E600900A. Poems Before Congress.
Weldon’s Register of Facts and Occurrences Relating to Literature, the Sciences, and the Arts, September 1860, pp. 20–23.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 28, 380–383.
It is rather late in the day to notice Mrs. Browning’s Poems before Congress; but we are impelled to speak of them by the feeling of indignation with which we have been compelled to witness an attack, from a most unexpected quarter, upon the womanly character of her muse, and even upon her own steadfastness of faith and love. Sorry are we that the assault is from a hand we respect; but we also tenderly respect Mrs. Browning, and the truth itself more than her. We could have wished that some obscure Grub-street reviewer (for Grub-street is by no means quite deserted by the literati of the present day) had been the assailant, rather than Mr. William Howitt; but since the fates have not ruled it so, we submit to the momentary sacrifice of our own feeling of warmest friendship for the man, and proceed to deal with him as the unjust accuser of a woman whose name has long been dear to us, and whose fame will be but justly crowned when she is honoured by future generations as the best beloved in English literature.
In the Spiritual Magazine for July Mr. Howitt thus speaks [p. 21→] of “the woman who has won the highest present popularity in verse,” *—Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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*By the way, we object to the phrase “present popularity” as applied to Mrs. Browning. Popularity can hardly be predicated of her. She is appreciated by the few, unknown or neglected by the many, and only honoured with a sort of nodding or speaking acquaintance by the self-appointed censors of general literature. So much the more gently should Mr. Howitt have dealt with her.
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“Who does not recollect the love and admiration with which they read her earlier poems; how they glowed over the noble ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ and the healthy intellectual musical strains that accompanied it? But from the moment that the critic began to trumpet and exalt her as a marvel of strength and philosophical thought, the poetess seemed seized by a passion for a very Sampsonian vigour. Her manner lost the quiet and real vigour which it had from nature; it became forced, stilted, strained, and theatric. The action was no longer free and flowing, but galvanic; there came a fierce and pretentious style, with strange spasmodic starts, and affected phrases. There arose a fire that was of fever, rather than from the life blood of a genuine inspiration. This character, to my feeling, runs through all her succeeding compositions. Though containing bold theorisms of reform, especially as regards woman, they yet belong entirely to the earth plane, if they have not lately, according to Harris’s theory, been strongly biologized from below. In the ‘Casa Guidi Windows,’ she suddenly veered round to a great admiration for war. Since then she has become fascinated with the second modern Moloch, Louis Napoleon; her admiration of this man, whose life is a lie, amounts to little, if anything, short of possession (viz. demoniacal possession). From this Bonaparte element,—the great element of modern unrest, which keeps all Europe one great barracks, and will never let it be quiet till it has trodden it out,—she hopes the regeneration of nations! Suddenly, after he has lied to France, juggling it out of its republican freedom by the falsified dice of universal suffrage; and lied to Italy, promising to free it from the Alps to the Adriatic; and lied to all Europe, promising to submit the question of the annexation of Savoy to it, before moving in it, her wild enchantment culminates in hymns of worship to him, and dire curses on her country!”
Oh, shame, Mr. Howitt, that yours should be the lips to bear unblushing false witness against one whose heart has been wrung with agony in the cause of human freedom and human sorrow, and who, in her “poet passion,” has hailed with rapture the strong arm that came to rive the chains of Italy! We need not pause to denounce the juggling of a Bonaparte; we feel as strongly as Mr. Howitt all that is false or doubtful in the element which a greater than Bonaparte has permitted to mingle for a season (and we doubt not for good as well as for evil) with the strife of contending elements in Europe. We point to the simple fact recorded on the title-page of Mrs. Browning’s volume, that the poems in question were written “before Congress,”—before Louis Napoleon had lied to Italy, if he really has lied; before he had lied to Europe. Mr. Howitt, in the heat of his mistaken zeal, affirms the contrary, and speaks of the poet’s “wild enchantment” culminating in hymns of worship to this man when he stood condemned in the face of Europe as a liar and a wrong-doer, thrice proved. We point to the mute, yet eloquent testimony of Mrs. Browning’s title-page,—“Poems before Congress.” We point again to her preface, dated from Rome, February, 1860. Our readers may now do, what Mr. Howitt should have done, look to the dates of recent events for their own perfect satisfaction.
But Mr. Howitt is equally unjust when he affirms that anything like worship of Bonaparte is exhibited in Mrs. Browning’s poems. In her preface we read, “If patriotism means the flattery of one’s nation in every case, then the patriot, take it as you please, is merely a courtier; which I am not, though I have written ‘Napoleon III. in Italy;’” and the poem itself fully bears out this statement. This poem, “Napoleon III. in Italy,” can only be regarded as the incandescent, living emanation of Mrs. Browning’s love for that down-trodden land. To understand this, in its full extent, one must have watched the changing fortunes of Italy, lived its own life, and been the eye-witness of such horrors as we find recorded in the Athenæum of this day (July 26th). Mrs. Browning has for years past made Italy her home, and has felt the national life throb in her veins. She has seen the women of Italy lashed,—and worse used than that,—by a brutal soldiery; the youth of Italy shot like dogs in a ditch; the manhood of Italy tortured and starved in loathsome dungeons; and, as Lord Palmerston recently expressed it, the very government of its most powerful state degenerate into a system of police and espionage. Mrs. Browning has not languidly heard or read of such things in her London drawing-room, but she has watched these horrors, on the spot, through the accumulated anguish and suspense of years, and has been doomed to feel and see that they were perpetuated by the respect of statesmen for the parchment bonds of Vienna;—that her own land, with a quenchless love for freedom and progress, was nevertheless tied down by red tape, and was as helpless as Italy herself, when the time came to cease talking, and to act. Before these poems can be fairly judged, the feeling of sorrow and anguish by which the woman’s heart was torn, seeing these things, must be realized; and Italy must be viewed as she was, little more than a year ago. In a word, the slow fever that was consuming the youth of Italy, and burning in the veins of the poet-priestess who dwelt in their midst, must be felt in its intensity. We give our readers credit for at least some share of this feeling, and we ask them, what exultation must have swelled in the hearts of Italy’s daughters, when the legions of France suddenly arose in their wrath and came to aid them to strike the long meditated blow for freedom! Down to that moment, Mrs. Browning had contained her soul in patience, and her “wild enchantment” had woven no spell with the name of Napoleon. She preludes, in the poem under consideration, her want of respect for him as the mere sovereign of France. She says:—
I was not used at least,
Nor can be, now nor then,
To stroke the ermine beast
On any kind of throne
(Though builded by a nation for its own),
And swell the surging choir for kings of men.—
No, but when the cause she loved seemed to be adopted by this “king of men,” and he rode forth like Roland or Charlemagne at the head of the chivalry of France, then, forgetful of the sovereign, and utterly oblivious of the indirect ways by which he obtained his crown, she saw only the deliverer of Italy:—
But now, Napoleon, now
That, leaving far behind the purple throng
Of vulgar monarchs, thou
Tread’st higher in thy deed
Than stair of throne can lead,
To help in the hour of wrong
The broken hearts of nations to be strong,—
Now, lifted as thou art
To the level of pure song,
We stand to meet thee on these Alpine snows!
And while the palpitating peaks break out
Ecstatic from somnambular repose
With answers to the presence and the shout,
We, poets of the people, who take part
With elemental justice, natural right,
Join in our echoes also, nor refrain.
We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height
At last, and find thee great enough to praise.
Receive the poet’s chrism, which smells beyond
The priest’s, and pass thy ways;—
An English poet warns thee to maintain
God’s word, not England’s:—let His truth be true
And all men liars! with His truth respond
To all men’s lie. Exalt the sword and smite
On that long anvil of the Apennine
Where Austria forged the Italian chain in view
Of seven consenting nations, sparks of fine
Admonitory light,
Till men’s eyes wink before convictions new.
Flash in God’s justice to the world’s amaze.
Sublime Deliverer!—after many days
Found worthy of the deed thou art come to do.
We must remind our readers, that the disappointment of victory and liberty at Villafranca (for a short season only perhaps) had not occurred when the noble stanza that we have here cited was penned. These are poems “before Congress,” not after Napoleon had proved false, as Mr. Howitt avers. Is there any justification in this fact? Nay, is the heart of the poet justified when it feels most deeply, and utters most truly what it feels? Reader, the very dust of Italy in that hour of supreme fate was aglow with fire,—a fire which still burns fiercely, and with a pure flame, thank God! [p. 22→] Hear Mrs. Browning’s testimony, and stay the beating of your own heart, if it be possible:—
Now, shall we say
Our Italy lives indeed?
And if it were not for the beat and bray
Of drum and trump of martial men,
Should we feel the underground heave and strain,
Where heroes left their dust as a seed
Sure to emerge one day?
And if it were not for the rhythmic march
Of France and Piedmont’s double hosts,
Should we hear the ghosts
Thrill through ruined aisle and arch,
Throb along the frescoed wall,
Whisper an oath by that divine
They left in picture, book, and stone,
That Italy is not dead at all?
Ay, if it were not for the tears in our eyes,
These tears of a sudden passionate joy,
Should we see her arise
From the place where the wicked are overthrown,
Italy, Italy? loosed at length
From the tyrant’s thrall,
Pale and calm in her strength?
Pale as the silver cross of Savoy
When the hand that bears the flag is brave,
And not a breath is stirring, save
What is blown
Over the war-trump’s lip of brass,
Ere Garibaldi forces the pass!
Ay, it is so, even so
Each broken stone that long ago
She flung behind her as she went
In discouragement and bewilderment
Through the cairns of Time and missed her way
Between to-day and yesterday,
Up springs a living man.
And each man stands with his face in the light
Of his own drawn sword,
Ready to do what a hero can.
Wall to sap, or river to ford,
Cannon to front, or foe to pursue,
Still ready to do, and sworn to be true,
As a man and a patriot can.
Piedmontese, Neapolitan,
Lombard, Tuscan, Romagnole,
Each man’s body having a soul,—
Count how many they stand,
All of them sons of the land,
Every live man there
Allied to a dead man below,
And the deadest with blood to spare
To quicken a living hand
In case it should ever be slow.
Count how many they come
To the beat of Piedmont’s drum,
With faces keener and grayer
Than swords of the Austrian slayer,
All set against the foe.
The reader who is unmoved by these thrilling lines will hardly be affected by those which follow. We cite them without hope of such. If any can believe they were penned without intense agony, we can only say that we cannot understand their mode of perception. We seem to hear the exulting question, “Whence come these warriors with the swiftness of destroying angels ‘to the beat of Piedmont’s drum?’” And this is the stirring answer:—
Out of the dust, where they ground them,
Out of the holes, where they dogged them,
Out of the hulks, where they wound them
In iron, tortured and flogged them;
Out of the streets, where they chased them,
Taxed them and then bayoneted them,—
Out of the homes, where they spied on them,
(Using their daughters and wives),
Out of the church, where they fretted them,
Rotted their souls and debased them,
Trained them to answer with knives,
Then cursed them all at their prayers!—
Out of cold lands, not theirs,
Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them;
Back they come like a wind, in vain
Cramped up in the hills, that roars its road
The stronger into the open plain;
Or like a fire that burns the hotter
And longer for the crust of cinder,
Serving better the ends of the potter;
Or like a restrained word of God,
Fulfilling itself by what seems to hinder.
We cannot cite more of this poem, or dwell longer on its extraordinary character. Enough is said to prove that it has been misrepresented, not only in the spirit of its conception, but in the outward facts.
We now come to a second grievous injustice, the obloquy of which Mr. Howitt must share with the common herd of review writers, who have one and all not scrupled to treat the poem which bears for its title “A Curse for a Nation,” as a curse breathed against England. Mr. Howitt, indeed, remarks in a foot note,—“Since writing this article, I have heard, but not seen, that Mrs. Browning has disclaimed the application of the ‘Curse for a Nation’ to England, and transferred it to America. On referring to her volume again, I observe phrases which might bear out that application, but unfortunately, these are so vague, that none but a specially prompted reader could so apply them.” Indeed, indeed, Mr. Howitt? Let us begin at the beginning, and read the “Prologue” to the “Curse.” Mrs. Browning solemnly says:—
I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said, “Write!
Write a Nation’s curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.”
I faltered, taking up the word:
“Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.
For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”
“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.”
“Not so,” I answered. “Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land’s sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street, ” etc.
Are these vague expressions? Mrs. Browning, pleading to be excused, urges that her “own land’s sins” are so grievous, and cry so loud to heaven, that she cannot take upon herself to reprove those of another; and the angel goes on to reply that, for that very reason, she is the chosen instrument.
Because thou hast strength to see, and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.
Then it is twice repeated in the “prologue,” that the curse is to be sent “Over the Western Sea;” and in the third stanza of the curse (after an allusion to writhing bond slaves trodden under foot, in the second stanza), America is plainly pointed to as the New World:—
Because ye prosper in God’s name,
With a claim
To honour in the Old World’s sight,
Yet do the fiend’s work perfectly,
In strangling martyrs,—for this lie,
This is the curse. Write.
We have hardly patience to answer Mr. Howitt’s charge of “vagueness.” But he asks, as if doubtful of Mrs. Browning’s positive statement, “Why, indeed, should Americans, lying so far out of the scene, be dragged in and cursed for not coming and fighting for the Italians?” Something might be said on this point, especially as the chief article of accusation urged against them by Mrs. Browning is that of keeping their feet on “writhing bond slaves,” and the “curse” is only a mode of accounting for their apathy, by referring to that gigantic sin as a thing that must ever prevent them from acting nobly, as their hearts would dictate. All this Mr. Howitt should have perceived, at least when he referred to the poem a second time in the light of Mrs. Browning’s explanations, and, seeing it, he should have generously acknowledged his error, or put his ms. in the fire.
Mr. Howitt says, “It is very singular that this poem is given as a spirit communication, thus confirming the idea of biologizing ab infra.” We are rather inclined to agree with Mrs. Browning in one of the stanzas we have cited,—that this [p. 23→] curse, at least,—
——from the summits of love is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.
The same word in Hebrew means both blessing and cursing, and in Cannan there was a mountain appointed for each of these priestly acts. However, the poem speaks for itself. Every expression it contains is an indication of deeply-felt grief, and of a woman’s tender love for down-trodden humanity.
“Unfortunately,” says Mr. Howitt, “were this particular poem plucked out of the book, all the rest of it is so steeped in the same violent spirit against England, that it would possess little less of that cursing which, the poetess says, in the mouth of a woman is so ‘very salt, and bitter, and good.’” Now, we are not going to deny that there is in this book the evidence of a bitter feeling against England for not coming to the help of Italy, but for indulging, on the contrary, in suspicions of the French, which she (before Congress, be it remembered) was of opinion were perfectly groundless. In this bitter spirit, —yet not bitter enough to disguise the immense depth of love in that woman’s heart,—she penned “Italy and the World,” one of the finest poems,—if not the very finest,—in this collection. The conception of the day of judgment for Italy, with which it opens, is magnificent. Cockcrow is the cry of preparation from France, then suddenly the trumpet sounds, and the graves are opened.
Life and life and life! agrope in
The dusk of death, warm hands, stretched out
For swords, proved more life still to hope in,
Beyond and behind. Arise with a shout,
Nation of Italy, slain and buried!
Hill to hill and turret to turret
Flashing the tricolour,—newly created
Beautiful Italy, calm, unhurried,
Rise heroic and renovated,
Rise to the final restitution.
But we must give more of this—
Rise; prefigure the grand solution
Of earth’s municipal, insular schisms,—
Statesmen draping self-love’s conclusions
In cheap, vernacular patriotisms,
Unable to give up Judæa for Jesus.
Bring us the higher example; release us
Into the larger coming time:
And into Christ’s broad garment piece us
Rags of virtue as poor as crime,
National selfishness, civic vaunting.
No more Jew nor Greek then,—taunting
Nor taunted;—no more England nor France!
But one confederate brotherhood, planting
One flag only, to mark the advance,
Onward and upward, of all humanity.
For civilization perfected
Is fully developed Christianity.
“Measure the frontier,” shall it be said,
“Count the ships,” in national vanity?—
Count the nation’s heart-beats sooner.
For, though behind by a cannon or schooner,
That nation is still predominant,
Whose pulse beats quickest in zeal to oppugn or
Succour another, in wrong or want,
Passing the frontier in love and abhorrence.
Modena, Parma, Bologna, Florence,
Open us out the wider way!
Dwarf in that chapel of old St. Lawrence
Your Michel-Angelo’s giant Day,
With the grandeur of this day breaking o’er us!
Ye who, restrained as an ancient chorus,
Mute while the coryphæus spake.
Hush your separate voices before us,
Sink your separate lives for the sake
Of one sole Italy’s living for ever!
Givers of coat and cloak too,—never
Grudging that purple of yours at the best,—
By your heroic will and endeavour
Each sublimely dispossessed,
That all may inherit what each surrenders!
Earth shall bless you, O noble emenders
On egotist nations! Ye shall lead
The plough of the world, and sow new splendours
Into the furrow of things, for seed,—
Ever the richer for what ye have given.
Lead us and teach us, until earth and heaven
Grow larger around us and higher above.
Our sacrament-bread has a bitter leaven;
We bait our traps with the name of love,
Till hate itself has a kinder meaning.
Oh, this world: this cheating and screening
Of cheats! this conscience for candlewicks,
Not beacon-fires! this over-weening
Of under-hand diplomatical tricks,
Dared for the country while scorned for the counter!
Oh, this envy of those who mount here,
And oh, this malice to make them trip!
Rather quenching the fire there, drying the fount here
To frozen body and thirsty lip,
Than leave to a neighbour their ministration.
Here follows a verse which has been purposely misquoted:—
I cry aloud in my poet passion,
Viewing my England o’er Alp and sea,
I loved her more in her ancient fashion,
She carries her rifles too thick for me,
Who spares them so in the cause of a brother.
What does the reader think of the line here printed in italics being omitted in order to make out a case against Mrs. Browning? Yet even this has been done,—by Grub-street! Not by Mr. Howitt, we are sincerely happy to say.
We trust we have said enough to correct an injustice, but for which we should scarcely have had occasion to notice Poems before Congress. Mrs. Browning, perhaps, may now feel that her trust in Napoleon has been misplaced; but there is nothing in these pages that she will ever need to look back upon with shame, or that we would deal with in any other spirit than that of tenderness and reverence. There is, indeed, a wild, lawless vigour in these poems, and there is a depth of enthusiasm in them which scorns the ordinary bonds of verse, as it withers with tenfold scorn the conventionalities of society. But they must be judged from the circumstances which inspired them; and, so judged, they will not be found unworthy of the hand that wrote both Lady Geraldine’s Courtship and Aurora Leigh.
Reviewed:
Poems Before Congress (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1860.
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