Mary decided to break her contract with the Drury Lane Theatre so that she could spend more time with the prince, who was claiming she never had enough time for him. Sheridan told her that if she did back out of her contract it would not be offered to her again. She nodded but continued to have it cancelled.
If only Mary had waited a while longer she would have discovered that her ardent lover was playing away from home and was on the point of dumping her entirely.
While she was out shopping for a party for the prince, the royal removalists moved into her apartment and packed up everything. When she returned she thought she’d been burgled. Neighbours told her what had happened and she traced her personal possessions to her husband’s residence, but he was not going to let her have them back. The prince had terminated the lease on the flat (he always had his men put clauses into a lease so he could wriggle out when he wanted to). And, worst of all, Mary had just lost all chance of getting work on the stage to support herself. There was only one course of action and that was to go to the king, George III, to tell him what his son was capable of.
The king was more than aware of his eldest son’s bad behaviour and, in his view, duping an actress – who he viewed as little better than a prostitute – paled into insignificance. For his part, the king was more worried about the enormous debts his son had accumulated through gambling. The signed document that Mary waved around as evidence of the prince’s duplicity was nothing more than an irritation.
However, Mary had in her possession something far more damaging and which posed a real threat to the security of the monarchy: the prince’s sexually explicit love letters to her. She wrote out a sample of some of the juiciest titbits and sent it along with her letter of complaint to the king. She was careful not to say anything that would suggest she was openly blackmailing the family, but it was inferred that if her demands were not met then the letters might happen to find their way into the hands of a journalist. And the public would have loved it.
Mary wanted the £25,000 that was only one-quarter of what she was originally promised. And if the prince’s misdeeds weren’t enough to scare His Majesty then Mary had another little scandal up her sleeve if necessary. Prince Frederick, the younger brother, had an illegitimate child with a common serving girl. The child had been placed with a decent family and Mary knew which one.
There was one big hurdle to Mary’s plan, which was that the prince was already so in debt that his inheritance at 21, though still a little way off, was already spoken for. Lord Malvern, who was in love with Mary himself, tried to negotiate with her. In the end Mary settled for an immediate payment of £1,000 in exchange for a dozen of the letters. Later she would receive another amount for another dozen, and so forth. As she was desperate for money she felt she didn’t have much option.
In order to squeeze more money out of the prince, Mary enlisted the help of Charles James Fox, a lawyer and politician. He too was attracted to Mary and tried to see what he could do. In the end, the best that could be got was an annual income of £500 plus £250 for Mary’s daughter, to be paid to her annually for life. The letters were returned and destroyed. When George became king, still fearful of Mary’s ability to damage his shaky reputation, she was also made to promise never to publish anything defamatory about him, which is probably why her memoirs end where they do. A small print-run of the memoirs was published after Mary’s death and was made available only to close friends and family. It is now available as an e-book from www.gutenberg.org.
Mary had a brief fling with Fox, who was as cunning as his name. Although she quite enjoyed his witty company it was to the stalwart if rather dull Lord Malvern that she turned for further security. In return for a comfortable lifestyle and protection, Mary moved into his lavish London house and became his mistress. She made sure that her young child was kept close to her and was as amply provided for as Mary was herself.
Perhaps Mary would have spent the rest of her life as the privileged lover of Lord Malvern, but unfortunately she gave into temptation and spent a night of passion with Captain Banestre Tarleton, a friend of Malvern’s. Mary’s interest was aroused when she discovered Tarleton was an aspiring author, working on a history of the American War of Independence. This was the lure she could not resist. Her own ambition was to live by her writing, a most difficult thing to do in those times, especially for a woman. What she didn’t know was that the charming captain had made a bet with his drinking friends that he could easily get into bed with her.
Mary gave her new lover two locks of hair, one from her head and one from her pubic area. Oddly, she didn’t question that he asked for this (especially after the same thing had been requested so long ago by the Prince of Wales). They were, of course, trophies to be held aloft in the club where Lord Malvern became the butt of jokes; his beautiful mistress was nothing but a whore.
Mary got into her phaeton (one of the presents she had received from the prince) and raced off to find Malvern to see if the damage could be limited. On the way, the carriage crashed and Mary was pinned underneath it for more than an hour. It was Tarleton who came to her rescue. She was uninjured but in complete shock. Tarleton, to give him his due, was struck with remorse at having been the cause of such a nasty accident and drove her home to his own house. On settling and soothing her they discovered that they had a lot more in common than their one night stand.
Like so many men of his station, Tarleton was deep in debt and his family offered to pay off all his creditors if he took himself to France, without Mrs Robinson, and lived quietly for a while. Not seeing any other option Tarleton wrote to Mary explaining his situation but left without saying goodbye to her. Mary, anxious to keep hold of the man with whom she had so much to share, raised the funds to pay off his debts herself and chased after him to Dover to see if she could catch him before he embarked for France. Another pressing matter was the fact that she had discovered she was pregnant with his child.
The rough trip to Dover was too much for Mary, along with the anguish of losing yet another friend, and on the way she went into premature labour, losing the baby and then contracting rheumatic fever. She nearly died of it and was left very weak and permanently disabled afterwards. Tarleton returned as soon as he heard what had happened. When Mary was well enough the two of them went to live in France, where it was considerably cheaper to live comfortably.
Once across the Channel, Mary and Ban (the shortened form of his name) settled down to a life of writing. Mary helped Ban finish his manuscript of the war in America and then found a publisher for it. Mary herself kept writing poems and brought out a volume when the couple returned to London. Captain Tarleton became Colonel, although this did not help his financial situation, nor did his entering Parliament.
Mary was contented. She could not have any more children after her illness, which had also left her weak in the legs. Mary and Tarleton were together for fifteen companionable years. And then Tarleton did a most astonishing and underhand thing: he married a young woman who would give him an heir. It was done to please his parents but he neglected to tell Mary; she learned of his engagement through the newspaper.
It was the ultimate betrayal: worse than her father’s, worse than her husband’s, much worse than the prince’s – this was the end of her relationships with men. She wrote a novel The False Friend. In it she warned young women to beware of the romantic suitor. The book became a success and a second edition was published. Sales rocketed when it became known that the author was none other than Perdita Robinson who had been a stage sensation and mistress to the Prince of Wales.
Mary ‘Perdita’ Darby Robinson died in 1800.
MARIA FITZHERBERT (NÉE SMYTHE)
The woman who kept a prince
George IV kept up the family tradition of having a stack of women at his disposal. Some of them were no more than prostitutes, paid in cash for their services, others were longer-term arrangements. George and his brothers began this habit while they were all still in their teens
; between them they fathered numerous illegitimate offspring.
This is the story of a woman who was particularly hard to get into bed and had to be tricked into what she thought was a legitimate marriage before she would sleep with him.
Maria Smythe (1756–1837) was a convent-educated girl from a good Catholic family. Catholicism was a difficult religion to practise in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was not illegal but there were no public Catholic services to attend and all marriages had to be performed as Anglican ones first or they were deemed illegal.
When she was 18 Maria fell in love with a handsome young man who had an estate and promised to look after her. His name was Edward Weld. The two underwent the obligatory first Anglican wedding and finished with a private Catholic service at her own home. All was set for a perfect life.
Not three months after the wedding took place, Edward was thrown from his horse and seriously injured. Maria, although distraught, nursed her husband until he died shortly after. Unfortunately, there had been an oversight. Because of their youth and the fact they hadn’t been married very long, Edward had forgotten to make provision for his wife in his will. He should have followed the normal procedure of fixing a percentage of his estate and fortune on Maria so she could live comfortably after his death. Instead everything went to Edward’s younger brother, who refused to give his sister-in-law anything.
In such a case there was only one viable option for a young woman and that was to return to her father’s house. Not long before she got there he had suffered a heart attack and it had left him partially paralysed. Maria was happy to tend her father and live a quiet life to mourn her husband.
Maria Fitzherbert
It was not to be. Maria’s aunt, Lady Isabella Sefton, decided it was not a healthy proposition for such an attractive young widow and dragged Maria out of her retirement to spend four months of the social season with her in town. Isabella had only her niece’s welfare in mind; although Maria didn’t have a dowry Isabella felt certain they would be able to find someone suitable for her.
The Earl of Sefton already had someone in mind, Thomas Fitzherbert: a widower, a Catholic, wealthy and of good reputation. He was ten years older than Maria. Fitzherbert came to dinner, sat next to Maria and found her quite delightful but also without affected airs. She was natural, sweet and modest. He asked the earl if he could pay his attentions to her.
They married on 24 June 1778, again with two ceremonies. Maria was 22. The first ceremony was conducted in public in the village church and then the Catholic one was held in Fitzherbert’s private chapel on his estate, Swynnerton Hall. It was another love match of two mature and quiet people. Within six months they were expecting a baby. Then Maria had a miscarriage. She went into a decline and her husband worried about her health. He decided she needed a change of scene and swept her off to London.
A popular activity amongst the wealthy socialites of London was to drive in a carriage through Hyde Park, particularly the south side’s Rotten Row (at the end of the eighteenth century this was a wide pathway some 4,541 feet long). Fitzherbert took his grieving wife for an afternoon to Rotten Row. Before long the couple became aware of a young man on horseback riding alongside them and staring very rudely at her. She ignored him. Later, her husband informed her that her admirer was the Prince of Wales and that he had a dreadful reputation as a womaniser and made no discrimination between married and unmarried. Maria was put on her guard. Her aunt also reinforced the warnings when she was told of the incident. The Prince of Wales was not a good man, even though he was heir to the throne of England.
In 1778 the Papists Act was passed in Parliament in an attempt to stem the intolerance towards the Catholic community. The act upset a lot of people and, just as Fitzherbert feared, there were public outbursts of anger and violence. It culminated in a series of riots in which the homes and businesses of Catholics were set fire to. One evening Maria’s brother-in-law came to their house in London in a terrible state, calling on her husband to come and help quell the fires and save people’s homes and lives. Ever ready to help, Fitzherbert rushed out into the night.
He returned in the morning, covered in ash, soot, black, burned and exhausted. Maria put him straight to bed, already fearing the worst. Within hours she had a doctor to see him, he was desperately ill. He was suffering from severe smoke inhalation. The doctor advised a change of climate as soon as possible, perhaps to the south of France.
Maria would have done anything to help her beloved husband recover, and having spent years at school in France she was more than proficient in the language. They settled in Nice. Thomas Fitzherbert knew he wouldn’t ever get better, he found it hard to breathe and was wracked with pain. He arranged for his London lawyer to visit him in Nice. Fitzherbert made sure Maria would be left very comfortable after he was gone. The bulk of the estate would pass to a younger brother, this was the usual way of things, but a nice amount was put aside for Maria.
At the age of 37 the heroic Fitzherbert died in the arms of his wife. She couldn’t get his body back to England so had to have him buried in France. As soon as she could, Maria took herself back to the convent where she had been educated, to be cared for by the kind nuns she knew so well. She longed for solitude. She had lost two husbands, both of whom she had loved and had been loved by. There were no children from either marriage to bring comfort to her.
It is highly likely that Maria would have stayed in France, but the French Revolution was looming and she was urged to go home to England as soon as she could. In 1783 she returned home only to find her pending arrival had been splashed across the society pages of the newspapers. It was the last thing she wanted.
Following this there were further newspaper items about the young, attractive widow and her fortune, speculating on who would be the first to woo her. All Maria wanted to do was to be left alone to grieve. Her aunt had other ideas, not to see her remarried necessarily, but she didn’t think it a good thing for her niece to be so wrapped up in her sorrow. They went to Covent Garden to the opera, sitting in a private box where Maria could watch without being gazed upon by a curious public, or so she thought. However, a pair of opera glasses was trained her way and the Prince of Wales spent the whole evening watching the beautiful young woman he had stared at in the park all those years before.
In the general bustle of leaving the theatre, the prince asked Maria’s uncle to introduce them. It was done unwillingly as the earl knew what the prince was up to. Maria for her part did not like the pushy young man.
The prince found Maria’s reluctance to see him very enticing. He was working himself up into a fixation with her. He enlisted the help of his dear friend Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (and whose own story appears in this volume). Georgiana didn’t think much of the prince’s choice for his latest paramour but she agreed to hold a luncheon party and invite the widow – and to sit her next to the prince.
At the lunch Maria ignored her admirer as much as she could without being openly rude. She was heeding her friends’ warnings about him and alarm bells were ringing loudly. On her return home Maria’s aunt again warned her about the Prince’s reputation. The warning was hammered home when later that day a large bunch of flowers and a bracelet were delivered to Maria at her aunt’s house. She kept the flowers and sent a note thanking the prince for them, but returned the bracelet saying she couldn’t accept that kind of gift.
The prince was far from discouraged and made sure Maria was invited to more gatherings so that they could be thrown together. Despite herself Maria enjoyed the social activities; she even began to enjoy the prince’s company. He was an art lover, particularly of French art and this was one of Maria’s own passions. As their friendship grew, the prince sent her a miniature of himself set in a locket. Maria did not feel the need to send back this item of jewellery and she wore it often. Had she known it was almost identical, although smaller, to one that the prince had given to Perdita Robinson, she may have thought differe
ntly.
Maria told her priest of her growing fondness for the prince. He advised her to live a quieter life and move to the country, making accessibility to her more difficult. She took the advice but didn’t move far enough away. She settled on a house in Richmond and began to restore the gardens there. It was not more than a carriage ride, and no distance at all on horseback, so the prince was easily able to visit her in her country idyll. Maria continued to reject his now quite open declarations of love.
Rumours began to issue forth that the prince was so in love with the young widow that he was going to propose marriage. Whether he had any real intention of doing so had no bearing on the matter. He was not yet 25 and therefore could not marry anyone without his father’s (the king’s) permission. What is more, he could not legally marry a Catholic and keep his claim to the throne of England. There was huge opposition to having a Catholic monarch ruling in England. If he had married Maria without his father’s consent then the marriage could be declared null and void. Maria knew this and so did the prince. Yet it seems that the prince was a young man totally self-absorbed. It is doubtful whether he thought further than his immediate pleasure and if he could get Maria into bed he would marry her without thought of the consequences.
Maria, afraid of more rumours circulating to damage her reputation, took on a companion, an older woman, to act as chaperone for the prince’s visits. This meant Maria could begin to really enjoy the prince’s company. Instead of taking it slowly and steadily the prince began to pressure Maria with his assertions, that he needed her to help compensate for his lonely childhood. She sympathised but, wisely, would not give in.
Maria’s confessor advised her to go away again; France was his suggestion. She would go back to her convent and be safe. She told the prince that she did love him but that as they could never be married it was best for her to remove herself from temptation and leave him to fall in love with someone else. The prince’s response was to threaten to kill himself. In July 1784 he pierced his chest with an ornamental dagger, just enough to draw blood. He ordered his barber to dress the wound with used bandages so that the damage would look greater. He then sent a message to Maria that he was dying of a self-inflicted wound. She was horrified, worried but suspicious too. Her chaperone wasn’t available to go with her to see the prince so in desperation she called on the Duchess of Devonshire to go with her.
Other Women Page 5