Perdita

by Paula Byrne

  Mary probably assumed that the poem was by Coleridge. She would have been delighted at being praised by so technically accomplished a poet for inventing an entirely original metre. As was seen in the previous chapter, it was Coleridge who drew the attention of his fellow Lake Poets to ‘The Haunted Beach’.

  Unable to visit Coleridge, she wrote two poems for him instead. An ‘Ode, Inscribed to the Infant Son of S. T. Coleridge’ was written on hearing the news of the birth of his third child, Derwent. Coleridge must have told her of how the house where he was living, Greta Hall, nestled below the great curve of the mountain called Skiddaw. She imagines Derwent growing up as a ‘babe of the mountain wild’ and contrasts her own enclosure in Windsor Forest with his freedom among the hills:

  I sing to thee! On Skiddaw’s heights upborne – …

  Ye Mountains! From whose crests sublime

  Imagination might to frenzy turn …

  Ye Cat’racts …

  Ye silent Lakes …

  And thou, meek Orb, that lift’st thy silver bow

  O’er frozen vallies, and o’er the hills of snow; –

  Ye all shall lend your wonders – all combine

  To greet the Babe, with energies divine! …

  Sweet Boy! accept a Stranger’s Song,

  Who joys to sing of thee,

  Alone her forest haunts among,

  The haunts of wood-wild harmony!26

  Mary beautifully imagines Coleridge and his son hand in hand, treading ‘In converse sweet, the mountain’s head’. She hopes that one day Derwent will become a poet like his father – ‘Shall sing the song thy father sung’. In thinking of Coleridge’s son, she is also reflecting on the literary career of her own daughter.

  Mary’s ode for Derwent is full of deliberate allusions to ‘Frost at Midnight’, Coleridge’s exquisite poem to his first son, Hartley. So, for example, ‘Whether Skiddaw greets the dawn of light … Whether Lodore for thee its white wave flings’ echoes the rhetorical structure of ‘Whether the summer clothe the general earth … whether the eave-drops fall’ in ‘Frost at Midnight’. The key thought in Coleridge’s poem was that he was reared ‘in the great city’, but he hopes that Hartley will ‘wander like a breeze / By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags / Of ancient mountain’. Mary’s response imagines Coleridge and Derwent wandering in just such a location.

  The most interesting allusion is contained within the phrase ‘accept a Stranger’s Song’. ‘Frost at Midnight’ had included the mysterious lines

  How oft … have I gazed upon the bars,

  To watch that fluttering stranger …

  and still my heart leaped up,

  For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved.27

  Here the word stranger refers first to the fluttering film of soot on the grate of a fire and then to Coleridge’s hope that he will soon be joined by a visitor. He explained the origin of the image in a footnote to the poem: ‘In all parts of the kingdom these films are called strangers and supposed to portend the arrival of some absent friend.’ In calling herself a stranger, Mary is not merely alluding to the fact that she has not met the baby Derwent, but also making herself into the stranger of ‘Frost at Midnight’, the ‘absent friend’, the ‘sister’ who because of her immobility cannot physically share in Coleridge’s joy at the birth of his third son, but who can do so through her poem.

  Around the same time, Mary sent Coleridge another poem, entitled simply ‘To the Poet Coleridge’. Indeed, she may even have posted the two poems together. This one was published posthumously with her Memoirs, dated October 1800, and signed ‘Sappho’, then reprinted (with slight variants) in her Poetical Works. It was here that she quoted from ‘Kubla Khan’, which Coleridge had shown her in manuscript:

  I hear her voice! Thy sunny dome,

  Thy caves of ice, loud repeat,

  Vibrations, madd’ning sweet,

  Calling the visionary wand’rer home.

  She sings of Thee, O favour’d child

  Of Minstrelsy, Sublimely Wild!

  Of thee, whose soul can feel the tone

  Which gives to airy dreams a magic All Thy Own!28

  Coleridge wrote back with his poem ‘A Stranger Minstrel’. This was also published in Mary’s Memoirs, with the subtitle ‘written to Mrs Robinson, a few weeks before her death’. The title is a clear response to the phrase ‘accept a Stranger’s Song’ in the ode to Derwent. Here Coleridge poetically implores her to leave Windsor for Greta Hall. He imagines himself lying ‘supine’ halfway up the mountain of Skiddaw, thinking of Mrs Robinson and shedding ‘the tear, slow travelling on its way’. ‘I would, old Skiddaw! SHE were here!’ he says, to which the mountain replies that she is here in spirit because ‘her divinest melody’ has freed her soul and ‘She is where’er she wills to be / Unfetter’d by mortality!’ He returns the compliment of quotation that she had paid him:

  Now to the ‘haunted beach’ can fly,

  Beside the threshold scourged with waves,

  Now where the maniac wildly raves,

  ‘Pale moon, thou spectre of the sky!’29

  The last line was his favourite one from Robinson’s ‘The Maniac’, the poem whose origin may have inspired ‘Kubla Khan’.

  Coleridge was one of the last friends Mary wrote to when she was on her deathbed. The letter is lost, but part of its content is preserved because Coleridge quoted it to his friend Tom Poole. He described it as a ‘most affecting, heart-rending Letter’ in which she expressed ‘what she called her death bed affection and esteem for me’. ‘The very last Lines of her Letter are indeed sublime,’ he continued:

  My little Cottage is retired and comfortable. There I mean to remain (if indeed I live so long) till Christmas. But it is not surrounded with the romantic Scenery of your chosen retreat: it is not, my dear Sir! The nursery of sublime Thoughts – the abode of Peace – the solitude of Nature’s Wonders. O! Skiddaw! – I think, if I could but once contemplate thy Summit, I should never quit the Prospect it would present till my eyes were closed for ever!30

  At the beginning of December she completed the arrangement of her Poetical Works. The Lyrical Tales were published two weeks later, with a sample poem (‘All Alone’) appearing in the Morning Post, prefaced with a generous tribute:

  Mrs ROBINSON’S volume of Lyrical Tales has just made its appearance; and in few recent publications have we discovered such a variety of pathetic and humorous pieces, written with great feeling and elegance; and abounding with rich and lively colouring, the effusion of real genius. We extract the following, one of the most affecting productions that has lately issued from the English Press.31

  Her friend John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’) sent her a series of letters, with songs interspersed, addressing her as Sappho. In one of them he wrote, ‘My dear friend, I have just heard that you have been exceedingly unwell: for God’s sake do not be foolish enough to die yet, as you possess stamina for an hundred years, and a poetical mind that cannot be soon replaced.’32

  Mary knew that she was dying, but she remained in good spirits for the sake of her daughter. Her mind was alert to the very end. ‘As she hourly declined,’ remembered her daughter, ‘her mind seemed to acquire strength in proportion to the weakness of her frame’:

  When no longer able to support the fatigue of being removed from her chamber, she retained a perfect composure of spirits, and, in the intervals of extreme bodily suffering, would listen, while her daughter read to her, with apparent interest and collectedness of thought, frequently making observations on what would probably take place when she passed that ‘bourn’, whence no traveller returns.33

  One of her final wishes was to see her remaining writings duly published. She placed her manuscript memoirs into the hands of her daughter ‘with an injunction that the narrative should be made public; adding, “I should have continued it up to the present time, – but perhaps it is as well that I have been prevented. Pr
omise me that you will print it!”’34 Maria Elizabeth, of course, could not refuse such a request. She agreed, after which Mary became tranquil. Her daughter kept her word and saw the book into print within a matter of months.

  Maria Elizabeth shared the nursing care with a companion, Elizabeth Weale, who lived with them in the cottage. One day when Maria Elizabeth was absent Mary took the opportunity to give Elizabeth instructions for her burial: ‘I cannot talk to my poor girl on these sad subjects.’ Then with an unruffled manner, and minute precision, she said that she wanted the simplest of burial services. ‘“Let me”, said she with an impressive though almost inarticulate voice, “be buried in Old Windsor churchyard.” For the selection of that spot she gave a particular reason.’ The reason was, of course, its proximity to the place where she and the Prince had been lovers.

  Almost penniless, she bequeathed a ‘few trifling memorials’ to friends. She desired that locks of her hair should be sent to ‘two particular persons’, who must have been the Prince and Tarleton. Mary’s final thoughts, though, were for her daughter, her ‘adored and affectionate secondself’. When Maria Elizabeth and Elizabeth Weale tried to console her with hopes of recovery she shook her head, told them not to deceive themselves and then ‘pressing to her heart her daughter, who knelt by her bed-side, she held her head for some minutes clasped against her bosom, which throbbed, as with some internal and agonizing conflict. – “Poor heart!” murmured she, in a deep and stifled tone, “what will become of thee!”’35 She paused, stifled her sobs, and then asked if one of the young women could read to her.

  That night, she seemed better, and even talked about her plans for composing ‘a long work, upon which she would bestow great pains and time’. She spoke of her regret at writing too many of her books too quickly.

  One of the symptoms of her final illness was water on the chest, which threatened suffocation. Maria Elizabeth and Elizabeth supported her in their arms, on pillows, to counteract this. She lasted in this state for fifteen days. On Christmas Eve, she asked how long it was until Christmas Day. On being told, she replied, ‘Yet I shall never see it.’ Towards midnight she cried, ‘Oh God, oh just and merciful God, help me to support this agony.’ She lingered on through Christmas Day, enduring ‘great anguish’. In the evening ‘a kind of lethargic stupor came on’. Maria Elizabeth implored her mother to speak if she could. Her last words were ‘My darling Mary!’36 After this, she fell into a coma. She died on 26 December 1800, just after noon.

  The body was given an autopsy at the request of her physicians, Drs Pope and Chandler. She had died from ‘a dropsy in the chest’ – heart failure. They also found six large gallstones in the gall bladder.

  She was buried as she wished to be, in a corner of the churchyard at Old Windsor, just down the road from Englefield Green. Only two people came. Walking behind her coffin were her two literary friends, ‘Peter Pindar’ and William Godwin.

  *Quoted in chapter 2.

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  About the Author

  Q and A with Paula Byrne

  by Louise Tucker

  What inspired you to write about Mary Robinson?

  I first came across her when I was researching my first book, Jane Austen and the Theatre. I was fascinated by her extraordinary life story, and then I discovered that she was also a highly successful poet and novelist. It seemed to me incredible that such an interesting woman had been allowed to fade into obscurity.

  Mary Robinson had to become a writer or starve: what motivates you to write?

  Dr Johnson said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. I would add success, self-respect, love of the subject – in no particular order.

  Have you always wanted to be a writer? Or did teaching come first?

  I’ve always wanted to be a writer ever since I was a little girl and wrote stories to amuse my brothers and sisters. Teaching was something I fell into, mainly because I needed work, and it seemed like a job I could do. Ten years later, I decided to try my luck writing, and wrote my first book in between having my two children.

  Academics often have to specialize in terms of the historical periods they write about and teach. What drew you to the eighteenth century?

  I think of myself as a writer rather than an academic. I’ve always been in love with the eighteenth century – the novels, the plays, the clothes, the manners, the elegance, the architecture, and the music – I’m still obsessed with it, and I think I always will be.

  You were born in Birkenhead and still live and work very close to your roots. How important is place to you as a person and as a writer?

  ‘Dr Johnson said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.’

  I think one’s environment is of vital importance. I am very close to my family and to my roots, but I do not feel sentimentally attached to the North, mainly because of the damp climate. I am living in the country at the moment, and find it extremely conducive to work. I also love France and California – places where I have spent time living and writing. I like extremes – the bright lights of the city and the beauty and peacefulness of the countryside.

  You describe Mary as one of the ‘fastest pens in the business’ and just before she dies she regrets writing her books too quickly. How difficult is it, as a writer, to find your voice faced with publishing deadlines and other demands on your time?

  I find that I work best in the mornings, so I try to be at my desk before 9 a.m. I have always been quite self-disciplined and motivated, and try to ensure that I write something every day (even if it’s just taking notes). I completed my Ph.D. and first book around pregnancies and small children, so it feels like a luxury to have so much time, now that they are at primary school. Writing is the very best job in the world, and I’m lucky to do something that I love – so I try not to complain about it. My favourite maxim (courtesy of Madonna) is ‘Just do it’.

  ‘Of all the occupations which industry can pursue, those of literary toil are the most fatiguing. That which seems to the vacant eye a mere playful amusement, is in reality an Herculean labour’ [Mary Robinson, The Natural Daughter]. Do you agree?! For example was it hard to write this book and do you find writing hard in general?

  I enjoy writing and researching and, luckily, do not find it ‘an Herculean labour’. Unlike Mary, I have the benefit of computers, the internet, gorgeous libraries, research grants, literary advances, ease of travel, a supportive husband and good health. I would not have liked to be a writer in her era, where female writers had a particularly difficult time, and where the conditions were so poor, and the literary marketplace so precarious.

  The public’s fascination with Mary begins with her on the stage but continues when she is a writer: celebrity is very much a writer’s lot, both in the eighteenth century but also in the twenty-first. How do you feel about that?

  I think it’s unfortunate today that it’s all about the full package. A writer is now expected to be ‘marketable’ in terms of their youth, gender, looks, and deportment. Writers should be allowed to be old and ugly – it should be a prerequisite. I don’t think many writers today are ‘celebrities’ except for Salman Rushdie.

  Your book clearly discusses Robinson’s influences and influence as a writer – the plot of Robinson’s novel Walsingham, in which a man turns out to be a woman and the hero can thus legitimately fall in love with her, is reminiscent of Twelfth Night and anticipates Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Who influenced you and why?

  As a fledgling biographer, I was deeply influenced by Richard Holmes’s superb Footsteps – his convic
tion that following in the physical footsteps of a writer is as important as academic research. My other influences are Stella Tillyard and Claire Tomalin, whose biographies of eighteenth-century women, I think, revolutionized the genre. They made their subjects flesh and blood rather than stiff, remote historical figures. They also brought alive the social context, in a way that hinted at interesting modern parallels, and incorporated novelistic techniques into their books.

  Mary Robinson, and her friend Mary Wollstonecraft, were both writers and feminists championing the importance of female education, roles and rights. Do you think, as some commentators do, that there is no need for feminism and that the work that these two radicals started is done?

  To my mind Mary Robinson is the quintessential post-feminist. She championed equal educational opportunities (such as universities for women) and was herself an intellectual who was not afraid to shine in a man’s world, but she also loved glamour and shopping. She was a beautiful woman, who was in touch with her sexuality, and enjoyed both male and female company. She was also a devoted mother and daughter, and supported young, aspiring women writers. As usual, Mary was way ahead of her time.

  ‘I’ve always been in love with the eighteenth century – the novels, the plays, the clothes, the manners, the elegance, the architecture, and the music.’