THE FORTUNES OF HARRIETTE
By Angela Thirkell
Written mainly to blackmail her former lovers, the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson turned out to be as light-hearted and vivid a picture of Regency society as has ever been published. It is well kpdaii, however, that Harriette's ideas oftruth were distinctly original, and Mrs. Thirkell, in The Fortunes of Harriette (Hamish Hamilton, 10s. 6d.), has put all lovers of the period in her debt. In the main, of course, her story follows Harriette's own, and Lord. _Criven, Frederick Lamb, the MarifulS of Lorne, Lord Ponsonby, the Duke of Wellington, and the rest appear each in turn as that lady's protector. There is much about her parentage and upbringing,-however, and her adventures in later life, that has no place in the Memoirs, and she is such an entertaining person that one is glad to know all one can about her—even her sad dwindling into the wife of a member of that middle class which she so whole-heartedly despised, -and her last squalid years, in the best courtesan tradition, in the new, Victorian England which had no place for her. Mrs. Thirkell very rightly keeps flarriette's own words for many of the scenes, such as the famous evenings at the opera. when the box of the Three Graces was crowded out with admirers, or the sad story of the Duke of Wellington in the rain. Harriette's dialogue, true or not, is of a kindwhich any novelist might envy. -Anyone 'xho has been put off by the length of Harriette Wilson's Memoirs should make her acquaintance in this lively biography.
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