Perdita

by Paula Byrne

  When Mrs Baddeley explained the neglect into which she had fallen, Mrs Robinson cried out, ‘Oh, the ingratitude of mankind!’ She shed some tears and promised to intercede on her fellow actress’s behalf not only with the Duke but also with the Prince. She then talked about her own life: how she was living apart from her husband, but still on friendly terms – save that ‘he drew her purse-strings too often; but, that as he was her husband, she could not refuse him’. She explained that the Prince wanted her to stay away from her husband, but that Robinson was always seeking her out in public places in order to get money from her.

  She also revealed that with the Prince she was the happiest of women, explaining that ‘the poor dear boy’ often got out of his bed when he was at Kew and came to her in the middle of the night, at the inn on Eel Pie Island. ‘How do you mean?’ asked Mrs Baddeley, ‘got out of bed?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Mrs Robinson, ‘their Majesties always paid such attention to their children, as to go and see them every night, after they were in bed; and often has the dear Prince got up after this, dressed himself, and with the assistance of his brother, the Duke of York, climbed over the garden-wall, after mid-night, and come to me; staid some hours, and returned home over the wall again, before day-light; unknown to any one, but his brother.’ She added that his affection for her was ‘of no short duration’.18

  The inevitable price of Mary’s high profile around London and loose tongue with regard to the Prince’s favours was bad publicity in the papers. Though Mary glossed over the fact in her recollections, her simultaneous affair with Lord Malden also came under constant scrutiny. One paper published a vicious poem addressed to Malden on the ‘report of Perditta’s being created a Countess’. The presence of her husband gave fuel to the scandalmongers.

  In September a letter from ‘Dramaticus’, written from the Piazza Coffee-house, was published in the Morning Post:

  The audacity of Mrs R—, who was an actress last winter, and whose situation and character is certainly not improved since her resignation from the stage, is beyond example or excuse; and the Monsieur M—, her nominal husband, deserves the severest reprehension, in daring to seat himself in a part of the house allotted to people of character and fashion.

  I know of no rank of prostitution that can either lessen the crime or disgrace of it; and, however profligate the age may be, I believe that the greatest libertine of our sex would revolt at the idea of handing a wife, sister, or daughter, in to a box where they were certain of being surrounded by public prostitutes.

  The managers owe it to the public, they owe it to themselves, to preserve the side-boxes for the modest and reputable part of the other sex; or at least, it is their duty to refuse them to actresses, swindlers, wantons in high keeping, who have the presumption to ask for them. Mrs R—is unquestionably a pretty woman, and her beauty would lose nothing from being exhibited in the green boxes; but when she has the assurance to mix with women of character and distinction her charms should no longer protect her from the reprehension due to her temerity.19

  But she also had her defenders. A poem in praise of her reputation and her talents as an actress was published in the same paper on 28 September. It paid tribute to her incomparable art as Ophelia, Cordelia, Sir Harry, Rosalind, Viola, and Palmira. She was admirable in both tragedy and comedy, but especially comedy. The poem was accompanied by a defence of her conduct and even of her husband.20

  Then there was another note of support, this one from ‘an admirer of Modest Women’. It suggested that her reputation was ‘only suspected by the envious and ill-natured part of her own sex’ – a charge that Mary would make herself in the Memoirs. The correspondent for the defence said that ‘No ill conduct has ever been proved against this Lady, neither has she ever been censured beyond the ill-nature of a newspaper paragraph.’21 ‘Dramaticus’ fought back a few days later, claiming that Mrs Robinson had arrogated to herself ‘the importance of a person of fashion’ by having the ‘audacity to place herself in a part of the theatre, hitherto reserved for the reception of people of rank’. There were also references to her ‘ingenious tricks’ and her husband’s ‘lucrative complacency’.22 Another outraged letter, signed ‘No Flatterer’, was printed a week after this, objecting to the poem of 28 September as ‘the most fulsome panegyric which ever disgraced a newspaper – on that most virtuous, most innocent, most amiable, most poetic, and most beautiful of her sex, the most renowned Perdita’. In reality, it said, she was none of these things. She had a ‘positive prostitute character’ and was no better than an ‘orange woman – she should keep out of side-boxes’.23

  Around the same time, she hit the papers again as a result of an embarrassing incident at Covent Garden Theatre when she caught her estranged husband making love to a ‘fillette’ in one of the boxes. She flew into a jealous rage, ran to the box, seized her unhappy husband, dragged him by the hair into the lobby ‘and there spent her violence in blows and reproaches to the complete entertainment of a numerous auditory’.24 At length she bore him away in triumph to her house. The Prince was reportedly not amused by this incident: Mary was beginning to seem a liability and other women were catching his eye.

  Rumours circulated of her estrangement from the Prince. She was taunted, accused of being a ‘ripe mine of diseases’.25 Contradictory reports kept appearing: did the constant attentions of Lord Malden mean that he was her lover? Or was ‘the silver R. upon the dark green chariot … nothing less than a token of royal favour’?26

  Mary complained that ‘Tales of the most infamous and glaring falsehood were invented, and I was again assailed by pamphlets, by paragraphs, and caricatures, and all the artillery of slander.’27 One of the first full-scale printed assaults came in a one-shilling pamphlet called A Satire on the Present Times, which particularly emphasized her ‘pimping spouse’:

  A noted beauty, (Perdita her name,

  No matter where brought up, or whence she came,)

  Though bless’d with charms above her narrow soul,

  Was curs’d with pride not reason could controul.

  Where’er she came contending suitors bow’d:

  (Enough to make the giddy strumpet proud:)

  One boasted wealth; – Florio, in guile less vers’d,

  Preach’d up his passion, – but she chose the first.

  Mark what ensues; – our Perdita is caught;

  And her rich husband proves not worth a groat.

  Reduc’d to poverty; ‘twas now her aim

  To tread the path which leads to public fame:

  In plainer terms; – with G—ck to engage,

  And sport away her talents on the stage.

  The bait soon took; her ev’ry wish prevail’d;

  And charms succeeded where her merit fail’d.

  Lords sigh’d for her, and Perdita for them,

  Nor dar’d her pimping spouse such arts condemn.

  He, of each spark of honest pride bereft,

  Held her right hand while M-ld-n kiss’d her left.

  But now no more a tool to Drury-lane,

  She eyes her old associates with disdain;

  For silk-brocade puts off the vulgar chintz,

  And struts the would-be mistress of a p—e.28

  The clear implication here is that the affair with Malden preceded that with the Prince.

  The first of the many caricatures lampooning Florizel and Perdita was published in November (see p. 108). It shows Mary flanked by the Prince on one side and her husband on the other. She is wearing a low-cut dress and a high Welsh hat over a long wig. Robinson bears the cuckold’s horns and is holding a paper inscribed with the words Sir Peter Pimp. The Prince’s coronet, decorated with two ostrich feathers and a leek, emblem of Wales, is falling from his head. Mary holds out to him a book entitled Essay on Man. He looks at her with his two hands raised, as if dazzled by her beauty. At Perdita’s feet are boxes inscribed Whitewash, Carmine, Dentrifice, Perfume and Pomatum, together with a letter inscribed Florizel. Below the engraving
there is a song to the tune of ‘O Polly is a sad slut!’ (Polly was Mary’s family name):

  Sometimes she’d play the Tragic Queen,

  Sometimes the Peasant poor,

  Sometimes she’d step behind the Scenes,

  And there she’d play the W[hore].

  Two thousand Pounds, a princely Sight

  For doing just no more,

  Than what is acted every Night,

  By every Sister W[hore],

  She never play’d her part so well,

  In all her Life before,

  Yet some, as well as Florizel,

  Knows how she plays the W[hore].

  Her husband too, a puny Imp,

  Will often guard the Door,

  And humbly play Sir Peter Pimp

  While she performs the W[hore].

  The strain of all this was beginning to tell. A friend of Mary’s signing himself A.B. wrote to the Morning Post warning that if the London papers continued to persecute her with scandalous paragraphs they would have her ‘blood to answer for’.29 There was also a rumour that she was going to escape all the attention by fleeing to Germany. The very next day she appeared at a masquerade with Lord Malden, fetchingly dressed in a brown capuchin cloak and hood. This fuelled more rumours that she was reunited with Malden.

  The Morning Post was generally hostile to Mary, so she was fortunate that in November 1780 a new daily paper was launched. Its editor was Henry Bate, well known for his contacts in high society and his willingness to risk libel actions. The original for the scandalmonger Snake in Sheridan’s School for Scandal, he was the son of a preacher and had been educated at Cambridge and intended for the Church. Despite being a clergyman, he became one of the first editors of the Morning Post. He always wore black and was known as ‘the Fighting Parson’ due to his excitable temper, which often got him into trouble. Bate lost his job at the Morning Post after he was jailed for a year for libelling the Duke of Richmond and, when he discovered that his position had not been kept open, he retaliated by founding the Morning Herald. He had long been fascinated with the theatre, having started his career as a young curate to the Reverend James Townley, who was famed for his farce High Life Below Stairs. Henry had published plays himself and had staged a successful opera. He was married to Mary White, sister to a celebrated Shakespearean actress. Mrs Bate knew all the actresses of the west end, and it was her job to file gossip for the Morning Herald.

  Mary and Henry Bate were, on the whole, supportive towards Mary Robinson. This was partly out of sympathy for a fellow thespian, but principally because it made good journalistic sense to take the opposite line to that of the Morning Post. The Bates knew that the best way to sell papers was to follow every twist and turn of a scandal. In time-honoured fashion, Mary began leaking her side of the story to the Bates. Even the Morning Post was persuaded to print a denial of the rumours that there was an estrangement between Florizel and Perdita.30

  The King was doing his best to terminate the relationship. Just before Christmas he proposed a ‘new arrangement’ whereby at the end of the year the Prince would leave Windsor for Buckingham House (now Buckingham Palace), where he would have his own establishment and a degree of independence. ‘My inclination,’ His Majesty wrote, ‘is to grant you all the rational amusement I can, and keep you out of what is improper, and so to steer you, that when arrived at the full stage of manhood, you may thank me for having made you escape evils that ill become a young man of rank, but in your exalted situation are criminal.’31 The Prince would be allowed to dine with his companions in his apartment twice a week. He could go to plays and the opera provided he gave notice to the King and was accompanied by his regular attendants. He would be expected to attend church on Sunday and Drawing Room at St James’s when the King was present, as well as the Queen’s Thursday Drawing Room. When the King rode out of a morning, the Prince would accompany him. The price of an independent establishment was that he should keep away from masquerades (‘you already know my disapprobation of them in this country’), assemblies in private houses, and other such dubious congregations. Assemblies in private houses served as shorthand for visits to Perdita in Cork Street.

  All was going well with the Prince, at least as far as Mary was concerned, when, out of nowhere, she received a curt note from him informing her that ‘we must meet no more!’32 The affair that had begun with scores of eloquent love letters had seemingly ended without explanation or apology. Mary was bewildered. At a meeting only two days before, her lover had professed his undiminished affection. She always remained adamant that there was no reason why the Prince had so abruptly terminated the relationship and complained that she was never given a proper explanation: ‘I again most SOLEMNLY REPEAT, that I was totally ignorant of any JUST CAUSE for so sudden an alteration.’33

  If the Prince thought that Mary would accept his rejection without demur, he did not know his fiery lover. After all, this was the woman who, heavily pregnant, had confronted her husband’s mistress with impunity. She wrote twice to George for an explanation, ‘but received no elucidation of this most cruel and extraordinary mystery’.34 In the face of his stony silence, she panicked and set off in her phaeton to Windsor. The long drive from Cork Street to Windsor was fraught. It was late and growing dark, and Mary travelled unaccompanied except for her postillion, a 9-year-old boy. The phaeton was a light, open four-wheeled carriage, usually drawn by a pair of ponies, though Mary’s was small, with only one pony. It would have been an easy target for highwaymen, who were aware that this was a vehicle favoured by wealthy ladies. Though highwaymen had a reputation for being glamorous figures, especially since the success of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, in reality they were brutal in their treatment of victims, often raping women.

  Mary must have been alarmed when she reached Hounslow Heath and was warned by an innkeeper that ‘every carriage which had passed the heath for the last ten nights had been attacked and rifled’.35 But with her mind on the Prince, she did not care for personal danger. If her lover had truly rejected her, the idea of death was inviting. When she reached the middle of the pitch-black heath, she was startled by the appearance of a ‘footpad’ (a highwayman on foot). The man snatched at the reins, but the young postillion spurred the pony just in time and galloped off at full speed. The footpad gave chase, but could not outrun the carriage, and they reached the Magpie, a small inn on the outskirts of the heath, in safety, without sustaining a serious atttack.

  Mary was exhilarated by her escape. When writing up her account of the journey, she asserted bravely that the highwayman would have had to strangle her before she would relinquish the costly jewels she had about her. Her courage only failed her when she arrived at the Magpie and bumped into the beautiful Elizabeth Armistead and the Prince’s servant Meynel. The Armistead (as the press insisted on calling her) was evidently on her way back from an assignation with the Prince: ‘My foreboding soul instantly beheld a rival.’36 Mary remembered that the Prince had frequently expressed a wish to know the lady in question.

  Elizabeth Armistead was a courtesan, who had risen from humble beginnings. She was 30 when she became mistress to the Prince. An unsubstantiated rumour suggested that for a time she had been Perdita’s dresser at Drury Lane. She had certainly been a model for a hairdresser before being taken up by one of the famous madams of London’s exclusive brothels. Her beauty swiftly acquired her a succession of rich and aristocratic patrons, such as the Duke of Ancaster, the Duke of Dorset, and the Earl of Derby, Viscount Bolingbroke. At the time of her assignation with the Prince, she was mistress to the Duke of Devonshire’s brother, Lord George Cavendish.*

  The inevitable had happened: the Prince had a new mistress. When Mary arrived at Windsor, he refused to see her.

  The chronology of the end of the affair is uncertain. After a period of estrangement, the Prince apparently wanted to be reconciled with Mary. He suggested a meeting at Malden’s home in Clarges Street. After much hesitation – so she said – Mary agreed. Th
e Prince apologized for his neglect of her, put his arms around her and protested his love, claiming that it was the efforts of her ‘concealed enemies’ that had undermined her position. Mary was triumphant, but her victory was short-lived: she thought that they were fully reconciled, but to her ‘surprise and chagrin’, on meeting his Royal Highness in Hyde Park the very next day, he turned his head to avoid seeing her and even affected not to know her. Neither would he respond to any of the desperate letters she sent him.37

  Mary did not despair. She probed Lord Malden for details about the Prince’s change of heart. He told her that she had enemies in high places. She knew that the Duke of Cumberland was her enemy, but she now learnt that the ladies at court had begun a vicious whispering campaign. It was said that Mary had slandered one of the Prince’s friends in public, giving him an excuse to drop her; in reality, the charms of Elizabeth Armistead and the knowledge that Mary had been having an affair with his own best friend Malden were of more pressing significance. Furthermore, with the prospect of some degree of independence close at hand the Prince did not want to tie himself to one person. Many members of his intimate circle disliked her, and she was pressing him for a better establishment of her own. The Prince of Wales wanted out. The problem for the palace was that she was not going to go quietly.