Walking With Ghosts
This is part of the Walk on the Wild Side project by Jackie Hopfinger and Mike Press. Read more at the project publication page.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green…
William Blake • Jerusalem
They walked upon Soho Square too. Living in Soho for much of his life William Blake would have walked across the square often. It was once described as possessing “a very pleasing and somewhat rural appearance”. Thanks to the Mock-Tudor electricity sub-station at its centre and the diligence of parks department staff, it still does.
We can imagine others who walked the square — the outsiders, the misfits, the radicals who lived and worked locally, together making Soho a unique creative crucible. There’s JMW Turner coming out of number eight, where he studies, selling his sky paintings on a stall outside for a shilling or two each. There are bargains to be had there, to be sure. And over here is Karl Marx with an armful of papers, hurrying from his Dean Street home to his daily appointment at the British Library where he will change human history. But he will never know that.
He strides purposefully past the bench where Amy Winehouse sits, throwing her head back as she shares a joke with a friend. She’s on her break between sets at that little Greek Street bar where she sings. Seemingly oblivious to all around them, David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp sashay arm in arm, as lovers often do, towards their flat in an alleyway just off the square. Leaving from the front door of number one, where she and her husband run their business, a woman scurries past St Patrick’s Church towards the tube station. Linda McCartney looks down at the rice by the church where a wedding has been. Lives in a dream.
The ghosts of Soho wait for us in the square. They live in our dreams, and in the songs, music, paintings, books and poems they have left for us to discover. They are still here in Soho. If we look hard enough. And there are ghosts of those we have never met before, whose names feature only in footnotes, if at all, in the stories and histories of London and its popular culture. But to see them we need to peel away some layers of history.
So let us demolish that quirky mock-Tudor sub-station and a couple of minor twentieth century architectural embarrassments. We also need to remove St Patrick’s Catholic Church that today stands proudly on the eastern side of the Square. We are returning to what were dark days for Catholicism in London. Let us replace the church with the imposing double fronted grey-brick mansion of Carlisle House that preceded it, which at one time had been home to the ambassador of the King of Naples. Soho Square is now not too different from its appearance on an April evening in 1762.
As evening darkens, servants busy themselves drawing curtains and fastening shutters on the windows of Soho Square’s elegant townhouses. They are home to baronets, a couple of foreign ambassadors and at least three MPs, all of whom value the relative quiet of this new neighbourhood on the edge of London, just a five minute walk from open fields to the north. The quiet was not to last.
A small crowd gathered in the late-afternoon to secure a good view, but as the light of day fades away, more join them. The square fills with the life of London: dockers up from the river, milkmaids from Marylebone fields, clerks from the city, servants on a night off, costermongers selling hot pies and ales, beggars and light-fingered pickpockets. Chatter, laughter and a palpable sense of expectation fills the air. As the bells of London strike ten, a great cry goes up as the first of the sedan chairs and carriages turn the corner out of Greek Street, and pull up in front of Carlisle House. A seemingly endless procession of golden coaches, white horses, hackney carriages and yet more sedan chairs prompt surges from the crowd, rowdy cheering and at times unrepeatable insults that elicit roars of laughter. It is the best free show in town.
The best paid show in town is taking place inside Carlisle House. Its masquerade balls are like nothing else that London has ever seen before. The opulence, spectacle and conspicuous wealth on display is without equal. One account describes a typical evening at Carlisle House where “the beautiful daughter of a peer wore the costume of an Indian princess, three black girls bearing her train, a canopy held over her head by two negro boys, and her dress covered with jewels worth £100,000. It was at another that Adam, in fleshcoloured tights and an apron of fig-leaves, was to be seen in company with the Duchess of Bolton as Diana.” Royalty and ambassadors from across Europe, landed gentry and the most celebrated of London society are all in attendance. On this day, like on all others when a Soho ball is held, the Commons adjourns early so that Members of Parliament have time to dress for the occasion.
Through the doors of Carlisle House and up its wide sweeping staircase is a blur of fine silks and lace, ribbons and bows, coats embroidered with jewels, velvet gilt edged cuffs and sapphire buckles. All the women are topped with towering edifices of hair interwoven with flowers, ribbons, golden threads and strands of pearls. The stairs lead to a massive banqueting hall illuminated by five hundred candles, at the far end of which an orchestra plays, and there in the middle of the hall stands the one individual who is not in costume. Short, slightly plump and dressed in a style of unadorned elegance, Mrs Teresa Cornelys meets, greets and congratulates her guests on their sartorial inventiveness. And the band plays on. Until eight in the morning.
Born into a Venetian theatrical family, Mrs Cornelys (also known as Teresa Pompeati and sometimes as Madame de Trenty) had been an opera singer, occasional impresario and socialite moving from country to country, never quite finding her niche. Casanova was the father of her children, and it was perhaps a determination not to be dependent on him and make her own way that drove her ambitions and helped to form a character that was described as “enterprising, irrepressible, charming and scathing in equal measure”.
Turning up in London in 1759 as a destitute single mother speaking no English and with a young daughter in tow, she questioned why “the most extensive, most opulent, and most important City in Europe was the only one of note that had not a settled Entertainment for the select reception and amusement of the Nobility and Gentry”. So, two years after her arrival she gave Soho and the world a rather wonderful invention — the nightclub. Carlisle House became the Studio 54 of its day. And then some.
To begin with she offered card playing and dancing, later moving into concerts of operatic greatest hits and masked balls. Attracting Georgian London’s rich and fashionable, the venture quickly outgrew the relatively modest confines of the house, so extensions were built to add a concert hall and other rooms. No expense was spared on the interior design with Rococo stucco-work, Doric columns and chandeliers. Josiah Wedgwood, whose new London showroom was around the corner, supplied the finest bone china while Thomas Chippendale crafted all the furniture.
With these new rooms, Teresa Cornelys single handedly created the swinging sixties — the swinging seventeen sixties. Fanny Burney, diarist, playwright and later Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte wrote: “The magnificence of the rooms, splendour of the illuminations and embellishments, and the brilliant appearance of the company exceeded anything I ever before saw”. Cornelys’ vision was one of experiential excess and perfection, offering music, dancing, dining, socialising and a variety of other entertainments. It was a heady mix of luxury, culture, entertainment and debauchery. Along with her affluent patrons, Europe’s most celebrated musicians were engaged to perform. It is a testament to her powers of persuasion that she created all this without any money of her own, and while those powers prevailed, her credit was good.
We have no direct evidence that Charles Ignatius Sancho attended evenings at Carlisle House. But we do know that throughout this period Sancho was a man-about-town, popular with the rich and royal, whose portrait had been painted by Gainsborough. Among his many talents, he was a notable letter-writer and author, writer of two plays and prodigious composer of chamber music, country dances and popular songs: his music becoming hits of the day. He latterly ran an exclusive grocery shop in Mayfair. As a lover of music, card playing and socialising we can reasonably assume that he will have made his way across the Square towards an evening of pleasure at Carlisle House.
Charles Ignatius Sancho is another ghost waiting for us on the square.
He was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic in around 1729. His mother died shortly after he was born and his father committed suicide, preferring death to a life of slavery. Shortly after arriving in what is now Colombia, the young orphan was shipped by his owner to London. Taken eventually under the wing of the Duke of Montagu, he was tutored in music and literature and became a valet to the Duke. As well as being the pinnacle of Carlisle House’s fortunes, the 1760s was when the debate around the abolition of the slave trade was at its height and Sancho became a crucial member of the abolitionist movement. He is a hugely significant Londoner for many reasons. For our story, he is the first black person to compose music in the European style. As a property owner, he was the first black man to vote in an election and as a campaigner and writer, he is one of the very first to give black people in Britain a political voice.
Sancho was one of many black Londoners. Britain had become the leading slave trading nation and enslaved servants were seen as a status symbol in Georgian London, often forced to wear a metal collar on which was engraved the name of their owner. In 1756 a goldsmith in Westminster advertised collars for sale along with “silver padlocks for Blacks or Dogs”. Coffee houses were places where all sources of wealth in could be openly traded. In the classified section of London’s Daily Advertiser on 22 May 1761, this announcement was printed: “To be disposed of, a beautiful black Girl, a Native of Bengal, and nineteen Years of Age: She is perfectly good natured, and can talk the English language: Is well qualified to wait upon a Lady. Enquire at the Bar of St. Martin’s, Le Grand Coffee House.” The slave trade was not confined to far away lands. It was happening in the heart of London. Over cups of coffee.
A few managed to rise from servitude, but as David Olusoga has explained “freed from slavery, most were imprisoned by poverty”. Others escaped and disappeared into the poorer overcrowded communities of the city — ‘the blackbirds of St Giles’, as a few of them were known. By the end of the century London’s black population would increase significantly as thousands of African Americans who had fought alongside the British in the American War of Independence were provided with passage to Britain.
Sancho was exceptional for many reasons, and became well connected with royalty and those intellectuals who were defining the Age of Enlightenment. While the music, cards and company will have all attracted Sancho to Teresa Cornelys’ Soho nights, the abolitionist cause together with his new young family to which he was devoted, took him away. But he leaves an extraordinary legacy. Black music in London and Britain, indeed in Europe, starts with Charles Ignatius Sancho. And Carlisle House was certainly one of the first places where it was heard.
Even at the height of her success, problems were building for Teresa Cornelys. Where she led, others followed, and so competition steadily built in London’s entertainment industry. Also, she was spending way beyond her means, with her creditors becoming increasingly impatient with her. On top of all this, operatic performances required a special royal licence which she didn’t possess.
It was her rivals who first started court proceedings against her in 1771, which included performing opera without a licence and keeping a ‘disorderly house’. Despite her best efforts to keep going, her creditors joined the fray, and in November 1772 she was declared bankrupt, resulting in Carlisle House being seized, its contents auctioned off and Teresa Cornelys imprisoned. She had a maintained a good run at Carlisle House, since her evenings began in 1761. But incarceration was not the end of her by any means.
Released from prison, she moved to Southampton where she ran a hotel for a short time. Returning to London, she worked her powers of persuasion yet again, holding a Venetian regatta on the Thames, and somehow getting herself back to Carlisle House, where she worked as a manager, organising two seasons of masked balls. Bankruptcy took her back into King’s Bench Prison in 1779, but she escaped the following year when the prison was torched in the Gordon Riots. She was on the run for two months until her recapture. Fifteen years later she was known as Mrs Smith and sold milk around the affluent houses of Knightsbridge. Eventually in 1797 she died of breast cancer as a pauper in the Fleet Debtors’ Prison.
Teresa Cornelys walks into Soho Square, as she does every evening. Just another ghost on the square. Approaching the bench where he has been waiting for her, she pauses for a moment, gently gathering the fabric of her gown, before lowering herself slowly onto the bench, rearranging her skirts around her, resting her hands lightly on her lap, and tilting her head towards him.
“Good even, Mister Sancho. How dost thou fare this fine evening?”
He smiles at his old friend, his patron and confidante, who had provided him with many happy evenings of music, dance and conversation.
“Remarkably well, I thank thee, Mrs. Cornelys. And yourself?”
“Alas Charles, I’ve endured more than two centuries, resigned to the shadow of oblivion.”
“Aye, Mrs. Cornelys, you and I both.”
“Not for coin nor renown did I endeavour.”
“You passed as a beggar and faded into obscurity. Hence, you are untroubled by disappointment.”
“Indeed Charles, yet I ponder. Behold, upon these buildings around here, the dead are remembered. Those held to be illustrious have their names written in azure circles.”
“I’ve observed,” he replied, “there’s Mozart and Bowie, Canaletto and Blake…”
“…Coleridge and Shelley, a fellow credited with the creation of the television, a contrivance most perplexing, and our esteemed comrade, Mister Marx of Dean Street.”
“And let us not forget Augustus Siebe, whose name graces Denmark Street. I understand he invented the diving helmet.”
“Charles, ‘diving helmet’ eludes my understanding. Is it a contemporary variant of the Venus Glove, such as those we furnished for our gentlemen in secluded chambers?
“In truth, these contrivances bear no relation to the boudoir’s comforts. They are, as I discern, instruments for subaquatic exploration.”
“How curious indeed. Yet, setting aside these helmets, it is clear to me that those within the azure circles share little in common.”
“Well, they are all of Caucasian descent.”
“And all are men,” she added, reruffling the fabric of her dresses as she did so, before inquiring “pray tell Charles, what could be the cause of this circumstance?”
“I hold,” replied Sancho, “that there exists a reason most profound. ’Tis men who wrought their own history, Mrs. Cornelys.”
“Nay, Charles, ’tis people,” she interrupted.
“Corrected I stand. People forge their own history, yet others chronicle it. Trusting in their diligent research and judgment, but oft it is skewed by their own biases, whims, and inclinations.”
“You echo the sentiments of our friend Mr. Marx.”
“A sage indeed. Women, particularly single mothers, who meet their end in poverty, and men of African descent, regardless of their financial state, scarcely find mention in the annals of history. We remain unremarked and unknown.”
Both sit in silence for a moment, before Teresa Cornelys says “In words ascribed to one of my fellow countrymen ‘the good that men do is oft interred with their bones’”.
“Should the bones in discourse be those of a lady or an individual of African lineage,” he replied, “then, alas, it is oft the usual circumstance”.
A gentle breeze blew across the Square carrying with it the sound of a flautist and tabla drummer playing for coins from passers-by. Teresa Cornelys sways her head slowly to the rhythm of the music.
“And yet, my dear Mrs Cornelys, there is a wind of change blowing. It is recognised that histories too often highlight only the kind who pen them, neglecting those who differ in appearance and manner. There are other and better ways of telling the stories of the past. In London, we all wrought our distinct histories. This metropolis embraced us, alongside others of diverse creed and kindred. The Jew and the African. The Mohammedan and the Christian. The outcast and the revolutionary. Herein the streets of Soho we carved our existence.”
“Aye, Charles. Here within the very bounds of Soho we crafted amusements, cultivated culture, and forged change. Music, that divine expression, resonates as the melody of folk conjuring joy. A haven of freedom and emancipation.”
“Yes,” replied Sancho with a broad smile. “London granted us sanctuary. It is a city of refuge. And may that continue evermore.”
Sources and inspiration
There are a number of sources used in writing this. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Patterson Joseph (2022) was particularly inspiring and useful, as were the published letters of Sancho, which are available on Project Gutenberg. Judith Summers’ book The Empress of Pleasure (2003) is supported by very thorough research on Teresa Cornelys. The dialogue section at the end is very much an experiment in writing, raising some ethical issues about the extent to which I have used their voices to articulate my own views. I am not immune from the ‘biases, whims and inclinations’ of historical writers that this section seeks to highlight. I have tried to be faithful and respectful to the two subjects of this piece, but invite any suggestions on how I can do this better.
A final thanks to the tutor and fellow students on the City Lit Creative Non-Fiction Workshopping course, for whom I wrote this. Their comments and inspiration pushed me well out of my comfort zone to not just be faithful to research, but to ‘use imagination to fill the gaps’ and take the reader on a journey. The journeys they shared into dreamworlds, down rivers, into Calabrian farmhouses, behind family photographs and into the dark cave of a staff appraisal have been a delight to read.
Walk with us!
Our next guided walk will be on Sunday 5 May. Details here:
https://medium.com/@mikepressuk/the-music-and-politics-walk-1b530edddff7
We’re doing it as a fundraiser for Centrepoint — the charity that supports young homeless people.
