Whore’s who

Lucy Locket lost her pocket
Kitty Fisher found it,
Ne’er a penny was there in it
But a ribbon round it

AN innocent nursery rhyme? Not a bit of it.

Kitty Fisher was one of the 18th Century’s most famous (and most highly paid) courtesans, said to be able to command 100 guineas a night (and one or two other things as well).

We shall hear ere long what happened when a member of the nobility offered just 50 guineas for her halfprice harlotry. Today’s column will also reveal the tawdry origin of the phrase “Publish and be damned”, why it was thought a wise precaution to elbow your way round the room, why it wasn’t Nell Gwynn at all costs and why Mrs Sally Bercow wasn’t the first semi-public figure to portray herself wearing little more than a bed sheet.

All this and much more was revealed in a lecture – a sort of Whore’s Who – given on Tuesday afternoon to members of the Wensleydale branch of the Decorative and Fine Arts Society by the quite splendid Linda Smith. She called it Great Tarts in Art, having discovered in a thesaurus all manner of euphemisms for the oldest profession, but only one that rhymed with her specialist subject.

Possibly she might have titled it Ladies of the Knight, save that most of them aimed rather higher (or lower, as the case may be).

Holder of two first class art history degrees, a lecturer at both Tate Britain and Tate Modern, she came up with the idea while watching an old episode of Blackadder with her children.

“No one ever got anywhere on looks and charm alone,” someone says.

“You’ve never met Lady Hamilton,” replies Blackadder.

The talk, decorously delivered and perfectly pitched, has been given as far away as Australia, where someone asked why so many early courtesan portraits coyly depicted them in a shepherdess role. “It’s because they hadn’t invented school uniform,” said a feller, Australian, from Melbourne.

Ms Smith, who may certainly be called a dab hand, though best not a good pro, ranges from Nell Gwynn to Christine Keeler, from the 6ft stunner known as Dally the Tall to Lily Langtry, officially termed a professional beauty, though that was euphemistic as well.

Then there was Elizabeth Armistead, who “managed to stay on top for ten years” – the mind slightly wandered at that point – before happily marrying Charles James Fox, the prominent Whig.

“It was a bit like David Cameron running off with Amy Winehouse,” said Linda.

Particularly she seemed knowledgeable about Lady Hamilton, a Hamilton academical, as it were. It was the former Emma Hart, indeed, who appeared on stage wearing a bed sheet and a shameless expression.

“You couldn’t make it up, could you?” said Linda.

Save for the allusion to the Speaker’s wife, none of her subjects is from the past 40 years. Probably they’ve all taken out super-injunctions.

Art lovers will be happy to learn that painters from Gainsborough to Reynolds, from Degas to Toulouse- Lautrec – “the painter of prostitutes par excellence” – are spread liberally across her canvass.

She also showed a William Hogarth painting of a young man visiting a quack doctor – sure as apples, he didn’t think he had tonsilitis – and another of an Edwardian curate propositioning a young lady.

“You can’t have tarts without vicars,” said Linda.

The talk was held at the Middleham Key Centre, many of the society’s 160 members in attendance.

Mostly they are quite elderly, mostly female. One or two – to borrow the old joke – might hitherto have supposed that sex was something in which they delivered nutty slack.

All appeared to be greatly entertained; none in the least offended, none inclined to make excuses and leave. As Kitty Fisher may have observed, it’s all in the game, isn’t it?

MIDDLEHAM’S horse racing country, racing and now racy, famed also for its association with Richard III. It was Charles II, however, who was king of the courtesans. Linda had an image of him, too. No oil painting, old Charlie.

“Reminds me of Russell Brand,” she said.

The monarch had strings of mistresses – “Why do mistresses always come in strings?” she wondered – thus giving new meaning to the phrase about lying back and thinking of England.

“We never had a full-blown Madame de Pompadour, though it wasn’t for want of trying by several of them,” said Linda.

The most infamous was Barbara Villiers – “an absolutely dreadful woman, spectacularly promiscuous, she would leap into bed with anyone, including stable lads”.

Not Middleham stable lads, of course.

Villiers’s portrait, said the speaker, showed “monumental self-satisfaction”.

It’s probably not the first thing people noticed.

For her spectacular promiscuity – “sex for favours” – Villiers was made Duchess of Cleveland. Aren’t they the forebears of one of the North- East’s most distinguished families?

Isn’t there a Villiers Street in Spennymoor, and possibly in Hartlepool?

We should be told.

Poor Nell Gwynn was one of several mistresses the king enjoyed at the same time, though probably not simultaneously. “One thing everyone knows about Nell Gwynn,” said Linda, “is that she was as common as muck.”

Then there was Elizabeth Milbank, painted by Stubbs, who “achieved feats of social climbing by the careful deployment of her body”.

Kitty Fisher was much painted by Joshua Reynolds, but also by the lesser-known Nathaniel Hone, who Linda preferred. Rather like many of Middleham’s thoroughbreds, she was owned by a syndicate. “You have to wonder at the logistics of that,” said Linda.

Ms Locket, it’s said, was similarly employed, but dumped a suitor when he became impecunious.

That he remained well dressed – “but a ribbon round him” – prompted Fisher to cast her hook, the lady clearly having changed her ways from the 50 guinea bid, which prompted her to put the note between two slices of bread and eat it.

That one of her lovers was said to be the Earl of Sandwich may or may not be coincidental. “The nearest comparison I can think of is a Ferrari – fast, flashy and chosen to impress, but yesterday’s news as soon as there’s a newer model.”

So it went on, more mistresses than a Fifties girls’ high school, none more repugnant than Harriette Wilson, courtesan and blackmailer, whose conquests included the Duke of Wellington.

Told that he must find a small fortune to prevent exposure in her autobiography, Wellington uttered publishing’s best known maxim.

Damned, the lady not only castigated his sexual prowess but, possibly worse, compared him to a rat catcher.

That many gentlemen of the age could be seen elbowing their way round the room was because of the belief, possibly mistaken, that a symptom of sexually transmitted disease was inflammation of that particular part of the anatomy.

The 65-minute talk ended with Lewis Morley’s familiar portrait of Ms Keeler astride a chair and with a Private Eye cartoon of the lady similarly arrayed around a gravestone.

“John Profumo RIP,” it said.

A wonderful afternoon ended with a nice tea and a bumpy bus ride back.

And so, as still we say in the inky trade, to bed.