Imposture and Serres' Reputation Around 1813

by Alyssa Wu

Serres’ claims and other women impostors

To first understand how Serres was seen by the public, we must see how she represented herself. One major facet of her representation was how she claimed her royal blood. In 1817, Serres first claimed that she was the daughter of George III’s brother, Prince Henry; Prince Henry had supposedly married her aunt, Olive Payne. However, in 1820, Serres had changed the story of her claim. Instead of claiming that her aunt married royalty, Serres instead claimed that her uncle, James Wilmot, had secretly married a Polish princess named Poniatowski. The daughter of that marriage then married the Duke of Cumberland, and she was the only child from that marriage. Both claims were eventually proven false, as much of the evidence for her claims was found to be forged.

Despite the evidence being forged by Serres’ own hand, there is considerable evidence that Serres believed that she was truly of royal blood. Long after Serres’s death, her daughter Lavinia would go in her mothers’ footsteps and attempt to convince both the British court and public that she was of royal blood (Bondesson 170). Lavinia was convinced that her mother was telling the truth. This implies that Serres’ act of royalty— perhaps more of a delusion—  was never dropped. In the face of the rampant dislike of her in the press and irreparable damage to her reputation, Serres never dropped her claims, implying that she truly believed in her royal blood. This delusion may have come for her desire for both fame and money, which imposure also offered. Throughout her life, Serres demonstrated an interest in both money and fame; as a young girl, she wrote letters to the Duke of Kent and the Prince of Wales, asking for money and also giving unwanted advice (Bondesson 174). This unwarranted advising may have come from a desire to gain fame as an advisor.

The general opinion of impostors at the time varied, though it was generally negative.  One scholar, Debbie Lee, posits that the public opinions’ on female impostors were divided between sympathy for their desperation against how dangerously deceptive they were (18). In Olivia’s case, the people were likely to strongly dislike her due to her deceptions, especially since she had condemned her husband to debtor’s prisons for the rest of his life. Furthermore, her circumstances before her claims were not nearly as sad as some others, as she had a career as an artist and writer. Furthermore, her imposture was not as interesting a story as other impostors at the time, such as Princess Caraboo. Caraboo, otherwise known as Mary Baker,  pretended to be from a Malaysian island kingdom called Javasu, and fooled a British village about her identity for months, and met a variety of popular figures in England in the midst of her imposture.

Serres’s publishing history

Serres’s claims largely became known through her pamphlets, and her reputation was affected by how she presented herself through them. Serres published and sold her first pamphlet, The Life of the Author of the Letters of Junius, the Rev. James Wilmot, in 1813. It was sold with the help of a variety of popular booksellers, such as John Hatchard and Evan Williams. Both Hatchard and Williams had connections to nobles; Williams was the bookseller to the Duke and Duchess of York, and Hatchard’s bookstore was a place where the upper class would frequently meet, as his bookstore doubled as a literary coffeehouse (Jones). It’s likely Serres had these connections to popular booksellers through her connections as an author of romance novels and poems (St Julian (1805), Flights of Fancy: Poems (1806); however, I cannot confirm this as no copies are online.

In Serres’s next pamphlet published in 1822, The Princess of Cumberland's Statement to the English Nation, As to Her Application to Ministers, she likely continued to work with them. The opening page lists that the “book may be had of all booksellers”, and it's unlikely Serres would stop working with her old connections. Furthermore, the letter Serres wrote in the Upcott album was addressed to an E. Williams, which is likely the same as Evan Williams. In the letter, Serres sets up a time for her and associates of Williams to meet, sometime in March 1822. This matches up to the date the pamphlet was published, so it’s likely that they were meeting to discuss selling her new pamphlet.

In her The Princess of Cumberland's Statement to the English Nation, As to Her Application to Ministers pamphlet, her publisher was Redford & Robins; while Redford & Robins is less well known, we can guess that they were also popular as their business continued to run until 1887 (Brown 155). The fact that her pamphlets were sold by popular businesses suggests that the public— at the very least, the rich and middle class— had the ability to access and read the pamphlets. Even those who could not purchase her pamphlets may have seen her writing within the Gentleman’s Magazine, which was written in the same dramatic flair as her pamphlets were. 

Gentleman’s Magazine

A reason that contributed to the failure of Serres’ imposture was her previous conduct in a popular magazine called the Gentleman’s Magazine. As discussed, Serres’s first pamphlet in 1813 was regarding the Letters of Junius; within the pamphlet, she claimed that her uncle, James Wilmot, had wrote the Letters of Junius. However, as the author of the Letters was anonymous, this could not be confirmed, and many others had theories on who the possible author might be, who was only called Junius. The Letters were a series of anonymous letters that criticized the government; the author was anonymous due to fear of political repercussions.

Serres had written a letter to the magazine in response to the backlash of her claims, specifically addressing one letter from George Woodfall. Woodfall was the printer of the original Letters of Junius, and was strongly opposed to the idea that Wilmot was the author of them. Though he claimed he did not know who the original author was, his words still carried weight. This back and forth of agreement and disagreement between people within the magazine was typical. Additionally, people sent their own opinions of who was right in the form of letters, whether it be Serres or Woodfall, in the magazine. 

Comparing Serres and Woodfalls’ letters to each other, we can see how Serres’s writing affected the public opinion of her. If you would like to read the full letters, you can read the letters from the two here, on pages 115 and 449; letters from other citizens addressing the situation can be found by searching ‘Junius’ in the link.

In Woodfall’s letter on page 115, he brings out evidence as to why Wilmot is not Junius, citing their different schedules and locations. Overall, his response is measured: “I meant not the slightest disrespect to the memory of Dr. Wilmot… It was in reprobation of those who, without ground in so doing, thrust forward his name as the Author of the Letters, which many still think as yet without a Father. The Doctor, as I have been informed, was a man of considerable abilities… But his habits were not those of Junius” (118). This admittance can be seen as Woodfall acquiescing to some of Serres’s points; in her pamphlet, she talks about both her and the community’s experience with her uncle, both of which were tremendously positive. Woodfall’s ability to acquiesce that Wilmot had ‘considerable abilities’ makes him seem more logical to the eyes of the public, as it shows that he is not looking to win the argument, but rather only to find the truth.

Serres responded back in the magazine in anger, contrasting heavily against Woodfall’s response, saying: “as my sex is much against the popularity of the Life; I have, too, political enemies — powerful ones, whose characters and transactions, having been developed to me by others, have subjected me to much secret oppression” (414). Serres noting her gender and emotion first before any of her evidence puts her in a bad light, especially due to the believed tie between women and erratic emotion. She notes a ‘secret oppression’, but to the public, this would have been obscene, especially since Serres had not yet come with the claim that she was Princess of Cumberland, as it was not yet 1822. This sense of delusion and self importance lent readers— particularly male readers— to see Serres as an archetype of the most negative aspects of a woman. 

The belief in the tie between women and emotion was strong during the time, and was made stronger due to the events of the French Revolution. Edmund Burke, one of the most popular orators in England, described poor women in the crowd surrounding the royal deaths in the French Revolution in a negative light in a negative light: “horrible yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infinite contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest woman” (Lee 19). Though Serres has demonstrated more control than these women, there is still a resemblance to this description and Serres herself, especially in the mention of contumelies. According to the OED, to be contumely means “[i]nsolent reproach or abuse; insulting or offensively contemptuous language or treatment…  scornful rudeness; now, esp. such contemptuous treatment as tends to inflict dishonour and humiliation.” This description strongly applies to Serres; the public would have seen her as dishonoring herself by acting in a way unseemly to a woman, especially with her attempts at claiming authority, and her inflated sense of self importance.

Additionally, Burke’s description of women during the French Revolution made British conservatives “more sensitive  to  gender  and  class  disruption … [and] regarded  poor  or  working-class women with suspicion if they assumed any kind of authority” (Lee 19). This suspicion would have applied to Serres. To them, Serres’s letters would have served as a good reason as to why women should not be in power, as her delusion would have been generalized to all women. Her delusion in her self importance is shown especially with the contrast to Woodfall’s letters, which presents himself as extremely rational. 

Works Cited

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Jones, Evan David. “Williams, Evan (1749-1835), Bookseller and Publisher.” Dictionary of Welsh Biography, National Library of Wales, https://biography.wales/article/s-WILL-EVA-1749.

Lee, Debbie. Romantic Liars: Obscure Women Who Became Impostors and Challenged an Empire. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2006.

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Wells, John. "Baker [née Willcocks], Mary [alias Princess Caraboo] (bap. 1791, d. 1864), impostor." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  01. Oxford University Press. Date of access 6 Nov. 2021, <https://www-oxforddnb-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41062>            

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