The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

60 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

’TIS THERE my breast shall seek repose,

And “drink Oblivion to its woes.” (1: 58; 61–70)

The joke is on Anna Matilda, as Laura archly points out that her rival

has missed the classical allusion to the river of forgetfulness, Lethe,

in Greek mythology. Moreover, she takes the opportunity to quote

Milton’s Comus (“brew’d enchantment”; 696) as a way to one- up

her opponent. But it is also playfully self- referential: Robinson per-

formed the role of “the Lady,” the character who speaks the quoted

phrase, in several Drury Lane productions of Comus in the late 1770s

(Davenport 227). Anna Matilda wrote no reply to Laura.

Thus, Robinson establishes herself as Laura in the Della Crusca

network. Meanwhile, the first poem to appear with her own sig-

nature, “Mrs. Robinson,” appeared around this time in a different

newspaper, the Star, on 25 February 1789. It seems a child- like fable

but is an allegory of competition between women—the beautiful but-

terf ly and the rapacious bee, both gendered female. The moral is that

the beautiful must beware of the envious when the latter is equipped

with the wit and the malice to do harm. In this way it complements

Laura’s “To Anna Matilda”; but, signed by her own name, “The Bee

and the Butterf ly” is also a direct riposte to the fashionable ladies

who took such pleasure in her downfall. What is interesting to me

is how self- consciously technical Laura’s performance is compared

with that of “Mrs. Robinson.” The avatar as a deliberate refraction of

the literary self thus gives license to the formal experimentation and

virtuosity Robinson will continue to develop. It would be a couple

of years before Robinson would reveal herself as the agent of these

avatars; but for now, the Della Crusca network provided a way for her

avatars and her poems to work as actors in the network without the

interference of Robinson’s authorial self and its previous associations.

“Laura” was her way of beginning to earn the “laurel,” “the Wreath

of Fame,” with which her poetry is obsessed. The avatar is itself a kind

of poetic form.

My purpose in this chapter has been to establish the terms of the

Della Crusca network, commercial and literary. For the first couple

of years, this network was popular and entertaining—a ludic paradise

of sorts that would soon prove unrecoverable as Merry and Robinson

each became involved in the other’s politics as well as the other’s

poetry. Robinson’s profound affinities with Merry constitute a major

obstacle for appreciating her poetry today, because the teleology of

British Romanticism implies a renunciation of this kind of verse.

From Gifford’s attack on the Della Cruscans in the Baviad (1791)

9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 609780230100251_03_ch01.indd 60 12/31/2010 4:20:17 PM12/31/2010 4:20:17 PM

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

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