Note 148 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
In 1781, Mary Robinson (1758-1800), known as “Perdita,” had ceased to be the mistress of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., whose bond for £20,000, never paid, was exchanged for the pension of £500 a year awarded her by Fox in 1783. She was portrayed by Reynolds twice, and by Romney, Gainsborough, Hoppner, Zoffany, and twice by Cosway.
The original name of Mrs. Robinson’s family had been M’Dermott, which had been changed by an ancestor to Darby. Mrs. Darby had brought up her daughter under difficult circumstances. Obliged to earn her own living during her husband’s absence in America, she started a ladies’ boarding school in Little Chelsea, in which the future “Perdita” (as we learn from her autobiography) taught English literature to the daughters of the well-to-do citizens, and read to them “sacred and moral lessons on saints’ days and Sunday evenings.” The “high personage” referred to in this paragraph is of course the Prince, in whom Richard Cosway, the courtly miniaturist, found a lavish patron.