Chapter 10

TROUBLE OF LOVE: THE MAN'S

I

THE WOMAN UNWON

In the section entitled "Lovers Meeting" we saw the exultant mood of love in man, and I there pointed out how seldom even Browning has assigned that mood to woman. But he does not show her as alone in suffering love's pain. The lyrics we are now to consider give us woman as the maker of love's pain for man; we learn her in this character through the utterances of men--and these are noble utterances, every one. Mr. J. T. Nettleship, in his _Essays and Thoughts_, well remarks that man's passion shows, in Browning's work, "a greater width of view and intellectual power" than woman's does; that in the feminine utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is imagined";[277:1] and that in such utterances "we notice . . . an absolute want of originality and of power to look at the passion of love in an abstract sense outside the woman herself and her lover."

I too have, by implication, found this fault with Browning; but Mr. Nettleship differs from me in that he apparently delights to dwell on the idea of woman's accepted inferiority--her "tender, unaspiring love . . . type of that perfection which looks to one superior." It will be seen from this how little he is involved by feminism. That woman should be the glad inferior quarrels not at all with his vision of things as they should be. Man, indeed, he grants, "must firmly establish his purity and constancy before he dares to assert supremacy over Nature": woman, we may suppose, being--as if she were not quite certainly _a person_--included in Nature. That a devotee of Browning should retain this attitude may well surprise us, since nothing in his "teaching" is clearer than that woman is the great inspiring influence for man. But the curious fact which has struck both Mr. Nettleship and myself--that, in Browning's work, woman does so frequently, _when expressing herself_, fail in breadth and imagination--may very well account for the obsolete gesture in this interpreter. . . . Can it be, then, that Browning was (as has frequently been said of him) very much less dramatic a writer than he wished to believe himself? Or, more aptly for our purpose to frame the question, was he dramatic only for men? Did he merely guess at, and not grasp, the deepest emotions and thoughts of women? This, if it be affirmed, will rob him of some glory--yet I think that affirmed it must be. It leaves him all nobility of mind and heart with regard to us; the glory of which he is robbed is after all but that of thaumaturgic power--it is but to say that he could not turn himself into a woman!

+ + + + +

In what ways does Browning show us as the makers of "love's trouble" for man? First, of course, as loved and unwon. But though this be the most obvious of the ways, not obvious is Browning's treatment of it. To love "in vain" is a phrase contemned of him. No love is in vain. Grief, anguish even, may attend it, but never can its issue be futility. Nor is this merely the already familiar view that somehow, though rejected, love benignly works for the beloved. "That may be, that _is_" (he seems to say), "but it is not the truth which most inspires me." The glory of love for Browning resides most radiantly in what it does for the lover's own soul. It is "God's secret": one who loves is initiate.

"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her; Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder. Life will just hold out the proving both our powers, alone and blended: And then, come next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended."

That is the concluding stanza of _Cristina_, which might be called the companion-piece to _Porphyria's Lover_; for in each the woman belongs to a social world remote from her adorer's; in each she has, nevertheless, perceived him and been drawn to him--but in _Cristina_ is caught back into the vortex, while in _Porphyria's Lover_ the passion prevails, for the man, by killing her, has kept her folded in "God's secret" with himself.

"She should never have looked at me if she meant I should not love her! There are plenty . . . men, you call such, I suppose . . . she may discover All her soul to, if she pleases, and yet leave much as she found them: But I'm not so, and she knew it, when she fixed me, glancing round them."

That is the lover's first impulsive cry on finding himself "thrown over." Why did she not leave him alone? Others tell him that that "fixing" of hers means nothing--that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of women. Not _that_, whatever else!

And now, so sure of this that he grows sure of other things as well, he declares that it was a moment of true revelation for her also--she _did_ perceive in him the man she wanted.

"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! but not quite so sunk that moments, Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, when the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise it if pursuing Or the right way or the wrong way, to its triumph or undoing."

That was what she had felt--the queen of women! A coquette, if they will, for others, but not for him; and, though cruel to him also in the event, not because she had not recognised him. She _had_ recognised him, and more--she had recognised the great truth, had deeply felt that the soul "stops here" for but one end, the true end, sole and single: "this love-way."

If the soul miss that way, it goes wrong. There may be better ends, there may even be deeper blisses, but that is the essential--that is the significant thing in life.

But they need not smile at his fatuity! He sees that she "knew," but he can see the issue also.

"Oh, observe! of course, next moment, the world's honours, in derision, Trampled out the light for ever. Never fear but there's provision Of the devil's to quench knowledge, lest we walk the earth in rapture" . . .

_That_ must be reckoned with; but all it does to those who "catch God's secret" is simply to make them prize their capture so much the more:

"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her;"

--for though she has cast him off, he has grasped her soul, and will retain it. He has prevailed, and all the rest of his life shall prove him the victorious one--the one who has two souls to work with! He will prove all that such a pair can accomplish; and then death can come quickly: "this world's use will have been ended." She also knew this, but would not follow it to its issue. Thus she lost him--but he gained her, and that shall do as well.

+ + + + +

No loving "in vain" there! But this poem is the high-water mark of unsuccessful love exultant. Browning was too true a humanist to keep us always on so shining a peak; he knew that there are lower levels, where the wounded wings must rest--that mood, for instance, of wistful looking-back to things undreamed-of and now gone, yet once experienced:

"This is a spray the bird clung to, Making it blossom with pleasure, Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, Fit for her nest and her treasure. Oh, what a hope beyond measure Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to-- So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

This is a heart the Queen leant on" . . .

--and in a stanza far less lovely than that of the bird, he shows forth the analogy. The Queen "went on"; but what a moment that heart had had! . . . Gratitude, we see always, for the gift of love in the heart, for God's secret. The lover was left alone, but he had known the thrill. "Better to have loved and lost"--nay, but "lost," for Browning, is not in the scheme. She is there, in the world, whether his or another's.

Sometimes she has never been his at all, has never cared:

"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."

And then, for many a month, he tried to learn the lute to please her.

"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!"

Thus we gradually see that all his life he has been learning to love her. Now he has resolved to speak. . . . 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!"

Here again is Browning's typical lover. Never does he whine, never resent: she was free to choose, and she has not chosen _him_. That is pain; but of the "humiliation" commonly assigned to unsuccessful love, he never dreams: where can be humiliation in having caught God's secret? . . . And even if she have half-inclined to him, but found that not all herself can give herself--more pain in that, a nearer approach to "failure," perhaps--even so, he understands.

"I said--Then dearest, since 'tis so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails, Since this was written and needs must be-- My whole heart rises up to bless Your name in pride and thankfulness! Take back the hope you gave--I claim Only a memory of the same --And this beside, if you will not blame, Your leave for one more last ride with me."

The girl hesitates. Her proud dark eyes, half-pitiful, dwell on him for a moment--"with life or death in the balance," thinks he.

". . . Right! The blood replenished me again; My last thought was at least not vain; I and my mistress, side by side Shall be together, breathe and ride; So, one day more am I deified. _Who knows but the world may end to-night?_"[285:1]

Now the moment comes in which he lifts her to the saddle. It is as if he had drawn down upon his breast the fairest, most celestial cloud in evening-skies . . . a cloud touched gloriously at once by setting sun and rising moon and evening-star.

"Down on you, near and yet more near, Till flesh must fade for heaven was here-- Thus leant she and lingered--joy and fear! Thus lay she a moment on my breast."

And then they begin to ride. His soul smooths itself out--there shall be no repining, no questioning: he will take the whole of his hour.

"Had I said that, had I done this, So might I gain, so might I miss. Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!

* * * * *

And here we are riding, she and I."

_He_ is not the only man who has failed. All men strive--who succeeds? His enfranchised spirit seems to range the universe--everywhere the _done_ is petty, the undone vast; everywhere men dream beyond their powers:

"I hoped she would love me; here we ride!"

No one gains all. Hand and brain are never equal; hearts, when they can greatly conceive, fail in the greatest courage; nothing we do is just what we dreamed it might be. We are hedged in everywhere by the fleshly screen. But _they_ two ride, and he sees her bosom lift and fall. . . . To the rest, then, their crowns! To the statesman, ten lines, perhaps, which contain the fruit of all his life; to a soldier, a flag stuck on a heap of bones--and as guerdon for each, a name scratched on the Abbey stones.

"My riding is better, by their leave!"

Even our artists! The poet says the thing, but we feel it. Not one of us can express it like him; but has he _had_ it? When he dies, will he have been a whit nearer his own sublimities than the lesser spirits who have never turned a line?

"Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride."

(Note the fine irony here. The poet shall sing the joy of riding; this man _rides_.)

The great sculptor, too, with his twenty years' slavery to Art:

"And that's your Venus, whence we turn To yonder girl that fords the burn!"

But the sculptor, with his insight, acquiesces, so this man need not pity him. The musician fares even worse. After _his_ life's labours, they say (even his friends say) that the opera is great in intention, but fashions change so quickly in music--he is out-of-date. He gave his youth? Well--

"I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine."

Supposing we could know perfect bliss in this world, what should we have for which to strive? We must lead some life beyond, we must have a bliss to die for! If _he_ had this glory-garland round his soul, what other joy could he ever so dimly descry?

"Earth being so good, would heaven seem best? Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride."

* * * * *

Thus he has mused, riding beside her, to the horses' rhythmic stretching pace. It shall be best as she decrees. She rejects him: he will not whine; what she does shall somehow have its good for him--_she_ shall not be wrong! He has the thought of her in his soul, and the memory of her--and there will be, as well, the memory of this ride. That moment he has, whole and perfect:

"Who knows but the world may end to-night!"

Yes; they ride on--the sights, the sounds, the thoughts, encompass them; they are together. His soul, all hers, has yet been half-withdrawn from her, so deeply has he mused on what she is to him: it is the great paradox--almost one forgets that she is there, so intimate the union, and so silent. . . . But is she _not_ there? and, being there, does she not now seem to give him something strange and wonderful to take from her? She _is_ there--

"And yet--she has not spoke so long!"

She is as silent as he. They might both be in a trance. He knows what his trance is--can it be that hers is the same? Then what would it mean? . . . And the hope so manfully resigned floods back on him. What if this _be_ heaven--what if she has found, caught up like him, that she does love?

Can it mean that, gazing both, now in this glorious moment, at life's flower of love, they both are fixed so, ever shall so abide--she with him, as he with her? Can it mean that the instant is made eternity--

"And heaven just prove that I and she Ride, ride together, for ever ride?"

* * * * *

Despite the transcendental interpretations of this glorious love-song--surpassed, I think and many others think, by none in the world--I believe that the concluding stanza means just that. Hope has rushed on him again from her twin-silence--can she be at one with him in all, as she is in this? Will the proud dark eyes have forgotten the pity--and the pride? . . . The wrong that has been done to Browning by his too-subtle "interpreters" is, in my view, incalculable. Always he must be, for them, the teacher. But he is the _poet_! He "sings, riding's a joy"--and such joy brings hope along with it, hope for the "obvious human bliss." People seem to forget that it was Browning who made that phrase[289:1]--which might almost be his protest against the transcendentalists.

Much of his finest work has been thus falsified, thus strained to meanings so "profound" as to be none at all. Mr. Nettleship's gloss upon this stanza of _The Last Ride_ is a case in point. "[The lover] buoys himself with the hope that the highest bliss _may_ be the change from the minute's joy to an eternal fulfilment of joy." Does this mean anything? And if it did, does that stanza mean _it_? I declare that it means nothing, and that the stanza means what instinctively (I feel and know) each reader, reading it--not "studying" it--accepts as its best meaning: the human one, the true following of the so subtly-induced mood. And that is, simply, the invigoration, the joy, of riding; and the hope which comes along with that invigoration and that joy.

+ + + + +

In the strange _Numpholeptos_ we find, by implication, the heart of Browning's "message" for women. "The nympholepts of old," explains Mr. Augustine Birrell in one of the volumes of _Obiter Dicta_, "were those unfortunates who, whilst carelessly strolling among sylvan shades, caught a hasty glimpse of some spiritual inmate of the woods, in whose pursuit their whole lives were ever afterwards fruitlessly spent."

The man here has fallen in love with "an angelically pure and inhumanly cold woman, who requires in him an unattainable union of immaculate purity and complete experience of life."[290:1]

She does not reject his love, but will wholly accept it only on these impossible terms. Herself dwells in some "magic hall" whence ray forth shafts of coloured light--crimson, purple, yellow; and along these shafts, which symbolise experience, her lover is to travel--coming back to her at close of each wayfaring, for the rays end before her feet, beneath her eyes and smile, as they began. He goes forth in obedience; he comes back. Ever the issue is the same: he comes back smirched. And she--forgives him, but not loves him.

"What means the sad slow silver smile above My clay but pity, pardon?--at the best But acquiescence that I take my rest, Contented to be clay?"

She "smiles him slow forgiveness"--nothing more; he is dismissed, must travel forth again. _This_ time he may return, untinged by the ray which he is to traverse. She sends him, deliberately; he must break through the quintessential whiteness that surrounds her--but he is to come back unsmirched. So she pitilessly, for all her "pity," has decreed.

And patient, mute, obedient, always he has gone--until this day. This day his patience fails him, and he speaks. Once more he had come back--once more been "pardoned." But the pity was so gentle--like a moon-beam. He had almost hoped the smile would pass the "pallid moonbeam limit," be "transformed at last to sunlight and salvation." If she could pass that goal and "gain love's birth," he scarce would know his clay from gold's own self; "for gold means love." . . . But no; the "sad slow silver smile" had meant, as ever, naught but pity, pardon, acquiescence in his lesserness for _him_. _She_ acquiesced not; she keeps her love for the "spirit-seven" before God's throne.[291:1]

He then made one supreme appeal for

"Love, the love sole and whole without alloy."

Vainly! Such an appeal "must be felt, not heard." Her calm regard was unchanged--nay, rather it had grown harsh and hard, had seemed to imply disdain, repulsion, and he could not face those things; he rose from his kissing of her feet--he _did_ go forth again. This time he might return, immaculate, from the path of that "lambent flamelet." . . . He knew he could not, but--he _might_! She promises that he can: should he not trust her?

* * * * *

And now, to-day, once more he is returned. Still she stands, still she listens, still she smiles! But he protests at last:

"Surely I had your sanction when I faced, Fared forth upon that untried yellow ray Whence I retrack my steps?"

The crimson, the purple had been explored; from them he had come back deep-stained. How has the yellow used him? He has placed himself again for judgment before her "blank pure soul, alike the source and tomb of that prismatic glow." To this yellow he has subjected himself utterly: she _had_ ordained it! He was to "bathe, to burnish himself, soul and body, to swim and swathe in yellow licence." And here he is: "absurd and frightful," "suffused with crocus, saffron, orange"--just as he had been with crimson, purple!

She willed it so: he was to track the yellow ray. He pleads once more her own permission--nay, command! And, as before, she shows

"Scarce recognition, no approval, some Mistrust, more wonder at a man become Monstrous in garb, nay--flesh-disguised as well, Through his adventure."

But she had said that, if he were worthily to retain her love, he must share the knowledge shrined in her supernal eyes. And this was the one way for _man_ to gain that knowledge. Well, it is as before:

"I pass into your presence, I receive Your smile of pity, pardon, and I leave."

But no! This time he will not leave, he will not dumbly bend to his penance. Hitherto he has trusted her word that the feat can be achieved, the ray trod to its edge, yet he return unsmirched. He has tried the experiment--and returned, "absurd as frightful." This is his last word.

". . . No, I say: No fresh adventure! No more seeking love At end of toil, and finding, calm above My passion, the old statuesque regard, The sad petrific smile!"

And he turns upon her with a violent invective. She is not so much hard and hateful as mistaken and obtuse.

"You very woman with the pert pretence To match the male achievement!"

_Who_ could not be victorious when all is made easy, when the rough effaces itself to smooth, the gruff "grinds down and grows a whisper"; when man's truth subdues its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush spear that womanly falsehood fights with? Oh woman's ears that will not hear the truth! oh woman's "thrice-superfine feminity of sense," that ignores, as by right divine, the process, and takes the spotless result from out the very muck that made it!

But he breaks off. "Ah me!" he cries,

"The true slave's querulous outbreak!"

And forth again, all slavishly, at her behest he fares. Who knows but _this_ time the "crimson quest" may deepen to a sunrise, not decay to that cold sad sweet smile--which he obeys?

+ + + + +

Such a being as this, said Browning himself, "is imaginary, not real; a nymph and no woman"; but the poem is "an allegory of an impossible ideal of love, accepted conventionally." _How_ impossible he has shown not only here but everywhere--_how_ conventionally accepted. This is not woman's mission! And in the lover's querulous outbreak--the "true slave's" outbreak--we may read the innermost meaning of the allegory. If women will set up "the pert pretence to match the male achievement," they must consent to take the world as men are forced to take it. There must be no unfairness, no claim on the chivalry which has sought to shield them: in the homely phrase, they must "take the rough with the smooth"--not the stainless result alone, with a revolted shudder for the marrings which have made it possible.

But having flung these truths at her, observe that the man rues them. He accepts himself as a slave: the slave (as I read this passage) to what is _true_ in the idea of woman's purity. The insufferable creature of the smile is (as he says) the "mistaken and obtuse unreason of a she-intelligence"; but somewhere there was right in her demand. If man could but return, unstained! He must go forth, must explore the rays--of all the claims of woman on him this is most insistent; but if he could explore, and not return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"--the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is not _experience_, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the other she must choose: knowledge and the right to judge, or ignorance and the duty to refrain from judgment. . . . And yet--he goes again; he obeys the silver smile! For the "crimson-quest may deepen to a sunrise"; he _may_ come back and find her waiting, "sunlight and salvation," because she understands at last; and both shall look for stains from those long shafts, and see none there. . . . Maybe, maybe: he goes--will come again one day; and _that_ at last may prove itself the day when "men are pure, and women brave."

+ + + + +

We pass from the unearthly atmosphere of _Numpholeptos_--well-nigh the most abstract of all Browning's poems--to the vivid, astonishing realism of _Too Late_.

Edith is dead, and the man who loved her and failed to win her, is musing upon the transmutation of all values in his picture of life which has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and loved her and lost her--and it was as if a great stone had been cast by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it--the waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone full-tide."

The stone thwarted God. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about it. Though the waves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win past, a thread of water might escape and run through the "evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea. This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall then have stilled his passion.

The second way was better!

"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some night When new things happen, a meteor-ball May slip through the sky in a line of light, And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall, And my waves no longer champ nor chafe, Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"

For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look at his life."

"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"

All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.

"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may, Watch and wear and wonder who will. Oh, my whole life that ends to-day! Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still, 'The woman is dead that was none of his; And the man that was none of hers may go!' There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .

All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a "want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never give it--and perhaps she _does_ want him. He feels that she does--a "pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs help in her grave, and finds none near"--that from his heart, precisely _his_, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it--so! . . . His acquiescence then had been his error.

"I ought to have done more: once my speech, And once your answer, and there, the end, And Edith was henceforth out of reach! Why, men do more to deserve a friend, Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise, Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face. Why, better even have burst like a thief _And borne you away to a rock for us two, In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief_" . . .

Well, _he_ had not done this. But--

"What did the other do? You be judge! Look at us, Edith! Here are we both! Give him his six whole years: I grudge None of the life with you, nay, loathe Myself that I grudged his start in advance Of me who could overtake and pass. But, as if he loved you! No, not he, Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain" . . .

--for he who speaks, though he so loved and loves her, knows that he is and was alone in his worship. He knows even that such worship of her was among unaccountable things. That _he_, young, prosperous, sane, and free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and held it forth to _her_, and said, "Half a glance, and I drop the glass!" . . . For--and now we come to those amazing stanzas which place this passionate love-song by itself in the world--

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held, More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:

* * * * *

The others? No head that was turned, no heart Broken, my lady, assure yourself!"

Her admirers had quickly recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singleness _was_ peace, and not--what they were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth about her was simply that

"On the whole, you were let alone, I think."

And laid so, on the shelf, she had "looked to the other, who acquiesced." He was a poet, was he not?

"He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read, Loved you and doved you--did not I laugh?"

Oh, what a prize! Had she appreciated adequately her pink of poets? . . . But, after all, she had chosen him, before _this_ lover: they had both been tried.

"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark, _Tekel_, found wanting, set aside, Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark Till comfort come, and the last be bled: He? He is tagging your epitaph."

And now sounds that cry of the girl of _In a Year_.

"If it could only come over again!"

She _must_ have loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and pricked that leathern heart, to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .

"And late it was easy; late, you walked Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked; If I heard good news, you heard the same; When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped; I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."

Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good of it! He will keep alive--and long, she shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end. Those others may go on with the world--get gold, get women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here."[301:1]

And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Only _he_ could have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is which--the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those eyes--and yet "the others" did not love so, the defects _were_ valid: there should be some recognition: "_I_ loved, _quand même_!" Why, it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:

"I liked that way you had with your curls, Wound to a ball in a net behind: Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's, And your mouth--there was never, to my mind, Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut; And the dented chin, too--what a chin! There were certain ways when you spoke, some words That you know you never could pronounce: You were thin, however; like a bird's Your hand seemed--some would say, the pounce Of a scaly-footed hawk--all but! The world was right when it called you thin.

But I turn my back on the world: I take Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips. Bid me live, Edith!"

--and she shall be queen indeed, shall have high observance, courtship made perfect. He seems to see her stand there--

"Warm too, and white too: would this wine Had washed all over that body of yours, Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!"

. . . The wine of his life, that she would not take--but she shall take it now! He will "slake thirst at her presence" by pouring it away, by drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to do. Edith needs help in her grave and finds none near--wants warmth from his heart? He sends it--so.

+ + + + +

Assuredly this is the meaning; yet none of the commentators says so. She was the man's whole life, and she has died. Then he dies too, that he may live.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here."

Yet even in this we have no sense of failure, of "giving-in": it is for intenser life that he dies, and she shall be his queen "while his soul endures."

This is the last of my "women unwon." In none of all these poems does courage fail; love is ever God's secret. It comes and goes: the heart has had its moment. It does not come at all: the heart has known the loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with it. It has set a price upon itself, a cruel crushing price: the heart will pay it, if it can be paid. It has waked too late--it calls from the grave: the heart will follow it there. No love is in vain:

"For God above creates the love to reward the love."

FOOTNOTES:

[277:1] He excepts, of course, all through this passage, _Any Wife to any Husband_--a poem which has not fallen into my scheme.

[285:1] No line which Browning has written is more characteristic than this--nor more famous.

[289:1] In _By the Fireside_.

[290:1] Arthur Symons, _Introduction to the Study of Browning_, p. 198.

[291:1] Browning himself, asked by Dr. Furnivall, on behalf of the Browning Society, to explain this allusion, answered in the fashion which he often loved to use towards such inquirers: "The 'seven spirits' are in the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron, a common image." . . . "I certainly never intended" (he also said) "to personify wisdom, or philosophy, or any other abstraction." And he summed up the, after all, sufficiently obvious meaning by saying that _Numpholeptos_ is "an allegory of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such by a man who all the while" (as I have once or twice had occasion to say of himself!) "cannot quite blind himself to the fact that" (to put it more concisely than he) knowledge and purity are best obtained by achievement. Still more concisely: "Innocence--sin--virtue"--in the Hegelian chord of experience.

[301:1] Here is a clear echo of Heine, in one of his most renowned lyrics:--

"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell, In crazy dances they're leaping: We two in the grave lie well, lie well, And I in thine arms am sleeping.

The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day, To Heaven or Hell they're hieing: We two care nothing, we two will stay Together quietly lying."

II

THE WOMAN WON

Love is not static. We may not sit down and say, "It cannot be more than now; it will not be less. Henceforth I take it for granted." Though she be won, there still is more to do. I say "she" (and Browning says it), because the taking-for-granted ideal is essentially man's--woman has never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it is _because_ men feel so keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it. Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come to an end of it--and, if we were wise, should not desire so to do.

But is she in truth so elusive? Are not women far simpler than they are accounted? "The First Reader in another language," I have elsewhere said of them; but doubtless a woman cannot be the judge. Let us see what Browning, subtle as few other men, thought of our lucidity.

"Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her-- Next time, herself!--not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume! As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew; Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather."

So elusive, says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious--or, if conscious, blind to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses, _for fun_, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room! How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And when she tossed her hat off, or carefully put it on before the mirror . . . if the glass did gleam, it was a trick of light; _she_ did not produce it! For, conscious of this magic, she would lose it; her very inapprehensiveness it is which "brings it off." Yet she loves to hear her lover tell of such imaginings, and the more he tells, the more there seem to be for him.

"Yet the day wears, And door succeeds door; I try the fresh fortune-- Range the wide house from the wing to the centre. Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter. Spend my whole day in the quest, who cares? But 'tis twilight, you see--with such suites to explore, Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!"

Listening, she begins to understand how deeply he means "herself." It is not only the spell that she leaves behind her in the mere, actual rooms: it is the mystery residing in her "house of flesh." What does _that_ house contain--where is _she_? He seems to hold her, yet she "goes out as he enters"; he seems to have found her, yet it is like hide-and-seek at twilight, and half-a-hundred hiders in a hundred rooms!

She listens, puzzled; perhaps a little frightened to be so much of a secret. For she never meant to be--she cannot feel that she _is_; and thus, how shall she help him to "find" her? Perhaps she must always elude? She does not desire that: he must not let her escape him! And he quickly answers:

"Escape me? Never-- Beloved! While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue."

But she is not "the loth"; that is all his fancy. She wants him to find her. And this, in its turn, scares _him_.

"My life is a fault at last, I fear: It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though I do my best, I shall scarce succeed."

It is the trouble of love. He may never reach her. . . . They look at one another, and he takes heart again.

"But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And, baffled, get up and begin again-- So the chase takes up one's life, that's all."

But she is now almost repelled. She is not this enigma: she _wants_ him to grasp her. Well, then, she can help him, he says:

"Look but once from your farthest bound At me so deep in the dust and dark, No sooner the old hope goes to ground Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark, I shape me-- Ever Removed!"

Is not this the meaning? The two poems seem to me supplementary of each other. First, the sense of her elusiveness; then the dim resentment and fear which this knowledge of mystery awakes in her. She does not (as I have seemed to make her) _speak_ in either of these poems; but the thoughts are those which she must have, and so far, surely, her lover can divine her? The explanation given both by Mrs. Orr and Berdoe of _Love in a Life_ (the first lyric), that the lover is "inhabiting the same house with his love," seems to me simply inept. Is it not clear that no material house[308:1] is meant? They are both inhabiting the _body_; and she, passing through this sphere, touching it at various points, leaves the spell of her mere being everywhere--on the curtain, the couch, the cornice-wreath, the mirror. But through _her_ house he cannot range, as she through actualities. And though ever she eludes him, this is not what she sets out to do; she needs his comprehension; she does not desire to "escape" him.

The old enigma that is no enigma--the sphinx with the answer to the riddle ever trembling on her lips! But if she were understood, she might be taken for granted. . . . So the lips may tremble, but the answer is kept back:

"While the one eludes must the other pursue."

"The desire of the man is for the woman; the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man."

In those two poems the lovers are almost gay; they can turn and smile at one another 'mid the perplexity. The man is eager, resolute, humorous; the woman, if not acquiescent, is at least apprehending. The heart shall find her some day: "next time herself, not the trouble behind her!" She feels that she can aid him to that finding; it depends, in the last resort, on _her_.

But in _Two in the Campagna_ a different lover is to deal with. What he wants is more than this. He wants to pass the limits of personality, to forget the search in the oneness. There is more than "finding" to be done: finding is not the secret. He tries to tell her--and he cannot tell her, for he does not himself fully know.

"I wonder do you feel to-day As I have felt since, hand in hand, We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, This morn of Rome and May?"

His thought escapes him ever. Like a spider's silvery thread it mocks and eludes; he seeks to catch it, to hang his rhymes upon it. . . . No; it escapes, escapes.

"Help me to hold it! First it left The yellowing fennel. . . ."

What does the fennel mean? Something, but he cannot grasp it--and the thread now seems to float upon that weed with the orange cup, where five green beetles are groping--but not there either does it rest . . . it is all about him: entangling, eluding:

"Everywhere on the grassy slope, I traced it. Hold it fast!"

The grassy slope may be the secret! That infinity of passion and peace--the Roman Campagna:

"The champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash of air-- Rome's ghost since her decease."

And think of all that that plain even now stands for:

"Such life here, through such lengths of hours, Such miracles performed in play, Such primal naked forms of flowers, Such letting nature have her way While heaven looks from its towers!"

They love one another: why cannot they be like that plain, why cannot _they_ "let nature have her way"? Does she understand?

"How say you? Let us, O my dove, Let us be unashamed of soul, As earth lies bare to heaven above! How is it under our control To love or not to love?"

But always they stop short of one another. That is the dread mystery:

"I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more. Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be?"

He longs to yield his will, his whole being--to see with her eyes, set his heart beating by hers, drink his fill from her soul; make her part his--_be_ her. . . .

"No. I yearn upward, touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth--I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak-- Then the good minute goes."

Goes--with such swiftness! Already he is "far out of it." And shall this never be different?

". . . Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow?"

He must indeed, for already he is "off again":

"Just when I seemed about to learn!"

Even the letting nature have her way is not the secret. The thread is lost again:

"The old trick! Only I discern-- Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

_No_ contact is close enough. The passion is infinite, the hearts are finite. The deepest love must suffer this doom of isolation: plunged as they may be in one another, body and soul, in the very rapture is the sentence. The good minute goes. It shall be theirs again--again they shall trust it, again the thread be lost: "the old trick!"

For it is the very trick of life, as here we know it. The Campagna itself says that--

"Rome's ghost since her decease."

Mutability, mutability! Though the flowers are the primal, naked forms, they are not the same flowers; though love is ever new, it is ever old. _New as to-day is new: old as to-day is old_; and all the lovers have discerned, like him,

"Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

For has she helped him to hold the thread? No; she too has been the sport of "the old trick." And even of that he cannot be wholly sure:

"I _wonder_ do you feel to-day As I have felt . . . ?"

+ + + + +

In the enchanting _Lovers' Quarrel_ we find a less metaphysical pair than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with the mystery of her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, very humanly and gladly, the "time of their lives"! All through the winter they have frolicked: there never was a more enchanting love than she, and plainly he has charmed her just as much. The same sort of fun appealed to them both at the same moment--games out of straws of their own devising; drawing one another's faces in the ashes of the hearth:

"Free on each other's flaws, How we chattered like two church daws!"

And then the _Times_ would come in--and the Emperor has married his Mlle. de Montijo!

"There they sit ermine-stoled, And she powders her hair with gold."

Or a travel-book arrives from the library--and the two heads are close together over the pictures.

"Fancy the Pampas' sheen! Miles and miles of gold and green Where the sunflowers blow In a solid glow, And to break now and then the screen-- Black neck and eyeballs keen, Up a wild horse leaps between!"

. . . No picture in the book like that--what a genius he is! The book is pushed away; and there lies the table bare:

"Try, will our table turn? Lay your hands there light, and yearn Till the yearning slips Thro' the finger-tips In a fire which a few discern, And a very few feel burn, And the rest, they may live and learn!

Then we would up and pace, For a change, about the place, Each with arm o'er neck: 'Tis our quarter-deck, We are seamen in woeful case. Help in the ocean-space! Or, if no help, we'll embrace."

The next play must be "dressing-up"; for the sailor-game had ended in that nonsense of a kiss because they had not thought of dressing properly the parts:

"See how she looks now, dressed In a sledging-cap and vest! 'Tis a huge fur cloak-- Like a reindeer's zoke Falls the lappet along the breast: Sleeves for her arms to rest, Or to hang, as my Love likes best."

Now it is _his_ turn; he must learn to "flirt a fan as the Spanish ladies can"--but she must pretend too, so he makes her a burnt-cork moustache, and she "turns into such a man!" . . .

All this was three months ago, when the snow first mesmerised the earth and put it to sleep. Snow-time is love-time--for hearts can then show all:

"How is earth to know Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?"

* * * * *

Three months ago--and now it is spring, and such a dawn of day! The March sun feels like May. He looks out upon it:

"All is blue again After last night's rain, And the South dries the hawthorn-spray. Only, my Love's away! I'd as lief that the blue were grey."

Yes--she is gone; they have quarrelled. Or rather, since it does not take two to do that wretched deed, _she_ has quarrelled. It was some little thing that he said--neither sneer nor vaunt, nor reproach nor taunt:

"And the friends were friend and foe!"

She went away, and she has not come back, and it is three months ago.

One cannot help suspecting that the little thing he said, which was _not_ so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour--that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What _had_ he said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far more than malice can--for it is more evidently sincere in what it has of the too-much, or the too-little. . . . Well, angry exceedingly, or wounded exceedingly, she had gone, and still is gone--and he sits marvelling. Three months! Is she going to stay away for ever? Is she going to cast him off for a word, a "bubble born of breath"? Why, they had been _one_ person!

"Me, do you leave aghast With the memories We amassed?"

Just for "a moment's spite." . . . She ought to have understood.

"Love, if you knew the light That your soul casts in my sight, How I look to you For the pure and true, And the beauteous and the right--"

But so had she looked to _him_, and he had shown her "a moment's spite." . . . Yet he cannot believe that a hasty word can do all this against the other memories. Things like that are indeed for ever happening; trivialities thus can mar immensities. The eye can be blurred by a fly's foot; a straw can stop all the wondrous mechanism of the ear. But that is only the external world; endurance is easy there. It is different with love.

"Wrong in the one thing rare-- Oh, it is hard to bear!"

And especially hard now, in this "dawn of day." Little brooks must be dancing down the dell,

"Each with a tale to tell, Could my Love but attend as well."

But as she cannot, he will not. . . . Only, things will get lovelier every day, for the spring is back, or at any rate close at hand--the spring, when the almond-blossom blows.

"We shall have the word In a minor third There is none but the cuckoo knows: Heaps of the guelder rose! I must bear with it, I suppose."

For he would choose, if he could choose, that November should come back. Then there would be nothing for her to love but love! In such a world as spring and summer make, heart can dispense with heart; the sun is there, and the "flowers unnipped"; but in winter, freezing in the crypt, the heart cries: "Why should I freeze? Another heart, as chill as mine is now, would quiver back to life at the touch of this one":

"Heart, shall we live or die? The rest . . . settle by-and-bye!"

Three months ago they were so happy! They lived blocked up with snow, the wind edged in and in, as far as it could get:

"Not to our ingle, though, Where we loved each the other so!"

If it were but winter now again, instead of the terrible, lovely spring, when she will have the blue sky and the hawthorn-spray and the brooks to love--and the almond-blossom and the cuckoo, and that guelder-rose which he will have to bear with . . .

But, after all, it _is_ November for their hearts! Hers is chill as his; she cannot live without him, as he cannot without her. If it were winter, "she'd efface the score and forgive him _as before_" (thus we perceive that this is not the first quarrel, that he has offended her before with that word which was _not_ so many things!)--and what else is it but winter for their shivering hearts? So he begins to hope. In March, too, there are storms--here is one beginning now, at noon, which shows that it will last. . . . Not yet, then, the too lovely spring!

"It is twelve o'clock: I shall hear her knock In the worst of a storm's uproar: I shall pull her through the door, I shall have her for evermore!"

. . . I think she came back. She would want to see how well he understood the spring--he who could make that picture of the Pampas' sheen and the wild horse. Why should spring's news unfold itself, and he not "say things" about it to her, like those he could say about the mere _Times_ news? And it _is_ impossible to bear with the guelder-rose--the guelder-rose must be adored. They will adore it together; she will efface the score, and forgive him as before. What fun it will be, in the worst of the storm, to feel him pull her through the door!

In _The Lost Mistress_ it is really finished: she has dismissed him. We are not told why. It cannot be because he has not loved her--he who so tenderly, if so whimsically, accepts her decree. He will not let her see how much he suffers--he still can say the "little things" she liked.

"All's over, then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, to-day; One day more breaks them open fully --You know the red turns grey."

That is what his life has turned, but he will not maunder about it.

"To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? May I take your hand in mine? Mere friends are we--well, friends the merest Keep much that I resign."

He is no more "he" for her: he is a friend like the rest. _He_ resigns. But the friends do not know what "he" knew.

"For each glance of the eye so bright and black Though I keep with heart's endeavour-- Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, Though it stay in my soul for ever--"

. . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding--very nearly. There are some things, perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not fear--he will try.

"Yet I will but say what mere friends say, Or only a thought stronger; I will hold your hand but as long as all may, Or so very little longer!"

Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "_Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?_" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a noble, tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her hand a little longer than the others do!

+ + + + +

_The Worst of It_ is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her. But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has happened _through_ him. She had given him herself, she had bound her soul by the "vows that damn"--and then had found that she must break them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down!

But _she_--the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no heaven for her--no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted, and not she, graced here beyond all saints?

"Hardly! That must be understood! The earth is your place of penance, then."

But even the earthly punishment will be heavy for her to bear. . . . If it had only been he that was false, not she! _He_ could have borne all easily; speckled as he is, a spot or two would have made little difference. And he is nothing, while she is all.

Too monstrously the magnanimity of this man weights the scale against the woman. Instinctively we seek a different "excuse" for her from that which he makes--though indeed there scarce is one at which he does not catch.

"And I to have tempted you"--

. . . that is, tempted her to snap her gold ring and break her promise:

"I to have tempted you! I, who tired Your soul, no doubt, till it sank! Unwise, I loved and was lowly, loved and aspired, Loved, grieving or glad, till I made you mad, And you meant to have hated and despised-- Whereas, you deceived me nor inquired!"

This is the too-much of magnanimity. Browning tends to exaggerate the beauty of that virtue, as already we have seen in Pompilia; and assuredly this husband has, like her, the defect of his quality. Tender, generous, high-hearted he is, but without the "sinew of the soul," as some old writer called _anger_. All these wonderful and subtle reasons for the tragic issue, all this apprehensive forecasting of the blow that awaits the woman "at the end of life," and the magnanimity which even then she shall find dreadfully awaiting her . . . all this is noble enough to read of, but imagine its atmosphere in daily life! The truth is that such natures are but wasted if they do not suffer--almost they might be called responsible for others' misdoings. We read the ringing stanzas of _The Worst of It_, and feel that no one should be doomed to suffer such forgiveness. What chance had _her_ soul? At every turn it found itself forestalled, and shall so find itself, he tells her, to all eternity.

"I knew you once; but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face."

No: this with me is not a favourite poem. The wife, beautiful and passionate, was never given a chance, in this world, to be "placed" at all in virtue; and she felt, no doubt, with a woman's intuition, that even in the last of all encounters she should still be baffled. Already that faultless husband is planning to be crushingly right on the Day of Judgment. And he _is_ so crushingly right! He is not a prig, he is not a Pharisee; he is only perfectly magnanimous--perfectly right. . . . And sometimes, she must have thought vaguely, with a pucker on the glorious brow,--sometimes, to love lovably, we must yield a little of our virtue, we must be willing to be perfectly wrong.

+ + + + +

But his suffering is genuine. She has twisted all his world out of shape. He believes no more in truth or beauty or life.

"We take our own method, the devil and I, With pleasant and fair and wise and rare: And the best we wish to what lives, is--death."

_She_ is better off; she has committed a fault and has done . . . now she can begin again. But most likely she does not repent at all, he goes on to reflect--most likely she is glad she deceived him. She had endured too long:--

"[You] have done no evil and want no aid, Will live the old life out and chance the new. And your sentence is written all the same, And I can do nothing--pray, perhaps: But somehow the word pursues its game-- If I pray, if I curse--for better or worse: And my faith is torn to a thousand scraps, And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame.

Dear, I look from my hiding-place. Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes? Be happy! Add but the other grace, Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt? I knew you once: but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pass nor turn my face."

I think the saddest thing in this poem is its last stanza; for we feel, do we not? that _now_ she is having her first opportunity to be both happy and good--free from the intolerable magnanimity of this husband. And so, by making a male utterance too "noble," Browning has almost redressed the balance. The tear had been too frequently assigned to woman; exultation too often had sounded from man. We have seen that many of the feminine "tears" were supererogatory; and now, in this chapter of the Woman Won, we see that she can tap the source of those salt drops in man. But not in _James Lee's Wife_ is the top-note of magnanimity more strained than in _The Worst of It_. Moral gymnastics should not be practised at the expense of others. No one knew that better than Browning, but too often he allowed his subtle intellect to confute his warm, wise heart--too often he fell to the lure of "situation," and forgot the truth. "A man and woman _might_ feel so," he sometimes seems to have said; "it does not matter that no man and woman ever have so felt."

And thus, now and then, he gave both men and women--the worst of it. But oftener he gave them such a best of it that I hardly can imagine a reader of Browning who has not love and courage in the heart, and trust and looking-forward in the soul; who does not, in the words of the great Epilogue:--

"Greet the unseen with a cheer."

FOOTNOTES:

[308:1] Compare this passage with one in a letter to E. B. B.: "In this House of Life, where I go, you go--when I ascend, you run before--when I descend, it is after you."

THE END

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. at Paul's Work, Edinburgh

Transcriber's Notes:

This text uses a unique type of ellipsis to represent where material has been left out of poetry quotations and out of the story line of a poem. They are indicated here by five asterisks:

* * * * *

The number of periods in ellipses match the original.

Thought breaks in the text are indicated by the following:

+ + + + +

The word manoeuvre used an ae ligature in the original.

Words in italics in the original are surrounded by _underscores_.

The following words appear in the original with and without hyphens:

commonplace/common-place disgrace/dis-grace moonbeam/moon-beam wellnigh/well-nigh

End of Project Gutenberg's Browning's Heroines, by Ethel Colburn Mayne