“Why wasn’t the doctor sent for immediately?”
“Well, first, no one knew who you was, miss. And then Mr. Alsop, he come up here and says he’s seen the caricatures of you in all the papers comporting yourself like a hussy and you deserved whatever was coming to you, ’specially after the midwife could do nothing more. It was Mrs. Alsop that nearly beat him about the head for daftness. She said that even the lowest of humans deserves succor when they’re ill. It was Mrs. Alsop sent one of our postilions to fetch Dr. Thistleton. But the doctor’s wife told Mrs. Alsop he’s delivering Mrs. Pickford’s baby out in Faversham, and hasn’t come back yet.”
Daylight had waned by the time the doctor arrived at my bedside. Holding aloft his lantern he peeled back the thin sheeting that served as bedclothes to discover my skirts caked with blood.
“Were you…with child, ma’am?” he asked, his expression alarmingly grave.
I nodded. “Enough to be sensible of my state, yet not so far along that the world might know it by my silhouette.” It was an effort to speak. My words sounded funny to me as they bubbled forth from my lips.
“I regret to say that your condition has…changed,” said the doctor. “You have lost the child.”
I had not been conscious when the midwife had attended my bedside, and knew not what, if anything, she had done. “Can I bear another?”
The medic shook his head. “That I cannot say.” And as he manipulated my legs his doubt grew more pronounced. “And, alas, I cannot tell what caused this trauma to your limbs.” He could not unclench my fingers either, without engendering the most excruciating pain. “I understand your coach met with an accident on the road not far from here, and you were carried from the wreckage to this room. It may be an unfortunate coincidence that you were overtaken by a strange and mysterious illness nearly at the very moment that your conveyance toppled; or it may be that you are suffering from injuries you sustained in the mishap with the carriage, or—I regret to propose—as a result of poor midwifery. In any event, madam, I am most certain that you are no longer with child. As for the palsy to your limbs, I cannot unequivocally state the cause. I would prescribe sea bathing, which will alleviate some of the pains in your joints. It is very likely that from now on, you will require assistance wherever you go—even to walk from your bed to the commode.”
Convulsive sobs overtook me; hot tears bathed my cheeks. The doctor gazed at my face, as if to draw it. I wondered what he saw there, and asked for a glass that I might look for myself, but there was none in the room.
“How old are you, madam, if I may ask?” I could see that the doctor was calculating in his head how many years of pain and disfigurement remained to me. That alone was enough for me to wish myself dead.
“Only twenty-five, sir. Do you know who I am?” I breathed. Dr. Thistleton shook his head. “Have you never been to the theatre?” I received another nod in the negative. “I am Mrs. Robinson,” I said. “They call me ‘the Perdita.’”
The doctor’s countenance grew even more solemn. Finally, after a ponderous silence, he said, “Mrs. Robinson, you are, I fear, lost indeed…it is my considered, though humble, medical opinion that, if you harbor any designs to do so in future…you will never be able to take the stage again.”
I was conveyed to London the following day, my legs and fingers still palsied. Being carried as though I were a piece of furniture engendered in my bosom the utmost mortification; but ambulating on my own was an embarrassment even more painful. Every step I assayed was a Herculean effort. One leg would not seem to follow the other; I must have looked a bandy-legged crone.
Nine-year-old Maria was beside herself with agitation. “If I had gone with you, Mummy, I should have kept a lookout for Colonel Tarleton’s coach and then you would not have taken sick.”
She smelled like honeysuckle, fresh and sweet. Biting back my tears, I stroked her hair and said, “You may have to be my legs now. And even my hands sometimes, for every word I write from now on will be born of pain.”
As my curious daughter helpfully endeavored to uncurl my fingers, I winced in agony. “They are hard, Mummy, like wax tapers. But mayhap if we warm them up, they will melt and be like new again.” She wrapped my ungainly hands in her own tiny ones as if to trap a pair of monstrous fireflies and blew upon them like she was cooling a spoonful of soup.
“Would you fetch your mama a glass, my sweetheart?” I had not yet garnered the courage to look upon my reflection, but had to conquer my fears eventually. Why not now, when it was just the two of us in my boudoir?
“I don’t know if you can hold it,” said Maria, offering me a silver-backed hand mirror.
My clenched fingers closed about its handle and I beheld my countenance for the first time since the fateful accident. What I saw terrified me beyond words. For my features seemed to have settled into a frown. I had been a famous beauty. Would I ever recover my looks?
And insult was heaped upon injury when I read in the Morning Herald on July 31, 1783, that:
Mary Robinson is dangerously ill at her house in Berkeley Square. The environs of her sex, those distaff members of her social sphere, attribute her indisposition to the declining influence of her charms.
They hinted, too, that the cause of my affliction was venereal, concurring that my indisposition was due to my love of gaiety and an abundance of midnight revels.
What vipers! And their supposition for my “indisposition” most patently untrue. Not only that, my night flight had been entirely for
