Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (51 page)

to no purpose; for Perdita knows, while she has these letters, she is

sure of her Florizel, or is sure to be able to expose him if he chuses

to desert her. She therefore carefully hoards them up, and while she

does so the royal uncle . . . still wants that hold upon his nephew which

otherwise would be complete, for probably the threat of publication

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would then be repeated from another quarter. At present the greatest

chance of the world arriving at any acquaintance with those valuable

and numerous epistles is the possibility of a total break between the

two lovers, which (let what will be said and whatever may have been

either provocation or appearance) has not yet happened” (18).

35. The first poem in Dryden’s volume is Sir Carr Scrope’s translation of

“Sapho to Phaon,” while the 1712 edition and subsequent editions

include a retranslation by Pope. Robinson’s 1796 sonnet cycle
Sappho

and Phaon
is not an imitation of these epistles, although Robinson

contextualizes her poems in both the poetic epistle and sonnet cycle

traditions by referencing the “many distinguished authors” who have

become “panegyrists” for “[t]he unfortunate lovers, Heloise and

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Abeilard; and, the supposed platonic, Petrarch and Laura.” Pope’s

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poetic epistle
Eloisa to Abelard
was published in 1717. Tom Mole

suggests that Robinson’s interest in Sappho was in part an interest in

a female poet who, unlike Robinson, was known only for her poetry

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and not as a celebrity (“Conflicted Celebrity” 196).

36. The “last peace” probably refers to the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which

ended the Seven Years War. The “present war” is the American war

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for independence.

37. Bolingbroke was “generally seen,” as Nicholas Phillipson observes,

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“as a Tory who appropriated an opposition Whig theory of the con-

stitution” (232). Pocock points out that Bolingbroke’s later writings,

such as
The Idea of a Patriot King
, “are mere exhortations to the

leaders of society, and finally to the Patriot King, to display heroic

virtue and redeem a corrupt world” (
Machiavellian Moment
484),

although his use of the term “had to contend with a perception, as

old as the Civil Wars, of the ‘patriot’ as one who loved his country

more than he loved its government, or even its king” (575). He wrote

The Idea of a Patriot King
for Frederick, Prince of Wales in 1738 but

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did not publish it until 1749 after learning that Pope had printed and

distributed copies without his permission.

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38. Pocock points out that Bolingbroke argued for an independence

among branches of government that comes close to the separation

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of powers. Although he claimed only to advocate against any one

branch having undue influence over another, he “at times used ter-

minology which seemed to suggest that king, lords, and commons

performed separate political functions which could be distinguished

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as executive, judicial, and legislative, that the balance of the constitu-

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tion consisted in the ability of any two of these to check the third,

and that since it was vital to prevent any of them from establishing a

permanent ascendancy over any other, the ‘independence’ of each of

the three must at all costs be preserved” (480).

39. Often referred to as “Jew King,” John King, originally Jacob Rey,

was the father of the novelist Charlotte Dacre. He financed Jacobin

and radical Whig publications and enterprises such as the print

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campaign against the Duke of York in 1809, and he may also have

“had a hand in fostering” the career of the radical MP, Sir Frances

Burdett (McCalman 39). In 1773 he would have been about twenty

and just at the beginning of his career. Assuming a birth date of

1756, Robinson would have been seventeen.

40. “With Mrs. Robinson, the poetess, so notorious a few years after

under the name of Perdita, he was, if report says true, the first instru-

ment of conjugal infidelity: and her pretended correspondence, which

King vainly endeavoured to employ for the purposes of extortion

from her then protector, Lord M. was afterwards published. As we

believe that the letters are principally forgeries, we do not think it

necessary to copy them” (“John King” 13).

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41. King’s denomination as “His Predatory Majesty, the King of the

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Swindlers,” echoes the historically anti-Semitic title “King of the

Jews” and forces an association of Jewishness with predation and

swindling.

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42. The youth of the central characters in these stories—only King and

the later Robinson were even out of their teens—marks them as

episodes in longer careers. This hindsight operates in
Authentic

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Memoirs
and in the
Scourge
article, which were written at the end of

or after Robinson’s career (the
Scourge
article was written in 1811,

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after the Prince had been married twice and was shortly to move

from Prince of Wales to Prince Regent). King is clearly using the

ten-year interval between his association with Robinson and hers

with the Prince to stress the history of swindling he outlines in his

preface and introduction. In the introduction to her Broadview edi-

tion of Robinson’s poems, Judith Pascoe points to the singular fail-

ure of the picaresque in narratives of Robinson’s life. Unlike the men

she was involved with, Robinson was never able to dissociate herself

from the notoriety of her early affair, which became the focalizing

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event of her life. Throughout her later life she attempted unsuc-

cessfully to resist her “status as the poster girl for unfettered female

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passion” (42). Her
Memoirs
in particular are constrained to counter

her courtesan image by insisting eq ually on her respectability and

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her artistry (48).

43. Pointing to the
Preliminary Discourse
, King argues that in it

Robinson “arrogates too a Skill in Politicks, and declares that the

P—is entirely guided by the Sentiments he has imbibed from her.”

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“She announces to the World the Blessings we may expect from the

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Reign of a P—, tutored by such a Mistress, who, while she imparts

Pleasure, gives Instruction” (15). I have trouble understanding how

King could make this conclusion about a text that, title notwith-

standing, is largely not about Robinson, and in which she occupies

a political position the reverse of what was already known about her.

He seems to see only the tête-à-tête-style courtesan biography and be

led by this to misread the politics of the pamphlet.

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44. King stresses the artificiality of Robinson’s literary ambitions by

mentioning them in the context of her theatrical career, where she

“displayed some little Abilities” and “in this Situation . . . amused

herself with composing” (13). The suggestion is that she dabbles in

both professions, but that her association with play-acting marks her

composition as nothing more than “humble Imitation” (14).

45. King claims that the Robinsons, together with their “dreadful Set of

Colleagues,” were “the chief Inventors of the Art of Swindling, which

then was but in its Infancy” (9). In
Crime, Gender and Consumer

Culture in Nineteenth-Century England
, Tammy Whitlock discusses

the history of trade protection societies, which flourished in the

end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth century. The

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bulk of these organizations were centered in London and focused

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on “urban crimes like fraud, shoplifting, and especially credit fraud”

(157).

46. In the narrative organizing of these letters, King points out that

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Robinson asks for a loan that will cover only half of what she has

spent. Her implied desperation, coupled with his patronizing repri-

mand, emphasizes his superior age and gender: “You little Prodigal,

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you have spent 200L in Six Weeks; I will not answer your Drafts.”

Like a father or a husband, he has the purse strings and teases as he

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withholds.

47.
Memoirs of Perdita
was published in London by G. Lister, the pub-

lisher of
Effusions of Love
and
The Rambler’s Magazine
. The author

of
Memoirs
lists
Effusions
as the true source of the Florizel and

Perdita letters and credits Lister with “many curious publications of

the amorous class” (124). “Curious,” as Toulalan points out, is code

for sexually exciting (
Imagining Sex
166).

48. The episode with the letter signed in blood and the Chesterfield

debauch are reproduced almost verbatim (95–96; 107–10).

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49. Robinson also campaigned for Tarleton in his first (unsuccessful) bid

for a seat in Parliament in 1784.

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50. “The erotic nature . . . of these texts is . . . lost in the rush to ‘legiti-

mize’ them by ascribing a serious other purpose to them (religious or

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political criticism). But we should not forget that sex has been chosen

as the text’s content, so they serve not only as satire but also as por-

nography in the way they incite the reader to imagine the body, and

sexual acts and to think about sex” (38).

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51. In his introduction, the editor distinguishes his production from

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the other versions of Robinson’s life, which have only been given

“by piece-meal, and in detached morsels; while the following history

may with propriety be said to be dictated
by herself
” (iii–iv). He fol-

lows this qualified claim with an explanation that both iterates and

satirizes the standard authenticity claims of pseudo-memoirs: “Not

that the Editor insinuates any
particular
intimacy with the lady: he

only seriously assures the reader, that the circumstances of her life

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were communicated by
one
who has for several years been her confi-

dant, and to whose pen she has been indebted for much news-paper

panegyric. After this assertion, the public must place what degree

of credit they please in the authenticity of these memoirs” (iv). This

editor’s authority is not compromised by a sexual relationship with

Robinson (although his disavowal is a bit weak). He cannot say the

same, however, for her “confidant,” who either wrote them himself

or at her dictation. In other words, Robinson’s twin predilections for

sex and money produced this document. It is for the reader to decide

whether this fact compromises or testifies to its authenticity.

52. By the time of the best known of the pornographic satires, both

Robinson’s initial “sale” of the Prince’s letters for 500 pounds and

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Fox’s later negotiations for her annuity were public knowledge.

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53.
The Rambler’s Magazine
for 1783 contains almost as many satirical