Mary Robinson and Elizabeth Craven

The exhibition at Chawton House entitled Mary Robinson: Actress, Mistress, Writer, Radical, brought together an immense amount of material shedding light on this remarkable Georgian woman, who deserves to be known for so much more than just being an actress and the mistress of George IV when he was Prince of Wales.

   Mary Darby Robinson wrote several novels, a lot of accomplished poetry, and some fascinating Memoirs, as well as the feminist text A Letter to the Women of England. 

    Despite her fame and talent, her life was never easy. Tricked into marriage in her teens, she was incarcerated in a debtors' prison, with her infant daughter, because of the debts of her feckless husband. She escaped by publishing fiction and launching on a career on the London stage, where she was much applauded for her beauty and talents.

Mary Robinson wearing a chemise-style dress.

After achieving success in many rôles, in May 1780 she acted the lead in the first of Elizabeth Craven's plays to be performed on the public stage, The Miniature Picture. This was a daring rôle, because the heroine, Eliza, appears first disguised as a man before changing to female attire. [1] 

     Mrs Robinson had not yet then become the mistress of the Prince of Wales, whose attentions to her were public knowledge. Believing his declarations of passion, she became his mistress, but he lost interest in her after six months. She was paid £5,000 by the King in exchange for the letters the Prince had written to her, a poor compensation for the loss of her stage career. In 1781, she went to France where she was received in a friendly way by Queen Marie Antoinette, whose friendships with actors and broad-minded attitude towards the former mistress of the English prince were among the long list of reasons why people disapproved of her.  

Marie Antoinette had more in common with Mrs Robinson than might have been supposed. The French Queen used her position as a fashion leader to try to advocate more rational dress for women, and was painted by Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun (a friend of Craven's). Marie Antoinette got Vigée-Le Brun admitted to the French Academy of painting, where the number of women allowed was tiny. In one of her later portraits the Queen was wearing a "chemise dress", a simple muslin gown that was worn without corset or panniers, and which cost a fraction of the heavy, elaborate silk gowns required for public court appearance.

    Mrs Robinson helped to spread this fashion and in fact Marie Antoinette sent chemise dresses as gifts to her and the Duchess of Devonshire, who was Mary Robinson's friend and patron.

    The Chawton exhibition displayed a chemise dress as worn and owned by Mrs Robinson herself.

Such clothing was very liberating for women and moreover represented a rebellion against the formality and restrictions of court dress codes. It was democratic as well as comfortable and practical.

     Craven, who was living in France from 1783 to 1785, after her separation from her first husband, describes and deplores how the painting of Marie Antoinette in her chemise dress caused a lot of public disapproval, so much so that it had to be removed from display at the Salon. Craven writes sympathetically about the young queen, who was a target for public discontent. Marie Antoinette was actually a generous and benevolent woman, but she was blamed for whatever she did. If she dressed in court finery she was condemned as extravagant and out of touch with the people; if she appeared in a chemise dress, she was castigated for indecency and putting French silk manufacturers out of business. She could not win. [2]

   Within the next ten years, ladies all over Europe adopted a similar style of dress as the height of fashion and it was worn by the most extreme revolutionaries.

    Craven's sympathy for Marie Antoinette has been misinterpreted by certain literary critics as a sign of support for the "ancien regime" whereas it was actually a sign of her being on the same wave-length as other feminist and adventurous women of her time. She and Mary Robinson shared a desire for emancipation, which was often linked to rebellious and unconventional sexual behaviour. The latter came at a high cost for women but Robinson, like Craven, was not averse to risks, despite public disapproval. They braved them all. In France in 1782 Robinson met a Colonel Tarleton, with whom she had a prolonged love affair.

   Despite an illness that left her lame and debilitated, she continued to support herself and her daughter by writing poetry, novels and plays. She became the poetry editor of The Morning Post and numbered Coleridge, William Godwin and Mary Wollestoncraft among her friends.

   In 1798, the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft were attacked by Richard Polwhele in a poem entitled The Unsex’d Females. Robinson responded by publishing a pamphlet entitled
A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination the following year (1799) under the pseudonym of Anne Frances Randall.

    It was not unusual for women to conceal their authorship of controversial books. Craven did the same when she published her feminist work, Letters to Her Son, in 1784. 

   Robinson did not live much longer. In May 

1800 she was arrested for debt, and she died the following December. The recognition she is  getting now is well deserved.

1  Dated from Horace Walpole's letter of 28th May 1780.

2. Craven, Journey to Constantinople 1814 edition, London,  pp 24, 45.

A Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter - Page 33

https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1551112361

Mary Robinson, ‎Sharon M. Setzer - 2003 - 

Mary Robinson: A Brief Chronology 1756 Born in Bristol on November 27 to Hester and Nicholas Darby 1768 Moves to London with her ... Poems by Mrs. Robinson Meets Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire 1776 Meets Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the new manager of ... the play) 1780 Resigns position at Drury Lane Theatre after triumphant performance as Eliza in Lady Craven's The Miniature Picture on ...May 24th 1780  

http://www.regencyhistory.net/2014/04/mary-perdita-robinson-1757-1800.html

Perdita: Royal mistress, Writer, Romantic by Sarah Gristwood.