by Paula Byrne
Lyttelton tried one last desperate attempt to win Mary away from her husband. With her usual aplomb for setting a scene, she describes the day when Lyttelton called upon her for a meeting, pleading important business. He told Mary that he had a secret to reveal about Robinson. Lyttelton then confessed to his part in alienating her husband’s ‘conjugal affections’, revealing that Thomas Robinson had a mistress, ‘a woman of abandoned character’ who lived in Princes Street, Soho. He told Mary that Robinson spent money on his mistress, money that they should have been saving for the birth of the baby. He even named the other woman: she was called Harriet Wilmot. Robinson visited her every day.
Lyttelton made Mary promise not to tell her husband who was the source of the revelation. If she did, there would have to be a duel. Having reduced her to tears of sorrow and mortification, Lyttelton suggested that Mary should take revenge on her husband by placing herself under his protection: ‘You cannot be a stranger to my motives for thus cultivating the friendship of your husband; my fortune is at your disposal. Robinson is a ruined man; his debts are considerable, and nothing but destruction can await you. Leave him! Command my powers to serve you.’15
Mary was mortified at the proposal, but she was also angry and determined enough to face her rival. Perhaps she was spurred by the memory that her mother had had to endure a similar revelation. The encounter in Soho is described in the Memoirs in the style of sentimental fiction. Needless to say, the virtuous young wife vanquishes the profligate mistress. With her novelist’s eye for detail, Mary recalled the dirty servant girl who let her into Miss Wilmot’s apartment, the incriminating new white silk underwear spread out on the bed, her beating heart as she heard Miss Wilmot’s footsteps approach the room.
Mary’s rival was a handsome older woman who was visibly distressed by the presence of her lover’s pregnant young wife. Her lips were ‘as pale as ashes’. She did not deny the charges levelled against her, and as she drew off her gloves to cover her eyes, presumably from shame, Mary noticed Tom’s ring on her finger. Harriet tried to return the ring, to no avail. Mary refused to take it. Harriet said, ‘Had I known that Mr Robinson was the husband of such a woman—’ As Mary rose to leave, Harriet spoke, ‘I never will see him more – unworthy man – I never will again receive him.’ Mary swept out of the room without a further word. As usual, Mary remembered her costume for the occasion, as though she were an actress playing her part: she wore a morning dress of white muslin, with a white lawn cloak and a straw bonnet. Her rival was dressed in a printed Irish muslin and wore a black gauze cloak and a chip hat trimmed with lilac ribbons.16
Devastated by the encounter as Mary claimed to be, she accompanied her husband to Drury Lane that evening with Lord Lyttelton. She concealed her true feelings and participated in the fun with her usual gusto. It was only in the morning that she confronted Robinson. He did not deny the charge. Mary learned that he had had another mistress at the time of their marriage, and that his infidelities were public knowledge. The extent of his debts also became clear to her. Robinson had got himself caught in the invidious position of borrowing money from loan sharks to pay off his creditors. He was deeply involved with King the moneylender. Indeed, ‘the parlour of our house was almost as much frequented by Jews as though it had been their synagogue’.17 Mary’s protestations that she was a ‘total stranger’ to the business transactions were, of course, untrue – John King had the proof of that.
Despite Robinson’s infidelity, he is not depicted in Mary’s narrative as the outright villain of the piece. She presents her husband as weak and impressionable, rather than vicious. It was Lord Lyttelton she blamed. She despised him for the way he treated women, in particular for his contemptuous behaviour towards his estranged wife and his mistress, a Miss Dawson. The press suggested that Mary and Lyttelton were having an affair, a claim that she vehemently denied: ‘he was the very last man in the world for whom I ever could have entertained the smallest partiality; he was to me the most hateful of existing beings’.18
Handsome George Fitzgerald was quite another matter: ‘his manners towards women were beautifully interesting’. He tried to seduce Mary on a warm summer’s evening at Vauxhall. The Robinsons stayed until the early hours of the morning and then while they were waiting for their carriage to take them home, Fitzgerald made his move. A late night quarrel broke out between two men and Robinson and Fitzgerald took off to view the commotion. Mary tried to follow but was soon lost in the throng of people. Later, only Fitzgerald returned. He took Mary towards the exit to wait for her husband. To her alarm, Fitzgerald’s carriage appeared as if out of nowhere and he tried to bundle Mary in. As the door swung open, she noticed a pistol in the pocket of the door. His servants, who were clearly in on the attempted abduction, kept at a discreet distance, while Fitzgerald grabbed Mary around the waist. She struggled free and ran back towards the entrance to the pleasure gardens, where she found her husband. Fitzgerald acted as though nothing had happened: ‘Here he comes!’ he exclaimed with an easy nonchalance, ‘we had found the wrong carriage, Mr Robinson, we have been looking after you, and Mrs Robinson is alarmed beyond expression.’ ‘I am indeed!’ replied Mary.19
She decided to say nothing to Robinson for fear of repercussions: an advanced state of pregnancy was no time to lose one’s husband in a duel. ‘Fighting Fitzgerald’ was a brilliant shot. He killed eighteen men in the course of his duelling career, before being hanged. From that point on, Mary avoided Fitzgerald’s company despite – or because of – his charisma: ‘he was too daring, and too fascinating a being to be allowed the smallest marks of confidence’.
As on so many occasions in the Memoirs, the veracity of this story cannot be taken for granted: the abduction and rape of young women at public places had been a standard twist in the romantic novel ever since the attempted abduction of Harriet Byron in Samuel Richardson’s hugely influential Sir Charles Grandison. We cannot be sure that Mary was not indulging here in a novelist’s licence with the truth.
As with the trip to Bristol and Wales, there is another version of the story of these months – which the Memoirs may indeed have been consciously attempting to erase. Again, it was the Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite that made the case for the prosecution. According to John King, Mary was no innocent that first night at the Pantheon. He claimed that she made a play for the three fashionable aristocrats:
At every fashionable Place of Resort, [the Robinsons] appeared as brilliant as any in the Circle; the Extravagance of the Diversions was no Check to their Vanity. At a Masquerade one evening, she was noticed by Lord Lyttelton, Lord Valencia, and Lord Northington; her Pride was highly gratified to be distinguished by Three such fashionable Noblemen; and that an Acquaintance so fortunately begun should not be lost, she wrote the following Note to each Gentleman the next day. ‘My Lord, a Lady in the Character of an Orange Girl that had the Honour of being distinguished by your Lordship last Night at the Masquerade, was a Mrs R—, of Hatton-Garden, who will esteem herself further honoured if your Lordship should condescend to favour her with a Visit.’ – On this singular Invitation, the Gentlemen came, and paid their respective Addresses to her; but it was the intrepid persevering Lord Lyttelton that most succeeded, it was the Splendor of his Equipage that seduced her vain Heart, till at length his Familiarity with her became the Topic of the whole Town. They were continually together at every Place of Amusement; and the Husband trudged after them, as stupid and as tranquil as any Brute of the cornuted Creation.20
King left his readers in no doubt that Mary and Lyttelton had a full-scale affair. He told of how they would engage in amorous dalliance in a closed carriage, with Robinson riding ‘a Mile or Two behind on Horseback’. Far from taking umbrage at the intimacy, the husband ‘continually boasted among his Acquaintance, the Superiority of his Connections, and his Wife’s Ascendancy over every fashionable Gallant’.21 This was the kind of story that gave Robinson a reputation as little better than his wife’s pimp.
&
nbsp; A garbled and exaggerated version of this story about Mary making love in a moving coach with the full complaisance of her husband also found its way into the muckraking Memoirs of Perdita published in 1784. Here, though, her high-speed dalliance is with a well-endowed sailor who gives her ‘a pleasure she never could experience in the arms of debilitated peers and nobles’. He takes her four times, with Thomas Robinson riding not on a horse somewhere behind, but on the roof of the very carriage.22
King also claimed that Lyttelton intervened to save Robinson from prosecution when his fraudulent financial dealings were on the point of being exposed. According to this account, Lord Lyttelton dropped Mary on discovering that she and her husband were mere swindlers out to fleece him for all they could get. The truth of the matter is probably somewhere in the middle between Mary’s picture of aristocratic villainy and King’s far from disinterested portrayal of sexual misconduct for financial ends. There can be no doubt that the Robinsons lived way beyond their means: was it only the Jewish moneylenders who gave them the capacity to do so? Or did Lyttelton dig deep into his pocket? And if he did, was it in expectation of sexual favours or as payment for delights already delivered?
Whatever the precise means, Mary’s beauty, wit, and connections were taking her well on the way to the achievement of her ambition of fame: ‘I was now known, by name, at every public place in and near the metropolis.’23 At the same time, the Robinsons were becoming notorious for their debts. In the autumn of 1774, in the final weeks of her pregnancy, their creditors foreclosed on them and an execution was brought on Robinson. The couple were forced to flee Hatton Garden for a friend’s house in Finchley, which was then a village on the outskirts of London. They were deserted by all of their staff with the exception of a single faithful black servant. Mary barely saw her husband, who spent most of his time in town.
In the meantime, Hester returned from Bristol with George and helped her daughter to prepare for her confinement. They sewed baby clothes, and Mary continued to read and write. Robinson acquired the habit of taking George with him on his ‘business trips’ to London, but George, who adored his sister, confessed that they called upon disreputable women. He also told her that her valuable watch, which Mary presumed had been taken by the bailiffs, had actually been given to one of Robinson’s mistresses. When confronted, he did not bother to deny the infidelity.
Despite Robinson’s indifference, which was particularly insensitive so close to the birth of his first child, Mary continued to blame others more than her husband for their predicament. Perhaps she felt guilty for contributing to his debts by her expensive taste. She blamed Lyttelton, their creditors and even Robinson’s father: ‘had Mr Harris generously assisted his son, I am fully and confidently persuaded that he would have pursued a discreet and regular line of conduct’.24
It was to Harris that Robinson turned in desperation. He decided to leave London and head for Tregunter, where he could plead for his father’s help. Robinson insisted that Mary accompany him, despite the discomfort and danger of travelling all those miles in her condition. He no doubt anticipated that the presence of his favoured young wife heavy with a future grandchild would help to soften up old Harris. Mary, for her part, did not want to leave her mother when she needed her during the trials of labour. Childbirth was traumatic at the best of times for women in the eighteenth century: it was common for mothers to write their unborn children farewell letters to be read in the event of their death during labour or its aftermath. Mary feared that she might die in Wales and the baby be left amongst strangers. With her youthful pride, she also dreaded the sneers she would have to face from Elizabeth Robinson and Mrs Molly upon returning to Tregunter in debt and disgrace.
CHAPTER 5
Debtors’ Prison
‘Tis not the whip, the dungeon, or the chain that constitutes the slave; freedom lives in the mind, warms the intellectual soul, lifts it above the reach of human power, and renders it triumphant over sublunary evil.
Mary Robinson, Angelina
News had reached Tregunter of Robinson’s imminent arrest. Harris was away from home when they arrived, but on his return he lost no time in making his position clear: ‘Well! So you have escaped from a prison, and now you are come here to do penance for your follies?’1 Over the following days, he taunted the couple, though he did at least offer them refuge.
When Mary tried to amuse herself by playing an old spinet in one of the parlours, Harris mocked her for giving herself airs and graces: ‘Tom had better married a good tradesman’s daughter than the child of a ruined merchant who was not capable of earning a living.’ She may have smarted from the insults, but her husband, knowing her temper, pleaded with her to ignore Harris’s behaviour. She was furious, though, when he openly insulted her at a dinner party. A guest, remarking on her swollen stomach, expressed his pleasure that she was come to give Tregunter ‘a little stranger’ and joked (as Harris was renovating his house) that they should build a new nursery for the baby. ‘No, no,’ replied Mr Harris, laughing, ‘they came here because prison doors were open to receive them.’2
The renovation of Tregunter meant that Mary could not be housed for her confinement – at least that was the excuse given by Harris. Only two weeks away from giving birth, Mary was told that she must go to Trevecca House, which was just under two miles away, at the foot of a mountain called Sugar Loaf. Away from Harris and his female cronies, she relaxed and communed with nature:
Here I enjoyed the sweet repose of solitude: here I wandered about woods entangled by the wild luxuriance of nature, or roved upon the mountain’s side, while the blue vapours floated round its summit. O, God of Nature! Sovereign of the universe of wonders! in those interesting moments how fervently did I adore thee!3
The sentiments are typical of the age of sensibility. If she really wandered thus so late in her pregnancy, she must have been unusually healthy and energetic.
Though Mary writes here of the ‘sweet repose of solitude’, Trevecca House was actually more crowded than Tregunter. One part housed the Huntingdon seminary and another part of the building was converted into a flannel manufactory. Nevertheless, she was no longer forced to endure the jibes of her husband’s vulgar family, for they seldom visited her. According to the Memoirs, she was indifferent to their ill-treatment of her. Her spiritual communion with the mountains made her all the more conscious that she had ‘formed an union with a family who had neither sentiment nor sensibility’.
The child, named Maria Elizabeth Robinson,* was born on 18 October 1774, just a few weeks before Mary’s seventeenth birthday. Delighted with her beautiful daughter, the young mother allowed her nurse to show Maria Elizabeth to the factory workers who clamoured to see the ‘little heiress to Tregunter’. Mary was at first alarmed at the prospect of exposing the baby to the cold October air, but the nurse soothed her fears and cautioned her that the local people would consider Mary ‘proud’ if she refused to show the ‘young squire’s’ baby. It was a happy day for Mary, as the crowd heaped blessings on the baby, and the nurse, Mrs Jones, passed on every detail of their praises to the exhausted mother.
There is no mention of Robinson in the narrative, but later that evening Harris paid a visit. After asking after Mary’s health he demanded to know what she was going to do with the child. When she made no answer he honoured her with his own recommendation: ‘“I will tell you,” added he; “Tie it to your back and work for it.’” For good measure he added, ‘Prison doors are open … Tom will die in a gaol; and what is to become of you?’ Mary was all the more humiliated by the impropriety of these taunts being spoken in front of the nurse. Maybe Harris would have been kinder if the baby had been a boy, but one senses that his own infatuation with Mary had now worn off and that he considered her expensive lifestyle to have been a major factor in Tom’s improvidence. When his daughter Elizabeth made her visit, she suggested that it would be a mercy for the infant ‘if it pleased God to take it’.4
Three weeks later, Robin
son’s creditors caught up with him. They had discovered that he had fled to Wales, and in order to avoid the spectacle of being arrested at Harris’s house – which would have been the final nail in the coffin of his hoped-for inheritance – he left immediately. They were on the run once more. Though still weak from the delivery of her child, Mary refused to stay at Trevecca without her husband. She travelled against the advice of the capable Mrs Jones. They set off for Monmouth, where Mary’s grandmother lived. Mrs Jones travelled in the post chaise as far as Abergavenny, cradling the baby on a pillow on her lap. The local people were sorry to see them go, but ‘Neither Mr Harris nor the enlightened females of Tregunter expressed the smallest regret, or solicitude on the occasion.’5
Mary was worried about taking care of her baby after the departure of Mrs Jones. Her education had not prepared her for ‘domestic occupations’. She was still only 17, and without her mother. But she trusted her maternal instincts and did the best she could. Lacking a wet nurse, she breastfed her own baby, which was still perceived as an unusual step for a woman of her class – though it was something that would be advocated by the feminist writers of the 1790s.
The next day they arrived at Monmouth, where Mary’s grandmother Elizabeth lived. They received a warm welcome, though how much her grandmother knew about their state of affairs is not clear. Seventy-year-old Elizabeth, who had been a beauty in her day, was still an attractive woman; she dressed in neat, simple gowns of brown or black silk. She was a pious, well-respected figure, and mild of temper: Mary envied her grandmother’s tranquillity and her fervent religious faith.