Back in Cork Street, I wrote a third letter to the prince.
If ever you loved me, you must make a clean breast of all of the circumstances which compelled you to break with me in such an abrupt and injurious manner.
And then I enumerated the calumnies that had been heaped upon me by my detractors, the thousand taunts and humiliations I had been compelled to endure as a result of our liaison. By now we had been lovers in every way for upwards of six months.
You are only too sensible of the most obscene falsehoods that have been fabricated by my enemies. What little reputation I had has been utterly destroyed. It was only the most ardent and generous inducements that encouraged me to quit my husband’s arms for yours, and well you know that I kept myself to myself for many months, battling the war within my soul, for I never took the stigma of adultery lightly. What further do I want from you, you may ask. For now, only this: justice—to be acquitted by you from the myriad slanders voiced and published by those who would see me wallow in the stinking gutters of disrepute. Yours ever—Mary.
That much I did receive from His Highness, in response to my passionate plea. Though he had no power to halt the libels that littered the daily papers, he did admit, through Malden, that I had been most unjustly maligned and ill treated.
Yet His Highness unkindly persisted in withdrawing himself from my society whenever we attended the same entertainments. And as the days wore on, my situation became every hour more irksome. I was now deeply in debt, which I despaired of ever having the power to discharge. I had quitted both my husband and my profession for the prince, fatally induced to relinquish what would have provided an honorable and ample resource for myself and my child.
Though our acquaintance had been strained during my royal romance, Georgiana’s heart was made of such fine stuff that she was kindly disposed to receive me in my distress.
Accompanied by Maria, who wished to play with Her Grace’s spaniels, I arrived at Devonshire House in a plain hooded calash, so my identity might remain concealed from the public, who were only too delighted to titter about my despair. How the gossips love to see a highflyer plummet back to earth!
Silently we sat while a servant filled our cups with the most deliciously aromatic coffee. I waited until the domestic was dismissed from the room before unburdening myself.
“You cannot imagine how it feels to walk through the streets and hear the sniggering, particularly from those women who only a few weeks ago would have given anything to be in my shoes,” I fretted.
“Whatever you do, you cannot let them see your desolation,” counseled the duchess. “In fact, you must live as high as ever. Keep your chin up, my dear, and pretend that nothing has gone amiss. It’s the only way to silence their wagging tongues, for it provides them with unalloyed glee to see you in disgrace. That’s what they want—to see you thrown into the mud—but you can’t allow them the satisfaction! Carry on as ever. You cannot go back.”
Maria requested a taste of coffee, and I promised I should leave a little in the cup and top it off with cream, for the robust black brew was far too strong for a child of six.
“But I have not your income; how can I afford now to live as gaily as ever? I subsisted on borrowed time,” I told Georgiana. “I see that now. Merchants fell over themselves to gain my custom when there was every expectation on all sides that my fame, and the prince’s bounty, came in endless supply. Where my mail was filled with invitations until but a few days ago, now I receive nothing but duns.” I thought of Mrs. Baddeley’s unfortunate plight and the future she had foretold for me. “Those with titles may sin on, financially, Your Grace, but we common folk must pay the piper. And I have seen enough of the grimy walls of a debtors’ prison to last a lifetime.” After much rumination, I said, “Perhaps I should take up the masks of Thalia and Melpomene again.”
The duchess frowned. “I would counsel otherwise,” she said gently. “Such a decision would be ill advised.”
“But why? Why not assay once again the profession that brought me fame as well as fortune? And I am sorely in need of the latter these days. It has only been a few months since I quit the stage. Surely Mr. Sheridan would welcome me back to Drury Lane.”
“I hear things,” Georgiana replied cryptically. She handed a biscuit to Maria, who had asked to feed the spaniel; and my daughter, once gratified, scampered off after the puppy.
The duchess leaned toward me confidentially. “Please believe me when I tell you that I do not believe the public will suffer your reappearance on the stage. Their memories are of short duration. They regard you now as a disgraced woman, as…” The duchess lowered her eyes in embarrassment. “As a joke.”
My jaw fell. I blanched. “It is not possible! Truly you can’t mean to say that there is no hope of redemption?”
The duchess shook her head dolefully. “None at present. That is my perspective. But you are welcome to enjoy another vantage, of course.”
I thought of the jibe the Morning Post had taken at my expense, anonymously publishing a couplet that read:
Now, Lady—where’s your honor now? Can no man fit your palate but a prince?
I confess it galled me to think I had so soon become a pariah where once the selfsame people had seen in me a paragon to be emulated and admired. How I despised the hypocrisy wherein a fallen woman was expected to behave like her betters, when her so-called betters behaved no better than she! For example, the Duchess of Devonshire was up
