The Ghost of S.T. Coleridge in Mary Robinson's The Haunted Beach

by Miles Durrance

I: Abstract.

Mary (Darby) Robinson stands as a female poet who was unusually prolific and popular in her own time. According to our friend, editor Ducan Wu, "she produced six volumes of poetry, eight novels, and two plays with remarkable success between the years of 1775 and 1800" (Wu 178). It seems eerily fitting that Robinson's The Haunted Beach would be composed only months prior to the poet's untimely death in 1800 (she was only 43 at the time). The momentous talent of this spirited woman would live on, however, through the impressions she made upon a number of her considerable Romantic contemporaries, Samuel Taylor Coleridge being her most ardent supporter. Ironically, this self-same lofty association ultimately contributes to the undercutting of her most famous poem's intended dramatic effect.

II: Publication History of The Haunted Beach (and related notes on the author).

By the time she composed The Haunted Beach, Mary Robinson had lived her share of life. She had seen early fame as an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre, and weathered several scandalous relationships and affairs that drew the ire of the popular media. Her most talked about escapade was a year-long tryst with the Prince of Wales. Later on, Mary lost the use of her legs due to a miscarriage. Happily, the last section of Mary's life would see her settle into a mostly-distinguished and financially rewarding career as a writer/poet (Wu 177-182).

Mary's earliest works were to be published in the old vein of gathering financial sponsorship in order to send a volume to the presses and then distribute it (her first volume, 1775's Poems, was partially sponsored by the Duchess of Devonshire [Wu 178]). Mary's subsequent fame/infamy as a great actress/prolific sleep-around, though, would eventually allow her to publish works via a much more accessible route once she turned her full attention to writing: the newspaper. Mary's most visible and productive period as a poet took place near the end of her life at The Morning Post, an upstart "hodgepodge of gossip and political intrigue" that nonetheless regularly employed the talents of such luminaries as Robinson (who would compose poems under several pseudonyms, principally "Laura Maria" and "Tabitha Bramble"), Coleridge, Robert Southey and Wordsworth to fill its poetry column on a daily basis (Pascoe 252-253; 260). Mary's previously-established scandalous reputation with the English public made her a perfect vehicle for the aims of the Post's editor, Daniel Stuart, to market his poets as "fashionable people in order to create more interest in his publication, and thereby create profits by greater public demand for copies of the Post (Pascoe 258-259). This exact type of accessibility led to the propagation of Mary's pop-culture legend, coinciding with the dissemination of what would actually come to be viewed as often serious, sometimes brilliant poetry by both critics and contemporaries.

Although Robinson's romantic relations would never quite coalesce, she would enjoy a most fruitful professional relationship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who described her as "a woman of undoubted genius" to Southey roughly a year prior to her death (Wu 177). Coleridge's interactions with Robinson should appear quite remarkable to the modern student of Romanticism. He sent her a manuscript copy of his as yet-unpublished Kubla Kahn in 1797; was influenced to write his poem The Snow-Drop after reading a poem of the same name by Robinson; and, perhaps most notoriously, openly borrowed the meter for his poem The Solitude of Binnorie from Robinson's The Haunted Beach (which, in turn, owes much in terms of its gothic aspects to STC's Christabel and Rime of the Ancient Mariner [Wu 180, 182; Wordsworth Introduction to Lyrical Tales]).

The story behind the composition of The Haunted Beach is actually much shadier than the rather straightforward publication history of the poem. The unsettling incident that inspired the poem is only related in a post-mortem attachment to Robinson's autobiography by an unnamed friend of the poet (see the Wu Romanticism anthology, page 121, for this spooky account). No exact date or year is given for the composition of The Haunted Beach in this passage. We are only vaguely informed that it was "one of those nights of melancholy inspiration" (Wu 121). In any event, the poem itself first appeared in the February 28, 1800 edition of The Morning Post, by which time Robinson had replaced Southey as the paper's poetry editor (Wu 182). Not surprisingly, Coleridge loved the poem and urged Southey to include it in his Annual Anthology of Poetry; the poem also appears in Mary Robinson's final collection of poetry, entitled Lyrical Tales, which was published on December 18, 1800, only 8 days before her death. (Yes, Mary had read and was inspired by Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, even though he was much less acquainted with her and received her work more frigidly than his friend Coleridge [Wu 182]). Interestingly, Wordsworth temporarily considered changing the title to the second edition of his Lyrical Ballads in 1800 because of its resemblance to the title of Robinson's anthology; the two works eventually retained their original titles and were published only five weeks apart, Wordsworth's collection appearing in January of 1801 (J. Wordsworth Intro. to Lyrical Tales).

The scandalous Mary Robinson's work fell out of favor with the onset of the Victorian era, but the sensational aspects of her life and career have recently rekindled the interest of critics in the life and output of this multi-faceted talent (Chancey Website bio.). Perhaps most fitting about Robinson's career is her relationship to Coleridge, whose own rise and fall and recent resurrection parallels that of Robinson. It is also surprising and a bit enlightening to find out that the poet deemed most worthy of Coleridge's esteem is not the author of The Lyrical Ballads, but rather that of the almost-forgotten Lyrical Tales.

III: Interpretation of The Haunted Beach in View of its Publication History.

Robinson's The Haunted Beach is undeniably rife with thematic aspects that remind one of S.T. Coleridge's more canonical Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poem's first four stanzas set the scene ominously for what our narrator is viewing. The last four inform the reader as to the identity of the corpse in the shed (a "shipwrecked mariner," line 46), refer to the actions of his "messmates brave" (55) and relate the lot of the cursed fisherman who hides the body of his victim ("Heaven designed his guilty mind / Should feed on prospects dreary," lines 75-76).
The fact that this poem so much recalls Mariner and is not delivered with a force matching the power of the story behind its composition reflects the fate of a poem that is famous primarily because of its association with the things surrounding its creation and publication.

The Haunted Beach is not viewed as Mary Robinson's best poem (this honor usually goes to Sappho and Phaon, from 1776). Its most revered aspect is not its imagery or the emotional power of its story (Coleridge himself was said to have believed that the poem ends "feebly" [Wordsworth Intro. to Lyrical Tales]). Rather, its principal fame is derived from outside occurrences that subsume the actual content of the poem.

As mentioned above, Coleridge admired its meter and used it in one of his own poems. There's also the murky story behind the actual inspiration for the poem, the prose relation of which comes off as much spookier than the poem itself (and this account was not even penned by Robinson!). Additionally, the poem was published at the whim of Robinson herself, as she had become poetry editor of the paper in which the poem first appeared. Her ill-health was also plaguing her to further extents at the time of its composition, which could not have boded well for the quality of its rendering. On top of all of this is the far-too-obvious influence of STC's Mariner. The idea that Robinson would relate such a harrowing experience as that which inspired the poem in the form of such a, well, rip-off, does little to bolster the originality or dramatic power of this poem.

Unfortunately, it seems as though The Haunted Beach speaks more to the canonization of the Ancient Mariner, the influence of Coleridge in the late 1790's, and the remarkable rapport he had with Robinson than it does to her own considerable talents as a poet. The fate of this poem in fact encapsulates the early tarnishes of reputation that Robinson herself experienced early in her professional life: yes, it is famous, but for all the wrong reasons. Luckily, Mrs. Robinson lived to transcend such early bad press and the rest of her poetry seems to be on a similar course in winning convincing modern critics as to validity of her talents versus the sensationalism of her associations.

Works Cited

Chancey, Kristen. "Mary Robinson. Online. University of Florida. Internet. 29 May 2000.
Available: www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/chancey.htm <http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/chancey.htm> .

Pascoe, Judith. "Mary Robinson and the Literary Marketplace. Romantic Women Writers:
Voices and Countervoices. Eds. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover:
University Press of New England, 1995. 253-268.

Wordswoth, John. Introduction. Lyrical Tales. By Mary Robinson. Oxford: Woodstock Books,
1989. 1-4.

Wu, Duncan, ed. Romantic Women Poets. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.