackmailer all but a few of her letters have been destroyed. So erased from the annals of history had she become when my interest in Harriette Wilson began that she threatened to remain for me the figure of fantasy she had been in her lifetime. I owe the fact that I have found such rich material to the help and support of many people. Julian Loose, my editor, encouraged the project from the very start, as did all those at Faber and my agent, Lisa Darnell. Their enthusiasm was a great motivator, particularly at the beginning when Harriette (as I call her for simplicity’s sake, her name having changed so often in her career) was stubbornly refusing to show in the books and boxes of letters which were piling up around me like pillars. Working with Faber is a great pleasure.
My research would still be continuing were it not for the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust. I am enormously grateful to Michael Holroyd, Michèle Roberts and Professor Rachel Bowlby for supporting me in my application for a Leverhulme Fellowship, and to my colleagues in the English Department at Reading University for covering my teaching in my absence. I would also like to thank the staff at The British Library, The British Museum Print Room, the Colindale Newspaper Library, Durham University Library Archives and Special Collections, the Guildhall Library, the London Library, Special Collections at London University Library, New York Public Library, Berkshire County Records, Buckinghamshire County Records, Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre, Derbyshire Record Office, Dorset Record Office, the Family Records Centre, the Hampshire Record Office, Hampton Court, the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, London Metropolitan Archives, the Public Records Office at Kew, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and Westminster Public Archives. Thanks are due to Virginia Murray for permission to reproduce letters from Harriette Wilson in the John Murray Archive, to The Honourable Henry Lytton Cobbold for permission to reproduce letters to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton kept in the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, to Durham University Library for permission to reproduce letters from the Earl Grey Papers, and to the Duke of Beaufort for permission to reproduce letters from the Badminton archives. I am most grateful to Margaret Richards for her kindness in taking me through the Somerset letters at Badminton, and for her subsequent help. Vital information was generously given to me about the background of the Cheney family by Michael Capel Cure, and of the Proby and Storer families by Peter Fullerton.
For permission to reproduce the pictures in the plate section, I would like to thank the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Country Life and the Hulton Getty Picture Collection. Except where shown otherwise, the illustrations are reproduced, by kind permission, from copies in a private collection. All illustrations in the text are reproduced, by kind permission, from copies in a private collection.
Many others have enabled this book come to fruition and I am in the debt of Mike Bott, Professor Cedric Brown, James Burmester, Jill Burrows, Angus Cargill, Ann Carey, Juliet Carey, Simon Carey, Adina Carlson, Emma Clery, Stephen Colclough, Ron Costley, Dan Cruickshank, Ben Dean, Jean Debney, Edward and Bridget Dommen, Ophelia Field, Edmund Grey, John Gurnett, the Earl of Harewood, Dr Christine Kenyon Jones, Frances Henderson, Christopher Hibbert, Alastair Laing, Nick Peacock, William Proby, Dr Jane Ridley, Jill Tovey, Kate Ward, Steve Weissman, Rollo Whately, Ann Woodley, and Andrew Wordsworth. Dr Adam Smyth was an excellent research assistant. My greatest thanks go to William St Clair for reading and commenting on the drafts, and for his willingness to discuss my ideas and share his own.
My parents never ceased to lend me their support, from researching, proof-reading, and reference hunting to photocopying and babysitting. It is to them that this book is dedicated.