Perdita
Page 18
The pamphlet was published on a Saturday and on the Monday Mary and Malden attempted to retrieve the original letters.
A book attacking King, published some time later, provides a fuller account of the affair. Its version of the sequence of events is probably exaggerated, but has the ring of truth. When the Poetical Epistle from Florizel to Perdita became a bestseller, King saw the opportunity to make some money from his old package of Mrs Robinson’s letters. He went to her house and tried to sell them back to her for £400. She refused, so he upped the ante by demanding £2,000. If she did not pay, he would have anonymous letters sent to Lord Malden accusing her of infidelity to him, would plant malignant stories about her in the daily papers, and publish letters revealing that they had had an affair during the first year of her marriage. This blackmail attempt also failed, with the result that the letters were published. According to this account, some of them were genuine and others forged.22
This source also suggests that King and his publishers hoped to sell 10,000 copies, but the grubby nature of their dealings meant that they shifted scarcely a hundred. In a contest between Perdita and an Israelite, the press – especially Bate’s Morning Herald – would always be on the side of the British beauty. Besides, the real prize was the correspondence with the Prince. Within a few days of King’s shabby little publication there appeared a pocket-sized volume of just under a hundred pages, priced one shilling and sixpence: The Budget of Love; or, Letters between Florizel and Perdita. To which are prefixed some interesting Anecdotes of the Fair Heroine. The ‘interesting Anecdotes’ consist of a brief and largely accurate account of Mary’s early life and some fairly detailed allegations about her relationship with Lord Lyttelton. The book was furnished with an address to the reader explaining that Perdita had been so proud of her letters from the Prince that she read them out to her favourite chambermaid and then entrusted them to the girl’s care. Unfortunately, mistress and maid had a falling out, with the result that the letters passed into the hands of the latter’s betrothed, who ‘advised her to dispose of them, for the gratification of the public and her own emolument’.23 This story sounds like a blatant fabrication, leading one to assume that the letters are outright forgeries.
Nevertheless, they were written by someone with both a reasonable knowledge of the course of events and a good ear for the kind of language the Prince and the actress would have used in their letters. Thus Florizel: ‘Did you perceive one more arduous than the rest, pressing his hand upon his heart, and looking all desire, – one more elevated than the common race of men?’ And Perdita: ‘You will say that I write you out of patience; but I have such a pleasure in writing to you, that I cannot forbear it.’24 All the letters are dated between 31 March and 18 April 1780, which is exactly the time when the Prince and Mary were in almost daily correspondence before their first private meeting. Whoever wrote the letters knew that Malden was the intermediary, that financial guarantees were offered before Mary agreed to meet, and that an assignation was eventually made for Kew. There are also some very entertaining novelistic touches:
At length the wished-for hour is fixed, – in my opinion, at a most convenient place: – I wish that you may think so too: – it is at the S[tar]and G[arter], K[ew]B[ridge] – If you will bless me with your sight there to-morrow night at seven o’clock, you will make me the happiest of mortals. – I have thought of a stratagem how to steal away disguised from home, but you will be pleased, my Love, to be at the appointed place first, that I may ask for you in some fictitious name. – Let me know if that hour will be convenient, and what name I shall call you by. – When you address me, call me Williamson.25
The hour of seven seems implausibly early, but the broad outline is consistent with Mary’s own story to Mrs Baddeley of how the Prince would escape from the palace during the night to meet her at the inn on Eel Pie Island.
The broad humour of such publications was a severe embarrassment to Mary: the comedy queen of Drury Lane was now dupe to the hacks of Paternoster Row. A form of consolation came a few weeks later when the Prince tired of Elizabeth Armistead. The Morning Herald reported the news with its customary military metaphors:
A coalition is about to take place between those celebrated leaders of the amorous Squadron, the Arms—d and the Perdita, on the grounds of mutual disappointment: the former having now lost all those regal hopes which kept her towering so long above the rest of the frail Sisterhood, and that to the inexpressible chagrin of the hapless Perdita. A singularity of distress has, however, at last wrought a miracle unlooked for, in uniting those once jarring elements, though it is but by the brittle cement of female friendship!26
The Prince had turned his attentions to a ‘demi-rep’ (woman of doubtful reputation) with aristocratic pretensions called Grace Dalrymple Eliot. She was popularly known as ‘Dally the Tall’. It may also be that he shied away from a commitment to Elizabeth Armistead because he realized that Perdita was going to cost him dear and the prospect of payouts to two women would have been too much to bear. Mrs Robinson’s threat to publish the letters was ‘chocolate-house chat’ all through the spring and early summer.27
The Prince wrote to his brother Frederick, who was still in Germany, lamenting that he had not been present to assist him with the Perdita business. He had been forced to rely instead on the Duke of Cumberland. The news would not have pleased Frederick, given that the King had repeatedly advised the young princes to stay away from their gambling libertine uncle. The Prince insisted however that the Duke was not ‘rioting and raking’ with him. On the contrary, ‘he has acted as my firmest, staunchest and best friend … in an affair in which I wanted the advice of such a friend, which has lately happened, and which I hope will now be speedily put an end to. It originated from the old infernal cause Robinson.’28 He knew he had to get the letters back because of what he had rashly said in them about other members of the royal family, including the King.
Mary, meanwhile, was keeping up appearances. The Morning Post reported that ‘A Pony phaeton is now building in Long-Acre, for the celebrated Perdita, which is said to be the most complete carriage of its kind that has made its appearance for many years.’29 It was probably paid for by Malden. She seems to have been determined to fight fire with fire. If ‘Jew’ King, the pamphleteers, and the gossipmongers were to abuse her name, she would use the newspapers to promote a more positive image. ‘Puffing is now at such a height,’ observed the Morning Herald, ‘that even the fair frails practice it with success … Perdita and others now puff off their qualifications in the different newspapers.’30 From this time on she was often portrayed as a manipulator of the press; when she was poor, the papers joked that she could no longer afford to pay for her own publicity machine.
The first issue of the gossipy periodical the Rambler’s Magazine includes an imaginary dialogue between Perdita, Dally the Tall, and another courtesan known as the Bird of Paradise. They discuss their methods. The Bird of Paradise says that the important thing when you take a lover is not to mention money until the morning. Perdita considers this ‘No bad scheme for fleecing a Fumbler, or a Flogging Cull; but I always endeavour to rivet the nail at once by a settlement, and I have invariably my attorney ready to draw the deeds.’ The Bird then proposes an item for insertion in ‘the list’ (the next day’s gossip column): ‘We hear that Perdita has absolutely refused a settlement of a thousand a year from the D—of N—, so strongly is she attached to her devoted and almost adored Florizel.’ Perdita replies: ‘But middling – however it will rouze Florizel’s feelings, and I shall hear from him in consequence of reading this article. Besides, I shall see him this night at the Opera, and I will place Lord M—n and him so directly opposite, and the Duke on an angle, that one nod, with a smile from me, will bring him home again.’31 This is good satire because it hits upon a truth: a woman such as Perdita was not merely the victim of the press, she was also an arch-manipulator of her public image. If the papers used military language to describe her rivalry w
ith Mrs Armistead, then she would dress up in military regalia for a masked ball. In early May she appeared at the Pantheon ‘en militaire, regimentally equipped from top to toe’.32 The Prince and Malden were both there to see her.
When the papers complained that she was making a show of herself, she announced that she would henceforth be cutting back on her public engagements: ‘The Perdita, is determined, in consequence of her various disappointments, to lead a life of penitence and retirement.’33 She took a house in Old Windsor, ‘where she proposes enjoying the rural sweets of retirement the ensuing summer, unalloyed by domestic jars, or jealous inquietude’.34 Renting a property on the Prince’s doorstep was also a way of making sure that the question of the letters was not forgotten.
The rural retreat did not last for long. Soon she was back in London, attending a masquerade at the Haymarket. Once again she sported a ‘most becoming’ military costume (scarlet faced with apple green), though she did not stay late.35 She was escorted by her two most ardent supporters, Lord Malden and Earl Cholmondeley. She may have had a brief affair with the latter at this time (there were also unsubstantiated rumours of a liaison with the ‘unusually handsome’ Duke of Dorset).
She commuted at high speed between town and Old Windsor in her powder-blue carriage drawn by four chestnut ponies. Both the postillion and the servant on the back wore livery of blue and silver. Sometimes Perdita had a dress to match: ‘The lady dashed into town through Hyde-Park turnpike, at four o’clock, dressed in a blue great coat prettily trimmed in silver; a plume of feather graced her hat, which even Alexander the Great might have prided himself in.’ On this occasion, the Bird of Paradise was passing in her coach and positively ‘drooped her wings at the superior stile in which [Perdita] moved’.36 It was becoming customary for fashionable new garments to be named after the aristocratic lady who wore them first. Uniquely among commoners, Mary took on this role as fashion pioneer. In the spring of 1781, the Lady’s Magazine appointed its first fashion correspondent, Charlotte Stanley, and gave her a monthly column. Under ‘Full Dress for June’ she recommended ‘The Perdita. A chip hat with a bow, and pink ribbons puff’d round the crown.’37
Fearing that her creditors would foreclose on her, Mary spent money while she could. Increasingly wild parties were held in Cork Street and she sat for a portrait by George Romney, one of London’s foremost painters. Around this time, Thomas Robinson returned to her. Mary was surprised to find a letter from him, full of regrets and apologies. The Morning Herald reported the reunion:
The Perdita is unquestionably in better plight than any of her frail sisterhood of whatever denomination. Coach, Vis-à-vis, Chariot, Gig, Cabriole, Phaetons of every complexion have alternately swelled her transient equipage! In the midst of all this whirl of dissipation, she is not unmindful of her marriage vow. – Her accommodating spouse participates in all, and yields implicit the connubial bed, or drives her petit ponies black or grey, just as the moment suits, without or murmur or regret.38
Although Perdita was no longer Florizel’s beloved, she had a panache that none of her rivals could match. The only option for the courtesans was to join forces. But when they did, there would always be a crowd of supporters ready to come to Mary’s aid. One evening at the Opera House, the Armistead and Dally the Tall ‘formed so determined a line against the pink-sterned Perdita’ that ‘the lookers on with all that generous interference which is the characteristic of the country at such times, rushed into her wake and carried her off with colours flying against such shameful odds’.39
CHAPTER 11
Blackmail
If Once betray’d, I scarce forgive:
And though I pity All that live,
And mourn for ev’ry pain;
Yet never could I court the Great,
Or worship Fools, whate’er their state;
For falsehood I disdain!
Mary Robinson, ‘Stanzas to a Friend,
who desired to have my Portrait’
Thomas and Mary Robinson continued to accumulate debts, borrowing money against the security of an eventual payoff from the Prince. Mary’s initial asking price was £2,500, which might be considered modest, given that she had in her possession a signed and sealed bond promising her £20,000 from the royal coffers. But her creditors were losing patience:
The creditors of a once admired Sultana of R—l fame, are become of late more restive and impatient than heretofore, from a discovery that certain arrangements which have been sedulously reported to be in agitation, are proved to be no more than the fairy fancies of the deluded fair one; in consequence of which, a whole train of danglers and dependants have withdrawn their assiduities, a circumstance that must convey an inexpressible mortification to any young woman less aspiring than the once elevated Perdita.1
Becoming desperate, she seems to have recalled the device she had used to persuade Robinson to tell his family about their marriage. Early in July 1781 the Morning Herald reported that ‘Perdita is said to have declared herself pregnant, and desired the great event to be announced to certain R—l ears in form. – Lord C—y is appointed plenipo extraordinary on this important embassy.’2 ‘Lord C—y’ was the fourth Earl of Cholmondeley. A chamberlain to the Prince, he had – like the Prince and most of his male friends – had an affair with Dally the Tall, but he was now, like Malden, inseparable from Perdita. According to the Memoirs of Perdita he was ‘long indefatigable in the pursuit of her’.3
A few days later, the Morning Herald mischievously suggested that, not to be outdone, Elizabeth Armistead was going to try a similar trick: ‘The declared pregnancy of the Perdita, has alarmed the Ar—d beyond expression, who, being strenuous in opposition, is determined to leave no stone unturned to get in the same good way. It is said, she has engaged the celestial bed as a powerful resolvent in obstructions, and drinks the waters of the Islington Spa, to brave the lax fibres, and restore the ravages of time or accident.’4 The celestial bed belonged to Dr James Graham, sex therapist to the stars, whose public lectures on erotic rejuvenation by means of ‘magnetico-electrical fire’ would later be attended by Mary, the Prince, and Charles James Fox.
Press speculation was reaching fever pitch. One morning the Morning Herald carried three separate stories about Mary. The most talked about of them reported that ‘The young German Baroness, who is the present rival of the Perditta, has taken an house in Corke-Street, next door to her celebrated predecessor.’ ‘Young men of fashion’ were gathering round Perdita herself like bees to a honey pot, while she was ‘equally sedulous in her attentions to a young Pole, the object of her choice’.5 There were so many fashionable carriages rolling up in Cork Street that it was hard to know who was visiting whom.
The German Baroness was the Countess von Hardenburg, wife of a Hanoverian aristocrat who had come to London in the hope of gaining an ambassadorial position. She had already tried to seduce the Prince’s brother whilst in Germany. The Prince found her ‘devinely pretty’; when he tried to teach her to play cards at Windsor, neither of them could keep their eyes off each other. He soon enjoyed what he called ‘the pleasures of Elyssium’ with her.6 The affair was kept secret until the Morning Herald broke the story in its article about Mary. But the press report was a case of mistaken identity. The Prince wrote to his brother to explain:
Thus did our connexion go forward in the most delightful manner that you can form any idea to yourself of, till an unfortunate article in the Morning Herald appeared, saying that the German Baroness who had been imported by the Queen, had taken a house next door to Perdita’s in Cork Street, and that my carriage was seen constantly at her door. The confusion which caused this article is that a Polish Countess, Countess Raouska, has taken the house next to Mrs R’s, and the Duke of Gloucester’s carriage is very often, nay even every day seen at her door.7
So it was not the Prince visiting the German Baroness and Perdita charming the Polish Count, but the Prince’s uncle having an affair with the Polish Countess.
But the report in the Morning Herald was enough to make the German Baron suspicious. He confronted his wife and extracted from her an exchange of love letters with the Prince, which led to an ugly scene, with the upshot that the Prince’s ‘little angel’ was dispatched to Brussels. The Armistead and Dally the Tall also retreated to the Continent at this point, leaving Perdita centre stage. The tantalizing prospect of a theatrical comeback was floated once more: ‘The quondam Princess Perdita having had her share of courts and courtly things, is about to quit the delusive scenes of mock royalty, to resume her lamb-collecting crook, and return once more to her innocent flock on the dramatic plains of Old Drury.’8
With the Morning Herald emphasizing her resilience in this way, it was time for the Morning Post to respond with some smears:
Perdita, finding neither tears, puffs, paragraphs, or intreaties, can regain the affections of a certain H—r App—t, has now levelled all her forces against the Earl of D—y, if possible to seduce him from the lovely F—n, whose beauty and amiable qualities render all her endeavours vain and fruitless, and the poor Perdita remains sick in a fit of envy and vexation.9
The lovely F—n was Elizabeth Farren, an actress who actually succeeded in becoming a wife rather than a courtesan: she would eventually marry the Earl of Derby and be praised by one and all as a true lady. There is no evidence that Mary made a play for Farren’s lover. The Morning Post then resorted to the low tactic of adding a decade to her age: ‘Poor Perdita still pursues her favourite point with unremitting attention, and has the vanity, no doubt, to suppose, though turn’d of thirty-four, and may shortly be a grand-mother, that she shall be able to supplant the beautiful F—n.’10 As in a game of Chinese whispers, the rumour that Perdita was pregnant is here converted into a rumour that her daughter is pregnant. Maria Elizabeth was 6 at the time.