Perdita

by Paula Byrne

  In the summer of 1799, just after the novel had been finished, the Morning Post carried similar reports of Mary herself: ‘Mrs Robinson, from her temporary habitation in Piccadilly, looks down upon the little great, without envying their less permanent distinctions’; and, similarly, a week later, ‘Mrs Robinson, from her Piccadilly window, has an opportunity of drawing characters from life; and her pen is equal to the variety of its subjects.’29

  The description in the novel actually fits Mary herself – once the most sought-after woman about town, now confined by illness behind a window – better than it does Martha in the story:

  Often did she mark the cold retiring aspect of deserting friendship, the freezing half bend of distant civility, or the familiar nod of low presuming vanity … It was then that she really knew many of those worldly associates who fly with the warm beams of a summer destiny; many who had obtrusively paid homage to her mind, and obsequiously courted her society, when she was above the necessity of seeking patronage, but who now, grown suddenly fastidious, scarcely condescended to recognize her.30

  Mary becomes so caught up in the writing here that she forgets that her character never had people paying homage to her mind and obsequiously courting her society.

  Martha’s literary labours, like Mary’s, threaten to destroy her health. All that her ‘incessant industry could procure was insufficient for the purposes of gaining a permanent independence’.31 A ‘wealthy libertine’ then offers to make her his mistress for £2,000 down payment and £300 per annum, but she is too proud to accept.

  Martha goes to Spa in Belgium, where she meets the amiable Georgina Duchess of Chatsworth and makes a ‘forcible impression on her’ because of her ‘easy modest grace’. Martha has been left without clothes, but Georgina lends her a wardrobe and asks her to stay:

  The Duchess of Chatsworth was not a being created in the common mould; she could hear and she could feel for the child of persecution: Mrs Morley’s manners and her artless story were sure passports to a soul, sustained, inspired, and softened by the fine-wrought energies of virtue and benevolence: she knew that woman was an ill-fated being; that the world was ever ready to condemn, though tardy to investigate; she could discriminate betwixt the erring and the vicious; she could by soothing the compunctuous pangs of a too credulous bosom, reconcile it to that hope, that conscious pride, which would in future be its best and strongest safeguard.32

  Snobbish and empty-headed Lady Penelope Pryer, meanwhile, ‘could not conceive how the Duchess of Chatsworth, a woman of the most exemplary conduct, could receive a doubtful character, foster a stranger in a foreign country, and become the avowed patroness of one, who had nothing but talents to support her’. Now near the end of her literary career, Mary was paying retrospective tribute to Georgiana for her patronage at its beginning.

  CHAPTER 24

  Lyrical Tales

  ‘Who, to see the lady they were now speaking to, could believe that she had once been called the beautiful Mrs Robinson?’

  Memoirs of the Late Mrs Robinson, Written by Herself

  I have also at Bristol (in the beautiful press of Biggs and Cottle) a volume of Lyrical Tales; my favourite offspring.

  Mary Robinson to Jane Porter, August 1800

  The strain of what the Morning Post called Mary’s ‘mental labours’ led to a further period of indisposition. She remained at Englefield Cottage, dangerously ill and ‘attended twice a day by a physician’. She had retrenched ‘even her necessary expenses, and nearly secluded herself from society’.1

  She was confined to her bed for over a month. One night her fever was so bad that her doctor expected imminent death, but she survived and in the morning fell into a peaceful sleep. Suddenly the door was forced open, shaking the whole cottage. Two men who looked like ruffians marched into Mary’s bedroom. In a faint voice, she asked them who they were. One was an attorney and the other his client: they had come with a summons for her to appear as a witness in a lawsuit they were bringing against her brother. Refusing to leave the room, they persisted with a stream of personal questions. The client said sneeringly to his lawyer, ‘Who, to see the lady they were now speaking to, could believe that she had once been called the beautiful Mrs Robinson?’ After making more ‘savage and brutal’ observations, they threw a subpoena on the bed and left. Mary was so distressed that she suffered violent convulsions.2

  As soon as she was well enough to hold a pen, she began writing again. The Morning Post reported that Mrs Robinson had once more resumed her nom de plume Laura Maria, ‘a name by which her muse first obtained its increasing celebrity, and which will frequently appear in the poetry department of this paper’.3 In September 1799 she republished her feminist treatise under her own name, with a slightly altered title: Thoughts on the Condition of Women, and on the Injustice of Mental Subordination. A preface explained that the first edition had been published back in February ‘under the fictitious Signature of Anne Frances Randall’, but that the recent publication in Paris of a work on a similar subject had induced Mrs Robinson ‘to avow herself the Author of this Pamphlet’. A disadvantage of the acknowledgement of authorship was that the appearance of her name in the list of major female British authors at the back would have seemed egotistic, so the preface also explained that ‘the mention of Mrs Robinson’s works was merely inserted with a view to mislead the reader respecting the REAL AUTHOR of the Pamphlet’.4

  At the end of the year, despite her poor health, she took over from Robert Southey as poetry editor of the Morning Post. Her poems were considered one of the ‘principal embellishments and supports’ of the paper. It was now her role not only to be chief contributor but also to select and edit submissions from other poets. She continued to write in a range of voices and styles: one day she would be ‘Tabitha Bramble’ discoursing wittily in verse on ‘Modern Male Fashions’ or ‘The Ingredients which Compose Modern Love’, the next she would be ‘Laura Maria’ composing a cautionary narrative poem about ‘The Gamester’ who loses everything as a result of his addiction, and a few days after that she would be ‘M R’ writing an ode ‘To the New Type of the Morning Post’ (designed to assure readers of the elegance of the paper’s new layout).5 Some of her older poems, meanwhile, took on a new life when they were set to music by the actress Dora Jordan.

  Mary may also have been instrumental in introducing a fashion column to the Morning Post – here the public were informed that powder had gone out of fashion (‘a white head was considered the height of Gothic Absurdity’) but that the simple white muslin dress, sometimes trimmed with velvet and satin ribbons, was still in vogue. There was also mention of the turban that Maria Elizabeth had made her trademark.6

  On returning to London from Englefield Green, Mary took rooms at 66 South Audley Street, just off Grosvenor Square, a less prestigious address than Berkeley Square or Clarges Street but still within the fashionable Mayfair district, close to Hyde Park and St James’s. Despite her new position at the Morning Post, she was very short of money. She wrote a round robin letter to various magazine publishers, seeking work:

  Sir

  Being at this period unoccupied in any literary pursuit, and wishing to employ my pen for the advantage of my finances, I would like to engage my services in the pages of any monthly publication. If you are the Conductor of a Magazine, I shall thank you to inform me, whether you can find me such employment, either in prose or Verse, and on what terms you could afford to treat with me?7

  She signed herself ‘Mary Robinson, author of Poems, Novels Etc. etc. etc. etc.’ and added a postscript requesting a written answer.

  Coleridge had come to London in late November 1799 so that he could take up a position on the Morning Post, providing articles on politics. On Christmas Eve, he went to supper with Mary and Maria Elizabeth. Godwin was also there. In the New Year, she frequently entertained Godwin, Coleridge, and her editor Daniel Stuart to tea or supper. Godwin’s diary reveals that she also sometimes attended the theatre, despite her immobi
lity.

  Coleridge persuaded his friend Southey to include her poem ‘Jasper’ in the Annual Anthology of new poetry that he was editing:

  I have enclosed a Poem which Mrs Robinson gave me for your Anthology – She is a woman of undoubted Genius. There was a poem of hers in this Morning’s paper which both in metre and matter pleased me much – She overloads every thing; but I never knew a human Being with so full a mind – bad, good, and indifferent, I grant you, but full, and overflowing. This poem I asked for you, because I thought the metre stimulating – and some of the Stanzas really good – The first line of the 12th would of itself redeem a worse Poem. – I think, you will agree with me; but should you not, yet still put it in, my dear fellow! for my sake, and out of respect to a Woman-poet’s feeling.8

  The line that Coleridge so admired was ‘Pale moon! thou spectre of the sky!’ He later quoted it in his tribute poem to Mary, ‘A Stranger Minstrel’. Some weeks later he wrote again to Southey about another of her poems:

  In the Morning Post was a poem of fascinating Metre by Mary Robinson –’twas on Wednesday, Feb 26. – and entitled the Haunted Beach. I was so struck with it that I sent to her to desire that [it] might be preserved in the Anthology – She was extremely flattered by the Idea of its being there, as she idolizes you and your Doings. So if it be not too late, I pray you, let it be in … the Images are new and very distinct – that ‘silvery carpet’ is so just, that it is unfortunate it should seem so bad – for it is really good – but the Metre – ay! that Woman has an Ear.9

  ‘The Haunted Beach’ does indeed have a powerful and original metre, not dissimilar to that of Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’:

  The Spectre band, his messmates brave,

  Sunk in the yawning ocean,

  While to the mast he lash’d him fast

  And brav’d the storm’s commotion.

  The winter moon, upon the sand

  A silv’ry carpet made,

  And mark’d the Sailor reach the land,

  And mark’d his murd’rer wash his hand

  Where the green billows play’d.10

  As winter came to an end, Mary’s health improved a little. She was seen taking airings in her carriage. This was not without hazard. One day she was involved in a serious traffic accident. Her carriage was ‘shattered considerably’ by a collision with another coach: ‘fortunately Mrs ROBINSON received no injury; on account of her lameness, the accident was particularly alarming’. On another occasion the Morning Post reported that Hyde Park ‘was yesterday a scene of splendour; the promenade was crowded with beauty and fashion’ – Mrs Robinson was duly listed among the notables observed. But she was an outsider now. Once she would have paraded the walks in her latest gown and hat, but now she could only watch from her carriage window. A few days later, as ‘Oberon’, she published a poignant poem called ‘Stanzas written in Hyde Park on Sunday Last by Oberon reflecting on all the female beauties who parade in Hyde Park’.11 Here she described the perambulating beauties as ‘British Wonders’. Her comfort for no longer being numbered among the crowd was that she was now an acknowledged British Wonder among authors.

  In order to maximize her literary earnings, she turned herself into a journalist as well as a poet. Between October 1799 and February 1800 she wrote a series of essays for the Morning Post under the heading ‘The Sylphid’. Each piece took the form of a letter to the editor written in the voice of an invisible sylph. ‘I am allowed the power of changing my form, as suits the observation of the moment,’ she wrote in the first essay, ‘I listen with equal scepticism to the Lover’s vows and the Courtier’s professions.’ The role suited her mercurial personality.

  The Sylphid essays return to several of her favoured themes. The neglect of literary talent: ‘I repaired to the abode of neglected genius. I beheld the genuine sons and daughters of the Muses, pining in obscure poverty, and labouring incessantly for a scanty pittance.’ The fickleness of fashion: ‘Fashion is a Sylph of fantastic appearance, the illegitimate offspring of Caprice (for Fashion is of no sex) … Fashion is a distorted Sylph, decked with flowers, feathers, tinsel, jewels, beads, and all the garish profusion of degenerated fancy.’ Demi-reps: ‘A woman of Demi-ton is no less remarkable for her love of notoriety, than for the prominent figure she is ambitious of making, wherever she meets the eye of public observation.’ When she describes a demi-rep as a woman who is conspicuous in her carriage, takes a prominent seat at the theatre, and is always outré in fashionable dress, she is gently mocking her own younger self, while when she writes an essay on the ‘Male Coquet’ who preens himself round the fashionable parts of London she is digging at Tarleton. The series ends with more of her habitual targets such as the ‘WOU’D-BE MAN OF FASHION’ and the pushy self-important ‘Mrs Prominent’, but along the way she takes on newly topical matters, for instance the courage of the ‘British tar’ in the naval war against the French.12

  At the beginning of April, Coleridge said goodbye to Mary and headed north to the Lake District. He left the manuscript of his play Osorio with her, asking her to hand it on to Godwin when she had finished with it.

  Mary had returned to the Memoirs that she had begun writing two years before, then put aside. The Morning Post whetted the public’s appetite for their publication, but Mary broke off her narrative at the point of her affair with the Prince of Wales. When summer came, she drafted some materials regarding her later years under the title ‘Anecdotes of Distinguished Personages and Observations on Society and Manners, during her Travels on the Continent and in England’. Some of the ‘Anecdotes of Distinguished Personages’ – brief biographies of Lauzun, the Duke of Chartres, and Marie Antoinette – were published by Richard Phillips in his Monthly Magazine. Phillips was Godwin’s publisher; he was the man who called Mrs Robinson the most interesting woman in England.

  Mary’s four-part essay on the fashionable pursuits of the metropolis also appeared in Phillips’s Monthly Magazine: it was probably a version of the ‘Observations on Society and Manners’ that she intended to include in her Memoirs. Phillips duly published the Memoirs in the year after Mary’s death. The first part, told in her own voice and extending from her birth to the affair with the Prince, was based on her original manuscript, which survives in a private collection. The second part, or ‘Continuation’, was stitched together by Maria Elizabeth – and perhaps Phillips – from a combination of her own recollections and various fragmentary manuscripts by her mother that are now lost.

  Mary Robinson’s Memoirs is one of the earliest examples of an English writer’s autobiography. Her intention was to undo the scandalous work of such purported biographies as the anonymous Memoirs of Perdita. At the same time, she wanted to trace the origins of her literary sensibility. Like William Wordsworth in his poetry, Dorothy Wordsworth in her journals, Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his notebooks, John Keats in his letters, and Leigh Hunt in his Autobiography, she considered her own life and feelings, her emotional and intellectual development, to be central to her writing.

  Mary’s Memoirs should, of course, be treated with a healthy degree of scepticism. It is difficult not to smile at the avowals of chastity from one of the most sexually talked-about women of her era. Notorious for her manipulation of the public, she was self-consciously pleading at the bar of public opinion in defence of her own reputation. Her memory was unreliable and her narrative contains many contradictions and improbabilities, leading at least one theatre historian to describe it as a ‘work of fiction’.13 Her mission was to present herself as a victim of both male duplicity and the passions of her own feeling heart, but also as a misunderstood genius. The book’s frequent bouts of self-exculpation, together with its overwrought sentimental style and the unfortunate fact that the authorial narrative breaks off long before she began her career as a serious author, have damaged Robinson’s reputation, encouraging romantic novelists of later years to portray her as ‘Perdita’ the royal mistress rather than ‘Mrs Robinson’ the distinguished writer. A
s late as 1994, the Memoirs was republished under the title Perdita.

  Her other major literary task in the spring and summer of 1800 was the preparation of a new selection of her poems. She called it her ‘favourite offspring’.14 She had fallen under the spell of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads of 1798, so she decided to put together a volume of the same style, consisting mostly of narrative poems that she had published in the Morning Post or the monthly magazines. Such was her admiration for Wordsworth and Coleridge’s book that she engaged the same London publisher (Longman and Rees) and the same Bristol printer (Biggs and Cottle). She chose Lyrical Tales as her title and even requested that the book should be printed in the same typeface as Lyrical Ballads.

  Her admiration for Wordsworth was already apparent from an introductory paragraph that she composed when his poem ‘The Mad Mother’ appeared in the Morning Post during her literary editorship: ‘We have been so much captivated with the following beautiful piece, which appears in a small volume LYRICAL BALLADS, that we are tempted to transgress the rule we have laid down for ourselves [of not printing previously published poems]. Indeed, the whole collection, with the exception of the first piece, which appears manifestly to be written by a different hand, is a tribute to genuine nature.’15 The ‘first piece’ in Lyrical Ballads, manifestly written by a different hand, was Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’. Mary was not alone in finding it immensely powerful in itself, but disproportionately long and out of keeping with the rest of the volume: several reviewers of Lyrical Ballads had made the same point. Probably with this in mind, she placed her equivalent of ‘The Ancient Mariner’, a long Gothic narrative poem called ‘Golfre’, not at the front but at the back of Lyrical Tales, so that it would not be off-putting.