Charlotte Mardyn
[1][2] Little is known of her early life or origins owing to her telling various conflicting stories about herself, with William Oxberry recounting that he had heard five different versions.
In 1808 she moved to Gosport where she worked as a housemaid[3] and it was at this time the Portsmouth Company of actors made their annual visit to her home city.
"[5] He met the attractive 16 year-old Charlotte Mardyn; she being ambitious for a better life and wishing to escape the drudgery of the kitchen the two quickly married and she joined the Portsmouth Company.
Having sent the money a week later she found her supposedly dead husband drunkenly staggering towards her home with the intention of causing trouble.
She was Zuleika opposite Edmund Kean in The Bride of Abydos (1818)[7] adapted from Byron's poem of the same name and played Sylvia in Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer (1819).
[9][10] An alternative and more innocent (but possibly less likely) version of the incident was that, as a leading member of the Committee of Management of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Byron had been visited at his home by Mrs Mardyn who was anxious to prevent a rival actress from gaining a coveted role.
This beautiful woman, and popular actress, has recently returned to her native country, after a voluntary seclusion of four years upon the Continent, during which she has visited various parts of Germany, Italy, &c. &c. devoting herself to the study of their languages, and a cultivation of their literature.
Captain Medwin’s recent publication has happily cleared the character of this much-injured Lady, in so decided and unequivocal a manner, that the most inveterate malignity no longer can venture a reflection.
The slanderous rumour, which so long and cruelty coupled her name with that of Lord Byron, was, in its origin, a misapprehension wholly inexplicable.
It now is proved that his Lordship never met Mrs. Mardyn out of the Green-room of Drury-lane Theatre, and even there scarcely ever noticed her beyond the mere compliment of a passing bow.
Nevertheless, utterly unfounded as that rumour actually was, at one time, it obtained so general a credit, that both the reputation and the feelings of its innocent victim were outraged by it to the direst extreme.
[16] In 1834 Byron's historical tragedy in blank verse Sardanapalus (1821) was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Macready taking the title role.
