Sophie was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight—according to herself in 1792. There is controversy on the matter. Mme Montagu in her book says that some of Sophie's biographers put the date at 1790, or even 1785. But Mme Montagu herself reproduces the list of wearing apparel with which Sophie was furnished when she left the 'house of industry' (the workhouse). It is dated 1805. In those days children were not maintained in poor institutions to the mature ages of fifteen or twenty. They were supposed to be armed against life's troubles at twelve or even younger. Sophie, then, could hardly have been born before 1792, but is quite likely to have been born later.
The name of Sophie's father is given as "Daw." Like many another celebrity, as, for example, Walter Raleigh and Shakespeare, Sophie spelled her name variously, though ultimately she fixed on "Dawes." Richard, or Dickey, Daw was a fisherman for appearance sake and a smuggler for preference. The question of Sophie's legitimacy anses from the fact that her mother, Jane Callaway, was registered at death as "a spinster." Sophie was one of ten children. Dickey Daw drank his family into the poorhouse, an institution which sent Sophie to fend for herself in 1805, procuring her a place as servant at a farm on the island.
Service on a farm does not appear to have appealed to Sophie. She escaped to Portsmouth, where she found a job as hotel chambermaid. Tiring of that, she went to London and became a milliner's assistant. A little affair we hear, in which a mere water-carrier was an equal participant, lost Sophie her place. We next have word of her imitating Nell Gwynn, both in selling oranges to playgoers and in becoming an actress—not, however, at Old Drury, but at the other patent theatre, Covent Garden. Save that as a comedian she never took London by storm, and that she lacked Nell's unfailing good humour, Sophie in her career matches Nell in more than superficial particulars. Between selling oranges and appearing on the stage Sophie seems to have touched bottom for a time in poverty. But her charms as an actress captivated an officer by and by, and she was established as his mistress in a house at Turnham Green. Tiring of her after a time—Sophie, it is probable, became exigeant with increased comfort—her protector left her with an annuity of L50.
The annuity does not appear to have done Sophie much good. We next hear of her as servant-maid in a Piccadilly brothel, a lupanar much patronized by wealthy emigres from France, among whom was Louis-Henri-Joseph, Duc de Bourbon and later Prince de Conde, a man at that time of about fifty-four.
The Duc's attention was directed to the good looks of Sophie by a manservant of his. Mme Montagu says of Sophie at this time that "her face had already lost the first bloom of youth and innocence." Now, one wonders if that really was so, or if Mme Montagu is making a shot at a hazard. She describes Sophie a little earlier than this as having developed into a fine young woman, not exactly pretty or handsome, but she held her head gracefully, and her regular features were illumined by a pair of remarkably bright and intelligent eyes. She was tall and squarely built, with legs and arms which might have served as models for a statue of Hercules. Her muscular force was extraordinary. Her lips were rather thin, and she had an ugly habit of contracting them when she was angry. Her intelligence was above the average, and she had a good share of wit.
At the time when the Duc de Bourbon came upon her in the Piccadilly stew the girl was probably no more than eighteen. If one may judge her character from the events of her subsequent career there was an outstanding resiliency and a resoluteness as main ingredients of her make-up, qualities which would go a long way to obviating any marks that might otherwise have been left on her by the ups and downs of a mere five years in the world. If, moreover, Mme Montagu's description of her is a true one it is clear that Sophie's good looks were not of the sort to make an all-round appeal. The ways in which attractiveness goes, both in men and in women, are infinite in their variety. The reader may recall, in this respect, what was said in the introductory chapter about Kate Webster and the instance of the bewhiskered 'Fina of the Spanish tavern. And since a look of innocence and the bloom of youth may, and very often do, appear on the faces of individuals who are far from being innocent or even young, it may well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid in a brothel though she was, still kept a look of country freshness and health, unjaded enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting old rip. The odds are, at all events, that Sophie was much less artificial in her charms than the practised ladies of complacency upon whom she attended. With her odd good looks she very likely had just that subacid leaven for which, in the alchemy of attraction, the Duc was in search.
The Duc, however, was not the only one to whom Sophie looked desirable. Two English peers had an eye on her—the Earl of Winchilsea and the Duke of Kent. This is where the card affair comes in. The Duc either played whist with the two noblemen for sole rights in Sophie or, what is more likely, cut cards with them during a game. The Duc won. Whether his win may be regarded as lucky or not can be reckoned, according to the taste and fancy of the reader, from the sequelae of some twenty years.
II
With the placing of Sophie dans ses meubles by the Duc de Bourbon there began one of the most remarkable turns in her career. In 1811 he took a house for her in Gloucester Street, Queen's Square, with her mother as duenna, and arranged for the completion of her education.
As a light on her character hardly too much can be made of this stage in her development. It is more than likely that the teaching was begun at Sophie's own demand, and by the use she made of the opportunities given her you may measure the strength of her ambition. Here was no rich man's doxy lazily seeking a veneer of culture, enough to gloss the rough patches of speech and idea betraying humble origin. This fisherman's child, workhouse girl, ancilla of the bordels, with the thin smattering of the three R's she had acquired in the poor institution, set herself, with a wholehearted concentration which a Newnham 'swot' might envy, to master modern languages, with Greek, Latin, and music. At the end of three years she was a good linguist, could play and sing well enough to entertain and not bore the most intelligent in the company the Duc kept, and to pass in that company—the French emigre set in London—as a person of equal education. If, as it is said, Sophie, while she could read and write French faultlessly, never could speak it without an English accent, it is to be remembered that the flexibility of tongue and mind needed for native-sounding speech in French (or any other language) is so exceptional as to be practically non-existent among her compatriots to this day. The fault scarcely belittles her achievement. As well blame a one-legged man for hopping when trying to run. Consider the life Sophie had led, the sort of people with whom she had associated, and that temptation towards laissez-faire which conquers all but the rarest woman in the mode of life in which she was existing, and judge of the constancy of purpose that kept that little nose so steadfastly in Plutarch and Xenophon.