R440622A. Colombe’s Birthday.
The Examiner, 22 June 1844, pp. 388–389.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 381–382.
This play gives sterling proof of Mr Browning’s genius. There is a want in it: but not of passion, nor of thought. We have had to describe the want so often, that we will spare the reader repetition of it. Mr Browning exacts some hard conditions for the pleasure of his poetry, and could discourse good reasons for them, doubtless. We must at any rate be content to remember what a high authority has said, that if to do were as easy as to teach what were good to be done, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. And this not a poor man’s cottage. It is a building of strength and stateliness, notwithstanding its intricate passages, and galleries of too quaint device: raised by a man of rich imagination, and many fine and noble sympathies.
The germ of the story is a very simple contrast to its subtlety of treatment, as with the greater part of Mr Browning’s writings. Twelve months before the scene opens, on the anniversary of her birthday, the young Colombe of Ravestein has been proclaimed, unexpectedly, Duchess of Juliers and Cleves; but at the opening of the scene, another anniversary of the birthday has brought with it a new and stronger claimant to the duchy: the shrewd, cold, politic Prince Berthold. In Juliers arrives at the same time, Valence, a poor but enthusiastic advocate of Cleves; to seek redress from the young sovereign for the wrongs of his native city, and to become the victim, when he sees her, of an apparently hopeless passion. Circumstances try, and establish, the solid strength of this character. He is called on to confront the claim of Berthold, though it would have given his love some hope; and, when obliged to admit the claim, is made Berthold’s messenger to Colombe, to end their rivalry by marriage. Great force and beauty are in these situations, and in the corresponding struggles of Colombe. She rejects the hand of Berthold; the vision of state and power fades before the lowlier reality; and she becomes the untitled wife of the poor advocate of Cleves.
The contrast of Valence and Berthold is the best of this design. The worldliness which blights even generous ambition, is shown by the light of that pure enthusiasm from which meanest ambitions receive grace and lustre. What Valence says to Colombe of the lot of Berthold, when he thinks her disposed to shrink from sharing it, and to undervalue its aims and ends, is full of the highest and most affecting truth.
The general character of writing in the play, may be judged by the scene in which, Berthold having asserted his claim to the duchy, Valence thus confronts him.
Berth. Of your subjects
I ask then: whom do you accredit? Where
Stand those should answer?
Val. [advancing] The Lady is alone!
Berth. Alone, and thus? So weak and yet so bold?
Val. I said she was alone—
Berth. —And weak, I said.
Val. When is man strong until he feels alone?
It was some lonely strength at first, be sure,
Created organs, such as those you seek,
By which to give its varied purpose shape—
And, naming the selected ministrants,
Took sword, and shield, and sceptre,—each, a man!
That strength performed its work and passed its way:
You see our Lady: there the old shapes stand!
—A Marshal, Chamberlain, and Chancellor—
Be helped their way, into their death put life
And find advantage,—so you counsel us!
But let strength feel alone, seek help itself,—
And as the inland-hatched sea-creature hunts
The sea’s breast out,—as, littered ’mid the waves,
The desert-brute makes for the desert’s joy,
—So, I am first her instinct fastens on;
And prompt I say so clear as heart can speak,
The people will not have you; nor shall have!
It is not merely I shall go bring Cleves
And fight you to the last, though that does much,—
And men and children,—ay, and women too,
Fighting for home, are rather to be feared
Than mercenaries fighting for their pay—
But say you beat us, since such things have been,
And, where this Juliers laughed, you set your foot
Upon a steaming bloody plash—what then?
Stand you the more our Lord as there you stand?
Lord it o’er troops whose force you concentrate,
A pillared flame whereto all ardours tend—
Lord it ’mongst priests whose schemes you amplify,
A cloud of smoke ’neath which all shadows brood—
But never, in this gentle spot of earth,
Can you become our Colombe, our play-queen,
Whom we, to furnish lilies for her hair,
Would pour our veins forth to enrich the soil!
—Our conqueror? Yes!—Our despot? Yes!—Our Duke?
Know yourself, know us!
These noble images have worthy counterpart in one of the profounder thoughts of Berthold, when he seeks to justify to Colombe a plain cold utterance of his own inability to love.
Our best course is to say these hideous truths,
And see them, once said, grow endurable.
Like waters shuddering from their central bed,
Black with the midnight bowels of the earth,
That, once up-spouted by an earthquake’s throe,
A portent and a terror—soon subside,
Freshen apace, take gold and rainbow hues,
Under the sun and in the air,—at last
Grow common to the earth as hills or trees—
Accepted by all things they came to scare.
The time of action is the seventeenth century, and Mr Browning’s shrewd prince has not omitted to take note of its anti-princely signs and portents. The speech in which he refers to them is not one of the worst, or least picturesque, in the play.
Why not confess at once that I advise
None of our kingly craft and guild just now
To lay, one moment, down their privilege
With the notion they can any time at pleasure
Retake it—that may turn out hazardous!
We seem, in Europe, pretty well at end
O’ the night, with our great masque: those favoured few
Who keep the chamber’s top, and honour’s chance
Of the early evening, may retain their place
And figure as they list till out of breath.
But it is growing late; and I observe
A dim grim kind of tipstaves at the doorway
Not only bar new comers entering now,
But caution those who left, for any cause,
And would return, that morning draws too near;
The ball must die off, shut itself up. We—
I think, may dance lights out and sunshine in,
And sleep off headache on our frippery—
But friend the other, who cunningly stole out,
And thinks re-enter with a fresh costume,
Will be advised go back to bed, I fear.
I stick to privilege on second thoughts!
There can be no question of the nerve and vigour of this writing, or of its grasp of thought. Whether the present generation of readers will take [p. 389→] note of it, or leave it to the uncertain mercies of the future, still rests with Mr Browning himself. As far as he has gone, we abominate his tastes as much as we respect his genius.
[John Forster]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. VI. Colombe’s Birthday (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1844.
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