The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2 - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Stephen Greenblatt (ч. 20)

335 To guard thee on the rough ways of the world.'

"Ay," said the King, "and hear ye such a cry? But when did Arthur chance upon thee first?"

"O King!" she cried, "and I will tell thee true: He found me first when yet a little maid:

340 Beaten I had been for a little fault Whereof I was not guilty; and out I ran And flung myself down on a bank of heath, And hated this fair world and all therein, And wept, and wish'd that I were dead; and he�

345 I know not whether of himself he came, Or brought by Merlin, who, they say, can walk Unseen at pleasure�he was at my side, And spake sweet words, and comforted my heart, And dried my tears, being a child with me.

350 And many a time he came, and evermore As I grew greater grew with me; and sad At times he seem'd, and sad with him was I, Stern too at times, and then I loved him not, But sweet again, and then I loved him well.

355 And now of late I see him less and less, But those first days had golden hours for me, For then I surely thought he would be king.

"But let me tell thee now another tale: For Bleys, our Merlin's master, as they say, 360 Died but of late, and sent his cry to me, To hear him speak before he left his life.

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Shrunk like a fairy changeling8 lay the mage;

And when I enter'd told me that himself

And Merlin ever served about the King,

Uther, before he died; and on the night

When Uther in Tintagil past away

Moaning and wailing for an heir, the two

Left the still King, and passing forth to breathe,

Then from the castle gateway by the chasm

Descending thro' the dismal night�a night

In which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost�

Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps

It seem'd in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof

A dragon wing'd, and all from stem to stern

Bright with a shining people on the decks,

And gone as soon as seen. And then the two

Dropt to the cove, and watch'd the great sea fall,

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,

Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:

And down the wave and in the flame was borne

A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,

Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried 'The King!

Here is an heir for Uther!' And the fringe

Of that great breaker, sweeping up the strand,

Lash'd at the wizard as he spake the word,

And all at once all round him rose in fire,

So that the child and he were clothed in fire.

And presently thereafter follow'd calm,

Free sky and stars: 'And this same child,' he said,

'Is he who reigns; nor could I part in peace

Till this were told.' And saying this the seer

Went thro' the strait0 and dreadful pass of death,

narrow

Not ever to be question'd any more

Save on the further side; but when I met

Merlin, and ask'd him if these things were truth�

The shining dragon and the naked child

Descending in the glory of the seas�

He laugh'd as is his wont," and answer'd me

custom

In riddling triplets of old time, and said: " 'Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!

A young man will be wiser by and by;

An old man's wit may wander ere he die.

Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!

And truth is this to me, and that to thee;

And truth or clothed or naked let it be.

Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows:

Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

8. Child secretly substituted for another.

THE COMING OF ARTHUR / 1 195

"So Merlin riddling anger'd me; but thou Fear not to give this King thine only child, Guinevere: so great bards of him will sing Hereafter; and dark sayings from of old

415 Ranging and ringing thro' the minds of men, And echo'd by old folk beside their fires For comfort after their wage-work is done, Speak of the King; and Merlin in our time Hath spoken also, not in jest, and sworn

420 Tho' men may wound him that he will not die, But pass, again to come; and then or now Utterly smite the heathen underfoot, Till these and all men hail him for their king."

She spake and King Leodogran rejoiced,

425 But musing "Shall I answer yea or nay?" Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw, Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew, Field after field, up to a height, the peak Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king,

430 Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope The sword rose, the hind� fell, the herd was driven, peasant Fire glimpsed;0 and all the land from roof and rick,9 glimmered In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind, Stream'd to the peak, and mingled with the haze

435 And made it thicker; while the phantom king Sent out at times a voice; and here or there Stood one who pointed toward the voice, the rest Slew on and burnt, crying, "No king of ours, No son of Uther, and no king of ours;"

440 Till with a wink his dream was changed, the haze Descended, and the solid earth became As nothing, but the King stood out in heaven, Crown'd. And Leodogran awoke, and sent Ulfius, and Brastias and Bedivere,

445 Back to the court of Arthur answering yea.

Then Arthur charged his warrior whom he loved And honour'd most, Sir Lancelot, to ride forth And bring the Queen;�and watch'd him from the gates: And Lancelot past away among the flowers,

450 (For then was latter April) and return'd Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere. To whom arrived, by Dubric the high saint, Chief of the church in Britain, and before The stateliest of her altar-shrines, the King

455 That morn was married, while in stainless white, The fair beginners of a nobler time, And glorying in their vows and him, his knights Stood round him, and rejoicing in his joy.

9. Stacks of grain.

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 460465Far shone the fields of May thro' open door, The sacred altar blossom'd white with May, The Sun of May descended on their King, They gazed on all earth's beauty in their Queen, Roll'd incense, and there past along the hymns A voice as of the waters, while the two Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love: 470475480And Arthur said, "Behold, thy doom� is mine. Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!" To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes, "King and my lord, I love thee to the death!" And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake, "Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee, And all this Order of thy Table Round Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King!" So Dubric said; but when they left the shrine Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood, In scornful stillness gazing as they past; Then while they paced a city all on fire With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew, And Arthur's knighthood sang before the King:� destiny "Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May, Blow trumpet, the long night hath roll'd away! Blow thro' the living world�'Let the King reign.' "Shall Rome or Heathen rule in Arthur's realm? 485 Flash brand and lance, fall battleaxe upon helm, Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign. "Strike for the King and five! his knights have heard. That God hath told the King a secret word. Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign. 490 "Blow trumpet! he will lift us from the dust. Blow trumpet! live the strength and die the lust! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. 495"Strike for the King and die! and if thou diest, The King is King, and ever wills the highest. Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. "Blow, for our Sun is mighty in his May! Blow, for our Sun is mightier day by day! Clang battleaxe, and clash brand! Let the King reign. 500"The King will follow Christ, and we the King In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing. Fall battleaxe, and flash brand! Let the King reign." So sang the knighthood, moving to their hall. There at the banquet those great Lords from Rome, The slowly-fading mistress of the world,

TH E PASSIN G O F ARTHU R / 120 1 505510 Strode in, and claim'd their tribute as of yore. But Arthur spake, "Behold, for these have sworn To wage my wars, and worship me their King; The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And we that fight for our fair father Christ, Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old To drive the heathen from your Roman wall, No tribute will we pay:" so those great lords Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome. 515And Arthur and his knighthood for a space Were all one will, and thro' that strength the King Drew in the petty princedoms under him, Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reign'd. 1869 1869 The Passing of Arthur1 5That story which the bold Sir Redivere,2 First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds. For on their march to westward, Bedivere, Who slowly paced among the slumbering host, Heard in his tent the moanings of the King: io1520"I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die. O me! for why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would, Till the High God behold it from beyond, And enter it, and make it beautiful? Or else as if the world were wholly fair, But that these eyes of men are dense and dim, And have not power to see it as it is: Perchance, because we see not to the close;� For I, being simple, thought to work His will,

1. On the composition of this final idyll and its his nephew, Modred, Arthur returns there to relation to Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur of 1842, see engage in his last battle. Upon landing at Dover, n. 1, p. 1127. The principal source is Malory's Gawain is slain. Morte Darthur 21.4�5. Preceding the action of this 2. A knight who has long been close to the king, idyll, Arthur has been in France with his nephew described in The Coming of Arthur, lines 173�74: Gawain, fighting against the forces of Lancelot. "Bedivere. the first of all his knights / Knighted by Learning at that time of the gathering of an army Arthur at his crowning." against him in England, under the leadership of

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

And have but stricken with the sword in vain; And all whereon I leaned in wife and friend

25 Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm Reels back into the beast, and is no more. My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death:3 Nay�God my Christ�I pass but shall not die."

Then, ere that last weird battle in the west,

30 There came on Arthur sleeping, Gawain killed In Lancelot's war, the ghost of Gawain blown Along a wandering wind, and past his ear Went shrilling. "Hollow, hollow all delight! Hail, King! tomorrow thou shalt pass away.

35 Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee. And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight." And fainter onward, like wild birds that change Their season in the night and wail their way

40 From cloud to cloud, down the long wind the dream Shrilled; but in going mingled with dim cries Far in the moonlit haze among the hills, As of some lonely city sacked by night, When all is lost, and wife and child with wail

45 Pass to new lords; and Arthur woke and called, "Who spake? A dream. O light upon the wind, Thine, Gawain, was the voice�are these dim cries Thine? or doth all that haunts the waste and wild Mourn, knowing it will go along with me?"

50 This heard the bold Sir Bedivere and spake: "O me, my King, let pass whatever will, Elves, and the harmless glamour of the field;4 But in their stead thy name and glory cling To all high places like a golden cloud

55 Forever: but as yet thou shalt not pass. Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him, but rise� I hear the steps of Modred in the west,

60 And with him many of thy people, and knights Once thine, whom thou hast loved, but grosser grown Than heathen, spitting at their vows and thee. Right well in heart they know thee for the King. Arise, go forth and conquer as of old."

65 Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Far other is this battle in the west Whereto we move, than when we strove in youth,

3. Cf. Jesus' cry in Matthew 27.46: "My God, my which cluster round the King's name." One legend God, why hast thou forsaken me?" told of the elves' bestowing gifts on Arthur as a 4. Tennyson said the reference is to "the legends child.

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR / 120 3

And brake the petty kings, and fought with Rome, Or thrust the heathen from the Roman wall,5 70 And shook him through the north. Ill doom0 is mine destiny To war against my people and my knights. The king who fights his people fights himself. And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke That strikes them dead is as my death to me. 75 Yet let us hence, and find or feel a way Through this blind haze, which ever since I saw One lying in the dust at Almesbury,6 Hath folded in the passes of the world." Then rose the King and moved his host by night, 80 And ever pushed Sir Modred, league by league, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse7� A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelled, 85 And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sand, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea. There the pursuer could pursue no more, And he that fled no further fly the King; 90 And there, that day when the great light of heaven Burned at his lowest in the rolling year, On the waste sand by the waste sea they closed. Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fight Like this last, dim, weird battle of the west. 95 A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea: Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold With formless fear; and even on Arthur fell Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought. IOO For friend and foe were shadows in the mist, And friend slew friend not knowing whom he slew;s And some had visions out of golden youth, And some beheld the faces of old ghosts Look in upon the battle; and in the mist 105 Was many a noble deed, many a base, And chance and craft and strength in single fights, And ever and anon with host to host Shocks, and the splintering spear, the hard mail hewn, Shield-breakings, and the clash of brands,0 the crash swords 110 Of battleaxes on shattered helms, and shrieks After the Christ, of those who falling down

5. Hadrian's Wall, built in northern Britain, by the 8. Cf. the description of a battle by the Greek 2nd-century Roman emperor Hadrian as a defense writer Thucydides (ca. 455-ca. 400 B.C.E.) in his against invaders from the north. History of the Peloponnesian War (7.44), in which 6. The convent to which Guinevere withdraws in the invaders become confused by darkness and the eleventh idyll; during the king's farewell visit slaughter many of their own men, and Matthew to her there, she lies in the dust at his feet. Arnold's 1851 reworking of this scene in "Dover 7. Legendary land, extending west from Cornwall, Beach," lines 35-37 (p. 1369). that sank into the sea.

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Looked up for heaven, and only saw the mist; And shouts of heathen and the traitor knights, Oaths, insult, filth, and monstrous blasphemies,

115 Sweat, writhings, anguish, laboring of the lungs In that close mist, and cryings for the light, Moans of the dying, and voices of the dead.

Last, as by some one deathbed after wail Of suffering, silence follows, or through death

120 Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore, Save for some whisper of the seething seas, A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew

125 The mist aside, and with that wind the tide Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field Of battle: but no man was moving there; Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave

BO Rrake in among dead faces, to and fro Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen, And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome, And rolling far along the gloomy shores

135 The voice of days of old and days to be.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Redivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King:

"Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world,

140 And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, And beats upon the faces of the dead, My dead, as though they had not died for me?� O Redivere, for on my heart hath fallen Confusion, till I know not what I am,

145 Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King. Behold, I seem but King among the dead."

Then spake the bold Sir Bedivere: "My King, King everywhere! and so the dead have kings, There also will I worship thee as King.

150 Yet still thy life is whole, and still I five Who love thee; but who hates thee, he that brought The heathen back among us, yonder stands, Modred, unharmed, the traitor of thine house."

Then spake the King: "My house hath been my doom.

155 But call not thou this traitor of my house Who hath but dwelled beneath one roof with me. My house are rather they who sware my vows, Yea, even while they brake them, owned0 me King. ackncnvledged And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR / 1205

160 When all the purport of my throne hath failed, That quick or dead thou holdest me for King. King am I, whatsoever be their cry; And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see Yet, ere I pass." And uttering this the King

165 Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow, Striking the last stroke with Excalibur, Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.

170 So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord, King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,

175 The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on a dark strait of barren land: On one side lay the Ocean, and on one

i8o Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of today unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep

185 They sleep�the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were.

190 I perish by this people which I made,� Though Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more;9 but, let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten through the helm That without help I cannot last til morn.

195 Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite,1 mystic, wonderful,

200 Holding the sword�and how I rowed across And took it, and have worn it, like a king; And, wheresoever I am sung or told In aftertime, this also shall be known: But now delay not: take Excalibur,

205 And fling him far into the middle mere:0 middle of the lake Watch what thou seest, and lightly0 bring me word." quickly

9. Cf. Malory, Morte Darthur 21.7: "Some men place. And men say that he will come again." yet say in many parts of England that King Arthur 1. A rich silk fabric, is not dead, but by the will of our Lord in another

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: "It is not meet," Sir King, to leave thee thus, fitting Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm� A little thing may harm a wounded man; Yet I thy hest� will all perform at full, command Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."

So saying, from the ruined shrine he stepped, And in the moon athwart" the place of tombs, across Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake.

There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft� twinkled with diamond sparks, hilt Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth�-work red gem Of subtlest jewelry. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled as he stood, This way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but at the last it seemed Better to leave Excalibur concealed There in the many-knotted waterflags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.0 shore So strode he back slow to the wounded King.

Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Hast thou performed my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag."

To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name. Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, Or voice, or else a motion of the mere. This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief� and dear, and do the thing beloved I bade thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."

Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR / 1207

How curiously and strangely chased,2 he smote 255 His palms together, and he cried aloud:

"And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.

260 What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself?

265 The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumors of a doubt? But were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings,

270 Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.'

275 So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honor and much fame were lost."

So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,3 And hid Excalibur the second time, 280 And so strode back slow to the wounded king.

Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily: "What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the water lapping on the crag, 285 And the long ripple washing in the reeds."

To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: "Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king,

290 Laid widowed of the power in his eye That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom should meet the offices of all, Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;

295 Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper, get thee hence:

2. Decorated. "Curiously": skillfully. 3. Vain and foolish fancies.

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, 300 I will arise and slay thee with my hands."

Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bullrush beds, and clutched the sword, And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand

305 Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round and whirled in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,4 Seen where the moving isles of winter shock5 By night, with noises of the Northern Sea.

310 So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipped the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the mere.

315 And lightly went the other to the King.

Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath: "Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?"

And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:

320 "Sir King, I closed mine eyelids, lest the gems Should blind my purpose, for I never saw, Nor shall see, here or elsewhere, till I die, Not though I live three lives of mortal men, So great a miracle as yonder hilt.

325 Then with both hands I flung him, wheeling him; But when I looked again, behold an arm, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, That caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the mere."

330 And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard: "My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die."

335 So saying, from the pavement he half rose, Slowly, with pain, reclining on his arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue eyes As in a picture. Him Sir Bedivere Remorsefully regarded through his tears,

340 And would have spoken, but he found not words; Then took with care, and kneeling on one knee, O'er both his shoulders drew the languid hands, And rising bore him through the place of tombs.

4. The northern lights. 5. Where the icebergs collide.

THE PASSING OF ARTHUR / 1209

But, as he walked, King Arthur panted hard,

345 Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sighed the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, "Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, and I shall die." But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge,

350 Clothed with his breath, and looking, as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills. He heard the deep behind him, and a cry Before. His own thought drove him like a goad. Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves

355 And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels� And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

360 And the long glories of the winter moon.

Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge, Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern, Beneath them; and descending they were ware� aware That all the decks were dense with stately forms,

365 Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream�by these Three Queens with crowns of gold: and from them rose A cry that shivered to the tingling stars, And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills

370 All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world.

Then murmured Arthur, "Place me in the barge." So to the barge they came. There those three Queens Put forth their hands, and took the King, and wept.

375 But she, that rose the tallest of them all And fairest, laid his head upon her lap, And loosed the shattered casque,0 and chafed his hands, helmet And called him by his name, complaining loud, And dropping bitter tears against a brow

380 Striped with dark blood: for all his face was white And colorless, and like the withered moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing east; And all his greaves and cuisses6 dashed with drops Of onset;7 and the light and lustrous curls�

385 That made his forehead like a rising sun High from the dais-throne�were parched with dust; Or, clotted into points and hanging loose, Mixed with the knightly growth that fringed his lips. So like a shattered column lay the King;

390 Not like that Arthur who, with lance in rest,

6. Armor to protect the front of the thighs. 7. Blood from battle. "Greaves": armor to protect the leg below the knee.

1 138 / ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

From spur to plume a star of tournament, Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged Before the eyes of ladies and of kings.

Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:

395 "Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight.

400 Such times have been not since the light8 that led The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh. But now the whole Round Table is dissolved Which was an image of the mighty world, And I, the last, go forth companionless,

405 And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfills himself in many ways,

410 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again,

415 Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain,

420 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way 425 With these thou seest-�if indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)� To the island-valley of Avilion;9 Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly: but it lies 430 Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound."

So said he, and the barge with oar and sail Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan 435 That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood

8. I.e., the star that guided the three kings 9. Or Avalon; in Celtic mythology and medieval ("Elders") to the infant Jesus at Bethlehem. See romance, the Vale of the Blessed where heroes Matthew 2.1-12. enjoyed life after death.

CROSSING THE BAR / 1211

With swarthy webs.� Long stood Sir Bedivere webbed feet Revolving many memories, till the hull Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,

440 And on the mere the wailing died away.

But when that moan had passed for evermore, The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn Amazed him, and he groaned, "The King is gone." And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,1

445 "From the great deep to the great deep he goes."

Whereat he slowly turned and slowly clomb The last hard footstep of that iron crag; Thence marked the black hull moving yet, and cried, "He passes to be King among the dead,

450 And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again; but�if he come no more� O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat, Who shrieked and wailed, the three whereat we gazed On that high day, when, clothed with living light,

455 They stood before his throne in silence, friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?"2

Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world, Like the last echo born of a great cry,

460 Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars.

Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb Even to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,

465 Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King, Down that long water opening on the deep Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go From less to less and vanish into light. And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

1833-69 1869

Crossing the Bar1

Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,2 When I put out to sea,

1. In The Coming of Arthur, Merlin speaks a mys-1. Although not the last poem written by Tennyterious prophecy, in verse, concerning Arthur's son, "Crossing the Bar" appears, at his request, as birth; see lines 402-10 (p. 1198). the final poem in all collections of his work. 2. In The Coming of Arthur, Arthur's half-sister 2. Mournful sound of the ocean beating on a sand Bellicent describes his coronation. See lines 275� bar at the mouth of a harbor. 78 (p. 1196).

121 2 / EDWARD FITZGERALD

5 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. 10Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; I? For though from out our bourne0 of Time and PlaceThe flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. boundary

1889 1889

EDWARD FITZGERALD 1809-1883

Omar Khayyam was a twelfth-century mathematician, astronomer, and teacher from Nishapur in Persia. He was also the author of numerous rhymed quatrains, a verse form called in Persian rubai. Omar's four-line epigrams were subsequently brought together in collections called Rubaiydt and recorded in various manuscripts.

More than seven hundred years later, in 1857, an Omar manuscript came into the hands of Edward FitzGerald, who made from it one of the most popular poems of the Victorian period. FitzGerald was a scholar of comfortable means who lived in the country reading the classics and cultivating his garden. He also cultivated his friendships with writers such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Thomas Carlyle, to whom he wrote charming letters. His translations from Greek and Latin were largely ignored and so too, at first, was his translation of Omar's Persian verses, which he published anonymously. In 1859 only two reviewers noticed the appearance of the Rubaiydt of Omar Khayyam, and the book was soon remaindered. Two years later the volume was discovered by D. G. Bossetti; enthusiasm for it gradually spread, until edition after edition was called for. FitzGerald subjected the poem to numerous revisions over the years; the first edition is printed here.

Experts have argued at great length whether FitzGerald's adaptation of Omar's poem is a faithful translation, but the question seemed unimportant to most of its original readers. Writing in 1869, the American academic Charles Eliot Norton felt that the poem "reads like the latest and freshest expression of the perplexity and of the doubt of the generation to which we ourselves belong." These nostalgic, yearning lyrics may well have spoken to the Victorians' sense of their own dislocation and paralysis, but the impressions of another place and time summoned up by the languid beauty of the verse were also captivating precisely because of their foreign aura. Certainly the highly polished stanzas of FitzGerald's Rubaiydt both contribute to and reflect a nineteenth-century fascination with the imagined exoticism of distant Oriental cultures.

RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM / 121 3

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

5 Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry, "Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup "Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before io The Tavern shouted�"Open then the Door! "You know how little while we have to stay, "And, once departed, may return no more."

Now the New Year1 reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, 15 Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.2

Iram3 indeed is gone with all its Rose, And Jamshyad's4 Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields, 20 And still a Garden by the Water blows.0 blooms

And David's Lips are lock't; but in divine High piping Pehlevi,5 with "Wine! Wine! Wine! "Red Wine!"�the Nightingale cries to the Rose That yellow Cheek of her's to incarnadine.0 turn red

25 Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly�and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

And look�a thousand Blossoms with the Day 30 Woke�and a thousand scatter'd into Clay: And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad6 away.

1. In Persia the beginning of spring. 3. Identified by FitzGerald as a royal garden "now 2. Breathes. Moses, Jesus: plants named in honor sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia." of prophets who came before Mohammed. The 4. A legendary king. Persians believed that Jesus' healing power was in 5. The classical language of Persia. his breath. 6. Founder of a line of Persian kings.

121 4 / EDWARD FITZGERALD

But come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot Of Kaikobad and Kaikhosru7 forgot! 35

Let Rustum8 lay about him as he will, Or Hatim Tai9 cry Supper�heed them not.

10 With me along some Strip of Herbage strown That just divides the desert from the sown, Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known, 40 And pity Sultan Mahmud1 on his Throne.

11 Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse�and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness� And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

12 45 "How sweet is mortal Sovranty!"�think some: Others�"How blest the Paradise to come!" Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest; Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!

13 Look to the Rose that blows about us�"Lo, 50 Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow: "At once the silken Tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."

14 The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes�or it prospers; and anon,

55 Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two�is gone.

15 And those who husbanded the Golden Grain, And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd 60 As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai0 inn Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.

17 65 They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep; And Bahram,2 that great Hunter�the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

7. A king. 1. A sultan who conquered India. 8. A warrior. 2. A king who was lost while hunting a wild ass. 9. A generous host.

RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM / 121 5

I sometimes think that never blows so red 70 The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth3 the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

�9 And this delightful Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean� 75 Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears� To-morrow?�Why, To-morrow I may be so Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

21 Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,

Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to Rest.

85 And we, that now make merry in the Room They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom, Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth Descend, ourselves to make a Couch�for whom?

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 90 Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and�sans End!

Alike for those who for TO-DA Y prepare, And those that after a TO-MORROW stare, 95 A Muezzin4 from the Tower of Darkness cries "Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!"

25 Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn 100 Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;

3. In classical myth the hyacinth was associated were marked AI, the god's sorrowful cry. with grief; the plant was supposed to have sprung 4. One who calls the hour of prayer from the tower from the blood of Hyacinthus, a beautiful youth of a mosque. loved and accidentally killed by Apollo. Its petals

121 6 / EDWARD FITZGERALD

One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

27 105 Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow, 110 And with my own hand labour'd it to grow: And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd� "I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

Into this Universe, and why not knowing, Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: 115 And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

3�

What, without asking, hither hurried whence? And, without asking, whither hurried hence! Another and another Cup to drown 120 The Memory of this Impertinence!

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn5 sate, And many Knots unravel'd by the Road; Rut not the Knot of Human Death and Fate.

32 125 There was a Door to which I found no Key: There was a Veil past which I could not see: Some little Talk awhile of M E and THEE . There seemed�and then no more of THE E and ME .

Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried, 130 Asking, "What Lamp had Destiny to guide "Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?" And�"A blind Understanding!" Heav'n replied.

Then to this earthen Rowl did I adjourn My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn: 135 And Lip to Lip it murmur'd�"While you live "Drink!�for once dead you never shall return."

I think the Vessel, that with fugitive Articulation answer'd, once did live,

5. The seat of knowledge. According to a note by FitzGerald, Saturn was lord of the seventh heaven.

RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM / 121 7

And merry-make; and the cold Lip I kiss'd 140 How many Kisses might it take�and give!

36 For in the Market-place, one Dusk of Day, I watch'd the Potter thumping his wet Clay:

And with its all obliterated Tongue It murmur'd�"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

145 Ah, fill the Cup:�what boots it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our Feet: Unborn TO-MORROW, and dead YESTERDAY, Why fret about them if TO-DA Y be sweet!

38, One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, 150 One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste� The Stars are setting and the Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing�Oh, make haste!

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute? 155 Better be merry with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

You know, my Friends, how long since in my House For a new Marriage I did make Carouse: Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, 160 And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

41 For "Is" and "IS-NOT" though with Rule and Line, And "UP-AND-DOWN" without, I could define,

I yet in all I only cared to know, Was never deep in anything but�Wine.

165 And lately, by the Tavern Door agape, Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and He bid me taste of it; and 'twas�the Grape!

The Grape that can with Logic absolute 170 The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects6 confute: The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.

The mighty Mahmiid, the victorious Lord, That all the misbelieving and black Horde7

6. The 72 Sects into which Islamism so soon split 7. This alludes to Mahmud's Conquest of India [FitzGerald's note], and its swarthy Idolaters [FitzGerald's note].

121 8 / EDWARD FITZGERALD

175

Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul Scatters and slays with his enchanted Sword.

45 But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:

And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht, 180 Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.

46 For in and out, above, about, below, Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,8

Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun, Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

47 185 And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, End in the Nothing all Things end in�Yes� Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what Thou shalt be�Nothing�Thou shalt not be less.

48 While the Rose blows along the River Brink, 190 With old Khayyam the Ruby Vintage drink: And when the Angel with his darker Draught Draws up to Thee�take that, and do not shrink.

49 'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

195 Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.

5� The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Right or Left, as strikes the Player0 goes; polo player And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field, 200 He knows about it all�HE knows�HE knows!

51 The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

205 And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help�for It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

53 With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man's knead, 210 And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:

8. A type of magic lantern, in which a cylindrical drum, its interior painted with various figures, revolves around a lighted candle.

RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM / 121 9

Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

I tell Thee this�When, starting from the Goal, Over the shoulders of the flaming Foal 215

Of Heav'n Parwfn and Mushtara they flung, In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul9

The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about If clings my Being�let the Sufi� flout; mystic Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key, 220 That shall unlock the Door he howls without.

56 And this I know: whether the one True Light, Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,

One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright.

225 Oh, Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin� trap Beset the Road I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

58 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 230 And who with Eden didst devise the Snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give�and take!

Kuza-Ndtna1

59 Listen again. One Evening at the Close Of Ramazan,2 ere the better Moon arose, 235 In that old Potter's Shop I stood alone With the clay Population round in Rows.

And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot Some could articulate, while others not: And suddenly one more impatient cried� 240 "Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"

Then said another�"Surely not in vain "My Substance from the common Earth was ta'en,

9. The speaker asserts that his fate was predes-tion in relation to the constellation Fquuleus ("the tined by the configuration of the stars and planets Foal," or colt). at the moment of his birth, when he "start[ed] from 1. The Book of Pots (Persian). the Goal." His horoscope involved the Pleiades 2. The month of fasting (Ramadan), during which ("Parwin") and the planet Jupiter ("Mushtari"), no food is eaten from sunrise to sunset. which were "flung" by the gods into a special posi

122 0 / EDWARD FITZGERALD

"That He who subtly wrought me into Shape "Should stamp me back to common Earth again."

245 Another said�"Why, ne'er a peevish Boy, "Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy; "Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love "And Fansy, in an after Rage destroy!"

None answer'd this; but after Silence spake 2so A Vessel of a more ungainly Make: "They sneer at me for leaning all awry; "What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

Said one�"Folks of a surly Tapster tell, "And daub his Visage with the Smoke of Hell; 255 "They talk of some strict Testing of us�Pish! "He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."

65 Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh, "My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:

"Rut, fill me with the old familiar Juice, 260 "Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!"

66 So while the Vessels one by one were speaking, One spied the little Crescent3 all were seeking: And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother! "Hark to the Porter's Shoulder-knot a-creaking!"

265 Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash my Body whence the Life has died, And in the Windingsheet of Vine-leaf wrapt, So bury me by some sweet Garden-side.

68 That ev'n my buried Ashes such a Snare 270 Of Perfume shall fling up into the Air, As not a True Believer passing by But shall be overtaken unaware.

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong: 275

Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a Song.

3. At the Close of the Fasting Month, Ramazan . . . , the first Glimpse of the New Moon .. . is looked for with the utmost Anxiety, and hailed with all Acclamation [FitzGerald's note].

ELIZABETH GASKELL / 1221

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before I swore�but was I sober when I swore? And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand 280 My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.

71 And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel, And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour�well,

I often wonder what the Vintners buy One half so precious as the Goods they sell.

72. 285 Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the Branches sang, Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire 290 To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits�and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane, The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again: 295 How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this same Garden after me�in vain!

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass, And in thy joyous Errand reach the Spot 300 Where I made one�turn down an empty Glass!

TAMAM SHUD 4

1857 1859

4. It is ended (Persian). ELIZABETH GASKELL 1810-1865

It is ironic that the writer whom contemporaries and future generations knew as "Mrs. Gaskell" once instructed her sister-in-law that it was "a silly piece of bride-like affectation not to sign yourself by your proper name." Despite the wifely identity that the name Mrs. Gaskell connotes, Elizabeth Gaskell, as she always signed herself, wrote fiction on contemporary social topics that stimulated considerable controversy. Her

122 2 / ELIZABETH GASKELL

first novel, Mary Barton (1848), presents a sympathetic picture of the hardships and the grievances of the working class. Another early novel, Ruth (1853), portrays the seduction and rehabilitation of an unmarried mother.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born in 1810 in Chelsea, on the outskirts of London, to a family that followed Unitarianism, a Christian movement that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and advocated religious tolerance. Her mother died when Gaskell was one, and the girl was sent to rural Knutsford, in Cheshire, to be raised by her aunt. At the age of twenty-one, she met and married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister whose chapel was in the industrial city of Manchester. For the first ten years of her marriage, she led the life of a minister's wife, bearing five children, keeping a house, and helping her husband serve his congregation. When her fourth child and only son, William, died at the age of one year, Gaskell became depressed. Her husband encouraged her to write as a way of allaying her grief, and so she produced Mary Barton, subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life. In the preface to the novel, she wrote that she was inspired by thinking "how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the careworn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want." Observing the mutual distrust of the rich and the poor, and their accompanying resentments, Gaskell hoped that her novel would help create within her middle- class readership understanding and sympathy for the working classes.

Anonymously published, the novel was widely reviewed and discussed. Gaskell was soon identified as the author; she subsequently developed a wide acquaintance in literary circles. She wrote five more novels and about thirty short stories, many of which were published in Charles Dickens's journal Household Words and its successor, AI! the Year Round. The contrasting experiences Gaskell's life had given her of two ways of life, of rural Knutsford and industrial Manchester, defined the poles of her fiction. Her second novel, Cranford (1853), presents a delicate picture of the small events of country village life, a subject to which she returns with greater range and psychological depth in her last novel, Wives and Daughters (1866). In North and South (1855), Gaskell brings together the two worlds of her fiction in the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman from a village in the south of England who moves to a factory town in the north.

One of the writers Gaskell's literary fame led her to know was Charlotte Bronte, with whom she became friends. When Bronte died in 1855, Gaskell was approached by Patrick Bronte to write the story of his daughter's life. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) is a masterpiece of English biography and one of her finest portrayals of character. Her focus in the Life on the relationship between Bronte's identity as a writer and her role as daughter, sister, and wife reflects the balance Gaskell herself sought between the stories she wove and the people she cared for. Referred to by Dickens as "my dear Scheherazade," Gaskell wrote not just to entertain but also to critique society and to promote social reform.

The Old Nurse's Story1

You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye,

1. Originally published anonymously in the 1 852 Christmas number of Dickens's journal Household Words; it was later republished in Gaskell's Lizzie Leigh, and Other Tales (1855).

THE OLD NURSE'S STORY / 1223

when the mistress called me up, and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle, and a steady honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor. I thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming baby, and what I should have to do with it. However, I see you don't care so much for this part of my story, as for what you think is to come, so I'll tell you at once I was engaged,2 and settled at the parsonage before Miss Rosamond (that was the baby, who is now your mother) was born. To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when she came, for she was never out of her mother's arms, and slept by her all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted her to me. There never was such a baby before or since, though you've all of you been fine enough in your turns; but for sweet winning ways, you've none of you come up to your mother. She took after her mother, who was a real lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a granddaughter of Lord Furnivall's in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor sister, and had been brought up in my lord's family till she had married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in Carlisle�but a clever fine gentleman as ever was�and one who was a right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells. When your mother, little Miss Rosamond, was about four or five years old, both her parents died in a fortnight�one after the other. Ah! that was a sad time. My pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby, when my master came home from one of his long rides, wet and tired, and took the fever he died of; and then she never held up her head again, but just lived to see her dead baby, and have it laid on her breast before she sighed away her life. My mistress had asked me, on her death-bed, never to leave Miss Rosamond; but if she had never spoken a word, I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world.

The next thing, and before we had well stilled our sobs, the executors and guardians came to settle the affairs. They were my poor young mistress's own cousin, Lord Furnivall, and Mr. Esthwaite, my master's brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so well to do then, as he was afterwards, and with a large family rising about him. Well! I don't know if it were their settling, or because of a letter my mistress wrote on her death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow it was settled that Miss Rosamond and me were to go to Furnivall Manor House, in Northumberland, and my lord spoke as if it had been her mother's wish that she should live with his family, and as if he had no objections, for that one or two more or less could make no difference in so grand a household. So, though that was not the way in which I should have wished the coming of my bright and pretty pet to have been looked at�who was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never so grand�I was well pleased that all the folks in the Dale should stare and admire, when they heard I was going to be young lady's maid at my Lord Furnivall's at Furnivall Manor.

But I made a mistake in thinking we were to go and live where my lord did. It turned out that the family had left Furnivall Manor House fifty years or more. I could not hear that my poor young mistress had ever been there, though she had been brought up in the family; and I was sorry for that, for I should have liked Miss Rosamond's youth to have passed where her mother's had been.

2. Hired.

122 4 / ELIZABETH GASKELL

My lord's gentleman, from whom 1 asked as many questions as I durst, said that the Manor House was at the foot of the Cumberland Fells, and a very grand place; that an old Miss Furnivall, a great-aunt of my lord's, lived there, with only a few servants; but that it was a very healthy place, and my lord had thought that it would suit Miss Rosamond very well for a few years, and that her being there might perhaps amuse his old aunt.

I was bidden by my lord to have Miss Rosamond's things ready by a certain day. He was a stern, proud man, as they say all the Lord Furnivalls were; and he never spoke a word more than was necessary. Folk did say he had loved my young mistress; but that, because she knew that his father would object, she would never listen to him, and married Mr. Esthwaite; but I don't know. He never married at any rate. But he never took much notice of Miss Rosamond; which I thought he might have done if he had cared for her dead mother. He sent his gentleman with us to the Manor House, telling him to join him at Newcastle that same evening; so there was no great length of time for him to make us known to all the strangers before he, too, shook us off; and we were left, two lonely young things (I was not eighteen), in the great old Manor House. It seems like yesterday that we drove there. We had left our own dear parsonage very early, and we had both cried as if our hearts would break, though we were travelling in my lord's carriage, which I had thought so much of once. And now it was long past noon on a September day, and we stopped to change horses for the last time at a little smoky town, all full of colliers and miners. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep, but Mr. Henry told me to waken her, that she might see the park and the Manor House as we drove up. I thought it rather a pity; but I did what he bade me, for fear he should complain of me to my lord. We had left all signs of a town or even a village, and were then inside the gates of a large wild park�not like the parks here in the south, but with rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old oaks, all white and peeled with age.

The road went up about two miles, and then we saw a great and stately house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place;�to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriage-way in order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed front; at both sides of which a wing projected, which were each the ends of other side fronts; for the house, although it was so desolate, was even grander than I expected. Behind it rose the Fells, which seemed unenclosed and bare enough; and on the left hand of the house as you stood facing it, was a little old-fashioned flower-garden, as I found out afterwards. A door opened out upon it from the west front; it had been scooped out of the thick dark wood for some old Lady Furnivall; but the branches of the great forest trees had grown and overshadowed it again, and there were very few flowers that would live there at that time.

When we drove up to the great front entrance, and went into the hall I thought we should be lost�it was so large, and vast, and grand. There was a chandelier all of bronze, hung down from the middle of the ceiling; and 1 had never seen one before, and looked at it all in amaze. Then, at one end of the hall, was a great fire-place, as large as the sides of the houses in my country,

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with massy andirons and dogs3 to hold the wood; and by it were heavy old- fashioned sofas. At the opposite end of the hall, to the left as you went in� on the western side�was an organ built into the wall, and so large that it filled up the best part of that end. Beyond it, on the same side, was a door; and opposite, on each side of the fire-place, were also doors leading to the east front; but those I never went through as long as I stayed in the house, so I can't tell you what lay beyond.

The afternoon was closing in, and the hall, which had no fire lighted in it, looked dark and gloomy; but we did not stay there a moment. The old servant who had opened the door for us bowed to Mr. Henry, and took us in through the door at the further side of the great organ, and led us through several smaller halls and passages into the west drawing-room, where he said that Miss Furnivall was sitting. Poor little Miss Rosamond held very tight to me, as if she were scared and lost in that great place, and, as for myself, I was not much better. The west drawing-room was very cheerful-looking, with a warm fire in it, and plenty of good comfortable furniture about. Miss Furnivall was an old lady not far from eighty, I should think, but I do not know. She was thin and tall, and had a face as full of fine wrinkles as if they had been drawn all over it with a needle's point. Her eyes were very watchful, to make up, I suppose, for her being so deaf as to be obliged to use a trumpet.4 Sitting with her, working at the same great piece of tapestry, was Mrs. Stark, her maid and companion, and almost as old as she was. She had lived with Miss Furnivall ever since they both were young, and now she seemed more like a friend than a servant; she looked so cold and grey, and stony, as if she had never loved or cared for any one; and I don't suppose she did care for any one, except her mistress; and, owing to the great deafness of the latter, Mrs. Stark treated her very much as if she were a child. Mr. Henry gave some message from my lord, and then he bowed good-bye to us all,�taking no notice of my sweet little Miss Rosamond's out-stretched hand�and left us standing there, being looked at by the two old ladies through their spectacles.

I was right glad when they rung for the old footman who had shown us in at first, and told him to take us to our rooms. So we went out of that great drawing-room, and into another sitting-room, and out of that, and then up a great flight of stairs, and along a broad gallery�which was something like a library, having books all down one side, and windows and writing-tables all down the other�till we came to our rooms, which I was not sorry to hear were just over the kitchens; for I began to think I should be lost in that wilderness of a house. There was an old nursery, that had been used for all the little lords and ladies long ago, with a pleasant fire burning in the grate, and the kettle boiling on the hob, and tea things spread out on the table; and out of that room was the night-nursery, with a little crib for Miss Rosamond close to my bed. And old James called up Dorothy, his wife, to bid us welcome; and both he and she were so hospitable and kind, that by-and-by Miss Rosamond and me felt quite at home; and by the time tea was over, she was sitting on Dorothy's knee, and chattering away as fast as her little tongue could go. I soon found out that Dorothy was from Westmoreland, and that bound her and me together, as it were; and I would never wish to meet with kinder people

3. Large decorative fireplace supports. 4. A horn-shaped device used by the hard of hearing to amplify sound.

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than were old James and his wife. James had lived pretty nearly all his life in my lord's family, and thought there was no one so grand as they. He even looked down a little on his wife; because, till he had married her, she had never lived in any but a farmer's household. But he was very fond of her, as well he might be. They had one servant under them, to do all the rough work. Agnes they called her; and she and me, and James and Dorothy, with Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark, made up the family; always remembering my sweet little Miss Rosamond! I used to wonder what they had done before she came, they thought so much of her now. Kitchen and drawing-room, it was all the same. The hard, sad Miss Furnivall, and the cold Mrs. Stark, looked pleased when she came fluttering in like a bird, playing and pranking hither and thither, with a continual murmur, and pretty prattle of gladness. I am sure, they were sorry many a time when she flitted away into the kitchen, though they were too proud to ask her to stay with them, and were a little surprised at her taste; though, to be sure, as Mrs. Stark said, it was not to be wondered at, remembering what stock her father had come of. The great, old rambling house, was a famous5 place for little Miss Rosamond. She made expeditions all over it, with me at her heels; all, except the east wing, which was never opened, and whither we never thought of going. But in the western and northern part was many a pleasant room; full of things that were curiosities to us, though they might not have been to people who had seen more. The windows were darkened by the sweeping boughs of the trees, and the ivy which had overgrown them: but, in the green gloom, we could manage to see old China jars and carved ivory boxes, and great heavy books, and, above all, the old

pictures!

Once, I remember, my darling would have Dorothy go with us to tell us who they all were; for they were all portraits of some of my lord's family, though Dorothy could not tell us the names of every one. We had gone through most of the rooms, when we came to the old state drawing-room over the hall, and there was a picture of Miss Furnivall; or, as she was called in those days, Miss Grace, for she was the younger sister. Such a beauty she must have been! but with such a set, proud look, and such scorn looking out of her handsome eyes, with her eyebrows just a httle raised, as if she wondered how any one could have the impertinence to look at her; and her lip curled at us, as we stood there gazing. She had a dress on, the like of which I had never seen before, but it was all the fashion when she was young; a hat of some soft white stuff like beaver, pulled a little over her brows, and a beautiful plume of feathers sweeping round it on one side; and her gown of blue satin was open in front to a quilted white stomacher.6

"Well, to be sure!" said I, when I had gazed my fill. "Flesh is grass,7 they do say; but who would have thought that Miss Furnivall had been such an out- and-out beauty, to see her now?"

"Yes," said Dorothy. "Folks change sadly. But if what my master's father

used to say was true, Miss Furnivall, the elder sister, was handsomer than

Miss Grace. Her picture is here somewhere; but, if I show it you, you must

never let on, even to James, that you have seen it. Can the little lady hold her

tongue, think you?" asked she.

I was not so sure, for she was such a little sweet, bold, open-spoken child,

5. Exciting, wonderful. 7. Cf. 1 Peter 1.24 ("For all flesh is as grass, and 6. Ornamental covering for the front of the body. all the glory of men as the flower of grass. The grass "Beaver": felted wool. withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away").

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so I set her to hide herself; and then I helped Dorothy to turn a great picture, that leaned with its face towards the wall, and was not hung up as the others were. To be sure, it beat Miss Grace for beauty; and, I think, for scornful pride, too, though in that matter it might be hard to choose. I could have looked at it an hour, but Dorothy seemed half frightened of having shown it to me, and hurried it back again, and bade me run and find Miss Rosamond, for that there were some ugly places about the house, where she should like ill for the child to go. I was a brave, high-spirited girl, and thought little of what the old woman said, for I liked hide-and-seek as well as any child in the parish; so off I ran to find my little one.

As winter drew on, and the days grew shorter, I was sometimes almost certain that I heard a noise as if some one was playing on the great organ in the hall. I did not hear it every evening; but, certainly, I did very often; usually when I was sitting with Miss Rosamond, after I had put her to bed, and keeping quite still and silent in the bedroom. Then I used to hear it booming and swelling away in the distance. The first night, when I went down to my supper, I asked Dorothy who had been playing music, and James said very shortly that I was a gowk to take the wind soughing8 among the trees for music; but I saw Dorothy look at him very fearfully, and Bessy, the kitchen-maid, said something beneath her breath, and went quite white. I saw they did not like my question, so I held my peace till I was with Dorothy alone, when I knew I could get a good deal out of her. So, the next day, I watched my time, and I coaxed and asked her who it was that played the organ; for I knew that it was the organ and not the wind well enough, for all I had kept silence before James. But Dorothy had had her lesson, I'll warrant, and never a word could I get from her. So then I tried Bessy, though I had always held my head rather above her, as I was evened9 to James and Dorothy, and she was little better than their servant. So she said I must never, never tell; and, if 1 ever told, I was never to say she had told me; but it was a very strange noise, and she had heard it many a time, but most of all on winter nights, and before storms; and folks did say, it was the old lord playing on the great organ in the hall, just as he used to do when he was alive; but who the old lord was, or why he played, and why he played on stormy winter evenings in particular, she either could not or would not tell me. Well! I told you I had a brave heart; and I thought it was rather pleasant to have that grand music rolling about the house, let who would be the player; for now it rose above the great gusts of wind, and wailed and triumphed just like a living creature, and then it fell to a softness most complete; only it was always music and tunes, so it was nonsense to call it the wind. I thought, at first, it might be Miss Furnivall who played, unknown to Bessy; but, one day when I was in the hall by myself, I opened the organ and peeped all about it, and around it, as I had done to the organ in Crosthwaite Church once before, and I saw it was all broken and destroyed inside, though it looked so brave1 and fine; and then, though it was noon-day, my flesh began to creep a little, and I shut it up, and ran away pretty quickly to my own bright nursery; and I did not like hearing the music for some time after that, any more than James and Dorothy did. All this time Miss Rosamond was making herself more and more beloved. The old ladies liked her to dine with them at their early dinner; James stood behind Miss Furnivall's chair,

8. Moaning. "Shortly": curtly. "Gowk": fool. 1. Excellent. 9. Of equal status.

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and I behind Miss Rosamond's, all in state; and, after dinner, she would play about in a corner of the great drawing-room, as still as any mouse, while Miss Furnivall slept, and I had my dinner in the kitchen. But she was glad enough to come to me in the nursery afterwards; for, as she said, Miss Furnivall was so sad, and Mrs. Stark so dull; but she and I were merry enough; and, by-andby, I got not to care for that weird rolling music, which did one no harm, if we did not know where it came from.

That winter was very cold. In the middle of October the frosts began, and lasted many, many weeks. I remember, one day at dinner, Miss Furnivall lifted up her sad, heavy eyes, and said to Mrs. Stark, "I am afraid we shall have a terrible winter," in a strange kind of meaning way. But Mrs. Stark pretended not to hear, and talked very loud of something else. My little lady and I did not care for the frost;�not we! As long as it was dry we climbed up the steep brows, behind the house, and went up on the Fells, which were bleak and bare enough, and there we ran races in the fresh, sharp air; and once we came down by a new path that took us past the two old gnarled holly-trees, which grew about half-way down by the east side of the house. But the days grew shorter and shorter; and the old lord, if it was he, played away more and more stormily and sadly on the great organ. One Sunday afternoon,�it must have been towards the end of November�I asked Dorothy to take charge of little Missey when she came out of the drawing-room, after Miss Furnivall had had her nap; for it was too cold to take her with me to church, and yet I wanted to go. And Dorothy was glad enough to promise, and was so fond of the child that all seemed well; and Bessy and I set off very briskly, though the sky hung heavy and black over the white earth, as if the night had never fully gone away; and the air, though still, was very biting and keen.

"We shall have a fall of snow," said Bessy to me. And sure enough, even while we were in church, it came down thick, in great large flakes, so thick it almost darkened the windows. It had stopped snowing before we came out, but it lay soft, thick and deep beneath our feet, as we tramped home. Before we got to the hall the moon rose, and I think it was lighter then,�what with the moon, and what with the white dazzling snow�than it had been when we went to church, between two and three o'clock. I have not told you that Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark never went to church: they used to read the prayers together, in their quiet gloomy way; they seemed to feel the Sunday very long without their tapestry-work to be busy at. So when I went to Dorothy in the kitchen, to fetch Miss Rosamond and take her up-stairs with me, I did not much wonder when the old woman told me that the ladies had kept the child with them, and that she had never come to the kitchen, as I had bidden her, when she was tired of behaving pretty in the drawing-room. So I took off my things and went to find her, and bring her to her supper in the nursery. But when I went into the best drawing-room, there sat the two old ladies, very still and quiet, dropping out a word now and then, but looking as if nothing so bright and merry as Miss Rosamond had ever been near them. Still I thought she might be hiding from me; it was one of her pretty ways; and that she had persuaded them to look as if they knew nothing about her; so I went softly peeping under this sofa, and behind that chair, making believe I was sadly frightened at not finding her.

"What's the matter, Hester?" said Mrs. Stark sharply. I don't know if Miss

Furnivall had seen me, for, as I told you, she was very deaf, and she sat quite

still, idly staring into the fire, with her hopeless face. "I'm only looking for my

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little Rosy-Posy," replied I, still thinking that the child was there, and near me, though I could not see her.

"Miss Rosamond is not here," said Mrs. Stark. "She went away more than an hour ago to find Dorothy." And she too turned and went on looking into the fire.

My heart sank at this, and I began to wish I had never left my darling. I went back to Dorothy and told her. James was gone out for the day, but she and me and Bessy took lights, and went up into the nursery first and then we roamed over the great large house, calling and entreating Miss Rosamond to come out of her hiding place, and not frighten us to death in that way. But there was no answer; no sound.

"Oh!" said I at last, "Can she have got into the east wing and hidden there?"

But Dorothy said it was not possible, for that she herself had never been in there; that the doors were always locked, and my lord's steward had the keys, she believed; at any rate, neither she nor James had ever seen them: so, I said I would go back and see if, after all, she was not hidden in the drawing-room, unknown to the old ladies; and if I found her there, I said, I would whip her well for the fright she had given me; but I never meant to do it. Well, I went back to the west drawing-room, and I told Mrs. Stark we could not find her anywhere, and asked for leave to look all about the furniture there, for I thought now, that she might have fallen asleep in some warm hidden corner; but no! we looked, Miss Furnivall got up and looked, trembling all over, and she was no where there; then we set off again, every one in the house, and looked in all the places we had searched before, but we could not find her. Miss Furnivall shivered and shook so much, that Mrs. Stark took her back into the warm drawing-room; but not before they had made me promise to bring her to them when she was found. Well-a-day! I began to think she never would be found, when I bethought me to look out into the great front court, all covered with snow. I was up-stairs when I looked out; but, it was such clear moonlight, I could see quite plain two little footprints, which might be traced from the hall door, and round the corner of the east wing. I don't know how I got down, but I tugged open the great, stiff hall door; and, throwing the skirt of my gown over my head for a cloak, I ran out. I turned the east corner, and there a black shadow fell on the snow; but when I came again into the moonlight, there were the little footmarks going up�up to the Fells. It was bitter cold; so cold that the air almost took the skin off my face as I ran, but I ran on, crying to think how my poor little darling must be perished2 and frightened. I was within sight of the holly-trees, when I saw a shepherd coming down the hill, bearing something in his arms wrapped in his maud.3 He shouted to me, and asked me if I had lost a bairn;4 and, when I could not speak for crying, he bore towards me, and I saw my wee bairnie lying still, and white, and stiff, in his arms, as if she had been dead. He told me he had been up the Fells to gather in his sheep, before the deep cold of night came on, and that under the holly-trees (black marks on the hill-side, where no other bush was for miles around) he had found my little lady�my lamb�my queen�my darling�stiff and cold, in the terrible sleep which is frost-begotten. Oh! the joy, and the tears of having her in my arms once again! for I would not let him carry her; but took her, maud and all, into my own arms, and held her near my own

2. Extremely cold. region. 3. Shawl of gray plaid used by shepherds in the 4. Child.

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warm neck and heart, and felt the life stealing slowly back again into her little gentle limbs. But she was still insensible when we reached the hall, and I had no breath for speech. We went in by the kitchen door.

"Bring the warming-pan," said I; and I carried her up-stairs and began undressing her by the nursery fire, which Bessy had kept up. I called my little lammie all the sweet and playful names I could think of,�even while my eyes were blinded by my tears; and at last, oh! at length she opened her large blue eyes. Then I put her into her warm bed, and sent Dorothy down to tell Miss Furnivall that all was well; and I made up my mind to sit by my darling's bedside the live-long night. She fell away into a soft sleep as soon as her pretty head had touched the pillow, and I watched by her till morning light; when she wakened up bright and clear�or so I thought at first�and, my dears, so I think now.

She said, that she had fancied that she should like to go to Dorothy, for that both the old ladies were asleep, and it was very dull in the drawing-room; and that, as she was going through the west lobby, she saw the snow through the high window falling�falling�soft and steady; but she wanted to see it lying pretty and white on the ground; so she made her way into the great hall; and then, going to the window, she saw it bright and soft upon the drive; but while she stood there, she saw a little girl, not so old as she was, "but so pretty," said my darling, "and this little girl beckoned to me to come out; and oh, she was so pretty and so sweet, I could not choose but go." And then this other little girl had taken her by the hand, and side by side the two had gone round the east corner.

"Now you are a naughty little girl, and telling stories," said I. "What would your good mamma, that is in heaven, and never told a story in her life, say to her little Rosamond, if she heard her�and I dare say she does�telling stories!"

"Indeed, Hester," sobbed out my child; "I'm telling you true. Indeed I am."

"Don't tell me!" said I, very stern. "I tracked you by your foot-marks through the snow; there were only yours to be seen: and if you had had a little girl to go hand-in-hand with you up the hill, don't you think the foot-prints would have gone along with yours?"

"I can't help it, dear, dear Hester," said she, crying, "if they did not; I never looked at her feet, but she held my hand fast and tight in her little one, and it was very, very cold. She took me up the Fell-path, up to the holly trees; and there I saw a lady weeping and crying; but when she saw me, she hushed her weeping, and smiled very proud and grand, and took me on her knees, and began to lull me to sleep; and that's all, Hester�but that is true; and my dear mamma knows it is," said she, crying. So I thought the child was in a fever, and pretended to believe her, as she went over her story�over and over again, and always the same. At last Dorothy knocked at the door with Miss Rosamond's breakfast; and she told me the old ladies were down in the eating- parlour, and that they wanted to speak to me. They had both been into the night-nursery the evening before, but it was after Miss Rosamond was asleep; so they had only looked at her�not asked me any questions.

"I shall catch it," thought I to myself, as I went along the north gallery. "And

yet," I thought, taking courage, "it was in their charge I left her; and it's they

that's to blame for letting her steal away unknown and unwatched." So I went

in boldly, and told my story. I told it all to Miss Furnivall, shouting it close to

her ear; but when I came to the mention of the other little girl out in the snow,

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coaxing and tempting her out, and willing her up to the grand and beautiful lady by the Holly-tree, she threw her arms up�her old and withered arms� and cried aloud, "Oh! Heaven, forgive! Have mercy!"

Mrs. Stark took hold of her; roughly enough, I thought; but she was past Mrs. Stark's management, and spoke to me, in a kind of wild warning and authority.

"Hester! keep her from that child! It will lure her to her death! That evil child! Tell her it is a wicked, naughty child." Then, Mrs. Stark hurried me out of the room; where, indeed, I was glad enough to go; but Miss Furnivall kept shrieking out, "Oh! have mercy! Wilt Thou never forgive! It is many a long year ago "

I was very uneasy in my mind after that. I durst never leave Miss Rosamond, night or day, for fear lest she might slip off again, after some fancy or other; and all the more, because I thought I could make out that Miss Furnivall was crazy, from their odd ways about her; and I was afraid lest something of the same kind (which might be in the family, you know) hung over my darling. And the great frost never ceased all this time; and, whenever it was a more stormy night than usual, between the gusts, and through the wind, we heard the old lord playing on the great organ. But, old lord, or not, wherever Miss Rosamond went, there I followed; for my love for her, pretty helpless orphan, was stronger than my fear for the grand and terrible sound. Besides, it rested with me to keep her cheerful and merry, as beseemed her age. So we played together, and wandered together, here and there, and everywhere; for I never dared to lose sight of her again in that large and rambling house. And so it happened, that one afternoon, not long before Christmas day, we were playing together on the billiard-table in the great hall (not that we knew the right way of playing, but she liked to roll the smooth ivory balls with her pretty hands, and I liked to do whatever she did); and, by-and-bye, without our noticing it, it grew dusk indoors, though it was still light in the open air, and I was thinking of taking her back into the nursery, when, all of a sudden, she cried out:

"Look, Hester! look! there is my poor little girl out in the snow!"

I turned towards the long narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw a little girl, less than my Miss Rosamond�dressed all unfit to be out-of-doors such a bitter night�crying, and beating against the window-panes, as if, she wanted to be let in. She seemed to sob and wail, till Miss Rosamond could bear it no longer, and was flying to the door to open it, when, all of a sudden, and close upon us, the great organ pealed out so loud and thundering, it fairly made me tremble; and all the more, when I remembered me that, even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the window-glass, although the Phantom Child had seemed to put forth all its force; and, although I had seen it wail and cry, no faintest touch of sound had fallen upon my ears. Whether I remembered all this at the very moment, I do not know; the great organ sound had so stunned me into terror; but this I know, I caught up Miss Rosamond before she got the hall-door opened, and clutched her, and carried her away, kicking and screaming, into the large bright kitchen, where Dorothy and Agnes were busy with their mince-pies.

"What is the matter with my sweet one?" cried Dorothy, as I bore in Miss Rosamond, who was sobbing as if her heart would break. "She won't let me open the door for my little girl to come in; and she'll die if she is out on the Fells all night. Cruel, naughty Hester," she said, slapping

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me; but she might have struck harder, for I had seen a look of ghastly terror on Dorothy's face, which made my very blood run cold.

"Shut the back kitchen door fast, and bolt it well," said she to Agnes. She said no more; she gave me raisins and almonds to quiet Miss Rosamond: but she sobbed about the little girl in the snow, and would not touch any of the good things. I was thankful when she cried herself to sleep in bed. Then I stole down to the kitchen, and told Dorothy I had made up my mind. I would carry my darling back to my father's house in Applethwaite; where, if we lived humbly, we lived at peace. I said I had been frightened enough with the old lord's organ-playing; but now, that I had seen for myself this little moaning child, all decked out as no child in the neighborhood could be, beating and battering to get in, yet always without any sound or noise�with the dark wound on its right shoulder; and that Miss Rosamond had known it again for the phantom that had nearly lured her to her death (which Dorothy knew was true); I would stand it no longer.

I saw Dorothy change color once or twice. When I had done, she told me she did not think I could take Miss Rosamond with me, for that she was my lord's ward, and I had no right over her; and she asked me, would I leave the child that I was so fond of, just for sounds and sights that could do me no harm; and that they had all had to get used to in their turns? I was all in a hot, trembling passion; and I said it was very well for her to talk, that knew what these sights and noises betokened, and that had, perhaps, had something to do with the Spectre-child while it was alive. And I taunted her so, that she told me all she knew, at last; and then I wished I had never been told, for it only made me more afraid than ever.

She said she had heard the tale from old neighbors, that were alive when she was first married; when folks used to come to the hall sometimes, before it had got such a bad name on the country side: it might not be true, or it might, what she had been told.

The old lord was Miss Furnivall's father�Miss Grace, as Dorothy called her, for Miss Maude was the elder, and Miss Furnivall by rights. The old lord was eaten up with pride. Such a proud man was never seen or heard of; and his daughters were like him. No one was good enough to wed them, although they had choice enough; for they were the great beauties of their day, as I had seen by their portraits, where they hung in the state drawing-room. But, as the old saying is, "Pride will have a fall;" and these two haughty beauties fell in love with the same man, and he no better than a foreign musician, whom their father had down from London to play music with him at the Manor House. For, above all things, next to his pride, the old lord loved music. He could play on nearly every instrument that ever was heard of; and it was a strange thing it did not soften him; but he was a fierce dour old man, and had broken his poor wife's heart with his cruelty, they said. He was mad after music, and would pay any money for it. So he got this foreigner to come; who made such beautiful music, that they said the very birds on the trees stopped their singing to listen. And, by degrees, this foreign gentleman got such a hold over the old lord, that nothing would serve him but that he must come every year; and it was he that had the great organ brought from Holland and built up in the hall, where it stood now. He taught the old lord to play on it; but many and many a time, when Lord Furnivall was thinking of nothing but his fine organ, and his finer music, the dark foreigner was walking abroad in the woods with one of the young ladies; now Miss Maude, and then Miss Grace.

THE OLD NURSE'S STORY / 1233

Miss Maude won the day and carried off the prize, such as it was; and he and she were married, all unknown to any one; and before he made his next yearly visit, she had been confined of5 a little girl at a farm-house on the Moors, while her father and Miss Grace thought she was away at Doncaster Races. Rut though she was a wife and a mother, she was not a bit softened, but as haughty and as passionate as ever; and perhaps more so, for she was jealous of Miss Grace, to whom her foreign husband paid a deal of court�by way of blinding her�-as he told his wife. But Miss Grace triumphed over Miss Maude, and Miss Maude grew fiercer and fiercer, both with her husband and with her sister; and the former�who could easily shake off what was disagreeable, and hide himself in foreign countries�went away a month before his usual time that summer, and half threatened that he would never come back again. Meanwhile, the little girl was left at the farm-house, and her mother used to have her horse saddled and gallop wildly over the hills to see her once every week, at the very least�for where she loved, she loved; and where she hated, she hated. And the old lord went on playing�playing on his organ; and the servants thought the sweet music he made had soothed down his awful temper, of which (Dorothy said) some terrible tales could be told. He grew infirm too, and had to walk with a crutch; and his son�that was the present Lord Furnivall's father�was with the army in America, and the other son at sea; so Miss Maude had it pretty much her own way, and she and Miss Grace grew colder and bitterer to each other every day; till at last they hardly ever spoke, except when the old lord was by. The foreign musician came again the next summer, but it was for the last time; for they led him such a life with their jealousy and their passions, that he grew weary, and went away, and never was heard of again. And Miss Maude, who had always meant to have her marriage acknowledged when her father should be dead, was left now a deserted wife� whom nobody knew to have been married�with a child that she dared not own, although she loved it to distraction; living with a father whom she feared, and a sister whom she hated. When the next summer passed over and the dark foreigner never came, both Miss Maude and Miss Grace grew gloomy and sad; they had a haggard look about them, though they looked handsome as ever. But by and by Miss Maude brightened; for her father grew more and more infirm, and more than ever carried away by his music; and she and Miss Grace lived almost entirely apart, having separate rooms, the one on the west side� Miss Maude on the east�those very rooms which were now shut up. So she thought she might have her little girl with her, and no one need ever know except those who dared not speak about it, and were bound to believe that it was, as she said, a cottager's child she had taken a fancy to. All this, Dorothy said, was pretty well known; but what came afterwards no one knew, except Miss Grace, and Mrs. Stark, who was even then her maid, and much more of a friend to her than ever her sister had been. But the servants supposed, from words that were dropped, that Miss Maude had triumphed over Miss Grace, and told her that all the time the dark foreigner had been mocking her with pretended love�he was her own husband; the colour left Miss Grace's cheek and lips that very day for ever, and she was heard to say many a time that sooner or later she would have her revenge; and Mrs. Stark was for ever spying about the east rooms.

One fearful night, just after the New Year had come in, when the snow was

5. Given birth to.

123 4 / ELIZABETH GASKELL

lying thick and deep, and the flakes were still falling�fast enough to blind any one who might be out and abroad�there was a great and violent noise heard, and the old lord's voice above all, cursing and swearing awfully,�and the cries of a little child,�and the proud defiance of a fierce woman,�and the sound of a blow,�and a dead stillness,�and moans and wailings dying away on the hill-side! Then the old lord summoned all his servants, and told them, with terrible oaths, and words more terrible, that his daughter had disgraced herself, and that he had turned her out of doors,�her, and her child,� and that if ever they gave her help,�or food�or shelter,�he prayed that they might never enter Heaven. And, all the while, Miss Grace stood by him, white and still as any stone; and when he had ended she heaved a great sigh, as much as to say her work was done, and her end was accomplished. But the old lord never touched his organ again, and died within the year; and no wonder! for, on the morrow of that wild and fearful night, the shepherds, coming down the Fell side, found Miss Maude sitting, all crazy and smiling, under the holly-trees, nursing a dead child,�with a terrible mark on its right shoulder. "But that was not what killed it," said Dorothy; "it was the frost and the cold�every wild creature was in its hole, and every beast in its fold,�

while the child and its mother were turned out to wander on the Fells! And now you know all! and I wonder if you are less frightened now?"

I was more frightened than ever; but I said I was not. I wished Miss Rosamond and myself well out of that dreadful house for ever; but I would not leave her, and I dared not take her away. But oh! how I watched her, and guarded her! We bolted the doors, and shut the window-shutters fast, an hour or more before dark, rather than leave them open five minutes too late. But my little lady still heard the weird child crying and mourning; and not all we could do or say, could keep her from wanting to go to her, and let her in from the cruel wind and the snow. All this time, I kept away from Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark, as much as ever I could; for I feared them�I knew no good could be about them, with their grey hard faces, and their dreamy eyes, looking back into the ghastly years that were gone. But, even in my fear, I had a kind of pity�for Miss Furnivall, at least. Those gone down to the pit6 can hardly have a more hopeless look than that which was ever on her face. At last I even got so sorry for her�who never said a word but what was quite forced from her�that I prayed for her; and I taught Miss Rosamond to pray for one who had done a deadly sin; but often when she came to those words, she would listen, and start up from her knees, and say, "I hear my little girl plaining7 and crying very sad�Oh! let her in, or she will die!"

One night�just after New Year's Day had come at last, and the long winter had taken a turn as I hoped�I heard the west drawing-room bell ring three times, which was the signal for me. I would not leave Miss Rosamond alone, for all she was asleep�for the old lord had been playing wilder than ever� and I feared lest my darling should waken to hear the spectre child; see her I knew she could not, I had fastened the windows too well for that. So, I took her out of her bed and wrapped her up in such outer clothes as were most handy, and carried her down to the drawing-room, where the old ladies sat at their tapestry work as usual. They looked up when I came in, and Mrs. Stark asked, quite astounded, "Why did I bring Miss Rosamond there, out of her warm bed?" I had begun to whisper, "Because I was afraid of her being tempted

6. Hell. 7. Lamenting.

THE OLD NURSE'S STORY / 123 5

out while I was away, by the wild child in the snow," when she stopped me short (with a glance at Miss Furnivall) and said Miss Furnivall wanted me to undo some work she had done wrong, and which neither of them could see to unpick. So, I laid my pretty dear on the sofa, and sat down on a stool by them, and hardened my heart against them as I heard the wind rising and howling.

Miss Rosamond slept on sound, for all the wind blew so; and Miss Furnivall said never a word, nor looked round when the gusts shook the windows. All at once she started up to her full height, and put up one hand as if to bid us listen.

"I hear voices!" said she. "I hear terrible screams�I hear my father's voice!"

Just at that moment, my darling wakened with a sudden start: "My little girl is crying, oh, how she is crying!" and she tried to get up and go to her, but she got her feet entangled in the blanket, and I caught her up; for my flesh had begun to creep at these noises, which they heard while we could catch no sound. In a minute or two the noises came, and gathered fast, and filled our ears; we, too, heard voices and screams, and no longer heard the winter's wind that raged abroad. Mrs. Stark looked at me, and I at her, but we dared not speak. Suddenly Miss Furnivall went towards the door, out into the ante-room, through the west lobby, and opened the door into the great hall. Mrs. Stark followed, and I durst not be left, though my heart almost stopped beating for fear. I wrapped my darling tight in my arms, and went out with them. In the hall the screams were louder than ever; they sounded to come from the east wing�nearer and nearer�close on the other side of the locked-up doors� close behind them. Then I noticed that the great bronze chandelier seemed all alight, though the hall was dim, and that a fire was blazing in the vast hearth-place, though it gave no heat; and I shuddered up with terror, and folded my darling closer to me. But as I did so, the east door shook, and she, suddenly struggling to get free from me, cried, "Hester! I must go! My little girl is there; I hear her; she is coming! Hester, I must go!"

I held her tight with all my strength; with a set will, 1 held her. If I had died, my hands would have grasped her still; I was so resolved in my mind. Miss Furnivall stood listening, and paid no regard to my darling, who had got down to the ground, and whom I, upon my knees now, was holding with both my arms clasped round her neck; she still striving and crying to get free.

All at once, the east door gave way with a thundering crash, as if torn open in a violent passion, and there came into that broad and mysterious light, the figure of a tall old man, with grey hair and gleaming eyes. He drove before him, with many a relentless gesture of abhorrence, a stern and beautiful woman, with a little child clinging to her dress.

"Oh Hester! Hester!" cried Miss Rosamond. "It's the lady! the lady below the holly-trees; and my little girl is with her. Hester! Hester! let me go to her; they are drawing me to them. I feel them�I feel them. I must go!"

Again she was almost convulsed by her efforts to get away; but I held her tighter and tighter; till I feared I should do her a hurt; but rather that than let her go towards those terrible phantoms. They passed along towards the great hall-door, where the winds howled and ravened for their prey; but before they reached that, the lady turned; and I could see that she defied the old man with a fierce and proud defiance; but then she quailed�and then she threw up her arms wildly and piteously to save her child�her little child�from a blow from his uplifted crutch.

123 6 / CHARLES DICKENS

And Miss Rosamond was torn as by a power stronger than mine, and writhed in my arms, and sobbed (for by this time the poor darling was growing faint).

"They want me to go with them on to the Fells�they are drawing me to them. Oh, my little girl! I would come, but cruel, wicked Hester holds me very tight." But when she saw the uplifted crutch she swooned away, and I thanked God for it. Just at this moment�when the tall old man, his hair streaming as in the blast of a furnace, was going to strike the little shrinking child�Miss Furnivall, the old woman by my side, cried out, "Oh, father! father! spare the little innocent child!" But just then I saw�we all saw�another phantom shape itself, and grow clear out of the blue and misty light that filled the hall; we had not seen her till now, for it was another lady who stood by the old man, with a look of relentless hate and triumphant scorn. That figure was very beautiful to look upon, with a soft white hat drawn down over the proud brows, and a red and curling lip. It was dressed in an open robe of blue satin. I had seen that figure before. It was the likeness of Miss Furnivall in her youth; and the terrible phantoms moved on, regardless of old Miss Furnivall's wild entreaty,�and the uplifted crutch fell on the right shoulder of the little child, and the younger sister looked on, stony and deadly serene. But at that moment, the dim lights, and the fire that gave no heat, went out of themselves, and Miss Furnivall lay at our feet stricken down by the palsy�death-stricken.

Yes! she was carried to her bed that night never to rise again. She lay with her face to the wall, muttering low but muttering alway: "Alas! alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age! What is done in youth can never be undone in age!"

1852

CHARLES DICKENS 1812-1870

Charles Dickens was Victorian England's most beloved and distinctive novelist. In the words of the eulogy that the classicist Benjamin Jowett spoke at his funeral service, Dickens "occupied a greater space than any other writer during the last thirty- five years. We read him, talked about him, acted him; we laughed with him, wc were roused by him to a consciousness of the misery of others, and to a pathetic [i.e., emotional] interest in human life."

Charles Dickens was born the second of eight children in the coastal town of Portsmouth in southern England. His father, a clerk in the Naval Pay Office, found it difficult to keep his family out of debt. Plagued by financial insecurity, the family moved from place to place, to increasingly poorer lodgings, finally ending up in London. In an effort to help the family out, a friend of his father's offered Charles a job in a shoe-blacking factory. Two days before his twelfth birthday, he began work, labeling bottles for six shillings a week. Two weeks later his father was arrested and sent to the Marshalsea Prison for debt. His family went to live in prison with him, as was the custom; but they decided that Charles should remain outside, living with a woman who took in young boarders and continuing to work.

The months in which Charles lived alone and worked in the blacking warehouse were traumatic, and the intense feeling Dickens had of humiliation and abandonment shaped his fiction in profound ways. The sense he had of himself as "a child of singular abilities: quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally," who had been cast

CHARLES DICKENS / 1237

away to suffer unjustly, formed the basis for characters such as Oliver Twist, the young David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations (1860�61), whose mistreatment represents Dickens's harshest indictment of society.

Dickens's father was able to leave debtors' prison after three months, upon receipt of a legacy from his mother. He removed Charles from the factory and sent him to school. At fifteen Dickens began work as a junior clerk at a law office; eighteen months later he became a freelance newspaper reporter, first reporting court proceedings and later debates in the House of Commons. Reporting led him to fiction. He began publishing literary sketches, at first anonymously and then under the pseudonym Boz. In 1836, on his twenty-fourth birthday, he published the collection Sketches by Boz. The success of the volume led to a commission from the publishers Chapman 8t Hall to publish a book in serial installments with companion illustrations. The result, Pickwick Papers (1836�37), brought Dickens fame and prosperity. This picaresque novel, relating the adventures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends as they travel around England, set the pattern of illustrated serial publication that was to define Dickens's writing career and to shape the reading habits of his generation. Families would wait in suspense for the next installment of a novel to be issued, which they would read aloud as an evening's entertainment. Successes followed quickly: Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41).

By the time of Pickwick's completion, Dickens had married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of a fellow journalist, and had begun a family; they eventually had ten children, and household chaos would come increasingly to frustrate him. If Dickens's portrayal of women as inadequate keepers of domestic order was inspired by conditions at home, then the frequent appearance in his fiction of a very different kind of feminine character, the impossibly good and unreachable ideal, can be linked to two young women he knew in his early adulthood. Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, was his first love; but his courtship was discouraged by her family, who felt he was beneath her. He was left with a painful sense that he had lost his perfect woman. Dickens was still more devastated when Mary, his seventeen-year-old sisterin- law, whom he idolized, died in his arms.

Through the 1840s and 1850s Dickens continued to write novels at an intense pace, producing Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843�44), Dombey and Son (1846-48), David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-53), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-57), and A Tale of Two Cities (1859). He also became deeply involved in a number of other activities, including traveling, working for charities, and acting. During this time he founded and edited the weekly magazine Household Words (incorporated in 1859 into All the Year Round), which published fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Dickens himself, and other novelists as well as opinion pieces about political and social issues. And he began a series of Christmas books, the first of which was A Christmas Carol (1843).

In 1858, when Dickens separated from his wife, his life and work changed. He became involved with the actress Ellen Ternan, and he took up residence at Gad's Hill, a gentleman's house in Kent. Abandoning amateur theatricals, he embarked on a series of lucrative professional readings; they were so emotionally and physically exhausting that his doctor finally instructed him to stop. He slowed the pace of his writing, publishing only two novels in the 1860s: Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend (1864�65). He died suddenly in 1870, leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), unfinished.

Dickens's early fiction is remarkable for its extravagance, which Franz Kafka calls

"Dickens's opulence and great, careless prodigality." It marks many elements of his

novels�their baggy plots, filled with incident; the constant metaphorical invention

of their language; and the multitude of their characters. Anthony Trollope observed

that no other writer except Shakespeare has left so many "characters which are known

by their names familiarly as household words, and which bring to our minds vividly

and at once, a certain well-understood set of ideas, habits, phrases and costumes,

123 8 / CHARLES DICKENS

making together a man, or woman, or child, whom we know at a glance and recognize at a sound, as we do our own intimate friends."

Dickens builds character from a repeated set of gestures, phrases, and metaphors. For example, whenever Mrs. Micawber enters the story of David Copperfield, she repeats, "I will never desert Mr. Micawber." Having a "slit of a mouth" into which he posts his food, Wemmick in Great Expectations rarely appears without some reference to his "post office" mouth; Mr. Gradgrind is always identified in Hard Times with the squareness of each of his physical attributes. This way of creating character led the novelist E. M. Forster to use Dickens to illustrate what he means by a flat, as opposed to a round, character. Such a reductive technique of characterization might seem to have little to offer by way of depth of insight, but this is not the case. In particular, as Dickens's fiction becomes more complex in the course of his career, the repeated tics that identify his characters come to represent emotional fixations and social distortions. Dickens's early fiction exults in its comic exaggeration of human peculiarities. In his later fiction that comedy becomes grotesque, as the distortions of caricature reflect failures of humanity in his increasingly dark social vision.

Bernard Shaw wrote that "Dickens never regarded himself as a revolutionist, though he certainly was one." Dickens's early novels often concern social abuses� the workhouses in which pauper children were confined in Oliver Twist, abusive and fraudulent schools in Nicholas Nickleby. As his career progressed, Dickens felt an increasing urgency about the social criticism his novels made. He gave Hard Times the subtitle For These Times and dedicated the book to Thomas Carlyle, indicating his ambition to write a work in the tradition of Carlyle's social indictment, "Signs of the Times" (1829). In his middle novels Dickens's criticism of society becomes increasingly systemic, and he begins to use organizing metaphors to express his social vision. Bleak House, for example, concerns the failings of the legal system, but the obfuscation and self-interest of the law are symptomatic of a larger social ill, symbolized in the smothering fog whose description begins the novel.

Despite the bleakness of Dickens's view of society and the fierceness of his criticism of it, his novels always end with a sentimental assertion of the virtues of home and heart. Readers and critics alike in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often felt that this sentimentality blunted his social analysis: although Dickens tries to use fiction to stir the human heart and evoke humanitarian feelings, the domestic refuges of his novels never change the world outside. In more recent times, and in the wake of D. A. Miller's study of Victorian fiction, The Novel and the Police (1988), many critics now express no surprise about this narrowing of scope: according to Miller, cultural productions (such as the novel) that emanate from the heart of a bourgeois society inevitably reproduce the controlling mechanism that regulates that world as a whole, and the seemingly subversive social critique at the beginning of a Dickens novel will ultimately be contained within an idealized middle-class sitting room at its close. Such scholars throw into question the earlier view of this novelist as an energetic, if conflicted, critic of his age: Dickens is instead perceived as an unofficial spokesman of conservative ideologies. Yet there are certainly many different ways to think about unresolved tensions within Dickens's work, and the teeming pages of his fourteen novels and wide range of other writings offer endless inspiration.

The distinctive character of Dickens's fiction is so pronounced that critics often talk as if the individual worlds of all of his novels were continuous. In part Dickens's tendency to return repeatedly to the subjects that possessed his imagination supports this impression. One of those subjects is prisons. "A Visit to Newgate" is his earliest piece on the topic, to which he returns many times, as in Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers, and Little Dorrit. Prison for Dickens is a particular social abuse; the most harrowing setting in which to contemplate criminality and guilt; a metaphor for the psychological captivity his characters create for themselves; and the system through which society enforces its discipline. Throughout his fiction key elements of Victorian society, such as the prison, take on multiple layers of significance;

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 123 9

in this way, as the critic J. Hillis Miller observes, Dickens's creative vision in part determines the Victorian spirit itself.

A Visit to Newgate1

"The force of habit" is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day's experience has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be suddenly removed like another Aladdin's palace,2 and set down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred, whose road to business every morning lies through Newgatestreet, or the Old Bailey,' would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small, grated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy beings immured in its dismal cells; and yet these same men, day by day, and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London, in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it�nay, not even knowing, or if they do, not heeding, the fact, that as they pass one particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of hope has fled for ever, and whose miserable career will shortly terminate in a violent and shameful death. Contact with death even in its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. How much more awful is it to reflect on this near vicinity to the dying�to men in full health and vigour, in the flower of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and perceptions as acute and perfect as your own; but dying, nevertheless�dying as surely�with the hand of death imprinted upon them as indelibly�as if mortal disease had wasted their frames to shadows, and corruption had already begun!

It was with some such thoughts as these that we determined, not many weeks since, to visit the interior of Newgate�in an amateur capacity, of course; and, having carried our intention into effect, we proceed to lay its results before our readers, in the hope�founded more upon the nature of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive pow- ers�that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We have only to premise, that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of the prison; they will be found at length in numerous reports of numerous committees, and a variety of authorities of equal weight. We took no notes, made no memoranda, measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact number of inches in no particular room, are unable even to report of how many apartments the gaol is composed.

We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners; and what we did see, and what we thought, we will tell at once in our own way.

1. First published in Sketches by Boz (1836). New-his palace to Africa. "Bedlam": a London hospital gate was London's main criminal prison. for the insane. 2. In Arabian Nights, an evil magician temporarily 3. London's criminal court. gets control of Aladdin's magic lamp and transports

124 0 / CHARLES DICKENS

Having delivered our credentials to the servant who answered our knock at the door of the governor's4 house, we were ushered into the "office;" a little room, on the right-hand side as you enter, with two windows looking into the Old Bailey: fitted up like an ordinary attorney's office, or merchant's countinghouse, with the usual fixtures�a wainscoted partition, a shelf or two, a desk, a couple of stools, a pair of clerks, an almanack, a clock, and a few maps. After a little delay, occasioned by sending into the interior of the prison for the officer whose duty it was to conduct us, that functionary arrived; a respectable- looking man of about two or three and fifty, in a broad-brimmed hat, and full suit of black, who, but for his keys, would have looked quite as much like a clergyman as a turnkey.5 We were disappointed; he had not even top-boots6 on. Following our conductor by a door opposite to that at which we had entered, we arrived at a small room, without any other furniture than a little desk, with a book for visitors' autographs, and a shelf, on which were a few boxes for papers, and casts of the heads and faces of the two notorious murderers, Bishop and Williams;7 the former, in particular, exhibiting a style of head and set of features, which might have afforded sufficient moral grounds for his instant execution at any time, even had there been no other evidence against him. Leaving this room also, by an opposite door, we found ourself in the lodge which opens on the Old Bailey; one side of which is plentifully garnished with a choice collection of heavy sets of irons, including those worn by the redoubtable Jack Sheppard�genuine; and those said to have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less celebrated Dick Turpin8�doubtful. From this lodge, a heavy oaken gate, bound with iron, studded with nails of the same material, and guarded by another turnkey, opens on a few steps, if we remember right, which terminate in a narrow and dismal stone passage, running parallel with the Old Bailey, and leading to the different yards, through a number of tortuous and intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates and gratings, whose appearance is sufficient to dispel at once the slightest hope of escape that any new comer may have entertained; and the very recollection of which, on eventually traversing the place again, involves one in a maze of confusion.

It is necessary to explain here, that the buildings in the prison, or in other words the different wards�form a square, of which the four sides abut respectively on the Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now forming a part of Newgate-market), the Sessions-house, and Newgate-street. The intermediate space is divided into several paved yards, in which the prisoners take such air and exercise as can be had in such a place. These yards, with the exception of that in which prisoners under sentence of death are confined (of which we shall presently give a more detailed description), run parallel with Newgatestreet, and consequently from the Old Bailey, as it were, to Newgate-market. The women's side is in the right wing of the prison nearest the Sessions-house. As we were introduced into this part of the building first, we will adopt the same order, and introduce our readers to it also.

Turning to the right, then, down the passage to which we just now adverted, omitting any mention of intervening gates�for if we noticed every gate that was unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as soon as we had

4. The head of the prison. liams"), notorious body snatchers who were 5. Jailer, guard. hanged for murdering a young boy in 1831. 6. High boots. 8. Two notorious 18th-century thieves and high7. John Bishop and Thomas Head (aka "Wil-waymen. "Irons": shackles.

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 1241

passed, we should require a gate at every comma�we came to a door composed of thick bars of wood, through which were discernible, passing to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women: the majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards. One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about five feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and defended in front by iron bars, from which the friends of the female prisoners communicate with them. In one corner of this singular-looking den, was a yellow, haggard, decrepit old woman, in a tattered gown that had once been black, and the remains of an old straw bonnet, with faded ribbon of the same hue, in earnest conversation with a young girl�a prisoner, of course�of about two-and-twenty. It is impossible to imagine a more poverty-stricken object, or a creature so borne down in soul and body, by excess of misery and destitution as the old woman. The girl was a good-looking robust female, with a profusion of hair streaming about in the wind�for she had no bonnet on�and a man's silk pocket-handkerchief loosely thrown over a most ample pair of shoulders. The old woman was talking in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly of mental anguish; and every now and then burst into an irrepressible sharp, abrupt cry of grief, the most distressing sound that ears can hear. The girl was perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of redemption, she listened doggedly to her mother's entreaties, whatever they were: and, beyond inquiring after "Jem," and eagerly catching at the few halfpence her miserable parent had brought her, took no more apparent interest in the conversation than the most unconcerned spectators. Heaven knows there were enough of them, in the persons of the other prisoners in the yard, who were no more concerned by what was passing before their eyes, and within their hearing, than if they were blind and deaf. Why should they be? Inside the prison, and out, such scenes were too familiar to them, to excite even a passing thought, unless of ridicule or contempt for feelings which they had long since forgotten.

A little farther on, a squalid-looking woman in a slovenly, thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in a large red shawl, the fringed ends of which straggled nearly to the bottom of a dirty white apron, was communicating some instructions to her visitor�her daughter evidently. The girl was thinly clad, and shaking with the cold. Some ordinary word of recognition passed between her and her mother when she appeared at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret, nor affection was expressed on either side. The mother whispered her instructions, and the girl received them with her pinched-up half-starved features twisted into an expression of careful cunning. It was some scheme for the woman's defence that she was disclosing, perhaps; and a sullen smile came over the girl's face for an instant, as if she were pleased: not so much at the probability of her mother's liberation, as at the chance of her "getting off" in spite of her prosecutors. The dialogue was soon concluded; and with the same careless indifference with which they had approached each other, the mother turned towards the inner end of the yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered.

The girl belonged to a class�unhappily but too extensive�the very existence of which, should make men's hearts bleed. Barely past her childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what childhood is: who have never been taught to love and court a parent's smile, or to dread a parent's frown. The thousand nameless endearments of childhood, its gaiety and its

124 2 / CHARLES DICKENS

innocence, are alike unknown to them. They have entered at once upon the stern realities and miseries of life, and to their better nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in aftertimes, by any of the references which will awaken, if it be only for a moment, some good feeling in ordinary bosoms, however corrupt they may have become. Talk to them of parental solicitude, the happy days of childhood, and the merry games of infancy! Tell them of hunger and the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, the station-house, and the pawnbroker's, and they will understand you.

Two or three women were standing at different parts of the grating, conversing with their friends, but a very large proportion of the prisoners appeared to have no friends at all, beyond such of their old companions as might happen to be within the walls. So, passing hastily down the yard, and pausing only for an instant to notice the little incidents we have just recorded, we were conducted up a clean and well-lighted flight of stone stairs to one of the wards. There are several in this part of the building, but a description of one is a description of the whole.

It was a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment, lighted of course, by windows looking into the interior of the prison, but far more light and airy than one could reasonably expect to find in such a situation. There was a large fire with a deal table before it, round which ten or a dozen women were seated on wooden forms9 at dinner. Along both sides of the room ran a shelf; below it, at regular intervals, a row of large hooks were fixed in the wall, on each of which was hung the sleeping mat of a prisoner: her rug and blanket being folded up, and placed on the shelf above. At night, these mats are placed on the floor, each beneath the hook on which it hangs during the day; and the ward is thus made to answer the purposes both of a day-room and sleeping apartment. Over the fireplace, was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were displayed a variety of texts from Scripture, which were also scattered about the room in scraps about the size and shape of the copy-slips which are used in schools. On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of stewed beef and brown bread, in pewter dishes, which are kept perfectly bright, and displayed on shelves in great order and regularity when they are not in use.

The women rose hastily, on our entrance, and retired in a hurried manner to either side of the fireplace. They were all cleanly�many of them decently� attired, and there was nothing peculiar, either in their appearance or demean- our. One or two resumed the needlework which they had probably laid aside at the commencement of their meal; others gazed at the visitors with listless curiosity; and a few retired behind their companions to the very end of the room, as if desirous to avoid even the casual observation of the strangers. Some old Irish women, both in this and other wards, to whom the thing was no novelty, appeared perfectly indifferent to our presence, and remained standing close to the seats from which they had just risen; but the general feeling among the females seemed to be one of uneasiness during the period of our stay among them: which was very brief. Not a word was uttered during the time of our remaining, unless, indeed, by the wardswoman in reply to some question which we put to the turnkey who accompanied us. In every ward on the female side, a wardswoman is appointed to preserve order, and a similar regulation is adopted among the males. The wardsmen and wardswomen are all

9. Benches.

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 124 3

prisoners, selected for good conduct. They alone are allowed the privilege of sleeping on bedsteads; a small stump bedstead1 being placed in every ward for that purpose. On both sides of the gaol, is a small receiving-room, to which prisoners are conducted on their first reception, and whence they cannot be removed until they have been examined by the surgeon of the prison.2

Retracing our steps to the dismal passage in which we found ourselves at first (and which, by-the-bye, contains three or four dark cells for the accommodation of refractory3 prisoners), we were led through a narrow yard to the "school"�a portion of the prison set apart for boys under fourteen years of age. In a tolerable-sized room, in which were writing-materials and some copybooks, was the school-master, with a couple of his pupils; the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining apartment, the whole were drawn up in line for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in all, some with shoes, some without; some in pinafores4 without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores, and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number, without an exception we believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket- picking; and fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld.�There was not one redeeming feature among them�not a glance of honesty�not a wink expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks,5 in the whole collection. As to anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely out of the question. They were evidently quite gratified at being thought worth the trouble of looking at; their idea appeared to be, that we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an indispensable part of the show; and every boy as he "fell in" to the line, actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done something excessively meritorious in getting there at all. We never looked upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never saw fourteen such hopeless creatures of neglect, before.

On either side of the school-yard is a yard for men, in one of which�that towards Newgate-street�prisoners of the more respectable class are confined. Of the other, we have little description to offer, as the different wards necessarily partake of the same character. They are provided, like the wards on the women's side, with mats and rugs, which are disposed of in the same manner during the day; the only very striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards inhabited by the females, is the utter absence of any employment. Huddled together on two opposite forms, by the fireside, sit twenty men perhaps; here, a boy in livery; there, a man in a rough great-coat and top-boots; farther on, a desperate-looking fellow in his shirt sleeves, with an old Scotch cap6 upon his shaggy head; near him again, a tall ruffian, in a smock-frock; next to him, a miserable being of distressed appearance, with his head resting on his hand;�all alike in one respect, all idle and listless. When they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the window, or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging their bodies to and fro. With the exception of a man reading an old newspaper, in two or three instances, this was the case in every ward we entered.

The only communication these men have with their friends, is through two

1. Bedframe that ends at the level of the mattress. was published. Even the construction of the prison 2. The regulations of the prison relative to the itself has been changed [Dickens's note]. confinement of prisoners during the day, their 3. Unmanageable. sleeping at night, their taking their meals, and 4. Aprons. other matters of gaol economy, have been all 5. Prison ships. altered�greatly for the better�since this sketch 6. Brimless woolen hat with two tails.

124 4 / CHARLES DICKENS

close iron gratings, with an intermediate space of about a yard in width between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the prisoner have any communication by touch with the person who visits him. The married men have a separate grating, at which to see their wives, but its construction is the same.

The prison chapel is situated at the back of the governor's house: the latter having no windows looking into the interior of the prison. Whether the associations connected with the place�the knowledge that here a portion of the burial service is, on some dreadful occasions, performed over the quick7 and not upon the dead�cast over it a still more gloomy and sombre air than art has imparted to it, we know not, but its appearance is very striking. There is something in a silent and deserted place of worship, solemn and impressive at any time; and the very dissimilarity of this one from any we have been accustomed to, only enhances the impression. The meanness of its appointments� the bare and scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars on either side�the women's gallery wdth its great heavy curtain�the men's with its unpainted benches and dingy front�the tottering little table at the altar, with the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legible through lack of paint, and dust and damp�so unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood, of a modern church-�are strange and striking. There is one object, too, which rivets the attention and fascinates the gaze, and from which we may turn horror-stricken in vain, for the recollection of it will haunt us, waking and sleeping, for a long time afterwards. Immediately below the reading-desk, on the floor of the chapel, and forming the most conspicuous object in its little area, is the condemned pew; a huge black pen, in which the wretched people, who are singled out for death, are placed on the Sunday preceding their execution, in sight of all their fellow-prisoners, from many of whom they may have been separated but a week before, to hear prayers for their own souls, to join in the responses of their own burial service, and to listen to an address, warning their recent companions to take example by their fate, and urging themselves, while there is yet time�nearly four-and-twenty hours�to "turn, and flee from the wrath to come!"8 Imagine what have been the feelings of the men whom that fearful pew has enclosed, and of whom, between the gallows and the knife, no mortal remnant may now remain!9 Think of the hopeless clinging to life to the last, and the wild despair, far exceeding in anguish the felon's death itself, by which they have heard the certainty of their speedy transmission to another world, with all their crimes upon their heads, rung into their ears by the officiating clergyman!

At one time�and at no distant period either�the coffins of the men about to be executed, were placed in that pew, upon the seat by their side, during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilization and humanity which abolished this frightful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous; usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defense, as every year's experience has shown them to be more and more inefficacious.

7. Living. prisoners had been handed over to anatomists and 8. Cf. Matthew 3.7 and Luke 3.7: "O generation medical schools for dissection and scientific study. of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the This was considered an extra, postmortem punish- wrath to come?" ment. 9. Since the 16th century the corpses of hanged

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 1245

Leaving the chapel, descending to the passage so frequently alluded to, and crossing the yard before noticed as being allotted to prisoners of a more respectable description than the generality of men confined here, the visitor arrives at a thick iron gate of great size and strength. Having been admitted through it by the turnkey on duty, he turns sharp round to the left, and pauses before another gate; and, having passed this last barrier, he stands in the most terrible part of this gloomy building�the condemned ward.

The press-yard,1 well known by name to newspaper readers, from its frequent mention in accounts of executions, is at the corner of the building, and next to the ordinary's2 house, in Newgate-street: running from Newgate-street, towards the centre of the prison, parallel with Newgate-market. It is a long, narrow court, of which a portion of the wall in Newgate-street forms one end, and the gate the other. At the upper end, on the left-hand�that is, adjoining the wall in Newgate-street�is a cistern of water, and at the bottom a double grating (of which the gate itself forms a part) similar to that before described. Through these grates the prisoners are allowed to see their friends; a turnkey always remaining in the vacant space between, during the whole interview. Immediately on the right as you enter, is a building containing the press-room, day-room, and cells; the yard is on every side surrounded by lofty walls guarded by chevaux defrise;3 and the whole is under the constant inspection of vigilant and experienced turnkeys.

In the first apartment into which we were conducted�which was at the top of a staircase, and immediately over the press-room�were five-and-twenty or thirty prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the result of the recorder's report�men of all ages and appearances, from a hardened old offender with swarthy face and grizzly beard of three days' growth, to a handsome boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly youthful appearance even for that age, who had been condemned for burglary. There was nothing remarkable in the appearance of these prisoners. One or two decently-dressed men were brooding with a dejected air over the fire; several little groups of two or three had been engaged in conversation at the upper end of the room, or in the windows; and the remainder were crowded round a young man seated at a table, who appeared to be engaged in teaching the younger ones to write. The room was large, airy, and clean. There was very little anxiety or mental suffering depicted in the countenance of any of the men;�they had all been sentenced to death, it is true, and the recorder's report had not yet been made; but, we question whether there was a man among them, notwithstanding, who did not know that although he had undergone the ceremony, it never was intended that his life should be sacrificed. On the table lay a Testament, but there were no tokens of its having been in recent use.

In the press-room below, were three men, the nature of whose offence rendered it necessary to separate them, even from their companions in guilt. It is a long, sombre room, with two windows sunk into the stone wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on the morning of their execution, before moving towards the scaffold. The fate of one of these prisoners was uncertain; some mitigatory circumstances having come to light since his trial, which had been humanely represented in the proper quarter. The other two had nothing

1. Area from which criminals condemned to death execution. started for the place of execution. 3. Line of spikes (French). 2. Clergyman appointed to prepare criminals for

124 6 / CHARLES DICKENS

to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world. "The two short ones," the turnkey whispered, "were dead men."

The man to whom we have alluded as entertaining some hopes of escape, was lounging, at the greatest distance he could place between himself and his companions, in the window nearest to the door. He was probably aware of our approach, and had assumed an air of courageous indifference; his face was purposely averted towards the window, and he stirred not an inch while we were present. The other two men were at the upper end of the room. One of them, who was imperfectly seen in the dim light, had his back towards us, and was stooping over the fire, with his right arm on the mantel-piece, and his head sunk upon it. The other, was leaning on the sill of the farthest window. The light fell full upon him, and communicated to his pale, haggard face, and disordered hair, an appearance which, at that distance, was ghastly. His cheek rested upon his hand; and, with his face a little raised, and his eyes wildly staring before him, he seemed to be unconsciously intent on counting the chinks in the opposite wall. We passed this room again afterwards. The first man was pacing up and down the court with a firm military step�he had been a soldier in the foot-guards�and a cloth cap jauntily thrown on one side of his head. He bowed respectfully to our conductor, and the salute was returned. The other two still remained in the positions we have described, and were as motionless as statues.4

A few paces up the yard, and forming a continuation of the building, in which are the two rooms we have just quitted, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is by a narrow and obscure staircase leading to a dark passage, in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid tint over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like warmth around. From the left-hand side of this passage, the massive door of every cell on the story opens; and from it alone can they be approached. There are three of these passages, and three of these ranges of cells, one above the other; but in size, furniture and appearance, they are all precisely alike. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners under sentence of death are removed from the day-room at five o'clock in the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a candle until ten o'clock; and here they remain until seven next morning. When the warrant for a prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the cells and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He is at liberty to walk in the yard; but, both in his walks and in his cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey who never leaves him on any pretence.

We entered the first cell. It was a stone dungeon, eight feet long by six wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a bible, and prayer-book. An iron candlestick was fixed into the wall at the side; and a small high window in the back admitted as much air and light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars. It contained no other furniture of any description.

Conceive the situation of a man, spending his last night on earth in this cell. Buoyed up with some vague and undefined hope of reprieve, he knew not why�indulging in some wild and visionary idea of escaping, he knew not

4. These two men were executed shortly afterwards. The other was respited during his Majesty's pleasure [Dickens's note], "His Majesty": William IV (1765-1837; reigned 1830-37).

A VISIT TO NEWGATE / 124 7

how�hour after hour of the three preceding days allowed him for preparation, has fled with a speed which no man living would deem possible, for none but this dying man can know. He has wearied his friends with entreaties, exhausted the attendants with importunities, neglected in his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of his spiritual consoler; and, now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now that eternity is before him and guilt behind, now that his fears of death amount almost to madness, and an overwhelming sense of his helpless, hopeless state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupified, and has neither thoughts to turn to, nor power to call upon, the Almighty Being, from whom alone he can seek mercy and forgiveness, and before whom his repentance can alone avail.

Hours have glided by, and still he sits upon the same stone bench with folded arms, heedless alike of the fast decreasing time before him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradually, and the deathlike stillness of the street without, broken only by the rumbling of some passing vehicle which echoes mournfully through the empty yards, warns him that the night is waning fast away. The deep bell of St. Paul's strikes�one! He heard it; it has roused him. Seven hours left! He paces the narrow limits of his cell with rapid strides, cold drops of terror starting on his forehead, and every muscle of his frame quivering with agony. Seven hours! He suffers himself to be led to his seat, mechanically takes the bible which is placed in his hand, and tries to read and listen. No: his thoughts will wander. The book is torn and soiled by use�and like the book he read his lessons in, at school, just forty years ago! He has never bestowed a thought upon it, perhaps, since he left it as a child: and yet the place, the time, the room� nay, the very boys he played with, crowd as vividly before him as if they were scenes of yesterday; and some forgotten phrase, some childish word, rings in his ears like the echo of one uttered but a minute since. The voice of the clergyman recalls him to himself. He is reading from the sacred book its solemn promises of pardon for repentance, and its awful denunciation of obdurate men. He falls upon his knees and clasps his hands to pray. Hush! what sound was that? He starts upon his feet. It cannot be two yet. Hark! Two quarters have struck;�the third�the fourth. It is! Six hours left. Tell him not of repentance! Six hours' repentance for eight times six years of guilt and sin! He buries his face in his hands, and throws himself on the bench.5

Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind pursues him in his dreams. An insupportable load is taken from his breast; he is walking with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright sky above them, and a fresh and boundless prospect on every side�how different from the stone walls of Newgate! She is looking�not as she did when he saw her for the last time in that dreadful place, but as she used when he loved her� long, long ago, before misery and ill-treatment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his nature, and she is leaning upon his arm, and looking up into his face with tenderness and affection�and he does not strike her now, nor rudely shake her from him. And oh! how glad he is to tell her all he had forgotten in that last hurried interview, and to fall on his knees before her and fervently beseech her pardon for all the unkindness and cruelly that wasted her form and broke her heart! The scene suddenly changes. He is on his trial again: there are the judge and jury, and prosecutors, and witnesses, just as

5. Cf. the description of Fagin's last night in the condemned cell in Oliver Twist (1838), chap. 52.

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they were before. How full the court is�what a sea of heads�with a gallows, too, and a scaffold�and how all those people stare at himl Verdict, "Guilty." No matter; he will escape.

The night is dark and cold, the gates have been left open, and in an instant he is in the street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment like the wind. The streets are cleared, the open fields are gained and the broad wide country lies before him. Onward he dashes in the midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a speed and lightness, astonishing even to himself. At length he pauses; he must be safe from pursuit now; he will stretch himself on that bank and sleep till sunrise.

A period of unconsciousness succeeds. He wakes, cold and wretched. The dull gray light of morning is stealing into the cell, and falls upon the form of the attendant turnkey. Confused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty. It is but momentary. Every object in the narrow cell is too frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake. He is the condemned felon again, guilty and despairing; and in two hours more will be dead.

1835 1836

ROBERT BROWNING 1812-1889

During the years of his marriage, Bobert Browning was sometimes referred to as "Mrs. Browning's husband." Elizabeth Barrett was at that time a famous poet, whereas her husband was a relatively unknown experimenter whose poems were greeted with misunderstanding or indifference. Not until the 1860s did he at last gain a public and become recognized as the rival or equal of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In the twentieth century his reputation persisted but in an unusual way: his poetry was admired by two groups of readers widely different in tastes. To one group, among whom were the Browning societies that flourished in England and America, Browning was a wise philosopher and religious teacher who resolved the doubts that troubled Matthew Arnold and Tennyson.

The second group of readers enjoyed Browning less for his attempt to solve problems of religious doubt than for his attempt to solve the problems of how poetry should be written. Poets such as Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell recognized that more than any other nineteenth-century poet, it was Browning who energetically hacked through a trail that subsequently became the main road of twentieth-century poetry. In Poetry and the Age (1953) Bandall Jarrell remarked that "the dramatic monologue, which once had depended for its effect upon being a departure from the norm of poetry, now became in one form or another the norm."

The dramatic monologue, as Browning uses it, separates the speaker from the poet

in such a way that the reader must work through the words of the speaker to discover

the meaning of the poet. For example, in the well-known early monologue "My Last

Duchess" (1842), we listen to the duke as he speaks of his dead wife. From his one-

sided conversation we piece together the situation, both past and present, and we

infer what sort of woman the duchess really was and what sort of man the duke is.

Ultimately, we may also infer what the poet himself thinks of the speaker he has

created. In this poem it is fairly easy to reach such a judgment, although the pleasure

of the poem results from our reconstruction of a story quite different from the one

ROBERT BROWNING / 1249

the duke thinks he is telling. Many of Browning's poems are far less stable, and it is difficult to discern the relationship of the poet to his speaker. In reading "A Grammarian's Funeral" (1855), for example, can we be sure that the central character is a hero? Or is he merely a fool? In " 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' " (1855) is the speaker describing a phantasmagoric landscape of his own paranoid imagining, or is the poem a fable of courage and defiance in a modern wasteland?

In addition to his experiments with the dramatic monologue, Browning also experimented with language and syntax. The grotesque rhymes and jaw-breaking diction that he often employs have been repugnant to some critics; George Santayana, for instance, dismissed him as a clumsy barbarian. But to those who appreciate Browning, the incongruities of language are a humorous and appropriate counterpart to an imperfect world. Ezra Pound's tribute to "Old Hippety-Hop o' the accents," as he addresses Browning, is both affectionate and memorable:

Heart that was big as the bowels of Vesuvius Words that were winged as her sparks in eruption, Eagled and thundered as Jupiter Pluvius Sound in your wind past all signs o' corruption.

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, a London suburb. His father, a bank clerk, was a learned man with an extensive library. His mother was a kindly, religious- minded woman, interested in music, whose love for her brilliant son was warmly reciprocated. Until the time of his marriage, at the age of thirty-four, Browning was rarely absent from his parents' home. He attended a boarding school near Camber- well, traveled a little (to Russia and Italy), and was a student at the University of London for a short period, but he preferred to pursue his education at home, where he was tutored in foreign languages, music, boxing, and horsemanship and where he read omnivorously. From this unusual education he acquired a store of knowledge on which to draw for the background of his poems.

The "obscurity" of which his contemporaries complained in his earlier poetry may be partly accounted for by the circumstances of Browning's education, but it also reflects his anxious desire to avoid exposing himself too explicitly before his readers. His first poem, Pauline (1833), published when he was twenty-one, had been modeled on the example of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the most personal of poets. When an otherwise admiring review by John Stuart Mill noted that the young author was afflicted with an "intense and morbid self-consciousness," Browning was overwhelmed with embarrassment. He resolved to avoid confessional writings thereafter.

One way of reducing the personal element in his poetry was to write plays instead of soul-searching narratives or lyrics. In 1836, encouraged by the actor W. C. Mac- ready, Browning began work on his first play, Strafford, a historical tragedy that lasted only four nights when it was produced in London in 1837. For ten years the young writer struggled to write for the theater, but all his stage productions remained failures. Nevertheless, writing dialogue for actors led him to explore another form more congenial to his genius�the dramatic monologue, a form that enabled him through imaginary speakers to avoid explicit autobiography. His first collection of such monologues, Dramatic Lyrics, appeared in 1842; but it received no more critical enthusiasm than did his plays.

Browning's resolution to avoid the subjective manner of Shelley did not preclude his being influenced by the earlier poet in other ways. At fourteen, when he first discovered Shelley's works, he became an atheist and liberal. Although he grew away from the atheism, after a struggle, and also the extreme phases of his liberalism, he retained from Shelley's influence something permanent and more difficult to define: an ardent dedication to ideals (often undefined ideals) and an energetic striving toward goals (often undefined goals).

Browning's ardent romanticism also found expression in his love affair with Eliza

beth Barrett, which had the dramatic ingredients of Browning's own favorite story of

125 0 / ROBERT BROWNING

St. George rescuing the maiden from the dragon. Few would have forecast the outcome when Browning met Elizabeth Barrett in 1845. She was six years older than he was, a semi-invalid, jealously guarded by her possessively tyrannical father. But love, as the poet was to say later, is best; and love swept aside all obstacles. After their elopement to Italy, the former semi-invalid was soon enjoying far better health and a full life. The husband likewise seemed to thrive during the years of this remarkable marriage. His most memorable volume of poems, Men and Women (1855), reflects his enjoyment of Italy: its picturesque landscapes and lively street scenes as well as its monuments from the past�its Renaissance past in particular.

The happy fifteen-year sojourn in Italy ended in 1861 with Elizabeth's death. The widower returned to London with his son. During the twenty-eight years remaining to him, the quantity of verse he produced did not diminish. Dramatis Personae (1864) is a volume containing some of his most intriguing monologues, such as "Caliban upon Setebos." And in 1868 he published his longest and most significant single poem, The Ring and the Book, which was inspired by his discovery of an old book of legal records concerning a murder trial in seventeenth-century Rome. His poem tells the story of a brutally sadistic husband, Count Guido Franceschini. The middle-aged Guido grows dissatisfied with his young wife, Pompilia, and accuses her of having adulterous relations with a handsome priest who, like St. George, had tried to rescue her from the appalling situation in which her husband confined her. Eventually Guido stabs his wife to death and is himself executed. In a series of twelve books, Browning retells this tale of violence, presenting it from the contrasting points of view of participants and spectators. Because of its vast scale, The Ring and the Book is like a Victorian novel, but in its experiments with multiple points of view it anticipates later works such as Joseph Conrad's novel Lord Jim (1900) and Akira Kurosawa's film Rashdmon (1950).

After The Ring and the Book several more volumes appeared. In general, Browning's writings during the last two decades of his life exhibit a certain mechanical repetition of mannerism and an excess of argumentation�tendencies into which he may have been led by the unqualified enthusiasm of his admirers, for it was during this period that he gained his great following. When he died, in 1889, he was buried in West- minster Abbey.

During the London years Browning became extremely fond of social life. He dined at the homes of friends and at clubs, where he enjoyed port wine and conversation. He would talk loudly and emphatically about many topics�except his own poetry, about which he was usually reticent. Despite his bursts of outspokenness, Browning's character seemed, in Thomas Hardy's words, "the literary puzzle of the nineteenth century." Like William Butler Yeats, he was a poet preoccupied with masks. On the occasion of his burial, his friend Henry James reflected that many oddities and many great writers have been buried in Westminster Abbey, "but none of the odd ones have been so great and none of the great ones been so odd."

Just as Browning's character is hard to identify so also are his poems difficult to

relate to the age in which they were written. Bishops and painters of the Renaissance,

physicians of the Roman Empire, musicians of eighteenth-century Germany�as we

explore this gallery of talking portraits we seem to be in a world of time long past,

remote from the world of steam engines and disputes about human beings' descent

from the ape. Yet our first impression is misleading. Many of these portraits explore

problems that confronted Browning's contemporaries, especially problems of faith

and doubt, of good and evil, and of the function of the artist in modern life. "Caliban

upon Setebos," for example, is a highly topical critique of Darwinism and of natural

(as opposed to supernatural) religions. Browning's own attitude toward these topics

is partially concealed because of his use of speakers and of settings from earlier ages,

yet we do encounter certain recurrent religious assumptions that we can safely assign

to the poet himself. The most recurrent is that God has created an imperfect world

as a kind of testing ground, a "vale of soul-making," as John Keats had said. It followed,

ROBERT BROWNING / 1251

for Browning's purposes, that the human soul must be immortal and that heaven itself be perfect. As Abt Vogler affirms: "On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round." Armed with such a faith, Browning sometimes gives the impression that he was himself untroubled by the doubts that gnawed at the hearts of Tennyson, Arnold, and other figures in the mid-Victorian period. Yet Browning's apparent optimism is consistently being tested by his bringing to light the evils of human nature. His gallery of villains�murderers, sadistic husbands, mean and petty manipulators� is an extraordinary one. Few writers, in fact, seem to have been more aware of the existence of evil.

A second aspect of Browning's poetry that separates it from the Victorian age is its style. The most representative Victorian poets such as Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti write in the manner of Keats, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser, and of classical poets such as Virgil. Theirs is the central stylistic tradition in English poetry, one that favors smoothly polished texture, elevated diction and subjects, and pleasing liquidity of sound. Browning draws from a different tradition, more colloquial and discordant, a tradition that includes the poetry of John Donne, the soliloquies of William Shakespeare, and certain features of the narrative style of Geoffrey Chaucer. Of most significance are Browning's affinities with Donne. Both poets sacrifice, on occasion, the pleasures of harmony and of a consistent elevation of tone by using a harshly discordant style and unexpected juxtapositions that startle us into an awareness of a world of everyday realities and trivialities. Readers who dislike this kind of poetry in Browning or in Donne argue that it suffers from prosiness. Oscar Wilde once described the novelist George Meredith as "a prose Browning." And so, he added, was Browning. Wilde's joke may help us to relate Browning to his contemporaries. For if Browning seems out of step with other Victorian poets, he is by no means out of step with his contemporaries in prose. The grotesque, which plays such a prominent role in the style and subject matter of Carlyle and Dickens and in the aesthetic theories of John Ruskin, is equally prominent in Browning's verse:

Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savory, smug and gruff.

Like Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833�34), these lines from "Holy-Cross Day" (1855) present a situation of grave seriousness with noisy jocularity. It was fitting that Browning and Carlyle remained good friends, even though the elder writer kept urging Browning to give up verse in favor of prose.

The link between Browning and the Victorian prose writers is not limited to style. With the later generation of Victorian novelists, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Henry James, Browning shares a central preoccupation. Like Eliot in particular, he was interested in exposing the devious ways in which our minds work and the complexity of our motives. "My stress lay on incidents in the development of a human soul," he wrote; "little else is worth study." His psychological insights can be illustrated in poems such as "The Bishop Orders His Tomb" (1845) and "Andrea del Sarto" (1855). Although these are spoken monologues, not inner monologues in the manner of James Joyce, the insight into the workings of the mind is similarly acute. As in reading Joyce, we must be on our guard to follow the rapid shifts of the speaker's mental processes as jumps are made from one cluster of associations to another. A further challenge for the reader of Browning is to identify what has been left out. As was remarked in a letter by the 1890s poet Ernest Dowson, Browning's "masterpieces in verse" demonstrate both "subtlety" and "the tact of omission." "My Last Duchess," he added, "is pure Henry James."

But Browning's role as a forerunner of twentieth-century literature should not blind us to his essential Victorianism. Energy is the most characteristic aspect of his writing and of the man (Ivan Turgenev compared Browning's handshake to an electric shock).

1252 / ROBERT BROWNING

Gerard Manley Hopkins described Browning as "a man bouncing up from table with his mouth full of bread and cheese and saying that he meant to stand no blasted nonsense." This buoyancy imparts a creative vitality to all of Browning's writings.

Porphyria's Lover1

The rain set early in tonight, The sullen wind was soon awake, It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake: 5 I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; 10 Which done, she rose, and from her form Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side is And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, 20 And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, Murmuring how she loved me�she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, 25 And give herself to me forever. But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: 30 So, she was come through wind and rain. Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshiped me: surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew 35 While I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound 40

Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain.

1. One of a pair of monologues originally published as "Madhouse Cells." a title that emphasized the speakers abnormal state of mind.

SOLILOQU Y O F TH E SPANIS H CLOISTE R / 125 3 As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again 45 Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, 50 Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, 55 And I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria's love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, 60 And yet God has not said a word! 183 4 1836,184 2

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

i Gr-r-r�there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flowerpots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood,1 would not mine kill you! 5 What? your myrtle bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims� Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together: io Salve tibi!2 I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year:

Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls,3 I doubt: 15 What 's the Latin name for "parsley"?

What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?4

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf! With a fire-new spoon we're furnished, 20

And a goblet for ourself,

1. An oath (archaic). 3. Abnormal outgrowths on oak trees, used for 2. Hail to thee! (Latin); i.e., "your health!" This tanning. and other speeches in italics in this stanza are the 4. Dandelion (19th-century use), words of Brother Lawrence.

125 4 / ROBERT BROWNING

Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps0 jaws Marked with L. for our initial! (He-he! There his lily snaps!) 4 25 Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the Convent bank With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 30 �Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?5 (That is, if he'd let it show!) 5 When he finishes refection,0 dinner Knife and fork he never lays 35 Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange pulp� In three sips the Arian6 frustrate; 40 While he drains his at one gulp. 6 Oh, those melons? If he's able We're to have a feast! so nice! One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice. 45 How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange!�And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly! 7 There's a great text in Galatians,7 so Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails: If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, 55 Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee?8 8 Or, my scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type!

5. Pirate of the Barbary Coast of northern Africa, renowned for fierceness and lechery. 6. Heretical follower of Arius (256�336), who denied the doctrine of the Trinity. 7. The speaker hopes to obtain Lawrence's damnation by luring him into a heresy when he may prove unable to interpret "Galatians" in an unswervingly orthodox way. In Galatians 5.15�23 St. Paul specifies an assortment of "works of the flesh" that lead to damnation, which could make up a total of "twenty-nine" (line 51).

8. A heretic, a follower of Mani (3rd century), Persian religious leader.

M Y LAS T DUCHES S / 125 5 60Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's0 gripe: If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't? the devil's 659 Or, there's Satan!�one might venture Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture 70As he'd miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia9 We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine' 'St, there's Vespers!2 Plena gratia. Ave, Virgo!3 Gr-r-r�you swine! ca. 1839 1842 My Last Duchess' Ferrara 5iois20That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf's2 hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Fra 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. Sir, 'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

9. The speaker would pledge his own soul to Satan in return for blasting Lawrence and his "roseacacia," but the pledge would be so cleverly worded that the speaker would not have to pay his debt to Satan. There would be an escape clause ("flaw in the indenture") for himself. 1. Perhaps the opening of a mysterious curse against Lawrence. 2. Evening prayers. 3. Full of grace, Hail, Virgin! (Latin). The speaker's twisted state of mind may he reflected in his mixed-up version of the prayer to Mary: "Ave, Maria, gratia plena."

1. The poem is based on incidents in the life of Alfonso II. Duke of Ferrara in Italy, whose first wife, Lucrezia, a young woman, died in 1561 after three years of marriage. Following her death, the duke negotiated through an agent to marry a niece of the Count of Tyrol. Browning represents the duke as addressing this agent. 2. Friar Pandolf, an imaginary painter.

1256 / ROBERT BROWNING

For calling up that spot of joy. 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.

25 Sir, 'twas all one! My favor 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

30 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men�good! but thanked Somehow�I know not how�as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

35 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech�(which I have not)�to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark"�and if she let

40 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse �E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

45 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence

50 Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

55 Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck' cast in bronze for me!

1842 1842

The Lost Leader1

Just for a handful of silver he left us,2 Just for a riband' to stick in his coat� Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,

3. An unidentified or imaginary sculptor. The of his young admirers such as Browning, whose Count of Tyrol had his capital at Innsbruck. liberalism was then as passionate as Wordsworth's 1. William Wordsworth, who had been an ardent had once been. libera! in his youth, had become a political con-2. Browning here alludes to the "thirty pieces of servative in later years. In old age, when he silver" for which Judas betrayed lesus (Matthew accepted a grant of money from the government 26.14-16). and the office ol poet laureate, he alienated some 3. Symbol of the office of poet laureate.

Ho w THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS / 125 7

Lost all the others she lets us devote; 5 They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How all our copper had gone for his service! Rags�were they purple, his heart had been proud! We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 10 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, Made him our pattern to live and to die! Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, Burns, Shelley, were with us�they watch from their graves! 15 He alone breaks from the van4 and the freemen �He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering�not through his presence; Songs may inspirit us�not from his lyre; Deeds will be done�while he boasts his quiescence, 20 Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! 25 Life's night begins: let him never come back to us! There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, Forced praise on our part�the glimmer of twilight, Never glad confident morning again! Best fight on well, for we taught him�strike gallantly, 30 Menace our heart ere we master his own; Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

1843 1845

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix1

(16-)

I I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; s Behind shut the postern,0 the lights sank to rest, side door And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

4. Vanguard of the army of liberalism. ders and Spain, was an imaginary one. In 1889 1. The distance between Ghent, in Flanders, and Thomas Edison prepared a cylinder recording of Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen, in Germany) is Browning's recitation of the opening lines of this about one hundred miles. Browning said that the poem. incident, occurring during the wars between Flan

125 8 / ROBERT BROWNING

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,

10 Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique0 right, spur or pommel Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;

is At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,

20 And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

25 And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence�ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! And the thick heavy spume-flakes which ay and anon

30 His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

6 By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix"�for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, 35 And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and 1, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,

40 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"�and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup0 over, lay dead as a stone; rump

45 And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB / 1259

9 Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,

50 Shook off both my jack boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

10 55 And all I remember is�friends flocking round As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 60 Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

ca. 1844 1845

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church'

Rome, 15�

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!2 Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews�sons mine .. . ah God, I know not! Well� She, men would have to be your mother once,

5 Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream,

io Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;

15 And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: �Old Gandolf cozened" me, despite my care; cheated

1. In "Fra Lippo Lippi" Browning represents the dawn of the Renaissance in Italy, with its fresh zest for human experiences in this world. In this monologue he portrays a later stage of the Renaissance when such worldliness, full-blown, had infected some of the leading clergy of Italy. Browning's portrait of the dying bishop is, however, not primarily a satire against corruption in the church. It is a brilliant exposition of the workings of a mind, a mind that has been conditioned by special historical circumstances. The Victorian historian of art John Ruskin said of this poem: I know of no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told.

as in these lines, of the Renaissance spirit�its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that 1 have said of the central Renaissance in thirty pages of the Stones of Venice, put into as many lines, Browning's also being the antecedent work.

St. Praxed's Church was named in honor of St. Praxedes, a Roman virgin of the 2nd century who gave her riches to poor Christians. Both the bishop and his predecessor, Gandolf, are imaginary persons.

2. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2.

126 0 / ROBERT BROWNING

Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south He graced his carrion with,3 God curse the same!

20 Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle side,4 And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:

25 And I shall fill my slab of basalt5 there, And 'neath my tabernacle6 take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

30 As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.7 �Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,8 Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church

35 �What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .

40 Bedded in store of rotten fig leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail,9 Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,1 Big as a jew's head cut off at the nape,2 Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .

45 Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati3 villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church4 so gay,

50 For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:5 Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black6� 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else

55 Shall ye contrast my frieze7 to come beneath? The bas-relief8 in bronze ye promised me,

Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot� of, and perchance know

3. Bishop Gandolf shrewdly chose a prize spot in 9. Basket for holding olives. the southern corner of the church for his huriai 1. Valuable bright blue stone. place. The tomb that the speaker is ordering will 2. Perhaps a reference to the head of John the also be inside the church, as was common for Baptist, cut off at Salome's request (Matthew important people in this era. 14.6-11). 4. The Epistles of the New Testament are read 3. Suburb of Rome, used as a resort by wealthy from the right-hand side of the altar (as one faces Italians. it). 4. II Gesu, a Jesuit church in Rome. In a chapel 5. Dark-colored igneous rock. in this church the figure of an angel (rather than 6. Stone canopy or tentlike roof, presumably sup-God) holds a huge lump of lapis lazuli in his hands. ported by the "nine columns" under which the 5. Cf. Job 7.6. sculptured effigy of the bishop would lie on the 6. I.e., black marble. "slab of basalt." 7. Continuous band of sculpture. 7. A pulpy mash of fermented grapes from which 8. Sculpture in which the figures do not project a strong wine might be poured off. far from the background surface. 8. An inferior marble that peels in layers.