Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
I admire and look up to heroes, but indolent men make the best lovers, wrote Harriet Wilson in her memoirs. In eighteen twenty five, Harriet, a British courtesan, wrote and published a series of stories in a British broadsheet paper titled The Memoirs of Harriet Wilson. She's one of the most famous courtesans of the Regency era, not necessarily because
of her affairs, but because she named names. She exposed in her memoirs, the names of royal, aristocratic and political men, whom she then blackmailed to keep their names out of those memoirs. Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, was famously one of those influential names. Let's talk about who Arthur was, why Harriet would want to blackmail him, and why among all her victims, we chose him to have on the show Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarqui.
And I'm Holly Frye. Arthur Wellesley was a hero. Literally, he had wanted to follow his dreams of becoming a musician, but his mother would not hear of it, and instead he joined a Highland regiment. He then fought at Flanders, directed the British campaign in India, fought in campaigns in both Portugal and France, and commanded the British Army in the Peninsular War. He went on to become a military general who, among many impressive acts, was a national hero
for his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo. His military battle plans are still studied today. He was that good. He famously is quoted saying the only thing I am
afraid of is fear. We'll see about that. Arthur has also appeared on Criminalia a few times in the past, so if you've been with us for a while, you may remember we talked about the time his portrait, which is Goya's painting The Duke, became a target of theft from the National Gallery in London, and we also told the story of when he was famously stalked by Lady Georgiana Faine, English heiress and daughter of John Fain, tenth Earl of Westmoreland. And we can't skip this fact either.
He is also the person that Wellington boots are named for after he asked his shoemaker, a George Hoby of Saint James's Street in London, to make him a boot that would be easier to wear with the newly fashionable tighter fitting trousers. The Wellington Arch in London's Hyde Park. Yes, that is named after him.
Too, but it takes two to tango, so let's talk about Harriet. Harriet Wilson was born Harriet de Bouchet on February twenty second, seventeen eighty six in London. She was one of fifteen children born to Swiss clockmaker John and his English wife Amelia. John changed the family's surname to Wilson in eighteen oh one. Harriet did not grow up dreaming of becoming a courtisan. She first tried on a career as a governess, then a boarding school music teacher.
She found both, she would later write, insufferable and boring. She wanted, as she wrote in her memoirs, to live quote as free as air, from any restraint but that of my conscience, and explained that her sister Amy led her, as well as her other sisters, Fanny and Sophie, into the world of the courtisan society. Labeled her a demirep, which was a woman of dubious reputation, but the courtesan was a woman in control of her life and her finances,
which most married women at the time were not. So Esa heads up on this one as we get into her story. Her life as a courtieson began when she was a teenage girl.
So a courtisan, just so we all know, was basically an upper class woman who had intimate relationships with wealthy or important people in exchange for money. She also provided companionship and good conversation. Sometimes this was a long term financial arrangement, but not always. It could be weeks or it could be years, and courtisans had a certain cachet. They were witty and intelligent. With Jois de Vive, Harriet
was an educated woman. She read French, and she was interested in Roman history, and she took interest in current politics. She was described as quote far from beautiful, but a smart, saucy girl with good eyes and dark hair and the manners of a wild schoolboy.
It's time for us to take a break forward from our sponsors. But when we're back, we'll talk about Harriet Wilson's career as a courtesan. And the influential people who got caught in her web of blackmail.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about some of the affairs of Harriet Wilson.
Harriet began her memoirs talking about her first client, William, Earl of Craven. William we found was a cousin of the author Jane Austen, which is just a little side note for any j Knights or austin Knites out there. Of him, she said, quote, I shall not say how and why I became, at the age of fifteen the mistress of the Earl of Craven, whether it was love, or the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble lord which induced me to leave
my paternal roof and place myself under his protection. Her memoirs were hyped as a tell all, and she did tell some. She described not only the boredom she felt as the years passed, but also personal details, such as quote, all men do not wear those ugly cotton nightcaps. Else all women's illusions had been destroyed in the first night of marriage. Later in her story, she writes of a royal quote, I wonder, thought, I what sort of a nightcap?
The Prince of Wales wears she had a great deal to say, and just as many of us can't get enough celebrity gossip today, people then also wanted to hear about it.
Years later, the Earl of Craven ended the affair, accusing her of having a dalliance with Frederick Lamb, third Viscount Melbourne. She denied it to William, but she and Lamb did have an affair. After her relationship with Lamb ended, she began an affair with Colin Campbell, third Duke of Argyle, that ended when he and her sister Amy met and they became lovers. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was an on again, off again entanglement. The memoir really reads like
a who's who of influential names. Harriet claimed the Marquess of Worcester wanted to marry her, although his father, the Duke of Beaufort, put an end to that. Some versions of that affair suggest she actually blackmailed the Duke into keeping his son's proposal quiet. It was one thing to carry on with a cortison, but marriage that was a no no. She kept a company of Henry Brahm, first Baron Brahm and Vox, as well as John Wilson Croker,
politician and essayist. She also had flirtations with the Prince Regent, who reigned first as Regent due to his father's illness from eighteen eleven to eighteen twenty and then as King George the Fourth from eighteen twenty to eighteen forty. Other influential names included Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston, Lord Frederick Bentick, Augustus Fitzgerald, third Duke Leinster, Francis Seymour Conway, Third Marquess of Hertford, the Honorable Frederick poodle Bing, and Lord John Ponsonby,
whom she claimed was her one true love. Of him she recalled quote, even the knocker of his door escaped, not my veneration.
Many of the men who had in the past promised her a pension as part of their deal seemed to have forgotten about her after they ended the affair, and that's where the idea of the tell all sparked. Finding herself about to turn forty years old with dwindling finances, Harriet decided to write her memoirs, which actually was a kiss and Tell that she used to threaten to expose her lovers unless they paid to keep their names out of her work. It was split into multiple volumes, each
featuring a different client or clients. In cahoots with publisher John Joseph Stockdale, a draft of the manuscript for the Memoirs of Harriet Wilson was intentionally circulated to several of the important men mentioned in the book, along with a note that for a sizeable payment, passages could be omitted or revised, and quotes from love letters could be removed
Before it went public. Some accounts report that upwards of two hundred letters were sent to her former clients demanding an annual annuity of twenty pounds or one lump sum of two hundred pounds to ensure their annonymity. Though nefarious, it was a pretty good plan. If she didn't get the money she was blackmailing for, she would still make money on the book sales anyway.
Stockdale, her publisher, was a sketchy guy. He was an English publisher and editor with a reputation as a pornographer and as a publisher of questionable materials. The fact that he was involved in blackmail is pretty unsurprising. He did, however, publish writing that was less sensationalistic, sometimes, such as Percy Bishelley's Gothic horror novel titled Saint Irvine or The Rosicrucian
of Romance. Under the pseudonym of Thomas Little. He also published an edition of John Robertson's then radical Treatise on the Pathology of the Reproductive System. That was a work titled on Diseases of the Generative System.
So that said, we're going to take a break for word from our sponsors. When we're all back together, we'll talk about how successful or unsuccessful Harriet's blacklackmail campaign fared.
Welcome back to Criminalia and now the blackmail. Let's talk about Arthur Wellesley's reaction to Harriet's blackmail attempt.
So back to the memoir. In December of eighteen twenty four, Arthur Wellesley received correspondence from John Joseph Stockdale on behalf of Harriet, stating, quote, my Lord Duke, in Harriet Wilson's memoirs which I am about to publish, are various anecdotes of your grace which it would be most desirable to withhold. At least such is my opinion. I have stopped the press for the moment, but as the publication will take
place next week, little delay can necessarily take place. This outraged Arthur, leading him to roar the now famous quote, publish and be damned. He was the only person mixed up in Harriet's blackmail circle who stood up for himself so solidly that we still know about it two hundred years later.
So obviously, Arthur Wellesley was not the kind of man who was easily intimidated, not on the battlefield and not off of it. He was more than willing to call out any person who gave him any offense or grievance. He was literally a guy who would face his enemies with pistols at dawn. He did, and he lived to tell about it. After his military achievements, he entered politics, eventually rising to the office of Prime Minister in eighteen
twenty eight. He was married, yet remained an undeniable womanizer. Twenty years had passed since he and Harriet had their affair.
We learn of him from her that he was quote a faithful lover whose love survived six winters. She described him as quote my own Wellington, who sided over me, talked of my wonderful beauty, ran after me. She called him quote my constant visitor and a modern bluebeard. She also described him as quote most unentertaining and claimed that quote in the evenings, when he wore his broad red ribbon, he looked very much like a rat catcher. She compared his pillow talk to quote sitting up with a corpse.
It wasn't all racy material.
Of course, Arthur wasn't the only one that Harriet tried to blackmail, and others were more forthcoming. We mentioned earlier that she included the Prince Regent in her tell all, but there wasn't much to tell. Really. It was more about associating with his name. Harriet wrote about the letters that they had exchanged and how he didn't impress her. In his correspondence, she wrote to him, quote, I am told that I am very beautiful, So perhaps you would like to see me if you believe you could make
me in love with you write to me. In reply, George suggested they meet in London, but as she was in Brighton, she replied, quote, Sir, to travel fifty two miles this bad weather merely to see a man, would you must admit be madness in a girl like myself? Surrounded by humble admirers. If you can do anything better in the way of pleasing a lady than ordinary men,
write directly, if not adieu monsieur le Prince. She admitted, though that they never actually had an affair, so threatening to share his correspondence she hoped was going to be enough to get him to pay her for her silence.
Her blackmail scheme pay to be deleted from her Kiss and Tel has since frustrated biographers of Wilson, as she clearly held her end of the deal and altered her writing for those who gave her money. Most of her former lovers, including the Prince Regent, who we know wasn't actually in that category, technically paid to keep their names out of this whole business.
Stockdale, despite Arthur's outcry, did publish, And as for the Duke, his social and public reputation maybe took a small hit, but nothing really happened. He didn't have to resign, he didn't have to apologize. He kept his status as the nation's hero and his popularity. Ebbden waned with his political career, not from anything Harriet had to say about him.
The book became a bestseller, even though much of it was known to be completely fictional, and, as we've been talking about, also heavily redacted. The demand was so great that a barrier had to be erected in front of Stockdale's shop the day it was made available. But despite its subject matter, Harriet's allegedly scandalous book was actually, by many accounts, pretty dull. The scandal of the book was the names that appeared in it, not anything especially graphic or salacious.
Minus the two hundred pound blackmail payments, It's believed that Harriet's memoirs made her about ten thousand pounds. In eighteen thirty, she tried another round of blackmail letters to her former clients, threatening another publication. Mostly this just caused anger, and most of the men dismissed her. In the end, with a comfortable nest egg from her memoir sales and her successful blackmails, Harriet retired from her work.
So what are we drinking with Harriet or Arthur?
This is a drink that I think Harriet would have enjoyed, and I'm calling it the chatty Cortison. There are a lot of cocktails called a courtisan, so I couldn't do that.
That's appropriate for her.
She was chatting. She wanted to talk a lot about her life, some of it fake and some of it real and.
Redacted, heavily redacted life.
So this one is a heavy hitter. I just warn you up front there is a lot of alcohol in it. So we'll start with the non alcoholic components, a half ounce of lemon juice and an ounce of white grape juice. To that, you are going to add an ounce of gin, a half ounce of Creme de Vilette, and a half ounce of Saint Germain, and you are going to shake these together with ice till it's very cold, and you're going to pour them into a chilled coop, and then you are going to top it with chilled prosecco for
a little bubble, A little bubble, a little bubble. This is one of those drinks that is almost stupidly delicious. It's super easy to sip, even though has a lot of alcohol in it. Obviously, drink responsibly. But I just picture her having these made as she sits on her couch, chuckling to herself about all of the men she feels. She holds in her hand with her information, the floral notes from the creme to violette and the elderflower liquor
are not super strong. It's like they all kind of balance and co under each other, and it's like having a almost like a champagne cocktail, but it's a little more than your French seventy five because we have other flavors in the mix.
I actually think this is The ingredients to this are fantastically Harriet.
They just felt very right to yeah for her. If you want to make the mocktail version of this, that is actually pretty easy. We're going to do the subout. We've gotten pretty used to of using an ounce of flat tonic water in lieu of gin. Instead of your creme to violette, you're gonna use violet syrup, and instead
of your elderflower liqueur, you'll use an elderflower syrup. Now, one thing I would do here is I would up the lemon juice just a little bit, because at that point you're adding a lot more syrup to get the flavors. So I would go to like three quarters of an ounce, maybe even more. If you want a little more tart, then you'll keep your ounce of white grape juice, and you will use like a low sugar ginger ale instead of prosecco.
Sounds like that. The mocktail is equally days day.
Yeah, it is very yummy. It's one of those mocktails that I found myself going. If I've made everything but the bubble part and I just kept us in a picture, I can drink off of this all day while I'm working, and just top it off with the ginger ale and I'll be in great chap. It's a super yummy one. I really liked this. The cocktail version is not very sweet.
Even though it has sweet elements in it. Nothing is really to my palette, the domineering element of it, which is always nice right when it's like, oh, this is just its own, its own thing. That is the chatty Cortison. We have sure enjoyed chatting about her with you, and we hope that you have enjoyed it as well, and that you will join us again next week for another story of blackmail and another coercion concoction. Criminalia is a
production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,