Mrs Jordan's Profession

by Claire Tomalin

  30. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 31 August 1802, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 49–50.

  31. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but October 1802, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 52–3.

  32. The Duke of Clarence to Thomas Coutts, 7 May 1803, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 54. See also gossip – and of course it is only gossip – retailed on 22 November 1804 (The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 6, p. 2,452) when at the Academy Club James Heath (official historical engraver to George III) ‘spoke of the situation of Mrs Jordan with the Duke of Clarence as being far from happy. She is now pregnant with her 9th Child. The Duke takes Her money and she finds it difficult to manage for the Children she had before she lived with the Duke. – Heath said she makes more than £3000 a yr.’

  33. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but watermark 1803, RA Add. 40/107.

  34. John Tottenham O’Keefe became a chaplain to the Duke probably in 1798 when he completed his studies at Oxford, and died in Jamaica in 1803.

  35. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but late 1806, Huntington Library MS.

  36. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but early 1800s, Huntington Library MS.

  37. In another letter she says, ‘The builder says the Duke does not mean to sit in his library in the winter, as it is to be only a kind of shew Library.’

  38. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but? 1801, Huntington Library MS.

  39. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but early 1800s, Huntington Library MS. For a visit to the theatre, DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but?9 October 1804, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 59.

  40. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 1803, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 54; then Huntington Library MS.

  41. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but September 1804, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 57.

  42. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 1803, Huntington Library MS.

  43. She spoke these words in the epilogue to Cherry’s The Soldier’s Daughter in 1804, when there was an invasion scare.

  44. Sadly, I have been unable to trace the whereabouts of this painting. It was advertised for sale by a New York gallery in the English art journal Apollo in 1968, no. 12, p. lxxxiii. The gallery has disappeared.

  45. This painting, for many years in the family of the Earls of Munster, is now the property of Lord De L’Isle, and can be seen at Penshurst Place.

  46. Lord Minto, in letter to his wife, cited in The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales 1770–1812, vol. 4 (1967), p. 91n.

  47. The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 270.

  14 THE SERPENT ENTERS PARADISE

  1. Undated Huntington Library MS letters mention the visit to Merton Place with the children and the invitation to both a dinner and a ball, both of which DJ seems to have refused; it is clear she did not become a close friend of Emma Hamilton, about whom there is a later unsympathetic reference, giving gossip about a drunken party Hamilton attended when she was confined for debt.

  2. Some of the columns from the colonnades were used; the temple is still there, but the piece of mast was moved, first into the house, then to Windsor and then to the United Services Museum; it is now in storage in the National Portrait Gallery.

  3. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 1807, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), p. 66.

  4. DJ to John Bannister, 26 February 1806, J. Adolphus, Memoirs of John Bannister, vol. 2 (1839), p. 151. The letter goes on, ‘Do come out soon, and re-establish my health – I mean my – theatrical health, which without you, is certainly on the decline. My best compliments to Mrs Bannister and your fair daughters. Yours very sincerely D. Jordan.’

  5. Cobbett’s article is quoted in the anonymous Life of 1886 (see Bibliography), pp. 63–6.

  6. The Duke of Clarence at Bushy to Samuel Hawker in Portugal, 28 September 1810, De L’Isle Archive.

  7. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d., Huntington Library MS.

  8. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but March 1807, Huntington Library MS.

  9. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 1810, Huntington Library MS.

  10. Lady Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, 19 September 1807, Lady Granville (ed.), Private Correspondence 1781–1821, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, vol. 2 (1916), p. 284.

  11. 15 October 1807, K. Cave (ed.), The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 8 (1982), p. 3,127.

  12. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d, but? December 1807, Huntington Library MS.

  13. Thomas Maurice, Richmond Hill (1807), p. 149.

  14. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, October 1808, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 69.

  15. George Munster to De L’Isle, April 1837, De L’Isle Archive, Sydney MSS U 1500 C221–229.

  16. The Duke of Clarence to the Prince of Wales, n.d. but 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 67.

  15 LONDON AND DUBLIN DISASTERS: 1809

  1. The Duke of Clarence to DJ, 1 November 1808. Aspinall prints this in Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), p. 70, but he gives no source, and says he did not see the MS, though he does not doubt its authenticity. Since DJ returned almost all the Duke’s letters to the royal family in 1811, this is probably one of the few she kept, regarding it as particularly precious. It is not in the Huntington collection or the Royal Archives.

  2. Lord Glenbervie, Diaries, vol. 2 (1928), p. 26.

  3. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but Wed. half past one, Mortimer St,? 1809, Huntington Library MS.

  4. Tom Pocock, Sailor King: The Life of King William IV (1991), p. 172.

  5. George’s Account of the British Campaign was first published anonymously in parts in the United Service Journal, 1829, and reprinted in 1831.

  6. Newspaper cutting of 1808 included among Huntington Library MS.

  7. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 1809, Huntington Library MS. DJ to James Boaden, 17 August 1809, James Boaden, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2 (1831), p. 253.

  8. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, ‘Bushy Thursday’, n.d. but 1809, Huntington Library MS.

  9. 14 February 1809, K. Cave (ed.), The Diaries of Joseph Farington, vol. 9 (1983), p. 400: the portrait painter Thomas Phillips told him ‘it had long been mentioned that the Duke of Clarence had seduced a daugr. of Mrs Jordan’. 19 February 1809, The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol. 9, p. 3,403, ‘General Morse had told him of the report that Miss Ford a daughter of Mrs Jordan is pregnant by the Duke of Clarence.’ Lady Spencer to Lady Bessborough, 20 March 1809, Earl of Bessborough and Arthur Aspinall (eds.), Lady Bessborough and Her Family Circle (1940), p. 184.

  10. DJ to James Boaden, n.d. but 1809, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 237.

  11. DJ to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 2 March 1809, Bushy House, cited in G. Raymond, The Life and Enterprises of R. W. Elliston, Comedian (1857), p. 152.

  12. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, Bath, Sunday, n.d.,? April 1809, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 84.

  13. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, Bath, n.d., Huntington Library MS.

  14. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d., but 1809, Huntington Library MS.

  15. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but April 1809, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 80.

  16. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but?26 April 1809, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 84.

  17. The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 1, p. 275.

  18. Leigh Hunt, in Roger Ingpen (ed.), Autobiography, vol. 1 (1903), p. 148.

  19. Leigh Hunt, in N. Archer and R. Lowe (eds.), Dramatic Essays (1894), p. 84.

  20. William Oxberry, Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes, vol. 1 (1835), pp. 197–205.

  21. W. C. Macready in Frederick Pollock (ed.), Reminiscences, vol. 1 (1875), p. 63.

  22. J. Adolphus, Memoirs of John Bannister, vol. 2 (1839), p. 261.

  23. Boaden tells this story, without attribution, in an appendix to vol. 1 of his Life, pp. 362–4. He can have heard it only f
rom Dora herself, which seems a little improbable, or from Lucy. I favour Lucy. She was with her mother in Chester; she was the most likely to have talked to Boaden after Dora’s death, being adult, married to a man who respected her mother, and deeply attached to her herself.

  24. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but June 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 139.

  25. Sir John Barrington, Personal Sketches of My Own Time, vol. 2 (1827), p. 45.

  26. This and all further quotations from DJ’s letters in this chapter are taken from Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 88–104.

  27. Harriet Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, n.d. but probably December 1809, Lady Granville (ed.), Private Correspondence 1781–1821, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, vol. 2 (1916), pp. 349–50.

  16 ‘I AM A BETTER ACTRESS AT THIS MOMENT THAN I EVER WAS’: 1810

  1. DJ to Jonah Barrington, n.d. but winter 1809, Sir Jonah Barrington, Personal Sketches of My Own Time, vol. 2 (1827), pp. 235–6.

  2. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but September 1809, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), pp. 108–9.

  3. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 134.

  4. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 134. She knew she was misquoting Goldsmith’s beautiful lines from The Traveller, which go:

  Where’re I roam, whatever realms to see,

  My heart untravell’d fondly turns to thee;

  Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,

  And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

  5. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 132–3.

  6. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but June 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 136.

  7. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January 1810, Huntington Library MS and Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 130.

  8. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but June 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 144.

  9. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but July 1810, RA Add. 40/147.

  10. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but October 1810, Huntington Library MS.

  11. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January 1810, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 131.

  12. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but February 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 188.

  13. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but January or February 1811, Huntington Library MS. Mrs Jordan and Her Family quotes part of this letter on p. 184, but misreads ‘crowded’ and omits the last sentence quoted, as well as a good deal else relating to the family and her anxieties about them.

  14. Diprose, Diprose’s Book of the Stage and Players, (n.d.), p. 61.

  15. W.C. Macready, in Frederic Pollock (ed.), Reminiscences, vol. 1 (1875), p. 63.

  16. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 19 June, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 142.

  17. His account in Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 146–7; hers in RA Add. 40/147.

  18. Harriet Bessborough to Granville Leveson-Gower, n.d. but 1810, Lady Granville (ed.), Private Correspondence 1781–1821, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, vol. 2 (1916), p. 375.

  19. DJ to George FitzClarence, Friday ye 24th [August 1810], Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 150–51.

  20. Cited in Olwen Hedley, Queen Charlotte (1975), p. 254.

  21. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but February 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  22. DJ to Jonah Barrington, April 1810, Personal Sketches of My Own Time, vol. 2, p. 238.

  23. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but September 1810, Huntington Library MS.

  24. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but December 1810, Huntington Library MS.

  25. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but January 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 180.

  26. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but February 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 187.

  27. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but stamped 4 March 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  28. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but April 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 192.

  29. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but August 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  30. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but summer 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  31. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but August 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  17 ‘MY DEAR MOTHER … A MOST INJURED WOMAN’: 1811

  1. George FitzClarence to DJ, 21 August 1811, Huntington Library MS. George’s spelling is terrible, but no worse than Princess Charlotte’s, and he soon got it up to scratch.

  2. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but August 1811, Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), p. 197.

  3. ibid.

  4. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but September 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 202.

  5. ibid.

  6. James Boaden, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2 (1831), p. 281.

  7. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, ‘York Sunday’ n.d. but August 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  8. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, Sunday [22 September 1811], Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 203.

  9. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, Cheltenham Sunday [2 September 1811], Huntington Library MS, omitted by Aspinall in transcript on p. 203 of Mrs Jordan and Her Family.

  10. William Oxberry, Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes, vol. 1 (1835), pp. 202–3. The story was credited to an actor who was present, and was told also by Boaden, but it had been handed on verbally for twenty years before it was written down.

  11. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 13 October 1811, Huntington Library MS. Mrs Jordan and Her Family prints part of this letter on p. 206, but omits everything about the plans for the garden and the children.

  12. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but November 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  13. The Duke of Clarence to Lady de Crespigny, aunt of Miss Tylney Long, n.d. but October 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 212.

  14. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, Bushy, Sunday [13 October 1811], Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 206.

  15. Lady Bessborough to Granville Leveson-Gower, 2 November 1811, Lady Granville (ed.), Private Correspondence 1781–1821, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, vol. 2 (1916), p. 413.

  16. Princess Charlotte to Miss Mercer Elphinstone, 23 November 1811, cited in Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Letters of Princess Charlotte (1949), p. xiv.

  17. The Duke of Clarence to George FitzClarence, Ramsgate, n.d. but November 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 212–13.

  18. DJ to George FitzClarence, Monday [November 1811], Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 216.

  19. 19 April 1791 point of law reported in Annual Register that mother of child born out of wedlock has no right as guardian after age of seven.

  20. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, 22 November 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  21. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, St James’s Friday [29 November 1811], Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 217.

  22. DJ to James Boaden, n.d. but November 1811, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, pp. 273–5.

  23. R. Fulford, The Royal Dukes (1933), pp. 124–5.

  24. Philip Ziegler, King William (1971), pp. 110–11.

  25. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but before mid-December 1811, Huntington Library MS.

  26. Boaden quotes her letter in The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 278.

  27. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but 16 December 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 219.

  28. DJ to John McMahon, n.d. but 16 December 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 219–20. Aspinall found this letter among the Prince Regent’s papers in the Royal Archives.

  29. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but 16 December 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 220.

  30. Henry FitzClarence to George FitzClarence, 7 December 1811, Birkbeck MS.

&n
bsp; 31. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but 10 December 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 218.

  32. The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2, p. 276.

  33. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but December 1810, Huntington Library MS.

  34. In 1806 the royal Princes were reported as having their allowances increased from £12,000 to £18,000 a year, plus a special grant each of £20,000 to settle their debts.

  35. The Duke of Clarence to Sophy FitzClarence, n.d. but late 1811, from Portsmouth, RA Add. 4/148.

  I never wish either to say or write an angry word to you: but I cannot approve of your now wishing to live with me: I must be the best judge and am your best friend: you will of course live with me as must all my daughters as they attain the age of sixteen: the boys must live with me and will occasionally visit their mother: till everything is settled between me and your mother there is not any hurry about her taking a house unless a very cheap and convenient one offers: Tus may remain till next April twelvemonth with his mother if she wishes to keep him…

  36. ibid.

  37. John McMahon to William Adam, 30 December 1811, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 223.

  38. Princess Charlotte to Miss Mercer Elphinstone, 5 January 1812, The Letters of Princess Charlotte, p. 25.

  39. DJ to John McMahon, n.d. but early January 1812, Huntington Library MS. It is curious that Aspinall did not print this letter.

  40. DJ to the Duke of Clarence, n.d. but early January 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, p. 226.

  18 AN ATTACK BY THE TIMES: 1813

  1. DJ to James Boaden, n.d. but January 1812, James Boaden, The Life of Mrs Jordan, vol. 2 (1831), p. 277.

  2. William Adam to DJ, 24 January 1812, cited in Arthur Aspinall (ed.), Mrs Jordan and Her Family, being the Unpublished Letters of Mrs Jordan and the Duke of Clarence, later William IV (1951), p. 230.

  3. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but September 1812 (from Exeter), RA Add. 40/196.

  4. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but January 1812, Huntington Library MS.

  5. DJ to George FitzClarence, n.d. but January 1812, Mrs Jordan and Her Family, pp. 228–9.