Woman in History.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 18, 3 November 1909, Page 61

Woman in History.

SOME NOTORIOUS WOMEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE latter part of the eighteenth century, when vast increase in wealth was bringing forth unbridled prodigality and mankind had not yet been sobered by the terrors of the French Revolution, was about the most immoral in English social history.

It was an epoch of matrimonial infidelity. Almost every month an action for crim. con. or a petition for divorce occupied the attention of the King’s Bench or Doctor’s Commons. At no other time were so many proud names dragged through the mire, and never before had so many titled ladies strayed from the path of virtue. It is not surprising, therefore, that this vicious era 'witnessed the apotheosis of the scarlet ■woman. Day by day the Press chronicled her movements, chanting her praises or making merry over her transgressions. Dishonour was a sure passport to celebrity, and, thanks to the license of newspapers. every frail beauty might live in hope that one morning she would awake to find herself famous.

The ladies who actually did succeed in winning fame have pansed permanently into history. In many instances their lives are interwoven with the careers of notable contemporaries. The name of Fanny Murray is writ Urge in a chapter in the history of John Wilkes; the fortunes of Nancy Parsons were identified in the closest manner with the ministry of the Duke of Grafton; the portraits of Kitty Fisher in private and public galleries will not allow us to forget that she was a favourite model of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sometimes a special interest of some sort attaches to the lady fair and frail. No critic of the French Revolution can afford to neglect the memoirs of Grace Dalrymple Eliot, nor should the student of criminology overlook the case of Kitty Kennedy and her precious brothers. Fanny Murray was a little orphan who, in the year 1741, tried to make a living by selling flowers in the streets of Bath. Though only twelve years old she fell a victim to the wiles of one “Jack” Spencer, the favourite grandson of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and next passed into the hands of Beau Nash, then an elderly person, but still acknowledged social king of Bath.

Before the year 174-3 her friendship with Nash had ended, and she had plunged into the mad swirl of London life. Soon her youth and beauty were recognised by the rakes of Covent Garden. During the summer of 1746 society was much amused by Horace Walpole’s poem of “The Beauties,” a sprightly eulogy of some of the loveliest women in the land. Every one approved of the poet’s selections save Richard Rigby, who made a jocular protest, declaring that no list of fair ladies could be complete unless it included the name of Fanny Murray. Evidently by this time “The Beauty of the Bath” had emerged from the obscurity of Covent Garden. And, indeed, it is a matter of record that all the wild nobles in the town were enraptured with her fresh, young charms. Whenever she walked abroad a troop of gallants crowded around her. Such a favourite did she become that the wits declared “it was a vice not to be acquainted with Fanny; it was a crime not to toast her at every meal.”

Her chief admirer at this period was Sir Richard Clapham, a baronet of more wealth than brains. Many anecdotes were told of his foolish extravagance. The story of the banknote sandwich, which was repeated in every tavern and club house in London, has been preserved for all time in one of Walpole’s letters. One morning Fanny was sitting at the breakfast table with Sir Richard when, to stop her oft-repeated complaints of poverty, he drew out his pocketbook and presented her with twenty pounds. It was in the early days of their friendship —the autumn of 1748—and the nineteen-year-old Fanns’, now at the pinnacle of her fame, could afford to take liberties. Laughing contemptuously she clapped the bank note between two slices of bread and butter, and, protesting that it was not sufficient to make her a breakfast, began to munch it in saucy derision.

“Drat your twenty pounds,” she cried, according to Walpole. “What does that signify ?” The whirligig of Time brought around its customary revenges. Eight years

later Fanny Murray was loverless and penniless. She had run the pace, and it had proved too killing for her. As a last appeal she applied to the Spencer family. Her betrayer was dead, but his son, a conscientious and kindly gentleman, not only settled on her a pension of two hundred pounds, but procured for her a husband in the person of one of the principal actors at Drury Lane, a handsome Scotsman, of a good but decayed family, named David Ross. On the day of the wedding, when bride and groom arrived at church, the clergyman came forward and begged Fanny to allow him a word in private. Having taken her into the vestry, he warned her, as one of her friends has related, “delicately but solemnly that marriage was an awful and a sacred tie, and that unless she had determined t 6 forsake all others and cleave only to her husband she would plunge herself into dreadful guilt by entering the married state.”

The penitent woman did not resent the good man’s advice. Deeply moved, she replied that she was going to lead a new life, and hoped to atone for her past sins. So, after a few words of encouragement, he led her into the church and proceeded with the ceremony. Thus the notorious Fanny Murray became the wife of the famous David Ross, and settled down cheerfully to her new duties, darning her husband’s stockings and mending his shirts with amazing industry, spoiling the good, easy man in a hundred ways by her care for his comfort.

To the end she proved a model wife, and although everyone watched her conduct with keen suspicion, no one ever detected the slightest impropriety. Henceforth not a breath of scandal tarnished her name. A little more than 12 months after David Ross’s farewell to the stage he suffered the greatest misfortune in his checkered career. On April 1, 1778, his faithful wife died at their home in the Strand. Her age was 49, and she had been married more than 20 years. In the very year of Fanny Murray’s retirement from the purlieus of London a more famous woman than herself had gfisen to the bad eminence she had formerly occupied. Kitty Fisher had become the toast of the tow’n.

Kitty is described as very beautiful. But even had she been very plain, her cavaliers would have been numerous, for her wit and high spirits made her a fascinating companion. One who should have known speaks of her as “the essence of small talk and the magazine of contemporary anecdote. It was impossible to be dull in her company.”

Since she was endowed by Nature with a distinct personality, her bonmots and repartees possessed an uncommon zest and were quoted in the club rooms as frequently as the sallies of Sam Foote, the play-actor.

Little is known of her early life. It is believed that she was born in Soho about 1738, and that her father was a German silver chaser, who spelt the name Fischer. Under the auspices of an accomplished rake, Thomas Medlycott by name, the heir of a Somersetshire landowner, she began to appear in all public places when about 20. With utmost avidity she courted all the distractions of her new life, seeking an anodyne for the pangs of conscience in a whirl of pleasure. Soon she became a familiar figure in the boxes of the theatres. Night after night she joined the fashionable throng that flocked to the concerts in the Rotunda at Ranelagh. Day after day she paraded the walks of Lslington Spa, or took tea at Marylebone Gardens, attired in the latest fashion, an easy negligee clinging round her trim figure. It was a common reproach against Kitty—a reproach put both into prose and verse —that more of her own sex were seduced from the paths of virtue by her display of luxury than had been corrupted by all the rakes in the town. Sometimes her notoriety caused her considerable discomfort in public places, since the sound of her name would gather a crowd around her in a moment. One story which Mr. Bleackley tells is worth retelling. During a review in Hyde Park some mischievous courtiers who had espied Kitty Fisher a short distance away suggested to George H. that it would be a good joke to introduce her to Mr. Pitt, his staid and aged Secretary of State. His Majesty nodded approval. “Who is that lady?” he asked, looking toward the beauty.

“Oh, sir,” replied Lord Ligonier, “that is the Duchess of N , a foreign lady, whom the Secretary should know.”

“Well, well,” cried the mischief-loving King, “present him to her.”

In obedience to the royal command, Mr. Pitt allowed himself to be led away by his fellow peer, who, as soon as they had come up to the lady, announced without further ado:—

“This is Mr. Secretary Pitt —Miss Kitty Fisher.” The great Commoner was not in the least embarrassed. Removing his hat, with a gracious bow, he advanced toward the astonished girl, and told her how sorry he was that he had not known her as a young girl.

“For then, madam.” he continued, “I should have the hope of succeeding in your affections, but old and infirm as you now see me, I have no other way of avoiding the force of such beauty than by flying from it.”

And with this gallant speech he hobbled away.

“.So you soon despatched him, Kitty?" eried some of the jesters who had followed to mark the jest’s prosperity. “Not I. indeed,” she retorted. “He went off of his own acord, to my very great regret, for 1 have never had such handsome things said of me by the youngest of you.” Not only was Kitty, in Tom Taylor’s word, “the most celebrated Traviata of her time,” but probably she was the most famous that England had ever seen. From 1758 until 1766 her supremacy was absolute. Then, like Fanny Murray, she disappeared from her old haunts to become a lawful and loyal wife. Her husband was John Norris, a Kentish landowner, and a member of Parliament, who shocked his family and all London by this amazing marriage. He retired with her to his country seat in the little village of Benenden. But Kitty’s health had been broken down by dissipation. She soon recognised that death stared her in the face. Since her marriage she had shown the deepest and sincerest piety, finding solace in religion and charitable works, hoping to win pardon for her sins. On March 23, 1767, the body of Catherine Fisher Norris was laid to rest in the family vault of Benenden Parish Church, and the poor villagers, looking on with mournful eyes as she was carried to the tomb, felt that they had never possessed a better friend than this bright and beautiful lady, who had come among them for such a short space of time like a winter flower. In sharp contrast to the stories of these two reformed Magdalens, born in the gutter and dying in respectable mansions, is that of Gertrude Mahon, who was born to respectability and deliberately ended her days in the gutter. Gertrude Tilson was the spoiled child of incompetent and improvident parents. Her father, James Tilson, died while consul to Cadiz when she was only twelve years old, and she was brought up by her mother who was the Countess of Kerry by her first marriage. Thrown into. London society at the age of seventeen, she met and eloped with one Gilbraith Mahon, an Irish gambler and an adventurer, from whom she soon separated.

Then her mother died and left her in comfortable circumstances. But she had

acquired a taste for low society which led to her eventual ruin. The name of one man after another was coupled with hers until at last she became a a outcast from decent society, notorious under the name of the “Bird of Paradise,” for her madcap escapades and also for the variety and brilliance of her dresses. Eventually she died in absolute poverty and misery, ostracised from her fellow creatures, a withered haggard woman. Such is Hie fate of the majority.