Last week my wife and I needed to visit Weybridge in Surrey (UK), which is quite close to Old Windsor in Berkshire, the place where Mary (Perdita) Robinson spent the last days of her life and also where she is buried. We thought we would take the opportunity to try and find the house where she died -- Englefield Cottage -- which we believed was located on Middle Hill in Englefield Green, near Old Windsor. Despite a very slow drive down the road, we were unable to find the cottage. As it had been more than 200 years ago that she died I suppose the chances that the cottage has since been demolished or renamed are fairly high.

So, we moved on to Old Windsor to find her grave. We knew it was in "Old Windsor church-yard" because Robert D. Bass had told us so in The Green Dragoon. We found Church Road in Old Windsor, and then a church, but again we hit a problem. Bass had described the burial -- "Through the rows of majestic elms they bore her to a grave near a spreading larch". So, what was the problem? There wasn't a single tree in the church-yard! We knew that all Elm trees in England had become the victim of Dutch Elm Disease several years ago, but where was the Larch? We found and checked a map, and there were four more churches in Old Windsor! There was another church in Church Road, and it was located near the River Thames, a more probable location we thought. So we continued down Church Road where we found the Parish Church of St Peter & St Andrew. We entered the church-yard to find many trees, including a Larch! Beneath it lay the vault in which the remains of Mary "Perdita" Robinson lay.

Although the years have caused the inscription to become badly eroded, it was clear this was the vault in which she was buried. We don't know for how much longer the inscription will be decipherable -- not too many years I think. It was a very dull late-autumn day (hence the leaves), perhaps similar to the day on which she was buried.

[There are at least three inscriptions on the sides of Mary's monument, though due to the weathering Peter mentions, it is difficult to find accurate transcriptions of them. -- Marg B.]

The front bears the basic inscription:

MARY ROBINSON
BORN 27 NOV 1758
DIED 26 DEC 1800
"PERDITA"
(BORN DARBY)
[Two additional lines are indecipherable]¹

One side has the following poem, said to have been written by Mary herself:

O THOU, whose cold and senseless heart
Ne'er knew affection's struggling sigh,
Pass on, nor vaunt the Stoic's art,
Nor mock this grave with tearless eye.
 
For oft, when evening's purple glow
Shall slowly fade from yonder steep,
Fast o'er this sod the tear shall flow
From eyes that only wake to weep.
 
No wealth had she, no pow'r to sway;
Yet rich in worth and learning's store;
She wept her summer hours away,
She heard the wintry storm no more.
 
Yet o'er this low and silent spot
Full many a bud of Spring shall wave,
While she -- by all save ONE forgot --
SHALL SNATCH A WREATH BEYOND THE GRAVE!²

Another side has this inscription, apparently written by Maria Elizabeth:

Of Beauty's Isle her daughter must declare
She who sleeps here was fairest of the fair
But ah! while Nature on her favourite smil'd
And Genius claim'd his share in Beauty's child
Ev'n as he wove a Garland for her brow
Mix'd Lurid nightshade with the buds of May
And twin'd her darkest cypress with the bay:
In mildew tears steep'd every opening flow'r
Yet O may Pity's angel from her grave
This early victim of misfortune save
And as she springs to everlasting morn
May Glory's fadeless crown her soul adorn³

The fourth side is apparently blank.

Notes:

¹ Transcribed on site by Lytton Jarman. Notice that she managed to get her own, preferred version of her birthdate on her monument. Robert D. Bass, The Green Dragoon; The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1957), p403, quotes an entirely different legend, which is quite puzzling. Both Lytton and Peter have seen the original, and at least part of the text is discernable in Peter's photo. It clearly does not match the Bass version. [ back ]

² Marguerite Steen, The Lost One: A Biography of Mary 'Perdita' Robinson (London: Methuen and Co., 1937), p238. [ back ]

³ Transcribed on site by Lytton Jarman. [ back ]