R460801A. Bells and Pomegranates.
The Atlas, 1 August 1846, pp. 491–492; 29 August 1846, pp. 554–555.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 13.
In the eighth and last number of this series of dramas and dramatic poems, Mr. Browning explains to the uninitiated the meaning of the somewhat fantastic title which he has given to his work. He tells us that he “only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought, which looks too ambitious thus expressed; and so the symbol was preferred.” We have nothing to say against the title or the explanation. The critic, who has only to object to the title of a book, had better hold his peace altogether.
Mr. Browning has now completed the task which he proposed to himself some five years ago; and what are we to say of the result? He has sustained the reputation, which he acquired in early youth, as the author of Paracelsus; but he has not made a step in advance. There are passages, in more than one of the poems now before us, indicating a higher order of genius than any to be found in the work which lifted him at once to an elevated position among the younger poets of the age; but there is no one poem in the collection of an excellence so sustained—no one poem so complete as a whole, characterised by so much singleness, yet extensiveness of aim; so much unity of purpose and steadfastness of power. Of Sordello we say nothing. It was a bold experiment; it may have been a successful one—but the thing was not to our taste.
Robert Browning is almost a great poet. In his Paracelsus he has said, and with all truth:—
We get so near; so very, very near—
’Tis an old tale; Jove strikes the Titans down,
Not when they set about their mountain piling;
But when another rock would crown their work.
We quote from memory—but such the purport of the strain. Robert Browning “gets very, very near.” He gets no nearer, out of pure wilfulness. He will not add the last rock to the pile; but wantonly destroys his work, at the very point of completion. He is prodigal of his reputation. He will mar his handy-work—blotting and daubing mercilessly just where it looks most promising. He plays tricks, which one less confident in his own strength would never venture upon; in vulgar language, “making ducks and drakes” of his fame, as though it were not worth caring for—a thing to be blown hither and thither by every fitful gust of eccentricity.
There is scarcely anything in poetry, which, if he will, Robert Browning may not achieve. But the world will not admit his claims, so long as he insists upon mixing up toadstools with his pomegranates. If he must open a shop for the sale of wretched fungi, we adjure him, by his own reputation, not to put his name over the door. The age is a fastidious age; and moreover it is an envious one. Critics will rather pronounce Robert Browning to be a simpleton because he publishes such stuff as that about Nelson’s coat, and the glove, of which Peter Ronsard loquitur, than extol him as a great dramatic poet, on the strength of such scenes as those between Sebald and Ottima, in the first part of “Pippa Passes,” or Thorold and Mildred, in the “Blot on the Scutcheon.” It has taken Wordsworth many years to live down the ridicule with which some of his early poems environed his name; and yet the most promising of our younger poets, Tennyson and Browning, seem to think that they cannot achieve a lasting reputation without committing some egregious follies in their youth—as though Wordsworth had achieved his reputation, by dint of, not in spite of, such follies. Doubtless, all our greatest writers—as Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton—have done things unworthy of their reputation; but their greatness lies not in the doing of such things, but in the power to reach the utmost pinnacle of fame with such drag-weights ever pulling them downwards. Let our young Titans beware lest they forge for themselves what may hinder their ascent altogether and clog them for ever to the lower earth of utter failure and humiliation.
We know that Browning defends his worst puerilities on the score of dramatic fitness. It is very possible that the people supposed to have given utterance to what is here set down for them, would have spoken, under similar circumstances, after the fashion here described—roughly and unpoetically—but why go out of one’s way to write this sort of dramatic verse, which has no merit but its fitness—vulgar language in the mouths of vulgar people? We would not have his little fishes talk like big whales, but we would have him leave the little fishes to themselves, until they have learnt to talk in a more becoming manner. The poet is under no obligation to write dramatic monologues of such a low cast. The demands of a complete drama, the dramatis personæ being many and many-sided, may leave the dramatist no choice. He must either violate truth—and at this genius ever revolts; or he must introduce vulgar personages discoursing in a vulgar strain—but a monologue is a different thing altogether. Here the choice is all the author’s. He may describe a rook cawing, or an ass braying; but he must not call the description poetry.
But enough of this. We honestly confess that we are among the number—we believe, the increasing number—of Mr. Browning’s admirers. Within this widening circle, ever since “Paracelsus” was first given to the world, we have watched his progress with no lukewarm interest; and if we have been sometimes disappointed—if the poet has not yet, in our opinion, fulfilled the rich promise of his youth, he has done enough to render us still hopeful—to sustain our faith in his capacity to achieve great things. There is nothing in the work before us to shake our confidence; though we have not marked, as the series has progressed, that steady growth of poetic power, which we would fain have seen in a work appearing at intervals of over a surface of five years. Indeed, in our opinion, the first of the series is the best. Nothing which Robert Browning has written indicates more clearly what he is capable of doing than “Pippa Passes.” The scene in the “shrub house up the hill-side,” to which we have already made allusion, is full of evidences of great tragic power. Ottima is a modern Clytemnestra—not less terrible in her beauty. With her paramour, the German Sebald, she has murdered her husband. The night of blood is at an end; day dawns. The guilty couple are together; the corpse is in the house hard by; they throw open the window, and look out into the “clear air of morning.” The light alarms Ottima, and she bids Sebald close the lattice again. The latter consents somewhat unwillingly; and here we see the difference of their two natures. She desires to forget the world—to forget the crime; to forget everything in love;—he is for looking the crime boldly in the face;—
Let us throw off
This mask; how do you bear yourself? Let’s out
With all of it.
Ottima. Best never speak of it.
Sebald recurs again and again to the crime. She tries to divert his mind;—tempts him with wine; still he asks—
But am not I his cut-throat—what are you?
He will call things by their proper names; she evades the truth, until the perseverance of her paramour in truth-speaking overcomes her, and fearing lest by giving occasion for constant contradictions she should excite his anger and hasten the now evident cooling of his passion, she blurts out the whole truth in all its hideous nakedness—
If we had come upon a thing like that
Suddenly—
Sebald. A ‘thing’—there again—a ‘thing.’
Ottima. Then, Venus’ body, had we come upon
My husband Lucca Gaddi’s murdered corpse
Within there, at his couch foot, covered close—
Would you have pored upon it? Why persist
In poring now upon it? For ’tis here,
As much as there in the deserted house—
You can not rid your eyes of it: for me
Now he is dead I hate him worse—I hate—
Dare you stay here? I would go back and hold
His two dead hands and say, I hate you worse,
Lucca, than—
Sebald. Off, off, take your hands off mine!—
’Tis the hot evening—off!—oh, morning is it?
Ottima. There’s one thing must be done— you know what thing,
Come in and help to carry. We may sleep
Anywhere in the whole wide house to-night.
Still, even after the burst of plain truth-speaking, she cannot bring herself calmly to speak of what has been, but reverts again and again to “the thing;” and tries, in the thought of future passionate joy, to drown all sense of the horrors of the past. Sebald has more real horror of the deed that has been done; Ottima has more sophistry. She persuades herself, in a manner, that her great love sanctifies the act; she will not let herself believe that murder has been committed; but speaks of her “passion’s fruit,” as though the fearful sacrifice made at the altar of passion were a righteous one. She feels that by committing one crime she has rid herself of the necessity of committing another—that a single blow has emancipated her from the guilty thraldom of a life of daily crime—a life of legal but unnatural prostitution to one, whom she has loathed in the innermost recesses of her heart. There is terrible truthfulness in all this. It was natural that she, with greater horror of crime itself, should have gilded and glossed over such a crime—that whilst not deploring the past, but declaring herself ready to go through it again, and almost glorying in the bloody deed, should still shrink from speaking of it as a deed of blood. There is not much remorse in either. But the passion of Ottima is more enduring; and she has escaped more; her trials had been greater; the death of her husband had emancipated her from a life of unendurable bitterness. Sebald, on the other hand, the excitement over, begins to experience a terrible reaction. The conviction forces itself upon his mind that what he had gained is scarcely worth the purchase-money. The lustrous beauty of Ottima, now all his own, seems but a poor recompense; he would give it all back again, so that the deed were undone. Ottima speaks of the past; she sees her declining influence, and artfully endeavours to win it back again. She talks of their early loves—of the rise of mutual passion up to the hour of full fruition. Sebald relents: his passion returns upon him in all force, and he exclaims—
I kiss you now, dear Ottima:—now and now.
This way?—will you forgive me—be once more
My great Queen?
Ottima. Bind it thrice around my brow—
Crown me your Queen—your spirit’s arbitress—
Magnificent in sin. Say that!”
Sebald. I crown you
My great white Queen, my spirit’s arbitress,
Magnificent!——
And here he pauses;—a little ragged factory-girl goes singing past the windows. “Pippa passes.” The burden of her song is—
God’s in his Heaven;
All’s right with the world.
Sebald is startled;—the scales fall from his eyes. Ottima’s beauty, where is it now? All gone. The dream of passion is broken. The voice of remorse is no longer to be drowned: he must look again at the naked truth, and seeing it, he glories in the torture that he suffers:
I see what I have done
Entirely now. Oh! I am proud to feel
Such torments—let the world take credit that
I having done my deed pay too its price—
I hate—hate—curse you—God’s in his Heaven!
But we turn gladly from this terrible picture of lust and murder—passion and remorse. Robert Browning deals in other wares—more tender and more touching. There is a scene of a very different kind now before us: the speakers are a knot of “poor girls”—very poor, for they are what the world calls “unfortunate;” sinned against more than sinning. Sitting on the steps of a rich man’s house, in very idleness they begin “wishing.” Remember the character and calling of the speakers, and appreciate what follows:—
First Girl.—My turn:—
Spring’s come and summer’s coming: I would wear
A long loose gown—down to the feet and hands—
With plaits here, close about the throat, all day:–
And all night lie, the cool long nights, in bed—
And have new milk to drink—apples to eat,
Deuxans and junetings, leather coats … Ah! I should say,
This is away in the fields—miles!
Third Girl.—Say at once
You’d be at home—she’d always be at home!
Now comes the story of the farm among
The cherry orchards, and how April snowed
White blossoms on her as she ran; why, fool
They’ve rubbed the chalk mark out how tall you were,
Twisted your starling’s neck, broken his cage,
Made a dunghill of your garden.
First Girl.—They destroy
My garden since I left them? Well; perhaps!
I would have done so—so I hope they have.
This, in our estimation, is very touching, and very beautiful. It goes straight to the heart. The passage is a brief one; but what a long sad history it tells. How much is told in the single line, which we print in italics—how completely does it express the efforts made, in an innocent home, to efface all painful recollections of the lost one—of the erring daughter, who has loved not wisely but too well. Every record of her is wiped away. She is as though she had never been. And yet, after all, how much of goodness and of purity of thought is there in that would-be-forgotten one—her longings after the country, after the modest vest, the new milk, and long nights, not in the cruel streets, but on her innocent couch, how touchingly do they indicate the survival of a pure and holy fire in that desecrated [p. 492→] shrine. We must break off for the present—but shall return anon to the completed series of Bells and Pomegranates.
[Continued in the issue of 29 August 1846, pp. 554–555.]
The blot in the ’Scutcheon was performed at Drury-lane. It is scarcely to be questioned that with Phelps, Miss Faucit, and Mrs. Stirling in the principal characters, the performance of this three-act tragedy must have afforded no ordinary pleasure to a refined audience; but London audiences are not always refined; and we cannot say it is any marvel to us that the drama did not long retain possession of the stage. It is certainly not adapted to representation at either of the larger theatres. Indeed, it has long been acknowledged that dramatic pieces of a legitimate cast, relying much more on action that The Blot in the ’Scutcheon are out of place in houses of such compass that a large portion of the audience cannot hear at all, and can only imperfectly see what is going on on the stage. It is obvious that this piece would have succeeded infinitely better at one of the smaller theatres, where now the highest (available) dramatic talent is to be found; indeed, we do not think it improbable that a revival at one of these theatres would now be attended with a certain amount of success. The Blot in the ’Scutcheon is, as a complete performance, more dramatic than any of Mr. Browning’s works. The action is single; the characters few; and there is something in the onward progress of the events under the irresistible influence of an impending destiny, which reminds us of the old Greek drama. The actors, though few, are well contrasted; the dialogue is perfectly intelligible and always to the point; it is often nervous and compact; and many scenes are full of pathos—but, perhaps, the interest is of somewhat too exclusive a cast, the passion too subdued, to enlist largely the sympathies of a modern audience. It would be a mistake to say that the piece is not dramatic. It may not throughout be theatrically effective; but there are unmistakeable evidences in it of high dramatic power.
It is Robert Browning’s fate—or ought we not rather to write, it is Robert Browning’s choice—to have fit audience but few. He looks for a larger amount of capacity in his readers than he is likely to find in their possession. He expects them to come out and meet him half way. In The Blot in the ’Scutcheon he exacts less from them than in other works; but still he presupposes the existence of greater quickness of perception and more readiness of sympathy than the majority of his readers will bring to the appreciation of these dramas and dramatic poems. Ever and anon, he condescends to one of those undeniable snatches of dramatic effectiveness which no audience, however stolid, can fail to understand; but such glimpses of plain meaning are few and far between. Thus, in the drama of Luria, the chief actor, who gives the name to the piece—a Moor by birth, and the chief commander of the Florentine troops—is tempted by the ingratitude of Florence and the splendid offers of her enemy, Pisa, to go over to the Pisans. Tiburzio, the Pisan general, comes to Luria’s tent, the bearer of a letter containing proofs of the treachery of Florence; he gives it to Luria; tells him that Florence has no claim upon him, and beseeches him to transfer his services to Pisa. Luria will give no direct answer; he hesitates—admits the soundness of Tiburzio’s reasoning— but cannot bring himself to accept the offer. Tiburzio cannot but admire his enemy the more for his unwillingness to accept the offers of Pisa—his unwillingness to believe that Florence is really treacherous. “If,” says Luria—
If the firm-fixed foundation of my faith
In Florence, who to me stands for mankind—
If that breaks up and disimprisoning
From the abyss—ah, friends, it cannot be!
You may be very sage, yet—all the world
Having to fall, or your sagacity,
You do not wish to find yourself alone!
What would the world be worth? whose love be sure?
The world remains—you are deceived!”
And Tiburzio answers, sympathising with and appreciating the magnanimity of the Moor—
Your hand!
I lead the vanguard. If you fall, beside,
The better—I am left to speak! For me,
This was my duty, nor would I rejoice
If I could help—it misses its effect:
And, after all, you will look gallantly,
Found dead here with that letter in your breast.
Luria then answers that he cannot yet give his final response, but that when Tiburzio rejoins his troops and sounds the trumpet, if Luria’s trump gives not back the cry, then he is wholly Pisa’s. Tiburzio departs; and Luria’s soliloquy, which follows the departure of the Pisan general, is very fine. The old Florentine general, Braccio—and Puccio, the chief commissary—and Domizia, a noble Florentine lady, here join the Moor. Luria shows the letter—says that by opening it he shall learn at once the reward that Florence has intended for him,—but presently says, hypothetically—
I have heard by fits, or seemed to hear
Of strange occurrences, ingratitude,
Treachery even—say that one of you
Surmised this letter carried what might turn
To harm hereafter, cause him prejudice—
What would he do?
And Domizia says hastily—
Thank God, and take revenge!
Turn her own force against the city straight,
And even at the moment when the foe
Sounded defiance——
And here Tiburzio’s trumpet—the turning point of Luria’s resolves—is heard to sound in the distance. The interest of the audience may now be supposed to culminate. Will the trumpet send back defiance to the Pisans, or will silence declare that he is no longer the leader of the Florentine troops? A brief pause, and Luria, taking up the half-uttered sentence of the Florentine lady, nobly exclaims—
Ah, you Florentines!
So would you do? Wisely for you, no doubt!
My simple Morrish instinct leads to sink
The obligation you relieved me from
Still deeper. Sound our answer, I should say!
And thus!—(tearing the letter)—The battle! That solves every doubt!
And as the trumpet answers, the scene closes.
This is, doubtless, highly dramatic, and theatrically would be very effective. It shows what Robert Browning can do when he pleases to appeal to the understandings of common men. But the entire drama is not effective: it is deficient in action; the interest is too remote; there is too much elaboration of points of character, which, however much they may engage the inquiries and fix the attention of the philosophic student of human nature, must be thrown away upon the multitude. To common readers, or to an ordinary audience, if the piece were represented upon the stage, this elaboration must be mere tediousness. There is too much of the abstract and analytical. There is a want, in all the characters, of genuine flesh and blood.
In the Soul’s Tragedy this want is less apparent. It is a mere sketch; but there is more distinctness in the characters—more force, more vigour, more reality. There are two friends—we use the word for want of a better—Luitolfo and Chiappino: Luitolfo—
the proper
Friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul.
Fit for the sunshine:—
And Chiappino—
The homeless, friendless, penniless,
Prescribed and exiled wretch:—
one always in trouble, from which his prosperous friend Luitolfo extricates him—paying his fines, obtaining by his personal influence remission of the sentences passed upon him by the provost, and otherwise serving the moody, discontented being, whose rugged nature is not moved to kindness by these manifold good offices, but rather to bitterness and hatred; for he is proud, and cannot bear to be beholden to another. Moreover, Chiappino, loves hopelessly the betrothed of the fortunate Luitolfo. Envy and jealousy are both operative within him; and, above all, he has incurred obligations which he can never repay. The “tragedy” opens upon Chiappino discoursing with Eulalia, the betrothed of Luitolfo, who is even then absent from home interceding with the provost on behalf of his ever trouble-involved friend. Chiappino speaks contemptuously of Luitolfo as a time-serving, fawning, honey-tongued courtier, without the manhood to resist oppression—to strike a blow in a good [p. 555→] cause. A knocking is heard—Luitolfo has returned. Chiappino exclaims, in bitter irony—
Bless my hero-friend,
Luitolfo!
And before opening the door, frames an apologetical speech for Luitolfo, setting forth the failure of his mission, from want, as Chiappino insinuates, of proper manliness in urging his demands:—
Is it not thus you’ll speak, adventurous friend?
He then opens the door, and Luitolfo “rushes in, his garments disordered.” Eulalia exclaims, horror-struck—
Luitolfo! Blood?
Luitolfo.—There’s more—and more of it!
Eulalia—take the garment—no—you, friend!
You take it and the blood from me—you dare!
Eulalia.—Oh! who has hurt you? Where’s the wound?
Chiappino.—‘Who,’ say you?
The man with many a touch of virtue yet!
The Provost’s friend has proved too frank of speech,
And this comes of it. Miserable hound!
This comes of temporising, as I said!
Here’s fruit of your smooth speeches and fair looks!
Now see my way! As God lives, I go straight
To the palace and do justice, once for all!
Luitolfo.—What says he?
Chiappino.—I’ll do justice on him!
Luitolfo.—Him?
Chiappino.—The Provost.
Luitolfo.—I’ve just killed him.
Eulalia.—Oh, my God!
This is startlingly effective. It come upon the reader with a shock. The simple enunciation of the tremendous truth that the “friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul, fit for the sunshine”—the mild, prosperous, happy Luitolfo, has, for that friend who has spoken such bitter scorn of him, with his own hands slain a man, and that man the chief of the city, is more appalling, thus conveyed in a few plain words—the plainest and most direct that could be uttered— than all the declamation in the world. They are precisely the words—no more and no less— that any man so situated would utter. They are very true, and in their truth highly dramatic. But Robert Browning rarely aims at the production of these startling effects.
His power rather lies in subdued pathos—in those half-suppressed bursts of emotion, which betray a depth of feeling not to be expressed in words. Thus in The Blot in the ’Scutcheon, to which we have already referred in language of general commendation, there are many touches of passionate truth, which simple as they are in their beauty, go straight to the heart. We cannot adduce a more pregnant example than that of Mildred’s reply to Thorold, who having slain her lover, asks to be forgiven:—
You’ve murdered Henry Mertoun—now proceed;
What is it I must pardon? This and all?
Well, I do pardon you—I think I do.
Thorold, how very wretched you must be!
Nothing can surpass the pathos of this last line. She cannot conceive any misery greater than that of the man who has slain her lover; and she would not do anything, if she could, to augment it. Such touches as these are above the appreciation of a common audience; but there are in this tragedy many passages which must, in performance, be dramatically effective. Indeed, every scene is full of such passages; and we cannot but attribute the little success with which the piece met, in representation, to the size of the theatre at which it was performed. There is much fine energetic declamation in it. Thus Thorold’s curse, when Mildred confesses that she receives, night after night, a lover in her chamber; and yet still consents to receive the Earl as her avowed suitor (the secret lover is the Earl) is a piece of powerful writing, which must have a thrilling effect in delivery. What precedes it, too, is finely effective. Thorold’s passionate indignation on first hearing Mildred’s avowal that she is ready to receive the Earl is expressed with much dramatic truth:—
Mildred.—But, Thorold—if
I will receive him as I said?
Thorold.—The Earl?
Mildred.—I will receive him!
Thorold (starting up).—Ho there! Guendolen!
And Austin, you are welcome too! Look there!
The woman there!
Austin and Guendolen.—How, Mildred?
Thorold.—Mildred once.
In spite of Thorold’s vehement denunciations, Mildred continues firm in her avowal of the truth; and he, overcome by her apparent shamelessness, proceeds to curse his sister:—
You have heard
Of wretched women—all but Mildred—tied
In wild illicit ties to losels vile
You’d tempt them to forsake, and they’ll reply
‘Gold, friends, repute, I left for him, I have
In him: why should I leave him then for gold,
Repute, of friends?’ And you have felt your heart
Respond to these poor outcasts of the world
As to so many friends; bad as you please,
You’ve felt they were God’s men and women still,
So not to be disowned by you! But she,
That stands there, calmly gives her lover up,
And means to wed the Earl that she may hide
Their intercourse the safeller!—and for that
I curse her to her face before you all;
Shame hunt her from the earth! Then heaven do right
To both! It bears me now—shall judge her then!
(As Mildred faints and falls, Tresham rushes out.)
The womanly support given by Guendolen to her cousin, in this hour of trial, is finely conceived; and the language well befits the occasion. It is throughout in the spirit of that noble Shakesperian exclamation—
Oh! on my soul, my cousin is belied!
Guendolen is, indeed, another Beatrice. We must here abruptly close our notice of Mr. Browning’s completed series of Bells and Pomegranates. Our high opinion of the work will be gathered from what we have written. Our objections, such as they are, we have rather hinted at than declared. We have great faith in Robert Browning’s genius; and we are not without a hope that his wilfulness will diminish as his years increase. We look forward with no little interest to the appearance of his next work. If he be only true to himself, he may achieve great things. If not, none can say how soon he may not dig the grave of his reputation.
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates (RB), Collected ed., London: Edward Moxon, 1846.
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