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Mistress Peachum's Pleasure: The Life of Lavinia Fenton, Duchess of Bolton

by Lisa Hilton

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312764,525 (3.17)1
Mistress Peachum was Lavinia Fenton, an eighteenth-century actress who was the original Polly Peachum in John Gay's play The Beggar's Opera and became the Duchess of Bolton. Raised in a Charing Cross coffee-house, Lavinia became an actress, and though she was a newcomer to the stage when she was chosen to star as Polly, her combination of a sweet voice, a pretty face and a knowledge of the seamier side of London life made the role her own. Both Lavinia and the play were overnight sensations, but she enjoyed only a few months of fame before she caught the eye of the Duke of Bolton, a married, indolent and childless aristocrat. The Duke was determined to make her his mistress, and she agreed to elope with him, exchanging the rackety glamour of life as London's most celebrated actress for twenty years of retirement. Lavinia gave the Duke three sons, but when she was left a widow she chose her own way once more, and scandalously threw away their fortunes on her younger lover.… (more)
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‘She was very accomplished; was a most agreeable companion; had much wit, and strong good sense, and a just taste in polite literature. Her person was agreeable and well-made; though she could not be called a beauty. I have had the pleasure of being at table with her, when her conversation was much admired by the first characters of the age.’ This is the Reverend Joseph Warton remembering his patroness Lavinia, Duchess of Bolton after her death in 1760. In a previous incarnation she had been the first Polly Peachum of The Beggar’s Opera and a star of the Georgian stage.

After she left the stage, Lavinia Fenton lived an entirely domestic life with her Duke until the death of his first wife allowed them to marry and then they continued contentedly as before. As so little reliable information has survived about her, Lisa Hilton writes of Fenton’s life through the prism of her times and the opera that made her star. The times would have ensured her life was short, poor and brutal but Gay’s opera brought her fame - and the demerits of celebrity for an actress such as lampoons and being dubbed a prostitute - but also miraculously a dull and pompous admirer who remained loyal until his death. There is a delicious examination of their relationship. ‘What is it in you that he wants so badly? Which Lavinia does he need, and how are you to know how to give her to him?’ In her widowhood there’s one act of rebellion when, as Horace Walpole gossiped, ‘after a life of merit [she] relapsed into her Pollyhood’ and took a lover. This is a brilliant, exciting, dazzling and thought-provoking biography displaying, like its subject, accomplishment wit and strong good sense.
  Sarahursula | Apr 7, 2013 |
Poor historical account, taken mostly from secondary sources, of an interesting 18th century woman; dreadful writing style too. ( )
  thefirstalicat | Feb 4, 2008 |
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Mistress Peachum was Lavinia Fenton, an eighteenth-century actress who was the original Polly Peachum in John Gay's play The Beggar's Opera and became the Duchess of Bolton. Raised in a Charing Cross coffee-house, Lavinia became an actress, and though she was a newcomer to the stage when she was chosen to star as Polly, her combination of a sweet voice, a pretty face and a knowledge of the seamier side of London life made the role her own. Both Lavinia and the play were overnight sensations, but she enjoyed only a few months of fame before she caught the eye of the Duke of Bolton, a married, indolent and childless aristocrat. The Duke was determined to make her his mistress, and she agreed to elope with him, exchanging the rackety glamour of life as London's most celebrated actress for twenty years of retirement. Lavinia gave the Duke three sons, but when she was left a widow she chose her own way once more, and scandalously threw away their fortunes on her younger lover.

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