The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

The English Sappho 117

or a Play” (191–2).^5 And for Robinson, a lover of Pope’s poetry, the

name Sappho also would have had the negative associations found

throughout his poetry, particularly in the animosity he expresses

toward Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, also called “Sappho.” In his

versification of Donne’s “Satire II,” Pope, for example, adds a super-

f luous jab at Montagu not in the original: “As who knows Sapho,

smiles at other whores” (6). The intellectual woman and the profes-

sional woman writer, long before the bluestocking epithet, was often

regarded as merely a better class of whore, whose talents mitigate

somewhat the sins of that class. Popular English and French transla-

tions during the eighteenth century helped somewhat to rehabilitate

Sappho as a figure of lyrical elegance.

Just as Sappho’s history is replete with claims that she was a nym-

phomaniac, tribadist, and prostitute, Robinson herself, assigned the

epithet “Perdita,” was called a prostitute in the newspapers and was

the subject of popular pornography.^6 While Robinson would have

appreciated the recognition of her poetical talents by the early 1790s,

the implicit comparison between her personal history and that of the

ancient Greek poet potentially could have derailed her claims to poetic

legitimacy and fame by continuing to call attention to her question-

able virtue. When she first became the subject of gossip, most of it

was relatively innocuous and f lattering of her beauty and charms. As

she gradually became associated with a succession of supposed lov-

ers, chief among them the Prince, the gossip became more malicious.

The Morning Herald, for instance, reported on the “midnight orgies

celebrated at the hotel de Perdita” presided over by “the coronetted

high- priest, and other right honorable novitiates” (25 May 1781). The

papers delighted in the suggestion that the Prince and his friends, such

as Lord Malden, Fox, and finally Tarleton, were sharing Robinson’s

body. The Morning Post parodied the papers’ “Ship News” columns

with the clever conceit of “the Perdita Frigate,” which the paper notes

is “a prodigious f ine clean- bottom’d vessel” (21 September 1783). The

column recounts this particular ship’s many exploits, having briefly

captured “the Florizel, a most valuable ship belonging to the crown,”

but in turn was taken by “the Fox” and “the Malden.” The report

concludes with the image of “the Tarleton” “coming along side of the

Perdita, fully determined to board her sword in hand,” at which point

“she instantly surrendered at discretion.” As Robinson’s fortunes

fell, the press gleefully recommended Robinson, identified only as

Perdita, as an object lesson. The Morning Post reported in 1784 that

“a life of wanton dissipation has reduced her to penury and distress;

poverty, with all its horrors surrounds her; her constitution and the

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