Perdita

by Paula Byrne

  7 o’Clock Wednesday evening –

  Just returned completely drenched with an unceasing rain, from 2 o’Clock, to this moment –

  Mary [i.e. Maria Elizabeth] trembles at the Idea of her hasty Novel letters appearing in public, – we shall see it tomorrow. You are too kind, indeed Juan! But we love you very sincerely, purely, and disinterestedly. –

  Have you seen Whitehouse’s Odes? I have received some very flattering letters from him, though personally unknown. You shall see them when I come to town. He has sent me his works, Splendidly bound. – I think his Odes Good – read them and give me your opinion.

  Adieu Adieu

  Yours very truly

  M R

  Mary will write to you by the next post – The General sends best Compts. with the little Bertha. My brother will be in town next month – when he hopes to meet with you often and Mr H.33

  The ‘little Bertha’ means a complimentary copy of the novel. The ‘General’ was Tarleton, who was promoted that year.* The full name of ‘Mr H’ is a mystery, though a paragraph in the Oracle reveals who he was: ‘Mrs ROBINSON is to reside with her brother, Mr DARBY in Italy two years – From his house Mr H—will receive the hand of Miss R. with a fortune, generously suitable to her accomplishments.’34 A possible candidate is the son of those old family friends, the Hanways. It is not known when Maria Elizabeth became engaged to ‘Mr H’ or when and why the engagement was broken off. She never married. The source of her ‘fortune’ is also a mystery: it is most probable that she was provided for by her uncle, George Darby, who had risen to become head of the British factory in Leghorn. The house in Englefield Green, by Windsor Great Park, in which Mary spent her last days was owned by the daughter not the mother; Maria Elizabeth remained there until her own death.

  The Shrine of Bertha certainly did not bring Maria Elizabeth a great income. It was printed for her by William Lane at the Minerva Press, which churned out Gothic novels for the circulating libraries. Though there was a further edition in 1796, sales were by no means spectacular. There were a couple of reviews, one of them praising the book as ‘on the whole, well-written’.35

  Mary became involved with the theatre world again that summer. On ‘the Glorious first of June’, there was a major victory against the French Navy off the coast of Brittany. The occasion was marked a month later by a special evening at the new Drury Lane Theatre for the ‘Benefit for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of the Brave Men who fell in the Late Glorious Actions, under Earl Howe’. The event was under the patronage of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Clarence. The main play was Garrick’s ever-popular The Country Girl, after which the Duke of Clarence’s mistress Dora Jordan spoke the original epilogue to Sheridan’s The Rivals, and then there was a show, hastily put together by Sheridan, entitled The Glorious First of June. It included songs by various authors, among them Mary Robinson. The evening raised more than thirteen hundred guineas for the benefit fund.

  Tarleton, meanwhile, was still gambling, even making a bet with Sheridan that he would not see active duty in Paris. It was rumoured that Mary’s reason for writing was to pay his debts. So claimed a satirical pamphlet, The Whig Club; or, a Sketch of Modern Patriotism:

  If you will believe the Colonel, his exploits in love have at least equalled his achievements in war; it is his pleasure to relate how often and how firmly he has stood in the imminent breach. To this he could lately call Perdita to witness; but the once elegant frail one remains now only a melancholy ruin of her former beauty; and is reduced to beguile her hours, and prop the Colonel’s tottering finances, by weaving novels, and fineering sonnets.36

  This pamphlet was by Charles Pigott, a Shropshire gentleman who was a bon vivant, man of the turf, and unlikely Jacobinical radical. Regarding Whigs such as Fox and Tarleton as no better than Tories such as Pitt, he wrote a series of scurrilous and best-selling satires that made radical capital out of the ‘boudoir politics’ of the aristocracy and the gentry who sat in Parliament.

  Tarleton was further vilified in Pigott’s Female Jockey Club, in which a biographical sketch of Mary was used as a pretext to attack princes, courts, and decadent aristocrats. There it was claimed that the Colonel had become estranged from Mary because he had made sexual advances to Maria Elizabeth: ‘we have lately heard, with unfeigned sorrow, (so fugitive are lover’s joys,) that there at present exists a serious difference between them, the Liverpool hero having betrayed certain symptoms of amorous fondness for Perdita’s fair daughter’.37 This was in the summer of 1794, when Mary went off to Windsor without Tarleton. As usual, a reunion soon followed: ‘A certain Literary Female has good humouredly received a gallant Colonel into those habits of friendly attendance, so reciprocally gratifying, and which misconception alone could have broken off.’38 But how many times could they go on breaking up and making up?

  *There is a puzzle here, in that this letter was clearly written shortly before the publication of The Shrine of Bertha, but Tarleton was gazetted Major General some time later. The gazetting does seem to have been delayed, so perhaps Tarleton had heard about his prospects by this time. The alternative explanation is that the ‘General’ refers to another close mutual acquaintance of Mary Robinson and John Taylor, conceivably the Earl of Moira, who had been made a General by this time, and who seems to have been very intimate with Mary—the nature and extent of their relationship is one of the most intriguing mysteries of her later years.

  CHAPTER 21

  Nobody

  Have I not reason to be disgusted when I see him, to whom I ought to look for better fortune, lavishing favours on unworthy objects, gratifying the avarice of ignorance and dullness; while I, who sacrificed reputation, an advantageous profession, friends, patronage, the brilliant hours of youth, and the conscious delight of correct conduct, am condemned to the scanty pittance bestowed on every indifferent page who holds up his ermined train of ceremony!

  Mary Robinson to John Taylor, 5 October 1794

  In the autumn of 1794, Mary was lodging at Salt Hill, on the turnpike road out towards Windsor. She was waiting to hear from John Kemble at Drury Lane whether or not he intended to produce her comedy, Nobody. At this time she wrote several letters to one of her closest friends, John Taylor. They give an intimate insight into her struggles as her financial difficulties and feelings of isolation increased. Her fury with the Prince of Wales, whom she blamed for the onset of her misfortunes, exploded from her pen and she also unleashed her anger at being exploited by her (male) publishers and by Kemble.

  Mary informed Taylor (‘Juan’) of a ‘secret which must not be revealed’. Her brother George was urging her to leave England and retire to Tuscany: ‘My dear and valuable brother, who is now in Lancashire, wishes to persuade me, and the unkindness of the world tends not a little to forward his hopes. I have no relations in England except my darling girl, and, I fear, few friends.’ She was particularly grieved by what she considered to be the failure of her literary endeavours, those ‘false prospects’ that had led her ‘into the vain expectation that fame would attend my labours, and my country be my pride’. She complained that her comedy had been in the manager’s hands for two long years ‘without a single hope that a trial would be granted’.

  She also mentioned that both she and her daughter had received reviews from William Gifford, author of The Baviad. Her friend ‘Peter Pindar’ had told of an editor’s intention to ‘cut up’ her work before even reading it. She felt especially indignant on her daughter’s behalf: ‘My poor little Mary, too – what had she done to injure those “Self-named monarchs of the laurelled crown, / Props of the press – and tutors of the town”’ (the quotation is a couplet concerning critics from her Modern Manners). In reaction to all the recent bad press, she vowed to terminate her literary career: ‘When I leave England – adieu to the muse for ever! – I will never publish another line while I exist, and even those manuscripts now finished I WILL DESTROY.’ She could no longer see the point of working so hard when
it was her publishers who reaped the financial reward.

  Mary told Taylor that her annuity was barely enough to support her expenses, given that her lameness meant that she was unable to travel by foot: ‘how can I subsist upon £500 a year when my carriage (a necessary expense) alone costs me £200.’ Five hundred pounds was, of course, the amount of the Prince’s annuity. It is here that she comes closest to confessing her remorse for taking that irreversible step so long ago when she agreed to become his mistress. The Prince had recently broken off his connection with Mrs Fitzherbert, much to the King’s delight, and had agreed to marry Caroline of Brunswick. His debts were in excess of £600,000. Mary was ‘disgusted’ that the Prince was ‘lavishing favours on unworthy objects’, squandering his wealth while she who had ‘sacrificed reputation, an advantageous profession, friends, patronage, the brilliant hours of youth, and the conscious delight of correct conduct’ was condemned to poverty – and an annuity that was not paid when it should have been.1

  Taylor responded with a kind and sympathetic letter. She wrote back the following week in a calmer state of mind:

  In wretched spirits I wrote you last week a most melancholy letter. Your kind answer consoled me. The balsam of pure and disinterested friendship never fails to cure the mind’s sickness, particularly when it proceeds from disgust at the ingratitude of the world.

  As from the high and craggy peak,

  Impetuous torrents rush below,

  The peaceful valley’s haunts to seek,

  And midst its winding channels flow;

  So wild affliction madd’ning flies,

  For shelter to the feeling breast,

  Where sympathy a balm supplies,

  And friendship soothes the soul to rest.

  So much for a simile. I am never happy but when I am tagging rhymes, and never pleased with them when they are finished.

  What news is there in town? How do you like Miss Wallis? I saw her at Bath two years since in the character of Portia, and thought her best praise was the manner of a gentlewoman. But we shall wait long – very long – before we see anything like that inspiration which characterises a Siddons – that soul beaming through every veil of fiction, and making art more lovely than even nature in all its fairest adornments. For after all acting must be the perfection of art; nature, rude and spontaneous, would but ill describe the passions so as to produce effect in scenes of fictitious sorrow. Mrs Siddons, in my humble opinion, is the most perfect mistress of the character she undertakes to represent of any performer I ever beheld – Garrick not excepted. Her ‘Was he alive?’ in Lady Randolph [in John Home’s popular tragedy Douglas], touched my feelings so acutely that I never wish again to give them so severe a trial. But whither is my pen rambling? Do not suppose I am pretending to the vanity of a critic. I am only humbly describing what I felt deeply and can only faintly express. One hour of rational gratification is worth an age of frivolous fashionable pastime. I never heard Miss Farren’s niminy piminy but I instantly thought of Mrs Siddons’s solemn ‘remember twelve’; so natural it is for the mind to recur to the extreme of perfection on observing the insignificance of folly.

  We shall return to town very soon. Adieu, etc. The postman has released you from a stupid letter.2

  Mary’s admiration of Siddons knew no bounds, as this letter suggests. Her unflattering reference to Miss Farren’s ‘niminy piminy’ is wonderfully dismissive of her acting style, though Farren was supposedly to appear in Nobody. There could be no better revelation of Mary’s mercurial nature than the shift from the bitterness and despair of the previous week’s letter to the energy and cheerfulness of this one. Having threatened to stop writing altogether, she now claims that she is never happier than when ‘tagging rhymes’. Her mood swings were probably exacerbated by opium.

  The very next day she wrote Taylor a mildly flirtatious letter. She mentioned Tarleton’s promotion to ‘Major General’ and said that although she was ‘no friend to new titles’ his success was ‘well earned and I rejoice in his acquiring it’. She enquired after mutual friends, such as ‘Peter Pindar’ the satirist, and shared theatre gossip. Elizabeth Farren had been to see her, with her ‘constant little Earl’. Then she had a dig at Kemble – and indeed sketched into the letter a very funny profile of his head, with his famously large nose making him look very superior. In spite of his ill nature – and his postponement of her comedy – she ‘cannot help admiring’ him. She explained that she and her daughter had been busy with ‘ramblings over the country’, visiting notable sites such as the tomb of the poet Thomas Gray and ‘Robin Hood’s mansion’. She then turned to the Prince’s new wife: ‘I hear the Princess of Wales is handsome, and amiable, tant mieux; I hope she will be happy. I don’t think the most Exalted situations promise the fairest prospects’. She wrote some lines of verse:

  Heav’n knows, I never would repine,

  Though fortune’s fairest frowns were mine, –

  If Fate would grant that o’er my tomb

  One little laurel wreath, might bloom,

  And Mem’ry, sometimes wander near,

  To bid it live, – and drop a tear!

  I never would, for all the Show

  That tinsel Splendour can bestow

  Or waste a thought, – or heave a sigh –

  Too well I know, – ’tis pageantry!

  At the end of the letter, she reiterated her desire to leave England for good:

  The many temptations to quit England, if you know what a Brother I have, you would think all others unnecessary. – Yet – I shall often think how

  The poor Captive, in some foreign realm

  Stands on the shore, and sends his wishes back

  To the dear native spot from whence he came.*

  ‘What a long letter!’ she concluded cheerily, ‘pray scold me, and tell me, I am a troublesome Being: – Even that, will not do; – for I should be tempted to write Volumes, to make you think otherwise.’ She sent love from the General and Maria Elizabeth, then signed herself off ‘Mary Robinson, the poor Poetess’.3

  Unlike Sheridan, Kemble had a poor reputation for man-management. As Mary’s caricature suggests, he was lofty and aloof. His achievement was to restore discipline and order to the theatre and to see Drury Lane through the period of rebuilding, during which Sheridan was mainly concerning himself with politics. The new theatre was not easy to play. Its capacity was over three and a half thousand, with seats in four tiers, but the box tiers were too low and the sight lines were bad. The gallery was so far away from the stage that the actors could barely be heard. Sheridan had hoped it would become a ‘Grand National Theatre’, but it was plagued by difficulties from its opening. Prior to the official opening, with Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth, there had been a royal command performance, for which the marshalling of the pit doors was badly managed: the spectators crowded in, a man toppled on the stairs in the rush, and fifteen people were crushed to death, with nineteen others seriously injured. The King was not told the news until he returned to the palace at the end of the evening.

  At last Mary heard the news that her play was being submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for censorship and the actors were in rehearsal. She had written the comedy specifically as a vehicle for Dora Jordan – in her novel of 1799 The False Friend she would pay a warm tribute to the acting skills of this other royal mistress (she also set a hilarious scene in Drury Lane, with a country party watching Mrs Jordan and failing to appreciate her art, in the manner of the naive Partridge watching Garrick in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones). The illegitimate Dora Jordan had risen from her lowly and obscure origins to become the mistress of the King’s third son, the Duke of Clarence. Both the Duke and the actress were subscribers to Mary’s first volume of Poems. As Siddons was renowned as the Tragic Muse of the London stage, so Jordan was lauded as the Comic Muse. She was unparalleled in her comic gifts and the theatregoing public flocked to see her perform. Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Lord Byron all became admirers of her talents a
nd expressed their admiration in flattering encomiums. To William Hazlitt she was ‘the child of nature, whose voice was a cordial to the heart because it came from it … whose laugh was to drink nectar … whose singing was like the twang of Cupid’s bow’. For the more prosaic theatre chronicler John Genest, ‘she sported the best leg ever seen on the stage’.4 Jordan was famous for her ‘low’ roles, playing chambermaids, romps, and hoydens to high acclaim.

  Mary made a smart move when she decided to write a comedy to showcase Dora’s talents. The part was Nelly Primrose, a ‘west-country’ girl (as Mary was herself). She is a naive chambermaid thrust into London high society with comic results. Mary’s big mistake, however, was to target female gamesters for her theme. The part of Lady Languid was written with Elizabeth Farren in mind, but at the last minute she dropped out, alleging that the play ridiculed one of her friends. Given her own longstanding involvement with the Earl of Derby, Miss Farren had to be very careful not to offend the ton.

  Nelly Primrose is the new maid to the widow Lady Languid, a compulsive gambler who runs the risk of alienating her lovers by her habit. The ladies in her circle are as corrupt as she, and are all avid players: ‘we scarcely see the sun from November to February, we rise at noon, and go to bed at day-break’. Her Ladyship’s reputation is almost ruined by huge losses at the table and by rumours that she has let a man into her closet, when in fact Nelly has inadvertently placed a pair of dirty ‘Jack’ (male) boots in there – one of her numerous blunders in attempting to obey her mistress’s orders. Lady Languid mourns that ‘Play! Destructive Play! Perpetual losses and no rest have destroyed me … This is it to be the Slave of Fashion! Our Equals laugh at us – Our inferiors don’t understand us. In short now-a-days, we are nobody.’

  The dialogue is fast, sharp, and witty. There are some ‘in-jokes’, as when Mary pokes fun at her own reputation for ‘basilisking’ the Prince: Lord Courtland says of Lady Languid at the opera, ‘she was the figure in a Dutch-clock – perpetually turning her head from you to the stage, and from the stage to you thus’.