Bell’s Laureates I 29Sunday Last” [2: 57–8]), another lyric marveling at the spectacle of
Georgiana in her “new and splendid carriage” (2: 58–9), and a poem
on catching a glimpse of the Countess of Yarmouth “at her window
in Piccadilly” (2: 67–8). These poems, replete with the frisson of
f leeting glimpses of fashionable female celebrity, gently lampoon the
chivalric hyperbole of male erotic spectatorship and hyper- sensibility,
if not the spectacles themselves. Robinson treads lightly here, for she
was known to be the author of the Oberon poems and did not want
to risk alienating those whom she hoped would subscribe to a third
volume of her collected poems, which never materialized despite
being puffed aggressively in the Post. For instance, her “Stanzas on
the Duchess of Devonshire’s Indisposition” conveys no irony in its
sympathetic concern and its praise of Georgiana’s virtue and mag-
nanimity (2: 75). But Robinson also revives the paternal/maternal
facet of the avatar for “Lines Addressed to a Beautiful Infant,” which
she inscribed to Eliza Fenwick, author of the novel Secresy (1795),
who with her young children stayed with Robinson for a few weeks
in the summer of 1800 when Fenwick separated from her husband
(2: 108–9).
But the Oberon avatar resists characterization as erotic or pater-
nal, and the Oberon poems defy classification as having any qualities
peculiar to a coherent fiction of Oberon’s personality or authority.
Oberon is like any other poet- figure in that he writes in a variety of
styles from a variety of perspectives. In this way, Oberon, like each
of her avatars, is a metonym for Robinson. She used the signature for
several other poems during the final months of her life, from May
until October of 1800, and these final Oberon poems run the gambit
of her lyric modes. Playing on Burns’s “To a Mouse,” “Oberon, to
the May Fly” is a charming rumination on the transience of human
life, but with a comic bathos in the image of a tiny fairy and f ly
replacing the laborer and the mouse (2: 84–5). “The Fisherman” is
mildly subversive in its celebration of working- class contentedness
(2: 106–7). In “A Hue and Cry,” Oberon complains of the wan-
ton immodesty displayed by revelers at Brighton—undoubtedly a
dig at the Prince of Wales’ supposed dissipation following his separa-
tion from Caroline of Brunswick (2: 118). Oberon is amorous (“To
Arabelle!” [2: 128–9]), comical (“Sweet Madeline of Aberdeen” [2:
131–2]), pathetic (“Written on the Sea- Shore” [2: 133–4]), didactic
(“Love’s Four Senses” [2: 142–3]), and sentimental (“Written Near
an Old Oak” [2: 143–4]). And in a pair of poems signed “M. R.,”
“Oberon to Titania” and “Titania’s Answer to Oberon,” Robinson
figuratively returns the characters to Shakespeare (2: 119–21).9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 299780230100251_03_ch01.indd 29 12/31/2010 4:20:10 PM12/31/2010 4:20:10 PM
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