Ann Ford - 3. the scandal

The vibrant concerts, the ageing Earl and the talk of the town.

During 1760 and 1761, Ann performed in several concerts in London - it had been no accident that at the same time, Gainsborough was displaying her portrait in Bath.

At this point, we need to see another portrait.

Does this look familiar?

The posture is almost a mirror image of Ann Ford's. She has no instruments, but it shows that just as Gainsborough influenced others, he too had been influenced by earlier painters.

It's of Barbara Villiers, the Countess of Castlemain, painted by Sir Peter Lely. She became the mistress of Charles II in 1660, the year he was restored to the throne. One of her indirect descendants was William Villiers, the 3rd Earl of Jersey.

At the age of 53, the Earl had become infatuated with the 23-year-old Ann Ford and they seem to have had an affair. The Earl had been married to the dowager (widowed) Duchess of Bedford for 26 years (who had been the both step-sister and the step-cousin, as well as the wife of Wriothesley Russell, the 3rd Duke of Bedford - work that one out!)

Thomas Gainsborough must have heard about the affair. He had deliberately adopted Lely’s pose as a subtle hint about the relationship between Ann and the Earl.

Then fate took a hand. In 1761, their affair became the subject of gossip. To set the record straight and defend her reputation, she published a pamphlet. She described her affair with a "person of distinction", never named but whom everybody would have known was the Earl of Jersey...

...and how she turned down his offer of £800 a year to become his mistress. “When your L..d…p on your knees, and with tears trickling down your aged cheeks, swore the sincerity of your love…” she said.

It seems that the Earl was persistent - perhaps he was stalking her - but she implied later on that they had genuine feelings for each other. She says that she would have preferred him to any other man in the Kingdom….“had you been single: so far had the partiality I thought you had of me… deluded my senses.”

She’d chucked him then, and he wouldn’t accept it.

The first edition of her pamphlet sold 500 copies in just 5 days.

There’s nothing like hot gossip, conducted in public, to titillate Society. And gossip was currency for the wealthy visitors to Bath, who were drawn into Gainsborough's rooms to take a closer look at the way he'd portrayed her so true to life. For Thomas Gainsborough, business was picking up.

Ann reprinted her pamphlet in 1762 with a postscript. And this time, the Earl replied in a pamphlet of his own. That also quickly ran to a second edition.

By now, Ann had indelibly compromised herself, the very thing her father had tried to avoid. What would become of her?

The answer is in Part 4, but the clue is in the pamphlet cover above - it says it's a letter from Miss F--d, but the author isn't called that...