E561201A. Aurora Leigh.
Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 1 December 1856, p. 6.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 23.
This is a poem of no ordinary mark. Clever as the authoress has proved herself to be in various smaller detached pieces, it remaind for her to carry her powers to the greatest height of success. This she has now achieved, and has placed herself upon a level with some of the grandest poets, of whom England is justly proud. Doubtless, opinions will be much divided as to the nature of the story depicted in Mrs. Browning's spiritstirring poem. As to the merit of the poem itself, it is scarcely possible there can be an antagonistic sentiment. It possesses all the qualities, which make poetry a charming vehicle of description. Straining after effect—the bane of modern poetry—is in every respect avoided; whilst the effects fall continually upon the ear with all that roundness of antithesis, and elegance of rhythm, which form the essential characteristics of true poetic excellence. But there is one charm, above all this, that cannot fail to attract every unprejudiced reader—the noble tone and high principled thought, which do such honour to a nature truly feminine, although it has essayed to grasp thoughts of masculine vigour, and to give them a majestic bearing. For our own part, we are not much enamoured with the story. It is hard and dry in its ideas. The only marvel is, that it could have been made so deeply interesting. It may be thus briefly sold. Aurora Leigh is the daughter of an Italian mother by an English father. While yet an infant her mother dies, and the father, too assuage his grief, resolves to bring up his child as a pedant. When she reaches her teens he too dies, and she is then handed over to a maiden aunt, who has had no sympathies with her brother, and borne a positive dislike to her foreign sister–in–law. The father, on account of his marriage, had been disinherited; whilst the property which ought to have been his, has reverted to a nephew, Romney Leigh, who spends his money in the Utopian task of trying to break down the distinctions of classes. He falls in love with a poor sempstress Marian Erle, to whom he is about to be married, but on the morning of the wedding-day the fair bride, that was to have been, is not to be found, a certain Lady Waldemer, herself in love with the expectant bridegroom elect, having contrived to send her out of the way, by which means the poor girl is reduced to shame and infamy. This intriguante then, in order to catch the hero, pretends to aid him in his Utopian views. Of this Aurora Leigh immediately hears, and begins to feel that she too has a secret liking for her cousin. She flies, however, to the Continent, meets Marian Erle, the poor girl already spoken of, at Paris, and taken her and her child to Florence. All this while she imagines that her cousin Romney is married to Lady Waldemer; but he, having been so severely injured as to have lost his sight, by his house having been burned down, makes the best of his way to Florence, in order to find his first love, and marry her. She, however, rejects his suit; when, an explanation having ensued between the cousins, they are united. From this short outline of the plot, it will be clear that talent of no ordinary character was necessary to make it in any wise acceptable. So happily, however, has Mrs. Browning treated the subject, that the crudity—to call it nothing else—of her story is altogether lost in the beauties of her language. Those who recollect poor Currer Bell‘s “Jane Eyre” and “Vilette,” will trace several points of similarity in the incidents of the story, and come to a similar conclusion—that each authoress was able only by her extraordinary talent to clothe a hideous skeleton so gracefully as to take away avery particle of its repulsiveness.
The episode, as we may call it, of Marian Erle's life, is a subject, which required the most delicate handling. What can be more thrilling than this description of the poor girl's remorse sad suffering? The locale, it is to be remembered, is Italy—
And you call it being lost,
That down came next day’s noon and caught me there
Half gibbering and half raving on the floor,
And wondering what had happened up in Heaven,
That suns should dare to shine when God himself
Was certainly abolished.
“I was mad,—
How many weeks, I know not,—many weeks.
I think they let me go, when I was mad,
They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys might
A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down
I went by road and village, over tracts
Of open foreign country, large and strange,
Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines,
Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton Hand
Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore
Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,
And resolute to get me, slow and sure;
While every roadside Christ upon his cross
Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me,
And shook his nails in anger, and came down
To follow a mile after, wading up
The low vines and green wheat, crying ‘Take the girl!
She’s none of mine from henceforth.’ Then, I knew,
(But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)
The charitable peasants gave me bread
And leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied,
At parting, Mary’s image round my neck—
How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;
A woman has been strangled with less weight:
I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean
And ease my breath a little, when none looked;
I did not need such safeguards:—brutal men
Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen
My face,—I must have had an awful look.
We close this notice—which, we confess, we are most lothe to do—with a passage of such rare beauty, that it will commend itself to all, who are to be touched by the thrilling energy of eloquence. Aurora laments that her life hitherto had been all a blank, through her own waywardness, but now gives up the rest of her days to him, who so long had been devoted to her. The feminine qualities of these passages will appeal to many hearts with a truthfulness that is better felt than described:—
Could I see his face,
I wept so? Did I drop against his breast,
Or did his arms constrain me? Were my cheeks
Hot, overflooded, with my tears, or his?
And which of our two large explosive hearts
So shook me? That, I know not
....
What he said,
I fain would write. But if an angel spoke
In thunder, should we, haply, know much more
Than that it thundered? If a cloud came down
And wrapt us wholly, could we draw its shape,
As if on the outside, and not overcome?
....
But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet!
O dark, O moon and stars, O, ecstasy
Of darkness! O great mystery of love,—
In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self
Enlarges rapture,—as a pebble dropt
In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine!
While we two sate together, leaned that night
So close, my very garments crept and thrilled
With strange electric life; and both my cheeks
Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hair
In which his breath was; while the golden moon
Was hung before our faces as the badge
Of some sublime inherited despair
Since ever to be seen by only one.
Here we must take our leave of the most brilliant poem that has appeared since Byron laid down the lyre. In the authoress the art of poetry has risen, Phoenix-like, from its ashes, only to shine greater brilliancy amidst the darkness, which for so long a time has obscured its realms.
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1857.
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