My pious mother was now in town and visited me daily, though it broke my heart that no matter how great the applause, she always watched my performances with the utmost consternation, the knowledge of which always remained a source of distress to me.
“Why can you not be happy for me, Mother?” I had asked her this on more than one occasion. Now she sat on a rather worn divan in my dressing room at Drury Lane, sipping my extravagantly costly Darjeeling whilst I applied my makeup.
“Oh, Mary,” she sighed, “do you expect me to evince delight when you nightly expose your person to the world to ogle as they wish?”
I dipped my finger into a pot of crimson and dabbed it on my cheeks, studying my reflection in the glass. “My conduct has always been quite respectable, ma’am. Both on and off the stage. But for my love of fine things and the pleasure I derive from attending routs and ridottos, I should say I am quite stainless. I abjure cards; and I flirt no more nor less than anyone else, man or woman—but such behavior is comme il faut among the fashionable! The furtive wink behind a fan, the nod, the encouraging smile, the sly bow or curtsy—it is common conduct here, and I’m told I’ve become rather adept at it. It may appear to signify everything at the time, but in truth, the behavior means nothing. It is all a game people play, and to be accepted as much as any actress can by society’s diamonds of the first water, I must play it, too.”
“It is because your profession condemns you as an outcast, no matter how cleverly you play the game, that I fear all the more for your character. I cannot help but recall your father’s admonishment.” Mother shivered.
She never failed to hit my Achilles’ heel with one of her baited arrows. I knew she would invoke Papa’s name at some point. She always did. “Nicholas Darby. A fine example of high feelings and proper manners he!” I retorted. “Should I imitate the sort of conduct exemplified by my father and my husband, I would have the blackest character in Christendom!” I assured her that I still had the consolation of an unsullied name and enjoyed the highest female patronage—a circle of the most respectable and partial friends, which included the admirable Duchess of Devonshire, the very avatar of fashion.
Had I mentioned to my mother the names of those who had dangled before me the temptation of fortune, it would have cast in marble her unfavorable impression of the set in which I moved. I daren’t tell her that no less a personage than the Duke of Rutland had—via the supercilious silk merchant at Hinchcliffe and Croft in Henrietta Street—offered me a settlement of six hundred pounds per annum as a means of estranging me entirely from my husband. My mother would have remained just as anxious if I had told her the truth—that I refused the offer. Though an acceptance of such protection might have solved my pecuniary predicament, I wished to remain, in the eyes of the public, deserving of its patronage. Mother, like much of the rest of society, particularly the rising middle classes from which we sprang, equated all actresses with those females of a distinctly lower stamp for whom artifice is also a chief weapon within their personal arsenal, and who exhibit their charms for the exchange of coin.
The fact that I had a husband, however wayward, was an enhancement, rather than a detraction, to my good reputation. And for better or worse, Mr. Robinson and I were bound to one another. In our station of life, divorce was a near impossibility.
How delighted I was when John, my elder brother, whom I had not clapped eyes upon in years, came to London and expressed an interest in attending one of my performances. That night I was to do Jacintha, a trousers role, in The Suspicious Husband, and with great excitement I was helped into my red velvet suit by my new dresser, Mrs. Bates. “My brother is in the house tonight,” I told her. “He’s a merchant—in from Leghorn on business.”
“Sure, he’s very proud of you, Mrs. R.,” Mrs. Bates said cheerfully. She gave my cuffs a tug to adjust the lace. “You break a leg out there this evening and I’ll see you at the interval.”
My nerves were aflutter, so eager was I to shine for my brother. But the moment I stepped out on the stage, I saw John rise and quit his box immediately. With the audience as illuminated as the actors, it was sometimes all too easy to discern a familiar face. My mother, who had been seated beside him, hid behind her fan when she met my gaze. I was so wounded, and so mortified by their reaction, that it seemed an eternity before I could recover myself and slip back into the personage of Jacintha. So unconquerable was his aversion to the notion that his sister had sullied herself by treading the boards—and in trousers—that my own brother declined to remain, refusing to see me in the profession I had sought so long to achieve, and in a role for which I was quite renowned. That night I had intended to host a supper in John’s honor, but when I arrived back at my rooms, Maria’s nanny, Dorcas, informed me that my brother had desired to return to his hotel, expressing the wish that I not call upon him.
I knelt down and took my little girl in my arms, bursting into sobs. “I hope, if I should give you a brother, Maria, that he will never deny you his respect and withhold his devotion, regardless of the path you choose.”
She regarded me uncomprehendingly. “Don’t cry, Mummy.” With her tiny finger she smudged away my tears.
