Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (15 page)

49

Part of King’s goal in writing the pamphlet was to establish that

Robinson was both an aspiring writer and not a very good one. He

claims in his preface that she was responsible for the publication of

Poetic Epistle
, which he sees as un-ironic self-promotion: “being

acquainted with both the prosaic and the poetic Stile of Mrs. R—, I

discovered the Poem and Exordium to be her own Production, and

that affectionate flattering Metre ascribed to the Prince, the vain

Effusion of her own Imagination” (5–6).43 He insists, however, that

she could not have written it without help; it must have been “revised

and bettered by some more correct and able Pen” (14), directly contra-

dicting the first couplet of Perdita’s reply to Florizel: “Think not, my

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Prince, the dictates of my pen/Owe their faint force to aid of letter’d

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men” (35). Robinson’s letters to King give the lie to these lines by

establishing her dependence on his superior writing skills: “Shall I

ever write as well as you do?” she asks, adding, conveniently, “I am

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fond of Poetry, and you shall correct some Attempts in that Way,

when I come to
London
” (26). He replies that he could only provide

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“some unimportant Alteration in the formal Mode of Grammar and

Orthography.” In “Sprightliness, W it and Genius,” he assures her,

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“I cannot keep pace with you” (27). He then goes on to demonstrate

far more sprightliness, wit, genius, and volume, than she. His letters

are longer, and increasingly more eloquent, sentimental, and philo-

sophical than hers. His occupy roughly two-thirds of the twenty-five

pages of correspondence; hers take up a little more than eight.

King’s modest demurral notwithstanding, he makes it clear that

Robinson is not the writer here; her literary aspirations are affecta-

tion. She has “amused herself,” he writes in his introduction, “with

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composing Sonnets, Panegyricks, Acrosticks, and various other

Compositions
in Favour of herself
” (13–14) and, presumably,
not
cor-

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rected by him. Their vanity, however, always outweighs their liter-

ary merit, which “never extended beyond a very humble Imitation of

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Shenstone’s Poems” (14–15).44 Prostitution, not poetry, is her real

calling, and prostitution, rather than imposture, is the real crime his

pamphlet uncovers. King maintains that his object in publishing the

letters is to expose fraud. “The general Object of this Publication,”

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he claims in the preface, “is the same as was the
original
Intent of the

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Society for c hecking and prosecuting S
– –” (ii). He is probably refer-

ring to The Guardians, or the Society for the Protection of Trade

against Swindlers and Sharpers. The Guardians was one of the earliest

and best known trade protection societies that emerged in London in

the later eighteenth century; it was founded in 1776 and continued,

with various name changes, throughout the nineteenth century.45

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50

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

Authentic Memoirs, Memorandums and Confessions
is dedicated to

The Guardians, and recommended to their attention, tactlessly, as

“a work that has for its object, the development and exposure of the

arts, devices, and manoeuvres, by which Swindlers elude your vigi-

lance.” Both King and the anonymous author of
Authentic Memoirs

suggest that the Society has already outlived its effectiveness, deviated

from its “
original
Intent” to the point where swindlers “elude [its]

influence.” The job of exposing and protecting against fraud now

properly belongs to the world of letters. The real police are the editors

of hidden or suppressed documents, who establish their probity and

their literary or editorial authority by pointing the finger at others.

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The preface suggests that the letters will prove Robinson is a swindler,

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a nascent criminal category with which King hopes to shock his readers

and to mark her as a member of a much lower class than the beautiful

courtesan who is mistress of the Prince of Wales. He outlines a series of

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scams in which the Robinsons use the appearance of wealth and Mary’s

sexuality to lure and defraud their victims. The letters themselves, how-

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ever, offer a simpler narrative of the exchange of sex for money. The fact

that they mention cash rather than expensive gifts (diamond framed

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miniatures, say, or elaborate carriages) suggests that she is closer to a

common prostitute than a courtesan. She does not imperiously reject

the base cash offers of prospective protectors or their procurers. Instead,

she is the first to introduce the subject of money, and is particular about

cash amounts: “I am astonished that you should scruple to lend me

such a Sum as 100L when it was the last I should borrow, and should

have repaid it faithfully. Now you have an Opportunity of shewing your

Love, or I shall see that you have all along deceived me” (40).46

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King links erotic pleasure with avarice as a way to discredit Robinson

and to license her mass-marketing as a consumable sexual object. His

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rhetoric notwithstanding, his letters offer a view of
both
the dissipated

wanton
and
the vitiated miser. His readers get to share the moral high

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ground with him, while still enjoying the sexual frisson of picturing

Robinson’s “
inventive Enjoyments
” and “
magick Touch
” that causes

“a
Delirium of Ecstasy
” (34). Perhaps she knows tricks other girls

don’t? We can only imagine. But we get to imagine because she has

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forfeited our good opinion by seeking payment like a common prosti-

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tute. Following his usual practice of conjoining her duplicity and her

desirability, King encourages his readers to picture Robinson as he has

seen her—to see her through him:

I will not think you sincere, when you say you love; yet if you are not

in earnest, you have given
too serious
a Testimony of it for one only

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C h r o n i c l e s o f F l o r i z e l a n d P e r d i t a

51

in Joke
; but it is almost Blasphemy to suspect one of such heavenly

Form, so beautiful, such Symmetry of Features, such delicate wel-

formed Limbs, such panting snowy Breasts, such—Oh! what
Raptures

ineffable seize my
delighted Imagination
, when I
recollect
the
delirious

Transports
that throbbed to my very Soul, when that beauteous Form

stood confessed in all the resistless Power of—
Nakedness
. I must stop

till my
enraptured
Fancy returns from the
ecstatick
Thought. (28–29)

This passage threatens to disrupt the narrative trajectory of King’s

pamphlet with the alternate narrative of pornography. Just as he is

arrested in his meditation on Robinson’s sincerity by enraptured rec-

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ollection of the encounter that ought to prove it, he invites his readers

to stop following the story of how she swindled him and just enjoy

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the show.

Sarah Toulalan points out that this orchestrated voyeurism is

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“integral” to the experience of pornography: “Part of the frisson of

pornography . . . is the pleasure and shock of seeing something that

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‘should’ remain hidden and private.” It is in the “disrupted space”

between public and private “that pleasure emerges” (161). King’s

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re-created strip-tease shows us first her face, then her limbs, then her

breasts, until finally the tassels and g-string are cast aside, and we and

he both pause again over the sight of her “in all the resistless Power

of—
Nakedness
.” This methodical unveiling until there is nothing left

to take off replicates the accretive organization of pornographic texts,

in which each depicted encounter withholds a little less, is a little

more graphic, or a little more kinky, to keep the reader engaged until

the end. This is the structuring of the 1784
Memoirs of Perdita
, which

uses existing material on Robinson and the Prince as a scaffolding

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on which to build its titillating supertext. The anonymous author47

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lifts background text from the tête-à-têtes and
Effusions of Love
.48

He supplements this with gradually amplifying amorous encounters:

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a blushing Perdita with her first lover, an interlude in a closed car-

riage; an especially implausible encounter with an army of ants and a

strapping gardener; a threesome, and eventually the image of Perdita

humping so vigorously that she almost suffocates the cuckolded voy-

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eur under her bed.

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McCreery and Runge both point out that the harshest depic-

tions of Robinson, in prints, pamphlets, and pornographic and

semi- pornographic volumes, proliferated after 1782. They probably

reflected her support for Charles James Fox, who had been briefly

her lover after the Prince, and the ill-fated Fox-North coalition: “The

majority of satirical prints, and indeed the most stimulating ones,

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52

R o y a l R o m a n c e s

appeared not when Robinson was most socially active, but when her

male friends’ political careers were most controversial” (McCreery,

Satirical Gaze
101).49 The year 1784, when
Memoirs of Perdita
was

published, “was the year of the famous Westminster election, when

Robinson campaigned with the Duchess of Devonshire and others

for Fox, which would explain a good number of the satires (Runge

570n21). Like King’s pamphlet,
Memoirs of Perdita
shades the figure

of the courtesan into that of the prostitute, emphasizing Robinson’s

fondness for cash payments and “the all-persuasive arguments of a

Bank note” (49). As Toulalan points out, however, pornographic sat-

ire is still pornography. Its sexual content is not simply a vehicle, to

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be cast aside in the search for the “real” aims of a piece. The sexual

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and the satiric share space.50 Like King, this author links erotic and

commercial motives, so that readers can feel free to desire and deride

Robinson equally: “Love and avarice were so predominant in Perdita’s

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bosom, that she could seldom resist an opportunity of gratifying

either; but when both could be centered in one object, the impulse

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to gratification became irresistible indeed” (55–56). The irresistible

impulse for gratification suggests the repetitive, autoerotic narrative

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of this text. For most of the novel, unlike the earlier novels, the fact

of sex takes precedence over questions about who is having the sex.

Robinson is the exception, of course, but then Robinson is the auto-

erotic vehicle, the porn star whose reliable ability to excite and gratify

can be inserted into a variety of sexual situations.

Memoirs of Perdita
is imaginative literature masquerading as fact,

as are the earlier epistolary novels, although this masquerade is the

more transparent as the satire is the more direct.51 This time, how-

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