Read Online Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy by Kristin Flieger Samuelian - Free Book Online
Authors: Kristin Flieger Samuelian
Tags: History, England, Europe, 18th Century, Modern (16th-21st Centuries), 2010, 0230616305, Palgrave Macmillan
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122–23; quoting Steele, Memoirs of
Mrs. Elizabeth Baddely , 1787). Newspapers scrutinized and reported
yright material fr
her public behavior, chronicling when she began wearing his min-
Cop
iature around her neck, for instance, or when she began driving a
new carriage with an ambiguous blazon that looked, from a distance,
like a coronet. The affair with the Prince was first mentioned in the
newspapers—and the couple was first referred to publicly as Florizel
and Perdita—in July 1781 (Byrne 117). Both novels drop plenty of
references to details and events the public was likely to recognize.
10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian
9780230616301_03_ch01.indd 26
9780230616301_03_ch01.indd 26
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C h r o n i c l e s o f F l o r i z e l a n d P e r d i t a
27
Effusions of Love records the gift of a “miniature picture,” which
Florizel promises to wear “ever” on his bosom, attached with a rib-
bon, “as it would be imprudent to fix it to my watch” (28). The phras-
ing here possibly alludes to Lady Craven’s The Miniature Picture , in
which Robinson played Sir Harry Revel, one of the “breeches” roles
for which she became famous and which she was playing on her last
night at Drury Lane before retiring from the theater. In her Memoirs ,
Robinson reports that the Prince once proposed that she meet him
dressed as a boy, but that she refused because of “The indelicacy of
such a step, as well as the danger of detection” (II. 50). The Budget of
Love reverses the transaction: Florizel gives Perdita a diamond-framed
veConnect - 2011-04-02
miniature, and she assures him that “The setting is most excellent;—
algra
the brilliancy of the diamonds are [sic] surpassed by nothing but the
celestial lustre that sparkles in the eyes of FLORIZEL!” (72).16 She
tells him she has decided to have her portrait painted, “presuming that
romso - PT
my FLORIZEL may give it some indifferent place in his Cabinet,”
although she adds disingenuously, “perhaps it will not be proper to
lioteket i
present, or be thought a gift worthy his reception” (78–79). This is
most likely a reference to one of a pair of portraits of her by Romney.
sitetsbib
According to Robinson’s biographer Paula Byrne, she began sitting
for this picture two weeks after her breakup with the Prince, and it
“was published as an engraving at the height of the letter negotiations
on August 25, 1781” (Byrne 154).
The authors of both novels include details like these, which they
can assume the public already knows, in order to establish the verac-
ity of those they encounter in these stories. Theirs is a finely calcu-
lated management of the “hermeneutic of intimacy” that Tom Mole
veconnect.com - licensed to Univer
describes, in which direct personal engagement with a celebrated fig-
ure is “marketed as a commodity” and at the same time offered as “an
.palgra
escape from the standardised impersonality of commodity culture”
( Byron’s Romantic Celebrity 25). Mole and others locate the origins of
om www
modern celebrity culture at the end of the eighteenth century, when, as
Eric Eisner puts it, the public “emerged not just as an abstraction but
also as a spectatorial body; “a ‘gazing [. . .] multitude”—produced by
an accelerating set of technologies of publicity” ( Nineteenth-Century
yright material fr
Poetry and Literary Celebrity 21).17 Eisner is quoting from a passage
Cop
in Robinson’s Memoirs in which she describes being “overwhelmed
by the gazing of the multitude” at the height of the public’s preoccu-
pation with the affair (II. 67). This multitude, “massive, anonymous,
socially diverse, geographically distributed” (Mole, Byron’s Romantic
Celebrity 3), is not only the crowd that inconveniences Robinson at
the shops or that, with “staring curiosity,” gathers around her
Mrs. Elizabeth Baddely , 1787). Newspapers scrutinized and reported
yright material fr
her public behavior, chronicling when she began wearing his min-
Cop
iature around her neck, for instance, or when she began driving a
new carriage with an ambiguous blazon that looked, from a distance,
like a coronet. The affair with the Prince was first mentioned in the
newspapers—and the couple was first referred to publicly as Florizel
and Perdita—in July 1781 (Byrne 117). Both novels drop plenty of
references to details and events the public was likely to recognize.
10.1057/9780230117488 - Royal Romances, Kristin Flieger Samuelian
9780230616301_03_ch01.indd 26
9780230616301_03_ch01.indd 26
10/22/2010 6:03:00 PM
10/22/2010 6:03:00 PM
C h r o n i c l e s o f F l o r i z e l a n d P e r d i t a
27
Effusions of Love records the gift of a “miniature picture,” which
Florizel promises to wear “ever” on his bosom, attached with a rib-
bon, “as it would be imprudent to fix it to my watch” (28). The phras-
ing here possibly alludes to Lady Craven’s The Miniature Picture , in
which Robinson played Sir Harry Revel, one of the “breeches” roles
for which she became famous and which she was playing on her last
night at Drury Lane before retiring from the theater. In her Memoirs ,
Robinson reports that the Prince once proposed that she meet him
dressed as a boy, but that she refused because of “The indelicacy of
such a step, as well as the danger of detection” (II. 50). The Budget of
Love reverses the transaction: Florizel gives Perdita a diamond-framed
veConnect - 2011-04-02
miniature, and she assures him that “The setting is most excellent;—
algra
the brilliancy of the diamonds are [sic] surpassed by nothing but the
celestial lustre that sparkles in the eyes of FLORIZEL!” (72).16 She
tells him she has decided to have her portrait painted, “presuming that
romso - PT
my FLORIZEL may give it some indifferent place in his Cabinet,”
although she adds disingenuously, “perhaps it will not be proper to
lioteket i
present, or be thought a gift worthy his reception” (78–79). This is
most likely a reference to one of a pair of portraits of her by Romney.
sitetsbib
According to Robinson’s biographer Paula Byrne, she began sitting
for this picture two weeks after her breakup with the Prince, and it
“was published as an engraving at the height of the letter negotiations
on August 25, 1781” (Byrne 154).
The authors of both novels include details like these, which they
can assume the public already knows, in order to establish the verac-
ity of those they encounter in these stories. Theirs is a finely calcu-
lated management of the “hermeneutic of intimacy” that Tom Mole
veconnect.com - licensed to Univer
describes, in which direct personal engagement with a celebrated fig-
ure is “marketed as a commodity” and at the same time offered as “an
.palgra
escape from the standardised impersonality of commodity culture”
( Byron’s Romantic Celebrity 25). Mole and others locate the origins of
om www
modern celebrity culture at the end of the eighteenth century, when, as
Eric Eisner puts it, the public “emerged not just as an abstraction but
also as a spectatorial body; “a ‘gazing [. . .] multitude”—produced by
an accelerating set of technologies of publicity” ( Nineteenth-Century
yright material fr
Poetry and Literary Celebrity 21).17 Eisner is quoting from a passage
Cop
in Robinson’s Memoirs in which she describes being “overwhelmed
by the gazing of the multitude” at the height of the public’s preoccu-
pation with the affair (II. 67). This multitude, “massive, anonymous,
socially diverse, geographically distributed” (Mole, Byron’s Romantic
Celebrity 3), is not only the crowd that inconveniences Robinson at
the shops or that, with “staring curiosity,” gathers around her
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