172 The Poetry of Mary Robinson- “A New Song, to an Old Tune” (12 January 1798) [T.B.]
- “Sonnet [beginning “Say, Stern Oppression”]” (3 February 1798)
[T.B.] - “Ode Fifth” (14 February 1798)
- “A New Song” (19 February 1798) [T.B.]
Of these eight poems, the five odes in the series are signed “Tabitha
Bramble”; the other three poems, the two songs and the sonnet, are
signed “T.B.” This might warrant further investigation because the
five odes seem more deliberately performative than the other three.
Indeed, the sonnet signed “T.B.” is not satirical or even comic in
the least. While Vargo argues that Robinson’s Tabitha deliberately
“works in an opposite direction” from Smollett’s (38), I think anyone
familiar with Smollett’s Humphry Clinker is likely going to be dis-
appointed with—if not exasperated by—Robinson’s performances as
Tabitha Bramble. The most puzzling thing about the Tabitha poems
is how incongruous they seem in relation to Smollett’s original char-
acter, who was popular and visually represented in new engravings for
reprints of the book. For the most part, Robinson’s Tabitha poems
are oblivious to the most superficial aspects of Smollett’s character-
ization: these poems possess very little local color (other than perhaps
their irregular meters that match Wolcot’s), no Scots dialect or Scots
expressions, no malapropisms, no comical misspellings, and only
occasional successes at wit. The epistolary nature of Smollett’s book
provides such specific depictions of the character and her manner of
expression. To take one example, in Smollett, Tabby writes to Mrs
Gwyllim, the family’s housekeeper back in Scotland, “I wrote to doc-
tor Lews for the same porpuss, but he never had the good manners to
take the least notice of my letter; for which reason, I shall never favour
him with another, though he beshits me on his bended knees” (175).
Robinson, however, never convincingly performs Smollett’s character
and one might wonder if she even read the book.
Like many of her poetic satires, these first Tabitha Bramble poems
are grounded in London and in London society and politics; but
unlike her other more urbane satires, these are situated from the
perspective of the rustic outsider. The first one, “Tabitha Bramble
Visits the Metropolis by Command of her Departed Brother” delib-
erately invokes Smollett’s novel because Tabitha’s brother, as her
readers would have known, is the cantankerous but lovably sensible
Matthew Bramble; in the first stanza of the ode Tabitha, is in mourn-
ing for him. But Matthew Bramble does not die in Humphry Clinker.
Moreover, at the end of the novel, Tabitha marries the quixotic9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1729780230100251_06_ch04.indd 172 12/28/2010 11:08:51 AM12/28/2010 11:08:51 AM
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