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,[28] 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."
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,
'knocked for 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 her after 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 having
developed 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.
At the time when the Duc de Bourbon came upon her in the Piccadilly
stew the girl was probably no more than eighteen. If one may judge
her character from the events of her subsequent career there was an
outstanding resiliency and a resoluteness as main ingredients of her
make-up, qualities which would go a long way to obviating any marks that
might otherwise have been left on her by the ups and downs of a mere
five years in the world. If, moreover, Mme Montagu's description of her
is a true one it is clear that Sophie's good looks were not of the sort
to make an all-round appeal. The ways in which attractiveness goes,
both in men and in women, are infinite in their variety. The reader may
recall, in this respect, what was said in the introductory chapter about
Kate Webster and the instance of the bewhiskered 'Fina of the Spanish
tavern. And since a look of innocence and the bloom of youth may, and
very often do, appear on the faces of individuals who are far from being
innocent or even young, it may well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid
in a brothel though she was, still kept a look of country freshness and
health, unjaded enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting
old rip. The odds are, at all events, that Sophie was much less
artificial in her charms than the practised ladies of complacency upon
whom she attended. With her odd good looks she very likely had just that
subacid leaven for which, in the alchemy of attraction, the Duc was in
search.
The Duc, however, was not the only one to whom Sophie looked desirable.
Two English peers had an eye on her--the Earl of Winchilsea and the Duke
of Kent. This is where the card affair comes in. The Duc either played
whist with the two noblemen for sole rights in Sophie or, what is more
likely, cut cards with them during a game. The Duc won. Whether his win
may be regarded as lucky or not can be reckoned, according to the taste
and fancy of the reader, from the sequelae of some twenty years.