“An imprimatur from His Grace or me is as good as a royal warrant,” she giggled. “I have not the slightest doubt that when I tell those in our circle that I have found the female Dryden, they shall clamor for a copy.”
I blush to write that I removed the dozing spaniel from my skirts and prostrated myself at her feet. “My admired patroness, the best of women!” I wept, the tears of joy—and relief—staining my brown silk bodice.
The duchess was, as ever, true to her word. In the summer of 1776, Poems by Mrs. Robinson, a 134-page octavo volume, was published. In a slender twist of irony, the frontispiece was drawn by Angelo Albanesi.
The contents were mostly moral elegies and pastoral verses featuring numerous rhymes twixt “bower” and “flower,” “heart” and “art”—youthful efforts containing tumbles of words as purple as irises and phrases as torrid as a November tempest. But such was the popular poetry of the day, and I was confident that my style would improve and mature, ripening with time, until it became truly my own and not derivative of other poets’ odes to Phyllis penned during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
But my slender volume sold. And sold!
And on the third of August, 1776, Tom Robinson was discharged from the Fleet. Thanks to the patronage of the Duchess of Devonshire, sales of my little volume of poetry garnered enough money to enable the settlement of my husband’s debts.
On our release, I made straight for Vauxhall. How I had missed its magic! I had frequently found occasion to observe a mournful contrast when I quitted Devonshire House to enter the dark galleries of a prison; but the sensation I felt on hearing the strains of the pleasure gardens’ orchestra, and on beholding the gay throng during this first visit in public after so long a seclusion, was indescribable.
Adding to my delirium was the giddy knowledge that my talents as a poetess had provided the golden key that turned the clink, setting us free as a family to hear the nightingales from a moonlit walk, and picnic by the bankside in the summer sun.
Act Three
All the World’s a Stage
Fourteen
A Second Chance
1776…age eighteen
Now that Mr. Robinson had obtained his liberty—thanks to my pen and Her Grace’s patronage of it—how would he provide for his family, assuring that we would subsist honorably and above reproach? My husband had never completed his legal studies. My literary efforts did not produce a steady stream of income on which we could rely. Mr. Robinson had applied to his father for some form of allowance, but every request for aid was refused. Mr. Harris, whom my husband persisted in referring to as his “uncle,” had provided us a pittance on which to manage whilst we languished in prison, but it was an amount so low that it might better be deemed an insult than an income.
Although the American colonies declared war against us that summer, my thoughts had been focused on our release from the Fleet and I’d had precious little time to read the papers. Now, as autumn leaves waxed russet and gold in St. James’s Park, and across the ocean the fatal volleys were exchanged twixt rebel and redcoat, my mind was fixed upon the duty of providing for my family, whose number would soon increase again.
Not too many weeks later, during our daily constitutional amid the park’s graceful groves, we chanced to meet William Brereton, one of the luminaries of Drury Lane, whose acquaintance I had made nearly four years previous when the illustrious Garrick presumed to tutor me as his protégée.
“Well, damme—Mary Darby, is it?” exclaimed the actor.
“Robinson now.” I curtsied prettily and introduced my husband. From Mr. Brereton’s reaction, I think he was surprised to see me wedded to so diminutive a specimen of manhood.
“Well—my felicitations,” Brereton gushed, pumping my husband’s hand. “Tell me, Mrs. Robinson—what have you been getting up to since we last met? I daresay the stage was deprived of one who might have been among its brightest ornaments when you broke off your connexion with Mr. Garrick.”
I glanced at the actor, a fine example himself of thespian talent. Was he quizzing me, or did his earnest expression speak his mind truthfully? At that moment, gazing into Mr. Brereton’s gravely handsome face, my thoughts turned once more to the pursuit of a dramatic life—the idea rushed like a bolt of electricity through every fiber of my being.
“Do you really think I could make another go of it?” I asked him, the color rushing into my face. I had not felt more excited about a thing since my first, and last, sally toward the boards.
To my astonishment, Mr. Robinson answered for him. “And why not!” Well he knew, of course, of our pecuniary constraints. And ever since the publication of my first volume of poetry I was convinced of the possibility that my artistic talents might win me an honorable independence—which seemed my only recourse, as my husband appeared congenitally allergic to any form of employment that did not feature a baize-covered gaming table.
Not too many days later, Mr. Brereton surprised me by calling at our lodgings in Newman Street. I had not been well; my condition had weakened my constitution, exacerbated by having continued for so long to attend to my devotions as a mother by nursing Maria, who was now past the age of two.
My mortification was complete when Mr. Brereton appeared with a companion, catching
