Free The Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold Page B

enough to bear a kicking’. His only comfort lay in the revenge he was likely to reap at the expense of his wealthy client’s purse.
    Harris also found that in a larger establishment conspicuously larger requirements were made of him by patrons. A wider pool of gentlemen, comprising regulars as well as visitors from other parts of London, required a more diverse body of women to keep them amused. Harris’s knowledge of local prostitutes would have sufficed for only a short period. At a venue as well trafficked as the Shakespear, demand could quite easily outstrip supply if he was to rely solely upon the flesh on offer within the precincts of the Garden, particularly if a number of his reliable ladies might be unfit for performance due to a bout of the pox or a case of the clap. Irrespective of the quandary in which he found himself, and with no obvious solution, ‘the Bucks still rutted and calledfor coolers to quench their passions’. With hindsight, Harris was able to philosophise about the matter: ‘Man is an animal of passions’, he concluded, and ‘that which is subject to its passions has no steadiness … nor can it like anything for a long time’. The answer to such a problem was obvious: ‘provide a variety of faces’. But from where? And how could he vouch for the integrity of the goods on offer, if he was unfamiliar with the history of their suppliers? To make matters worse, what if these same bucks found ‘the fountains from which they drew their refreshment to be poisoned’? Certainly ‘they would blame those who led them to it, especially if it were done purely for the love of lucre’. Even in the early years of his career, Harris was likely to have been no stranger to physical violence. Jealous lovers, angry husbands and previously healthy clients who contracted the pox were all likely to have sought him out at some point. Of all three, none could be so vicious as the last of these, a gentleman whose entire life might have been cast into the balance as the result of a hasty and lustful encounter. Here might be someone who had unwittingly infected his wife and unborn offspring, who had shortened his own existence and that of his entire lineage due to the poor advice of a pimp. It may have been a picture of this figure standing before him that inspired John Harrison’s change of identity.
    Managing ‘a variety of faces’ required the cultivation of a flawless memory. A successful pimp needed a means by which this range of varied visages could be easily recalled and summoned when requested. In the case of a high-profile pimp at the Shakespear, whose reservoir was expected to be as vast as all of London, this was no easy feat. Similarly, a clever pimp would put himself in good stead with his customers if he could remember them, their preferences and which of the ladies under his care they had already sampled. Recruitment also posed a problem, and might occupy a good part of a pimp’s energy. He would be constantly on the look-out for further conscripts, bearing in mind the partialities of his better-paying clients, making mental notes of who liked fresh-faced country lasses and who liked buxom older ladies. He might be given specific projects to pursue, orders from a bored peer or rich banker to hunt down a cleaner, younger mistress. On a lesser scale, at a smaller establishment, these tasks might have seemed less daunting, but now that his playing-field had been widened, Jack Harris’s challengewas to come to terms with the demands placed on him. If he were to master them successfully, he would make both his and Packington Tomkins’s fortune.
    When Tomkins took on John Harrison, he may have known something about the Covent Garden local or he may have divined it from the glint in his eye. Harrison had more ambition than most. He was, above all else, exceedingly clever, a man who might have fared equally well as a merchant or a banker, but who by virtue of his birth found himself in a realm far