Stuart’s Laureates I 183cultivate an urbane voice for the avatar that bears no resemblance to
the Tabitha Bramble of the political satires or the poetic tales. Some
comic pieces echo the voice of the spinster persona and similarly
ridicule “peevish” old women, including “When I Was Young” (2:
89–90; 1) and “The Grey- Beard” (92–3). Other poems that appear
with the “T.B.” signature are not even comic at all, such as “Pretty
Susan” (2: 110–1), “The Summer Day” (113–4), “Written During
the Late Stormy Weather” (138). And another, “The Admonition”
(140–2), is a love lyric “after the manner of the antient poets” writ-
ten explicitly in a male voice but signed “T.B.” The haphazardness of
these signatures gives the impression that Robinson submitted the
poems to Stuart and he gave them whatever signature he saw fit, per-
haps to give the illusion of a multiplicity of voices.
Indeed, almost all of Robinson’s avatars reappear during this final
year, including Julia, Oberon, Laura Maria, Laura, and Sappho, plus
a couple of new ones, Lesbia and Bridget, that seem interchangeable
with any of the others. The poems signed with these avatars all echo
their previous textual incarnations but never in a fully integrated way
in order to construct a coherent character. Robinson, for example,
revived her Laura Maria avatar for the purpose of poetic correspon-
dence with male friends such as Wolcot and Pratt, suggesting that
she viewed that signature as a refraction of her social, networking
self as it had once been with Robert Merry.^10 She does also seem to
have reserved the “Laura Maria” or “L.M.” signatures for her more
sentimental, melancholy, or morally instructive pieces.^11 One ode,
“Ode To Winter,” from December of 1799, matches the style and
substance of her Oracle odes from years earlier (2: 15–6). Overall,
though, the poems associated with the Laura Maria avatar gener-
ally are interchangeable with those she signed with her own name
or her initials. But that is, after all the point of the avatar. They are
all Mrs. Robinson. Toward the end of her life, one poem, “The Old
Shepherd. A Tale,” even appeared in the Monthly Magazine prefaced
as “By MRS. ROBINSON” but signed at the end “Tabitha Bramble”
(2: 123–4). This further suggests that the “feigned signature” is just
another formal feature of the poem.To Undertake the Poetical Department
“You must contribute, Brain!” Robert Southey, in his charming lyric
“The Poet Perplext,” addresses not only his brain but also the rig-
ors of composing original poetry twice a week for Daniel Stuart’s
Morning Post and Gazetteer. This poem provides some insight into9780230100251_06_ch04.indd 1839780230100251_06_ch04.indd 183 12/28/2010 11:08:53 AM12/28/2010 11:08:53 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
omso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-13