by Paula Byrne
Royal Academy of Arts 182
exhibition (1782) 191–2
Royal Legend, The 421
Runaway, The 84
St Amand les Eaux (Flanders) 257–8
St Leger, Colonel 148
Sappho 344, 345
Sappho and Phaon 344–6
Satire on the Present Times, A (pamphlet) 136–7
Saunders, Dr Erasmus 30
School for Scandal, The (pamphlet) 243–4
School for Scandal, The (play) 82, 243
Search after Happiness, The 12
Seys, Richard 392
She Stoops to Conquer 207
Shelburne, Lord 196, 197, 215
Shelley, Mary 343, 351
Frankenstein 353
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 243, 291, 400
friendship with Mary 83, 95–6
and Mary’s acting career 79, 86
Mary’s letter to begging for money 300–1
political career 97, 105, 125
running of Drury Lane 83
views of female education 84
Sherwin, John Keyes 132–3
Shrine of Bertha, The 321, 323
Sicilian Lover, The 335, 339–41, 362
Siddons, Sarah 12, 310–11, 327–8, 329
Sight, The Cavern of Woe, and Solitude 311
slave trade 271
smallpox 10
Smith, Charlotte 64, 345, 424
Smith, William ‘Gentleman’ 107
Smollett, Tobias Humphry Clinker 358
‘Snow Drop, The’ 359–60
Society of Merchant Venturers 7–8, 13
‘Sonnet to the Evening’ 258
Southampton, Lord 164
Southey, Robert 8, 358, 378, 379
Spa 303
Stanley, Charlotte 155
‘Stanzas in Season’ 240
‘Stanzas to a Friend, who desired to have my Portrait’ 305–7
‘Stanzas Written between Dover and Calais’ 302–3
Stephens, Catherine 424
Stuart, Daniel 334, 357–8, 360, 379, 410
Suicide, The 86
Suspicious Husband, The 87
Sylphid essays 381–2
Tarleton, Colonel Banastre 196, 394
affair and relationship with Mary 190, 193, 211, 212, 214, 222–3, 235, 251–2, 253–4, 270, 293, 297, 300, 305, 313, 324, 344, 350
and American War of Independence 180–1
appearance and physique 180
background 180
caricatures of 197–8
death 422
debts 222, 223, 225
ending of relationship with Mary 350–1, 368
as fashion innovator 210
and gambling 214, 223, 257, 262, 323, 351
History of the Campaigns 253, 254, 257
leaves England for France to escape debtors 1, 227, 230
marriage to Susan Bertie 362–3, 422
political career 271, 344
portrait of by Reynolds 184, 185–6, 192
press criticism of 362
promotion to Major General 322, 328
returns from France and resumes affair with Mary 235
rheumatic fever 309
vilified in pamphlets by Pigott 323–4
Tarleton, Jane (mother) 223, 225
Tarleton, John (brother) 251–2
Tate, Nahum 25
Taylor, John 40–1, 274, 311, 316, 325, 328, 356, 357
Temple of Health and Hymen 219
theatre 75–6
costumes 79
view of actresses 88–9
see also Drury Lane theatre
Theatre Royal (Covent Garden) 21, 105
Theatre Royal Drury Lane see Drury Lane theatre
Thrale, Hester 12, 273
‘To the Poet Coleridge’ 413–14
Topham, Captain Edward 266
Town and Country Magazine 120, 143–4
Townshend, Lord John 259
Trip to Scarborough, A 81–2
Twelfth Night 99
Twiss, Francis 343
Valentia, Lord 50–1
Vancenza; or, the Dangers of Credulity 293–7, 298–300, 320
Vauxhall pleasure gardens 253
Veigel, Eva Maria 24
Vis-à-Vis of Berkley-Square, The (pamphlet) 224–5
Wales, Prince of (later George IV) 106, 144–5, 246–7, 261, 424
affair with Elizabeth Armistead 141, 142, 150, 153
affair with Fitzherbert 255, 326
affair and relationship with Mary 1, 3, 110–13, 114–15, 117, 119, 122–3, 124–5, 131–2, 134, 136, 326, 392
agreement to marry Caroline of Brunswick 326
appearance and nature 106–7, 131
assures bond to Mary 123–4, 125, 215, 230
attends royal command
performance of Florizel and Perdita and
meets Mary 106, 107–10, 110–11
caricatures of 108, 137–8, 140, 156, 217–18
correspondence with Mary Hamilton 110–11, 111–13, 114, 115–16
ending of affair with Mary 139–42, 144–5
and Fox 196, 215
health 149
love letters to Mary 1, 37, 113, 117, 118, 119, 123–4
Mary’s sonnet to 308
negotiations with Mary over bond and payment of annuity 216, 230–1, 235, 326, 387, 390
negotiations over return of love letters 161–7
and politics 131, 308–9
press interest and publicity surrounding affair with Mary 128–30
rebellion against father 131, 148–9
relationship with Mary after ending of affair 262
separation from Caroline 346
Walpole, Charlotte 98
Walpole, Horace 7, 126, 200
Walsingham 221–2, 274, 290, 321, 347, 352–6, 358–9, 360, 369, 426
Way to Keep Him, The 389
Weale, Elizabeth 416, 424
Whig Club; or, a Sketch of Modern Patriotism (pamphlet) 323–4
Whigs 131, 195–6, 290–1
Widow, or a Picture of Modern Times, The 188, 316–20
Wild Wreath, The 422, 424
Willis, Francis 260
Wilmot, Harriet 52–3
Wolcot, John (Peter Pindar) 192, 274, 328, 415, 423
Wollstonecraft, Mary 3, 296, 339, 343, 348–9
death 351, 368
influence on Mary’s writing 351
Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman 336
marriage to Godwin 351
review of Hubert de Sevrac 347–8
Vindication of the Rights of Woman 291, 339, 354
Wordsworth, William 23, 264, 383, 384–5, 411
Lyrical Ballads 383, 384
‘The Mad Mother’ 383
The Prelude 23
‘The Solitude of Binnorie’ 411
‘We are Seven’ 384
World, The 264, 264–5, 266
Wray, Sir Cecil 238
Wyndham, Charles 148
Yates, Mary Ann 81
Yea, Lady Julia 51
York, Duke of see Frederick, Duke of York
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the British Academy in the form of a generous research grant to help defray the cost of illustrations, permissions, microfilms, photocopies, and travel expenses.
I am very grateful to the following scholars, archivists, and librarians for assistance of various kinds: Irene Andrews, Matthew Bailey, Jennie Batchelor, Peter Beal, Jane Bradley, Siân Cooksey, Hilary Davies, Elizabeth Dunn, Julie Flanders, Amanda Foreman, Flora Fraser, Ted Gott, Katie Hickman, Alison Kenney, Jacqueline Labbe, Tom Mayberry, Judith Pascoe, Charlotte Payne, Matthew Percival, Linda Peterson, Maggie Powell, David Rhodes, Angela Rosenthal, Wendy Roworth, Diego Saglia, Helen Scott, Sharon Setzer, Stephen Tabor, Teresa Taylor, William St Clair, Judy Simons, Jessica Vale, Steve Wharton, Frances Wilson, Robert Woof, Georgianna Ziegler.
This biography could not have been written without the
resources of the following institutions: Bodleian Library, Oxford; Central Library, Bristol; Bristol Record Office; British Library (special thanks to Matthew Shaw in the Manuscripts Room and all the helpful staff in the Newspaper Division at Colindale, which was my most important source); Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum; Cambridge University Library; Chawton House Library; Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC; Garrick Club Library (special thanks to Marcus Risdell); Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University (special thanks to Luke Dennis); Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford; Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Liverpool Record Office; the Pforzheimer Collection at the New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; special thanks to Stephen Wagner); Royal Archives and Collection (special thanks to the Registrar, Miss Pamela Clark); Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon; Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon; Surrey Records Office; Theatre Museum, London; Wallace Collection, London; Warwick University Library; City of Westminster Archives Centre; Witt Library, London.
I am especially grateful to Rear Admiral Sir Peter and Dame Elizabeth Anson for their generosity in allowing me to see the correspondence between the Prince of Wales and Mary Hamilton and to quote from it here; also for their hospitality while I was in their home. Equal thanks are owed to the staff of the residence where the original manuscript of Mary Robinson’s Memoirs is held and to the Trustees of the collection for permission to quote from it (special thanks to Rodney Melville). Thanks also to Rev. Nicholas Chubb for directing me to his ancestor John Chubb’s portrait of Mary, to Hélène at the Tourist Office in Calais, and to Graham Dennis of Blacklock Books in Englefield Green for local knowledge when I was in search of Mary’s cottage.
Thanks to my incomparable agents Andrew Wylie and Sarah Chalfant. Grateful thanks to my publishers Michael Fishwick and Kate Hyde at HarperCollins in London and Susanna Porter at Random House in New York, and Juliet Davis in the picture department at HarperCollins. Many thanks to Carol Anderson for her scrupulous copy editing.
A huge debt is owed to my friend and research assistant Héloïse Sénéchal. She has been indefatigable in her efforts and has provided assistance and companionship from the darkened rooms of the Colindale library, where we pored over eighteenth-century newspapers for days on end, to the London pubs where we shared lively discussions about Mary Robinson. Heartfelt thanks to Dr Chris Clark for her scrupulous research on rheumatic fever. Rachel Bolger has read the entire manuscript and I am extremely grateful for her most valuable suggestions and comments. Thanks to the mums at the Croft School, especially Tracey Rigby, Sally Manners, and Bev Clarke, who have helped in numerous ways.
Gratitude is due to my good friends who take a generous interest in my work, especially Phil and Jane Davis, Paul Edmondson, Kelvin and Faith Everest, Carol Rutter, and Stanley Wells. Thanks also to my siblings, Collette, Chris, David, Claire, Joe and Rachael, and my wonderful parents, Tim and Clare. My children Tom and Ellie have shown remarkable patience, especially when I was away on research trips – thanks and love to you both. My deepest gratitude belongs to my husband and dearest friend Jonathan Bate, who has endured the pleasures, pains, and privileges of being so long in the company of Mrs Robinson. I salute you, and thank you for your patience and wisdom. My grandmother (also called Mary Robinson, though no relation) has been an inspiration to me all of my life. Though she died a week before the book was completed, I feel sure she would have enjoyed Mary’s story. This book is for her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool, where she is a Research Fellow in English Literature. Her first book, Jane Austen and the Theatre, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, she lives in Warwickshire with her two young children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1 See the list of her works at the beginning of the bibliography.
2 Jacqueline M. Labbe, ‘Mary Robinson’s Bicentennial’, Women’s Writing, 9:1 (2002), ‘Special Number: Mary Robinson’, p. 4.
3 Cynthia Campbell, The Most Polished Gentleman: George IV and the Women in his Life (London, 1995).
4 See especially the admirable work of Judith Pascoe, Romantic Theatricality: Gender, Poetry, and Spectatorship (Ithaca, NY, 1997) and Mary Robinson: Selected Poems (Peterborough, Ont., 2000).
5 Sir Richard Phillips (her last publisher), letter of 8 Jan. 1826, in The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales 1770–1812, ed. Arthur Aspinall, 8 vols (London, 1963–71), iii, p. 135.
CHAPTER 1
1 Walpole, letter of 22 Oct. 1766; John Britton, Bath and Bristol, with the Counties of Somerset and Gloucester (1829), p. 5. I owe these references to Diego Saglia’s excellent unpublished article ‘Bristol Commerce and the Metropolitan Scene of Luxury in Mary Robinson’s Memoirs and The Progress of Liberty’.
2 Bristol Record Office, FCP/St Aug/R/1 (f) 2. Spelt ‘Polle’ in the original register and ‘Polly’ in the Bishop’s Transcript.
3 Memoirs of the Late Mrs Robinson, Written by Herself (1801). Quoted from the edition of M. J. Levy, Perdita: The Memoirs of Mary Robinson (London, 1994), pp. 17–18. For the convenience of the reader, all subsequent quotations are from this edition, but the text has been checked against the first edition.
4 According to the preface to The Poetical Works of the Late Mrs Robinson, including many pieces never before published, ed. Mary E. Robinson (1806), Mary’s paternal grandfather married Benjamin’s sister, Hester Franklin, but there was no Hester among Benjamin’s many sisters.
5 Memoirs, p. 18.
6 Manuscript of Memoirs, fol. 4v, not in published text.
7 Mary writes that he was born two years after the marriage, but the baptismal record (9 June 1752) suggests three.
8 Memoirs, p. 21.
9 Anne Stott, Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford, 2003), p. 10.
10 Erased passage in manuscript of Memoirs, fol. 18.
11 See Richard Jenkins, Memoirs of the Bristol Stage (1826), p. 86.
12 Memoirs, p. 22.
13 Hannah More, The Search after Happiness (1774), quoted in Stott, Hannah More, p. 13.
14 The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi (formerly Mrs Thrale), ed. E. A. Bloom and L. D. Bloom, vol. iii (Newark, Del., 1993), p. 82.
15 Memoirs, p. 25.
16 Memoirs, p. 25.
17 Memoirs, p. 23.
18 Memoirs, p. 26.
19 Memoirs, p. 26. For historical verification, based on primary sources, see the entry on Nicholas Darby in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. iv (Toronto, 1979), pp. 194–5.
20 Manuscript of Memoirs, fol. 30v.
21 Memoirs, p. 28.
22 Memoirs, p. 29.
23 Memoirs, p. 29.
24 The Memoirs of Perdita (1784), p. iv.
25 Memoirs of Perdita, p. 11.
26 Memoirs, p. 30.
27 Memoirs, p. 31.
28 Memoirs, p. 33.
29 Memoirs, p. 34.
30 Memoirs, p. 34.
31 Conversations of James Northcote R.A. with James Ward, ed. E. Fletcher (London, 1901), p. 59.
CHAPTER 2
1 See James Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste 1660–1800 (London, 1997) and The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb (London, 1982).
2 Wordsworth, The Prelude, book 7.
3 First published in Morning Post, Aug. 1800; in Poetical Works (1806) and Selected Poems, ed. Pascoe, p. 352.
4 The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. i, 1768–1773, ed. Lars E. Troide (Oxford, 1988), p. 215.
5 Memoirs, p. 37.
6 Burney, Early Journals, vol. i, pp. 151, 322.
7 ‘Retaliation’ (1774), in Oliver Goldsmith’s Collected Works, vol. iv
(Oxford, 1966).
8 Memoirs, p. 35.
9 Memoirs, p. 37.
10 Memoirs, p. 38.
11 Memoirs, p. 38.
12 Memoirs, p. 38.
13 Memoirs, p. 39.
14 Memoirs, p. 39.
15 [John King], Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite (1781), p. 7.
16 Memoirs, p. 41.
17 Memoirs, p. 42.
18 Memoirs, p. 42.
19 Memoirs, pp. 42–3.
20 Memoirs, p. 42.
CHAPTER 3
1 Memoirs, p. 43.
2 Memoirs, p. 45.
3 Memoirs, p. 45.
4 Memoirs, p. 46.
5 Memoirs, p. 46.
6 Memoirs, p. 47.
7 Memoirs, p. 48.
8 Memoirs, p. 48.
9 Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite, and his Answers to them (1781), quotations from the correspondence: pp. 17, 19, 22–3, 24–5, 26, 28–9, 32, 34, 35–6, 38–9, 40. The ‘Answers’ were probably embellished retrospectively for publication, just as Mary’s letters may well have been doctored, but their consistency – in terms of dates and details – with Mary’s side of the correspondence suggests that King had probably kept copies of his originals.
10 John Taylor, Records of my Life, 2 vols (1832), ii, p. 341.
11 Memoirs, p. 49.
12 Memoirs, p. 49.
13 Memoirs, p. 49.
14 Memoirs, p. 50.
15 Memoirs, p. 50.
16 Memoirs, p. 50.
17 Memoirs, p. 50.
18 Memoirs, p. 50.
19 Memoirs, p. 51.
20 Memoirs, p. 51.
CHAPTER 4
1 Letters from Perdita to a Certain Israelite, pp. 9–10.
2 Memoirs, p. 52.
3 Quoted John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London, 1997), p. 62.
4 Memoirs, p. 52.
5 Memoirs, p. 52.
6 London Magazine (1774), quoted M. J. Levy, notes to Memoirs, p. 160.
7 Memoirs, p. 53.
8 Memoirs, p. 53.
9 Memoirs, p. 54.
10 Memoirs, p. 54.
11 Memoirs, pp. 54–5.
12 Memoirs, pp. 55–6.