Browning's Heroines Part 3

--My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure, Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!"

I have omitted two lines from this eight-lined stanza, and omitted them because they ill.u.s.trate all too forcibly Browning's chief fault as a lyric--and, in this case, as a dramatic--poet. Both of them are frankly parenthetic; both parentheses are superfluous; neither has any incidental beauty to redeem it; and, above all, we may be sure that Pippa did not think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow an indulgent fas.h.i.+on to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the cert.i.tude we feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt it. . . . In the same way, the opening rhapsody on dawn which precedes her invocation to the holiday is out of character--impossible to regard its lavish and gorgeous images as those (however sub-conscious) of an unlettered girl.

But all carping is forgotten when we reach

"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing"--

a poet's phrase, it is true, yet in no way incongruous with what we can imagine Pippa to have thought, if not, certainly, in such lovely diction to have been able to express. Thenceforward, until the episodical lines on the Martagon lily, the child and her creator are one. There comes the darling menace to the holiday--

". . . But thou must treat me not As prosperous ones are treated . . .

For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest Me, who am only Pippa--old year's sorrow, Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow: Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.

All other men and women that this earth Belongs to, who all days alike possess, Make general plenty cure particular dearth,[26:1]

Get more joy one way, if another less: Thou art my single day, G.o.d lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven-- Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!"

Having made her threat and her invocation, she falls to thinking of those "other men and women," and tells her Day about them, like the child she is. They, she declares, are "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones." Each is, in the event, to be vitally influenced by her song, as she "pa.s.ses"

at Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night; but this she knows not at the time, nor ever knows.

The first Happy One is "that superb great haughty Ottima," wife of the old magnate, Luca, who owns the silk-mills. The New Year's morning may be wet--

". . . Can rain disturb Her Sebald's homage? all the while thy rain Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane, He will but press the closer, breathe more warm Against her cheek: how should she mind the storm?"

Here we learn what later we are very fully to be shown--that Ottima's "happiness" is not in her husband.

The second Happy One is Phene, the bride that very day of Jules, the young French sculptor. They are to come home at noon, and though noon, like morning, should be wet--

". . . what care bride and groom Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their marriage day;

Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be Sunbeams and pleasant weather, spite of thee."

The third Happy One--or Happy Ones, for these two Pippa cannot separate--are Luigi, the young aristocrat-patriot, and his mother.

Evening is their time, for it is in the dusk that they "commune inside our turret"--

"The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth, She in her age, as Luigi in his youth, For true content . . ."

Aye--though the evening should be obscured with mist, _they_ will not grieve--

". . . The cheerful town, warm, close, And safe, the sooner that thou art morose Receives them . . ."

That is all the difference bad weather can make to such a pair.

The Fourth Happy One is Monsignor, "that holy and beloved priest," who is expected this night from Rome,

"To visit Asolo, his brother's home, And say here ma.s.ses proper to release A soul from pain--what storm dares hurt his peace?

Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard."

And now the great Day knows all that the Four Happy Ones possess, besides its own "blue solemn hours serenely flowing"--for not rain at morning can hurt Ottima with her Sebald, nor at noon the bridal pair, nor in the evening Luigi and his mother, nor at night "that holy and beloved" Bishop . . .

"But Pippa--just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil."

All at once she realises that in thus lingering over her toilet, she is letting some of her precious time slip by for naught, and betakes herself to was.h.i.+ng her face and hands--

"Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught With a single splash from my ewer!

You that would mock the best pursuer, Was my basin over-deep?

One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits.

Now grow together on the ceiling!

That will task your wits."

Here we light on a trait in Browning of which Mr. Chesterton most happily speaks--his use of "homely and practical images . . . allusions, bordering on what many would call the commonplace," in which he "is indeed true to the actual and abiding spirit of love," and by which he "awakens in every man the memories of that immortal instant when common and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonis.h.i.+ng realism"

in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and _Pippa Pa.s.ses_ is not a love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we use it to enhance a pa.s.sage such as this. Who has not caught the sunbeam asleep in the mere washhand basin as water was poured out for the mere daily toilet--and felt that heartening grat.i.tude for the symbol of captured joy, which made the instant typic and immortal? For these are the things that all may have, as Pippa had. The ambus.h.i.+ng of that beam and the ordering it, in her sweet wayward imperiousness, to

". . . grow together on the ceiling.

That will task your wits!"

--is one of the most enchanting moments in this lovely poem. The sunbeam settles by degrees (I wish that she had not been made to term it, with all too Browningesque agility, "the radiant cripple"), and finally lights on her Martagon lily, which is a lily with purple flowers. . . .

Here again, for a moment, she ceases to be the lyrical child, and turns into the Browning (to cite Mr. Chesterton again) to whom Nature really meant such things as the basket of jelly-fish in _The Englishman in Italy_, or the stomach-cyst in _Mr. Sludge the Medium_--"the monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, these lines on the purple lily are not only ugly and grotesque--in that kind of ugliness which "was to Browning not in the least a necessary evil, but a quite unnecessary luxury, to be enjoyed for its own sake"--but are monstrously (more than any other instance I can recall) unsuited to the mind from which they are supposed to come.

"New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk-bird's poll!"

One such example is enough. We have once more been deprived of Pippa, and got nothing really worth the possession in exchange.

But Pippa is quickly retrieved, with her gleeful claim that _she_ is the queen of this glowing blossom, for is it not she who has guarded it from harm? So it may laugh through her window at the tantalised bee (are there travelling bees in Italy on New-Year's Day? But this is Midsummer Day!), may tease him as much as it likes, but must

". . . in midst of thy glee, Love thy Queen, wors.h.i.+p me!"

There will be warrant for the wors.h.i.+p--

". . . For am I not, this day, Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?

I may fancy all day--and it shall be so-- That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names, Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!"

So, as she winds up her hair (we may fancy), Pippa plays the not yet relinquished baby-game of Let's-pretend; but is grown-up in this--that she begins and ends with love, which children give and take unconsciously.

"Some one shall love me, as the world calls love: I am no less than Ottima, take warning!

The gardens and the great stone house above, And other house for shrubs, all gla.s.s in front, Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont, To court me, while old Luca yet reposes . . ."

But this earliest pretending breaks down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich and proud can know,

"How we talk in the little town below."