Perdita

by Paula Byrne

  A caricature called ‘The new Vis-à-vis, or Florizel driving Perdita’ was published in the Rambler’s Magazine that month. It shows the Prince driving Mary’s splendid new carriage, drawn by two goats. A badly drawn Fox rides postillion, holding out a paper inscribed ‘Grant of £60,000’ – a reference to the sum bestowed on the Prince upon his coming of age for the purpose of forming an establishment. Lord North lies on the top of the carriage asleep, his arms folded; his head rests on a pillow inscribed Royal Favor. Perdita has three ostrich feathers in her hair, a sign of her link to the Prince. The caricature reveals that the negotiations between Perdita and the Prince, with Fox as intermediary, were very much in the public eye at this time. Through Fox’s good offices, it was finally agreed that the Prince would pay Mary an annuity of £500 and that after her death her daughter would continue to receive half the sum. The settlement was presented as an equivalent to the bond of £20,000 that the Prince had given her back in 1780, to be paid on his establishment, ‘as a consideration for the resignation of a lucrative profession at the particular request of his Royal Highness’.10 Mary received her long-overdue reward for giving up her stage career at a time when illness was threatening to put an end to her public life altogether.

  Surviving account books in the Royal Archives at Windsor reveal that over the years the Prince was irregular in his payment of the annuity. It was one of his largest regular outgoings, as is apparent from a list of pensions and annual donations made by his treasurer in 1787: £500 to Mrs Robinson is substantially more than the next highest payment (£300 for ‘Musicians’) and his largest donation (£105 to the Welsh Society). It is in an altogether different league from his more domestic disbursements, such as £31. 10s. for Humphreys the rat-catcher and £25. 4s. to a Mrs Duck for ‘coach and necessaries’.11

  Late in September, Tarleton wrote from Douai in France to his brother Thomas. The letter is an untidy, distracted, barely legible scrawl:

  My dear brother I have been rambling – I have been a vagabond and now do not know where to fix … Wisdom and Fortitude ought to teach Philosophy – I trust I shall attain it soon, for I have had adversity enough to chase away all passions.

  I reveal to you——every thing. I reveal to you every thing. I have not forgot Mrs R—oh God such a conflict I hope never again to encounter. I hear she is dangerously ill – But no more. I shall grow distracted.12

  He did not yet know that the catastrophe was in all probability precipitated by her night-time dash in pursuit of him.

  Mary returned from Brighton, but remained virtually bedridden for the rest of the year. A newspaper report in October claimed that she had ‘lost the use of one side of her frail and lovely tenement’ as a result of a paralytic stroke, but a denial of this was published a few days later.13 There was further cruel press comment the next month: ‘The Perdita, who has been ill, mends but very slowly. She is said, from her shattered condition to be unfit for any further service. She is, however, in dock, and the colonel is emptying her cargo, and stopping her leaks.’14 The Colonel was doing no such thing: he was far away in France, anxiously awaiting further news of her.

  The caricaturists continued to harp on Florizel and Perdita. In a satirical engraving of October, she is the seducer of a naive, impressionable young man. George III laments his son’s fall before the charms of the bare-breasted Perdita, while her husband, the King of Cuckolds, looks on, supporting her other lovers (North, Fox, and Tarleton) on his horns. She was still being branded a wanton long after she had been cast off by the Prince and Fox, even as her body was struck down with disease. Late in the year, the Rambler’s Magazine published faked ‘Letters from Florizel’ of an obscene nature. In one he purportedly tells of how when she was visiting him at Colnbrook, he had her splayed out on the bed but then lost his erection: ‘Her short and double breathings heaved her breast, her snowy, swelling breast; her hands that grasped me trembling as they closed, while she permitted mine unknown, unheeded to traverse all her beauties, till quite forgetting all, and abandoning my soul to joy, I rushed upon her, who lay all fainting beneath my useless weight; for on a sudden all my power was fled, swifter than lightning hurried through my enfeebled veins, and vanished all.’15

  At the end of November there was a sighting of the vis-à-vis out and about in London, but the papers also reported that Mrs Robinson had given up her box at the opera and was rarely seen. It was lamented that her absence deprived the winter season of new dress designs: the bon ton had suffered a paralysis of its own as a result of the absence of its fashion leader. Mary’s main occupation as she convalesced was her writing. Her daughter records that ‘even under so severe a calamity, the powers of her mind, and the elasticity of her spirits, triumphed over the weakness of her frame. This check to the pleasures and vivacity of youth, by depriving her of external resource, led her to the more assiduous cultivation and development of her talents.’16 Her return to writing was stimulated not only by her immobility but also by the fact that she was in financial difficulty. Creditors were reportedly knocking at her door. The £500 annuity was proving insufficient to clear her debts. The precious vis-à-vis was seized in execution for a debt, though recovered when Fox generously advanced the money. According to the Morning Herald, ‘the grateful fair one’ determined ‘that the Lion couchant should be erased from the pannels, and a Fox rampant placed in his stead’.17

  During December Sir Joshua Reynolds put the finishing touches to the painting on which he had been working all year. A reporter saw it in his studio:

  Sir Joshua Reynolds has lately finished another portrait of Mrs Robinson; in which she does not retain the composure given her in the character of a beauty, after the manner of Reubens, but appears the dejected Charlotte of Werter … Her aspect is melancholy itself; her hair is disordered; and her attire simple to a degree. The scene of landscape, and water, which is introduced, seems to illustrate the character, and give a portrait of a depressed state of mind.18

  The impression given here is that the image reflects Mary’s state of mind during her months of indisposition, but the decision to paint her in profile with a forlorn expression must have been made when she began sitting for the portrait back in the spring. This suggests that even before becoming immobilized she was planning a change of public image.

  The second Reynolds portrait was widely circulated in the form of engravings in later years. In this form it was given various titles, including Contemplation. It appeared as frontispiece to Mary’s Poems of 1791, her Lyrical Tales of 1800, and her posthumous Poetical Works of 1806. It was thus the authorized image of Mrs Robinson the author. Whereas Reynolds’s first portrait had made her into ‘the character of a beauty, after the manner of Reubens’, in the second one the viewer is intended to concentrate upon her mood. She is the picture of thoughtfulness, introspection, wistfulness. This particular pose of the turned-away head was known technically as a lost profile: a fitting posture for Perdita, ‘the lost one’.

  The decision to place her in a bleak landscape of rock, sea, and overcast sky also turns the portrait into a history painting. The haunting background implies a narrative: Mary comes to resemble an abandoned woman filled with melancholy, gazing with sorrow on a tempestuous sea and a distant horizon. The article in the Morning Herald suggested a resemblance to the dejected Charlotte in the archetypal novel of sensibility, Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, but classically educated spectators would also have thought of Ariadne, deserted by her lover on a desolate rock on Naxos. Deserted females of classical mythology were associated with writing. Their stories reached the eighteenth century by way of Ovid’s highly popular and influential epistolary poems the Heroides, love elegies written in the voices of figures such as Ariadne and Sappho. In this sense, the second Reynolds portrait prepares the way for Mary’s later career as a writer who became known as the British Sappho. The portrait stayed with Reynolds until his death and is now in the Wallace Collection together with the Romney and the Gainsborough.

&n
bsp; Mary’s health began to improve in the New Year. In early January she was seen in the Prince of Wales’s box at the opera, wearing a blue hat and looking very beautiful. Relations with her royal ex-lover must have remained cordial. But she was then ‘confined to her chamber’ for a further three weeks ‘with a return of her rheumatic complaint’.19 She was attended by a distinguished doctor called Sir John Elliott.

  There was more bad publicity at this time. A scurrilous pamphlet seems to have been published under the title The Amours of FLORIZEL, an entertaining narrative, by the highly esteemed Mrs R—n commonly called Perdita (cost one shilling and sixpence). It apparently sold out in a matter of days: a press advertisement announced that ‘Many Gentlemen having been disappointed of the above very entertaining production, have now an opportunity of being supplied with the second edition.’20 Not a single copy of this pamphlet survives.

  By the end of the month, Mary had her opera box back, ‘cushioned with Rose-colored Sattin – like the Queen of France’s’.21 It was reported that news of her debts was false and that the rumour of them reflected badly on the Prince who had recently made her independent. The supposed state of her affairs, both personal and financial, was made public a few days later. Here there was even a mention of her estranged husband, who was still in town:

  It is asserted that Florizel has lately made Perdita a settlement of eight hundred pounds a year; she has likewise five hundred pounds a year, from Lord M—n, exclusive of her house, equipage, etc., which are provided for her. Renard, being now upon half-pay, cannot do any great matters for her in the pecuniary way. – When he gets in again, he proposes to make up all deficiencies.

  There has been a laudable pride in Mrs Robinson’s preferring to withdraw herself from public diversions, rather than purchase pleasure at the expence of delicacy. She deserves applause for this conduct, in spite of all that envy or detraction can invent to condemn her; and, where incontrovertible facts appear to her honour and advantage, it would be unpardonable not to do her justice. – This lady’s husband has got apartments in St George’s Fields. Quere, as she enjoys all the luxuries of life, she should allow him, at least, the necessaries of life, such as provision, pocket-money, a bed-fellow, etc.22

  The amount of the Prince’s annuity is inflated here; the true value of Malden’s is not known for sure.

  On 31 January 1784 the Morning Herald celebrated Mary’s full-scale re-emergence into the fashionable world: she had started ‘appearing in all the attractions of beauty in the different streets of St James’s to the great mortification of the female world’ and ‘notwithstanding the reports of her indisposition we never remember to have seen her look better’. Even the Morning Post was forced to admit that she had fully recovered from what it (inaccurately) called her ‘palsy’. Each morning she drove a few hundred yards down to Piccadilly, took an airing down St James’s Street, through Pall Mall, by the Prince’s residence at Carlton House, and then back home to Berkeley Square again.

  Tarleton was also planning a homecoming. The Fox-North Government had collapsed and he saw the opportunity to begin a political career of his own. He returned to town in March and moved straight in with Mary. Neither his mother nor his old commanding officer Cornwallis was best pleased. ‘The gallant Tarleton,’ the Morning Post revealed in a paragraph full of the double entendre that always surrounded the couple, ‘is again on duty in Berkley-square. He is no longer Perditus but Restoratus. His skill is as great as ever and he can go through all the evolutions, from loading to firing, with the tattoo only.’23 Whether or not the paralysis of Mary’s legs affected the process of Tarleton’s loading and firing in her bed during the later years of their relationship will never be known. Nevertheless, a full decade after being disabled she wrote in her ‘Ode to Rapture’ of ‘Fierce Delight’, ‘The snowy Bosom, beating high’, ‘throbbing pulses’, ‘quiv’ring sighs’, and an ecstasy ‘Too Exquisite To Last’.24 These may be phrases from the lexicon of sensibility, but they also suggest that erotic pleasure was by no means a distant memory.

  CHAPTER 16

  Politics

  I shall be rallied, condemned, – laughed at, and lampooned in all the diurnal prints. I shall be the hero of every magazine; the prominent figure in every caricature shop, for these six months to come!

  Mary Robinson, Angelina

  Foreign affairs did not become easier, despite the end of the American war. With America gone, Britain’s most important colony was India. For generations, it had been run indirectly: the East India Company was the de facto government. The state benefited from the colony through taxes and duties, without the expense of an administrative structure and an occupying army. The problem was that the head of the Company, Warren Hastings, was governing Bengal as if it were a personal fiefdom. Corruption was rife, security was unstable, and the Company was in debt. One thing that Fox and North could agree on was that the Indian situation must be taken in hand – North had previously introduced a Regulating Act and Fox was ready to take forward more radical reform. In November 1783 he introduced an India Bill in the House of Commons. Its intention was to oversee the East India Company much more rigorously than ever before: in effect, the Company would be run by a group of seven commissioners answerable to Parliament, rather in the manner of a modern quango. The commissioners would have the particular task of rooting out corruption and reining in the power of the governors in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.

  The Bill was fiercely debated both inside and outside Parliament. Fox’s enemies portrayed him as ‘Carlo Khan’, making his own bid for supreme power in the East. The House of Commons initially passed the Bill, but after the King wrote an open letter to the Lords stating that anyone voting for the Bill was not only not his friend but his personal enemy, the Bill failed at its second reading. Fox was furious: in his view, to have been beaten by the treachery of the King and the influence of the Lords called into question the constitutional settlement that had prevailed for most of the century. The King dissolved Parliament in mid-session, provoking a major constitutional crisis. He went ahead and appointed 24-year-old Tory William Pitt the Younger Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury (effectively Prime Minister). Fox was not to be a minister again for twenty-two years, and then only for a few months before his death.

  The India Bill and its aftermath spawned many pamphlets and caricatures. In ‘General Blackbeard Wounded at the Battle of Leadenhall’ by John Boyne, Fox is shown lying on the ground, surrounded by his followers. Leadenhall Street was the location of the headquarters of the East India Company. The composition of the caricature is based on one of the most famous paintings of the age, Benjamin West’s vast canvas of the death of General Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec. Immediately behind Fox stands Perdita, bending over him and administering a bottle of smelling salts to his nose. Her right arm is held out behind her to the Prince of Wales, who kneels, kissing her hand, which he holds clasped in his own. What is striking about this caricature is that Perdita is the only woman in it. Although Fox was really living with Armistead and the connection with the Prince was formally at an end, as far as the general public was concerned Mary remained the female face of the coalition.

  The King’s appointment of Pitt to the premiership meant that there was bound to be a general election early in the New Year. It was called in February and a vicious campaign began. The issue at stake effectively came down to a vote for or against the power of the King. Pitt triumphed in a contest that, in the words of Fox’s authoritative biographer Lord John Russell, ‘determined for more than forty years the question of the government of England’.1

  Fox himself fought for the most prominent constituency in the land, that of Westminster itself. The voting system of the time was rather different from the modern system: two seats were available, for which there were three candidates, and the voting took place over a period of several weeks, with a running count of votes being announced each day. Nobody doubted that first past the post would be the war her
o Admiral Hood, so the fight for the second seat was between Fox and Sir Cecil Wray.

  The Prince of Wales canvassed the borough with Fox, which was a mixed blessing, but the aspect of the campaign that garnered most satirical attention was the prominence of Fox’s female supporters – who, of course, did not have votes themselves. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the Whigs, sporting the blue and buff colours and wearing a fox-fur tippet and a foxtail in her hat. She was alleged to have shaken hands with a butcher and kissed a plumber to gain votes. Her sister Lady Duncannon and various other fine ladies assisted.

  It was, however, not only the female aristocrats who canvassed, but also the ‘frail sisterhood’. The Morning Post, which was vehemently anti-Fox, protested that his supporters were mere prostitutes: ‘The modest women have now almost entirely deserted the Fox-Corner, Covent Garden, so that the “Man of the People” is at present supported by the Women of the People.’2

  Mary always prided herself on not being a courtesan. She therefore sought to distance herself from Fox’s less reputable supporters: ‘Perdita is so much offended with the quondam Man of the People for accepting the assistance of the disciples of Sappho, that she has withdrawn her support, declaring her interest shall alone be for a Man for the Woman.’3 She was actually earmarked as the successor to Georgiana as leader of the female canvassers, as the Morning Post made clear in a striking report in the later stages of the campaign: ‘The Duchess of Devonshire is so jaded by the fatigues of canvassing, that she must step down from the niche she has hitherto occupied among the BEVY OF BEAUTIES. Perdita is nominated for the succession by the High Priest of the Temple.’4 Historians have made much of Georgiana’s prominent role in the campaign, but wholly neglected Mary Robinson’s equal prominence.