The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

178 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

While he pays all his cronies, with other folks’ pelf,

And, by bankrupting millions, enriches himself! (1: 357; 6–9)

In a move more characteristic of Peter Pindar than Mary Robinson,

Tabitha takes the opportunity to mock Pitt’s unmarried status as evi-

dence of his callow virginity and implied homosexuality: ostensibly

referring to Pitt’s dual position as First Lord of the Treasury, Tabitha

hints, “With garters and tinsel he dresses his toys, / and he calls the

gay puppets his Tr—y boys” (13–4), and then a few lines down, she

adds, “To his own wily race, see the VIRGIN- BOY cling” (26). Tabitha

finally concludes that Pitt’s presumed chastity is more fundamentally

inhuman through an ironic inversion of Burke’s famous epithet for

the masses: “Then in vain shall the SWINE grunt of taxes and woe, /

While the VIRGIN of BRITAIN is cold as its snow” (358; 41–2). Pitt

thus becomes a parodic Mother of Christ. The series proper con-

cludes with a bizarre and somewhat incoherent fable attempted in

the manner of John Gay’s animal fables; this piece is meant to be

a response to the secession of the Foxite Whigs from the House of

Commons in 1797 after their failed attempts to impeach Pitt. In the

poem, which is inscribed to the Duke of Portland, Fox’s former ally,

the King appears as his familiar lampoon “Farmer George.” The

other characters are an assortment of birds: Fox is the Eagle of “lin-

eage high” (because he was the second son of Henry Fox, 1st Baron

Holland [1705–74] and a descendent of Charles II). In contrast, Pitt

appears as the “long- neck’d, noisy, gabbling Gander; / A thing, the

Farmer oft wou’d hold / In solemn converse” (1: 361–2; 18–20).

The fable laments Portland’s defection to Pitt’s side, which many saw

as committing to the King’s desire to reassert monarchical authority

throughout Europe as the war with France continued. The subject and

the style of these poems are uncharacteristic of Robinson, but she was

ever the poetic chameleon. This new direction also may derive from

her increased friendliness with Godwin and Wollstonecraft, from her

continued intimacy with Wolcot, and perhaps from the bitterness of

the separation from Tarleton, whose politics she likely abhorred.

The trouble with Tabitha Bramble, then, is not just the incongruity

between her first performance and Smollett’s character, but also the

way in which her later re- adoption of the character in 1800 does not

match either her earlier Tabitha or Smollett’s. Like Portia before her,

Tabitha Bramble disappeared after only a handful of poems. One more

poem in this series, “Admonitory Ode VIII. Tabitha Bramble to Peter

Pindar,” would appear much later in July of 1799. The numbering of

this poem as “Ode VIII” is odd because the sixth and seventh Tabitha

odes are not known to exist. The number may signify a relationship to

9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1789780230100251_06_ch04.indd 178 12/28/2010 11:08:52 AM12/28/2010 11:08:52 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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