of thy wanton Love’ and his ‘melting Senses’ drowning in ‘delicious Transports’, while at the same time delivering a rebuke: ‘You little Prodigal, you have spent £200 in Six Weeks: I will not answer your Drafts.’ King’s refusal to forward any more funds, despite a further request, brought the correspondence to an abrupt end in the final week of November. Mary’s last letter is in a very different tone from the preceding ones:
I Find you have not yet answered my Draft. I do not wish an Acquaintance with any Man who professes so much Love, but who gives so little Proof of it. I wish I could recall those imprudent Moments when I suffered your deluding Promises, and seductive Tongue, to betray me into Sin; but unless you give me the Token of your Sincerity that I ask for, I will take care how I trust you again. I am astonished that you should scruple to lend me such a Sum as £100 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.
King responded with a long and vitriolic letter on the evils of ambition and avarice, and the correspondence ended. His failure to recover either his original loan or his subsequent advances, together with a not unjustifiable sense of having been taken for a ride by Mary’s flirtatious manner, accounts for his action in publishing the letters in 1781. There is no evidence that King himself had any further dealings with Mary thereafter, though by a curious twist his daughter became a passionate fan of her poetry.*
Late in November, Robinson returned to Bristol to fetch his wife. They left Hester and headed across to Wales. They endured a hazardous crossing at Chepstow in an open boat in the midst of a fierce storm. In the Memoirs, Mary novelistically interprets this as an ill omen, akin to the storm that coincided with her birth. Throughout the journey Robinson tried to prepare his refined young wife for her first meeting with his family. Still denying that Harris was his father, he asked Mary to ‘overlook anything harsh that might appear in the manners of his uncle’. But she was busy absorbing the beauties of the landscape as they drove into the remote Welsh countryside: ‘We passed through a thick wood, the mountains at every brake meeting our eyes covered with thin clouds, and rising in a sublime altitude above the valley. A more romantic space of scenery never met the human eye!’11
With a shift of tone typical of Mary’s mercurial nature, the narrative of her visit to the in-laws then turns from romantic novel to comedy of high and low life, with the sophisticated townies meeting the country bumpkins. Mary was fabulously dressed, as usual, in a dark claret riding habit and a white beaver hat trimmed with feathers. She looked askance at the odd couple that waited to greet her, her father-in-law, Thomas Harris, and his daughter, Elizabeth. Harris, evidently pleased with the elegant Mrs Robinson, kissed her ‘with excessive cordiality’, while his daughter led her into the house ‘with cold formality’. ‘She could not have taken my hand with a more frigid demeanour,’ Mary adds, clearly relishing the memory.12
The young women sized one another up. Elizabeth was not a great beauty and must have felt threatened by her brother’s fashionable wife. She was cold and haughty and took an instant dislike to her new sister-in-law. To Mary’s sharp eyes, she looked a fright. Elizabeth seemed older than her twenty years, moved stiffly, without grace or elegance, and was short and clumsy looking. She had a rustic face with a snub, upturned nose, and cheeks ‘somewhat more ruddy than was consistent with even good health’.13 Her countenance, Mary thought, was ‘peculiarly formed for the expression of sarcastic vulgarity’. The elegantly dressed Mrs Robinson was equally appalled by Elizabeth’s vulgar attire; she wore a cheap gaudy chintz gown and a ‘thrice-bordered cap’ decked with a profusion of ribbons. Her initial impression of retired tailor Thomas Harris was just as dismaying: he wore an unfashionable brown fustian coat, a scarlet waistcoat trimmed with gold, a gold-laced hat, and – instead of the silk stockings that befitted a gentleman – a hideous pair of woollen ‘spatter-dashes’. He cuts an engagingly comic figure, his manners coarse and boorish, but kind of heart – the very embodiment of Squire Western in Fielding’s Tom Jones or Goldsmith’s Mr Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer.
Harris was, in fact, an influential figure in Glamorganshire. He was the squire of two large estates, Tregunter and Trevecca, and was a Justice of the Peace. One of his brothers was Howel Harris, a well-known Methodist reformer. Possibly through his brother’s influence, the religious reformer Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, had established a seminary at Trevecca House for the training of ministers. Elizabeth Robinson was a convert to Lady Huntingdon’s ‘sect’, and sometimes took Mary with her to Trevecca. Squire Harris preferred the local church where he could throw his weight around and fine the rustics for swearing, even though ‘every third sentence he uttered was attended by an oath that made his hearers shudder’.14 Harris spent most of the days on his estate, riding his small Welsh pony, only appearing at meal times.
Mary was thoroughly bored by her husband’s family. She quickly discovered that the real ruler of the household was Molly Edwards, the housekeeper. She heartily disliked her: ‘a more overbearing, vindictive spirit never inhabited the heart of mortal than that which pervaded the soul of the ill-natured Mrs Molly’.15 Miss Betsy and Mrs Molly were jealous of Mary, who supped ale with the squire and soon became his favourite: ‘They observed me with jealous eyes; they considered me as an interloper, whose manners attracted Mr Harris’s esteem, and who was likely to diminish their divided influence in the family.’16
Mary often alienated other young women, who were left feeling dowdy and dull in her presence. She was naturally flirtatious and men were captivated by her charm, but she was perhaps less keen to cultivate the friendship of other women, if she did not think it worth her time. She noticed the ‘side-long glances’ of Miss Betsy and Mrs Molly when she entertained visitors who praised her ‘good looks, or taste in the choice of my dresses’. The women taunted her for acting like a duchess with her fine clothes and her accomplishments – ‘a good housewife had no occasion for harpsichords and books’.17 They reminded her that she had no money to support her fancy ways. But Mary did not care. She had her beauty and her elegance and her humour to protect her. When she went riding with Miss Betsy, she laughed at her odd appearance: ‘Miss Robinson rode on horseback in a camlet safe-guard, with a high-crowned bonnet. I wore a fashionable habit, and looked like something human.’18
More disturbingly, Harris seemed to have fallen in love with her even though in his sixties he was old enough to be her grandfather. When he declared that he should ‘have liked me for a wife, had I not married Tom’, she decided it would be prudent to leave. She feared that ‘through the machinations of Miss Betsy and Mrs Molly I should lose the share I had gained in his affections’. Betsy and Molly were duly furious when the squire insisted upon accompanying Mary to Bristol: ‘he swore that he would see me safe across the Channel, whatever might be the consequences of his journey’.19
In Bristol, meeting the charming Hester and getting a taste of her active social life, Harris decided to stay a while. Hester introduced him to her friends and he was invited to several dinner parties. Mary danced with him and, after he had supped his evening draught, she would sing to him. He was flattered by the attention and dropped hints to the effect that Tom would inherit the estate. He asked for advice on refurbishments for Tregunter House, and together they picked out smart marble chimney-pieces: ‘Choose them as you like them, Mrs Robinson, for they are all for you and Tom when I am no more.’20
