R430401A. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.
The Pathfinder, 1 April 1843, pp. 87–88.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 396–397.
We have been so fortunate as to see Mr. Browning’s tragedy (of which we gave an account in our last*) in print. It is with more propriety, a dramatic sketch than a tragedy, for the emotions of the piece are single and there is too little of the variety of real life which revolves in the larger circle drawn by Shakspeare and the old masters. There are but three sentiments in the play, the struggle between love and duty in the breast of an old servant, the passion for honor of the brother and the devoted suffering of the heroine. With a rigorous conception of passion on the part of the author, there is certainly absent a free, eloquent expression, its usual attendant in the greatest minds. The language is harsh and perplexed. It is difficult to read A Blot in the ’Scutcheon without studying it. But rather would we [p. 88→] search this stony, rugged soil for the few wild delicate flowers of the mountain than pluck whole hotbeds of gaudy tulips which may be raised in any garden. We have more hope from Mr. Browning than we had from Talfo[u]rd, for Ion had attained at once the highest excellence, of which the school of Cato was capable. It had done all that imitation and elegance could do, produced a popular, eloquent tragedy. It has a graceful declamation. There was not even an error to escape from. It has a charmed circle in which the author sat spell bound and there sedet eternumque sedebit, infelix Talford. Fluency would appear to be a very ordinary condition of talent. While a man of true heart and deep feeling elaborates line, by line, there is an unlimited number of poets in the ladies’ magazines without the encumbrance of either heart or feeling, who will throw off pages without a break. The melodramas written to order for the Bowery Theatre, are any of them smoother than Mr. Browning’s play. Still this crabbedness of itself is far from a merit. There is nothing of it in the freedom, “the large utterance of the early gods.” The greatest poets speak, as the greatest men act, with unrestrained force and fulness. But our intention is not to write an essay. We wish to give the readers a specimen of the new writers’ manner. In all candor (for we think well of Mr. Browning, spite of his faults) we begin with one of the worst, the most involved, intricate passages where there are frequent affectations of prosiness that make any thing but convincing poetry. Tresham, about to confront his sister with proofs of her guilt, draws the following picture of love between a sister and brother. Speaking, not irreverently, we call this bad prose. The italics are our own.
Tresham. Mildred, I do believe a brother’s love,
For a sole sister must exceed them all!
For see now, only see! there’s no alloy
Of earth that creeps into the perfect’st gold
Of other loves—no gratitude to claim;
You never gave her life—not even the dross
That keeps life—never tended her, instructed,
Enriched her—so your love can claim no right
O’er hers, save pure love’s claim—that’s what I call
Freedom from Earthliness. You’ll never hope
To be such friends, for instance, she and you,
As when you hunted cowslips in the woods,
Or played together in the meadow hay.
Oh, yes—with age, respect comes, and your worth
Is felt, there’s growing sympathy of tastes,
There’s ripened friendship, there’s confirmed esteem,
—Much head these make against the new comer!
The startling apparition—the strange youth—
Whom one half-hour’s conversing with, or, say,
Mere gazing at, shall change (beyond all change
This Ovid ever sang about!) your soul.
… Her soul that is—the sister’s soul! &c.
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*On page 71 of the previous issue (25 March 1843) a brief notice appears with a passage copied from The Examiner.
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This is a very ill way of putting the case. Tresham may have been prouder of his ancestry than of his rhetoric, and he had a very confused task before him. We could forgive Tresham (in actual life) for being dull and confused, but we cannot forgive Mr. Browning for so carefully sinking the Poet on the stage.
Gladly do we turn and forgive the proseman as we welcome the poet. The struggle in the breast of the old servant, who has discovered his mistress’ error, is told in a few powerful words:
Gerard—Oh, my lord, only once—let me this once
Speak what is on my mind! Since first I noted
All this, I’ve groaned as if a fiery net
Plucked me this way and that—fire, if I turned
To her, fire if I turned to you, and fire,
If down I flung myself and strove to die.
The lady could not have been seven years old
When I was trusted to conduct her safe
Thro’ the deer-herd, to stroke the snow-white fawn
I brought to eat bread from her tiny hand
Within a month. She ever had a smile
To greet me with—She .. if it could undo
What’s done to lop each limb from off this trunk.
All that is foolish talk, not fit for you
I mean, I could not speak and bring her heart
For Heaven’s compelling: but when I was fixed
To hold my peace, each morsel of your food
Eaten beneath your roof, my birth-place, too,
Choked me. I wish I had grown mad in doubts
What it behoved me to do. This morn it seemed
Either I must confess to you, or die:
Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm
That crawls, to have betrayed my Lady!
Mildred thus regrets the loss of innocence, hope departed, in the prospect of marriage:
Then, no sweet courtship-days,
No dawning consciousness of love for us,
No strange and palpitating births of sense
From words and looks, no innocent fears and hopes,
Reserves and confidences: morning’s over!
Tresham, in his library, after the discovery:
There’s cheerful day outside—
This is my library—and this the chair
My father used to sit in carelessly,
After his soldier-fashion, while I stood
Between his knees to question him—and here
Gerard our gray retainer,—as he says,
Fed with our food from sire to son an age,—
Has told a story—I am to believe!
His farewell to his ancestral trees. The sorrow of Tresham, the separate current of his thoughts from those of Guendolen, refusing to mingle, are finely marked.
Guendolen. Where are you taking me?
Tresham. He fell just here!
Now answer me. Shall you in your whole life
—You who have nought to do with Mertoun’s fate,
Now you have seen his breast upon the turf,
Shall you e’er walk this way if you can help!
When you and Austin wander arm in arm
Thro’ our ancestral grounds, will not a shade
Be ever on the meadow and the waste—
Another kind of shade than when the night
Shuts the woodside with all its whispers up!
But will you ever so forget this night
As willingly to cross this bloody turf
Under the black yew avenue? That’s well!
You turn your head! and I then?—
Guen. What is done?—
Is done! My care is for the living. Thorold,
Bear up against this burthen—more remains
To set the neck to!
Tresh. Dear and ancient trees
My fathers planted, and I loved so well!
What have I done that, like some fabled crime
Of yore, lets loose a fury—free to lead
Her miserable dance amidst you all?
Oh never more for me shall winds intone
With all your tops a vast antiphony,
Demanding and responding in God’s praise!
Hers ye are now—not mine! Farewell—Farewell!
There is but one step for poor Mildred after her guilt—and that is the grave. Love tempers its own misfortune and softens the hues of this world to the dying eye. There is an ineffable tenderness in her submission, there is no cavil, no plea. The brother’s pride and the sister’s honor (in the high purposes of tragedy) have but one refuge
for God
We’re good enough, tho’ the world casts us out!
[Evert A. Duyckinck]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. V. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1843.
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