Lavinia+Fenton,+the+Duchess+of+Bolton

= The Duchess of Bolton: Lavinia Fenton =



**PERFORMER:** Lavinia Fenton (1708-1760)

**NOTABLE PERFORMANCE:** Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera

**RECEPTION:** Easily the most popular performance of her career; so popular that she was frequently referred to by her character’s name Polly. It was written by John Gay himself that “the person who acted Polly (Miss Fenton, afterwards the Duchess of Bolton) till then obscure, became all at once the favorite of the town.”1 It was even noted by Gay himself in a letter to Jonathan Swift that, “The Beggar’s Opera hath been acted now thirty-six times, and was as full the last night as the first […] A play was given out, but the audience called out for the Beggar’s Opera; and they were forced to play it, or the audience would not have staid.”2

**MARRIED TO:** Charles Powlett, Duke of Bolton (with whom she was having an affair because at the time he was married to Lady Anne Vaughn)

**FAMILY AND DESCENT INTO POVERTY:** Fenton’s father was a mercer from London and her mother was a housewife from a wealthy family. Although her parents were of good fortune (thanks to her mother) and good status (thanks to her father) they lost a great deal of their wealth at the hands of the dubious joint-stock company known as The South Sea Company. As a response, Fenton and her family lost all their wealth and she became an orange seller.

**SOUTH SEA COMPANY:** The Company itself was created during the War of the Spanish Succession which raised Britain’s national debt and the idea behind it was that it would be both public and private and encourage trade. However, their stocks never did too well and eventually crashed in an economic disaster known as the South Sea Bubble. In response to the South Sea Bubble, Parliament made it illegal to form joint-stock companies (unless given permission by the Crown.)



**DISCOVERY AND LIFE AT THE PLAYHOUSE:** Fenton was discovered by a “Gentleman Comedian” while selling fruit to Britain’s elite; he remains a fairly anonymous figure in records and is only known as Mr. R. Mr. R invited her to work in the Play-House doing odd jobs like working the Boxes until he learned that she could perform well as an actress. Lavinia was very much a natural on the stage attracting a fan-base not long after joining the Play-House however it was her memorable performance in The Beggar’s Opera that cemented her status as a star. She was extremely popular with men and they often competed for her attention. Fenton’s financial success as an actress allowed her to restore her elite status and by the end of her life she was a wealthy Duchess.

**THE BEGGAR’S OPERA:** Fenton’s appeal was largely cultivated from her daintiness reflected in her airy voice and pure beauty which were pivotal to her portrayal of Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera. Her on-stage persona was so liked that she was praised by a biographer of John Gay: "The person who acted Polly, 'till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written; books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jest.”3 She was so popular in her portrayal of Polly that printer, A. Moore, produced several pieces of literature related to her including The Life of Lavinia Beswick, alias Fenton, alias Polly Peachum.4



**LEGACY:** Lavinia was known as a very boisterous member of society who broke away from traditions of women being reserved. As such she was the subject of much gossip in Eighteenth Century England. Her flamboyance raised concerns in retrospective analysis of gendered interactions within society because she didn’t seem to fit in either what German sociologist Jürgen Habermas calls the public and private realms. In his definition of the two, the public realm is gendered as masculine due to the freedoms that the male social elites had to engage with others and he defines the private realm as feminine due to the lack of freedom elite women had unless they were amongst a select group.

He says (of women) that, "They cannot be fully members of the public (in the sense that men can), they cannot be in the public without implicating their private and/or intimate status, they rarely form an effective counter-public resisting hege- monic ideology, they cannot retreat to a fully private existence, and their intimate lives become fair game (whether on the basis of speculation or fact) for public exposure.”5

The difference between an actor and an actress of the Eighteenth Century was that an actor could freely engage in any persona on stage be it a gentleman or a comedian and that would have little consequence or correlation to his off-stage persona however for actresses much of their private lives became intertwined with the characters they played on the stage and Lavina was no exception. Not only was she targeted in early tabloids, but she even took on the alias of Polly Peachum, the character she played within The Beggar’s Opera.

**LAVINIA OR POLLY:** Due to conflicting depictions of Fenton, there is a disconnect in documentation of how the actress actually behaved with some historians identifying her as a demure lady and other’s arguing that she was in fact a very coy person with a strong sense of controlling the media. Polly and Lavinia are therefore often pitted as opposing figures with the naming of the actress conjuring up two images. As Polly, she is the talk of the town and a shining example of feminine grace and as Lavinia she is a skilled actress who delights in the male attention she received and who knew how to work her angles.

What some like Toni-Lynn O’Shaughnessy argue is that Polly’s character in Gay’s work was not without sexual desire. As a response to the reprisal of Polly in Gay’s ballad opera of the same name 18th century authors, including Caleb D’Anvers in his The Twickenham hotch-potch published in 1728 in London, associated lewd verse with Peachum. The Polly that is talked about in biographies of Lavinia is the love-child of the modest Polly in Gay’s work and the Lavinia that was favored in tabloids. Polly as an actress therefore both represents the shy nature of Polly Peachum and the boisterous nature of Lavinia Fenton who was able to exist in the public eye.

One of the more scandalous truths about Lavinia Fenton is her relationship with the 3rd Duke of Bolton, Charles Powlett, who while married to Lady Anne Vaughan began an affair with Fenton which later resulted in a marriage between Powlett and Fenton upon Lady Anne’s death. The nature of their affair was particularly inappropriate because while still married to Lady Anne, Powlett and Fenton had children who were illegitimate. This did not bode well for Fenton whose legacy became that of a prostitute to her public enemies. This also brought into question the sexuality of Fenton and other career women which was addressed in The Life of Fenton by Anonymous. The image of Fenton as a threatening prostitute who was able to steal the heart of a nobleman such as the Duke of Bolton was in direct contrast to the lighthearted nature of the sexually charged characters in The Beggar’s Opera who were undoubtedly more socially-damnable than Fenton and yet their reception was favorable because it was comedy whereas Fenton’s was one of disappointment.

**THE LIFE OF FENTON:** The take-away of this text was that Fenton was embodied as a unique social case because of her possession of masculine and feminine social traits. On the one hand she was beautiful and every bit as dainty as the noble women who maneuvered through the private realms of society and yet on the other hand, Fenton embodied a masculine sexually-charged desire which was publically criticized. This brought into question the existence of sexual lust in women of the higher class. Some do criticize The Life of Fenton because they disagree with the uniqueness of Fenton as a sexual predator. Those who criticize the work are of the mindset that women including Fenton collectively behaved with an understanding of both private and public realms, such as Tracy C. Davis who wrote: “Because of their sex they are not allowed the public, yet they themselves go about in public and embody publicity. They may convey the normative ideology of the private/intimate sphere yet they clearly do not confine themselves to it. They are neither private citizens in the public sphere nor private women in the intimate sphere.”6

**DEATH OF THE DUCHESS:** Lavinia Fenton died as the Duchess of Bolton on January 24, 1760. The London Chornicle a major newspaper in the Eighteenth Century reported that, “On Thursday died at Westcombe in Kent the Dowager Duchess of Bolton, by whose death a jointure of £5,000 per annum devolves to his Grace the Duke of Bolton.”7 Because Fenton had given birth to illegitimate children with her husband, Charles, any wealth that Fenton had acquired upon his death and hers would’ve gone to the next heir. In theory this would have been the 3rd Duke’s brother Harry Powlett, 4th Duke of Bolton; however, Harry had passed a year before Fenton in 1759 and therefore the recipient of the fortune is debated. According to author and journalist Charles E. Pearce in his book on Fenton’s life “Polly Peachum”: Being the Story of Lavinia Fenton (Duchess of Bolton) and “The Beggar's Opera” it is believed that Fenton left her fortune to an Irishman named Kelley. However t is also reported in Pearce’s book, based on accounts from man of letters Horace Walpole in 1760 that “When [Fenton] was dying this fellow sent for a lawyer to make her will, but the man, finding who was to be her heir instead of her children, refused to draw it. The Court of Chancery did furnish one other not quite so scrupulous, and her sons have but a thousand pounds a piece.”8 This means that despite being illegitimate, the Duke and Duchess had arranged for some kind of inheritance for their three sons: Charles, Percy, and Horatio.

**IMPACT:** Fenton’s public image lives on as evidence of a fork in the road for women of the Eighteenth Century whose social lives were under heavy fire by unrealistic standards of feminine and masculine behavior. Women were expected to navigate through their private and public lives with expert precision yet Fenton is remembered as a rebel amongst women. Whether met with praise or reprimand, Fenton was arguably one of the most memorable victims of the Eighteenth Century gossip circle. She was the victim of misrepresentation and her name to this day is just as political amongst critics as it was in her heyday. So whether you call her Lavinia, Polly, or the Duchess of Bolton, the biographers agree that it was her bold desire and fiery persona that made for her duplicitous nature off-stage.



**WORKS CITED AND REFERENCES ** One of Her Companions. //The Whole Life of Polly Peachum: Containing an Account of Her Birth ... Shewing How She Jumpt from an Orange Girl to an Actress on the Stage, and from That to Be a Lady of Fortune: To Which Is Added, a List of Her Admires [sic] Written by One of Her Companions. .//London: Printed by M. Hind on Safforn-Hill sic, 1730. Web. 1 Gay, John. //The Beggar's Opera : A Comic Opera. By John Gay. Adapted for Theatrical Representation, As Performed at the Theatres-Royal, Drury-Lane, and Covent-Garden. Regulated from the Prompt-Book .//London: Printed for the proprietors, 1794. Web. ECCO; Eighteenth century collections online. 2 Swift, Jonathan. //Volume XV. Containing Letters to and from Dr. Jonathan Swift : Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, from the Year 1703, to 1743. With Notes Explanatory and Historical, by the Rev. Thomas Birch, D.D.F.R.S. John Hawkesworth, L.L.D. And the Editor, Mr. Thomas Wilkes.//Dublin: Printed by George Faulkner, 1767. Web. ECCO; Eighteenth century collections online. 3 Gay, John. //Plays Written by Mr. John Gay : To Which Is Added, an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author.//London: J. and R. Ton, 1760. Print. 4-6 Wanko, Cheryl. “Three Stories of Celebrity: The Beggar's Opera ‘Biographies.’” //Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900//, vol. 38, no. 3, 1998, pp. 481–498. []. 7-8  Pearce, Charles E. //"Polly Peachum": The Story of "Polly" and "The Beggar's Opera,".//London: Stanley Paul & Co, 1923. Web.