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Robert Browning
By
G. K. Chesterton
Contents
CHAPTER
I - BROWNING IN EARLY LIFE
CHAPTER
III - BROWNING AND HIS MARRIAGE
CHAPTER
IV - BROWNING IN ITALY
CHAPTER
V - BROWNING IN LATER LIFE
CHAPTER
VI - BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST.
CHAPTER
VII - THE RING AND THE BOOK
CHAPTER
VIII - THE PHILOSOPHY OF BROWNING..
CHAPTER I - BROWNING IN E=
ARLY
LIFE
On the subject of Browning's work
innumerable things have been said and remain to be said; of his life,
considered as a narrative of facts, there is little or nothing to say. It w=
as a
lucid and public and yet quiet life, which culminated in one great dramatic
test of character, and then fell back again into this union of quietude and=
publicity.
And yet, in spite of this, it is a great deal more difficult to speak final=
ly
about his life than about his work. His work has the mystery which belongs =
to
the complex; his life the much greater mystery which belongs to the simple.=
He
was clever enough to understand his own poetry; and if he understood it, we=
can
understand it. But he was also entirely unconscious and impulsive, and he w=
as never
clever enough to understand his own character; consequently we may be excus=
ed
if that part of him which was hidden from him is partly hidden from us. The
subtle man is always immeasurably easier to understand than the natural man;
for the subtle man keeps a diary of his moods, he practises the art of
self-analysis and self-revelation, and can tell us how he came to feel this=
or
to say that. But a man like Browning knows no more about the state of his
emotions than about the state of his pulse; they are things greater than he,
things growing at will, like forces of Nature. There is an old anecdote, pr=
obably
apocryphal, which describes how a feminine admirer wrote to Browning asking=
him
for the meaning of one of his darker poems, and received the following repl=
y:
"When that poem was written, two people knew what it meant--God and Ro=
bert
Browning. And now God only knows what it means." This story gives, in =
all
probability, an entirely false impression of Browning's attitude towards his
work. He was a keen artist, a keen scholar, he could put his finger on
anything, and he had a memory like the British Museum Library. But the story
does, in all probability, give a tolerably accurate picture of Browning's a=
ttitude
towards his own emotions and his psychological type. If a man had asked him
what some particular allusion to a Persian hero meant he could in all
probability have quoted half the epic; if a man had asked him which third
cousin of Charlemagne was alluded to in Sordello, he could have given an
account of the man and an account of his father and his grandfather. But if=
a
man had asked him what he thought of himself, or what were his emotions an =
hour
before his wedding, he would have replied with perfect sincerity that God a=
lone
knew.
This mystery of t=
he
unconscious man, far deeper than any mystery of the conscious one, existing=
as
it does in all men, existed peculiarly in Browning, because he was a very
ordinary and spontaneous man. The same thing exists to some extent in all
history and all affairs. Anything that is deliberate, twisted, created as a
trap and a mystery, must be discovered at last; everything that is done
naturally remains mysterious. It may be difficult to discover the principle=
s of
the Rosicrucians, but it is much easier to discover the principles of the
Rosicrucians than the principles of the United States: nor has any secret
society kept its aims so quiet as humanity. The way to be inexplicable is t=
o be
chaotic, and on the surface this was the quality of Browning's life; there =
is
the same difference between judging of his poetry and judging of his life, =
that
there is between making a map of a labyrinth and making a map of a mist. The
discussion of what some particular allusion in Sordello means has gone on so
far, and may go on still, but it has it in its nature to end. The life of
Robert Browning, who combines the greatest brain with the most simple tempe=
rament
known in our annals, would go on for ever if we did not decide to summarise=
it
in a very brief and simple narrative.
Robert Browning w=
as
born in Camberwell on May 7th 1812. His father and grandfather had been cle=
rks
in the Bank of England, and his whole family would appear to have belonged =
to
the solid and educated middle class--the class which is interested in lette=
rs,
but not ambitious in them, the class to which poetry is a luxury, but not a
necessity.
This actual quali=
ty
and character of the Browning family shows some tendency to be obscured by
matters more remote. It is the custom of all biographers to seek for the
earliest traces of a family in distant ages and even in distant lands; and
Browning, as it happens, has given them opportunities which tend to lead aw=
ay
the mind from the main matter in hand. There is a tradition, for example, t=
hat
men of his name were prominent in the feudal ages; it is based upon little
beyond a coincidence of surnames and the fact that Browning used a seal wit=
h a
coat-of-arms. Thousands of middle-class men use such a seal, merely because=
it
is a curiosity or a legacy, without knowing or caring anything about the
condition of their ancestors in the Middle Ages. Then, again, there is a th=
eory
that he was of Jewish blood; a view which is perfectly conceivable, and whi=
ch
Browning would have been the last to have thought derogatory, but for which=
, as
a matter of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence. The chief reason
assigned by his contemporaries for the belief was the fact that he was, wit=
hout
doubt, specially and profoundly interested in Jewish matters. This suggesti=
on,
worthless in any case, would, if anything, tell the other way. For while an
Englishman may be enthusiastic about England, or indignant against England,=
it
never occurred to any living Englishman to be interested in England. Browni=
ng
was, like every other intelligent Aryan, interested in the Jews; but if he =
was
related to every people in which he was interested, he must have been of ex=
traordinarily
mixed extraction. Thirdly, there is the yet more sensational theory that th=
ere
was in Robert Browning a strain of the negro. The supporters of this hypoth=
esis
seem to have little in reality to say, except that Browning's grandmother w=
as
certainly a Creole. It is said in support of the view that Browning was
singularly dark in early life, and was often mistaken for an Italian. There
does not, however, seem to be anything particular to be deduced from this, =
except
that if he looked like an Italian, he must have looked exceedingly unlike a
negro.
There is nothing
valid against any of these three theories, just as there is nothing valid in
their favour; they may, any or all of them, be true, but they are still
irrelevant. They are something that is in history or biography a great deal
worse than being false--they are misleading. We do not want to know about a=
man
like Browning, whether he had a right to a shield used in the Wars of the
Roses, or whether the tenth grandfather of his Creole grandmother had been
white or black: we want to know something about his family, which is quite =
a different
thing. We wish to have about Browning not so much the kind of information w=
hich
would satisfy Clarencieux King-at-Arms, but the sort of information which w=
ould
satisfy us, if we were advertising for a very confidential secretary, or a =
very
private tutor. We should not be concerned as to whether the tutor were
descended from an Irish king, but we should still be really concerned about=
his
extraction, about what manner of people his had been for the last two or th=
ree generations.
This is the most practical duty of biography, and this is also the most
difficult. It is a great deal easier to hunt a family from tombstone to
tombstone back to the time of Henry II. than to catch and realise and put u=
pon
paper that most nameless and elusive of all things--social tone.
It will be said
immediately, and must as promptly be admitted, that we could find a
biographical significance in any of these theories if we looked for it. But=
it
is, indeed, the sin and snare of biographers that they tend to see signific=
ance
in everything; characteristic carelessness if their hero drops his pipe, and
characteristic carefulness if he picks it up again. It is true, assuredly, =
that
all the three races above named could be connected with Browning's personal=
ity.
If we believed, for instance, that he really came of a race of mediæv=
al
barons, we should say at once that from them he got his pre-eminent spirit =
of
battle: we should be right, for every line in his stubborn soul and his ere=
ct
body did really express the fighter; he was always contending, whether it w=
as
with a German theory about the Gnostics, or with a stranger who elbowed his
wife in a crowd. Again, if we had decided that he was a Jew, we should point
out how absorbed he was in the terrible simplicity of monotheism: we should=
be
right, for he was so absorbed. Or again, in the case even of the negro fanc=
y;
it would not be difficult for us to suggest a love of colour, a certain men=
tal
gaudiness, a pleasure
"When=
reds
and blues were indeed red and blue,"
as he says in The
Ring and the Book. We should be right; for there really was in Browning a
tropical violence of taste, an artistic scheme compounded as it were, of
orchids and cockatoos, which, amid our cold English poets, seems scarcely
European. All this is extremely fascinating; and it may be true. But, as has
above been suggested, here comes in the great temptation of this kind of wo=
rk,
the noble temptation to see too much in everything. The biographer can easi=
ly see
a personal significance in these three hypothetical nationalities. But is t=
here
in the world a biographer who could lay his hand upon his heart and say tha=
t he
would not have seen as much significance in any three other nationalities? =
If
Browning's ancestors had been Frenchmen, should we not have said that it was
from them doubtless that he inherited that logical agility which marks him
among English poets? If his grandfather had been a Swede, should we not have
said that the old sea-roving blood broke out in bold speculation and insati=
able
travel? If his great-aunt had been a Red Indian, should we not have said th=
at
only in the Ojibways and the Blackfeet do we find the Browning fantasticali=
ty
combined with the Browning stoicism? This over-readiness to seize hints is =
an
inevitable part of that secret hero-worship which is the heart of biography.
The lover of great men sees signs of them long before they begin to appear =
on
the earth, and, like some old mythological chronicler, claims as their hera=
lds
the storms and the falling stars.
A certain indulge=
nce
must therefore be extended to the present writer if he declines to follow t=
hat
admirable veteran of Browning study, Dr. Furnivall, into the prodigious
investigations which he has been conducting into the condition of the Brown=
ing
family since the beginning of the world. For his last discovery, the descen=
t of
Browning from a footman in the service of a country magnate, there seems to=
be
suggestive, though not decisive evidence. But Browning's descent from baron=
s,
or Jews, or lackeys, or black men, is not the main point touching his famil=
y.
If the Brownings were of mixed origin, they were so much the more like the
great majority of English middle-class people. It is curious that the roman=
ce
of race should be spoken of as if it were a thing peculiarly aristocratic; =
that
admiration for rank, or interest in family, should mean only interest in one
not very interesting type of rank and family. The truth is that aristocrats
exhibit less of the romance of pedigree than any other people in the world.=
For
since it is their principle to marry only within their own class and mode of
life, there is no opportunity in their case for any of the more interesting
studies in heredity; they exhibit almost the unbroken uniformity of the low=
er
animals. It is in the middle classes that we find the poetry of genealogy; =
it
is the suburban grocer standing at his shop door whom some wild dash of Eas=
tern
or Celtic blood may drive suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime. Let us ad=
mit
then, that it is true that these legends of the Browning family have every
abstract possibility. But it is a far more cogent and apposite truth that i=
f a
man had knocked at the door of every house in the street where Browning was
born, he would have found similar legends in all of them. There is hardly a=
family
in Camberwell that has not a story or two about foreign marriages a few
generations back; and in all this the Brownings are simply a typical Camber=
well
family. The real truth about Browning and men like him can scarcely be bett=
er
expressed than in the words of that very wise and witty story, Kingsley's W=
ater
Babies, in which the pedigree of the Professor is treated in a manner which=
is
an excellent example of the wild common sense of the book. "His mother=
was
a Dutch woman, and therefore she was born at Curaçoa (of course, you
have read your geography and therefore know why), and his father was a Pole,
and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of course, you have lear=
nt
your modern politics, and therefore know why), but for all that he was as t=
horough
an Englishman as ever coveted his neighbour's goods."
It may be well
therefore to abandon the task of obtaining a clear account of Brownings fam=
ily,
and endeavour to obtain, what is much more important, a clear account of his
home. For the great central and solid fact, which these heraldic speculatio=
ns
tend inevitably to veil and confuse, is that Browning was a thoroughly typi=
cal
Englishman of the middle class. He may have had alien blood, and that alien=
blood,
by the paradox we have observed, may have made him more characteristically a
native. A phase, a fancy, a metaphor may or may not have been born of easte=
rn
or southern elements, but he was, without any question at all, an Englishma=
n of
the middle class. Neither all his liberality nor all his learning ever made=
him
anything but an Englishman of the middle class. He expanded his intellectua=
l tolerance
until it included the anarchism of Fifine at the Fair and the blasphemous
theology of Caliban; but he remained himself an Englishman of the middle cl=
ass.
He pictured all the passions of the earth since the Fall, from the devouring
amorousness of Time's Revenges to the despotic fantasy of Instans Tyrannus;=
but
he remained himself an Englishman of the middle class. The moment that he c=
ame
in contact with anything that was slovenly, anything that was lawless, in
actual life, something rose up in him, older than any opinions, the blood of
generations of good men. He met George Sand and her poetical circle and hat=
ed
it, with all the hatred of an old city merchant for the irresponsible life.=
He
met the Spiritualists and hated them, with all the hatred of the middle cla=
ss
for borderlands and equivocal positions and playing with fire. His intellect
went upon bewildering voyages, but his soul walked in a straight road. He p=
iled
up the fantastic towers of his imagination until they eclipsed the planets;=
but
the plan of the foundation on which he built was always the plan of an hone=
st
English house in Camberwell. He abandoned, with a ceaseless intellectual
ambition, every one of the convictions of his class; but he carried its
prejudices into eternity.
It is then of
Browning as a member of the middle class, that we can speak with the greate=
st
historical certainty; and it is his immediate forebears who present the real
interest to us. His father, Robert Browning, was a man of great delicacy of
taste, and to all appearance of an almost exaggerated delicacy of conscienc=
e.
Every glimpse we have of him suggests that earnest and almost worried
kindliness which is the mark of those to whom selfishness, even justifiable
selfishness, is really a thing difficult or impossible. In early life Rober=
t Browning
senior was placed by his father (who was apparently a father of a somewhat
primitive, not to say barbaric, type) in an important commercial position in
the West Indies. He threw up the position however, because it involved him =
in
some recognition of slavery. Whereupon his unique parent, in a transport of
rage, not only disinherited him and flung him out of doors, but by a superb
stroke of humour, which stands alone in the records of parental ingenuity, =
sent
him in a bill for the cost of his education. About the same time that he was
suffering for his moral sensibility he was also disturbed about religious
matters, and he completed his severance from his father by joining a dissen=
ting
sect. He was, in short, a very typical example of the serious middle-class =
man
of the Wilberforce period, a man to whom duty was all in all, and who would
revolutionise an empire or a continent for the satisfaction of a single mor=
al
scruple. Thus, while he was Puritan at the core, not the ruthless Puritan of
the seventeenth, but the humanitarian Puritan of the eighteenth century, he=
had
upon the surface all the tastes and graces of a man of culture. Numerous
accomplishments of the lighter kind, such as drawing and painting in water
colours, he possessed; and his feeling for many kinds of literature was
fastidious and exact. But the whole was absolutely redolent of the polite
severity of the eighteenth century. He lamented his son's early admiration =
for
Byron, and never ceased adjuring him to model himself upon Pope.
He was, in short,=
one
of the old-fashioned humanitarians of the eighteenth century, a class which=
we
may or may not have conquered in moral theory, but which we most certainly =
have
not conquered in moral practice. Robert Browning senior destroyed all his
fortunes in order to protest against black slavery; white slavery may be, as
later economists tell us, a thing infinitely worse, but not many men destro=
y their
fortunes in order to protest against it. The ideals of the men of that peri=
od
appear to us very unattractive; to them duty was a kind of chilly sentiment.
But when we think what they did with those cold ideals, we can scarcely fee=
l so
superior. They uprooted the enormous Upas of slavery, the tree that was
literally as old as the race of man. They altered the whole face of Europe =
with
their deductive fancies. We have ideals that are really better, ideals of
passion, of mysticism, of a sense of the youth and adventurousness of the
earth; but it will be well for us if we achieve as much by our frenzy as th=
ey did
by their delicacies. It scarcely seems as if we were as robust in our very
robustness as they were robust in their sensibility.
Robert Browning's
mother was the daughter of William Wiedermann, a German merchant settled in
Dundee, and married to a Scotch wife. One of the poet's principal biographe=
rs
has suggested that from this union of the German and Scotch, Browning got h=
is
metaphysical tendency; it is possible; but here again we must beware of the
great biographical danger of making mountains out of molehills. What Browni=
ng's
mother unquestionably did give to him, was in the way of training--a very s=
trong
religious habit, and a great belief in manners. Thomas Carlyle called her
"the type of a Scottish gentlewoman," and the phrase has a very r=
eal
significance to those who realise the peculiar condition of Scotland, one of
the very few European countries where large sections of the aristocracy are
Puritans; thus a Scottish gentlewoman combines two descriptions of dignity =
at
the same time. Little more is known of this lady except the fact that after=
her
death Browning could not bear to look at places where she had walked.
Browning's educat=
ion
in the formal sense reduces itself to a minimum. In very early boyhood he
attended a species of dame-school, which, according to some of his biograph=
ers,
he had apparently to leave because he was too clever to be tolerable. Howev=
er
this may be, he undoubtedly went afterwards to a school kept by Mr. Ready, =
at
which again he was marked chiefly by precocity. But the boy's education did=
not
in truth take place at any systematic seat of education; it took place in h=
is
own home, where one of the quaintest and most learned and most absurdly
indulgent of fathers poured out in an endless stream fantastic recitals from
the Greek epics and mediæval chronicles. If we test the matter by the
test of actual schools and universities, Browning will appear to be almost =
the
least educated man in English literary history. But if we test it by the am=
ount
actually learned, we shall think that he was perhaps the most educated man =
that
ever lived; that he was in fact, if anything, overeducated. In a spirited p=
oem
he has himself described how, when he was a small child, his father used to
pile up chairs in the drawing-room and call them the city of Troy. Browning
came out of the home crammed with all kinds of knowledge--knowledge about t=
he
Greek poets, knowledge about the Provençal Troubadours, knowledge ab=
out
the Jewish Rabbis of the Middle Ages. But along with all this knowledge he
carried one definite and important piece of ignorance, an ignorance of the
degree to which such knowledge was exceptional. He was no spoilt and
self-conscious child, taught to regard himself as clever. In the atmosphere=
in
which he lived learning was a pleasure, and a natural pleasure, like sport =
or wine.
He had in it the pleasure of some old scholar of the Renascence, when gramm=
ar
itself was as fresh as the flowers of spring. He had no reason to suppose t=
hat
every one did not join in so admirable a game. His sagacious destiny, while
giving him knowledge of everything else, left him in ignorance of the ignor=
ance
of the world.
Of his boyish day=
s scarcely
any important trace remains, except a kind of diary which contains under one
date the laconic statement, "Married two wives this morning." The
insane ingenuity of the biographer would be quite capable of seeing in this=
a
most suggestive foreshadowing of the sexual dualism which is so ably defend=
ed
in Fifine at the Fair. A great part of his childhood was passed in the soci=
ety
of his only sister Sariana; and it is a curious and touching fact that with=
her
also he passed his last days. From his earliest babyhood he seems to have l=
ived
in a more or less stimulating mental atmosphere; but as he emerged into you=
th
he came under great poetic influences, which made his father's classical po=
etic
tradition look for the time insipid. Browning began to live in the life of =
his
own age.
As a young man he
attended classes at University College; beyond this there is little evidence
that he was much in touch with intellectual circles outside that of his own
family. But the forces that were moving the literary world had long passed
beyond the merely literary area. About the time of Browning's boyhood a very
subtle and profound change was beginning in the intellectual atmosphere of =
such
homes as that of the Brownings. In studying the careers of great men we ten=
d constantly
to forget that their youth was generally passed and their characters
practically formed in a period long previous to their appearance in history=
. We
think of Milton, the Restoration Puritan, and forget that he grew up in the
living shadow of Shakespeare and the full summer of the Elizabethan drama. =
We
realise Garibaldi as a sudden and almost miraculous figure rising about fif=
ty
years ago to create the new Kingdom of Italy, and we forget that he must ha=
ve
formed his first ideas of liberty while hearing at his father's dinner-table
that Napoleon was the master of Europe. Similarly, we think of Browning as =
the
great Victorian poet, who lived long enough to have opinions on Mr. Gladsto=
ne's
Home Rule Bill, and forget that as a young man he passed a bookstall and sa=
w a
volume ticketed "Mr. Shelley's Atheistic Poem," and had to search
even in his own really cultivated circle for some one who could tell him who
Mr. Shelley was. Browning was, in short, born in the afterglow of the great
Revolution.
The French Revolu=
tion
was at root a thoroughly optimistic thing. It may seem strange to attribute
optimism to anything so destructive; but, in truth, this particular kind of
optimism is inevitably, and by its nature, destructive. The great dominant =
idea
of the whole of that period, the period before, during, and long after the
Revolution, is the idea that man would by his nature live in an Eden of
dignity, liberty and love, and that artificial and decrepit systems are kee=
ping
him out of that Eden. No one can do the least justice to the great Jacobins=
who
does not realise that to them breaking the civilisation of ages was like
breaking the cords of a treasure-chest. And just as for more than a century
great men had dreamed of this beautiful emancipation, so the dream began in=
the
time of Keats and Shelley to creep down among the dullest professions and t=
he
most prosaic classes of society. A spirit of revolt was growing among the y=
oung
of the middle classes, which had nothing at all in common with the complete=
and
pessimistic revolt against all things in heaven or earth, which has been
fashionable among the young in more recent times. The Shelleyan enthusiast =
was
altogether on the side of existence; he thought that every cloud and clump =
of
grass shared his strict republican orthodoxy. He represented, in short, a
revolt of the normal against the abnormal; he found himself, so to speak, in
the heart of a wholly topsy-turvy and blasphemous state of things, in which=
God
was rebelling against Satan. There began to arise about this time a race of
young men like Keats, members of a not highly cultivated middle class, and =
even
of classes lower, who felt in a hundred ways this obscure alliance with ete=
rnal
things against temporal and practical ones, and who lived on its imaginative
delight. They were a kind of furtive universalist; they had discovered the
whole cosmos, and they kept the whole cosmos a secret. They climbed up dark
stairs to meagre garrets, and shut themselves in with the gods. Numbers of =
the
great men, who afterwards illuminated the Victorian era, were at this time =
living
in mean streets in magnificent daydreams. Ruskin was solemnly visiting his
solemn suburban aunts; Dickens was going to and fro in a blacking factory;
Carlyle, slightly older, was still lingering on a poor farm in Dumfriesshir=
e;
Keats had not long become the assistant of the country surgeon when Browning
was a boy in Camberwell. On all sides there was the first beginning of the
æsthetic stir in the middle classes which expressed itself in the
combination of so many poetic lives with so many prosaic livelihoods. It was
the age of inspired office-boys.
Browning grew up,
then, with the growing fame of Shelley and Keats, in the atmosphere of lite=
rary
youth, fierce and beautiful, among new poets who believed in a new world. I=
t is
important to remember this, because the real Browning was a quite different
person from the grim moralist and metaphysician who is seen through the
spectacles of Browning Societies and University Extension Lecturers. Browni=
ng
was first and foremost a poet, a man made to enjoy all things visible and i=
nvisible,
a priest of the higher passions. The misunderstanding that has supposed him=
to
be other than poetical, because his form was often fanciful and abrupt, is
really different from the misunderstanding which attaches to most other poe=
ts.
The opponents of Victor Hugo called him a mere windbag; the opponents of
Shakespeare called him a buffoon. But the admirers of Hugo and Shakespeare =
at
least knew better. Now the admirers and opponents of Browning alike make him
out to be a pedant rather than a poet. The only difference between the Brow=
ningite
and the anti-Browningite, is that the second says he was not a poet but a m=
ere
philosopher, and the first says he was a philosopher and not a mere poet. T=
he
admirer disparages poetry in order to exalt Browning; the opponent exalts
poetry in order to disparage Browning; and all the time Browning himself
exalted poetry above all earthly things, served it with single-hearted
intensity, and stands among the few poets who hardly wrote a line of anythi=
ng
else.
The whole of the
boyhood and youth of Robert Browning has as much the quality of pure poetry=
as
the boyhood and youth of Shelley. We do not find in it any trace of the
analytical Browning who is believed in by learned ladies and gentlemen. How
indeed would such sympathisers feel if informed that the first poems that
Browning wrote in a volume called Incondita were noticed to contain the fau=
lt
of "too much splendour of language and too little wealth of thought&qu=
ot;?
They were indeed Byronic in the extreme, and Browning in his earlier
appearances in society presents himself in quite a romantic manner. Macread=
y,
the actor, wrote of him: "He looks and speaks more like a young poet t=
han any
one I have ever seen." A picturesque tradition remains that Thomas Car=
lyle,
riding out upon one of his solitary gallops necessitated by his physical
sufferings, was stopped by one whom he described as a strangely beautiful
youth, who poured out to him without preface or apology his admiration for =
the
great philosopher's works. Browning at this time seems to have left upon ma=
ny
people this impression of physical charm. A friend who attended University
College with him says: "He was then a bright handsome youth with long
black hair falling over his shoulders." Every tale that remains of him=
in connection
with this period asserts and reasserts the completely romantic spirit by wh=
ich
he was then possessed. He was fond, for example, of following in the track =
of
gipsy caravans, far across country, and a song which he heard with the refr=
ain,
"Following the Queen of the Gipsies oh!" rang in his ears long en=
ough
to express itself in his soberer and later days in that splendid poem of th=
e spirit
of escape and Bohemianism, The Flight of the Duchess. Such other of these e=
arly
glimpses of him as remain, depict him as striding across Wimbledon Common w=
ith
his hair blowing in the wind, reciting aloud passages from Isaiah, or climb=
ing
up into the elms above Norwood to look over London by night. It was when
looking down from that suburban eyrie over the whole confounding labyrinth =
of
London that he was filled with that great irresponsible benevolence which is
the best of the joys of youth, and conceived the idea of a perfectly irresp=
onsible
benevolence in the first plan of Pippa Passes. At the end of his father's
garden was a laburnum "heavy with its weight of gold," and in the
tree two nightingales were in the habit of singing against each other, a fo=
rm
of competition which, I imagine, has since become less common in Camberwell.
When Browning as a boy was intoxicated with the poetry of Shelley and Keats=
, he
hypnotised himself into something approaching to a positive conviction that
these two birds were the spirits of the two great poets who had settled in =
a Camberwell
garden, in order to sing to the only young gentleman who really adored and
understood them. This last story is perhaps the most typical of the tone co=
mmon
to all the rest; it would be difficult to find a story which across the gul=
f of
nearly eighty years awakens so vividly a sense of the sumptuous folly of an
intellectual boyhood. With Browning, as with all true poets, passion came f=
irst
and made intellectual expression, the hunger for beauty making literature a=
s the
hunger for bread made a plough. The life he lived in those early days was no
life of dull application; there was no poet whose youth was so young. When =
he
was full of years and fame, and delineating in great epics the beauty and
horror of the romance of southern Europe, a young man, thinking to please h=
im,
said, "There is no romance now except in Italy." "Well,"
said Browning, "I should make an exception of Camberwell."
Such glimpses will
serve to indicate the kind of essential issue that there was in the nature =
of
things between the generation of Browning and the generation of his father.
Browning was bound in the nature of things to become at the outset Byronic,=
and
Byronism was not, of course, in reality so much a pessimism about civilised
things as an optimism about savage things. This great revolt on behalf of t=
he elemental
which Keats and Shelley represented was bound first of all to occur. Robert
Browning junior had to be a part of it, and Robert Browning senior had to go
back to his water colours and the faultless couplets of Pope with the full
sense of the greatest pathos that the world contains, the pathos of the man=
who
has produced something that he cannot understand.
The earliest work=
s of
Browning bear witness, without exception, to this ardent and somewhat senti=
mental
evolution. Pauline appeared anonymously in 1833. It exhibits the characteri=
stic
mark of a juvenile poem, the general suggestion that the author is a thousa=
nd
years old. Browning calls it a fragment of a confession; and Mr. Johnson Fo=
x,
an old friend of Browning's father, who reviewed it for Tait's Magazine, sa=
id,
with truth, that it would be difficult to find anything more purely
confessional. It is the typical confession of a boy laying bare all the
spiritual crimes of infidelity and moral waste, in a state of genuine ignor=
ance
of the fact that every one else has committed them. It is wholesome and nat=
ural
for youth to go about confessing that the grass is green, and whispering to=
a
priest hoarsely that it has found a sun in heaven. But the records of that =
particular
period of development, even when they are as ornate and beautiful as Paulin=
e,
are not necessarily or invariably wholesome reading. The chief interest of
Pauline, with all its beauties, lies in a certain almost humorous singulari=
ty,
the fact that Browning, of all people, should have signalised his entrance =
into
the world of letters with a poem which may fairly be called morbid. But thi=
s is
a morbidity so general and recurrent that it may be called in a contradicto=
ry
phrase a healthy morbidity; it is a kind of intellectual measles. No one of=
any
degree of maturity in reading Pauline will be quite so horrified at the sin=
s of
the young gentleman who tells the story as he seems to be himself. It is the
utterance of that bitter and heartrending period of youth which comes befor=
e we
realise the one grand and logical basis of all optimism--the doctrine of
original sin. The boy at this stage being an ignorant and inhuman idealist,
regards all his faults as frightful secret malformations, and it is only la=
ter that
he becomes conscious of that large and beautiful and benignant explanation =
that
the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. That
Browning, whose judgment on his own work was one of the best in the world, =
took
this view of Pauline in after years is quite obvious. He displayed a very m=
anly
and unique capacity of really laughing at his own work without being in the
least ashamed of it. "This," he said of Pauline, "is the only
crab apple that remains of the shapely tree of life in my fool's
paradise." It would be difficult to express the matter more perfectly.
Although Pauline was published anonymously, its authorship was known to a
certain circle, and Browning began to form friendships in the literary worl=
d. He
had already become acquainted with two of the best friends he was ever dest=
ined
to have, Alfred Domett, celebrated in "The Guardian Angel" and
"Waring," and his cousin Silverthorne, whose death is spoken of in
one of the most perfect lyrics in the English language, Browning's "May
and Death." These were men of his own age, and his manner of speaking =
of
them gives us many glimpses into that splendid world of comradeship which.
Plato and Walt Whitman knew, with its endless days and its immortal nights.
Browning had a third friend destined to play an even greater part in his li=
fe,
but who belonged to an older generation and a statelier school of manners a=
nd scholarship.
Mr. Kenyon was a schoolfellow of Browning's father, and occupied towards his
son something of the position of an irresponsible uncle. He was a rotund, r=
osy
old gentleman, fond of comfort and the courtesies of life, but fond of them
more for others, though much for himself. Elizabeth Barrett in after years
wrote of "the brightness of his carved speech," which would appea=
r to
suggest that he practised that urbane and precise order of wit which was ev=
en
then old-fashioned. Yet, notwithstanding many talents of this kind, he was =
not
so much an able man as the natural friend and equal of able men.
Browning's circle=
of
friends, however, widened about this time in all directions. One friend in
particular he made, the Comte de Ripert-Monclar, a French Royalist with who=
m he
prosecuted with renewed energy his studies in the mediæval and
Renaissance schools of philosophy. It was the Count who suggested that Brow=
ning
should write a poetical play on the subject of Paracelsus. After reflection=
, indeed,
the Count retracted this advice on the ground that the history of the great
mystic gave no room for love. Undismayed by this terrible deficiency, Brown=
ing
caught up the idea with characteristic enthusiasm, and in 1835 appeared the
first of his works which he himself regarded as representative--Paracelsus.=
The
poem shows an enormous advance in technical literary power; but in the hist=
ory
of Browning's mind it is chiefly interesting as giving an example of a pecu=
liarity
which clung to him during the whole of his literary life, an intense love of
the holes and corners of history. Fifty-two years afterwards he wrote
Parleyings with certain Persons of Importance in their Day, the last poem
published in his lifetime; and any reader of that remarkable work will perc=
eive
that the common characteristic of all these persons is not so much that they
were of importance in their day as that they are of no importance in ours. =
The
same eccentric fastidiousness worked in him as a young man when he wrote Pa=
racelsus
and Sordello. Nowhere in Browning's poetry can we find any very exhaustive
study of any of the great men who are the favourites of the poet and morali=
st.
He has written about philosophy and ambition and music and morals, but he h=
as
written nothing about Socrates or Cæsar or Napoleon, or Beethoven or
Mozart, or Buddha or Mahomet. When he wishes to describe a political ambiti=
on
he selects that entirely unknown individual, King Victor of Sardinia. When =
he wishes
to express the most perfect soul of music, he unearths some extraordinary
persons called Abt Vogler and Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. When he wishes to
express the largest and sublimest scheme of morals and religion which his
imagination can conceive, he does not put it into the mouth of any of the g=
reat
spiritual leaders of mankind, but into the mouth of an obscure Jewish Rabbi=
of
the name of Ben Ezra. It is fully in accordance with this fascinating craze=
of
his that when he wishes to study the deification of the intellect and the d=
isinterested
pursuit of the things of the mind, he does not select any of the great
philosophers from Plato to Darwin, whose investigations are still of some
importance in the eyes of the world. He selects the figure of all figures m=
ost
covered with modern satire and pity, the à priori scientist of the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance. His supreme type of the human intellect is
neither the academic nor the positivist, but the alchemist. It is difficult=
to imagine
a turn of mind constituting a more complete challenge to the ordinary modern
point of view. To the intellect of our time the wild investigators of the
school of Paracelsus seem to be the very crown and flower of futility, they=
are
collectors of straws and careful misers of dust. But for all that Browning =
was
right. Any critic who understands the true spirit of mediæval science=
can
see that he was right; no critic can see how right he was unless he underst=
ands
the spirit of mediæval science as thoroughly as he did. In the charac=
ter of
Paracelsus, Browning wished to paint the dangers and disappointments which
attend the man who believes merely in the intellect. He wished to depict the
fall of the logician; and with a perfect and unerring instinct he selected a
man who wrote and spoke in the tradition of the Middle Ages, the most
thoroughly and even painfully logical period that the world has ever seen. =
If
he had chosen an ancient Greek philosopher, it would have been open to the =
critic
to have said that that philosopher relied to some extent upon the most sunny
and graceful social life that ever flourished. If he had made him a modern
sociological professor, it would have been possible to object that his ener=
gies
were not wholly concerned with truth, but partly with the solid and material
satisfaction of society. But the man truly devoted to the things of the mind
was the mediæval magician. It is a remarkable fact that one civilisat=
ion
does not satisfy itself by calling another civilisation wicked--it calls it=
uncivilised.
We call the Chinese barbarians, and they call us barbarians. The mediæ=
;val
state, like China, was a foreign civilisation, and this was its supreme
characteristic, that it cared for the things of the mind for their own sake=
. To
complain of the researches of its sages on the ground that they were not
materially fruitful, is to act as we should act in telling a gardener that =
his roses
were not as digestible as our cabbages. It is not only true that the
mediæval philosophers never discovered the steam-engine; it is quite
equally true that they never tried. The Eden of the Middle Ages was really a
garden, where each of God's flowers--truth and beauty and reason--flourished
for its own sake, and with its own name. The Eden of modern progress is a
kitchen garden.
It would have been
hard, therefore, for Browning to have chosen a better example for his study=
of
intellectual egotism than Paracelsus. Modern life accuses the mediæval
tradition of crushing the intellect; Browning, with a truer instinct, accus=
es
that tradition of over-glorifying it. There is, however, another and even m=
ore
important deduction to be made from the moral of Paracelsus. The usual accu=
sation
against Browning is that he was consumed with logic; that he thought all
subjects to be the proper pabulum of intellectual disquisition; that he glo=
ried
chiefly in his own power of plucking knots to pieces and rending fallacies =
in
two; and that to this method he sacrificed deliberately, and with complete
self-complacency, the element of poetry and sentiment. To people who imagine
Browning to have been this frigid believer in the intellect there is only o=
ne answer
necessary or sufficient. It is the fact that he wrote a play designed to
destroy the whole of this intellectualist fallacy at the age of twenty-thre=
e.
Paracelsus was in=
all
likelihood Browning's introduction to the literary world. It was many years,
and even many decades, before he had anything like a public appreciation, b=
ut a
very great part of the minority of those who were destined to appreciate him
came over to his standard upon the publication of Paracelsus. The celebrated
John Forster had taken up Paracelsus "as a thing to slate," and h=
ad
ended its perusal with the wildest curiosity about the author and his works=
. John
Stuart Mill, never backward in generosity, had already interested himself in
Browning, and was finally converted by the same poem. Among other early
admirers were Landor, Leigh Hunt, Horne, Serjeant Talfourd, and Monckton-Mi=
lnes.
One man of even greater literary stature seems to have come into Browning's
life about this time, a man for whom he never ceased to have the warmest
affection and trust. Browning was, indeed, one of the very few men of that
period who got on perfectly with Thomas Carlyle. It is precisely one of tho=
se
little things which speak volumes for the honesty and unfathomable good hum=
our
of Browning, that Carlyle, who had a reckless contempt for most other poets=
of
his day, had something amounting to a real attachment to him. He would run =
over
to Paris for the mere privilege of dining with him. Browning, on the other
hand, with characteristic impetuosity, passionately defended and justified
Carlyle in all companies. "I have just seen dear Carlyle," he wri=
tes
on one occasion; "catch me calling people dear in a hurry, except in a
letter beginning." He sided with Carlyle in the vexed question of the
Carlyle domestic relations, and his impression of Mrs. Carlyle was that she=
was
"a hard unlovable woman." As, however, it is on record that he on=
ce,
while excitedly explaining some point of mystical philosophy, put down Mrs.
Carlyle's hot kettle on the hearthrug, any frigidity that he may have obser=
ved
in her manner may possibly find a natural explanation. His partisanship in =
the
Carlyle affair, which was characteristically headlong and human, may not th=
row
much light on that painful problem itself, but it throws a great deal of li=
ght
on the character of Browning, which was pugnaciously proud of its friends, =
and
had what may almost be called a lust of loyalty. Browning was not capable of
that most sagacious detachment which enabled Tennyson to say that he could =
not
agree that the Carlyles ought never to have married, since if they had each
married elsewhere there would have been four miserable people instead of tw=
o.
Among the motley =
and
brilliant crowd with which Browning had now begun to mingle, there was no
figure more eccentric and spontaneous than that of Macready the actor. This
extraordinary person, a man living from hand to mouth in all things spiritu=
al
and pecuniary, a man feeding upon flying emotions, conceived something like=
an
attraction towards Browning, spoke of him as the very ideal of a young poet,
and in a moment of peculiar excitement suggested to him the writing of a gr=
eat
play. Browning was a man fundamentally indeed more steadfast and prosaic, b=
ut
on the surface fully as rapid and easily infected as Macready. He immediate=
ly
began to plan out a great historical play, and selected for his subject
"Strafford."
In Browning's
treatment of the subject there is something more than a trace of his Puritan
and Liberal upbringing. It is one of the very earliest of the really import=
ant
works in English literature which are based on the Parliamentarian reading =
of
the incidents of the time of Charles I. It is true that the finest element =
in
the play is the opposition between Strafford and Pym, an opposition so
complete, so lucid, so consistent, that it has, so to speak, something of t=
he friendly
openness and agreement which belongs to an alliance. The two men love each
other and fight each other, and do the two things at the same time complete=
ly.
This is a great thing of which even to attempt the description. It is easy =
to
have the impartiality which can speak judicially of both parties, but it is=
not
so easy to have that larger and higher impartiality which can speak
passionately on behalf of both parties. Nevertheless, it may be permissible=
to
repeat that there is in the play a definite trace of Browning's Puritan
education and Puritan historical outlook.
For Strafford is,=
of
course, an example of that most difficult of all literary works--a political
play. The thing has been achieved once at least admirably in Shakespeare's
Julius Cæsar, and something like it, though from a more one-sided and
romantic stand-point, has been done excellently in L'Aiglon. But the
difficulties of such a play are obvious on the face of the matter. In a
political play the principal characters are not merely men. They are symbol=
s, arithmetical
figures representing millions of other men outside. It is, by dint of elabo=
rate
stage management, possible to bring a mob upon the boards, but the largest =
mob
ever known is nothing but a floating atom of the people; and the people of
which the politician has to think does not consist of knots of rioters in t=
he
street, but of some million absolutely distinct individuals, each sitting in
his own breakfast room reading his own morning paper. To give even the fain=
test
suggestion of the strength and size of the people in this sense in the cour=
se
of a dramatic performance is obviously impossible. That is why it is so eas=
y on
the stage to concentrate all the pathos and dignity upon such persons as
Charles I. and Mary Queen of Scots, the vampires of their people, because
within the minute limits of a stage there is room for their small virtues a=
nd
no room for their enormous crimes. It would be impossible to find a stronger
example than the case of Strafford. It is clear that no one could possibly =
tell
the whole truth about the life and death of Strafford, politically consider=
ed,
in a play. Strafford was one of the greatest men ever born in England, and =
he
attempted to found a great English official despotism. That is to say, he
attempted to found something which is so different from what has actually c=
ome
about that we can in reality scarcely judge of it, any more than we can jud=
ge
whether it would be better to live in another planet, or pleasanter to have
been born a dog or an elephant. It would require enormous imagination to re=
construct
the political ideals of Strafford. Now Browning, as we all know, got over t=
he
matter in his play, by practically denying that Strafford had any political
ideals at all. That is to say, while crediting Strafford with all his real
majesty of intellect and character, he makes the whole of his political act=
ion
dependent upon his passionate personal attachment to the King. This is unsa=
tisfactory;
it is in reality a dodging of the great difficulty of the political play. T=
hat
difficulty, in the case of any political problem, is, as has been said, gre=
at.
It would be very hard, for example, to construct a play about Mr. Gladstone=
's
Home Rule Bill. It would be almost impossible to get expressed in a drama of
some five acts and some twenty characters anything so ancient and complicat=
ed
as that Irish problem, the roots of which lie in the darkness of the age of
Strongbow, and the branches of which spread out to the remotest commonwealt=
hs
of the East and West. But we should scarcely be satisfied if a dramatist
overcame the difficulty by ascribing Mr. Gladstone's action in the Home Rule
question to an overwhelming personal affection for Mr. Healy. And in thus
basing Strafford's action upon personal and private reasons, Browning certa=
inly
does some injustice to the political greatness, of Strafford. To attribute =
Mr. Gladstone's
conversion to Home Rule to an infatuation such as that suggested above, wou=
ld
certainly have the air of implying that the writer thought the Home Rule
doctrine a peculiar or untenable one. Similarly, Browning's choice of a mot=
ive
for Strafford has very much the air of an assumption that there was nothing=
to
be said on public grounds for Strafford's political ideal. Now this is
certainly not the case. The Puritans in the great struggles of the reign of
Charles I. may have possessed more valuable ideals than the Royalists, but =
it
is a very vulgar error to suppose that they were any more idealistic. In Br=
owning's
play Pym is made almost the incarnation of public spirit, and Strafford of
private ties. But not only may an upholder of despotism be public-spirited,=
but
in the case of prominent upholders of it like Strafford he generally is.
Despotism indeed, and attempts at despotism, like that of Strafford, are a =
kind
of disease of public spirit. They represent, as it were, the drunkenness of
responsibility. It is when men begin to grow desperate in their love for the
people, when they are overwhelmed with the difficulties and blunders of hum=
anity,
that they fall back upon a wild desire to manage everything themselves. The=
ir
faith in themselves is only a disillusionment with mankind. They are in that
most dreadful position, dreadful alike in personal and public affairs--the
position of the man who has lost faith and not lost love. This belief that =
all
would go right if we could only get the strings into our own hands is a fal=
lacy
almost without exception, but nobody can justly say that it is not public-s=
pirited.
The sin and sorrow of despotism is not that it does not love men, but that =
it
loves them too much and trusts them too little. Therefore from age to age in
history arise these great despotic dreamers, whether they be Royalists or
Imperialists or even Socialists, who have at root this idea, that the world
would enter into rest if it went their way and forswore altogether the righ=
t of
going its own way. When a man begins to think that the grass will not grow =
at
night unless he lies awake to watch it, he generally ends either in an asyl=
um
or on the throne of an Emperor. Of these men Strafford was one, and we cann=
ot
but feel that Browning somewhat narrows the significance and tragedy of his
place in history by making him merely the champion of a personal idiosyncra=
sy
against a great public demand. Strafford was something greater than this; if
indeed, when we come to think of it, a man can be anything greater than the=
friend
of another man. But the whole question is interesting, because Browning,
although he never again attacked a political drama of such palpable importa=
nce
as Strafford, could never keep politics altogether out of his dramatic work.
King Victor and King Charles, which followed it, is a political play, the s=
tudy
of a despotic instinct much meaner than that of Strafford. Colombe's Birthd=
ay, again,
is political as well as romantic. Politics in its historic aspect would see=
m to
have had a great fascination for him, as indeed it must have for all ardent
intellects, since it is the one thing in the world that is as intellectual =
as
the Encyclopædia Britannica and as rapid as the Derby.
One of the favour=
ite
subjects among those who like to conduct long controversies about Browning =
(and
their name is legion) is the question of whether Browning's plays, such as
Strafford, were successes upon the stage. As they are never agreed about wh=
at constitutes
a success on the stage, it is difficult to adjudge their quarrels. But the
general fact is very simple; such a play as Strafford was not a gigantic
theatrical success, and nobody, it is to be presumed, ever imagined that it
would be. On the other hand, it was certainly not a failure, but was enjoyed
and applauded as are hundreds of excellent plays which run only for a week =
or
two, as many excellent plays do, and as all plays ought to do. Above all, t=
he definite
success which attended the representation of Strafford from the point of vi=
ew
of the more educated and appreciative was quite enough to establish Brownin=
g in
a certain definite literary position. As a classical and established
personality he did not come into his kingdom for years and decades afterwar=
ds;
not, indeed, until he was near to entering upon the final rest. But as a
detached and eccentric personality, as a man who existed and who had arisen=
on
the outskirts of literature, the world began to be conscious of him at this
time.
Of what he was
personally at the period that he thus became personally apparent, Mrs. Brid=
ell
Fox has left a very vivid little sketch. She describes how Browning called =
at
the house (he was acquainted with her father), and finding that gentleman o=
ut,
asked with a kind of abrupt politeness if he might play on the piano. This
touch is very characteristic of the mingled aplomb and unconsciousness of
Browning's social manner. "He was then," she writes, "slim a=
nd
dark, and very handsome, and--may I hint it?--just a trifle of a dandy,
addicted to lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things, quite the glass of
fashion and the mould of form. But full of 'ambition,' eager for success, e=
ager
for fame, and, what is more, determined to conquer fame and to achieve succ=
ess."
That is as good a portrait as we can have of the Browning of these days--qu=
ite
self-satisfied, but not self-conscious young man; one who had outgrown, but
only just outgrown, the pure romanticism of his boyhood, which made him run
after gipsy caravans and listen to nightingales in the wood; a man whose
incandescent vitality, now that it had abandoned gipsies and not yet immers=
ed itself
in casuistical poems, devoted itself excitedly to trifles, such as
lemon-coloured kid gloves and fame. But a man still above all things perfec=
tly
young and natural, professing that foppery which follows the fashions, and =
not
that sillier and more demoralising foppery which defies them. Just as he wa=
lked
in coolly and yet impulsively into a private drawing-room and offered to pl=
ay,
so he walked at this time into the huge and crowded salon of European liter=
ature
and offered to sing.
CHAPTER II - EARLY WORKS<=
/span>
In 1840 Sordello was published. Its
reception by the great majority of readers, including some of the ablest me=
n of
the time, was a reception of a kind probably unknown in the rest of literary
history, a reception that was neither praise nor blame. It was perhaps best=
expressed
by Carlyle, who wrote to say that his wife had read Sordello with great
interest, and wished to know whether Sordello was a man, or a city, or a bo=
ok.
Better known, of course, is the story of Tennyson, who said that the first =
line
of the poem--
"Who will, may he=
ar
Sordello's story told,"
and the last line=
--
"Who would, has h=
eard
Sordello's story told,"
were the only two
lines in the poem that he understood, and they were lies.
Perhaps the best
story, however, of all the cycle of Sordello legends is that which is relat=
ed
of Douglas Jerrold. He was recovering from an illness; and having obtained
permission for the first time to read a little during the day, he picked up=
a
book from a pile beside the bed and began Sordello. No sooner had he done so
than he turned deadly pale, put down the book, and said, "My God! I'm =
an
idiot. My health is restored, but my mind's gone. I can't understand two
consecutive lines of an English poem." He then summoned his family and
silently gave the book into their hands, asking for their opinion on the po=
em; and
as the shadow of perplexity gradually passed over their faces, he heaved a =
sigh
of relief and went to sleep. These stories, whether accurate or no, do
undoubtedly represent the very peculiar reception accorded to Sordello, a
reception which, as I have said, bears no resemblance whatever to anything =
in
the way of eulogy or condemnation that had ever been accorded to a work of =
art
before. There had been authors whom it was fashionable to boast of admiring=
and
authors whom it was fashionable to boast of despising; but with Sordello en=
ters
into literary history the Browning of popular badinage, the author whom it =
is
fashionable to boast of not understanding.
Putting aside for=
the
moment the literary qualities which are to be found in the poem, when it
becomes intelligible, there is one question very relevant to the fame and
character of Browning which is raised by Sordello when it is considered, as
most people consider it, as hopelessly unintelligible. It really throws some
light upon the reason of Browning's obscurity. The ordinary theory of
Browning's obscurity is to the effect that it was a piece of intellectual
vanity indulged in more and more insolently as his years and fame increased.
There are at least two very decisive objections to this popular explanation=
. In
the first place, it must emphatically be said for Browning that in all the
numerous records and impressions of him throughout his long and very public
life, there is not one iota of evidence that he was a man who was
intellectually vain. The evidence is entirely the other way. He was vain of
many things, of his physical health, for example, and even more of the phys=
ical
health which he contrived to bestow for a certain period upon his wife. From
the records of his early dandyism, his flowing hair and his lemon-coloured
gloves, it is probable enough that he was vain of his good looks. He was va=
in
of his masculinity, his knowledge of the world, and he was, I fancy, decide=
dly
vain of his prejudices, even, it might be said, vain of being vain of them.=
But
everything is against the idea that he was much in the habit of thinking of
himself in his intellectual aspect. In the matter of conversation, for exam=
ple,
some people who liked him found him genial, talkative, anecdotal, with a
certain strengthening and sanative quality in his mere bodily presence. Some
people who did not like him found him a mere frivolous chatterer, afflicted
with bad manners. One lady, who knew him well, said that, though he only met
you in a crowd and made some commonplace remark, you went for the rest of t=
he
day with your head up. Another lady who did not know him, and therefore dis=
liked
him, asked after a dinner party, "Who was that too-exuberant financier=
?"
These are the diversities of feeling about him. But they all agree in one
point--that he did not talk cleverly, or try to talk cleverly, as that
proceeding is understood in literary circles. He talked positively, he talk=
ed a
great deal, but he never attempted to give that neat and æsthetic
character to his speech which is almost invariable in the case of the man w=
ho
is vain of his mental superiority. When he did impress people with mental
gymnastics, it was mostly in the form of pouring out, with passionate
enthusiasm, whole epics written by other people, which is the last thing th=
at
the literary egotist would be likely to waste his time over. We have theref=
ore
to start with an enormous psychological improbability that Browning made his
poems complicated from mere pride in his powers and contempt of his readers=
.
There is, however,
another very practical objection to the ordinary theory that Browning's
obscurity was a part of the intoxication of fame and intellectual
consideration. We constantly hear the statement that Browning's intellectual
complexity increased with his later poems, but the statement is simply not
true. Sordello, to the indescribable density of which he never afterwards e=
ven
approached, was begun before Strafford, and was therefore the third of his =
works,
and even if we adopt his own habit of ignoring Pauline, the second. He wrote
the greater part of it when he was twenty-four. It was in his youth, at the
time when a man is thinking of love and publicity, of sunshine and singing
birds, that he gave birth to this horror of great darkness; and the more we
study the matter with any knowledge of the nature of youth, the more we sha=
ll
come to the conclusion that Browning's obscurity had altogether the opposit=
e origin
to that which is usually assigned to it. He was not unintelligible because =
he
was proud, but unintelligible because he was humble. He was not unintelligi=
ble
because his thoughts were vague, but because to him they were obvious.
A man who is
intellectually vain does not make himself incomprehensible, because he is so
enormously impressed with the difference between his readers' intelligence =
and
his own that he talks down to them with elaborate repetition and lucidity. =
What
poet was ever vainer than Byron? What poet was ever so magnificently lucid?=
But
a young man of genius who has a genuine humility in his heart does not
elaborately explain his discoveries, because he does not think that they are
discoveries. He thinks that the whole street is humming with his ideas, and
that the postman and the tailor are poets like himself. Browning's impenetr=
able
poetry was the natural expression of this beautiful optimism. Sordello was =
the
most glorious compliment that has ever been paid to the average man.
In the same manne=
r,
of course, outward obscurity is in a young author a mark of inward clarity.=
A
man who is vague in his ideas does not speak obscurely, because his own daz=
ed
and drifting condition leads him to clutch at phrases like ropes and use the
formulæ that every one understands. No one ever found Miss Marie Core=
lli
obscure, because she believes only in words. But if a young man really has
ideas of his own, he must be obscure at first, because he lives in a world =
of
his own in which there are symbols and correspondences and categories unkno=
wn
to the rest of the world. Let us take an imaginary example. Suppose that a
young poet had developed by himself a peculiar idea that all forms of
excitement, including religious excitement, were a kind of evil intoxicatio=
n,
he might say to himself continually that churches were in reality taverns, =
and
this idea would become so fixed in his mind that he would forget that no su=
ch association
existed in the minds of others. And suppose that in pursuance of this gener=
al idea,
which is a perfectly clear and intellectual idea, though a very silly one, =
he
were to say that he believed in Puritanism without its theology, and were to
repeat this idea also to himself until it became instinctive and familiar, =
such
a man might take up a pen, and under the impression that he was saying
something figurative indeed, but quite clear and suggestive, write some such
sentence as this, "You will not get the godless Puritan into your white
taverns," and no one in the length and breadth of the country could fo=
rm
the remotest notion of what he could mean. So it would have been in any
example, for instance, of a man who made some philosophical discovery and d=
id not
realise how far the world was from it. If it had been possible for a poet in
the sixteenth century to hit upon and learn to regard as obvious the
evolutionary theory of Darwin, he might have written down some such line as
"the radiant offspring of the ape," and the maddest volumes of
mediæval natural history would have been ransacked for the meaning of=
the
allusion. The more fixed and solid and sensible the idea appeared to him, t=
he
more dark and fantastic it would have appeared to the world. Most of us ind=
eed,
if we ever say anything valuable, say it when we are giving expression to t=
hat
part of us which has become as familiar and invisible as the pattern on our
wall paper. It is only when an idea has become a matter of course to the th=
inker
that it becomes startling to the world.
It is worth while=
to
dwell upon this preliminary point of the ground of Browning's obscurity,
because it involves an important issue about him. Our whole view of Brownin=
g is
bound to be absolutely different, and I think absolutely false, if we start
with the conception that he was what the French call an intellectual. If we=
see
Browning with the eyes of his particular followers, we shall inevitably thi=
nk
this. For his followers are pre-eminently intellectuals, and there never li=
ved upon
the earth a great man who was so fundamentally different from his followers.
Indeed, he felt this heartily and even humorously himself. "Wilkes was=
no
Wilkite," he said, "and I am very far from being a Browningite.&q=
uot;
We shall, as I say, utterly misunderstand Browning at every step of his car=
eer
if we suppose that he was the sort of man who would be likely to take a
pleasure in asserting the subtlety and abstruseness of his message. He took
pleasure beyond all question in himself; in the strictest sense of the word=
he
enjoyed himself. But his conception of himself was never that of the
intellectual. He conceived himself rather as a sanguine and strenuous man, a
great fighter. "I was ever," as he says, "a fighter." H=
is
faults, a certain occasional fierceness and grossness, were the faults that=
are
counted as virtues among navvies and sailors and most primitive men. His vi=
rtues,
boyishness and absolute fidelity, and a love of plain words and things are =
the
virtues which are counted as vices among the æsthetic prigs who pay h=
im
the greatest honour. He had his more objectionable side, like other men, bu=
t it
had nothing to do with literary egotism. He was not vain of being an
extraordinary man. He was only somewhat excessively vain of being an ordina=
ry
one.
The Browning then=
who
published Sordello we have to conceive, not as a young pedant anxious to
exaggerate his superiority to the public, but as a hot-headed, strong-minde=
d,
inexperienced, and essentially humble man, who had more ideas than he knew =
how
to disentangle from each other. If we compare, for example, the complexity =
of
Browning with the clarity of Matthew Arnold, we shall realise that the caus=
e lies
in the fact that Matthew Arnold was an intellectual aristocrat, and Brownin=
g an
intellectual democrat. The particular peculiarities of Sordello illustrate =
the
matter very significantly. A very great part of the difficulty of Sordello,=
for
instance, is in the fact that before the reader even approaches to tackling=
the
difficulties of Browning's actual narrative, he is apparently expected to s=
tart
with an exhaustive knowledge of that most shadowy and bewildering of all hu=
man
epochs--the period of the Guelph and Ghibelline struggles in mediæval
Italy. Here, of course, Browning simply betrays that impetuous humility whi=
ch
we have previously observed. His father was a student of mediæval
chronicles, he had himself imbibed that learning in the same casual manner =
in
which a boy learns to walk or to play cricket. Consequently in a literary s=
ense
he rushed up to the first person he met and began talking about Ecelo and
Taurello Salinguerra with about as much literary egotism as an English baby
shows when it talks English to an Italian organ grinder. Beyond this the po=
em
of Sordello, powerful as it is, does not present any very significant advan=
ce
in Browning's mental development on that already represented by Pauline and
Paracelsus. Pauline, Paracelsus, and Sordello stand together in the general
fact that they are all, in the excellent phrase used about the first by Mr.
Johnson Fox, "confessional." All three are analyses of the weakne=
ss
which every artistic temperament finds in itself. Browning is still writing
about himself, a subject of which he, like all good and brave men, was
profoundly ignorant. This kind of self-analysis is always misleading. For w=
e do
not see in ourselves those dominant traits strong enough to force themselves
out in action which our neighbours see. We see only a welter of minute ment=
al
experiences which include all the sins that were ever committed by Nero or =
Sir
Willoughby Patterne. When studying ourselves, we are looking at a fresco wi=
th a
magnifying glass. Consequently, these early impressions which great men have
given of themselves are nearly always slanders upon themselves, for the
strongest man is weak to his own conscience, and Hamlet flourished to a
certainty even inside Napoleon. So it was with Browning, who when he was ne=
arly
eighty was destined to write with the hilarity of a schoolboy, but who wrot=
e in
his boyhood poems devoted to analysing the final break-up of intellect and
soul.
Sordello, with all
its load of learning, and almost more oppressive load of beauty, has never =
had
any very important influence even upon Browningites, and with the rest of t=
he
world the name has passed into a jest. The most truly memorable thing about=
it
was Browning's saying in answer to all gibes and misconceptions, a saying w=
hich
expresses better than anything else what genuine metal was in him, "I
blame no one, least of all myself, who did my best then and since." Th=
is
is indeed a model for all men of letters who do not wish to retain only the
letters and to lose the man.
When next Browning
spoke, it was from a greater height and with a new voice. His visit to Asol=
o,
"his first love," as he said, "among Italian cities,"
coincided with the stir and transformation in his spirit and the breaking u=
p of
that splendid palace of mirrors in which a man like Byron had lived and die=
d.
In 1841 Pippa Passes appeared, and with it the real Browning of the modern
world. He had made the discovery which Byron never made, but which almost e=
very
young man does at last make--the thrilling discovery that he is not Robinso=
n Crusoe.
Pippa Passes is the greatest poem ever written, with the exception of one or
two by Walt Whitman, to express the sentiment of the pure love of humanity.=
The
phrase has unfortunately a false and pedantic sound. The love of humanity i=
s a
thing supposed to be professed only by vulgar and officious philanthropists=
, or
by saints of a superhuman detachment and universality. As a matter of fact,
love of humanity is the commonest and most natural of the feelings of a fre=
sh
nature, and almost every one has felt it alight capriciously upon him when
looking at a crowded park or a room full of dancers. The love of those whom=
we
do not know is quite as eternal a sentiment as the love of those whom we do
know. In our friends the richness of life is proved to us by what we have
gained; in the faces in the street the richness of life is proved to us by =
the
hint of what we have lost. And this feeling for strange faces and strange
lives, when it is felt keenly by a young man, almost always expresses itsel=
f in
a desire after a kind of vagabond beneficence, a desire to go through the w=
orld
scattering goodness like a capricious god. It is desired that mankind should
hunt in vain for its best friend as it would hunt for a criminal; that he
should be an anonymous Saviour, an unrecorded Christ. Browning, like every =
one
else, when awakened to the beauty and variety of men, dreamed of this arrog=
ant
self-effacement. He has written of himself that he had long thought vaguely=
of
a being passing through the world, obscure and unnameable, but moulding the
destinies of others to mightier and better issues. Then his almost faultles=
s artistic
instinct came in and suggested that this being, whom he dramatised as the
work-girl, Pippa, should be even unconscious of anything but her own happin=
ess,
and should sway men's lives with a lonely mirth. It was a bold and moving
conception to show us these mature and tragic human groups all at the supre=
me
moment eavesdropping upon the solitude of a child. And it was an even more
precise instinct which made Browning make the errant benefactor a woman. A
man's good work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what =
she is.
There is one other
point about Pippa Passes which is worth a moment's attention. The great
difficulty with regard to the understanding of Browning is the fact that, to
all appearance, scarcely any one can be induced to take him seriously as a
literary artist. His adversaries consider his literary vagaries a disqualif=
ication
for every position among poets; and his admirers regard those vagaries with=
the
affectionate indulgence of a circle of maiden aunts towards a boy home for =
the
holidays. Browning is supposed to do as he likes with form, because he had =
such
a profound scheme of thought. But, as a matter of fact, though few of his
followers will take Browning's literary form seriously, he took his own
literary form very seriously. Now Pippa Passes is, among other things,
eminently remarkable as a very original artistic form, a series of disconne=
cted
but dramatic scenes which have only in common the appearance of one figure.=
For
this admirable literary departure Browning, amid all the laudations of his
"mind" and his "message," has scarcely ever had credit.=
And
just as we should, if we took Browning seriously as a poet, see that he had
made many noble literary forms, so we should also see that he did make from
time to time certain definite literary mistakes. There is one of them, a
glaring one, in Pippa Passes; and, as far as I know, no critic has ever tho=
ught
enough of Browning as an artist to point it out. It is a gross falsificatio=
n of
the whole beauty of Pippa Passes to make the Monseigneur and his accomplice=
in the
last act discuss a plan touching the fate of Pippa herself. The whole centr=
al
and splendid idea of the drama is the fact that Pippa is utterly remote from
the grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms. To make her in the =
end
turn out to be the niece of one of them, is like a whiff from an Adelphi
melodrama, an excellent thing in its place, but destructive of the entire
conception of Pippa. Having done that, Browning might just as well have made
Sebald turn out to be her long lost brother, and Luigi a husband to whom she
was secretly married. Browning made this mistake when his own splendid arti=
stic
power was only growing, and its merits and its faults in a tangle. But its =
real
literary merits and its real literary faults have alike remained unrecognis=
ed
under the influence of that unfortunate intellectualism which idolises Brow=
ning
as a metaphysician and neglects him as a poet. But a better test was coming.
Browning's poetry, in the most strictly poetical sense, reached its flower =
in Dramatic
Lyrics, published in 1842. Here he showed himself a picturesque and poignant
artist in a wholly original manner. And the two main characteristics of the
work were the two characteristics most commonly denied to Browning, both by=
his
opponents and his followers, passion and beauty; but beauty had enlarged her
boundaries in new modes of dramatic arrangement, and passion had found new
voices in fantastic and realistic verse. Those who suppose Browning to be a=
wholly
philosophic poet, number a great majority of his commentators. But when we =
come
to look at the actual facts, they are strangely and almost unexpectedly
otherwise.
Let any one who
believes in the arrogantly intellectual character of Browning's poetry run =
through
the actual repertoire of the Dramatic Lyrics. The first item consists of th=
ose
splendid war chants called "Cavalier Tunes." I do not imagine that
any one will maintain that there is any very mysterious metaphysical aim in
them. The second item is the fine poem "The Lost Leader," a poem
which expresses in perfectly lucid and lyrical verse a perfectly normal and
old-fashioned indignation. It is the same, however far we carry the query. =
What
theory does the next poem, "How they brought the Good News from Ghent =
to
Aix," express, except the daring speculation that it is often exciting=
to
ride a good horse in Belgium? What theory does the poem after that,
"Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr," express, except that it is =
also
frequently exciting to ride a good horse in Africa? Then comes
"Nationality in Drinks," a mere technical oddity without a gleam =
of
philosophy; and after that those two entirely exquisite "Garden Fancie=
s,"
the first of which is devoted to the abstruse thesis that a woman may be
charming, and the second to the equally abstruse thesis that a book may be a
bore. Then comes "The Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," from wh=
ich
the most ingenious "Browning student" cannot extract anything exc=
ept
that people sometimes hate each other in Spain; and then "The
Laboratory," from which he could extract nothing except that people
sometimes hate each other in France. This is a perfectly honest record of t=
he
poems as they stand. And the first eleven poems read straight off are
remarkable for these two obvious characteristics--first, that they contain =
not
even a suggestion of anything that could be called philosophy; and second, =
that
they contain a considerable proportion of the best and most typical poems t=
hat
Browning ever wrote. It may be repeated that either he wrote these lyrics
because he had an artistic sense, or it is impossible to hazard even the
wildest guess as to why he wrote them.
It is permissible=
to
say that the Dramatic Lyrics represent the arrival of the real Browning of
literary history. It is true that he had written already many admirable poe=
ms
of a far more ambitious plan--Paracelsus with its splendid version of the
faults of the intellectual, Pippa Passes with its beautiful deification of =
unconscious
influence. But youth is always ambitious and universal; mature work exhibits
more of individuality, more of the special type and colour of work which a =
man
is destined to do. Youth is universal, but not individual. The genius who
begins life with a very genuine and sincere doubt whether he is meant to be=
an
exquisite and idolised violinist, or the most powerful and eloquent Prime
Minister of modern times, does at last end by making the discovery that the=
re
is, after all, one thing, possibly a certain style of illustrating Nursery =
Rhymes,
which he can really do better than any one else. This was what happened to
Browning; like every one else, he had to discover first the universe, and t=
hen
humanity, and at last himself. With him, as with all others, the great para=
dox
and the great definition of life was this, that the ambition narrows as the
mind expands. In Dramatic Lyrics he discovered the one thing that he could
really do better than any one else--the dramatic lyric. The form is absolut=
ely original:
he had discovered a new field of poetry, and in the centre of that field he=
had
found himself.
The actual qualit=
y,
the actual originality of the form is a little difficult to describe. But i=
ts
general characteristic is the fearless and most dexterous use of grotesque
things in order to express sublime emotions. The best and most characterist=
ic
of the poems are love-poems; they express almost to perfection the real
wonderland of youth, but they do not express it by the ideal imagery of most
poets of love. The imagery of these poems consists, if we may take a rapid =
survey
of Browning's love poetry, of suburban streets, straws, garden-rakes, medic=
ine
bottles, pianos, window-blinds, burnt cork, fashionable fur coats. But in t=
his
new method he thoroughly expressed the true essential, the insatiable reali=
sm
of passion. If any one wished to prove that Browning was not, as he is said=
to
be, the poet of thought, but pre-eminently one of the poets of passion, we
could scarcely find a better evidence of this profoundly passionate element=
than
Browning's astonishing realism in love poetry. There is nothing so fiercely
realistic as sentiment and emotion. Thought and the intellect are content to
accept abstractions, summaries, and generalisations; they are content that =
ten
acres of ground should be called for the sake of argument X, and ten widows'
incomes called for the sake of argument Y; they are content that a thousand
awful and mysterious disappearances from the visible universe should be sum=
med up
as the mortality of a district, or that ten thousand intoxications of the s=
oul
should bear the general name of the instinct of sex. Rationalism can live u=
pon
air and signs and numbers. But sentiment must have reality; emotion demands=
the
real fields, the real widows' homes, the real corpse, and the real woman. A=
nd
therefore Browning's love poetry is the finest love poetry in the world,
because it does not talk about raptures and ideals and gates of heaven, but
about window-panes and gloves and garden walls. It does not deal much with =
abstractions;
it is the truest of all love poetry, because it does not speak much about l=
ove.
It awakens in every man the memories of that immortal instant when common a=
nd
dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter, and a
value beyond the power of any millionaire to compute. He expresses the
celestial time when a man does not think about heaven, but about a parasol.=
And
therefore he is, first, the greatest of love poets, and, secondly, the only
optimistic philosopher except Whitman.
The general
accusation against Browning in connection with his use of the grotesque com=
es
in very definitely here; for in using these homely and practical images, th=
ese
allusions, bordering on what many would call the commonplace, he was indeed
true to the actual and abiding spirit of love. In that delightful poem
"Youth and Art" we have the singing girl saying to her old lover-=
-
"No harm! It was =
not my
fault If you
never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E=
in
alt, Or ra=
n the
chromatic scale up."
This is a great d=
eal
more like the real chaff that passes between those whose hearts are full of=
new
hope or of old memory than half the great poems of the world. Browning never
forgets the little details which to a man who has ever really lived may
suddenly send an arrow through the heart. Take, for example, such a matter =
as
dress, as it is treated in "A Lover's Quarrel."
"See, how she loo=
ks
now, dressed In a
sledging cap and vest! =
'Tis
a huge fur cloak-- =
Like
a reindeer's yoke Falls the lappet =
along
the breast: Sleeves for her a=
rms to
rest, Or to=
hang,
as my Love likes best."
That would almost
serve as an order to a dressmaker, and is therefore poetry, or at least
excellent poetry of this order. So great a power have these dead things of
taking hold on the living spirit, that I question whether any one could read
through the catalogue of a miscellaneous auction sale without coming upon
things which, if realised for a moment, would be near to the elemental tear=
s.
And if any of us or all of us are truly optimists, and believe as Browning =
did,
that existence has a value wholly inexpressible, we are most truly compelle=
d to
that sentiment not by any argument or triumphant justification of the cosmo=
s,
but by a few of these momentary and immortal sights and sounds, a gesture, =
an
old song, a portrait, a piano, an old door.
In 1843 appeared =
that
marvellous drama The Return of the Druses, a work which contains more of
Browning's typical qualities exhibited in an exquisite literary shape, than=
can
easily be counted. We have in The Return of the Druses his love of the corn=
ers
of history, his interest in the religious mind of the East, with its almost
terrifying sense of being in the hand of heaven, his love of colour and ver=
bal luxury,
of gold and green and purple, which made some think he must be an Oriental
himself. But, above all, it presents the first rise of that great psycholog=
ical
ambition which Browning was thenceforth to pursue. In Pauline and the poems
that follow it, Browning has only the comparatively easy task of giving an
account of himself. In Pippa Passes he has the only less easy task of givin=
g an
account of humanity. In The Return of the Druses he has for the first time =
the task
which is so much harder than giving an account of humanity--the task of giv=
ing
an account of a human being. Djabal, the great Oriental impostor, who is the
central character of the play, is a peculiarly subtle character, a compound=
of
blasphemous and lying assumptions of Godhead with genuine and stirring patr=
iotic
and personal feelings: he is a blend, so to speak, of a base divinity and o=
f a
noble humanity. He is supremely important in the history of Browning's mind,
for he is the first of that great series of the apologiæ of apparently
evil men, on which the poet was to pour out so much of his imaginative weal=
th--Djabal,
Fra Lippo, Bishop Blougram, Sludge, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, and the he=
ro
of Fifine at the Fair.
With this play, so
far as any point can be fixed for the matter, he enters for the first time =
on
the most valuable of all his labours--the defence of the indefensible. It m=
ay
be noticed that Browning was not in the least content with the fact that
certain human frailties had always lain more or less under an implied
indulgence; that all human sentiment had agreed that a profligate might be
generous, or that a drunkard might be high-minded. He was insatiable: he wi=
shed
to go further and show in a character like Djabal that an impostor might be=
generous
and that a liar might be high-minded. In all his life, it must constantly be
remembered, he tried always the most difficult things. Just as he tried the
queerest metres and attempted to manage them, so he tried the queerest human
souls and attempted to stand in their place. Charity was his basic philosop=
hy;
but it was, as it were, a fierce charity, a charity that went man-hunting. =
He
was a kind of cosmic detective who walked into the foulest of thieves' kitc=
hens
and accused men publicly of virtue. The character of Djabal in The Return of
the Druses is the first of this long series of forlorn hopes for the relief=
of
long surrendered castles of misconduct. As we shall see, even realising the
humanity of a noble impostor like Djabal did not content his erratic hunger=
for
goodness. He went further again, and realised the humanity of a mean impost=
or
like Sludge. But in all things he retained this essential characteristic, t=
hat
he was not content with seeking sinners--he sought the sinners whom even
sinners cast out.
Browning's feelin=
g of
ambition in the matter of the drama continued to grow at this time. It must=
be
remembered that he had every natural tendency to be theatrical, though he
lacked the essential lucidity. He was not, as a matter of fact, a particula=
rly
unsuccessful dramatist; but in the world of abstract temperaments he was by
nature an unsuccessful dramatist. He was, that is to say, a man who loved a=
bove
all things plain and sensational words, open catastrophes, a clear and ring=
ing
conclusion to everything. But it so happened, unfortunately, that his own w=
ords
were not plain; that his catastrophes came with a crashing and sudden
unintelligibleness which left men in doubt whether the thing were a catastr=
ophe
or a great stroke of good luck; that his conclusion, though it rang like a =
trumpet
to the four corners of heaven, was in its actual message quite inaudible. We
are bound to admit, on the authority of all his best critics and admirers, =
that
his plays were not failures, but we can all feel that they should have been=
. He
was, as it were, by nature a neglected dramatist. He was one of those who
achieve the reputation, in the literal sense, of eccentricity by their fran=
tic
efforts to reach the centre.
A Blot on the
'Scutcheon followed The Return of the Druses. In connection with the
performance of this very fine play a quarrel arose which would not be worth
mentioning if it did not happen to illustrate the curious energetic simplic=
ity
of Browning's character. Macready, who was in desperately low financial
circumstances at this time, tried by every means conceivable to avoid playi=
ng
the part; he dodged, he shuffled, he tried every evasion that occurred to h=
im,
but it never occurred to Browning to see what he meant. He pushed off the p=
art
upon Phelps, and Browning was contented; he resumed it, and Browning was on=
ly
discontented on behalf of Phelps. The two had a quarrel; they were both
headstrong, passionate men, but the quarrel dealt entirely with the unfortu=
nate
condition of Phelps. Browning beat down his own hat over his eyes; Macready
flung Browning's manuscript with a slap upon the floor. But all the time it
never occurred to the poet that Macready's conduct was dictated by anything=
so
crude and simple as a desire for money. Browning was in fact by his princip=
les
and his ideals a man of the world, but in his life far otherwise. That worl=
dly ease
which is to most of us a temptation was to him an ideal. He was as it were a
citizen of the New Jerusalem who desired with perfect sanity and simplicity=
to
be a citizen of Mayfair. There was in him a quality which can only be most
delicately described; for it was a virtue which bears a strange resemblance=
to
one of the meanest of vices. Those curious people who think the truth a thi=
ng
that can be said violently and with ease, might naturally call Browning a s=
nob.
He was fond of society, of fashion and even of wealth: but there is no snob=
bery
in admiring these things or any things if we admire them for the right reas=
ons.
He admired them as worldlings cannot admire them: he was, as it were, the c=
hild
who comes in with the dessert. He bore the same relation to the snob that t=
he
righteous man bears to the Pharisee: something frightfully close and similar
and yet an everlasting opposite.
CHAPTER III - BROWNING AND
HIS MARRIAGE
Robert Browning had his faults, and=
the
general direction of those faults has been previously suggested. The chief =
of
his faults, a certain uncontrollable brutality of speech and gesture when he
was strongly roused, was destined to cling to him all through his life, and=
to
startle with the blaze of a volcano even the last quiet years before his de=
ath.
But any one who wishes to understand how deep was the elemental honesty and
reality of his character, how profoundly worthy he was of any love that was
bestowed upon him, need only study one most striking and determining elemen=
t in
the question--Browning's simple, heartfelt, and unlimited admiration for ot=
her
people. He was one of a generation of great men, of great men who had a cer=
tain
peculiar type, certain peculiar merits and defects. Carlyle, Tennyson, Rusk=
in,
Matthew Arnold, were alike in being children of a very strenuous and
conscientious age, alike in possessing its earnestness and air of deciding
great matters, alike also in showing a certain almost noble jealousy, a cer=
tain
restlessness, a certain fear of other influences. Browning alone had no fea=
r;
he welcomed, evidently without the least affectation, all the influences of=
his
day. A very interesting letter of his remains in which he describes his
pleasure in a university dinner. "Praise," he says in effect,
"was given very deservedly to Matthew Arnold and Swinburne, and to that
pride of Oxford men, Clough." The really striking thing about these th=
ree
names is the fact that they are united in Browning's praise in a way in whi=
ch
they are by no means united in each other's. Matthew Arnold, in one of his
extant letters, calls Swinburne "a young pseudo-Shelley," who,
according to Arnold, thinks he can make Greek plays good by making them mod=
ern.
Mr. Swinburne, on the other hand, has summarised Clough in a contemptuous
rhyme:--
"There was a bad =
poet
named Clough, Whom his friends =
all
united to puff. But the public, t=
hough
dull, Has n=
ot
quite such a skull As belongs to bel=
ievers
in Clough."
The same general =
fact
will be found through the whole of Browning's life and critical attitude. He
adored Shelley, and also Carlyle who sneered at him. He delighted in Mill, =
and
also in Ruskin who rebelled against Mill. He excused Napoleon III. and Land=
or
who hurled interminable curses against Napoleon. He admired all the cycle o=
f great
men who all contemned each other. To say that he had no streak of envy in h=
is
nature would be true, but unfair; for there is no justification for attribu=
ting
any of these great men's opinions to envy. But Browning was really unique, =
in
that he had a certain spontaneous and unthinking tendency to the admiration=
of
others. He admired another poet as he admired a fading sunset or a chance
spring leaf. He no more thought whether he could be as good as that man in =
that
department than whether he could be redder than the sunset or greener than =
the
leaf of spring. He was naturally magnanimous in the literal sense of that
sublime word; his mind was so great that it rejoiced in the triumphs of
strangers. In this spirit Browning had already cast his eyes round in the
literary world of his time, and had been greatly and justifiably struck with
the work of a young lady poet, Miss Barrett.
That impression w=
as
indeed amply justified. In a time when it was thought necessary for a lady =
to
dilute the wine of poetry to its very weakest tint, Miss Barrett had contri=
ved
to produce poetry which was open to literary objection as too heady and too
high-coloured. When she erred it was through an Elizabethan audacity and
luxuriance, a straining after violent metaphors. With her reappeared in poe=
try
a certain element which had not been present in it since the last days of
Elizabethan literature, the fusion of the most elementary human passion with
something which can only be described as wit, a certain love of quaint and
sustained similes, of parallels wildly logical, and of brazen paradox and
antithesis. We find this hot wit, as distinct from the cold wit of the scho=
ol
of Pope, in the puns and buffooneries of Shakespeare. We find it lingering =
in
Hudibras, and we do not find it again until we come to such strange and str=
ong
lines as these of Elizabeth Barrett in her poem on Napoleon:--
"Blood fell like =
dew
beneath his sunrise--sooth, But glittered dew=
-like
in the covenanted And high-rayed light. H=
e was
a despot--granted, But the [Greek: a=
utos]
of his autocratic mouth Said 'Yea' i' the
people's French! He magnified The image of the
freedom he denied."
Her poems are ful=
l of
quaint things, of such things as the eyes in the peacock fans of the Vatica=
n,
which she describes as winking at the Italian tricolor. She often took the =
step
from the sublime to the ridiculous: but to take this step one must reach the
sublime. Elizabeth Barrett contrived to assert, what still needs but then u=
rgently
needed assertion, the fact that womanliness, whether in life or poetry, was=
a
positive thing, and not the negative of manliness. Her verse at its best was
quite as strong as Browning's own, and very nearly as clever. The differenc=
e between
their natures was a difference between two primary colours, not between dark
and light shades of the same colour.
Browning had often
heard not only of the public, but of the private life of this lady from his
father's friend Kenyon. The old man, who was one of those rare and valuable
people who have a talent for establishing definite relationships with people
after a comparatively short intercourse, had been appointed by Miss Barrett=
as
her "fairy godfather." He spoke much about her to Browning, and of
Browning to her, with a certain courtly garrulity which was one of his tale=
nts.
And there could be little doubt that the two poets would have met long befo=
re
had it not been for certain peculiarities in the position of Miss Barrett. =
She
was an invalid, and an invalid of a somewhat unique kind, and living beyond=
all
question under very unique circumstances.
Her father, Edward
Moulton Barrett, had been a landowner in the West Indies, and thus, by a
somewhat curious coincidence, had borne a part in the same social system wh=
ich
stung Browning's father into revolt and renunciation. The parts played by
Edward Barrett, however, though little or nothing is known of it, was proba=
bly
very different. He was a man Conservative by nature, a believer in authorit=
y in
the nation and the family, and endowed with some faculties for making his c=
onceptions
prevail. He was an able man, capable in his language of a certain bitter
felicity of phrase. He was rigidly upright and responsible, and he had a
capacity for profound affection. But selfishness of the most perilous sort,=
an
unconscious selfishness, was eating away his moral foundations, as it tends=
to
eat away those of all despots. His most fugitive moods changed and controll=
ed
the whole atmosphere of the house, and the state of things was fully as opp=
ressive
in the case of his good moods as in the case of his bad ones. He had, what =
is
perhaps the subtlest and worst spirit of egotism, not that spirit merely wh=
ich
thinks that nothing should stand in the way of its ill-temper, but that spi=
rit
which thinks that nothing should stand in the way of its amiability. His
daughters must be absolutely at his beck and call, whether it was to be
brow-beaten or caressed. During the early years of Elizabeth Barrett's life,
the family had lived in the country, and for that brief period she had know=
n a
more wholesome life than she was destined ever to know again until her marr=
iage
long afterwards. She was not, as is the general popular idea, absolutely a
congenital invalid, weak, and almost moribund from the cradle. In early
girlhood she was slight and sensitive indeed, but perfectly active and
courageous. She was a good horsewoman, and the accident which handicapped h=
er
for so many years afterwards happened to her when she was riding. The injur=
y to
her spine, however, will be found, the more we study her history, to be only
one of the influences which were to darken those bedridden years, and to ha=
ve
among them a far less important place than has hitherto been attached to it.
Her father moved to a melancholy house in Wimpole Street; and his own chara=
cter
growing gloomier and stranger as time went on, he mounted guard over his
daughter's sickbed in a manner compounded of the pessimist and the
disciplinarian. She was not permitted to stir from the sofa, often not even=
to
cross two rooms to her bed. Her father came and prayed over her with a kind=
of
melancholy glee, and with the avowed solemnity of a watcher by a deathbed. =
She was
surrounded by that most poisonous and degrading of all atmospheres--a medic=
al
atmosphere. The existence of this atmosphere has nothing to do with the act=
ual
nature or prolongation of disease. A man may pass three hours out of every =
five
in a state of bad health, and yet regard, as Stevenson regarded, the three
hours as exceptional and the two as normal. But the curse that lay on the
Barrett household was the curse of considering ill-health the natural condi=
tion
of a human being. The truth was that Edward Barrett was living emotionally =
and
æsthetically, like some detestable decadent poet, upon his daughter's
decline. He did not know this, but it was so. Scenes, explanations, prayers,
fury, and forgiveness had become bread and meat for which he hungered; and =
when
the cloud was upon his spirit, he would lash out at all things and every one
with the insatiable cruelty of the sentimentalist.
It is wonderful t=
hat
Elizabeth Barrett was not made thoroughly morbid and impotent by this
intolerable violence and more intolerable tenderness. In her estimate of her
own health she did, of course, suffer. It is evident that she practically
believed herself to be dying. But she was a high-spirited woman, full of th=
at
silent and quite unfathomable kind of courage which is only found in women,=
and
she took a much more cheerful view of death than her father did of life. Si=
lent
rooms, low voices, lowered blinds, long days of loneliness, and of the
sickliest kind of sympathy, had not tamed a spirit which was swift and head=
long
to a fault. She could still own with truth the magnificent fact that her ch=
ief
vice was impatience, "tearing open parcels instead of untying them;&qu=
ot;
looking at the end of books before she had read them was, she said, incurab=
le
with her. It is difficult to imagine anything more genuinely stirring than =
the achievement
of this woman, who thus contrived, while possessing all the excuses of an
invalid, to retain some of the faults of a tomboy.
Impetuosity,
vividness, a certain absoluteness and urgency in her demands, marked her in=
the
eyes of all who came in contact with her. In after years, when Browning had
experimentally shaved his beard off, she told him with emphatic gestures th=
at
it must be grown again "that minute." There we have very graphica=
lly
the spirit which tears open parcels. Not in vain, or as a mere phrase, did =
her husband
after her death describe her as "all a wonder and a wild desire."=
She had, of cours=
e,
lived her second and real life in literature and the things of the mind, and
this in a very genuine and strenuous sense. Her mental occupations were not
mere mechanical accomplishments almost as colourless as the monotony they
relieved, nor were they coloured in any visible manner by the unwholesome
atmosphere in which she breathed. She used her brains seriously; she was a =
good
Greek scholar, and read Æschylus and Euripides unceasingly with her b=
lind
friend, Mr. Boyd; and she had, and retained even to the hour of her death, a
passionate and quite practical interest in great public questions. Naturally
she was not uninterested in Robert Browning, but it does not appear that she
felt at this time the same kind of fiery artistic curiosity that he felt ab=
out
her. He does appear to have felt an attraction, which may almost be called
mystical, for the personality which was shrouded from the world by such som=
bre
curtains. In 1845 he addressed a letter to her in which he spoke of a forme=
r occasion
on which they had nearly met, and compared it to the sensation of having on=
ce
been outside the chapel of some marvellous illumination and found the door
barred against him. In that phrase it is easy to see how much of the romant=
ic
boyhood of Browning remained inside the resolute man of the world into whic=
h he
was to all external appearance solidifying. Miss Barrett replied to his let=
ters
with charming sincerity and humour, and with much of that leisurely self-re=
velation
which is possible for an invalid who has nothing else to do. She herself, w=
ith
her love of quiet and intellectual companionship, would probably have been
quite happy for the rest of her life if their relations had always remained=
a
learned and delightful correspondence. But she must have known very little =
of Robert
Browning if she imagined he would be contented with this airy and bloodless
tie. At all times of his life he was sufficiently fond of his own way; at t=
his
time he was especially prompt and impulsive, and he had always a great love=
for
seeing and hearing and feeling people, a love of the physical presence of
friends, which made him slap men on the back and hit them in the chest when=
he
was very fond of them. The correspondence between the two poets had not long
begun when Browning suggested something which was almost a blasphemy in the=
Barrett
household, that he should come and call on her as he would on any one else.
This seems to have thrown her into a flutter of fear and doubt. She alleges=
all
kinds of obstacles, the chief of which were her health and the season of the
year and the east winds. "If my truest heart's wishes avail," rep=
lied
Browning obstinately, "you shall laugh at east winds yet as I do."=
;
Then began the ch=
ief
part of that celebrated correspondence which has within comparatively recent
years been placed before the world. It is a correspondence which has very
peculiar qualities and raises many profound questions.
It is impossible =
to
deal at any length with the picture given in these remarkable letters of the
gradual progress and amalgamation of two spirits of great natural potency a=
nd
independence, without saying at least a word about the moral question raise=
d by
their publication and the many expressions of disapproval which it entails.=
To
the mind of the present writer the whole of such a question should be teste=
d by
one perfectly clear intellectual distinction and comparison. I am not prepa=
red
to admit that there is or can be, properly speaking, in the world anything =
that
is too sacred to be known. That spiritual beauty and spiritual truth are in
their nature communicable, and that they should be communicated, is a princ=
iple
which lies at the root of every conceivable religion. Christ was crucified =
upon
a hill, and not in a cavern, and the word Gospel itself involves the same i=
dea
as the ordinary name of a daily paper. Whenever, therefore, a poet or any s=
imilar
type of man can, or conceives that he can, make all men partakers in some
splendid secret of his own heart, I can imagine nothing saner and nothing
manlier than his course in doing so. Thus it was that Dante made a new heav=
en
and a new hell out of a girl's nod in the streets of Florence. Thus it was =
that
Paul founded a civilisation by keeping an ethical diary. But the one essent=
ial
which exists in all such cases as these is that the man in question believes
that he can make the story as stately to the whole world as it is to him, a=
nd
he chooses his words to that end. Yet when a work contains expressions which
have one value and significance when read by the people to whom they were
addressed, and an entirely different value and significance when read by any
one else, then the element of the violation of sanctity does arise. It is n=
ot
because there is anything in this world too sacred to tell. It is rather
because there are a great many things in this world too sacred to parody. If
Browning could really convey to the world the inmost core of his affection =
for
his wife, I see no reason why he should not. But the objection to letters w=
hich
begin "My dear Ba," is that they do not convey anything of the so=
rt.
As far as any third person is concerned, Browning might as well have been e=
xpressing
the most noble and universal sentiment in the dialect of the Cherokees.
Objection to the publication of such passages as that, in short, is not the
fact that they tell us about the love of the Brownings, but that they do not
tell us about it.
Upon this princip=
le
it is obvious that there should have been a selection among the Letters, but
not a selection which should exclude anything merely because it was ardent =
and
noble. If Browning or Mrs. Browning had not desired any people to know that
they were fond of each other, they would not have written and published &qu=
ot;One
Word More" or "The Sonnets from the Portuguese." Nay, they w=
ould
not have been married in a public church, for every one who is married in a
church does make a confession of love of absolutely national publicity, and=
tacitly,
therefore, repudiates any idea that such confessions are too sacred for the
world to know. The ridiculous theory that men should have no noble passions=
or
sentiments in public may have been designed to make private life holy and
undefiled, but it has had very little actual effect except to make public l=
ife
cynical and preposterously unmeaning. But the words of a poem or the words =
of
the English Marriage Service, which are as fine as many poems, is a languag=
e dignified
and deliberately intended to be understood by all. If the bride and bridegr=
oom
in church, instead of uttering those words, were to utter a poem compounded=
of
private allusions to the foibles of Aunt Matilda, or of childish secrets wh=
ich
they would tell each other in a lane, it would be a parallel case to the
publication of some of the Browning Letters. Why the serious and universal
portions of those Letters could not be published without those which are to=
us
idle and unmeaning it is difficult to understand. Our wisdom, whether expre=
ssed
in private or public, belongs to the world, but our folly belongs to those =
we
love.
There is at least=
one
peculiarity in the Browning Letters which tends to make their publication f=
ar
less open to objection than almost any other collection of love letters whi=
ch
can be imagined. The ordinary sentimentalist who delights in the most emoti=
onal
of magazine interviews, will not be able to get much satisfaction out of th=
em, because
he and many persons more acute will be quite unable to make head or tail of
three consecutive sentences. In this respect it is the most extraordinary
correspondence in the world. There seem to be only two main rules for this =
form
of letter-writing: the first is, that if a sentence can begin with a
parenthesis it always should; and the second is, that if you have written f=
rom
a third to half of a sentence you need never in any case write any more. It
would be amusing to watch any one who felt an idle curiosity as to the lang=
uage
and secrets of lovers opening the Browning Letters. He would probably come =
upon
some such simple and lucid passage as the following: "I ought to wait,=
say
a week at least, having killed all your mules for you, before I shot down y=
our
dogs.... But not being Phoibos Apollon, you are to know further that when I=
did
think I might go modestly on ... [Greek: ômoi], let me get out of this
slough of a simile, never mind with what dislocated ankles."
What our imaginary
sentimentalist would make of this tender passage it is difficult indeed to
imagine. The only plain conclusion which appears to emerge from the words is
the somewhat curious one--that Browning was in the habit of taking a gun do=
wn
to Wimpole Street and of demolishing the live stock on those somewhat
unpromising premises. Nor will he be any better enlightened if he turns to =
the
reply of Miss Barrett, which seems equally dominated with the great central=
idea
of the Browning correspondence that the most enlightening passages in a let=
ter
consist of dots. She replies in a letter following the above: "But if =
it
could be possible that you should mean to say you would show me. . . . Can =
it
be? or am I reading this 'Attic contraction' quite the wrong way. You see I=
am
afraid of the difference between flattering myself and being flattered . . .
the fatal difference. And now will you understand that I should be too over=
joyed
to have revelations from the Portfolio . . . however incarnated with blots =
and
pen scratches . . . to be able to ask impudently of them now? Is that
plain?" Most probably she thought it was.
With regard to
Browning himself this characteristic is comparatively natural and appropria=
te.
Browning's prose was in any case the most roundabout affair in the world. T=
hose
who knew him say that he would often send an urgent telegram from which it =
was
absolutely impossible to gather where the appointment was, or when it was, =
or
what was its object. This fact is one of the best of all arguments against =
the theory
of Browning's intellectual conceit. A man would have to be somewhat abnorma=
lly
conceited in order to spend sixpence for the pleasure of sending an
unintelligible communication to the dislocation of his own plans. The fact =
was,
that it was part of the machinery of his brain that things came out of it, =
as
it were, backwards. The words "tail foremost" express Browning's
style with something more than a conventional accuracy. The tail, the most
insignificant part of an animal, is also often the most animated and fantas=
tic.
An utterance of Browning is often like a strange animal walking backwards, =
who flourishes
his tail with such energy that every one takes it for his head. He was in o=
ther
words, at least in his prose and practical utterances, more or less incapab=
le
of telling a story without telling the least important thing first. If a man
who belonged to an Italian secret society, one local branch of which bore a=
s a
badge an olive-green ribbon, had entered his house, and in some sensational=
interview
tried to bribe or blackmail him, he would have told the story with great en=
ergy
and indignation, but he would have been incapable of beginning with anything
except the question of the colour of olives. His whole method was founded b=
oth
in literature and life upon the principle of the "ex pede Herculem,&qu=
ot;
and at the beginning of his description of Hercules the foot appears some s=
izes
larger than the hero. It is, in short, natural enough that Browning should =
have
written his love letters obscurely, since he wrote his letters to his publi=
sher
and his solicitor obscurely. In the case of Mrs. Browning it is somewhat mo=
re
difficult to understand. For she at least had, beyond all question, a quite
simple and lucent vein of humour, which does not easily reconcile itself wi=
th
this subtlety. But she was partly under the influence of her own quality of
passionate ingenuity or emotional wit of which we have already taken notice=
in
dealing with her poems, and she was partly also no doubt under the influenc=
e of
Browning. Whatever was the reason, their correspondence was not of the sort=
which
can be pursued very much by the outside public. Their letters may be publis=
hed
a hundred times over, they still remain private. They write to each other i=
n a
language of their own, an almost exasperatingly impressionist language, a
language chiefly consisting of dots and dashes and asterisks and italics, a=
nd
brackets and notes of interrogation. Wordsworth when he heard afterwards of
their eventual elopement said with that slight touch of bitterness he alway=
s used
in speaking of Browning, "So Robert Browning and Miss Barrett have gone
off together. I hope they understand each other--nobody else would." It
would be difficult to pay a higher compliment to a marriage. Their common
affection for Kenyon was a great element in their lives and in their
correspondence. "I have a convenient theory to account for Mr.
Kenyon," writes Browning mysteriously, "and his otherwise
unaccountable kindness to me." "For Mr. Kenyon's kindness," =
retorts
Elizabeth Barrett, "no theory will account. I class it with mesmerism =
for
that reason." There is something very dignified and beautiful about the
simplicity of these two poets vying with each other in giving adequate prai=
se
to the old dilettante, of whom the world would never have heard but for the=
m.
Browning's feeling for him was indeed especially strong and typical.
"There," he said, pointing after the old man as he left the room,
"there goes one of the most splendid men living--a man so noble in his
friendship, so lavish in his hospitality, so large-hearted and benevolent, =
that
he deserves to be known all over the world as 'Kenyon the Magnificent.'&quo=
t;
There is something thoroughly worthy of Browning at his best in this feelin=
g, not
merely of the use of sociability, or of the charm of sociability, but of the
magnificence, the heroic largeness of real sociability. Being himself a warm
champion of the pleasures of society, he saw in Kenyon a kind of poetic gen=
ius
for the thing, a mission of superficial philanthropy. He is thoroughly to be
congratulated on the fact that he had grasped the great but now neglected
truth, that a man may actually be great, yet not in the least able.
Browning's desire=
to
meet Miss Barrett was received on her side, as has been stated, with a vari=
ety
of objections. The chief of these was the strangely feminine and irrational
reason that she was not worth seeing, a point on which the seeker for an
interview might be permitted to form his own opinion. "There is nothin=
g to
see in me; nor to hear in me.--I never learned to talk as you do in London;
although I can admire that brightness of carved speech in Mr. Kenyon and ot=
hers.
If my poetry is worth anything to any eye, it is the flower of me. I have l=
ived
most and been most happy in it, and so it has all my colours; the rest of m=
e is
nothing but a root, fit for the ground and dark." The substance of
Browning's reply was to the effect, "I will call at two on Tuesday.&qu=
ot;
They met on May 2=
0,
1845. A short time afterwards he had fallen in love with her and made her an
offer of marriage. To a person in the domestic atmosphere of the Barretts, =
the
incident would appear to have been paralysing. "I will tell you what I
once said in jest ..." she writes, "If a prince of El Dorado shou=
ld
come with a pedigree of lineal descent from some signory in the moon in one
hand and a ticket of good behaviour from the nearest Independent chapel in =
the other!--'Why,
even then,' said my sister Arabel, 'it would not do.' And she was right; we=
all
agreed that she was right."
This may be taken=
as
a fairly accurate description of the real state of Mr. Barrett's mind on one
subject. It is illustrative of the very best and breeziest side of Elizabeth
Barrett's character that she could be so genuinely humorous over so tragic a
condition of the human mind.
Browning's propos=
als
were, of course, as matters stood, of a character to dismay and repel all t=
hose
who surrounded Elizabeth Barrett. It was not wholly a matter of the fancies=
of
her father. The whole of her family, and most probably the majority of her
medical advisers, did seriously believe at this time that she was unfit to =
be
moved, to say nothing of being married, and that a life passed between a bed
and a sofa, and avoiding too frequent and abrupt transitions even from one =
to
the other, was the only life she could expect on this earth. Almost alone in
holding another opinion and in urging her to a more vigorous view of her
condition, stood Browning himself. "But you are better," he would
say; "you look so and speak so." Which of the two opinions was ri=
ght
is of course a complex medical matter into which a book like this has neith=
er
the right nor the need to enter. But this much may be stated as a mere ques=
tion
of fact. In the summer of 1846 Elizabeth Barrett was still living under the
great family convention which provided her with nothing but an elegant
deathbed, forbidden to move, forbidden to see proper daylight, forbidden to
receive a friend lest the shock should destroy her suddenly. A year or two
later, in Italy, as Mrs. Browning, she was being dragged up hill in a wine
hamper, toiling up to the crests of mountains at four o'clock in the mornin=
g, riding
for five miles on a donkey to what she calls "an inaccessible volcanic
ground not far from the stars." It is perfectly incredible that any on=
e so
ill as her family believed her to be should have lived this life for
twenty-four hours. Something must be allowed for the intoxication of a new =
tie
and a new interest in life. But such exaltations can in their nature hardly
last a month, and Mrs. Browning lived for fifteen years afterwards in
infinitely better health than she had ever known before. In the light of mo=
dern
knowledge it is not very difficult or very presumptuous, of us to guess that
she had been in her father's house to some extent inoculated with hysteria,
that strange affliction which some people speak of as if it meant the absen=
ce
of disease, but which is in truth the most terrible of all diseases. It mus=
t be
remembered that in 1846 little or nothing was known of spine complaints suc=
h as
that from which Elizabeth Barrett suffered, less still of the nervous
conditions they create, and least of all of hysterical phenomena. In our day
she would have been ordered air and sunlight and activity, and all the thin=
gs
the mere idea of which chilled the Barretts with terror. In our day, in sho=
rt,
it would have been recognised that she was in the clutch of a form of neuro=
sis which
exhibits every fact of a disease except its origin, that strange possession
which makes the body itself a hypocrite. Those who surrounded Miss Barrett =
knew
nothing of this, and Browning knew nothing of it; and probably if he knew
anything, knew less than they did. Mrs. Orr says, probably with a great dea=
l of
truth, that of ill-health and its sensations he remained "pathetically
ignorant" to his dying day. But devoid as he was alike of expert knowl=
edge
and personal experience, without a shadow of medical authority, almost with=
out
anything that can be formally called a right to his opinion, he was, and
remained, right. He at least saw, he indeed alone saw, to the practical cen=
tre
of the situation. He did not know anything about hysteria or neurosis, or t=
he
influence of surroundings, but he knew that the atmosphere of Mr. Barrett's
house was not a fit thing for any human being, alive, dying, or dead. His s=
tand
upon this matter has really a certain human interest, since it is an exampl=
e of
a thing which will from time to time occur, the interposition of the averag=
e man
to the confounding of the experts. Experts are undoubtedly right nine times=
out
of ten, but the tenth time comes, and we find in military matters an Oliver
Cromwell who will make every mistake known to strategy and yet win all his
battles, and in medical matters a Robert Browning whose views have not a
technical leg to stand on and are entirely correct.
But while Browning
was thus standing alone in his view of the matter, while Edward Barrett had=
to
all appearance on his side a phalanx of all the sanities and respectabiliti=
es,
there came suddenly a new development, destined to bring matters to a crisis
indeed, and to weigh at least three souls in the balance. Upon further
examination of Miss Barrett's condition, the physicians had declared that it
was absolutely necessary that she should be taken to Italy. This may, witho=
ut
any exaggeration, be called the turning-point and the last great earthly
opportunity of Barrett's character. He had not originally been an evil man,
only a man who, being stoical in practical things, permitted himself, to his
great detriment, a self-indulgence in moral things. He had grown to regard =
his
pious and dying daughter as part of the furniture of the house and of the u=
niverse.
And as long as the great mass of authorities were on his side, his illusion=
was
quite pardonable. His crisis came when the authorities changed their front,=
and
with one accord asked his permission to send his daughter abroad. It was his
crisis, and he refused.
He had, if we may
judge from what we know of him, his own peculiar and somewhat detestable wa=
y of
refusing. Once when his daughter had asked a perfectly simple favour in a
matter of expediency, permission, that is, to keep her favourite brother wi=
th
her during an illness, her singular parent remarked that "she might ke=
ep
him if she liked, but that he had looked for greater self-sacrifice."
These were the weapons with which he ruled his people. For the worst tyrant=
is
not the man who rules by fear; the worst tyrant is he who rules by love and
plays on it as on a harp. Barrett was one of the oppressors who have discov=
ered
the last secret of oppression, that which is told in the fine verse of
Swinburne:--
"The racks of the=
earth
and the rods Are
weak as the foam on the sands; The heart is the =
prey
for the gods, Who
crucify hearts, not hands."
He, with his terr=
ible
appeal to the vibrating consciences of women, was, with regard to one of th=
em,
very near to the end of his reign. When Browning heard that the Italian jou=
rney
was forbidden, he proposed definitely that they should marry and go on the
journey together.
Many other persons
had taken cognisance of the fact, and were active in the matter. Kenyon, the
gentlest and most universally complimentary of mortals, had marched into the
house and given Arabella Barrett, the sister of the sick woman, his opinion=
of
her father's conduct with a degree of fire and frankness which must have be=
en
perfectly amazing in a man of his almost antiquated social delicacy. Mrs. J=
ameson,
an old and generous friend of the family, had immediately stepped in and
offered to take Elizabeth to Italy herself, thus removing all questions of
expense or arrangement. She would appear to have stood to her guns in the
matter with splendid persistence and magnanimity. She called day after day
seeking for a change of mind, and delayed her own journey to the continent =
more
than once. At length, when it became evident that the extraction of Mr.
Barrett's consent was hopeless, she reluctantly began her own tour in Europ=
e alone.
She went to Paris, and had not been there many days, when she received a fo=
rmal
call from Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who had been marr=
ied
for some days. Her astonishment is rather a picturesque thing to think abou=
t.
The manner in whi=
ch
this sensational elopement, which was, of course, the talk of the whole
literary world, had been effected, is narrated, as every one knows, in the
Browning Letters. Browning had decided that an immediate marriage was the o=
nly
solution; and having put his hand to the plough, did not decline even when =
it
became obviously necessary that it should be a secret marriage. To a man of=
his
somewhat stormily candid and casual disposition this necessity of secrecy w=
as
really exasperating; but every one with any imagination or chivalry will re=
joice
that he accepted the evil conditions. He had always had the courage to tell=
the
truth; and now it was demanded of him to have the greater courage to tell a
lie, and he told it with perfect cheerfulness and lucidity. In thus
disappearing surreptitiously with an invalid woman he was doing something
against which there were undoubtedly a hundred things to be said, only it
happened that the most cogent and important thing of all was to be said for=
it.
It is very amusin=
g,
and very significant in the matter of Browning's character, to read the
accounts which he writes to Elizabeth Barrett of his attitude towards the
approaching coup de théâtre. In one place he says, suggestively
enough, that he does not in the least trouble about the disapproval of her
father; the man whom he fears as a frustrating influence is Kenyon. Mr. Bar=
rett
could only walk into the room and fly into a passion; and this Browning cou=
ld
have received with perfect equanimity. "But," he says, "if
Kenyon knows of the matter, I shall have the kindest and friendliest of
explanations (with his arm on my shoulder) of how I am ruining your social
position, destroying your health, etc., etc." This touch is very sugge=
stive
of the power of the old worldling, who could manoeuvre with young people as
well as Major Pendennis. Kenyon had indeed long been perfectly aware of the=
way
in which things were going; and the method he adopted in order to comment o=
n it
is rather entertaining. In a conversation with Elizabeth Barrett, he asked
carelessly whether there was anything between her sister and a certain Capt=
ain
Cooke. On receiving a surprised reply in the negative, he remarked
apologetically that he had been misled into the idea by the gentleman calli=
ng
so often at the house. Elizabeth Barrett knew perfectly well what he meant;=
but
the logical allusiveness of the attack reminds one of a fragment of some Me=
redithian
comedy.
The manner in whi=
ch
Browning bore himself in this acute and necessarily dubious position is,
perhaps, more thoroughly to his credit than anything else in his career. He
never came out so well in all his long years of sincerity and publicity as =
he
does in this one act of deception. Having made up his mind to that act, he =
is
not ashamed to name it; neither, on the other hand, does he rant about it, =
and
talk about Philistine prejudices and higher laws and brides in the sight of
God, after the manner of the cockney decadent. He was breaking a social law,
but he was not declaring a crusade against social laws. We all feel, whatev=
er
may be our opinions on the matter, that the great danger of this kind of so=
cial
opportunism, this pitting of a private necessity against a public custom, is
that men are somewhat too weak and self-deceptive to be trusted with such a
power of giving dispensations to themselves. We feel that men without meani=
ng
to do so might easily begin by breaking a social by-law and end by being
thoroughly anti-social. One of the best and most striking things to notice
about Robert Browning is the fact that he did this thing considering it as =
an
exception, and that he contrived to leave it really exceptional. It did not=
in
the least degree break the rounded clearness of his loyalty to social custo=
m.
It did not in the least degree weaken the sanctity of the general rule. At a
supreme crisis of his life he did an unconventional thing, and he lived and=
died
conventional. It would be hard to say whether he appears the more thoroughly
sane in having performed the act, or in not having allowed it to affect him=
.
Elizabeth Barrett
gradually gave way under the obstinate and almost monotonous assertion of
Browning that this elopement was the only possible course of action. Before=
she
finally agreed, however, she did something, which in its curious and impuls=
ive
symbolism, belongs almost to a more primitive age. The sullen system of med=
ical
seclusion to which she had long been subjected has already been described. =
The most
urgent and hygienic changes were opposed by many on the ground that it was =
not
safe for her to leave her sofa and her sombre room. On the day on which it =
was
necessary for her finally to accept or reject Browning's proposal, she call=
ed
her sister to her, and to the amazement and mystification of that lady asked
for a carriage. In this she drove into Regent's Park, alighted, walked on to
the grass, and stood leaning against a tree for some moments, looking round=
her
at the leaves and the sky. She then entered the cab again, drove home, and
agreed to the elopement. This was possibly the best poem that she ever
produced.
Browning arranged=
the
eccentric adventure with a great deal of prudence and knowledge of human
nature. Early one morning in September 1846 Miss Barrett walked quietly out=
of
her father's house, became Mrs. Robert Browning in a church in Marylebone, =
and
returned home again as if nothing had happened. In this arrangement Browning
showed some of that real insight into the human spirit which ought to make =
a poet
the most practical of all men. The incident was, in the nature of things,
almost overpoweringly exciting to his wife, in spite of the truly miraculous
courage with which she supported it; and he desired, therefore, to call in =
the
aid of the mysteriously tranquillising effect of familiar scenes and faces.=
One
trifling incident is worth mentioning which is almost unfathomably
characteristic of Browning. It has already been remarked in these pages tha=
t he
was pre-eminently one of those men whose expanding opinions never alter by a
hairsbreadth the actual ground-plan of their moral sense. Browning would ha=
ve
felt the same things right and the same things wrong, whatever views he had=
held.
During the brief and most trying period between his actual marriage and his
actual elopement, it is most significant that he would not call at the hous=
e in
Wimpole Street, because he would have been obliged to ask if Miss Barrett w=
as
disengaged. He was acting a lie; he was deceiving a father; he was putting a
sick woman to a terrible risk; and these things he did not disguise from
himself for a moment, but he could not bring himself to say two words to a =
maidservant.
Here there may be partly the feeling of the literary man for the sacredness=
of
the uttered word, but there is far more of a certain rooted traditional
morality which it is impossible either to describe or to justify. Browning's
respectability was an older and more primeval thing than the oldest and most
primeval passions of other men. If we wish to understand him, we must always
remember that in dealing with any of his actions we have not to ask whether=
the
action contains the highest morality, but whether we should have felt incli=
ned
to do it ourselves.
At length the
equivocal and exhausting interregnum was over. Mrs. Browning went for the s=
econd
time almost on tiptoe out of her father's house, accompanied only by her ma=
id
and her dog, which was only just successfully prevented from barking. Before
the end of the day in all probability Barrett had discovered that his dying
daughter had fled with Browning to Italy.
They never saw him
again, and hardly more than a faint echo came to them of the domestic
earthquake which they left behind them. They do not appear to have had many
hopes, or to have made many attempts at a reconciliation. Elizabeth Barrett=
had
discovered at last that her father was in truth not a man to be treated wit=
h;
hardly, perhaps, even a man to be blamed. She knew to all intents and purpo=
ses
that she had grown up in the house of a madman.
CHAPTER IV - BROWNING IN
ITALY
The married pair went to Pisa in 18=
46,
and moved soon afterwards to Florence. Of the life of the Brownings in Italy
there is much perhaps to be said in the way of description and analysis, li=
ttle
to be said in the way of actual narrative. Each of them had passed through =
the one
incident of existence. Just as Elizabeth Barrett's life had before her marr=
iage
been uneventfully sombre, now it was uneventfully happy. A succession of
splendid landscapes, a succession of brilliant friends, a succession of high
and ardent intellectual interests, they experienced; but their life was of =
the
kind that if it were told at all, would need to be told in a hundred volume=
s of
gorgeous intellectual gossip. How Browning and his wife rode far into the c=
ountry,
eating strawberries and drinking milk out of the basins of the peasants; how
they fell in with the strangest and most picturesque figures of Italian
society; how they climbed mountains and read books and modelled in clay and
played on musical instruments; how Browning was made a kind of arbiter betw=
een
two improvising Italian bards; how he had to escape from a festivity when t=
he
sound of Garibaldi's hymn brought the knocking of the Austrian police; these
are the things of which his life is full, trifling and picturesque things, a
series of interludes, a beautiful and happy story, beginning and ending
nowhere. The only incidents, perhaps, were the birth of their son and the d=
eath
of Browning's mother in 1849.
It is well known =
that
Browning loved Italy; that it was his adopted country; that he said in one =
of
the finest of his lyrics that the name of it would be found written on his
heart. But the particular character of this love of Browning for Italy need=
s to
be understood. There are thousands of educated Europeans who love Italy, who
live in it, who visit it annually, who come across a continent to see it, w=
ho hunt
out its darkest picture and its most mouldering carving; but they are all
united in this, that they regard Italy as a dead place. It is a branch of t=
heir
universal museum, a department of dry bones. There are rich and cultivated
persons, particularly Americans, who seem to think that they keep Italy, as
they might keep an aviary or a hothouse, into which they might walk whenever
they wanted a whiff of beauty. Browning did not feel at all in this manner;=
he
was intrinsically incapable of offering such an insult to the soul of a nat=
ion.
If he could not have loved Italy as a nation, he would not have consented to
love it as an old curiosity shop. In everything on earth, from the Middle A=
ges
to the amoeba, who is discussed at such length in "Mr. Sludge the
Medium," he is interested in the life in things. He was interested in =
the
life in Italian art and in the life in Italian politics.
Perhaps the first=
and
simplest example that can be given of this matter is in Browning's interest=
in
art. He was immeasurably fascinated at all times by painting and sculpture,=
and
his sojourn in Italy gave him, of course, innumerable and perfect opportuni=
ties
for the study of painting and sculpture. But his interest in these studies =
was
not like that of the ordinary cultured visitor to the Italian cities. Thous=
ands
of such visitors, for example, study those endless lines of magnificent Pag=
an
busts which are to be found in nearly all the Italian galleries and museums,
and admire them, and talk about them, and note them in their catalogues, and
describe them in their diaries. But the way in which they affected Browning=
is
described very suggestively in a passage in the letters of his wife. She de=
scribes
herself as longing for her husband to write poems, beseeching him to write
poems, but finding all her petitions useless because her husband was engaged
all day in modelling busts in clay and breaking them as fast as he made the=
m.
This is Browning's interest in art, the interest in a living thing, the
interest in a growing thing, the insatiable interest in how things are done.
Every one who knows his admirable poems on painting--"Fra Lippo
Lippi" and "Andrea del Sarto" and "Pictor
Ignotus"--will remember how fully they deal with technicalities, how t=
hey
are concerned with canvas, with oil, with a mess of colours. Sometimes they=
are
so technical as to be mysterious to the casual reader. An extreme case may =
be
found in that of a lady I once knew who had merely read the title of
"Pacchiarotto and how he worked in distemper," and thought that
Pacchiarotto was the name of a dog, whom no attacks of canine disease could
keep from the fulfilment of his duty. These Browning poems do not merely de=
al
with painting; they smell of paint. They are the works of a man to whom art=
is
not what it is to so many of the non-professional lovers of art, a thing ac=
complished,
a valley of bones: to him it is a field of crops continually growing in a b=
usy
and exciting silence. Browning was interested, like some scientific man, in=
the
obstetrics of art. There is a large army of educated men who can talk art w=
ith
artists; but Browning could not merely talk art with artists--he could talk
shop with them. Personally he may not have known enough about painting to be
more than a fifth-rate painter, or enough about the organ to be more than a
sixth-rate organist. But there are, when all is said and done, some things
which a fifth-rate painter knows which a first-rate art critic does not kno=
w;
there are some things which a sixth-rate organist knows which a first-rate
judge of music does not know. And these were the things that Browning knew.=
He was, in other
words, what is called an amateur. The word amateur has come by the thousand
oddities of language to convey an idea of tepidity; whereas the word itself=
has
the meaning of passion. Nor is this peculiarity confined to the mere form of
the word; the actual characteristic of these nameless dilettanti is a genui=
ne
fire and reality. A man must love a thing very much if he not only practise=
s it
without any hope of fame or money, but even practises it without any hope of
doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any oth=
er
man can love the rewards of it. Browning was in this strict sense a strenuo=
us
amateur. He tried and practised in the course of his life half a hundred th=
ings
at which he can never have even for a moment expected to succeed. The story=
of
his life is full of absurd little ingenuities, such as the discovery of a w=
ay
of making pictures by roasting brown paper over a candle. In precisely the =
same
spirit of fruitless vivacity, he made himself to a very considerable extent=
a technical
expert in painting, a technical expert in sculpture, a technical expert in =
music.
In his old age, he shows traces of being so bizarre a thing as an abstract
police detective, writing at length in letters and diaries his views of cer=
tain
criminal cases in an Italian town. Indeed, his own Ring and the Book is mer=
ely
a sublime detective story. He was in a hundred things this type of man; he =
was precisely
in the position, with a touch of greater technical success, of the admirable
figure in Stevenson's story who said, "I can play the fiddle nearly we=
ll
enough to earn a living in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite.&qu=
ot;
The love of Brown=
ing
for Italian art, therefore, was anything but an antiquarian fancy; it was t=
he
love of a living thing. We see the same phenomenon in an even more important
matter--the essence and individuality of the country itself.
Italy to Browning=
and
his wife was not by any means merely that sculptured and ornate sepulchre t=
hat
it is to so many of those cultivated English men and women who live in Italy
and enjoy and admire and despise it. To them it was a living nation, the ty=
pe
and centre of the religion and politics of a continent; the ancient and fla=
ming
heart of Western history, the very Europe of Europe. And they lived at the =
time
of the most moving and gigantic of all dramas--the making of a new nation, =
one
of the things that makes men feel that they are still in the morning of the
earth. Before their eyes, with every circumstance of energy and mystery, was
passing the panorama of the unification of Italy, with the bold and romantic
militarism of Garibaldi, the more bold and more romantic diplomacy of Cavou=
r.
They lived in a time when affairs of State had almost the air of works of a=
rt;
and it is not strange that these two poets should have become politicians in
one of those great creative epochs when even the politicians have to be poe=
ts.
Browning was on t=
his
question and on all the questions of continental and English politics a very
strong Liberal. This fact is not a mere detail of purely biographical inter=
est,
like any view he might take of the authorship of the "Eikon Basilike&q=
uot;
or the authenticity of the Tichborne claimant. Liberalism was so inevitably
involved in the poet's whole view of existence, that even a thoughtful and
imaginative Conservative would feel that Browning was bound to be a Liberal.
His mind was possessed, perhaps even to excess, by a belief in growth and e=
nergy
and in the ultimate utility of error. He held the great central Liberal
doctrine, a belief in a certain destiny of the human spirit beyond, and per=
haps
even independent of, our own sincerest convictions. The world was going rig=
ht
he felt, most probably in his way, but certainly in its own way. The sonnet
which he wrote in later years, entitled "Why I am a Liberal,"
expresses admirably this philosophical root of his politics. It asks in eff=
ect
how he, who had found truth in so many strange forms after so many strange
wanderings, can be expected to stifle with horror the eccentricities of oth=
ers.
A Liberal may be defined approximately as a man who, if he could by waving =
his
hand in a dark room, stop the mouths of all the deceivers of mankind for ev=
er,
would not wave his hand. Browning was a Liberal in this sense.
And just as the g=
reat
Liberal movement which followed the French Revolution made this claim for t=
he
liberty and personality of human beings, so it made it for the liberty and
personality of nations. It attached indeed to the independence of a nation
something of the same wholly transcendental sanctity which humanity has in =
all
legal systems attached to the life of a man. The grounds were indeed much t=
he
same; no one could say absolutely that a live man was useless, and no one c=
ould
say absolutely that a variety of national life was useless or must remain
useless to the world. Men remembered how often barbarous tribes or strange =
and
alien Scriptures had been called in to revive the blood of decaying empires=
and
civilisations. And this sense of the personality of a nation, as distinct f=
rom
the personalities of all other nations, did not involve in the case of these
old Liberals international bitterness; for it is too often forgotten that f=
riendship
demands independence and equality fully as much as war. But in them it led =
to
great international partialities, to a great system, as it were, of adopted
countries which made so thorough a Scotchman as Carlyle in love with German=
y,
and so thorough an Englishman as Browning in love with Italy.
And while on the =
one
side of the struggle was this great ideal of energy and variety, on the oth=
er
side was something which we now find it difficult to realise or describe. We
have seen in our own time a great reaction in favour of monarchy, aristocra=
cy,
andecclesiasticism, a reaction almost entirely noble in its instinct, and
dwelling almost entirely on the best periods and the best qualities of the =
old régime.
But the modern man, full of admiration for the great virtue of chivalry whi=
ch
is at the heart of aristocracies, and the great virtue of reverence which i=
s at
the heart of ceremonial religion, is not in a position to form any idea of =
how
profoundly unchivalrous, how astonishingly irreverent, how utterly mean, and
material, and devoid of mystery or sentiment were the despotic systems of
Europe which survived, and for a time conquered, the Revolution. The case
against the Church in Italy in the time of Pio Nono was not the case which =
a rationalist
would urge against the Church of the time of St. Louis, but diametrically t=
he
opposite case. Against the mediæval Church it might be said that she =
was
too fantastic, too visionary, too dogmatic about the destiny of man, too
indifferent to all things but the devotional side of the soul. Against the
Church of Pio Nono the main thing to be said was that it was simply and
supremely cynical; that it was not founded on the unworldly instinct for
distorting life, but on the worldly counsel to leave life as it is; that it=
was
not the inspirer of insane hopes, of reward and miracle, but the enemy, the=
cool
and sceptical enemy, of hope of any kind or description. The same was true =
of
the monarchical systems of Prussia and Austria and Russia at this time. The=
ir
philosophy was not the philosophy of the cavaliers who rode after Charles I=
. or
Louis XIII. It was the philosophy of the typical city uncle, advising every
one, and especially the young, to avoid enthusiasm, to avoid beauty, to reg=
ard
life as a machine, dependent only upon the two forces of comfort and fear. =
That
was, there can be little doubt, the real reason of the fascination of the N=
apoleon
legend--that while Napoleon was a despot like the rest, he was a despot who
went somewhere and did something, and defied the pessimism of Europe, and
erased the word "impossible." One does not need to be a Bonaparti=
st
to rejoice at the way in which the armies of the First Empire, shouting the=
ir
songs and jesting with their colonels, smote and broke into pieces the armi=
es
of Prussia and Austria driven into battle with a cane.
Browning, as we h=
ave
said, was in Italy at the time of the break-up of one part of this frozen
continent of the non-possumus, Austria's hold in the north of Italy was par=
t of
that elaborate and comfortable and wholly cowardly and unmeaning compromise,
which the Holy Alliance had established, and which it believed without doub=
t in
its solid unbelief would last until the Day of Judgment, though it is diffi=
cult
to imagine what the Holy Alliance thought would happen then. But almost of a
sudden affairs had begun to move strangely, and the despotic princes and th=
eir
chancellors discovered with a great deal of astonishment that they were not
living in the old age of the world, but to all appearance in a very
unmanageable period of its boyhood. In an age of ugliness and routine, in a
time when diplomatists and philosophers alike tended to believe that they h=
ad a
list of all human types, there began to appear men who belonged to the morn=
ing
of the world, men whose movements have a national breadth and beauty, who a=
ct symbols
and become legends while they are alive. Garibaldi in his red shirt rode in=
an
open carriage along the front of a hostile fort calling to the coachman to
drive slower, and not a man dared fire a shot at him. Mazzini poured out up=
on
Europe a new mysticism of humanity and liberty, and was willing, like some
passionate Jesuit of the sixteenth century, to become in its cause either a
philosopher or a criminal. Cavour arose with a diplomacy which was more
thrilling and picturesque than war itself. These men had nothing to do with=
an
age of the impossible. They have passed, their theories along with them, as=
all
things pass; but since then we have had no men of their type precisely, at =
once
large and real and romantic and successful. Gordon was a possible exception.
They were the last of the heroes.
When Browning was
first living in Italy, a telegram which had been sent to him was stopped on=
the
frontier and suppressed on account of his known sympathy with the Italian
Liberals. It is almost impossible for people living in a commonwealth like =
ours
to understand how a small thing like that will affect a man. It was not so =
much
the obvious fact that a great practical injury was really done to him; that=
the
telegram might have altered all his plans in matters of vital moment. It wa=
s,
over and above that, the sense of a hand laid on something personal and
essentially free. Tyranny like this is not the worst tyranny, but it is the
most intolerable. It interferes with men not in the most serious matters, b=
ut
precisely in those matters in which they most resent interference. It may be
illogical for men to accept cheerfully unpardonable public scandals, benigh=
ted
educational systems, bad sanitation, bad lighting, a blundering and ineffic=
ient
system of life, and yet to resent the tearing up of a telegram or a post-ca=
rd;
but the fact remains that the sensitiveness of men is a strange and localis=
ed
thing, and there is hardly a man in the world who would not rather be ruled=
by
despots chosen by lot and live in a city like a mediæval Ghetto, than=
be
forbidden by a policeman to smoke another cigarette, or sit up a quarter of=
an
hour later; hardly a man who would not feel inclined in such a case to rais=
e a
rebellion for a caprice for which he did not really care a straw. Unmeaning=
and
muddle-headed tyranny in small things, that is the thing which, if extended
over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of
September. And that was the nightmare of vexatious triviality which was lyi=
ng
over all the cities of Italy that were ruled by the bureaucratic despotisms=
of
Europe. The history of the time is full of spiteful and almost childish
struggles--struggles about the humming of a tune or the wearing of a colour,
the arrest of a journey, or the opening of a letter. And there can be little
doubt that Browning's temperament under these conditions was not of the kin=
d to
become more indulgent, and there grew in him a hatred of the Imperial and D=
ucal
and Papal systems of Italy, which sometimes passed the necessities of
Liberalism, and sometimes even transgressed its spirit. The life which he a=
nd
his wife lived in Italy was extraordinarily full and varied, when we consid=
er
the restrictions under which one at least of them had always lain. They met=
and
took delight, notwithstanding their exile, in some of the most interesting =
people
of their time--Ruskin, Cardinal Manning, and Lord Lytton. Browning, in a mo=
st characteristic
way, enjoyed the society of all of them, arguing with one, agreeing with
another, sitting up all night by the bedside of a third.
It has frequently
been stated that the only difference that ever separated Mr. and Mrs. Brown=
ing
was upon the question of spiritualism. That statement must, of course, be
modified and even contradicted if it means that they never differed; that M=
r.
Browning never thought an Act of Parliament good when Mrs. Browning thought=
it
bad; that Mr. Browning never thought bread stale when Mrs. Browning thought=
it
new. Such unanimity is not only inconceivable, it is immoral; and as a matt=
er
of fact, there is abundant evidence that their marriage constituted somethi=
ng
like that ideal marriage, an alliance between two strong and independent
forces. They differed, in truth, about a great many things, for example, ab=
out
Napoleon III. whom Mrs. Browning regarded with an admiration which would ha=
ve
been somewhat beyond the deserts of Sir Galahad, and whom Browning with his
emphatic Liberal principles could never pardon for the Coup d'État. =
If
they differed on spiritualism in a somewhat more serious way than this, the
reason must be sought in qualities which were deeper and more elemental in =
both
their characters than any mere matter of opinion. Mrs. Orr, in her excellent
Life of Browning, states that the difficulty arose from Mrs. Browning's firm
belief in psychical phenomena and Browning's absolute refusal to believe ev=
en
in their possibility. Another writer who met them at this time says,
"Browning cannot believe, and Mrs. Browning cannot help believing.&quo=
t;
This theory, that Browning's aversion to the spiritualist circle arose from=
an
absolute denial of the tenability of such a theory of life and death, has in
fact often been repeated. But it is exceedingly difficult to reconcile it w=
ith Browning's
character. He was the last man in the world to be intellectually deaf to a
hypothesis merely because it was odd. He had friends whose opinions covered
every description of madness from the French legitimism of De Ripert-Moncla=
r to
the Republicanism of Landor. Intellectually he may be said to have had a ze=
st
for heresies. It is difficult to impute an attitude of mere impenetrable
negation to a man who had expressed with sympathy the religion of "Cal=
iban"
and the morality of "Time's Revenges." It is true that at this ti=
me
of the first popular interest in spiritualism a feeling existed among many =
people
of a practical turn of mind, which can only be called a superstition against
believing in ghosts. But, intellectually speaking, Browning would probably =
have
been one of the most tolerant and curious in regard to the new theories,
whereas the popular version of the matter makes him unusually intolerant and
negligent even for that time. The fact was in all probability that Browning=
's
aversion to the spiritualists had little or nothing to do with spiritualism=
. It
arose from quite a different side of his character--his uncompromising disl=
ike
of what is called Bohemianism, of eccentric or slovenly cliques, of those
straggling camp followers of the arts who exhibit dubious manners and dubio=
us
morals, of all abnormality and of all irresponsibility. Any one, in fact, w=
ho
wishes to see what it was that Browning disliked need only do two things.
First, he should read the Memoirs of David Home, the famous spiritualist me=
dium
with whom Browning came in contact. These Memoirs constitute a more thoroug=
h and
artistic self-revelation than any monologue that Browning ever wrote. The
ghosts, the raps, the flying hands, the phantom voices are infinitely the m=
ost
respectable and infinitely the most credible part of the narrative. But the
bragging, the sentimentalism, the moral and intellectual foppery of the
composition is everywhere, culminating perhaps in the disgusting passage in
which Home describes Mrs. Browning as weeping over him and assuring him that
all her husband's actions in the matter have been adopted against her will.=
It
is in this kind of thing that we find the roots of the real anger of Browni=
ng.
He did not dislike spiritualism, but spiritualists. The second point on whi=
ch
any one wishing to be just in the matter should cast an eye, is the record =
of
the visit which Mrs. Browning insisted on making while on their honeymoon in
Paris to the house of George Sand. Browning felt, and to some extent expres=
sed,
exactly the same aversion to his wife mixing with the circle of George Sand
which he afterwards felt at her mixing with the circle of Home. The society=
was
"of the ragged red, diluted with the low theatrical, men who worship G=
eorge
Sand, à genou bas between an oath and an ejection of saliva." W=
hen
we find that a man did not object to any number of Jacobites or Atheists, b=
ut
objected to the French Bohemian poets and to the early occultist mediums as
friends for his wife, we shall surely be fairly right in concluding that he
objected not to an opinion, but to a social tone. The truth was that Browni=
ng
had a great many admirably Philistine feelings, and one of them was a great
relish for his responsibilities towards his wife. He enjoyed being a husban=
d.
This is quite a distinct thing from enjoying being a lover, though it will =
scarcely
be found apart from it. But, like all good feelings, it has its possible
exaggerations, and one of them is this almost morbid healthiness in the cho=
ice
of friends for his wife.
David Home, the
medium, came to Florence about 1857. Mrs. Browning undoubtedly threw herself
into psychical experiments with great ardour at first, and Browning, equally
undoubtedly, opposed, and at length forbade, the enterprise. He did not do =
so
however until he had attended one séance at least, at which a somewh=
at
ridiculous event occurred, which is described in Home's Memoirs with a grav=
ity
even more absurd than the incident. Towards the end of the proceedings a wr=
eath
was placed in the centre of the table, and the lights being lowered, it was
caused to rise slowly into the air, and after hovering for some time, to mo=
ve
towards Mrs. Browning, and at length to alight upon her head. As the wreath=
was
floating in her direction, her husband was observed abruptly to cross the r=
oom
and stand beside her. One would think it was a sufficiently natural action =
on
the part of a man whose wife was the centre of a weird and disturbing
experiment, genuine or otherwise. But Mr. Home gravely asserts that it was =
generally
believed that Browning had crossed the room in the hope that the wreath wou=
ld
alight on his head, and that from the hour of its disobliging refusal to do=
so
dated the whole of his goaded and malignant aversion to spiritualism. The i=
dea
of the very conventional and somewhat bored Robert Browning running about t=
he
room after a wreath in the hope of putting his head into it, is one of the
genuine gleams of humour in this rather foolish affair. Browning could be f=
airly
violent, as we know, both in poetry and conversation; but it would be almost
too terrible to conjecture what he would have felt and said if Mr. Home's
wreath had alighted on his head.
Next day, accordi=
ng
to Home's account, he called on the hostess of the previous night in what t=
he
writer calls "a ridiculous state of excitement," and told her
apparently that she must excuse him if he and his wife did not attend any m=
ore
gatherings of the kind. What actually occurred is not, of course, quite eas=
y to
ascertain, for the account in Home's Memoirs principally consists of noble
speeches made by the medium which would seem either to have reduced Brownin=
g to
a pulverised silence, or else to have failed to attract his attention. But
there can be no doubt that the general upshot of the affair was that Browni=
ng
put his foot down, and the experiments ceased. There can be little doubt th=
at
he was justified in this; indeed, he was probably even more justified if the
experiments were genuine psychical mysteries than if they were the hocus-po=
cus
of a charlatan. He knew his wife better than posterity can be expected to d=
o;
but even posterity can see that she was the type of woman so much adapted t=
o the
purposes of men like Home as to exhibit almost invariably either a great
craving for such experiences or a great terror of them. Like many geniuses,=
but
not all, she lived naturally upon something like a borderland; and it is
impossible to say that if Browning had not interposed when she was becoming
hysterical she might not have ended in an asylum.
The whole of this
incident is very characteristic of Browning; but the real characteristic no=
te
in it has, as above suggested, been to some extent missed. When some seven
years afterwards he produced "Mr. Sludge the Medium," every one
supposed that it was an attack upon spiritualism and the possibility of its
phenomena. As we shall see when we come to that poem, this is a wholly mist=
aken
interpretation of it. But what is really curious is that most people have
assumed that a dislike of Home's investigations implies a theoretic disbeli=
ef
in spiritualism. It might, of course, imply a very firm and serious belief =
in
it. As a matter of fact it did not imply this in Browning, but it may perfe=
ctly
well have implied an agnosticism which admitted the reasonableness of such
things. Home was infinitely less dangerous as a dexterous swindler than he =
was
as a bad or foolish man in possession of unknown or ill-comprehended powers=
. It
is surely curious to think that a man must object to exposing his wife to a=
few
conjuring tricks, but could not be afraid of exposing her to the loose and
nameless energies of the universe.
Browning's theore=
tic
attitude in the matter was, therefore, in all probability quite open and
unbiassed. His was a peculiarly hospitable intellect. If any one had told h=
im
of the spiritualist theory, or theories a hundred times more insane, as thi=
ngs
held by some sect of Gnostics in Alexandria, or of heretical Talmudists at
Antwerp, he would have delighted in those theories, and would very likely h=
ave adopted
them. But Greek Gnostics and Antwerp Jews do not dance round a man's wife a=
nd
wave their hands in her face and send her into swoons and trances about whi=
ch
nobody knows anything rational or scientific. It was simply the stirring in
Browning of certain primal masculine feelings far beyond the reach of
argument--things that lie so deep that if they are hurt, though there may b=
e no
blame and no anger, there is always pain. Browning did not like spiritualis=
m to
be mentioned for many years.
Robert Browning w=
as
unquestionably a thoroughly conventional man. There are many who think this
element of conventionality altogether regrettable and disgraceful; they have
established, as it were, a convention of the unconventional. But this hatre=
d of
the conventional element in the personality of a poet is only possible to t=
hose
who do not remember the meaning of words. Convention means only a coming to=
gether,
an agreement; and as every poet must base his work upon an emotional agreem=
ent
among men, so every poet must base his work upon a convention. Every art is=
, of
course, based upon a convention, an agreement between the speaker and the
listener that certain objections shall not be raised. The most realistic ar=
t in
the world is open to realistic objection. Against the most exact and everyd=
ay
drama that ever came out of Norway it is still possible for the realist to
raise the objection that the hero who starts a subject and drops it, who ru=
ns
out of a room and runs back again for his hat, is all the time behaving in a
most eccentric manner, considering that he is doing these things in a room =
in
which one of the four walls has been taken clean away and been replaced by a
line of footlights and a mob of strangers. Against the most accurate
black-and-white artist that human imagination can conceive it is still to be
admitted that he draws a black line round a man's nose, and that that line =
is a
lie. And in precisely the same fashion a poet must, by the nature of things=
, be
conventional. Unless he is describing an emotion which others share with hi=
m,
his labours will be utterly in vain. If a poet really had an original emoti=
on;
if, for example, a poet suddenly fell in love with the buffers of a railway
train, it would take him considerably more time than his allotted three-sco=
re
years and ten to communicate his feelings.
Poetry deals with
primal and conventional things--the hunger for bread, the love of woman, the
love of children, the desire for immortal life. If men really had new
sentiments, poetry could not deal with them. If, let us say, a man did not =
feel
a bitter craving to eat bread; but did, by way of substitute, feel a fresh,
original craving to eat brass fenders or mahogany tables, poetry could not
express him. If a man, instead of falling in love with a woman, fell in love
with a fossil or a sea anemone, poetry could not express him. Poetry can on=
ly express
what is original in one sense--the sense in which we speak of original sin.=
It
is original, not in the paltry sense of being new, but in the deeper sense =
of
being old; it is original in the sense that it deals with origins.
All artists, who =
have
any experience of the arts, will agree so far, that a poet is bound to be
conventional with regard to matters of art. Unfortunately, however, they are
the very people who cannot, as a general rule, see that a poet is also boun=
d to
be conventional in matters of conduct. It is only the smaller poet who sees=
the
poetry of revolt, of isolation, of disagreement; the larger poet sees the
poetry of those great agreements which constitute the romantic achievement =
of civilisation.
Just as an agreement between the dramatist and the audience is necessary to
every play; just as an agreement between the painter and the spectators is
necessary to every picture, so an agreement is necessary to produce the wor=
ship
of any of the great figures of morality--the hero, the saint, the average m=
an,
the gentleman. Browning had, it must thoroughly be realised, a real pleasur=
e in
these great agreements, these great conventions. He delighted, with a true
poetic delight, in being conventional. Being by birth an Englishman, he took
pleasure in being an Englishman; being by rank a member of the middle class=
, he
took a pride in its ancient scruples and its everlasting boundaries. He was
everything that he was with a definite and conscious pleasure--a man, a
Liberal, an Englishman, an author, a gentleman, a lover, a married man.
This must always =
be
remembered as a general characteristic of Browning, this ardent and headlong
conventionality. He exhibited it pre-eminently in the affair of his elopeme=
nt
and marriage, during and after the escape of himself and his wife to Italy.=
He
seems to have forgotten everything, except the splendid worry of being marr=
ied.
He showed a thoroughly healthy consciousness that he was taking up a respon=
sibility
which had its practical side. He came finally and entirely out of his dream=
s.
Since he had himself enough money to live on, he had never thought of himse=
lf
as doing anything but writing poetry; poetry indeed was probably simmering =
and
bubbling in his head day and night. But when the problem of the elopement a=
rose
he threw himself with an energy, of which it is pleasant to read, into ever=
y kind
of scheme for solidifying his position. He wrote to Monckton Milnes, and wo=
uld
appear to have badgered him with applications for a post in the British Mus=
eum.
"I will work like a horse," he said, with that boyish note, which,
whenever in his unconsciousness he strikes it, is more poetical than all his
poems. All his language in this matter is emphatic; he would be "glad =
and
proud," he says, "to have any minor post" his friend could
obtain for him. He offered to read for the Bar, and probably began doing so.
But all this vigorous and very creditable materialism was ruthlessly
extinguished by Elizabeth Barrett. She declined altogether even to entertain
the idea of her husband devoting himself to anything else at the expense of
poetry. Probably she was right and Browning wrong, but it was an error whic=
h every
man would desire to have made.
One of the qualit=
ies
again which make Browning most charming, is the fact that he felt and expre=
ssed
so simple and genuine a satisfaction about his own achievements as a lover =
and
husband, particularly in relation to his triumph in the hygienic care of his
wife. "If he is vain of anything," writes Mrs. Browning, "it=
is
of my restored health." Later, she adds with admirable humour and
suggestiveness, "and I have to tell him that he really must not go tel=
ling
everybody how his wife walked here with him, or walked there with him, as i=
f a wife
with two feet were a miracle in Nature." When a lady in Italy said, on=
an
occasion when Browning stayed behind with his wife on the day of a picnic, =
that
he was "the only man who behaved like a Christian to his wife,"
Browning was elated to an almost infantile degree. But there could scarcely=
be
a better test of the essential manliness and decency of a man than this tes=
t of
his vanities. Browning boasted of being domesticated; there are half a hund=
red
men everywhere who would be inclined to boast of not being domesticated. Bad
men are almost without exception conceited, but they are commonly conceited=
of
their defects.
One picturesque
figure who plays a part in this portion of the Brownings' life in Italy is
Walter Savage Landor. Browning found him living with some of his wife's
relations, and engaged in a continuous and furious quarrel with them, which
was, indeed, not uncommonly the condition of that remarkable man when living
with other human beings. He had the double arrogance which is only possible=
to
that old and stately but almost extinct blend--the aristocratic republican.
Like an old Roman senator, or like a gentleman of the Southern States of Am=
erica,
he had the condescension of a gentleman to those below him, combined with t=
he
jealous self-assertiveness of a Jacobin to those above. The only person who
appears to have been able to manage him and bring out his more agreeable si=
de
was Browning. It is, by the way, one of the many hints of a certain element=
in
Browning which can only be described by the elementary and old-fashioned wo=
rd
goodness, that he always contrived to make himself acceptable and even lova=
ble
to men of savage and capricious temperament, of detached and erratic genius,
who could get on with no one else. Carlyle, who could not get a bitter taste
off his tongue in talking of most of his contemporaries, was fond of Browni=
ng.
Landor, who could hardly conduct an ordinary business interview without
beginning to break the furniture, was fond of Browning. These are things wh=
ich
speak more for a man than many people will understand. It is easy enough to=
be
agreeable to a circle of admirers, especially feminine admirers, who have a
peculiar talent for discipleship and the absorption of ideas. But when a ma=
n is
loved by other men of his own intellectual stature and of a wholly differen=
t type
and order of eminence, we may be certain that there was something genuine a=
bout
him, and something far more important than anything intellectual. Men do not
like another man because he is a genius, least of all when they happen to be
geniuses themselves. This general truth about Browning is like hearing of a
woman who is the most famous beauty in a city, and who is at the same time
adored and confided in by all the women who live there.
Browning came to =
the
rescue of the fiery old gentleman, and helped by Seymour Kirkup put him und=
er
very definite obligations by a course of very generous conduct. He was fully
repaid in his own mind for his trouble by the mere presence and friendship =
of
Landor, for whose quaint and volcanic personality he had a vast admiration,
compounded of the pleasure of the artist in an oddity and of the man in a h=
ero.
It is somewhat amusing and characteristic that Mrs. Browning did not share =
this
unlimited enjoyment of the company of Mr. Landor, and expressed her feeling=
s in
her own humorous manner. She writes, "Dear, darling Robert amuses me by
talking of his gentleness and sweetness. A most courteous and refined gentl=
eman
he is, of course, and very affectionate to Robert (as he ought to be), but =
of
self-restraint he has not a grain, and of suspicion many grains. What do you
really say to dashing down a plate on the floor when you don't like what's =
on
it? Robert succeeded in soothing him, and the poor old lion is very quiet on
the whole, roaring softly to beguile the time in Latin alcaics against his =
wife
and Louis Napoleon."
One event alone c=
ould
really end this endless life of the Italian Arcadia. That event happened on
June 29, 1861. Robert Browning's wife died, stricken by the death of her
sister, and almost as hard (it is a characteristic touch) by the death of
Cavour. She died alone in the room with Browning, and of what passed then,
though much has been said, little should be. He, closing the door of that r=
oom
behind him, closed a door in himself, and none ever saw Browning upon earth
again but only a splendid surface.
CHAPTER V - BROWNING IN L=
ATER
LIFE
Browning's confidences, what there =
were
of them, immediately after his wife's death were given to several
women-friends; all his life, indeed, he was chiefly intimate with women. The
two most intimate of these were his own sister, who remained with him in all
his later years, and the sister of his wife, who seven years afterwards pas=
sed away
in his presence as Elizabeth had done. The other letters, which number only=
one
or two, referring in any personal manner to his bereavement are addressed to
Miss Haworth and Isa Blagden. He left Florence and remained for a time with=
his
father and sister near Dinard. Then he returned to London and took up his
residence in Warwick Crescent. Naturally enough, the thing for which he now
chiefly lived was the education of his son, and it is characteristic of Bro=
wning
that he was not only a very indulgent father, but an indulgent father of a =
very
conventional type: he had rather the chuckling pride of the city gentleman =
than
the educational gravity of the intellectual.
Browning was now
famous, Bells and Pomegranates, Men and Women, Christmas Eve, and Dramatis
Personæ had successively glorified his Italian period. But he was alr=
eady
brooding half-unconsciously on more famous things. He has himself left on
record a description of the incident out of which grew the whole impulse and
plan of his greatest achievement. In a passage marked with all his peculiar
sense of material things, all that power of writing of stone or metal or th=
e fabric
of drapery, so that we seem to be handling and smelling them, he has descri=
bed
a stall for the selling of odds and ends of every variety of utility and
uselessness:--
=
&nb=
sp;
"picture frames White through the=
worn
gilt, mirror-sconces chipped, Bronze angel-head=
s once
knobs attached to chests, (Handled when anc=
ient
dames chose forth brocade) Modern chalk draw=
ings,
studies from the nude, Samples of stone,=
jet,
breccia, porphyry Polished and roug=
h,
sundry amazing busts In baked earth,
(broken, Providence be praised!) A wreck of tapest=
ry
proudly-purposed web When reds and blu=
es
were indeed red and blue, Now offer'd as a =
mat to
save bare feet (Since carpets
constitute a cruel cost). =
* * Vulgarised Horace=
for
the use of schools, 'The Life, Death,
Miracles of Saint Somebody, Saint Somebody El=
se,
his Miracles, Death, and Life'-- With this, one gl=
ance
at the lettered back of which, And 'Stall,' crie=
d I; a
lira made it mine."
This sketch embod=
ies
indeed the very poetry of débris, and comes nearer than any other po=
em
has done to expressing the pathos and picturesqueness of a low-class pawnsh=
op.
"This," which Browning bought for a lira out of this heap of rubb=
ish,
was, of course, the old Latin record of the criminal case of Guido
Franceschini, tried for the murder of his wife Pompilia in the year 1698. A=
nd
this again, it is scarcely necessary to say, was the ground-plan and motive=
of
The Ring and the Book.
Browning had pick=
ed
up the volume and partly planned the poem during his wife's lifetime in Ita=
ly.
But the more he studied it, the more the dimensions of the theme appeared to
widen and deepen; and he came at last, there can be little doubt, to regard=
it
definitely as his magnum opus to which he would devote many years to come. =
Then
came the great sorrow of his life, and he cast about him for something suff=
iciently
immense and arduous and complicated to keep his brain going like some huge =
and
automatic engine. "I mean to keep writing," he said, "whethe=
r I
like it or not." And thus finally he took up the scheme of the
Franceschini story, and developed it on a scale with a degree of elaboratio=
n,
repetition, and management, and inexhaustible scholarship which was never
perhaps before given in the history of the world to an affair of two or thr=
ee
characters. Of the larger literary and spiritual significance of the work,
particularly in reference to its curious and original form of narration, I
shall speak subsequently. But there is one peculiarity about the story which
has more direct bearing on Browning's life, and it appears singular that fe=
w,
if any, of his critics have noticed it. This peculiarity is the extraordina=
ry
resemblance between the moral problem involved in the poem if understood in=
its
essence, and the moral problem which constituted the crisis and centre of
Browning's own life. Nothing, properly speaking, ever happened to Browning
after his wife's death; and his greatest work during that time was the tell=
ing,
under alien symbols and the veil of a wholly different story, the inner tru=
th about
his own greatest trial and hesitation. He himself had in this sense the same
difficulty as Caponsacchi, the supreme difficulty of having to trust himsel=
f to
the reality of virtue not only without the reward, but even without the nam=
e of
virtue. He had, like Caponsacchi, preferred what was unselfish and dubious =
to
what was selfish and honourable. He knew better than any man that there is
little danger of men who really know anything of that naked and homeless
responsibility seeking it too often or indulging it too much. The
conscientiousness of the law-abider is nothing in its terrors to the
conscientiousness of the conscientious law-breaker. Browning had once, for =
what
he seriously believed to be a greater good, done what he himself would never
have had the cant to deny, ought to be called deceit and evasion. Such a th=
ing
ought never to come to a man twice. If he finds that necessity twice, he ma=
y, I
think, be looked at with the beginning of a suspicion. To Browning it came
once, and he devoted his greatest poem to a suggestion of how such a necess=
ity
may come to any man who is worthy to live.
As has already been suggested, any
apparent danger that there may be in this excusing of an exceptional act is
counteracted by the perils of the act, since it must always be remembered t=
hat
this kind of act has the immense difference from all legal acts--that it can
only be justified by success. If Browning had taken his wife to Paris, and =
she had
died in an hotel there, we can only conceive him saying, with the bitter
emphasis of one of his own lines, "How should I have borne me, please?=
"
Before and after this event his life was as tranquil and casual a one as it
would be easy to imagine; but there always remained upon him something which
was felt by all who knew him in after years--the spirit of a man who had be=
en
ready when his time came, and had walked in his own devotion and certainty =
in a
position counted indefensible and almost along the brink of murder. This gr=
eat
moral of Browning, which may be called roughly the doctrine of the great ho=
ur, enters,
of course, into many poems besides The Ring and the Book, and is indeed the
mainspring of a great part of his poetry taken as a whole. It is, of course,
the central idea of that fine poem, "The Statue and the Bust," wh=
ich
has given a great deal of distress to a great many people because of its
supposed invasion of recognised morality. It deals, as every one knows, wit=
h a
Duke Ferdinand and an elopement which he planned with the bride of one of t=
he
Riccardi. The lovers begin by deferring their flight for various more or le=
ss comprehensible
reasons of convenience; but the habit of shrinking from the final step grows
steadily upon them, and they never take it, but die, as it were, waiting for
each other. The objection that the act thus avoided was a criminal one is v=
ery
simply and quite clearly answered by Browning himself. His case against the
dilatory couple is not in the least affected by the viciousness of their ai=
m.
His case is that they exhibited no virtue. Crime was frustrated in them by =
cowardice,
which is probably the worse immorality of the two. The same idea again may =
be
found in that delightful lyric "Youth and Art," where a successful
cantatrice reproaches a successful sculptor with their failure to understand
each other in their youth and poverty.
"Each life unfulf=
illed,
you see; It=
hangs
still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed
deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted,
despaired,--been happy."
And this concepti=
on
of the great hour, which breaks out everywhere in Browning, it is almost
impossible not to connect with his own internal drama. It is really curious
that this correspondence has not been insisted on. Probably critics have be=
en
misled by the fact that Browning in many places appears to boast that he is
purely dramatic, that he has never put himself into his work, a thing which=
no
poet, good or bad, who ever lived could possibly avoid doing.
The enormous scope
and seriousness of The Ring and the Book occupied Browning for some five or=
six
years, and the great epic appeared in the winter of 1868. Just before it was
published Smith and Elder brought out a uniform edition of all Browning's w=
orks
up to that time, and the two incidents taken together may be considered to =
mark
the final and somewhat belated culmination of Browning's literary fame. The
years since his wife's death, that had been covered by the writing of The R=
ing
and the Book, had been years of an almost feverish activity in that and many
other ways. His travels had been restless and continued, his industry immen=
se,
and for the first time he began that mode of life which afterwards became so
characteristic of him--the life of what is called society. A man of a shall=
ower
and more sentimental type would have professed to find the life of dinner-t=
ables
and soirées vain and unsatisfying to a poet, and especially to a poe=
t in
mourning. But if there is one thing more than another which is stirring and
honourable about Browning, it is the entire absence in him of this cant of
dissatisfaction. He had the one great requirement of a poet--he was not
difficult to please. The life of society was superficial, but it is only ve=
ry
superficial people who object to the superficial. To the man who sees the
marvellousness of all things, the surface of life is fully as strange and
magical as its interior; clearness and plainness of life is fully as myster=
ious
as its mysteries. The young man in evening dress, pulling on his gloves, is
quite as elemental a figure as any anchorite, quite as incomprehensible, an=
d indeed
quite as alarming.
A great many lite=
rary
persons have expressed astonishment at, or even disapproval of, this social
frivolity of Browning's. Not one of these literary people would have been
shocked if Browning's interest in humanity had led him into a gambling hell=
in
the Wild West or a low tavern in Paris; but it seems to be tacitly assumed =
that
fashionable people are not human at all. Humanitarians of a material and
dogmatic type, the philanthropists and the professional reformers go to loo=
k for
humanity in remote places and in huge statistics. Humanitarians of a more v=
ivid
type, the Bohemian artists, go to look for humanity in thieves' kitchens and
the studios of the Quartier Latin. But humanitarians of the highest type, t=
he
great poets and philosophers, do not go to look for humanity at all. For th=
em
alone among all men the nearest drawing-room is full of humanity, and even
their own families are human. Shakespeare ended his life by buying a house =
in his
own native town and talking to the townsmen. Browning was invited to a great
many conversaziones and private views, and did not pretend that they bored =
him.
In a letter belonging to this period of his life he describes his first din=
ner
at one of the Oxford colleges with an unaffected delight and vanity, which
reminds the reader of nothing so much as the pride of the boy-captain of a
public school if he were invited to a similar function and received a few
compliments. It may be indeed that Browning had a kind of second youth in t=
his long-delayed
social recognition, but at least he enjoyed his second youth nearly as much=
as
his first, and it is not every one who can do that.
Of Browning's act=
ual
personality and presence in this later middle age of his, memories are still
sufficiently clear. He was a middle-sized, well set up, erect man, with
somewhat emphatic gestures, and, as almost all testimonies mention, a curio=
usly
strident voice. The beard, the removal of which his wife had resented with =
so
quaint an indignation, had grown again, but grown quite white, which, as sh=
e said
when it occurred, was a signal mark of the justice of the gods. His hair was
still fairly dark, and his whole appearance at this time must have been very
well represented by Mr. G.F. Watts's fine portrait in the National Portrait=
Gallery.
The portrait bears one of the many testimonies which exist to Mr. Watts's g=
rasp
of the essential of character, for it is the only one of the portraits of
Browning in which we get primarily the air of virility, even of animal
virility, tempered but not disguised, with a certain touch of the pallor of=
the
brain-worker. He looks here what he was--a very healthy man, too scholarly =
to
live a completely healthy life.
His manner in
society, as has been more than once indicated, was that of a man anxious, if
anything, to avoid the air of intellectual eminence. Lockhart said briefly,
"I like Browning; he isn't at all like a damned literary man." He
was, according to some, upon occasion, talkative and noisy to a fault; but
there are two kinds of men who monopolise conversation. The first kind are
those who like the sound of their own voice; the second are those who do not
know what the sound of their own voice is like. Browning was one of the lat=
ter class.
His volubility in speech had the same origin as his voluminousness and
obscurity in literature--a kind of headlong humility. He cannot assuredly h=
ave
been aware that he talked people down or have wished to do so. For this wou=
ld
have been precisely a violation of the ideal of the man of the world, the o=
ne
ambition and even weakness that he had. He wished to be a man of the world,=
and
he never in the full sense was one. He remained a little too much of a boy,=
a
little too much even of a Puritan, and a little too much of what may be cal=
led
a man of the universe, to be a man of the world.
One of his faults
probably was the thing roughly called prejudice. On the question, for examp=
le,
of table-turning and psychic phenomena he was in a certain degree fierce and
irrational. He was not indeed, as we shall see when we come to study
"Sludge the Medium," exactly prejudiced against spiritualism. But=
he
was beyond all question stubbornly prejudiced against spiritualists. Whether
the medium Home was or was not a scoundrel it is somewhat difficult in our =
day
to conjecture. But in so far as he claimed supernatural powers, he may have
been as honest a gentleman as ever lived. And even if we think that the mor=
al
atmosphere of Home is that of a man of dubious character, we can still feel
that Browning might have achieved his purpose without making it so obvious =
that
he thought so. Some traces again, though much fainter ones, may be found of
something like a subconscious hostility to the Roman Church, or at least a =
less
full comprehension of the grandeur of the Latin religious civilisation than=
might
have been expected of a man of Browning's great imaginative tolerance.
Æstheticism, Bohemianism, the irresponsibilities of the artist, the
untidy morals of Grub Street and the Latin Quarter, he hated with a consumi=
ng
hatred. He was himself exact in everything, from his scholarship to his
clothes; and even when he wore the loose white garments of the lounger in
Southern Europe, they were in their own way as precise as a dress suit. This
extra carefulness in all things he defended against the cant of Bohemianism=
as
the right attitude for the poet. When some one excused coarseness or neglig=
ence
on the ground of genius, he said, "That is an error: Noblesse
oblige."
Browning's
prejudices, however, belonged altogether to that healthy order which is
characterised by a cheerful and satisfied ignorance. It never does a man any
very great harm to hate a thing that he knows nothing about. It is the hati=
ng
of a thing when we do know something about it which corrodes the character.=
We
all have a dark feeling of resistance towards people we have never met, and=
a
profound and manly dislike of the authors we have never read. It does not h=
arm
a man to be certain before opening the books that Whitman is an obscene ran=
ter or
that Stevenson is a mere trifler with style. It is the man who can think th=
ese
things after he has read the books who must be in a fair way to mental
perdition. Prejudice, in fact, is not so much the great intellectual sin as=
a
thing which we may call, to coin a word, "postjudice," not the bi=
as
before the fair trial, but the bias that remains afterwards. With Browning's
swift and emphatic nature the bias was almost always formed before he had g=
one
into the matter. But almost all the men he really knew he admired, almost a=
ll
the books he had really read he enjoyed. He stands pre-eminent among those
great universalists who praised the ground they trod on and commended exist=
ence
like any other material, in its samples. He had no kinship with those new a=
nd
strange universalists of the type of Tolstoi who praise existence to the
exclusion of all the institutions they have lived under, and all the ties t=
hey
have known. He thought the world good because he had found so many things t=
hat
were good in it--religion, the nation, the family, the social class. He did
not, like the new humanitarian, think the world good because he had found so
many things in it that were bad.
As has been
previously suggested, there was something very queer and dangerous that
underlay all the good humour of Browning. If one of these idle prejudices w=
ere
broken by better knowledge, he was all the better pleased. But if some of t=
he
prejudices that were really rooted in him were trodden on, even by accident,
such as his aversion to loose artistic cliques, or his aversion to undignif=
ied
publicity, his rage was something wholly transfiguring and alarming, someth=
ing
far removed from the shrill disapproval of Carlyle and Ruskin. It can only =
be
said that he became a savage, and not always a very agreeable or presentable
savage. The indecent fury which danced upon the bones of Edward Fitzgerald =
was
a thing which ought not to have astonished any one who had known much of
Browning's character or even of his work. Some unfortunate persons on anoth=
er
occasion had obtained some of Mrs. Browning's letters shortly after her dea=
th,
and proposed to write a Life founded upon them. They ought to have understo=
od
that Browning would probably disapprove; but if he talked to them about it,=
as
he did to others, and it is exceedingly probable that he did, they must have
thought he was mad. "What I suffer with the paws of these black-guards=
in
my bowels you can fancy," he says. Again he writes: "Think of this
beast working away, not deeming my feelings, or those of her family, worthy=
of
notice. It shall not be done if I can stop the scamp's knavery along with h=
is
breath." Whether Browning actually resorted to this extreme course is
unknown; nothing is known except that he wrote a letter to the ambitious
biographer which reduced him to silence, probably from stupefaction.
The same peculiar=
ity
ought, as I have said, to have been apparent to any one who knew anything of
Browning's literary work. A great number of his poems are marked by a trait=
of
which by its nature it is more or less impossible to give examples. Suffice=
it
to say that it is truly extraordinary that poets like Swinburne (who seldom
uses a gross word) should have been spoken of as if they had introduced mor=
al license
into Victorian poetry. What the Non-conformist conscience has been doing to=
have
passed Browning is something difficult to imagine. But the peculiarity of t=
his
occasional coarseness in his work is this--that it is always used to expres=
s a
certain wholesome fury and contempt for things sickly, or ungenerous, or
unmanly. The poet seems to feel that there are some things so contemptible =
that
you can only speak of them in pothouse words. It would be idle, and perhaps=
undesirable,
to give examples; but it may be noted that the same brutal physical metapho=
r is
used by his Caponsacchi about the people who could imagine Pompilia impure =
and
by his Shakespeare in "At the Mermaid," about the claim of the
Byronic poet to enter into the heart of humanity. In both cases Browning fe=
els,
and perhaps in a manner rightly, that the best thing we can do with a senti=
ment
essentially base is to strip off its affectations and state it basely, and =
that
the mud of Chaucer is a great deal better than the poison of Sterne. Herein
again Browning is close to the average man; and to do the average man justi=
ce,
there is a great deal more of this Browningesque hatred of Byronism in the
brutality of his conversation than many people suppose.
Such, roughly and=
as
far as we can discover, was the man who, in the full summer and even the fu=
ll
autumn of his intellectual powers, began to grow upon the consciousness of =
the
English literary world about this time. For the first time friendship grew
between him and the other great men of his time. Tennyson, for whom he then=
and
always felt the best and most personal kind of admiration, came into his li=
fe,
and along with him Gladstone and Francis Palgrave. There began to crowd in =
upon
him those honours whereby a man is to some extent made a classic in his
lifetime, so that he is honoured even if he is unread. He was made a Fellow=
of
Balliol in 1867, and the homage of the great universities continued thencef=
orth
unceasingly until his death, despite many refusals on his part. He was
unanimously elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1875. He declined,
owing to his deep and somewhat characteristic aversion to formal public
speaking, and in 1877 he had to decline on similar grounds the similar offer
from the University of St. Andrews. He was much at the English universities=
, was
a friend of Dr. Jowett, and enjoyed the university life at the age of
sixty-three in a way that he probably would not have enjoyed it if he had e=
ver
been to a university. The great universities would not let him alone, to th=
eir
great credit, and he became a D.C.L. of Cambridge in 1879, and a D.C.L. of =
Oxford
in 1882. When he received these honours there were, of course, the traditio=
nal
buffooneries of the undergraduates, and one of them dropped a red cotton
night-cap neatly on his head as he passed under the gallery. Some indignant=
intellectuals
wrote to him to protest against this affront, but Browning took the matter =
in
the best and most characteristic way. "You are far too hard," he
wrote in answer, "on the very harmless drolleries of the young men.
Indeed, there used to be a regularly appointed jester, 'Filius Terrae' he w=
as
called, whose business it was to gibe and jeer at the honoured ones by way =
of
reminder that all human glories are merely gilded baubles and must not be
fancied metal." In this there are other and deeper things characterist=
ic
of Browning besides his learning and humour. In discussing anything, he must
always fall back upon great speculative and eternal ideas. Even in the
tomfoolery of a horde of undergraduates he can only see a symbol of the anc=
ient
office of ridicule in the scheme of morals. The young men themselves were
probably unaware that they were the representatives of the "Filius
Terrae."
But the years dur=
ing
which Browning was thus reaping some of his late laurels began to be filled
with incidents that reminded him how the years were passing over him. On Ju=
ne
20, 1866, his father had died, a man of whom it is impossible to think with=
out
a certain emotion, a man who had lived quietly and persistently for others,=
to
whom Browning owed more than it is easy to guess, to whom we in all probabi=
lity
mainly owe Browning. In 1868 one of his closest friends, Arabella Barrett, =
the
sister of his wife, died, as her sister had done, alone with Browning. Brow=
ning
was not a superstitious man; he somewhat stormily prided himself on the
contrary; but he notes at this time "a dream which Arabella had of Her=
, in
which she prophesied their meeting in five years," that is, of course,=
the
meeting of Elizabeth and Arabella. His friend Milsand, to whom Sordello was
dedicated, died in 1886. "I never knew," said Browning, "or =
ever
shall know, his like among men." But though both fame and a growing
isolation indicated that he was passing towards the evening of his days, th=
ough
he bore traces of the progress, in a milder attitude towards things, and a =
greater
preference for long exiles with those he loved, one thing continued in him =
with
unconquerable energy--there was no diminution in the quantity, no abatement=
in
the immense designs of his intellectual output.
In 1871 he produc=
ed
Balaustion's Adventure, a work exhibiting not only his genius in its highest
condition of power, but something more exacting even than genius to a man of
his mature and changed life, immense investigation, prodigious memory, the
thorough assimilation of the vast literature of a remote civilisation.
Balaustion's Adventure, which is, of course, the mere framework for an Engl=
ish version
of the Alcestis of Euripides, is an illustration of one of Browning's finest
traits, his immeasurable capacity for a classic admiration. Those who knew =
him
tell us that in conversation he never revealed himself so impetuously or so
brilliantly as when declaiming the poetry of others; and Balaustion's Adven=
ture
is a monument of this fiery self-forgetfulness. It is penetrated with the
passionate desire to render Euripides worthily, and to that imitation are f=
or
the time being devoted all the gigantic powers which went to make the songs=
of
Pippa and the last agony of Guido. Browning never put himself into anything
more powerfully or more successfully; yet it is only an excellent translati=
on.
In the uncouth philosophy of Caliban, in the tangled ethics of Sludge, in h=
is
wildest satire, in his most feather-headed lyric, Browning was never more
thoroughly Browning than in this splendid and unselfish plagiarism. This
revived excitement in Greek matters; "his passionate love of the Greek
language" continued in him thenceforward till his death. He published =
more
than one poem on the drama of Hellas. Aristophanes' Apology came out in 187=
5,
and The Agamemnon of Æschylus, another paraphrase, in 1877. All three=
poems
are marked by the same primary characteristic, the fact that the writer has=
the
literature of Athens literally at his fingers' ends. He is intimate not only
with their poetry and politics, but with their frivolity and their slang; he
knows not only Athenian wisdom, but Athenian folly; not only the beauty of
Greece, but even its vulgarity. In fact, a page of Aristophanes' Apology is
like a page of Aristophanes, dark with levity and as obscure as a schoolman=
's treatise,
with its load of jokes.
In 1871 also appe=
ared
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau: Saviour of Society, one of the finest and most
picturesque of all Browning's apologetic monologues. The figure is, of cour=
se,
intended for Napoleon III., whose Empire had just fallen, bringing down his
country with it. The saying has been often quoted that Louis Napoleon decei=
ved
Europe twice--once when he made it think he was a noodle, and once when he =
made
it think he was a statesman. It might be added that Europe was never quite =
just
to him, and was deceived a third time, when it took him after his fall for =
an
exploded mountebank and nonentity. Amid the general chorus of contempt which
was raised over his weak and unscrupulous policy in later years, culminatin=
g in
his great disaster, there are few things finer than this attempt of Brownin=
g's
to give the man a platform and let him speak for himself. It is the apologi=
a of
a political adventurer, and a political adventurer of a kind peculiarly ope=
n to
popular condemnation. Mankind has always been somewhat inclined to forgive =
the
adventurer who destroys or re-creates, but there is nothing inspiring about=
the
adventurer who merely preserves. We have sympathy with the rebel who aims at
reconstruction, but there is something repugnant to the imagination in the
rebel who rebels in the name of compromise. Browning had to defend, or rath=
er
to interpret, a man who kidnapped politicians in the night and deluged the
Montmartre with blood, not for an ideal, not for a reform, not precisely ev=
en
for a cause, but simply for the establishment of a régime. He did th=
ese
hideous things not so much that he might be able to do better ones, but tha=
t he
and every one else might be able to do nothing for twenty years; and Browni=
ng's
contention, and a very plausible contention, is that the criminal believed =
that
his crime would establish order and compromise, or, in other words, that he=
thought
that nothing was the very best thing he and his people could do. There is
something peculiarly characteristic of Browning in thus selecting not only a
political villain, but what would appear the most prosaic kind of villain. =
We
scarcely ever find in Browning a defence of those obvious and easily defend=
ed
publicans and sinners whose mingled virtues and vices are the stuff of roma=
nce
and melodrama--the generous rake, the kindly drunkard, the strong man too g=
reat
for parochial morals. He was in a yet more solitary sense the friend of the
outcast. He took in the sinners whom even sinners cast out. He went with the
hypocrite and had mercy on the Pharisee.
How little this
desire of Browning's, to look for a moment at the man's life with the man's
eyes, was understood, may be gathered from the criticisms on
Hohenstiel-Schwangau, which, says Browning, "the Editor of the Edinbur=
gh
Review calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, which it is not, any more th=
an
what another wiseacre affirms it to be, a scandalous attack on the old cons=
tant
friend of England. It is just what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, =
say
for himself."
In 1873 appeared
Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country, which, if it be not absolutely one of the fin=
est
of Browning's poems, is certainly one of the most magnificently Browningesq=
ue.
The origin of the name of the poem is probably well known. He was travellin=
g along
the Normandy coast, and discovered what he called
"Meek, hitherto
un-Murrayed bathing-places, Best loved of
sea-coast-nook-full Normandy!"
Miss Thackeray, w=
ho
was of the party, delighted Browning beyond measure by calling the sleepy o=
ld
fishing district "White Cotton Night-Cap Country." It was exactly=
the
kind of elfish phrase to which Browning had, it must always be remembered, a
quite unconquerable attraction. The notion of a town of sleep, where men and
women walked about in nightcaps, a nation of somnambulists, was the kind of
thing that Browning in his heart loved better than Paradise Lost. Some time
afterwards he read in a newspaper a very painful story of profligacy and
suicide which greatly occupied the French journals in the year 1871, and wh=
ich
had taken place in the same district. It is worth noting that Browning was =
one
of those wise men who can perceive the terrible and impressive poetry of the
police-news, which is commonly treated as vulgarity, which is dreadful and =
may
be undesirable, but is certainly not vulgar. From The Ring and the Book to
Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country a great many of his works might be called
magnificent detective stories. The story is somewhat ugly, and its power do=
es
not alter its ugliness, for power can only make ugliness uglier. And in this
poem there is little or nothing of the revelation of that secret wealth of
valour and patience in humanity which makes real and redeems the revelation=
of
its secret vileness in The Ring and the Book. It almost looks at first sigh=
t as
if Browning had for a moment surrendered the whole of his impregnable philo=
sophical
position and admitted the strange heresy that a human story can be sordid. =
But
this view of the poem is, of course, a mistake. It was written in something=
which,
for want of a more exact word, we must call one of the bitter moods of
Browning; but the bitterness is entirely the product of a certain generous
hostility against the class of morbidities which he really detested, someti=
mes more
than they deserved. In this poem these principles of weakness and evil are
embodied to him as the sicklier kind of Romanism, and the more sensual side=
of
the French temperament. We must never forget what a great deal of the Purit=
an
there remained in Browning to the end. This outburst of it is fierce and
ironical, not in his best spirit. It says in effect, "You call this a
country of sleep, I call it a country of death. You call it 'White Cotton
Night-Cap Country'; I call it 'Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.'"
Shortly before th=
is, in
1872, he had published Fifine at the Fair, which his principal biographer, =
and
one of his most uncompromising admirers, calls a piece of perplexing cynici=
sm.
Perplexing it may be to some extent, for it was almost impossible to tell
whether Browning would or would not be perplexing even in a love-song or a
post-card. But cynicism is a word that cannot possibly be applied with any =
propriety
to anything that Browning ever wrote. Cynicism denotes that condition of mi=
nd
in which we hold that life is in its nature mean and arid; that no soul
contains genuine goodness, and no state of things genuine reliability. Fifi=
ne
at the Fair, like Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, is one of Browning's apologe=
tic soliloquies--the
soliloquy of an epicurean who seeks half-playfully to justify upon moral
grounds an infidelity into which he afterwards actually falls. This casuist,
like all Browning's casuists, is given many noble outbursts and sincere
moments, and therefore apparently the poem is called cynical. It is difficu=
lt
to understand what particular connection there is between seeing good in no=
body
and seeing good even in a sensual fool.
After Fifine at t=
he
Fair appeared the Inn Album, in 1875, a purely narrative work, chiefly
interesting as exhibiting in yet another place one of Browning's vital
characteristics, a pleasure in retelling and interpreting actual events of a
sinister and criminal type; and after the Inn Album came what is perhaps the
most preposterously individual thing he ever wrote, Of Pacchiarotto, and Ho=
w He
Worked in Distemper, in 1876. It is impossible to call the work poetry, and=
it is
very difficult indeed to know what to call it. Its chief characteristic is a
kind of galloping energy, an energy that has nothing intellectual or even
intelligible about it, a purely animal energy of words. Not only is it not
beautiful, it is not even clever, and yet it carries the reader away as he
might be carried away by romping children. It ends up with a voluble and
largely unmeaning malediction upon the poet's critics, a malediction so
outrageously good-humoured that it does not take the trouble even to make
itself clear to the objects of its wrath. One can compare the poem to nothi=
ng in
heaven or earth, except to the somewhat humorous, more or less benevolent, =
and
most incomprehensible catalogues of curses and oaths which may be heard fro=
m an
intoxicated navvy. This is the kind of thing, and it goes on for pages:--
"Long after the l=
ast of
your number Has
ceased my front-court to encumber While, treading d=
own rose
and ranunculus, You
Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us! Troop, all of you=
man
or homunculus, Quick march! for
Xanthippe, my housemaid, If once on your p=
ates
she a souse made With what, pan or=
pot,
bowl or skoramis, First comes to her
hand--things were more amiss! I would not for w=
orlds
be your place in-- Recipient of slop=
s from
the basin! =
You,
Jack-in-the-Green, leaf-and-twiggishness Won't save a dry =
thread
on your priggishness!"
You can only call
this, in the most literal sense of the word, the brute-force of language.
In spite however =
of
this monstrosity among poems, which gives its title to the volume, it conta=
ins
some of the most beautiful verses that Browning ever wrote in that style of
light philosophy in which he was unequalled. Nothing ever gave so perfectly=
and
artistically what is too loosely talked about as a thrill, as the poem call=
ed
"Fears and Scruples," in which a man describes the mystifying con=
duct
of an absent friend, and reserves to the last line the climax--
=
"Hush, I pray you! What if this frie=
nd
happen to be--God."
It is the masterp=
iece
of that excellent but much-abused literary quality, Sensationalism.
The volume entitl=
ed
Pacchiarotto, moreover, includes one or two of the most spirited poems on t=
he
subject of the poet in relation to publicity--"At the Mermaid,"
"House," and "Shop."
In spite of his
increasing years, his books seemed if anything to come thicker and faster. =
Two
were published in 1878--La Saisiaz, his great metaphysical poem on the
conception of immortality, and that delightfully foppish fragment of the an=
cien
régime, The Two Poets of Croisic. Those two poems would alone suffic=
e to
show that he had not forgotten the hard science of theology or the harder
science of humour. Another collection followed in 1879, the first series of=
Dramatic
Idylls, which contain such masterpieces as "Pheidippides" and
"Ivàn Ivànovitch." Upon its heels, in 1880, came the
second series of Dramatic Idylls, including "Muléykeh" and
"Clive," possibly the two best stories in poetry, told in the best
manner of story-telling. Then only did the marvellous fountain begin to sla=
cken
in quantity, but never in quality. Jocoseria did not appear till 1883. It c=
ontains
among other things a cast-back to his very earliest manner in the lyric of
"Never the Time and the Place," which we may call the most
light-hearted love-song that was ever written by a man over seventy. In the
next year appeared Ferishtah's Fancies, which exhibit some of his shrewdest
cosmic sagacity, expressed in some of his quaintest and most characteristic
images. Here perhaps more than anywhere else we see that supreme peculiarit=
y of
Browning--his sense of the symbolism of material trifles. Enormous problems,
and yet more enormous answers, about pain, prayer, destiny, liberty, and
conscience are suggested by cherries, by the sun, by a melon-seller, by an
eagle flying in the sky, by a man tilling a plot of ground. It is this spir=
it
of grotesque allegory which really characterises Browning among all other
poets. Other poets might possibly have hit upon the same philosophical
idea--some idea as deep, as delicate, and as spiritual. But it may be safely
asserted that no other poet, having thought of a deep, delicate, and spirit=
ual idea,
would call it "A Bean Stripe; also Apple Eating."
Three more years
passed, and the last book which Browning published in his lifetime was
Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, a book which
consists of apostrophes, amicable, furious, reverential, satirical, emotion=
al
to a number of people of whom the vast majority even of cultivated people h=
ave
never heard in their lives--Daniel Bartoli, Francis Furini, Gerard de Laire=
sse,
and Charles Avison. This extraordinary knowledge of the fulness of history =
was
a thing which never ceased to characterise Browning even when he was unfort=
unate
in every other literary quality. Apart altogether from every line he ever
wrote, it may fairly be said that no mind so rich as his ever carried its
treasures to the grave. All these later poems are vigorous, learned, and
full-blooded. They are thoroughly characteristic of their author. But nothi=
ng
in them is quite so characteristic of their author as this fact, that when =
he
had published all of them, and was already near to his last day, he turned =
with
the energy of a boy let out of school, and began, of all things in the worl=
d,
to re-write and improve "Pauline," the boyish poem that he had
written fifty-five years before. Here was a man covered with glory and near=
to
the doors of death, who was prepared to give himself the elaborate trouble =
of
reconstructing the mood, and rebuilding the verses of a long juvenile poem
which had been forgotten for fifty years in the blaze of successive victori=
es.
It is such things as these which give to Browning an interest of personality
which is far beyond the more interest of genius. It was of such things that
Elizabeth Barrett wrote in one of her best moments of insight--that his gen=
ius was
the least important thing about him.
During all these
later years, Browning's life had been a quiet and regular one. He always sp=
ent
the winter in Italy and the summer in London, and carried his old love of
precision to the extent of never failing day after day throughout the year =
to
leave the house at the same time. He had by this time become far more of a
public figure than he had ever been previously, both in England and Italy. =
In
1881, Dr. Furnivall and Miss E.H. Hickey founded the famous "Browning
Society." He became President of the new "Shakespeare Society&quo=
t;
and of the "Wordsworth Society." In 1886, on the death of Lord
Houghton, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent to the Royal Academ=
y.
When he moved to De Vere Gardens in 1887, it began to be evident that he was
slowly breaking up. He still dined out constantly; he still attended every
reception and private view; he still corresponded prodigiously, and even ad=
ded
to his correspondence; and there is nothing more typical of him than that n=
ow,
when he was almost already a classic, he answered any compliment with the m=
ost
delightful vanity and embarrassment. In a letter to Mr. George Bainton,
touching style, he makes a remark which is an excellent criticism on his wh=
ole literary
career: "I myself found many forgotten fields which have proved the
richest of pastures." But despite his continued energy, his health was
gradually growing worse. He was a strong man in a muscular, and ordinarily =
in a
physical sense, but he was also in a certain sense a nervous man, and may be
said to have died of brain-excitement prolonged through a lifetime. In these
closing years he began to feel more constantly the necessity for rest. He a=
nd
his sister went to live at a little hotel in Llangollen, and spent hours
together talking and drinking tea on the lawn. He himself writes in one of =
his
quaint and poetic phrases that he had come to love these long country retre=
ats,
"another term of delightful weeks, each tipped with a sweet starry Sun=
day
at the little church." For the first time, and in the last two or three
years, he was really growing old. On one point he maintained always a tranq=
uil
and unvarying decision. The pessimistic school of poetry was growing up all
round him; the decadents, with their belief that art was only a counting of=
the
autumn leaves, were approaching more and more towards their tired triumph a=
nd
their tasteless popularity. But Browning would not for one instant take the
scorn of them out of his voice. "Death, death, it is this harping on d=
eath
that I despise so much. In fiction, in poetry, French as well as English, a=
nd I
am told in American also, in art and literature, the shadow of death, call =
it
what you will, despair, negation, indifference, is upon us. But what fools =
who
talk thus! Why, amico mio, you know as well as I, that death is life, just =
as
our daily momentarily dying body is none the less alive, and ever recruiting
new forces of existence. Without death, which is our church-yardy crape-like
word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of that which we
call life. Never say of me that I am dead."
On August 13, 188=
8,
he set out once more for Italy, the last of his innumerable voyages. During=
his
last Italian period he seems to have fallen back on very ultimate simplicit=
ies,
chiefly a mere staring at nature. The family with whom he lived kept a fox =
cub,
and Browning would spend hours with it watching its grotesque ways; when it=
escaped,
he was characteristically enough delighted. The old man could be seen
continually in the lanes round Asolo, peering into hedges and whistling for=
the
lizards.
This serene and
pastoral decline, surely the mildest of slopes into death, was suddenly
diversified by a flash of something lying far below. Browning's eye fell up=
on a
passage written by the distinguished Edward Fitzgerald, who had been dead f=
or
many years, in which Fitzgerald spoke in an uncomplimentary manner of Eliza=
beth
Barrett Browning. Browning immediately wrote the "Lines to Edward
Fitzgerald," and set the whole literary world in an uproar. The lines =
were
bitter and excessive to have been written against any man, especially bitte=
r and
excessive to have been written against a man who was not alive to reply. And
yet, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel a certain dark and
indescribable pleasure in this last burst of the old barbaric energy. The
mountain had been tilled and forested, and laid out in gardens to the summi=
t;
but for one last night it had proved itself once more a volcano, and had li=
t up
all the plains with its forgotten fire. And the blow, savage as it was, was
dealt for that great central sanctity--the story of a man's youth. All that=
the
old man would say in reply to every view of the question was, "I felt =
as if
she had died yesterday."
Towards December =
of
1889 he moved to Venice, where he fell ill. He took very little food; it was
indeed one of his peculiar small fads that men should not take food when th=
ey
are ill, a matter in which he maintained that the animals were more sagacio=
us.
He asserted vigorously that this somewhat singular regimen would pull him
through, talked about his plans, and appeared cheerful. Gradually, however,=
the
talking became more infrequent, the cheerfulness passed into a kind of plac=
idity;
and without any particular crisis or sign of the end, Robert Browning died =
on
December 12, 1889. The body was taken on board ship by the Venice Municipal
Guard, and received by the Royal Italian marines. He was buried in the Poet=
s'
Corner of Westminster Abbey, the choir singing his wife's poem, "He gi=
veth
His beloved sleep." On the day that he died Asolando was published.
CHAPTER VI - BROWNING AS A
LITERARY ARTIST
Mr. William Sharp, in his Life of
Browning, quotes the remarks of another critic to the following effect:
"The poet's processes of thought are scientific in their precision and
analysis; the sudden conclusion that he imposes upon them is transcendental=
and
inept."
This is a very fa=
ir
but a very curious example of the way in which Browning is treated. For wha=
t is
the state of affairs? A man publishes a series of poems, vigorous, perplexi=
ng,
and unique. The critics read them, and they decide that he has failed as a
poet, but that he is a remarkable philosopher and logician. They then proce=
ed
to examine his philosophy, and show with great triumph that it is
unphilosophical, and to examine his logic and show with great triumph that =
it
is not logical, but "transcendental and inept." In other words,
Browning is first denounced for being a logician and not a poet, and then d=
enounced
for insisting on being a poet when they have decided that he is to be a
logician. It is just as if a man were to say first that a garden was so
neglected that it was only fit for a boys' playground, and then complain of=
the
unsuitability in a boys' playground of rockeries and flower-beds.
As we find, after
this manner, that Browning does not act satisfactorily as that which we have
decided that he shall be--a logician--it might possibly be worth while to m=
ake
another attempt to see whether he may not, after all, be more valid than we
thought as to what he himself professed to be--a poet. And if we study this=
seriously
and sympathetically, we shall soon come to a conclusion. It is a gross and
complete slander upon Browning to say that his processes of thought are
scientific in their precision and analysis. They are nothing of the sort; if
they were, Browning could not be a good poet. The critic speaks of the
conclusions of a poem as "transcendental and inept"; but the
conclusions of a poem, if they are not transcendental, must be inept. Do the
people who call one of Browning's poems scientific in its analysis realise =
the
meaning of what they say? One is tempted to think that they know a scientif=
ic analysis
when they see it as little as they know a good poem. The one supreme differ=
ence
between the scientific method and the artistic method is, roughly speaking,
simply this--that a scientific statement means the same thing wherever and
whenever it is uttered, and that an artistic statement means something enti=
rely
different, according to the relation in which it stands to its surroundings.
The remark, let us say, that the whale is a mammal, or the remark that sixt=
een
ounces go to a pound, is equally true, and means exactly the same thing, wh=
ether
we state it at the beginning of a conversation or at the end, whether we pr=
int
it in a dictionary or chalk it up on a wall. But if we take some phrase
commonly used in the art of literature--such a sentence, for the sake of
example, as "the dawn was breaking"--the matter is quite differen=
t.
If the sentence came at the beginning of a short story, it might be a mere
descriptive prelude. If it were the last sentence in a short story, it migh=
t be
poignant with some peculiar irony or triumph. Can any one read Browning's g=
reat
monologues and not feel that they are built up like a good short story,
entirely on this principle of the value of language arising from its
arrangement. Take such an example as "Caliban upon Setebos," a
wonderful poem designed to describe the way in which a primitive nature may=
at
once be afraid of its gods and yet familiar with them. Caliban in describing
his deity starts with a more or less natural and obvious parallel between t=
he
deity and himself, carries out the comparison with consistency and an almost
revolting simplicity, and ends in a kind of blasphemous extravaganza of
anthropomorphism, basing his conduct not merely on the greatness and wisdom,
but also on the manifest weaknesses and stupidities, of the Creator of all
things. Then suddenly a thunderstorm breaks over Caliban's island, and the =
profane
speculator falls flat upon his face--
"Lo! 'Lieth flat =
and
loveth Setebos! 'Maketh his teeth=
meet
through his upper lip, Will let those qu=
ails
fly, will not eat this month One little mess of
whelks, so he may 'scape!"
Surely it would be
very difficult to persuade oneself that this thunderstorm would have meant
exactly the same thing if it had occurred at the beginning of "Caliban
upon Setebos." It does not mean the same thing, but something very
different; and the deduction from this is the curious fact that Browning is=
an
artist, and that consequently his processes of thought are not "scient=
ific
in their precision and analysis."
No criticism of
Browning's poems can be vital, none in the face of the poems themselves can=
be
even intelligible, which is not based upon the fact that he was successfull=
y or
otherwise a conscious and deliberate artist. He may have failed as an artis=
t,
though I do not think so; that is quite a different matter. But it is one t=
hing
to say that a man through vanity or ignorance has built an ugly cathedral, =
and
quite another to say that he built it in a fit of absence of mind, and did =
not
know whether he was building a lighthouse or a first-class hotel. Browning =
knew
perfectly well what he was doing; and if the reader does not like his art, =
at
least the author did. The general sentiment expressed in the statement that=
he
did not care about form is simply the most ridiculous criticism that could =
be
conceived. It would be far nearer the truth to say that he cared more for f=
orm
than any other English poet who ever lived. He was always weaving and model=
ling
and inventing new forms. Among all his two hundred to three hundred poems it
would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that there are half as many differ=
ent
metres as there are different poems.
The great English
poets who are supposed to have cared more for form than Browning did, cared
less at least in this sense--that they were content to use old forms so lon=
g as
they were certain that they had new ideas. Browning, on the other hand, no
sooner had a new idea than he tried to make a new form to express it.
Wordsworth and Shelley were really original poets; their attitude of thought
and feeling marked without doubt certain great changes in literature and
philosophy. Nevertheless, the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality&q=
uot;
is a perfectly normal and traditional ode, and "Prometheus Unbound&quo=
t;
is a perfectly genuine and traditional Greek lyrical drama. But if we study=
Browning
honestly, nothing will strike us more than that he really created a large
number of quite novel and quite admirable artistic forms. It is too often
forgotten what and how excellent these were. The Ring and the Book, for
example, is an illuminating departure in literary method--the method of tel=
ling
the same story several times and trusting to the variety of human character=
to
turn it into several different and equally interesting stories. Pippa Passe=
s,
to take another example, is a new and most fruitful form, a series of detac=
hed dramas
connected only by the presence of one fugitive and isolated figure. The
invention of these things is not merely like the writing of a good poem--it=
is
something like the invention of the sonnet or the Gothic arch. The poet who
makes them does not merely create himself--he creates other poets. It is so=
in
a degree long past enumeration with regard to Browning's smaller poems. Suc=
h a
pious and horrible lyric as "The Heretic's Tragedy," for instance=
, is
absolutely original, with its weird and almost blood-curdling echo verses, =
mocking
echoes indeed--
"And dipt of his =
wings
in Paris square, They
bring him now to lie burned alive.
[And
wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, =
ye
shall say to confirm him who singeth--
We b=
ring
John now to be burned alive."
A hundred instanc=
es
might, of course, be given. Milton's "Sonnet on his Blindness," or
Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," are both thoroughly original, but
still we can point to other such sonnets and other such odes. But can any o=
ne
mention any poem of exactly the same structural and literary type as
"Fears and Scruples," as "The Householder," as "Ho=
use"
or "Shop," as "Nationality in Drinks," as "Sibrand=
us Schafnaburgensis,"
as "My Star," as "A Portrait," as any of "Ferishta=
h's
Fancies," as any of the "Bad Dreams."
The thing which o=
ught
to be said about Browning by those who do not enjoy him is simply that they=
do
not like his form; that they have studied the form, and think it a bad form=
. If
more people said things of this sort, the world of criticism would gain alm=
ost
unspeakably in clarity and common honesty. Browning put himself before the
world as a good poet. Let those who think he failed call him a bad poet, an=
d there
will be an end of the matter. There are many styles in art which perfectly
competent æsthetic judges cannot endure. For instance, it would be
perfectly legitimate for a strict lover of Gothic to say that one of the
monstrous rococo altar-pieces in the Belgian churches with bulbous clouds a=
nd
oaken sun-rays seven feet long, was, in his opinion, ugly. But surely it wo=
uld
be perfectly ridiculous for any one to say that it had no form. A man's act=
ual
feelings about it might be better expressed by saying that it had too much.=
To
say that Browning was merely a thinker because you think "Caliban upon
Setebos" ugly, is precisely as absurd as it would be to call the autho=
r of
the old Belgian altarpiece a man devoted only to the abstractions of religi=
on. The
truth about Browning is not that he was indifferent to technical beauty, bu=
t that
he invented a particular kind of technical beauty to which any one else is =
free
to be as indifferent as he chooses.
There is in this
matter an extraordinary tendency to vague and unmeaning criticism. The usual
way of criticising an author, particularly an author who has added somethin=
g to
the literary forms of the world, is to complain that his work does not cont=
ain
something which is obviously the speciality of somebody else. The correct t=
hing
to say about Maeterlinck is that some play of his in which, let us say, a
princess dies in a deserted tower by the sea, has a certain beauty, but tha=
t we
look in vain in it for that robust geniality, that really boisterous will to
live which may be found in Martin Chuzzlewit. The right thing to say about
Cyrano de Bergerac is that it may have a certain kind of wit and spirit, but
that it really throws no light on the duty of middle-aged married couples in
Norway. It cannot be too much insisted upon that at least three-quarters of=
the
blame and criticism commonly directed against artists and authors falls und=
er
this general objection, and is essentially valueless. Authors both great and
small are, like everything else in existence, upon the whole greatly
under-rated. They are blamed for not doing, not only what they have failed =
to
do to reach their own ideal, but what they have never tried to do to reach
every other writer's ideal. If we can show that Browning had a definite ide=
al
of beauty and loyally pursued it, it is not necessary to prove that he could
have written In Memoriam if he had tried.
Browning has suff=
ered
far more injustice from his admirers than from his opponents, for his admir=
ers
have for the most part got hold of the matter, so to speak, by the wrong en=
d.
They believe that what is ordinarily called the grotesque style of Browning=
was
a kind of necessity boldly adopted by a great genius in order to express no=
vel and
profound ideas. But this is an entire mistake. What is called ugliness was =
to
Browning not in the least a necessary evil, but a quite unnecessary luxury,
which he enjoyed for its own sake. For reasons that we shall see presently =
in
discussing the philosophical use of the grotesque, it did so happen that
Browning's grotesque style was very suitable for the expression of his pecu=
liar
moral and metaphysical view. But the whole mass of poems will be misunderst=
ood if
we do not realise first of all that he had a love of the grotesque of the
nature of art for art's sake. Here, for example, is a short distinct poem
merely descriptive of one of those elfish German jugs in which it is to be
presumed Tokay had been served to him. This is the whole poem, and a very g=
ood
poem too--
"Up jumped Tokay =
on our
table, Like=
a
pigmy castle-warder, Dwarfish to see, =
but
stout and able, Arms and accoutre=
ments
all in order; And
fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South Blew with his bug=
le a
challenge to Drouth, Cocked his flap-h=
at
with the tosspot-feather, Twisted his thumb=
in
his red moustache, Jingled his huge =
brass
spurs together, Tightened his wai=
st
with its Buda sash, And then, with an
impudence nought could abash, Shrugged his
hump-shoulder, to tell the beholder, For twenty such k=
naves
he would laugh but the bolder: And so, with his
sword-hilt gallantly jutting, And dexter-hand o=
n his
haunch abutting, Went the little m=
an,
Sir Ausbruch, strutting!"
I suppose there a=
re
Browning students in existence who would think that this poem contained
something pregnant about the Temperance question, or was a marvellously sub=
tle
analysis of the romantic movement in Germany. But surely to most of us it is
sufficiently apparent that Browning was simply fashioning a ridiculous knic=
k-knack,
exactly as if he were actually moulding one of these preposterous German ju=
gs.
Now before studying the real character of this Browningesque style, there is
one general truth to be recognised about Browning's work. It is this--that =
it
is absolutely necessary to remember that Browning had, like every other poe=
t,
his simple and indisputable failures, and that it is one thing to speak of =
the badness
of his artistic failures, and quite another thing to speak of the badness of
his artistic aim. Browning's style may be a good style, and yet exhibit many
examples of a thoroughly bad use of it. On this point there is indeed a
singularly unfair system of judgment used by the public towards the poets. =
It
is very little realised that the vast majority of great poets have written =
an
enormous amount of very bad poetry. The unfortunate Wordsworth is generally
supposed to be almost alone in this; but any one who thinks so can scarcely
have read a certain number of the minor poems of Byron and Shelley and
Tennyson.
Now it is only ju=
st
to Browning that his more uncouth effusions should not be treated as
masterpieces by which he must stand or fall, but treated simply as his
failures. It is really true that such a line as
"Irks fear the
crop-full bird, frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?"
is a very ugly an=
d a
very bad line. But it is quite equally true that Tennyson's
"And that good ma=
n, the
clergyman, has told me words of peace,"
is a very ugly an=
d a
very bad line. But people do not say that this proves that Tennyson was a m=
ere
crabbed controversialist and metaphysician. They say that it is a bad examp=
le
of Tennyson's form; they do not say that it is a good example of Tennyson's
indifference to form. Upon the whole, Browning exhibits far fewer instances=
of
this failure in his own style than any other of the great poets, with the e=
xception
of one or two like Spenser and Keats, who seem to have a mysterious incapac=
ity
for writing bad poetry. But almost all original poets, particularly poets w=
ho
have invented an artistic style, are subject to one most disastrous habit--=
the
habit of writing imitations of themselves. Every now and then in the works =
of
the noblest classical poets you will come upon passages which read like
extracts from an American book of parodies. Swinburne, for example, when he=
wrote
the couplet--
"From the lilies =
and
languors of virtue To the raptures a=
nd
roses of vice,"
wrote what is not=
hing
but a bad imitation of himself, an imitation which seems indeed to have the
wholly unjust and uncritical object of proving that the Swinburnian melody =
is a
mechanical scheme of initial letters. Or again, Mr. Rudyard Kipling when he
wrote the line--
"Or ride with the
reckless seraphim on the rim of a red-maned star,"
was caricaturing
himself in the harshest and least sympathetic spirit of American humour. Th=
is
tendency is, of course, the result of the self-consciousness and theatrical=
ity
of modern life in which each of us is forced to conceive ourselves as part =
of a
dramatis personæ and act perpetually in character. Browning sometimes
yielded to this temptation to be a great deal too like himself.
"Will I widen the=
e out
till thou turnest From Margaret Min=
nikin
mou' by God's grace, To Muckle-mouth M=
eg in
good earnest."
This sort of thin=
g is
not to be defended in Browning any more than in Swinburne. But, on the othe=
r hand,
it is not to be attributed in Swinburne to a momentary exaggeration, and in
Browning to a vital æsthetic deficiency. In the case of Swinburne, we=
all
feel that the question is not whether that particular preposterous couplet
about lilies and roses redounds to the credit of the Swinburnian style, but=
whether
it would be possible in any other style than the Swinburnian to have written
the Hymn to Proserpine. In the same way, the essential issue about Browning=
as
an artist is not whether he, in common with Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley,
Tennyson, and Swinburne, sometimes wrote bad poetry, but whether in any oth=
er
style except Browning's you could have achieved the precise artistic effect
which is achieved by such incomparable lyrics as "The Patriot" or
"The Laboratory." The answer must be in the negative, and in that
answer lies the whole justification of Browning as an artist.
The question now
arises, therefore, what was his conception of his functions as an artist? We
have already agreed that his artistic originality concerned itself chiefly =
with
the serious use of the grotesque. It becomes necessary, therefore, to ask w=
hat
is the serious use of the grotesque, and what relation does the grotesque b=
ear
to the eternal and fundamental elements in life?
One of the most
curious things to notice about popular æsthetic criticism is the numb=
er
of phrases it will be found to use which are intended to express an
æsthetic failure, and which express merely an æsthetic variety.
Thus, for instance, the traveller will often hear the advice from local lov=
ers
of the picturesque, "The scenery round such and such a place has no
interest; it is quite flat." To disparage scenery as quite flat is, of
course, like disparaging a swan as quite white, or an Italian sky as quite
blue. Flatness is a sublime quality in certain landscapes, just as rockines=
s is
a sublime quality in others. In the same way there are a great number of
phrases commonly used in order to disparage such writers as Browning which =
do
not in fact disparage, but merely describe them. One of the most distinguis=
hed
of Browning's biographers and critics says of him, for example, "He has
never meant to be rugged, but has become so in striving after strength.&quo=
t;
To say that Browning never tried to be rugged is to say that Edgar Allan Poe
never tried to be gloomy, or that Mr. W.S. Gilbert never tried to be
extravagant. The whole issue depends upon whether we realise the simple and
essential fact that ruggedness is a mode of art like gloominess or
extravagance. Some poems ought to be rugged, just as some poems ought to be
smooth. When we see a drift of stormy and fantastic clouds at sunset, we do=
not
say that the cloud is beautiful although it is ragged at the edges. When we=
see
a gnarled and sprawling oak, we do not say that it is fine although it is
twisted. When we see a mountain, we do not say that it is impressive althou=
gh
it is rugged, nor do we say apologetically that it never meant to be rugged,
but became so in its striving after strength. Now, to say that Browning's p=
oems,
artistically considered, are fine although they are rugged, is quite as abs=
urd
as to say that a rock, artistically considered, is fine although it is rugg=
ed. Ruggedness
being an essential quality in the universe, there is that in man which resp=
onds
to it as to the striking of any other chord of the eternal harmonies. As the
children of nature, we are akin not only to the stars and flowers, but also=
to
the toad-stools and the monstrous tropical birds. And it is to be repeated =
as
the essential of the question that on this side of our nature we do
emphatically love the form of the toad-stools, and not merely some complica=
ted
botanical and moral lessons which the philosopher may draw from them. For e=
xample,
just as there is such a thing as a poetical metre being beautifully light or
beautifully grave and haunting, so there is such a thing as a poetical metre
being beautifully rugged. In the old ballads, for instance, every person of
literary taste will be struck by a certain attractiveness in the bold, vary=
ing,
irregular verse--
"He is either him=
sell a
devil frae hell, Or else his mothe=
r a
witch maun be; I
wadna have ridden that wan water For a' the gowd in
Christentie,"
is quite as pleas=
ing
to the ear in its own way as
"There's a bower =
of
roses by Bendemeer stream, And the nightinga=
le
sings in it all the night long,"
is in another way.
Browning had an unrivalled ear for this particular kind of staccato music. =
The
absurd notion that he had no sense of melody in verse is only possible to
people who think that there is no melody in verse which is not an imitation=
of
Swinburne. To give a satisfactory idea of Browning's rhythmic originality w=
ould
be impossible without quotations more copious than entertaining. But the es=
sential
point has been suggested.
"They were purple=
of
raiment and golden, Filled full of th=
ee,
fiery with wine, Thy lovers in hau=
nts
unbeholden, In
marvellous chambers of thine,"
is beautiful
language, but not the only sort of beautiful language. This, for instance, =
has
also a tune in it--
"I--'next poet.' =
No, my
hearties, I=
nor
am, nor fain would be! Choose your chief=
s and
pick your parties, Not one soul revo=
lt to
me! =
* * Which of you did =
I enable
Once to slip
inside my breast, There to catalogu=
e and
label What =
I like
least, what love best, Hope and fear, be=
lieve
and doubt of, Seek and shun, re=
spect,
deride, Who=
has
right to make a rout of Rarities he found
inside?"
This quick, galla=
ntly
stepping measure also has its own kind of music, and the man who cannot fee=
l it
can never have enjoyed the sound of soldiers marching by. This, then, rough=
ly
is the main fact to remember about Browning's poetical method, or about any
one's poetical method--that the question is not whether that method is the =
best
in the world, but the question whether there are not certain things which c=
an
only be conveyed by that method. It is perfectly true, for instance, that a
really lofty and lucid line of Tennyson, such as--
"Thou art the hig=
hest,
and most human too" and "We needs mu=
st
love the highest when we see it"
would really be m=
ade
the worse for being translated into Browning. It would probably become
"High's human; man
loves best, best visible,"
and would lose its
peculiar clarity and dignity and courtly plainness. But it is quite equally
true that any really characteristic fragment of Browning, if it were only t=
he
tempestuous scolding of the organist in "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha&q=
uot;--
"Hallo, you sacri=
stan,
show us a light there! Down it dips, gon=
e like
a rocket. W=
hat,
you want, do you, to come unawares, Sweeping the chur=
ch up
for first morning-prayers, And find a poor d=
evil
has ended his cares At the foot of yo=
ur
rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs? Do I carry the mo=
on in
my pocket?"
--it is quite equ=
ally
true that this outrageous gallop of rhymes ending with a frantic astronomic=
al
image would lose in energy and spirit if it were written in a conventional =
and
classical style, and ran--
"What must I deem=
then
that thou dreamest to find Disjected bones a=
drift
upon the stair Thou sweepest cle=
an, or
that thou deemest that I Pouch in my walle=
t the
vice-regal sun?"
Is it not obvious
that this statelier version might be excellent poetry of its kind, and yet
would be bad exactly in so far as it was good; that it would lose all the
swing, the rush, the energy of the preposterous and grotesque original? In
fact, we may see how unmanageable is this classical treatment of the
essentially absurd in Tennyson himself. The humorous passages in The Prince=
ss,
though often really humorous in themselves, always appear forced and feeble=
because
they have to be restrained by a certain metrical dignity, and the mere idea=
of
such restraint is incompatible with humour. If Browning had written the pas=
sage
which opens The Princess, descriptive of the "larking" of the
villagers in the magnate's park, he would have spared us nothing; he would =
not
have spared us the shrill uneducated voices and the unburied bottles of gin=
ger
beer. He would have crammed the poem with uncouth similes; he would have ch=
anged
the metre a hundred times; he would have broken into doggerel and into
rhapsody; but he would have left, when all is said and done, as he leaves in
that paltry fragment of the grumbling organist, the impression of a certain
eternal human energy. Energy and joy, the father and the mother of the
grotesque, would have ruled the poem. We should have felt of that rowdy gat=
hering
little but the sensation of which Mr. Henley writes--
"Praise the gener=
ous
gods for giving, In this world of =
sin
and strife, With
some little time for living, Unto each the joy=
of
life,"
the thought that
every wise man has when looking at a Bank Holiday crowd at Margate.
To ask why Browni=
ng
enjoyed this perverse and fantastic style most would be to go very deep into
his spirit indeed, probably a great deal deeper than it is possible to go. =
But
it is worth while to suggest tentatively the general function of the grotes=
que
in art generally and in his art in particular. There is one very curious id=
ea into
which we have been hypnotised by the more eloquent poets, and that is that
nature in the sense of what is ordinarily called the country is a thing
entirely stately and beautiful as those terms are commonly understood. The
whole world of the fantastic, all things top-heavy, lop-sided, and nonsensi=
cal
are conceived as the work of man, gargoyles, German jugs, Chinese pots,
political caricatures, burlesque epics, the pictures of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley
and the puns of Robert Browning. But in truth a part, and a very large part=
, of
the sanity and power of nature lies in the fact that out of her comes all t=
his
instinct of caricature. Nature may present itself to the poet too often as
consisting of stars and lilies; but these are not poets who live in the
country; they are men who go to the country for inspiration and could no mo=
re
live in the country than they could go to bed in Westminster Abbey. Men who
live in the heart of nature, farmers and peasants, know that nature means c=
ows
and pigs, and creatures more humorous than can be found in a whole sketch-b=
ook
of Callot. And the element of the grotesque in art, like the element of the
grotesque in nature, means, in the main, energy, the energy which takes its=
own
forms and goes its own way. Browning's verse, in so far as it is grotesque,=
is
not complex or artificial; it is natural and in the legitimate tradition of
nature. The verse sprawls like the trees, dances like the dust; it is ragged
like the thunder-cloud, it is top-heavy like the toadstool. Energy which
disregards the standard of classical art is in nature as it is in Browning.=
The
same sense of the uproarious force in things which makes Browning dwell on =
the
oddity of a fungus or a jellyfish makes him dwell on the oddity of a philos=
ophical
idea. Here, for example, we have a random instance from "The Englishma=
n in
Italy" of the way in which Browning, when he was most Browning, regard=
ed
physical nature.
"And pitch down h=
is
basket before us, All trembling ali=
ve With pink and grey
jellies, your sea-fruit; You touch the str=
ange
lumps, And =
mouths
gape there, eyes open, all manner Of horns and of h=
umps, Which only the fi=
sher
looks grave at."
Nature might mean
flowers to Wordsworth and grass to Walt Whitman, but to Browning it really
meant such things as these, the monstrosities and living mysteries of the s=
ea.
And just as these strange things meant to Browning energy in the physical
world, so strange thoughts and strange images meant to him energy in the me=
ntal
world. When, in one of his later poems, the professional mystic is seeking =
in a
supreme moment of sincerity to explain that small things may be filled with=
God
as well as great, he uses the very same kind of image, the image of a shape=
less
sea-beast, to embody that noble conception.
"The Name comes c=
lose
behind a stomach-cyst, The simplest of
creations, just a sac That's mouth, hea=
rt,
legs, and belly at once, yet lives And feels, and co=
uld do
neither, we conclude, If simplified sti=
ll
further one degree."
=
&nb=
sp; =
(SLUDGE.)
These bulbous,
indescribable sea-goblins are the first thing on which the eye of the poet
lights in looking on a landscape, and the last in the significance of which=
he
trusts in demonstrating the mercy of the Everlasting.
There is another =
and
but slightly different use of the grotesque, but which is definitely valuab=
le
in Browning's poetry, and indeed in all poetry. To present a matter in a
grotesque manner does certainly tend to touch the nerve of surprise and thu=
s to
draw attention to the intrinsically miraculous character of the object itse=
lf.
It is difficult to give examples of the proper use of grotesqueness without=
becoming
too grotesque. But we should all agree that if St. Paul's Cathedral were
suddenly presented to us upside down we should, for the moment, be more
surprised at it, and look at it more than we have done all the centuries du=
ring
which it has rested on its foundations. Now it is the supreme function of t=
he
philosopher of the grotesque to make the world stand on its head that people
may look at it. If we say "a man is a man" we awaken no sense of =
the
fantastic, however much we ought to, but if we say, in the language of the =
old
satirist, "that man is a two-legged bird, without feathers," the
phrase does, for a moment, make us look at man from the outside and gives u=
s a
thrill in his presence. When the author of the Book of Job insists upon the=
huge,
half-witted, apparently unmeaning magnificence and might of Behemoth, the
hippopotamus, he is appealing precisely to this sense of wonder provoked by=
the
grotesque. "Canst thou play with him as with a bird, canst thou bind h=
im
for thy maidens?" he says in an admirable passage. The notion of the
hippopotamus as a household pet is curiously in the spirit of the humour of
Browning.
But when it is
clearly understood that Browning's love of the fantastic in style was a
perfectly serious artistic love, when we understand that he enjoyed working=
in
that style, as a Chinese potter might enjoy making dragons, or a mediæ=
;val
mason making devils, there yet remains something definite which must be lai=
d to
his account as a fault. He certainly had a capacity for becoming perfectly
childish in his indulgence in ingenuities that have nothing to do with poet=
ry
at all, such as puns, and rhymes, and grammatical structures that only just=
fit
into each other like a Chinese puzzle. Probably it was only one of the mark=
s of
his singular vitality, curiosity, and interest in details. He was certainly=
one
of those somewhat rare men who are fierily ambitious both in large things a=
nd
in small. He prided himself on having written The Ring and the Book, and he=
also
prided himself on knowing good wine when he tasted it. He prided himself on=
re-establishing
optimism on a new foundation, and it is to be presumed, though it is somewh=
at
difficult to imagine, that he prided himself on such rhymes as the followin=
g in
Pacchiarotto:--
"The wolf, fox, b=
ear,
and monkey, By
piping advice in one key-- That his pipe sho=
uld
play a prelude To
something heaven-tinged not hell-hued, Something not har=
sh but
docile, Man-liquid, not
man-fossil."
This writing, con=
sidered
as writing, can only be regarded as a kind of joke, and most probably Brown=
ing
considered it so himself. It has nothing at all to do with that powerful and
symbolic use of the grotesque which may be found in such admirable passages=
as
this from "Holy Cross Day":--
"Give your first
groan--compunction's at work; And soft! from a =
Jew
you mount to a Turk. Lo, Micah--the
self-same beard on chin He was four times
already converted in!"
This is the serio=
us
use of the grotesque. Through it passion and philosophy are as well express=
ed
as through any other medium. But the rhyming frenzy of Browning has no
particular relation even to the poems in which it occurs. It is not a dance=
to
any measure; it can only be called the horse-play of literature. It may be
noted, for example, as a rather curious fact, that the ingenious rhymes are=
generally
only mathematical triumphs, not triumphs of any kind of assonance. "The
Pied Piper of Hamelin," a poem written for children, and bound in gene=
ral
to be lucid and readable, ends with a rhyme which it is physically impossib=
le
for any one to say:--
"And, whether the=
y pipe
us free, fróm rats or fróm mice, If we've promised=
them
aught, let us keep our promise!"
This queer trait =
in
Browning, his inability to keep a kind of demented ingenuity even out of po=
ems
in which it was quite inappropriate, is a thing which must be recognised, a=
nd
recognised all the more because as a whole he was a very perfect artist, an=
d a
particularly perfect artist in the use of the grotesque. But everywhere whe=
n we
go a little below the surface in Browning we find that there was something =
in
him perverse and unusual despite all his working normality and simplicity. =
His
mind was perfectly wholesome, but it was not made exactly like the ordinary
mind. It was like a piece of strong wood with a knot in it.
The quality of wh=
at,
can only be called buffoonery which is under discussion is indeed one of the
many things in which Browning was more of an Elizabethan than a Victorian. =
He
was like the Elizabethans in their belief in the normal man, in their gorge=
ous
and over-loaded language, above all in their feeling for learning as an
enjoyment and almost a frivolity. But there was nothing in which he was so =
thoroughly
Elizabethan, and even Shakespearian, as in this fact, that when he felt
inclined to write a page of quite uninteresting nonsense, he immediately did
so. Many great writers have contrived to be tedious, and apparently aimless,
while expounding some thought which they believed to be grave and profitabl=
e;
but this frivolous stupidity had not been found in any great writer since t=
he
time of Rabelais and the time of the Elizabethans. In many of the comic sce=
nes
of Shakespeare we have precisely this elephantine ingenuity, this hunting o=
f a
pun to death through three pages. In the Elizabethan dramatists and in Brow=
ning
it is no doubt to a certain extent the mark of a real hilarity. People must=
be
very happy to be so easily amused.
In the case of wh=
at
is called Browning's obscurity, the question is somewhat more difficult to
handle. Many people have supposed Browning to be profound because he was
obscure, and many other people, hardly less mistaken, have supposed him to =
be
obscure because he was profound. He was frequently profound, he was
occasionally obscure, but as a matter of fact the two have little or nothin=
g to
do with each other. Browning's dark and elliptical mode of speech, like his
love of the grotesque, was simply a characteristic of his, a trick of is te=
mperament,
and had little or nothing to do with whether what he was expressing was
profound or superficial. Suppose, for example, that a person well read in
English poetry but unacquainted with Browning's style were earnestly invite=
d to
consider the following verse:--
"Hobbs hints
blue--straight he turtle eats. Nobbs
prints blue--claret crowns his cup. Nokes outdares St=
okes
in azure feats-- Both =
gorge.
Who fished the murex up? What porridge had=
John
Keats?"
The individual so
confronted would say without hesitation that it must indeed be an abstruse =
and
indescribable thought which could only be conveyed by remarks so completely
disconnected. But the point of the matter is that the thought contained in =
this
amazing verse is not abstruse or philosophical at all, but is a perfectly
ordinary and straightforward comment, which any one might have made upon an
obvious fact of life. The whole verse of course begins to explain itself, i=
f we
know the meaning of the word "murex," which is the name of a sea-=
shell,
out of which was made the celebrated blue dye of Tyre. The poet takes this =
blue
dye as a simile for a new fashion in literature, and points out that Hobbs,
Nobbs, etc., obtain fame and comfort by merely using the dye from the shell;
and adds the perfectly natural comment:--
"... Who fished t=
he
murex up? W=
hat
porridge had John Keats?"
So that the verse=
is
not subtle, and was not meant to be subtle, but is a perfectly casual piece=
of
sentiment at the end of a light poem. Browning is not obscure because he has
such deep things to say, any more than he is grotesque because he has such =
new
things to say. He is both of these things primarily, because he likes to
express himself in a particular manner. The manner is as natural to him as a
man's physical voice, and it is abrupt, sketchy, allusive, and full of gaps=
. Here
comes in the fundamental difference between Browning and such a writer as
George Meredith, with whom the Philistine satirist would so often in the ma=
tter
of complexity class him. The works of George Meredith are, as it were, obsc=
ure
even when we know what they mean. They deal with nameless emotions, fugitive
sensations, subconscious certainties and uncertainties, and it really requi=
res
a somewhat curious and unfamiliar mode of speech to indicate the presence o=
f these.
But the great part of Browning's actual sentiments, and almost all the fine=
st
and most literary of them, are perfectly plain and popular and eternal
sentiments. Meredith is really a singer producing strange notes and cadences
difficult to follow because of the delicate rhythm of the song he sings.
Browning is simply a great demagogue, with an impediment in his speech. Or
rather, to speak more strictly, Browning is a man whose excitement for the
glory of the obvious is so great that his speech becomes disjointed and
precipitate: he becomes eccentric through his advocacy of the ordinary, and
goes mad for the love of sanity.
If Browning and
George Meredith were each describing the same act, they might both be obscu=
re,
but their obscurities would be entirely different. Suppose, for instance, t=
hey
were describing even so prosaic and material an act as a man being knocked
downstairs by another man to whom he had given the lie, Meredith's descript=
ion
would refer to something which an ordinary observer would not see, or at le=
ast
could not describe. It might be a sudden sense of anarchy in the brain of t=
he
assaulter, or a stupefaction and stunned serenity in that of the object of =
the
assault. He might write, "Wainwood's 'Men vary in veracity,' brought t=
he
baronet's arm up. He felt the doors of his brain burst, and Wainwood a swift
rushing of himself through air accompanied with a clarity as of the
annihilated." Meredith, in other words, would speak queerly because he=
was
describing queer mental experiences. But Browning might simply be describing
the material incident of the man being knocked downstairs, and his descript=
ion would
run:--
"What then? 'You =
lie'
and doormat below stairs Takes bump from
back."
This is not subtl=
ety,
but merely a kind of insane swiftness. Browning is not like Meredith, anxio=
us
to pause and examine the sensations of the combatants, nor does he become
obscure through this anxiety. He is only so anxious to get his man to the
bottom of the stairs quickly that he leaves out about half the story.
Many who could
understand that ruggedness might be an artistic quality, would decisively, =
and
in most cases rightly, deny that obscurity could under any conceivable
circumstances be an artistic quality. But here again Browning's work requir=
es a
somewhat more cautious and sympathetic analysis. There is a certain kind of=
fascination,
a strictly artistic fascination, which arises from a matter being hinted at=
in
such a way as to leave a certain tormenting uncertainty even at the end. It=
is
well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half
understand the world. One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is
the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or dee=
p in
sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered so=
mething
stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecil=
ity
not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a gen=
uine
one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is
beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.
But in truth it is
very difficult to keep pace with all the strange and unclassified artistic
merits of Browning. He was always trying experiments; sometimes he failed,
producing clumsy and irritating metres, top-heavy and over-concentrated
thought. Far more often he triumphed, producing a crowd of boldly designed
poems, every one of which taken separately might have founded an artistic s=
chool.
But whether successful or unsuccessful, he never ceased from his fierce hunt
after poetic novelty. He never became a conservative. The last book he
published in his life-time, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in
their Day, was a new poem, and more revolutionary than Paracelsus. This is =
the
true light in which to regard Browning as an artist. He had determined to l=
eave
no spot of the cosmos unadorned by his poetry which he could find it possib=
le
to adorn. An admirable example can be found in that splendid poem "Chi=
lde
Roland to the Dark Tower came." It is the hint of an entirely new and
curious type of poetry, the poetry of the shabby and hungry aspect of the e=
arth
itself. Daring poets who wished to escape from conventional gardens and
orchards had long been in the habit of celebrating the poetry of rugged and
gloomy landscapes, but Browning is not content with this. He insists upon
celebrating the poetry of mean landscapes. That sense of scrubbiness in nat=
ure,
as of a man unshaved, had never been conveyed with this enthusiasm and prim=
eval
gusto before.
"If there pushed =
any
ragged thistle-stalk Above
its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were
jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's har=
sh
swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of green=
ness?
'tis a brute must walk Pashing
their life out, with a brute's intents."
This is a perfect
realisation of that eerie sentiment which comes upon us, not so often among
mountains and water-falls, as it does on some half-starved common at twilig=
ht,
or in walking down some grey mean street. It is the song of the beauty of
refuse; and Browning was the first to sing it. Oddly enough it has been one=
of
the poems about which most of those pedantic and trivial questions have been
asked, which are asked invariably by those who treat Browning as a science =
instead
of a poet, "What does the poem of 'Childe Roland' mean?" The only
genuine answer to this is, "What does anything mean?" Does the ea=
rth
mean nothing? Do grey skies and wastes covered with thistles mean nothing? =
Does
an old horse turned out to graze mean nothing? If it does, there is but one
further truth to be added--that everything means nothing.
CHAPTER VII - THE RING AND
THE BOOK
When we have once realised the great
conception of the plan of The Ring and the Book, the studying of a single
matter from nine different stand-points, it becomes exceedingly interesting=
to
notice what these stand-points are; what figures Browning has selected as v=
oicing
the essential and distinct versions of the case. One of the ablest and most
sympathetic of all the critics of Browning, Mr. Augustine Birrell, has said=
in
one place that the speeches of the two advocates in The Ring and the Book w=
ill
scarcely be very interesting to the ordinary reader. However that may be, t=
here
can be little doubt that a great number of the readers of Browning think th=
em
beside the mark and adventitious. But it is exceedingly dangerous to say th=
at anything
in Browning is irrelevant or unnecessary. We are apt to go on thinking so u=
ntil
some mere trifle puts the matter in a new light, and the detail that seemed
meaningless springs up as almost the central pillar of the structure. In the
successive monologues of his poem, Browning is endeavouring to depict the
various strange ways in which a fact gets itself presented to the world. In
every question there are partisans who bring cogent and convincing arguments
for the right side; there are also partisans who bring cogent and convincin=
g arguments
for the wrong side. But over and above these, there does exist in every gre=
at
controversy a class of more or less official partisans who are continually
engaged in defending each cause by entirely inappropriate arguments. They do
not know the real good that can be said for the good cause, nor the real go=
od
that can be said for the bad one. They are represented by the animated,
learned, eloquent, ingenious, and entirely futile and impertinent arguments=
of
Juris Doctor Bottinius and Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis. These two men=
brilliantly
misrepresent, not merely each other's cause, but their own cause. The
introduction of them is one of the finest and most artistic strokes in The =
Ring
and the Book.
We can see the ma=
tter
best by taking an imaginary parallel. Suppose that a poet of the type of
Browning lived some centuries hence and found in some cause
célèbre of our day, such as the Parnell Commission, an
opportunity for a work similar in its design to The Ring and the Book. The
first monologue, which would be called "Half-London," would be the
arguments of an ordinary educated and sensible Unionist who believed that t=
here
really was evidence that the Nationalist movement in Ireland was rooted in
crime and public panic. The "Otherhalf-London" would be the utter=
ance
of an ordinary educated and sensible Home Ruler, who thought that in the ma=
in
Nationalism was one distinct symptom, and crime another, of the same poison=
ous
and stagnant problem. The "Tertium Quid" would be some detached i=
ntellectual,
committed neither to Nationalism nor to Unionism, possibly Mr. Bernard Shaw,
who would make a very entertaining Browning monologue. Then of course would
come the speeches of the great actors in the drama, the icy anger of Parnel=
l,
the shuffling apologies of Pigott. But we should feel that the record was
incomplete without another touch which in practice has so much to do with t=
he
confusion of such a question. Bottinius and Hyacinthus de Archangelis, the =
two cynical
professional pleaders, with their transparent assumptions and incredible
theories of the case, would be represented by two party journalists; one of
whom was ready to base his case either on the fact that Parnell was a Socia=
list
or an Anarchist, or an Atheist or a Roman Catholic; and the other of whom w=
as
ready to base his case on the theory that Lord Salisbury hated Parnell or w=
as
in league with him, or had never heard of him, or anything else that was re=
mote
from the
world of reality.
These are the kind of little touches for which we must always be on the loo=
k-out
in Browning. Even if a digression, or a simile, or a whole scene in a play,
seems to have no point or value, let us wait a little and give it a chance.=
He
very seldom wrote anything that did not mean a great deal.
It is sometimes
curious to notice how a critic, possessing no little cultivation and fertil=
ity,
will, in speaking of a work of art, let fall almost accidentally some
apparently trivial comment, which reveals to us with an instantaneous and
complete mental illumination the fact that he does not, so far as that work=
of
art is concerned, in the smallest degree understand what he is talking abou=
t.
He may have intended to correct merely some minute detail of the work he is=
studying,
but that single movement is enough to blow him and all his diplomas into the
air. These are the sensations with which the true Browningite will regard t=
he
criticism made by so many of Browning's critics and biographers about The R=
ing
and the Book. That criticism was embodied by one of them in the words "=
;the
theme looked at dispassionately is unworthy of the monument in which it is
entombed for eternity." Now this remark shows at once that the critic =
does
not know what The Ring and the Book means. We feel about it as we should fe=
el
about a man who said that the plot of Tristram Shandy was not well construc=
ted,
or that the women in Rossetti's pictures did not look useful and industriou=
s. A
man who has missed the fact that Tristram Shandy is a game of digressions, =
that
the whole book is a kind of practical joke to cheat the reader out of a sto=
ry,
simply has not read Tristram Shandy at all. The man who objects to the Ross=
etti
pictures because they depict a sad and sensuous day-dream, objects to their
existing at all. And any one who objects to Browning writing his huge epic
round a trumpery and sordid police-case has in reality missed the whole len=
gth
and breadth of the poet's meaning. The essence of The Ring and the Book is =
that
it is the great epic of the nineteenth century, because it is the great epi=
c of
the enormous importance of small things. The supreme difference that divides
The Ring and the Book from all the great poems of similar length and largen=
ess
of design is precisely the fact that all these are about affairs commonly
called important, and The Ring and the Book is about an affair commonly cal=
led
contemptible. Homer says, "I will show you the relations between man a=
nd
heaven as exhibited in a great legend of love and war, which shall contain =
the
mightiest of all mortal warriors, and the most beautiful of all mortal
women." The author of the Book of Job says, "I will show you the
relations between man and heaven by a tale of primeval sorrows and the voic=
e of
God out of a whirlwind." Virgil says, "I will show you the relati=
ons
of man to heaven by the tale of the origin of the greatest people and the f=
ounding
of the most wonderful city in the world." Dante says, "I will show
you the relations of man to heaven by uncovering the very machinery of the
spiritual universe, and letting you hear, as I have heard, the roaring of t=
he
mills of God." Milton says, "I will show you the relations of man=
to
heaven by telling you of the very beginning of all things, and the first
shaping of the thing that is evil in the first twilight of time." Brow=
ning
says, "I will show you the relations of man to heaven by telling you a
story out of a dirty Italian book of criminal trials from which I select on=
e of
the meanest and most completely forgotten." Until we have realised this
fundamental idea in The Ring and the Book all criticism is misleading.
In this Browning =
is,
of course, the supreme embodiment of his time. The characteristic of the mo=
dern
movements par excellence is the apotheosis of the insignificant. Whether it=
be
the school of poetry which sees more in one cowslip or clover-top than in
forests and waterfalls, or the school of fiction which finds something inde=
scribably
significant in the pattern of a hearth-rug, or the tint of a man's tweed co=
at,
the tendency is the same. Maeterlinck stricken still and wondering by a deal
door half open, or the light shining out of a window at night; Zola filling
note-books with the medical significance of the twitching of a man's toes, =
or
the loss of his appetite; Whitman counting the grass and the heart-shaped
leaves of the lilac; Mr. George Gissing lingering fondly over the third-cla=
ss ticket
and the dilapidated umbrella; George Meredith seeing a soul's tragedy in a
phrase at the dinner-table; Mr. Bernard Shaw filling three pages with stage
directions to describe a parlour; all these men, different in every other
particular, are alike in this, that they have ceased to believe certain thi=
ngs
to be important and the rest to be unimportant. Significance is to them a w=
ild
thing that may leap upon them from any hiding-place. They have all become t=
erribly
impressed with and a little bit alarmed at the mysterious powers of small
things. Their difference from the old epic poets is the whole difference
between an age that fought with dragons and an age that fights with microbe=
s.
This tide of the
importance of small things is flowing so steadily around us upon every side
to-day, that we do not sufficiently realise that if there was one man in
English literary history who might with justice be called its fountain and
origin, that man was Robert Browning. When Browning arose, literature was
entirely in the hands of the Tennysonian poet. The Tennysonian poet does in=
deed
mention trivialities, but he mentions them when he wishes to speak triviall=
y; Browning
mentions trivialities when he wishes to speak sensationally. Now this sense=
of
the terrible importance of detail was a sense which may be said to have
possessed Browning in the emphatic manner of a demoniac possession. Sane as=
he
was, this one feeling might have driven him to a condition not far from
madness. Any room that he was sitting in glared at him with innumerable eyes
and mouths gaping with a story. There was sometimes no background and no mi=
ddle
distance in his mind. A human face and the pattern on the wall behind it ca=
me forward
with equally aggressive clearness. It may be repeated, that if ever he who =
had
the strongest head in the world had gone mad, it would have been through th=
is
turbulent democracy of things. If he looked at a porcelain vase or an old h=
at,
a cabbage, or a puppy at play, each began to be bewitched with the spell of=
a
kind of fairyland of philosophers: the vase, like the jar in the Arabian
Nights, to send up a smoke of thoughts and shapes; the hat to produce souls=
, as
a conjuror's hat produces rabbits; the cabbage to swell and overshadow the
earth, like the Tree of Knowledge; and the puppy to go off at a scamper alo=
ng
the road to the end of the world. Any one who has read Browning's longer po=
ems
knows how constantly a simile or figure of speech is selected, not among the
large, well-recognised figures common in poetry, but from some dusty corner=
of
experience, and how often it is characterised by smallness and a certain qu=
aint
exactitude which could not have been found in any more usual example. Thus,=
for
instance, Prince Hohenstiel--Schwangau explains the psychological meaning of
all his restless and unscrupulous activities by comparing them to the impul=
se
which has just led him, even in the act of talking, to draw a black line on=
the
blotting-paper exactly, so as to connect two separate blots that were alrea=
dy
there. This queer example is selected as the best possible instance of a
certain fundamental restlessness and desire to add a touch to things in the
spirit of man. I have no doubt whatever that Browning thought of the idea a=
fter
doing the thing himself, and sat in a philosophical trance staring at a pie=
ce
of inked blotting-paper, conscious that at that moment, and in that
insignificant act, some immemorial monster of the mind, nameless from the
beginning of the world, had risen to the surface of the spiritual sea.
It is therefore t=
he
very essence of Browning's genius, and the very essence of The Ring and the
Book, that it should be the enormous multiplication of a small theme. It is=
the
extreme of idle criticism to complain that the story is a current and sordid
story, for the whole object of the poem is to show what infinities of spiri=
tual
good and evil a current and sordid story may contain. When once this is rea=
lised,
it explains at one stroke the innumerable facts about the work. It explains,
for example, Browning's detailed and picturesque account of the glorious
dust-bin of odds and ends for sale, out of which he picked the printed reco=
rd
of the trial, and his insistence on its cheapness, its dustiness, its yellow
leaves, and its crabbed Latin. The more soiled and dark and insignificant he
can make the text appear, the better for his ample and gigantic sermon. It
explains again the strictness with which Browning adhered to the facts of t=
he forgotten
intrigue. He was playing the game of seeing how much was really involved in=
one
paltry fragment of fact. To have introduced large quantities of fiction wou=
ld
not have been sportsmanlike. The Ring and the Book therefore, to re-capitul=
ate
the view arrived at so far, is the typical epic of our age, because it
expresses the richness of life by taking as a text a poor story. It pays to
existence the highest of all possible compliments--the great compliment whi=
ch monarchy
paid to mankind--the compliment of selecting from it almost at random.
But this is only =
the
first half of the claim of The Ring and the Book to be the typical epic of
modern times. The second half of that claim, the second respect in which the
work is representative of all modern development, requires somewhat more
careful statement. The Ring and the Book is of course, essentially speaking=
, a
detective story. Its difference from the ordinary detective story is that i=
t seeks
to establish, not the centre of criminal guilt, but the centre of spiritual
guilt. But it has exactly the same kind of exciting quality that a detective
story has, and a very excellent quality it is. But the element which is
important, and which now requires pointing out, is the method by which that
centre of spiritual guilt and the corresponding centre of spiritual rectitu=
de
is discovered. In order to make clear the peculiar character of this method=
, it
is necessary to begin rather nearer the beginning, and to go back some litt=
le
way in literary history.
I do not know whe=
ther
anybody, including the editor himself, has ever noticed a peculiar coincide=
nce
which may be found in the arrangement of the lyrics in Sir Francis Palgrave=
's
Golden Treasury. However that may be, two poems, each of them extremely well
known, are placed side by side, and their juxtaposition represents one vast
revolution in the poetical manner of looking at things. The first is
Goldsmith's almost too well known
"When lovely woman
stoops to folly, And finds too lat=
e that
men betray, What
charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash=
her
guilt away?"
Immediately
afterwards comes, with a sudden and thrilling change of note, the voice of
Burns:--
"Ye banks and bra=
es o'
bonnie Doon, How c=
an ye
bloom sae fair? How can ye chant,=
ye
little birds, And I=
sae
fu' of care?
Thou'll break my heart=
, thou
bonny bird, That =
sings
upon the bough, Thou minds me of =
the
happy days When =
my
fause Love was true."
A man might read
those two poems a great many times without happening to realise that they a=
re
two poems on exactly the same subject--the subject of a trusting woman dese=
rted
by a man. And the whole difference--the difference struck by the very first
note of the voice of any one who reads them--is this fundamental difference,
that Goldsmith's words are spoken about a certain situation, and Burns's wo=
rds
are spoken in that situation.
In the transition
from one of these lyrics to the other, we have a vital change in the concep=
tion
of the functions of the poet; a change of which Burns was in many ways the
beginning, of which Browning, in a manner that we shall see presently, was =
the
culmination.
Goldsmith writes
fully and accurately in the tradition of the old historic idea of what a po=
et
was. The poet, the vates, was the supreme and absolute critic of human
existence, the chorus in the human drama; he was, to employ two words, which
when analysed are the same word, either a spectator or a seer. He took a
situation, such as the situation of a woman deserted by a man before-mentio=
ned,
and he gave, as Goldsmith gives, his own personal and definite decision upo=
n it,
entirely based upon general principles, and entirely from the outside. Then=
, as
in the case of The Golden Treasury, he has no sooner given judgment than th=
ere
comes a bitter and confounding cry out of the very heart of the situation
itself, which tells us things which would have been quite left out of accou=
nt
by the poet of the general rule. No one, for example, but a person who knew
something of the inside of agony would have introduced that touch of the ra=
ge
of the mourner against the chattering frivolity of nature, "Thou'll br=
eak my
heart, thou bonny bird." We find and could find no such touch in Golds=
mith.
We have to arrive at the conclusion therefore, that the vates or poet in his
absolute capacity is defied and overthrown by this new method of what may be
called the songs of experience.
Now Browning, as =
he
appears in The Ring and the Book, represents the attempt to discover, not t=
he
truth in the sense that Goldsmith states it, but the larger truth which is =
made
up of all the emotional experiences, such as that rendered by Burns. Browni=
ng,
like Goldsmith, seeks ultimately to be just and impartial, but he does it b=
y endeavouring
to feel acutely every kind of partiality. Goldsmith stands apart from all t=
he
passions of the case, and Browning includes them all. If Browning were
endeavouring to do strict justice in a case like that of the deserted lady =
by
the banks of Doon, he would not touch or modify in the smallest particular =
the
song as Burns sang it, but he would write other songs, perhaps equally
pathetic. A lyric or a soliloquy would convince us suddenly by the mere pul=
se
of its language, that there was some pathos in the other actors in the dram=
a; some
pathos, for example, in a weak man, conscious that in a passionate ignoranc=
e of
life he had thrown away his power of love, lacking the moral courage to thr=
ow
his prospects after it. We should be reminded again that there was some pat=
hos
in the position, let us say, of the seducer's mother, who had built all her
hopes upon developments which a mésalliance would overthrow, or in t=
he
position of some rival lover, stricken to the ground with the tragedy in wh=
ich he
had not even the miserable comfort of a locus standi. All these characters =
in the
story, Browning would realise from their own emotional point of view before=
he
gave judgment. The poet in his ancient office held a kind of terrestrial da=
y of
judgment, and gave men halters and haloes; Browning gives men neither halter
nor halo, he gives them voices. This is indeed the most bountiful of all th=
e functions
of the poet, that he gives men words, for which men from the beginning of t=
he
world have starved more than for bread.
Here then we have=
the
second great respect in which The Ring and the Book is the great epic of the
age. It is the great epic of the age, because it is the expression of the
belief, it might almost be said, of the discovery, that no man ever lived u=
pon
this earth without possessing a point of view. No one ever lived who had no=
t a
little more to say for himself than any formal system of justice was likely=
to
say for him. It is scarcely necessary to point out how entirely the applica=
tion
of this principle would revolutionise the old heroic epic, in which the poet
decided absolutely the moral relations and moral value of the characters.
Suppose, for example, that Homer had written the Odyssey on the principle of
The Ring and the Book, how disturbing, how weird an experience it would be =
to
read the story from the point of view of Antinous! Without contradicting a
single material fact, without telling a single deliberate lie, the narrative
would so change the whole world around us, that we should scarcely know we =
were
dealing with the same place and people. The calm face of Penelope would, it=
may
be, begin to grow meaner before our eyes, like a face changing in a dream. =
She
would begin to appear as a fickle and selfish woman, passing falsely as a
widow, and playing a double game between the attentions of foolish but
honourable young men, and the fitful appearances of a wandering and
good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn =
of
melodramatic rôles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who u=
ses
marital rights as an instrument for the worse kind of wrongs. Or, again, if=
we
had the story of the fall of King Arthur told from the stand-point of Mordr=
ed, it
would only be a matter of a word or two; in a turn, in the twinkling of an =
eye,
we should find ourselves sympathising with the efforts of an earnest young =
man
to frustrate the profligacies of high-placed paladins like Lancelot and
Tristram, and ultimately discovering, with deep regret but unshaken moral
courage, that there was no way to frustrate them, except by overthrowing the
cold and priggish and incapable egotist who ruled the country, and the whol=
e artificial
and bombastic schemes which bred these moral evils. It might be that in spi=
te
of this new view of the case, it would ultimately appear that Ulysses was
really right and Arthur was really right, just as Browning makes it ultimat=
ely
appear that Pompilia was really right. But any one can see the enormous
difference in scope and difficulty between the old epic which told the whole
story from one man's point of view, and the new epic which cannot come to i=
ts conclusion,
until it has digested and assimilated views as paradoxical and disturbing as
our imaginary defence of Antinous and apologia of Mordred.
One of the most
important steps ever taken in the history of the world is this step, with a=
ll its
various aspects, literary, political, and social, which is represented by T=
he
Ring and the Book. It is the step of deciding, in the face of many serious
dangers and disadvantages, to let everybody talk. The poet of the old epic =
is
the poet who had learnt to speak; Browning in the new epic is the poet who =
has
learnt to listen. This listening to truth and error, to heretics, to fools,=
to
intellectual bullies, to desperate partisans, to mere chatterers, to system=
atic
poisoners of the mind, is the hardest lesson that humanity has ever been se=
t to
learn. The Ring and the Book is the embodiment of this terrible magnanimity=
and
patience. It is the epic of free speech.
Free speech is an
idea which has at present all the unpopularity of a truism; so that we tend=
to
forget that it was not so very long ago that it had the more practical
unpopularity which attaches to a new truth. Ingratitude is surely the chief=
of
the intellectual sins of man. He takes his political benefits for granted, =
just
as he takes the skies and the seasons for granted. He considers the calm of=
a
city street a thing as inevitable as the calm of a forest clearing, whereas=
it
is only kept in peace by a sustained stretch and effort similar to that whi=
ch
keeps up a battle or a fencing match. Just as we forget where we stand in
relation to natural phenomena, so we forget it in relation to social phenom=
ena.
We forget that the earth is a star, and we forget that free speech is a
paradox.
It is not by any
means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty=
of
speech is right or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter
follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more t=
han
it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up a part of the public road, or
infect half a town with typhoid fever. The theory of free speech, that trut=
h is
so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is
very much better at all costs to hear every one's account of it, is a theory
which has been justified upon the whole by experiment, but which remains a =
very
daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great
discoveries of the modern time; but, once admitted, it is a principle that =
does
not merely affect politics, but philosophy, ethics, and finally poetry.
Browning was upon=
the
whole the first poet to apply the principle to poetry. He perceived that if=
we
wish to tell the truth about a human drama, we must not tell it merely like=
a
melodrama, in which the villain is villainous and the comic man is comic. He
saw that the truth had not been told until he had seen in the villain the p=
ure
and disinterested gentleman that most villains firmly believe themselves to=
be,
or until he had taken the comic man as seriously as it is the custom of com=
ic
men to take themselves. And in this Browning is beyond all question the fou=
nder
of the most modern school of poetry. Everything that was profound, everythi=
ng,
indeed, that was tolerable in the aesthetes of 1880, and the decadent of 18=
90,
has its ultimate source in Browning's great conception that every one's poi=
nt
of view is interesting, even if it be a jaundiced or a blood-shot point of =
view.
He is at one with the decadents, in holding that it is emphatically profita=
ble,
that it is emphatically creditable, to know something of the grounds of the
happiness of a thoroughly bad man. Since his time we have indeed been somew=
hat
over-satisfied with the moods of the burglar, and the pensive lyrics of the
receiver of stolen goods. But Browning, united with the decadents on this
point, of the value of every human testimony, is divided from them sharply =
and
by a chasm in another equally important point. He held that it is necessary=
to
listen to all sides of a question in order to discover the truth of it. But=
he
held that there was a truth to discover. He held that justice was a mystery,
but not, like the decadents, that justice was a delusion. He held, in other
words, the true Browning doctrine, that in a dispute every one was to a cer=
tain
extent right; not the decadent doctrine that in so mad a place as the world,
every one must be by the nature of things wrong.
Browning's concep=
tion
of the Universe can hardly be better expressed than in the old and pregnant
fable about the five blind men who went to visit an elephant. One of them
seized its trunk, and asserted that an elephant was a kind of serpent; anot=
her
embraced its leg, and was ready to die for the belief that an elephant was a
kind of tree. In the same way to the man who leaned against its side it was=
a
wall; to the man who had hold of its tail a rope, and to the man who ran up=
on its
tusk a particularly unpleasant kind of spear. This, as I have said, is the
whole theology and philosophy of Browning. But he differs from the
psychological decadents and impressionists in this important point, that he
thinks that although the blind men found out very little about the elephant,
the elephant was an elephant, and was there all the time. The blind men for=
med
mistaken theories because an elephant is a thing with a very curious shape.=
And
Browning firmly believed that the Universe was a thing with a very curious
shape indeed. No blind poet could even imagine an elephant without experien=
ce,
and no man, however great and wise, could dream of God and not die. But the=
re
is a vital distinction between the mystical view of Browning, that the blind
men are misled because there is so much for them to learn, and the purely
impressionist and agnostic view of the modern poet, that the blind men were
misled because there was nothing for them to learn. To the impressionist ar=
tist
of our time we are not blind men groping after an elephant and naming it a =
tree
or a serpent. We are maniacs, isolated in separate cells, and dreaming of t=
rees
and serpents without reason and without result.
CHAPTER VIII - THE PHILOS=
OPHY
OF BROWNING
The great fault of most of the
appreciation of Browning lies in the fact that it conceives the moral and
artistic value of his work to lie in what is called "the message of
Browning," or "the teaching of Browning," or, in other words=
, in
the mere opinions of Browning. Now Browning had opinions, just as he had a
dress-suit or a vote for Parliament. He did not hesitate to express these
opinions any more than he would have hesitated to fire off a gun, or open an
umbrella, if he had possessed those articles, and realised their value. For=
example,
he had, as his students and eulogists have constantly stated, certain defin=
ite
opinions about the spiritual function of love, or the intellectual basis of
Christianity. Those opinions were very striking and very solid, as everythi=
ng
was which came out of Browning's mind. His two great theories of the univer=
se
may be expressed in two comparatively parallel phrases. The first was what =
may
be called the hope which lies in the imperfection of man. The characteristic
poem of "Old Pictures in Florence" expresses very quaintly and
beautifully the idea that some hope may always be based on deficiency itsel=
f;
in other words, that in so far as man is a one-legged or a one-eyed creatur=
e, there
is something about his appearance which indicates that he should have anoth=
er
leg and another eye. The poem suggests admirably that such a sense of
incompleteness may easily be a great advance upon a sense of completeness, =
that
the part may easily and obviously be greater than the whole. And from this
Browning draws, as he is fully justified in drawing, a definite hope for
immortality and the larger scale of life. For nothing is more certain than =
that
though this world is the only world that we have known, or of which we could
even dream, the fact does remain that we have named it "a strange
world." In other words, we have certainly felt that this world did not
explain itself, that something in its complete and patent picture has been
omitted. And Browning was right in saying that in a cosmos where incomplete=
ness
implies completeness, life implies immortality. This then was the first of =
the
doctrines or opinions of Browning: the hope that lies in the imperfection of
man. The second of the great Browning doctrines requires some audacity to
express. It can only be properly stated as the hope that lies in the
imperfection of God. That is to say, that Browning held that sorrow and
self-denial, if they were the burdens of man, were also his privileges. He =
held
that these stubborn sorrows and obscure valours might, to use a yet more
strange expression, have provoked the envy of the Almighty. If man has
self-sacrifice and God has none, then man has in the Universe a secret and
blasphemous superiority. And this tremendous story of a Divine jealousy
Browning reads into the story of the Crucifixion. If the Creator had not be=
en crucified
He would not have been as great as thousands of wretched fanatics among His=
own
creatures. It is needless to insist upon this point; any one who wishes to =
read
it splendidly expressed need only be referred to "Saul." But these
are emphatically the two main doctrines or opinions of Browning which I have
ventured to characterise roughly as the hope in the imperfection of man, and
more boldly as the hope in the imperfection of God. They are great thoughts,
thoughts written by a great man, and they raise noble and beautiful doubts =
on
behalf of faith which the human spirit will never answer or exhaust. But ab=
out them
in connection with Browning there nevertheless remains something to be adde=
d.
Browning was, as =
most
of his upholders and all his opponents say, an optimist. His theory, that m=
an's
sense of his own imperfection implies a design of perfection, is a very good
argument for optimism. His theory that man's knowledge of and desire for
self-sacrifice implies God's knowledge of and desire for self-sacrifice is
another very good argument for optimism. But any one will make the deepest =
and
blackest and most incurable mistake about Browning who imagines that his op=
timism
was founded on any arguments for optimism. Because he had a strong intellec=
t,
because he had a strong power of conviction, he conceived and developed and
asserted these doctrines of the incompleteness of Man and the sacrifice of
Omnipotence. But these doctrines were the symptoms of his optimism, they we=
re
not its origin. It is surely obvious that no one can be argued into optimism
since no one can be argued into happiness. Browning's optimism was not foun=
ded on
opinions which were the work of Browning, but on life which was the work of
God. One of Browning's most celebrated biographers has said that something =
of
Browning's theology must be put down to his possession of a good digestion.=
The
remark was, of course, like all remarks touching the tragic subject of
digestion, intended to be funny and to convey some kind of doubt or diminut=
ion
touching the value of Browning's faith. But if we examine the matter with
somewhat greater care we shall see that it is indeed a thorough compliment =
to
that faith. Nobody, strictly speaking, is happier on account of his digesti=
on.
He is happy because he is so constituted as to forget all about it. Nobody
really is convulsed with delight at the thought of the ingenious machinery
which he possesses inside him; the thing which delights him is simply the f=
ull
possession of his own human body. I cannot in the least understand why a go=
od
digestion--that is, a good body--should not be held to be as mystic a benef=
it
as a sunset or the first flower of spring. But there is about digestion this
peculiarity throwing a great light on human pessimism, that it is one of the
many things which we never speak of as existing until they go wrong. We sho=
uld
think it ridiculous to speak of a man as suffering from his boots if we mea=
nt
that he had really no boots. But we do speak of a man suffering from digest=
ion
when we mean that he suffers from a lack of digestion. In the same way we s=
peak
of a man suffering from nerves when we mean that his nerves are more ineffi=
cient
than any one else's nerves. If any one wishes to see how grossly language c=
an
degenerate, he need only compare the old optimistic use of the word nervous=
, which
we employ in speaking of a nervous grip, with the new pessimistic use of the
word, which we employ in speaking of a nervous manner. And as digestion is a
good thing which sometimes goes wrong, as nerves are good things which
sometimes go wrong, so existence itself in the eyes of Browning and all the
great optimists is a good thing which sometimes goes wrong. He held himself=
as
free to draw his inspiration from the gift of good health as from the gift =
of
learning or the gift of fellowship. But he held that such gifts were in lif=
e innumerable
and varied, and that every man, or at least almost every man, possessed some
window looking out on this essential excellence of things.
Browning's optimi=
sm
then, since we must continue to use this somewhat inadequate word, was a re=
sult
of experience--experience which is for some mysterious reason generally
understood in the sense of sad or disillusioning experience. An old gentlem=
an
rebuking a little boy for eating apples in a tree is in the common concepti=
on
the type of experience. If he really wished to be a type of experience he w=
ould
climb up the tree himself and proceed to experience the apples. Browning's
faith was founded upon joyful experience, not in the sense that he selected=
his
joyful experiences and ignored his painful ones, but in the sense that his
joyful experiences selected themselves and stood out in his memory by virtu=
e of
their own extraordinary intensity of colour. He did not use experience in t=
hat
mean and pompous sense in which it is used by the worldling advanced in yea=
rs.
He rather used it in that healthier and more joyful sense in which it is us=
ed
at revivalist meetings. In the Salvation Army a man's experiences mean his
experiences of the mercy of God, and to Browning the meaning was much the s=
ame.
But the revivalists' confessions deal mostly with experiences of prayer and
praise; Browning's dealt pre-eminently with what may be called his own subj=
ect,
the experiences of love.
And this quality =
of
Browning's optimism, the quality of detail, is also a very typical quality.
Browning's optimism is of that ultimate and unshakeable order that is found=
ed
upon the absolute sight, and sound, and smell, and handling of things. If a=
man
had gone up to Browning and asked him with all the solemnity of the eccentr=
ic,
"Do you think life is worth living?" it is interesting to conject=
ure
what his answer might have been. If he had been for the moment under the in=
fluence
of the orthodox rationalistic deism of the theologian he would have said,
"Existence is justified by its manifest design, its manifest adaptatio=
n of
means to ends," or, in other words, "Existence is justified by its
completeness." If, on the other hand, he had been influenced by his own
serious intellectual theories he would have said, "Existence is justif=
ied
by its air of growth and doubtfulness," or, in other words,
"Existence is justified by its incompleteness." But if he had not
been influenced in his answer either by the accepted opinions, or by his own
opinions, but had simply answered the question "Is life worth
living?" with the real, vital answer that awaited it in his own soul, =
he
would have said as likely as not, "Crimson toadstools in Hampshire.&qu=
ot;
Some plain, glowing picture of this sort left on his mind would be his real
verdict on what the universe had meant to him. To his traditions hope was
traced to order, to his speculations hope was traced to disorder. But to
Browning himself hope was traced to something like red toadstools. His
mysticism was not of that idle and wordy type which believes that a flower =
is
symbolical of life; it was rather of that deep and eternal type which belie=
ves
that life, a mere abstraction, is symbolical of a flower. With him the great
concrete experiences which God made always come first; his own deductions a=
nd speculations
about them always second. And in this point we find the real peculiar inspi=
ration
of his very original poems.
One of the very f=
ew
critics who seem to have got near to the actual secret of Browning's optimi=
sm
is Mr. Santayana in his most interesting book Interpretations of Poetry and
Religion. He, in contradistinction to the vast mass of Browning's admirers,=
had
discovered what was the real root virtue of Browning's poetry; and the curi=
ous
thing is, that having discovered that root virtue, he thinks it is a vice. =
He describes
the poetry of Browning most truly as the poetry of barbarism, by which he m=
eans
the poetry which utters the primeval and indivisible emotions. "For the
barbarian is the man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being,
who does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause, or by
conceiving their ideal goal." Whether this be or be not a good definit=
ion
of the barbarian, it is an excellent and perfect definition of the poet. It
might, perhaps, be suggested that barbarians, as a matter of fact, are gene=
rally
highly traditional and respectable persons who would not put a feather wron=
g in
their head-gear, and who generally have very few feelings and think very li=
ttle
about those they have. It is when we have grown to a greater and more civil=
ised
stature that we begin to realise and put to ourselves intellectually the gr=
eat
feelings that sleep in the depths of us. Thus it is that the literature of =
our
day has steadily advanced towards a passionate simplicity, and we become mo=
re
primeval as the world grows older, until Whitman writes huge and chaotic ps=
alms
to express the sensations of a schoolboy out fishing, and Maeterlinck embod=
ies
in symbolic dramas the feelings of a child in the dark.
Thus, Mr. Santaya=
na
is, perhaps, the most valuable of all the Browning critics. He has gone out=
of
his way to endeavour to realise what it is that repels him in Browning, and=
he
has discovered the fault which none of Browning's opponents have discovered.
And in this he has discovered the merit which none of Browning's admirers h=
ave discovered.
Whether the quality be a good or a bad quality, Mr. Santayana is perfectly
right. The whole of Browning's poetry does rest upon primitive feeling; and=
the
only comment to be added is that so does the whole of every one else's poet=
ry.
Poetry deals entirely with those great eternal and mainly forgotten wishes
which are the ultimate despots of existence. Poetry presents things as they=
are
to our emotions, not as they are to any theory, however plausible, or any a=
rgument,
however conclusive. If love is in truth a glorious vision, poetry will say =
that
it is a glorious vision, and no philosophers will persuade poetry to say th=
at
it is the exaggeration of the instinct of sex. If bereavement is a bitter a=
nd
continually aching thing, poetry will say that it is so, and no philosophers
will persuade poetry to say that it is an evolutionary stage of great
biological value. And here comes in the whole value and object of poetry, t=
hat
it is perpetually challenging all systems with the test of a terrible since=
rity.
The practical value of poetry is that it is realistic upon a point upon whi=
ch
nothing else can be realistic, the point of the actual desires of man. Ethi=
cs
is the science of actions, but poetry is the science of motives. Some actio=
ns
are ugly, and therefore some parts of ethics are ugly. But all motives are
beautiful, or present themselves for the moment as beautiful, and therefore=
all
poetry is beautiful. If poetry deals with the basest matter, with the shedd=
ing of
blood for gold, it ought to suggest the gold as well as the blood. Only poe=
try
can realise motives, because motives are all pictures of happiness. And the
supreme and most practical value of poetry is this, that in poetry, as in
music, a note is struck which expresses beyond the power of rational statem=
ent
a condition of mind, and all actions arise from a condition of mind. Prose =
can
only use a large and clumsy notation; it can only say that a man is miserab=
le,
or that a man is happy; it is forced to ignore that there are a million div=
erse
kinds of misery and a million diverse kinds of happiness. Poetry alone, wit=
h the
first throb of its metre, can tell us whether the depression is the kind of
depression that drives a man to suicide, or the kind of depression that dri=
ves
him to the Tivoli. Poetry can tell us whether the happiness is the happiness
that sends a man to a restaurant, or the much richer and fuller happiness t=
hat
sends him to church.
Now the supreme v=
alue
of Browning as an optimist lies in this that we have been examining, that
beyond all his conclusions, and deeper than all his arguments, he was
passionately interested in and in love with existence. If the heavens had
fallen, and all the waters of the earth run with blood, he would still have
been interested in existence, if possible a little more so. He is a great p=
oet
of human joy for precisely the reason of which Mr. Santayana complains: that
his happiness is primal, and beyond the reach of philosophy. He is something
far more convincing, far more comforting, far more religiously significant =
than
an optimist: he is a happy man.
This happiness he
finds, as every man must find happiness, in his own way. He does not find t=
he
great part of his joy in those matters in which most poets find felicity. He
finds much of it in those matters in which most poets find ugliness and
vulgarity. He is to a considerable extent the poet of towns. "Do you c=
are
for nature much?" a friend of his asked him. "Yes, a great
deal," he said, "but for human beings a great deal more."
Nature, with its splendid and soothing sanity, has the power of convincing =
most
poets of the essential worthiness of things. There are few poets who, if th=
ey escaped
from the rowdiest waggonette of trippers, could not be quieted again and
exalted by dropping into a small wayside field. The speciality of Browning =
is rather
that he would have been quieted and exalted by the waggonette.
To Browning, prob=
ably
the beginning and end of all optimism was to be found in the faces in the
street. To him they were all the masks of a deity, the heads of a
hundred-headed Indian god of nature. Each one of them looked towards some
quarter of the heavens, not looked upon by any other eyes. Each one of them
wore some expression, some blend of eternal joy and eternal sorrow, not to =
be
found in any other countenance. The sense of the absolute sanctity of human
difference was the deepest of all his senses. He was hungrily interested in=
all
human things, but it would have been quite impossible to have said of him t=
hat
he loved humanity. He did not love humanity but men. His sense of the diffe=
rence
between one man and another would have made the thought of melting them int=
o a
lump called humanity simply loathsome and prosaic. It would have been to him
like playing four hundred beautiful airs at once. The mixture would not com=
bine
all, it would lose all. Browning believed that to every man that ever lived=
upon
this earth had been given a definite and peculiar confidence of God. Each o=
ne
of us was engaged on secret service; each one of us had a peculiar message;
each one of us was the founder of a religion. Of that religion our thoughts,
our faces, our bodies, our hats, our boots, our tastes, our virtues, and ev=
en
our vices, were more or less fragmentary and inadequate expressions.
In the delightful
memoirs of that very remarkable man Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, there is an
extremely significant and interesting anecdote about Browning, the point of
which appears to have attracted very little attention. Duffy was dining with
Browning and John Forster, and happened to make some chance allusion to his=
own
adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, when Forster remarked, half jestingl=
y,
that he did not suppose that Browning would like him any the better for tha=
t.
Browning would seem to have opened his eyes with some astonishment. He
immediately asked why Forster should suppose him hostile to the Roman Churc=
h.
Forster and Duffy replied almost simultaneously, by referring to "Bish=
op
Blougram's Apology," which had just appeared, and asking whether the
portrait of the sophistical and self-indulgent priest had not been intended=
for
a satire on Cardinal Wiseman. "Certainly," replied Browning
cheerfully, "I intended it for Cardinal Wiseman, but I don't consider =
it a
satire, there is nothing hostile about it." This is the real truth whi=
ch
lies at the heart of what may be called the great sophistical monologues wh=
ich
Browning wrote in later years. They are not satires or attacks upon their s=
ubjects,
they are not even harsh and unfeeling exposures of them. They are defences;
they say or are intended to say the best that can be said for the persons w=
ith
whom they deal. But very few people in this world would care to listen to t=
he
real defence of their own characters. The real defence, the defence which
belongs to the Day of Judgment, would make such damaging admissions, would
clear away so many artificial virtues, would tell such tragedies of weakness
and failure, that a man would sooner be misunderstood and censured by the w=
orld
than exposed to that awful and merciless eulogy. One of the most practically
difficult matters which arise from the code of manners and the conventions =
of
life, is that we cannot properly justify a human being, because that
justification would involve the admission of things which may not
conventionally be admitted. We might explain and make human and respectable,
for example, the conduct of some old fighting politician, who, for the good=
of
his party and his country, acceded to measures of which he disapproved; but=
we
cannot, because we are not allowed to admit that he ever acceded to measure=
s of
which he disapproved. We might touch the life of many dissolute public men =
with
pathos, and a kind of defeated courage, by telling the truth about the hist=
ory
of their sins. But we should throw the world into an uproar if we hinted th=
at
they had any. Thus the decencies of civilisation do not merely make it
impossible to revile a man, they make it impossible to praise him.
Browning, in such
poems as "Bishop Blougram's Apology," breaks this first mask of
goodness in order to break the second mask of evil, and gets to the real
goodness at last; he dethrones a saint in order to humanise a scoundrel. Th=
is
is one typical side of the real optimism of Browning. And there is indeed
little danger that such optimism will become weak and sentimental and popul=
ar,
the refuge of every idler, the excuse of every ne'er-do-well. There is litt=
le
danger that men will desire to excuse their souls before God by presenting
themselves before men as such snobs as Bishop Blougram, or such dastards as=
Sludge
the Medium. There is no pessimism, however stern, that is so stern as this
optimism, it is as merciless as the mercy of God.
It is true that in
this, as in almost everything else connected with Browning's character, the
matter cannot be altogether exhausted by such a generalisation as the above.
Browning's was a simple character, and therefore very difficult to understa=
nd,
since it was impulsive, unconscious, and kept no reckoning of its moods.
Probably in a great many cases, the original impulse which led Browning to =
plan
a soliloquy was a kind of anger mixed with curiosity; possibly the first ch=
arcoal
sketch of Blougram was a caricature of a priest. Browning, as we have said,=
had
prejudices, and had a capacity for anger, and two of his angriest prejudices
were against a certain kind of worldly clericalism, and against almost every
kind of spiritualism. But as he worked upon the portraits at least, a new
spirit began to possess him, and he enjoyed every spirited and just defence=
the
men could make of themselves, like triumphant blows in a battle, and towards
the end would come the full revelation, and Browning would stand up in the =
man's
skin and testify to the man's ideals. However this may be, it is worth whil=
e to
notice one very curious error that has arisen in connection with one of the
most famous of these monologues.
When Robert Brown=
ing
was engaged in that somewhat obscure quarrel with the spiritualist Home, it=
is
generally and correctly stated that he gained a great number of the impress=
ions
which he afterwards embodied in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." The
statement so often made, particularly in the spiritualist accounts of the
matter, that Browning himself is the original of the interlocutor and expos=
er
of Sludge, is of course merely an example of that reckless reading from whi=
ch no
one has suffered more than Browning despite his students and societies. The=
man
to whom Sludge addresses his confession is a Mr. Hiram H. Horsfall, an
American, a patron of spiritualists, and, as it is more than once suggested,
something of a fool. Nor is there the smallest reason to suppose that Sludge
considered as an individual bears any particular resemblance to Home consid=
ered
as an individual. But without doubt "Mr. Sludge the Medium" is a
general statement of the view of spiritualism at which Browning had arrived
from his acquaintance with Home and Home's circle. And about that view of s=
piritualism
there is something rather peculiar to notice. The poem, appearing as it did=
at
the time when the intellectual public had just become conscious of the exis=
tence
of spiritualism, attracted a great deal of attention, and aroused a great d=
eal
of controversy. The spiritualists called down thunder upon the head of the
poet, whom they depicted as a vulgar and ribald lampooner who had not only
committed the profanity of sneering at the mysteries of a higher state of l=
ife,
but the more unpardonable profanity of sneering at the convictions of his o=
wn
wife. The sceptics, on the other hand, hailed the poem with delight as a
blasting exposure of spiritualism, and congratulated the poet on making him=
self
the champion of the sane and scientific view of magic. Which of these two
parties was right about the question of attacking the reality of spirituali=
sm
it is neither easy nor necessary to discuss. For the simple truth, which
neither of the two parties and none of the students of Browning seem to have
noticed, is that "Mr. Sludge the Medium" is not an attack upon
spiritualism. It would be a great deal nearer the truth, though not entirely
the truth, to call it a justification of spiritualism. The whole essence of
Browning's method is involved in this matter, and the whole essence of
Browning's method is so vitally misunderstood that to say that "Mr. Sl=
udge
the Medium" is something like a defence of spiritualism will bear on t=
he face
of it the appearance of the most empty and perverse of paradoxes. But so, w=
hen
we have comprehended Browning's spirit, the fact will be found to be.
The general idea =
is
that Browning must have intended "Sludge" for an attack on spirit=
ual
phenomena, because the medium in that poem is made a vulgar and contemptible
mountebank, because his cheats are quite openly confessed, and he himself p=
ut
into every ignominious situation, detected, exposed, throttled, horsewhippe=
d,
and forgiven. To regard this deduction as sound is to misunderstand Brownin=
g at
the very start of every poem that he ever wrote. There is nothing that the =
man
loved more, nothing that deserves more emphatically to be called a speciali=
ty
of Browning, than the utterance of large and noble truths by the lips of me=
an
and grotesque human beings. In his poetry praise and wisdom were perfected =
not
only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of
swindlers and snobs. Now what, as a matter of fact, is the outline and deve=
lopment
of the poem of "Sludge"? The climax of the poem, considered as a =
work
of art, is so fine that it is quite extraordinary that any one should have
missed the point of it, since it is the whole point of the monologue. Sludg=
e the
Medium has been caught out in a piece of unquestionable trickery, a piece of
trickery for which there is no conceivable explanation or palliation which =
will
leave his moral character intact. He is therefore seized with a sudden
resolution, partly angry, partly frightened, and partly humorous, to become
absolutely frank, and to tell the whole truth about himself for the first t=
ime
not only to his dupe, but to himself. He excuses himself for the earlier st=
ages
of the trickster's life by a survey of the border-land between truth and fi=
ction,
not by any means a piece of sophistry or cynicism, but a perfectly fair
statement of an ethical difficulty which does exist. There are some people =
who
think that it must be immoral to admit that there are any doubtful cases of
morality, as if a man should refrain from discussing the precise boundary at
the upper end of the Isthmus of Panama, for fear the inquiry should shake h=
is
belief in the existence of North America. People of this kind quite
consistently think Sludge to be merely a scoundrel talking nonsense. It may=
be remembered
that they thought the same thing of Newman. It is actually supposed, appare=
ntly
in the current use of words, that casuistry is the name of a crime; it does=
not
appear to occur to people that casuistry is a science, and about as much a
crime as botany. This tendency to casuistry in Browning's monologues has do=
ne
much towards establishing for him that reputation for pure intellectualism
which has done him so much harm. But casuistry in this sense is not a cold =
and
analytical thing, but a very warm and sympathetic thing. To know what
combination of excuse might justify a man in manslaughter or bigamy, is not=
to
have a callous indifference to virtue; it is rather to have so ardent an
admiration for virtue as to seek it in the remotest desert and the darkest
incognito.
This is emphatica=
lly
the case with the question of truth and falsehood raised in "Sludge the
Medium." To say that it is sometimes difficult to tell at what point t=
he
romancer turns into the liar is not to state a cynicism, but a perfectly ho=
nest
piece of human observation. To think that such a view involves the negation=
of
honesty is like thinking that red is green, because the two fade into each
other in the colours of the rainbow. It is really difficult to decide when =
we come
to the extreme edge of veracity, when and when not it is permissible to cre=
ate
an illusion. A standing example, for instance, is the case of the fairy-tal=
es.
We think a father entirely pure and benevolent when he tells his children t=
hat
a beanstalk grew up into heaven, and a pumpkin turned into a coach. We shou=
ld
consider that he lapsed from purity and benevolence if he told his children
that in walking home that evening he had seen a beanstalk grow half-way up =
the church,
or a pumpkin grow as large as a wheelbarrow. Again, few people would object=
to
that general privilege whereby it is permitted to a person in narrating eve=
n a
true anecdote to work up the climax by any exaggerative touches which really
tend to bring it out. The reason of this is that the telling of the anecdote
has become, like the telling of the fairy-tale, almost a distinct artistic
creation; to offer to tell a story is in ordinary society like offering to
recite or play the violin. No one denies that a fixed and genuine moral rule
could be drawn up for these cases, but no one surely need be ashamed to adm=
it that
such a rule is not entirely easy to draw up. And when a man like Sludge tra=
ces
much of his moral downfall to the indistinctness of the boundary and the
possibility of beginning with a natural extravagance and ending with a gross
abuse, it certainly is not possible to deny his right to be heard.
We must recur,
however, to the question of the main development of the Sludge self-analysi=
s.
He begins, as we have said, by urging a general excuse by the fact that in =
the
heat of social life, in the course of telling tales in the intoxicating
presence of sympathisers and believers, he has slid into falsehood almost
before he is aware of it. So far as this goes, there is truth in his plea.
Sludge might indeed find himself unexpectedly justified if we had only an e=
xact
record of how true were the tales told about Conservatives in an exclusive =
circle
of Radicals, or the stories told about Radicals in a circle of indignant Co=
nservatives.
But after this general excuse, Sludge goes on to a perfectly cheerful and
unfeeling admission of fraud; this principal feeling towards his victims is=
by
his own confession a certain unfathomable contempt for people who are so ea=
sily
taken in. He professes to know how to lay the foundations for every species=
of personal
acquaintanceship, and how to remedy the slight and trivial slips of making
Plato write Greek in naughts and crosses.
"As I fear, sir, =
he
sometimes used to do Before I found the
useful book that knows."
It would be diffi=
cult
to imagine any figure more indecently confessional, more entirely devoid of=
not
only any of the restraints of conscience, but of any of the restraints even=
of
a wholesome personal conceit, than Sludge the Medium. He confesses not only
fraud, but things which are to the natural man more difficult to confess ev=
en than
fraud--effeminacy, futility, physical cowardice. And then, when the last of=
his
loathsome secrets has been told, when he has nothing left either to gain or=
to
conceal, then he rises up into a perfect bankrupt sublimity and makes the g=
reat
avowal which is the whole pivot and meaning of the poem. He says in effect:
"Now that my interest in deceit is utterly gone, now that I have admit=
ted,
to my own final infamy, the frauds that I have practised, now that I stand
before you in a patent and open villainy which has something of the disinte=
restedness
and independence of the innocent, now I tell you with the full and impartial
authority of a lost soul that I believe that there is something in
spiritualism. In the course of a thousand conspiracies, by the labour of a
thousand lies, I have discovered that there is really something in this mat=
ter
that neither I nor any other man understands. I am a thief, an adventurer, a
deceiver of mankind, but I am not a disbeliever in spiritualism. I have seen
too much for that." This is the confession of faith of Mr. Sludge the
Medium. It would be difficult to imagine a confession of faith framed and p=
resented
in a more impressive manner. Sludge is a witness to his faith as the old
martyrs were witnesses to their faith, but even more impressively. They
testified to their religion even after they had lost their liberty, and the=
ir
eyesight, and their right hands. Sludge testifies to his religion even afte=
r he
has lost his dignity and his honour.
It may be repeated
that it is truly extraordinary that any one should have failed to notice th=
at
this avowal on behalf of spiritualism is the pivot of the poem. The avowal
itself is not only expressed clearly, but prepared and delivered with admir=
able
rhetorical force:--
"Now for it, then=
! Will
you believe me, though? You've heard what=
I
confess: I don't unsay A single word: I
cheated when I could, Rapped with my to=
e-joints,
set sham hands at work, Wrote down names =
weak
in sympathetic ink. Rubbed odic light=
s with
ends of phosphor-match, And all the rest;
believe that: believe this, By the same token,
though it seem to set The crooked strai=
ght
again, unsay the said, Stick up what I've
knocked down; I can't help that, It's truth! I som=
ehow
vomit truth to-day. This trade of min=
e--I
don't know, can't be sure But there was som=
ething
in it, tricks and all!"
It is strange to =
call
a poem with so clear and fine a climax an attack on spiritualism. To miss t=
hat
climax is like missing the last sentence in a good anecdote, or putting the
last act of Othello into the middle of the play. Either the whole poem of
"Sludge the Medium" means nothing at all, and is only a lampoon u=
pon
a cad, of which the matter is almost as contemptible as the subject, or it
means this--that some real experiences of the unseen lie even at the heart =
of
hypocrisy, and that even the spiritualist is at root spiritual.
One curious theory
which is common to most Browning critics is that Sludge must be intended fo=
r a
pure and conscious impostor, because after his confession, and on the perso=
nal
withdrawal of Mr. Horsfall, he bursts out into horrible curses against that
gentleman and cynical boasts of his future triumphs in a similar line of
business. Surely this is to have a very feeble notion either of nature or a=
rt.
A man driven absolutely into a corner might humiliate himself, and gain a c=
ertain
sensation almost of luxury in that humiliation, in pouring out all his
imprisoned thoughts and obscure victories. For let it never be forgotten th=
at a
hypocrite is a very unhappy man; he is a man who has devoted himself to a m=
ost
delicate and arduous intellectual art in which he may achieve masterpieces
which he must keep secret, fight thrilling battles, and win hair's-breadth
victories for which he cannot have a whisper of praise. A really accomplish=
ed
impostor is the most wretched of geniuses; he is a Napoleon on a desert isl=
and.
A man might surely, therefore, when he was certain that his credit was gone=
, take
a certain pleasure in revealing the tricks of his unique trade, and gaining=
not
indeed credit, but at least a kind of glory. And in the course of this
self-revelation he would come at last upon that part of himself which exist=
s in
every man--that part which does believe in, and value, and worship somethin=
g.
This he would fling in his hearer's face with even greater pride, and take a
delight in giving a kind of testimony to his religion which no man had ever
given before--the testimony of a martyr who could not hope to be a saint. B=
ut
surely all this sudden tempest of candour in the man would not mean that he
would burst into tears and become an exemplary ratepayer, like a villain in=
the
worst parts of Dickens. The moment the danger was withdrawn, the sense of
having given himself away, of having betrayed the secret of his infamous
freemasonry, would add an indescribable violence and foulness to his reacti=
on
of rage. A man in such a case would do exactly as Sludge does. He would dec=
lare
his own shame, declare the truth of his creed, and then, when he realised w=
hat he
had done, say something like this:--
"R-r-r, you brute=
-beast
and blackguard! Cowardly scamp! I only wish I dar=
ed
burn down the house And spoil your
sniggering!"
and so on, and so=
on.
He would react li=
ke
this; it is one of the most artistic strokes in Browning. But it does not p=
rove
that he was a hypocrite about spiritualism, or that he was speaking more tr=
uthfully
in the second outburst than in the first. Whence came this extraordinary th=
eory
that a man is always speaking most truly when he is speaking most coarsely?=
The
truth about oneself is a very difficult thing to express, and coarse speaki=
ng
will seldom do it.
When we have gras=
ped
this point about "Sludge the Medium," we have grasped the key to =
the
whole series of Browning's casuistical monologues--Bishop Blaugram's Apolog=
y,
Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau,
Fra Lippo Lippi,
Fifine at the Fair, Aristophanes' Apology, and several of the monologues in=
The
Ring and the Book. They are all, without exception, dominated by this one
conception of a certain reality tangled almost inextricably with unrealitie=
s in
a man's mind, and the peculiar fascination which resides in the thought that
the greatest lies about a man, and the greatest truths about him, may be fo=
und
side by side in the same eloquent and sustained utterance.
"For Blougram, he
believed, say, half he spoke."
Or, to put the ma=
tter
in another way, the general idea of these poems is, that a man cannot help
telling some truth even when he sets out to tell lies. If a man comes to te=
ll
us that he has discovered perpetual motion, or been swallowed by the
sea-serpent, there will yet be some point in the story where he will tell us
about himself almost all that we require to know.
If any one wishes=
to
test the truth, or to see the best examples of this general idea in Brownin=
g's
monologues, he may be recommended to notice one peculiarity of these poems =
which
is rather striking. As a whole, these apologies are written in a particular=
ly
burly and even brutal English. Browning's love of what is called the ugly is
nowhere else so fully and extravagantly indulged. This, like a great many o=
ther
things for which Browning as an artist is blamed, is perfectly appropriate =
to
the theme. A vain, ill-mannered, and untrustworthy egotist, defending his o=
wn
sordid doings with his own cheap and weather-beaten philosophy, is very lik=
ely
to express himself best in a language flexible and pungent, but indelicate =
and
without dignity. But the peculiarity of these loose and almost slangy
soliloquies is that every now and then in them there occur bursts of pure
poetry which are like a burst of birds singing. Browning does not hesitate =
to
put some of the most perfect lines that he or anyone else have ever written=
in the
English language into the mouths of such slaves as Sludge and Guido
Franceschini. Take, for the sake of example, "Bishop Blougram's Apolog=
y."
The poem is one of the most grotesque in the poet's works. It is intentiona=
lly
redolent of the solemn materialism and patrician grossness of a grand
dinner-party à deux. It has many touches of an almost wild bathos, s=
uch
as the young man who bears the impossible name of Gigadibs. The Bishop, in
pursuing his worldly argument for conformity, points out with truth that a
condition of doubt is a condition that cuts both ways, and that if we canno=
t be
sure of the religious theory of life, neither can we be sure of the materia=
l theory
of life, and that in turn is capable of becoming an uncertainty continually
shaken by a tormenting suggestion. We cannot establish ourselves on
rationalism, and make it bear fruit to us. Faith itself is capable of becom=
ing
the darkest and most revolutionary of doubts. Then comes the passage:--
"Just when we are
safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a
flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus ending f=
rom
Euripides,-- And
that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at=
once
as Nature's self, To rap and knock =
and
enter in our soul, Take hands and da=
nce
there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient=
idol,
on his base again,-- The grand
Perhaps!"
Nobler diction an=
d a
nobler meaning could not have been put into the mouth of Pompilia, or Rabbi=
Ben
Ezra. It is in reality put into the mouth of a vulgar, fashionable priest,
justifying his own cowardice over the comfortable wine and the cigars.
Along with this
tendency to poetry among Browning's knaves, must be reckoned another
characteristic, their uniform tendency to theism. These loose and mean
characters speak of many things feverishly and vaguely; of one thing they
always speak with confidence and composure, their relation to God. It may s=
eem
strange at first sight that those who have outlived the indulgence, and not
only of every law, but of every reasonable anarchy, should still rely so si=
mply
upon the indulgence of divine perfection. Thus Sludge is certain that his l=
ife of
lies and conjuring tricks has been conducted in a deep and subtle obedience=
to
the message really conveyed by the conditions created by God. Thus Bishop
Blougram is certain that his life of panic-stricken and tottering compromise
has been really justified as the only method that could unite him with God.
Thus Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is certain that every dodge in his thin st=
ring
of political dodges has been the true means of realising what he believes t=
o be
the will of God. Every one of these meagre swindlers, while admitting a fai=
lure
in all things relative, claims an awful alliance with the Absolute. To many=
it
will at first sight appear a dangerous doctrine indeed. But, in truth, it i=
s a
most solid and noble and salutary doctrine, far less dangerous than its
opposite. Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or
moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth.
Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the
world which cannot otherwise be given. Every one should, for the good of men
and the saving of his own soul, believe that it is possible, even if we are=
the
enemies of the human race, to be the friends of God. The evil wrought by th=
is mystical
pride, great as it often is, is like a straw to the evil wrought by a mater=
ialistic
self-abandonment. The crimes of the devil who thinks himself of immeasurable
value are as nothing to the crimes of the devil who thinks himself of no va=
lue.
With Browning's knaves we have always this eternal interest, that they are =
real
somewhere, and may at any moment begin to speak poetry. We are talking to a
peevish and garrulous sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry feature=
s, his
evasive eyes, and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and
harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay beco=
mes
a common mouthpiece, and the voice that comes forth is the voice of God,
uttering His everlasting soliloquy.