The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Bell’s Laureates II 91

and the developing French constitutions. Robinson’s Ainsi va le

monde, then, is an important document in the British debate over

the French Revolution and is one of the few immediate poetic

responses to be published. The next year Robinson included Ainsi

va le monde in her collection of Poems, printed by Bell. She would

continue to engage the French Revolution, its principles, and its

ultimately unfortunate course throughout the decade. Robinson

also would continue to associate with Merry until his departure

with his actress wife, Ann Brunton, for America in 1796. Despite

the posthumous disavowal of the Memoirs, Robinson and Merry

shared a taste for poetry that coincided with their shared politi-

cal views, and the Della Crusca network eventually evolved (some

would say devolved) into a network of disenfranchised radicals.

As I noted in the previous chapter, Merry introduced Godwin

to Robinson, founding an important friendship for Robinson in

her final years (Paul 1: 154). Significantly, in Maria Elizabeth’s

edition of Robinson’s Poetical Works in 1806, Ainsi va le monde

appears in the canon of Robinson’s poetry; all references to Merry,

however, have been deleted or effaced from the poem. Whether it

was Robinson or her daughter who made these changes is impos-

sible to determine, but I suspect it was not Robinson herself,

especially given the embarrassed acknowledgment of her Della

Cruscan sympathies in the section of the Memoirs continued “by

a friend.” Furthermore, after the debacle of Godwin’s memoir of

Wollstonecraft, the author(s) of Robinson’s Memoirs is careful

to elide Robinson’s friendship with radicals such as Wolcot and

Godwin as well, the only two mourners at her funeral.

Bell’s Whole Choir

When Great Britain and France went to war, Merry and his associates

eventually became the target of vicious political attacks masked as liter-

ary ones, such as William Gifford’s Baviad in 1791. The destruction of

Della Crusca began as a systematic program of incessant ridicule almost

immediately after The Laurel of Liberty and Ainsi va le monde appeared.

The ridicule of Della Crusca and Laura Maria began playfully enough:

the Town and Country Magazine joked that “This rhyming couple seem

so exactly on a par that an union of pens, if not of hands, could not

be disreputable to either” (72). The tone from some quarters became

gradually harsher as it became known that Robinson was the author

of the Laura Maria poems. Perhaps in response to the suggestion of a

union between the two poets, the Morning Post snidely and knowingly

9780230100251_04_ch02.indd 919780230100251_04_ch02.indd 91 12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM12/28/2010 11:08:29 AM

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

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