E570400D. Aurora Leigh (New York, 1857).
The Lady’s Home Magazine, April 1857, pp. 233–237
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 323–326.
This is one of the productions of the present season which is likely to create some sensation among those who are fond of sensations—not on account of the novelty of the style, which is as old as Carlyle and his corporal’s guard of small imitators, but on account of some of the opinions set forth by the author, which are bold and striking, but not for that reason unjust, or reprehensible as coming from a woman. Of others we cannot say as much. Mrs. Browning is original, from the fact that, in a speculative, scheming age, full of plans and projects of reform, both in church and state—an age of associations, when every thing is done, not by rule, but by compact—she belongs to the anti-social reform party, and maintains that every one should mend one until the whole is mended. In order to regenerate masses, she would begin with individuals, and have individuals look to a power superior to their own in accomplishing important changes. It requires some courage in these restless, adventurous times, to be a conservative, rather than a propagandist. Besides, conservatism is amiable in a woman, and more appropriate to her peculiar sphere than socialism, which is noisy, speculative, and vulgar. We are glad to find Mrs. Browning in the conservative ranks. She is more sensible and practical than some poets are, but her poetry, also, is different from that of some others; it is more philosophical, deeper, broader, more living, because it has more common sense in it—a wider basis of principle and truth.
There is no complication of plot in the story of Aurora Leigh. It is the history of part of a life, or, rather, of part of several lives—of individuals, plainly belonging to the present century. The characters are well selected, as representative men and women, standing for certain classes, and expressing opinions that are peculiar to those classes. Aurora Leigh is a genius, who worships genius, and adores herself for possessing it. She is one who is to reform the world by the force of mind and genius alone. With her, books, especially those she writes herself, are the lever by which the world is raised. She at last discovers that opinions are naught, and that truths, not self-derived, but flowing down from above, are the great laws of life and progress. She deals, accordingly, some very instructive lessons to the whole class of modern reformers run mad.
Romney Leigh is a socialist, a champion of brotherhood, which he proposes to achieve by a levelling process—a process of levelling up and levelling down. He belongs to the aristocracy, but has a world-wide sympathy for the down-trodden classes. His philanthropy extends far beyond the functions of government and private charity. It takes in whole masses, which, by plans more chimerical than practical, are to be suddenly elevated to a respectable human stand-point, and rendered quite comfortable. He has the elements of an excellent character, both intellectual and moral, but experience convinces him of the folly of his plans, and of his own inherent weakness, and he at length turns to the only Source of all power and illumination. But let us descend to particulars.
The father of Aurora Leigh is an Englishman—her mother an Italian. The emotional nature, which she derives from her mother, is predominant in her constitution. She is a “born poet,” besides being a beautiful and attractive woman. To these characteristics she adds self-will and strong will, and a high sense of personal independence, and of the worldly dignity that clusters around talent. She loses her mother in infancy, and her father dies during her girlhood. She is placed under the tuition of a self-seeking, worldly-minded relation, an aunt, who could never forgive her brother for marrying an Italian wife, and who could never forgive the daughter for the offence which the father committed. Her situation, under her aunt’s roof, is anything but agreeable to a girl of genius, possessed of a high and somewhat rebel spirit, to whom trammels of all kinds are irksome. The most annoying of these was a secret understanding, in due time made manifest, whereby to sanctify, or, at least, render tolerable the supposed mesalliance of the father—the high-blooded Romney Leigh, her cousin, was to marry her, and in case of her refusal to agree to the match, she was to be deprived of the inheritance which would otherwise be secured to her by the compliance with this arrangement. She had esteemed her cousin; they had grown up together in each other’s society; they had read the same books together, they sympathised [p. 234→] with many of each other’s opinions; and, upon the whole, they possessed many traits in common which would have rendered the match, in the English, and in any sense of the term, suitable, besides its desirableness in a worldly aspect. Again, each possessed peculiarities and cherished plans at the outset of life, which were not prophetic of harmony in the wedded state; at least, so thought Aurora, and, accordingly, she rejects the offer of her cousin’s hand, and the fortune that accompanies it, and prefers to rely on the resources of her own genius.
An interval of ten years elapses, during which Romney prosecutes, with ill-success, his projects of social reform, and she pursues authorship with reputation, but, in the end, with little self-satisfaction. During this period the author introduces Marian Erle—as Bulwer does Alice—a perfect creation of poetic fancy, surrounded by misery and degradation the most revolting. The parallel in the character of these two may be easily compared and identified by any who have read “Ernest Maltravers,” and now read “Aurora Leigh.” Some of her touches in the description of her low-born heroine are glorified by true genius, while others are debased by grossness of expression, unintelligible narration, the wildest vagaries of unregulated thought, and the jolting and tumbling style of rhyme, which agitates and affronts the reader of good taste. She does not award to this girl, after all, poetic justice, since, faultless in every particular, she yet abandons her to the wily arts of a rival, and exposes her, without mercy or remorse, to the deepest villainy and most hopeless ruin. This girl was chosen by Romney, the champion of socialism, to form a connecting-link between the high-born and the vulgar, and she is recklessly disposed of by our authoress, to prove the fact that Romney Leigh was mistaken in his impossible theory of levelling classes, while she, Aurora Leigh, (alias Elizabeth Browning) pursues the better plan of operating through a book.
The book is undoubtedly a good one in many respects, but it is as faulty in others as was the socialistic scheme of uniting the extremes of society. At all events, we do not regard the author a safe guide, either in her irreverent flights of bold thought, when she deals with angels, and even the Almighty, as though she were an inspired exponent of the thoughts of angels and of God, nor in the less offensive, but still reprehensible, violation of all poetic rules and accepted application of language.
If the perversion of terms from their common and simple use, till, by their strange combination, and eccentric connection, they mean one scarce knows what, be an art of the poet, it must be admitted that Mrs. Browning is a poetess of admirable skill. The great effort at originality of expression, so evident in all writers of this school, is painfully felt by the reader when toiling through her compositions. True, her thoughts are often grand and striking, but they are dimly developed by language sometimes silly and affected, and sometimes absurd and inappropriate. One must think in order to reach her meaning. Ideas must be gathered in her works, rather from hints and probable explanations, than from direct statement. She astounds with sounding epithets. Like Shelley, she veils herself in shadows; like Coleridge, she grows wild to the verge of madness. Little simple, nothing natural, gratifies the reader of correct taste in her pages; and yet they contain many beautiful things quaintly delivered, but deformed by the errors of transcendental novelty. She has labored, with untiring zeal, to produce new forms of expression, and, in short, to write as no one else has written. In this her success has undoubtedly been seen; but what has she gained by all this diligence? A new style, perhaps, but one faulty and artificial.
A sufferer from long and severe illness, Mrs. Browning has, for years, in the solitude of her chamber, devoted herself to letters, and there, though translated to a bride, we are willing to behold her now, pale and thought-worn, toiling at her endless task of producing something unusual in the construction of sentences and arrangements of words; while her great and noble sentiments, if delivered without this over-effort at distinguishing peculiarity, would command at once the admiration of all.
She says, prefacing her earlier poems: “Poetry has been a serious thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious thing; there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done work, so far, as work; not mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain—and as work I offer it to the public, feeling its faultiness more deeply than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration, but feeling, also, that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done should protect it in the eyes of the reverent and sincere.”
Let us examine, with due “reverence,” a [p. 235→] specimen of the work before us. We select a passage amongst many of which it is a fair sample. Its high-sounding phrases, inflated obscure, and meaningless, (or, at least, of doubtful significance,) puzzle and perplex the reader, who, when he cannot fathom its sense, concludes, perhaps, this wonderful woman, “the Milton among female poets,” is too wise and profound for his comprehension. Another reader understands, or hopes he does, our lady poet’s mysticism, and, when satisfied that such is the fact, feels, also, that there has been “much ado about nothing,” that the little jewel is not worth the painful labor of separating it from the trash and mud in which it lies embedded; that the idea is indebted to its pompous surroundings of mighty and learned words for seeming great at the first glance. But we proceed to our extract:
O life, O poetry,
Which means life in life! cognisant of life
Beyond this blood-beat—poetry, my life—
My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot
From Zeus’s thunder, who has ravished me
Away from all the shepherds’ sheep and dogs,
And set me in the Olympian roar and round
Of luminous faces for a cupbearer,
To keep the mouths of all the godheads moist
For everlasting laughter—I myself,
Half-drunk across the beakers with their eyes!
How those gods look!
******
Am I such indeed? The name
Is royal, and to sign it like a queen
Is what I dare not—though some royal blood
Would seem to tingle in me now and then,
With sense of power and ache—with imposthumes
And manias usual to the race.
Now these same “imposthumes” and “manias” are especially what we complain of in Mrs. Browning’s very popular verses, and we by no means consider them indications of poetic genius; they belong to crude and inelegant writers, and need the correction of sound judgment and cultivated taste, and we recommend her to discard them as vile nuisances, and not attempt to pass them off upon the world as proofs of superiority. The “aches,” too, which she feelingly records, her art should have taught her to conceal, at least in the laborious construction of her abrupt and halting lines. She may extol Carlyle and Keats, but her imitation of them proves how dangerous their example has been to admiring followers like herself.
Lady Waldemar is a dark, artful and appalling character. Mrs. Browning has drawn her with artistic skill, and evinces knowledge of the world, and its blinding gloss, in the fearful picture. This portrait again reminds us of one of Bulwer’s bold delineations. The hand which sketches it seems that of a man, rather than of a woman; and, sooth to say, our authoress is not over feminine, in style or thought—a perfect contrast to Mrs. Hemans, whose delicacy hallowed every page, and whose highest moral sentiments were always draped with woman’s tenderness, refinement, and rainbow beauty.
But Mrs. Browning, assuming man’s hardness, and dashing boldly on, must expect to be dealt with as her temerity demands, and we are free to tell her that she has ventured where wise men would pause, and timorous women would turn away abashed, for she has described some scenes and circumstances in which we beg leave to decline pursuing her steps. She is quite strong enough to go forth alone.
To deny her merit is impossible, and that, too, of a high order. But her compositions are abundantly ungraceful, sometimes lowered by terms ignored in the vocabulary of common decency, sometimes obscured by a paltry display of learning, and sometimes bombastic beyond endurance. We almost forgive all this, when a great thought comes gleaming out from clouds and darkness, as it often does, and commands us to listen to her song, when weariness and disgust had almost induced us to lay aside the book and repudiate its author.
It is amusing to see Mrs. Browning’s blundering attempt to place Keats above Pope—the most classic bard England ever knew—and Byron, whose lordly powers demanded a world’s homage, and obtained it, too, despite the opposition of Jeffrey, the keenest critic of his age,—despite his own vagaries—for his genius was defiant and eccentric; it is amusing, we say, and convinces us of the models she has chosen—if her involved and most reprehensible style of writing had not previously established the fact that she belongs to the Lake school of English poetry. She says:
By Keats’s soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years,
And died not young, (the life of a long life,
Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear
Upon the world’s cold cheek, to make it burn
Forever;) by that strong excepted soul,
I count it strange and hard to understand
That nearly all young poets should write old;
That Pope was sexagenarian at sixteen,
And beardless Byron academical,
And so with others. It may be, perhaps,
Such have not settled long and deep enough [p. 236→]
In trance, to attain to clairvoyance, and still
The memory mixes with the vision, spoils,
And works it turbid.
These speculations may go for what they are worth. Meantime, the world must decide whether Pope or Mrs. Browning is most turbid. The whole passage is presumptuous, affected and most decidedly untrue. Keats, it appears, “turned upon his grand central self,” “lived a long life,” though he “died young,” and is “excepted” from all others, by the great glory which he achieved in the shedding of a single tear; but this mighty tear,—a magical one,—is to burn, we are told, on the world’s cheek forever! What monstrous imagery is this! a very gorgon in the phantom ranks of transcendental nonsense. If Mrs. Browning ever studied poetry as an art, she ought to be aware that both rhetoric and common sense imperatively require simplicity of style. Understand your subject—feel your subject—are the two grand rules, unimpaired by innovation, which must govern and elevate rational composition. We are not all clairvoyants, and cannot, all of us, appreciate flights beyond reason and probability. How are we to understand the expression, “By Keats’s soul?” Are we not expressly told, “Swear not at all?” Still more decidedly do we object to her irreverent use of a name so sacred that angels pronounce it with awe. Her task being, as she avers, to reform the world, we suggest that her example, in this particular, does not comport with the philanthropic aim proposed.
Mrs. Browning is resolved to forestal the public judgment as to her genius and composition, by a decided expression of the conclusions to which she has arrived on these interesting topics. She is not deficient in the art of sounding her own trumpet:
God has made me—I’ve a heart
That’s capable of worship, love and loss
We say the same of Shakspeare’s. I’ll be meek,
And learn to reverence, even this poor myself.
Her “meekness” is very remarkable in emulating Shakspeare’s laurels, and her “self-reverence” (should we not rather say, her insufferable vanity and assumption?) still more so.
The cupbearer of the gods, and who makes “all the godheads” laugh under the inspiration of her verses, is also (seipsa judice) a maker of “good books” and an apostle of “truth,” notwithstanding her womanly infirmity:
The book, too—pass it. “A good book,” says he,
“And you a woman! I had laughed at that,
But long since. I’m a woman, it is true.
Alas, and woe to us, when we feel it most!
Then, least care have we for the crowns and goals,
And compliments on writing our good books.
The book has some truth in it, I believe.
****
I have written truth
And I a woman.
We do not quite understand this disclaimer of “crowns” and “compliments” by our authoress, predicated upon the circumstances of sex. If she is a woman, and has written a “good book,” and, especially, if she has “written truth,” we cannot see why she is not as fairly entitled to a crown as the “beardless Byron,” or as “that strong excepted soul,” Keats.
The particular “truth” which Mrs. Browning has “written,” and to which she refers in the above passage, charms us, and upon scanning it attentively, we are nearly as ready to award her the palm of the philosopher as the laurel of the poet:
Truth, so far, in my book—the truth which draws
Through all things upwards; that a twofold world
Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things
And spiritual—who separates these two
In art, in morals, or the social drift,
Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,
Is wrong, in short, at all points.
Without the spiritual, observe,
The natural’s impossible; no form,
No motion! Without sensuous, spiritual
Is inappreciable; no beauty or power!
And in this twofold sphere the twofold man
(And still the artist is intensely (?) a man)
Holds firmly by the natural, to reach
The spiritual beyond it—fixes still
The type with mortal vision, to pierce through,
With eyes immortal, to the antetype
Some call the ideal—better called the real,
And certain to be called so presently
When things shall have their names.
These are noble sentiments, strongly and well expressed, too. But Young had said, more succinctly, the same thing before:
All—all on earth is shadow—all beyond
Is substance. The reverse is folly’s creed.
Again we cite, with decided approval, the following passage from our true-thoughted author:
“There’s nothing great
Nor small,” has said a poet of our day,
(Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve,
And not be thrown out by the matin’s bell;)
And, truly, I reiterate—nothing’s small! [p. 237→]
No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,
In such a little tremor of the blood
The whole strong clamor of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware,
More and more from the first similitude.
“Daubing faces from a similitude” is a rather strained use of language, but we pass it by as a poetic license, for the sake of the fine thoughts contained in the above passage. “Cramming earth with heaven,” also, is a curious kind of surfeit, and can only be understood in the light of the theory, on which she seems to pride herself, and which is more fully set forth in the following earnest passage:
Verily I was wrong;
And, verily, many thinkers of this age,
Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone—
The great below clenched by the great above;
Shade here authenticating substance there;
The body proving spirit, as the effect
The cause.
****
There are many, even,
Whose names are written in the Christian church
To no dishonor—diet still on mud,
And splash the altars with it. You might think
The clay Christ laid upon their eyelids, when,
Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,
Remained there to retard its exercise
With clogging incrustations. Close to heaven.
They see for mysteries through the open doors,
Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthen-ware;
And fain would enter, when their time shall come,
With quite a different body than St. Paul
Has promised, husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,
Or where’s the resurrection?
Mrs. Browning, then, denies the doctrine of the resurrection of the material body, denounces orthodox “mysteries” as “puffs of smoke from pots of earthen-ware,” and maintains a double cosmos in which matter and material things answer to spirit and spiritual things. It is well that in England there is no censorship of the press before publication, or these notions might not “pass muster” with the Establishment, to which, we believe, she belongs. They are not quite original, we apprehend, with Mrs. Browning; but if adopted are likely essentially to modify our theological systems, and are therefore entitled to the gravest consideration.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1857.
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