by Paula Byrne
*‘fully established as his cloistered mistress’.
*Lord George discovered the princely liaison one night when he arrived late and drunk at the Armistead house and was refused admittance. He barged into her chamber, stretched out his arm with a candle in his hand and discovered the Prince of Wales hiding behind the door. Cavendish burst out laughing, made his Royal Highness a low bow, and retired.
CHAPTER 10
The Rivals
If women are fond of Scandal, it is the men who make us so; the avidity with which it is sought after, and the industry with which it is propagated, leads us to believe that it is the only pleasant source of conversation; and while we find that it commands the multitude, can we be blamed for using it as the magnet of attraction.
Mary Robinson, The Widow
For once the Town and Country Magazine was behind the times. In its January 1781 issue, Mary appeared again in ‘Histories of the Tête-à-Tête’, this time coupled with the Prince. Under the oval portraits were the titles ‘The Fair Ophelia’ and ‘The Illustrious Heir’. The biographical account of the Prince was flattering: ‘He rides, walks, dances and fences, with skill, ease and grace.’ He cut ‘a very handsome stately figure’. He was every young lady’s dream and many had set out to entrap him. Mary was presented as a beauty of obscure origins: ‘Her bewitching face, and delicately handsome person, very early attracted the notice of the nobility.’ She was the victim of a father who disposed of her to an unworthy husband: ‘The devil appeared to her in the shape of an attorney’s clerk, all glittering with spangles, and bedaubed with lace.’ The Prince was said to have fallen in love with her in the character of Ophelia – it was presumably considered too close to the mark to say Perdita. According to the piece, the lovers were still together: ‘They continue to reciprocate the finest feelings of which human beings are susceptible.’1
The Town and Country Magazine had the tact not to reiterate its earlier linking of Mary with Malden. People in the innermost circle of high society had a shrewd idea that his involvement had played a large part in the end of the royal affair. Thus Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire: ‘the P. of Wales, discovering her infidelity, was shock’d at the treachery he had gone thro’, and his friend and mistress were equally disgraced’.2 Mary lent credibility to the rumours by allowing herself to be escorted around town by Malden. She insisted that, though she had placed herself under his protection, it was not a ‘pecuniary’ arrangement. At that time, she claimed, he was ‘even poorer than myself: the death of his Lordship’s grandmother, Lady Frances Coningsby, had not then placed him above the penury of his small income’.3 But when her ladyship did die, later in 1781, Malden was in the position to offer Mary financial support.
Rumours soon abounded that Florizel and Perdita were no longer together. Mary was growing desperate as her measures to win back the Prince were not working and she was deep in debt, which she saw no way of discharging: ‘I had quitted both my husband and my profession: – the retrospect was dreadful!’ (she presumably means ‘prospect’, not ‘retrospect’). She was £7,000 in debt – well over a quarter of a million in today’s money – and her creditors were either threatening prison or seeking sexual favours in lieu of payment. She wondered about returning to the stage, but her friends advised that the public ‘would not suffer a reappearance’. This surprised her, since Sophia Baddeley had returned to the theatre after a period as a full-time courtesan. A story was planted in the press in order to test the water; it was even provocatively suggested that she might move from Drury Lane to Covent Garden – the King’s favoured theatre – and make her debut in the role of Jane Shore, deserted royal mistress.4 But Mary followed the advice of her immediate circle and was ‘thus fatally induced to relinquish what would have proved an ample and honourable resource for myself and my child’.5
On the eve of the new year there had been newspaper reports of the Prince’s new establishment and his first public outing in his new role: ‘This evening, at the Opera, his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is to make his first appearance in public, in the character of the Heir apparent. He will be surrounded by his new established household, and his suite will be as numerous as his Majesty’s.’6 It was tantalizing for Mary that she had lost him at the very time when he became formal heir to the throne. A few days later it was reported that ‘A certain young illustrious personage is said to have promised that Mrs R—’s establishment should immediately succeed his own, which, however, remaining still unsettled, though the former arrangement is made, has occasioned some severe reproaches on the part of the now suspicious Perdita.’7 There was, however, no possibility of a resumption of the relationship. Mary did not blame the Prince’s character so much as his station in life, which had put him so out of touch with the world. She returned his jewels and gifts, keeping only his miniature portrait and lock of hair. And the bond for £20,000.
On 5 January there appeared a very well-sourced story in the Morning Herald, possibly fed to Henry Bate by Mary herself. It gave the first public hint that she would stop at nothing, even blackmail, to get her ‘establishment’:
A certain amour royal is now totally at an end; a separation has taken place a thoro for more than three weeks, and a settlement worthy of such a sultana is the only thing now wanting to break off all intercourse whatever. Mrs Robinson thinking the adjustment of this part of the divorce too essential to be trifled with, has roundly written to her once ardent lover, ‘that if the establishment is not duly arranged within the space of fourteen days from the commencement of the new year, his——must not be surprised, if he sees a full publication of all of those seductory epistles which alone estranged her from virtue, and the marriage vow.’
It was also reported that ‘A certain young personage and Lord M—n are not on those terms of intimacy which formerly made them appear more like brothers than prince and subject.’ Malden was paying the price of taking Perdita to his own bed as well as his master’s. Mary was considered so newsworthy that there was even a report of Nicholas Darby’s whereabouts: ‘The father of the celebrated Perdita has lately taken the command of a stout Privateer sitting out in the River, and just ready to sail.’8 He was redeeming himself with a naval career that would eventually take him into the service of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. The Prince, meanwhile, was becoming a regular visitor at Cumberland House, home of his disgraced uncle, who was no friend to Mary.
The prospect of letters being published set tongues wagging. In the middle of January the Morning Herald announced that ‘The Poetic Epistle from Florizel to Perdita; with Perdita’s answer will be published during the course of next week, notwithstanding the repeated offers of the most lucrative kind, which have been made to the Editor to suppress the publication.’9 The poem was duly published a few days later. It sold out within a week and was immediately reprinted; a third edition followed soon after. The popularity of this pamphlet, which cost half a crown even though it was only forty pages long, may be gauged from an anecdote published in the Morning Herald in early April:
A gentleman happening the other day to be in a bookseller’s shop – the author of a pamphlet of Lasting Peace to Europe, came in, and ask’d the bookseller how the book sold? ‘But slowly,’ answered the bookseller, ‘It would have sold better if it had been put at eighteen pence’ – ‘How!’ exclaimed the author, ‘Give the plan of a lasting peace to Europe for eighteen pence, while Perditta is sold for half a crown?’ – ‘Aye, aye,’ replied the bookseller, tapping the author upon the hand, ‘Write me a history of scandal, the more scandalous, and the more scurrilous the better, and bring it to me, and I’ll give you a good price for it, and pay you before hand, for nothing but scandal will sell’ – ‘What,’ replied the author, ‘can be more striking than to expose the vices of Kings, and the troubles that their reign causes upon the earth?’ – ‘True,’ said the bookseller, ‘but that is soaring too high, that, does not amuse the ladies – alas! Such are the depravity of the times, and the taste of the n
obility.’10
In fact, the poem itself was hardly calculated to set the pulses racing. ‘Florizel’ writes as a boyish innocent:
Unknown to all your sex, a perfect boy
Fledg’d but unvers’d in manhood’s greatest joy,
You taught me what it is to be a Man
And baffled all my Father’s plan.
The poetic response of ‘Perdita’ offers the assurance that she was not interested in teaching him the erotic arts, but merely in helping him ‘To find the young emotions room to shoot.’ A little more riskily, the poem ends by claiming that the Queen and Mary’s mother had colluded in the affair:
Our two mammas have courteously agreed
If we’re content the nation need not heed.
Your royal Father winks at all, no doubt.
The real meat of the pamphlet was not the exchange of poems but the ‘Preliminary Discourse upon the Education of Princes’ that was published with it. This is strongly pro-Perdita. ‘Bristol is the place of her nativity,’ it says, ‘a circumstance alone sufficient to rescue that city from the sarcasm of abounding with ugly women.’ Her respectable family and good education in the establishment of the More sisters are emphasized. It is claimed that ‘we see no sharpers, fidlers, singers nor even other courtezans in her train’. She is even attempting to shake off ‘Lord Pandar’ (Malden), ‘the mediator of her promotion’. What has happened, though, is that a plan has been laid to disturb the Prince’s felicity, ‘raise suspicions in a mind which never before suspected’, and ‘plot the interposition of another Fair one’ in the good grace of the Prince.11 It gradually becomes clear that this is a political pamphlet more than a piece of scandalmongering: its argument is that Perdita’s name has been blackened and she has been excluded from the Prince’s company by the Cumberland House and Whig factions who are attempting to win him over for the Opposition. Perdita, by contrast, is held up as the very model of political orthodoxy:
The politics of a great Prince’s mistress are so far from being unworthy of attention that it is very certain the true cause of all the royal smiles, which Perdita is well known to receive during her attendance upon the chace, are no compliments to the beauty of her person but merely meant as an approbation of her political system, which is intirely ministerial.12
Perdita was thus represented as the ‘ministerial’ candidate and her rival the Armistead as the ‘Opposition’ one, or – in the words of a newspaper report – the ‘factious representative’ of the ‘blue and buff Junto’.13
The rivalry between the two mistresses was played out in the newspapers over a period of several months. Mary’s contact with the Bates ensured that the Morning Herald was hostile to the behaviour of Elizabeth Armistead: ‘Mrs Arms—has taken care to have it pretty repeatedly intimated to the celebrated Perdita, that a certain young personage’s absence from her, is owing to the Superior influence of certain charms in another quarter, at the altar of which he still continues to sacrifice … the cruel mode of proclaiming the triumph, has visibly affected the deserted fair one.’ Perdita took a centre box at the opera, but to no avail: the Prince did not once look at her. Mrs Armistead, it was soon reported, ‘has certainly been gratified at last in an amour with a certain young personage; and now flatters herself that her charms will not be so soon unrivetted, as were those of the once exalted and enviable Perdita’.14
There was a showdown at the Opera House on the evening of Saturday, 17 February. While Perdita sat in a box directly above the Prince, Elizabeth ‘directed her artillery’ from a much better position on the opposite side: ‘His Highness, in surveying them round, met in an upward glance the eyes of Mrs R. They scarce exchanged a look, when his attention was riveted by Mrs A—d, who, during the momentary victory over her competitor, drew a glove from a beautiful hand, and seemed to hold it as a gauntlet to her R—l admirer.’ Having published this on the Monday, the Morning Herald could not resist returning to the story the next morning, telling of how the princely personage was besieged ‘by a strong detachment of the amorous phalanx’ while ‘the Pensive Perdita every now and then sent down an unavailing sigh’.15
Whilst the rivalry between the women was being acted out in the press, the Prince, heady with his new-found freedom and denied the companionship of his brother the Duke of York and his trusted companion Colonel Lake (they had both gone abroad), fell in with the Duke of Cumberland and two notorious rakes, Charles Wyndham and Colonel St Leger. They frittered away the early months of 1781 in drunkenness and debauchery. During one raucous night in Blackheath they were so intoxicated that a member of the party tried to tear the tongue out of a fierce house dog. The dog responded by savaging a footman’s leg and Wyndham’s arm. Their host fell down the stairs, and the Prince was so drunk he was incapable of driving home.
Furthermore, the Prince was openly criticizing the King in the ‘grossest terms’, ‘even in his hearing’, which so alarmed George III that he confided in the Duke of Gloucester his fears that his son would soon refuse to obey him. But then the Prince suffered the ill effects of his hard living; according to Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, ‘Drinking and living too freely brought on a violent fever … which soon however spent itself in a hideous humour in his face.’16 For most of March, he was in the care of his physician, who at one time even feared for his life. The Prince wrote to his brother in Germany, ‘I remained cooped up in my bedchamber an entire fortnight without ever tasting anything but barley water and some damned wishy washy stuff of that sort.’17 His brother warned him that he would seriously damage himself and blamed the debauchery on wicked Uncle Cumberland. But the Prince did not listen: when he recovered he carried on womanizing. Mary had not quite given up on him, and was concerned for his health. The Morning Post noted that ‘ever since the late indisposition of the heir apparent, Perdita’s face has remained unvarnished; but as he is now recovered, it is hoped the lilly and carnation will again blossom in her countenance’.18
By April, the papers were saying that the ‘implacable rivals’ were close to having a catfight in the street. They drove around in their brimstone-yellow equipages looking daggers at each other:
The Armst—d and the Perdita, are grown such implacable rivals, that the most serious consequences are to be apprehended from a personal meeting, which the partisans of either are anxious to avoid: for some time they contented themselves with exchanging looks of fiery indignation as their carriages passed each other; but now, their glasses are let down as soon as the enemy is seen approaching, and they mutually exchange repeated broadsides of grinnings and spittings, to the no small entertainment of the neighbourhood, where the rencontre happens: thitherto, they have engaged only upon different tacks, and nothing has proved decisive; the Armst—d however we hear, is now practising a grin of so powerful a nature, under the notorious Grimaldi, that if she is fortunate enough to bring it to bear full upon the enemy, it cannot fail to insure her a complete victory!
Perdita seems to have known she was defeated. She was conspicuous by her absence from a gathering of more than a thousand ladies of rank and fashion in Kensington Gardens, the kind of assembly she would never have missed in happier times. Her rival had triumphed: the Armistead was secure in the Prince’s love, while the Perdita was left slowly stalking ‘the joyless round of Ranelagh’s dreary dome: no pleasing memory left; no sympathies of mutual love, all former scenes of dear delight for ever gone!’19
But Mary still had the letters. The threat to publish was her most powerful weapon. Reputations could be seriously damaged by the appearance of private correspondence in the public domain. She discovered this to her own cost in March, when an alarming advertisement appeared in the papers: ‘On Saturday next will be published in Quarto, Price 2 Shillings, Genuine Letters from PERDITA to a JEW; with the Jew’s answer. This pamphlet will through [sic] new light on the Art of Love, and furnish useful hints to Lovers of every Denomination. Specimens of the Original Letters are left with the publishers.’20 The letters written to ‘J
ew’ King the moneylender back in the earliest days of her marriage had returned to haunt her.
Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite began with a preface in which King (anonymously) justified his ‘indelicate’ publication of private letters on the grounds that Perdita herself had breached decorum by authorizing the appearance back in January of the Poetical Epistle from Florizel to Perdita. He claimed, indeed, on the basis of his acquaintance ‘with both the prosaic and poetic Stile of Mrs R—’ that Mary herself had actually been the author not only of both sides of the poetic correspondence but also of the ‘Preliminary Discourse upon the Education of Princes’ that so flattered her. He countered with his own, far less flattering biography, dwelling on the Robinsons’ swindling, their time in debtors’ prison, and Mary’s affairs with a string of aristocratic paymasters.
As was seen in chapter 3, there must have been a considerable element of authenticity to the letters that followed this prefatory blast: King could not have known about the Robinsons’ trip to Oxford, Bristol, and Wales unless he was much better acquainted with them than Mary herself ever revealed. Strong evidence for authenticity is provided by a report that appeared in the Morning Post within days of publication:
The noble paramour of the celebrated Perditta, and the fair dame herself, on Monday evening made a bold push to recover certain letters, upon the originality of which a certain book has lately been published; but the attempt was abortive; the publisher would not surrender, but challenged the demandant to the Chapter coffee-house, there to decide his right. The attic regions of Pater-noster Row were in an uproar, but, the amorous pair were obliged to retreat without the objects of their wishes.21