Browning's Heroines Part 27

Foremost among them (relates Ronsard in Browning's poem) were De Lorge and the lady he was "adoring."

"Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed Her, and the horrible pitside"

--for they were now all sitting above the arena round which the lions'

dens were placed. The black Arab keeper was told to stir up the great beast, Bluebeard. A firework was accordingly dropped into the den, whose door had been opened . . . they all waited breathless, with beating hearts . . .

"Then earth in a sudden contortion Gave out to our gaze her abortion.

Such a brute! . . .

One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy To see the black mane, vast and heapy, The tail in the air stiff and straining, The wide eyes nor waxing nor waning."

And the poet, watching him, thought how perhaps in that eruption of noise and light, the lion had dreamed that his shackles were shivered, and he was free again.

"Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!

And you saw by the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already."

The King laughed: "Was there a man among them all who would brave Bluebeard?" Not as a challenge did he say this--he knew well that it were almost certain death:

"Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold!"

But Francis had scarcely finished speaking when (as all the world knows) a glove fluttered down into the arena and fell close to the lion. It was the glove of De Lorge's lady. They were sitting together, and he had been, as Ronsard could see, "weighing out fine speeches like gold from a balance." . . . He now delayed not an instant, but leaped over the barrier and walked straight up to the glove. The lion never moved; he was still staring (as all of us, with aching hearts, have seen such an one stare from his cage) at the far, unseen, remembered land. . . . De Lorge picked up the glove, calmly; calmly he walked back to the place where he had leaped the barrier before, leaped it again, and (once more, as all the world knows) dashed the glove in the lady's face. Every eye was on them. The King cried out in applause that _he_ would have done the same:

". . . 'Twas mere vanity, Not love, set that task to humanity!"

--and, having the royal word for it, all the lords and ladies turned with loathing from De Lorge's "queen dethroned."

All but Peter Ronsard. _He_ noticed that she retained undisturbed her self-possession amid the Court's mockery.

"As if from no pleasing experiment She rose, yet of pain not much heedful, So long as the process was needful.

She went out 'mid hooting and laughter; Clement Marot stayed; I followed after."

Catching her up, he asked what it had all meant. "I'm a poet," he added; "I must know human nature."

"She told me, 'Too long had I heard Of the deed proved alone by the word: For my love--what De Lorge would not dare!

With my scorn--what De Lorge could compare!

And the endless descriptions of death He would brave when my lip formed a breath, I must reckon as braved'" . . .

--and for these great gifts, must give in return her love, as love was understood at the Court of King Francis. But to-day, looking at the lion, she had mused on all the dangers affronted to get that beast to that den: his capture by some poor slave whom no lady's love was to reward, no King or Court to applaud, but only the joy of the sport, and the delight of his children's wonder at the glorious creature. . . . And at this very Court, the other day, did not they tell of a page who for mere boyish bravado had dropped his cap over the barrier and leaped across, pretending that he must get it back? Why should she not test De Lorge here and now? For _now_ she was still free; now she could find out what "death for her sake" really meant; otherwise, he might yet break down her doubts, she might yield, still una.s.sured, and only then discover that it did not mean anything at all! So--she had thrown the glove.

"'The blow a glove gives is but weak: Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?

But when the heart suffers a blow, Will the pain pa.s.s so soon, do you know?'"

De Lorge, indeed, had braved "death for her sake"; but he had then been capable of the public insult. The pain of _that_, had she loved him, must quite have broken her heart. And not only had he been capable of this, but he had not understood her, he too had thought it "mere vanity." Love then was nowhere--neither in his heart nor in hers. . . .

Ronsard, following her with his eyes as she went finally away, saw a youth keeping as close as he dared to the doorway by which she would pa.s.s. He was a mere plebeian; naturally his life was not so precious as that of the brilliant De Lorge (thus Ronsard ironically remarks); but there was no doubt what _he_ would have done, "had our brute been Nemean." He would exultantly have accepted the test, have thought it right that he should earn what he so ardently desired.

"And when, shortly after, she carried Her shame from the Court, and they married, To that marriage some happiness, maugre The voice of the Court, I dared augur."

De Lorge led for some time the most brilliant of envied careers, and finally married a beauty who had been the King's mistress for a week.

Thenceforth he fetched her gloves very diligently, at the hours when the King desired her presence and his absence--and never did he set off on that errand (looking daggers at her) but Francis took occasion to tell the Court the story of the other glove. And she would smile and say that he brought _hers_ with no murmur.

Was the first lady right or wrong? She was right to hesitate in accepting De Lorge's "devotion"--not because De Lorge was worthless, but because she did not love him. The King spoke truly when he said that not love set that task to humanity. Neither did mere vanity set it, as we now perceive; but _only_ love could excuse the test which love could never have imposed. De Lorge was worthless--no matter; the lady held no right over him, whatever he was, for she did not love him. And not alone her "test" was the proof of this: her hesitation had already proved it.

But, it may be said, the age was different: women still believed that love could come to them through "wooing." Nowadays, to be sure, so subtle a woman as this would know that her own heart lay pa.s.sive, and that women's hearts do not lie pa.s.sive when they love. . . . But I think there were few things about love that women did not know in the days of King Francis! We have only to read the discourses of Marguerite de Valois, sister of the King--we have only to consider the story of Diane de Poitiers, seventeen years older than her Dauphin, to realise _that_ most fully. Women's hearts were the same; and a woman's heart, when it loves truly, will make no test for very pride-in-love's dear sake. It scorns tests--too much scorns them, it may be, and yet I know not. Again it is the Meredithian axiom which arrests me: "He learnt how much we gain who make no claims." Our lovers then may be, should be, prepared to plunge among the lions for our gloves--but we should not be able to send them! And if so, a De Lorge here and there should win a "hand" he merits not, we may reflect that the new, no more than the old, De Lorge will have won the _heart_ which doubts--and, doubting, flings (or keeps) the glove.

"Utter the true word--out and away Escapes her soul." . . .

Gloves flung to lions are not the answer which that enfranchised soul will give! And so the Lady thought right and did wrong: 'twas _not_ love set that task to humanity. Even Browning cannot win her our full pardon; we devote not many kerchiefs to drying this "tear."

II.--DiS ALITER VISUM; OR, LE BYRON DE NOS JOURS

"The G.o.ds saw it otherwise." Thus we may translate the first clause of the t.i.tle; the second, the reference to Byron, I have never understood, and I think shall never understand. Of all the accusations which stand against him, that of letting opportunity in this sort slip by is a.s.suredly not one. Such "poor pretty thoughtful things" as the lady of this poem played their parts most notably in Byron's life--to their own disaster, it is true, but never because he weighed their worth in the spirit of this French poet, so bitterly at last accused, who meets again, ten years after the day of his cogitations, the subject of them in a Paris drawing-room--married, and as dissatisfied as he, who still is free. Reading the poem, indeed, with Byron in mind, the fancy comes to me that if it had been by any other man but Browning, it might almost be regarded as a sidelong vindication of the Frenchman for having rejected the "poor pretty thoughtful thing." For Byron married her[224:1]--and in what did it result? . . . But that Browning should in any fashion, however sidelong, acknowledge Byron as anything but the most despicable of mortals, cannot for a moment be imagined; he who understood so many complex beings failed entirely here. Thus, ever in perplexity, I must abjure the theory of Byronic merit. There lurks in this poem no hidden plea for abstention, for the "man who doesn't"--hinted at through compa.s.sionate use of his name who made one of the great disastrous marriages of the world.

Ten years before this meeting in Paris, the two of the poem had known one another, though not with any high degree of intimacy, for only twice had they "walked and talked" together. He was even then "bent, wigged, and lamed":

"Famous, however, for verse and worse, Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair"

--that is, the next vacancy at the French Academy, for so ill.u.s.trious was he that his secondary reputation would not injure him.

She who now accuses him was then a "young beauty, round and sound as a mountain-apple," ingenuous, ardent, wealthy--the typical "poor pretty thoughtful thing" with aspirations, for she tried to sing and draw, read verse and thought she understood--at any rate, loved the Great, the Good, and the Beautiful. But to him her "culture" seemed pitifully amateurish--him who took the arts in his stride, as it were, who could float wide and free over the whole province of them, as the sea-gull floats over the waters. Nevertheless he had walked and talked with her "twice" at the little remote, unspoilt seaside resort where they had chanced to meet. It was strange that more people had not discovered it, so fine were the air and scenery--but it remained unvisited, and thus the two were thrown together. One scorching noon they met; he invited her to a stroll on the cliff-road. She took his arm, and (looking back upon it now) remembers that as she took it she smiled "sillily," and made some ba.n.a.l speech about the blazing, brazen sea below. For she felt that he had guessed her secret, timid hope. . . . Now, recalling the episode (it is he who has given the signal for such reminiscence), she asks him what effect his divination of her trembling heart had had on him that day.

"Did you determine, as we stepped O'er the lone stone fence, 'Let me get Her for myself, and what's the earth With all its art, verse, music, worth-- Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?'"

For she knows, and she knew that _he_ knew, the prompt reply which would come if he "blurted out" a certain question--come in her instant silence, her downward look, the rush of colour to her cheek and brow.

They would have returned from that walk as plighted lovers--he, old, famous, weary; she with her youth and beauty, her ardour and her wealth, all rapturously given, and with the happy prospect added to all other joys of being certain of applause for the distinction shown in her choice! . . . A perfect hour for both--while it lasted.

But (so she now reads his gone-by cogitations for him) it would not last. The daily life would reclaim them; Paris would follow, with full time for both to reason and reflect. . . . And thus (still interpreting to him the imagined outcome of his musings) she would regret that choice which had seemed to show her of the elect--for after all a poet _need_ not be fifty! Young men can be poets too, and though they blunder, there is something endearing in their blunders; moreover, one day they will be as "firm, quiet, and gay" as he, as expert in deceiving the world, which is all, in the last a.n.a.lysis, that such a man does.

For, if he _had_ spoken to her that day, what would he have said? (She is still expounding to him the situation of this potential married pair, as she has divined in her long musings that he then foresaw it.) He would not have said, like a boy, "Love me or I die." But neither would he have said the truth, which was simply that he wished to use her young ardour and vitality to help his age. Such was the demand which she (as, according to her, he then reasoned it out) would in time have accused him, tacitly or not, of having made upon her. . . . And what would his own reflections have been? She is ready to use her disconcerting clairvoyance for these also; nay, she can do more, she can tell him the very moment at which he acted upon them in advance! For as they foreshadowed themselves, he had ceased to press gently her arm to his side--she remembers well the stopping of that tender pressure, and now can connect the action with its mental source. _His_ reflection, then, would have been simply that he had thrown himself away, had bartered all he was and had been and might be--all his culture, knowledge of the world, guerdons of gold and great renown--for what? For "two cheeks freshened by youth and sea": a mere nosegay. _Him_, in exchange for a nosegay!

"That ended me." . . .

They duly admired the "grey sad church," on the cliff-top, with its scattered graveyard crosses, its garlands where the swallows perched; they "took their look" at the sea and sky, wondering afresh at the general ignorance of so attractive a little hole; then, finding the sun really too scorching, they descended, got back to the baths, to such civilisation as there was:

"And then, good-bye! Ten years since then: Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now, By a window-seat for that cliff-brow, On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths."

Ten years. He has a notorious liaison with a dancer at the Opera; she has married lovelessly. They have met again, and, in sentimental mood, he has recalled that sojourn, has begun to make a kind of tentative love to her, probably unimpaired in beauty, certainly more intellectually interesting, for the whole monologue proves that she can no longer be patronisingly summed up in "poor pretty thoughtful thing." And she has cried, in the words which open the poem:

"Stop, let me have the truth of that!

Is that all true?"