ALGERNON AND MORGANA--OPPORTUNITY AND REPENTANCE--THE FOREST IN WINTER
Les violences qu'on se fait pour s'empêcher d'aimer sont
souvent plus cruelles que les rigueurs de ce qu'on aime.
--La Rochefoucauld.
The winter set in early. December began with intense frost. Mr.
Falconer, one afternoon, entering the inner drawing-room, found Miss
Gryll alone. She was reading, and on the entrance of her visitor, laid
down her book. He hoped he had not interrupted her in an agreeable
occupation. 'To observe romantic method,' we shall give what passed
between them with the Christian names of the speakers.
_Morgana._ I am only reading what I have often read before, _Orlando
Innamorato_; and I was at the moment occupied with a passage about
the enchantress from whom my name was borrowed. You are aware that
enchantresses are in great favour here.
_Algernon._ Circe and Gryllus, and your name, sufficiently show that. And
not your name only, but----I should like to see the passage, and should
be still better pleased if you would read it to me.
_Morgana._ It is where Orlando, who had left Morgana sleeping by the
fountain, returns to seek the enchanted key, by which alone he can
liberate his friends.
Il Conte, che d' intrare havea gran voglia,
Subitamente al fonte ritornava:
Quivi trovô Morgana, che con gioglia
Danzava intorno, e danzando cantava.
Ne pui leggier si move al vento foglia
Come ella sanza sosta si voltava,
Mirando hora a la terra ed hora al sole;
Ed al suo canto usa va tal parole:
'Qualonque cerca al mondo haver thesoro,
Over diletto, o segue onore e stato,
Ponga la mano a questa chioma d' oro,
Ch' io porto in fronte, e quel fara beato.
Ma quando ha il destro a far cotal lavoro,
Non prenda indugio, che 'l tempo passato
Più non ritorna, e non si trova mai;
Ed io mi volto, e lui lascio con guai.'
Cosi cantava d' intorno girando
La bella Fata a quella fresca fonte;
Ma come gionto vide il Conte Orlando,
Subitamente rivoltô la fronte:
Il prato e la fontana abbandonando,
Prese il viaggio suo verso d* un monte,
Quai chiudea la Valletta picciolina:
Quivi fuggendo Morgana cammina.{1}
1 Bojardo: 1. ii. c. 8. Ed. Vinegia; 1544.
With earnest wish to pass the enchanted gate,
Orlando to the fount again advanced,
And found Morgana, all with joy elate,
Dancing around, and singing as she danced.
As lightly moved and twirled the lovely Fate
As to the breeze the lightest foliage glanced,
With looks alternate to the earth and sky,
She thus gave out her words of witchery:
'Let him, who seeks unbounded wealth to hold,
Or joy, or honour, or terrestrial state,
Seize with his hand this lock of purest gold,
That crowns my brow, and blest shall be his fate.
But when time serves, behoves him to be bold,
Nor even a moment's pause interpolate:
The chance, once lost, he never finds again:
I turn, and leave him to lament in vain.'
Thus sang the lovely Fate in bowery shade
Circling in joy around the crystal fount;
But when within the solitary glade
Glittered the armour of the approaching Count,
She sprang upon her feet, as one dismayed,
And took her way towards a lofty mount
That rose the valley's narrow length to bound:
Thither Morgana sped along the ground.
I have translated Fata, Fate. It is usually translated
Fairy. But the idea differs essentially from ours of a
fairy. Amongst other things there is no Fato, no Oberon to
the Titania. It does not, indeed, correspond with our usual
idea of Fate, but it is more easily distinguished as a
class; for our old acquaintances the Fates are an
inseparable three. The Italian _Fata_ is independent of her
sisters. They are enchantresses; but they differ from other
enchantresses in being immortal. They are beautiful, loo,
and their beauty is immortal: always in Bojardo. He would
not have turned Alcina into an old woman, as Ariosto did;
which I must always consider a dreadful blemish on the many
charms of the _Orlando Furioso_.
_Algernon._ I remember the passage well. The beautiful _Fata_, dancing
and singing by the fountain, presents a delightful picture.
_Morgana._ Then, you know, Orlando, who had missed his opportunity of
seizing the golden forelock while she was sleeping, pursues her a long
while in vain through rocky deserts, _La Penitenza_ following him with a
scourge. The same idea was afterwards happily worked out by Machiavelli
in his _Capitolo del Occasion_.
_Algernon._ You are fond of Italian literature? You read the language
beautifully. I observe you have read from the original poem, and not
from Bemi's _rifacciamento_.
_Morgana._ I prefer the original. It is more simple, and more in
earnest. Bemi's playfulness is very pleasant, and his exordiums are
charming; and in many instances he has improved the poetry. Still, I
think he has less than the original of what are to me the great charms
of poetry, truth and simplicity. Even the greater antiquity of style has
its peculiar appropriateness to the subject. And Bojardo seems to have
more faith in his narrative than Berni. I go on with him with ready
credulity, where Berni's pleasantry interposes a doubt.
_Algernon._ You think that in narratives, however wild and romantic, the
poet should write as if he fully believed in the truth of his own story.
_Morgana._ I do; and I think so in reference to all narratives, not to
poetry only. What a dry skeleton is the history of the early ages
of Rome, told by one who believes nothing that the Romans believed!
Religion pervades every step of the early Roman history; and in a great
degree down at least to the Empire; but, because their religion is
not our religion, we pass over the supernatural part of the matter in
silence, or advert to it in a spirit of contemptuous incredulity. We do
not give it its proper place, nor present it in its proper colours, as
a cause in the production of great effects. Therefore, I like to read
Livy, and I do not like to read Niebuhr.
_Algernon._ May I ask if you read Latin?
_Morgana._ I do; sufficiently to derive great pleasure from it. Perhaps,
after this confession, you will not wonder that I am a spinster.
_Algernon._ So far, that I think it would tend to make you fastidious
in your choice. Not that you would be less sought by any who would be
worthy your attention. For I am told you have had many suitors, and have
rejected them all in succession. And have you not still many, and
among them one very devoted lover, who would bring you title as well as
fortune? A very amiable person, too, though not without a comic side to
his character.
_Morgana._ I do not well know. He so far differs from all my preceding
suitors that in every one of them I found the presence of some quality
that displeased me, or the absence of some which would have pleased me:
the want, in the one way or the other, of that entire congeniality in
taste and feeling which I think essential to happiness in marriage. He
has so strong a desire of pleasing, and such power of acquisition and
assimilation, that I think a woman truly attached to him might mould
him to her mind. Still, I can scarcely tell why, he does not complete
my idealities. They say, Love is his own avenger: and perhaps I shall be
punished by finding my idealities realised in one who will not care for
me.
_Algernon._ I take that to be impossible.
Morgana blushed, held down her head, and made no reply. Algernon looked
at her in silent admiration. A new light seemed to break in on him.
Though he had had so many opportunities of forming a judgment on the
point, it seemed to strike him for the first time with irresistible
conviction that he had never before heard such a sweet voice, nor seen
such an expressive and intelligent countenance. And in this way they
continued like two figures in a _tableau vivant,_ till the entrance
of other parties broke the spell which thus had fixed them in their
positions.
A few minutes more, and their destinies might have been irrevocably
fixed. But the interruption gave Mr. Falconer the opportunity of
returning again to his Tower, to consider, in the presence of the seven
sisters, whether he should not be in the position of a Roman, who was
reduced to the dilemma of migrating without his household deities, or of
suffering his local deities to migrate without him; and whether he could
sit comfortably on either of the horns of this dilemma. He felt that
he could not. On the other hand, could he bear to see the fascinating
Morgana metamorphosed into Lady Curryfin? The time had been when he had
half wished it, as the means of restoring him to liberty. He felt
now that when in her society he could not bear the idea; but he still
thought that in the midst of his domestic deities he might become
reconciled to it.
He did not care for horses, nor keep any for his own use. But as time
and weather were not always favourable to walking, he had provided for
himself a comfortable travelling-chariot, without a box to intercept the
view, in which, with post-horses after the fashion of the olden time, he
performed occasional migrations. He found this vehicle of great use in
moving to and fro between the Grange and the Tower; for then, with all
his philosophy, Impatience was always his companion: Impatience on his
way to the Grange, to pass into the full attraction of the powerful
spell by which he was drawn like the fated ship to the magnetic rock
in the _Arabian Nights_: Impatience on his way to the Tower, to find
himself again in the 'Regions mild of pure and serene air,' in which the
seven sisters seemed to dwell, like Milton's ethereal spirits 'Before
the starry threshold of Jove's court.' Here was everything to soothe,
nothing to irritate or disturb him: nothing on the spot: but it was
with him, as it is with many, perhaps with all: the two great enemies
of tranquillity, Hope and Remembrance, would still intrude: not like a
bubble and a spectre, as in the beautiful lines of Coleridge:{1}
Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On him but seldom, Power divine,
Thy spirit rests. Satiety,
And sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope,
And dire Remembrance, interlope,
And vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before: the spectre stalks behind.
--Coleridge's Ode to Tranquillity.
for the remembrance of Morgana was not a spectre, and the hope of her
love, which he cherished in spite of himself, was not a bubble: but
their forces were not less disturbing, even in the presence of his
earliest and most long and deeply cherished associations.
He did not allow his impatience to require that the horses should be
put to extraordinary speed. He found something tranquillising in the
movement of a postilion in a smart jacket, vibrating on one horse
upwards and downwards, with one invariable regulated motion like the
cross-head of a side-lever steam-engine, and holding the whip quietly
arched over the neck of the other. The mechanical monotony of the
movement seemed less in contrast than in harmony with the profound
stillness of the wintry forest: the leafless branches heavy with rime
frost and glittering in the sun: the deep repose of nature, broken now
and then by the traversing of deer, or the flight of wild birds: highest
and loudest among them the long lines of rooks: but for the greater part
of the way one long deep silence, undisturbed but by the rolling of
the wheels and the iron tinkling of the hoofs on the frozen ground. By
degrees he fell into a reverie, and meditated on his last dialogue with
_Morgana._
'It is a curious coincidence,' he thought, 'that she should have been
dwelling in a passage, in which her namesake enchantress inflicted
punishment on Orlando for having lost his opportunity. Did she associate
Morgana with herself and Orlando with me? Did she intend a graceful hint
to me not to lose _my_ opportunity? I seemed in a fair way to seize the
golden forelock, if we had not been interrupted. Do I regret that I did
not? That is just what I cannot determine. Yet it would be more
fitting, that whatever I may do should be done calmly, deliberately,
philosophically, than suddenly, passionately, impulsively. One thing
is clear to me. It is now or never: this or none. The world does
not contain a second Morgana, at least not of mortal race. Well: the
opportunity will return. So far, I am not in the predicament in which we
left Orlando. I may yet ward off the scourge of _La Penitenza?_
But his arrival at home, and the sight of the seven sisters, who had all
come to the hall-door to greet him, turned his thoughts for awhile into
another channel.
He dined at his usual hour, and his two Hebes alternately filled his
glass with Madeira. After which the sisters played and sang to him in
the drawing-room; and when he had retired to his chamber, had looked on
the many portraitures of his Virgin Saint, and had thought by how many
charms of life he was surrounded, he composed himself to rest with the
reflection: 'I am here like Rasselas in the Happy Valley: and I can now
fully appreciate the force of that beautiful chapter: _The wants of him
who wants nothing?_'