Free The Damnation of John Donellan by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

Warwick; Lady Harley had so many children by her various lovers that her offspring were called ‘the Harleian Miscellany’; and the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole married Lord Walde-grave and, later, the Duke of Gloucester.
    Marriage among the aristocracy was rarely an affair of the heart – the idea of romantic love had yet to take precedence as a reason for wedlock – and when that new form of entertainment, the novel, talked of romance the very concept was howled down as derisory and dangerous. Marriage in high society was an alliance of families designed to ensure that land, revenue and power remained within the grip of the few. An aristocratic woman was required to be chaste before she married, but in society in 1760 she was merely required to be discreet after the wedding; husbands maintained mistresses and wives took lovers, and the whole understanding of the way society worked was based on a wife providing heirs rather than emotional support, and of husbands procuring, maintaining and often abusing ordinary women.
    The Victorians did indeed subsequently feel ashamed of the raucous sensuality of their ancestors, and tried to erase it. Leading radical Francis Place, born in London in 1771, spoke in his autobiography of conversation even in his home being ‘coarse and vulgar’ and ‘remarkably gross’. His son actually tore some pages from his papers when they were donated to the nation, leaving the embarrassed comment ‘much licentiousness’.
    Women who made their name through sex dominated society and were known as the ‘Toasts’ – the toasts of the town. They are relevant to Donellan in more ways than one, for the work that he was about to become engaged in required that he knew the distinction between aristocrats and fantastically wealthy courtesans.
    The captain did not go unnoticed. In fact, he deliberately drew attention to himself. Although he maintained that he was not in any way at fault during his time in Masulipatnam, and was prepared to testify that not only did he take no booty of war from the city but he had also had his £50 fee taken from him at the court martial,he seemed to have enough money not only to mix in high society in London and dress well, but also to sport a large diamond ring that earned him the nickname ‘Diamond Donellan’. At the trial, local Warwickshire and Northamptonshire newspapers would say that this ring was part of his spoils of war from India. ‘He returned to Europe with a large sum of money and several valuable gems,’ noted the
Nottinghamshire Gazette
in 1781. ‘To his companions he used to boast of Secret Services … ambition was his ruling passion … play and gallantry he pursued …’ However he had come by his money, Donellan was now wealthy enough to buy a part share in a new business venture – the Pantheon.
    The Pantheon had been devised and the process of building it begun by Philip Elias Turst, the owner of some land on the south side of Oxford Street, and a ‘lady of means’, Margaretta Maria Ellice. Ellice claimed that she had been connected with another extravagant place of entertainment just a few hundred yards away, Carlisle House in Soho Square, which had been started by a famous courtesan, Teresa Cornelys, in 1760. Initially, Carlisle House had the relatively innocent objective of providing genteel entertainment for the aristocracy, but it rapidly became as infamous as its occupant as the delights turned from dancing and card-playing to exotic masquerades. Capable of holding 500 guests in its mirrored rooms hung with chandeliers and Chinese wallpaper, for luxury it ‘surpassed all description’. 6 In the previous decade, the
Gentleman’s Magazine
had said of such establishments: ‘Masquerade houses may be called shops where opportunities for immorality and almost every kind of vice are retailed.’ They were right.
    Probably the