Conquering courtesan's dangerous liaisons -.

(From Canberra Times)

F RANCES WILSON begins her biography of Harriette Wilson by asserting that her subject ''could not have existed anywhere other than Mayfair, in the heart of London, at any time other than the dawn of the nineteenth century''. Although her claim is substantiated in the vividness and detail with which she depicts Harriette's milieu, the impression made upon this reader is that Harriette is in some ways also eerily our contemporary. There is apparently no relation between author and subject - ''Wilson'' was the name Harriette Dubouchet adopted early in life. She was the sixth of 15 children of a bad-tempered, unreliable Swiss father and his submissive wife 20 years his junior. Harriette's mother, Amelia, was illegitimate and had been raised by a kindly couple who owned a stocking-cleaning enterprise. The question arises as to why at least four, possibly six, of the Dubouchet daughters elected to make their living as courtesans. Frances Wilson partly answers this question in her analysis of the status of courtesans during the Regency. As she indicates, there was a …