by Paula Byrne
Gainsborough, a friend of Henry Bate (whom he also painted), is clearly taking Mary’s side. One senses that he is half in love with her himself. A modern critic has suggested what a provocation this must have been, given that the painting was commissioned by the Prince: ‘Gainsborough dramatises her beauty, sensitivity, sexuality, expressing his own feelings about her and offering the prince visual evidence that he has made a mistake in casting her off. You idiot, Your Highness, is the painting’s message.’36 If that was the message, the Prince either failed to perceive it or regarded it with equanimity, considering the implied insult a price worth paying for the beauty of the piece.
Mary still had her beauty, her health, and her youth. Moreover, she had been successful in portraying herself as a victim of the corrupt court. The Morning Herald took the view that, despite her ‘fracas with her illustrious amorata’, Perdita had ‘preserved a line of conduct so irreproachable and prudent, that even her most rancorous enemies cannot stigmatize her with the smallest reflection’.37 It also praised her ‘universal character for humanity’.38 Her father, meanwhile, was reported commanding a ship called the Resolution, employed to convey stores for the relief of Gibraltar, which had been besieged by the Spanish when they entered the Anglo-French war on the French side.
In early October, there was a sighting that seems to confirm the story that the diamond encrustation of the Prince’s miniature was only undertaken after the end of the affair: ‘The Perdita constantly wears the portrait of the Princely Florizel richly ornamented with brilliants, set in a peculiar and elegant stile.’39 A week later her dress sense seemed to let her down for once. She appeared in a gaudy French outfit rather than the simple dress in which she was seen to best advantage: ‘The Corke-Street Enchantress has adopted the mistaken notion of Frenchifying herself, and now dresses after the Parisian mode. She should leave Gallic art to the old and hagged; and while possessed of nature, beauty and elegance, disdain the borrowed trappings, only necessary to declining age, and wrinkled deformity.’40
Her mind had indeed turned to France. In mid-October she left England for the first time, accompanied only by her little daughter and ‘a necessary suite of domestics’.41 She was heading for Paris, via Margate and Ostend. Grace Dalrymple threw a party to celebrate her departure: ‘A Correspondent says that Dally the Tall gave a superb fete last night at her house near Tyburn Turnpike, in consequence of the Perdita’s departure for the Continent, whose superior charms have long been the daily subject of Dally’s envy and abuse.’42 Ten days later there was a rumour that the Gainsborough portrait was going to follow her across the Channel, reversing the customary etiquette whereby a picture was sent ‘by way of flattering prcludio to the arrival of the fair original’ – ‘here it is reversed, from a conviction that the claims of Perdita are such as stand in no need of a false impression!’43 She would be feted as a heroine in the country that was still engaged in military skirmishes with the British. The Prince may have thought that he had got rid of her, but safe in Mary’s keeping was his bond for £20,000.
CHAPTER 12
Perdita and Marie Antoinette
To desert her country, to fly like a wretched fugitive, or to become a victim to malice and swell the triumph of her enemies, were the only alternatives that seemed to present themselves. Flight was humiliating and dreadful; but to remain in England was impracticable. The terrors and struggles of her mind, became almost intolerable, and nearly deprived her of her reason.
Maria Elizabeth Robinson, ‘Continuation’ of her mother’s Memoirs
Mary crossed the English Channel with letters of introduction to various respectable French families and also to Sir John Lambert, the resident English banker in Paris. She planned to stay for two months. Sir John procured her an apartment, a rental carriage, and a box at the opera. Parties were held in her honour, she cut a figure at ‘spectacles and places of public entertainment’, and ‘a brilliant assemblage of illustrious visitors failed not to grace at the opera the box of la belle Angloise’.1
Lambert was notorious for combining the cordiality of the English character with the stylishness of the French. He introduced Mary to Philippe, Duke of Chartres, the future Duke of Orléans, a cousin of King Louis XVI. Reputedly the richest man in Europe, he was a politician, an Anglophile, and a rake who was said to have a harem of concubines. He was always beautifully dressed and was rated the best dancer at court, though he had a reputation for cowardice, having once left the scene of a battle in order to return to the opera in Paris. A few months thereafter, when ogling the beauties at a ball, he described one unfortunate lady as ‘faded’. She overheard him and replied ‘Like your reputation, Monseigneur.’2
The papers back in London kept Mary’s fans abreast of her latest conquests: ‘She was much admired at the French Opera, and never appeared there without drawing his Royal Highness the Duke of Chartres, and several other leading men of fashion into her box, who it seems had been previously introduced to her by Sir John Lambert, her banker.’3 The Duke quickly let it be known that he was determined to have Mrs Robinson. She was resolute in her resistance, despite his elaborate attempts at seduction. Maria Elizabeth Robinson takes up the story in a section of her ‘Continuation’ to the Memoirs that was almost certainly based on an unpublished manuscript by Mary entitled ‘Anecdotes of distinguished Personages and Observations on Society and Manners, during her Travels on the Continent and in England’:
The most enchanting fêtes were given at Mousseau, a villa belonging to the Duke of Orleans near Paris, at which Mrs Robinson invariably declined to appear. Brilliant races à l’Angloise were exhibited on the plains des Sablons, to captivate the attention of the inexorable Angloise. On the birthday of Mrs Robinson a new effort was made to subdue her aversion and to obtain her regard. A rural fête was appointed in the gardens of Mousseau, when this beautiful Pandae-monium of splendid profligacy was, at an unusual expense, decorated with boundless luxury.
In the evening, amidst a magnificent illumination, every tree displayed the initials of la belle Angloise, composed of coloured lamps, interwoven with wreaths of artificial flowers. Politeness compelled Mrs Robinson to grace with her presence a fête instituted to her honour. She, however, took the precaution of selecting for her companion a German lady, then resident at Paris, while the venerable chevalier Lambert attended them as a chaperon.4
On her first outings in London society while still a teenager, Mary had gazed with wonder on the coloured lights spangling the trees of Vauxhall Gardens. Now the richest man in Europe was illuminating the trees in his vast and elaborate gardens with her own initials. And yet she did not give in to him. After her affair with the future King of England, it would take something other than aristocratic ostentation to impress her.
A few days after this extraordinary birthday tribute, Mary saw Marie Antoinette. The Queen had at last given birth to an heir (the Dauphin) just over a month before. Soon after Mary’s birthday, the Queen was due to dine in public at Versailles for the first time since her confinement. The Duke of Chartres brought Mary a message announcing that the Queen wished la belle Angloise to be there.* Mary immediately began to plan her outfit for the occasion. She hired the services of the royal couturier Mademoiselle Rose Bertin, who had dressed the Queen for her coronation and ever since then was rumoured to have visited Marie Antoinette’s private apartments twice every week (more often even than the hairdresser, who was only summoned once a week). Bertin was notorious for her arrogance, especially in her shop in the rue de Saint-Honoré, once she had become famous as the Queen’s designer. One lady came from the provinces to ask for a dress for her presentation at court, Bertin looked her up and down and then turned to one of her helpers with the words, ‘Show Madame my latest work for her Majesty.’ Bertin was nicknamed the ‘Minister of Fashion’,5 and specialized in gowns in the pale colours that the Queen loved, powder blue, green, and soft yellow; she also loved gauzy flowing fabrics. Mary Robinson, however, was not intimidated by her and ord
ered a dress of pale green silk with a tiffany petticoat, festooned with delicate lilacs. She wore a magnificent headdress of white feathers, and, in tribute to the Queen and the fashion of the court, she stained her cheeks with the deepest rouge.
The royal diners were protected from the public by a crimson cord drawn across an alcove in the palace. As soon as Mary arrived, the Duke of Chartres left the King’s side (where he was then in waiting) and procured her a place where she could be seen by the Queen. ‘The grand couvert, at which the King acquitted himself with more alacrity than grace, afforded a magnificent display of epicurean luxury,’ observed Mary. His Majesty was notoriously greedy. The Queen, meanwhile, ate nothing. ‘The slender crimson cord, which drew a line of separation between the royal epicures and the gazing plebeians, was at the distance but of a few feet from the table. A small space divided the Queen from Mrs Robinson, whom the constant observation and loudly whispered encomiums of her Majesty most oppressively flattered.’6 As the Queen moved to draw on her gloves, she noticed that Mary was looking with admiration at her ‘white and polished arms’, and she immediately uncovered them again and leaned for a moment on her hand, so that Mary could gaze on her at will. Mary noticed that Marie Antoinette was, in turn, looking with particular attention at her bosom, which bore the miniature of the Prince of Wales.
The very next day the Duke of Chartres arrived at Mary’s apartment with a special commission from the Queen for a loan of the miniature. When the Duke returned the picture he gave Mary an exquisite netted purse, a gift from her Majesty. Many years later, after Marie Antoinette had been guillotined, Mary wrote a Monody ‘on the Death of the Queen of France’:
Oh! I have seen her, like a sun, sublime,
Diffusing glory on the wings of Time:
And, as revolving seasons own his flight,
Marking each brilliant minute with delight.7
According to the unpublished testimony of Jane Porter, a close friend of Mary, the French Queen developed an intimate relationship with la belle Angloise. Porter claims that during her residence in Paris, ‘when her loveliness shone in its brightest perfection’,
instead of receiving the Nobles of the French Court, who all crowded to pay her homage, she secluded herself within her closet; and for hours, and days, and weeks, has remained there, studying how to become wiser and better. At this time, (and every Englishman who was then at Paris, must know it;) her society was sought by the first literary characters, male and female, in that country. Even Antoinette herself used to say, ‘Send for the lovely Mrs Robinson. Let me look at her again, and hear her speak, before I go to sleep!’8
Here Mary is represented not only as a beautiful face but also as a cultivated mind and a mesmerizing voice. The impression is given that Marie Antoinette, who was well known for her extremely intense female friendships, has fallen half in love with her. The only problem with the story is that Mary returned to England about three weeks after her first meeting with Antoinette, so it is difficult to imagine that there was time for many nocturnal encounters.
Though Mary refused the Duke of Chartres, she was unable to resist his dashing friend the Duke of Lauzun. Armand Louis de Gontaut (later Biron) was a soldier and a philanderer. He had got into trouble over a misunderstanding with Marie Antoinette. She had admired his plume of white heron’s feathers, and when he was told about her admiration he sent it to her with his compliments. As a courtesy, Antoinette wore it herself. Lauzun took this as an invitation to make a pass at her, but found himself rudely rebuffed. His memoirs suggested that the Queen was smitten with him, but they were generally regarded as a self-serving and unreliable source. Mary’s Memoirs dismiss Lauzun as a disgrace to human nature on account of his vices, whilst at the same time acknowledging that ‘the elegance of his manners rendered him a model to his contemporaries’.9 Lauzun’s memoirs, by contrast, claim that he had a brief affair with her:
She was gay, lively, open, and a good creature; she did not speak French; I was an object to excite her fancy, a man who had brought home great tidings, who came from the war, who was returning there immediately; he had suffered greatly, he would suffer more still. She felt that she could not do too much for him; and so I enjoyed Perdita, and did not conceal my success from Madame de Coigny.10
The war to which he refers here was the American War of Independence. The tidings he had brought home were the news that a combined French and American army had defeated the British under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Soon Mary would meet the most famous British soldier from that same campaign, a Colonel who had actually engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Lauzun (and later became friends with him).
Madame de Coigny was the woman with whom Lauzun was most obsessed. His affair with Perdita caused a rift between him and three of his other mistresses, but he managed to remain on good terms with de Coigny despite the fact that his farewell to Mary caused him to miss a dinner engagement with her:
Perdita left for England, and was so insistent that I should accompany her as far as Calais, that I could not refuse. It was a great sacrifice, for that very day I was engaged to dine at Madame de Gontaut’s with Madame de Coigny; I wrote to Madame de Coigny to say that I was prevented from dining with her; and seized this singular occasion to assure her that I adored her, and should continue, whatever might befall, to adore her all my life.11
Mary made no mention of her noble companion on the road to Calais. There is no record of her feelings about being a mere distraction from Lauzun’s true passion. She did, however, publish memoirs of both him and the Duke of Chartres in the last year of her life. Her account of Lauzun there was much more generous than that in the Memoirs.
‘Perhaps in the pages of biography there never has appeared a more romantic or amiable character than that which was exhibited by this unfortunate nobleman,’ she began her short life of Lauzun. She described how he was the idol of the women and the example for the men at the most polished court in Europe, how he was an Anglophile, a man of exquisite sensibility, an admirer of literature and fine arts. She recalled his residence in Pall Mall and his ‘Platonic attachment’ to a married lady, contrasting this to the marriage alliance into which he was forced by his family. She then told of his military triumphs in America – though without mentioning that he fought against her own lover Colonel Tarleton – and of how he was the man who was dispatched to Versailles with news of the triumph at Yorktown, at a time when she herself (‘the writer of these pages’) was in Paris. She fondly remembered his ‘small villa at Mont-rouge’ just outside the capital, fitted up in the English style and staffed with English domestics. She noted at this point that the Duke of Chartres’ ‘fairy palace of Mouceau’, where she had been entertained so lavishly, was also ‘inhabited by English domestics’.
Always acutely aware of reversals of fortune, Mary observed that Versailles was the temple of delight and Lauzun the hero of the day: ‘His name was re-echoed by all ranks of people; and the surrender of York-Town was considered as the most promising event which had been recorded on the annals of the American war.’ But the French people, particularly those who were blinded by courtly splendour, did not foresee that those ‘who by their valour had contributed towards the establishment of liberty in America, would scarcely permit the ardent effects which it produced to lie dormant in their bosoms’.12 The irony of history was that the Duke who had joined Lafayette in assisting the Americans in their revolution eventually became a victim of his own people’s revolution: he took command of the Army in the Vendée during the anarchy of the early 1790s, where he ‘hourly received accounts of massacres and horrors’, but was then recalled to Paris, imprisoned, and executed by the Jacobins.
‘Here let the sensible reader bestow a tear,’ Mary concluded, ‘while reflection shews the progress of [Lauzun’s] fall from power to degradation; from the most splendid altitudes of fame and fortune, to the gloomy platform of the guillotine!’ This was written at a time when she had undergone her own, albeit lesser, degradation from cel
ebrity and temporary affluence to disability and neglect.
Her ‘Anecdotes’ of the Duke of Chartres (‘by one who knew him intimately’) emphasized the vicissitudes of his relationship with Marie Antoinette, his affair with Dally the Tall, and his path from ‘the brilliant hemisphere’ to the guillotine as ‘the despotism of the French government’ led to revolution, only for ‘Egalité’s revenge’ to turn to bloody ‘rancour’. For the mature Mary, Chartres epitomized the simultaneous allure and repulsion of the aristocracy. He had a fine figure, a constant smile, perfect manners, and great wit, yet ‘under the specious semblance of a gay and fascinating exterior, he concealed an imagination at once bold, fertile, and ambitious’. Taken all in all, ‘this extraordinary and daring personage presented, in his rapid descent from rank and fortune to the platform of a guillotine, perhaps the most singular compound of ambition and degradation, vanity and folly, courage and audacity, that ever marked the tablet of a chequered fortune’.13
News of Mary’s Gallic triumph soon reached England. ‘Dally the Tall,’ reported the Morning Herald with relish, ‘is said to be dangerously ill; her indisposition is attributed to the dreadful shocks which convulsed her whole Frame, on hearing of the reception the Perdita met with among the Parisian nobility, who so cruelly disregarded Dally.’14 The Prince was still intimate with Dally, but the Morning Herald took the view that she would not be able to withstand the reappearance of the lost one: ‘The expected arrival of the Perdita from Paris has planted an agonizing thorn in the pillow of Dally the Tall, who has declared to her unsuccessful Puff in Ordinary, that she is determined upon quitting the Kingdom the moment she is assured of her rival’s return.’15 The advance word on Perdita was that she would be returning with ‘such a train of first rate fashions that cannot fail to set the whole world “a madding”’.16 Dally did, however, have a powerful retaliation: the day before Christmas it was revealed that she was pregnant. The Prince denied that he was the father, but when the baby was born the following March she was pointedly christened Georgiana.