And here my words trailed off into the air, for I had indeed adored him when I was but a girl, before he left us for distant lands—and the allure of a mistress. But had he not been instrumental in terrifying my mother into marrying me off at such a young age, rather than permit me to pursue my theatrical dreams? Had Mother not been so hasty, perhaps my life would not have taken so many unpleasant turns. No Mr. Robinson, and hence, no debtors’ prison. I glanced at my lovely daughter, her fringe flopping over one eye, her tongue peeking from her lips as she earnestly formed every letter. Yet I would not have a different child for all the world.
Maria looked up and tilted her head quizzically. “Mummy? What comes next?”
“Where were we?” I replied absentmindely.
My thoughts refocused on the task at hand. “‘Captain Nicholas Darby, whose legitimate daughter I had the happiness of being…’ Whatever possessed them to think I was his natural child?” I muttered. Suddenly the Inuit boy appeared in my mind’s eye. Because Papa likely did have at least one natural issue, I suppose. “Yes, ‘Captain Nicholas Darby, et cetera—died six months since, on board his own ship, of seventy-four guns, in the Russian service, having previously distinguished himself in His Majesty’s Royal Navy as the commander of an ordnance vessel during the siege of Gibraltar in 1783.’”
I went on to correct the editor’s misapprehension regarding my maternal side of the family, and clarified that in November 1757 I had been born in Bristol, and there educated by Hannah More. Before concluding the letter with the usual obloquies, I asked Maria to write, “‘As a man of feeling I request you to contradict the report with candor, and all possible expedition. I have brothers in Italy, who will experience the greatest anxiety should such a detail reach their ears.’”
The Morning Post never printed the retraction, but they did publish my letter in its entirety. Nonetheless, it felt good to be “alive” again!
Ban’s memoir had been published in the spring of 1787, but at sixteen shillings a copy it was not likely to earn its hero a proper income. So Ban had done what he did best in peacetime: he became a professional gambler, opening a faro hall in Daubigney’s tavern. He had left me in a fit of temper, reminding me that I had no legal claim to his affections, and returned without me to London.
Now that I was no longer required to act as my lover’s amanuensis, I devoted the entirety of my talents to worshipping at the shrine of Erato—penning nothing but poetry, including a series of sonnets that were published in The World. My verses and stanzas, written under a plethora of pseudonyms—that they be judged on their merits alone and not on their author’s name—now graced the pages of several periodicals. Though it delighted me to see so many of my efforts in print, it would have brought greater pleasure if it had been disclosed to the readers that they were enjoying the work of the woman they all knew as the scandalous Perdita.
Ban and I were quarrelling more often than we made love, which, given that we were at the time residing in different countries, was not terribly astonishing. His fancies had begun to wander, and I could not countenance his straying passions. It was a small world we inhabited, where everyone knew each other’s business—or pretended to—and gossiped about it prodigiously. By September Ban was once more standing for Parliament, campaigning in Liverpool, and undoubtedly kissing everyone with a cleavage.
Wounded, heartsick, and embarrassed, from our vine-covered cottage in Aix-la-Chapelle, I could only exact revenge and remonstration through the point of my pen.
On October 31, 1787, The World published my lengthy four-stanza opus, “Lines to Him Who Will Understand Them,” a few of which I include below:
THOU art no more my bosom’s FRIEND;
Here must the sweet delusion end,
That charm’d my senses many a year,
Thro’ smiling summers, winters drear.—
Yes; I shall view thee in each FLOW’R,
That changes with the transient hour:
Thy wand’ring Fancy I shall find
Borne on the wings of every WIND:
Thy wild impetuous passions trace
O’er the white wave’s tempestuous space:
In every changing season prove
An emblem of thy wav’ring LOVE.
Such were my pangs of disprized love. And everyone who read them guessed correctly as to whom I made my dedication. Each time a published poem referenced my feelings for Ban, however obliquely, our affair ended up being chronicled in the press. I was winning sympathy with my pen.
And when once again Ban Tarleton tasted defeat, on my tongue the bitterness of his failed election bid was sweet.
Yet I missed him dreadfully; living with him could be purgatory, but life without him was an eternal hell. Besides, I longed for my native soil, for my old friends, and desired to be closer to my publishers.
So in January of 1788, Maria and I returned to London, taking up residence at forty-two Clarges Street. Mother joined us from Bristol. Ban settled into a flat down the block from us at number thirty. And suddenly, his family changed their song. My soul rejoiced to discover that after so many years the Tarletons had finally come to accept our love and regard us as a couple, despite the extralegal nature of our liaison.
We were ruled by our passions, Ban and I. Our lovemaking had always attained a fever pitch—a mutual need that neither of us ever seemed able to slake—and when we fell out, woe betide whoever
