Friday, November 13, 2009

Tart of the Week: Lavinia Fenton


Sometimes the best tarts are the products of tarts themselves. Lavinia Fenton was the result of her mother's late night rendezvous with a sailor. Things were rough growing up in Charing Cross in the early 1700s. Lavinia, like so many young women, turned to prostitution as a child. From there she took the usual prostitute promotion and became an actress.

Her first recorded appearances on the stage happened while she was still a teenager. It was when Lavinia joined the production at Lincoln's Inn Fields that she became noticed. Of course this could just be because she was a pretty face. Either way, people flocked to see the divine Miss Fenton on stage. One of those people was Charles, Duke of Bolton.

The Duke was in a loveless marriage and much older than Lavinia but that wouldn't stop the two from shacking up. Nor would Lavinia let shacking up get in the way of her career. It was her performance as Polly Peachum in The Beggar's Opera that earned Lavinia the most success. It also earned her a depiction in a Hogarth painting portraying the play. Now Lavinia was a full-out star: the papers followed her, prints were made of her, and she became the reason people would see the play.

After her initial success as Polly Peachum, there was a demand for Lavinia to play the character in just about any production of The Beggar's Opera. In the meantime she had three sons, all with the Duke. It wasn't until the death of his wife in 1751 that the Duke made an honest woman out of Lavinia. Nine years later, Lavinia died, having lived her celebrity life with a happier ending than its beginning.

10 comments:

  1. Very interesting, I love music history and had often seen the famous Hogarth painting depicting her in 'The Beggar's Opera', but had never known much about her life.

    ReplyDelete
  2. how do you come across all your tarts? reading about their lifes is very interesting. first thing i do, when logging in into blogger, is reading your new posts... great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excellent blog, I love it. I always read it.

    Bye, Lady P.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, thanks for the info. There's a bio on her that I keep coming across. Maybe I need to snag a copy. Have you read it, Heather? (Or anyone else.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Ladies!! I don't know if I find the tarts as much as the tarts find me. Either that or it takes one to know one! Har har har, couldn't resist.

    @Polonaise, no I haven't read it yet. Just another thing to add to the never-ending queue

    ReplyDelete
  6. very interesting indeed and i'm pleased that her days ended so happily...i'm very fond of historical tarts.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I haven't even read the post yet and all I can think at present is: eye cream...cucumber slices...chilled tea bags...eye cream...

    ReplyDelete
  8. What a nose!

    She doesn't sound like much of a tart though - did what she had to, found a guy, and actually married him when she could!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I went to a talk in London by Dan Cruickshank this week entitled "Harlots and Hospitals" and he mentioned that in the course of his research about 10 years ago he found that a current day Lavinia Fenton had sought out the current Duke of Bolton and married him. He had no news of whether the marriage survived.

    ReplyDelete
  10. No way!! That could just be more extreme than the lady who has been plastic surgery to look like Nefertiti!

    ReplyDelete