R551202A. Men and Women.
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 2 December 1855, p. 8.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 326–328.
It would be idle to attempt to speak of Robert Browning unless writer, reader, and subject, are in some way familiar. A little knowledge of an author makes much that is shadowy in criticism clear. A casual “touch of nature” arrests the hand that was closing the volume. Therefore, presuming you to be perfectly ignorant at present, it is proposed that you make acquaintance—friendship and reverence biding their time;—it is proposed that you make acquaintance merely with Robert Browning through the medium of “Evelyn Hope,” who may be regarded as the “Little Treasure” of literature—healing the wound between author and public, which has arisen through the over-obscurity of the one and the petulant indifference of the other.
evelyn hope.
Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass.
Little has yet been changed, I think—
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays thro’ the hinge’s chink.
Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name—
It was not her time to love: beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares.
And now was quiet, now astir—
Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.
Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew—
And just because I was thrice as old,
And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was nought to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, nought beside?
No, indeed! for God above
Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love,—
I claim you still, for my own love’s sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few—
Much is to learn and much to forget
Ere the time be come for taking you.
But the time will come,—at last it will,
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant, I shall say,
In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium’s red—
And what you would do with me, in fine,
In the new life come in the old one’s stead.
I have lived, I shall say, so much since then,
Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
Yet one thing, one, in my soul’s full scope,
Either I missed or itself missed me—
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!
I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;
My heart seemed full as it could hold—
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile
And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold.
So, hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep—
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand,
There, that is our secret; go to sleep,
You will wake, and remember, and understand.
This little poem is so perfect and so rare that the misunderstanding is arranged at once. There are no faults on either side. A bond of sympathy is established and—we can talk at ease. Your first impression of the poem is the truthfulness of the position assumed, and which is so well proved by the perfect spontaneity of the language employed. It is a river, a part of nature which can have but one channel. There was no hesitation, and the course taken was never taken before. The ordinary “new poet” when writing, say congratulations, upon the perfect felicity of his matrimonial venture, addresses his wife in precisely the language employed by Mr. Tennyson towards the object of his affection twelve years ago. And here it may be said that, throughout these volumes, and those which preceded them, there is no idea or line which could have been suggested by any other idea or line extant. That is a great testimony to truth, for the heart when earnestly excited does not speak the language of other men. Unacknowledged quotation is the result either of deliberate theft, or of incapacity both in conception and expression.
For the pleasure of speaking of Mr. Browning only, we should prefer taking his former “Poems” as the text. To exhibit him as a great teacher; to show, through the “Blot on the ’Scutcheon,” the impossibility of making atonement for sin: how, after a certain point, it becomes criminal to endeavour to do without heavenly mercy. To trace Paracelsus and Aprile—knowledge and love—who died in the burst of consciousness that together they might attain the god-like condition, if God would permit man to make the endeavour. In “Pippa Passes,” how innocence singing in the ears of guilt can overcome the most abandoned. Such morals are in plenty in the former volumes, more sparingly in these. As before, there is much satire. The author is a great sketcher of character or scenery, who gives you a grand picture in a few words. He is an illustrator: can show you something which you do not know through the medium of some common place with which you must be familiar; some piece of grotesque—“Do I hold the moon in my pocket?” for instance. Some question like that, like the metal radia of the illuminators, which look leaden enough until the light, which you have refused to recognise, be placed before it. More especially, Browning is a dramatist. He is the lover, scarcely known to himself, of Evelyn Hope. Next he is a “Florentine person of quality”—say a cotton lord—who cannot appreciate the beauties of nature to be viewed “up in a villa,” and sighs for the gossip and green blinds “down in the city.” “But what oil pays at the gate is something dreadful to think of,” and he remains a blot upon grandeur. There he is Fra Lippo Lippi, who has escaped from his monk’s window because at the alley’s end some “sportive ladies leave their doors ajar.” His sophisticated logic can overcome the police. He is next the physician of 1850 years ago: Karshish, who writes to his friend of a man named Lazarus being raised from a three days’ tomb by a Nazarine who employed no drugs. Karshish will evidently be a believer. Then he is a nineteenth century bishop, and tells you, “across the walnuts and the wine,” how a man may believe or stretch belief, how his conscience may collapse or expand, according to the requirements of the times. All these, and many more, is Browning; and it is difficult to say in which he falls short or exceeds. All have such perfect vitality. Each speaks precisely in his proper person. Each uses the language and illustrations of his day. The most artless mention of Vespasian makes you feel the first century, whilst a casual denunciation of Verdi makes you hear the nineteenth. That is the dramatic faculty; the abnegation, for the time being, of everything but the one position, of everything out of the one point of view. Browning has this in perfection, and yet Browning must be held to have failed on the stage. It results from the want of combined action and position. You see, when the eyes and the ears combine to receive a certain intellectual enjoyment, it is but fair that the eyes should be gratified by a share of show and motion equal to that in the language which is enjoyed by the ears. This we do not find. The author is so great a master of words, can fling them into such startling combinations, can move them for every purpose, as generals can their troops—or as some generals can not their troops—that he prefers them as media for his ideas to the more visible men, women, and upholstery. Assuming the higher intellectuality of mind to matter, it might be said, somewhat paradoxically, that Browning is too great a dramatist to be successfully dramatic. The drama represents life. In life we never find the “startling positions” upon which our successful dramatists confessedly depend. Those are Browning’s claims.
That every great mind has some drawback will be readily admitted. Do we not snatch at the most degrading of Montaignés aphorisms? Careless readers, literary flaneurs, by way of getting rid of the subject will admit of Browning’s observation and intellect, but deny his ability of expression to do justice to either. They pronounce him obscure, and say that, like Coleridge’s prose, he may not pay for the trouble he costs. That can never be proved until the attempt has succeeded—and there may be yet another way of looking at it. The lady weighing eighteen stone complained that omnibus doors were made absurdly small; she was met by the conductor’s assertion that perhaps the lady was “a shaving too large.” Squire Thornhill accuses Moses of wishing to be supplied with argument and apprehension as well! Those are homely, Browningian, illustrations. But it must be admitted that the detractors have some show of reason. There is a passage in “Sordello” which has fairly non-plussed the warmest half-dozen of the author’s admirers, who solemnly met to discuss it. Browning might repeat, as one of his characters in “Strafford” says, “Alas, that one cannot take out one’s heart, and show it, what a truthful thing it is.” The only thing for the reader to do, under these painful circumstances, is to study Browning’s heart—he must study it.
And now we would give proof—it must be faintly—of the matter of these volumes. All the larger poems must be left untouched, as too enduring for an ephemeral occasion. He is the Italian person of quality eulogising the city, and depreciating the suburb.
What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights
’Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights;
You’ve the brown ploughed land before, when the oxen steam and wheeze,
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey olive trees.
Is it better in May, I ask you? you’ve summer all at once;
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns!
’Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell,
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.
Is it ever hot in the square? There’s a fountain to spout and splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows flash
On the horses with curling fish tails, that prance and paddle and pash
Round the lady atop in the conch—fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash!
* * * * *
Ere opening your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin;
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in;
You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there’s a travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture—the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.
Above it, behold the archbishop’s most fatherly of rebukes,
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the duke’s!
Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don So-and-so
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,
“And moreover,” (the sonnet goes rhyming,) “the skirts of St. Paul has reached,
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached.”
Noon strikes,—here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart!
Bang, whang, whang, goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife;
No keeping one’s haunches still: it’s the greatest pleasure in life.
And now the reader, who is possibly a lover, or certainly has been a lover, or will be one, should read the following. Observe the self-abnegation—the utter affection; and, remembering that Browning is always dramatic, value it not the less, because the moral “God creates the love to reward the love,” is clearly not involved in it. Keep Evelyn Hope, for the present out of sight.
one way of love.
All June I bound the rose in sheaves,
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves,
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string—fold music’s wing,
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion.—Heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? ’Tis well!
Lose who may—I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they.
Only once, through fifteen years of literary life, has Robert Browning spoke out, in his own person. That is in his last poem, the fiftieth of the present collection, to his wife, Elizabeth Barrett, “probably,” the Athenæum has said, “the most intellectual woman of any age.” He describes how Raphael painted for the crowd, but wrote “A Century of Sonnets” for his mistress. How Dante “once prepared to paint an angel.” Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.” And Browning, who cannot paint an angel, even for a similar purpose, what is he to do? He must make an exception to his own natural course, and speak in his own proper person. He can stand only on his attainment, that of verse alone, which one life allows him. Therefore, he speaks—
Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s,
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence—
Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.
Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,
Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.
What, there’s nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay—for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy)
All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos)
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman—
Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,
Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better!
Proves she like some portent of an ice-berg
Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu
Climbed and saw the very God, the highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work
When they ate and drank and saw God also!
What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.
Only this is sure—the sight were other,
Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
This I say of me, but think of you, love!
This to you—yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that’s the world’s side—there’s the wonder—
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you.
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you—
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.
Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!
The reader may sleep, but “will wake, and remember, and understand.”
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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