Bell’s Laureates I 17newspaper the Oracle. And, of course, Robinson had been known
as “the English Sappho” since the publication by John Bell of her
first volume of poems in 1791. Complementing the self- ref lexivity
of the scene, Martha’s poem itself had appeared in the Morning Post
on 5 April 1799 as the work of “Mrs. Robinson.” Facetiously, then,
Robinson repurposes her previously published poem as the work of
Martha Morley, who, before she begins reciting, is asked by a young
lady, “ ‘Pray, ma’am, do you write in the newspapers?’ ” And, adding
to Martha’s mortification, the young lady teasingly asks, “ ‘Are you
Anna Matilda, or Della Crusca, or Laura Maria? Comical creatures!
they have made me shed many a tear, though I never more than half
understood them’ ” (7: 133). Alluding to her early career, Robinson
pokes fun at herself and at Hannah Cowley (Anna Matilda) and
Robert Merry (Della Crusca) for writing the hugely popular poetry
that frequently also was criticized for being no more than glittering
nonsense. Robinson, writing with comical deadpan, has the earnest
and mortified Martha refute the association, “ ‘I never wrote under
either of those signatures,’ said Mrs. Morley.’ ” Robinson winks wryly
at her readers with “either,” ironically owning up to her alter- ego
Laura Maria. Of course, this is all in fun because her readers had
known she was Laura Maria since 1791, when she claimed the “feigned
signatures” of Laura, Laura Maria, and Oberon in the preface to her
Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson. As this moment in The Natural Daughter
proves, Robinson never disavows her connection to the so- called
Della Cruscans, although the Memoirs, concerned with the preserva-
tion and perpetuation of her literary reputation, does: “dazzled by
the false metaphors and rhapsodical extravagance of some contempo-
rary writers, she suffered her judgment to be misled and her taste to
be perverted: an error of which she became afterwards sensible” (7:
279). Although she engages in some mild self- parody, this episode of
The Natural Daughter is a reminder that the poetry of Della Crusca
and his pseudonymous associates originally was all in good fun.
At the time of writing The Natural Daughter, Robinson also
was reviving Laura Maria in the columns of the Morning Post. She
signed “Laura Maria” to a tributary poem to Samuel Jackson Pratt
on 25 July 1799 and continued to use it while working for Daniel
Stuart at the Morning Post throughout 1800. Robinson originally
designed the avatar in 1789 for Bell’s newspaper The Oracle, but she
had not used the pseudonym since her poem “To Zephyrus. Written
in August, 1793” appeared in the Oracle on 7 January 1794. From
1789 until then, it had been her principal pseudonym. So, five years
later, her revival of Laura Maria in the newspaper coincides with her9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 179780230100251_03_ch01.indd 17 12/31/2010 4:20:08 PM12/31/2010 4:20:08 PM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13