Perditasroom's Blog

Morning Post and Daily Advertiser December 16^th 1780

The report of an illustrious personage having broke the amorous ties, in which he was entangled by a late fair actress, is premature. On the contrary, the happy Perdita has gained so much ground in his affections that her amazing success has given a mortal stab to the pride of a certain young Lady, who entertains so high an opinion of her mother’s double coronet, of her own personal merit, that she thinks herself a proper match for the Grand Mogul.

Gazetter and Daily New Advertiser 22^nd August 1780

For the GAZETTEER

Envy will kill, and ungratified detraction will consume, as sure as a cannon ball or a decline.

HOWEVER the daughters of detraction may invent lyes and fight against the fair Perdita, it must gratify her vanity to see the universal envy she has lighted up in the bosoms of her would-be rival countrywomen. Every laughable paragraph tends to encrease her consequence by proving the disappointed and wretched situation of half her sex. Perdita’s good fortune has caused more real anguish of mind in the female world than can be well imagined or described; and those who affect to disbelieve the reality of it now break forth with double vengeance to rail and aim at what they cannot reach. Bankrupts in fame, beauty, and all those accomplishments of the mind and graces of person which captivate the hearts of men, danglers, and puppies alike, those antiquated bona rebas divide their time between their city uncles, their stage and critic instructors, and their message acquaintance. This last worshipful society may not be sufficiently under the general description here given, but to the cognoscenti, the term will appear perfectly intelligible.

Not being one of the cognoscenti – I will need to seek out the meaning of “message acquaintance”. 

Extract from the London Courant and Westminster Chronicle14th March 1781

The “disconsolate” Perdita is a term which at present will not hold; as long as she continues to be “as pretty a bit of flesh” as any “Mycena”, with two gowns to her back, and “everything handsome about her,” with the Heir Apparent, she need not be Perdita “the disconsolate.”

Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser (London, England), Saturday, February 10, 1781

This Day is published, HARRIS’s LIST OF COVENT-GARDEN LADIES: or, Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar, for the year 1781. Containing characters and Anecdotes of Perdita and Elvira; also many interesting  particular relative to more than one hundred and fifty Ladies of various descriptions.

Printed for H. Ranger, at No. 23, Fleet-Street, almost opposite St. Dunstan’s Church. Price 2s. 6d.

Where may be had, the separate Lists of each year, from 1771, to the present 1781.

One to check up on – E. J. Burford in his work Royal St James’s: Being a Story of Kings, Clubmen and Courtesans suggests that ‘Perdita’ Robinson was often to be found at Mrs. Windsor’s when she needed money after the Prince had broken off the engagement’ (p. 216).