In his entry for 17 May 1826, Frederic Madden described a dinner with nine other men as “Rather dull – as I always find it among men. Give me only a woman – a pretty woman – to talk to and I am content – but among men I am melancholy & not inclined to utter a word.” His fondness for female company is evident from the beginning of 1826, as on 1 January he spent an hour with Mrs Jilbert, and the early weeks of the year included trips to the opera and theatre with Mrs Bunce, Mrs Jilbert and the Misses Johnstone. Inevitably, in his journal we see his relationships with women from Madden’s perspective, with very limited clues about what they thought of him.
On 20 January, Madden went to a dance in Kensington, where his dancing partners included Rosa Sturt. However, when socialising with young women Madden frequently compared their appearance unfavourably to the woman he hoped to marry: Mary Hayton. When he was ill in September 1826 while visiting Mary and her family, Madden also commented on Mary’s kindness. The women of Madden’s family provided more practical support in times of trouble. For example, his sister Emma wrote letters for him while he was unwell.
While Madden’s family were broadly supportive of his marriage plans, Mary’s mother (Mrs Doolan) was not. When Madden visited Mary and her family in Brighton, he recorded his frustrations in trying to be alone with her and for much of 1826 Mrs Doolan forbade the pair from writing to one another. Instead Madden addressed his letters and gifts to Mary’s sister.
Meanwhile, Madden found other outlets for his lust. From February, Madden’s 1826 journal documents his encounters with women who were selling sex. The entry for 5 February records “a pretty adventure”, when he “went to Marybone Church with a milliner”. While this may sound innocent, milliners (who were often poorly paid) were notorious for supplementing their income through prostitution. A week later, Madden’s journal records that he waited for a girl (puella) who failed to meet him. In this, as in some later entries, he chose to write in Latin, presumably to make it less likely that women or servants could understand his meaning, and he expressed frustration at all women for using their arts to deceive men.
It is unclear whether the woman who failed to keep her appointment was the milliner of the previous week, but on 15 February Madden again met a milliner, now recorded as “A. G.”, “who promised to come to me on Sunday”. This woman was apparently prospering as Madden noted that she was intending to leave her employer “Mrs T.” and “with her sister open a house on her own account in the millinery & dressmaking line.” Madden’s enthusiastic comment “Bona fortuna!” may suggest that dressmaking was not to be their only source of income.
On Sunday 19 February, A. G. kept her appointment. Madden recorded that they visited a confectioner and a restaurant, before switching to Latin to explain that they went to the White House in Soho Square. The White House was notorious as a “house of iniquity”. A well-known later description claimed: “One room was all gold, another all silver, yet another all bronze, and each was known from the prevailing style of its decorations; all were fitted with mirrors let into the walls; other apartments were called The Painted Chamber, The Grotto, The Coal Hole, and in one, The Skeleton Room, a skeleton was made by a mechanical contrivance to issue from a cupboard!”1 Madden recounted that A. G. now showed reluctance and struggled with him, but that he conquered her. This is uncomfortable reading from a twenty-first-century perspective, but could be a tactic to encourage men to spend more money.2 The experience did not deter A. G. from entertaining Madden again on 28 February. Madden recorded that she was the most beautiful woman he had had intercourse with.
Life as a student at Oxford seems to have offered Madden fewer opportunities for sexual encounters, but on his return to London in May Madden noted that “not being afraid of the Proctors, [I] had some pleasant adventures”. A few days later, he was more explicit, recording (in English) that on the evening of the 23 May he went to Covent Garden “with Fanny N. Slept with her at the Fountain, a charming girl. Cost me above 5. 0. 0. £. champagne included”. (The Fountain Tavern was in The Strand). In December he recorded sleeping with another woman at “Spring Gardens”.
Madden was not alone in recording sexual encounters in his journals; Samuel Pepys provides an earlier and a better-known example. Nevertheless, that Madden chose to document this part of his life suggests that it was important to him and socially acceptable among his male community. Madden will have interacted with many other women (and men) in 1826, who went unmentioned in his journals, but his records offer some insights into his ideas about women and their place in a profoundly unequal society.
- E. Beresford Chancellor, The Pleasure Haunts of London During Four Centuries (London, 1925), p. 186. ↩︎
- See H. Rubenhold, The Covent Garden Ladies (London, 2020), especially the “New Foreword”. ↩︎
See also:
R. W. and G. P. Ackerman, Sir Frederic Madden: A Biographical Sketch and Bibliography (New York, 1979).
C. de Hamel, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club (London, 2022).
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