Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies

This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looks at the moment immediately after Charles II reversed this rule, and it’s a fun little look at some portraits, caricatures and paraphernalia of women who were allowed on stage, ‘from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’. It’s focused on portraits, but there are some super little earthenware tiles with different actresses on them in Room 3. There’s also a facsimile of the Yellow Pages-style brothel directory, Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies; or, The Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar, illustrating the fall from grace of the once ‘Convent and Garden’ of Westminster Abbey – a bit too close to eighteenth-century Theatreland for PR-comfort. Since its reissue by the History Press this book has now achieved some cult status – the guy next to me, looking at it, said to his companion, ‘You know, Gladys: Harris’ List – that’s the one we’ve got in the toilet’.

Nell (c.1651-87) opens this exhibition – a talented comic actress, although she is popularly most recognised for inspiring Charles II’s last words ‘Let not poor Nelly starve’ (she survived him by barely a year, fact fans). There are two portraits of her here, in both of which she’s got her mammaries out. This exhibition would have these as evidence of her ‘skillful manipulation’ rather than ‘brazen hussydom’; the second portrait shows her naked to the waist and looking directly at the viewer with a gaze at once languid and challenging. You might be reminded of Manet’s Olympia, condemned as ‘vulgar’ and ‘immoral’ on its first exhibition at 1863, mainly because the nude is looking directly at the viewer rather than obligingly turning her head away for better ogling comfort. And indeed, such a tension between looking and being looked at probably underscored a lot of the moral uncertainty about the early actresses.

Later on, we get Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), powerful, tragic grande dame. She appears in Room 3 painted by Thomas Lawrence as public intellectual, tutor to the royal children – and at a vantage point that forces us to look up at her imperious face, rather than to avert our eyes from her naked bosom. This is hung alongside a number of grandiose actress-as-Muse paintings, large as their themes, and also including Muses of Comedy and society amateurs like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

But even in the late eighteenth century ‘actress’ still wasn’t a career you’d want for your wife. Thespiennes like Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (1754-1792) and Elizabeth Farren (1759-1829) – both exhibited here – gave up their acting careers, on request, upon marriage. While the eighteenth-century gentleman was not renowned for being into female careers in general, the issue here seems to be more ‘other men looking at your wife’ than anything else: after all, these men were ‘forward thinking’ enough to marry an actress in the first place. Perhaps they were nervous of the number of early actresses, like Nell, who had affairs with kings and nobles. If so, they had a good few hundred years of uncertainty left: Edward VII was still pretty into actresses at the turn of the twentieth century. ‘I’ve spent enough on you to build a battleship’ he complained to Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), eliciting the tart response ‘And you’ve spent enough in me to float one.’ (It may have been such impertinence that led to her replacement by another actress, Sarah Bernhardt, shortly afterwards.)

Dorothy Jordan in travesti - engraving after the John Hoppner painting in this exhibition

But, as this exhibition shows, one of the primary moral gripes with these early actresses was actually about something a bit unexpected: the travesti roles many of them built careers on. There are some fascinating visual representations in this exhibition of actresses – like Dorothy Jordan (1761-1816), whose bosom apparently ‘concealed everything but its own charms’ – in their famous ‘breech’ roles, both Shakespearean (stalwarts like Twelfth Night and As You Like It) and just… male (Tom Thumb). It seems that, after decades of young boys aping womanhood, the first actresses set themselves the challenge of continuing the noble tradition: it was conscious decision, rather than occasional dramatic necessity, for many of them to adopt the travesti.

The Immodesty here implied resulted in endless caricatures, many of which are exhibited here. My favourite was entitled ‘An Actress at her Toilet; or, Miss Brazen Just Breecht’ – though perhaps even stranger were the portraits of various male actors, including David Garrick, in drag – enormous hoop and all – as a kind of forerunner to the pantomime dame.

Take a feminist friend and thrash it out in the Portrait Gallery café with their superior yoghurt and granola, says this reviewer. And visit John Donne on the top floor, if he’s not gone into cleaning yet.

• The First Actresses runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 8 January 2012.

I was also inspired by a question from @FeministInti to her twitter followers: do you know any folk songs that feature gender-based violence? The answer is yes, AND HOW. In a few moments we had amassed enough for a limited edition CD box set of traditional songs about rape, domestic violence and murdered women.

It tends to be these songs that a lot of modern folkish artists have picked up on. Yes, I’m looking at you Nick Cave. And you, Decemberists, although I love you. There are also a lot (a LOT) of waiflike folk girls with guitars singing about how love is like a cloud or they’re not sure which handbag matches their heart, as parodied by Bill Bailey.

As an antidote to the murdery and misogynist on the one hand and the mindlessly insipid and pathetic on the other I thought I would take this opportunity to share and celebrate some traditional songs in which women come out on top.

Note: Because the songs are hundreds of years old in some cases there’s quite a lot of variety over names and lyrics. I managed to find versions of nearly all of them on Spotify and have made a collaborative playlist so y’all can add any others you find: Kickass women in folk songs.

Cross-dressing adventurers

'The Female Sailor' broadsheet from the National Maritime Museum

Now THIS is what I’m talking about – songs about women dressing as sailors, hunters and highwaymen, whether to find their true love or just for kicks. Some of them sound a little unhinged: like Sovay, who is prepared to blow her lover’s head off if he gives up the love token she has given him. But the heroine in ‘The Golden Glove’ is very endearing as she cleverly arranges matters so that she can marry the man she loves (and “enjoy” him, as she sings gleefully).

If you’d like more stories of derring-do like this, I recommend Dianne Dugaw’s Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850.

Sovay

“Sovay Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man’s array
With a brace of pistols all at her side
To meet her true love, to meet her true love, for did she ride”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Pentangle – Sovay

When I Was A Fair Maid

“When I was a fair maid about seventeen
I listed in the navy for to serve the queen
I listed in the navy, a sailor lad to stand
For to hear the cannons rattling
and the music so grand”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Triona Ní Dhomhnaill – When I Was A Fair Maid

The Golden Glove

“Coat waistcoat and trousers the young girl put on
And away she went a-hunting with her dog and her gun
And she hunted around where the farmer he did dwell
Because in her heart oh she loved him so well”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Alva – The Golden Glove

Bold William Taylor

“Then the captain stepped up to her, pleased well at what she’s done;
He’s gone and made her a bold commander, over a ship and all its men.”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Patrick Street – William Taylor

Cowgirls

Just a couple of examples – ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart’ is basically about a woman who wants to be a cowboy, the ‘sweetheart’ of the title is purely incidental, and ‘Belle Starr’ is about a real life wild west fugitive who had a number of famous fugitive lovers.

I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart

“I wanna pillow my head by the sleeping herd
while the moon shines down from above
I wanna strum my guitar, and yodellaheehoo,
that’s the life that I love!”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Patsy Montana – I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart

Belle Starr

“Eight lovers they say combed your waving black hair
Eight men knew the feel of your dark velvet waist
Eight men heard the sounds of your tan leather skirt
Eight men heard the bark of the guns that you wore”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Pete Seeger – Belle Starr

Bold and crafty women

The Crafty Maid and Lovely Joan outsmart their arrogant would-be seducers and make off with their horses. Sally Brown kicks the ass of the Cruel Youth, saving her own life and avenging the deaths of the ‘pretty maidens’ who went before her, and the Bonny Lass of Angelsey dances the king and 15 of his knights out of their swag.

The Crafty Maid’s Policy

“But as soon as the maid she saw him a’coming
She instantly then took her pistol in hand
Saying “Doubt not my skill, it is you I would kill
I will have you stand back or you are a dead man.”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Frankie Armstrong – The Crafty Maid’s Policy

Lovely Joan

“She’s robbed him of his horse and ring,
And left him to rage in the meadows green.”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Heather Wood – Lovely Joan

The Cruel Youth

“Lie there, lie there, you cruel young man,
Lie there lie there,” said she
“Six pretty maidens you’ve drowned here,
now go keep them company.”

• Full lyrics
• YouTube: Gerri Gribi – The Cruel Youth

The Bonny Lass of Angelsey

“She’s taken all their bucklers and swords
She’s taken their gold and their bright money
And back to the mountains she’s away
The bonnie lass of Anglesey”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Paddy Tutty – The Bonny Lass Of Anglesey

Silver Dagger

The woman in Joan Baez’s version of the Silver Dagger decides not to risk getting her heart broken by keeping clear of love altogether. Whether she’s right or wrong, I like that she makes a choice.

“My daddy is a handsome devil
He’s got a chain five miles long
And on every link a heart does dangle
Of another maid he’s loved and wronged.”

• Full lyrics
• Spotify: Joan Baez – Silver Dagger

Thanks to my main song sources, Mudcat and Creative Folk!