Gilbert Keith Chesterton Part 5

To quote our critic: 'Browning was a thoroughly typical Englishman of the middle cla.s.s,' and he remained so through his life.

But this middle-cla.s.s Englishman walking through the streets of Camberwell, as the boys played in the gutters, was Browning, not then the master poet of the Victorian Era, but the young man who could 'pa.s.s a bookstall and find no thrill in beholding on a placard the name of Sh.e.l.ley.'

Browning found his early life in an age 'of inspired office boys,' an age that emerged from the shadow of the French Revolution, that extreme method of optimism which Chesterton believes no Englishman can understand, not even Carlyle himself. It was an optimism that was so, because it held that man was worthy of liberty, which is to say that no man is by his nature ever meant to be a slave.

While Browning was living his daily life in Camberwell, d.i.c.kens was existing in the blacking factory; yet again it was an age of the beginning of intellectual giants.

The Chestertonian standpoint with regard to the early days of Browning is interesting. It is a ready acknowledgment of the poetic instinct that was being slowly but surely nurtured in the heart of the unknown young man of Camberwell.

It is in this early period of his life that Browning attempts what Chesterton rightly describes as the most difficult of literary propositions, that of writing a good political play. This Browning essayed to do, and wrote 'Strafford,' a play that dealt with that most controversial part of history, the time when kings could be executed in Whitehall under the shadow of their own Parliament.

For our critic, Strafford was one of the greatest men ever born with the sacred name of England on his brow. The play was not a gigantic success, it was not a failure; it was, as was to be expected, popular with a limited public, which is very often one of the surest criterions of merit in a book or play. The success of the play was sufficient to a.s.sure the public that Browning had brains and, what was more unusual, could put them to a good advantage.

Browning became then 'a detached and eccentric personality who had arisen on the outskirts; the world began to be conscious of him at this time.'

In 1840 our critic tells us 'Sordello' was published. It was a poem that caused people to wonder whether it was really deep, or merely pure nonsense, a distinction some people cannot ever discover in regard to Browning.

Of this poem, its unique reception by the literary world lies in the fact 'that it was fashionable to boast of not understanding,' which, as I have said, was an indication that it might be termed extremely clever or extremely stupid. It was not a poem, as has been held by some critics, that was a piece of intellectual vanity. Browning was far too great a man to stoop down to such mere ba.n.a.l conceit. The poem was a very different thing. It was a creature created by the obscurity of Browning's mind, which, as Chesterton thinks, was the natural reaction for a genius, born in a villa street in South London.

What is the explanation of this poem? What is its meaning? Wherein lies its soul? These are questions every lover of Browning has constantly to ask. Our critic supplies an answer, an answer that is original, and is, I think, true--the poem is an epic on 'the horror of great darkness,'

that darkness that strangely enough seems to attack the young more frequently than the old.

That which is levelled against Browning, his obscurity, is a very bulwark protecting a subtle and clear mind. This is specially so with a poet who probably of all men so lives in his own poetic world that he forgets his ideas, though clear to himself, are vague to the world occupied with conventionalities.

The real difficulty of 'Sordello' lies in the fact that it is written about an obscure piece of Italian history of which Browning happened to have knowledge--the struggles of mediaeval Italy. This obscurity is not studied, as in the case of academic distinction; it is natural. The obscurity of many of the pa.s.sages of St. John's Gospel is natural because the mind of St. John dwelt on the 'depths,' as did Browning's dwell on the grotesque. The result is the same. Each needs an interpreter, each has an abundance of the richest philosophy, each has an imprint of the Finger of G.o.d.

With all the controversy it has caused, 'Sordello' has had no great influence on Browningites; its name has pa.s.sed into almost contempt.

Chesterton has done much to give the true meaning of this strange work.

With his next poem Browning spoke with a voice that, as our critic says, proved that he had found that he was not Robinson Crusoe, which is to say that he had found that the world contained a great number of people.

Despite the 1,500 millions amongst whom we 'live and move and have our being' we are apt to think that we alone are important, which is not conceit but a mere proposition demonstrating that man is a universe in himself while being but an infinitesimal part of the universe.

'Pippa Pa.s.ses' is a poem which expresses a love of humanity; it is an epic of unconscious influence which, no doubt, Browning felt was the key to all that is best and n.o.ble in human activity. 'The whole idea of the poem lies in the fact that "Pippa Pa.s.ses" is utterly remote from the grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms.'

Browning's poetry in the poetical sense was now nearing its zenith. The 'Dramatic Lyrics' were published in 1842, possibly about the time that d.i.c.kens was returning from his triumphant American tour. These showed, Chesterton thinks, the two qualities most often denied to Browning, pa.s.sion and beauty. They are the contradiction to critics, other than ours, who regard Browning as wholly a philosophic poet, which is to say a poet who wrote poetry not for its own sake but for purely utilitarian purpose; not that poetry of the emotions is not useful--it is on a different plane.

The poems were those that 'represent the arrival of the real Browning of literary history'; for in these he discovered what was, for Chesterton, Browning's finest achievement, his dramatic lyrical poems.

Critics have said that Browning's poetry lacks pa.s.sion and the most poignant emotion of human nature, love. Chesterton, on the other hand, considers that Browning was the finest love poet of the world. It is real love poetry, because it talks about real people, not ideals; it does not muse of the Prince Charming meeting the Fairy Princess, and forget the devoted wife meeting her husband on the villa doorstep with open arms and a nice dinner in the parlour. Sentiment must be based on reality if it is to have worth. This is the strong point, for our critic, of Browning's love poetry.

The next work of importance that came from Browning's pen was the 'Return of the Druses,' which shows Browning's interest in the strange religions of the East, that queer phantastic part of the world that gave birth to a Western religion which has transformed the West, leaving the East to gaze afar off. This poem is, for Chesterton, a psychological one. It is an attempt to give an account of a human being; perhaps the most difficult task in the world, because it can never hope to solve all sides of the question. The central character of this splendid poem is one 'Djubal,' a queer mixture of the virtues of the Deity with the vices of Humanity. He is for Browning the first of a series of characters on which he displays his wonderful powers of apologizing for apparently bad men.

He attempted, to quote our critic, 'to seek out the sinners whom even sinners cast out,' which Christ always did, and which His Church does not always do.

Again Browning turned his hand to writing plays, but he was always a 'neglected dramatist' in the sense that he had to push his plays; his plays did not push him.

His next play, 'A Blot on the "Scutcheon,"' is chiefly interesting, as it was the occasion of a quarrel between its author and that most eccentric of theatrical personalities, Macready. The quarrel was, our critic points out, a matter of money. But Browning failed to see this; he was a man of the world in his poems, but not in his life.

It is interesting here to see what our critic says of Browning about this period before we consider the question of his marriage. 'There were people who called Browning a sn.o.b. He was fond of wealth and fond of society; he admired them as the child who comes in from the desert. He bore the same relation to the sn.o.b that the righteous man bears to the Pharisee--something frightfully close and similar and yet an everlasting opposite.'

It has been left for Chesterton to give the truest definition of a Pharisee that has yet been penned, because it is exactly what every man feels but has never expressed in so brilliant a paradox.

That Browning had faults Chesterton would be the last to deny. Faults are as much a part of a great man as virtues. The more p.r.o.nounced the fault, the more exquisite is the virtue, especially in a man of the character of Browning, a character that had a certain 'uncontrollable brutality of speech,' together with a profound and unaffected respect for other people.

Chesterton's chapter on Browning and his marriage is one of the most homely chapters of the book; it gives the lie to those critics who have glibly said that he has no way in which to reach our hearts or cause a lump in our throats.

The very method of describing how a great man wooed a great woman, how the two loved, married, and disagreed upon certain matters, is one that has an essential appeal to the heart. The exquisite description of the effect of the death of his wife on Browning is pathetic by its very simplicity.

It is enough to say that Browning's marriage was a successful one, which is not to say that it was entirely free from certain disagreements. The domestic relations of great writers and poets have not always been of the rosiest. Swift did not make an ideal marriage--at least, not on conventional lines. Milton had a wife who utterly misunderstood that her husband was a genius. d.i.c.kens was not blessed with matrimonial bliss.

Sh.e.l.ley found faith in one woman hard.

But Browning and his wife had no disagreements on their life interests.

They were both poets, though of a different calibre. What they really did not see eye to eye upon was something which the human race is still much divided about. This great point of difference was with regard to spiritualism. Browning did not dislike spiritualism; he disliked spiritualists. The difference is tremendous. Unfortunately many of the interpreters of spiritualism have degraded it into a kind of blatant necromancy which is in no way dignified or useful. It is entirely opposed to proper psychic research.

Miss Barrett had been an invalid. Therefore Browning feared that spiritualism might have a really bad effect on his wife. 'He was sensible to put a stop to it.'

The theory, on the other hand, held by other critics of Browning than Chesterton was that his dislike of spiritualism was fostered by a direct disbelief in immortality, which is as absurd a statement as is possible to make. Spiritualism and Immortality have no necessary connection whatever, though to a certain extent Spiritualism is presumed on the belief in a future life.

But this, as Chesterton points out, was not the reason for Browning's position; it was entirely that Browning thought 'if he had not interposed when she was becoming hysterical she might have ended in a lunatic asylum.'

As Browning spent so much of his life in Italy it will be well to see what our critic considers he thought of that country under the blue skies jutting on to the blue seas of the Mediterranean.

'Italy,' says Chesterton, 'to Browning and his wife, was not by any means merely that sculptured and ornate sepulchre that it is to so many of those cultured Englishmen who live in Italy and despise it. To them it was a living nation, the type and centre of the religion and politics of a continent, the ancient and flaming heart of Western history, the very Europe of Europe.'

Browning's life in Italy was more or less uneventful. It consisted of a conventional method--the meeting of famous Englishmen visiting Italy, the writing of numerous poems, the pleasant domestic life of a literary genius and his wife.

There was only one thing that could break it, and it came in 1861. Mrs.

Browning died. 'Alone in the room with Browning. He, closing the door of that room behind him, closed a door in himself, and none ever saw Browning upon earth again but only a splendid surface.'

During his wife's life Browning had planned his great work, that of the 'Ring and the Book.' In the meantime came the death of his wife, and Browning moved on the earth alone. Of this period of his life, shortly after the death of Mrs. Browning, Chesterton gives us a clear picture.

'Browning liked social life, he liked the excitement of the dinner, the exchange of opinions, the pleasant hospitality that is so much a part of our life. He was a good talker because he had something to say.'

One of his chief faults, according to our critic, was prejudice.

Prejudice is probably an unconscious obeying of instinct; it may even be a warning. Yet it can be and often is entirely unreasonable.

Browning's prejudice was, Chesterton thinks, the type that hated a thing it knew nothing about, a state of mind that is comparatively harmless.

What is dangerous is disliking a thing when we know what it is. The prejudice of Browning was synonymous with his profound contempt for certain things of which he can only speak 'in pothouse words.'

About this period Browning produced 'Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gu, Saviour of Society.' This is 'one of the most picturesque of Browning's apologetic monologues.' It is Browning's courageous attempt to allow Napoleon III to speak for himself. Yet again Browning 'took in those sinners whom even sinners cast out.'

Two years later, we are told, Browning produced one of his most characteristic works, 'Night-cap Country.' It is an elegant poem of the sicklier side of the French Revolution and the more sensual side of the French temperament.

This is the period in Browning's life when he produced his most characteristic work. It was that time when he was nearly middle aged, when the lamp of youth was just flickering, and when the lamp of old age was about to be lighted.

Chesterton treats the whole of this period with a calm straightforwardness that we are not accustomed to in his writings. There is no doubt, I think, of all our critic's books, that his work on Browning is the least Chestertonian, which is not in any way to disparage it, but rather to state that the book might have been written by any biographer who knew Browning's works and had the sense to see that his characteristics were such that many of his critics were unfair to him. Chesterton will never allow for an instant that Browning suffered from anything but an evident 'naturalness,' which expressed itself in a rugged style, concealing charity in an original grotesqueness of manner.