IV
Swinburne has been usually regarded as an impersonal poet, though some of his critics have tried to see in the accounts of derelictions from the path of virtue in the poems, records of actual experiences. The poet has himself written something on the subject. In the Dedicatory Epistle of 1904 to the collected edition of his works he wrote: "There are photographs from life in the book (Poems and Ballads, 1865); there are sketches from imagination. Some which keen-sighted criticism has dismissed with a smile as ideal or imaginary were as real and actual as they well could be; others which have been taken for obvious transcripts from memory were utterly fantastic or dramatic.... Friendly and kindly critics, English and foreign, have detected ignorance of the subject in poems taken straight from the life, and have protested that they could not believe me were I to swear that poems entirely or mainly fanciful were not faithful expressions or transcriptions of the writer's actual experience and personal emotion."
The poet does not tell us which poems were fanciful and which were not. He does let us know that some of the poems were the record of his own experience. I propose to show that many of the poet's best known poems had a personal background and thus to differ with the theory usually prevalent that Swinburne, instead of having sung his own soul, was but a clever manipulator of rhyme and metre. The clue to the investigation is furnished by our knowledge that one of his greatest poems in the Poems and Ballads, "The Triumph of Time," was inspired by the one love disappointment of his life. It was written in 1862 when he was twenty-five years old and "represented with the exactest fidelity," says Gosse, his biographer, "his emotions which passed through his mind when his anger had died down, and when nothing remained but the infinite pity and the pain." Swinburne met the young lady at the home of the friends of Ruskin and Burne-Jones, Dr. John Simon and his wife. She was a kinswoman of theirs. She gave the poet roses and sang for him. She laughed in his face when he proposed. He was hurt grievously and went up to the sea in Northumberland and composed the poem. The poet told Gosse the story in 1876.
The poem is a cry of a wounded heart; one of the most powerful in all literature. The poet recounts all his emotions and foresees that this affair will influence his life. Many lines in it are familiar to Swinburne lovers, such as "I shall never be friend again with roses," "I shall hate sweet music my whole life long." It is one of Swinburne's masterpieces and Rupert Brooke considered it the masterpiece of the poet.
One may now see that the terrible declamation against love, one of the lengthiest and best choruses in his play Atlanta in Calydon, rings with a personal note. The lines beginning "For an evil blossom was born" constitute one of the most bitter outcries against love in literature. Unconsciously, memories of his lost love were at work and the chorus must have been written about the same time as "The Triumph of Time." The play itself was published in 1864. Swinburne is the Chorus and thus chants his own feelings in the Greek legend he tells.
Swinburne may have had other love affairs though Gosse tells us this was his only one. I find memories of the unfortunate episode throughout the entire first volume of Poems and Ballads, and note recurrences to the theme in later volumes. In one of his best known poems, "The Forsaken Garden," written in 1876, he dwells on the death of love. The idea of love having an end is repeated with much persistency throughout many of his poems; he so harps on the same note, that the suspicions of critics should have been roused before we learned about the romance of his life. No doubt the reason he was attracted to the love tragedy of Tristram of Lyonesse, published in 1882, was because of his own tragic experience; and in the splendid prelude (written, Gosse tells us, in 1871) we see the effects of his love affair.
We have evidence of Swinburne's grief in two of the greatest poems of the Poems and Ballads, where it was least suspected, in "Anactoria" and "Dolores," poems whose morality he had to defend. He pours some light on the subject in his Notes on Poems and Reviews, published as a reply to his critics after the issue of his Poems and Ballads in 1865. Of "Anactoria" he said: "In this poem I have simply expressed, or tried to express, that violence of affection between one and another which hardens into rage and deepens into despair.... I have tried to cast my spirit into the mould of hers (Sappho), to express and represent not the poem but the poet.... As to the 'blasphemies' against God or gods of which here and elsewhere I stand accused—they are to be taken as the first outcome or outburst of foiled and fruitless passion recoiling on itself."
In other words he was singing his own grief through Sappho. The rage and despair were Swinburne's own and the "blasphemies" were his own reaction to frustrated love.
On "Dolores," the poet says: "I have striven here to express that transient state of spirit through which a man may be supposed to pass, foiled in love and weary of loving, but not yet in sight of rest; seeking rest in those violent delights which have violent ends in free and frank sensualities which at last profess to be no more than they are."
No doubt the poet gave himself up to light loves as a result of his disappointment. But the point here to be remembered is that the poem is by his own confession a result of a state of spirit through which a "man foiled in love" (the poet himself) may be said to pass and through which Swinburne did pass.
Let us examine some of his lyrics, chiefly those in his first volume where we can see the result of the love affair.
In "Laus Veneris" he breaks off from his story to say:
"Ah love, there is no better life than this,
To have known love how bitter a thing it is,
And afterwards be cast out of God's sight."
He spoke here from personal memories.
After he tells the story of "Les Noyades," of the youth who was bound to a woman who did not love him and thrown into the river Loire, the poet ends abruptly, and addresses his own love, regretting that this could not have happened to him. He re-echoes the sentiment in "The Triumph of Time" where he wishes he were dead with his love. Yet no critic has ventured to see how Swinburne was drawn to this tale by his unconscious, by the fact that he had lost his love; and no critic dreamed of claiming that the following concluding lines were personal and addressed to the kinswoman of the Simons:
"O sweet one love, O my life's delight,
Dear, though the days have divided us,
Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,
Not twice in the world shall the Gods do this."
His address to the spirit of Paganism, the "Hymn of Proserpine," which should not necessarily bring up thoughts of his love tragedy, nevertheless begins, "I have lived long enough, have seen one thing, that love hath an end," and later on he complains that laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day, but love grows bitter with treason and laurel outlives not May. I fear that the poet deserves more sympathy than he has hitherto been accorded. He had accused his love of having encouraged him, hence he knew what he meant when he sang those sad words "love grows bitter with treason."
Two other pathetic poems are "A Leave Taking" where he constantly reiterates "she would not love" and he turns for consolation to his songs; and "Satia de Sanguine" where he says, "in the heart is the prey for gods, who crucify hearts, not hands."
In "Rondel" he begins:
"These many years since we began to be
What have the gods done with us? what with me,
What with my love? They have shown me fates and fears,
Harsh springs and fountains bitterer than the sea."
In the "Garden of Proserpine," he sings,
"And love grown faint and fretful,
Sighs and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure."
This poem shows his longing for rest after his sad experience; he is tired of everything but sleep.
In "Hesperia" he again refers to his troubles:
"As the cross that a wild nun clasps till the edge of it bruises her bosom,
So love wounds as we grasp it and blackens and burns as a flame;
I have loved much in my life; when the live bud bursts with the blossom
Bitter as ashes or tears is the fruit, and the wine thereof shame."
Even in "The Leper" he gives us an inkling of his great love by describing the devotion of the lover for the smitten lady. "She might have loved me a little too, had I been humbler for her sake."
All these poems appeared in his first volume and were written within at least two years after his sorrow. He can scarcely write a poem or chant about a woman or retell an old myth or legend, or venture a bit of philosophy but he unconsciously introduces his aching heart. The burden is always that love has an end or lives but a day.
There are other poems in the first volume where the personal note is present and yet very little attention has been called to this.
The poem "Felise," with its quotation from Villon, "Where are the Snows of Yesterday," is I believe a personal poem, based on an actual or desired change between him and his lost sweetheart, that is, if this poem refers to her. Some day new data may appear to tell us whether the facts of the poem had any basis in reality. It seems that a year after the poet's love was rejected by the girl, she wished to win his love back and that he now scorned her. The poem was written, Gosse conjectures, in 1864, but 1863 is most likely the date from the internal evidence, as she rejected him in 1862. Swinburne refers to the change a year had brought:
"I had died for this last year, to know
You loved me. Who shall turn on fate?
I care not if love come or go
Now, though your love seek mine for mate.
It is too late."
He exults cruelly; in the new situation he is revenged.
"Love wears thin,
And they laugh well who laugh the last."
He concludes:
"But sweet, for me no more with you!
Not while I live, not though I die.
Good night, good bye."
If she ever sought a return to the poet's affections, he refused to receive her. He had hoped she might seek to return; read the following lines from "The Triumph of Time," where he takes the same stand that he does in this poem.
"Will it not one day in heaven repent you?
Will they solace you wholly the days that were?
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet me and see where the great lane is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you.
The gait is strait. I shall not be there."
No, never would he take her back. Whether the incident of her asking to be restored to his affections happened or not is unimportant, relatively. Sappho prayed to Aphrodite to reverse the situation of her love and make the rejecting lover come to her suppliant; a situation that every suffering lover wants, and as we know, very often happens.
One of the finest poems inspired by his love, "his sleek black pantheress," is the poem called "At a Month's End," published in 1878 in the second series of Poems and Ballads. He recalls the old days and his grief is not now so maddening. He sighs:
"Should Love disown or disesteem you
For loving one man more or less?
You could not tame your light white sea-mew,
Nor I my sleek black pantheress.
"For a new soul let whoso please pray,
We are what life made us and shall be.
For you the jungle and me the sea-spray
And south for you and north for me."
The late Edward Thomas, killed in the war, was certainly in error when he concluded that Swinburne did not directly express personal emotion and that few of the pieces could have been addressed to one woman and that he never expressed a single hearted devotion to one woman except in "A Leave Taking." We need not insist that one woman was always in his mind, but one woman inspired most of his love passages. New information may show that other women inspired some of his love verse.[E]
Another phase in studying the poet that has interested readers is whether he actually figured in the light and lewd loves he sang. This is rather dangerous ground, and one cannot delve with certainty here. Nor is this matter so important as the question of the connection between a grand passion and the poems. The poet says in his notes in reply to critics that "Dolores" and "Faustine" are merely fanciful. Gosse has been censured for not having written an honest biography and for having passed over certain episodes in the poet's life. It had often been rumoured that the poet did lead, occasionally, a dissipated life. In the late seventies he was rescued by his friend Watts-Dunton from the effects of presumable long dissipation. After that time the poet's life was normal and the publication of the early poems of passion became a source of regret to him. He never again returned to that strain and incidentally rarely wrote work that was equal to his first period. It may then be true that some light loves and immoral women inspired poems like "Anima Anceps," "A Match," "Before Parting," "Rococo," "Stage Love," "Interlude," "Before Dawn," "Faustine," "Dolores," "Fragoleeta," "Aholibah," etc.
Swinburne then, who of all lyric poets was the one deemed least to have drawn on his personal life for material, has done so in great measure.
His "Thalassius" gives us his spiritual autobiography. At the age of fifty-five he recurred to his childhood scenes and gave us memories of them in his drama The Sister (1892) where he drew himself in Clavering. His The Tale of Balen, published a few years later, is also personal.
In spite of the fact that the poet elaborated and gave us such rich verse, he wrote from the unconscious. The first stanzas of "A Vision of Spring in Winter" were composed in sleep. He awoke at night and penned the verses he had composed. His "A Ballade of Dreamland" was written in the morning without a halt. Swinburne worked from impulse.
Swinburne's affinity to Shelley calls for special comment. He was attracted to him, because Shelley too, like Swinburne, hated monarchy and the church, because he had a mastery over melody in verse, because he was persecuted. He wrote to his youngest sister (Leith: Swinburne, Page 221): "I must say it is too funny—not to say uncanny—how much there is in common between us two; born in exactly the same class, cast out of Oxford—the only difference being that I was not formally but informally expelled—and holding and preaching the same general views in the poems which made us famous." This is a good illustration of the process of projection in literature. Swinburne was attracted to Shelley because he was most like him.
The influence of his mother, Jane Swinburne, was a determining factor in his life. She guided his reading and took care of him and he was mentally a good deal like her. He was very much attached to her and no doubt she unconsciously is present in much of his work. She died in 1896 when eighty-seven years old and her death left him a changed man and was the tragedy of his later life. When she came to live with him before her death he wrote a poem of welcome to her, "The High Oaks," and when she died he wrote "Barking Hall."