The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

118 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

use of her limbs are gone; death stares her in the face” (16 August

1784). A month later, in the same paper, a correspondent defines

prostitute as “a woman who sacrifices chastity to sensuality”; he goes

on to parody Linnaeus by providing a taxonomy of such women.

Robinson is identified in the “order” of “kept mistresses by Princes

and Nobility,” as a “species” of “those who are prostitutes by profes-

sion, as Perdita, &c.” (10 September 1784). The Morning Post at

this time (under different proprietorship) was particularly vicious and

continually reminded its readers of Robinson’s penury and dimin-

ished physical beauty. An engraved print in the Rambler’s Magazine,

for instance, depicts Robinson in rags begging from the Prince of

Wales—a reference to the annuity she was able to secure from the

Royal Family. Her critics viewed this as extortion as well as prosti-

tution, so the papers continued to titillate its readers with hints of

Robinson’s sexual depravity long after her affair with the Prince had

ended: for instance, one report on her sojourn in France imaged “the

Perdita” among “a Convent of Nuns,” noting on supposed authority

that “certain friars, it is said, have found her a very warm convert!”

(25 September 1784). Expressing mock compassion for “the poor

fallen Perdita,” the paper reported on the auctioning of her property

for debts, while licentiously reminding its readers that the “Cyprian

Corps” is without leadership; now there is “no Perdita aspiring to the

queenship of impurity” (10 January 1785, 11 February 1785).

Reports on her activities in the gossip pages of the 1780s, more-

over, had been fascinated with her health and were tinged with the

morbid frisson that the promiscuous Perdita would get what she

deserved—death. Presumably providing what its readers wanted, the

papers exulted in her downfall and disgrace and looked forward to

her demise: the Public Advertiser reported, “The Perdita yet contin-

ues unrecovered; a wretched victim of vicious folly” (6 April 1785).

During the summer of 1786, the papers got their wish: a false report

of her death abroad circulated widely in the papers. For instance, the

General Evening Post noted the death, “in indigence and obscurity,”

of “the once famous Perdita (Mrs. Robinson)” in Paris, describing

it as “another fatal instance of the unhappy tendency of beauty and

accomplishments, when unattended by discretion and virtue!” (11

July 1786). Some tastefully repentant obituaries appeared in the very

papers that savaged her reputation, although the Public Advertiser

and the Morning Post, printing the same obituary, could not resist

asserting that she was her father’s illegitimate daughter (14 July

1786), a claim Robinson felt called upon from Germany to refute in

a widely reprinted letter to the editors (5 August 1786). In asserting

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1189780230100251_05_ch03.indd 118 12/28/2010 11:08:39 AM12/28/2010 11:08:39 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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