Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland

326 Pages·2012·1.108 MB·English

by  Hal Gladfelder

FANNY HILL in BOMBAY
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FANNY HILL
in BOMBAY
The Making & Unmaking of John Cleland
l
Hal Gladfelder
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
© 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2012
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gladfelder, Hal.
Fanny Hill in Bombay : the making and unmaking of John Cleland / Hal Gladfelder.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-1-4214-0490-5 (hdbk. : acid-free paper)
isbn-10: 1-4214-0490-7 (hdbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Cleland, John, 1709–1789. I. Title.
pr3348.c65z66 2012
828'.609—dc23
[B] 2011029770
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contents
Acknowledgments vii
John Cleland: A Chronology ix
introduction “Old Cleland” 1
chapter 1 Fanny Hill in Bombay (1728–1740) 15
chapter 2 Down and Out in Lisbon and London (1741–1748) 37
chapter 3 Sodomites (1748–1749) 54
chapter 4 Three Memoirs (1748–1752) 85
chapter 5 The Hack (1749–1759) 139
chapter 6 The Man of Feeling (1752–1768) 177
chapter 7 A Briton (1757–1787) 213
epilogue Afterlife 238
Appendix. Cleland’s Mémoire to King João V of Portugal (1742) 245
Notes 249
Bibliography 289
Index 303
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acknowledgments
For help in locating archival and rare published materials, I would like to thank
the librarians, archivists, and readers’ assistants at the British Library (especially
staff working with the India Office Collection in the Asian and African Studies
reading room); the British National Archives, Kew; the Bodleian Library, Ox-
ford; the Lambeth Palace Library, London; the John Rylands Library, Deansgate;
and the John Rylands University Library at the University of Manchester. The
staff and librarians at the Rush Rhees Library of the University of Rochester
were also of great help in this project’s early days. Some of my preliminary re-
search was carried out during a period of sabbatical leave from the University
of Rochester, and the manuscript was drafted and largely completed during a
yearlong research leave jointly supported by the University of Manchester and
an Arts and Humanities Research Council fellowship.
A portion of chapter 3 appeared in different form as “In Search of Lost Texts:
Thomas Cannon’s Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d,”
Eighteenth-Century Life 31:1 (2006): 22–43. I thank Duke University Press for
permission to include a revised version here, and the journal’s editor, Cedric D.
Reverand II, for his exacting and astute close reading. Other portions of chap-
ters 3 and 4 appeared in different form under the title “Plague Spots” in Social
Histories of Disability and Deformity, edited by David M. Turner and Kevin Stagg
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 56–78. Still other portions of chapter 4 formed
part of the introduction to my edition of Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb (Pe-
terborough: Broadview, 2005); I thank Julia Gaunce, Barbara Conolly, Leonard
Conolly, and Colleen Franklin for their help in bringing that project to comple-
tion. Thanks also to Matthew McAdam, my acquiring editor at the Johns Hop-
kins University Press, and to George Roupe for his meticulous copy editing.
Peter Sabor and William H. Epstein were kind enough to read drafts of the
first three chapters, and I am grateful both for their comments and for their
viii Acknowledgments
pioneering work on Cleland, which has inspired my own. Thomas Keymer
read the entire manuscript and made invaluable suggestions for improving it;
the faults that remain, of course, are my own. For giving me the opportunity
to present this work to diverse audiences, I want to thank Monika Fludernik,
Greta Olsen, and Jan Albers (University of Freiburg); Tim Hitchcock (Insti-
tute for Historical Research, London); and Shohini Chaudhuri (University of
Essex). For advice, solidarity, conversation, and other forms of moral or intel-
lectual support, my thanks to Hans Turley (much missed), Lúcia Sá, George
Haggerty, John Richetti, Noelle Gallagher, Brian Ward, Jill Campbell, Kathryn
King, Bette London, Tom DiPiero, Ruth Mack, Rachel Ablow, Laura Rosenthal,
Corrinne Harol, Morris and Georgia Eaves, Victoria Myers, Max Novak, and
Ruth Yeazell. Although I can’t name them all here, colleagues at the University
of Rochester and, now, the University of Manchester have provided warm and
intellectually vibrant environments to work in.
Through the whole writing process, Laura Doan, Marlene Mussell, and Ja-
net Wolff cheered me on and celebrated every tiny milestone. Far away though
they are, I want to send this out to my family: Anne Morgan; Glenn and Dale
Gladfelder; and Kari and Tobbe Johansson. Closer to home, Oliver, Emilia, and
Sophie played a vital creative (and sometimes destructive) part in the writing:
ideal collaborators. The most vital part, though, was played by Jeff Geiger, writ-
ing away in the next room while I wrote this, and who came with me to walk
around Cleland’s old haunts.
john cleland: a chronology
1710 Born, probably late summer, Kingston-upon-Thames, near London;
first child of William Cleland, former army officer and civil servant,
and Lucy DuPass Cleland; christened 24 September.
1721 Enrolls as student at Westminster School, January; withdraws, for
reasons unknown, in 1723.
1728 Arrives in Bombay as a soldier in the service of the British East India
Company and lives there until 1740, advancing to the position of
junior merchant and becoming secretary to the governing Bombay
Council.
1730 According to his own later statements, begins writing Memoirs of a
Woman of Pleasure in collaboration with Charles Carmichael (born
ca. 1712).
1733 Death of Charles Carmichael, 24 July.
1734 Becomes embroiled in two legal cases: one initiated by William Boag,
seaman, who charges JC with abducting Boag’s female servant, Mar-
thalina (decided in favor of JC in September 1735); the second initi-
ated by Henry Lowther and Robert Cowan, members of the Bombay
Council, who lodge complaints against JC for injurious language
(December 1734; case sent to the Company Directors in London for
adjudication; decided in favor of JC, 1736).
1736 Arrival in Bombay of sister, Charlotte Lucy (or Louisa) Cleland, listed
as a resident from 25 October. The following year, on 24 June, she
marries George Sadleir, and on 3 October 1739 their son John is born;
by 4 December 1739 he had died of “flux.” Charlotte would continue to
live in Bombay until September 1740 and from October 1743 until her
death (in Surat) in October 1747.