R420402A. King Victor and King Charles.
The Examiner, 2 April 1842, pp. 211–212.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 401–402.
This is a piece of modern history of a startling kind, thrown into dramatic form.
The King Victor is that notable person whose energy secured for the Dukes of the House of Savoy, some century and a quarter since, the place among Sovereigns of Europe which they hold to this day, with the title of Kings of Sardinia. He has also some special claims upon the interest of Englishmen, from having married a niece of Charles the Second: an alliance which might have dropped the English Crown into his family, but for the settlement of ’88. All the incidents and associations of his life, however—even to the memory of that indomitable spirit which, having sustained a petty dukedom against all that even the Fourteenth Louis could bring against it, ultimately regalised its race—have been absorbed in his sad and surprising death. And over this sufficient mystery still hangs, to make it the more appropriate subject for a tragic poet.
After reigning in his Dukedom thirty years, and seventeen years in his kingdom, Victor, in a hale and vigorous old age, abdicated in favour of his son. His motives are doubtful. Mr Browning finds them in a restless passion for intrigue; and makes the abdication a mere expedient by which the wily politician, still resolved to die a king, would have slipped his pliant and docile son for a time into the danger-woven mesh of his sovereignty, which, when youth and innocence had disentangled, craft and old age should again enjoy. And the manner in which this tribute to the simplest kind of honesty is wrung from the hardened veteran in subtle policy, is no doubt the conception of a true poet. But we suspect that Victor’s reasons lay much more upon the surface. In all probability the case was the precise counterpart of what we have witnessed in a neighbouring kingdom within the last three years: a king abdicating in his son’s favour, that he might as a private man indulge a passion unquestioned, from which decency would have interdicted royalty.
Be this as it may—and whether to return was a part of the original design, as Mr Browning would make it; or, as we think more likely, a part of the original weakness of the old man’s subjection to an infamous woman, for whom he had resigned his crown, and impelled by whom he came to ask for it again—Victor, within a year of his abdication, did return. But he found his son less docile and pliant than he had left him. And here equal doubts as with the motives of the father, occur respecting the conduct adopted by the son. It seems questionable whether there were needless cruelty and harshness in what he did, or whether he was urged and sustained through it all by a noble sense of duty. Mr Browning uses the poetic privilege admirably, in reconciling the external facts on which these questions arise; and the decisive measures which are said to have broken the heart of Victor, are with great beauty and masterly skill made quite compatible with the generous character which history gives to Charles. But the mere facts as they stand on record in relation to Victor’s return, we take to be these. At first, his son would not believe that his father seriously entertained the intention attributed to him; but on receiving serious proofs to that effect, took council with his nobles, and had him at once arrested. Victor then passed twelve wretched months in solitary detention at Rivoli, and miserably died. The old man’s heart was broken, but his passionate temper stayed to the last. It is even said, in some of the more private details of this unhappy time, that from his death bed he drove away the priests of the church, to which he had theretofore never failed in duty, appalled by the nature of his denunciations against King Charles. “Bring no consolation to me,” he said, when they reminded him of the Great Sacrifice for the remission of suffering and of sin: “He of whom you speak, had a son to die for Him: I die for my son.”
The characters in Mr Browning’s tragedy are four: Victor and Charles; Polyxena, the wife of Charles; and D’Ormea, the minister of both kings. Of these, we like Victor the most; and, notwithstanding some exquisite management in relation to him, Charles the least. Until near the close indeed, he is in such a continual and most painful fret and worry that we long for all our sakes to have him any way out of it. The secret of Mr Browning’s error in this, we suspect to be one very common with the best young poets: the love of a too decisive contrast. But it needed no such artifice to recommend the more strikingly, the calm and quiet figure by Charles’s side. Polyxena is a charming conception, adequately sustained: a delightful picture of the high-toned Love in woman, which without other aid gives brightness to the intellect and irresistible moral strength to the soul. We like D’Ormea too: the rascally, conscience-scared old minister, who suddenly finds himself infected with virtue as with an influenza, and is very nigh falling a martyr to it. [p. 212→]
The general fault of the tragedy, as a poem, is in its defects of versification; and, as a dramatic work, in its substitution of the metaphysics of character and passion for their broad and practical results. These mistakes, which have a wilful and deliberate air, are easily pointed out, and much effective abuse vented upon them without much trouble. But it is worth more trouble to be able to discover, even in these, the wayward perverseness of a man of true genius. Such is Mr Browning. We ought not to extenuate what we hold to be a grave error; but we think it not difficult to see that, by the very passion for his art, such a man may be so betrayed. Time is the great correcter: as Time is the disinterested, the immortal witness on Poetry’s behalf, that her ways are very old and very settled ways, not admitting, like those of steam and other wonderful inventions, of many novel or useful improvements. She has now been current in the world for some thousands of years, and it is generally admitted, we believe, that the first effort she made—the first at any rate of which there is written record—continues to be the best.
We cannot subjoin all we could have wished, from the tragedy itself: but the reader who is wise enough to take our word, and act on it, will find his reward in many beautiful, powerful, and pathetic passages. Meanwhile, what little we can quote may go in illustration of old Victor: the master-piece of the composition, as he ought to be. The constant reaction upon his habits of craft and mere politic purposes, of the nobler part of his nature and the grand recollections of his life, is at once an instructive and affecting piece of truth.
Oh, Victor—Victor—
But thus it is: the age of crafty men
Is loathsome—youth contrives to carry off
Dissimulation—we may intersperse
Extenuating passages of strength,
Ardour, vivacity, and wit—may turn
E’en guile into a voluntary grace,—
But one’s old age, when graces drop away
And leave guile the pure staple of our lives—
Ah, loathsome!
So is the pleading of the poor outwitted old man, when the change of character in his son dawns terribly upon him.
… he forgot his promise, found his strength
Fail him, had thought at savage Chamberri
Too much of brilliant Turin, Rivoli here,
And Susa, and Veneria, and Superga—
Pined for the pleasant places he had built
When he was fortunate and young.
Again:
… he could not die
Deprived of baubles he had put aside
He deemed for ever—of the Crown that binds
Your brain up, whole, sound, and impregnable,
Creating kingliness—the Sceptre, too,
Whose mere wind, should you wave it, back would beat
Invaders—and the golden Ball which throbs
As if you grasped the palpitating heart
Indeed o’ the realm, to mould as choose you may.
In the closing speech of the tragedy, there is great art, beauty, and effect. The best and worst of Victor are here for the last time brought together, side by side with the lesson they teach. It is very striking, that grand kind of vanity in the old man—already sufficiently far from life to behold himself a figure in history.
Vic. Past help, past reach!
’Tis in the heart—you cannot reach the heart:
This broke mine, that I did believe you, Charles,
Would have denied and so disgraced me.
Pol. Charles
Has never ceased to be your subject, sire—
He reigned at first through setting up yourself
As pattern: if he e’er seemed harsh to you,
’Twas from a too intense appreciation
Of your own character: he acted you—
Ne’er for an instant did I think it real,
Or look for any other than this end.
I hold him worlds the worse on that account;
But so it was.
Cha. I love you now, indeed!
(To Victor.) You never knew me!
Vic. Hardly till this moment,
When I seem learning many other things,
Because the time for using them is past.
If ’twere to do again! That’s idly wished.
Truthfulness might prove policy as good
As guile. Is this my daughter’s forehead? Yes—
I’ve made it fitter now to be a Queen’s
Than formerly—I’ve ploughed the deep lines there
That keep too well a Crown from slipping off!
No matter. Guile has made me King again.
Louis—’twas in King Victor’s time—long since,
When Louis reign’d—and, also, Victor reign’d—
How the world talks already of us two!
God of eclipse and each discoloured star,
Why do I linger then?
Ha! Where lurks he?
D’Ormea! Come nearer to your King! Now stand!
[Collecting his strength as D’Ormea approaches.
But you lied. D’Ormea! I do not repent. [Dies.
This should be our last extract, but that we wish to show the writer’s dramatic faculty, in passages of ordinary dialogue. If we had space, we should have given the whole scene which closes the first part, beginning with the entrance of the crowned Charles: as it is, we content ourselves with what follows.
Cha. First for the levies.
What forces can I muster presently?
[D’Ormea delivers papers which Charles inspects.
Cha. Good—very good Montorio .. how is this?
—Equips me double the old complement
Of soldiers?
D’O. Since his land has been relieved
From double impost this he manages:
But under the late monarch ..
Cha. Peace. I know.
Count Spava has omitted mentioning
What proxy is to head these troops of his.
D’O. Count Spava means to head his troops himself.
Something’s to fight for now; “whereas,” says he,
“Under the Sovereign’s father” ..
Cha. It would seem
That all my people love me.
D’O. Yes. [To Polyxena, while Charles continues to inspect the papers.
A temper
Like Victor’s may avail to keep a state—
He terrifies men and they fall not off—
Good to restrain; best, if restraint were all:
But with the silent circle round him ends
Such sway. Our King’s begins precisely there.
For to suggest, impel, and set at work,
Is quite another function. Men may slight
In time of peace the King who brings them peace:
In war,—his voice, his eyes, help more than fear.
They love you, sire!
Sooner or later—unless he defers it till too late!—Mr Browning will write an entirely worthy, manly, and well matured dramatic work. It is in him, and ought to be out.
[John Forster]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. II. King Victor and King Charles (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1842.
___________________
