Although Robinson had been on the stage for nearly two years before meet- ing the Prince, she became an overnight media sensation once he chose her as his mistress of the moment. Robinson takes full advantage of this in her memoir, recreating in detail the moments leading up to her performance of Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, before the Royal family in 1779. She was ner- vous before the play and recalled that Mr. Smith, who was to play her father, Leontes, joked, “By jove, Mrs. Robinson you will make a conquest of the prince for tonight you look handsomer than ever” (vol. 2, 37). In true Cin- derella fashion, Robinson denies any prior thoughts of seducing the Prince and describes in detail the moment that their eyes met:
The Prince’s particular attention was observed by everyone. . . . On the last curtsy, the royal family condescendingly returned a bow to the perform- ers; but just as the curtain was falling my eyes met those of the Prince of Wales; and, with a look that I shall never forget, he gently inclined his head a second time; I felt the compliment and blushed my gratitude. (vol. 2, 39; Robinson’s emphasis)
The power of Robinson’s performance is analogous to the power of celebrity status. Her appearance disrupts class boundaries, social constructs, the divide between the audience and the actors, and the separation between Robinson- as-Perdita and Robinson-as-herself. In this instant, she has achieved a per- fect state of fame—recognition by the heir to the English throne, the “ideal” man, and the ideal audience. At the same time, this moment of celebrity recognition, when Robinson is able to escape the realities of her “real” life, is also a haunting reminder of what will be. Her readers have been led through the narrative in anticipation of this very moment and the inevitability of her demise afterward. Robinson will always be trapped by her domestic role, by
mary robinson’s gothic celebrity 95
the need to care for and support her daughter, and by the consequences of her doomed liaison with the Prince. Thus, the moment when her body mat- ters most is also the moment that signals the price of her celebrity and her own futile attempts to recapture its original authentic moment.
Robinson and the Prince became associated for a short while. Cartoons in the press depicted Robinson as Perdita and the Prince as a smitten Flori- zel. Although the affair ended quickly, and Robinson negotiated a deal with the Royal Family for a monthly allowance in exchange for his incriminating letters to her, none of these financial details are included in the section of the memoir that was written by Robinson. Robinson insists that the Prince was responsible for their clandestine correspondence and that he sent her a miniature of himself with an inscription that read: “Je ne change qu’en mou-
rant; Unalterable to my Perdita through life” (vol. 2, 47).53 Curiously, Rob-
inson’s “authentic” portion of the memoir ends abruptly and is continued by a “friend” just at the point in the narrative where she is invited to “Meet the royal Highness in his apartments.”54
The “friend” in question is Robinson’s daughter, who managed to find a lengthy letter written by her mother that picked up the narrative right where it ended. The mysterious letter that continues the memoir is written to an anonymous male friend in America. Robinson did have a long rela- tionship with Colonel Banastre Tarleton who was stationed for a period in America; however, the text fits so seamlessly into the narrative that it seems as if the references to this person were added in order to provide an audi- ence for this “letter.” Who, then, wrote this portion of the memoir? Most scholars agree that Robinson’s daughter, Maria, herself an unsuccessful nov- elist, wrote the letter in her mother’s voice in order to make the story appear to be more complete and authentic, or perhaps the original letter existed in fragments that Maria pieced together in order to finish the text. Even more compelling is the idea that at this point in her story, Robinson was no lon- ger able to use Gothic strategies to fashion her celebrity, so she disappears as an authorial presence. Robinson cuts off her story just at the point where her performances begin to have consequences, and she cannot resort to liter- ary categories to rescue her reputation. In true Robinson fashion, the secret of who wrote the letter and the rest of volume two is the memoir’s Gothic paradox. Robinson ultimately becomes the ghost that haunts her own story. While Robinson could negotiate strategic disappearances at points in the memoir where her body became enmeshed in scandal and intrigue, off stage her ability to project idealized images of herself became increasingly difficult. In the same way that she vanished from her memoir, she gradually disap- peared from public view. Despite Robinson’s associations in her later years
chaPter two 96
with notable figures, including the Duchess of Devonshire, Sheridan, Fox, Coleridge, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft, she died virtually alone with only her daughter left to mourn her passing. A segment of the author Jane Porter’s diary reveals what society thought about Robinson near the end of her life. She writes about the moment when she heard of Robinson’s death:
I pleaded a nervous headache, and made that an excuse for the tears which poured down my cheeks. . . . I one moment despised myself, for being ashamed to avow feelings, which I could not condemn, and the next I excused myself from the conviction that it was only a prudence due to my sister and myself not to publish a conduct, which however guilty, would draw on us the disrespect of many of our friends, and most likely the scan-
dal of the world.55
Ultimately, Robinson’s visual, narrative, and theatrical attempts to rescue her damaged reputation were thwarted by the menacing scrutiny of public opinion. Her status as an adulteress and an actress would follow her until her death in 1800.
Robinson’s final poem entitled “All Alone” ends, significantly, with a ref- erence to dressing and adornment:
My Father never will return, He rests beneath the sea-green wave: I have no kindred left to mourn When I am hid in yonder grave;
No one! To dress with flowers the stone:—
Then—surely I am left alone!56
The image of Robinson’s bare grave stone is perhaps a fitting end for a life spent dressing, disguising, and fashioning identities. The limits of Robinson’s success in fashioning her celebrity suggest the ways in which celebrity is tied to an actress’s ability to project idealized narratives of femininity through written, visual, and theatrical strategies. Robinson was able to partially rein- vent herself because of her talents as an actress and an author. In the end, though, despite her use of Gothic strategies, a process aimed at creating meaningful links among her varied self-representations, she could not recon- cile her public reputation with the personas that she hoped would make her seem valuable in the eyes of eighteenth-century audiences.
The ideals of eighteenth-century femininity that Siddons and Robinson cultivated in their self-fashioning strategies would be alternately parodied
mary robinson’s gothic celebrity 97
and ignored by the actress Mary Wells, the subject of the next chapter. Wells deviated so far from the norm in her self-representations that her contempo- raries labeled her mad, disturbing, and wildly eccentric. Wells’s unique brand of theatricality looks forward to characterizations of nineteenth-century madwomen, who, in acting out on their desires, challenged and threatened Victorian ideals of feminine domesticity and passivity. For Wells, fashioning celebrity meant creating all her own rules.
98
in 1791, John Russell exhibited a painting at The Royal Academy titled,
Portrait of a Lady and Three Children.1 The lady, who was later revealed by
The Morning Chronicle to be the actress Mary Wells, sits gazing down at her
three lovely daughters. The children are captured in a moment of carefree innocence. One child uses a feather to tickle her sister who is holding a bas- ket of flowers. The daughter closest to Wells gestures playfully toward her mother. Wells smiles contentedly at her little ones with a mixture of protec- tiveness and pride. With her large eyes, cherubic mouth, and subtle dress, Wells is the ideal of feminine domestic beauty in this portrait.
What is absent from the painting, however, is just as interesting as what is depicted. The most striking omission is the image of the father, Edward Topham, who was Wells’s lover but not her husband. After her identity was revealed, the portrait became known as “Mrs. Topham and her three children.”2 Art historian Marcia Pointon observes in her book, Hanging the
Head, that a missing father in an eighteenth-century family portrait is often
“a deliberate narrative device that sharpens the perception of the patriar- chal.”3 Thus, the most powerful figure in the family constellation is even
more significant when alluded to but not represented. In the Russell por- trait, the fantasy of legitimacy, intimacy, and naturalness that this painting conveys would be ruined by Topham’s presence. Without him, the painting is simply titled, Portrait of a Lady and Three Children.4 There is no hint that
Wells was an actress, that her relationship with Topham was not traditional, or that the family is not respectable. With Topham in it, the painting would represent an illegitimate family—a domestic fraud.