第36章 ALMOST A LADY(1)

Thanks to my friend Billy Bennett, of music-hall fame, for his hint for the chapter title.

Born (probably illegitimately) in a fisherman's cottage, reared in a workhouse, employed in a brothel, won at cards by a royal duke, mistress of that duke, married to a baron, received at Court by three kings (though not much in the way of kings), accused of cozenage and tacitly of murder, died full of piety, `cutting up' for close on L150,000--there, as it were in a nutshell, you have the life of Sophie Dawes, Baronne de Feucheres.

In the introduction to her exhaustive and accomplished biography of Sophie Dawes, from which a part of the matter for this resume is drawn, Mme Violette Montagu, speaking of the period in which Sophie lived, says that Paris, with its fabulous wealth and luxury, seems to have been looked upon as a sort of Mecca by handsome Englishwomen with ambition and, what is absolutely necessary if they wish to be really successful, plenty of brains.''

Sophie Dawes, Queen of Chantilly (John Lane, 1912).

It is because Sophie had plenty of brains of a sort, besides the attributes of good looks, health, and by much a disproportionate share of determination, and because, with all that she attained to, she died quite ostracized by the people with whom it had been her life's ambition to mix, and was thus in a sense a failure--it is because of these things that it is worth while going into details of her career, expanding the precis with which this chapter begins.

Among the women selected as subjects for this book Sophie Dawes as a personality wins `hands down.' Whether she was a criminal or not is a question even now in dispute.Unscrupulous she certainly was, and a good deal of a rogue.That modern American product the `gold-digger' is what she herself would call a `piker' compared with the subject of this chapter.The blonde bombshell, with her `sugar daddy,' her alimony`racket,' and the hundred hard-boiled dodges wherewith she chisels money and goods from her prey, is, again in her own crude phraseology, `knockedfor a row of ash-cans' by Sophie Dawes.As, I think, you will presently see.

Sophie was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight--according to herself in 1792.There is controversy on the matter.Mme Montagu in her book says that some of Sophie's biographers put the date at 1790, or even 1785.But Mme Montagu herself reproduces the list of wearing apparel with which Sophie was furnished when she left the `house of industry' (the workhouse).It is dated 1805.In those days children were not maintained in poor institutions to the mature ages of fifteen or twenty.They were supposed to be armed against life's troubles at twelve or even younger.Sophie, then, could hardly have been born before 1792, but is quite likely to have been born later.

The name of Sophie's father is given as Daw.'' Like many another celebrity, as, for example, Walter Raleigh and Shakespeare, Sophie spelled her name variously, though ultimately she fixed on Dawes.'' Richard, or Dickey, Daw was a fisherman for appearance sake and a smuggler for preference.The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as a spinster.'' Sophie was one of ten children.Dickey Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm on the island.

Service on a farm does not appear to have appealed to Sophie.She escaped to Portsmouth, where she found a job as hotel chambermaid.Tiring of that, she went to London and became a milliner's assistant.A little affair we hear, in which a mere water-carrier was an equal participant, lost Sophie her place.We next have word of her imitating Nell Gwynn, both in selling oranges to playgoers and in becoming an actress--not, however, at Old Drury, but at the other patent theatre, Covent Garden.Save that as a comedian she never took London by storm, and that she lacked Nell's unfailing good humour, Sophie in her career matches Nell in more than superficial particulars.Between selling oranges and appearing on the stage Sophie seems to have touched bottom for a time in poverty.But her charms as an actress captivated an officer by and by, and she was established as his mistress in a house at Turnham Green.Tiring of herafter a time--Sophie, it is probable, became exigeant with increased comfort--her protector left her with an annuity of L50.

The annuity does not appear to have done Sophie much good.We next hear of her as servant-maid in a Piccadilly brothel, a lupanar much patronized by wealthy emigres from France, among whom was Louis- Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and later Prince de Conde, a man at that time of about fifty-four.

The Duc's attention was directed to the good looks of Sophie by a manservant of his.Mme Montagu says of Sophie at this time that her face had already lost the first bloom of youth and innocence.'' Now, one wonders if that really was so, or if Mme Montagu is making a shot at a hazard.She describes Sophie a little earlier than this as havingdeveloped into a fine young woman, not exactly pretty or handsome, but she held her head gracefully, and her regular features were illumined by a pair of remarkably bright and intelligent eyes.She was tall and squarely built, with legs and arms which might have served as models for a statue of Hercules.Her muscular force was extraordinary.Her lips were rather thin, and she had an ugly habit of contracting them when she was angry.Her intelligence was above the average, and she had a good share of wit.