A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 32

The anecdote which forms the basis of "CLIVE," was told to Mr. Browning in 1846 by Mrs. Jameson, who had shortly before heard it at Lansdowne House, from Macaulay. It is cursorily mentioned in Macaulay's "Essays."

When Robert Clive was first in India, a boy of fifteen, clerk in a merchant's office at St. David's, he accused an officer with whom he was playing, of cheating at cards, and was challenged by him in consequence.

Clive fired, as it seems, prematurely, and missed his aim. The officer, at whose mercy he had thus placed himself, advanced to within arm's length, held the muzzle of his pistol to the youth's forehead, and summoned him to repeat his accusation. Clive did repeat it, and with such defiant courage that his adversary was unnerved. He threw down the weapon, confessed that he had cheated, and rushed out of the room. A chorus of indignation then broke forth among those who had witnessed the scene. They declared that the "wronged civilian" should be righted; and that he who had thus disgraced Her Majesty's Service should be drummed--if needs be, kicked--out of the regiment. But here Clive interposed. Not one, he said, of the eleven, whom he addressed by name and t.i.tle, had raised a finger to save his life. He would clear scores with any or all among them who breathed a word against the man who had spared it. Nor, as the narrative continues, and as the event proved, was such a word ever spoken.

Clive is supposed to relate this experience, a week before his self-inflicted death, to a friend who is dining with him; and who, struck by his depressed mental state, strives to arouse him from it by the question: which of his past achievements const.i.tutes, in his own judgment, the greatest proof of courage. He gives the moment in which the pistol was levelled at his head, as that in which he felt, not most courage, but most fear. But, as he explains to his astonished listener, it was not the almost certainty of death, which, for one awful minute, made a coward of him; it was the bare possibility of a reprieve, which would have left no appeal from its dishonour. His opponent refused to fire. He might have done so with words like these:

"Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare: Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim Which permits me to forgive you!..." (vol. xv. p. 105.)

What course would have remained to him but to seize the pistol, and himself send the bullet into his brain? This tremendous mental situation is, we need hardly say, Mr. Browning's addition to the episode.

The poem contains also some striking reflections on the risks and responsibilities of power; and concludes with an expression of reverent pity for the "great unhappy hero" for whom they proved too great.

"MULeYKEH" is an old Arabian story. The name which heads it is that of a swift, beautiful mare, who was Hoseyn--her owner's, "Pearl." He loved her so dearly, that, though a very poor man, no price would tempt him to sell her; and in his fear of her being stolen, he slept always with her head-stall thrice wound round his wrist: and Buheyseh, her sister, saddled for instantaneous pursuit. One night she was stolen; and Duhl, the thief, galloped away on her and felt himself secure: for the Pearl's speed was such that even her sister had never overtaken her. She chafed, however, under the strange rider, and slackened her pace. Buheyseh, bearing Hoseyn, gained fast upon them; the two mares were already "neck by croup." Then the thought of his darling's humiliation flashed on Hoseyn's mind. He shouted angrily to Duhl in what manner he ought to urge her. And the Pearl, obeying her master's voice, no less than the familiar signal prescribed by him, bounded forward, and was lost to him forever. Hoseyn returned home, weeping sorely, and the neighbours told him he had been a fool. Why not have kept silence and got his treasure back?

"'And--beaten in speed!' wept Hoseyn: 'You never have loved my Pearl.'"

(vol. xv. p. 116.)

The man who gives his name to "PIETRO OF ABANO" was the greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[106] He was also an astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr.

Browning relates. But the special story he tells of him has been told of others also.

Pietro of Abano had the reputation of being a wizard; and though his skill in curing sickness, as in building, star-reading, and yet other things, conferred invaluable services on his fellow-men, he received only kicks and curses for his reward. His power seemed, nevertheless, so enviable, that he was one day, in the archway of his door, accosted by a young Greek, who humbly and earnestly entreated that the secret of that power might be revealed to him. He promised to repay his master with loving grat.i.tude; and hinted that the bargain might be worth the latter's consideration, since nature, in all else his slave, forbade his drinking milk (this is told of the true Pietro): in other words, denied him the affection which softens and sweetens the dry bread of human life. Pietro pretended to consent, and began, to utter, by way of preface, the word "benedicite." The young Greek lost consciousness at its second syllable; and awoke to find himself alone, and with a first instalment of Peter's secret in his mind. "Good is product of evil, and to be effected through it." Acting upon this doctrine, he traded on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures wherever the opportunity occurred; and attained by this means, first, wealth; next temporal, and then spiritual, power; rising finally to the dignity of Pope. At each stage of this progress, Peter came to him in apparent dest.i.tution, and claimed the promised grat.i.tude in an urgent, but very modest prayer for a.s.sistance. And each time Peter's presence infused into him a fresh power of unscrupulousness, and sent him a step farther on his way. But each time also the pupil postponed his obligation, till he at last disclaimed it; and--enthroned in the Lateran--was dismissing his benefactor with insult: when the closing syllables--"dicite"--sounded in his ear; and he became conscious of Peter's countenance smiling back at him over his shoulder, and Peter's door being banged in his face. And he then knew that he had lived a lifetime in the fraction of a minute, and that the magician, by means of whom he had done so, justly declined to trust him.

Mr. Browning, however, bids the young Greek persevere; since he might ransack Peter's books, without discovering a better secret for gaining power over the ma.s.ses, than the "cleverness uncurbed by conscience,"

which he perhaps already possesses.[107]

"DOCTOR ----" is an old Hebrew legend, founded upon the saying that a bad wife is stronger than death. Satan complains, in his character of Death, that man has the advantage of him: since he may baffle him, whenever he will, by the aid of a bad woman; and he undertakes to show this in his own person. He comes to earth, marries, and has a son, who in due time must be supplied with a profession. This son is too cowardly to be a soldier, and too lazy to be a lawyer; Divinity is his father's sphere. So Satan decides that he shall be a doctor; and endows him with a faculty which will enable him to practise Medicine, without any knowledge of it at all. The moment he enters a sick room, he will see his father spiritually present there; and unless he finds him seated at the sick's man's head, that man is not yet doomed. Thus endowed, Doctor ----can cure a patient who was despaired of, with a dose of penny-royal, and justly predict death for one whose only ailment is a pimple. His success carries all before it. One day, however, he is summoned to the emperor, who lies sick; and the emperor offers gold, and power, and, lastly, his daughter's hand, as the price of his recovery. But this time Satan sits at the head of the bed, and not even such an appeal to his pride and greed will induce him to grant the patient even a temporary reprieve. The son, thus driven to bay, pretends to be struck by a sudden thought. "He will try the efficacy of the mystic Jacob's staff." He whispers to an attendant to bid his mother bring it; and as Satan's Bad Wife enters the room, Satan vanishes through the ceiling, leaving a smell of sulphur behind him. The Emperor gets well; but Doctor ----renounces the promised gold: for it was to be the Princess's dowry; and he is too wise to accept it on the condition of saddling himself with a wife.

"PAN AND LUNA" describes a mythical adventure of Luna--the moon, given by Virgil in the Georgics; and has for its text a line from them (III.

390):

"Si credere dignum est."[108]

According to the legend, Luna was one night entrapped by Pan who lay in wait for her in the form of a cloud, soft and snowy as the fleece of a certain breed of sheep; and, Virgil continues, followed him to the woodland, "by no means spurning him." But Mr. Browning tells the story in a manner more consonant with the traditional modesty of the "Girl-Moon." She was, he says, distressed by the exposure of her full-orbed charms, as she flew bare through the vault of heaven: the protecting darkness ever vanis.h.i.+ng before her; and she took refuge for concealment in the cloud of which the fleecy billows were to close and contract about her, in the limbs of the goat-G.o.d. How little she accepted this her first eclipse, may be shown, he thinks, by the fact that she never now lingers within a cloud longer than is necessary to "rip" it through.

"JOCOSERIA."

The volume so christened (grave and gay), published 1883, shows a greater variety of subject and treatment than do the Dramatic Idyls, and its contents might be still more easily broken up; but they are also best given in their original form. They are--

"Wanting is--what?"

"Donald."

"Solomon and Balkis."

"Cristina and Monaldeschi."

"Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli."

"Adam, Lilith, and Eve."

"Ixion."

"Jochanan Hakkadosh."

"Never the Time and the Place."

"Pambo."

"WANTING IS--WHAT?" is an invocation to Love, as the necessary supplement to whatever is beautiful in life. It may equally be addressed to the spirit of Love, or to its realization in the form of a beloved person.

"DONALD" is a true story, repeated to Mr. Browning by one who had heard it from its hero the so-called Donald, himself. This man, a fearless sportsman in the flush of youth and strength, found himself one day on a narrow mountain ledge--a wall of rock above, a precipice below, and the way barred by a magnificent stag approaching from the opposite side.

Neither could retrace his steps. There was not s.p.a.ce enough for them to pa.s.s each other. One expedient alone presented itself: that the man should lie flat, and the stag (if it would) step over him. And so it might have been. Donald slipped sideways on to his back. The stag, gently, cautiously, not grazing him with the tip of a hoof, commenced the difficult transit; the feat was already half accomplished. But the lifted hind legs laid bare the stomach of the stag; and Donald, who was sportsman first, and man long afterwards, raised himself on his elbow, and stabbed it. The two rolled over into the abyss. The stag, for the second time, saved its murderer's life; for it broke his fall. He came out of the hospital into which he had been carried, a crippled, patched-up wretch, but able to crawl on hands and knees to wherever his "pluck" might be appreciated, and earn a beggar's livelihood by telling how it was last displayed.

These facts are supposed to be related in a Scotch bothie, to a group of young men already fired by the attractions of sport; and are the narrator's comment on the theory, that moral soundness as well as physical strength, is promoted by it.

"SOLOMON AND BALKIS" is the Talmudic version[109] of the dialogue, which took place between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, on the occasion of her visit to the wise King. They begin by talking for effect: and when questioned by each other as to the kind of persons they most readily admit to their respective courts, Solomon answers that he welcomes the Wise, whatever be their social condition; and Balkis declares that her sympathies are all with the Good. But a chance (?) movement on her part jostles the hand of Solomon; and the ring it bears slips round, so that the truth-compelling Name is turned outwards instead of in. Then he confesses that he loves the Wise just so long as he is the object of their appreciation; she that she loves the Good so long as they bear the form of young and handsome men.

He acknowledges, with a sigh, that the soul, which will soar in heaven, must crawl while confined to earth; she owns, with a laugh and a blush, that she has not travelled thus far to hold mental communion with him.[110]

"CRISTINA[111] AND MONALDESCHI" gives the closing scene of the life of Monaldeschi, in what might be Cristina's own words. She is addressing the man whom she has convicted of betraying her, and at whose murder she is about to a.s.sist; and the monologue reflects the outward circ.u.mstance of this murder, as well as the queen's deliberate cruelty, and her victim's cowardice. They are in the palace of Fontainebleau. Its internal decorations record the loves of Diane de Poitiers and the French king, in their frequent repet.i.tion of the crescent and the salamander,[112] and of the accompanying motto, "Quis separabit;" and Cristina, with ghastly irony, calls her listener's attention to the appropriateness of these emblems to their own case. Then she plays with the idea that his symbol is the changing moon, hers the fire-fed salamander, dangerous to those only who come too close. Changing the metaphor, she speaks of herself as a peak, which Monaldeschi has chosen to scale, and which he wrongly hoped to descend when he should be weary of the position, by the same ladder by which he climbed; and her half-playful words a.s.sume a still more sinister import, as she depicts the whirling waters, the frightful rocky abyss, into which a moment's giddiness on his part, a touch from her, might precipitate him. She bids him cure the dizziness, ward off the danger, by kneeling, even crouching, at her feet; act the lover, though he no longer is one. And all the while she is drawing him towards the door of that "Gallery of the Deer," where the priest who is to confess, the soldiers who are to slay, are waiting for him.

Cristina's last words are addressed, in vindication of her deed, to the priest (Lebel), who is aghast at its ferocity. He, she says, has received the culprit's confession, and would not divulge it for a crown.

The church at Avon[113] must tell how _her_ secrets have been guarded by him to whom she had entrusted them.

"MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI" is the mournful yet impa.s.sioned expression of an unrequited love.

"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE" ill.u.s.trates the manner in which the typical man and woman will proceed towards each other: the latter committing herself by imprudent disclosures when under the influence of fear, and turning them into a joke as soon as the fear is past; the former pretending that he never regarded them as serious.

"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus, wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[114] He has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Here's[115] love; and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to claim the love of Here, together with the friends.h.i.+p of Zeus; he has erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were otherwise--that he had sinned in arrogance--that, befriended by the G.o.ds, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the false testimony of the fles.h.!.+" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need there is of acc.u.mulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he denounces the G.o.ds, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy, he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human pa.s.sions and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their striving in h.e.l.l! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope; of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy.

Beyond the weakness of the G.o.d his tormenter he descries a Power, un.o.bstructed, all-pure.

"Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the G.o.ds.h.i.+p and sink!"

If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's att.i.tude towards the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel it.

"JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH" relates how a certain Rabbi was enabled to extend his life for a year and three months beyond its appointed term, and what knowledge came to him through the extension. Mr. Browning professes to rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the t.i.tle, given by him in Hebrew, means "Collection of many lies;" and he adds, by way of supplement, three sonnets, supposed to fantastically ill.u.s.trate the old Hebrew proverb, "From Moses to Moses[116] never was one like Moses," and embodying as many fables of wildly increasing audacity. The main story is nevertheless justified by traditional Jewish belief; and Mr. Browning has made it the vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious thought.

Jochanan Hakkadosh was at the point of death. He had completed his seventy-ninth year. But his faculties were unimpaired; and his pupils had gathered round him to receive the last lessons of his experience; and to know with what feelings he regarded the impending change.

Jochanan Hakkadosh had but one answer to give: his life had been a failure. He had loved, learned, and fought; and in every case his object had been ill-chosen, his energies ill-bestowed. He had shared the common lot, which gives power into the hand of folly, and places wisdom in command when no power is left to be commanded. With this desponding utterance he bade his "children" farewell.

But here a hubbub of protestation arose. "This must not be the Rabbi's last word. It need not be so;" for, as Tsaddik, one of the disciples, reminded his fellows, there existed a resource against such a case.

Their "Targums" (commentaries) a.s.sured them that when one thus combining the Nine Points of perfection was overtaken by years before the fruits of his knowledge had been matured, respite might be gained for him by a gift from another man's life: the giver being rewarded for the wisdom to which he ministered by a corresponding remission of ill-spent time. The sacrifice was small, viewed side by side with the martyrdoms endured in Rome for the glory of the Jewish race.[117] "Who of those present was willing to make it?" Again a hubbub arose. The disciples within, the mixed crowd without, all clamoured for the privilege of lengthening the Rabbi's life from their own. Tsaddik deprecated so extensive a gift.

"Their teacher's patience should not be overtaxed, like that of Perida (whose story he tells), by too long a spell of existence." He accepted from the general bounty exactly one year, to be recruited in equal portions from a married lover, a warrior, a poet, and a statesman; and, the matter thus settled, Jochanan Hakkadosh fell asleep.