Very Rare. There is an example in the BM but we have been unable to locate any other examples.
A scene illustrating a humorous episode in the memoirs of the famous courtesan Harriette Wilson.
The print illustrates a story told by Harriette Wilson in her scandalous Memoirs, published serially in 1825 by John Joseph Stockdale. Wilson (1786 – 1845) became the mistress of the Earl of Craven at the age of 15. In her career as a courtesan, she went on to have relations with men of the upper class who circled around Mayfair. Living in the demi-mondaine she was at once one of Mayfair’s most and least visible characters, witness and privy to the private scandals of the era’s leading men.
In chapter VIII of her Memoirs Harriette Willson recounts an affair concerning the Clergyman Lord Frederick Beauclerk, the Courtesan Mrs Moll Raffles, the longstanding mistress of the Marquess of Wellesley. Beaucklerk pays a visit to Wilson and tells her of his intrigue with Wellesley’s “belle amie Raffles”, Wilson, wilfully making mischief invites Wellesley to visit her and relays to him the affair.
Wilson describes Wellesley arriving, satirically overdressed. “His lordship appeared the very essence of everything most recherché in superfine elegance. He was in fact all essence! Such Cambric, white as driven snow! Such embroidery! Such diamonds! Such a brilliant snuff box! Such seals and chain! And then, the pretty contrast between the broad, new, blue ribbon across his breast, and his delicate white waistcoat!” His “countenance was good and his speech was all honey, until I very quietly and very unceremoniously mentioned the worthy clergyman having passed the whole of the night preceding with Moll Raffles, consoling her en prêtre, for his lordship’s absence.”
Agitated Wellesley protests: “ ‘nay, nay, nay’ and laying his white hand, rings and all, on my shoulder, in much tribulation and hurry of speech and manner, ‘Nay – think of what you are saying – think how you may be injuring that lovely sweet being – that sweetest unsophisticated! Lovely! Sweet!’
‘Oh, what a bed of sweets, yours must be!’ interrupted I. […] Come, come, I continued, ‘my lord! Mrs. Raffles is rich, and can do without you, kindly assisted as she is by the little parson! – Don’t fret for her, nor for yourself; but if you still love her, receive her from the hands of the good clergyman.’
‘Impossible!’ Wellesly exclaimed. ‘I must reproach her with her faults, and then – she will throw plates and dishes in my face!’
‘No! would she be so vulgar?’
‘It is not vulgarity in her’ it is ‘nature’.
‘Well then, since it is natural to break our head, which fact I do not in the least dispute, may it not be as natural to adorn it occasionally? And may it not be her nature to intrigue with Fred Beauclerk?’ ” (Harriet Wilson Ed. Evelyn Nash, The Memoirs of Harriet Wilson, 1909, pp.133-136)
The episode satirises Wellesley’s infatuation and wilful ignorance of the contract between courtesan and courtier. He idealises Moll raffles as an innocent, “natural” woman and blinkers himself from the nature of her profession in which she is financially and sexually independent.
