in comparison to the revolutionary ‘Perdita’ chemise that Mary herself would popularize in the 1780s. Lustring was a plain woven silk with a glossy finish that was very popular for summer wear, while the fashionable chip hat, made of finely shaved willow or poplar, was to be worn at a jaunty angle.
Mary’s obsession with her outfits might be considered as shallow and frivolous, but this is to misunderstand the power of fashion: she was very attuned to the ways in which clothing could transform her image. Fashion was central to the consumer society of the late eighteenth century. A plethora of shops offered ready-to-wear collections, while there were second-hand clothes stalls for the less well off. Silks, linens, and cottons were more widely available than ever before. Journalism and fashion went hand in hand: new monthly publications such as the Lady’s Magazine included plates and detailed descriptions of the latest styles. Ladies could even hand-colour the black and white engravings and send them off to a mantua-maker with instructions for making up.
Mary loved to remember the tiniest details of the clothes she was wearing on a particular occasion. On the day that she met her future husband in Greenwich she felt that she had never dressed so perfectly to her own satisfaction. Thomas Robinson spent most of the evening simply staring at her. The party dined early and then returned to London, where Robinson’s friend expatiated upon the many good qualities of Mary’s new suitor, speaking of ‘his future expectations from a rich old uncle; of his probable advancement in his profession; and, more than all, of his enthusiastic admiration of me’.12 Robinson was apparently the heir of a rich tailor called Thomas Harris, who had a large estate in Wales. Hester Darby sensed that the secure marriage she needed for her daughter was within grasp.
As the date set for Mary’s stage debut approached, Robinson was assiduous in his courtship. He knew that it was crucial to win her mother’s approval and did so by his constant attentions and a flow of presents calculated to impress. Hester was especially fond of ‘graveyard’ literature, and she was delighted when Robinson brought her an elegantly bound copy of James Hervey’s lugubrious Meditations among the Tombs of 1746. She was ‘beguiled’ by these attentions and Robinson accordingly ‘became so great a favourite, that he seemed to her the most perfect of existing beings’. He gained more credit when smallpox again threatened the family. This time it was George, Hester’s favourite son, who was dangerously ill. Mary postponed her stage appearance and Robinson was ‘indefatigable in his attentions’ to the sick boy and his anxious mother. Robinson’s conduct convinced Hester that he was ‘“the kindest, the best of mortals!”, the least addicted to worldly follies – and the man, of all others, who she should adore as a son-in-law’.13
Robinson might have convinced the mother, but he still had some way to go with the daughter. Luck was on his side. When George recovered from the smallpox, Mary fell sick herself. This was a test that would reveal the extent of the suitor’s devotion: would he persist in his courtship despite the threat of death or at the very least disfigurement of her lovely features? He did not waver and duly exerted ‘all his assiduity’ to win Mary’s affections, proving the ‘disinterested’ quality of his fondness. For Mary, the relationship was more fraternal than romantic: ‘he attended with the zeal of a brother; and that zeal made an impression of gratitude upon my heart, which was the source of all my succeeding sorrows’.14
The combined forces of mother and lover were irresistible. Every kind of persuasion and emotional blackmail was employed to press the suit. Hester urged Mary to promise that if she survived the disease she would marry Robinson. She reiterated the threat made by Mary’s father and even intimated that her daughter’s refusal was proof that she retained affection for the ‘libertine Captain’. Mary was cajoled and bullied, ‘repeatedly urged and hourly reminded’ of her father’s vow. Hester’s only hesitation was the thought of the inevitable separation between mother and daughter that marriage would bring. But the resolute lover overcame this obstacle with his promise of the ultimate sacrifice: he insisted that the bride’s mother should live with them, overseeing the domestic duties. Could Mary really refuse him when he offered her abandoned mother a home?
This was how Mary recollected the courtship when she came to write her memoirs. By making her mother an accomplice in Robinson’s scheme to force her hand, she gave the impression that it was not a marriage of affection on her part. But Hester’s culpability is debatable. Her worries were genuine. Her daughter was headstrong, and Hester was doubtful about a stage career. She was worried about Nicholas and the threat he had issued. Robinson’s motives seemed genuine enough. His was hardly a mercenary choice, as Mary brought no money or prospects. Few men would cherish the idea of living with their mother-in-law during the first years of marriage. It would appear that Robinson was genuinely in love with Mary. Neither was his devotion skin deep. He could well have withdrawn his suit when the ravages of smallpox threatened her beauty. At its worst, this horrific disease rendered its surviving victims disfigured and scarred beyond all recognition. Robinson risked his own health to nurse George and attend Mary. Considered in this light, his commitment could not be doubted.
Mary’s timid acquiescence in the match seems uncharacteristic. She had inherited her father’s intrepidity and her mother’s determination. Every action of her eventful life suggests strength of will and force of personality that little could dampen. But she was weak and vulnerable with illness when she finally agreed to Robinson’s proposal. While she lay on her sickbed, the banns were published during three successive Sunday morning services at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in what is now Trafalgar Square.
An unflattering biographical account of the Robinsons, published in 1781, in which the writer claimed that he knew a great deal about the couple’s affairs, claimed that, despite his humble position as a lawyer’s clerk, Thomas presented himself to Mary and Hester as a gentleman of £30,000, sole heir to a Mr Harris of Carmarthenshire, who gave him an allowance of £500 per year and far greater expectations for the future. According to this early biographer, both Mary and her mother jumped at the match.15
Doubts may have crept in when Robinson urged mother and daughter to keep the engagement secret. He gave two reasons. One was that he still had three months’ training to serve as an articled clerk and the second that there was another young lady who wished to marry him as soon as he came into independence. Mary had found a small window of opportunity for delay and urged him to postpone the marriage until he came of age. Robinson absolutely refused. Now that she had recovered, with no loss to her looks, Mary still harboured hopes of a stage career. Garrick, wholly unaware that he was in danger of losing his protégée, was agitating for a performance date. Robinson, appealing shrewdly to Hester’s insecurities, invoked strong arguments against the theatre. Nicholas Darby would be horrified by the prospect. Mary’s health would suffer from the ‘fatigues and exertions of the profession’. He also voiced the anti-theatrical prejudice of the age’s moralists when he suggested that Mary would become an object of male desire whose reputation would be irrevocably damaged ‘on a public stage, where all the attractions of the mimic scene would combine to render [her] a fascinating object’.16
Time was running out for Mary. She now had to decide whether to risk the social embarrassment of pulling out of the marriage even though the banns had been posted or to abandon her hopes of a stage career. With increasing pressure from all angles to choose between the professions of respectable marriage or disreputable acting, she relented: ‘It was now that Mr Robinson and my mother united in persuading me to relinquish my project; and so perpetually, during three days, was I tormented on the subject – so ridiculed for having permitted the bans to be published, and afterwards hesitating to fulfil my contract, that I consented – and was married.’17
In the original manuscript of
