Sophia was a shopaholic, using shopping to cope with her life. She took to buying dozens of stockings, shoes, gloves, and other items as well as things that were of questionable need or value. She ran up serious debt.
Page 64: Sophia now had debts of more than 3000 pounds (180,000 pounds at the time the book was published in 2003). Although she was still besieged by her admirers,it was not obvious even to her that Melbourne's passion was cooling. To add to her problems, she found that she was pregnant... although she miscarried soon afterwards. Nonetheless, the frantic pursuit of pleasure continued unabated. 'Our life was such a continued scene of bustle and dissipation,' wrote Mrs. Steele, ' that I wonder how she looked so well,'
Page 66: Money was not the only temptation in Sophia's way. She was a woman of strong appetites in every respect. While Lord Melbourne remained her official protector during this period, there was also a continual stream of unofficial lovers - mostly young officers and undergraduates, neither rich nor well connected - to whom Sophia was attracted for her own sake. Even Mrs. Steele's disapproval could not keep them away entirely. If anything, this evidence of Sophia's view of her own sexuality as a source of pleasure - rather than just as a commodity to be bartered - was the cause of even greater tension between the two women than were the scores of amorous old aristocrats laying siege to her.
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Sophia lost Lord Melbourne. Though she had been loyal to him in turning others away, she had overspent and was deeply in debt and faced selling her diamonds to make minimal payments. She also caught him paying attention to another Courtesan who he had been with before his neglected marriage. She returned to the stage after three years absence. Her reputation and status were in decline and she had still had the shopaholic's addiction to spending and acquiring things.
Pages 74-75: Nonetheless, Sophia's status, in some indefinable way, had declined. Although she was still receiving an extremely handsome salary - 7 pounds per week the following season, in which she opened as Olivia in Twelfth Night - it was by no means the dizzying sum she had commanded at the height of her powers. Her desertion by Melbourne had left her vulnerable in areas other than merely financial ones. Imperceptibly, the grayest of grey areas, the infinitely subtle line between a courtesan, with enough glamour and fashionable status to pick and choose her protectors, and a plain woman of the town (available to more or less anyone so long as the price was right), was slowly beginning to shift."
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