The prince pressed his lips to my fingertips; his smile illumined my salon. “Wait and see!”
Heads turned when, with Lord Malden on my arm, I arrived at St. James’s Palace, dressed in the height of fashion, my gown a lavender polonaise shot with gold threads. Though I endeavored to appear dreadfully dignified, it was nigh impossible to mask my delight at setting foot inside St. James’s!
Thousands of tapers glinted from enormous crystal chandeliers, rivaling the lavishly jeweled nobility for brilliance. The paneled walls were highly polished. The air was thick with the scents of perfume and pomade.
“I have good news, Mrs. Robinson,” he exclaimed. At this, I thought I should dance with the prince after all. “His Royal Highness has instructed me to escort you to the Lord Chamberlain’s box, so you will not be insulted by the necessity of taking your place amid the common spectators.”
Malden gestured toward an area quite like a grandstand, separated from the dance floor by a low wall paneled in walnut. There were about five rows of seats ascending from the floor, as if the room were some sort of arena.
My disappointed heart sank at his words, but at least my lover had made every effort to honor me.
Still, it stung when the Prince of Wales, looking the very picture of youthful nobility in a sky-blue coat beautifully embroidered with silver, opened the ball with the strikingly lovely Lady Augusta Campbell, daughter of the Duke of Argyll. The envy that I felt was incalculable, made all the more acute by the acknowledgment that no matter how intimate I was with the heir to the throne, my station prohibited me from mingling in this exalted sphere. Seated in the Lord Chamberlain’s box, I was but a few feet from the royal family, but the gulf might just as well have been an ocean.
Lady Augusta drew a pair of pink rosebuds from her bouquet. I held my breath. Her intention was clear—the buds were emblematic of him and her; how would the prince handle her flirtation? I all but bit my glove. Her ladyship proffered the gift to His Highness, expecting him, no doubt—as did I—to place them in his bosom. But to the astonishment of the entire glittering assemblage, the prince summoned one of his confidants, the Earl of Chomondeley, and, handing him the rosebuds, whispered something in the young lord’s ear. Their dual gaze affixed on me, seated in the Lord Chamberlain’s box; and naturally, all eyes followed until they focused on my person. The dancing ceased; lorgnettes were raised, and one could hear even a pin drop in the ballroom.
The earl mounted the stairs and entered my box, offering me the buds with a gallant bow. When his eyes met mine, I could see that he was not pleased to have been asked to perform his commission. His unspoken distaste for me, which clearly expressed the collective opinion of the exalted throng below us, awakened in me a measure of defiance, and I placed the rosebuds in my own bosom, pleased with my victory over my would-be rival.
But my triumph was short-lived.
“Half the world would appear to hate me,” I lamented to the Duchess of Devonshire as we strolled along Piccadilly. “And most of them are newspaper editors and caricaturists. Yesterday I opened the Morning Post to find the most scurrilous cartoon! I snipped it for the portfolio I have begun to keep of every squib and scandalous jibe. In just a few weeks’ time, it has grown thicker than my thumb.”
We passed a young newsboy hawking a broadsheet. “Perdita Sucking at the Public Teat!” cried the boy vulgarly, his squawky soprano not yet near manhood’s deeper tones. His mouth gaped like a fish when I purchased a paper off him.
“Look at this!” I said to Georgiana, pointing at the ugly drawing that covered the better part of a quarter page.
Her Grace scrutinized the caricature in which I was depicted in my new silver and blue carriage emblazoned with my crest, a flowering heart that from a distance resembled a five-pronged coronet. Titled “The new vis-à-vis, or Florizel driving Perdita,” the vicious cartoon showed me absconding with the nation’s treasury, a fat periwigged nobleman (representing Lord North, the prime minister) supine on the roof of the carriage, bearing a sign marked “royal favor.” With His Highness on the box, and Fox as rear postilion, the coach was pulled by a pair of horned goats, a recognizable symbol of the cuckold.
Keenly I felt the malice of my detractors. Georgiana had solicitously informed me that even those whom I numbered among my friends were in truth secret enemies, eager to see me topple from my lofty perch. “So illustrious a lover could not fail to excite the envy of your own sex,” the duchess reminded me. It was as plain as fustian that women of all descriptions were desirous of attracting His Royal Highness’s attention, and I had neither the rank nor the power to oppose such alluring adversaries.
“I cannot go anywhere without hearing some vicious slander against me,” I said to the duchess, just as an elderly woman shook her walking stick at me. “It seems that every engine of female malice has been set in motion to destroy my repose. There are times when I cannot enjoy a single minute of the happiness I have earned. Every petty calumny is repeated from mouth to mouth, from behind fans and broadsheets, and is so distorted with each repetition that the scandal becomes magnified tenfold.” Tales of the most infamous and glaring falsehood were invented and disseminated. I was assailed by pamphlets, by paragraphs, and by caricatures, crushing me with the artillery of libel, while the only being to whom I then looked up to for protection was so situated as to be unable to afford it to me.
The duchess made a
