Source of book: I own this
I own a Modern Library hardback of Browning’s poetry. Despite being over 700 pages long, it is far from the complete poems. Browning was prolific, which also means he was a bit uneven. Despite the curation of my collection, there are still some poems in there that leave me a bit cold.
That said, when Browning is on, he is ON, and his best is in the pantheon. I have read two other selections from Browning: his play Pippa Passes, and his early poetry collection Dramatic Lyrics. From that latter work, I also read my kids “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” which is a true classic.
The similarity of the collection titles is interesting to me. So far, all of the works I have discussed on this blog come from a larger collection of Browning’s earlier poetry. Before he became a famous poet, he had to self-publish his works. He released a eight-volume (!) set over a five year period (1841-46), which he entitled Belles and Pomegranates, starting with Pippa Passes and ending with two more plays, Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy. Six of the volumes are plays in verse, like Pippa Passes. Browning wrote more of these than people realize.
Like other Browning collections, this one is a mix of short poems with much longer narrative poems. In many ways, his long narrative poems are his best work. In this collection, “The Flight of the Duchess” is my favorite of the long poems. I’ll start with discussing that one.
The basic plot is that of a Duke who decides to return to the family property and attempt to be like the Dukes of old time. He takes a young and naive woman as his wife, then proceeds to crush her vivacity and high spirits, treating her as a decoration. She is miserable and starts to fade. But, eventually, a Gypsy woman sees something in her, and helps her escape. She is never seen again by her husband.
Now, this is interesting, and not just as a story. Something else was going on in 1845 with Browning that seems a bit of a parallel.
Robert Browning read the poetry of an intriguing middle-aged woman, Elizabeth Barrett, and met her in 1845. They hit it off, and soon fell in love.
And oh my god was her father a nasty piece of work. He was a wealthy owner of several Caribbean plantations - his wealth was built on the backs of slaves. This belief that other humans existed to benefit him was extended to his children.
He literally expected that none of them would marry, but would devote their lives to caring for and entertaining him. When, predictably, some of them got married anyway, he promptly disinherited them.
Robert and Elizabeth got married in secret, to avoid her father making a big scene, and she made her escape.
The marriage appeared to have benefited them both. Elizabeth’s career (encouraged by Robert) reached new heights - and in fact, she was far more popular and well-regarded than he was during her lifetime. She inspired some of Robert’s greatest works as well. Robert was a devoted husband, and she returned his love, and they were separated only by her death in 1861.
It is not difficult here to see the connection. Just substitute “father” for “Duke” and you have it. The vivacious Elizabeth, chained to a controlling man who fancied himself an aristocrat because of his wealth, escaping with the aid of a family friend and a faithful servant. One could also see the Duke’s widowed mother as part of the portrayal of Elizabeth’s father - she is closer to her son than he is to is own wife.
There are some great lines in this poem. First is the description of the Duke, and his futile attempt to project the dignity and gravitas of his ancestors.
So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
‘Twas not for the joy’s self, but the joy of showing it,
Nor for the pride’s self, but the pride of seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out,
The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out.
I can’t help but see this in today’s reactionaries, whether religious or political. This cos-play of the past looks the same, because it isn’t rooted in its particular time, but in a fantasy of a past that never was.
Another line was a bit of a surprise to find. For context, the Duke tries to insist that his lady accompany him on his hunt, to look pretty and praise him for his prowess. (Shades of Elizabeth’s father, for sure.)
And when she persisted nevertheless, -
What? That sounds familiar. It is nearly word for word what was said by Mitch McConnell about Elizabeth Warren. Honestly, I doubt McConnell reads poetry, and wasn’t intentionally quoting from this poem. But if he was, this was the sort of gaffe like Ronald Reagan thinking “Born in the USA” was a patriotic anthem.
In context, he was identifying Warren as the hero of the moment, and himself as the oppressive and bullying Duke who would soon lose his wife forever. The Duke’s response is telling:
The Duke, dumb-striken with amazement,
Stood for a while in a sultry smother,
And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
Turned her over to his yellow mother
To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
As her cheek quick whitened thro’ all its quince-tinct.
Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
What meant she? - Who was she? - Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation -
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry,
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
Hmm, will this end well for the Duke and his mother? Any predictions? And hey, this sure sounds familiar to me. A mother-in-law lecturing her daughter-in-law on how to be a proper woman? Oh that very much happened, and with the same result - the daughter-in-law left. (Although in this case, the son went with his wife…)
The narrator is an old family servant who sees all this unfold. He overhears a conversation between the Lady and the Gypsy woman, and decides not to interfere. This monologue from the woman to the lady is excellent, but particularly this part:
And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
About thee, what we knew before,
How live is the only good in the world.
Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
Or brain devise, or hand approve!
It is our life at they feet we throw
To step with into light and joy;
Not a power of life but we employ
To satisfy thy nature’s want;
If it isn’t obvious, Robert Browning is speaking to Elizabeth in this monologue, just as she spoke to him through her poems. The monologue moves from the present to the distant future, when the Lady will be old.
So, at the last shall come old age,
Decrepit as befits that stage;
How else wouldst thou retire apart
With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
And gather all to the very least
Of the fragments of life’s earlier feast,
Let fall through eagerness to find
The crowning dainties yet behind?
Ponder on the entire past
Laid together thus ant last,
When the twilight helps to fuse
The first fresh with the faded hues,
And the outline of the whole
As round eve’s shades their framework roll,
Grandly fronts for once thy soul.
As I said, when Robert Browning is on, he is ON. That’s just gorgeous writing, and a fairly good prediction of his own life with Elizabeth. He would outlive Elizabeth by 28 years, but he would never remarry or forget those magical 15 years together.
Near the end of the poem, returning to the voice of the servant, who is now quite old. His wife, Jacynth, who helped the Lady escape, now lies in the churchyard, as does the Duke. His children having left for their own adventures, he decides to devote the rest of his life trying to find the Lady. There is a good line there near the end.
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinfull,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:
When we mind labor, then only, we’re too old -
The poem closes with a nice dig at the Duke - and at his toxic future father-in-law:
- So, I shall find out some snug corner
Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,
Turn myself round and bid the world good-night;
And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet’s blowing
Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen_
To a world where will be no further throwing
Pearls before swine that can’t value them. Amen!
It’s an excellent poem, a well-told story. And so many witty puns and worldplays too. Notice rhyming “instinct” with “quince-tinct” - one of my favorites, but there are so many sprinkled throughout.
There are other poems in the collection, of course. I will mention “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” which is a deliciously sardonic poem. The old Bishop, lacking self-awareness or perspective, is on his death bed obsessing about the lavish tomb he expects his many illegitimate sons to build for him. And taking shots at his long-dead rival Gandolf, who lost out on one of the beautiful mistresses the Bishop has had. He is pathetic and absurd, still nattering on at his stolen weath, his years spent fucking beautiful women, and his triumph over his rivals. Yet soon he will be dead, and can’t take any of it with him. He kind of suspects his sons will just squander his wealth, but he puts that thought out of his mind in favor of being able to gloat at Gandalf for all eternity.
And, wait, “Gandalf”? Yep. So, I had to go look up that name and its history. Apparently, it comes from the Poetic Edda, the old Norse mythology. It is in a list of Dwarf names, apparently, and means “staff-elf.” Which, um, do Gimli and Legolas know about this? There is also a legendary king of some small kingdom in ancient Norway named Gandalf Alfgeirsson, who may have actually existed. Not sure why Browning uses the name in his poem, but he presumably borrowed it, like Tolkien did later, from the Edda.
I’ll also quote a pair of short poems that I liked.
Home-Thoughts, From the Sea
Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ‘mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;
“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?” - say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
Browning’s religious views were both complicated and also mysterious. He may have become an atheist after reading Shelley, but also later referred to himself as a Christian. He didn’t speak publicly about faith, although religion is present in many of his poems. The problem is, many of those religious poems come in his “Dramatic Monologues,” and thus reflect the views of his characters, not himself. Thus, unsurprisingly, these statements are all over the place from genuine belief to rank hypocrisy (see above about the Bishop.) In this poem immediately above, he intentionally ties a belief in God to the rise of Jupiter in the southeast.
I’ll end with this very Victorian musing on death and fame.
Earth’s Immortalities
Fame
See, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet’s wants the freshness of its prime;
Spite of the sexton’s browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;
How the minute grey lichens, plate o’er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!
Browning is buried in the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey - I paid my respects when I visited in 1999. For now, his immortality is assured, but already I wonder how many still read his poems? For all of us, any fame we have will eventually be buried in the sands of time. It’s a sobering thought, and a reminder that all of this is ultimately vanity.
Robert Browning’s best poems are wonderful, in my opinion, and his very best tend to be those in which he tells a story. One might consider him, therefore, in the tradition of Homer and other narrative poets of an earlier time. We don’t see much of that style anymore, which is a shame - there is a place in literature for stories told in poetry, not just prose.
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