Perdita

by Paula Byrne

Who, just at noon, has strength to rise from bed,

  With empty pocket – and more empty head;

  Who, scarce recover’d from the courtly dance,

  Sees with disgust the vulgar day advance:

  Anticipates the wax-illumin’d night,

  Cassino’s charms, and Faro’s proud delight!

  Who hates the broad intolerable sun,

  That points his door to every gaping dun;

  Who saunters all the morn, and reads the news,

  ‘Midst clouds of odours and Olympian dews;

  Till three o’clock proclaims the time to meet

  On the throng’d pavement of St James’s street;

  Where various shops on various follies thrive,

  ‘Beaux, banish beaux – and coaches, coaches drive:’

  While to Hyde-park this titled tribe are flocking,

  To walk in boots – or ride in silken stocking.13

  ‘Could Horace and Juvenal have descanted thus eloquently, on Heroes and Bravoes and Buckskin, on box-lobbies, hops and shops?’ asked one reviewer, while the Morning Post said that the poem was ‘another striking proof of the versatile talents of this elegant and intelligent Author’.14 When Mary wrote of the world she knew, and with a lightness of touch learned from Alexander Pope, she was at her best.

  Mary and Tarleton were not living together by this time, but he was ‘very often at her house in St James’s Place’15 – a compact little square that was just about as close as a commoner could live to the royal residence of St James’s Palace (it also had the advantage of abutting onto St James’s Park, the most prestigious of the London parks, where one needed a royal warrant to drive one’s carriage). In the public eye, Mary was now an independent woman of letters, not just the mistress of a famous man. She was sketched in profile by George Dance around this time, no longer looking like the woman of fashion, but very much the intellectual with her severe gaze, austere dress, and French Revolutionary headband.

  A second volume of collected poems was published on 4 January 1794 (though with the previous year given on the title page). Entitled Poems by Mrs M. Robinson Volume the Second, it was designed typographically to make a set with the 1791 volume, though it came from a different publisher – John Bell having gone bankrupt – and it was not a subscription volume. Priced at twelve shillings in boards, it was aimed at the middle market, somewhere above the circulating libraries for which novels were published but below the elite audience that had characterized the subscription list of volume one. A prefatory advertisement informed the reader that ‘Sight’, ‘The Cavern of Woe’, and ‘Solitude’, the trio of poems published independently some months before, had been included ‘in preference to printing a second Edition’ of them; it was also made clear that many of the other poems in the volume had previously been published in the Oracle ‘with the signatures of LAURA MARIA, OBERON, and JULIA’.

  The volume includes many more personal poems than its predecessor had done, among them Mary’s elegy for her father, many love poems for Tarleton, and a selection of lyrics written for her daughter, including some lines to Maria Elizabeth written on her nineteenth birthday (18 October 1793) that proclaim ‘Whate’er my chequer’d lot has been, / No hour was yet so dear to me / As That Blest Hour which gave me Thee!’16 Another glimpse of her life at this time is offered by ‘Evening Meditations on St Anne’s Hill, inscribed to The Right Hon. Charles James Fox’. Mary spent her summers in Old Windsor, not far from Fox’s country home, where Elizabeth Armistead was in more or less permanent residence. Now that Mary was an author, she no longer considered the Armistead to be a rival. The poem ends by praising Fox’s ‘honest heart’ and ‘patriot bosom’. This was a way of defending her old protector’s loyalty to king and country, despite his initial welcome of the French Revolution.

  One reviewer objected to the fact that so many of the poems were personal: ‘Many relate to incidents in her own connections, and are proudly plaintive.’17 Another critic perceptively noted that the volume had ‘the same beauties and the same faults’ as the first one.18 Perhaps Mary’s greatest deficiency as a writer was the lack of a faculty of self-criticism: she was not good at discriminating between her own good work and bad, and she did not have editors who were strong enough to help her with this problem. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the towering critical intelligence of the age, said some years later that her work was ‘bad, good and indifferent, I grant you, but full, and overflowing’.19 At this stage, much that was bad or indifferent about her poetry could be laid at the door of ‘the gaudy trappings of the Della Crusca school’. She had some way to go before fully rooting out that influence. The Oracle, predictably, had no time for such reservations: ‘we rarely, indeed, meet with elegance equal to the language of this work’.20 Friends such as John Taylor also rallied round with tributes:

  Impromptu to Mrs Robinson, on receiving her Poems

  Then take, dearest Laura, the tribute sincere

  From a friend who admired thee in life’s early hour;

  Who beheld in thy bloom, the sweet promise appear,

  That time has matured to so lovely a flower.21

  Sales figures for Poems Volume the Second do not survive. A new edition entitled simply Poems was published some time later at half the price of the original, which suggests an attempt to shift unsold stock.

  After the success of Vancenza, Mary had been busy planning and writing her second novel, which was to be an exposé of ‘modern times’, an extended fictional equivalent of the poem Modern Manners. As usual, the Oracle furnished some pre-publication hype, this time to the effect that there would be ‘striking resemblances’ to certain well-known public characters. The day before publication, the Morning Post reported news of angry murmurings circulating amongst the ton: ‘All the fashionable Widows are up in arms against Mrs Robinson and wonder how a woman without rank, dares take liberties with great people. – What adds to the crime, is her presuming to espouse the cause of the Swinish Multitude.’22 The ‘swinish multitude’ was Burke’s infamous term for the Parisian populus – it had constantly been thrown back at him by radicals such as Tom Paine and by caricaturists who mocked him as a turncoat. For the more conservative elements of the ton, it was outrageous that Mrs Robinson, sometime royal mistress, should now be mixing in radical circles and espousing the cause of the multitude. But on the principle that all publicity is good publicity, Mary would not have been unduly concerned about the pre-publication chatter.

  The Widow, or a Picture of Modern Times was published on St Valentine’s Day 1794. Dedicated ‘To that Public and those Liberal Critics, who have so highly distinguished my former productions’, it signalled a new departure for Mary’s prose writing, in both style and content. It is an epistolary novel, centred upon a sentimental heroine called Julia St Lawrence, who, like the author, has an American merchant for a father and spends her time reading avidly and ‘scribbling poetry’. She is an ‘American beauty’ with dark auburn hair and blue eyes. Julia elopes and marries and is believed to have perished at sea; her husband remarries and she lives incognito in the country, passing herself off as a widow. The other widow of the novel, who was clearly the cause of offence to the ton, is a vicious, unprincipled woman called Amelia Vernon. Utterly lacking in moral scruple, she wreaks havoc on all who come into contact with her. In a most undignified manner, she revels in her widowhood: ‘Weeds are delightfully becoming; I lamented the hour I left them off; and hope that, one day or other, I shall have the felicity of wearing them again.’23

  Mrs Vernon’s bosom friend Lady Seymour is the most convincing character in the book. She is neither too innocent like Julia nor too corrupt like Amelia; rather, she is a scheming but lively and charismatic anti-heroine who anticipates such figures as the Lady Susan of Jane Austen’s juvenile epistolary novel, or for that matter Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. Lady Seymour is exiled to the country, where she feels she is ‘buried alive’ and makes mischief amongst the locals to amuse herself. In contrast to the many
characters in women’s novels of the period who are victims of sensibility, she satirizes the foibles of sentimentalism, such as the love of nature:

  If I liked mountains and rivulets, and woods, and cascades, could I not have them painted and hung up in my house? They would appear quite as charming, and would have the additional merit of being the same at all seasons: for autumn is insupportable, it warns one of declining beauty! And winter, oh, winter! perpetually reminds me of Sir Charles! [her long-suffering husband] … I should expire, if any body thought me capable of obeying my husband.’24

  As reviewers were quick to acknowledge, Mary drew the follies of fashionable society with a skilful hand. Writing vividly and candidly about the society she knew so well, she exposed the corruption of a world where extramarital affairs were commonplace, virtue ridiculed, and a self-satisfied sense of superiority endemic. ‘My dear Lady Allford,’ writes Lady Seymour, ‘we must keep up an appearance of decorum, otherwise women of inferior rank, who boast only the gothic perfections of talents and sensibilities, would obtrude themselves into notice; and leave us of higher birth, quite in the mists of obscurity.’ And Mrs Vernon: ‘It is now too late to repent, you have bought a titled protection, and you may easily purchase happiness, for your rank places you above the low impertinence of censure.’ People of lower rank but superior intellectual status are unjustly vilified by those who have power. As Julia St Lawrence is warned by her confidante, ‘to be highly distinguished for mental perfections, is, in the eye of ignorance to be guilty of the worst of crimes; because, they are attributes superior to those of birth, are not to be acquired by rapacity, or robbed of their intrinsic value by the fluctuations of fortune’.25

  The epistolary style freed Mary to experiment with different voices, ranging from the sharp satire of Lady Seymour to the cruel wit of Mrs Vernon and the egalitarian views of Lord Allford. Her novel became a forum for her increasingly radical views on education, revolution, reputation, and the iniquities of rank. ‘Nothing shall persuade me, that virtue is not the natural inmate of the human breast; and I believe, that the vast difference of rank, and the vices of those favoured with the gifts of fortune, are entirely productive of all the ills that threaten humanity,’ writes Lord Allford: the idea that humankind is innately virtuous and that inequalities of rank and wealth are the root of all evil comes straight from the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the other intellectual fathers of the French Revolution. Robinson is equally alert to the cycle of violence that is unleashed by the justifiable desire of the lower orders to liberate themselves from subjugation:

  The insolence of what is called the higher order of society, creates that sort of murmuring which awakens the slumbering mind; in those who are most enlightened, it produces a restlessness, which soon grows into contempt! contempt banishes respect, and produces hatred; the next idea is REVENGE! Reason then begins to ruminate on what are the real claims of superiority, and the powers of the intellect assert their right to pre-eminence; we shudder at the horrors of a civil war! We shrink when we behold a torrent of human blood, appeasing the thirst of an incensed multitude. But the ignorance in which the obscure order of the people are nursed, and the perpetual subjection in which they are educated, prevent the expansion of the mind, and make them only sensible of wrongs, and eager for redress. Take the tyger from his den, will he not seek for blood?26

  As Mary wrote this, the Jacobin terror was about to be unleashed on the streets of Paris.

  The novel was rightly praised for having an ‘easier style’ than Vancenza and for its truth to life: ‘the principal merit of these volumes is their exhibiting a picture of modern times, in which the features of fashionable folly and depravity are drawn with a skilful hand’; ‘her characters and manners are evidently drawn from an intimate acquaintance with the fashionable world’.27 Engagingly, Mary was not averse to making jokes at her own expense: ‘I tried to touch my pianoforte; the first song I opened in my music book was, Adieu thou Dreary Pile; I ventured to open a second, which presented that stupid old ditty, Ye fair married Dames; a third, For Tenderness form’d; and a fourth, Mary’s Lamentation. This was too provoking!’28 There is also a certain poignancy in the heroine’s desire to be reconciled with her long-lost father and to live with him in America. For some readers, what was most powerful – especially in the light of Mary’s past – was the book’s defence of beautiful women who succumb to temptation:

  We are all subject to error, and the feeling, considerate mind readily embraces every occasion to commend, rather than to depreciate. Let those who censure examine their own hearts; let them before they condemn, prove themselves immaculate. The frailty of our sex depends on a thousand circumstances, and ought to claim the tenderest indulgence. A woman may be weak without being vicious; a variety of events may conspire to undermine the most powerful rectitude; and the severity frequently exercised by relations in the education of youth, gives an habitual discontent, which renders every scene of life dull and insipid. The mind so tinged with peevish indifference shrinks from the energies of virtue, and easily becomes a prey to the designing. There are women who have no opportunities to wander from the paths of propriety; peculiar deficiency in personal attractions will often shield the weakest heart from the attacks of the seducer; others are placed on such an eminence of delight, so surrounded by all the comforts, the luxuries of life, blessed with the attentions of amiable kindred (while every wish is anticipated by the affections of a worthy husband) that to deviate from virtue would be unpardonable. But let the prejudiced observer turn to that woman, who, perhaps, tenderly educated in the bosom of affluence, with a mind exquisitely sensible, driven upon the mercy of an unfeeling world; young, beautiful, stricken with poverty, shrinking under oppression, assailed by flattery, and allured by splendor; surely the most obdurate heart must sigh for such a wanderer, and confess that, if any thing can palliate indiscretion, it is the combination of such circumstances. But, alas! How few will examine with candour, or judge with lenity! How few will look back upon past provocation, in order to extenuate present culpability!29

  Since Vancenza had been such a commercial success The Widow was printed, by Mary’s personal request, in an edition of 1,500 copies, more than twice the usual print run for a novel. It sold briskly for the first few months, passing the break-even point (which would have been reached at about five hundred copies) and yielding Mary a first payment in July of £21, hardly the kind of money she required to maintain her establishment. Sporadic press comment on the book continued throughout the year. In May: ‘The Daughters of Pharoah are highly offended at the liberties taken with their honourable employment by Mrs ROBINSON in her new Novel’ – that is to say, the fashionable gambling ladies at their faro tables (a set that included Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire) had taken offence at the portrayal of their extravagant addiction. And in October, the Morning Post observed that whereas two years ago the multitude had worshipped Mrs Robinson’s writings ‘even to idolatry’ and named her ‘the English Sappho … whose literary fame would outlive the Pencil of a Reynolds’, now she was ‘the subject of abuse, because her Novel breathes the Spirit of Democracy!!’30

  Mary was indisposed with ‘a nervous fever’ around the time of her book’s publication. Her daughter, meanwhile, was beginning to appear in society. She attended a masquerade at Brandenburg House (the Prince of Wales and Sheridan were also present) wearing the costume of a nun. She was said to be, together with a Miss Jerningham and a Lady Asgill, one of the three ‘prettiest women’ in the room.31

  Maria Elizabeth also made her literary debut. Her first novel was completed a few weeks after her mother’s second one was published. Entitled The Shrine of Bertha, it was a Gothic romance written in epistolary form, with all the conventional elements of the genre: ancient ruins, secret caskets, corpses, and spectres. The heroines are Laura and Sophia. Laura – which was, of course, the best known of Maria Elizabeth’s mother’s pen names – has auburn hair and dark blue eyes (like Mary and several of
her heroines). She has been educated at a convent in Lausanne, where much of the novel is set until the heroine travels to Germany. Laura’s bosom friend Sophia resides in England and sends letters describing dissipated fashionable life. Laura is a disciple of ‘the divine Rousseau’, and is a much more typically sentimental and less feisty heroine than those of Mary. She is in love with her cousin, Henry Percival, who has gone abroad to escape his domineering mother. After many problems and obstacles, chiefly arising from mysterious details surrounding Laura’s origins, they are united. The unexpected plot twist is that the suspected suicide Lady Bertha did not die by her own hand, but was accidentally given an overdose of opium – a misadventure that anticipates the climax of Mary’s later novel, Walsingham, in which the hero nearly takes a potentially fatal dose of the drug.

  Maria Elizabeth writes well about society and manners, offering some fascinating details, no doubt based on personal experience, of life abroad in France and Germany. There are, for instance, colourful descriptions of rural fetes, outdoor tables laden with eggs, cheese, breads, and wine, and of the national characteristics of German women: ‘more like the English than any other nation. They are lively, sociable and unaffected; passionately fond of dress and play.’32 The text is laced with quotations from Shakespeare and references to Homer and Virgil, demonstrating that Maria Elizabeth had received a superior and ‘masculine’ education rather than having merely been brought up for needlework and the piano. The book begins with a dedication to ‘the best of mothers’ from her ‘most grateful and affectionate daughter’. Verses by both mother and daughter were woven into the narrative, the inclusion of new poetry by Mary serving as a bonne bouche for potential buyers.

  A letter from Mary to her friend John Taylor reveals the excitement and apprehension mother and daughter felt in the days before publication: