“In any event, for all my endeavors, we’ve barely got a pot to piss in, regardless of Ban’s gambling vices. My mental labors have failed through the dishonest conduct of my publishers. My works have sold handsomely, but the profits have been theirs. Maria, how can we subsist on five hundred pounds a year”—I sighed, ignoring her encouragement—“when it costs two hundred just to maintain my carriage?” I stared at my nearly useless legs, amorphous logs beneath the quilt. “Once upon a time my coaches were a luxury,” I said. “Now, just one of them is a necessity.”
My sonnets from Sappho to Phaon worked their magic and brought Ban’s heart back to me.
Women are most relenting victims when they subdue a rebellious lover, I mused. If one such man should ever reappear to plead, our anger instantly subsides and his penitence only served to attach us more strongly than ever!
Our broken hearts were healed, but Ban’s gambling seemed a disease for which there was no cure. The dignity of office made no difference in his conduct, for he was as laddish as ever he’d been before he was made an MP. When he was happy, he stayed at the card tables for hours on end; and when things took a downturn for him, he entered his name in the betting books with just as much frequency. The wagering sprees had increasingly involved copious drinking as well—shades of my ill-starred life with Tom Robinson—and I grew ever more disgusted, particularly when the corrupting influences included close friends who were well acquainted with my opinions on the subject. Among these confederates of Ban’s was Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who had been steadily moving away from his demanding mistress, the Theatre, preferring to embrace the world of politics instead. Ban and Sheridan were fast buddies, and their shared affinity for gaming and drink made them closer than ever.
Rather graphic images of my inebriated lover staggering through the streets of London were immortalized in verse by both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey when the Morning Post printed “The Devil’s Thoughts.” I was livid—not at my fellow poets, but that our dirty linen should be so exposed.
There I was, so protective of our characters for propriety’s sake; and yet in retrospect, I suppose it was a bit silly of me, for our reputations were already in the gutter, those horses long gone from the barn!
Twenty-seven
Nobody
1794…my thirty-seventh year
Back in 1792 I had submitted to Sheridan a rather biting satire that I had titled Nobody. It held the mirror up to the faces of the nobility, hideously disfigured with greed by the vice of gambling. Finally, in 1794, with Sheridan concentrating on politics and John Philip Kemble now managing Drury Lane, Kemble decided to produce the play and a cast was selected. The performers were less excited about it than I, however, even though their roles were plums; for despite the rigid separation of class between the actresses and the women they would be mocking, many of us who had attained fame in our profession did socialize with the likes of the liberal-minded Duchess of Devonshire and other female gamesters from the cluster of upper-class Whigs. Putting it bluntly, the actors feared reprisals from the ton, were they to play my satire. In fact, I mocked myself from my high-flying Perdita days as much as I skewered the ladies of the ton.
My former rival at Drury Lane, Elizabeth Farren—who had been set down to assay Lady Languid, the principal part—quite abruptly withdrew her participation, not comfortable in a comedy that lampooned Georgiana, who was a close friend. Things began to look rather dicey for us until we found a willing replacement. Dear Dorothy Jordan, however, a woman who feared nothing, dived into the role I had written for her, that of a saucy maid—the type of part in which Dora had achieved her fame upon the stage.
Dora had earned an equal measure of notoriety as the mistress of King George’s third son, the Duke of Clarence. Needless to say, she and I understood each other well.
The premiere of Nobody was scheduled for November 29, 1794—the same night as the opening of the gambling ladies’ faro season. No sooner had the play been announced than Dora Jordan and I each received anonymous letters, threatening “Nobody shall be damned.” The original counterparts of my fictional creations had heard about the plot and vowed to “finish the comedy”—in other words, to put an end to it.
As the play shone a torch on the voraciousness of the upper-crust gamblers, it also derided the hypocrisy of those titled ladies who enjoyed clandestine adulterous liaisons while openly condemning other women who engaged in extramarital affairs. Once again, I was writing from experience.
How could Mrs. Jordan and I be receiving threats that the satire would be “finished” before it had even premiered? During the rehearsal process, had Sheridan discussed Nobody’s plot among his cronies in the Devonshire set? Had the Farren flapped her envious tongue to our tony acquaintances?
“Chin up, Mum,” Maria counseled. “It’s not so very different from the squibs the papers used to run. I expect all the hubbub will bring even more people flocking to the theatre to see what the fuss is all about. I’ve learned a lot, being your daughter. Never underestimate the public’s curiosity—particularly when they smell debacle.”
“That’s not terribly reassuring, my sweet.” Though I was eager to see my two-act comedy performed, I was begrudgingly compelled to acknowledge that the
