"You will say, 'Why trouble me with all this?' I answer, 'Because when I am at peace, you may be in possession of my real sentiments and defend my cause when I shall not have the power of doing it.'
"My comedy has been long in the hands of a manager, but whether it will ever be brought forward time must decide. You know, my dear friend, what sort of authors have lately been patronised by managers; their pieces ushered to public view, with all the advantages of splendour; yet I am obliged to wait two long years without a single hope that a trial would be granted. Oh, I am tired of the world and all its mortifications. I promise you this shall close my chapters of complaints. Keep them, and remember how ill I have been treated."
Eight days later she wrote to the same friend:
"In wretched spirits I wrote you last week a most melancholy letter. Your kind answer consoled me. The balsam of pure and disinterested friendship never fails to cure the mind's sickness, particularly when it proceeds from disgust at the ingratitude of the world."
The play to which she referred was probably that mentioned in the sequel to her memoirs, which was unhappily a failure. It is notable that the principal character in the farce was played by Mrs. Jordan, who was later to become the victim of a royal prince, who left her to die in poverty and exile.
The letter of another great actress, Sarah Siddons, written to John Taylor, shows kindness and compassion toward Perdita.
"I am very much obliged to Mrs. Robinson," says Mrs. Siddons, "for her polite attention in sending me her poems. Pray tell her so with my compliments. I hope the poor, charming woman has quite recovered from her fall. If she is half as amiable as her writings, I shall long for the possibility of being acquainted with her. I say the possibility, because one's whole life is one continual sacrifice of inclinations, which to indulge, however laudable or innocent, would draw down the malice and reproach of those prudent people who never do ill, 'but feed and sleep and do observances to the stale ritual of quaint ceremony.' The charming and beautiful Mrs. Robinson: I pity her from the bottom of my soul."
Almost to the last she retained her beauty, and delighted in receiving her friends and learning from them news of the world in which she could no longer move. Reclining on her sofa in the little drawing-room of her house in St. James's Place, she was the centre of a circle which comprised many of those who had surrounded her in the days of her brilliancy, amongst them being the Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of York.
Possibly, for the former, memory lent her a charm which years had not utterly failed to dispel.
J. Fitzgerald Molloy.