READ THE MEMOIRS OF SOPHIA BADDELEY BY HER FRIEND MRS. ELIZABETH STEELE ON INTERNET ARCHIVE (CIRCA 1796)

INTERNET ARCHIVE.ORG MEMOIR OF SOPHIA BADDELEY - by ELIZABETH STEELE 

Full title : The memoirs of Mrs. Sophia Baddeley, late of Drury Lane Theatre

Elizabeth Steel is the woman who in great friendship but also servitude, lived with Sophia Baddeley. She was her chaperone, gave her opinions about the various men who wanted to be patrons, lived with her, tried to keep her out of trouble.

 I think a question we might have in 2024 is if the two women also had a sexual or romantic relationship.  I have to let that question hang in the air.  It was uncommon for any woman to live alone and most Courtesans had servants. The role of Mrs. Elizabeth Steele, who was about the same age as Sophia, was of friend, companion, chaperone, house-mate, advocate, and servant who, arguably, actually cared about Sophia and was steady in her life for many years.

Mrs. Elizabeth Steele wrote the memoirs of Sophia, and according to author Katie Hickman, set herself as a moral arbitrator of the story and as the most self-sacrificing person in the Courtesan's life.

Page 68: ... "I had given her my little fortune, which I had for years worked for, and did not repine; that I had also forsaken my husband, neglected my family, and given her myself, and would not give up my life, if necessary, to serve her.'

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texts

MAY FUNG YEE PANG PREMIERS "THE LOST WEEKEND" FILM ABOUT HER RELATIONSHIP WITH EX-BEATLE JOHN LENNON

MAY FUNG YEE PANG : MISTRESS  OF EX-BEATLE JOHN LENNON was MISTRESS OF THE MONTH in  APRIL 2012 here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  Here is an update on May's latest, a film called "The Lost Weekend" about her relationship with John.

A year and a half  plus love affair is not a "Lost Weekend" but that's what May Fung Yee Pang's relationship with then ex-Beatle, John Lennon, has been called. May was about a decade younger than John Lennon and 17 years younger than Yoko Ono, who encouraged the relationship, one in which she would not loose control.

VARIETY :Review: May Pang Tells Her Story, and a Piece of John Lennon’s, in a Compelling Documentary  This article linked has an 8 minute recording

Excerpt: In the photos that we saw at the time of her and John, she always had a waifish beauty, and a certain mystery behind those tinted hexagon glasses.  But in "The Lost Weekend," we see that May Pang was a tough ambitious city girl, who spoke with a slight but blunt New York accent, and that after dropping our of college she had the chutzpah to talk her way into a job at the Apple Records offices on Broadway.  She was a schmoozer, and when she began to work for John and Yoko, doing every makeshift task available - avant-garde film production assistant, costume designer - she had an ebullient smile and an easy-to-be-with vivacity.  She was fun but circumspect (she didn't drink or do drugs.)

Excellent review worth your time reading and so, though I haven't seen it yet, apparently a well done and revealing documentary.

This clip is not from the film but a fairly recent interview.  May is about 70 years old now.

KOLA's CHILDHOOD EFFECTED HER WHOLE LIFE

Kola Boof came to the United States to be adopted by a loving and intact family at the age of 8 with the name Naima Bint Harith. She had been rescued by a British couple after her parents were murdered. Her father was a light skinned Arab-Egyptian archaeologist named Harith Ben Farouk.  Her mother "mommy sweet" was Jiddi, a woman of a dark black African ethnic group. The family she had been placed with in England rejected her for being too intelligent for a girl. (!) She feels her dark color was part of that rejection. The family in the U.S. had seven other children, 3 others had been adopted. She went through some cultural shocks and so did they. When it was discovered that she was one of about 100 million African women (2007 stats) who had been subject to Female Genital Mutilation, which permanently restricts the size of a woman's vagina and will subject her to potentially painful intercourse for the rest of her life, her family was shocked. When she became an adult, they suggested she have surgery to repair but she refused.

Quote, "I think it's a misogynist ritual and an abomination against the God in women."  (Page 94)

Despite being raised in a family that wanted her - with a father - at 14 years old she was seduced by a reading skills instructor who she lost her virginity to at 17 - She thought it was love. It was a molestation and child rape. The relationship she thought was love went on for some time. He was discovered to have been doing the same with other underage teens. This lead to scandal. 

The teenage Naima was in many ways just a girl, one who loved the music of Olivia Newton-John and became a Madonna fan.  (She hates hip hop, calling it The Hip Hop Holocaust, saying it has ruined the progress of the Black Community, particularly for Black Women.)  Her ideas about what her adult life would become were unformed. She was also indulging herself in reading some excellent authors such as Alice Walker, Sylvia Plath, and Mark Twain. She never went to college but she began to write. To think of herself as a writer.

She and a girlfriend ran away from home rather than deal with the aftermath of her seduction and trial of her seducer and nilly willy got off the Greyhound bus in Lake Fairfax, Virginia.  It was a very small town that had a beauty contest.  The White men who judged it chose her to be Miss Fire Safety, August 1988.  The contest lead to her first experience of being a Mistress - a kept woman of a Jewish man.

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Primary reference for this post is Kola Boof's memoir.

STACK OF DUSTY BOOKS

MISTRESS MANIFESTO? MISTRESSES! YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A SCHOLAR TO COME TO AN OPINION! COMMENTARY BY MISSY

As my regular readers know, after I'm inspired to cover a mistress, I try to read around her before making a final decision on dedicating a month to her.  Then, because I'm interested in her, I hope what I write about her will interest my readers.

From the posted and unposted commentary that I got when I covered two of the women who openly made claim's in his lifetime to be the wife of rock star - poet Jim Morrison of The Doors, I feared that readers were mistaking MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT as being a Jim Morrison fan site, which it is not.  I had to remind people that the topic of this blog is mistresses, and the unconventional relationships and arrangements some people find themselves in.  Readers seemed to feel that if only I read more, or the book they recommended, then I would change my position, and perhaps not think that Morrison enjoyed pitting women against each other.  Covering a book written by yet another woman Morrison was in a long term relationship with convinced me that he was not one to be married to any one woman.

Clearly a controversial issue, and one of my most popular months here based on the hits, but one I took my stand on after dedicating many weeks over many months to reading around the subject, I had to wonder if some people thought my aim was to be a Jim Morrison and the Doors scholar.

But you know, you don't have to be a scholar, or read every book ever published (or talk to every person who claims to be in the know) to form an opinion.  Sometimes the opinion still comes from innate understanding, empathy, a gut feeling, or even a psychic knowing, about a person or a situation. 

I'm just being practical when I prefer the memoirs of the person themselves.  I know that the person has given a lot of themselves by writing the memoir, and even if they live past it and become an entirely different person, a memoir is a brave act.


Missy

HARRIETTE WILSON'S MEMOIRS ARE STILL AVAILABLE

RIELLE HUNTER'S MEMOIR : SHE WASN'T JOHN EDWARDS FIRST MISTRESS

Linking to one of many articles, this one by MEG KINNARD, on RIELLE's new book, called "What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me," just out, which is about her romance with politician John Edwards. This link has a good picture, and a long transcript you can read, to form your own opinions.