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 Pippa BROWNING'S HEROINES BY ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE WITH FRONTISPIECE & DECORATIONS BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1913 PREFACE 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 suggest—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. [Pg vii] [x:1] Browning, I think, is "coming back," as stars come back. There has been the period of obscuration. Seventeen years ago, when the Yellow Book and the National Observer were contending for les jeunes, 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 The Ring and the Book: "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: "And thinking too—oh, thinking, if you like, How utterly dissociated was I. . . ." —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 his days of excitement. . . . A hundred Browning verses sing themselves around my memories of the flat in Cromwell Road. Misconceptions was swung forth with gesture that figured swaying branches: "This is a spray the bird clung to. . . ." 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 Apparent Failure, thus recited. He would begin at the second verse, the "Doric little Morgue" verse. You were not to miss the great "phrase" in "The three men who did most abhor Their lives in Paris yesterday. . . ." —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. "How did it happen, my poor boy? You wanted to be Bonaparte, And have the Tuileries for toy, And could not, so it broke your heart. . . ." 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. 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 Standard 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 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." That 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 Fifine,[x:1] each age believes—and should believe—that to it alone the secret of true art has been whispered. Ethel Colburn Mayne. 11 Holland Road, Kensington, W. FOOTNOTES: I write far from my books, but the passage will be easily found or recalled. Two birds, possibly eagles [Pg viii] [Pg ix] [Pg x] [Pg xi] CONTENTS PART I GIRLHOOD PAGE Introductory 3 I. The Girl in "Count Gismond" 15 II. Pippa Passes I. Dawn: Pippa 23 II. Morning: Ottima 36 III. Noon: Phene 51 IV. Evening; Night: The Ending of the Day 67 III. Mildred Tresham 81 IV. Balaustion 93 V. Pompilia 122 PART II THE GREAT LADY "My Last Duchess," and "The Flight of the Duchess" 165 PART III THE LOVER I. Lovers Meeting 199 II. Trouble of Love: The Woman's I. The Lady in "The Glove" 215 II. Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron De Nos Jours 224 III. The Laboratory 233 IV. In a Year 237 PART IV THE WIFE I. A Woman's Last Word 245 II. James Lee's Wife 250 I. She Speaks at the Window 254 II. By the Fireside 256 III. In the Doorway 257 IV. Along the Beach 258 V. On the Cliff 261 VI. Reading a Book, under the Cliff 262 VII. Among the Rocks 266 VIII. Beside the Drawing-board 268 IX. On Deck 271 PART V TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S I. The Woman Unwon 277 II. The Woman Won 304 [Pg xii] PART I Girlhood BROWNING'S HEROINES INTRODUCTORY 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 which ought to be her very own to enjoy, as a man enjoys his adolescence. This dawning sense is explicit in the earlier verses of one of Browning's most original utterances, Evelyn Hope, which is the call of a man, many years older, to the mysterious soul of a dead young girl— "Sixteen years old when she died! Perhaps she had hardly heard my name; It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares, And now was quiet, now astir . . ." 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— "For each man kills the thing he loves." 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 précis— "Whither went the lovely hoyden? Disappeared in blessèd wife; Servant to a wooden cradle, Living in a baby's life." 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. In the same way, to me the earliest verses of Evelyn Hope are the loveliest. As I read on, doubts and questions gather fast— "But the time will come—at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay? Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red— [Pg 1] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead. I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed, or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see! I loved you, Evelyn, all the while. My heart seemed full as it could hold? There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold. So, hush—I will give you this leaf to keep: See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand." * * * * * 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. Will 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— "Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget, Ere the time be come for taking you." 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 taking of any man. . . . This is a curious lapse in Browning, to whom women are, 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. 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 — "Trust, that's purer than pearl"— 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— "Hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence and the calm, Of mute insensate things;" 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. * * * * * "All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem: In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea: [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] Breath and bloom, shade and shine—wonder, wealth, and—how far above them!— Truth, that's brighter than gem, Trust, that's purer than pearl— Brightest truth, purest trust, in the universe, all were for me In the kiss of one girl." Nothing there of "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever"! Do the fortunate girls of to-day get Summum Bonum 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 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 A Pearl, A Girl— "A simple ring with a single stone, To the vulgar eye no stone of price: Whisper the right word, that alone— Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice, And lo! you are lord (says an Eastern scroll) Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole, Through the power in a pearl. A woman ('tis I this time that say) With little the world counts worthy praise, Utter the true word—out and away Escapes her soul: I am wrapt in blaze, Creation's lord, of heaven and earth Lord whole and sole—by a minute's birth— Through the love in a girl!" As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be! But observe that he has to utter the true word. 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 Pauline, for which, despite its manifold beauties, he never in later life cared at all— more, he wished to suppress it. In Pauline, 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 Pauline 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— "Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me—thy soft breast Shall pant to mine—bend o'er me—thy sweet eyes And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms Drawing me to thee—these build up a screen To shut me in with thee, and from all fear . . ." And again in the picture of her, lovely to the sense, but, in some strange fashion, hardly less than nauseating to the mind — ". . . Love looks through— Whispers—E'en at the last I have her still, With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist . . . How the blood lies upon her cheek, outspread As thinned by kisses! only in her lips It wells and pulses like a living thing, And her neck looks like marble misted o'er [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] With love-breath—a Pauline from heights above, Stooping beneath me, looking up—one look As I might kill her and be loved the more. So love me—me, Pauline, and nought but me, Never leave loving! . . ." 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 "mon pauvre ami." Let any woman ask herself what that phrase implies, when used by her in 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 mon pauvre ami. 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 Youth and Art is gayer and more ironic. Here we have a woman, successful though (as I read the poem)[12:1] not 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— "We studied hard in our styles, Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos, For air looked out on the tiles, For fun watched each other's windows. * * * * * And I—soon managed to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind And be safe in my corset-lacing. * * * * * No harm! It was not my fault If you never turned your eyes' tail up As I shook upon E in alt, Or ran the chromatic scale up. * * * * * Why did you not pinch a flower In a pellet of clay and fling it? Why did I not put a power Of thanks in a look, or sing it?" * * * * * 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— "This could but have happened once, And we missed it, lost it for ever"— one's impulse surely is (mine is) to ask with some vexation what "this" was? "Each life's unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy; We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired—been happy." Away from its irritating context, that stanza is 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 Youth and Art is a betrayal of [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [12:1] lacking humour; I can but face it out, and say that unhumorous is precisely what, despite its levity of manner, rhythm, and rhyme, Youth and Art 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 bals-parés. 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. FOOTNOTES: 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 bals-parés," and she has married "a rich old lord," but nothing in either condition predicates the successful cantatrice. I THE GIRL IN "COUNT GISMOND" 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. 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 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. 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. Shy and proud and glad, she stood up, and as she did so, there stalked forth Count Gauthier— ". . . And he thundered 'Stay!' And all stayed. 'Bring no crowns, I say!' 'Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet About her! Let her shun the chaste, Or lay herself before their feet! Shall she whose body I embraced A night long, queen it in the day? For Honour's sake no crowns, I say!'" * * * * * Some years afterwards she told the story of that 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. Her friend asked her what she had answered, and she replied— "I? What I answered? As I live I never fancied such a thing As answer possible to give;" —for just as the body is struck dumb, as it were, when some monstrous engine of torture is directed upon it, so was her [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] soul for one moment. 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— ". . . North, South, East, West, I looked. The lie was dead And damned, and truth stood up instead." 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. "God took that on him—I was bid Watch Gismond for my part: I did. Did I not watch him while he let His armourer just brace his greaves, Rivet his hauberk, on the fret The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves No least stamp out, nor how anon He pulled his ringing gauntlets on." 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— "Cleaving till out the truth he clove. Which done, he dragged him to my feet And said 'Here die, but end thy breath In full confession, lest thou fleet From my first, to God's second death! Say, hast thou lied?' And, 'I have lied To God and her,' he said, and died." Then Gismond knelt and said to her words which even to this dear friend she could not repeat. She sank on his breast — "Over my head his arm he flung Against the world . . ." —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." Gaiety, courage, trust: in this nameless Browning heroine we find the characteristic marks. On that birthday morning, almost her greatest joy was in the sense of her cousins' love— "I thought they loved me, did me grace To please themselves; 'twas all their deed" —and never a thought of their jealousy had entered her mind. Both were beautiful— ". . . Each a queen By virtue of her brow and breast; Not needing to be crowned, I mean, As I do. E'en when I was dressed, Had either of them spoke, instead Of glancing sideways with still head! But no: they let me laugh and sing My birthday-song quite through . . ." 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— [Pg 18] [Pg 19] "Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, Chose time and place and company To suit it . . ." for with sad experience—"knowledge of the world"—to aid her, she can see that the whole must have been pre- concerted— "And doubtlessly ere he could draw All points to one, he must have schemed!" * * * * * 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 that Man—male Man—is the least protective of animals. "Over my head his arm he flung Against the world . . ." 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. 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— "Our elder boy has got the clear Great brow; tho' when his brother's black Full eye shows scorn, it . . ." 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— ". . . Gismond here? And have you brought my tercel back? I just was telling Adela How many birds it struck since May." 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. II "PIPPA PASSES" I. DAWN: PIPPA 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 [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] 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 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. 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— "Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. . . ." 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 "long 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. We see her first as she springs out of bed with the dawn's earliest touch on her "large mean airy chamber" at Asolo[24:1]—the lovely little town of Northern Italy 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. "Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, A mite of my twelve hours' treasure, The least of thy gazes or glances, * * * * * One of thy choices or one of thy chances, * * * * * —My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure, Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!" 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 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. But all carping is forgotten when we reach "Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing"— 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— ". . . But thou must treat me not As prosperous ones are treated . . . For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest Me, who am only Pippa—old year's sorrow, Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow: Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow. All other men and women that this earth Belongs to, who all days alike possess, [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] Make general plenty cure particular dearth,[26:1] Get more joy one way, if another less: Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven— Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!" 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. 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— ". . . Can rain disturb Her Sebald's homage? all the while thy rain Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane, He will but press the closer, breathe more warm Against her cheek: how should she mind the storm?" Here we learn what later we are very fully to be shown—that Ottima's "happiness" is not in her husband. 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— ". . . what care bride and groom Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their marriage day; * * * * * Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be Sunbeams and pleasant weather, spite of thee." 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"— "The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth, She in her age, as Luigi in his youth, For true content . . ." Aye—though the evening should be obscured with mist, they will not grieve— ". . . The cheerful town, warm, close, And safe, the sooner that thou art morose Receives them . . ." That is all the difference bad weather can make to such a pair. The Fourth Happy One is Monsignor, "that holy and beloved priest," who is expected this night from Rome, "To visit Asolo, his brother's home, And say here masses proper to release A soul from pain—what storm dares hurt his peace? Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard." 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 . . . "But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil." 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— [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] "Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, Was my basin over-deep? One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits. * * * * * Now grow together on the ceiling! That will task your wits." 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 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 Pippa Passes 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 ". . . grow together on the ceiling. That will task your wits!" —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 The Englishman in Italy, or the stomach-cyst in Mr. Sludge the Medium—"the monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, 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. "New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk-bird's poll!" One such example is enough. We have once more been deprived of Pippa, and got nothing really worth the possession in exchange. But Pippa is quickly retrieved, with her gleeful claim that she 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 ". . . in midst of thy glee, Love thy Queen, worship me!" There will be warrant for the worship— ". . . For am I not, this day, Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? * * * * * I may fancy all day—and it shall be so— That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names, Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!" 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. "Some one shall love me, as the world calls love: I am no less than Ottima, take warning! The gardens and the great stone house above, And other house for shrubs, all glass in front, Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont, To court me, while old Luca yet reposes . . ." [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] 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, "How we talk in the little town below." So the first dream is over. "Love, love, love—there's better love, I know!" —and the next pretending shall "defy the scoffer"; it shall be the love of Jules and Phene— "Why should I not be the bride as soon As Ottima?" Moreover, last night she had seen the stranger-girl arrive—"if you call it seeing her," for it had been the merest momentary glimpse— ". . . one flash Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses, Blacker than all except the black eyelash; I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses, So strict was she the veil Should cover close her pale Pure cheeks—a bride to look at and scarce touch, Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature, As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature? * * * * * How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss So startling as her real first infant kiss? Oh, no—not envy, this!" 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." "Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed," 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— ". . . for if you gave me Leave to take or to refuse, In earnest, do you think I'd choose That sort of new love to enslave me? Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning; As little fear of losing it as winning: Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives, And only parents' love can last our lives." 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? "Let me be Luigi! If I only knew What was my mother's face—my father, too!" 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— "Nay, if you come to that, best love of all Is God's;" —and she will be Monsignor! To-night he will bless the home of his dead brother, and God will bless in turn "That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn With love for all men! I, to-night at least, [Pg 33] [Pg 34] Would be that holy and beloved priest." 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— "All service ranks the same with God." No one can work on this earth except as God wills— ". . . God's puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last or first." And we must not talk of "small events": none exceeds another in greatness. . . . 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— "I will pass each, and see their happiness, And envy none—being just as great, no doubt, Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!" * * * * * 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— "Down the grass path grey with dew, Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs, Where the swallow never flew, Nor yet cicala dared carouse, No, dared carouse—" 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. II. MORNING: OTTIMA 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— "Kiss and be friends, my Sebald! Is't full morning? Oh, don't speak, then!" —but Sebald does speak, for in this aversion from the light of day he recognises a trait of hers which long has troubled him. With his 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— "And wisely; you were plotting one thing there, Nature, another outside. I looked up— Rough white wood shutters, rusty iron bars, Silent as death, blind in a flood of light; Oh, I remember!—and the peasants laughed And said, 'The old man sleeps with the young wife.' This house was his, this chair, this window—his." [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37]