by Paula Byrne
One malicious story in the Morning Post, concerning Mary’s imminent arrest for debt, was almost certainly true: ‘Perdita’s carriage was stopped in the streets last Wednesday and the pretty bauble touched on an execution; but we are happy to hear that it was soon restored, through the pecuniary interest of a noble friend.’11 This suggests that Malden was now in a better position to help out. He was reaping the financial benefit of his grandmother’s recent death.
The time had come to settle the business with the Prince. It was to be a drawn-out process. Mary’s position was desperate. She was thousands of pounds in debt and had a young daughter to consider. She had sacrificed everything for the Prince and she expected redress. The Prince’s hopes for a clean break were over-optimistic, while the King wrote furious letters to his son about the scandal: ‘I do not doubt that the last evening papers, or those of tomorrow morning will have the whole business fully stated in it. Indeed it is now certain that some unpleasant mention of you is daily to be found in the papers.’12
The Prince, at the request of the King, relied on the ‘discreet’ Colonel Hotham, his treasurer and the King’s aide-de-camp. A month of delicate and tense negotiations can be traced in a batch of surviving letters between the parties.
Hotham had an initial meeting with Mary herself at the house in Cork Street. She made it clear that she was not selling the letters, but was returning them in exchange for the payment of debts. Her point of principle was that she had been a highly paid actress and had given this up for the Prince. Hotham then reported back to the court, and Mary gave responsibility for negotiations to Lord Malden.
The intermediaries had the unenviable task of reaching a conclusion satisfactory to both parties. On 26 July Colonel Hotham wrote to Malden from Windsor, arranging to meet him the following day at Cranford Bridge. The meeting took place and was followed up by Hotham, in a letter written four days later, confirming the Prince’s initial offer of £5,000 for the return of the letters. Lest any misunderstanding should occur, he set out the Prince’s position clearly. Mrs Robinson was to accept the money as ‘a proper and sufficient reward … on a strict retrospect into every part of Mrs Robinson’s conduct during the time the attachment subsisted’. Hotham stressed that this ‘past connexion … never more can be renewed’.13 If she asked for more money, she would get nothing. This was the final offer. His letter drips with contempt for ‘this unpleasant subject’.
Mary was angry and humiliated by the tone of the letter. Malden met with the Prince himself on 3 August at Buckingham House and then at the London home of Lord Southampton, another of his closest courtiers. Mary wanted Malden to raise the issue of ‘future bounty’, which Hotham had curtly dismissed: Mary had not forgotten the Prince’s promise of £20,000 upon his coming of age. The palace wanted the £5,000 payoff to end the business, but Mary fought hard for future provision. Five thousand pounds would scarcely cover her debts. At the meeting the Prince insisted that he was ‘at present’ unable to make specific promises relating to future bounty. Malden informed Mary of this, much to her dismay. She prevailed upon Malden to write directly to the Prince, relaying her grief and anxiety. Perhaps she took heart from the phrase ‘at present’.
In a letter dated 4 August Malden informed the Prince that he had assured Mrs Robinson of the Prince’s ‘sincerity of intention’. He then restated her position: the Prince was accountable for her debts, which had been incurred on the ‘repeated assurances’ that he would honour her expenses and ‘raise her above the frowns of fortune’. She had told Malden that she would never have incurred such debts had it not been for those assurances. ‘The idea of falling from a state of splendor and independence (to which she always flattered herself she should be raised) to a level that must at least be degrading to her, impresses her with feelings that are hard to be forgone.’
Malden desperately tried to strike the right balance between expectation and compromise: ‘she now consoles herself under the hope, that whenever your Royal Highness’s situation shall enable you – you will not be forgetful of her’. He explained that it was ‘under this hope that she has delivered in trust to me every letter that your Royal Highness condescended to write to her’. Malden emphasized that Mary’s pride and honour were at stake. She was anxious that her motives should not be viewed as mercenary:
She still declares she cannot bear the idea held within Colonel Hotham’s letters, that the money therein mentioned is to be the consideration for the restitution of those papers and that she is to be precluded all hope of your R[oyal] H[ighness]’s future bounty. The idea she says shocks her, as it not only carries the strongest appearance of a price put upon her conduct to your R. H. during the time of your attachment to her, but gives her reason to fear that she will be left wholly destitute and without income hereafter, which she trusts your R. H. does not intend should be the case.14
She wanted it to be made clear to the Prince that her only inducement for giving up the letters was his peace of mind. She now required a written acknowledgement that the Prince believed that she was acting in good faith: ‘It is for her satisfaction then, that I request your R. H. to allow Col. Hotham to signify by letter to me, that you are satisfied with her inducement for parting with the papers. Nothing she says can be more injurious to her feelings, nor will she bear the idea of having it supposed that she has sold papers so dear to her.’
The letter ended by reiterating the hope that when the time came, the Prince would do more for her, although she would not lay him under any obligation of ‘doing for her hereafter, any thing further than what your R. H.’s honour and generosity would prompt you to’.15 The clear thrust of the letter is that an annuity on the Prince’s coming of age was non-negotiable. Hotham was equally intransigent: there was £5,000 on the table in return for the letters and that was that.16
Malden wrote back to the Prince, stating that it was unacceptable for Mrs Robinson to receive only £5,000, with no expectation of further assistance. The sum would not even be sufficient to clear her debts; such a proposal was ‘extremely circumscribed and inadequate’.17 Colonel Hotham was having none of it: whatever the Prince might have said in conversation, it ‘never was intended to give Mrs Robinson any Expectation or Hope, much less any Promise more than the Specifick sum’ mentioned in the first letter.18 Malden then bypassed Hotham and wrote to Lord Southampton for clarification of what the Prince had said when they had met in person. Southampton reminded him of the Prince’s exact words ‘I will not say, what I will, or will not do in future. I will make no promises, and will not bind myself. I owe it to the K[ing] not to do it.’ Southampton said that the meaning of the words was that ‘neither your Lordship, nor any other Person should have a right to form future pretensions, in consequence of it’.19 He signed off, saying that he wanted nothing further to do with the business.
The press quickly got wind of the negotiations. The Morning Post did not take a favourable view. What had the laws of Britain come to, it asked, when the royal family had no defence against a blackmail threat from a mere commoner? Besides, the whole negotiation was ridiculous, because even if Perdita were given money in return for the original letters, she would be bound to have kept copies that were just as dangerous. ‘It is certain had Florizel debauched Perdita, he ought to have made her an ample settlement for the loss of her honour; but as it is notorious that this was not the case, his family ought to treat her menaces with a silent contempt.’20
The Morning Herald responded on Mary’s side: the report in the Morning Post was illiberal and groundless; what was at stake was the Prince’s honour – he had made a vow to assist Mary financially and he surely had ‘too much liberality to break any engagement he has really entered into, let the consideration be what it may’. Besides, it was entirely his fault that Mary had for many months past been exposed ‘to every insult and injury’.21
Malden, meanwhile, was unable to stop Mary from sending a furious letter directly to the Prince, stating that she categorically refused h
is ‘unacceptable proposal’:
I will quit England instantly but no earthly power shall make me ever receive the smallest support from you. Your indelicacy in insulting me by such a proposal was totally unaccepted I confess – my conduct has been towards you irreproachable. I hope you will feel every degree of satisfaction in your own mind when you reflect how you have treated me. I have nothing further to say but you shall never be troubled by any further application from me neither will I receive the smallest favour from you.22
Malden tried to cool the emotional temperature and restart negotiations. On 14 August, he wrote two letters, one to the Prince of Wales by the desire of Mrs Robinson and the other to Hotham. He informed the Prince that Mary had authorized him to restore the letters, but still had not abandoned the hopes she had conceived based on the sentiments he had previously expressed and the ‘liberal promises’ he had made her.23 The letter to Hotham asked for a time and place to be specified for the return of the letters, and referred to a list of Mary’s debts that had been sent to the Colonel on the understanding that the Prince had agreed to discharge them in full.24
The same day, a story was leaked to Bate at the Morning Herald, announcing that the dispute over the letters was resolved: ‘It is beyond dispute that Perdita has at length succeeded in her amorous litigation with her hitherto tardy Banker in Wales. Not less than twenty thousand pounds were the stipulated doceur, which sum she is to be put in immediate possession of, on condition of certain manuscripts being surrendered.’ The Perdita, ‘having completed the sum of her worldly wishes with the Treasury Bench’, would be retiring to France.25
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Mary herself was the source of this leak: a public perception that she had been offered the full £20,000 could prove useful in negotiating an increase on the much lower sum that had actually been proposed. On the other hand, the Morning Herald may have been shooting in the dark: a further report two days later said that she had ‘apparently received the vivifying drops of Treasury distillation’, which was certainly not the case at this point.26
The wrangling continued. The Prince in person met Lord Malden at Cranford Bridge and quarrelled over the issue of future provision. The Prince would not bind himself to the future without the King’s consent; the letters were to be returned to Hotham. Hotham wrote to confirm that nothing more would be done for Mary than the payment of the sum originally proposed: ‘I beg, if Mrs Robinson entertains the smallest Hope or Expectation of more being done for her, either now, or hereafter, than the Payment of the £5,000, (which I am concern’d to find she yet appears to do,) that she may be compleatly undeceived, for I am commanded to say nothing ever can.’27 He agreed to meet Malden at Berkeley Square, but Malden refused to hand over the letters until the money had been paid. When Hotham returned to Windsor after this meeting, the Prince was furious that he was not bearing the letters. Hotham wrote again to stress that it was ‘absolutely necessary’ that Mrs Robinson should give sufficient security that the restitution of the letters would be bona fide complete, with no originals or copies retained, ‘in order that not only no Publication of them, or any part of them, shall take place, but that no Eye, except that of the Writer or of the Person they were written to, should look into Papers, which certainly never were intended for the Inspection of any Third Person whatever’.28
The next day (29 August) Mary retorted with a passionate letter to Malden, denouncing the Prince. He forwarded it to Hotham. This is the closest she comes to a direct threat of blackmail. His ‘ungenerous and illiberal’ treatment was justification for ‘any step my necessities may urge me to take’:
I have ever acted with the strictest honour and candour towards HRH – neither do I wish to do any thing I may hereafter have cause to repent. I do not know what answer may be thought sufficient, the only one I can, or ever will be, induced to give, is that I am willing to return every letter I have ever received from his R. H. bona fide. Had HRH honorably fulfilled every promise he has heretofore made me, I never could or would have made him ampler restitution, as I have ever valued those letters as dearly as my existence, and nothing but my distressed situation ever should have tempted me to give them up at all.29
The King, meanwhile, was put in the embarrassing position of applying to the Prime Minister, Lord North, for the money:
My eldest son got last year into a very improper connection with an actress and woman of indifferent character through the friendly assistance of Lord Malden. He sent her letters and very foolish promises, which undoubtedly by her conduct she has cancelled … a multitude of letters passed, which she has threatened to publish, unless he, in short, bought them of her …£5,000 is an enormous sum, but I wish to get my son out of this shameful scrape.30
Lord North sympathized with the King and admired his ‘paternal tenderness and wisdom’, but he still enjoyed reading the letters when Hotham finally obtained them. They were, he would later remark to his son-in-law, ‘remarkably well written’.31 The King comforted himself with the thought that he was not personally engaged in the transaction.
Malden and Mary had to accept that the other side was implacable. The ‘disagreeable business’ was concluded on 5 September when Hotham wrote to say that the payment of £5,000 had been authorized and that he would come round to Berkeley Square on the following Monday to pick up the letters.32 The question of ‘future bounty’ on the Prince’s coming of age was not mentioned. It was not, however, explicitly ruled out.
In public, Mary later claimed never to have held the Prince responsible for the sordid turn of events. But other, more private letters tell a different story, of anger, humiliation, and regret: ‘I, who sacrificed reputation, an advantageous profession, friends, patronage, the brilliant hours of youth, and the conscious delight of correct conduct, am condemned to the scanty pittance bestowed on every indifferent page who holds up his ermined train of ceremony.’33
It seemed that the palace had triumphed over the actress, and that her hopes of an annuity were blasted. But Mary was only temporarily defeated. In the same week that Hotham paid over the £5,000, she raised eyebrows by ordering the very latest carriage, a Bove de Paris, which ‘bids fair to kick the poor brimstone-coloured equipages quite out of doors’.34 She was also causing a stir in the art world. Two weeks after the Prince had called off the affair in December, she had begun sitting for Romney. His asking rate was twenty guineas for a half-length portrait, thus undercutting Gainsborough (thirty guineas) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (fifty guineas). He produced at least two – and maybe up to six – portraits of Mary, one of which was published as an engraving at the height of the letter negotiations on 25 August 1781.
The original portrait from which the engraving was taken remained with Romney and appeared in the artist’s sale after his death. This suggests that, rather than being paid for, it would have been undertaken as a kind of mutual publicity deal: Mary would have the honour of sitting for her portrait in the true manner of an aristocrat, while Romney would get to hang the canvas in his studio as a revelation of his art. Wealthy ladies would be able to come in and say words to the effect of ‘I’d like to commission you to paint me looking as beautiful as her.’ The portrait now hangs in the Wallace Collection in London. Mary appears as a demure Quaker, which, according to her Memoirs, was one of her favourite images. Her hair, bosom, and hands are covered modestly. She is the very picture of innocence.
The very same day that the engraving was published, as the polite world was gossiping about her impending payoff, the Morning Herald announced that Mrs Robinson was sitting for Gainsborough. He was also painting her rival, Dally the Tall. The papers joked that for once they would be painted naturally as opposed to artificially with make-up. Surprisingly, given the ferocity of the private negotiations that were going on between Malden and Hotham, Gainsborough planned to exhibit his Perdita at the Royal Academy beside his recently completed three-quarter-length portrait of the Prince himself, ‘dressed in the Windsor Uniform, green,
with buff collar and sleeves’.35
The portrait of Mary was apparently commissioned by the Prince himself. This seems extraordinary, given that he was trying to expunge her from his life at this time, though it may have been that the commission had come much earlier in the year and that the August sittings were not the first. But there is no doubt that the ‘fine whole length portrait of Mrs Robinson by Gainsborough’ was eventually to be seen hanging in the Prince’s gallery at Carlton House. Perhaps he regarded it as a souvenir of his first great love affair. After all, he would never again have so beautiful a mistress. He was billed 105 guineas for the portrait and made a first payment – over ten years late – to Gainsborough’s widow in 1793.
Gainsborough also executed a bust-length oval-shaped close-up – with the same pose, dress, and black velvet choker – for Mary’s own collection. We do not know whether this was a gift or whether she paid for it. A treasured possession, she kept it in pride of place on her wall, flanked by engravings of the Prince and Banastre Tarleton, until 1785, when her financial affairs became so hopeless that her possessions were auctioned off. It fetched thirty-two guineas and has now found its way to the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. There was also a preliminary study in oils for the main portrait, which remained with Gainsborough’s nephew and assistant, Gainsborough Dupont, until he died in 1797. Then there was another sale, and the Prince bought this to add to his collection, which is testimony to the endurance of his affection for Mary. He gave the full-length portrait away in 1818, but the study is still in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
The big painting – now in the Wallace Collection beside the Romney – has a seated Mary looking pensive and guarded, but very lovely, dressed in a simple and elegant gown, whose lacy hem reveals the most delicate of slippers and just a hint of slender ankle. She is clasping the Prince’s miniature in her hand. Tactfully, it is not rendered in sufficient detail to make his features visible, but a spectator at the time would have had no doubt in interpreting its significance. The portrait is a clear evocation of Mrs Robinson’s abandonment: she is Perdita the lost one, the pensive and thoughtful shepherdess, alone in a melancholy romantic landscape that is painted dreamily and almost impressionistically. The setting is a sharp contrast to the usual Gainsborough landscape style of realistically representing the great estates of the aristocrats who gave him commissions. Mary is carefully posed with only the miniature and a loyal Pomeranian lapdog to comfort her.