Romantic Autobiography in England
Vice, Ugly Vice: Memoirs of Mrs Billington from her Birth
Susan Levin
From Helen of Troy to Hilary Rodham Clinton, powerful, beautiful, betrayed women have been lightning rods for multiple anxieties. As a woman with a voice and sense of performing self so powerful that she posed a phenomenal threat to the accepted moral and sexual categories of her age, Elizabeth Billington defied control. Capitalizing on the popularity of autobiography and of Elizabeth Billington, a superstar of the stage, James Ridgway generates a pornographic, misogynistic, political tract that tests a range of autobiographical possibilities as it reveals the power structures of romantic theater and cultural production. To tell a life story is one way of reducing such a woman to understandable categories. The material James Ridgway presents in Memoirs of Mrs Billington From her Birth, however, shatters the potentially controlling frame of life narrative.
Memoir is historical record. What is included in her life story and how it is told raise significant issues about the autobiographical enterprise. What relationship to the reality of Elizabeth Billington's life does this memoir bear? A brief summary of her life helps clarify the perspective both Billington and Ridgway bring to the work. Her contemporaries, such as Lord Mount Edgcumbe and William Parke provide different possibilities about who she was and how she lived. She may have been born in 1765, 1768 or, (improbably) like Wordsworth and Beethoven, in 1770. Parents of prodigies often declare later birthdates for their children; performers do the same for themselves. Billington's mother, a singer, and father, an oboist, had long careers at King's Theatre, Vauxhall. Elizabeth and her brother, a violinist, were considered prodigies, but it was Elizabeth, as both a keyboard and vocal composer and performer, who shone. At 15, she defied her father to elope with her teacher, Thomas Billington, and was faced with supporting herself and her new husband. To find employment, the couple went to Dublin, and performed in Ireland until 1786, engagements that form the main subject of the Ridgway Memoirs. Finally, on 13 February 1786, Billington made her London debut and from then on worked on her voice continually even as she was steadily performing. Her departure for the continent in 1794 may have been owing to the scandal the Memoirs caused or may have reflected her desire for an international career.
In fact, the Memoirs had the effect of making her more successful than ever. She triumphantly debuted in Naples in a new opera composed for her by Bianchi, Inez di Castro. Mrs Billington died the next day, but she toured Italy with her brother and became friendly with Josephine Bonaparte. She married a Frenchman, but his brutal treatment sent her back to London, where from 1801 until 1811 she was the reigning diva of the day. Even after formally retiring, she performed for charity and for the benefits of her friends. Sometime in 1817 she was reunited with her husband and died the next year, owing -- according to rumor -- to his physical abuse.
Ridgeway's version presents a talented, sex-crazed virago, enforcing a traditional trope about the sexual immorality of singers, actors, and other professional -- especially female -- entertainers. He claims to be unsure about her birthdate, but settles on 1765, making her as much of an aging soprano as possible. She was, he reports, "starved or beat into the knowledge of music," by her "putative" father; Ridgway thus raises the possibility of illegitimacy. Part of his account focuses on Elizabeth as abused child, and hints of incest are frequent. "Her father was detected in attempting an intercourse with his musical offspring, before she could possibly, from her tender years, have had any tendency to vice". Her parents' limited talents limited their ability to support themselves; in contrast, "Miss Betsy," as Ridgway affectionately, sarcastically, and condescendingly calls her, is able to support herself "solely by her public performances". Ridgway writes of her childhood performances with her brother and of how when Weichsel and his wife separated, "it was then absolutely necessary to look out for a husband for Miss".
The affair brings destruction and disease. "It was during this period Mrs B. must have been infected with a loathsome -- by C." "The same malady" confines C. to his room and "her criminal intercourse with D. took place". The notorious affair with Daly is monitored by Mr Billington and others seeking to ruin the couple by taking legal action against them. Mrs Billington is forced to move "to a miserable room in a miserable place" (22). Somehow, the Billingtons get back together, and in the summer of 1784, a child is born. They leave the infant in Dublin to go on a tour, but the baby "soon after died of the horrid ___ received from its mother". Relations with Daly begin again, but now move mainly to the theatre itself. The tech. crew makes a hole in the wall to observe "every thing that passed in this small temple of lust and infamy". The summer heat intensifies their passion; Daly takes care to bribe Mr Billington with wine and watches. This "gross misconduct" gives Daly's wife a "violent illness:" her friends, who have also been Daly's financial backers, finally force the Billingtons from Ireland. They return to London as "cooing, loving, doves," and Elizabeth Billington makes her Covent Garden debut. Daly, deserted in Ireland, "appeared in mourning; was dejected, sorrowful, and avoided all business for some days after".
Giving a very different version of this situation, the Answer explains "that the actresses, who visit the Irish stage, are more subject to be seduced than seduce". Daly's apartment in the theatre was a "brothel in the morning" and "a gambling rendezvous in the evening". When actresses wouldn't cooperate, Daly, through the process of "forfeiture," took away their assignments and starved "the besieged into compliance". This description of theatre managers in general and Daly in particular recalls Virginia Woolf's account of Shakespeare's "wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith" who can only have contact with the theatre by becoming pregnant by "Nick Greene the actor-manager" and in despair "killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle". With the truth of the best fiction, Woolf provides the more usual story. Elizabeth Billington, in contrast, does not let Daly or any other man destroy her and her talent.
There is also the question of baby clothes. She is trying to make them, but is ashamed to admit to anybody but her mother that she doesn't really understand what to do. Mentioned frequently, the problematic layette is part of an ongoing discussion in the letters about clothing, a typical mother-daughter topic. The daughter sends her mother a gown with advice on accessorizing. In another letter, she writes of "the prettiest green gown" she has picked out, although she personally thinks "there are better colours".
Finally, the child arrives. "I was brought to bed on Monday of a fine girl, but I am not so happy to say she is perfectly well, for the poor little darling is griped very much, and it grieves me sadly you must imagine". A poignant postscript points further to the complex relationship of mother and daughter. "The child is very much like me; but I dare say you have almost forgot me". The baby is sickly and dies while the Billingtons are touring Ireland, a tragedy that occurs after the time of the letters, but that Ridgway dismisses as the result of Elizabeth's "disease." The wish that her mother will come live with her and the baby in Ireland -- "I hope after my child is born that you will ever be with me"-, and that they can perform together is not fulfilled.
While her husband is her main source of despair, other men also figure in the letters. Mr Billington's behavior recalls that of her father. "Not satisfied with the destruction he brought on" his wife, he wants also to ruin his daughter, to "bring me to utter destruction; he is a bad base man, he has used me worse than a dog." Her brother must turn out the same "by his eternal father's instructions". And, she fumes, she supports them both. Ridgway italicizes her one brief reference to Richard Daly, which he found particularly offensive. "I think I will make you laugh, when I tell you I cuckold B. with Mr D. the manager, but as to being found in bed with any body is a great falsity"
That Billington would raise such a subject in such a way with her mother, when she is "at the time in pregnancy, unquestionably, by her husband" (x) is for Ridgway particularly appalling. His muddling of the sequence of letters blurs the connection established between the two women. His repetition of certain phrases, some taken from the letters, further surrounds Billington with an aura of degeneracy. In describing her spying maid who steals her mail, for instance, Billington refers to her "cursed bitch of a servant". Ridgway has previously repeated the phrase with slight variation: "her maid who she calls a cursed bitch"; "called by her mistress a cursed bitch"; and finally "the cursed musical bitch". Through this kind of repetition, the reader associates Billington with the phrase and applies it to her, a woman who in Waterford is described as hurling "the most scurrilous and abusive invectives, against the truly respectable inhabitants of the city"
Ridgway justifies so constructing the Memoir by claiming that he wishes to present vice in general rather than Elizabeth Billington in particular. Describing himself as a man of honor and decency, who has been treacherously treated by those with whom he has tried to deal fairly, Ridgway feels a moral obligation to publish the letters and to expose the "Vice, ugly vice, in all its deformities ... too often countenanced upon the stage". The memoir becomes a public service.
Ridgway's various publications, on the other hand, may be connected. Many of his works involve important public figures. As a radical, he often explored relationships of political power. Gillian Russell points out how theatrical models shaped parliamentary debate, rituals of protest and mass demonstration, military training, and many other components of romantic life. "The discourse, practice, and images of the theatre pervaded all aspects of the culture". Theatrical works, many of which Ridgway published, helped define what it meant to be British in a time of growing nationalism. Elizabeth Billington lived and worked at the center of theatrical politics.
Like many performers, she had access to the most important political figures of the day. Musical events in which professionals and amateurs participated were common. The royal family was filled with talented musicians.
Whether or not it was an actual love affair, Mrs Billington's connection to the Prince of Wales was strong. In 1806, she brought Mozartian opera to London with a production of "La Clemenza di Tito." Parke describes the event as "the principal production of the season." Billington most probably used a score borrowed from the Prince of Wales to mount the production.
Almost every appraisal of Billington's work mentions the care and taste with which she performed. Her kindness and generosity were well-known to her contemporaries. The disconnect between Ridgway's version of her life and what seems to be its reality is profound. Ridgway's effort might also be considered in the context of another work of 1792: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft too writes about reactions to female sexuality. As a radical, middle-class intellectual, she argues the benefits for both sexes of regarding women as rational rather than sexual beings. Elizabeth Billington, however, defies the attempts of life narrative and social commentary to place woman into categories in which her power can be understood. Wollstonescraft's rationality cannot explain her; the scandal Ridgway dished out could not ruin her; the simple fact was that she performed and people loved her. She lived as a woman who sang and triumphed.