A Royal Scandal
Published in Windlesora 15 (1997)
© WLHG
In Old Windsor churchyard lie the remains of the beautiful Mary Robinson, actress, writer, feminist, and first mistress of George IV. It was once said that “no woman could look upon her grave without a blush and a tear”, but today we may feel that she was more a woman betrayed than a betrayer of her sex.
Born in Bristol of well-connected parents, John and Anne Darby(*), she received a good education, developing a love of reading, writing, and reciting verse. But her difficulties in life began early: she was only nine years old when her father left England on a project to establish a whale fishery on the coast of Labrador. He returned with a mistress, and did little to support his family thereafter.
Mary completed her education at an establishment in London where the dancing master was also ballet master at Covent Garden. A theatrical career was suggested, and she was introduced to the greatest actor of the day, David Garrick. In her Autobiography she describes how he took her under his wing and planned to present her as Cordelia to his Lear.
Unfortunately, in those days men often came to the theatre just to ogle the actresses. Her mother panicked when she realised that even at fourteen Mary’s good looks were attracting predatory males and she decided to get her daughter respectably married, falling for the charms of Thomas Robinson, an articled clerk. Only after Mary had been cajoled into marriage did they discover that he had falsely presented himself as heir to a fortune. Worse, he was a gambler and a rake, with dubious aristocratic companions who saw their friend’s lovely young wife as fair game for their lecherous advances.
Perhaps unfortunately, Mary was introduced to a life of fashionable pleasures and reckless expense. She always remembered her fine outfits then, and she obviously enjoyed attention—even if it meant fending off unwanted admirers. A much-loved daughter, Maria Elizabeth, was born just before her sixteenth birthday, but soon afterwards Robinson was imprisoned for debt. Mary here showed her mettle by sharing prison life until his release. She also spent time writing verses, and her first book of poems was published. But poetry was not the route to riches, and she turned again to the theatre.
The playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan had taken over the management of Drury Lane theatre from Garrick. He arranged Mary’s début, choosing to present the young girl as Juliet. Typically she remembers her dress: it was “a pale pink satin, trimmed with crape, richly spangled with silver”, while her head was “ornamented with feathers”.
For three years Mary triumphed on the stage. Sheridan wrote the part of Maria in The School for Scandal for her, though she was unable to play it owing to her second pregnancy (to her grief the baby died). It was rumoured that he became her lover: if so, there is a nice irony in that—even if the marriage was of a later date—his second wife also lies in Old Windsor churchyard, the two women separated by the church building. Enter a Prince. On 3 December 1779 King George III ordered a performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Amongst the royal party was George Prince of Wales, seventeen years old. Mary, just twenty-one, played the shepherdess Perdita (really the lost daughter of a king) who is courted by Florizel, heir of the kingdom in which she was abandoned. While Mary was nervously waiting to go on stage the actor playing her father, King Leontes, exclaimed: “By Jove, Mrs Robinson, you will make a conquest of the Prince, for tonight you look handsomer than ever”. He spoke in jest, but even while she stood in the wings in sight of the royal box Mary saw the Prince’s gaze fixed on her; at curtain call “my eyes met those of the Prince of Wales…with a look that I never shall forget”. A few days later a friend of the Prince called at her home and delivered her a love-note: it was signed Florizel.
More such letters followed and the Prince sent Mary his portrait in miniature, accompanied by a small paper heart on which were written, on one side “Je ne change qu’en mourant”, and on the other “Unalterable to my Perdita through life”. Dazzled but cautious, she realised the risks of becoming the Prince’s mistress, but perhaps she was in love with him as she always claimed—he was Prince Charming. After some resistance she agreed to secret meetings, the Prince sent a letter promising £20,000 when he reached his majority, and finally she yielded. From then on “The Perdita” became the target of the gossip columnists.
Her new position seems to have gone to her head. Used to being the centre of attention, she is said to have exhibited herself daily in Hyde Park in costumes of different character: one day en paysanne, another patched and powdered as a society belle, another in cravat and riding outfit. She indulged in a string of elegant carriages, one of which was blue and silver with an emblem on the side of a wreath of roses, above it a basket of flowers which from a distance looked like a coronet.
Perhaps alienated by her exhibitionism the Prince soon forgot his vows of eternal attachment, and after only a few months Perdita received “a cold and unkind letter – briefly informing me that we must meet no more”.
A woman of spirit, she was not going to go quietly She dashed off to Windsor Castle in her phaeton – narrowly escaping from a highwayman on Hounslow Heath. But the Prince refused to see her.
Perdita was desperate – deeply in debt, and having left both her husband and the theatre (Sheridan advised her of the impossibility of return). When reproachful letters failed, she played her trump card: the £20,000 promise. For this she has been condemned, but what was her alternative? Finally she accepted £5,000 for the Prince’s letters, and an annuity of £500 a year.
And that, as far as the history books are concerned, was that. Intriguingly, however, there is today a family which claims descent from a daughter of the pair, who they say was brought up secretly in some aristocratic household. It is certainly true that about the next few years of her life Perdita’s Autobiography is evasive. Direct narration stops, and events are selectively told by “a Friend”, presumed to be Maria Robinson who published the book after her mother’s death. It was hardly likely that the beautiful Perdita would retire into a life of quiet modesty, and newspaper gossip and letters show that she continued a leader of fashion, and took a succession of lovers from the Prince’s circle, including the politician Charles James Fox. She sat for her portrait to Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney, and paid a sensational visit to Paris where she was féted as “la belle Angloise”.
In 1781 Perdita was reported by the ever-attentive press as having taken the lease of an “elegant villa” at Old Windsor: in fact this was Englefield Cottage in Englefield Green (rented from a Joseph Daly, but its whereabouts has not been established). To this retreat at Christmas 1782 she took the last of her lovers, Banastre Tarleton, a handsome, thrusting Lieutenant Colonel from the American War of Independence. He had first pursued her as part of a £2,000 wager, but then fell in love with her. The Morning Herald also sardonically recorded a reconciliation with the Prince of Wales, when he met Perdita on horseback near Windsor market-place:
His Royal Highness stopt when he came near her, and pulling off his glove, shook her by the hand; the blushing Perdita holding one of her hands at the same time across her face,—Oh, modesty in the extreme!
Only a few months later tragedy struck. After sustaining heavy gambling losses Tarleton tried to flee the country. Perdita, though pregnant, went after him: the resulting miscarriage left her, still only twenty-four years old, with paralysis of the legs. The rest of her life was spent vainly in search of a cure.
Enforced inactivity and need for money now drove Perdita to pursue a literary career in earnest; both as Mary Robinson, and using pseudonyms, she published all kinds of writing. Though she never made a fortune her novels did well; one, Angelina, a lively epistolary novel with a setting based on Painshill Park near Cobham, sold out in a day. A play, however, was hissed from the stage by a hostile audience. But it was her reputation as a poet that mattered most to her, and she acquired a new nickname, “the English Sappho” (interestingly, she wrote Odes “To a Nightingale” and “To Melancholy” long before John Keats). The Prince of Wales headed an impressive list of subscribers for her 1791 Poems.
She became friends with the philosopher William Godwin, and his partner the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wrote a pamphlet herself about women’s rights. Another friend late in her life was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who called her “an undoubted genius”; the respect of such a discerning intellectual speaks much for her.
But her difficulties grew as her health deteriorated. Tarleton, whose debts she had shouldered and whose political career she had aided, abandoned her to marry an heiress. Facing destitution she had to sell all her possessions, including the carriage on which she had depended to get around. She must often have reflected bitterly on the appropriateness of the name Perdita: it means “the lost girl”. There remained her loyal daughter, who nursed her devotedly at Englefield Cottage.
On 25 October 1800 Mary Robinson wrote some poignant “Lines on seeing a rose still blooming at a cottage door on Egham Hill” (could this have been her own cottage?).
Why dost thou linger still, sweet flow’r?
Why yet remain, thy leaves to flaunt?
This is for thee no fost’ring hour –
The cold wind blows,
And many a chilling, ruthless show’r
Will now assail thee, beauteous rose!
It was, she noted, “a killing hour” for the rose—and, as she well knew, for herself. After much suffering, on 26 December she died. Among her final requests was for a lock of her hair to be sent to the Prince of Wales. She also asked to be buried in Old Windsor churchyard, celebrated then for its romantic “poetical” character, with fine rows of elms and larches, and yews adding a mournful touch. On the last day of the year just two literary friends attended her there. On the tombstone are engraved verses of hers, originally written for a novel, but seeming appropriate. They conclude:
No wealth had she, nor power to sway;
Yet rich in worth, and learning’s store:
She wept her summer hours away,
She heard the wintry storm no more.
Yet o’er this low and silent spot,
Full many a bud of Spring shall wave,
While she, by all, save ONE, forgot,
SHALL SNATCH A WREATH BEYOND THE GRAVE!
Perdita’s grave was at first an object of curiosity, and was tended by her daughter till her own death. Then in the censorious Victorian age she suffered an eclipse. But today’s broader-mindedness and interest in women’s writing have brought her, if not centre stage again, at least out from the wings. Her books have been dusted off and studied, her Autobiography re-issued, and an anonymous benefactor has restored her tomb. She would relish the attention.
Hester Davenport
(*) For these names, at variance with others published, I am indebted to Mrs Enid Ashton, née Darby, who has undertaken genealogical research.
Principal Sources
BASS, Robert D., The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson, London 1957.
BLAIN, V., CLEMENTS, P., and GRUNDY, I: The Feminist Companion To Literature in English, London 1990.
FERGUS, Jan and THADDEUS, Janice Farrar: ‘Women, Publishers, and Money, 1790-1820’ in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 1988, pp. 191-208.
HALL, Mr and Mrs S.C.: The Book of the Thames, London 1859.
HAWKINS, Laetitia Matilda: Memoirs, Anecdotes, Facts and Opinions, London 1824.
HIBBERT, Christopher: George IV: Regent and King, London 1973.
INGAMELLS, John: Mrs Robinson and her Portraits (a Wallace Collection Monograph), London 1978.
LEE, Sidney (ed.): The Dictonary of National Biography, Vol. XLIX, London 1897.
LEVY, M.J. (ed.): The Memoirs of Mary Robinson, London 1994.
LEVY, M.J.: The Mistresses of King George IV, London 1996.
An Afterword
Maria Elizabeth Robinson died in 1818, and is buried in her mother’s grave. A legend has developed since that she haunts the churchyard in the early morning and evening. But it was a very hot afternoon, in July 1995, when Mervyn Allen, a former ICI scientist, saw something strange when walking with his dog through the churchyard. He was in shorts for the heat, so he was astonished as he neared the lych-gate to see a figure go past clad in a long, dark, and hooded cloak. He couldn’t see the face, but instinctively felt that it was a woman, “of elegant carriage”. At the gate he looked in curiosity to see more – but the figure had vanished. Angus Macnaghten in Haunted Berkshire tells a similar story from a “down-to-earth Yorkshireman”, and oddly enough a fellow dog-walker later told Mervyn the same sort of tale, describing the hooded figure before he did. Mervyn had never heard of Perdita or her daughter. One is left to wonder: if there is a ghost in Old Windsor churchyard, might it not be that of the unhappy Perdita herself?
Windsor Local History Group 