The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Stuart’s Laureates I 191

newspaper The Express and Evening Chronicle on 9 January 1798.

There, “The Apotheosis, or the Snow- Drop” appears in a column

“FROM WALSINGHAM” below a reprint of Robinson’s “Stanzas,

to Fortune” and above a reprint of her poem “The Exile,” both

extracted from the novel.^14 The column oddly thus gives the impres-

sion of Coleridge’s poem, which takes up most of the space, being

from Walsingham rather than being a response to Robinson’s poem,

which appeared in the Post along with his “Visions of the Maid of

Orleans, a Fragment,” which had been part of Coleridge’s contribu-

tion to Joan of Arc but which Southey excised for the second edi-

tion.^15 Coleridge, not a reader of novels unless he was paid to review

them, undoubtedly read the poem in the paper where it is disembod-

ied from its representation in the novel as the composition of the male

protagonist, Walsingham (5: 22–3). Coleridge’s response betrays no

awareness of this and, as “Francini,” addresses Robinson in the poem

only as “Laura,” the avatar first associated with the Della Crusca

network. Carl Woodring connects the “Francini” signature to the

Francine family of Florence (124–5). But I would add that Coleridge

also makes a silly pun on the presumed Jacobinism of Stuart’s net-

work and nods to Robinson’s previous poetic admirers with Italianate

pseudonyms—“Della Crusca,” “Leonardo,” “Rinaldo,” “Arno,”

etc.—and to Merry’s own Florentine affiliations.^16 Significantly, the

poem is then a playful rekindling of Della Cruscan poetic amours

as Coleridge pays tribute, somewhat condescendingly, to Robinson’s

“potent sorceries of song” (Express and Evening Chronicle 6–9 January

1798). Perhaps without intending to do so, Coleridge re- genders the

original poem as feminine, where in the novel it is at least fictionally

masculine. He thus fixes Robinson as a fragile f lower, the first to

bloom and so to die, but revivified by his immortalizing gesture: as

he writes, “Fame unrebellious heard the charm, / And bore thee to

Pierian climes.” Although they were not yet acquainted, Coleridge

knew the way to Robinson’s heart. According to his friend Clement

Carlyon, Coleridge wrote the poem as a “way of making some amends

to her” for “abusing [her poetry] more than it deserved” (175). If

Carlyon’s memory serves, then Coleridge, with Carlyon in Germany

at the time, had yet to meet Robinson in person.^17 Robinson appar-

ently was delighted with Francini’s poetic tribute and, ignorant of

Coleridge’s authorship, asked Stuart to forward to Francini a letter of

gratitude and a set of the four- volume Walsingham (Erdman, Essays

162). The relationship with Coleridge will prove to be quite signifi-

cant at the end of Robinson’s life, as we shall see in the next chapter.

9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1919780230100251_06_ch04.indd 191 12/28/2010 11:08:54 AM12/28/2010 11:08:54 AM

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

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