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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:38:02 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 01:38:02 -0700 |
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font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .notebox {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; margin-top: 5%; /* makes box around Transcriber's Notes at end of file */ + margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 1em; border: solid black 1px;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Browning's Heroines, by Ethel Colburn Mayne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Browning's Heroines + +Author: Ethel Colburn Mayne + +Illustrator: Maxwell Armfield + +Release Date: April 28, 2007 [EBook #21247] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING'S HEROINES *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Michael Zeug, Lisa Reigel, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/pippa.png" alt="Pippa" width="45%"/> +</div> + + + + +<h1 style="margin-top: 2em;">BROWNING'S<br /> +HEROINES</h1> + +<h3 style="margin-top: 2em;"><span class="smcap">by</span> ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE<br /> +WITH FRONTISPIECE & DECORATIONS<br /> +BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD</h3> + +<h4 style="margin-top: 4em;">LONDON<br /> +CHATTO & WINDUS<br /> +1913</h4> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>When this book was projected, some one asked, "What is there to say +about Browning's heroines beyond what he said himself?"—and the +question, though it could not stay me, did chill momentarily my primal +ardour. Soon, however, the restorative answer presented itself. "If +there were nothing to say about Browning's heroines beyond what he said +himself, it would be a bad mark against him." For to <i>suggest</i>—to open +magic casements—surely is the office of our artists in every sort: +thus, for them to say all that there is to say about anything is to show +the casement stuck fast, as it were, and themselves battering somewhat +desperately to open it. Saying the things "about" is the other people's +function. It is as if we suddenly saw a princess come out upon her +castle-walls, and hymned that fair emergence, which to herself is +nothing.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Browning, I think, is "coming back," as stars come back. There has been +the period of obscuration. Seventeen years ago, when the <i>Yellow Book</i> +and the <i>National Observer</i> were contending for <i>les</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span><i>jeunes</i>, Browning +was, in the more "precious" côterie, king of modern poets. I can +remember the editor of that golden Quarterly reading, declaiming, +quoting, almost breathing, Browning! It was from Henry Harland that this +reader learnt to read <i>The Ring and the Book</i>: "Leave out the lawyers +and the Tertium Quid, and all after Guido until the Envoi." It was Henry +Harland who would answer, if one asked him what he was thinking of:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And thinking too—oh, thinking, if you like,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How utterly dissociated was I. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—regardless of all aptitude in the allusion, making it simply because +it "burned up in his brain," just as days "struck fierce 'mid many a day +struck calm" were always <i>his</i> days of excitement. . . . A hundred Browning +verses sing themselves around my memories of the flat in Cromwell Road.</p> + +<p><i>Misconceptions</i> was swung forth with gesture that figured swaying +branches:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This is a spray the bird clung to. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>You were to notice how the rhythms bent and tossed like boughs in that +first stanza—and to notice, also, how regrettable the second stanza +was. Nor shall I easily let slip the memory of <i>Apparent Failure</i>, thus +recited. He would begin at the second verse, the "Doric little Morgue" +verse. You were not to miss the great "phrase" in</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The three men who did most abhor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their lives in Paris yesterday. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p><p>—but you were to feel, scarce less keenly, the dire descent to bathos +in "So killed themselves." It was almost the show-example, he would tell +you, of Browning's chief defect—over-statement.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How did it happen, my poor boy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You wanted to be Bonaparte,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And have the Tuileries for toy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And could not, so it broke your heart. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>How compassionately he would give that forth! "A screen of glass, you're +thankful for"; "Be quiet, and unclench your fist"; "Poor men God made, +and all for this!"—the phrases (how alert we were for the "phrase" in +those days) would fall grave and vibrant from the voice with its subtle +foreign colouring: you could always infuriate "H. H." by telling him he +had a foreign accent.</p> + +<p>Those were Browning days; and now these are, or soon shall be. Two or +three years since, to quote him was, in the opinion of a <i>Standard</i> +reviewer, to write yourself down a back-number, as they say. I preserve +the cutting which damns with faint praise some thus antiquated short +stories of 1910. Browning and Wagner were so obsolete! . . . How young that +critic must have been—so young that he had never seen a star return. +Quite differently they come back—or is it quite the same? Soon we shall +be able to judge, for this star is returning, and—oh wonder!—is +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>trailing clouds of glory of the very newest cut. The stars always do +that, this watcher fancies, and certainly Browning, like the Jub-jub, +was ages ahead of the fashion. His passport for to-day is dated up to +the very hour—for though he could be so many other things besides, one +of his achievements, for us, will prove to have been that he could be so +"ugly." <i>That</i> would not have been reckoned among his glories in the +Yellow Book-room; but the wheel shall come full circle—we shall be +saying all this, one day, the other way round. For, as Browning +consoles, encourages, and warns us by showing in <i>Fifine</i>,<a name="FNanchor_X-1_1" id="FNanchor_X-1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_X-1_1" class="fnanchor">[x:1]</a> each age +believes—and should believe—that to it alone the secret of true art +has been whispered.</p> + +<p class="authorsc">Ethel Colburn Mayne.</p> + + +<p class="smcap">11 Holland Road,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kensington, W.</span></p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_X-1_1" id="Footnote_X-1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_X-1_1"><span class="label">[x:1]</span></a> I write far from my books, but the passage will be easily +found or recalled.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image02.png" alt="Two birds, possibly eagles" width="70%"/> +</div> + + + + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="centered"> +<table summary="Table of Contents" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4" border="0" width="60%"> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">PART I</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">GIRLHOOD</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright" colspan="4">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Girl in "Count Gismond"</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Pippa Passes</span></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Dawn: Pippa</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Morning: Ottima</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">III.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Noon: Phene</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">IV.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Evening; Night: The Ending of the Day</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">III.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Mildred Tresham</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">IV.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Balaustion</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">V.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Pompilia</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">PART II</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">THE GREAT LADY</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">"My Last Duchess," and "The Flight of the Duchess"</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>PART III</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">THE LOVER</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Lovers Meeting</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Trouble of Love: The Woman's</span></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft">The Lady in "The Glove"</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron De Nos Jours</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">III.</td> + <td class="tdleft">The Laboratory</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">IV.</td> + <td class="tdleft">In a Year</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">PART IV</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">THE WIFE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">A Woman's Last Word</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">James Lee's Wife</span></td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft">She Speaks at the Window</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft">By the Fireside</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">III.</td> + <td class="tdleft">In the Doorway</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">IV.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Along the Beach</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">V.</td> + <td class="tdleft">On the Cliff</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">VI.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Reading a Book, under the Cliff</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">VII.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Among the Rocks</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">VIII.</td> + <td class="tdleft">Beside the Drawing-board</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td class="tdright">IX.</td> + <td class="tdleft">On Deck</td> + <td class="tdright"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td> +</tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">PART V</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="tdcenter" colspan="4">TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="right">I.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Woman Unwon</span></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="right">II.</td> + <td class="tdleft" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Woman Won</span></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>PART I</h2> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image03.png" alt="Girlhood" width="65%" /> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>BROWNING'S HEROINES</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h2>INTRODUCTORY</h2> + + +<p>Browning's power of embodying in rhythm the full beauty of girlhood is +unequalled by any other English poet. Heine alone is his peer in this; +but even Heine's imagination dwelt more fondly on the abstract pathos +and purity of a maiden than on her individual gaiety and courage. In +older women, also, these latter qualities were the spells for Browning; +and, with him, a girl sets forth early on her brave career. That is the +just adjective. His girls are as brave as the young knights of other +poets; and in this appreciation of a dauntless gesture in women we see +one of the reasons why he may be called the first "feminist" poet since +Shakespeare. To me, indeed, even Shakespeare's maidens have less of the +peculiar iridescence of their state than Browning's have, and I think +this is because, already in the modern poet's day, girlhood was +beginning to be seen as it had never been seen before—that is, as a +"thing-by-itself." People had perceived—dimly enough, but with eyes +which have since grown clearer-sighted—that there is a stage in woman's +development <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>which ought to be her very own to enjoy, as a man enjoys +<i>his</i> adolescence. This dawning sense is explicit in the earlier verses +of one of Browning's most original utterances, <i>Evelyn Hope</i>, which is +the call of a man, many years older, to the mysterious soul of a dead +young girl—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sixteen years old when she died!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perhaps she had hardly heard my name;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It was not her time to love; beside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her life had many a hope and aim,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Duties enough and little cares,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now was quiet, now astir . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here recognition of the girl's individuality is complete. Not a word in +the stanza hints at Evelyn's possible love for another man. "It was not +her time"; there were quite different joys in life for her. . . . Such a +view is even still something of a novelty, and Browning was the first to +express it thus whole-heartedly. There had been, of course, from all +time the hymning of maiden purity and innocence, but beneath such +celebrations had lurked that predatory instinct which a still more +modern poet has epitomised in a haunting and ambiguous phrase—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For each man kills the thing he loves."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus, even in Shakespeare, the Girl is not so much that transient, +exquisite thing as she is the Woman-in-love; thus, even for Rosalind, +there waits the Emersonian <i>précis</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span><span class="i0">"Whither went the lovely hoyden?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Disappeared in blessèd wife;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Servant to a wooden cradle,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Living in a baby's life."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I confess that this tabloid "story of a woman" has, ever since my first +discovery of it, been a source of anger to me; and I do not think that +such resentment should be reckoned as a manifestation of modern +decadence. The hustling out of sight of that "lovely hoyden" is unworthy +of a poet; poet's eyes should rest longer upon beauty so +irrecoverable—for though the wife and mother be the happiest that ever +was, she can never be a girl again.</p> + +<p>In the same way, to me the earliest verses of <i>Evelyn Hope</i> are the +loveliest. As I read on, doubts and questions gather fast—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But the time will come—at last it will,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the lower earth, in the years long still,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That body and soul so pure and gay?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And your mouth of your own geranium's red—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And what you would do with me, in fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In the new life come in the old one's stead.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Given up myself so many times,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gained me the gains of various men,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Either I missed, or itself missed me:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What is the issue? let us see!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span><span class="i0">I loved you, Evelyn, all the while.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My heart seemed full as it could hold?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, hush—I will give you this leaf to keep:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, that is our secret: go to sleep!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You will wake, and remember, and understand."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here the average man is revived, the man who can imagine no meaning for +the loveliness of a girl's body and soul but that it shall "do +something" with him. When they meet in the "new life come in the old +one's stead," this is the question he looks forward to asking; and +instinctively, I think, we ask ourselves a different one. <i>Will</i> Evelyn, +on waking, "remember and understand"? Will she not have passed by very +far, in the spirit-world, this unconscious egotist? . . . True, he can to +some extent realise that probability—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Delayed it may be for more lives yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Much is to learn, much to forget,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ere the time be come for taking you."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Browning has used the wrong word here. She whom the "good stars that +met in her horoscope" had made of "spirit, fire, and dew," must, whether +it be her desire to do so or not, eternally keep part of herself from +the <i>taking</i> of any man. . . . This is a curious lapse in Browning, to whom +women are, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>in the highest sense of the word, individuals—not +individualists, a less lovable and far more capturable thing. His +heroines are indeed instinct with devotion, but it is devotion that +chooses, not devotion that submits. A world of "gaiety and courage" lies +between the two conceptions—a world, no less, of widened responsibility +and heavier burdens for the devotee. If we compare a Browning heroine +with a Byron one, we shall almost have traversed that new country, +wherein the air grows ever more bracing as we travel onward.</p> + +<p>With shrinking and timidity the Browning girl is unacquainted. As +experience grows, these sensations may sadly touch her, but she will not +have been prepared for them; no reason for feeling either had entered +her dream of life. She trusts—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Trust, that's purer than pearl"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and how much purer than shrinking! Free from the athletics and the +slang, she is antetype, indeed, of, say, the St. Andrews girl, that +admirable creation of our age; but she soars beyond her sister on the +wings of her more exquisite sensibility, and her deeper restfulness. Not +for her the perpetual pursuit of the india-rubber or the other kinds of +ball; she can conceive of the open air as something better than a place +to play games in. Like Wordsworth's Lucy—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hers shall be the breathing balm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hers the silence and the calm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of mute insensate things;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>and from such "being" she draws joys more instant and more glancingly +fair than Lucy drew. Among them is the joy of laughter. Of all gifts +that the fulness of time has brought to women, may we not reckon that +almost the best? A woman laughs nowadays, where, before, as an ideal she +smiled, or as a caricature giggled; and I think that the great symphony +of sex has been deepened, heightened wellnigh beyond recognition, by +that confident and delicate wood-note.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breath and bloom, shade and shine—wonder, wealth, and—how far above them!—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truth, that's brighter than gem,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trust, that's purer than pearl—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brightest truth, purest trust, in the universe, all were for me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the kiss of one girl."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nothing there of "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever"! Do +the fortunate girls of to-day get <i>Summum Bonum</i> in their albums (if +they have albums), as we of the past got Kingsley's ineffable pat on the +head? But since even for us to be a girl was bliss, these maidens of a +later day must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>surely be in paradise. They keep, in the words of our +poet, "much that we resigned"—much, too, that we prized. No girl, in +our day, but dreamed of the lordly lover, and I hazard a guess that the +fantasy persists. It is slower to be realised than even in our own +dream-period, for now it must come through the horn-gate of the maiden's +own judgment. Man has fallen from the self-erected pedestal of +"superiority." He had placed himself badly on it, such as it was—the +pose was ignoble, the balance insecure. One day, he will himself look +back, rejoicing that he is down; and when—or if—he goes up again, it +will be more worthily to stay, since other hands than his own will have +built the pillar, and placed him thereupon. His chief hope of +reinstatement lies in this one, certain fact: No girl will ever thrill +to a lover who cannot answer for her to <i>A Pearl, A Girl</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A simple ring with a single stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To the vulgar eye no stone of price:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whisper the right word, that alone—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lo! you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through the power in a pearl.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A woman ('tis I this time that say)<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With little the world counts worthy praise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Utter the true word—out and away<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Escapes her soul: I am wrapt in blaze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Creation's lord, of heaven and earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lord whole and sole—by a minute's birth—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through the love in a girl!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p><p>As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be! But observe that +he has to utter the <i>true</i> word.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>This brave and joyous note is the essential Browning, and to me it +supplies an easy explanation for his much-discussed rejection of the +very early poem <i>Pauline</i>, for which, despite its manifold beauties, he +never in later life cared at all—more, he wished to suppress it. In +<i>Pauline</i>, his deepest sense of woman's spiritual function is falsified. +This might be accounted for by the fact that it was written at +twenty-one, if it were not that at twenty-one most young men are most +"original." Browning, in this as in other things, broke down tradition, +for <i>Pauline</i> is by far the least original of his works in outlook—it +is, indeed, in outlook, of the purest common-place. "It exhibits," says +Mr. Chesterton, "the characteristic mark of a juvenile poem, the general +suggestion that the author is a thousand years old"; and it exhibits too +the entirely un-characteristic mark of a Browning poem, the general +suggestion that the poet has not thought for himself on a subject which +he was, in the issue, almost to make his own—that of the inspiring, as +opposed (for in Browning the antithesis is as marked as that) to the +consoling, power of a beloved woman. From the very first line this +emotional flaccidity is evident—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me—thy soft breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall pant to mine—bend o'er me—thy sweet eyes<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span><span class="i0">And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drawing me to thee—these build up a screen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To shut me in with thee, and from all fear . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And again in the picture of her, lovely to the sense, but, in some +strange fashion, hardly less than nauseating to the mind—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . Love looks through—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whispers—E'en at the last I have her still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How the blood lies upon her cheek, outspread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thinned by kisses! only in her lips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It wells and pulses like a living thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her neck looks like marble misted o'er<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With love-breath—a Pauline from heights above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stooping beneath me, looking up—one look<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I might kill her and be loved the more.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So love me—me, Pauline, and nought but me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never leave loving! . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Something is there to which not again, not once again, did Browning +stoop; and that something removes, for me, all difficulty in +understanding his rejection, despite its exquisite verbal beauties, of +this work. Moreover, it is interesting to observe the queer +sub-conscious sense of the lover's inferiority betrayed in the prose +note at the end. This is in French, and feigns to be written by Pauline +herself. She is there made to speak of "<i>mon pauvre ami</i>." Let any woman +ask herself what that phrase implies, when used by her in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>speaking of a +lover—"my poor dear friend"! We cannot of course be sure that Browning, +as a man, was versed in this scrap of feminine psychology; but we do +gather with certainty from Pauline's fabled comment that her view of the +confession—for the poem is merely, as Mr. Chesterton says, "the typical +confession of a boy"—was very much less lachrymose than that of <i>mon +pauvre ami</i>. Unconsciously, then, here—but in another poem soon to be +discussed, not unconsciously—there sounds the humorous note in regard +to men which dominates so many of women's relations with them. "The big +child"—to some women, as we all know, man presents himself in that +aspect chiefly. Pauline, remarking of her lover's "idea" that it was +perhaps as unintelligible to him as to her, is a tender exponent of this +view; the girl in <i>Youth and Art</i> is gayer and more ironic. Here we have +a woman, successful though (as I read the poem)<a name="FNanchor_12-1_2" id="FNanchor_12-1_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_12-1_2" class="fnanchor">[12:1]</a> <i>not</i> famous, +recalling to a successful and famous sculptor the days when they lived +opposite one another—she as a young student of singing, he as a budding +statuary—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We studied hard in our styles,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For air looked out on the tiles,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For fun watched each other's windows.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span><span class="i0">And I—soon managed to find<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Weak points in the flower-fence facing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was forced to put up a blind<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And be safe in my corset-lacing.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No harm! It was not my fault<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If you never turned your eyes' tail up<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I shook upon E in alt,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Or ran the chromatic scale up.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why did you not pinch a flower<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In a pellet of clay and fling it?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why did I not put a power<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of thanks in a look, or sing it?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I confess that this lyric, except for its penultimate verse, soon to be +quoted, does not seem to me what Mr. Chesterton calls it—"delightful." +Nothing, plainly, did bring these two together; she may have looked +jealously at his models, and he at her piano-tuner (though even this, so +far as "he" is concerned, I question), but they remained uninterested in +one another—and why should they not? When at the end she cries—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This could but have happened once,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we missed it, lost it for ever"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>one's impulse surely is (mine is) to ask with some vexation what "this" +was?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Each life's unfulfilled, you see;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It hangs still, patchy and scrappy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have not sighed deep, laughed free,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Starved, feasted, despaired—been happy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>Away from its irritating context, that stanza <i>is</i> delightful; with the +context it is to me wholly meaningless. The boy and girl had not fallen +in love—there is no more to say; and I heartily wish that Browning had +not tried to say it. The whole lyric is based on nothingness, or else on +a self-consciousness peculiarly unappealing. Kate Brown was evidently +quite "safe in her corset-lacing" before she put up a blind. I fear that +this confession of my dislike for <i>Youth and Art</i> is a betrayal of +lacking humour; I can but face it out, and say that unhumorous is +precisely what, despite its levity of manner, rhythm, and rhyme, <i>Youth +and Art</i> seems to my sense. . . . I rejoice that we need not reckon this +Kate among Browning's girls; she is introduced to us as married to her +rich old lord, and queen of <i>bals-parés</i>. Thus we may console ourselves +with the hope that life has vulgarised her, and that as a girl she was +far less objectionable than she now represents herself to have been. We +have only to imagine Evelyn Hope putting up a superfluous blind that she +might be safe in her corset-lacing, to sweep the gamut of Kate Brown's +commonness. . . . Let us remove her from a list which now offers us a +figure more definitely and dramatically posed than any of those whom we +have yet considered.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12-1_2" id="Footnote_12-1_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12-1_2"><span class="label">[12:1]</span></a> Mr. Chesterton and Mrs. Orr both speak of Kate Brown as +having succeeded in her art. I cannot find any words in the poem which +justify this view. She is "queen at <i>bals-parés</i>," and she has married +"a rich old lord," but nothing in either condition predicates the +successful cantatrice.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> +<h2>I</h2> + +<h3>THE GIRL IN "COUNT GISMOND"</h3> + + +<p>It is like a fairy tale, for there are three beautiful princesses, and +the youngest is the heroine. The setting is French—a castle in +Aix-en-Provence; it is the fourteenth century, for tourneys and +hawking-parties are the amusements, and a birthday is celebrated by an +award of crowns to the victors in the lists, when there are ladies in +brave attire, thrones, canopies, false knight and true knight. . . . Here +is the story.</p> + +<p>Once upon a time there were three beautiful princesses, and they lived +in a splendid castle. The youngest had neither father nor mother, so she +had come to dwell with her cousins, and they had all been quite happy +together until one day in summer, when there was a great tourney and +prize-giving to celebrate the birthday of the youngest princess. She was +to award the crowns, and her cousins dressed her like a queen for the +ceremony. She was very happy; she laughed and "sang her birthday-song +quite through," while she looked at herself, garlanded with roses, in +the glass before they all three went arm-in-arm down the castle stairs. +The throne <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>and canopy were ready; troops of merry friends had +assembled. These kissed the cheek of the youngest princess, laughing and +calling her queen, and then they helped her to stoop under the canopy, +which was pierced by a long streak of golden sunshine. There, in the +gleam and gloom, she took her seat on the throne. But for all her joy +and pride, there came to her, as she sat there, a great ache of longing +for her dead father and mother; and afterwards she remembered this, and +thought that perhaps if her cousins had guessed that such sorrow was in +her heart, even at her glad moment, they might not have allowed the +thing to happen which did happen.</p> + +<p>All eyes were on her, except those of her cousins, which were lowered, +when the moment came for her to stand up and present the victor's crown.</p> + +<p>Shy and proud and glad, she stood up, and as she did so, there stalked +forth Count Gauthier—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . And he thundered 'Stay!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all stayed. 'Bring no crowns, I say!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet<br /></span> +<span class="i1">About her! Let her shun the chaste,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or lay herself before their feet!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shall she whose body I embraced<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A night long, queen it in the day?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For Honour's sake no crowns, I say!'"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Some years afterwards she told the story of that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>birthday to a dear +friend, and when she came to Count Gauthier's accusation, she had to +stop speaking for an instant, because her voice was choked with tears.</p> + +<p>Her friend asked her what she had answered, and she replied—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I? What I answered? As I live<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I never fancied such a thing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As answer possible to give;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for just as the body is struck dumb, as it were, when some monstrous +engine of torture is directed upon it, so was her soul for one moment.</p> + +<p>But only for one moment. For instantly another knight strode out—Count +Gismond. She had never seen him face to face before, but now, so +beholding him, she knew that she was saved. He walked up to Gauthier and +gave him the lie in his throat, then struck him on the mouth with the +back of a hand, so that the blood flowed from it—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . North, South,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">East, West, I looked. The lie was dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And damned, and truth stood up instead."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Recalling it now, with her friend Adela, she mused a moment; then said +how her gladdest memory of that hour was that never for an instant had +she felt any doubt of the event.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God took that on him—I was bid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Watch Gismond for my part: I did.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span><span class="i0">Did I not watch him while he let<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His armourer just brace his greaves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rivet his hauberk, on the fret<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No least stamp out, nor how anon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He pulled his ringing gauntlets on."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Before the trumpet's peal had died, the false knight lay, "prone as his +lie," upon the ground; and Gismond flew at him, and drove his sword into +the breast—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Cleaving till out the truth he clove.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Which done, he dragged him to my feet<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And said 'Here die, but end thy breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In full confession, lest thou fleet<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From my first, to God's second death!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Say, hast thou lied?' And, 'I have lied<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To God and her,' he said, and died."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then Gismond knelt and said to her words which even to this dear friend +she could not repeat. She sank on his breast—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Over my head his arm he flung<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Against the world . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and then and there the two walked forth, amid the shouting multitude, +never more to return. "And so they were married, and lived happy ever +after."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Gaiety, courage, trust: in this nameless Browning heroine we find the +characteristic marks. On that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>birthday morning, almost her greatest joy +was in the sense of her cousins' love—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I thought they loved me, did me grace<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To please themselves; 'twas all their deed"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and never a thought of their jealousy had entered her mind. Both were +beautiful—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8h">". . . Each a queen<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By virtue of her brow and breast;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not needing to be crowned, I mean,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As I do. E'en when I was dressed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had either of them spoke, instead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of glancing sideways with still head!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But no: they let me laugh and sing<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My birthday-song quite through . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so, all trust and gaiety, she had gone down arm-in-arm with them, +and taken her state on the "foolish throne," while everybody applauded +her. Then had come the moment when Gauthier stalked forth; and from the +older mind, now pondering on that infamy, a flash of bitter scorn darts +forth—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Chose time and place and company<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To suit it . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for with sad experience—"knowledge of the world"—to aid her, she can +see that the whole must have been pre-concerted—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And doubtlessly ere he could draw<br /></span> +<span class="i1">All points to one, he must have schemed!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>Her trust in the swiftly emerging champion and lover is comprehensible +to us of a later day—that, and the joy she feels in watching him +impatiently submit to be armed. Even so might one of us watch and listen +to and keep for ever in memory the stamp of the foot, the sound of the +"ringing gauntlets"—reproduced as that must be for modern maids in some +less heartening music! But, as the tale proceeds, we lose our sense of +sisterhood; we realise that this girl belongs to a different age. When +Gauthier's breast is torn open, when he is dragged to her feet to die, +she knows not any shrinking nor compassion—can apprehend each word in +the dialogue between slayer and slain—can, over the bleeding body, +receive the avowal of his love who but now has killed his fellow-man +like a dog—and, gathered to Gismond's breast, can, unmoved by all +repulsion, feel herself smeared by the dripping sword that hangs beside +him. . . . All this we women of a later day have "resigned"—and I know not +if that word be the right one or the wrong; so many lessons have we +conned since Gismond fought for a slandered maiden. We have learned that +lies refute themselves, that "things come right in the end," that human +life is sacred, that a woman's chastity may be sacred too, but is not +her most inestimable possession—and, if it were, should be "able to +take care of itself." Further doctrines, though not yet fully accepted, +are being passionately taught: such, for example, as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>that Man—male +Man—is the least protective of animals.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Over my head his arm he flung<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Against the world . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I think we can see the princess, as she spoke those words, aglow and +tremulous like the throbbing fingers in the Northern skies. Well, the +"Northern Lights" recur, in our latitudes, at unexpected moments, at +long intervals; but they do recur.</p> + +<p>One thing vexes, yet solaces, me in this tale of Count Gismond. The +Countess, telling Adela the story, has reached the crucial moment of +Gauthier's insult when, choked by tears as we saw, she stops speaking. +While still she struggles with her sob, she sees, at the gate, her +husband with his two boys, and at once is able to go on. She finishes +the tale, prays a perfunctory prayer for Gauthier; then speaks of her +sons, in both of whom, adoring wife that she is, she must declare a +likeness to the father—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Our elder boy has got the clear<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Great brow; tho' when his brother's black<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full eye shows scorn, it . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With that "it" she breaks off; for Gismond has come up to talk with her +and Adela. The first words we hear her speak to that loved husband +are—fibbing words! The broken line is finished thus—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9h">". . . Gismond here?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And have you brought my tercel back?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I just was telling Adela<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How many birds it struck since May."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p><p>We, who have temporarily lost so many things, have at least gained this +one—that we should not think it necessary to tell that fib. We should +say nothing of what we had been "telling Adela." And some of us, +perhaps, would reject the false rhyme as well as the false words.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>"PIPPA PASSES"</h3> + + +<h4>I. DAWN: PIPPA</h4> + +<p>The whole of Pippa is emotion. She "passes" alone through the drama, +except for one moment—only indirectly shown us—in which she speaks +with some girls by the way. She does nothing, is nothing, but exquisite +emotion uttering itself in song—quick lyrical outbursts from her joyous +child's heart. The happiness-in-herself which this poor silk-winder +possesses is something deeper than the gaiety of which I earlier spoke. +Gay she can be, and is, but the spell that all unwittingly she +exercises, derives from the profounder depth of which the Eastern poet +thought when he said that "We ourselves are Heaven and Hell." . . . +Innocent but not ignorant, patient, yet capable of a hearty little +grumble at her lot, Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She +can threaten fictively her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing +rain to spoil her enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very +spirit of confiding love, for her threat is that if rain does fall, she +will be sorrowful and depressed, instead of joyous and exhilarated, for +the rest of the year during which she will be bound to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>her "wearisome +silk-winding, coil on coil." Such a possibility, thinks Pippa's trustful +heart, must surely be enough to cajole the weather into beauty and +serenity.</p> + +<p>It is New Year's Day, and sole holiday in all the twelve-month for +silk-winders in the mills of Asolo. An oddly chosen time, one +thinks—the short, cold festival! And it is notable that Browning, +though he acquiesces in the fictive date, yet conveys to us, so +definitely that it must be with intention, the effect of summer weather. +We find ourselves all through imagining mellow warmth and sunshine; nay, +he puts into Pippa's mouth, as she anticipates the treasured outing, +this lovely and assuredly not Janiverian forecast—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is it not plain from this that his artist's soul rejected the paltry +fact? For "blue" the hours of New Year's Day may be in Italy, but as +"<i>long</i> blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain +that, whatever it may be called, it is really Midsummer's Day on which +Pippa passes from Asolo through Orcana and Possagno, and back to Asolo +again.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>We see her first as she springs out of bed with the dawn's earliest +touch on her "large mean airy chamber" at Asolo<a name="FNanchor_24-1_3" id="FNanchor_24-1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_24-1_3" class="fnanchor">[24:1]</a>—the lovely little +town of Northern Italy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>which Browning loved so well. In that chamber, +made vivid to our imagination by virtue of three consummately placed +adjectives (note the position of "mean"), Pippa prepares for her one +external happiness in the year.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A mite of my twelve hours' treasure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The least of thy gazes or glances,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One of thy choices or one of thy chances,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">—My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have omitted two lines from this eight-lined stanza, and omitted them +because they illustrate all too forcibly Browning's chief fault as a +lyric—and, in this case, as a dramatic—poet. Both of them are frankly +parenthetic; both parentheses are superfluous; neither has any +incidental beauty to redeem it; and, above all, we may be sure that +Pippa did not think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow +an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often +led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses +are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not +cite them. But their crowning distastefulness <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>is in the certitude we +feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to +this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt +it. . . . In the same way, the opening rhapsody on dawn which precedes her +invocation to the holiday is out of character—impossible to regard its +lavish and gorgeous images as those (however sub-conscious) of an +unlettered girl.</p> + +<p>But all carping is forgotten when we reach</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>a poet's phrase, it is true, yet in no way incongruous with what we can +imagine Pippa to have thought, if not, certainly, in such lovely diction +to have been able to express. Thenceforward, until the episodical lines +on the Martagon lily, the child and her creator are one. There comes the +darling menace to the holiday—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">". . . But thou must treat me not<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As prosperous ones are treated . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Me, who am only Pippa—old year's sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All other men and women that this earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Belongs to, who all days alike possess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make general plenty cure particular dearth,<a name="FNanchor_26-1_4" id="FNanchor_26-1_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_26-1_4" class="fnanchor">[26:1]</a><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span><span class="i0">Get more joy one way, if another less:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Having made her threat and her invocation, she falls to thinking of +those "other men and women," and tells her Day about them, like the +child she is. They, she declares, are "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones." Each +is, in the event, to be vitally influenced by her song, as she "passes" +at Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night; but this she knows not at the +time, nor ever knows.</p> + +<p>The first Happy One is "that superb great haughty Ottima," wife of the +old magnate, Luca, who owns the silk-mills. The New Year's morning may +be wet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . Can rain disturb<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her Sebald's homage? all the while thy rain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He will but press the closer, breathe more warm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against her cheek: how should she mind the storm?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here we learn what later we are very fully to be shown—that Ottima's +"happiness" is not in her husband.</p> + +<p>The second Happy One is Phene, the bride that very day of Jules, the +young French sculptor. They are to come home at noon, and though noon, +like morning, should be wet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span><span class="i6h">". . . what care bride and groom<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their marriage day;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sunbeams and pleasant weather, spite of thee."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The third Happy One—or Happy Ones, for these two Pippa cannot +separate—are Luigi, the young aristocrat-patriot, and his mother. +Evening is their time, for it is in the dusk that they "commune inside +our turret"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For true content . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Aye—though the evening should be obscured with mist, <i>they</i> will not +grieve—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">". . . The cheerful town, warm, close,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And safe, the sooner that thou art morose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Receives them . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is all the difference bad weather can make to such a pair.</p> + +<p>The Fourth Happy One is Monsignor, "that holy and beloved priest," who +is expected this night from Rome,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To visit Asolo, his brother's home,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say here masses proper to release<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A soul from pain—what storm dares hurt his peace?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>And now the great Day knows all that the Four Happy Ones possess, +besides its own "blue solemn hours serenely flowing"—for not rain at +morning can hurt Ottima with her Sebald, nor at noon the bridal pair, +nor in the evening Luigi and his mother, nor at night "that holy and +beloved" Bishop . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>All at once she realises that in thus lingering over her toilet, she is +letting some of her precious time slip by for naught, and betakes +herself to washing her face and hands—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With a single splash from my ewer!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You that would mock the best pursuer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was my basin over-deep?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One splash of water ruins you asleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now grow together on the ceiling!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That will task your wits."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here we light on a trait in Browning of which Mr. Chesterton most +happily speaks—his use of "homely and practical images . . . allusions, +bordering on what many would call the commonplace," in which he "is +indeed true to the actual and abiding spirit of love," and by which he +"awakens in every man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>the memories of that immortal instant when common +and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to +utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonishing realism" +in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and <i>Pippa Passes</i> is not a +love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we +use it to enhance a passage such as this. Who has not caught the sunbeam +asleep in the mere washhand basin as water was poured out for the mere +daily toilet—and felt that heartening gratitude for the symbol of +captured joy, which made the instant typic and immortal? For these are +the things that all may have, as Pippa had. The ambushing of that beam +and the ordering it, in her sweet wayward imperiousness, to</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">". . . grow together on the ceiling.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That will task your wits!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—is one of the most enchanting moments in this lovely poem. The sunbeam +settles by degrees (I wish that she had not been made to term it, with +all too Browningesque agility, "the radiant cripple"), and finally +lights on her Martagon lily, which is a lily with purple flowers. . . . +Here again, for a moment, she ceases to be the lyrical child, and turns +into the Browning (to cite Mr. Chesterton again) to whom Nature really +meant such things as the basket of jelly-fish in <i>The Englishman in +Italy</i>, or the stomach-cyst in <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium</i>—"the +monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>these lines on +the purple lily are not only ugly and grotesque—in that kind of +ugliness which "was to Browning not in the least a necessary evil, but a +quite unnecessary luxury, to be enjoyed for its own sake"—but are +monstrously (more than any other instance I can recall) unsuited to the +mind from which they are supposed to come.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk-bird's poll!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>One such example is enough. We have once more been deprived of Pippa, +and got nothing really worth the possession in exchange.</p> + +<p>But Pippa is quickly retrieved, with her gleeful claim that <i>she</i> is the +queen of this glowing blossom, for is it not she who has guarded it from +harm? So it may laugh through her window at the tantalised bee (are +there travelling bees in Italy on New-Year's Day? But this is Midsummer +Day!), may tease him as much as it likes, but must</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">". . . in midst of thy glee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love thy Queen, worship me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There will be warrant for the worship—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . For am I not, this day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I may fancy all day—and it shall be so—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>So, as she winds up her hair (we may fancy), Pippa plays the not yet +relinquished baby-game of Let's-pretend; but is grown-up in this—that +she begins and ends with love, which children give and take +unconsciously.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Some one shall love me, as the world calls love:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am no less than Ottima, take warning!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The gardens and the great stone house above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And other house for shrubs, all glass in front,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To court me, while old Luca yet reposes . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But this earliest pretending breaks down quickly. What, after all, is +the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were +she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause +for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that +out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich and proud can +know,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How we talk in the little town below."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So the first dream is over.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love, love, love—there's better love, I know!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and the next pretending shall "defy the scoffer"; it shall be the love +of Jules and Phene—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Why should I not be the bride as soon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As Ottima?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Moreover, last night she had seen the stranger-girl <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>arrive—"if you +call it seeing her," for it had been the merest momentary glimpse—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11">". . . one flash<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blacker than all except the black eyelash;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So strict was she the veil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should cover close her pale<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pure cheeks—a bride to look at and scarce touch,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So startling as her real first infant kiss?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, no—not envy, this!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For, recalling the virgin dimness of that apparition, the slender gamut +of that exquisite reserve, the little work-girl has a moment's pang of +pity for herself, who has to trip along the streets "all but naked to +the knee."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>she cries, who is pure gold if not pure whiteness, and in an instant +shows herself to be at any rate pure innocence. It could not be envy, +she argues, which pierced her as she thought of that immaculate +girlhood—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5h">". . . for if you gave me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leave to take or to refuse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In earnest, do you think I'd choose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That sort of new love to enslave me?<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span><span class="i0">Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As little fear of losing it as winning:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And only parents' love can last our lives."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And she turns, thus rejecting the new love, to the "Son and Mother, +gentle pair," who commune at evening in the turret: what prevents her +being Luigi?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let me be Luigi! If I only knew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What was my mother's face—my father, too!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For Pippa has never seen either, knows not who either was, nor whence +each came. And just because, thus ignorant, she cannot truly figure to +herself such love, she now rejects in turn this third pretending—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nay, if you come to that, best love of all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is God's;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and she will be Monsignor! To-night he will bless the home of his dead +brother, and God will bless in turn</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With love for all men! I, to-night at least,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would be that holy and beloved priest."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now all the weighing of love with love is over; she has chosen, and +already has the proof of having chosen rightly, already seems to share +in God's love, for there comes back to memory an ancient New-Year's +hymn—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All service ranks the same with God."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>No one can work on this earth except as God wills—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2h">". . . God's puppets, best and worst,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are we; there is no last or first."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And we must not talk of "small events": none exceeds another in +greatness. . . .</p> + +<p>The revelation has come to her. Not Ottima nor Phene, not Luigi and his +mother, not even the holy and beloved priest, ranks higher in God's eyes +than she, the little work-girl—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I will pass each, and see their happiness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And envy none—being just as great, no doubt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And so, laughing at herself once more because she cares "so mightily" +for her one day, but still insistent that the sun shall shine, she +sketches her outing—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Down the grass path grey with dew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the swallow never flew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor yet cicala dared carouse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No, dared carouse—"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But breaks off, breathless, in the singing for which through the whole +region she is famed, leaves the "large mean airy chamber," enters the +little street of Asolo—and begins her Day.</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>II. MORNING: OTTIMA</h4> + +<p>In the shrub-house on the hill-side are Ottima, the wife of Luca, and +her German lover, Sebald. He is wildly singing and drinking; to him it +still seems night. But Ottima sees a "blood-red beam through the +shutter's chink," which proves that morning is come. Let him open the +lattice and see! He goes to open it, and no movement can he make but +vexes her, as he gropes his way where the "tall, naked geraniums +straggle"; pushes the lattice, which is behind a frame, so awkwardly +that a shower of dust falls on her; fumbles at the slide-bolt, till she +exclaims that "of course it catches!" At last he succeeds in getting the +window opened, and her only direct acknowledgment is to ask him if she +"shall find him something else to spoil." But this imperious petulance, +curiously as it contrasts with the patience which, a little later, she +will display, is native to Ottima; she is not the victim of her nerves +this morning, though now she passes without transition to a mood of +sensuous cajolement—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is't full morning?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, don't speak, then!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—but Sebald does speak, for in this aversion from the light of day he +recognises a trait of hers which long has troubled him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p><p>With <i>his</i> first words we perceive that "nerves" are uppermost, that +the song and drink of the opening moment were bravado—that Sebald, in +short, is close on a breakdown. He turns upon her with a gibe against +her ever-shuttered windows. Though it is she who now has ordered the +unwelcome light to be admitted, he overlooks this in his enervation, and +says how, before ever they met, he had observed that her windows were +always blind till noon. The rest of the little world of Asolo would be +active in the day's employment; but her house "would ope no eye." "And +wisely," he adds bitterly—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And wisely; you were plotting one thing there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nature, another outside. I looked up—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silent as death, blind in a flood of light;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, I remember!—and the peasants laughed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And said, 'The old man sleeps with the young wife.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This house was his, this chair, this window—his."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The last line gives us the earliest hint of what has been done: "This +house <i>was</i> his. . . ." But Ottima, whether from scorn of Sebald's mental +disarray, or from genuine callousness, answers this first moan of +anguish not at all. She gazes from the open lattice: "How clear the +morning is—she can see St. Mark's! Padua, blue Padua, is plain enough, +but where lies Vicenza? They shall find it, by following her finger that +points at Padua. . . ."</p> + +<p>Sebald cannot emulate this detachment. Morning seems to him "a night +with a sun added"; neither <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>dew nor freshness can he feel; nothing is +altered with this dawn—the plant he bruised in getting through the +lattice last night droops as it did then, and still there shows his +elbow's mark on the dusty sill.</p> + +<p>She flashes out one instant. "Oh, shut the lattice, pray!"</p> + +<p>No: he will lean forth—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . I cannot scent blood here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Foul as the morn may be."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But his mood shifts quickly as her own—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8h">". . . There, shut the world out!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How do you feel now, Ottima? There, curse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world and all outside!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and at last he faces her, literally and figuratively, with a wild appeal +to let the truth stand forth between them—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">". . . Let us throw off<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This mask: how do you bear yourself? Let's out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all of it."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But no. Her instinct is never to speak of it, while his drives him to +"speak again and yet again," for only so, he feels, will words "cease to +be more than words." <i>His blood</i>, for instance—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">". . . let those two words mean 'His blood';<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'His blood.' . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>She answers with phrases, the things that madden him—she speaks of +"the deed," and at once he breaks out again. <i>The deed</i>, and <i>the +event</i>, and <i>their passion's fruit</i>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . the devil take such cant!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am his cut-throat, you are . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With extraordinary patience, though she there, wearily as it were, +interrupts him, Ottima again puts the question by, and offers him wine. +In doing this, she says something which sends a shiver down the reader's +back—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . Here's wine!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I brought it when we left the house above,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And glasses too—wine of both sorts</i> . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He takes no notice; he reiterates—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But am I not his cut-throat? What are you?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Still with that amazing, that almost beautiful, patience—the quality of +her defect of callousness—Ottima leaves this also without comment. She +gazes now from the closed window, sees a Capuchin monk go by, and makes +some trivial remarks on his immobility at church; then once more offers +Sebald the flask—the "black" (or, as we should say, the "red") wine.</p> + +<p>Melodramatic and obvious in all he does and says, Sebald refuses the red +wine: "No, the white—the white!"—then drinks ironically to Ottima's +black <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>eyes. He reminds her how he had sworn that the new year should +not rise on them "the ancient shameful way," nor does it.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Do you remember last damned New Year's Day?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The characters now are poised for us—in their national, as well as +their individual, traits. Ottima, an Italian, has the racial +matter-of-factness, callousness, and patience; Sebald, a German, the no +less characteristic sentimentality and emotionalism. Her attitude +remains unchanged until the critical moment; his shifts and sways with +every word and action. No sooner has he drunk the white wine than he can +brutally, for an instant, exult in the thought that Luca is not alive to +fondle Ottima before his face; but with her instant answer (rejoicing as +she does to retrieve the atmosphere which alone is native to her +sense)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . Do you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fondle me, then! Who means to take your life?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—a new mood seizes on him. They have "one thing to guard against." They +must not make much of one another; there must be no more parade of love +than there was yesterday; for then it would seem as if he supposed she +needed proofs that he loves her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">". . . yes, still love you, love you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In spite of Luca and what's come to him."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>That would be a sure sign that Luca's "white sneering old reproachful +face" was ever in their thoughts. Yes; they must even quarrel at times, +as if they</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">". . . still could lose each other, were not tied<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By this . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but on her responding cry of "Love!" he shudders back again: <i>Is</i> he so +surely for ever hers?</p> + +<p>She, in her stubborn patience, answers by a reminiscence of their early +days of love—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . That May morning we two stole<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under the green ascent of sycamores"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and, thinking to reason with him, asks if, that morning, they had</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4h">". . . come upon a thing like that,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suddenly—"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but he interrupts with his old demand for the true word: she shall not +say "a thing" . . . and at last that marvellous patience gives way, and in +a superb flash of ironic rage she answers him—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then, Venus' body! had we come upon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My husband Luca Gaddi's murdered corpse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Within there, at his couch-foot, covered close"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—flinging him the "words" he has whimpered for in full measure, that so +at last she may attain to asking if, that morning, he would have "pored +upon it?" She knows he would not; then why pore <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>upon it now? For him, +it is here, as much as in the deserted house; it is everywhere.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">". . . For me<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(she goes on),</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now he is dead, I hate him worse: I hate . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His two dead hands, and say, 'I hate you worse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Luca, than——'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And in her frenzy of reminiscent hatred and loathing for the murdered +man, she goes to Sebald and takes <i>his</i> hands, as if to feign that other +taking.</p> + +<p>With the hysteria that has all along been growing in him, Sebald flings +her back—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . Take your hands off mine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis the hot evening—off! oh, morning, is it?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and she, restored to her cooler state by this repulse, and with a +perhaps unconscious moving to some revenge for it, points out, with a +profounder depth of callousness than she has yet displayed, that the +body at the house will have to be taken away and buried—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come in and help to carry"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with ghastly glee she adds—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">". . . We may sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now the dialogue sways between her deliberate sensuous allurement of the +man and his deepening <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>horror at what they have done. She winds and +unwinds her hair—was it so that he once liked it? But he cannot look; +he would give her neck and her splendid shoulders, "both those breasts +of yours," if this thing could be undone. It is not the mere +killing—though he would "kill the world so Luca lives again," even to +fondle her as before—but the thought that he has eaten the dead man's +bread, worn his clothes, "felt his money swell my purse." . . . <i>This</i> is +the intolerable; "there's a recompense in guilt"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"One must be venturous and fortunate:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What is one young for else?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and thus their passion is justified; but to have killed the man who +rescued him from starvation by letting him teach music to his wife . . . +why—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . He gave me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life, nothing less"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and if he did reproach the perfidy, "and threaten and do more," had he +no right after all—what was there to wonder at?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He sat by us at table quietly:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Why must you lean across till our cheeks touched?</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In that base blaming of her alone we get the measure of Sebald as at +this hour he is. He turns upon her with a demand to know how she now +"feels for him." Her answer, wherein the whole of her nature (as, again, +at this hour it is) reveals <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>itself—callous but courageous, proud and +passionate, cruel in its utter sensuality, yet with the force and +honesty which attend on all simplicity, good or evil—her answer strikes +a truer note than does anything which Sebald yet has said, or is to say. +She replies that she loves him better now than ever—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And best (<i>look at me while I speak to you</i>)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Best for the crime."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She is glad that the "affectation of simplicity" has fallen off—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . this naked crime of ours<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May not now be looked over: look it down."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And were not the joys worth it, great as it is? Would he give up the +past?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Give up that noon I owned my love for you?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and as, in her impassioned revocation of the sultry summer's day, she +brings back to him the very sense of the sun-drenched garden, the man at +last is conquered back to memory. The antiphon of sensual love begins, +goes on—the places, aspects, things, sounds, scents, that waited on +their ecstasy, the fire and consuming force of hers, the passive, no +less lustful, receptivity of his—and culminates in a chant to that +"crowning night" in July (and "the day of it too, Sebald!") when all +life seemed smothered up except their life, and, "buried in woods," +while "heaven's pillars seemed o'erbowed with heat," they lay quiescent, +till the storm came—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span><span class="i0">"Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ever and anon some bright white shaft<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feeling for guilty thee and me; then broke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The thunder like a whole sea overhead . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—while she, in a frenzy of passion—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . stretched myself upon you, hands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To hands, my mouth to your hot mouth, and shook<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my locks loose, and covered you with them—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You, Sebald, the same you!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the flame of her is scorching the feeble lover; feebly he pleads, +resists, begs pardon for the harsh words he has given her, yields, +struggles . . . yields again at last, for hers is all the force of body and +of soul: it is his part to be consumed in her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This way? Will you forgive me—be once more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My great queen?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Glorious in her victory, she demands that the hair which she had loosed +in the moment of recalling their wild joys he now shall bind thrice +about her brow—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Crown me your queen, your spirit's arbitress,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Magnificent in sin. Say that!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So she bids him; so he crowns her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My great white queen, my spirit's arbitress,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Magnificent . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>—but ere the exacted phrase is said, there sounds without the voice of +a girl singing.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The year's at the spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And day's at the morn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Morning's at seven;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hill-side's dew-pearled;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lark's on the wing;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The snail's on the thorn:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God's in his heaven—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All's right with the world!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">(<i>Pippa passes.</i>)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Like her own lark on the wing, she has dropped this song to earth, +unknowing and unheeding where its beauty shall alight; it is the impulse +of her glad sweet heart to carol out its joy—no more. She is passing +the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of +make-believe! If now she could know what part the dream-Pippa might have +taken on herself. . . . But she does not know, and, lingering for a moment +by the step, she bends to pick a pansy-blossom.</p> + +<p>The pair in the shrub-house have been arrested in full tide of passion +by her song. It strikes on Sebald with the force of a warning from +above—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You, you spoke!"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but she, contemptuously—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span><span class="i4h">". . . Oh, that little ragged girl!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She must have rested on the step: we give them<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But this one holiday the whole year round.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did you ever see our silk-mills—their inside?<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>There are ten silk-mills now belong to you!</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Enervated by the interruption, she calls sharply to the singer to be +quiet—but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then orders Sebald to call, +for <i>his</i> voice will be sure to carry.</p> + +<p>No: her hour is past. He is ruled now by that voice from heaven. +Terribly he turns upon her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Go, get your clothes on—dress those shoulders!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"> . . . Wipe off that paint! I hate you"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and as she flashes back her "Miserable!" his hideous repulse sinks to a +yet more hideous contemplation of her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My God, and she is emptied of it now!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Outright now!—how miraculously gone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All of the grace—had she not strange grace once?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No purpose holds the features up together,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only the cloven brow and puckered chin<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stay in their places: and the very hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That seemed to have a sort of life in it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drops, a dead web!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Poignant in its authenticity is her sole, piteous answer—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">". . . Speak to me—not of me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>But he relentlessly pursues the dread analysis of baffled passion's +aspect—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Broke the delicious indolence—all broken!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Once more that cry breaks from her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To me—not of me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but soon the natural anger against his insolence possesses her; she +whelms him with a torrent of recrimination. Coward and ingrate he is, +beggar, her slave—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4h">". . . a fawning, cringing lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A lie that walks and eats and drinks!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—while he, as in some horrible trance, continues his cold dissection—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12h">". . . My God!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those morbid olive faultless shoulder-blades—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I should have known there was no blood beneath!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For though the heaven-song have pierced him, not yet is Sebald reborn, +not yet can aught of generosity involve him. Still he speaks "of her, +not to her," deaf in the old selfishness and baseness. He can cry, amid +his vivid recognition of another's guilt, that "the little peasant's +voice has righted all again"—can be sure that <i>he</i> knows "which is +better, vice or virtue, purity or lust, nature or trick," and in the +high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the +other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he +also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to +her who had been for him all that she as yet knew how to be, in—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I hate, hate—curse you! God's in his heaven!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now, at this crisis, we are fully shown what, in despite of other +commentators,<a name="FNanchor_49-1_5" id="FNanchor_49-1_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_49-1_5" class="fnanchor">[49:1]</a> I am convinced that Browning meant us to perceive +from the first—that Ottima's is the nobler spirit of the two. Her lover +has stabbed himself, but she, not yet realising it, flings herself upon +him, wrests the dagger—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i15">". . . Me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Me! no, no, Sebald, not yourself—kill me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mine is the whole crime. Do but kill me—then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yourself—then—presently—first hear me speak!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I always meant to kill myself—wait, you!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Lean on my breast—not as a breast; don't love me</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The more because you lean on me, my own</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Heart's Sebald!</i> There, there, both deaths presently!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here at last is the whole woman. "Lean on my breast—not as a breast"; +"Mine is the whole crime"; "I always meant to kill myself—wait, you!" +She will relinquish even her sense of womanhood; no word of blame for +him; she would die, that he might live forgetting her, but it is too +late <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>for that, so "There, there, both deaths presently." . . . And now let +us read again the lamentable dying words of Sebald. It is even more than +I have said: not only are we meant to understand that Ottima's is the +nobler spirit, but (I think) that not alone the passing of Pippa with +her song has drawn this wealth of beauty from the broken woman's soul. +Always it was there; it needed but the loved one's need to pour itself +before him. "There, there, both deaths presently"—and in the dying, +each is again revealed. He, all self—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>My</i> brain is drowned now—quite drowned: all <i>I</i> feel"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and so on; while her sole utterance is—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not me—to him, O God, be merciful!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pippa's song has, doubtlessly, saved them both, but Sebald as by direct +intervention, Ottima as by the revelation of her truest self. Again, and +yet again and again, we shall find in Browning this passion for "the +courage of the deed"; and we shall find that courage oftenest assigned +to women. For him, it was wellnigh the cardinal virtue to be brave—not +always, as in Ottima, by the help of a native callousness, but assuredly +always, as in her and in the far dearer women, by the help of an +instinctive love for truth—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Truth is the strong thing—let man's life be true!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ottima's and Sebald's lives have not been "true"; but she, who can +accept the retribution and feel no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>faintest impulse to blame and wound +her lover—<i>she</i> can rise, must rise, to heights forbidden the lame +wings of him who, in his anguish, can turn and strike the +fellow-creature who has but partnered him in sin. Only Pippa, passing, +could in that hour save Sebald; but by the tenderness which underlay her +fierce and lustful passion, and which, in any later relation, some other +need of the man must infallibly have called forth, Ottima would, I +believe, without Pippa have saved herself. <i>Direct intervention</i>: not +every soul needs that. And—whether it be intentional or not, I feel +unable to decide, nor does it lose, but rather gain, in interest, if it +be unintentional—one of the most remarkable things in this remarkable +artistic experiment, this drama in which the scenes "have in common only +the appearance of one figure," is that by each of the Four Passings of +Pippa, a man's is the soul rescued.</p> + + +<h4>III. NOON: PHENE</h4> + +<p>A group of art-students is assembled at Orcana, opposite the house of +Jules, a young French sculptor, who to-day at noon brings home his +bride—that second Happiest One, the pale and shrouded beauty whom Pippa +had seen alight at Asolo, and had envied for her immaculate girlhood. +Very eagerly the youths are awaiting this arrival; there are seven, +including Schramm, the pipe-smoking mystic, and Gottlieb, a new-comer to +the group, who hears the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>reason for their excitement, and +tender-hearted and imaginative as he is, provides the human element amid +the theorising of Schramm, the flippancy of most of the rest, and the +fiendish malice of the painter, Lutwyche, who has a grudge against +Jules, because Jules (he has been told) had described him and his +intimates as "dissolute, brutalised, heartless bunglers." Very soon +after the bridal pair shall have alighted and gone in (so Lutwyche tells +Gottlieb), something remarkable will happen; it is this which they are +awaiting—Lutwyche, as the moving spirit, close under the window of the +studio, that he may lose no word of the anticipated drama. But they must +all keep well within call; everybody may be needed.</p> + +<p>At noon the married pair arrive—the bridegroom radiant, his hair "half +in storm and half in calm—patted down over the left temple—like a +frothy cup one blows on to cool it; and the same old blouse that he +murders the marble in."<a name="FNanchor_52-1_6" id="FNanchor_52-1_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_52-1_6" class="fnanchor">[52:1]</a> The bride is—"how magnificently pale!" +Most of these young men have seen her before, and always it has been her +pallor which has struck them, as it struck Pippa on seeing her alight at +Asolo. She is a Greek girl from Malamocco,<a name="FNanchor_52-2_7" id="FNanchor_52-2_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_52-2_7" class="fnanchor">[52:2]</a> fourteen years old at +most, "white and quiet as an apparition," with "hair like sea-moss"; her +name is Phene, which, as Lutwyche explains, means sea-eagle. . . . "How +magnificently <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>pale"—and how Jules gazes on her! To Gottlieb that gaze +of the young, rapturous husband is torture. "Pity—pity!" he +exclaims—but he alone of them all is moved to this: Schramm, ever ready +with his theories of mysticism and beauty and the immortal idealism of +the soul, is unconcerned with practice—theories and his pipe bound all +for Schramm; while Lutwyche is close-set as any predatory beast upon his +prey; and the rank and file are but the foolish, heartless boys of all +time, all place, the "students," mere and transient, who may turn into +decent men as they grow older.</p> + +<p>Well, they pass in, the bridegroom and his snowflake bride, and we pass +in with them—but not, like them, forget the group that lurked and +loitered about the house as they arrived.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The girl is silent as she is pale, and she is so pale that the first +words her husband speaks are as the utterance of a fear awakened by her +aspect—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If you'll not die: so, never die!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He leads her to the one seat in his workroom, then bends over her in +worshipping love, while she, still speechless, lifts her white face +slowly to him. He lays his own upon it for an instant, then draws back +to gaze again, while she still looks into his eyes, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>until he feels that +her soul is drawing his to such communion that—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i13">". . . I could<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Change into you, beloved! You by me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I by you; this is your hand in mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But her silence is unbroken, and now he needs her voice—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I have spoken: speak you!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—yet though he thus claims her utterance, his own bliss drives him +onward in eager speech. "O my life to come"—the life with her . . . and +yet, how shall he work!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The live truth, passing and re-passing me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sitting beside me?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Still she is silent; he cries again "Now speak!"—but in a new access of +joy accepts again that silence, for she must see the hiding-place he had +contrived for her letters—in the fold of his Psyche's robe, "next her +skin"; and now, which of them all will drop out first?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ah—this that swam down like a first moonbeam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into my world!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In his gladness he turns to her with that first treasure in his hand. +She is not looking. . . . But there is nothing strange in that—all the +rest is new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>to her; naturally she is more interested in the new things, +and adoringly he watches her as—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">". . . Again those eyes complete<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all my room holds; to return and rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On me, with pity, yet some wonder too . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But pity and wonder are natural in her—is she not an angel from heaven? +Yet he would bring her a little closer to the earth she now inhabits; +so—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What gaze you at? Those? Books I told you of;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let your first word to me rejoice them too."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Eagerly he displays them, but soon reproves himself: he has shown first +a tiny Greek volume, and of course Homer's should be the Greek—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So out comes the Odyssey, and a flower finds the place; he begins to +read . . . but she responds not, again the dark deep eyes are off "upon +their search." Well, if the books were not its goal, the statues must +be—and <i>they</i> will surely bring the word he increasingly longs for. +That of the "Almaign Kaiser," one day to be cast in bronze, is not worth +lingering at in its present stage, but this—<i>this</i>? She will recognise +this of Hippolyta—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Naked upon her bright Numidian horse,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for this is an imagined likeness, before he saw her, of herself. But no, +it is unrecognised; so they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>move to the next, which she cannot mistake, +for was it not done by her command? She had said he was to carve, +against she came, this Greek, "feasting in Athens, as our fashion was," +and she had given him many details, and he had laboured ardently to +express her thought. . . . But still no word from her—no least, least +word; and, tenderly, at last he reproaches her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But you must say a 'well' to that—say 'well'!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for alarm is growing in him, though he strives to think it only +fantasy; she gazes too like his marble, she is too like marble in her +silence—marble is indeed to him his "very life's-stuff," but now he has +found "the real flesh Phene . . ." and as he rhapsodises a while, hardly +able to sever this breathing vision from the wonders of his glowing +stone, he turns to her afresh and beholds her whiter than before, her +eyes more wide and dark, and the first fear seizes him again—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ah, you will die—I knew that you would die!"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and after that, there falls a long silence.</p> + +<p>Then she speaks. "Now the end's coming"—that is what she says for her +first bridal words.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now the end's coming: to be sure it must<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have ended some time!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and while he listens in the silence dreadfully transferred from her to +him, the tale of Lutwyche's revenge is told at last.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>We know it before Phene speaks, for Lutwyche, telling Gottlieb, has +told us; but Jules must glean it from her puzzled, broken utterance, +filled with allusions that mean nothing until semi-comprehension comes +through the sighs of tortured soul and heart from her who still is, as +it were, in a trance. And this dream-like state causes her, now and +then, to say the wrong words—the words <i>he</i> spoke—instead of those +which had "cost such pains to learn . . ."</p> + +<p>This is the story she tries to tell. Lutwyche had hated Jules for long. +There were many reasons, but the chief was that reported judgment of the +"crowd of us," as "dissolute, brutalised, heartless bunglers." Greatly, +and above all else, had Jules despised their dissoluteness: how could +they be other than the poor devils they were, with those debasing habits +which they cherished? "He could never," had said Lutwyche to Gottlieb, +"be supercilious enough on that matter. . . . <i>He</i> was not to wallow in the +mire: <i>he</i> would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile +put up with statuary." So Lutwyche had resolved that precisely "on that +matter" should his malice concentrate. He happened to hear of a young +Greek girl at Malamocco, "white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen +years old at farthest." She was said to be a daughter of the "hag +Natalia"—said, that is, by the hag herself to be so, but Natalia was, +in plain words, a procuress. "We selected," said Lutwyche, "this girl +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>as the heroine of our jest"; and he and his gang set to work at once. +Jules received, first, a mysterious perfumed letter from somebody who +had seen his work at the Academy and profoundly admired it: she would +make herself known to him ere long. . . . "Paolina, my little friend of the +Fenice," who could transcribe divinely, had copied this letter—"the +first moonbeam!"—for Lutwyche; and she copied many more for him, the +letters which Psyche, at the studio, was to keep in the fold of her +robe.</p> + +<p>In his very earliest answer, Jules had proposed marriage to the unknown +writer. . . . How they had laughed! But Gottlieb, hearing, could not laugh. +"I say," cried he, "you wipe off the very dew of his youth." Schramm, +however, had had his pipe forcibly taken from his mouth, and then had +pronounced that "nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world"; so, +Gottlieb silenced, Lutwyche went on with the story. The letters had gone +to Jules, and the answers had come from him, two, three times a day; +Lutwyche himself had concocted nearly all the mysterious lady's, which +had said she was in thrall to relatives, that secrecy must be +observed—in short, that Jules must wed her on trust, and only speak to +her when they were indissolubly united.</p> + +<p>But that, when accomplished, was not the whole of Lutwyche's revenge, +nor of his activity. To get the full savour of his malice, the victim +must be undeceived in such a way that there could be no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>mistaking the +hand which had struck; and this could best be achieved by writing a copy +of verses which should reveal their author at the end. Nor should these +be given Phene to hand Jules, for so Lutwyche would lose the delicious +actual instant of the revelation. No; they should be taught her, line by +line and word by word (since she could not read), and taught her by the +hag Natalia, that not a subtle pang be spared the "strutting +stone-squarer." Thus, listening beneath the window, Lutwyche could enjoy +each word, each moan, and when Jules should burst out on them in a fury +(but he must not be suffered to hurt his bride: she was too valuable a +model), they would all declare, with one voice, that this was their +revenge for his insults, they would shout their great shout of laughter; +and, next day, Jules would depart alone—"oh, alone indubitably!"—for +Rome and Florence, and they would be quits with him and his "coxcombry."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>That is the plan, but Phene does not know it. All she knows is that +Natalia said that harm would come unless she spoke their lesson to the +end. Yet, despite this threat, when Jules has fallen silent in his +terror at her "whitening cheek and still dilating eyes," she feels at +first that that foolish speech need not be spoken. She has forgotten +half of it; she does not care now for Natalia or any of them; above all, +she wants to stay where Jules' voice has lifted her, by just letting it +go on. "But can it?" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>she asks piteously—for with that transferring of +silence a change had come; the music once let fall, even Jules does not +seem able to take up its life again—"no, or you would!" . . . So trust, we +see, is born in her: if Jules could do what she desires, Phene knows he +would. But since he cannot, they'll stay as they are—"above the world."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you—what are you?" cries the child, who never till to-day has +heard such words or seen such looks as his. But she has heard other +words, seen other looks—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The same smile girls like me are used to bear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But never men, men cannot stoop so low . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet, watching those friends of Jules who came with the lesson she was to +learn, the strangest thing of all had been to see how, speaking of him, +they had used <i>that</i> smile—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But still Natalia said they were your friends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And they assented though they smiled the more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all came round me—that thin Englishman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With light lank hair, seemed leader of the rest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He held a paper"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and from that paper he read what Phene had got by heart.</p> + +<p>But oh, if she need not say it! if she could look up for ever to those +eyes, as now Jules lets her!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . I believe all sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span><span class="i0">Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Never to overtake the rest of me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drawn by those eyes!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But even as she gazes, she sees that the eyes "are altering—altered!" +She knows not why, she never has understood this sudden, wondrous +happening of her marriage, but the eyes to which she trusts are +altering—altered—and what can she do? . . . With heartrending pathos, +what she does is to clutch at his words to her, the music which had +lifted her, and now perhaps will lift him too by its mere sound. "I love +you, love" . . . but what does love mean? She knows not, and her "music" +is but ignorant echo; if she did know, she could prevent this change, +but the change is not prevented, so it cannot have been just the +words—it must have been in the tone that his power lay to lift her, and +<i>that</i> she cannot find, not understanding. So in the desperate need to +see and hear him as he was at first, she turns to her last device—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . Or stay! I will repeat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their speech, if that contents you. Only change<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No more"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and thus to him, but half aware as yet, sure only that she is not the +dream-lady from afar, Phene speaks the words that Lutwyche wrote, and +now waits outside to hear.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span><span class="i0">"I am a painter who cannot paint;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In my life, a devil rather than saint;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In my brain, as poor a creature too;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No end to all I cannot do!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet do one thing at least I can—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love a man or hate a man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Supremely: thus my lore began . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The timid voice goes on, saying the lines by rote as Phene had learned +them—and hard indeed they must have been to learn! For, as Lutwyche had +told his friends, it must be "something slow, involved, and mystical," +it must hold Jules long in doubt, and lure him on until at innermost—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find—this!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And truly it is so "involved," that, in the lessons at Natalia's, it had +been thought well to tutor Phene in the probable interruptions from her +audience of one. There was an allusion to "the peerless bride with her +black eyes," and <i>here</i> Jules was almost certain to break in, saying +that assuredly the bride was Phene herself, and so, could she not tell +him what it all meant?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And I am to go on without a word."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She goes on—on to the analysis, utterly incomprehensible to her, of +Lutwyche's plan for intertwining love and hate; and with every word the +malice deepens, becomes directer in its address. If any one should ask +this painter who can hate supremely, <i>how</i> his hate can "grin through +Love's rose-braided <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>mask," and <i>how</i>, hating another and having sought, +long and painfully, to reach his victim's heart and pierce to the quick +of it, he might chance to have succeeded in that aim—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By thy bride—how the painter Lutwyche can hate!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Phene has said her lesson, but it too has failed. He still is changed. +He is not even thinking of her as she ceases. The name upon his lips is +Lutwyche, not her own. He mutters of "Lutwyche" and "all of them," and +"Venice"; yes, them he will meet at Venice, and it will be their turn. +But with that word—"meet"—he remembers her; he speaks to her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">". . . You I shall not meet:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I dreamed, saying this would wake me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now Phene is again the silent one. We figure to ourselves the dark bent +head, the eyes that dare no more look up, the dreadful acquiescence as +he gives her money. So many others had done that; she had not thought +<i>he</i> would, but she has never understood, and if to give her money is +his pleasure—why, she must take it, as she had taken that of the +others. But he goes on. He speaks of selling all his casts and books and +medals, that the produce may keep her "out of Natalia's clutches"; and +if he survives the meeting with the gang in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>Venice, there is just one +hope, for dimly she hears him say—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Just that one vague, far hope, and for her <i>how</i> wide the world is, how +very hard to compass! But she stands silent, in her well-learnt +patience; and he is about to speak again, when suddenly from outside a +girl's voice is heard, singing.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Give her but a least excuse to love me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When—where—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How—can this arm establish her above me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If fortune fixed her as my lady there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There already, to eternally reprove me?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is the song the peasants sing of "Kate the Queen"<a name="FNanchor_64-1_8" id="FNanchor_64-1_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_64-1_8" class="fnanchor">[64:1]</a> and the page +who loved her, and pined "for the grace of her so far above his power of +doing good to"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'She never could be wronged, be poor,' he sighed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Need him to help her!' . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pippa, going back towards Asolo, carols it out as she passes; and Jules +listens to the end. It was bitter for the page to know that his lady was +above all need of him; yet men are wont to love so. But why should they +always choose the page's part? <i>He</i> had not, in his dreams of love. . . . +And all at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>once, as he vaguely ponders the song, the deep mysterious +import of its sounding in this hour dawns on him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here is a woman with utter need of me—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I find myself queen here, it seems! How strange!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He turns and looks again at the white, quiet child who stands awaiting +her dismissal. Her soul is on her silent lips—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look at the woman here with the new soul . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i7">This new soul is mine!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then, musing aloud, he comes upon the truth of it—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Scatter all this, my Phene—this mad dream!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What's the whole world except our love, my own!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To-night (he told her so, did he not?), aye, even before to-night, they +will travel for her land, "some isle with the sea's silence on it"; but +first he must break up these paltry attempts of his, that he may begin +art, as well as life, afresh. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And you are ever by me while I gaze,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Are in my arms as now—as now—as now!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is what Lutwyche, under the window, hears for his revenge.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p><p>In this Passing of Pippa, silence and song have met and mingled into +one another, for Phene is silence, as Pippa is song. Phene will speak +more when Jules and she are in their isle together—but never will she +speak much: she <i>is</i> silence. Her need of him indeed was utter—she had +no soul until he touched her into life: it is the very Pygmalion and +Galatea. But Jules' soul, no less, had needed Pippa's song to waken to +its truest self: once more the man is the one moved by the direct +intervention. Not that Phene, like Ottima, could have saved herself; +there <i>was</i> no self to save—she had that awful, piercing selflessness +of the used flesh and ignored soul. If Pippa had not passed, if Jules +had gone, leaving money in her hand . . . I think that Phene would have +killed herself—like Ottima, yet how unlike! For Phene (but one step +upon the way) would have died for her own self's sake only, because till +now she had never known it, but in that strangest, dreadfullest, that +least, most, sacred of offerings-up, had "lived for others"—the others +of the smile which girls like her are used to bear,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But never men, men cannot stoop so low."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Were ever scorn and irony more blasting, was ever pity more profound, +than in that line which Browning sets in the mouth of silence?</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>IV. EVENING; NIGHT: THE ENDING OF THE DAY</h4> + +<p>Our interest now centres again upon Pippa—partly because the Evening +and Night episodes are little touched by other feminine influence, but +also (and far more significantly) because the dramatic aspect of the +work here loses nearly all of its peculiar beauty. The story, till now +so slight yet so consummately sufficient, henceforth is involved with +"plot"—that natural enemy of spontaneity and unity, and here most +eminently successful in blighting both. Indeed, the lovely simplicity of +the earlier plan seems actually to aid the foe in the work of +destruction, by cutting, as it were, the poem into two or even three +divisions: first, the purely lyric portions—those at the beginning and +the end—where Pippa is alone in her room; second, the Morning and Noon +episodes, where the dramas are absolutely unconnected with the passing +girl; third, these Evening and Night scenes, where, on the contrary, all +is forced into more or less direct relation with the little figure whose +most exquisite magic has hitherto resided in the fusion of her complete +personal loneliness with her potent influence upon the lives and +characters of those who hear her sing.</p> + +<p>Mr. Chesterton claims to have been the first to point out "this gross +falsification of the whole beauty of <i>Pippa Passes</i>"—a glaring +instance, as he says, of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>the definite literary blunders which Browning +could make. But though that searching criticism were earliest in +declaring this, I think that few of us can have read the poem without +being vaguely and discomfortably aware of it. From the moment of the +direct introduction of Bluphocks<a name="FNanchor_68-1_9" id="FNanchor_68-1_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_68-1_9" class="fnanchor">[68:1]</a> (whose very name, with its dull +and pointless punning, is an offence), that sense of over-ingenuity, of +"tiresomeness," which is the prime stumbling-block to whole-hearted +Browning worship, becomes perceptible, and acts increasingly upon our +nerves until the Day is over, and Pippa re-enters her "large, mean, airy +chamber."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>On her return to Asolo from Orcana, she passes the ruined turret wherein +Luigi and his mother—those Third Happiest Ones whom in her thoughts she +had not been able to separate—are wont to talk at evening. Some of the +Austrian police are loitering near, and with them is an Englishman, +"lusty, blue-eyed, florid-complexioned"—one Bluphocks, who is on the +watch in a double capacity. He is to point out Luigi to the police, in +whose pay he is, and to make acquaintance with Pippa in return for money +already given by a private employer—for Bluphocks is the creature of +anyone's purse.</p> + +<p>As Pippa reaches the turret, a thought of days <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>long, long before it +fell to ruin makes her choose from her store of songs that which tells +how—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A king lived long ago,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the morning of the world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When earth was nigher heaven than now;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and coming to be very old, was so serene in his sleepy mood, "so safe +from all decrepitude," and so beloved of the gods—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That, having lived thus long, there seemed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No need the king should ever die."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her clear note penetrates to the spot where Luigi and his mother are +talking, as so often before. He is bound this night for Vienna, there to +kill the hated Emperor of Austria, who holds his Italy in thrall; for +Luigi is a Carbonarist, and has been chosen for this "lesser task" by +his leaders. His mother is urging him not to go. First she had tried the +direct appeal, but this had failed; then argument, but this failed too; +and as she stood at end of her own resources, the one hope that remained +was her son's delight in living—that sense of the beauty and glory of +the world which was so strong in him that he felt</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God must be glad one loves his world so much."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This joy breaks out at each turn of the mother's discourse. While Luigi +is striving to make plain to her the "grounds for killing," he thinks to +hear the cuckoo, and forgets all his array of facts; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>for April and June +are coming! The mother seizes at once on this, and joins to it a still +more powerful persuasion. In June, not only summer's loveliness, but +Chiara, the girl he is to marry, is coming: she who gazes at the stars +as he does—and how her blue eyes lift to them</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As if life were one long and sweet surprise!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In June she comes—and with the reiteration, Luigi falters, for he +recollects that in this June they were to see together "the Titian at +Treviso." . . . His mother has almost won, when a "low noise" outside, +which Luigi has first mistaken for the cuckoo, next for the renowned +echo in the turret . . . that low noise is heard again—"the voice of +Pippa, singing."</p> + +<p>And, listening to the song which tells what kings were in the morning of +the world, Luigi cries—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No need that sort of king should ever die!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And she begins again—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Among the rocks his city was:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before his palace, in the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He sat to see his people pass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And judge them every one"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and as she tells the manner of his judging, Luigi again exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That king should still judge, sitting in the sun!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the song goes on—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span><span class="i0">"His councillors, to left and right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Looked anxious up—but no surprise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Disturbed the king's old smiling eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the very blue had turned to white";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and those eyes kept their tranquillity even when, as legend tells, a +Python one day "scared the breathless city," but coming, "with forked +tongue and eyes on flame," to where the king sat, and seeing the sweet +venerable goodness of him, did not dare</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Approach that threshold in the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Assault the old king smiling there . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such grace had kings when the world begun!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And such grace have they, now that the world ends!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>cries Luigi bitterly, for at Vienna the Python <i>is</i> the king, and brave +men lurk in corners "lest they fall his prey." . . . He hesitates no more—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Tis God's voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and rushes from the turret, resolute for Vienna.</p> + +<p>By going he escapes the police, for it had been decided that if he +stayed at Asolo that night he should be arrested at once. He still may +lose his life, for he will try to kill the Emperor; but he will then +have been true to his deepest convictions—and thus Pippa's passing, +Pippa's song, have for the third time helped a soul to know itself.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Unwitting as before, she goes on to the house near the Duomo Santa +Maria, where the Fourth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>Happiest One, the Monsignor of her final +choice, "that holy and beloved priest," is to stay to-night. And now, +for the first time, we are to see her, though only for the barest +instant, come into actual contact with some fellow-creatures.</p> + +<p>Four "poor girls" are sitting on the steps of the Santa Maria. We hear +them talk with one another before Pippa reaches them: they are playing a +"wishing game," originated by one who, watching the swallows fly towards +Venice, yearns for their wings. She is not long from the country; her +dreams are still of new milk and apples, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . the farm among<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The cherry-orchards, and how April snowed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">White blossom on her as she ran."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So says one of her comrades scornfully, and tells her how of course the +home-folk have been careful to blot out all memories of one who has come +to the town to lead the life <i>she</i> leads. She may be sure the old people +have rubbed out the mark showing how tall she was on the door, and have</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Twisted her starling's neck, broken his cage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made a dung-hill of her garden!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She acquiesces mournfully, but loses herself again in memories: of her +fig-tree that curled out of the cottage wall—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"They called it mine, I have forgotten why"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and the noise the wasps made, eating the long <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>papers that were strung +there to keep off birds in fruit-time. . . . As she murmurs thus to +herself, her mouth twitches, and the same girl who had laughed before, +laughs now again: "Would I be such a fool!"—and tells <i>her</i> wish. The +country-goose wants milk and apples, and another girl could think of +nothing better than to wish "the sunset would finish"; but Zanze has a +real desire, something worth talking about! It is that somebody she +knows, somebody "greyer and older than her grandfather," would give her +the same treat he gave last week—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Feeding me on his knee with fig-peckers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lampreys and red Breganze wine;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>while she had stained her fingers red by</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Dipping them in the wine to write bad words with<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the bright table: how he laughed!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And as she recalls that night, she sees a burnished beetle on the ground +before her, sparkling along the dust as it makes its slow way to a tuft +of maize, and puts out her foot and kills it. The country girl recalls a +superstition connected with these bright beetles—that if one was +killed, the sun, "his friend up there," would not shine for two days. +They said it in her country "when she was young"; and one of the others +scoffs at the phrase, but looking at her, exclaims that indeed she <i>is</i> +no longer young: how thin her plump arms have got—does Cecco beat her +still? But Cecco doesn't matter, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>nor the loss of her young freshness, +so long as she keeps her "curious hair"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I wish they'd find a way to dye our hair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your colour . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i3">. . . The men say they are sick of black."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A girl who now speaks for the first and last time retorts upon this one +that very likely "the men" are sick of <i>her</i> hair, and does she pretend +that <i>she</i> has tasted lampreys and ortolans . . . but in the midst of this +new speaker's railing, the girl with wine-stained fingers exclaims—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Why there! Is not that Pippa<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are to talk to, under the window—quick— . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The country girl thinks that if it were Pippa, she would be singing, as +they had been told.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you sing first," retorts the other—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then if she listens and comes close . . . I'll tell you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sing that song the young English noble made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who took you for the purest of the pure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And meant to leave the world for you—what fun!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So, not the country girl, but she whose black hair discontents her, +sings, and Pippa "listens and comes close," for the song has words as +sweet as any of her own . . . and the red-fingered one calls to her to come +closer still, they won't eat her—why, she seems to be "the very person +the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love +with." She shall hear all about it; and on the steps <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>of the church +Pippa is told by this creature, Zanze, how a foreigner, "with blue eyes +and thick rings of raw silk-coloured hair," had gone to the mills at +Asolo a month ago and fallen in love with Pippa. Pippa, however, will +not keep him in love with her, unless she takes more care of her +personal appearance—she must "pare her nails pearlwise," and buy shoes +"less like canoes" for her small feet; <i>then</i> she may hope to feast upon +lampreys and drink Breganze, as Zanze does. . . . And now Pippa sings one +of her songs, and it might have been chosen expressly to please the +country girl. It begins—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Overhead the tree-tops meet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flowers and grass spring 'neath our feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was nought above me, and nought below<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My childhood had not learned to know"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—a little story of an innocent girl's way of making out for herself +only the sweetness of the world, the majesty of the heavens . . . and just +when all seemed on the verge of growing clear, and out of the "soft +fifty changes" of the moon, "no unfamiliar face" could look, the sweet +life was cut short—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Suddenly God took me . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As Pippa sang those words, she passed on. She had heard enough of the +four girls' talk, even were they not now interrupted by a sudden clatter +inside Monsignor's house—a sound of calling, of quick heavy feet, of +cries and the flinging down of a man, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>and then a noise as of dragging a +bound prisoner out. . . . Monsignor appeared for an instant at the window as +she, coming from the Duomo, passed his house. His aspect disappointed +her—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No mere mortal has a right<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To carry that exalted air;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Best people are not angels quite . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with that one look at him, she passed on to Asolo.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>What was the noise that broke out as Pippa finished her song? The loud +call which came first was Monsignor's, summoning his guards from an +outer chamber to gag and bind his steward. This steward had been supping +alone with the Bishop, who had come not only (as Pippa said in the +morning, choosing him as the ideal person for her pretending) "to bless +the home of his dead brother," but also to take possession of that +brother's estate. . . . He knows the steward to be a rascal; but he +himself, the "holy and beloved priest," is a good deal of a rascal too; +he has connived at his brother's death, and had connived at his mode of +life. Now the steward is preparing to blackmail the Bishop, as he had +blackmailed the Bishop's brother. Both are aware that the dead man had a +child; Monsignor believes that this child was murdered by the steward at +the instigation of a younger brother, who wished to succeed to the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>estates. He urges the man to confess; otherwise he shall be arrested by +Monsignor's people who are in the outer room. "Did you throttle or stab +my brother's infant—come now?"<a name="FNanchor_77-1_10" id="FNanchor_77-1_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_77-1_10" class="fnanchor">[77:1]</a></p> + +<p>But the steward has yet another card to play; moreover, so many enemies +now surround him that his life is probably forfeited anyhow, so he will +tell the truth. And the truth is that the child was not murdered by him +or anyone else. The child—the girl—is close at hand; he sees her every +day, he saw her this morning. Now, shall he make away with her for +Monsignor? Not "the stupid obvious sort of killing . . . of course there is +to be no killing; but at Rome the courtesans perish off every three +years, and he can entice her thither, has begun operations +already"—making use of a certain Bluphocks, an Englishman. Monsignor +will not <i>formally</i> assent, of course . . . but will he give the steward +time to cross the Alps? The girl is "but a little black-eyed pretty +singing Felippa,<a name="FNanchor_77-2_11" id="FNanchor_77-2_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_77-2_11" class="fnanchor">[77:2]</a> gay silk-winding girl"; some women are to pass +off Bluphocks as a somebody, and once Pippa entangled—it will be best +accomplished through her singing. . . . Well, Monsignor has listened; +Monsignor conceives—is it a bargain?</p> + +<p>It was precisely as the steward asked that question that Pippa finished +her song of a maiden's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>lesson and its ending, and Monsignor leaped up +and shouted to his guards. . . . The singing by which "little black-eyed +pretty Felippa" was to be entangled had rescued instead the soul of her +Fourth Happiest One from this deep infamy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The great Day is over. Pippa, back in her room, finds horribly uppermost +among her memories the talk of those lamentable four girls. It had +spoilt the sweetness of her day; it spoils now, for a while, her own +sweetness. Her comments on it have none of the wayward charm of her +morning fancies, for Pippa is very human—she can envy and decry, +swinging loose from the central steadiness of her nature like many +another of us, obsessed like her by some vile happening of the hours. +Just as we might find our whole remembrance of a festival thus overlaid +by malice and ugliness, <i>she</i> finds it; she can only think "how pert +that girl was," and how glad she is not to be like her. Yet, all the +same, she does not see why she should not have been told who it was that +"passed that jest upon her" of the Englishman in love—no foreigner had +come to the mills that she recollects. . . . And perhaps, after all, if +Luca raises the wage, she may be able to buy shoes next year, and not +look any worse than Zanze.</p> + +<p>But gradually the atmosphere of her mind seems restored; the fogs of +envy and curiosity begin to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>clear off—she goes over the game of +make-believe, how she was in turn each of the Four . . . but no! the miasma +is still in the air, and she's "tired of fooling," and New Year's Day is +over, and ill or well, <i>she</i> must be content. . . . Even her lily's asleep, +but she will wake it up, and show it the friend she has plucked for +it—the flower she gathered as she passed the house on the hill. . . . +Alas! even the flower seems infected. She compares it, "this pampered +thing," this double hearts-ease of the garden, with the wild growth, and +once more Zanze comes to mind—isn't she like the pampered blossom? And +if there were a king of the flowers, "and a girl-show held in his +bowers," which would he like best, the Zanze or the Pippa? . . . No: +nothing will conquer her dejection; fancies will not do, awakening +sleepy lilies will not do—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh what a drear dark close to my poor day!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How could that red sun drop in that black cloud?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and despairingly she accepts the one truth that seems to confront her: +"Day's turn is over, now arrives the night's;" the larks and thrushes +and blackbirds have had their hour; owls and bats and such-like things +rule now . . . and listlessly she begins to undress herself. She is so +alone; she has nothing but fancies to play with—this morning's, for +instance, of being anyone she liked. She had played her game, had kept +it up loyally with herself all day—what was the good?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span><span class="i0">"Now, one thing I should like to really know:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How near I ever might approach all those<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I only fancied being, this long day:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As to . . . in some way . . . move them—if you please,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do good or evil to them some slight way.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For instance, if I wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And border Ottima's cloak's hem . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Sitting on her bed, undressed, the solitary child thus broods. No nearer +than that can she get—her silk might border Ottima's cloak's hem. . . . +But she cannot endure this dejection: back to her centre of gaiety, +trust, and courage Pippa must somehow swing—and how shall she achieve +it? There floats into her memory the hymn which she had murmured in the +morning—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All service ranks the same with God."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But even this can help her only a little—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"True in some sense or other, I suppose . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She lies down; she can pray no more than that; the hymn no doubt is +right, "some way or other," and with its message thus almost mocking in +her ears, she falls asleep—the lonely little girl who has saved four +souls to-day, and does not know, will never know; but will be again, +to-morrow perhaps, when that sad talk on the church steps is faded from +her memory, the gay, brave, trustful spirit who, by merely being that, +had sung her Four Happiest Ones up toward "God in his heaven."</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24-1_3" id="Footnote_24-1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24-1_3"><span class="label">[24:1]</span></a> Asolo, in the Trevisan, is a very picturesque mediæval +fortified town, the ancient Acelum. It lies at the foot of a hill which +is surrounded by the ruins of an old castle; before it stretches the +great plain of the rivers Brenta and Piave, where Treviso, Vicenza, and +Padua may be clearly recognised. The Alps encircle it, and in the +distance rise the Euganean Hills. Venice can be discerned on the extreme +eastern horizon, which ends in the blue line of the Adriatic. The +village of Asolo is surrounded by a wall with mediæval turrets.—<span class="smcap">Berdoe</span>, +<i>Browning Cyclopædia</i>, p. 50.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26-1_4" id="Footnote_26-1_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26-1_4"><span class="label">[26:1]</span></a> Another line that I should like to omit, for the +following words, wholly in character, say all that the ugly ones have +boomed at us so incredibly. But here the rhyme-scheme provides a sort of +unpardonable excuse.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49-1_5" id="Footnote_49-1_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49-1_5"><span class="label">[49:1]</span></a> Dr. Berdoe and Mrs. Orr.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52-1_6" id="Footnote_52-1_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52-1_6"><span class="label">[52:1]</span></a> All the talk between the students is in prose.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52-2_7" id="Footnote_52-2_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52-2_7"><span class="label">[52:2]</span></a> The long shoaly island in the Lagoon, immediately +opposite Venice.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64-1_8" id="Footnote_64-1_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64-1_8"><span class="label">[64:1]</span></a> This song refers to Catherine of Cornaro, the last Queen +of Cyprus, who came to her castle at Asolo when forced to resign her +kingdom to the Venetians in 1489. "She lived for her people's welfare, +and won their love by her goodness and grace."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68-1_9" id="Footnote_68-1_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68-1_9"><span class="label">[68:1]</span></a> "The name means <i>Blue-Fox</i>, and is a skit on the +<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, which is bound in blue and fox" (Dr. Furnivall).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77-1_10" id="Footnote_77-1_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77-1_10"><span class="label">[77:1]</span></a> The dialogue between Monsignor and the steward is in +prose.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77-2_11" id="Footnote_77-2_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77-2_11"><span class="label">[77:2]</span></a> Having made her Monsignor's niece, observes Mr. +Chesterton, "Browning might just as well have made Sebald her long-lost +brother, and Luigi a husband to whom she was secretly married."</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p> +<h2>III</h2> + +<h3>MILDRED TRESHAM</h3> + +<h4>IN "A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON"</h4> + + +<p>I have said that, to my perception, the most characteristic mark in +Browning's portrayal of women is his admiration for dauntlessness and +individuality; and this makes explicable to me the failure which I +constantly perceive in his dramatic presentment of her whose "innocence" +(as the term is conventionally accepted) is her salient quality. The +type, immortal and essential, is one which a poet must needs essay to +show; and Browning, when he showed it through others, or in his own +person hymned it, found words for its delineation which lift the soul as +it were to morning skies. But when words are further called upon for its +<i>expression</i>, when such a woman, in short, has to speak for herself, he +rarely makes her do so without a certain consciousness of that especial +trait in her—and hence her speech must of necessity ring false, for +innocence knows nothing of itself.</p> + +<p>So marked is this failure, to my sense, that I cannot refuse the +implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as +it were by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular +apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean +anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the +"pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value +which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure from +this was the <i>circumstance</i> through which he had to show the more +essential purity, his instinctive scepticism drove him to the forcing of +a note which was not really native to his voice. For always (to my +sense) when he presents dramatically a girl or woman in the grip of this +circumstance, he gives her words, and feelings to express through them, +which only the French <i>mièvre</i> can justly describe. He does not, in +short, reveal her as she is, but only as others see her—and, among +those others, not himself.</p> + +<p>In Browning this might seem the stranger because he was so wholly +untouched by cynicism; but here we light upon a curious paradox—the +fact that the more "worldly" the writer, the better can he (as a general +rule and other things being equal) display this type. It may be that +such a writer can regard it analytically, can see what are the elements +which make it up; it may be that the deeper reverence felt for it by the +idealist is precisely that which draws him toward exaggeration—that his +fancy, brooding with closed eyes upon the "thing enskied and sainted," +thus becomes inclined to mawkishness . . . it <i>may</i> be, I say, but at the +bottom of my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>heart I do not feel that that is the explanation. One with +which I am better satisfied emerges from a line of verse already quoted:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For each man kills the thing he loves";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and the man most apt for such "killing" is precisely he who appraises +most shrewdly the thing he kills. As the cool practised libertine is +oftenest attracted by the immature girl, so the ardent inexperienced man +of any age will be drawn to the older woman; and the psychology of this +matter of everyday experience is closely akin to the paradox in artistic +creation of which I now speak.</p> + +<p>Browning, who saw woman so clearly as a creature with her definite and +justified demand upon life, saw, by inevitable consequence, that for +woman to "depart from innocence" (again, in the conventional sense of +the words) is not her most significant error; and this conviction +necessarily reacted upon his presentment of those in whom such purity is +the most salient quality—a type of which, as I have said, the poet is +bound to attempt the portrayal. Browning's instinctive questioning of +the "man-made" value then betrays itself—he exaggerates, he loses +grasp, for he is singing in a mode not native to his temperament.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The character of Mildred in <i>A Blot in the 'Scutcheon</i> is a striking +example of this. She is a young girl who has been drawn by her innocent +passion into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>complete surrender to her lover. He, after this surrender, +seeks her in marriage from her brother, who stands in the place of both +parents to the orphan girl. The brother consents, unknowing; but after +his consent, learns from a servant that Mildred has yielded herself to a +man—he learns not <i>whom</i>. She, accused, makes no denial, gives no name, +and to her brother's consternation, proposes thus to marry her suitor, +whom Tresham thinks to be in ignorance of her error. Tresham violently +repudiates her; then, meeting beneath her window the cloaked lover, +attacks him, forces him to reveal himself, learns that he and the +accepted suitor are one and the same, and kills him—Mertoun (the lover) +making no defence. Tresham goes to Mildred and tells her what he has +done; she dies of the hearing, and he, having taken poison after the +revelation of Mertoun's identity, dies also.</p> + +<p>The defects in this story are so obvious that I need hardly point them +out. Most prominent of all is the difficulty of reconciling Earl +Mertoun's conduct with that of a rational being. He is all that in +Mildred's suitor might be demanded, yet, loving her deeply and so loved +by her, he has feared to ask her brother for her hand, because of his +reverence for this Earl Tresham.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8h">". . . I was young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And your surpassing reputation kept me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So far aloof . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p><p>Thus he explains himself. He feared to ask for her hand, yet did not +fear to seduce her! The thing is so absurd that it vitiates all the +play, which indeed but once or twice approaches aught that we can figure +to ourselves of reality in any period of history. "Mediæval" is a +strange adjective, used by Mrs. Orr to characterise a work of which the +date is placed by Browning himself in the eighteenth century.</p> + +<p>Mildred is but fourteen: an age at which, with our modern sense of +girlhood as, happily, in this land we now know it, we find ourselves +unable to apprehend her at all. Instinctively we assign to her at least +five years more, since even these would leave her still a child—though +not at any moment in the play does she actually so affect us, for +Mildred is never a child, never even a young girl. Immature indeed she +is, but it is with the immaturity which will not develop, which has +nothing to do with length of years. To me, the failure here is absolute; +she never comes to life. Every student of Browning knows of the +enthusiasm which Dickens expressed for this piece and this character:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Browning's play has thrown me into a perfect passion of +sorrow. To say that there is anything in its subject save what +is lovely, true, deeply affecting . . . is to say that there is +no light in the sun, and no heat in the blood. . . . I know +nothing that is so affecting, nothing in any book I have ever +read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so young—I had +no mother.'"</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p><p>Such ardour well might stir us to agreement, were it not that Dickens +chose for its warmest expression the very centre of our disbelief: +Mildred's <i>recurrence</i> to that cry. . . . The cry itself—I cannot be alone +in thinking—rings false, and the recurrence, therefore, but heaps error +upon error. When I imagine an ardent girl in such a situation, almost +anything she could have been made to say would to me seem more authentic +than this. The first utterance, moreover, occurs before she knows that +Tresham has learnt the truth—it occurs, in soliloquy, immediately after +an interview with her lover.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I was so young, I loved him so, I had<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No mother, God forgot me, and I fell."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>I fell</i> . . . No woman, in any extremity, says that; that is what is said +by others of her. And <i>God forgot me</i>—is this the thought of one who +"loves him so"? . . . The truth is that we have here the very commonplace +of the theatre: the wish to have it both ways, to show, yet not to +reveal—the "dramatic situation," in short, set out because it <i>is</i> +dramatic, not because it is true. We cannot suppose that Browning meant +Earl Mertoun for a mere seducer, ravishing from a maiden that which she +did not desire to give—yet the words he here puts in Mildred's mouth +bear no other interpretation. Either she is capable of passion, or she +is not. If she <i>is</i>, sorrow for the sorrow that her recklessness may +cause to others will indeed put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>pain and terror in her soul, but she +will not, can not, say that "God forgot her": those words are alien to +the passionate. If she is <i>not</i>, if Mertoun is the mere seducer . . . but +the suggestion is absurd. We know that he is like herself, as herself +should have been shown us, young love incarnate, rushing to its end +mistakenly—wrong, high, and pure. These errors are the errors of quick +souls, of souls that, too late realising all, yet feel themselves +unstained, and know that not God forgot them, but they this world in +which we dwell.</p> + +<p>In her interview with Tresham after the servant's revelation, I find the +same untruth. He delivers a long rhapsody on brothers' love, saying that +it exceeds all other in its unselfishness. Her sole rejoinder—and here +she does for one second attain to authenticity—is the question: "What +is this for?" He, after some hesitation, tells her what he knows, calls +upon her to confess, she standing silent until, at end of the +arraignment, he demands the lover's name. Listen to her answer:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">. . . Thorold, do you devise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fit expiation for my guilt, if fit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There be! 'Tis nought to say that I'll endure<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bless you—that my spirit yearns to purge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her stains off in the fierce renewing fire:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But do not plunge me into other guilt!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, guilt enough . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She of course refuses the name. He tells her to pronounce, then, her own +punishment.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p><p>Again her answer, in the utter falseness to all truth of its abasement, +well-nigh sickens the soul:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt me thus!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To die here in this chamber, by that sword,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would seem like punishment; so should I glide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like an arch-cheat, into extremest bliss!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Comment upon that seems to me simply impossible. This is the woman to +whom, but a page or two back, young Mertoun has sung the exquisite song, +known to most readers of Browning's lyrics:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the surest" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Already in that hour with her, Mertoun must have learnt that some of +those high words were turned to slighter uses when they sang of Mildred +Tresham. In that hour he has spoken of the "meeting that appalled us +both" (namely, the meeting with her brother, when he was to ask for her +hand), saying that it is over and happiness begins, "such as the world +contains not." When Mildred answers him with, "This will not be," we +could accept, believingly, were only the sense of doom what her reply +brought with it. But "this will not be," because they do not "deserve +the whole world's best of blisses."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sin has surprised us, so will punishment."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>And how strange, how sad for a woman is it, to see with what truth and +courage Browning can make Mertoun speak! Each word that <i>he</i> says can be +brave and clear for all its recognition of their error; no word that +<i>she</i> says. . . . Her creator does not understand her; almost, thus, we do +feel Mildred to be real, so quick is our resentment of the unrealities +heaped on her. Imagining beforehand the moment when she shall receive in +presence of them all "the partner of my guilty love" (is not here the +theatre in full blast?), the deception she must practise—called by her, +in the vein so cruelly assigned her, "this planned piece of deliberate +wickedness" . . . imagining all this, she foresees herself unable to +pretend, pouring forth "all our woeful story," and pictures them aghast, +"as round some cursed fount that should spirt water and spouts +blood." . . . "I'll not!" she cries—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . 'I'll not affect a grace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That's gone from me—gone once, and gone for ever!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Gone once, and gone for ever." True, when the grace <i>is</i> gone; but +surely not from her, in any real sense, had it gone—and would she not, +in the deep knowledge of herself which comes with revelation to the +world, have felt that passionately? There are accusations of ourselves +which indeed arraign ourselves, yet leave us our best pride. To me, not +the error which made her prey to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>penitence was Mildred Tresham's +"fall," but those crude cries of shame.</p> + +<p>We take refuge in her immaturity, and in the blighting influence of her +brother—that prig of prigs, that "monomaniac of family pride and +conventional morality,"<a name="FNanchor_90-1_12" id="FNanchor_90-1_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_90-1_12" class="fnanchor">[90:1]</a> Thorold, Earl Tresham; but not thus can we +solace ourselves for Browning's failure. What a girl he might have given +us in Mildred, had he listened only to himself! But, not yet in full +possession of that self, he set up as an ideal the ideal of others, +trying dutifully to see it as they see it, denying dutifully his deepest +instinct; and, thus apostate, piled insincerity on insincerity, until at +last no truth is anywhere, and we read on with growing alienation as +each figure loses all of such reality as it ever had, and even +Gwendolen, the "golden creature"—his own dauntless, individual woman, +seeing and feeling truly through every fibre of her being—is lost amid +the fog, is stifled in the stifling atmosphere, and only at the last, +when Mildred and her brother are both dead, can once more say the word +which lights us back to truth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ah, Thorold, we can but—remember you!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was indeed all <i>they</i> could do; but we, more fortunate, can forget +him, imaging to ourselves the Mildred that Browning could have given +us—the Mildred of whom her brother is made to say:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span><span class="i0">"You cannot know the good and tender heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its girl's trust and its woman's constancy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How pure yet passionate, how calm yet kind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How grave yet joyous, how reserved yet free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As light where friends are . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There she is, as Browning might have shown her! "Control's not for this +lady," Tresham adds—the sign-manual of a Browning woman. As I have +said, he can display this lovely type through others, can sing it in his +own person, as in the exquisite dewdrop lyric; but once let her speak +for herself—he obeys the world and its appraisals, and the truth +departs from him; we have the Mildred Tresham of the theatre, of "the +partner of my guilty love," of "Oh, Thorold, you must never tempt me +thus!" of (in a later scene) "I think I might have urged some little +point in my defence to Thorold"; of that last worst unreality of all, +when Thorold has told her of his murder of her lover, and she cries:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . I—forgive not,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But bless you, Thorold, from my soul of souls!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There! Do not think too much upon the past!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The cloud that's broke was all the same a cloud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While it stood up between my friend and you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You hurt him 'neath its shadow: but is that<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So past retrieve? I have his heart, you know;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I may dispose of it: I give it you!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It loves you as mine loves!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>True, she is to die, and so is to rejoin her lover; but, thus rejoined, +will "blots upon the 'scutcheon" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>seem to them the all-sufficient claim +for Thorold's deed—Thorold who dies with these words on his lips:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">". . . You hold our 'scutcheon up.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Austin, no blot on it! You see how blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must wash one blot away; the first blot came<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the first blood came. To the vain world's eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All's gules again: no care to the vain world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From whence the red was drawn!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And on Austin's cry that "no blot shall come!" he answers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I said that: yet it did come. Should it come,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vengeance is God's, not man's. Remember me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>Vengeance</i>: how do they who are met again in the spirit-world regard +that word, that "God"?</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90-1_12" id="Footnote_90-1_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90-1_12"><span class="label">[90:1]</span></a> Berdoe. <i>Browning Cyclopædia.</i></p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> +<h2>IV</h2> + +<h3>BALAUSTION</h3> + +<h4>IN "BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE" AND "ARISTOPHANES' APOLOGY"</h4> + + +<p>To me, Balaustion is the queen of Browning's women—nay, I am tempted to +proclaim her queen of every poet's women. For in her meet all +lovelinesses, and to make her dearer still, some are as yet but in germ +(what a mother she will be, for example); so that we have, with all the +other beauties, the sense of the unfolding rose—"enmisted by the scent +it makes," in a phrase of her creator's which, though in the actual +context it does not refer to her, yet exquisitely conveys her influence +on these two works. "Rosy Balaustion": she is that, as well as "superb, +statuesque," in the admiring apostrophes from Aristophanes, during the +long, close argument of the <i>Apology</i>. In that piece, the Bald Bard +himself is made to show her to us; and though it follows, not precedes, +the <i>Adventure</i>, I shall steal from him at once, presenting in his lyric +phrases our queen before we crown her.</p> + +<p>He comes to her home in Athens on the night when Balaustion learns that +her adored Euripides <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>is dead. She and her husband, Euthukles, are +"sitting silent in the house, yet cheerless hardly," musing on the +tidings, when suddenly there come torch-light and knocking at the door, +and cries and laughter: "Open, open, Bacchos<a name="FNanchor_94-1_13" id="FNanchor_94-1_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_94-1_13" class="fnanchor">[94:1]</a> bids!"—and, heralded +by his chorus and the dancers, flute-boys, all the "banquet-band," there +enters, "stands in person, Aristophanes." Balaustion had never seen him +till that moment, nor he her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Forward he stepped: I rose and fronted him";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and as thus for the first time they meet, he breaks into a pæan of +admiration:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'You, lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Victory's self upsoaring to receive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The poet? Right they named you . . . some rich name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In <i>ion</i>' . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and trying to recall that name "in <i>ion</i>," he guesses two or three at +random, seizing thus the occasion to express her effect on him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Korakinidion, for the coal-black hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But none of these is right; "it was some fruit-flower"; and at last it +comes: <i>Balaustion</i>, Wild-Pomegranate-Bloom, and he exclaims in ecstasy, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>"Thanks, Rhodes!"—for her fellow-countrymen had found this name for +her, so apt in every way that her real name was forgotten, and as +Balaustion she shall live and die.</p> + +<p>"Nettarion, Phabion, for the darlingness"; and for all her intellect and +ardour, it is greatly <i>this</i> that makes Balaustion queen—the lovely +eager sweetness, the tenderness, the "darlingness": Aristophanes guessed +almost right!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>How did she win the name of Wild-Pomegranate-Flower? We learn it from +herself in the <i>Adventure</i>. Let us hear: let us feign ourselves members +of the little band of friends, all girls, with their charming, chiming +names: "Petalé, Phullis, Charopé, Chrusion"—to whom she cries in the +delightful opening:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I, when a girl, heard in Kameiros once,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And after, saved my life by? Oh, so glad<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To tell you the adventure!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Part of the adventure is historical. In the second stage of the +Peloponnesian War (that famous contention between the Athenians and the +inhabitants of Peloponnesus which began on May 7, 431 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> and lasted +twenty-seven years), the Athenian General, Nikias, had suffered disaster +at Syracuse, and had given himself up, with all his army, to the +Sicilians. But the assurances of safety which he had received were +quickly proved false. He was no sooner in the hands of the enemy than he +was shamefully put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>to death with his naval ally, Demosthenes; and his +troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour +lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news +reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of +Athens, and resolved to side with Sparta. Balaustion<a name="FNanchor_96-1_14" id="FNanchor_96-1_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_96-1_14" class="fnanchor">[96:1]</a> was there, +and she passionately protested against this decision, crying to "who +would hear, and those who loved me at Kameiros"<a name="FNanchor_96-2_15" id="FNanchor_96-2_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_96-2_15" class="fnanchor">[96:2]</a>:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12h">". . . No!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never throw Athens off for Sparta's sake—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never disloyal to the life and light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the whole world worth calling world at all!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To Athens, all of us that have a soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Follow me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and thus she drew together a little band, "and found a ship at Kaunos," +and they turned</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The glad prow westward, soon were out at sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pushing, brave ship with the vermilion cheek,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Proud for our heart's true harbour."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But they were pursued by pirates, and, fleeing from these, drove +unawares into the harbour of that very Syracuse where Nikias and +Demosthenes had perished, and in whose quarries their countrymen were +slaves. The inhabitants refused them admission, for they had heard, as +the ship came into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>harbour, Balaustion singing "that song of ours which +saved at Salamis." She had sprung upon the altar by the mast, and +carolled it forth to encourage the oarsmen; and now it was vain to tell +the Sicilians that these were Rhodians who had cast in their lot with +the Spartan League, for the Captain of Syracuse answered:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay, but we heard all Athens in one ode . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You bring a boatful of Athenians here";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and Athenians they would not have at Syracuse, "with memories of +Salamis" to stir up the slaves in the quarry.</p> + +<p>No prayers, no blandishments, availed the Rhodians; they were just about +to turn away and face the pirates in despair, when somebody raised a +question, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">". . . 'Wait!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cried they (and wait we did, you may be sure).<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'That song was veritable Aischulos,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Familiar to the mouth of man and boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Old glory: how about Euripides?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Might you know any of his verses too?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Browning here makes use of the historical fact that Euripides was +reverenced far more by foreigners and the non-Athenian Greeks than by +the Athenians—for Balaustion, "the Rhodian," had been brought up in his +worship, though she knew and loved the other great Greek poets also; and +already it was known to our voyagers that the captives in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>quarries +had found that those who could "teach Euripides to Syracuse" gained +indulgence far beyond what any of the others could obtain. Thus, when +the question sounded, "Might you know any of his verses too?" the +captain of the vessel cried:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Out with our Sacred Anchor! Here she stands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Balaustion! Strangers, greet the lyric girl!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why, fast as snow in Thrace, the voyage through,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has she been falling thick in flakes of him,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And so, although she has some other name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We only call her Wild-Pomegranate-Flower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Balaustion; since, where'er the red bloom burns<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You shall find food, drink, odour all at once."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He called upon her to save their little band by singing a strophe. But +she could do better than that—she could recite a whole play:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Alkestis</span>!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Only that very year had it reached "Our Isle o' the Rose"; she had seen +it, at Kameiros, played just as it was played at Athens, and had learnt +by heart "the perfect piece." Now, quick and subtle for all her +enthusiasm, she remembers to tell the Sicilians how, besides "its beauty +and the way it makes you weep," it does much honour to their own loved +deity:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span><span class="i0">"Herakles, whom you house i' the city here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nobly, the Temple wide Greece talks about;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I come a suppliant to your Herakles!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take me and put me on his temple-steps<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To tell you his achievement as I may."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Then," she continues, in a passage which rings out again in the +<i>Apology</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And poetry is power—they all outbroke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a great joyous laughter with much love:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Thank Herakles for the good holiday!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make for the harbour! Row, and let voice ring:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>In we row bringing in Euripides!</i>'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So did the Rhodians land at Syracuse. And the whole city, hearing the +cry "In we row," which was taken up by the crowd around the +harbour-quays, came rushing out to meet them, and Balaustion, standing +on the topmost step of the Temple of Herakles, told the play:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Told it, and, two days more, repeated it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until they sent us on our way again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With good words and great wishes."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That was her Adventure. Three things happened in it "for herself": a +rich Syracusan brought her a whole talent as a gift, and she left it on +the tripod as thank-offering to Herakles; a band of the captives—"whom +their lords grew kinder to, Because they called the poet +countryman"—sent her a crown <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>of wild-pomegranate-flower; and the third +thing . . . Petalé, Phullis, Charopé, Chrusion, hear of this also—of the +youth who, all the three days that she spoke the play, was found in the +gazing, listening audience; and who, when they sailed away, was found in +the ship too, "having a hunger to see Athens"; and when they reached +Piræus, once again was found, as Balaustion landed, beside her. +February's moon is just a-bud when she tells her comrades of this youth; +and when that moon rounds full:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We are to marry. O Euripides!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Everyone who speaks of <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i> will quote to you that +ringing line, for it sums up the high, ardent girl who, even in the +exultation of her love, must call upon the worshipped Master. It is this +passion for intellectual beauty which sets Balaustion so apart, which +makes her so complete and stimulating. She has a mind as well as a heart +and soul; she is priestess as well as goddess—Euthukles will have a +wife indeed! Every word she speaks is stamped with the Browning marks of +gaiety, courage, trust, and with how many others also: those of +high-heartedness, deep-heartedness, the true patriotism that cherishes +most closely the soul of its country; and then generosity, pride, +ardour—all enhanced by woman's more peculiar gifts of gentleness, +modesty, tenderness, insight, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>gravity . . . for Balaustion is like many +women in having, for all her gaiety, more sense of happiness than sense +of humour. It often comes to me as debatable if this be not the most +attractive of deficiencies! Certainly Balaustion persuades us of its +power; for in the <i>Apology</i>, her refusal of the Aristophanic Comedy is +firm-based upon that imputed lack in women. No man, thus poised, could +have convinced us of his reality; while she convinces us not only of her +reality, but of her rightness. Again, we must applaud our poet's wisdom +in choosing woman for the Bald Bard's accuser; she is as potent in this +part as in that of Euripides' interpreter.</p> + +<p>But what a girl Balaustion is, as well as what a woman! Let us see her +with the little band of friends about her, as in the exquisite +revocation (in the <i>Apology</i>) of the first adventure's telling:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . O that Spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That eve I told the earlier<a name="FNanchor_101-1_16" id="FNanchor_101-1_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_101-1_16" class="fnanchor">[101:1]</a> to my friends!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where are the four now, with each red-ripe mouth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Outsmoothing galingale and watermint?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Under the grape-vines, by the streamlet-side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Close to Baccheion; till the cool increase,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And other stars steal on the evening star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so, we homeward flock i' the dusk, we five!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>Then, in the <i>Adventure</i>, comes the translation by Browning of the +<i>Alkestis</i> of Euripides, which Balaustion is feigned to have spoken upon +the temple steps at Syracuse. With this we have here no business, though +so entire is his "lyric girl," so fully and perfectly by him conceived, +that not a word of the play but might have been Balaustion's own. This +surely is a triumph of art—to imagine such a speaker for such a piece, +and to blend them both so utterly that the supreme Greek dramatist and +this girl are indivisible. What a woman was demanded for such a feat, +and what a poet for both! May we not indeed say now that Browning was +our singer? Whom but he would have done this—so crowned, so trusted, +us, and so persuaded men that women can be great?</p> + +<p>"Its beauty, and the way it makes you weep": yes—and the way it makes +you thrill with love for Herakles, never before so god-like, because +always before too much the apotheosis of mere physical power. But read +of him in the <i>Alkestis</i> of Euripides, and you shall feel him indeed +divine—"this grand benevolence." . . . We can hear the voice of Balaustion +deepen, quiver, and grow grave with gladdened love, as Herakles is +fashioned for us by these two men's noble minds.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>When she had told the "perfect piece" to her girl-friends, a sudden +inspiration came to her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span><span class="i0">"I think I see how . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You, I, or anyone might mould a new<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Admetos, new Alkestis";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and saying this, a flood of gratitude for the great gift of poetry comes +full tide across her soul:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">". . . Ah, that brave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bounty of poets, the one royal race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ever was, or will be, in this world!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They give no gift that bounds itself and ends<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I' the giving and the taking: theirs so breeds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so transmutes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The man who only was a man before,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That he grows god-like in his turn, can give—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He also; share the poet's privilege,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring forth new good, new beauty from the old.<br /></span> +<span class="i7h">. . . So with me:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For I have drunk this poem, quenched my thirst,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Satisfied heart and soul—yet more remains!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could we too make a poem? Try at least,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Inside the head, what shape the rose-mists take!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, trying thus, Balaustion, Feminist, portrays the perfect marriage.</p> + +<p>Admetos, in Balaustion's and Browning's <i>Alkestis</i>, will not let his +wife be sacrificed for him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never, by that true word Apollon spoke!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the unwise wish is unwished, oh wife!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and he speaks, as in a vision, of the purpose of Zeus in himself.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span><span class="i0">"This purpose—that, throughout my earthly life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mine should be mingled and made up with thine—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And we two prove one force and play one part<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And do one thing. Since death divides the pair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis well that I depart and thou remain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bend yet awhile, a very flame above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rift I drop into the darkness by—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bid remember, flesh and spirit once<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never be that abominable show<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of passive death without a quickening life—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Admetos only, no Alkestis now!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is so that the man speaks to and of the woman, in Balaustion's and +Browning's <i>Alkestis</i>.</p> + +<p>And the woman, answering, declares that the reality of their joint +existence lies not in her, but in him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . 'What! thou soundest in my soul<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To depths below the deepest, reachest good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By evil, that makes evil good again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so allottest to me that I live,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And not die—letting die, not thee alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all true life that lived in both of us?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look at me once ere thou decree the lot!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Therewith her whole soul entered into his,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He looked the look back, and Alkestis died."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But when she reaches the nether world—"the downward-dwelling +people"—she is rejected as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>deceiver: "This is not to die," says the +Queen of Hades, for her death is a mockery, since it doubles the life of +him she has left behind:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Two souls in one were formidable odds:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Admetos must not be himself and thou!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lo, Alkestis was alive again."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>How do our little squabbles—the "Sex-War"—look to us after this?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>When next we meet with Balaustion, in <i>Aristophanes' Apology</i>, she is +married to her Euthukles, and they are once more speeding across the +waters—this time back to Rhodes, from Athens which has fallen.</p> + +<p>Many things have happened in the meantime, and Balaustion, leaving her +adoptive city, with "not sorrow but despair, not memory but the present +and its pang" in her deep heart, feels that if she deliberately invites +the scene, if she embodies in words the tragedy of Athens, she may free +herself from anguish. Euthukles shall write it down for her, and they +will go back to the night they heard Euripides was dead: "One year ago, +Athenai still herself." Together she and Euthukles had mused, together +glorified their poet. Euthukles had met the audience flocking homeward +from the theatre, where Aristophanes had that night won the prize <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>which +Euripides had so seldom won. They had stopped him to hear news of the +other poet's death: "Balaustion's husband, the right man to ask"—but he +had refused them all satisfaction, and scornfully rated them for the +crown but now awarded. "Appraise no poetry," he had cried: "price +cuttlefish!"</p> + +<p>Balaustion had seen, since she had come to live in Athens, but one work +of Aristophanes, the <i>Lysistrata</i>; and now, in breathless reminiscent +anger, recalls the experience. It had so appalled her, "that bestiality +so beyond all brute-beast imagining," that she would never see again a +play by him who in the crowned achievement of this evening had drawn +himself as Virtue laughingly reproving Vice, and Vice . . . Euripides! Such +a piece it was which had "gained the prize that day we heard the death."</p> + +<p>Yet, musing on that death, her wrath had fallen from her.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I thought, 'How thoroughly death alters things!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where is the wrong now, done our dead and great?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Euthukles, divining her thought, told her that the mob had repented when +they learnt the news. He had heard them cry: "Honour him!" and "A statue +in the theatre!" and "Bring his body back,<a name="FNanchor_106-1_17" id="FNanchor_106-1_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_106-1_17" class="fnanchor">[106:1]</a> bury him in +Piræus—Thucydides shall make his epitaph!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p><p>But she was not moved to sympathy with the general cry.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Our tribute should not be the same, my friend.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Statue? Within our hearts he stood, he stands!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and, for his mere mortal body:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Why, let it fade, mix with the elements<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There where it, falling, freed Euripides!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>She</i> knew, that night, a better way to hail his soul's new freedom. +This, by</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Singing, we two, its own song back again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up to that face from which flowed beauty—face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now abler to see triumph and take love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than when it glorified Athenai once."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes: they two would read together <i>Herakles</i>, the play of which +Euripides himself had given her the tablets, in commemoration of the +Adventure at Syracuse. After that, on her first arrival in Athens, she +had gone to see him, "held the sacred hand of him, and laid it to my +lips"; she had told him "how Alkestis helped," and he, on bidding her +farewell, had given her these tablets, with the stylos pendant from them +still, and given her, too, his own psalterion, that she might, to its +assisting music, "croon the ode bewailing age."</p> + +<p>All was prepared for the reading, when (as we earlier learnt) there came +the torch-light and the knocking at their door, and Aristophanes, fresh +from his triumph, entered with the banquet-band, to hail the "house, +friendly to Euripides."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>He knew, declared Aristophanes, that the Rhodian hated him most of +mortals, but he would not blench. The others blenched—no word could +they utter, nor one laugh laugh. . . . So he drove them out, and stood +alone confronting</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Statuesque Balaustion pedestalled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On much disapprobation and mistake."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He babbled on for a while, defiantly and incoherently, and at length she +turned in dumb rebuke, which he at once understood.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"True, lady, I am tolerably drunk";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for it was the triumph-night, and merriment had reigned at the banquet, +reigned and increased</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Till something happened' . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i10">Here he strangely paused";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but soon went on to tell the way in which the news had reached them +there. . . . While Aristophanes spoke, Balaustion searched his face; and +now (recalling, on the way to Rhodes, that hour to Euthukles), she +likens the change which she then saw in it to that made by a black cloud +suddenly sailing over a stretch of sparkling sea—such a change as they +are in this very moment beholding.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Just so, some overshadow, some new care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And left there only such a dark surmise—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No wonder if the revel disappeared,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So did his face shed silence every side!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I recognised a new man fronting me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>At once he perceived her insight, and answered it: "So you see myself? +Your fixed regard can strip me of my 'accidents,' as the sophists say?" +But neither should this disconcert him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thank your eyes' searching; undisguised I stand:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The merest female child may question me.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She, searching thus his face, had learnt already that "what she had +disbelieved most proved most true." Drunk though he was,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There was a mind here, mind a-wantoning<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At ease of undisputed mastery<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over the body's brood, those appetites.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, but he grasped them grandly!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was no "ignoble presence": the broad bald brow, the flushed cheek, +great imperious fiery eyes, wide nostrils, full aggressive mouth, all +the pillared head:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"These made a glory, of such insolence—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I thought—such domineering deity . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Impudent and majestic . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Instantly on her speaking face the involuntary homage had shown; and it +was to this that Aristophanes, keen of sight as she, had confidently +addressed himself when he told her to speak boldly. And in the very +spirit of her face she did speak:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Bold speech be—welcome to this honoured hearth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Good Genius!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>Here sounds the essential note of generous natures. Proved mistaken, +their instant impulse is to rejoice in defeat, if defeat means victory +for the better thing. Thus, as Balaustion speaks, her ardour grows with +every word. He is greater than she had supposed, and so she must even +rhapsodise—she must crowd praise on praise, until she ends with the +exultant cry:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O light, light, light, I hail light everywhere!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No matter for the murk that was—perchance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That will be—certes, never should have been<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such orb's associate!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mark that Aristophanes has not yet <i>said</i> anything to justify her change +of attitude: the seeing of him is enough to draw from her this +recantation—for she trusts her own quick insight, and so, henceforth +trusts him.</p> + +<p>Now begins the long, close argument between them which constitutes +<i>Aristophanes' Apology</i>. It is (from him) the defence of comedy as he +understands and practises it—broad and coarse when necessary; violent +and satiric against those who in any way condemn it. Euripides had been +one of these, and Balaustion now stands for him. . . . In the long run, it +is the defence of "realism" against "idealism," and, as such, involves a +whole philosophy of life. We cannot follow it here; all we may do is to +indicate the points at which it reveals, as she speaks in it, the +character of Balaustion, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>the growing charm which such revelation +has for her opponent.</p> + +<p>At every turn of his argument, Aristophanes is sure of her +comprehension. He knows that he need not adapt himself to a feebler +mind: "You understand," he says again and again. At length he comes, in +his narration, to the end of their feast that night, and tells how, +rising from the banquet interrupted by the entrance of Sophocles with +tidings of Euripides dead, he had cried to his friends that they must go +and see</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The Rhodian rosy with Euripides! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here you stand with those warm golden eyes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One's nature bottom-upwards, show the base . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Anyhow, I have followed happily<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The impulse, pledged my genius with effect,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since, come to see you, I am shown—myself!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She instantly bids him, as she has honoured him, that he do honour to +Euripides. But, seized by perversity, he declares that if she will give +him the <i>Herakles</i> tablets (which he has discerned, lying with the other +gifts of Euripides), he will prove to her, by this play alone, the "main +mistake" of her worshipped Master.</p> + +<p>She warmly interrupts, reproving him. Their house <i>is</i> the shrine of +that genius, and he has entered it, "fresh from his worst infamy"—yet +she has withheld the words she longs to speak, she has inclined, nay +yearned, to reverence him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span><span class="i0">"So you but suffer that I see the blaze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And not the bolt—the splendid fancy-fling,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not the cold iron malice, the launched lie."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If he does <i>this</i>, if he shows her</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A mere man's hand ignobly clenched against<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yon supreme calmness,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>she will interpose:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Such as you see me! Silk breaks lightning's blow!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Aristophanes, at that word of "calmness," exclaims vehemently. Death +is the great unfairness! Once a man dead, the survivors croak, "Respect +him." And so one must—it is the formidable claim, "immunity of +faultiness from fault's punishment." That is why <i>he</i>, Aristophanes, has +always attacked the living; he knew how they would hide their heads, +once dead! Euripides had chosen the other way; "men pelted him, but got +no pellet back"; and it was not magnanimity but arrogance that prompted +him to such silence. Those at whom Aristophanes or he should fling mud +were by that alone immortalised—and Euripides, "that calm cold +sagacity," knew better than to do them such service.</p> + +<p>As he speaks thus, Balaustion's "heart burns up within her to her +tongue." She exclaims that the baseness of Aristophanes' attack, of his +"mud-volleying" at Euripides, consists in the fact that both men had, at +bottom, the same ideals; they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>both extended the limitations of art, +both were desirous from their hearts that truth should triumph—yet +Aristophanes, thus desiring, poured out his supremacy of power against +the very creature who loved all that <i>he</i> loved! And she declares that +such shame cuts through all his glory. Comedy is in the dust, laid low +by him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Balaustion pities Aristophanes!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now she has gone too far—she has spoken too boldly.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Blood burnt the cheek-bone, each black eye flashed fierce:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'But this exceeds our license!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—so he exclaims; but then, seizing his native weapon, stops ironically +to search out an excuse for her. He finds it soon. She and her husband +are but foreigners; they are "uninstructed"; the born and bred Athenian +needs must smile at them, if he do not think a frown more fitting for +such ignorance. But strangers are privileged: Aristophanes will condone. +They want to impose their squeamishness on sturdy health: that is at the +bottom of it all. Their Euripides had cried "Death!"—deeming death the +better life; he, Aristophanes, cries "Life!" If the Euripideans +condescend to happiness at all, they merely "talk, talk, talk about the +empty name," while the thing itself lies neglected beneath their noses; +they</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span><span class="i4">"think out thoroughly how youth should pass—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just as if youth stops passing, all the same!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As he proceeds, in the superb defence of his own methods, he sees +Balaustion grow ever more indignant. But he conjures her to wait a +moment ere she "looses his doom" on him—and at last, drawing to an end, +declares that after all the ground of difference between him and her is +slight. In so far as it does exist, however, he claims to have won. +Euripides, for whom she stands, is beaten in this contest, yet he, +Aristophanes, has not even put forth all his power! If she will not +acknowledge final defeat:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and he urges her to use it all, to "let the whole rage burst in brave +attack."</p> + +<p>It is evident how he has been moved, despite his boasting—how eagerly +he awaits her use of the rosy strength. . . . But she begins meekly enough. +She is a woman, she says, and claims no quality "beside the love of all +things lovable"; in <i>that</i>, she does claim to stand pre-eminent. But men +may use, justifiably, different methods from those which women most +admire, and so far and because she is a foreigner, as he reminds her, +she may be mistaken in her blame of him. Yet foreigners, strangers, will +in the ultimate issue be the judges of this matter, and shall they find +Aristophanes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>any more impeccable than she does? (She now begins to put +forth the rosy strength!) What is it that he has done? He did not invent +comedy! Has he improved upon it? No, she declares. One of his aims is to +discredit war. That was an aim of Euripides also; and has Aristophanes +yet written anything like the glorious Song to Peace in the +<i>Cresphontes</i>?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come, for the heart within me dies away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So long dost thou delay!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She gives this forth, in the old "Syracusan" manner, and is well aware +that he can have no answer for her. Again (she proceeds), Euripides +discredited war by showing how it outrages the higher feelings: by what +method has Aristophanes discredited it? By the obscene allurements of +the <i>Lysistrata</i>! . . . Thus she takes him through his works, and finally +declares that only in "more audaciously lying" has he improved upon the +earlier writers of comedy. He has genius—she gladly grants it; but he +has debased his genius. The mob indeed has awarded him the crowns: is +such crowning the true guerdon?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tell him, my other poet—where thou walk'st<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But as to the immortality of either, who shall say? And is even <i>that</i> +the question? No: the question is—did both men wish to waft the white +sail of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>good and beauty on its way? Assuredly. . . . And so she cries at +the last: "Your nature too is kingly"; and this is for her the sole +source of ardour—she "trusts truth's inherent kingliness"; and the +poets are of all men most royal. She never would have dared approach +this poet so:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But that the other king stands suddenly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In all the grand investiture of death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bowing your knee beside my lowly head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Equals one moment!<br /></span> +<span class="i22">—Now arise and go.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both have done homage to Euripides!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But he insists that her defence has been oblique—it has been merely an +attack on himself. She must defend her poet more directly, or +Aristophanes will do no homage. At once she answers that she will, that +she has the best, the only, defence at hand. She will read him the +<i>Herakles</i>, read it as, at Syracuse, she spoke the <i>Alkestis</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Accordingly I read the perfect piece."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It ends with the lament of the Chorus for the departure of Herakles:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The greatest of all our friends of yore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have lost for evermore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and when Balaustion has chanted forth that strophe, there falls a long +silence, on this night of losing a friend.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p><p>Aristophanes breaks it musingly. "'Our best friend'—who has been the +best friend to Athens, Euripides or I?" And he answers that it is +himself, for he has done what he knew he <i>could</i> do, and thus has +charmed "the Violet-Crowned"; while Euripides had challenged failure, +and had failed. Euripides, he cries, remembering an instance, has been +like Thamyris of Thrace, who was blinded by the Muses for daring to +contend with them in song; <i>he</i>, Aristophanes, "stands heart-whole, no +Thamyris!" He seizes the psalterion—Balaustion must let him use it for +once—and sings the song, from Sophocles, of Thamyris marching to his +doom.</p> + +<p>He gives some verses,<a name="FNanchor_117-1_18" id="FNanchor_117-1_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_117-1_18" class="fnanchor">[117:1]</a> then breaks off in laughter, having, as he +says, "sung content back to himself," since he is <i>not</i> Thamyris, but +Aristophanes. . . . They shall both be pleased with his next play; it shall +be serious, "no word more of the old fun," for "death defends," and +moreover, Balaustion has delivered her admonition so soundly! Thus he +departs, in all friendliness:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Farewell, brave couple! Next year, welcome me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is "next year," and Balaustion and Euthukles are fleeing across the +water to Rhodes from Athens. This year has seen the death of Sophocles; +and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>greatest of all the Aristophanic triumphs in the <i>Frogs</i>. It +was all <i>him</i>, Balaustion says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There blazed the glory, there shot black the shame"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—it showed every facet of his genius, and in it Bacchos himself was +"duly dragged through the mire," and Euripides, after all the promises, +was more vilely treated than ever before.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So, Aristophanes obtained the prize,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so Athenai felt she had a friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Far better than her 'best friend,' lost last year."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But then, what happened? The great battle of Ægos Potamos was fought and +lost, and Athens fell into the hands of the Spartans. The conqueror's +first words were, "Down with the Piræus! Peace needs no bulwarks." At +first the stupefied Athenians had been ready to obey—but when the next +decree came forth, "No more democratic government; <i>we</i> shall appoint +your oligarchs!" the dreamers were stung awake by horror; they started +up a-stare, their hands refused their office.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Three days they stood, stared—stonier than their walls."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Lysander, the Spartan general, angered by the dumb delay, called a +conference, issued decree. Not the Piræus only, but all Athens should be +destroyed; every inch of the "mad marble arrogance" should go, and so at +last should peace dwell there.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p><p>Balaustion stands, recalling this to Euthukles, who writes her words . . . +and now, though she does not name it so, she tells the third "supreme +adventure" of her life. When that decree had sounded, and the Spartans' +shout of acquiescence had died away:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then did a man of Phokis rise—O heart! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Who</i> was the man of Phokis rose and flung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A flower i' the way of that fierce foot's advance"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—the "choric flower" of the <i>Elektra</i>, full in the face of the foe?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You flung that choric flower, my Euthukles!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and, gazing down on him from her proud rosy height, while he sits +gazing up at her, she chants again the words she spoke to her +girl-friends at the Baccheion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And poetry is power, and Euthukles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had faith therein to, full-face, fling the same—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sudden, the ice-thaw! The assembled foe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaving and swaying with strange friendliness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cried 'Reverence Elektra!'—cried<br /></span> +<span class="i10">. . . 'Let stand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Athenai'! . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and Athens was saved through Euripides,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Through Euthukles, through—more than ever—me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Balaustion, me, who, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Felt my fruit triumph, and fade proudly so!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><p>But next day, Sparta woke from the spell. Harsh Lysander decreed that +though Athens might be saved, the Piræus should not. Comedy should +destroy the Long Walls: the flute-girls should lead off in the dance, +should time the strokes of spade and pickaxe, till the pride of the +Violet-Crowned lay in the dust. "Done that day!" mourns Balaustion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The very day Euripides was born."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But <i>they</i> would not see the passing of Athenai; they would go, fleeing +the sights and sounds,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And press to other earth, new heaven, by sea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That somehow ever prompts to 'scape despair"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and wonderfully, at the harbour-side they found that old grey mariner, +whose ship she had saved in the first Adventure! The ship was still +weather-wise: it should</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Convey Balaustion back to Rhodes, for sake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of her and her Euripides!' laughed he,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and they embarked. It should be Rhodes indeed: to Rhodes they now are +sailing.</p> + +<p>Euripides lies buried in the little valley "laughed and moaned about by +streams,"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Boiling and freezing, like the love and hate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which helped or harmed him through his earthly course.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They mix in Arethusa by his grave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But, just as she had known, this revocation <i>has</i> consoled her. Now she +will be able to forget. Never again will her eyes behold Athenai, nor in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>imagination see "the ghastly mirth that mocked her overthrow"; but she +and Euthukles are exiles from the dead, not from the living, Athens:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That's in the cloud there, with the new-born star!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is no despair, there can be none; for does not the soul anticipate +its heaven here on earth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Above all crowding, crystal silentness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above all noise, a silver solitude . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hatred and cark and care, what place have they<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In yon blue liberality of heaven?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They are entering Rhodes now, and every wave and wind seems singing out +the same:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All in one chorus—what the master-word<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They take up? Hark! 'There are no gods, no gods!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glory to <span class="smcap">God</span>—who saves Euripides!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p> . . . There she is, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion—and Triumphant +Woman. What other man has given us this?—and even Browning only here. +Nearly always, for man's homage, woman must in some sort be victim: she +must suffer ere he can adore. But Balaustion triumphs, and we hail +her—and we hail her poet too, who dared to make her great not only in +her love, but in her own deep-hearted, ardent self.</p> + +<p>"This mortal shall put on individuality." Of all men Browning most +wished women to do that.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94-1_13" id="Footnote_94-1_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94-1_13"><span class="label">[94:1]</span></a> I follow Browning's spellings throughout.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96-1_14" id="Footnote_96-1_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96-1_14"><span class="label">[96:1]</span></a> The character of Balaustion is wholly imaginary.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96-2_15" id="Footnote_96-2_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96-2_15"><span class="label">[96:2]</span></a> A town of the island of Rhodes.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101-1_16" id="Footnote_101-1_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101-1_16"><span class="label">[101:1]</span></a> In the <i>Apology</i>, she tells "the second supreme +adventure": her interview with Aristophanes, and the recital to him of +the <i>Herakles</i> of Euripides.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106-1_17" id="Footnote_106-1_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106-1_17"><span class="label">[106:1]</span></a> Euripides died at the Court of Archelaus, King of +Macedonia.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117-1_18" id="Footnote_117-1_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117-1_18"><span class="label">[117:1]</span></a> Browning never finished his translation of this +splendid song.</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> +<h2>V</h2> + +<h3>POMPILIA</h3> + +<h4>IN "THE RING AND THE BOOK"</h4> + + +<p>I said, in writing of Balaustion: "Nearly always, for man's homage, +woman must in some sort be victim: she must suffer ere he can adore."</p> + +<p>I should have said that this <i>has been</i> so: for the tendency to-day is +to demonstrate rather the power than the weakness of woman. True that in +the "victim," that weakness was usually shown to be the very source of +that power: through her suffering not only she, but they who stood +around and saw the anguish, were made perfect. That this theory of the +outcome of suffering is an eternal verity I am not desirous to deny; but +I do deplore that, in literature, women should be made so +disproportionately its exemplars; and I deplore it not for feminist +reasons alone. Once we regard suffering in this light of a supreme +uplifting influence, we turn, as it were, our weapons against +ourselves—we exclaim that men too suffer in this world and display the +highest powers of endurance: why, then, do they so frequently, in their +imaginative works, present themselves as makers of women's woes? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>For +women make men suffer often; yet how relatively seldom men show this! +Thus, paradoxically enough, we may come to declare that it is to +themselves that men are harsh, and to us generous. "Chivalry from +women!"—how would that sound as a war-cry?</p> + +<p>Not all in jest do I so speak, though such recognition of male +generosity leaves existent a certain sense of weariness which assails +me—and if me, then probably many another—when I find myself reading of +the immemorial "victim." It is this which makes Balaustion supreme for +my delight. There is a woman with every noble attribute of womanhood at +its highest, who suffers at no hands but those of the Great Fates, as +one might say—the fates who rule the destiny of nations. . . . We turn now +to her direct antithesis in this regard of suffering—we turn to +Pompilia, victim first of the mediocre, ignorant, small-souled, then of +the very devil of malignant baseness; such a victim, moreover, first and +last, for the paltriest of motives—money. And money in no large, +imaginative sense, but in the very lowest terms in which it could be at +all conceived as a theme for tragedy. A dowry, and a tiny one: <i>this</i> +created "that old woe" which "steps on the stage" again for us in <i>The +Ring and the Book</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Another day that finds her living yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Little Pompilia, with the patient brow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lamentable smile on those poor lips,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span><span class="i0">And, under the white hospital-array,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alive i' the ruins. 'Tis a miracle.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It seems that when her husband struck her first,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She prayed Madonna just that she might live<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So long as to confess and be absolved;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And whether it was that, all her sad life long<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never before successful in a prayer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This prayer rose with authority too dread—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or whether because earth was hell to her,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By compensation when the blackness broke,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To show her for a moment such things were,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—the prayer was granted her.</p> + +<p>So, musing on the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; +and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express +itself—"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the +crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the +seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why +was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" +demands the imagined spokesman; and, summing up, he exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who did it shall account to Christ—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Having no pity on the harmless life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gentle face and girlish form he found,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thus flings back. Go practise if you please<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span><span class="i0">With men and women. Leave a child alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Christ's particular love's sake!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then, burning with pity and indignation, he proceeds to tell the story +of Pompilia as he sees it, feels it—and as Browning, in the issue, +makes us see and feel it too.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, Browning tells us this story—this "pure +crude fact" (for fact it actually is)—<i>ten times over</i>, through nine +different persons, Guido Franceschini, the husband, speaking twice. +Stated thus baldly, the plan may sound almost absurd, and the prospect +of reading the work appear a tedious one; but once begin it, and neither +impression survives for a moment. Each telling is at once the same and +new—for in each the speaker's point of view is altered. We get, first +of all, Browning's own summary of the "pure crude fact"; then the +appearance of that fact to:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>1. Half-Rome, antagonistic to Pompilia.</p> + +<p>2. The Other Half, sympathetic to her.</p> + +<p>3. "Tertium Quid," neutral.</p> + +<p>4. Count Guido Franceschini, at his trial.</p> + +<p>5. Giuseppe Caponsacchi (the priest with whom Pompilia fled), +at the trial.</p> + +<p>6. Pompilia, on her death-bed.</p> + +<p>7. Count Guido's counsel, preparing his speech for the +defence.</p> + +<p>8. The Public Prosecutor's speech.</p> + +<p>9. The Pope, considering his decision on Guido's appeal to him +after the trial.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>10. Guido, at the last interview with his spiritual advisers +before execution.</p></div> + +<p>Only the speeches of the two lawyers are wholly tedious; the rest of the +survey is absorbing. Not a point which can be urged on any side is +omitted, as that side presents itself; yet in the event, as I have said, +one overmastering effect stands forth—the utter loveliness and purity +of Pompilia. "She is the heroine," says Mr. Arthur Symons,<a name="FNanchor_126-1_19" id="FNanchor_126-1_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_126-1_19" class="fnanchor">[126:1]</a> "as +neither Guido nor Caponsacchi can be called the hero. . . . With hardly +[any] consciousness of herself, [she] makes and unmakes the lives and +characters of those about her"; and in this way he compares her story +with Pippa's: "the mere passing of an innocent child."</p> + +<p>And so, here, have we not indeed the victim? But though I spoke of +weariness, I must take back the words; for here too we have indeed the +beauty and the glory of suffering, and here the beauty and the glory of +manhood. Guido, like all evil things, is Nothingness: he serves but to +show forth what purity and love, in Pompilia, could be; what bravery and +love, in Caponsacchi, the "warrior-priest," could do. This girl has not +the Browning-mark of gaiety, but she has both the others—this "lady +young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad," who answered without fear the +call of the unborn life within her, and trusted without question "the +appointed man."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p>The "pure crude fact," detailed by Browning, was found in the authentic +legal documents bound together in an old, square, yellow +parchment-covered volume, picked up by him, "one day struck fierce 'mid +many a day struck calm," on a stall in the Piazza San Lorenzo of +Florence. He bought the pamphlet for eightpence, and it gave to him and +us the great, unique achievement of this wonderful poem:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prime nature with an added artistry."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Pompilia, called Comparini, was in reality "nobody's child." This, which +at first sight may seem of minor importance to the issue, is actually at +the heart of all; for, as I have said, it was the question of her dowry +which set the entire drama in motion. The old Comparini couple, +childless, of mediocre class and fortunes, had through silly +extravagance run into debt, and in 1679 were hard pressed by creditors. +They could not draw on their capital, for it was tied up in favour of +the legal heir, an unknown cousin. But if they had a child, that +disability would be removed. Violante Comparini, seeing this, resolved +upon a plan. She bought beforehand for a small sum the expected baby of +a disreputable woman, giving herself out to her husband, Pietro, and +their friends as almost miraculously pregnant—for she was past fifty. +In due time she became the apparent mother of a girl, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>Pompilia. This +girl was married at thirteen to Count Guido Franceschini, an +impoverished nobleman, fifty years old, of Arezzo. He married her for +her reported dowry, and she was sold to him for the sake of his rank. +Both parties to the bargain found themselves deceived (Pompilia was, of +course, a mere chattel in the business), for there was no dowry, and +Guido, though he <i>had</i> the rank, had none of the appurtenances thereof +which had dazzled the fancy of Violante. Pietro too was tricked, and the +marriage carried through against his will. The old couple, reduced to +destitution by extracted payment of a part of the dowry, were taken to +the miserable Franceschini castle at Arezzo, and there lived wretchedly, +in every sense, for a while; but soon fled back to Rome, leaving the +girl-wife behind to aggravated woes. About three years afterwards she +also fled, intending to rejoin the Comparini at Rome. She was about to +become a mother. The organiser and companion of her flight was a young +priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, who was a canon at Arezzo. Guido followed +them, caught them at Castelnuovo, a village on the outskirts of Rome, +and caused both to be arrested. They were confined in the "New Prisons" +at Rome, and tried for adultery. The result was a compromise—they were +pronounced guilty, but a merely nominal punishment ("the jocular piece +of punishment," as the young priest called it) was inflicted on each. +Pompilia was relegated for a time to a convent; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>Caponsacchi was +banished for three years to Civita Vecchia. As the time for Pompilia's +confinement drew near, she was permitted to go to her reputed parents' +home, which was a villa just outside the walls of the city. A few months +after her removal there, she became the mother of a son, whom the old +people quickly removed to a place of concealment and safety. A fortnight +later—on the second day of the New Year—Count Guido, with four hired +assassins, came to the villa, and all three occupants were killed: +Pietro and Violante Comparini, and Pompilia his wife. For these murders, +Guido and his hirelings were hanged at Rome on February 22, 1698.</p> + +<p>But now we must return upon our steps, if we would know "the truth of +this."</p> + +<p>When the old Comparini reached Rome, after their flight from Arezzo, the +Pope had just proclaimed jubilee in honour of his eightieth year, and +absolution for any sin was to be had for the asking—atonement, however, +necessarily preceding. Violante, remorseful for the sacrifice of their +darling, and regarding the woe as retribution for her original lie about +the birth, resolved to confess; but since absolution was granted only if +atonement preceded it, she must be ready to restore to the rightful heir +that which her pretended motherhood had taken from him. She therefore +confessed to Pietro first, and he instantly seized the occasion for +revenge on Guido, though that was not (or at any rate, according <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>to the +Other Half-Rome, may not have been) his only motive.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What? All that used to be, may be again?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What, the girl's dowry never was the girl's,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And unpaid yet, is never now to pay?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then the girl's self, my pale Pompilia child<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That used to be my own with her great eyes—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will she come back, with nothing changed at all?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He repudiated Pompilia publicly, and with her, of course, all claims +from her husband. Taken into Court, the case (also bound up in the +square yellow book) was, after appeals and counter-appeals, left +undecided.</p> + +<p>It was this which loosed all Guido's fury on Pompilia. He had already +learned to hate her for her shrinking from him; now, while he still +controlled her person, and wreaked the vilest cruelties and basenesses +upon it, he at the same time resolved to rid himself of her in any +fashion whatsoever which should leave him still a legal claimant to the +disputed dowry.<a name="FNanchor_130-1_20" id="FNanchor_130-1_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_130-1_20" class="fnanchor">[130:1]</a> There was only one way thus to rid himself, and +that was to prove her guilty of adultery. He concentrated on it. First, +his brother, the young Canon Girolamo, who lived at the castle, was +incited to pursue her with vile <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>solicitations. She fled to the +Archbishop of Arezzo and implored his succour. He gave none. Then she +went to the Governor: he also "pushed her back." She sought out a poor +friar, and confessed her "despair in God"; he promised to write to her +parents for her, but afterwards flinched, and did nothing. . . . Guido's +plan was nevertheless hanging fire; a supplementary system of +persecution must be set up. She was hourly accused of "looking +love-lures at theatre and church, in walk, at window"; but this, in the +apathy which was descending on her, she baffled by "a new game of giving +up the game."<a name="FNanchor_131-1_21" id="FNanchor_131-1_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_131-1_21" class="fnanchor">[131:1]</a> She abandoned theatre, church, walk, and window; +she "confounded him with her gentleness and worth," he "saw the same +stone strength of white despair":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How does it differ in aught, save degree,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the terrible patience of God?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and more and more he hated her.</p> + +<p>But at last, at the theatre one night, Pompilia—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Brought there I knew not why, but now know well"<a name="FNanchor_131-2_22" id="FNanchor_131-2_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_131-2_22" class="fnanchor">[131:2]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—saw, for the first time, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, "the young frank +personable priest"<a name="FNanchor_131-3_23" id="FNanchor_131-3_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_131-3_23" class="fnanchor">[131:3]</a>—and seeing him as rapt he gazed at her, felt</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span><span class="i2h">". . . Had there been a man like that,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lift me with his strength out of all strife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into the calm! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suppose that man had been instead of this?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Caponsacchi had hitherto been very much "the courtly spiritual Cupid" +that Browning calls him. His family, the oldest in Arezzo and once the +greatest, had wide interest in the Church, and he had always known that +he was to be a priest. But when the time came for "just a vow to read!" +he stopped awestruck. Could he keep such a promise? He knew himself too +weak. But the Bishop smiled. There were two ways of taking that vow, and +a man like Caponsacchi, with "that superior gift of making madrigals," +need not choose the harder one.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He was good enough for <i>that</i>, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit +he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at +his post where beauty and fashion rule"—a fribble and a coxcomb, in +short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . +After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of +his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a +kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the +place, amused or no . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A lady young, tall, beautiful, strange and sad"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p><p>—and it was (he remembered) like seeing a burden carried to the Altar +in his church one day, while he "got yawningly through Matin-Song." The +burden was unpacked, and left—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was the Rafael!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make +the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she +turned,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and thought the thought that we have learned—for instinctively and +surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that +man":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . Silent, grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but +promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day, +Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze. <i>He</i> +would not signify, but there was Pompilia:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Spare her, because he beats her as it is,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of +pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse—he felt that he must +leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>was done +with—the social successes, the intrigue, song-making; and his patron +was already displeased. These things were what he was there to do, and +he was going to church instead! "Are you turning Molinist?" the patron +asked. "I answered quick" (says Caponsacchi in his narrative)</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sir, what if I turned Christian?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and at once announced his resolve to go to Rome as soon as Lent was +over. One evening, before he went, he was sitting thinking how his life +"had shaken under him"; and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thinking moreover . . . oh, thinking, if you like,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How utterly dissociated was I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A priest and celibate, from the sad strange wife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Guido . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i5h">. . . I had a whole store of strengths<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Eating into my heart, which craved employ,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she, perhaps, need of a finger's help—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet there was no way in the wide world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To stretch out mine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her smile kept glowing out of the devotional book he was trying to read, +and he sat thus—when suddenly there came a tap at the door, and on his +summons, there glided in "a masked muffled mystery," who laid a letter +on the open book, and stood back demurely waiting.</p> + +<p>It was Margherita, the "kind of maid" of Count Guido, and the letter +purported to be from Pompilia, offering her love. Caponsacchi saw +through the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>trick at once: the letter was written by Guido. He answered +it in such a way that it would save <i>her</i> from all anger, and at the +same time infuriate the "jealous miscreant" who had written it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4h">". . . What made you—may one ask?—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Marry your hideous husband?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But henceforth such letters came thick and fast. Caponsacchi was met in +the street, signed to in church; slips were found in his prayer-book, +they dropped from the window if he passed. . . . At length there arrived a +note in a different manner. This warned him <i>not</i> to come, to avoid the +window for his life. At once he answered that the street was free—he +should go to the window if he chose, and he would go that evening at the +Ave. His conviction was that he should find the husband there, not the +wife—for though he had seen through the trick, it did not occur to him +that it was more than a device of jealousy to trap them, already +suspected after that mutual gaze at the theatre. What it really was, he +never guessed at all.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile—turning now to Pompilia's dying speech to the nuns who nursed +her—the companion persecution had been going on at the castle. Day +after day, Margherita had dinned the name of Caponsacchi into the wife's +ears. How he loved her, what a paragon he was, how little she owed +fidelity to the Count who used <i>her</i>, Margherita, as his pastime—ought +she not at least to see the priest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>and warn him, if nothing more? Guido +might kill him! Here was a letter from him; and she began to impart it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I know you cannot read—therefore, let me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'<i>My idol</i>'" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The letter was not from Caponsacchi, and Pompilia, divining this as +surely as she had divined that he did not throw the comfits, took it +from the woman's hands and tore it into shreds. . . . Day after day such +moments added themselves to all the rest of the misery, and at last, at +end of her strength, she swooned away. As she was coming to again, +Margherita stooped and whispered <i>Caponsacchi</i>. But still, though the +sound of his name was to the broken girl as if, drowning, she had looked +up through the waves and seen a star . . . still she repudiated the +servant's report of him: had she not that once beheld him?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Therefore while you profess to show him me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I ever see his own face. Get you gone!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the swoon had portended something; and on "one vivid daybreak," half +through April, Pompilia learned what that something was. . . . Going to bed +the previous night, the last sound in her ears had been Margherita's +prattle. "Easter was over; everyone was on the wing for Rome—even +Caponsacchi, out of heart and hope, was going there." Pompilia had heard +it, as she might have heard rain drop, thinking only that another day +was done:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p><p>But with the daybreak, what was the clear summons that seemed to pierce +her slumber?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5h">". . . Up I sprang alive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Light in me, light without me, everywhere<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Change!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The exquisite morning was there—the broad yellow sunbeams with their +"myriad merry motes," the glittering leaves of the wet weeds against the +lattice-panes, the birds—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Always with one voice—where are two such joys?—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood on the terrace—o'er the roofs such sky!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My heart sang, 'I too am to go away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I too have something I must care about,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not to live now would be the wickedness.'"<a name="FNanchor_137-1_24" id="FNanchor_137-1_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_137-1_24" class="fnanchor">[137:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>Pope Innocent XII—"the great good old Pope," as Browning calls him in +the summary of Book I—when in his turn he speaks to us, gives his +highest praise, "where all he praises," to this trait in her whom he +calls "My rose, I gather for the breast of God."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh child, that didst despise thy life so much<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How the fine ear felt fall the first low word<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Value life, and preserve life for My sake!'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thou, at first prompting of what I call God,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Accept the obligation laid on thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mother elect, to save the unborn child.<br /></span> +<span class="i11h">. . . Go past me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And get thy praise—and be not far to seek<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Presently when I follow if I may!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Now" (says the sympathetic Other Half-Rome), "begins the tenebrific +passage of the tale." As we have seen, Pompilia had tried all other +means of escape, even before the great call came to her. Her last appeal +had been made to two of Guido's kinsmen, on the wing for Rome like +everyone else—Conti being one. Both had refused, but Conti had referred +her to Caponsacchi—not evilly like Margherita, but jestingly, +flippantly. Nevertheless, that name had come to take a half-fateful +sense to her ears . . . and the Other Half-Rome thus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>images the moment in +which she resolved to appeal to him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If then, all outlets thus secured save one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At last she took to the open, stood and stared<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her wan face to see where God might wait—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there found Caponsacchi wait as well<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the precious something at perdition's edge,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He only was predestinate to save . . .<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whatever way in this strange world it was,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pompilia and Caponsacchi met, in fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She at her window, he i' the street beneath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And understood each other at first look."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For suddenly (she tells us) on that morning of Annunciation, she turned +on Margherita, ever at her ear, and said, "Tell Caponsacchi he may +come!" "How plainly" (says Pompilia)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How plainly I perceived hell flash and fade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O' the face of her—the doubt that first paled joy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then final reassurance I indeed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was caught now, never to be free again!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But she cared not; she felt herself strong for everything.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"After the Ave Maria, at first dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will be standing on the terrace, say!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She knew he would come, and prayed to God all day. At "an intense throe +of the dusk" she started up—she "dared to say," in her dying speech, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>that she was divinely pushed out on the terrace—and there he waited +her, with the same silent and solemn face, "at watch to save me."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He had come, as he defiantly had said, and not the husband met him, but, +at the window, with a lamp in her hand, "Our Lady of all the Sorrows." +He knelt, but even as he knelt she vanished, only to reappear on the +terrace, so close above him that she could almost touch his head if she +bent down—"and she did bend, while I stood still as stone, all eye, all +ear."</p> + +<p>First she told him that she could neither read nor write, but that the +letters said to be from him had been read to her, and seemed to say that +he loved her. She did not believe that he meant that as Margherita meant +it; but "good true love would help me now so much" that at last she had +resolved to see him. Her whole life was so strange that this but +belonged to the rest: that an utter stranger should be able to help +her—he, and he alone! She told him her story. There was a reason now at +last why she must fly from "this fell house of hate," and she would take +from Caponsacchi's love what she needed: enough to save her life with—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7h">". . . Take me to Rome!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take me as you would take a dog, I think,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Masterless left for strangers to maltreat:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take me home like that—leave me in the house<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the father and mother are" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p><p>She tells his answer thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i30">"He replied—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The first word I heard ever from his lips,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All himself in it—an eternity<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of speech, to match the immeasurable depth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O' the soul that then broke silence—'I am yours.'"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But when he had left her, irresolution swept over him. First, the Church +seemed to rebuke—the Church who had smiled on his silly intrigues! Now +she changed her tone, it appeared:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now, when I found out first that life and death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are means to an end, that passion uses both,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Indisputably mistress of the man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But that soon passed: the word was God's; this was the true +self-sacrifice. . . . But might it not injure her—scandal would hiss about +her name. Would not God choose His own way to save her? And <i>he</i> might +pray. . . . Two days passed thus. But he must go to counsel and to comfort +her—was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over the +terrace; she reproached him: why did he delay the help his heart yearned +to give? He answered with his fears for her, but she broke in, never +doubting him though he should doubt himself:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'I know you: when is it that you will come?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p><p>"To-morrow at the day's dawn," he replied; and all was arranged—the +place, the time; she came, she did not speak, but glided into the +carriage, while he cried to the driver:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . 'By San Spirito,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When she was dying of Guido's twenty-two dagger-thrusts, this was how +Pompilia thought of that long flight:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holding my hand across the world . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he, telling the judges of it at the murder-trial, cried that he +never could lie quiet in his grave unless he "mirrored them plain the +perfect soul Pompilia."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You must know that a man gets drunk with truth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stagnant inside him. Oh, they've killed her, Sirs!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can I be calm?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But he must be calm: he must show them that soul.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The glory of life, the beauty of the world,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The splendour of heaven . . . well, Sirs, does no one move?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do I speak ambiguously? The glory, I say,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the beauty, I say, and splendour, still say I" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>—for thus he flings defiance at them. Why do they not smile as they +smiled at the earlier adultery-trial, when they gave him "the jocular +piece of punishment," now that he stands before them "in this sudden +smoke from hell"?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Men, for the last time, what do you want with me?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For if they had but seen <i>then</i> what Guido Franceschini was! If they +would but have been serious! Pompilia would not now be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Gasping away the latest breath of all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This minute, while I talk—not while you laugh?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>How can the end of this deed surprise them? Pompilia and he had shown +them what its beginning meant—but all in vain. He, the priest, had left +her to "law's watch and ward," and now she is dying—"there and thus she +lies!" Do they understand <i>now</i> that he was not unworthy of Christ when +he tried to save her? His part is done—all that he had been able to do; +he wants no more with earth, except to "show Pompilia who was true"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The snow-white soul that angels fear to take<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Untenderly . . . Sirs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only seventeen!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then he begins his story of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . Our flight from dusk to clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through day and night and day again to night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once more, and to last dreadful dawn of all."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>Thinking how they sat in silence, both so fearless and so safe, waking +but now and then to consciousness of the wonder of it, he cries:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You know this is not love, Sirs—it is faith,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The feeling that there's God."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By morning they had passed Perugia; Assisi was opposite. He met her look +for the first time since they had started. . . . At Foligno he urged her to +take a brief rest, but with eyes like a fawn's,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The probing spear o' the huntsman,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>she had cried, "On, on to Rome, on, on"—and they went on. During the +night she had a troubled dream, waving away something with wild arms; +and Caponsacchi prayed (thinking "Why, in my life I never prayed +before!") that the dream might go, and soon she slept peacefully. . . . +When she woke, he answered her first look with the assurance that Rome +was within twelve hours; no more of the terrible journey. But she +answered that she wished it could last for ever: to be "with no dread"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Never to see a face nor hear a voice—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yours is no voice; you speak when you are dumb;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor face, I see it in the dark" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—such tranquillity was such heaven to her!</p> + +<p>"This one heart" (she said on her death-bed):</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span><span class="i0">"This one heart gave me all the spring!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could believe himself by his strong will<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had woven around me what I thought the world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We went along in . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, through the journey, was it natural<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such comfort should arise from first to last?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As she looks back, new stars bud even while she seeks for old, and all +is Caponsacchi:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Him I now see make the shine everywhere."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Best of all her memories—"oh, the heart in that!"—was the descent at a +little wayside inn. He tells of it thus. When the day was broad, he +begged her to descend at the post-house of a village. He told the woman +of the house that Pompilia was his sister, married and unhappy—would +she comfort her as women can? And then he left them together:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I spent a good half-hour, paced to and fro<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The garden; just to leave her free awhile . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I might have sat beside her on the bench<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the children were: I wish the thing had been,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Indeed: the event could not be worse, you know:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One more half-hour of her saved! She's dead now, Sirs!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As they again drove forward, she asked him if, supposing she were to die +now, he would account it to be in sin? The woman at the inn had told her +about the trees that turn away from the north wind with the nests they +hold; she thought she might be like those trees. . . . But soon, +half-sleeping <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>again, and restless now with returning fears, she seemed +to wander in her mind; once she addressed him as "Gaetano." . . . +Afterwards he knew that this name (the name of a newly-made saint) was +that which she destined for her child, if she was given a son:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"One who has only been made a saint—how long?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Twenty-five years: so, carefuller, perhaps,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To guard a namesake than those old saints grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tired out by this time—see my own five saints!"<a name="FNanchor_146-1_25" id="FNanchor_146-1_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_146-1_25" class="fnanchor">[146:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For "little Pompilia" had been given five names by her pretended +parents:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">". . . so many names for one poor child<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pompilia Comparini—laughable!"<a href="#Footnote_146-1_25" class="fnanchor">[146:1]</a> . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But now Caponsacchi himself grew restless, nervous: here was +Castelnuovo, as good as Rome:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Say you are saved, sweet lady!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She awoke. The sky was fierce with the sunset colours—suddenly she +cried out that she must not die:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Take me no farther, I should die: stay here!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have more life to save than mine!' She swooned.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We seemed safe: what was it foreboded so?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He carried her,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Against my heart, beneath my head bowed low,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As we priests carry the paten,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>into the little inn and to a couch, where he laid her, sleeping deeply. +The host urged him to leave her in peace till morn.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, my foreboding! But I could not choose."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>All night he paced the passage, throbbing with fear from head to foot, +"filled with a sense of such impending woe" . . . and at the first pause of +night went to the courtyard, ordered the horses—the last moment came, +he must awaken her—he turned to go:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">". . . And there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Faced me Count Guido."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Oh, if he had killed him then! if he had taken the throat in "one great +good satisfying gripe," and abolished Guido with his lie! . . . But while +he mused on the irony of such a miscreant calling <i>her</i> his wife,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The minute, oh the misery, was gone;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—two police-officers stood beside, and Guido was ordering them to take +her.</p> + +<p>Caponsacchi insisted that <i>he</i> should lead them to the room where she +was sleeping. He was a priest and privileged; when they came there, if +the officer should detect</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Between us and the mad dog howling there!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p><p>They all went up together. There she lay,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That filled the window with a light like blood."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>At Guido's loud order to the officers, she started up, and stood erect, +face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace +and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window +a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame +from hell, since <i>he</i> was in it—and she cried to him to stand away, she +chose hell rather than "embracing any more."</p> + +<p>Caponsacchi tried to go to her, but now the room was full of the rabble +pouring in at the noise—he was caught—"they heaped themselves upon +me." . . . Then, when she saw "my angel helplessly held back," then</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Came all the strength back in a sudden swell,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and she sprang at her husband, seized the sword that hung beside him,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O' the blade. 'Die,' cried she, 'devil, in God's name!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, but they all closed round her, twelve to one<br /></span> +<span class="i4h">. . . Dead-white and disarmed she lay."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She said, dying, that this, her first and last resistance, had been +invincible, for she had struck at the lie in Guido; and thus not "the +vain sword nor weak speech" had saved her, but Caponsacchi's truth:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span><span class="i0">"You see, I will not have the service fail!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I say the angel saved me: I am safe! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What o' the way to the end?—the end crowns all"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for even though she now was dying, there had been the time at the +convent with the quiet nuns, and then the safety with her parents, and +then:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My babe was given me! Yes, he saved my babe:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It would not have peeped forth, the bird-like thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through that Arezzo noise and trouble . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the sweet peace cured all, and let me live<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And give my bird the life among the leaves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God meant him! Weeks and months of quietude,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could lie in such peace and learn so much,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Know life a little, I should leave so soon.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Therefore, because this man restored my soul<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All has been right . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For as the weakness of my time drew nigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nobody did me one disservice more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spoke coldly or looked strangely, broke the love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I lay in the arms of, till my boy was born,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Born all in love, with nought to spoil the bliss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For, thinking of her happy childhood before the marriage, already she +has said that only that childhood, and the prayer that brought her +Caponsacchi, and the "great fortnight" remain as real: the four bad +years between</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Vanish—one quarter of my life, you know."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In that room in the inn they parted. They were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>borne off to separate +cells of the same ignoble prison, and, separate, thence to Rome.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Pompilia's face, then and thus, looked on me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The last time in this life: not one sight more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never another sight to be! And yet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I thought I had saved her . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It seems I simply sent her to her death.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You tell me she is dying now, or dead."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But then it flashes to his mind that this may be a trick to make him +confess—it would be worthy of them; and the great cry breaks forth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That vision in the blood-red daybreak—that<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leap to life of the pale electric sword<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Angels go armed with—that was not the last<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Know the manœuvre! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let me see for myself if it be so!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But it is true. Twenty-two dagger-thrusts—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Two days ago, when Guido, with the right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hacked her to pieces" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Oh, should they not have seen at first? That very flight proved the +innocence of the pair who thus fled: these judges should have recognised +the accepted man, the exceptional conduct that rightly claims to be +judged by exceptional rules. . . . But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>it is all over. She is dying—dead +perhaps. He has done with being judged—he is guiltless in thought, +word, and deed; and she . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">". . . For Pompilia—be advised,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Build churches, go pray! You will find me there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I know, if you come—and you will come, I know.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, there's a judge weeping! Did not I say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You were good and true at bottom? You see the truth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am glad I helped you: she helped me just so."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Once more he flashes forth in her defence, in rage against Guido—but +the image of her, "so sweet and true and pure and beautiful," comes back +to him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see we are<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So very pitiable, she and I,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who had conceivably been otherwise"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and at the thought of <i>how</i> "otherwise," of what life with such a +woman were for a free man, and of his life henceforth, a priest, "on +earth, as good as out of it," with the memory of her, only the memory . . . +for she is dying, dead perhaps . . . the whole man breaks down, and he goes +from the place with one wild, anguished call to heaven:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, great, just, good God! Miserable me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I have chosen to reveal Pompilia chiefly through Caponsacchi's speech +for two reasons. First, because there is nothing grander in our +literature than that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>passionate and throbbing monologue; second, +because to show this type of woman <i>through</i> another speaker is the way +in which Browning always shows her best. As I said when writing of +Mildred Tresham, directly such a woman speaks for herself, in Browning's +work, he forces the note, he takes from her (unconsciously) a part of +the beauty which those other speakers have shown forth. So with +Pompilia, though not in the same degree as with Mildred, for here the +truth <i>is</i> with us—Pompilia is a living soul, not a puppet of the +theatre. Yet even here the same strange errors recur. She has words +indeed that reach the inmost heart—poignant, overpowering in tenderness +and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw +together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is +the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the +marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses +its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to +delineate it; and the particular one chosen—of marriage as a coin, "a +dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"—is actually +inept, since the essence of her is that she does not know anything at +all about the "coin," so certainly does not know that it is or may be +"dirty."</p> + +<p>Again, here is an ignorant child, whose deep insight has come to her +through love alone. She feels, in the weakness of her nearing death, and +the bliss of spiritual tranquillity, that all the past <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>with Guido is a +terrific dream: "It is the good of dreams—so soon they go!" Beautiful: +but Browning could not leave it in that beautiful and true simplicity. +She must philosophise:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This is the note of evil: for good lasts" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pompilia was incapable of that: she could "say" the thing, as she says +it in that image of the dream—but she would have left it alone, she +would have made no maxim out of it. And the maxim, when it <i>is</i> made, +says no more than the image had said.</p> + +<p>Once again: her plea for Guido. That she should forgive him was +essential, but the pardon should have been blind pardon. No reason can +confirm it; and we should but have loved her more for seeking none. To +put in her mouth the plea that Guido had been deceived in his hope of +enrichment by marriage, and that his anger, thus to some extent +justified, was aggravated by her "blindness," by her not knowing +"whither he sought to drive" her with his charges of light conduct,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So unaware, I only made things worse" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—this is bad through and through; this is the excess of ingenuity which +misled Browning so frequently. There is no loveliness of pardon here; +but something that we cannot suffer for its gross humility. The aim of +Guido, in these charges, was filthiest evil: it revolts to hear the +victim, now fully aware—for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>the plea is based on her awareness—blame +herself for not "apprehending his drift" (could <i>she</i> have used that +phrase?), and thus, in the madness of magnanimity, seem to lose all +sense of good and evil. It is over-subtle; it is not true; it has no +beauty of any kind. But Browning could not "leave things alone"; he had +to analyse, to subtilise—and this, which comes so well when it is +analytic and subtle minds that address us, makes the defect of his work +whenever an innocent and ignorant girl is made to speak in her own +person.</p> + +<p>I shall not multiply instances; my aim is not destructive. But I think +the unmeasured praise of Browning by some of his admirers has worked +against, not for, him. It irritates to read of the "perfection" of this +speech—which has beauties so many and so great that the faults may be +confessed, and leave it still among the lovely things of our literature.</p> + +<p>I turn now gladly to those beauties. Chief is the pride and love of the +new-made mother—never more exquisitely shown, and here the more +poignantly shown because she is on her death-bed, and has not seen her +little son again since the "great fortnight." She thinks how well it was +that he had been taken from her before that awful night at the Villa:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He was too young to smile and save himself;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for she does not dream, not then remembering the "money" which was at +the heart of all her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>woe, that <i>he</i> would have been spared for that +money's sake. . . . But she had not seen him again, and now will never see +him. And when he grows up and comes to be her age, he will ask what his +mother was like, and people will say, "Like girls of seventeen," and he +will think of some girl he knows who titters and blushes when he looks +at her. . . . That is not the way for a mother!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Therefore I wish someone will please to say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I looked already old, though I was young;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and she begs to be told that she looks "nearer twenty." Her name too +is not a common one—that may help to keep apart</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A little the thing I am from what girls are."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But how hard for him to find out anything about her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No father that he ever knew at all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor never had—no, never had, I say!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and a mother who only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! +Only his saint to guard him—that was why she chose the new one; <i>he</i> +would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her +boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is +dwindling fast to that:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sheer dreaming and impossibility—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just in four days too! All the seventeen years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not once did a suspicion visit me<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span><span class="i0">How very different a lot is mine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From any other woman's in the world.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The reason must be, 'twas by step and step<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It got to grow so terrible and strange.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These strange woes stole on tip-toe, as it were . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I was found familiarised with fear."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>First there was the amazement of finding herself disowned by Pietro and +Violante. Then:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So with my husband—just such a surprise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such a mistake, in that relationship!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everyone says that husbands love their wives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guard them and guide them, give them happiness;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis duty, law, pleasure, religion: well—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You see how much of this comes true with me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Next, "there is the friend." . . . People will not ask her about him; they +smile and give him nicknames, and call him her lover. "Most surprise of +all!" It is always that word: how he loves her, how she loves him . . . yet +he is a priest, and she is married. It all seems unreal, like the +childish game in which she and her little friend Tisbe would pretend to +be the figures on the tapestry:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You know the figures never were ourselves.<br /></span> +<span class="i10"> . . . Thus all my life."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her life is like a "fairy thing that fades and fades."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"—Even to my babe! I thought when he was born,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Something began for me that would not end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For evermore, eternally, quite mine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>And hers he is, but he is gone, and it is all so confused that even +<i>he</i> "withdraws into a dream as the rest do." She fancies him grown big,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Frowns with the others: 'Poor imprudent child!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why did you venture out of the safe street?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why go so far from help to that lone house?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why open at the whisper and the knock?'"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That New Year's Day, when she had been allowed to get up for the first +time, and they had sat round the fire and talked of him, and what he +should do when he was big—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, what a happy, friendly eve was that!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And next day, old Pietro had been packed off to church, because he was +so happy and would talk so much, and Violante thought he would tire her. +And then he came back, and was telling them about the Christmas altars +at the churches—none was so fine as San Giovanni—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . When, at the door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A tap: we started up: you know the rest."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Pietro had done no harm; Violante had erred in telling the lie about her +birth—certainly that was wrong, but it was done with love in it, and +even the giving her to Guido had had love in it . . . and at any rate it is +all over now, and Pompilia has just been absolved, and thus there "seems +not so much pain":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span><span class="i0">"Being right now, I am happy and colour things.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Softened and bettered; so with other sights:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To me at least was never evening yet</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But seemed far beautifuller than its day</i>,<a name="FNanchor_158-1_26" id="FNanchor_158-1_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_158-1_26" class="fnanchor">[158:1]</a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">For past is past."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then she falls to thinking of that real mother, who had sold her before +she was born. Violante had told her of it when she came back from the +nuns, and was waiting for her boy to come. That mother died at her +birth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I shall believe she hoped in her poor heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I at least might try be good and pure . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And oh, my mother, it all came to this?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now she too is dying, and leaving her little one behind. But <i>she</i> is +leaving him "outright to God":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All human plans and projects come to nought:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My life, and what I know of other lives<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She will lay him with God. And her last breath, for gratitude, shall +spend itself in showing, now that they will really listen and not say +"he was your lover" . . . her last breath shall disperse the stain around +the name of Caponsacchi.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8h">". . . There,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strength comes already with the utterance!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now she tells what we know; some of it we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>have learnt already from her +lips. She goes back over the years in "that fell house of hate"; then, +the seeing of him at the theatre, the persecution with the false +letters, the Annunciation-morning, the summons to him, the meeting, the +escape:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No pause i' the leading and the light!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And this man, men call sinner? Jesus Christ!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But once more, mother-like, she reverts to her boy:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i13">". . . We poor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Weak souls, how we endeavour to be strong!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was already using up my life—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This portion, now, should do him such a good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This other go to keep off such an ill.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The great life: see, a breath, and it is gone!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Still, all will be well: "Let us leave God alone." And now she will +"withdraw from earth and man to her own soul," will "compose herself for +God" . . . but even as she speaks, the flood of gratitude to her one +friend again sweeps back, and she exclaims,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, and there is more! Yes, my end of breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall bear away my soul in being true!<a name="FNanchor_159-1_27" id="FNanchor_159-1_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_159-1_27" class="fnanchor">[159:1]</a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">He is still here, not outside with the world,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here, here, I have him in his rightful place!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I feel for what I verily find—again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The face, again the eyes, again, through all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heart and its immeasurable love<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span><span class="i0">Of my one friend, my only, all my own,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who put his breast between the spears and me.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ever with Caponsacchi!*nbsp;. . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No work begun shall ever pause for death!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love will be helpful to me more and more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I' the coming course, the new path I must tread—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What I see, oh, he sees, and how much more!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Say—I am all in flowers from head to foot!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Say—not one flower of all he said and did,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At this supreme of moments!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She has recognised the truth. This <i>is</i> love—but how different from the +love of the smilings and the whisperings, the "He is your lover!" He is +a priest, and could not marry; but she thinks he would not have married +if he could:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In heaven we have the real and true and sure."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In heaven, where the angels "know themselves into one"; and are never +married, no, nor given in marriage:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3h">". . . They are man and wife at once<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the true time is . . .<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span><span class="i0">So, let him wait God's instant men call years;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do out the duty! Through such souls alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God, stooping, shows sufficient of his light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Who would analyse this child would tear a flower to pieces. Pompilia is +no heroine, no character; but indeed a "rose gathered for the breast of +God":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Et, rose, elle a vécu ce que vivent les roses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">L'espace d'un matin."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126-1_19" id="Footnote_126-1_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126-1_19"><span class="label">[126:1]</span></a> <i>Introduction to the Study of Browning</i>, 1886, p. 152.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130-1_20" id="Footnote_130-1_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130-1_20"><span class="label">[130:1]</span></a> Abandoning for the moment intermediate events, it was +<i>this</i> which moved Guido to the triple murder: for once the old couple +and Pompilia dead, with the question of his claim to the dowry still +undecided as it was, his child, the new-born babe, might inherit all.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131-1_21" id="Footnote_131-1_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131-1_21"><span class="label">[131:1]</span></a> Guido's second speech, wherein he tells the truth, in +the hope that his "impenitence" may defer his execution.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131-2_22" id="Footnote_131-2_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131-2_22"><span class="label">[131:2]</span></a> Her dying speech.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131-3_23" id="Footnote_131-3_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131-3_23"><span class="label">[131:3]</span></a> Browning's summary. Book I.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137-1_24" id="Footnote_137-1_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137-1_24"><span class="label">[137:1]</span></a> Mrs. Orr, commenting on this passage, says: "The sudden +rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case, +becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and culture; +it was not suggested by the facts"—for Mrs. Orr, who had read the +documents from which Browning made the poem, says: "Unless my memory +much deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historical +defence of her flight. . . . The real Pompilia was a simple child, who +lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to +escape from him." And, as she later adds, though for many readers this +character is, in its haunting pathos, the most exquisite of Browning's +creations, "for others, it fails in impressiveness because it lacks the +reality which habitually marks them." But (she goes on) "it was only in +an idealised Pompilia that the material for poetical creation, in this +'murder story,' could have been found." These remarks will be seen +partly to agree with some of my own.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146-1_25" id="Footnote_146-1_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146-1_25"><span class="label">[146:1]</span></a> Her dying speech.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158-1_26" id="Footnote_158-1_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158-1_26"><span class="label">[158:1]</span></a> How wonderfully is the wistful nature of the girl +summed up in these two lines!</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159-1_27" id="Footnote_159-1_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159-1_27"><span class="label">[159:1]</span></a> Caponsacchi uses almost the same words of her: he will +"burn his soul out in showing you the truth."</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p> +<h2>PART II</h2> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image04.png" alt="The Great Lady" width="60%" /> +</div> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE GREAT LADY</h2> + +<h3>"MY LAST DUCHESS," AND "THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS"</h3> + + +<p>For a mind so subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the +perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious +than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things +adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning, +even a "lady" could be a woman—and remain a woman, even though she be +turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted +from the realm of things that may be loved! Of narrowness like this our +poet was incapable. He could indeed transcend the class-distinction, but +that was not, with him, the same as trampling it under foot. And +especially he loved to set a young girl in those regions where material +cares prevail not—where, moving as in an upper air, she joys or suffers +"not for bread alone."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er the breast's superb abundance, where a man might base his head?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p><p>He could grant her to be "such a lady," yet grant, too, that her soul +existed. True, that in <i>A Toccata of Galuppi's</i>,<a name="FNanchor_166-1_28" id="FNanchor_166-1_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_166-1_28" class="fnanchor">[166:1]</a> the soul <i>is</i> +questioned:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But this is not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but +those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an entire +social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in +Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite +the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile +"simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, +since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness +is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, +brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm amid its folly.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>The music trickled then through the room, as it trickles now for the +listening poet: with its minor cadences, the "lesser thirds so +plaintive," the "diminished sixths," the suspensions, the solutions: +"Must we die?"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Those commiserating sevenths—'Life might last! we can but try!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The question of questions, even for "ladies and gentlemen"! And then +come the other questions: "Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must +be answered to."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Brave Galuppi, that was music! Good alike at grave and gay!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play.'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . The "cold music" has seemed to the modern listener to say that <i>he</i>, +learned and wise, shall not pass away like these:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . You know physics, something of geology,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Butterflies may dread extinction—you'll not die, it cannot be!<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span><span class="i0">As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet while it seems to say this, the saying brings him no solace. What, +"creaking like a ghostly cricket," it intends, he must perceive, since +he is neither deaf nor blind:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After all, the pageant of life has value! We need not <i>only</i> the wise +men. And even the wise man creeps through every nerve when he listens to +that music. "Here's all the good it brings!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>None the less, there is trouble other than that of its passing in this +pageant. Itself has the seed of death within it. All that beauty, +riches, ease, can do, shall leave some souls unsatisfied—nay, shall +kill some souls. . . . This too Browning could perceive and show; and once +more, loved to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>show in the person of a girl. There is something in true +womanhood which transcends all <i>morgue</i>: it seems almost his foible to +say that, so often does he say it! In Colombe, in the Queen of <i>In a +Balcony</i> (so wondrously contrasted with Constance, scarcely less noble, +yet half-corroded by this very rust of state and semblance); above all, +in the exquisite imagining of that "Duchess," the girl-wife who twice is +given us, and in two widely different environments—yet is (to my +feeling) <i>one</i> loved incarnation of eager sweetness. He touched her +first to life when she was dead, if one may speak so paradoxically; +then, unsatisfied with that posthumous awaking, brought her resolutely +back to earth—in <i>My Last Duchess</i> and <i>The Flight of the Duchess</i> +respectively. Let us examine the two poems, and I think we shall agree, +in reading the second, that Browning, like Caponsacchi, could not have +the lady dead.</p> + +<p>First, then, comes a picture—the mere portrait, "painted on the wall," +of a dead Italian girl.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Looking as if she were alive. I call<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worked busily a day, and there she stands.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Frà Pandolf by design: for never read<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strangers like you that pictured countenance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The depth and passion of its earnest glance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to myself they turned (since none puts by<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span><span class="i0">And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How such a glance came there; so, not the first<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are you to turn and ask thus."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Duke, a Duke of Ferrara, owner of "a nine-hundred-years-old name," +is showing the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy +from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a +connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier +rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that +nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless +art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even +now that she is dead, he does not know that it was he who killed +her—nor, if he did, could feel remorse. For it is not possible that +<i>he</i> could have been wrong. This Duchess—it would have been idle to +"make his will clear" to such an one; the imposition, not the +exposition, of that will was all that he could show to her (or any other +lesser being) without stooping—"and I choose never to stoop." Her error +had been precisely the "depth and passion of that earnest glance" which +Frà Pandolf had so wonderfully caught. Does the envoy suppose that it +was only her husband's presence which called that "spot of joy" into her +cheek? It had <i>not</i> been so. The mere painting-man, the mere Frà +Pandolf, may have paid her some tribute of the artist—may have said, +for instance, that her mantle hid too much of her wrist, or that the +"faint half-flush that died <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>along her throat" was beyond the power of +paint to reproduce.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i14">". . . Such stuff<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For calling up that spot of joy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As the envoy still seems strangely unenlightened, the Duke is forced to +the "stooping" implied in a more explicit statement:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11h">". . . She had<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She looked on, and her looks went everywhere."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and +accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly +conveyed:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dropping of the daylight in the west,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bough of cherries some officious fool<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She rode with round the terrace—all and each<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would draw from her alike the approving speech,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or blush, at least. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to +the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender +creature as though we also were at gaze on Frà Pandolf's picture. . . . I +call <i>this</i> piece a wonder, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>now! Scarce one of the monologues is so +packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most +"simple"—even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they +are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives +are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, +hers—but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that +came to her was transmuted into her own dearness—even his favour at her +breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that "favour"—the high +proprietary air, the loftily anticipated gratitude: Sir Willoughby +Patterne by intelligent anticipation. But then, though the approving +speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with his bough of +cherries—and speech and blush were given again! Absurder still, the +spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Who'd stoop to blame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This sort of trifling?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p>Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of +ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's +gift"—even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted" +him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not +have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made +excuse) . . . even so (this must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>be impressed upon the envoy), it would +have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop."</p> + +<p>Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the +next Duchess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued upon +that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is sounding in +his ear—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4h">". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then all smiles stopped together."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing. +There she stands, <i>looking as if she were alive</i>. . . . And almost he +starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a +meaning—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8h">". . . There she stands<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if alive"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—the picture is a wonder!</p> + +<p>Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had +just now sounded: "<i>Then all smiles stopped together</i>"?</p> + +<p>She stands there—smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause +before Frà Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders. +Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily +in silence, taken: the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>next Duchess will be instructed beforehand in +the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Will't please you rise? We'll meet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The company below, then."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere, +as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his +master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair +daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot +resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such +proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . . +Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the +due deference:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">". . . Nay, we'll go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Together down, sir,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by <i>him</i>) the +envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor +has no eyes for "wonders" now—he has seen the wonder, has heard the +horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can pass +these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them, however, +must be pointed out:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . Notice Neptune, though,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p> . . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands, +or <i>was</i>, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not +where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by +flame; has been snatched from <i>her</i> Duke, and borne away to joy and +love—by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that +came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved +herself.</p> + +<p>The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller +whom he calls his friend.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess +all were young—if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up +at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had +been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and +died there,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Petticoated like a herald,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a chamber next to an ante-room<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What he called stink, and they perfume."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>boy to Paris, where she +belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So +the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were +railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years +were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And he came back the pertest little ape<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ever affronted human shape;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full of his travel, struck at himself.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Not he!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, +and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one +good thing left in these evil days:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages +were revived:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its +origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs +and length, all speed, no strength:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"They should have set him on red Berold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the red eye slow consuming in fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He +preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty +Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in +the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And out of a convent, at the word,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Came the lady in time of spring.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad +in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And so we saw the lady arrive;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She was the smallest lady alive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made in a piece of Nature's madness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too small, almost, for the life and gladness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That over-filled her."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle, +where the Duke awaited her.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Straight at the castle, that's best indeed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To look at from outside the walls"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and +thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of +gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who +rode on her other hand, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>name of every bird that flew past: "Was +that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"</p> + +<p>Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess—but +she <i>is</i> the same!), the little lady rode forward:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When suddenly appeared the Duke."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the +Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather +aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick +tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the +background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky +sullied by a chill wind,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The lady's face stopped its play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if her first hair had grown grey;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For such things must begin some one day."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the brave spirit survived. In a day or two she was well again, as if +she could not believe that God did not mean her to be content and glad +in His sight. "So, smiling as at first went she." She was filled to the +brim with energy; there never was such a wife as she would have made for +a shepherd, a miner, a huntsman—and this huntsman, who has <i>had</i> a +beloved wife, knows what he is saying.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span><span class="i0">"She was active, stirring, all fire—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could not rest, could not tire—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To a stone she might have given life! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here was plenty to be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she that could do it, great or small,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She was to do nothing at all."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For the castle was crammed with retainers, and the Duke's plan permitted +a wife, at most, to meet his eye with the other trophies in the hall and +out of it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At the proper place, in the proper minute,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And die away the life between."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The little Duchess, with her warm heart and her smile like the Italian +girl's that "went everywhere," broke every rule at first. It was amusing +enough (the old huntsman remembers)—but for the grief that followed +after. For she did not submit easily. Having broken the rules, she would +find fault with them! She would advise and criticise, and "being a +fool," instruct the wise, and deal out praise or blame like a child. But +"the wise" only smiled. It was as if a little mechanical toy should be +contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly <i>make</i> it. +Thus, as a mechanical toy, was the only way to treat this minute critic, +for like the Duke at Ferrara, this Duke (and his mother) did not choose +to stoop. <i>He</i> would merely wear his "cursed smirk" as he nodded +applause, but he had some trouble in keeping off the "old mother-cat's +claws."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span><span class="i0">"So the little lady grew silent and thin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Paling and ever paling."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>Then all smiles stopped together</i> . . . And the Duke, perceiving, said to +himself that it was done to spite him, but that he would find the way to +deal with it.</p> + +<p>Like the envoy, our huntsman's friend is beginning to find the tale a +little more than he can stand—but, unlike the envoy, he can express +himself. The old man soothes him down: "Don't swear, friend!" and goes +on to solace him by telling how the "old one" has been in hell for many +a year,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And the Duke's self . . . you shall hear."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A drinking-hole out of the fresh, tender ice,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>it chanced that the Duke, asking himself what pleasures were in season +(he would never have known, unless "the calendar bade him be hearty"), +found that a hunting party was indicated:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Always provided, old books showed the way of it!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Poetry, painting, tapestries, woodcraft, all were consulted: how it was +properest to encourage your dog, how best to pray to St. Hubert, patron +saint of hunters. The serfs and thralls were duly dressed up,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And oh, the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>But when all "the first dizziness of flap-hats and buff-coats and +jack-boots" had subsided, the Duke turned his attention to the Duchess's +part in the business, and, after much cogitation, somebody triumphantly +announced that he had discovered her function. An old book stated it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with water to wash the hands of her liege<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let her preside at the disemboweling."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>All was accordingly got ready: the towel, the most antique ewer, even +the jennet, piebald, black-barred, cream-coated, pink-eyed—and only +then, on the day before the party, was the Duke's pleasure signified to +his lady.</p> + +<p>And the little Duchess—paler and paler every day—said she would not +go! Her eyes, that used to leap wide in flashes, now just lifted their +long lashes, as if too weary even for <i>him</i> to light them; and she duly +acknowledged his forethought for her,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the weight by day and the watch by night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And much wrong now that used to be right;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and, in short, utterly declined the "disemboweling."</p> + +<p>But everything was arranged! The Duke was nettled. Still she persisted: +it was hardly the time . . .</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>The huntsman knew what took place that day in the Duchess's room, +because Jacynth, who was her tire-woman, was waiting within call outside +on the balcony, and since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, the +casement that Jacynth could peep through, an adorer of roses could peep +through also.</p> + +<p>Well, the Duke "stood for a while in a sultry smother," and then "with a +smile that partook of the awful," turned the Duchess over to his mother +to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it +all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her +whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture, +passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin—at +any rate, he showed a very stiff back.</p> + +<p>However, next day the company mustered. The weather was execrable—fog +that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect +sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the +woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the +courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with +the annual gifts to the castle. For every year, in this North land, the +Gipsies come to give "presents" to the Dukes—presents for which an +equivalent is always understood to be forthcoming.</p> + +<p>And marvellous the "presents" are! These Gipsies can do anything with +the earth, the ore, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>the sand. Snaffles, whose side-bars no brute can +baffle, locks that would puzzle a locksmith, horseshoes that turn on a +swivel, bells for the sheep . . . all these are good, but what they can do +with sand!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if in pure water you dropped and let die<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A bruised black-blooded mulberry."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then that other sort, "their crowning pride, with long white threads +distinct inside."</p> + +<p>These are the things they bring, when you see them trooping to the +castle from the valley. So they trooped this morning; and when they +reached the fosse, all stopped but one:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The oldest Gipsy then above ground."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This witch had been coming to the castle for years; the huntsman knew +her well. Every autumn she would swear must prove her last visit—yet +here she was again, with "her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes, of no +use now but to gather brine."</p> + +<p>She sidled up to the Duke and touched his bridle, so that the horse +reared; then produced her presents, and awaited the annual +acknowledgment. But the Duke, still sulky, would scarcely speak to her; +in vain she fingered her fur-pouch. At last she said in her "level +whine," that as well as to bring <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>the presents, she had come to pay her +duty to "the new Duchess, the youthful beauty." As she said that, an +idea came to the Duke, and the smirk returned to his sulky face. +Supposing he set <i>this</i> old woman to teach her, as the other had failed? +What could show forth better the flower-like and delicate life his +fortunate Duchess led, than the loathsome squalor of this sordid crone? +He turned and beckoned the huntsman out of the throng, and, as he was +approaching, bent and spoke mysteriously into the Gipsy's ear. The +huntsman divined that he was telling of the frowardness and ingratitude +of the "new Duchess." And the Gipsy listened submissively. Her mouth +tightened, her brow brightened—it was as if she were promising to give +the lady a thorough frightening. The Duke just showed her a purse—and +then bade the huntsman take her to the "lady left alone in her bower," +that she might wile away an hour for her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whose mind and body craved exertion,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet shrank from all better diversion."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then the Duke rode off.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Now begins "the tenebrific passage of the tale." Or rather, now begins +what we can make into such a passage if we will, but need not. We can +read a thousand transcendental meanings into what now happens, or we can +simply accept and understand <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>it—leaving the rest to the +"Browningites," of whom Browning declared that <i>he</i> was not.</p> + +<p>The huntsman, turning round sharply to bid the old woman follow him—a +little distrustful of her since that interview with the Duke—saw +something that not only restored his trust, but afterwards made him sure +that she had planned beforehand the wonders that now happened. She +looked a head taller, to begin with, and she kept pace with him easily, +no stooping nor hobbling—above all, no cringing! She was wholly +changed, in short, and the change, "whatever the change meant," had +extended to her very clothes. The shabby wolf-skin cloak she wore seemed +edged with gold coins. Under its shrouding disguise, she was wearing (we +may conjecture), for this foreseen occasion, her dress of tribal Queen. +But most wonderful of all was the change in her "eye-holes." When first +he saw her that morning, they had been, as it were, empty of all but +brine; now, two unmistakable eye-points, live and aware, looked out from +their places—as a snail's horns come out after rain. . . . He accepted all +this, "quick and surprising" as it was, without spoken comment; and took +the Gipsy to Jacynth, standing duty at the lady's chamber-door.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And Jacynth rejoiced, she said, to admit any one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For since last night, by the same token,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not a single word had the lady spoken."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The two women went in, and our friend, on the balcony, "watched the +weather."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p><p>Jacynth never could tell him afterwards <i>how</i> she came to fall soundly +asleep all of a sudden. But she did so fall asleep, and so remained the +whole time through. He, on the balcony, was following the hunt across +the open country—for in those days he had a falcon eye—when, all in a +moment, his ear was arrested by</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Was it singing, or was it saying,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or a strange musical instrument playing?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It came from the lady's room; and, pricked by curiosity, he pushed the +lattice, pulled the curtain, and—first—saw Jacynth "in a rosy sleep +along the floor with her head against the door." And in the middle of +the room, on the seat of state,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Was a queen—the Gipsy woman late!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She was bending down over the lady, who, coiled up like a child, sat +between her knees, clasping her hands over them, and with her chin set +on those hands, was gazing up into the face of the old woman. That old +woman now showed large and radiant eyes, which were bent full on the +lady's, and seemed with every instant to grow wider and more shining. +She was slowly fanning with her hands, in an odd measured motion—and +the huntsman, puzzled and alarmed, was just about to spring to the +rescue, when he was stopped by perceiving the expression on the lady's +face.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span><span class="i0">"For it was life her eyes were drinking . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life's pure fire, received without shrinking,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into the heart and breast whose heaving<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Told you no single drop they were leaving."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The life had passed into her very hair, which was thrown back, loose +over each shoulder,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moving to the mystic measure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bounding as the bosom bounded."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He stopped short, perplexed, "as she listened and she listened." But all +at once he felt himself struck by the self-same contagion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And I kept time to the wondrous chime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Making out words and prose and rhyme,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till it seemed that the music furled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From under the words it first had propped."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He could hear and understand, "word took word as hand takes hand"—and +the Gipsy said:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And so at last we find my tribe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so I set thee in the midst . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I trace them the vein and the other vein<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That meet on thy brow and part again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Making our rapid mystic mark;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I bid my people prove and probe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each eye's profound and glorious globe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till they detect the kindred spark<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In those depths so dear and dark . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on that round young cheek of thine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I make them recognise the tinge . . .<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span><span class="i0">For so I prove thee, to one and all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fit, when my people ope their breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To see the sign, and hear the call,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And take the vow, and stand the test<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which adds one more child to the rest—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the world is left outside."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There would be probation (said the Gipsy), and many trials for the lady +if she joined the tribe; but, like the jewel-finder's "fierce assay" of +the stone he finds, like the "vindicating ray" that leaps from it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So, trial after trial past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wilt thou fall at the very last<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breathless, half in trance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the thrill of the great deliverance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into our arms for evermore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thou shalt know, those arms once curled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About thee, what we knew before,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>How love is the only good in the world</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Henceforth be loved as heart can love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or brain devise, or hand approve!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand up, look below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is our life at thy feet we throw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To step with into light and joy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not a power of life but we employ<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To satisfy thy nature's want."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Gipsy said much more; she showed what perfect mutual love and +understanding can do, for "if any two creatures grow into one, they will +do more than the world has done"—and the tribe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>will at least approach +that end with this beloved woman. She says not <i>how</i>—whether by one +man's loving her to utter devotion of himself, or by <i>her</i> giving "her +wondrous self away," and taking the stronger nature's sway. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I foresee and I could foretell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy future portion, sure and well;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let them say what thou shalt do!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But whatever she does, the eyes of her tribe will be upon her, with +their blame, their praise:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Our shame to feel, our pride to show,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glad, angry—but indifferent, no!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And so at last the girl who now sits gazing up at her will come to old +age—will retire apart with the hoarded memories of her heart, and +reconstruct the past until the whole "grandly fronts for once her soul" + . . . and then, the gleam of yet another morning shall break; it will be +like the ending of a dream, when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Death, with the might of his sunbeam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With that great utterance her voice changed like a bird's. The music +began again, the words grew indistinguishable . . . with a snap the charm +broke, and the huntsman, "starting as if from a nap," realised afresh +that the lady was being bewitched, sprang from the balcony to the +ground, and hurried <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>round to the portal. . . . In another minute he would +have entered:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"When the door opened, and more than mortal<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood, with a face where to my mind centred<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All beauties I ever saw or shall see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She was so different, happy and beautiful,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I felt at once that all was best" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he felt, too, that he must do whatever she commanded. But there was, +in fact, no commanding. Looking on the beauty that had invested her, +"the brow's height and the breast's expanding," he knew that he was hers +to live and die, and so he needed not words to find what she +wanted—like a wild creature, he knew by instinct what this freed wild +creature's bidding was. . . . He went before her to the stable; she +followed; the old woman, silent and alone, came last—sunk back into her +former self,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Like a blade sent home to its scabbard."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He saddled the very palfrey that had brought the little Duchess to the +castle—the palfrey he had patted as he had led it, thus winning a smile +from her. And he couldn't help thinking that she remembered it too, and +knew that he would do anything in the world for her. But when he began +to saddle his own nag ("of Berold's begetting")—not meaning to be +obtrusive—she stopped him by a finger's lifting, and a small shake of +the head. . . . <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>Well, he lifted her on the palfrey and set the Gipsy +behind her—and then, in a broken voice, he murmured that he was ready +whenever God should please that she needed him. . . . And she looked down</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With a look, a look that placed a crown on me,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and felt in her bosom and dropped into his hand . . . not a purse! If it +had been a purse of silver ("or gold that's worse") he would have gone +home, kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned himself—but it was not a +purse; it was a little plait of hair, such as friends make for each +other in a convent:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This, see, which at my breast I wear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then—and then—to cut short—this is idle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These are feelings it is not good to foster.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the palfrey bounded—and so we lost her."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>There is the story of the Flight of the Duchess; and it seems to me to +need no "explanation" at all. The Gipsy can be anyone or anything we +like that <i>saves</i> us; the Duke and his mother anyone or anything that +crushes love.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love is the only good in the world."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p><p>And the love (though it <i>may</i> be) <i>need</i> not be the love of man for +woman, and woman for man; but simply love. The quick warm impulse which +made this girl look round so eagerly as she approached her future home, +and thank the man who led her horse for patting it, and want to hear the +name of every bird—the impulse from the heart "too soon made glad, too +easily impressed"; the sweet, rich nature of her who "liked whate'er she +looked on, and her looks went everywhere" . . . what was all this but +love? The tiny lady was one great pulse of it; without love she must +die; to give it, take it, was the meaning of her being. And love was +neither given nor accepted from her. Worse, it was scorned; it was not +"fitting." All she had to do was to be "on show"; nothing, nothing, +nothing else—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And die away the life between."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then came the time when, like Pompilia, she had "something she must +care about"; and the office asked of her was to "assist at the +disemboweling" of a noble, harried stag! Not even when she pleaded the +hour that awaited her was pity shown, was love shown, for herself or for +the coming child. And then the long, spiteful lecture. . . . That night, +even to Jacynth, not a word could she utter. Here was a world without +love, a world that did not want her—and <i>she</i> was here, and she must +stay, until, until . . . Which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>would the coming child be—herself again, +or <i>him</i> again? Scarce she knew which would be the sadder happening.</p> + +<p>And then Love walked in upon her. She was "of their tribe"—they wanted +her; they wanted all she was. Just what she was; she would not have to +change; they wanted her. They liked her eyes, and the colour on her +cheek—they liked <i>her</i>. Her eyes might look at them, and "speak true," +for they wanted just that truth from just those eyes.</p> + +<p>It is any escape, any finding of our "tribe"! It is the self-realisation +of a nature that can love. And this is but one way of telling the great +tale. Browning told it thus, because for years a song had jingled in his +ears of "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"—and to all of us, the +Gipsies stand for freedom, for knowledge of the great earth-secrets, for +nourishment of heart and soul. But we need not follow only them to +compass "the thrill of the great deliverance." We need but know, as the +little Duchess knew, what it is that we want, and trust it. <i>She</i> placed +the old woman at once upon her own "seat of state": from the moment she +beheld her, love leaped forth and crowned the messenger of love.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And so at last we find my tribe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so I set thee in the midst . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Henceforth be loved as heart can love. . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is our life at thy feet we throw<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To step with into light and joy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>The Duchess heard, and knew, and was saved. It needed courage—needed +swift decision—needed even some small abandonment of "duty." But she +saw what she must do, and did it. Duty has two voices often; the Duchess +heard the true voice. If she was bewitched, it was by the spell that was +ordained to save her, could she hear it. . . . And that she heard aright, +that, leaving the castle, she left the hell where love lives not, we +know from the old huntsman:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So they made no search and small inquiry";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and Gipsies thenceforth were hustled across the frontier.</p> + +<p>Even the Duchess could not make love valid there. Reality was out of +them. . . . True, the huntsman, after thirty years, is still her sworn +adorer. He had stayed at the castle:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I must see this fellow his sad life through—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He is our Duke, after all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—but, as soon as the Duke is dead, our friend intends to "go +journeying" to the land of the Gipsies, and there find his lady or hear +the last news of her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And when that's told me, what's remaining?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For Jacynth is dead and all their children, and the world is too hard +for his explaining, and so he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>hopes to find a snug corner under some +hedge, and turn himself round and bid the world good-night, and sleep +soundly until he is waked to another world, where pearls will no longer +be cast before swine that can't value them. "<i>Amen.</i>"</p> + +<p>But at any rate this talk with his friend has made him see his little +lady again, and everything that they did since "seems such child's +play," with her away! So her love did one thing even there—just as one +likes to think that the unhappier Duchess, the Italian one, left +precisely such a memory in the heart of that officious fool who broke +the bough of cherries for her in the orchard.</p> + +<p>And is it not good to think that almost immediately after <i>The Flight of +the Duchess</i> was published, Browning was to meet the passionate-hearted +woman whom <i>he</i> snatched almost from the actual death-bed that had been +prepared for her with as much of pomp and circumstance as was the +Duchess's life-in-death! With this in mind, it gives one a queer thrill +to read those lines of silenced prophecy:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I foresee and I could foretell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy future portion, sure and well:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let them say what thou shalt do!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166-1_28" id="Footnote_166-1_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166-1_28"><span class="label">[166:1]</span></a> The "Toccata" which awakens these reflections in the +poet is by a Venetian composer, Baldassare Galuppi, who was born in +1706, and died in 1785. He lived and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. +"He abounded" (says Vernon Lee, in her <i>Studies of the Eighteenth +Century in Italy</i>) "in melody, tender, pathetic, and brilliant, which in +its extreme simplicity and slightness occasionally rose to the highest +beauty."</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> +<h2>PART III</h2> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image05.png" alt="The Lover" width="65%"/> +</div> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p> +<h2>I</h2> + +<h3>LOVERS MEETING</h3> + + +<p>Browning believed in love as the great adventure of life—the thing +which probes, reveals, develops, proclaims or condemns. This faith is +common to most poets, or at any rate profession of this faith; but in +him, who was so free from sentimentality, it is more inspiring than in +any other, except perhaps George Meredith. Meredith too is without +sentimentality; but he has more of hardness, shall I say? in his general +outlook—more of the inclination to dwell on scientific or naturalistic +analogies with human experience. In Browning the "peculiar grace" is his +passion for humanity <i>as</i> humanity. It gives him but moderate joy to +trace those analogies; certainly they exist (he seems to say), but let +us take them for granted—let us examine man as a separate phenomenon, +so far as it is feasible thus to do. Moreover, his keenest interest, +next to mankind, was art in all its branches—a correlative aspect, that +is to say, of the same phenomenon. Thus each absorption explains and +aids the other, and we begin to perceive the reason for his triumphs in +expression of our subtlest inward life. Man <i>was</i>, for him, the proper +study of mankind; of all great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>poets, he was the most "social," and +that in the genial, not the satiric, spirit—differing there from Byron, +almost the sole other singer of whom it may be said (as Mr. Arthur +Symons has said) that for him "society exists as well as human nature." +Where Browning excels is in the breadth and kindliness of his outlook; +and again, this breadth and this kindliness are entirely unsentimental.</p> + +<p>In a "man of the world," then, such as he, belief in love is the more +inspiring. But for all his geniality, there is no indulgence for +flabbiness—there is little sympathy, indeed, for any of the weaker +ways. After <i>Pauline</i>—rejected utterance of his green-sickness—the +wan, the wistful, moods of love find seldom recognition; there are no +withdrawals "from all fear" into the woman's arms, and no looking up, +"as I might kill her and be loved the more," into the man's eyes. For +love is to make us greater, not smaller, than ourselves. It can indeed +<i>do all</i> for us, and will do all, but we must for our part be doing +something too. Nor shall one lover cast the burden on the other. That +other will answer all demands, will lift all loads that may be lifted, +but no <i>claim</i> shall be formulated on either side. This is the true +faith, the true freedom, for both. Meredith has said the same, more +axiomatically than Browning ever said it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He learnt how much we gain who make no claims"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—but Browning's whole existence announced that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>axiom, and triumphantly +proved it true. Almost the historic happy marriage of the world! Such +was <i>his</i> marriage, and such it must have been, for never was man +declared beforehand more infallible for the greatest of decisions. He +understood: understood love, marriage, and (hardest of all perhaps!) +conduct—what it may do, and not do, for happiness. That is to say, he +understood how far conduct helps toward comprehension and how far +hinders it—when it is that we should judge by words and deeds, and when +by "what we know," apart from words and deeds. The whole secret, for +Browning, lay in loving greatly.</p> + +<p>Thus, for example, it is notable that, except <i>The Laboratory</i> and +<i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, none of his poems of men and women turns upon +jealousy. For him, that was no part of love; there could be no place in +love for it. And even Elvire's demurs (in <i>Fifine</i>), even the departure +from her husband, are not the words, the deed, of jealousy, but of +insight into Juan's better self. He will never be all that he can be +(she sees) until he knows that it is her he loves, and her alone and +always; if this is the way he must learn it, she will go, that he may be +deep and true as well as brilliant.</p> + +<p>For Browning, <i>how</i> love comes is not important. It may be by the +high-road or the bypath; so long as it is truly recognised, bravely +answered, all is well. Living, it will be our highest bliss; dying, our +dearest memory.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span><span class="i0">"What is he buzzing in my ears?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Now that I come to die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do I view the world as a vale of tears?'<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ah, reverend sir, not I!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And why not? Because in the days gone by, a girl and this now dying man +"used to meet." What he viewed in the world then, he now sees again—the +"suburb lane" of their rendezvous; and he begins to make a map, as it +were, with the bottles on the bedside table.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">There watched for me, one June,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A girl: I know, Sir, it's improper,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My poor mind's out of tune."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nevertheless the clergyman must look, while he traces out the +details. . . . She left the attic, "there, by the rim of the bottle +labelled 'Ether,'"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And stole from stair to stair,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We loved, Sir—used to meet:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How sad and mad and bad it was—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But then, how it was sweet!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They did not marry; and the clergyman shall have no further and no other +"confession"—if he calls this one! It is the meaning of the man's life: +that is all.</p> + +<p>In <i>Confessions</i>, the story is done; the man is dying. In <i>Love among +the Ruins</i>, we have almost the great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>moment itself. The lover, alone, +is musing on the beauties and the hidden wonder of the landscape before +him. Here, in this flat pastoral plain, lies buried all that remains of +"a city great and gay," the country's very capital, where a powerful +prince once held his court. There had been a "domed and daring palace," +a wall with a hundred gates—its circuit made of marble, whereon twelve +men might stand abreast. Now all is pasture-land:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And such glory and perfection, see, of grass<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Never was"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—as here,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Long ago;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Struck them tame;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that glory and that shame alike, the gold<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Bought and sold."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of the glories nothing is left but a single little turret. It was part +of a tower once, a tower that "sprang sublime," whence the king and his +minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the +chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured eve" smiles as +it leaves the "many-tinkling fleece"; all is tranquillity, the slopes +and rills melt into one grey . . . and he knows</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Waits me there<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span><span class="i0">In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul<br /></span> +<span class="i3">For the goal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Till I come."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That king looked out on every side at the splendid city, with its +temples and colonnades,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts—and then<br /></span> +<span class="i3">All the men!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Either hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Of my face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Each on each."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A million fighters were sent forth every year from that city; and they +built their gods a brazen pillar high as the sky, yet still had a +thousand chariots in reserve—all gold, of course. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Earth's returns<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin.<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Shut them in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Love is best!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But though love be best, it is not all. It is here to transfigure all; +we must accept with it the merer things it glorifies. For life calls us, +even from our love. The day is long and we must work in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>it; but we can +meet when the day is done. In the light of this low half-moon can put +off in our boat, and row across and push the prow into the slushy sand +at the other side of the bay:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Three fields to cross till a farm appears;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blue spurt of a lighted match,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than the two hearts beating each to each!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes—we can meet at night. . . . But we must part at morning.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the sun looked over the mountain's rim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And straight was a path of gold for him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the need of a world of men for me."<a name="FNanchor_205-1_29" id="FNanchor_205-1_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_205-1_29" class="fnanchor">[205:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These are plainly not wedded lovers, though some commentators so +describe them; and indeed Browning sings but seldom of wedded love. When +he does so sing, he reaches heights of beauty beyond any in the other +lyrics, but the poems of marriage are not in our survey. In nearly all +his other <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>love-poetry, it is the "trouble of love," in one form or +another, which occupies him—the lovers who meet to part; those who love +"in vain" (as the phrase goes, but never <i>his</i> phrase); those who choose +separation rather than defiance of the "world, and what it fears"; those +who do defy that world, and reckon up their gains.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Dear, had the world in its caprice<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Deigned to proclaim 'I know you both,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Have recognised your plighted troth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Am sponsor for you: live in peace!'—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How many precious months and years<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Before we found it out at last,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world, and what it fears?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">How much of priceless life were spent<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With men that every virtue decks,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And women models of their sex,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Society's true ornament—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere we dared wander, nights like this,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And feel the Boulevard break again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To warmth and light and bliss?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That old quarrel between the ideals of Bohemia and of "respectability"! +They could have done these things, even as a married pair, but the +trouble is that then they would not have "dared" to do them. "People +would have talked." . . . Well, people may talk now, but they <i>have</i> gained +something. They have gained freedom to live their lives as they +choose—rightly or wrongly, but at any rate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>it is not "the world" that +sways them. They have learnt how much that good word is worth! What is +happening, this very hour, in that environment—here, for instance, in +the Institute, which they are just passing? "Guizot receives +Montalembert!" The two men are utterly opposed in everything that truly +signifies to each; yet now are exchanging empty courtesies. See the +courtyard all alight for the reception! Let them escape from it all, and +leave respectability to its false standards. <i>They</i> are not +included—they are outcasts: "put forward your best foot!"</p> + +<p>I accept this delightful poem with some reserve, for I think the lovers +had not so wholly emancipated themselves from "the world" as they were +pleased to think. The world still counted for them—as it counts for all +who remember so vehemently to denounce it. Moreover, married, they +could, were their courage complete, have beaten the world by forgetting +it. No more docile wild-beast than that much badgered creature when once +it recognises the true Contemner! To</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Feel the Boulevard break again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To warmth and light and bliss"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—on wild wet nights of wandering . . . this might even, through the +example of the Real Unfearing, become a craze! Yes—we must refuse to be +dazzled by rhetoric. These lovers also had their falling-short—they +could not <i>forget</i> the world.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p><p>Hitherto we have considered the normal meetings of lovers. Now we turn +to the dream-meetings—the great encounters which all of us feel might +be, yet are not. There can be few to whom there has not come that +imagination of the spiritually compelled presence, which Browning has so +marvellously uttered in <i>Mesmerism</i>. Here, in these breathless +stanzas,<a name="FNanchor_208-1_30" id="FNanchor_208-1_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_208-1_30" class="fnanchor">[208:1]</a> so almost literally mesmeric that, as we read them (or +rather draw them in at our own breathless lips!), we believe in the +actual coming of our loved one, and scarce dare look round lest we +should find the terrifying glory true . . . here the man sits alone in his +room at dead of night, and wills the woman to be with him. He brings his +thought to bear on her, "till he feels his hair turn grey":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Till I seemed to have and hold<br /></span> +<span class="i3">In the vacancy<br /></span> +<span class="i3">'Twixt the walls and me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the hair-plait's chestnut-gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the foot in its muslin fold—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Have and hold, then and there,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Her, from head to foot,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Breathing and mute,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Passive and yet aware,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the grasp of my steady stare—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span><span class="i0">Hold and have, there and then,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">All her body and soul<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That completes my whole,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that women add to men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the clutch of my steady ken"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . if so he can sit, never loosing his will, and with a gesture of his +hands that "breaks into very flame," he feels that he <i>must</i> draw her +from "the house called hers, not mine," which soon will seem to +suffocate her if she cannot escape from it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Out of doors into the night!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">On to the maze<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Of the wild wood-ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not turning to left nor right<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the pathway, blind with sight—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Swifter and still more swift,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">As the crowding peace<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Doth to joy increase<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the wild blind eyes uplift<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thro' the darkness and the drift!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he <i>will</i> sit so, feeling his soul dilate, and no muscle shall be +relaxed as he sees his belief come true, and more and more she takes +shape for him, so that she shall be, when she does come, altered even +from what she was at his first seeming to "have and hold her"—for the +lips glow, the cheek burns, the hair, from its plait, breaks loose, and +spreads with "a rich outburst, chestnut gold-interspersed," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>and the +arms open wide "like the doors of a casket-shrine," as she comes, comes, +comes . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Now—now'—the door is heard!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Hark, the stairs! and near—<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Nearer—and here—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Now!' and at call the third<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She enters without a word!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Could a woman ever forget the man who should do that with her! Would she +not almost be ready, in such an hour, to die as Porphyria died?</p> + +<p>But in <i>Porphyria's Lover</i>, not so great a spirit speaks. This man, too, +sitting in his room alone, thinks of the woman he loves, and she comes +to him; but here it is her own will that drives through wind and +rain—there is no compelling glory from the man uncertain still of +passion's answering passion.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The rain set early in to-night,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The sullen wind was soon awake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It tore the elm-tops down for spite,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And did its worst to vex the lake:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I listened with heart fit to break.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When glided in Porphyria." . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She glided in and did not speak. She looked round his cottage, then +kneeled and made the dying fire blaze up. When all the place was warm, +she rose and put off her dripping cloak and shawl, the hat, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>the soiled +gloves; she let her rain-touched hair fall loose,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And, last, she sat down by my side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And called me. When no voice replied,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She put my arm about her waist,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And made her smooth white shoulder bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all her yellow hair displaced,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And spread o'er all her yellow hair—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Murmuring how she loved me—she<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To set its struggling passion free<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From pride, and vainer ties dissever,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And give herself to me for ever."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But to-night, at some gay feast in a world all sundered from this man's, +there had seized her</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A sudden thought of one so pale<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For love of her, and all in vain:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So, she was come through wind and rain."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She found him indeed as she had pitifully dreamed of him: "with heart +fit to break" sitting desolate in the chill cottage; and even when she +was come, he still sat there inert, stupefied as it were by his +grief—unresponsive to the joy of her presence, unbelieving in it +possibly, since already so often he had dreamed that this might be, and +it had not been. But, unfaltering now that she has at last decided, she +calls to him, and as even then he makes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>no answer, sits down beside him +and draws his head to her breast.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Be sure I looked up at her eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Happy and proud; at last I knew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Porphyria worshipped me; surprise<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Made my heart swell, and still it grew<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While I debated what to do.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That moment she was mine, mine, fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Perfectly pure and good: I found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thing to do, and all her hair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In one long yellow string I wound<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Three times her little throat around,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And strangled her." . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But he knows that she felt no pain, for in a minute he opened her lids +to see, and the blue eyes laughed back at him "without a stain." He +loosed the tress about her neck, and the colour flashed into her cheek +beneath his burning kiss. Now he propped her head—this time <i>his</i> +shoulder bore</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">"The smiling rosy little head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So glad it has its utmost will,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That all it scorned at once is fled,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And I, its love, am gained instead!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Porphyria's love: she guessed not how<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Her darling one wish would be heard.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thus we sit together now,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And all night long we have not stirred,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And yet God has not said a word!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>This poem was first published as the second of two headed "Madhouse +Cells"; and though the classifying title was afterwards rejected, that +it should ever have been used is something of a clue to the meaning. But +only "something," for even so, we wonder if the dream were all a dream, +if Porphyria ever came, and, if she did, was this the issue? What truly +happened on that night of wind and rain?—that night which <i>is</i> real, +whatever else is not . . . I ask, we all ask; but does it greatly matter? +Enough that we can grasp the deeper meaning—the sanity in the madness. +As Porphyria, with her lover's head on her breast, sat in the little +cottage on that stormy night, the world at last rejected, the love at +last accepted, she was at her highest pulse of being: she was <i>herself</i>. +When in all the rest of life would such another moment come? . . . How many +lovers have mutually murmured that: "If we could die <i>now</i>!"—nothing +impaired, nothing gone or to go from them: the sanity in the madness, +the courage in the cowardice. . . . So this lover felt, brooding in the +"madhouse cell" on what had been, or might have been:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And thus we sit together now,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet God has not said a word!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Six poems of exultant love—and a man speaks in each! With Browning, the +woman much more rarely is articulate; and when she does speak, even +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span><i>he</i> puts in her mouth the less triumphant utterances. From the +nameless girl in <i>Count Gismond</i> and from Balaustion—these only—do we +get the equivalent of the man's exultation in such lyrics as I have just +now shown. . . . Always the tear assigned to woman! It may be "true"; I +think it is not at least <i>so</i> true, but true in some degree it must be, +since all legend will thus have it. What then shall a woman say? That +the time has come to alter this? That woman cries "for nothing," like +the children? That she does not understand so well as man the ends of +love? Or that she understands them better? . . . Perhaps all of these +things; perhaps some others also. Let us study now, at all events, the +"tear"; let us see in what, as Browning saw her, the Trouble of Love +consists for woman.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205-1_29" id="Footnote_205-1_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205-1_29"><span class="label">[205:1]</span></a> Very curious is the uncertainty which this stanza +leaves in the minds of some. In Berdoe's <i>Browning Cyclopædia</i> the +difficulty is frankly stated, with an exquisitely ludicrous result. He +interprets the last line of <i>Parting at Morning</i> as meaning that the +woman "desires more society than the seaside home affords"! But it is +the <i>man</i> who speaks, not the woman. The confusion plainly arises from a +misinterpretation of "him" in "straight was a path of gold for him." +Berdoe reads this as "lucrative work for the man"! Of course "him" +refers to the sun who has "looked over the mountain's rim" . . . Here is +an instance of making obscurity where none really exists.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208-1_30" id="Footnote_208-1_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208-1_30"><span class="label">[208:1]</span></a> Mr. Symons points out that in this extraordinary poem +"fifteen stanzas succeed one another without a single full stop or a +real break in sense or sound."</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE WOMAN'S</h3> + + +<h4>I.—THE LADY IN "THE GLOVE"</h4> + +<p>Writing of the unnamed heroine of <i>Count Gismond</i>, I said that she had +one of the characteristic Browning marks—that of trust in the sincerity +of others. Here, in <i>The Glove</i>, we find a figure who resembles her in +two respects: she is nameless, and she is a "great" lady—a lady of the +Court. But now we perceive, full-blown, the flower of Court-training: +<i>dis</i>-trust. In this heroine (for all we are told, as young as the +earlier one) distrust has taken such deep root as to produce the very +prize-bloom of legend—that famous incident of the glove thrown into the +lion's den that her knight may go to fetch it. . . . Does this +interpretation of the episode amaze? It is that which our poet gives of +it. Distrust, and only that, impelled this lady to the action which, +till Browning treated it, had been regarded as a prize-bloom indeed, but +the flower not of distrust, but its antithesis—vanity! All the world +knows the story; all the world, till this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>apologist arrived, condemned +alone the lady. Like Francis I, each had cried:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . 'Twas mere vanity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not love, set that task to humanity!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Browning, who could detect the Court-grown, found excuse for her in +that lamentable gardening. The weed had been sown, as it was sown (so +much more tragically) for the earlier heroine; and little though we are +told of the latter lady's length of years, we may guess her, from this +alone, to be older. <i>She had been longer at Court</i>; its lesson had +penetrated her being. Day after day she had watched, day after day had +listened; then arrived De Lorge with fervent words of love, and now she +watched <i>him</i>, hearkened <i>him</i> . . . and more and more misdoubted, +hesitated, half-inclined and half-afraid; until at last, "one day struck +fierce 'mid many a day struck calm," she gathered all her hesitation, +yielding, courage, into one quick impulse—and flung her glove to the +lions! With the result which we know—of an instant and a fearless +answer to the test; but, as well, an instant confirmation of the worst +she had dreaded.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>It was at the Court of King Francis I of France that it happened—the +most brilliant Court, perhaps, in history, where the flower of French +knighthood bloomed around the gayest, falsest of kings. Romance was in +the air, and so was corruption; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>poets, artists, worked in every corner, +and so did intrigue and baseness and lust. Round the King was gathered +the <i>Petite Bande</i>, the clique within a clique—"that troop of pretty +women who hunted with him, dined with him, talked with him"—led by his +powerful mistress, the Duchesse d'Étampes, friend of the Dauphin's +neglected wife, the Florentine Catherine de Médicis—foe of that wife's +so silently detested rival, "Madame Dame Diane de Poitiers, Grande +Sénéschale de Normandie."</p> + +<p>The two great mistresses had each her darling poet: the Duchesse +d'Étampes had chosen Clement Marot, who could turn so gracefully the +Psalms of David into verse; La Grande Sénéschale, always supreme in +taste, patronised Pierre Ronsard—and this was why Pierre sometimes +found that when he "talked fine to King Francis," the King would yawn in +his face, or whistle and move off to some better amusement.</p> + +<p>That was what Francis did one day after the Peace of Cambray had been +signed by France and Spain. He had grown weary of leisure:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here we've got peace, and aghast I'm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Caught thinking war the true pastime.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is there a reason in metre?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give us your speech, master Peter!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Peter obediently began, but he had hardly spoken half a dozen words +before the King whistled aloud: "Let's go and look at our lions!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>They went to the courtyard, and as they went, the throng of courtiers +mustered—lords and ladies came as thick as coloured clouds at sunset. +Foremost among them (relates Ronsard in Browning's poem) were De Lorge +and the lady he was "adoring."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her, and the horrible pitside"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for they were now all sitting above the arena round which the lions' +dens were placed. The black Arab keeper was told to stir up the great +beast, Bluebeard. A firework was accordingly dropped into the den, whose +door had been opened . . . they all waited breathless, with beating +hearts . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Then earth in a sudden contortion<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave out to our gaze her abortion.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such a brute! . . .<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To see the black mane, vast and heapy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The tail in the air stiff and straining,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wide eyes nor waxing nor waning."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the poet, watching him, thought how perhaps in that eruption of +noise and light, the lion had dreamed that his shackles were shivered, +and he was free again.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you saw by the flash on his forehead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He was leagues in the desert already."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p><p>The King laughed: "Was there a man among them all who would brave +Bluebeard?" Not as a challenge did he say this—he knew well that it +were almost certain death:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Francis had scarcely finished speaking when (as all the world knows) +a glove fluttered down into the arena and fell close to the lion. It was +the glove of De Lorge's lady. They were sitting together, and he had +been, as Ronsard could see, "weighing out fine speeches like gold from a +balance." . . . He now delayed not an instant, but leaped over the barrier +and walked straight up to the glove. The lion never moved; he was still +staring (as all of us, with aching hearts, have seen such an one stare +from his cage) at the far, unseen, remembered land. . . . De Lorge picked +up the glove, calmly; calmly he walked back to the place where he had +leaped the barrier before, leaped it again, and (once more, as all the +world knows) dashed the glove in the lady's face. Every eye was on them. +The King cried out in applause that <i>he</i> would have done the same:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . 'Twas mere vanity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not love, set that task to humanity!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and, having the royal word for it, all the lords and ladies turned +with loathing from De Lorge's "queen dethroned."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>All but Peter Ronsard. <i>He</i> noticed that she retained undisturbed her +self-possession amid the Court's mockery.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"As if from no pleasing experiment<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She rose, yet of pain not much heedful,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So long as the process was needful.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clement Marot stayed; I followed after."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Catching her up, he asked what it had all meant. "I'm a poet," he added; +"I must know human nature."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She told me, 'Too long had I heard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the deed proved alone by the word:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For my love—what De Lorge would not dare!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the endless descriptions of death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He would brave when my lip formed a breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must reckon as braved'" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and for these great gifts, must give in return her love, as love was +understood at the Court of King Francis. But to-day, looking at the +lion, she had mused on all the dangers affronted to get that beast to +that den: his capture by some poor slave whom no lady's love was to +reward, no King or Court to applaud, but only the joy of the sport, and +the delight of his children's wonder at the glorious creature. . . . And at +this very Court, the other day, did not they tell of a page who for mere +boyish bravado had dropped his cap over the barrier <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>and leaped across, +pretending that he must get it back? Why should she not test De Lorge +here and now? For <i>now</i> she was still free; now she could find out what +"death for her sake" really meant; otherwise, he might yet break down +her doubts, she might yield, still unassured, and only then discover +that it did not mean anything at all! So—she had thrown the glove.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'The blow a glove gives is but weak:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But when the heart suffers a blow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?'"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>De Lorge, indeed, had braved "death for her sake"; but he had then been +capable of the public insult. The pain of <i>that</i>, had she loved him, +must quite have broken her heart. And not only had he been capable of +this, but he had not understood her, he too had thought it "mere +vanity." Love then was nowhere—neither in his heart nor in hers. . . . +Ronsard, following her with his eyes as she went finally away, saw a +youth keeping as close as he dared to the doorway by which she would +pass. He was a mere plebeian; naturally his life was not so precious as +that of the brilliant De Lorge (thus Ronsard ironically remarks); but +there was no doubt what <i>he</i> would have done, "had our brute been +Nemean." He would exultantly have accepted the test, have thought it +right that he should earn what he so ardently desired.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span><span class="i0">"And when, shortly after, she carried<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her shame from the Court, and they married,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To that marriage some happiness, maugre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The voice of the Court, I dared augur."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>De Lorge led for some time the most brilliant of envied careers, and +finally married a beauty who had been the King's mistress for a week. +Thenceforth he fetched her gloves very diligently, at the hours when the +King desired her presence and his absence—and never did he set off on +that errand (looking daggers at her) but Francis took occasion to tell +the Court the story of the other glove. And she would smile and say that +he brought <i>hers</i> with no murmur.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Was the first lady right or wrong? She was right to hesitate in +accepting De Lorge's "devotion"—not because De Lorge was worthless, but +because she did not love him. The King spoke truly when he said that not +love set that task to humanity. Neither did mere vanity set it, as we +now perceive; but <i>only</i> love could excuse the test which love could +never have imposed. De Lorge was worthless—no matter; the lady held no +right over him, whatever he was, for she did not love him. And not alone +her "test" was the proof of this: her hesitation had already proved it.</p> + +<p>But, it may be said, the age was different: women still believed that +love could come to them through "wooing." Nowadays, to be sure, so +subtle a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>woman as this would know that her own heart lay passive, and +that women's hearts do not lie passive when they love. . . . But I think +there were few things about love that women did not know in the days of +King Francis! We have only to read the discourses of Marguerite de +Valois, sister of the King—we have only to consider the story of Diane +de Poitiers, seventeen years older than her Dauphin, to realise <i>that</i> +most fully. Women's hearts were the same; and a woman's heart, when it +loves truly, will make no test for very pride-in-love's dear sake. It +scorns tests—too much scorns them, it may be, and yet I know not. Again +it is the Meredithian axiom which arrests me: "He learnt how much we +gain who make no claims." Our lovers then may be, should be, prepared to +plunge among the lions for our gloves—but we should not be able to send +them! And if so, a De Lorge here and there should win a "hand" he merits +not, we may reflect that the new, no more than the old, De Lorge will +have won the <i>heart</i> which doubts—and, doubting, flings (or keeps) the +glove.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Utter the true word—out and away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Escapes her soul." . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Gloves flung to lions are not the answer which that enfranchised soul +will give! And so the Lady thought right and did wrong: 'twas <i>not</i> love +set that task to humanity. Even Browning cannot <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>win her our full +pardon; we devote not many kerchiefs to drying this "tear."</p> + + +<h4>II.—DÎS ALITER VISUM; <span class="smcap">or</span>, LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS</h4> + +<p>"The gods saw it otherwise." Thus we may translate the first clause of +the title; the second, the reference to Byron, I have never understood, +and I think shall never understand. Of all the accusations which stand +against him, that of letting opportunity in this sort slip by is +assuredly not one. Such "poor pretty thoughtful things" as the lady of +this poem played their parts most notably in Byron's life—to their own +disaster, it is true, but never because he weighed their worth in the +spirit of this French poet, so bitterly at last accused, who meets +again, ten years after the day of his cogitations, the subject of them +in a Paris drawing-room—married, and as dissatisfied as he, who still +is free. Reading the poem, indeed, with Byron in mind, the fancy comes +to me that if it had been by any other man but Browning, it might almost +be regarded as a sidelong vindication of the Frenchman for having +rejected the "poor pretty thoughtful thing." For Byron married +her<a name="FNanchor_224-1_31" id="FNanchor_224-1_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_224-1_31" class="fnanchor">[224:1]</a>—and in what did it result? . . . But that Browning should in +any fashion, however sidelong, acknowledge <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>Byron as anything but the +most despicable of mortals, cannot for a moment be imagined; he who +understood so many complex beings failed entirely here. Thus, ever in +perplexity, I must abjure the theory of Byronic merit. There lurks in +this poem no hidden plea for abstention, for the "man who +doesn't"—hinted at through compassionate use of his name who made one +of the great disastrous marriages of the world.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Ten years before this meeting in Paris, the two of the poem had known +one another, though not with any high degree of intimacy, for only twice +had they "walked and talked" together. He was even then "bent, wigged, +and lamed":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Famous, however, for verse and worse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—that is, the next vacancy at the French Academy, for so illustrious +was he that his secondary reputation would not injure him.</p> + +<p>She who now accuses him was then a "young beauty, round and sound as a +mountain-apple," ingenuous, ardent, wealthy—the typical "poor pretty +thoughtful thing" with aspirations, for she tried to sing and draw, read +verse and thought she understood—at any rate, loved the Great, the +Good, and the Beautiful. But to him her "culture" seemed pitifully +amateurish—him who took the arts in his stride, as it were, who could +float wide <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>and free over the whole province of them, as the sea-gull +floats over the waters. Nevertheless he had walked and talked with her +"twice" at the little remote, unspoilt seaside resort where they had +chanced to meet. It was strange that more people had not discovered it, +so fine were the air and scenery—but it remained unvisited, and thus +the two were thrown together. One scorching noon they met; he invited +her to a stroll on the cliff-road. She took his arm, and (looking back +upon it now) remembers that as she took it she smiled "sillily," and +made some banal speech about the blazing, brazen sea below. For she felt +that he had guessed her secret, timid hope. . . . Now, recalling the +episode (it is he who has given the signal for such reminiscence), she +asks him what effect his divination of her trembling heart had had on +him that day.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Did you determine, as we stepped<br /></span> +<span class="i1">O'er the lone stone fence, 'Let me get<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her for myself, and what's the earth<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With all its art, verse, music, worth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For she knows, and she knew that <i>he</i> knew, the prompt reply which would +come if he "blurted out" a certain question—come in her instant +silence, her downward look, the rush of colour to her cheek and brow. +They would have returned from that walk as plighted lovers—he, old, +famous, weary; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>she with her youth and beauty, her ardour and her +wealth, all rapturously given, and with the happy prospect added to all +other joys of being certain of applause for the distinction shown in her +choice! . . . A perfect hour for both—while it lasted.</p> + +<p>But (so she now reads his gone-by cogitations for him) it would not +last. The daily life would reclaim them; Paris would follow, with full +time for both to reason and reflect. . . . And thus (still interpreting to +him the imagined outcome of his musings) she would regret that choice +which had seemed to show her of the elect—for after all a poet <i>need</i> +not be fifty! Young men can be poets too, and though they blunder, there +is something endearing in their blunders; moreover, one day they will be +as "firm, quiet, and gay" as he, as expert in deceiving the world, which +is all, in the last analysis, that such a man does.</p> + +<p>For, if he <i>had</i> spoken to her that day, what would he have said? (She +is still expounding to him the situation of this potential married pair, +as she has divined in her long musings that he then foresaw it.) He +would not have said, like a boy, "Love me or I die." But neither would +he have said the truth, which was simply that he wished to use her young +ardour and vitality to help his age. Such was the demand which she (as, +according to her, he then reasoned it out) would in time have accused +him, tacitly or not, of having made upon her. . . . <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>And what would his own +reflections have been? She is ready to use her disconcerting +clairvoyance for these also; nay, she can do more, she can tell him the +very moment at which he acted upon them in advance! For as they +foreshadowed themselves, he had ceased to press gently her arm to his +side—she remembers well the stopping of that tender pressure, and now +can connect the action with its mental source. <i>His</i> reflection, then, +would have been simply that he had thrown himself away, had bartered all +he was and had been and might be—all his culture, knowledge of the +world, guerdons of gold and great renown—for what? For "two cheeks +freshened by youth and sea": a mere nosegay. <i>Him</i>, in exchange for a +nosegay!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That ended me." . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They duly admired the "grey sad church," on the cliff-top, with its +scattered graveyard crosses, its garlands where the swallows perched; +they "took their look" at the sea and sky, wondering afresh at the +general ignorance of so attractive a little hole; then, finding the sun +really too scorching, they descended, got back to the baths, to such +civilisation as there was:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">"And then, good-bye! Ten years since then:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>Ten years. He has a notorious liaison with a dancer at the Opera; she +has married lovelessly. They have met again, and, in sentimental mood, +he has recalled that sojourn, has begun to make a kind of tentative love +to her, probably unimpaired in beauty, certainly more intellectually +interesting, for the whole monologue proves that she can no longer be +patronisingly summed up in "poor pretty thoughtful thing." And she has +cried, in the words which open the poem:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Stop, let me have the truth of that!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is that all true?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and at first, between jest and bitterness, has given him the sum of +her musings on that moment when he decided to drop the nosegay.</p> + +<p>For ten years he has had, tacitly, the last word: his decision has stood +unchallenged. Nor shall it now be altered—he has begun to "tell" her, +to meander sentimentally around that episode, but she will have nothing +less than the truth; they will talk of it, yes, since he has so pleased, +but they will talk of it in <i>her</i> way. So she cuts him short, and draws +this acid, witty little sketch for him. . . . Has she not matured? might it +not have "done," after all? The nosegay was not so insipid! . . . But +suddenly, while she mocks, the deeper "truth of that" invades her soul, +and she must cease from cynic gibes, and yield the word to something +greater in herself.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span><span class="i0">"Now I may speak: you fool, for all<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your lore! Who made things plain in vain?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What was the sea for? What, the grey<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sad church, that solitary day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crosses and graves and swallows' call?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Was there nought better than to enjoy?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No feat which, done, would make time break,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And let us pent-up creatures through<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Into eternity, our due?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">No grasping at love, gaining a share<br /></span> +<span class="i1">O' the sole spark from God's life at strife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With death . . . ?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He calls his decision wisdom? It is one kind of wisdom only, and that +the least—"worldly" wisdom. He was old, and she was raw and +sentimental—true; each might have missed something in the other; but +completeness is not for our existence here, we await heaven for that. +Only earthbound creatures—like the star-fish, for instance—become all +they <i>can</i> become in this sphere; man's soul must evolve. Have their +souls evolved? And she cries that they have not:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of course he "did not know" (as he now seems feebly to interpolate); she +can well believe that, for if he had known, he would have saved two +souls—nay, four. What of his Stephanie, who danced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>vilely last night, +they say—will he not soon, like the public, abandon her now that "her +vogue has had its day"? . . . And what of the speaker herself? It takes but +half a dozen words to indicate <i>her</i> lot:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here comes my husband from his whist."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What is "the truth of that"?</p> + +<p>Again, I think, something of what I said in writing of <i>Youth and Art</i>: +again not quite what Browning seems to wish us to accept. Love is the +fulfilling of the law—with all my heart; but was love here? Does love +weigh worth, as the poet did? does love marry the next comer, as the +lady did? Mrs. Orr, devouter votary than I, explains that Browning meant +"that everything which disturbs the equal balance of human life gives a +vital impulse to the soul." Did one wish merely to be humorous, one +might say that this was the most optimistic view of unsuccessful +marriage which has yet found expression! But merely to be humorous is +not what I wish: we must consider this belief, which Mrs. Orr further +declares to be the expression of Browning's "poetic self." Assuredly it +is true that stereotyped monotony, even if happy, does leave the soul +unstirred to deepest depth. We may hesitate, nevertheless, to embrace +the view that "only our mistakes are our experience"; and this is the +view which seems to prevail in Mrs. Orr's interpretation of <i>Dîs Aliter +Visum</i>. Mr. Symons says that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>the woman points out to the man "his fatal +mistake." . . . But was it really a mistake at all? I do not, in urging +that question, commit myself to the crass commonplace of Berdoe, who +argues that "a more unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than +this one would have been"! The "match" standpoint is not here our +standpoint. <i>That</i> is, simply, that love is the fulfilling of the law, +and that these two people did not love. They were in the sentimental +state which frequently results from pleasant chance encounters—and the +experienced, subtle man of the world was able to perceive that, and to +act upon it. That he has pursued his wonted way of life, and that she +has married lovelessly (for a husband who plays whist is, by the +unwritten law of romance, a husband who can by no possibility be +loved!), proves merely that each has fallen away in the pursuit of any +ideal which may then have urged itself—not that both would certainly +have "saved their souls" if they had married one another. Speaking +elsewhere in this book of Browning's theory of love, I said: "Love can +do all, and will do all, but we must for our part be doing something +too"—but even love can do nothing if it is not there! Ideals need not +be abandoned because they are not full-realised; and, were we in stern +mood, it would be possible to declare that this lady had abandoned them +more definitely than her poet had, since he at all times was frankly a +worldling. Witty as she has become, there still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>remain in her, I fear, +some traces of the poor pretty thoughtful thing. . . . To sum up, for this +"tear" also we have but semi-sympathy; and Browning is again not at his +best when he makes the Victim speak for herself.</p> + + +<h4>III.—THE LABORATORY</h4> + +<p>Now let us see how he can make a woman speak when she suffers, but is +not, and will not be, a victim.</p> + +<p>At once she is a completely realised human creature, uttering herself in +such abandonment of all pretence as never fails to compass majesty. Into +the soul of this woman in <i>The Laboratory</i>, Browning has penetrated till +he seems to breathe with her breath. I question if there is another +fictive utterance to surpass this one in authenticity. It bears the +Great Seal. Not Shakespeare has outdone it in power and concentration. +Every word counts, almost every comma—for, like Browning, we too seem +to breathe with this woman's panting breath, our hearts to beat with the +very pain and rage of hers, and every pause she comes to in her speech +is <i>our</i> pause, so intense is the evocation, so unerring the expression +of an impulse which, whether or no it be atrophied in our more hesitant +and civilised consciousness, is at any rate effectively inhibited.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She is a Court lady of the <i>ancien régime</i>, in the great Brinvilliers +poisoning-period, and she is buying <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>from an old alchemist in his +laboratory the draught which is to kill her triumphant rival. Small, +gorgeous, and intense, she sits in the strange den and watches the old +wizard set about his work. She is due to dance at the King's, but there +is no hurry: he may take as long as he chooses. . . . Now she must put on a +glass mask like his, the old man tells her, for these "faint smokes that +curl whitely" are themselves poisonous—and she submits, and with all +her intensity at work, ties it on "tightly"; then sits again, to peer +through the fumes of the devil's-smithy. But she cannot be silent; even +to him—and after all, is such an one as he quite truly a man!—she must +pour forth the anguish of her soul. Questions relieve her now and then:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—but not long can she be merely curious; every minute there breaks out +a cry:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He is with her, and they know that I know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where they are, what they do . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in +the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps +through lovers in their bliss. They could not forget <i>me</i>, she thinks, +as all her sister-sufferers think. . . . Yet even in this hell, there is +some solace. They must be remembering her, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span><span class="i9h">". . . they believe my tears flow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes, here—where the old man works for her: grinding, moistening, and +mashing his paste, pounding at his powder. It is better to sit here and +watch him than go dance at the King's; and she looks round in her +restless, nervous anguish—the dagger in her heart, but this way, <i>this</i> +way, to stanch the wound it makes!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That in the mortar—you call it a gum?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure to taste sweetly—is that poison too?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But, maddened by the deadlier drug of wretchedness, she loses for a +moment the single vision of her rival: it were good to have <i>all</i> the +old man's treasures, for the joy of dealing death around her at that +hateful Court where each knows of her misery.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She need but give a lozenge "at the King's," and Pauline should die in +half an hour; or light a pastille, and Elise, "with her head and her +breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead." . . . But he is +taking too long.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Quick—is it finished? The colour's too grim!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p><p>For if it were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and +dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift +the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the old +man knows—this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to the +vessel again, a new doubt assails her.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That's why she ensnared him: this never will free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The soul from those masculine eyes—say, 'No!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For only last night, as they whispered, I brought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But it is not painless in its working? She does not desire that: she +wants the other to <i>feel</i> death; more—she wants the proof of death to +remain,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Brand, burn up, bite into its grace<a name="FNanchor_236-1_32" id="FNanchor_236-1_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_236-1_32" class="fnanchor">[236:1]</a>—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He is sure to remember her dying face!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is it done? Then he must take off her mask; he must—nay, he need not +look morose about it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She is not afraid to dispense with the protecting vizor:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p><p>There it lies—there. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You may kiss me, old man, on the mouth if you will!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and, looking her last look round the den, she prepares to go; but what +is that mark on her gorgeous gown? Brush it off! Brush off that dust! It +might bring horror down on her in an instant, before she knows or +thinks, and she is going straight from here to dance at the King's. . . . +She is gone, with her jealousy and her anguish and her passion, and, +clutched to her heart, the phial that shall end but one of those +torments.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She is gone, and she remains for ever. Her age is past, but not the +hearts that ached in it. We curb those hearts to-day; we do not poison +now; but have we forgotten the mood for poisoning?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such fiercenesses are silenced now; but, silent, they have still their +utterance, and it is here.</p> + + +<h4>IV.—IN A YEAR</h4> + +<p>Nay—here we have the heart unsilenced yet unfierce, the gentle, not the +"dreadful," heart of woman: as true to type, so true indeed that we can +even figure to ourselves the other hours in which the lady of <i>The +Laboratory</i> may have known, like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>the girl here, only dim, aching wonder +at her lover's mutability.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Was it something said,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Something done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vexed him? was it touch of hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Turn of head?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strange! that very way<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Love begun:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I as little understand<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Love's decay."<a name="FNanchor_238-1_33" id="FNanchor_238-1_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_238-1_33" class="fnanchor">[238:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here, again, is full authenticity. Girl-like, she sits and broods upon +it all—not angry, not even wholly wretched, for, though now she is +abandoned, she has not loved "in vain," since she loved greatly. So +greatly that still, still, she can dream:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Would he loved me yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On and on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While I found some way undreamed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">—Paid my debt!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave more life and more,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till, all gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He should smile, 'She never seemed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Mine before.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But this will not be; in a year it is over for him; and for her "over" +too, though not yet ended. How will it end for her?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span><span class="i0">"Well, this cold clay clod<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Was man's heart:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crumble it, and what comes next?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is it God ?" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The dream, the silly dream, of each forsaken child!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Dying for my sake—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">White and pink!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can't we touch these bubbles then<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But they break?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is what he will say to himself, in his high male fashion, when he +hears that she is dead; she sits and dreams of it, as women have done +since the world began, and will do till it ends.<a name="FNanchor_239-1_34" id="FNanchor_239-1_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_239-1_34" class="fnanchor">[239:1]</a></p> + +<p>Then, at last, he will know how she loved him; since, for all that has +been between them, clearly he has not known that yet. . . . Again, the +supreme conviction of our souls that who does know truly <i>all</i> the love, +can never turn away from it. Most pitiful, most deceived, of dreams—yet +after all, perhaps the horn-gate dream, for who knows "truly" but who +loves truly?</p> + +<p>Yet indeed (she now muses) <i>has</i> she enough loved him?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I had wealth and ease,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Beauty, youth:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since my lover gave me love,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I gave these.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span><span class="i0">That was all I meant<br /></span> +<span class="i1">—To be just,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the passion I had raised<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To content.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since he chose to change<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Gold for dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I gave him what he praised,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Was it strange?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And after all it was not enough! "Justice" was not enough, the giving of +herself was not enough. If she could try again, if she could find that +"way undreamed" to pay her debt. . . .</p> + +<p>I should like to omit two lines from the second of the stanzas quoted +above:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>And the passion I had raised</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>To content.</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From Browning, those words come oddly: moreover, elsewhere the girl +cries:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I, too, at love's brim<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Touched the sweet:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would die if death bequeathed<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sweet to him."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is more than to "content" the "passion she had raised." Let us +regard that phrase as unwritten: it is not authentic, it does not +express either the girl or her poet.</p> + +<p>The rest comes right and true—and more than all, perhaps, the second +verse, where the mystery of passion in its coming no less than in its +going is so subtly indicated.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span><span class="i0">"Strange! that very way<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Love begun:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I <i>as little understand</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1">Love's decay."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We hear to-day of love that aims at reason. Love forbid that I should +say love knows not reason—but love and God forbid that it should <i>aim</i> +at reason! Leave us that unwisdom at least: we are so wise to-day.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>This ardent, gentle girl must suffer, and will suffer long—but will not +die. She will live and she will grow. Shall she then look back with +scorn upon that earlier self? . . . We talk much now of "re-incarnation," +and always by our talk we seem to mean the coming-back to earth of a +spirit which at some time has left it. But are there not re-incarnations +of the still embodied spirit—is not re-incarnation, like eternity, with +us here and now, as we "in this body" live and suffer and despair, and +lift our hearts again to hope and faith? How many of us—grown, not +changed—can pityingly look back at ourselves in some such dying moment +as this poem shows us; for death it is to that "ourself." Hearts do not +break, but hearts do die—<i>that</i> heart, <i>that</i> self: we pass into a +Hades.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, this cold clay clod<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Was man's heart:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Crumble it, and what comes next?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is it God?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p><p>Or is it new heart, new self, new life? We come forth enfranchised from +our Hades. The evil days, the cruel days—we call them back (a little, +it may be, ashamed of our escape!) and still the blest remoteness will +endure: it was wonderful how it could suffer, the poor heart. . . . Surely +this is re-incarnation; surely no returning spirit witnesses more +clearly to a transition-state? We <i>have been</i> dead; but this "us" who +comes back to the world we knew is still the same—the heart will answer +as it once could answer, the spirit thrill as once it thrilled. +Only—this is the proof—both heart and spirit are <i>further on</i>; both +have, as it were, gone past the earlier summons and the earlier sense of +love; and so, evoking such an hour as this, when we could dream of +"dying for his sake, white and pink," we smile in tender, not in +scornful, pity—knowing now that "way undreamed" of our girl's dream, +and knowing that that way is not to die, but live and grow, since love +that changes "in a year" is not the love to die, or live, for.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224-1_31" id="Footnote_224-1_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224-1_31"><span class="label">[224:1]</span></a> The descriptive phrase above might really, at a pinch, +be applied to Annabella Milbanke.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236-1_32" id="Footnote_236-1_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236-1_32"><span class="label">[236:1]</span></a> Note the fierceness achieved by the shortening and the +alliteration in this line.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238-1_33" id="Footnote_238-1_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238-1_33"><span class="label">[238:1]</span></a> Mark how the deferred rhymes paint the groping +thoughts. Only after much questioning can the answer come, as it were, +in the "chime of the rhyme."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239-1_34" id="Footnote_239-1_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239-1_34"><span class="label">[239:1]</span></a> And men also, I hasten to add, that there may be no +pluming of male feathers—if indeed this be an occasion for pluming on +either side.</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p> +<h2>PART IV</h2> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image06.png" alt="The Wife" width="65%" /> +</div> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> +<h2>I</h2> + +<h3>A WOMAN'S LAST WORD</h3> + + +<p>They are married, and they have come to a spiritual crisis. She does +not, cannot, think as <i>he</i> thinks. But does thinking signify? She +loves—is not that enough? Can she not have done with thinking, or at +all events with talking about thinking? Perhaps, with every striving, +she shall achieve no more than that: to <i>say</i> nothing, to use no +influence, to yield the sanctioned woman's trophy of the "last word." . . . +Shall she, then, be yielding aught of value, if she contends no more?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What so wild as words are?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and that <i>they</i> should strive and argue! Why, it is as when birds +debate about some tiny marvel of those marvellous tiny lives, while the +hawk spies from a bough above.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"See the creature stalking<br /></span> +<span class="i1">While we speak!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hush and hide the talking,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Cheek on cheek!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For that hawk is ever watching life: it stands for the mysterious +effluence which falls on joy and kills <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>it; and that may just as well be +"talking" as aught else! He shall have his own way—or no: that is a +paltry yielding. There shall <i>be</i> no way but his.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What so false as truth is,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">False to thee?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She abandons then the cold abstraction; she does not even wish to +"know":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Where the apple reddens<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Never pry—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest we lose our Edens,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Eve and I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Be a god and hold me<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With a charm!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be a man and fold me<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With thine arm!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Teach me, only teach, Love!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As I ought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will speak thy speech, Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Think thy thought—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Meet, if thou require it,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Both demands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laying flesh and spirit<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In thy hands."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But even as she measures and exults in the abjection of herself, a voice +whispers in her soul that this is not the way. Something is wrong. She +hears, but cannot heed. It must be so, since he desires it—since he can +desire it. Since he <i>can</i> . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span><span class="i0">"That shall be to-morrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Not to-night:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must bury sorrow<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Out of sight:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">—Must a little weep, Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">(Foolish me!)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so fall asleep, Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Loved by thee."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He does not wish to know the real Herself. Then the real herself shall +"sleep"; all shall be as before.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Will this endure? All depends upon the woman: upon how strong <i>she</i> is. +For is not this the sheer denial of her husband's moral force? By her +silence, her abjection, her suppression, he shall prevail: not +otherwise. And so, <i>if</i> this endure, what shall the issue prove? Not the +highest good of married life for either, and still less for the man than +for the woman.</p> + +<p>By implication, Browning shows us that in <i>By the Fireside</i>, one of his +three great songs of wedded love:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your heart anticipate my heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You must be just before, in fine,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">See and make me see, for your part,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">New depths of the divine!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Once more we can trace there his development from <i>Pauline</i>. She, +looking up "as I might kill her and be loved the more," had, to the +lover's thinking, laid her flesh and spirit in his hands, precisely as +the wife <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>in the <i>Last Word</i> resolves to do. . . . As the poet grew, so +grew the man in Browning: we reach <i>By the Fireside</i> from these. For the +woman in the <i>Last Word</i>, strong to lay aside herself, to "think his +thought," could with that strength, used otherwise, bring <i>that</i> husband +to the place where stands the man in <i>By the Fireside</i>, when the "long +dark autumn evenings" are come, and together with his wife he treads +back the path to their youth, to the "moment, one and infinite" in which +they found each other once for all.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My perfect wife, my Leonor,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom else could I dare look backward for,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With whom beside should I dare pursue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The path grey heads abhor?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My own, confirm me! If I tread<br /></span> +<span class="i1">This path back, is it not in pride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To think how little I dreamed it led<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To an age so blest that, by its side,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Youth seems the waste instead?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And now read again:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Meet, <i>if thou require it</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Both demands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laying flesh and spirit<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In thy hands."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A lower note there, is it not? And shall he so require, and she so +yield, that backward-treading <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>path is not for them—never shall <i>they</i> +say to one another:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Come back with me to the first of all,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let us lean and love it over again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let us now forget and now recall,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Break the rosary in a pearly rain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gather what we let fall!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Too many tears would fall on that wife's rosary—the wife who had begun +so soon to know that Edens shall be lost by thinking Eves!</p> + +<p>But let me not enforce a moral. The mood is one that women know, and +often wisely use. "Talking" <i>is</i> to be hidden, "cheek on cheek," from +the hawk on the bough: but talking, as this wife will quickly see, is +not the sum of individuality's expression. She can teach him—learning +from him all the while—<i>not</i> to "require it": she, this same sweet, +strong-souled woman, for to be able to speak as she speaks here is her +sure indenture of freedom.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That shall be to-morrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Not to-night:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must bury sorrow<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Out of sight."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The "sorrow" is for him, not for herself: he has fallen below his +highest in the tyranny of to-night. Then be sure that she, so loving and +so seeing, shall lift him up to-morrow! <i>This</i> tear shall be dried.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>JAMES LEE'S WIFE</h3> + + +<p>In this song-cycle of nine poems we are shown the death of a woman's +heart. James Lee's wife sums up in herself, as it were, all those +"troubles of love" which we have considered in the earlier monologues. +The man has failed her—as De Lorge failed his lady, as the poet the +"poor, pretty thoughtful thing"; love has left her—as it left the woman +of <i>The Laboratory</i> and the girl of <i>In a Year</i>; she and her husband are +at variance in the great things of life—like the couple, in <i>A Woman's +last Word</i>. But even the complete surrender of individuality resolved +upon by the wife in that poem would not now avail, if indeed it ever +would have availed, the wife of James Lee. All is over, and, as she +gradually realises, over with such finality that there is only one thing +she can do, and that is to leave him—"set him free."</p> + +<p>We learn the mournful story from the wife's lips only; the husband never +speaks, and is but once present. All we actually see are the moods of +nine separate days—spread over what precise period of time we are not +clearly shown, but it was certainly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>a year. These nine revealings show +us every stage from the first faint pang of apprehension to the accepted +woe; then the battle with <i>that</i>—the hope that love may yet prevail; +the clutch at some high stoicism drawn from the laws of nature, or from +"old earth's" genial wisdom; next, the less exalted plan to be "of use," +since there is nothing else for her to be—and finally the flight, the +whole renunciation. Echoes hover from all sad women's stories elsewhere +studied: the Tear reigns supreme, the Victim is <i>in excelsis</i>—for +hardly did Pompilia suffer such excess of misery, since she at least +could die, remembering Caponsacchi. James Lee's wife will live, +remembering James Lee.</p> + +<p>Into the chosen commonplace of the man's name<a name="FNanchor_251-1_35" id="FNanchor_251-1_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_251-1_35" class="fnanchor">[251:1]</a> we may read a +symbolism. "This is every-day's news," the poet seems to say; "you may +watch the drama for yourselves whenever you so please." And only indeed +in the depth of the woman's passion is there aught unusual. <i>That</i>, as +uttered in the final poem, seems more than normal—since she knows her +husband for (as she so strangely says of him) "mere ignoble earth"; yet +still can claim that he "set down to her"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love that was life, life that was love,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">A rapture to fall where your foot might be."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p><p>More—or less—than dog-like is such love, for dogs are unaware of +"mere ignoble earth," dogs do not judge and analyse and patronise, and +resolve to "make the low nature better for their throes." Never has the +mistaken idea, the inept conduct, of passion been so subtly shown us, +with so much at once of pity and of irony.</p> + +<p>James Lee's wife is a plain woman.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Why, fade you might to a thing like me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So she cries in the painful concluding poem. Faded, coarse-haired, +coarse-skinned . . . is all said? But he had married her. In what, do we +find the word of that enigma? In the beauties of her heart and mind—the +passionate, devoted heart, the subtle, brooding mind. These had done the +first work; and alas! they have done the second also. The heart was +passionate and devoted, but it analysed too closely, and then clung too +closely; the mind was subtle and intense, but it could not rest, it +could not "take for granted"—male synonym for married bliss! And of +course we shall not dare deny James Lee his trustiest, sturdiest weapon: +<i>she had no sense of humour!</i> . . . If he was incomplete, so too was she; +and her incompleteness was of the kind that, in this relation, never +fails to fail—his, of the kind that more often than not succeeds. Thus +she sums him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span><span class="i0">"With much in you waste, with many a weed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And plenty of passions run to seed,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But a little good grain too."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This man, who may be reckoned in his thousands, as the corresponding +type in woman may, needs—not tyrannically, because unconsciously—a +mate who far excels him in all that makes nobility; and, nine times out +of ten, obtains her. "Mrs. James Lee" (how quaintly difficult it is to +realise that sequence!) is, on the contrary, of the type that one might +almost say inevitably fails to find the "true" mate. Perhaps she <i>has</i> +none. Perhaps, to be long loved, to be even long endured, this type must +alter itself by modification or suppression, like the wife in the <i>Last +Word</i>—who was not of it! For here is the very heart of the problem: can +or cannot character be altered? James Lee's wife is of the morbid, the +unbalanced, the unlovely: these, if they are to "survive," must learn +the lore of self-suppression. Not for them exactingness, caprice, the +gay or grave analysis of love and lover: such moods charm alone in +lovely women, and even in <i>them</i> bring risks along. The Mrs. Lees must +curb them wholly. As the whims of unwedded love, they may perchance +amuse or interest; marriage, for such, comports them not at all.</p> + +<p>Let us trace, compassionately if ironically, the mistakes of this sad +woman.</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>I.—SHE SPEAKS AT THE WINDOW</h4> + +<p>He is coming back to their seaside home at Sainte-Marie, near +Pornic—the Breton "wild little place" which Browning knew and loved so +well. "Close to the sea—a hamlet of a dozen houses, perfectly +lonely—one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea for miles. +I feel out of the earth sometimes as I sit here at the window."<a name="FNanchor_254-1_36" id="FNanchor_254-1_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_254-1_36" class="fnanchor">[254:1]</a></p> + +<p>And at the window <i>she</i> sits, watching for James Lee's return. Yesterday +it was summer, but the strange sudden "stop" has come, eerily, as it +always seems to come.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ah, Love, but a day<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the world has changed!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sun's away,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the bird estranged;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wind has dropped,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the sky's deranged:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Summer has stopped."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We can picture him as he arrives and listens to her: is there already a +faint annoyance? Need she so drearily depict the passing of summer? It +is bad enough that it <i>should</i> pass—we need not talk about it! Such +annoyance we all have felt with the relentless chroniclers of change. +Enough, enough; since summer is gone and we cannot bring it back, let us +think of something else. . . . But she goes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>on, and now we shall not doubt +that he is enervated, for this is what she says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look in my eyes!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Wilt thou change too?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should I fear surprise?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shall I find aught new<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the old and dear,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In the good and true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the changing year?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The questions have come to her—come on what cold blast from heaven, or +him? But in pity for herself, let her not ask them! We seem to see the +man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the +thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind. +"I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And +then, doomed blunderer, she goes on:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thou art a man,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But I am thy love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the lake, its swan;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For the dell, its dove;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And for thee (oh, haste!)<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Me, to bend above,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Me, to hold embraced."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She does not <i>say</i>, "oh, haste!"—that is the silent comment (we must +think) on her not instantly answered plea for his embrace. . . . And when +the embrace does come—the claimed embrace—we can figure to ourselves +the all it lacks.</p> + + +<h4><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>II.—BY THE FIRESIDE</h4> + +<p>Summer now indeed is gone; they are sitting by their fire of wood. The +blue and purple flames leap up and die and leap again, and she sits +watching them. The wood that makes those coloured flames is shipwreck +wood. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, for the ills half-understood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dim dead woe<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Long ago<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Befallen this bitter coast of France!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then, ever the morbid analogy, the fixed idea:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, poor sailors took their chance;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I take mine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Out there on the sea even now, some of those "poor sailors" may be +eyeing the ruddy casement and gnashing their teeth for envy and hate,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O' the warm safe house and happy freight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">—Thee and me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The irony of it seizes her. Those sailors need not curse them! Ships +safe in port have their own perils of rot and rust and worms in the wood +that gnaw the heart to dust. . . . "That is worse."</p> + +<p>And how long the house has stood here, to anger the drenched, stark men +on the sea! Who lived here before this couple came? Did another woman +before herself watch the man "with whom began <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>love's voyage full-sail" + . . . watch him and see the planks of love's ship start, and hell open +beneath?</p> + +<p><i>This</i> mood she speaks not, only sits and broods upon. And he? Men too +can watch, and struggle with themselves, and feel that little help is +given them. Some sailors come safe home, and these would have been +lighted by the ruddy casement. But she thinks only of the sailors +drowning, and gnashing their teeth for hate of the "warm safe house." +That melancholy brooding—and if she but looked lovely while she +broods. . . .</p> + + +<h4>III.—IN THE DOORWAY</h4> + +<p>She stands alone in the doorway, and looks out upon the dreary autumn +landscape.<a name="FNanchor_257-1_37" id="FNanchor_257-1_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_257-1_37" class="fnanchor">[257:1]</a> It is a grey October day; the sea is in "stripes like +a snake"—olive-pale near the land, black and "spotted white with the +wind" in the distance. How ominous it shows: good fortune is surely on +the wing.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As she gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the +golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its +stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart +"shrivels up and her spirit shrinks curled."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p><p>But courage, courage! Winter comes to all—not to them alone. And have +they not love, and a house big enough to hold them, with its four rooms, +and the field there, red and rough, not yielding now, but again to +yield? Rabbits and magpies, though now they find no food there (the +magpies already have well-nigh deserted it; when one <i>does</i> alight, it +seems an event), yet will again find food. But November—the chill month +with its "rebuff"—will see both rabbits and magpies quite departed. . . . +No! This shall not be her mood. Winter comes indeed to mere material +nature; God means precisely that the spirit shall inherit His power to +put life into the darkness and the cold. The spirit defies external +change:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And she turns to go in, for the hour at rest and solaced. They have the +house, and the field . . . and love.</p> + + +<h4>IV.—ALONG THE BEACH</h4> + +<p>Rest and solace have departed: winter is come—to all. She walks alone +on the beach; one may do that, "on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, +for miles";<a name="FNanchor_258-1_38" id="FNanchor_258-1_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_258-1_38" class="fnanchor">[258:1]</a> and broods once more. She figures him beside her; +they are speaking frankly of her pain. She "will be quiet." . . . Piteous +phrase of all unquiet women! She will be quiet; she will "reason <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>why he +is wrong." Well for her that the talk is but a fancied one; she would +not win far with such a preamble, were it real! It is thus that in +almost every word we can trace the destined failure of this loving +woman. . . . She begins her "reasoning."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You wanted my love—is that much true?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so I did love, so I do:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What has come of it all along?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I took you—how could I otherwise?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">For a world to me, and more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all, love greatens and glorifies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In what was mere earth before.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yes, earth—yes, mere ignoble earth!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Now do I mis-state, mistake?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Seal my sense up for your sake?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You were just weak earth, I knew":<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and then, pursuing, she sums him up as we saw at the beginning of our +study.</p> + +<p>Well for her, I say again, that this is but a fancied talk! And since it +is, we can accord her a measure of wisdom. For she <i>has</i> been wise in +one thing: she has not "wronged his weakness and called it worth"—that +memorable phrase, so Browningesque!</p> + +<p>She has "seen through" him, yet she loves him. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>Thus far, then, kind and +wise in her great passion. . . . But she should <i>forget</i> that she has seen +through him—she should keep that vision in the background, not hold it +ever in her sight. And now herself begins to see that this is where she +has not been wise. She took him for hers, just as he was—and did not +he, thus accepted, find her his? Has she not watched all that was as yet +developed in him, and waited patiently, wonderingly, for the more to +come?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Well, and if none of these good things came,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">What did the failure prove?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The man was my whole world, all the same."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>That</i> is the fault in her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">"That I do love, watch too long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wait too well, and weary and wear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And 'tis all an old story, and my despair<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Fit subject for some new song."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She has shown him too much love and indulgence and hope implied in the +indulgence: this was the wrong way. The "bond" has been felt—and such +"light, light love" as his has wings to fly at the mere suspicion of a +bond. He has grown weary of her "wisdom"; pleasure is his aim in life, +and <i>that</i> is always ready to "turn up next in a laughing eye." . . . So +the songs have said and will say for all time—the new songs for the old +despair.</p> + +<p>But though she knows all this (we seem to see), <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>she will not be able to +act upon it. Always she will watch too long, and wait too well. Hers is +a nature as simple as it is intense. No sort of subterfuge is within her +means—neither the gay deception nor the grave. What she knows that he +resents, she still must do immutably—bound upon the wheel of her true +self. For only one "self" she has, and that the wrong one.</p> + +<p>She turns back, she walks homeward along the beach—"on the edge of the +low rocks by the sea, for miles."</p> + + +<h4>V.—ON THE CLIFF</h4> + +<p>But still love is a power! Love can move mountains, for is not love the +same as faith? And not a mountain is here, but a mere man's +heart—already "moved," for he <i>has</i> loved her.</p> + +<p>It is summer again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry +grass—if one still can call it grass, so "deep was done the work of the +summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the grass, and +flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a shell: +"death's altar by the lone shore." The drear analogies succeed one +another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead grass, the +dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A +cricket—only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real +fairy, with wings all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of +fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">See, wonderful blue and red!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Shall there not then be other analogies? May not the minds of men, +though burnt and bare as the turf and the rock, be changed like them, +transfigured like them:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With such a blue-and-red grace, not theirs—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love settling unawares!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was almost a miracle, was it not? the way they changed. Such miracles +happen every day.</p> + + +<h4>VI.—READING A BOOK, UNDER THE CLIFF</h4> + +<p>These clever young men! She is reading a poem of the wind.<a name="FNanchor_262-1_39" id="FNanchor_262-1_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_262-1_39" class="fnanchor">[262:1]</a> The +singer asks what the wind wants of him—so instant does it seem in its +appeal.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Art thou a dumb wronged thing that would be righted,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Entrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith requited<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With falsehood—love, at last aware<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of scorn—hopes, early blighted—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'We have them; but I know not any tone<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dost think men would go mad without a moan,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If they knew any way to borrow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pathos like thine own?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>The splendid lines assail her.<a name="FNanchor_263-1_40" id="FNanchor_263-1_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_263-1_40" class="fnanchor">[263:1]</a> In her anguish of response she +turns from them at last—they are too much. This power of perception is +almost a baseness! And bitterly resentful of the young diviner who can +thus show forth her inmost woe with his phrase of "love, <i>at last aware</i> +of scorn," she flings the volume from her—rejecting him, detesting him, +and finding ultimately through her stung sense the way to refute him who +has dared, with his mere boy's eyes, to discern such anguish. He is +wrong: the wind does <i>not</i> mean what he fancies by its moaning. He thus +interprets it, because he thinks only of himself, and of how the +suffering of others—failure, mistake, disgrace, relinquishment—is but +the example for his use, the help to his path untried! Such agonies as +her own are mere instances for him to recognise and put into a +phrase—like that one, which stings the spirit, and sets the heart to +woe-fullest aching, and brims the eyes with bitter, bitterest tears. How +dare he, with his crude boy's heart, embody grief like hers in words, +how dare he know—and now her irony turns cruel:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Himself the undefeated that shall be:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">His triumph in eternity<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too plainly manifest!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p><p>Of course he does not know! The wind means something else. And as the +pain grows fainter, she finds it easier to forgive him. How <i>could</i> "the +happy, prompt instinctive way of youth" discover the wind's secret? Only +"the kind, calm years, exacting their accompt of pain" can mature the +mind. This young poet, grown older, will learn the truth one day—on a +midsummer morning, at daybreak, looking over some "sparkling foreign +country," at its height of gloom and gloss. At its height—next minute +must begin, then, the work of destruction; and what shall be the +earliest sign? That very wind beginning among the vines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">"So low, so low, what shall it say but this?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Here is the change beginning, here the lines<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The limit time assigns.'" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Change is the law of life: <i>that</i> is what the wind says.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nothing can be as it has been before;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Better, so call it, only not the same.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To draw one beauty into our hearts' core,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And keep it changeless! Such our claim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So answered: Never more!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Simple? Why, this is the old woe of the world;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Tune, to whose rise and fall we live and die.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise with it then! Rejoice that man is hurled<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From change to change unceasingly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His soul's wings never furled!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p><p>Her rejection of the "young man's pride" has raised her for an instant +above her own suffering. Flinging back his interpretation in his +face—that interpretation which had pierced her to the quick with its +intensity of vision—she has found a better one; and for a while she +rests in this. "The laws of nature": shall not that be the formula to +still her pain? . . . Not yet, not yet; the heart was numbed but for a +moment. Stung to such fresh life as it has been but now, it cries +imperiously again. The laws of nature?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That's a new question; still replies the fact,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We moan in acquiescence."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Only to acquiescence can we attain.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"God knows: endure his act!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the human loss, the human anguish. . . . Formulas touch not these, nor +does acquiescence mitigate. Tell ourselves as wisely as we may that +mutability must be—we yet discern where the woe lies. We cannot fix the +"one fair good wise thing" just as we grasped it—cannot engrave it, as +it were, on our souls. And then we die—and it is gone for ever, and we +would have sunk beneath death's wave, as we sink now, to save it—but +time washed over it ere death mercifully came. It was abolished even +while we lived: the wind had begun <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>"so low, so low" . . . and carried it +away on its moaning voice. Change is the very essence of life; and life +may be probation for a better life—who knows? But if she could have +engraved, immutable, on her soul, the hours in which her husband loved +her. . . .</p> + + +<h4>VII.—AMONG THE ROCKS</h4> + +<p>Such anguish must, at least, "change" with the rest! And now that autumn +is fully come, the loss of summer is more bearable. It is while we hope +that summer still may stay that we are tortured.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">This autumn morning!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She will forget the "laws of nature": she will unreflectingly watch +earth. That is best.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6h">". . . How he sets his bones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the ripple to run over in its mirth;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Listening the while, where on the heap of stones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The geniality of earth! She will sink her troubled soul into the vast +tranquillity. No science, no "cosmic whole"—just this: the brown old +earth.</p> + +<p>But soon the analogy-hunting begins: that soul <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>of hers can never rest. +What does "this," then, show forth? Her love in its tide can flow over +the lower nature, as the waves flow over the basking rocks. "Old earth +smiles and knows":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If you loved only what were worth your love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Make the low nature better by your throes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I confess that I cannot follow this analogy. The lesson may be clear—of +that later; the analogy escapes me. Who says that rocks are of lower +nature than the sea which washes them? But if it does not mean this, +what does it mean? Mrs. Orr interprets thus: "As earth blesses her +smallest creatures with her smile, so should love devote itself to those +less worthy beings who may be ennobled by it." That seems to me to touch +this instance not at all. It is the earth who has set "himself" (in the +unusual personification) to bask in the sun; the earth, <i>here</i>, is +getting, not giving. Or rather, all is one: each element wholly joys in +the other. And watching this, the woman wrings from it "the doctrine +simple, ancient, true," that love is self-sacrifice. Let that be true, I +still cannot see how the symbol aids the doctrine.</p> + +<p>And the doctrine? Grant that love is self-sacrifice (I had rather say +that self-sacrifice is a part, and but a part, of love): is love also +self-sufficiency?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Make the low nature better by your throes."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>It is a strange love, surely, which so speaks? Shall a man live, +despised, in harmony with her who despises him? James Lee's wife may +call this love, but we absolve James Lee, I think, if he does not! For +human beings feel most subtly when scorn dwells near them; they may +indeed have caused that scorn—but let there be no talk of love where it +subsists.</p> + +<p>Even bitterness were less destructive to the woman's hope than this +strange counting of the cost, this self-sufficiency. Our sympathy must +leave her at this phase; and sympathy for her was surely Browning's aim? +But possibly it was not; and <i>if</i> not, this indeed is subtle.</p> + + +<h4>VIII.—BESIDE THE DRAWING-BOARD</h4> + +<p>She had turned wearily from the household cares, the daily direction of +a little peasant-servant, to her drawing-board. A cast from Leonardo da +Vinci of a woman's hand is her model, and for an hour she has been +happily working. She has failed; but that has not clouded joy nor damped +ardour.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Its beauty mounted into my brain,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and, effacing the failures, she has yielded to a fancy—has taken the +chalk between her lips, instead of her fingers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"With soul to help if the mere lips failed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I kissed all right where the drawing ailed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still from one's soulless finger-tips."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p><p>This hand was that of a worshipped woman. Her fancy sets the ring on +it, by which one knows</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That here at length a master found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His match, a proud lone soul its mate."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Not even Da Vinci's pencil had been able to trace all the beauty—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">". . . how free, how fine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To fear almost!—of the limit-line."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>He</i>, like her, had suffered some defeat. But think of the minutes in +which, with her he worshipped, he "looked and loved, learned and drew, +Drew and learned and loved again!" Such moments are not for such as she. +She will go back to the household cares—she has her lesson, and it is +not the same as Da Vinci's.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Little girl with the poor coarse hand"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p> . . . this is <i>her</i> model, from whom she had turned to a cold clay cast. +Her business is to understand, not the almost fearful beauty of a thing +like this, but "the worth of flesh and blood."</p> + +<p>But was not that Da Vinci's business too? Would he not, could she speak +with him, proudly tell her so? "Nothing but beauty in a hand." Would the +Master have turned from this peasant one? No: she hears him condemn her, +laugh her woes to scorn.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The fool forsooth is all forlorn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because the beauty she thinks best<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span><span class="i0">Lived long ago or was never born,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because no beauty bears the test<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In this rough peasant hand!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was not long before Da Vinci threw aside the faulty pencil, and spent +years instead of hours in studying, not the mere external loveliness, +but the anatomy of the hand, learning the veritable use</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Of flesh and bone and nerve that make<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The poorest coarsest human hand<br /></span> +<span class="i1">An object worthy to be scanned<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A whole life long for their sole sake."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Just the hand—and all the body still to learn. Is not this the lesson +of life—this incompleteness?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Now the parts and then the whole!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And here is she, declaring that if she is not loved, she must die—she, +with her stinted soul and stunted body! Look again at the peasant hand. +No beauty is there—but it can spin the wool and bake the bread:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'What use survives the beauty?'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes: Da Vinci would proclaim her fool.</p> + +<p>Then <i>this</i> shall be the new formula. She will be of use; will do the +daily task, forgetting the unattainable ideals. She cannot keep her +husband's love, any more than she can draw the perfect hand; then she +will not waste her life in sighing for either gift. She will be useful; +she will gain cheer <i>that</i> way, since all the others fail her.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span><span class="i0">"Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have my lesson, shall understand."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is the last hope—to be of humble use; this the last formula for +survival.</p> + + +<h4>IX.—ON DECK</h4> + +<p>And this has failed like the rest. She is on board the boat that carries +her away from him, she has found the last formula: <i>set him free</i>. Well, +it in its turn has been followed: she is gone. Gone—in every sense.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There is nothing to remember in me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nothing I ever said with a grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nothing I did that you care to see,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nothing I was that deserves a place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In your mind, now I leave you, set you free."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No "<i>petite fleur dans la pensée</i>"—none, none: she grants him all her +dis-grace. But will he not grant her something too—now that she is +gone? Will he not grant that men have loved such women, when the women +have loved them so utterly? It <i>has</i> been: she knows that, and the more +certainly now that she has yielded finally her claim to a like miracle. +His soul is locked fast; but, "love for a key" (if he could but have +loved her!), what might not have happened? She might have grown the same +in his eyes as he is in hers!</p> + +<p>So strange it is to think of <i>that</i>. . . . She can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>think anything when +such imagining is once possible to her. She can think of <i>him</i> as the +"harsh, ill-favoured one!" For what would it have mattered—her +ugliness—if he had loved her? They would have been "like as pea and +pea." Ever since the world began, love has worked such spells—that is +so true that she has warrant to work out this strange, new dream.</p> + +<p>Imagine it. . . . If he had all her in his heart, as she has all him in +hers! He, whose least word brought gloom or glee, who never lifted his +hand in vain—that hand which will hold hers still, from over the sea . . . +if, when <i>he</i> thinks of her, a face as beautiful as his own should rise +to his imagination—with eyes as dear, a mouth like that, as bright a +brow. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Till you saw yourself, while you cried ''Tis she!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But it will not be—and if it could be, she would not know or care, for +the joy would have killed her.</p> + +<p>Or turn it again the converse way. Supposing he could "fade to a thing +like her," with the coarse hair and skin . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You might turn myself!—should I know or care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Either way it would kill her, so she may as well be gone, with her</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love that was life, life that was love";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p><p>and there is nothing at all to remember in her. As long as she lives +his words and looks will circle round <i>her</i> memory. If she could fancy +one touch of love for her once coming in those words and looks again. . . . +But the boat moves on, farther, ever farther from the little house with +its four rooms and its field and fig-tree and vines—from the window, +the fireside, the doorway, from the beach and cliff and rocks. All the +formulas have failed but this one. This one will not fail. He is set +free.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>She had to go; and neither him nor her can we condemn. "One near one is +too far." She saw and loved too well: one or the other she should have +been wise enough to hide from him. But she could not. Character is fate; +and two characters are two fates. Neither, with that other, could be +different; each might, with another "other," have been all that each was +meant to be.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251-1_35" id="Footnote_251-1_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251-1_35"><span class="label">[251:1]</span></a> The poems were first called <i>James Lee</i> only.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254-1_36" id="Footnote_254-1_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254-1_36"><span class="label">[254:1]</span></a> <i>Life</i>, Mrs. Orr, p. 266.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257-1_37" id="Footnote_257-1_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257-1_37"><span class="label">[257:1]</span></a> "The little church, a field, a few houses, and the +sea . . . Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind!"—<i>Life</i>, p. 266.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258-1_38" id="Footnote_258-1_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258-1_38"><span class="label">[258:1]</span></a> <i>Life</i>, p. 266.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262-1_39" id="Footnote_262-1_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262-1_39"><span class="label">[262:1]</span></a> These lines were published by Browning, separately, in +1836, when he was twenty-six. <i>James Lee's Wife</i> was published in 1864.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263-1_40" id="Footnote_263-1_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263-1_40"><span class="label">[263:1]</span></a> Nettleship well says: "The difference between the first +and second parts of this section is that, while the plaint of the wind +was enough to make Browning write in 1836, he must have the plaint of a +soul in 1863. . . . And yet, something is lost."</p></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> +<h2>PART V</h2> + +<div class="img"> +<img src="images/image07.png" alt="The Trouble of Love" width="70%" /> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> +<h2>TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<h3>THE WOMAN UNWON</h3> + +<p>In the section entitled "Lovers Meeting" we saw the exultant mood of +love in man, and I there pointed out how seldom even Browning has +assigned that mood to woman. But he does not show her as alone in +suffering love's pain. The lyrics we are now to consider give us woman +as the maker of love's pain for man; we learn her in this character +through the utterances of men—and these are noble utterances, every +one. Mr. J. T. Nettleship, in his <i>Essays and Thoughts</i>, well remarks +that man's passion shows, in Browning's work, "a greater width of view +and intellectual power" than woman's does; that in the feminine +utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is +imagined";<a name="FNanchor_277-1_41" id="FNanchor_277-1_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_277-1_41" class="fnanchor">[277:1]</a> and that in such utterances "we notice . . . an absolute +want of originality and of power to look at the passion of love in an +abstract sense outside the woman herself and her lover."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>I too have, by implication, found this fault with Browning; but Mr. +Nettleship differs from me in that he apparently delights to dwell on +the idea of woman's accepted inferiority—her "tender, unaspiring +love . . . type of that perfection which looks to one superior." It will be +seen from this how little he is involved by feminism. That woman should +be the glad inferior quarrels not at all with his vision of things as +they should be. Man, indeed, he grants, "must firmly establish his +purity and constancy before he dares to assert supremacy over Nature": +woman, we may suppose, being—as if she were not quite certainly <i>a +person</i>—included in Nature. That a devotee of Browning should retain +this attitude may well surprise us, since nothing in his "teaching" is +clearer than that woman is the great inspiring influence for man. But +the curious fact which has struck both Mr. Nettleship and myself—that, +in Browning's work, woman does so frequently, <i>when expressing herself</i>, +fail in breadth and imagination—may very well account for the obsolete +gesture in this interpreter. . . . Can it be, then, that Browning was (as +has frequently been said of him) very much less dramatic a writer than +he wished to believe himself? Or, more aptly for our purpose to frame +the question, was he dramatic only for men? Did he merely guess at, and +not grasp, the deepest emotions and thoughts of women? This, if it be +affirmed, will rob him of some glory—yet I think that affirmed it must +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>be. It leaves him all nobility of mind and heart with regard to us; the +glory of which he is robbed is after all but that of thaumaturgic +power—it is but to say that he could not turn himself into a woman!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In what ways does Browning show us as the makers of "love's trouble" for +man? First, of course, as loved and unwon. But though this be the most +obvious of the ways, not obvious is Browning's treatment of it. To love +"in vain" is a phrase contemned of him. No love is in vain. Grief, +anguish even, may attend it, but never can its issue be futility. Nor is +this merely the already familiar view that somehow, though rejected, +love benignly works for the beloved. "That may be, that <i>is</i>" (he seems +to say), "but it is not the truth which most inspires me." The glory of +love for Browning resides most radiantly in what it does for the lover's +own soul. It is "God's secret": one who loves is initiate.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life will just hold out the proving both our powers, alone and blended:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then, come next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>That is the concluding stanza of <i>Cristina</i>, which might be called the +companion-piece to <i>Porphyria's Lover</i>; for in each the woman belongs to +a social world remote from her adorer's; in each she has, nevertheless, +perceived him and been drawn to him—but in <i>Cristina</i> is caught back +into the vortex, while in <i>Porphyria's Lover</i> the passion prevails, for +the man, by killing her, has kept her folded in "God's secret" with +himself.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She should never have looked at me if she meant I should not love her!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There are plenty . . . men, you call such, I suppose . . . she may discover<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All her soul to, if she pleases, and yet leave much as she found them:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I'm not so, and she knew it, when she fixed me, glancing round them."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is the lover's first impulsive cry on finding himself "thrown +over." Why did she not leave him alone? Others tell him that that +"fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he +"can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about +giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about +lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the +queen of women. Not <i>that</i>, whatever else!</p> + +<p>And now, so sure of this that he grows sure of other things as well, he +declares that it was a moment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>of true revelation for her also—she +<i>did</i> perceive in him the man she wanted.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! but not quite so sunk that moments,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, when the spirit's true endowments<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise it if pursuing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or the right way or the wrong way, to its triumph or undoing."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That was what she had felt—the queen of women! A coquette, if they +will, for others, but not for him; and, though cruel to him also in the +event, not because she had not recognised him. She <i>had</i> recognised him, +and more—she had recognised the great truth, had deeply felt that the +soul "stops here" for but one end, the true end, sole and single: "this +love-way."</p> + +<p>If the soul miss that way, it goes wrong. There may be better ends, +there may even be deeper blisses, but that is the essential—that is the +significant thing in life.</p> + +<p>But they need not smile at his fatuity! He sees that she "knew," but he +can see the issue also.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, observe! of course, next moment, the world's honours, in derision,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trampled out the light for ever. Never fear but there's provision<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the devil's to quench knowledge, lest we walk the earth in rapture" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p><p><i>That</i> must be reckoned with; but all it does to those who "catch God's +secret" is simply to make them prize their capture so much the more:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for though she has cast him off, he has grasped her soul, and will +retain it. He has prevailed, and all the rest of his life shall prove +him the victorious one—the one who has two souls to work with! He will +prove all that such a pair can accomplish; and then death can come +quickly: "this world's use will have been ended." She also knew this, +but would not follow it to its issue. Thus she lost him—but he gained +her, and that shall do as well.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>No loving "in vain" there! But this poem is the high-water mark of +unsuccessful love exultant. Browning was too true a humanist to keep us +always on so shining a peak; he knew that there are lower levels, where +the wounded wings must rest—that mood, for instance, of wistful +looking-back to things undreamed-of and now gone, yet once experienced:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This is a spray the bird clung to,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Making it blossom with pleasure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Fit for her nest and her treasure.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Oh, what a hope beyond measure<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span><span class="i0">Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This is a heart the Queen leant on" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and in a stanza far less lovely than that of the bird, he shows forth +the analogy. The Queen "went on"; but what a moment that heart had +had! . . . Gratitude, we see always, for the gift of love in the heart, for +God's secret. The lover was left alone, but he had known the thrill. +"Better to have loved and lost"—nay, but "lost," for Browning, is not +in the scheme. She is there, in the world, whether his or another's.</p> + +<p>Sometimes she has never been his at all, has never cared:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All June I bound the rose in sheaves.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And strew them where Pauline may pass.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She will not turn aside? Alas!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let them lie. Suppose they die?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The chance was, they might take her eye."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then, for many a month, he tried to learn the lute to please her.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To-day I venture all I know.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She will not hear my music? So!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Break the string; fold music's wing:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus we gradually see that all his life he has been learning to love +her. Now he has resolved to speak. . . . Heaven or hell?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span><span class="i0">"She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lose who may—I still can say<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those who win heaven, blest are they!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here again is Browning's typical lover. Never does he whine, never +resent: she was free to choose, and she has not chosen <i>him</i>. That is +pain; but of the "humiliation" commonly assigned to unsuccessful love, +he never dreams: where can be humiliation in having caught God's +secret? . . . And even if she have half-inclined to him, but found that not +all herself can give herself—more pain in that, a nearer approach to +"failure," perhaps—even so, he understands.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I said—Then dearest, since 'tis so,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since now at length my fate I know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since nothing all my love avails,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Since this was written and needs must be—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My whole heart rises up to bless<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your name in pride and thankfulness!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take back the hope you gave—I claim<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only a memory of the same<br /></span> +<span class="i0">—And this beside, if you will not blame,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your leave for one more last ride with me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The girl hesitates. Her proud dark eyes, half-pitiful, dwell on him for +a moment—"with life or death in the balance," thinks he.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11h">". . . Right!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blood replenished me again;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My last thought was at least not vain;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span><span class="i0">I and my mistress, side by side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall be together, breathe and ride;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So, one day more am I deified.<br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>Who knows but the world may end to-night?</i>"<a name="FNanchor_285-1_42" id="FNanchor_285-1_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_285-1_42" class="fnanchor">[285:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now the moment comes in which he lifts her to the saddle. It is as if he +had drawn down upon his breast the fairest, most celestial cloud in +evening-skies . . . a cloud touched gloriously at once by setting sun and +rising moon and evening-star.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Down on you, near and yet more near,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till flesh must fade for heaven was here—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thus lay she a moment on my breast."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then they begin to ride. His soul smooths itself out—there shall be +no repining, no questioning: he will take the whole of his hour.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Had I said that, had I done this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So might I gain, so might I miss.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Might she have loved me? just as well<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She might have hated, who can tell!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">And here we are riding, she and I."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>He</i> is not the only man who has failed. All men strive—who succeeds? +His enfranchised spirit seems to range the universe—everywhere the +<i>done</i> is petty, the undone vast; everywhere men dream beyond their +powers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I hoped she would love me; here we ride!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>No one gains all. Hand and brain are never equal; hearts, when they can +greatly conceive, fail in the greatest courage; nothing we do is just +what we dreamed it might be. We are hedged in everywhere by the fleshly +screen. But <i>they</i> two ride, and he sees her bosom lift and fall. . . . To +the rest, then, their crowns! To the statesman, ten lines, perhaps, +which contain the fruit of all his life; to a soldier, a flag stuck on a +heap of bones—and as guerdon for each, a name scratched on the Abbey +stones.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My riding is better, by their leave!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Even our artists! The poet says the thing, but we feel it. Not one of us +can express it like him; but has he <i>had</i> it? When he dies, will he have +been a whit nearer his own sublimities than the lesser spirits who have +never turned a line?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(Note the fine irony here. The poet shall sing the joy of riding; this +man <i>rides</i>.)</p> + +<p>The great sculptor, too, with his twenty years' slavery to Art:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And that's your Venus, whence we turn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To yonder girl that fords the burn!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the sculptor, with his insight, acquiesces, so this man need not +pity him. The musician fares even worse. After <i>his</i> life's labours, +they say (even his friends say) that the opera is great in intention, +but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>fashions change so quickly in music—he is out-of-date. He gave his +youth? Well—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Supposing we could know perfect bliss in this world, what should we have +for which to strive? We must lead some life beyond, we must have a bliss +to die for! If <i>he</i> had this glory-garland round his soul, what other +joy could he ever so dimly descry?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus he has mused, riding beside her, to the horses' rhythmic stretching +pace. It shall be best as she decrees. She rejects him: he will not +whine; what she does shall somehow have its good for him—<i>she</i> shall +not be wrong! He has the thought of her in his soul, and the memory of +her—and there will be, as well, the memory of this ride. That moment he +has, whole and perfect:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who knows but the world may end to-night!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes; they ride on—the sights, the sounds, the thoughts, encompass them; +they are together. His soul, all hers, has yet been half-withdrawn from +her, so deeply has he mused on what she is to him: it is the great +paradox—almost one forgets that she is there, so intimate the union, +and so silent. . . . But is she <i>not</i> there? and, being there, does she not +now <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>seem to give him something strange and wonderful to take from her? +She <i>is</i> there—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And yet—she has not spoke so long!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She is as silent as he. They might both be in a trance. He knows what +his trance is—can it be that hers is the same? Then what would it +mean? . . . And the hope so manfully resigned floods back on him. What if +this <i>be</i> heaven—what if she has found, caught up like him, that she +does love?</p> + +<p>Can it mean that, gazing both, now in this glorious moment, at life's +flower of love, they both are fixed so, ever shall so abide—she with +him, as he with her? Can it mean that the instant is made eternity—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And heaven just prove that I and she<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ride, ride together, for ever ride?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Despite the transcendental interpretations of this glorious +love-song—surpassed, I think and many others think, by none in the +world—I believe that the concluding stanza means just that. Hope has +rushed on him again from her twin-silence—can she be at one with him in +all, as she is in this? Will the proud dark eyes have forgotten the +pity—and the pride? . . . The wrong that has been done to Browning by his +too-subtle "interpreters" is, in my view, incalculable. Always he must +be, for them, the teacher. But he is the <i>poet</i>! He "sings, riding's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>a +joy"—and such joy brings hope along with it, hope for the "obvious +human bliss." People seem to forget that it was Browning who made that +phrase<a name="FNanchor_289-1_43" id="FNanchor_289-1_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_289-1_43" class="fnanchor">[289:1]</a>—which might almost be his protest against the +transcendentalists.</p> + +<p>Much of his finest work has been thus falsified, thus strained to +meanings so "profound" as to be none at all. Mr. Nettleship's gloss upon +this stanza of <i>The Last Ride</i> is a case in point. "[The lover] buoys +himself with the hope that the highest bliss <i>may</i> be the change from +the minute's joy to an eternal fulfilment of joy." Does this mean +anything? And if it did, does that stanza mean <i>it</i>? I declare that it +means nothing, and that the stanza means what instinctively (I feel and +know) each reader, reading it—not "studying" it—accepts as its best +meaning: the human one, the true following of the so subtly-induced +mood. And that is, simply, the invigoration, the joy, of riding; and the +hope which comes along with that invigoration and that joy.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In the strange <i>Numpholeptos</i> we find, by implication, the heart of +Browning's "message" for women. "The nympholepts of old," explains Mr. +Augustine Birrell in one of the volumes of <i>Obiter Dicta</i>, "were those +unfortunates who, whilst carelessly strolling among sylvan shades, +caught a hasty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>glimpse of some spiritual inmate of the woods, in whose +pursuit their whole lives were ever afterwards fruitlessly spent."</p> + +<p>The man here has fallen in love with "an angelically pure and inhumanly +cold woman, who requires in him an unattainable union of immaculate +purity and complete experience of life."<a name="FNanchor_290-1_44" id="FNanchor_290-1_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_290-1_44" class="fnanchor">[290:1]</a></p> + +<p>She does not reject his love, but will wholly accept it only on these +impossible terms. Herself dwells in some "magic hall" whence ray forth +shafts of coloured light—crimson, purple, yellow; and along these +shafts, which symbolise experience, her lover is to travel—coming back +to her at close of each wayfaring, for the rays end before her feet, +beneath her eyes and smile, as they began. He goes forth in obedience; +he comes back. Ever the issue is the same: he comes back smirched. And +she—forgives him, but not loves him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What means the sad slow silver smile above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My clay but pity, pardon?—at the best<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But acquiescence that I take my rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Contented to be clay?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She "smiles him slow forgiveness"—nothing more; he is dismissed, must +travel forth again. <i>This</i> time he may return, untinged by the ray which +he is to traverse. She sends him, deliberately; he must break through +the quintessential whiteness that surrounds her—but he is to come back +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>unsmirched. So she pitilessly, for all her "pity," has decreed.</p> + +<p>And patient, mute, obedient, always he has gone—until this day. This +day his patience fails him, and he speaks. Once more he had come +back—once more been "pardoned." But the pity was so gentle—like a +moon-beam. He had almost hoped the smile would pass the "pallid moonbeam +limit," be "transformed at last to sunlight and salvation." If she could +pass that goal and "gain love's birth," he scarce would know his clay +from gold's own self; "for gold means love." . . . But no; the "sad slow +silver smile" had meant, as ever, naught but pity, pardon, acquiescence +in his lesserness for <i>him</i>. <i>She</i> acquiesced not; she keeps her love +for the "spirit-seven" before God's throne.<a name="FNanchor_291-1_45" id="FNanchor_291-1_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_291-1_45" class="fnanchor">[291:1]</a></p> + +<p>He then made one supreme appeal for</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love, the love sole and whole without alloy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p><p>Vainly! Such an appeal "must be felt, not heard." Her calm regard was +unchanged—nay, rather it had grown harsh and hard, had seemed to imply +disdain, repulsion, and he could not face those things; he rose from his +kissing of her feet—he <i>did</i> go forth again. This time he might return, +immaculate, from the path of that "lambent flamelet." . . . He knew he +could not, but—he <i>might</i>! She promises that he can: should he not +trust her?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>And now, to-day, once more he is returned. Still she stands, still she +listens, still she smiles! But he protests at last:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Surely I had your sanction when I faced,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fared forth upon that untried yellow ray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whence I retrack my steps?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The crimson, the purple had been explored; from them he had come back +deep-stained. How has the yellow used him? He has placed himself again +for judgment before her "blank pure soul, alike the source and tomb of +that prismatic glow." To this yellow he has subjected himself utterly: +she <i>had</i> ordained it! He was to "bathe, to burnish himself, soul and +body, to swim and swathe in yellow licence." And here he is: "absurd and +frightful," "suffused with crocus, saffron, orange"—just as he had been +with crimson, purple!</p> + +<p>She willed it so: he was to track the yellow ray. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>He pleads once more +her own permission—nay, command! And, as before, she shows</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Scarce recognition, no approval, some<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mistrust, more wonder at a man become<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Monstrous in garb, nay—flesh-disguised as well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through his adventure."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But she had said that, if he were worthily to retain her love, he must +share the knowledge shrined in her supernal eyes. And this was the one +way for <i>man</i> to gain that knowledge. Well, it is as before:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I pass into your presence, I receive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your smile of pity, pardon, and I leave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But no! This time he will not leave, he will not dumbly bend to his +penance. Hitherto he has trusted her word that the feat can be achieved, +the ray trod to its edge, yet he return unsmirched. He has tried the +experiment—and returned, "absurd as frightful." This is his last word.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10h">". . . No, I say:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No fresh adventure! No more seeking love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At end of toil, and finding, calm above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My passion, the old statuesque regard,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sad petrific smile!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he turns upon her with a violent invective. She is not so much hard +and hateful as mistaken and obtuse.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"You very woman with the pert pretence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To match the male achievement!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p><i>Who</i> could not be victorious when all is made easy, when the rough +effaces itself to smooth, the gruff "grinds down and grows a whisper"; +when man's truth subdues its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush spear that +womanly falsehood fights with? Oh woman's ears that will not hear the +truth! oh woman's "thrice-superfine feminity of sense," that ignores, as +by right divine, the process, and takes the spotless result from out the +very muck that made it!</p> + +<p>But he breaks off. "Ah me!" he cries,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The true slave's querulous outbreak!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And forth again, all slavishly, at her behest he fares. Who knows but +<i>this</i> time the "crimson quest" may deepen to a sunrise, not decay to +that cold sad sweet smile—which he obeys?</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Such a being as this, said Browning himself, "is imaginary, not real; a +nymph and no woman"; but the poem is "an allegory of an impossible ideal +of love, accepted conventionally." <i>How</i> impossible he has shown not +only here but everywhere—<i>how</i> conventionally accepted. This is not +woman's mission! And in the lover's querulous outbreak—the "true +slave's" outbreak—we may read the innermost meaning of the allegory. If +women will set up "the pert pretence to match the male achievement," +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>they must consent to take the world as men are forced to take it. There +must be no unfairness, no claim on the chivalry which has sought to +shield them: in the homely phrase, they must "take the rough with the +smooth"—not the stainless result alone, with a revolted shudder for the +marrings which have made it possible.</p> + +<p>But having flung these truths at her, observe that the man rues them. He +accepts himself as a slave: the slave (as I read this passage) to what +is <i>true</i> in the idea of woman's purity. The insufferable creature of +the smile is (as he says) the "mistaken and obtuse unreason of a +she-intelligence"; but somewhere there was right in her demand. If man +could but return, unstained! He must go forth, must explore the rays—of +all the claims of woman on him this is most insistent; but if he could +explore, and not return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience +is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"—the colours! The +shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, +but this is not <i>experience</i>, and she shall not conceit herself into +believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the +male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," +when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the +other she must choose: knowledge and the right to judge, or ignorance +and the duty to refrain from judgment. . . . And yet—he goes again; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>he +obeys the silver smile! For the "crimson-quest may deepen to a sunrise"; +he <i>may</i> come back and find her waiting, "sunlight and salvation," +because she understands at last; and both shall look for stains from +those long shafts, and see none there. . . . Maybe, maybe: he goes—will +come again one day; and <i>that</i> at last may prove itself the day when +"men are pure, and women brave."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>We pass from the unearthly atmosphere of <i>Numpholeptos</i>—well-nigh the +most abstract of all Browning's poems—to the vivid, astonishing realism +of <i>Too Late</i>.</p> + +<p>Edith is dead, and the man who loved her and failed to win her, is +musing upon the transmutation of all values in his picture of life which +has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his +absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who +married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That +life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her +and loved her and lost her—and it was as if a great stone had been cast +by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it—the +waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone +full-tide."</p> + +<p>The stone thwarted God. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about +it. Though the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>waves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win +past, a thread of water might escape and run through the +"evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea. +This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and +the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall +then have stilled his passion.</p> + +<p>The second way was better!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some night<br /></span> +<span class="i1">When new things happen, a meteor-ball<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May slip through the sky in a line of light,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try +again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look at +his life."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Watch and wear and wonder who will.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The woman is dead that was none of his;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the man that was none of hers may go!'<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p><p>All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a +"want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never +give it—and perhaps she <i>does</i> want him. He feels that she does—a +"pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs +help in her grave, and finds none near"—that from his heart, precisely +<i>his</i>, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it—so! . . . His +acquiescence then had been his error.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I ought to have done more: once my speech,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And once your answer, and there, the end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Edith was henceforth out of reach!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Why, men do more to deserve a friend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, better even have burst like a thief<br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>And borne you away to a rock for us two,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief</i>" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Well, <i>he</i> had not done this. But—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What did the other do? You be judge!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give him his six whole years: I grudge<br /></span> +<span class="i1">None of the life with you, nay, loathe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Myself that I grudged his start in advance<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of me who could overtake and pass.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, as if he loved you! No, not he,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain" . . .<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—for he who speaks, though he so loved and loves her, knows that he is +and was alone in his worship. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>He knows even that such worship of her +was among unaccountable things. That <i>he</i>, young, prosperous, sane, and +free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and +held it forth to <i>her</i>, and said, "Half a glance, and I drop the +glass!" . . . For—and now we come to those amazing stanzas which place +this passionate love-song by itself in the world—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The others? No head that was turned, no heart<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Broken, my lady, assure yourself!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her admirers had quickly recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a +friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to +believe that the peace of singleness <i>was</i> peace, and not—what they +were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth +about her was simply that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"On the whole, you were let alone, I think."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And laid so, on the shelf, she had "looked to the other, who +acquiesced." He was a poet, was he not?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Oh, what a prize! Had she appreciated adequately her pink of poets? . . . +But, after all, she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>had chosen him, before <i>this</i> lover: they had both +been tried.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Tekel</i>, found wanting, set aside,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till comfort come, and the last be bled:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He? He is tagging your epitaph."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And now sounds that cry of the girl of <i>In a Year</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"If it could only come over again!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She <i>must</i> have loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would +have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched +the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and pricked that leathern heart, +to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And late it was easy; late, you walked<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If I heard good news, you heard the same;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good +of it! He will keep alive—and long, she shall see; but not like the +others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he +means to end. Those others <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>may go on with the world—get gold, get +women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There are two who decline, a woman and I,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And enjoy our death in the darkness here."<a name="FNanchor_301-1_46" id="FNanchor_301-1_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_301-1_46" class="fnanchor">[301:1]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Only <i>he</i> +could have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of +lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is +which—the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one +have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in +those eyes—and yet "the others" did not love so, the defects <i>were</i> +valid: there should be some recognition: "<i>I</i> loved, <i>quand même</i>!" Why, +it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I liked that way you had with your curls,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Wound to a ball in a net behind:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span><span class="i0">Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And the dented chin, too—what a chin!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There were certain ways when you spoke, some words<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That you know you never could pronounce:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You were thin, however; like a bird's<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The world was right when it called you thin.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But I turn my back on the world: I take<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bid me live, Edith!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—and she shall be queen indeed, shall have high observance, courtship +made perfect. He seems to see her stand there—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Warm too, and white too: would this wine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had washed all over that body of yours,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p> . . . The wine of his life, that she would not take—but she shall take it +now! He will "slake thirst at her presence" by pouring it away, by +drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to do. Edith needs +help in her grave and finds none near—wants warmth from his heart? He +sends it—so.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Assuredly this is the meaning; yet none of the commentators says so. She +was the man's whole <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>life, and she has died. Then he dies too, that he +may live.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There are two who decline, a woman and I,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And enjoy our death in the darkness here."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet even in this we have no sense of failure, of "giving-in": it is for +intenser life that he dies, and she shall be his queen "while his soul +endures."</p> + +<p>This is the last of my "women unwon." In none of all these poems does +courage fail; love is ever God's secret. It comes and goes: the heart +has had its moment. It does not come at all: the heart has known the +loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with +it. It has set a price upon itself, a cruel crushing price: the heart +will pay it, if it can be paid. It has waked too late—it calls from the +grave: the heart will follow it there. No love is in vain:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For God above creates the love to reward the love."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277-1_41" id="Footnote_277-1_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277-1_41"><span class="label">[277:1]</span></a> He excepts, of course, all through this passage, <i>Any +Wife to any Husband</i>—a poem which has not fallen into my scheme.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285-1_42" id="Footnote_285-1_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285-1_42"><span class="label">[285:1]</span></a> No line which Browning has written is more +characteristic than this—nor more famous.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289-1_43" id="Footnote_289-1_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289-1_43"><span class="label">[289:1]</span></a> In <i>By the Fireside</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290-1_44" id="Footnote_290-1_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290-1_44"><span class="label">[290:1]</span></a> Arthur Symons, <i>Introduction to the Study of Browning</i>, +p. 198.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291-1_45" id="Footnote_291-1_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291-1_45"><span class="label">[291:1]</span></a> Browning himself, asked by Dr. Furnivall, on behalf of +the Browning Society, to explain this allusion, answered in the fashion +which he often loved to use towards such inquirers: "The 'seven spirits' +are in the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron, a common image." . . . +"I certainly never intended" (he also said) "to personify wisdom, or +philosophy, or any other abstraction." And he summed up the, after all, +sufficiently obvious meaning by saying that <i>Numpholeptos</i> is "an +allegory of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally +as such by a man who all the while" (as I have once or twice had +occasion to say of himself!) "cannot quite blind himself to the fact +that" (to put it more concisely than he) knowledge and purity are best +obtained by achievement. Still more concisely: +"Innocence—sin—virtue"—in the Hegelian chord of experience.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301-1_46" id="Footnote_301-1_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301-1_46"><span class="label">[301:1]</span></a> Here is a clear echo of Heine, in one of his most +renowned lyrics:— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In crazy dances they're leaping:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We two in the grave lie well, lie well,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And I in thine arms am sleeping.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To Heaven or Hell they're hieing:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We two care nothing, we two will stay<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Together quietly lying."<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<h3>THE WOMAN WON</h3> + + +<p>Love is not static. We may not sit down and say, "It cannot be more than +now; it will not be less. Henceforth I take it for granted." Though she +be won, there still is more to do. I say "she" (and Browning says it), +because the taking-for-granted ideal is essentially man's—woman has +never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it is <i>because</i> men feel so +keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the +real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it. +Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if +love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come +to an end of it—and, if we were wise, should not desire so to do.</p> + +<p>But is she in truth so elusive? Are not women far simpler than they are +accounted? "The First Reader in another language," I have elsewhere said +of them; but doubtless a woman cannot be the judge. Let us see what +Browning, subtle as few other men, thought of our lucidity.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span><span class="i3">"Room after room,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">I hunt the house through<br /></span> +<span class="i3">We inhabit together.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So elusive, says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she +does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious—or, if conscious, blind +to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses, +<i>for fun</i>, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows +nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room! +How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And when +she tossed her hat off, or carefully put it on before the mirror . . . if +the glass did gleam, it was a trick of light; <i>she</i> did not produce it! +For, conscious of this magic, she would lose it; her very +inapprehensiveness it is which "brings it off." Yet she loves to hear +her lover tell of such imaginings, and the more he tells, the more there +seem to be for him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet the day wears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And door succeeds door;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I try the fresh fortune—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span><span class="i0">Spend my whole day in the quest, who cares?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But 'tis twilight, you see—with such suites to explore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Listening, she begins to understand how deeply he means "herself." It is +not only the spell that she leaves behind her in the mere, actual rooms: +it is the mystery residing in her "house of flesh." What does <i>that</i> +house contain—where is <i>she</i>? He seems to hold her, yet she "goes out +as he enters"; he seems to have found her, yet it is like hide-and-seek +at twilight, and half-a-hundred hiders in a hundred rooms!</p> + +<p>She listens, puzzled; perhaps a little frightened to be so much of a +secret. For she never meant to be—she cannot feel that she <i>is</i>; and +thus, how shall she help him to "find" her? Perhaps she must always +elude? She does not desire that: he must not let her escape him! And he +quickly answers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Escape me?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Never—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beloved!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While I am I, and you are you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So long as the world contains us both,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Me the loving and you the loth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While the one eludes, must the other pursue."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But she is not "the loth"; that is all his fancy. She wants him to find +her. And this, in its turn, scares <i>him</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span><span class="i0">"My life is a fault at last, I fear:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It seems too much like a fate, indeed!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though I do my best, I shall scarce succeed."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is the trouble of love. He may never reach her. . . . They look at one +another, and he takes heart again.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But what if I fail of my purpose here?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is but to keep the nerves at strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And, baffled, get up and begin again—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So the chase takes up one's life, that's all."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But she is now almost repelled. She is not this enigma: she <i>wants</i> him +to grasp her. Well, then, she can help him, he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look but once from your farthest bound<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At me so deep in the dust and dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No sooner the old hope goes to ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">I shape me—<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Ever<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Removed!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is not this the meaning? The two poems seem to me supplementary of each +other. First, the sense of her elusiveness; then the dim resentment and +fear which this knowledge of mystery awakes in her. She does not (as I +have seemed to make her) <i>speak</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>in either of these poems; but the +thoughts are those which she must have, and so far, surely, her lover +can divine her? The explanation given both by Mrs. Orr and Berdoe of +<i>Love in a Life</i> (the first lyric), that the lover is "inhabiting the +same house with his love," seems to me simply inept. Is it not clear +that no material house<a name="FNanchor_308-1_47" id="FNanchor_308-1_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_308-1_47" class="fnanchor">[308:1]</a> is meant? They are both inhabiting the +<i>body</i>; and she, passing through this sphere, touching it at various +points, leaves the spell of her mere being everywhere—on the curtain, +the couch, the cornice-wreath, the mirror. But through <i>her</i> house he +cannot range, as she through actualities. And though ever she eludes +him, this is not what she sets out to do; she needs his comprehension; +she does not desire to "escape" him.</p> + +<p>The old enigma that is no enigma—the sphinx with the answer to the +riddle ever trembling on her lips! But if she were understood, she might +be taken for granted. . . . So the lips may tremble, but the answer is kept +back:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"While the one eludes must the other pursue."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"The desire of the man is for the woman; the desire of the woman is for +the desire of the man."</p> + +<p>In those two poems the lovers are almost gay; they can turn and smile at +one another 'mid the perplexity. The man is eager, resolute, humorous; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>the woman, if not acquiescent, is at least apprehending. The heart +shall find her some day: "next time herself, not the trouble behind +her!" She feels that she can aid him to that finding; it depends, in the +last resort, on <i>her</i>.</p> + +<p>But in <i>Two in the Campagna</i> a different lover is to deal with. What he +wants is more than this. He wants to pass the limits of personality, to +forget the search in the oneness. There is more than "finding" to be +done: finding is not the secret. He tries to tell her—and he cannot +tell her, for he does not himself fully know.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I wonder do you feel to-day<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As I have felt since, hand in hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We sat down on the grass, to stray<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In spirit better through the land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This morn of Rome and May?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His thought escapes him ever. Like a spider's silvery thread it mocks +and eludes; he seeks to catch it, to hang his rhymes upon it. . . . No; it +escapes, escapes.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Help me to hold it! First it left<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The yellowing fennel. . . ."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What does the fennel mean? Something, but he cannot grasp it—and the +thread now seems to float upon that weed with the orange cup, where five +green beetles are groping—but not there either <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>does it rest . . . it is +all about him: entangling, eluding:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Everywhere on the grassy slope,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I traced it. Hold it fast!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The grassy slope may be the secret! That infinity of passion and +peace—the Roman Campagna:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The champaign with its endless fleece<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of feathery grasses everywhere!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silence and passion, joy and peace,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">An everlasting wash of air—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rome's ghost since her decease."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And think of all that that plain even now stands for:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Such life here, through such lengths of hours,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Such miracles performed in play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such primal naked forms of flowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Such letting nature have her way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While heaven looks from its towers!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>They love one another: why cannot they be like that plain, why cannot +<i>they</i> "let nature have her way"? Does she understand?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How say you? Let us, O my dove,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Let us be unashamed of soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As earth lies bare to heaven above!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">How is it under our control<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To love or not to love?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p><p>But always they stop short of one another. That is the dread mystery:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I would that you were all to me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">You that are just so much, no more.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Where does the fault lie? What the core<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O' the wound, since wound must be?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He longs to yield his will, his whole being—to see with her eyes, set +his heart beating by hers, drink his fill from her soul; make her part +his—<i>be</i> her. . . .</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No. I yearn upward, touch you close,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Catch your soul's warmth—I pluck the rose<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And love it more than tongue can speak—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then the good minute goes."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Goes—with such swiftness! Already he is "far out of it." And shall this +never be different?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">". . . Must I go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Onward, whenever light winds blow?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He must indeed, for already he is "off again":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Just when I seemed about to learn!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Even the letting nature have her way is not the secret. The thread is +lost again:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The old trick! Only I discern—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Infinite passion, and the pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of finite hearts that yearn."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p><p><i>No</i> contact is close enough. The passion is infinite, the hearts are +finite. The deepest love must suffer this doom of isolation: plunged as +they may be in one another, body and soul, in the very rapture is the +sentence. The good minute goes. It shall be theirs again—again they +shall trust it, again the thread be lost: "the old trick!"</p> + +<p>For it is the very trick of life, as here we know it. The Campagna +itself says that—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rome's ghost since her decease."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mutability, mutability! Though the flowers are the primal, naked forms, +they are not the same flowers; though love is ever new, it is ever old. +<i>New as to-day is new: old as to-day is old</i>; and all the lovers have +discerned, like him,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Infinite passion, and the pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of finite hearts that yearn."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For has she helped him to hold the thread? No; she too has been the +sport of "the old trick." And even of that he cannot be wholly sure:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I <i>wonder</i> do you feel to-day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I have felt . . . ?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>In the enchanting <i>Lovers' Quarrel</i> we find a less metaphysical pair +than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken +her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>mystery of +her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, very humanly +and gladly, the "time of their lives"! All through the winter they have +frolicked: there never was a more enchanting love than she, and plainly +he has charmed her just as much. The same sort of fun appealed to them +both at the same moment—games out of straws of their own devising; +drawing one another's faces in the ashes of the hearth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Free on each other's flaws,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How we chattered like two church daws!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then the <i>Times</i> would come in—and the Emperor has married his +Mlle. de Montijo!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There they sit ermine-stoled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she powders her hair with gold."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or a travel-book arrives from the library—and the two heads are close +together over the pictures.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fancy the Pampas' sheen!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Miles and miles of gold and green<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Where the sunflowers blow<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In a solid glow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And to break now and then the screen—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Black neck and eyeballs keen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up a wild horse leaps between!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . No picture in the book like that—what a genius he is! The book is +pushed away; and there lies the table bare:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Try, will our table turn?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lay your hands there light, and yearn<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span><span class="i1">Till the yearning slips<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thro' the finger-tips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a fire which a few discern,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And a very few feel burn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the rest, they may live and learn!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then we would up and pace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For a change, about the place,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Each with arm o'er neck:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Tis our quarter-deck,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We are seamen in woeful case.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Help in the ocean-space!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or, if no help, we'll embrace."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The next play must be "dressing-up"; for the sailor-game had ended in +that nonsense of a kiss because they had not thought of dressing +properly the parts:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"See how she looks now, dressed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a sledging-cap and vest!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">'Tis a huge fur cloak—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Like a reindeer's zoke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Falls the lappet along the breast:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Sleeves for her arms to rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or to hang, as my Love likes best."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now it is <i>his</i> turn; he must learn to "flirt a fan as the Spanish +ladies can"—but she must pretend too, so he makes her a burnt-cork +moustache, and she "turns into such a man!" . . .</p> + +<p>All this was three months ago, when the snow first mesmerised the earth +and put it to sleep. Snow-time is love-time—for hearts can then show +all:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span><span class="i0">"How is earth to know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div> + +<p>Three months ago—and now it is spring, and such a dawn of day! The +March sun feels like May. He looks out upon it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"All is blue again<br /></span> +<span class="i2">After last night's rain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Only, my Love's away!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'd as lief that the blue were grey."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes—she is gone; they have quarrelled. Or rather, since it does not +take two to do that wretched deed, <i>she</i> has quarrelled. It was some +little thing that he said—neither sneer nor vaunt, nor reproach nor +taunt:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And the friends were friend and foe!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She went away, and she has not come back, and it is three months ago.</p> + +<p>One cannot help suspecting that the little thing he said, which was +<i>not</i> so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! +This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is +clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What <i>had</i> he said? +Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting +of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far more than malice +can—for it is more evidently sincere in what it has of the too-much, or +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>too-little. . . . Well, angry exceedingly, or wounded exceedingly, she +had gone, and still is gone—and he sits marvelling. Three months! Is +she going to stay away for ever? Is she going to cast him off for a +word, a "bubble born of breath"? Why, they had been <i>one</i> person!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Me, do you leave aghast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the memories We amassed?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Just for "a moment's spite." . . . She ought to have understood.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Love, if you knew the light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That your soul casts in my sight,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">How I look to you<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the pure and true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the beauteous and the right—"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But so had she looked to <i>him</i>, and he had shown her "a moment's +spite." . . . Yet he cannot believe that a hasty word can do all this +against the other memories. Things like that are indeed for ever +happening; trivialities thus can mar immensities. The eye can be blurred +by a fly's foot; a straw can stop all the wondrous mechanism of the ear. +But that is only the external world; endurance is easy there. It is +different with love.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wrong in the one thing rare—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, it is hard to bear!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And especially hard now, in this "dawn of day." Little brooks must be +dancing down the dell,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Each with a tale to tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could my Love but attend as well."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p><p>But as she cannot, he will not. . . . Only, things will get lovelier every +day, for the spring is back, or at any rate close at hand—the spring, +when the almond-blossom blows.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"We shall have the word<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In a minor third<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is none but the cuckoo knows:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heaps of the guelder rose!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must bear with it, I suppose."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For he would choose, if he could choose, that November should come back. +Then there would be nothing for her to love but love! In such a world as +spring and summer make, heart can dispense with heart; the sun is there, +and the "flowers unnipped"; but in winter, freezing in the crypt, the +heart cries: "Why should I freeze? Another heart, as chill as mine is +now, would quiver back to life at the touch of this one":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Heart, shall we live or die?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rest . . . settle by-and-bye!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Three months ago they were so happy! They lived blocked up with snow, +the wind edged in and in, as far as it could get:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not to our ingle, though,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where we loved each the other so!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If it were but winter now again, instead of the terrible, lovely spring, +when she will have the blue sky and the hawthorn-spray and the brooks to +love—and the almond-blossom and the cuckoo, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>and that guelder-rose +which he will have to bear with . . .</p> + +<p>But, after all, it <i>is</i> November for their hearts! Hers is chill as his; +she cannot live without him, as he cannot without her. If it were +winter, "she'd efface the score and forgive him <i>as before</i>" (thus we +perceive that this is not the first quarrel, that he has offended her +before with that word which was <i>not</i> so many things!)—and what else is +it but winter for their shivering hearts? So he begins to hope. In +March, too, there are storms—here is one beginning now, at noon, which +shows that it will last. . . . Not yet, then, the too lovely spring!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"It is twelve o'clock:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I shall hear her knock<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the worst of a storm's uproar:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I shall pull her through the door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I shall have her for evermore!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . I think she came back. She would want to see how well he understood +the spring—he who could make that picture of the Pampas' sheen and the +wild horse. Why should spring's news unfold itself, and he not "say +things" about it to her, like those he could say about the mere <i>Times</i> +news? And it <i>is</i> impossible to bear with the guelder-rose—the +guelder-rose must be adored. They will adore it together; she will +efface the score, and forgive him as before. What fun it will be, in the +worst of the storm, to feel him pull her through the door!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>In <i>The Lost Mistress</i> it is really finished: she has dismissed him. We +are not told why. It cannot be because he has not loved her—he who so +tenderly, if so whimsically, accepts her decree. He will not let her see +how much he suffers—he still can say the "little things" she liked.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"All's over, then: does truth sound bitter<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As one at first believes?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter<br /></span> +<span class="i1">About your cottage eaves!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I noticed that, to-day;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One day more breaks them open fully<br /></span> +<span class="i1">—You know the red turns grey."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is what his life has turned, but he will not maunder about it.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">May I take your hand in mine?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mere friends are we—well, friends the merest<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Keep much that I resign."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He is no more "he" for her: he is a friend like the rest. <i>He</i> resigns. +But the friends do not know what "he" knew.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For each glance of the eye so bright and black<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though I keep with heart's endeavour—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though it stay in my soul for ever—"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding—very nearly. +There are some things, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not +fear—he will try.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yet I will but say what mere friends say,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Or only a thought stronger;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will hold your hand but as long as all may,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Or so very little longer!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor +scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess +of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such +humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "<i>Does truth sound +bitter, as one at first believes?</i>" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, +that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a noble, +tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do +not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little +wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will +not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her +hand a little longer than the others do!</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p><i>The Worst of It</i> is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has +left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole +heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her. +But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has +happened <i>through</i> him. She had given him herself, she had bound her +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>soul by the "vows that damn"—and then had found that she must break +them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down!</p> + +<p>But <i>she</i>—the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of +white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like +myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no +heaven for her—no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted, +and not she, graced here beyond all saints?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hardly! That must be understood!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The earth is your place of penance, then."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But even the earthly punishment will be heavy for her to bear. . . . If it +had only been he that was false, not she! <i>He</i> could have borne all +easily; speckled as he is, a spot or two would have made little +difference. And he is nothing, while she is all.</p> + +<p>Too monstrously the magnanimity of this man weights the scale against +the woman. Instinctively we seek a different "excuse" for her from that +which he makes—though indeed there scarce is one at which he does not +catch.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And I to have tempted you"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>. . . that is, tempted her to snap her gold ring and break her promise:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I to have tempted you! I, who tired<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your soul, no doubt, till it sank! Unwise,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span><span class="i0">I loved and was lowly, loved and aspired,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Loved, grieving or glad, till I made you mad,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you meant to have hated and despised—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Whereas, you deceived me nor inquired!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is the too-much of magnanimity. Browning tends to exaggerate the +beauty of that virtue, as already we have seen in Pompilia; and +assuredly this husband has, like her, the defect of his quality. Tender, +generous, high-hearted he is, but without the "sinew of the soul," as +some old writer called <i>anger</i>. All these wonderful and subtle reasons +for the tragic issue, all this apprehensive forecasting of the blow that +awaits the woman "at the end of life," and the magnanimity which even +then she shall find dreadfully awaiting her . . . all this is noble enough +to read of, but imagine its atmosphere in daily life! The truth is that +such natures are but wasted if they do not suffer—almost they might be +called responsible for others' misdoings. We read the ringing stanzas of +<i>The Worst of It</i>, and feel that no one should be doomed to suffer such +forgiveness. What chance had <i>her</i> soul? At every turn it found itself +forestalled, and shall so find itself, he tells her, to all eternity.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I knew you once; but in Paradise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No: this with me is not a favourite poem. The wife, beautiful and +passionate, was never given a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>chance, in this world, to be "placed" at +all in virtue; and she felt, no doubt, with a woman's intuition, that +even in the last of all encounters she should still be baffled. Already +that faultless husband is planning to be crushingly right on the Day of +Judgment. And he <i>is</i> so crushingly right! He is not a prig, he is not a +Pharisee; he is only perfectly magnanimous—perfectly right. . . . And +sometimes, she must have thought vaguely, with a pucker on the glorious +brow,—sometimes, to love lovably, we must yield a little of our virtue, +we must be willing to be perfectly wrong.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>But his suffering is genuine. She has twisted all his world out of +shape. He believes no more in truth or beauty or life.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We take our own method, the devil and I,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With pleasant and fair and wise and rare:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the best we wish to what lives, is—death."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>She</i> is better off; she has committed a fault and has done . . . now she +can begin again. But most likely she does not repent at all, he goes on +to reflect—most likely she is glad she deceived him. She had endured +too long:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"[You] have done no evil and want no aid,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Will live the old life out and chance the new.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span><span class="i0">And your sentence is written all the same,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And I can do nothing—pray, perhaps:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But somehow the word pursues its game—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If I pray, if I curse—for better or worse:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dear, I look from my hiding-place.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be happy! Add but the other grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew you once: but in Paradise,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I think the saddest thing in this poem is its last stanza; for we feel, +do we not? that <i>now</i> she is having her first opportunity to be both +happy and good—free from the intolerable magnanimity of this husband. +And so, by making a male utterance too "noble," Browning has almost +redressed the balance. The tear had been too frequently assigned to +woman; exultation too often had sounded from man. We have seen that many +of the feminine "tears" were supererogatory; and now, in this chapter of +the Woman Won, we see that she can tap the source of those salt drops in +man. But not in <i>James Lee's Wife</i> is the top-note of magnanimity more +strained than in <i>The Worst of It</i>. Moral gymnastics should not be +practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than +Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his +warm, wise heart—too often he fell to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>lure of "situation," and +forgot the truth. "A man and woman <i>might</i> feel so," he sometimes seems +to have said; "it does not matter that no man and woman ever have so +felt."</p> + +<p>And thus, now and then, he gave both men and women—the worst of it. But +oftener he gave them such a best of it that I hardly can imagine a +reader of Browning who has not love and courage in the heart, and trust +and looking-forward in the soul; who does not, in the words of the great +Epilogue:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Greet the unseen with a cheer."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> +<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308-1_47" id="Footnote_308-1_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308-1_47"><span class="label">[308:1]</span></a> Compare this passage with one in a letter to E. B. B.: +"In this House of Life, where I go, you go—when I ascend, you run +before—when I descend, it is after you."</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 90%;" /> + + +<p class="sectctr">THE END</p> + + +<p class="sectctr"> +Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> +at Paul's Work, Edinburgh<br /> +</p> + + +<div class="notebox"> +<h2>Transcriber's Notes:</h2> + + +<p>This text uses a unique type of ellipsis to represent where material has +been left out of poetry quotations and out of the story line of a poem. +They are indicated here by five asterisks:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">* * * * *<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The number of periods in ellipses match the original.</p> + +<p>Thought breaks in the text are indicated by the following:</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>The following words appear in the original with and without hyphens:</p> + +<p class="blockquot">commonplace/common-place<br /> + disgrace/dis-grace<br /> + moonbeam/moon-beam<br /> + wellnigh/well-nigh</p> + +<p>Pages 2, 162, 164, 196, 198, 244, 274, and 276 are blank. Those page +numbers are not included.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Browning's Heroines, by Ethel Colburn Mayne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING'S HEROINES *** + +***** This file should be named 21247-h.htm or 21247-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/2/4/21247/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Michael Zeug, Lisa Reigel, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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