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Memoirs of a Georgian Rake
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- GenresBiographyNonfictionIndia
414 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
William Hickey
67 books1 followerWilliam Hickey (30 June 1749 – 31 May 1830) was an English lawyer, but is best known for his vast Memoirs, composed in 1808–10 and published between 1913 and 1925, which in their manuscript form cover seven hundred and forty closely written pages. Described by Peter Quennell as "One of the most remarkable books of its kind ever published in the English Language", Hickey's Memoirs give an extraordinarily vivid picture of life in late 18th-century London, Calcutta, Madras and Jamaica which stands comparison with the best of his near-contemporary James Boswell.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 4, 2020
This is a joyous and extraordinary memoir of a man who lived a joyous and extraordinary life. William Hickey was from a middle-class Irish family (his father was friends with Edmund Burke and was a sometime member of The Club), and he grew up and trained as a lawyer in London in the 1760s and '70s, before sailing off to try and make his fortune in India. It's a life that offers an amazing window on places and personalities of the period that are untouched by contemporary novelists.
William's early years are a real-life Tom Jones. ‘Woman, dear, lovely woman,’ he says, ‘I never could resist.’ His amorous inclinations start early, when a servant-girl takes to sleeping in his bed as a boy; soon, he is running away from school to explore the diversions of the big city, at one of the most chaotic and vibrant moments in its history. On one occasion, a friend of his father's stops him in the park to ask how school is going, and ends up giving him a guinea. Big mistake. William immediately runs off to find an old girlfriend:
Before long, William is living a life of total dissipation. His poor dad is constantly trying to set him up with some solid work experience or professional connections, but time and again, despite his best intentions, William finds himself relapsing into his old lifestyle: riotous clubs, huge drunken dinners, and late-night tours of the city's numerous brothels. Good lord, could they put the booze away – claret and champagne are quaffed here by the pint. On one occasion, William wakes up to find that he is in a room at the Cross Keys Bagnio, with his pockets picked and no memory of how he got there except to be told the watchmen dragged him in ‘in woeful plight’ at five a.m. (He manages to stagger downstairs and get a hackney coach home: ‘I vomited out of the coach windows the whole way, to the great entertainment of the foot passengers.’)
At another drunken dinner at The Bull in Shooter's Hill, it emerges that one of William's regular friends, Pris Vincent, has a particularly impressive party trick, ‘of being able to squirt her wine across a table, to such a nicety that she would fire into the neck of a quart bottle’. What, I thought – from her mouth? Well, no, it turned out:
Somehow, Hickey does not come across in these stories as a tacky drunk – largely because of the remarkably ingenuous way he has of telling these stories against himself. He seems genuinely motivated only by a desire to be good company, which he clearly was. His sexual misadventures are like Boswell with all of the Calvinist guilt removed: unlike Boswell, Hickey seems really to have liked women, and to have enjoyed their company, whether remunerated or otherwise. He never treats them as anything less than equal partners in his adventures, and if he ever gets a bit of money together, he throws a big dinner for all the girls of the town he knows, and arranges to have some of the funds sent to any who could not attend.
Of course, we are reading these things in Hickey's own words, which are not disinterested. But even taking that into account, we can make out in these anecdotes, hazily and at a distance, the outlines of the radically different mores of the eighteenth century, before a more moralising Victorian age supervened. In particular, the memoirs are an enlightening illustration of the fact that, between the streetwalker and the high-society grande dame, there existed a vast scale of intermediate positions of agency, respectability and sexual freedom that women could occupy.
Hickey sleeps – untransactionally, and by mutual inclination – with many high-profile courtesans and more respectable society ladies, but he seems rather to prefer the company of the assorted ‘rogues and whores’ he meets in London's taverns and bagnios. For instance, he is approached at one supper party by the renowned Emily Warren (later to be painted by Reynolds and Romney), who leads him to her bedroom – but, he says, ‘she was cold as ice, seemingly totally void of feeling…how unlike was she to my first little companion of Drury Lane or to Nanny Harris, Fanny Hartford, Clara Hayward, and twenty other of my old favourites!’
His real passion, though, is for Charlotte Barry, who is at first ‘kept’ by a bad-tempered acquaintance of his, but who eventually takes up with William instead. They were clearly devoted to each other. Novels of the period unite to give the impression that all women want nothing more than to marry – but when William proposes it
It's interesting that she presents her refusal as a way of protecting him from being trapped: presumably, for some women in these situations, it was also a way of protecting their own freedom. But Charlotte does take his name, and, as Mrs Hickey, goes out with him to India and indeed lives with him for the rest of her life. Their relationship was clearly profound and sincere, it just had nothing to do with an official ceremony. Nor is this presented as being especially unusual in Hickey's circle of acquaintances.
The passages describing William's many long sea voyages are very evocative, and often terrifying – the four-day hurricane that nearly sinks one ship he's on in the Bay of Bengal, before he and Charlotte are taken prisoner by the French, is an unforgettable set-piece. And the glimpses we get into eighteenth-century Jamaica, Canton, Madras and Calcutta are just fantastic – his dinners with a pre-impeachment Warren Hastings being a case in point. After nearly thirty years in India, he came back to London with enough money to settle down near his sisters, and apparently managed to live until he was eighty – which, as the editor of this edition says, is ‘a monument to the preservative powers of claret’.
Hickey's memoirs were not published in his lifetime – in fact, they didn't appear until the twentieth century, when they came out in four volumes. This selection, made by Roger Hudson, was apparently done (in 1995) for the Folio Society, so it doesn't exist in trade paperback. There was an earlier one-volume selection made by Peter Quennell in 1960, expanded with a few of the racier passages in 1974, which you might still be able to find in a second-hand shop. Otherwise, William Hickey remains unforgivably hard for book-lovers to get hold of. But he remains the most charming company imaginable, and for anyone interested in the time, the place or the personality involved, well worth the effort to look him up.
William's early years are a real-life Tom Jones. ‘Woman, dear, lovely woman,’ he says, ‘I never could resist.’ His amorous inclinations start early, when a servant-girl takes to sleeping in his bed as a boy; soon, he is running away from school to explore the diversions of the big city, at one of the most chaotic and vibrant moments in its history. On one occasion, a friend of his father's stops him in the park to ask how school is going, and ends up giving him a guinea. Big mistake. William immediately runs off to find an old girlfriend:
I directly went to her lodgings which were in a court that run out of Bow Street, Covent Garden. I told her the strength of my purse, and proposed going to the play, which she consenting to, there was I a hopeful sprig of thirteen, stuck up in a green box, with a blazing whore. From the theatre she took me home to supper, giving me lobster and oysters, both of which she knew I was very fond of, and plenty of rum punch; with my head full of which, at a late hour I went home, and as I would not tell where I had been, I received a smart flogging from the arm of my old operator, Dr Lloyd.
Before long, William is living a life of total dissipation. His poor dad is constantly trying to set him up with some solid work experience or professional connections, but time and again, despite his best intentions, William finds himself relapsing into his old lifestyle: riotous clubs, huge drunken dinners, and late-night tours of the city's numerous brothels. Good lord, could they put the booze away – claret and champagne are quaffed here by the pint. On one occasion, William wakes up to find that he is in a room at the Cross Keys Bagnio, with his pockets picked and no memory of how he got there except to be told the watchmen dragged him in ‘in woeful plight’ at five a.m. (He manages to stagger downstairs and get a hackney coach home: ‘I vomited out of the coach windows the whole way, to the great entertainment of the foot passengers.’)
At another drunken dinner at The Bull in Shooter's Hill, it emerges that one of William's regular friends, Pris Vincent, has a particularly impressive party trick, ‘of being able to squirt her wine across a table, to such a nicety that she would fire into the neck of a quart bottle’. What, I thought – from her mouth? Well, no, it turned out:
I immediately asked her to oblige us with this exhibition, which, as she had a large dose of wine in her head, she consented to with little difficulty, desiring me to be ‘her bottle holder’. I, accordingly, took up a champagne bottle, and, going from the end to the side of the table, she placed herself opposite and, pulling up her petticoats, I presented the mouth of the bottle in a slanting direction toward her. In an instant, she with her fingers contracted the lips of her tu quoque so as to produce a narrow curved stream, so correctly aimed that at least one-third actually entered the bottle. Never did I hear such screams of laughter as ensued; Lord Fielding was near suffocation, so excessively did it excite his mirth.
Somehow, Hickey does not come across in these stories as a tacky drunk – largely because of the remarkably ingenuous way he has of telling these stories against himself. He seems genuinely motivated only by a desire to be good company, which he clearly was. His sexual misadventures are like Boswell with all of the Calvinist guilt removed: unlike Boswell, Hickey seems really to have liked women, and to have enjoyed their company, whether remunerated or otherwise. He never treats them as anything less than equal partners in his adventures, and if he ever gets a bit of money together, he throws a big dinner for all the girls of the town he knows, and arranges to have some of the funds sent to any who could not attend.
Of course, we are reading these things in Hickey's own words, which are not disinterested. But even taking that into account, we can make out in these anecdotes, hazily and at a distance, the outlines of the radically different mores of the eighteenth century, before a more moralising Victorian age supervened. In particular, the memoirs are an enlightening illustration of the fact that, between the streetwalker and the high-society grande dame, there existed a vast scale of intermediate positions of agency, respectability and sexual freedom that women could occupy.
Hickey sleeps – untransactionally, and by mutual inclination – with many high-profile courtesans and more respectable society ladies, but he seems rather to prefer the company of the assorted ‘rogues and whores’ he meets in London's taverns and bagnios. For instance, he is approached at one supper party by the renowned Emily Warren (later to be painted by Reynolds and Romney), who leads him to her bedroom – but, he says, ‘she was cold as ice, seemingly totally void of feeling…how unlike was she to my first little companion of Drury Lane or to Nanny Harris, Fanny Hartford, Clara Hayward, and twenty other of my old favourites!’
His real passion, though, is for Charlotte Barry, who is at first ‘kept’ by a bad-tempered acquaintance of his, but who eventually takes up with William instead. They were clearly devoted to each other. Novels of the period unite to give the impression that all women want nothing more than to marry – but when William proposes it
she peremptorily refused, observing that she was already as happy as woman could be; that, should she avail herself of my generous offer and I at any future period repent of what I had done, it undoubtedly would break her heart.
It's interesting that she presents her refusal as a way of protecting him from being trapped: presumably, for some women in these situations, it was also a way of protecting their own freedom. But Charlotte does take his name, and, as Mrs Hickey, goes out with him to India and indeed lives with him for the rest of her life. Their relationship was clearly profound and sincere, it just had nothing to do with an official ceremony. Nor is this presented as being especially unusual in Hickey's circle of acquaintances.
The passages describing William's many long sea voyages are very evocative, and often terrifying – the four-day hurricane that nearly sinks one ship he's on in the Bay of Bengal, before he and Charlotte are taken prisoner by the French, is an unforgettable set-piece. And the glimpses we get into eighteenth-century Jamaica, Canton, Madras and Calcutta are just fantastic – his dinners with a pre-impeachment Warren Hastings being a case in point. After nearly thirty years in India, he came back to London with enough money to settle down near his sisters, and apparently managed to live until he was eighty – which, as the editor of this edition says, is ‘a monument to the preservative powers of claret’.
Hickey's memoirs were not published in his lifetime – in fact, they didn't appear until the twentieth century, when they came out in four volumes. This selection, made by Roger Hudson, was apparently done (in 1995) for the Folio Society, so it doesn't exist in trade paperback. There was an earlier one-volume selection made by Peter Quennell in 1960, expanded with a few of the racier passages in 1974, which you might still be able to find in a second-hand shop. Otherwise, William Hickey remains unforgivably hard for book-lovers to get hold of. But he remains the most charming company imaginable, and for anyone interested in the time, the place or the personality involved, well worth the effort to look him up.
October 4, 2023
William Hickey's massive memoir of his long life, here significantly (and thankfully) abridged, is one of the more remarkable accounts of Georgian Britain and particularly India at the height of the East India Company. Understandably the Folio account concentrates on the early years of the diary - his bacchanalian lifestyle in Regency London and his early years in India (Memoirs of a Georgian Rake has more selling potential than Memoirs of an Anglo-Indian Attorney). The rollicking account of his drunkenness and consorting with prostitutes at times gives the impression of a debauched Bertie Wooster as he gets into scrape after scrape. The accounts of near disasters at sea, including a gripping one of being caught in a Cyclone in the Indian Ocean, are vividly written.
At other times the reader is brought up short by the realisation that what he/she is reading is actually deeply unpleasant. The memoirs detail two serious sexual assaults on young girls, a terrible flogging of a sixteen year old slave (with, it should be said, disgust) and a young Indian girl who is sent to Hickey by a friend for his "personal use". This, after he has overcome his reluctance to have sex with natives. This is a book which probably ought to come with a chapter of trigger warnings.
Hickey's memoirs combine the squalor of Hogarth with the elegance of Canaletto (check out his description of his, no doubt highly expensive, pea green suit). They remind us of how complex and fascinating this age was. Almost entirely absent is any reference to religion, although Hickey is grateful to Providence for the numerous times he has been spared a watery grave. The gathering evangelical revival which led to the sterner Victorian morality (with all its hypocrisy) was at least partly responsible for ending the abuses casually detailed in these recollections.
At other times the reader is brought up short by the realisation that what he/she is reading is actually deeply unpleasant. The memoirs detail two serious sexual assaults on young girls, a terrible flogging of a sixteen year old slave (with, it should be said, disgust) and a young Indian girl who is sent to Hickey by a friend for his "personal use". This, after he has overcome his reluctance to have sex with natives. This is a book which probably ought to come with a chapter of trigger warnings.
Hickey's memoirs combine the squalor of Hogarth with the elegance of Canaletto (check out his description of his, no doubt highly expensive, pea green suit). They remind us of how complex and fascinating this age was. Almost entirely absent is any reference to religion, although Hickey is grateful to Providence for the numerous times he has been spared a watery grave. The gathering evangelical revival which led to the sterner Victorian morality (with all its hypocrisy) was at least partly responsible for ending the abuses casually detailed in these recollections.
September 5, 2025
Fantastic read. Not a good person, hell no, but I think a first person account like this gives depth to the whole “man of his time” thing. It’s used as an excuse or something, when really it’s like “no, he was somewhat a racist prick, but everyone was, just to varying degrees! He’s a 4 outta 10.”
Anywho, privileged English dude screws up multiple times on daddy’s money before finding a role doing some magisterial bs in India. Travels to Jamaica first, and oh man so many people die on the sea. Sometimes you can tell it affects Hickey, other times it doesn’t seem to affect him at all. He sees a dude whipping a slave or something way too much and he acts to stop it as do others, so there’s nuance/degree to the awful racism, as I said. But then the Indian girl he’s with was “uncommonly bright for amongst those people”, and it’s like, no dude she’s just the only one you talk to. There’s worse shit, but rehashing that so isn’t the point- it’s fascinating to get ground-level insight from a relatively unknown figure, regardless of his morality. It’s sex, drinking, being a spoiled British dude, that’s his jam, and I ain’t approving or disapproving- just marveling at the tale
He’s told from 225+ years away.
Would recommend, fun first-hand history.
Anywho, privileged English dude screws up multiple times on daddy’s money before finding a role doing some magisterial bs in India. Travels to Jamaica first, and oh man so many people die on the sea. Sometimes you can tell it affects Hickey, other times it doesn’t seem to affect him at all. He sees a dude whipping a slave or something way too much and he acts to stop it as do others, so there’s nuance/degree to the awful racism, as I said. But then the Indian girl he’s with was “uncommonly bright for amongst those people”, and it’s like, no dude she’s just the only one you talk to. There’s worse shit, but rehashing that so isn’t the point- it’s fascinating to get ground-level insight from a relatively unknown figure, regardless of his morality. It’s sex, drinking, being a spoiled British dude, that’s his jam, and I ain’t approving or disapproving- just marveling at the tale
He’s told from 225+ years away.
Would recommend, fun first-hand history.
September 2, 2019
Engaging picture of life in Regency Britain and India. Wonderful, funny stories. Fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews