[Illustration: THE GREAT LADY]
THE GREAT LADY
"MY LAST DUCHESS," AND "THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS"
For a mind so subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the
perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious
than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things
adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning,
even a "lady" could be a woman--and remain a woman, even though she be
turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted
from the realm of things that may be loved! Of narrowness like this our
poet was incapable. He could indeed transcend the class-distinction, but
that was not, with him, the same as trampling it under foot. And
especially he loved to set a young girl in those regions where material
cares prevail not--where, moving as in an upper air, she joys or suffers
"not for bread alone."
"Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red--
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance, where a man might base his
head?"
He could grant her to be "such a lady," yet grant, too, that her soul
existed. True, that in _A Toccata of Galuppi's_,[166:1] the soul _is_
questioned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice
earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned."
But this is not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but
those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an entire
social epoch--the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in
Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite
the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile
"simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature,
since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness
is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted,
brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm amid its folly.
"Well, and it was graceful of them--they'd break talk off and
afford
--She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord."
The music trickled then through the room, as it trickles now for the
listening poet: with its minor cadences, the "lesser thirds so
plaintive," the "diminished sixths," the suspensions, the solutions:
"Must we die?"--
"Those commiserating sevenths--'Life might last! we can but try!'"
The question of questions, even for "ladies and gentlemen"! And then
come the other questions: "Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must
be answered to."
"So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
'Brave Galuppi, that was music! Good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play.'
Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by
one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well
undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun."
. . . The "cold music" has seemed to the modern listener to say that
_he_, learned and wise, shall not pass away like these:
". . . You know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction--you'll not die, it cannot be!
As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the
crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to
stop?" . . .
Yet while it seems to say this, the saying brings him no solace. What,
"creaking like a ghostly cricket," it intends, he must perceive, since
he is neither deaf nor blind:
"But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy
mind! . . .
'Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old."
After all, the pageant of life has value! We need not _only_ the wise
men. And even the wise man creeps through every nerve when he listens to
that music. "Here's all the good it brings!"
+ + + + +
None the less, there is trouble other than that of its passing in this
pageant. Itself has the seed of death within it. All that beauty,
riches, ease, can do, shall leave some souls unsatisfied--nay, shall
kill some souls. . . . This too Browning could perceive and show; and
once more, loved to show in the person of a girl. There is something in
true womanhood which transcends all _morgue_: it seems almost his foible
to say that, so often does he say it! In Colombe, in the Queen of _In a
Balcony_ (so wondrously contrasted with Constance, scarcely less noble,
yet half-corroded by this very rust of state and semblance); above all,
in the exquisite imagining of that "Duchess," the girl-wife who twice is
given us, and in two widely different environments--yet is (to my
feeling) _one_ loved incarnation of eager sweetness. He touched her
first to life when she was dead, if one may speak so paradoxically;
then, unsatisfied with that posthumous awaking, brought her resolutely
back to earth--in _My Last Duchess_ and _The Flight of the Duchess_
respectively. Let us examine the two poems, and I think we shall agree,
in reading the second, that Browning, like Caponsacchi, could not have
the lady dead.
First, then, comes a picture--the mere portrait, "painted on the wall,"
of a dead Italian girl.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
Frà Pandolf by design: for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus."
The Duke, a Duke of Ferrara, owner of "a nine-hundred-years-old name,"
is showing the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy
from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a
connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier
rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that
nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless
art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even
now that she is dead, he does not know that it was he who killed
her--nor, if he did, could feel remorse. For it is not possible that
_he_ could have been wrong. This Duchess--it would have been idle to
"make his will clear" to such an one; the imposition, not the
exposition, of that will was all that he could show to her (or any other
lesser being) without stooping--"and I choose never to stoop." Her error
had been precisely the "depth and passion of that earnest glance" which
Frà Pandolf had so wonderfully caught. Does the envoy suppose that it
was only her husband's presence which called that "spot of joy" into her
cheek? It had _not_ been so. The mere painting-man, the mere Frà
Pandolf, may have paid her some tribute of the artist--may have said,
for instance, that her mantle hid too much of her wrist, or that the
"faint half-flush that died along her throat" was beyond the power of
paint to reproduce.
". . . Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy."
As the envoy still seems strangely unenlightened, the Duke is forced to
the "stooping" implied in a more explicit statement:
". . . She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere."
Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and
accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly
conveyed:
"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the west,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. . . ."
+ + + + +
We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to
the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender
creature as though we also were at gaze on Frà Pandolf's picture. . . .
I call _this_ piece a wonder, now! Scarce one of the monologues is so
packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most
"simple"--even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they
are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives
are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then,
hers--but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything
that came to her was transmuted into her own dearness--even his favour
at her breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that
"favour"--the high proprietary air, the loftily anticipated gratitude:
Sir Willoughby Patterne by intelligent anticipation. But then, though
the approving speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with
his bough of cherries--and speech and blush were given again! Absurder
still, the spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . .
"Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of
ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's
gift"--even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted"
him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not
have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made
excuse) . . . even so (this must be impressed upon the envoy), it would
have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop."
Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the
next Duchess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued
upon that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is
sounding in his ear--
". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing.
There she stands, _looking as if she were alive_. . . . And almost he
starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a
meaning--
". . . There she stands
As if alive"
--the picture is a wonder!
Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had
just now sounded: "_Then all smiles stopped together_"?
She stands there--smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause
before Frà Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders.
Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily
in silence, taken: the next Duchess will be instructed beforehand in
the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:
"Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then."
The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere,
as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his
master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair
daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot
resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such
proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . .
Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the
due deference:
". . . Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir,"
--and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by _him_) the
envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor
has no eyes for "wonders" now--he has seen the wonder, has heard the
horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can
pass these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them,
however, must be pointed out:
". . . Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."
. . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.
+ + + + +
But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands,
or _was_, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not
where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by
flame; has been snatched from _her_ Duke, and borne away to joy and
love--by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that
came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved
herself.
The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller
whom he calls his friend.
"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"
It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess
all were young--if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up
at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had
been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and
died there,
"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamber next to an ante-room
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they perfume."
The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took the boy to Paris, where she
belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So
the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were
railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years
were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."
"And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
--Not he!"
--for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue,
and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one
good thing left in these evil days:
"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."
It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages
were revived:
"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."
The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its
origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs
and length, all speed, no strength:
"They should have set him on red Berold,
Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"
Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He
preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty
Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in
the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.
"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady in time of spring.
--Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"
Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad
in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:
"And so we saw the lady arrive;
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of Nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her."
She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle,
where the Duke awaited her.
"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls"
--and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and
thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of
gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who
rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was
that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"
Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess--but
she _is_ the same!), the little lady rode forward:
"When suddenly appeared the Duke."
She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the
Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather
aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick
tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the
background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky
sullied by a chill wind,
"The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day."
But the brave spirit survived. In a day or two she was well again, as if
she could not believe that God did not mean her to be content and glad
in His sight. "So, smiling as at first went she." She was filled to the
brim with energy; there never was such a wife as she would have made for
a shepherd, a miner, a huntsman--and this huntsman, who has _had_ a
beloved wife, knows what he is saying.
"She was active, stirring, all fire--
Could not rest, could not tire--
To a stone she might have given life! . . .
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all."
For the castle was crammed with retainers, and the Duke's plan permitted
a wife, at most, to meet his eye with the other trophies in the hall and
out of it:
"To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen
At the proper place, in the proper minute,
And die away the life between."
The little Duchess, with her warm heart and her smile like the Italian
girl's that "went everywhere," broke every rule at first. It was amusing
enough (the old huntsman remembers)--but for the grief that followed
after. For she did not submit easily. Having broken the rules, she would
find fault with them! She would advise and criticise, and "being a
fool," instruct the wise, and deal out praise or blame like a child. But
"the wise" only smiled. It was as if a little mechanical toy should be
contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly _make_ it.
Thus, as a mechanical toy, was the only way to treat this minute critic,
for like the Duke at Ferrara, this Duke (and his mother) did not choose
to stoop. _He_ would merely wear his "cursed smirk" as he nodded
applause, but he had some trouble in keeping off the "old mother-cat's
claws."
"So the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling."
_Then all smiles stopped together_ . . . And the Duke, perceiving, said
to himself that it was done to spite him, but that he would find the way
to deal with it.
Like the envoy, our huntsman's friend is beginning to find the tale a
little more than he can stand--but, unlike the envoy, he can express
himself. The old man soothes him down: "Don't swear, friend!" and goes
on to solace him by telling how the "old one" has been in hell for many
a year,
"And the Duke's self . . . you shall hear."
+ + + + +
"Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh, tender ice,"
it chanced that the Duke, asking himself what pleasures were in season
(he would never have known, unless "the calendar bade him be hearty"),
found that a hunting party was indicated:
"Always provided, old books showed the way of it!"
Poetry, painting, tapestries, woodcraft, all were consulted: how it was
properest to encourage your dog, how best to pray to St. Hubert, patron
saint of hunters. The serfs and thralls were duly dressed up,
"And oh, the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!"
But when all "the first dizziness of flap-hats and buff-coats and
jack-boots" had subsided, the Duke turned his attention to the Duchess's
part in the business, and, after much cogitation, somebody triumphantly
announced that he had discovered her function. An old book stated it:
"When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
And with water to wash the hands of her liege
In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
Let her preside at the disemboweling."
All was accordingly got ready: the towel, the most antique ewer, even
the jennet, piebald, black-barred, cream-coated, pink-eyed--and only
then, on the day before the party, was the Duke's pleasure signified to
his lady.
And the little Duchess--paler and paler every day--said she would not
go! Her eyes, that used to leap wide in flashes, now just lifted their
long lashes, as if too weary even for _him_ to light them; and she duly
acknowledged his forethought for her,
"But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right;"
and, in short, utterly declined the "disemboweling."
But everything was arranged! The Duke was nettled. Still she persisted:
it was hardly the time . . .
The huntsman knew what took place that day in the Duchess's room,
because Jacynth, who was her tire-woman, was waiting within call outside
on the balcony, and since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, the
casement that Jacynth could peep through, an adorer of roses could peep
through also.
Well, the Duke "stood for a while in a sultry smother," and then "with a
smile that partook of the awful," turned the Duchess over to his mother
to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it
all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her
whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture,
passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin--at
any rate, he showed a very stiff back.
However, next day the company mustered. The weather was execrable--fog
that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect
sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the
woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the
courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with
the annual gifts to the castle. For every year, in this North land, the
Gipsies come to give "presents" to the Dukes--presents for which an
equivalent is always understood to be forthcoming.
And marvellous the "presents" are! These Gipsies can do anything with
the earth, the ore, the sand. Snaffles, whose side-bars no brute can
baffle, locks that would puzzle a locksmith, horseshoes that turn on a
swivel, bells for the sheep . . . all these are good, but what they can
do with sand!
"Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry."
And then that other sort, "their crowning pride, with long white threads
distinct inside."
These are the things they bring, when you see them trooping to the
castle from the valley. So they trooped this morning; and when they
reached the fosse, all stopped but one:
"The oldest Gipsy then above ground."
This witch had been coming to the castle for years; the huntsman knew
her well. Every autumn she would swear must prove her last visit--yet
here she was again, with "her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes, of no
use now but to gather brine."
She sidled up to the Duke and touched his bridle, so that the horse
reared; then produced her presents, and awaited the annual
acknowledgment. But the Duke, still sulky, would scarcely speak to her;
in vain she fingered her fur-pouch. At last she said in her "level
whine," that as well as to bring the presents, she had come to pay her
duty to "the new Duchess, the youthful beauty." As she said that, an
idea came to the Duke, and the smirk returned to his sulky face.
Supposing he set _this_ old woman to teach her, as the other had failed?
What could show forth better the flower-like and delicate life his
fortunate Duchess led, than the loathsome squalor of this sordid crone?
He turned and beckoned the huntsman out of the throng, and, as he was
approaching, bent and spoke mysteriously into the Gipsy's ear. The
huntsman divined that he was telling of the frowardness and ingratitude
of the "new Duchess." And the Gipsy listened submissively. Her mouth
tightened, her brow brightened--it was as if she were promising to give
the lady a thorough frightening. The Duke just showed her a purse--and
then bade the huntsman take her to the "lady left alone in her bower,"
that she might wile away an hour for her:
"Whose mind and body craved exertion,
And yet shrank from all better diversion."
And then the Duke rode off.
+ + + + +
Now begins "the tenebrific passage of the tale." Or rather, now begins
what we can make into such a passage if we will, but need not. We can
read a thousand transcendental meanings into what now happens, or we can
simply accept and understand it--leaving the rest to the
"Browningites," of whom Browning declared that _he_ was not.
The huntsman, turning round sharply to bid the old woman follow him--a
little distrustful of her since that interview with the Duke--saw
something that not only restored his trust, but afterwards made him sure
that she had planned beforehand the wonders that now happened. She
looked a head taller, to begin with, and she kept pace with him easily,
no stooping nor hobbling--above all, no cringing! She was wholly
changed, in short, and the change, "whatever the change meant," had
extended to her very clothes. The shabby wolf-skin cloak she wore seemed
edged with gold coins. Under its shrouding disguise, she was wearing (we
may conjecture), for this foreseen occasion, her dress of tribal Queen.
But most wonderful of all was the change in her "eye-holes." When first
he saw her that morning, they had been, as it were, empty of all but
brine; now, two unmistakable eye-points, live and aware, looked out from
their places--as a snail's horns come out after rain. . . . He accepted
all this, "quick and surprising" as it was, without spoken comment; and
took the Gipsy to Jacynth, standing duty at the lady's chamber-door.
"And Jacynth rejoiced, she said, to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken."
The two women went in, and our friend, on the balcony, "watched the
weather."
Jacynth never could tell him afterwards _how_ she came to fall soundly
asleep all of a sudden. But she did so fall asleep, and so remained the
whole time through. He, on the balcony, was following the hunt across
the open country--for in those days he had a falcon eye--when, all in a
moment, his ear was arrested by
"Was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing?"
It came from the lady's room; and, pricked by curiosity, he pushed the
lattice, pulled the curtain, and--first--saw Jacynth "in a rosy sleep
along the floor with her head against the door." And in the middle of
the room, on the seat of state,
"Was a queen--the Gipsy woman late!"
She was bending down over the lady, who, coiled up like a child, sat
between her knees, clasping her hands over them, and with her chin set
on those hands, was gazing up into the face of the old woman. That old
woman now showed large and radiant eyes, which were bent full on the
lady's, and seemed with every instant to grow wider and more shining.
She was slowly fanning with her hands, in an odd measured motion--and
the huntsman, puzzled and alarmed, was just about to spring to the
rescue, when he was stopped by perceiving the expression on the lady's
face.
"For it was life her eyes were drinking . . .
Life's pure fire, received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving."
The life had passed into her very hair, which was thrown back, loose
over each shoulder,
"And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded."
He stopped short, perplexed, "as she listened and she listened." But all
at once he felt himself struck by the self-same contagion:
"And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped."
He could hear and understand, "word took word as hand takes hand"--and
the Gipsy said:
"And so at last we find my tribe,
And so I set thee in the midst . . .
I trace them the vein and the other vein
That meet on thy brow and part again,
Making our rapid mystic mark;
And I bid my people prove and probe
Each eye's profound and glorious globe
Till they detect the kindred spark
In those depths so dear and dark . . .
And on that round young cheek of thine
I make them recognise the tinge . . .
For so I prove thee, to one and all,
Fit, when my people ope their breast,
To see the sign, and hear the call,
And take the vow, and stand the test
Which adds one more child to the rest--
When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
And the world is left outside."
There would be probation (said the Gipsy), and many trials for the lady
if she joined the tribe; but, like the jewel-finder's "fierce assay" of
the stone he finds, like the "vindicating ray" that leaps from it:
"So, trial after trial past,
Wilt thou fall at the very last
Breathless, half in trance
With the thrill of the great deliverance,
Into our arms for evermore;
And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
About thee, what we knew before,
_How love is the only good in the world_.
Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
Or brain devise, or hand approve!
Stand up, look below,
It is our life at thy feet we throw
To step with into light and joy;
Not a power of life but we employ
To satisfy thy nature's want."
The Gipsy said much more; she showed what perfect mutual love and
understanding can do, for "if any two creatures grow into one, they will
do more than the world has done"--and the tribe will at least approach
that end with this beloved woman. She says not _how_--whether by one
man's loving her to utter devotion of himself, or by _her_ giving "her
wondrous self away," and taking the stronger nature's sway. . . .
"I foresee and I could foretell
Thy future portion, sure and well;
But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
Let them say what thou shalt do!"
But whatever she does, the eyes of her tribe will be upon her, with
their blame, their praise:
"Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
Glad, angry--but indifferent, no!"
And so at last the girl who now sits gazing up at her will come to old
age--will retire apart with the hoarded memories of her heart, and
reconstruct the past until the whole "grandly fronts for once her soul"
. . . and then, the gleam of yet another morning shall break; it will be
like the ending of a dream, when
"Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes."
With that great utterance her voice changed like a bird's. The music
began again, the words grew indistinguishable . . . with a snap the
charm broke, and the huntsman, "starting as if from a nap," realised
afresh that the lady was being bewitched, sprang from the balcony to the
ground, and hurried round to the portal. . . . In another minute he
would have entered:
"When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful,
I felt at once that all was best" . . .
And he felt, too, that he must do whatever she commanded. But there was,
in fact, no commanding. Looking on the beauty that had invested her,
"the brow's height and the breast's expanding," he knew that he was hers
to live and die, and so he needed not words to find what she
wanted--like a wild creature, he knew by instinct what this freed wild
creature's bidding was. . . . He went before her to the stable; she
followed; the old woman, silent and alone, came last--sunk back into her
former self,
"Like a blade sent home to its scabbard."
He saddled the very palfrey that had brought the little Duchess to the
castle--the palfrey he had patted as he had led it, thus winning a smile
from her. And he couldn't help thinking that she remembered it too, and
knew that he would do anything in the world for her. But when he began
to saddle his own nag ("of Berold's begetting")--not meaning to be
obtrusive--she stopped him by a finger's lifting, and a small shake of
the head. . . . Well, he lifted her on the palfrey and set the Gipsy
behind her--and then, in a broken voice, he murmured that he was ready
whenever God should please that she needed him. . . . And she looked
down
"With a look, a look that placed a crown on me,"
and felt in her bosom and dropped into his hand . . . not a purse! If it
had been a purse of silver ("or gold that's worse") he would have gone
home, kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned himself--but it was not a
purse; it was a little plait of hair, such as friends make for each
other in a convent:
"This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment)
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then--and then--to cut short--this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster.
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded--and so we lost her."
+ + + + +
There is the story of the Flight of the Duchess; and it seems to me to
need no "explanation" at all. The Gipsy can be anyone or anything we
like that _saves_ us; the Duke and his mother anyone or anything that
crushes love.
"Love is the only good in the world."
And the love (though it _may_ be) _need_ not be the love of man for
woman, and woman for man; but simply love. The quick warm impulse which
made this girl look round so eagerly as she approached her future home,
and thank the man who led her horse for patting it, and want to hear the
name of every bird--the impulse from the heart "too soon made glad, too
easily impressed"; the sweet, rich nature of her who "liked whate'er she
looked on, and her looks went everywhere" . . . what was all this but
love? The tiny lady was one great pulse of it; without love she must
die; to give it, take it, was the meaning of her being. And love was
neither given nor accepted from her. Worse, it was scorned; it was not
"fitting." All she had to do was to be "on show"; nothing, nothing,
nothing else--
"And die away the life between."
And then came the time when, like Pompilia, she had "something she must
care about"; and the office asked of her was to "assist at the
disemboweling" of a noble, harried stag! Not even when she pleaded the
hour that awaited her was pity shown, was love shown, for herself or for
the coming child. And then the long, spiteful lecture. . . . That night,
even to Jacynth, not a word could she utter. Here was a world without
love, a world that did not want her--and _she_ was here, and she must
stay, until, until . . . Which would the coming child be--herself again,
or _him_ again? Scarce she knew which would be the sadder happening.
And then Love walked in upon her. She was "of their tribe"--they wanted
her; they wanted all she was. Just what she was; she would not have to
change; they wanted her. They liked her eyes, and the colour on her
cheek--they liked _her_. Her eyes might look at them, and "speak true,"
for they wanted just that truth from just those eyes.
It is any escape, any finding of our "tribe"! It is the self-realisation
of a nature that can love. And this is but one way of telling the great
tale. Browning told it thus, because for years a song had jingled in his
ears of "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"--and to all of us, the
Gipsies stand for freedom, for knowledge of the great earth-secrets, for
nourishment of heart and soul. But we need not follow only them to
compass "the thrill of the great deliverance." We need but know, as the
little Duchess knew, what it is that we want, and trust it. _She_ placed
the old woman at once upon her own "seat of state": from the moment she
beheld her, love leaped forth and crowned the messenger of love.
"And so at last we find my tribe,
And so I set thee in the midst . . .
Henceforth be loved as heart can love. . . .
It is our life at thy feet we throw
To step with into light and joy."
The Duchess heard, and knew, and was saved. It needed courage--needed
swift decision--needed even some small abandonment of "duty." But she
saw what she must do, and did it. Duty has two voices often; the Duchess
heard the true voice. If she was bewitched, it was by the spell that was
ordained to save her, could she hear it. . . . And that she heard
aright, that, leaving the castle, she left the hell where love lives
not, we know from the old huntsman:
"For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery;
So they made no search and small inquiry";
and Gipsies thenceforth were hustled across the frontier.
Even the Duchess could not make love valid there. Reality was out of
them. . . . True, the huntsman, after thirty years, is still her sworn
adorer. He had stayed at the castle:
"I must see this fellow his sad life through--
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall";
--but, as soon as the Duke is dead, our friend intends to "go
journeying" to the land of the Gipsies, and there find his lady or hear
the last news of her:
"And when that's told me, what's remaining?"
For Jacynth is dead and all their children, and the world is too hard
for his explaining, and so he hopes to find a snug corner under some
hedge, and turn himself round and bid the world good-night, and sleep
soundly until he is waked to another world, where pearls will no longer
be cast before swine that can't value them. "_Amen._"
But at any rate this talk with his friend has made him see his little
lady again, and everything that they did since "seems such child's
play," with her away! So her love did one thing even there--just as one
likes to think that the unhappier Duchess, the Italian one, left
precisely such a memory in the heart of that officious fool who broke
the bough of cherries for her in the orchard.
And is it not good to think that almost immediately after _The Flight of
the Duchess_ was published, Browning was to meet the passionate-hearted
woman whom _he_ snatched almost from the actual death-bed that had been
prepared for her with as much of pomp and circumstance as was the
Duchess's life-in-death! With this in mind, it gives one a queer thrill
to read those lines of silenced prophecy:
"I foresee and I could foretell
Thy future portion, sure and well:
But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
Let them say what thou shalt do!"
FOOTNOTES:
[166:1] The "Toccata" which awakens these reflections in the poet is by
a Venetian composer, Baldassare Galuppi, who was born in 1706, and died
in 1785. He lived and worked in London from 1741 to 1744. "He abounded"
(says Vernon Lee, in her _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_)
"in melody, tender, pathetic, and brilliant, which in its extreme
simplicity and slightness occasionally rose to the highest beauty."