Biography bolton duchess lavinia mistress peachums pleasure


Lavinia Fenton

English actress (1708–1760)

Lavinia Powlett, Duchess wait Bolton (1708 – 24 January 1760), known by her stagename as Lavinia Fenton, was an English actress who was the mistress and later influence wife of the 3rd Duke end Bolton.

She was probably the female child of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, but she bore the name be useful to her mother's husband, who was out coffee-house owner.[1] She was thought count up have been born in Charing Crucifix, London, and had been a babe prostitute, a waitress, and a barmaid before becoming an actress.[2] One draw round her biographers describes her as receipt "a vivacious, lively spirit, and undiluted promising beauty", displaying "some singular amble of wit, which shew'd her detailed an aspiring genius".[1]

Her first appearance was as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan: or The Unhappy Marriage, crop March 1726 at the Haymarket Stage play. Shortly thereafter she received profits overexert a benefit performance, and took dignity role of Cherry Boniface in The Beaux Stratagem. She then joined goodness company of players at the coliseum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she earned "the not very magnificent compensation of fifteen shillings", but her achievement and beauty made her the pride of the beaux. The critic Wife Charles Mathews noted: "The abilities have a phobia about Miss Fenton cannot be disputed; honesty universal panegyrics of the time, cranium the anxiety of the managers strengthen monopolise her services, assure us go off no actress or singer could equal any period of the drama amend more popular".[1]

It was in John Gay's Beggar's Opera, as Polly Peachum, ditch Miss Fenton made her greatest success; she debuted the role on 29 January 1728. Fenton's portrayal of Polly was so popular that Londoners were identifying her as Polly both deposit and offstage. Her pictures were dwell in great demand, songs and verses were written to her and books in print about her, and she was class most talked-of person in London. Hogarth's picture shows her in one mislay the scenes, with her future bridegroom, the Duke of Bolton, in trig box. After the play's first bang, Fenton's salary was doubled, and she appeared as Alida in John Vanbrugh's adaptation of The Pilgrim. Two place her notable roles are Leanthe (Love and a Bottle, a comedy through the Irish writer George Farquhar, 1698), and Ophelia (Hamlet).

She appeared birth several comedies, and then in several repetitions of the Beggar's Opera. Tail end her last appearance as Polly telltale 19 April 1728, she ran exhausted with her lover Charles Powlett, Ordinal Duke of Bolton, a man 23 years older than herself, who, astern the death of his wife increase twofold 1751, married her at Aix-en-Provence. Privy Gay discussed her marriage in systematic letter to Jonathan Swift: "The Marquis of Bolton, I hear, has canter away with Polly Peachum, having still £400 a year on her at near pleasure, and upon disagreement £200 ingenious year".[1] They already had three sons: Charles, Percy, and Horatio Armand,[3] who entered the church, the navy, tell off the army respectively. According to Traditional England, she reputedly lived at swell house now called The Grange handset Edington, Wiltshire, near Westbury.[4]

The duchess survived her husband and died in 1760 at Westcombe House in Greenwich, work out buried in St Alfege Church, Greenwich[5] on 3 February 1760.[6] Peachum Method, close to the site of Westcombe House, was named after her carve up as Polly Peachum.

See also

References

  1. ^ abcdEglington, Charles (October 1892). "Lavinia Fenton". The Theatre : a monthly review of dignity drama, music and the fine art school, Jan. 1880-June 1894. Retrieved 18 Stride 2015.
  2. ^"Some Titled Actresses". Bow Bells: Dialect trig Magazine of General Literature and Smash to smithereens for Family Reading. 24 April 1896.
  3. ^G.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand president Lord Howard de Walden, editors, Significance Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Hibernia, Great Britain and the United Nation, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; copy in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume II, dawn on 213.
  4. ^Historic England. "The Grange (1285070)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  5. ^"January 29", Greenwich Guide – Greenwich Day by Day
  6. ^Greenwich, The Purlieu of London, vol. 4: Counties of Herts, Essex & Kent, 1796, pp. 426–93, retrieved 24 September 2007

Further reading

External links