Mary Robinson – the Prince Regent's first mistressÌýÌý
Listener's query Ìý
"Who was the mistress of the Prince Regent who successfully blackmailed him?"
Brief summary
Mary Robinson (1758-1800) was a remarkable woman. In today's newspapers she would feature in the Arts supplement as well as in the scandal pages. Not only had she been an accomplished actress but from her mid-twenties she was a poet and novelist, admired and respected by the leading literary figures of the day. But the name by which she was always known was Perdita, mistress of the Prince of Wales.
When Mary met the young Prince, she was already a married woman. Born in Bristol, she had gone to London and was married at the age of 15, disastrously as it turned out, to a profligate, Thomas Robinson. Before she made her name on the stage, she had known the squalor of the debtors' prison. She was taken on by the manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and she built up a reputation in a number of Shakespearean roles.
It was when Mary appeared as Perdita in The Winter's Tale for a Royal Command Performance that the young Prince first saw her. He was 17 and she was 21. It was he who made the first move. Once the Prince caught sight of her, he was smitten. The next day she received a note from him signed 'Florizel'. Letter after letter followed and eventually, though at first she was very cautious about it, she became his mistress. Because of the way she had met the Prince, she was known thereafter as Perdita by the cartoonists and therefore by the public as well. The Prince never let on to his father, King George III, and during the affair, which lasted four years, he gave her a promissory note that he would give her £20,000 when he came of age.
When inevitably there came a point when the prince cast his eye elsewhere, poor Mary's time with him was up. The Prince never paid up as he had promised – he had no money of his own – so, in 1780, Mary threatened to publish their letters unless George III paid £5,000 to recover them.
It was the custom at that time for former mistresses to be paid a sum of money and even an annuity after that. The pile of letters the Prince Regent had written to her was something she could use to redress the wrong he had done her with his broken promises. There was nothing for it - the King had to stump up the cash and the letters were handed over.
After it was all over and her anger had subsided, Mary kept a place in her heart for the Prince, just as he probably did for her. However, Mary went on to other men - among them Charles James Fox, a politician, who negotiated an annuity for her when the Prince reached 21.
When still young, this great and well-known beauty, painted by Reynolds and Gainsborough among others, faced the greatest trial of her life. At the age of 26, she contracted a mysterious disease which left her partially paralysed. She had to be carried in and out of her house and carriage. Strong and very able woman that she was, she reinvented herself as a writer. She wrote prolifically, including well-regarded poetry and seven novels - one of which, Vincenza, was a best-seller in 1792. She made many friends in the literary world including William Godwin, who was in her funeral cortège, and especially Samuel Taylor Coleridge who greatly admired her work and who showed her his poem Kubla Khan years before it was published.
In the late 1790s, Mary's health declined and she died in 1800. She is buried in the churchyard at Old Windsor. Her latest biographer, Hester Davenport likes to think that the miniature which the Prince gave her and which she never gave back is in the grave with her.
Expert consulted
Hester Davenport, biographer
Further reading
Hester Davenport, The Prince's Mistress: A Life of Mary Robinson (Sutton Publishing, 2004)
Christopher Hibbert, George IV (Penguin, 2002)
E.A. Smith, George IV (Yale University Press, 1999)
M.J. Levy, The Mistresses of King George IV (Peter Owen, 1996)
Judith Pascoe, Mary Robinson (Broadview Literary Texts, Broadview Press, 1999)
Websites
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Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý