E570400A. Aurora Leigh (New York, 1857).
The Church Review, April 1857, pp. 124–126.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 314–316.
No book of the day has met a more diversified reception than “Aurora Leigh.” The (London) Guardian, which is “nothing” if it is not critical, fulminates as usual; pronounces “the book as a whole a failure;” and then shows plainly enough that it has not been able to appreciate either the design or the merits of the work. Blackwood is more discriminating; but fails to sympathize with the spirit in which the work was written. Its hyperborean taste is hardly fitted to do full justice to the tropical genius of the writer. The reviews of the work in this country are mostly but a re-hash of trans-atlantic criticisms. Had not our previous columns been preëngaged, and crowded to repletion, we would have attempted at least a more thorough analysis of the work than we have yet seen. As it is, we must content ourselves with a brief and imperfect notice.
“Aurora Leigh” was written, not as a work of art, not as a poem, not to be read for its æsthetic beauties, or mellifluous measures. It was written by one who felt that she had a message to deliver; it is the utterances of a heart which has its own interior life to disclose; its own struggles and conflicts to share with the hearts of others. The author’s pen seems almost to scorn the rules of rhetoric and the restraints of a closely measured verse in her conception of the greatness of her theme. And yet she is evidently a fine scholar, and many of her former poems are among the most beautiful lyrical gems of our language. There are also, in “Aurora Leigh,” passages of surpassing beauty and thrilling power even as artistic sketches, and, as a whole, it is superior to any of her former productions. There are, too, we confess, lines occurring constantly which are unpardonably slovenly, and whole pages, here and there, where there is neither sentiment, genius, or art, to redeem them from being simply dull. But, as a whole, “Aurora Leigh,” without ranking as a great poem, which will outlive its age and generation, is yet worthy of one whom we regard as England’s best living poet.
The story is evidently a transcript in verse of the author’s own life; and this intense personality is, we think, one secret, as it may be, also the measure of Mrs. Browning’s success. “Aurora Leigh,” born of a Florentine mother and an English father, and uniting in her own character the qualities of both, at the age of thirteen an orphan, is removed from her Italian home to England, where she is placed under the care of a stiff, prim, starched, high born aunt, an old maid. Here she is most carefully and thoroughly educated. Romney Leigh, her cousin, who inherits her father’s property, falls in love with her; and she with him, though she did not know it. From this point, the moral of the story really begins. Romney was a speculative philanthropist. She, distrusting the true loyalty of his homage, and with a pretty exalted conception of woman’s vocation, and feeling within her own soul the warmth of a hidden fire, an aspiration after fame, argues with great force against his visionary theories, but rejects his suit and removes to London, where, as an author, she attains the summit of her ambition. Romney Leigh, a thorough devotee to his new social scheme, gives proof of it in determining to ignore and merge all social distinctions by marrying a daughter of the people, Marian Erle, of most ignoble birth; and who, by the by, is one of the best characters in the story. Lady Waldemar, a beautiful, high-born, haughty woman, as much in love with Romney as such a vain and selfish woman can be, wishes to marry him, and secretly persuades Marian, at the last moment, to absent herself from the Church where a crowd are gathered for the wedding, and to flee to the Continent. There, in [p. 125→] Paris, Aurora finds her: and the authoress, disappointed with worldly fame, disgusted with the homage of all, while she finds a throne in the heart of none; together with Marian departs for refuge and rest to her own fair, sunny Italy. The thread of events in the story, the history of Lady Waldemar, of Marian, of Lord Howe, we cannot give. Romney Leigh visits Italy to marry Marian, and marries Aurora Leigh; he, sick of a philanthropy which has no faith in it, no recognition of the ordained laws of social life, and which is impracticable as well as infidel; and she, equally sick of a fame which reaches not the heart, and satisfied that there are wants of the soul which Art and Genius cannot supply.
We have no room to quote passages, where the author exhibits all her splendid resources; where feeling, sentiment, thought and diction hold the reader spell-bound with their magic power. The description of the turbulent scene in St. James’ Church, where a crowd, high and low, are gathered for the wedding, and Marian Erle, the bride, fails to appear; the letter of Aurora to Lady Waldemar, after the clandestine management of the latter in defeating the marriage is detected; the picture of a heart, conscious at last that fame is an empty bubble; these are among the cleverest portions of the work.
It is objected to the work, that Mrs. Browning’s pen is too communicative sometimes for the pen of a woman. So, too, these squeamish objectors would omit certain words in reading the Bible; and keep expurgated copies of Virgil and Shakespeare, with certain passages collected in a lump by themselves in an Appendix; a pretty sure index of a filthy imagination rather than of a pure heart.
The real faults of “Aurora Leigh,” as it seems to us, are, first a failure to recognize those distinctive virtues and graces which are the crowning glory of woman’s character. There is, also, a lack of a certain richness, tenderness, and sweetness of tone, a tone which gives utterance to the soul’s deepest breathings and aspirations in its hours of communion with the spiritual world. Mrs. Browning is capable of these loftier flights, but she does not essay them here. There is, also, not unfrequently, an obscurity and vagueness, as of a thought imperfectly conceived, a sort of dreamy revery in which it is hard to tell whether the writer’s fancy is soaring in the heavens above us, or whether it is floundering in quite another element. We miss, also, in “Aurora Leigh,” another element, the absence of which is a serious blemish. There is, in the poem, enough of passion, of a certain sort, perhaps too much; but we fail to detect that tenderness and full glow of deep emotion which wells out of a large, generous, loving soul. If, as she seems to think, her early verses were too proper, there is a coldness in her spontaneity even now. There is still another fault in “Aurora Leigh.” The prominent characters are not real. Aurora Leigh, Lady Waldemar, Marian Erle and Romney, are all distorted. Lady Waldemar, we would condemn for another reason; but we prefer to regard her as a distortion of the artist, rather than of the moralist. We shall have another criticism to make before we are done.
It is noteworthy, how much of the popular literature of the day clusters around one great question; the existence of Social Evils, and the means of curing them. Dickens, Thackeray, Miss Sewell, Miss Martineau, Miss Bremer, Kingsley, Maurice,—yes, and Fourier and Proudhon,—with all these, the upraising of the degraded, the smoothing of social inequalities, the regeneration of Society—this is the one great Question to be solved. Nor is it a modern Question. Nor is its earnest discussion now such a shadow of good things to come, as our modern dreamers would fain have us believe. It is the old question, which, in another form, ages ago, Plato in his Republic tried to answer. Thomas Moore, and, at a later day, the French Encyclopædists, were full of it; and Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, in early life, dreamed as splendidly and as truthfully as men dream now.
What, then, after all, is the grand social remedy which men have ever sought, but never found? It is not in reconstruction. It is not in Associations and Phalansteries. It is not in any attainable degree of intellectual or æsthetic [p. 126→] culture. It is not in tightening, or relaxing, Rubrics. It is not in any one form of Civil Government, but may coexist with almost any. It is to be found in a Supernatural Element. It is in the divine gift of the God-Man, who took our Nature upon Him, that He might redeem it from its bondage and regenerate it by the Eternal Spirit. “In Him,” not merely by Him, “shall all be made alive.” It is this Supernatural Element, which, alone, can and will renew Man’s nature, sanctify the affections, subdue the will, and soften and warm the heart of Society with the all pervading power of Love. God is Love. Heaven is Love. And Earth will be like God and like Heaven, when it sweetly yields to this sacred, blessed Power. Till then, all schemes, beautiful and fascinating howsoever they are, though sung by poet, and hallowed by genius, and made sacred by the fondest hopes of thousands on thousands of beating and bleeding hearts, will yet prove to be but the beautiful bubbles of a Utopian dream. The World will disbelieve. Infidels will jeer. Philanthropists will experiment. Christians may well work and pray in faith. The great fault we have to find with “Aurora Leigh,” is, that this vital truth, so vital that all else is falsehood, is not presented with an emphasis which shall make it remembered as the great moral of the story.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1857.
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