Browning's Heroines Part 34

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 a.s.sert 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.bility 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 "G.o.d'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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion prevails, for the man, by killing her, has kept her folded in "G.o.d'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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 a.n.a.logy. The Queen "went on"; but what a moment that heart had had! . . . Grat.i.tude, we see always, for the gift of love in the heart, for G.o.d'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 pa.s.s.

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 h.e.l.l?

"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 a.s.signed to unsuccessful love, he never dreams: where can be humiliation in having caught G.o.d'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!"