"MY LAST DUCHESS," AND "THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS"
For a mind so subtle, frank, and generous as that of Browning, the perfume which pervades the atmosphere of "high life" was no less obvious than the miasma. His imagination needed not to free itself of all things adventitious to its object ere it could soar; in a word, for Browning, even a "lady" could be a woman—and remain a woman, even though she be turned to a "great" lady, that figure once so gracious, now so hunted from the realm of things that may be loved! Of narrowness like this our poet was incapable. He could indeed transcend the class-distinction, but that was not, with him, the same as trampling it under foot. And especially he loved to set a young girl in those regions where material cares prevail not—where, moving as in an upper air, she joys or suffers "not for bread alone."
"Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red—
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance, where a man might base his head?"
He could grant her to be "such a lady," yet grant, too, that her soul existed. True, that in A Toccata of Galuppi's,[166:1] the soul is questioned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned."
But this is not our crude modern refusal of "reality" in any lives but those of toil and privation. It is rather the sad vision of an entire social epoch—the eighteenth century; and the eighteenth century in Venice, who was then at the final stage of her moral death. And despite the denial of soul in these Venetians, there is no contempt, no facile "simplification" of a question whose roots lie deep in human nature, since even the animals and plants we cultivate into classes! The sadness is for the mutability of things; and among them, that lighthearted, brilliant way of life, which had so much of charm amid its folly.
"Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford
—She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord."
The music trickled then through the room, as it trickles now for the listening poet: with its minor cadences, the "lesser thirds so plaintive," the "diminished sixths," the suspensions, the solutions: "Must we die?"—
"Those commiserating sevenths—'Life might last! we can but try!'"
The question of questions, even for "ladies and gentlemen"! And then come the other questions: "Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to."
"So an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
'Brave Galuppi, that was music! Good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play.'
Then they left you for their pleasure; till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun."
. . . The "cold music" has seemed to the modern listener to say that he, learned and wise, shall not pass away like these:
". . . You know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction—you'll not die, it cannot be!
As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?" . . .
Yet while it seems to say this, the saying brings him no solace. What, "creaking like a ghostly cricket," it intends, he must perceive, since he is neither deaf nor blind:
"But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! . . .
'Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old."
After all, the pageant of life has value! We need not only the wise men. And even the wise man creeps through every nerve when he listens to that music. "Here's all the good it brings!"
None the less, there is trouble other than that of its passing in this pageant. Itself has the seed of death within it. All that beauty, riches, ease, can do, shall leave some souls unsatisfied—nay, shall kill some souls. . . . This too Browning could perceive and show; and once more, loved to show in the person of a girl. There is something in true womanhood which transcends all morgue: it seems almost his foible to say that, so often does he say it! In Colombe, in the Queen of In a Balcony (so wondrously contrasted with Constance, scarcely less noble, yet half-corroded by this very rust of state and semblance); above all, in the exquisite imagining of that "Duchess," the girl-wife who twice is given us, and in two widely different environments—yet is (to my feeling) one loved incarnation of eager sweetness. He touched her first to life when she was dead, if one may speak so paradoxically; then, unsatisfied with that posthumous awaking, brought her resolutely back to earth—in My Last Duchess and The Flight of the Duchess respectively. Let us examine the two poems, and I think we shall agree, in reading the second, that Browning, like Caponsacchi, could not have the lady dead.
First, then, comes a picture—the mere portrait, "painted on the wall," of a dead Italian girl.
"That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
Frà 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."
The Duke, a Duke of Ferrara, owner of "a nine-hundred-years-old name," is showing the portrait, with an intention in the display, to the envoy from a Count whose daughter he designs to make his next Duchess. He is a connoisseur and collector of the first rank, but his pride is deeplier rooted than in artistic knowledge and possessions. Thanks to that nine-hundred-years-old name, he is something more than the passionless art-lover: he is a man who has killed a woman by his egotism. But even now that she is dead, he does not know that it was he who killed her—nor, if he did, could feel remorse. For it is not possible that he could have been wrong. This Duchess—it would have been idle to "make his will clear" to such an one; the imposition, not the exposition, of that will was all that he could show to her (or any other lesser being) without stooping—"and I choose never to stoop." Her error had been precisely the "depth and passion of that earnest glance" which Frà Pandolf had so wonderfully caught. Does the envoy suppose that it was only her husband's presence which called that "spot of joy" into her cheek? It had not been so. The mere painting-man, the mere Frà Pandolf, may have paid her some tribute of the artist—may have said, for instance, that her mantle hid too much of her wrist, or that the "faint half-flush that died along her throat" was beyond the power of paint to reproduce.
". . . Such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy."
As the envoy still seems strangely unenlightened, the Duke is forced to the "stooping" implied in a more explicit statement:
". . . 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."
Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly conveyed:
"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour 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
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. . . ."
We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to the Duke, looking at the Duchess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender creature as though we also were at gaze on Frà Pandolf's picture. . . . I call this piece a wonder, now! Scarce one of the monologues is so packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most "simple"—even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, hers—but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that came to her was transmuted into her own dearness—even his favour at her breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that "favour"—the high proprietary air, the loftily anticipated gratitude: Sir Willoughby Patterne by intelligent anticipation. But then, though the approving speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with his bough of cherries—and speech and blush were given again! Absurder still, the spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . .
"Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling?"
Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's gift"—even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted" him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made excuse) . . . even so (this must be impressed upon the envoy), it would have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop."
Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the next Duchess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued upon that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is sounding in his ear—
". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together."
There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing. There she stands, looking as if she were alive. . . . And almost he starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a meaning—
". . . There she stands
As if alive"
—the picture is a wonder!
Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had just now sounded: "Then all smiles stopped together"?
She stands there—smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause before Frà Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders. Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily in silence, taken: the next Duchess will be instructed beforehand in the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:
"Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then."
The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere, as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . . Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the due deference:
". . . Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir,"
—and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by him) the envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor has no eyes for "wonders" now—he has seen the wonder, has heard the horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can pass these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them, however, must be pointed out:
". . . Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."
. . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.
But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands, or was, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by flame; has been snatched from her Duke, and borne away to joy and love—by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved herself.
The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller whom he calls his friend.
"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"
It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the Duchess all were young—if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and died there,
"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .
Petticoated like a herald,
In a chamber next to an ante-room
Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
What he called stink, and they perfume."
The "sick tall yellow Duchess" soon took the boy to Paris, where she belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of God knows who." So the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."
"And he came back the pertest little ape
That ever affronted human shape;
Full of his travel, struck at himself.
You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
—Not he!"
—for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one good thing left in these evil days:
"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."
It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages were revived:
"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."
The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs and length, all speed, no strength:
"They should have set him on red Berold,
Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"
Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.
"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
And out of a convent, at the word,
Came the lady in time of spring.
—Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"
Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:
"And so we saw the lady arrive;
My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
She was the smallest lady alive,
Made in a piece of Nature's madness,
Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
That over-filled her."
She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle, where the Duke awaited her.
"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
To look at from outside the walls"
—and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of gratitude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"
Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian duchess—but she is the same!), the little lady rode forward:
"When suddenly appeared the Duke."
She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick tall yellow Duchess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky sullied by a chill wind,
"The lady's face stopped its play,
As if her first hair had grown grey;
For such things must begin some one day."
But the brave spirit survived. In a day or two she was well again, as if she could not believe that God did not mean her to be content and glad in His sight. "So, smiling as at first went she." She was filled to the brim with energy; there never was such a wife as she would have made for a shepherd, a miner, a huntsman—and this huntsman, who has had a beloved wife, knows what he is saying.
"She was active, stirring, all fire—
Could not rest, could not tire—
To a stone she might have given life! . . .
And here was plenty to be done,
And she that could do it, great or small,
She was to do nothing at all."
For the castle was crammed with retainers, and the Duke's plan permitted a wife, at most, to meet his eye with the other trophies in the hall and out of it:
"To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen
At the proper place, in the proper minute,
And die away the life between."
The little Duchess, with her warm heart and her smile like the Italian girl's that "went everywhere," broke every rule at first. It was amusing enough (the old huntsman remembers)—but for the grief that followed after. For she did not submit easily. Having broken the rules, she would find fault with them! She would advise and criticise, and "being a fool," instruct the wise, and deal out praise or blame like a child. But "the wise" only smiled. It was as if a little mechanical toy should be contrived to make the motion of striking, and brilliantly make it. Thus, as a mechanical toy, was the only way to treat this minute critic, for like the Duke at Ferrara, this Duke (and his mother) did not choose to stoop. He would merely wear his "cursed smirk" as he nodded applause, but he had some trouble in keeping off the "old mother-cat's claws."
"So the little lady grew silent and thin,
Paling and ever paling."
Then all smiles stopped together . . . And the Duke, perceiving, said to himself that it was done to spite him, but that he would find the way to deal with it.
Like the envoy, our huntsman's friend is beginning to find the tale a little more than he can stand—but, unlike the envoy, he can express himself. The old man soothes him down: "Don't swear, friend!" and goes on to solace him by telling how the "old one" has been in hell for many a year,
"And the Duke's self . . . you shall hear."
"Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
A drinking-hole out of the fresh, tender ice,"
it chanced that the Duke, asking himself what pleasures were in season (he would never have known, unless "the calendar bade him be hearty"), found that a hunting party was indicated:
"Always provided, old books showed the way of it!"
Poetry, painting, tapestries, woodcraft, all were consulted: how it was properest to encourage your dog, how best to pray to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters. The serfs and thralls were duly dressed up,
"And oh, the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!"
But when all "the first dizziness of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots" had subsided, the Duke turned his attention to the Duchess's part in the business, and, after much cogitation, somebody triumphantly announced that he had discovered her function. An old book stated it:
"When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
And with water to wash the hands of her liege
In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
Let her preside at the disemboweling."
All was accordingly got ready: the towel, the most antique ewer, even the jennet, piebald, black-barred, cream-coated, pink-eyed—and only then, on the day before the party, was the Duke's pleasure signified to his lady.
And the little Duchess—paler and paler every day—said she would not go! Her eyes, that used to leap wide in flashes, now just lifted their long lashes, as if too weary even for him to light them; and she duly acknowledged his forethought for her,
"But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
And much wrong now that used to be right;"
and, in short, utterly declined the "disemboweling."
But everything was arranged! The Duke was nettled. Still she persisted: it was hardly the time . . .
The huntsman knew what took place that day in the Duchess's room, because Jacynth, who was her tire-woman, was waiting within call outside on the balcony, and since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, the casement that Jacynth could peep through, an adorer of roses could peep through also.
Well, the Duke "stood for a while in a sultry smother," and then "with a smile that partook of the awful," turned the Duchess over to his mother to learn her duty, and hear the truth. She learned it all, she heard it all; but somehow or other it ended at last; the old woman, "licking her whiskers," passed out, and the Duke, who had waited to hear the lecture, passed out after her, making (he hoped) a face like Nero or Saladin—at any rate, he showed a very stiff back.
However, next day the company mustered. The weather was execrable—fog that you might cut with an axe; and the Duke rode out "in a perfect sulkiness." But suddenly, as he looked round, the sun ploughed up the woolly mass, and drove it in all directions, and looking through the courtyard arch, he saw a troop of Gipsies on their march, coming with the annual gifts to the castle. For every year, in this North land, the Gipsies come to give "presents" to the Dukes—presents for which an equivalent is always understood to be forthcoming.
And marvellous the "presents" are! These Gipsies can do anything with the earth, the ore, the sand. Snaffles, whose side-bars no brute can baffle, locks that would puzzle a locksmith, horseshoes that turn on a swivel, bells for the sheep . . . all these are good, but what they can do with sand!
"Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised black-blooded mulberry."
And then that other sort, "their crowning pride, with long white threads distinct inside."
These are the things they bring, when you see them trooping to the castle from the valley. So they trooped this morning; and when they reached the fosse, all stopped but one:
"The oldest Gipsy then above ground."
This witch had been coming to the castle for years; the huntsman knew her well. Every autumn she would swear must prove her last visit—yet here she was again, with "her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes, of no use now but to gather brine."
She sidled up to the Duke and touched his bridle, so that the horse reared; then produced her presents, and awaited the annual acknowledgment. But the Duke, still sulky, would scarcely speak to her; in vain she fingered her fur-pouch. At last she said in her "level whine," that as well as to bring the presents, she had come to pay her duty to "the new Duchess, the youthful beauty." As she said that, an idea came to the Duke, and the smirk returned to his sulky face. Supposing he set this old woman to teach her, as the other had failed? What could show forth better the flower-like and delicate life his fortunate Duchess led, than the loathsome squalor of this sordid crone? He turned and beckoned the huntsman out of the throng, and, as he was approaching, bent and spoke mysteriously into the Gipsy's ear. The huntsman divined that he was telling of the frowardness and ingratitude of the "new Duchess." And the Gipsy listened submissively. Her mouth tightened, her brow brightened—it was as if she were promising to give the lady a thorough frightening. The Duke just showed her a purse—and then bade the huntsman take her to the "lady left alone in her bower," that she might wile away an hour for her:
"Whose mind and body craved exertion,
And yet shrank from all better diversion."
And then the Duke rode off.
Now begins "the tenebrific passage of the tale." Or rather, now begins what we can make into such a passage if we will, but need not. We can read a thousand transcendental meanings into what now happens, or we can simply accept and understand it—leaving the rest to the "Browningites," of whom Browning declared that he was not.
The huntsman, turning round sharply to bid the old woman follow him—a little distrustful of her since that interview with the Duke—saw something that not only restored his trust, but afterwards made him sure that she had planned beforehand the wonders that now happened. She looked a head taller, to begin with, and she kept pace with him easily, no stooping nor hobbling—above all, no cringing! She was wholly changed, in short, and the change, "whatever the change meant," had extended to her very clothes. The shabby wolf-skin cloak she wore seemed edged with gold coins. Under its shrouding disguise, she was wearing (we may conjecture), for this foreseen occasion, her dress of tribal Queen. But most wonderful of all was the change in her "eye-holes." When first he saw her that morning, they had been, as it were, empty of all but brine; now, two unmistakable eye-points, live and aware, looked out from their places—as a snail's horns come out after rain. . . . He accepted all this, "quick and surprising" as it was, without spoken comment; and took the Gipsy to Jacynth, standing duty at the lady's chamber-door.
"And Jacynth rejoiced, she said, to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken."
The two women went in, and our friend, on the balcony, "watched the weather."
Jacynth never could tell him afterwards how she came to fall soundly asleep all of a sudden. But she did so fall asleep, and so remained the whole time through. He, on the balcony, was following the hunt across the open country—for in those days he had a falcon eye—when, all in a moment, his ear was arrested by
"Was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing?"
It came from the lady's room; and, pricked by curiosity, he pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain, and—first—saw Jacynth "in a rosy sleep along the floor with her head against the door." And in the middle of the room, on the seat of state,
"Was a queen—the Gipsy woman late!"
She was bending down over the lady, who, coiled up like a child, sat between her knees, clasping her hands over them, and with her chin set on those hands, was gazing up into the face of the old woman. That old woman now showed large and radiant eyes, which were bent full on the lady's, and seemed with every instant to grow wider and more shining. She was slowly fanning with her hands, in an odd measured motion—and the huntsman, puzzled and alarmed, was just about to spring to the rescue, when he was stopped by perceiving the expression on the lady's face.
"For it was life her eyes were drinking . . .
Life's pure fire, received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving."
The life had passed into her very hair, which was thrown back, loose over each shoulder,
"And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded."
He stopped short, perplexed, "as she listened and she listened." But all at once he felt himself struck by the self-same contagion:
"And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped."
He could hear and understand, "word took word as hand takes hand"—and the Gipsy said:
"And so at last we find my tribe,
And so I set thee in the midst . . .
I trace them the vein and the other vein
That meet on thy brow and part again,
Making our rapid mystic mark;
And I bid my people prove and probe
Each eye's profound and glorious globe
Till they detect the kindred spark
In those depths so dear and dark . . .
And on that round young cheek of thine
I make them recognise the tinge . . .
For so I prove thee, to one and all,
Fit, when my people ope their breast,
To see the sign, and hear the call,
And take the vow, and stand the test
Which adds one more child to the rest—
When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
And the world is left outside."
There would be probation (said the Gipsy), and many trials for the lady if she joined the tribe; but, like the jewel-finder's "fierce assay" of the stone he finds, like the "vindicating ray" that leaps from it:
"So, trial after trial past,
Wilt thou fall at the very last
Breathless, half in trance
With the thrill of the great deliverance,
Into our arms for evermore;
And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
About thee, what we knew before,
How love is the only good in the world.
Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
Or brain devise, or hand approve!
Stand up, look below,
It is our life at thy feet we throw
To step with into light and joy;
Not a power of life but we employ
To satisfy thy nature's want."
The Gipsy said much more; she showed what perfect mutual love and understanding can do, for "if any two creatures grow into one, they will do more than the world has done"—and the tribe will at least approach that end with this beloved woman. She says not how—whether by one man's loving her to utter devotion of himself, or by her giving "her wondrous self away," and taking the stronger nature's sway. . . .
"I foresee and I could foretell
Thy future portion, sure and well;
But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
Let them say what thou shalt do!"
But whatever she does, the eyes of her tribe will be upon her, with their blame, their praise:
"Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
Glad, angry—but indifferent, no!"
And so at last the girl who now sits gazing up at her will come to old age—will retire apart with the hoarded memories of her heart, and reconstruct the past until the whole "grandly fronts for once her soul" . . . and then, the gleam of yet another morning shall break; it will be like the ending of a dream, when
"Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes."
With that great utterance her voice changed like a bird's. The music began again, the words grew indistinguishable . . . with a snap the charm broke, and the huntsman, "starting as if from a nap," realised afresh that the lady was being bewitched, sprang from the balcony to the ground, and hurried round to the portal. . . . In another minute he would have entered:
"When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful,
I felt at once that all was best" . . .
And he felt, too, that he must do whatever she commanded. But there was, in fact, no commanding. Looking on the beauty that had invested her, "the brow's height and the breast's expanding," he knew that he was hers to live and die, and so he needed not words to find what she wanted—like a wild creature, he knew by instinct what this freed wild creature's bidding was. . . . He went before her to the stable; she followed; the old woman, silent and alone, came last—sunk back into her former self,
"Like a blade sent home to its scabbard."
He saddled the very palfrey that had brought the little Duchess to the castle—the palfrey he had patted as he had led it, thus winning a smile from her. And he couldn't help thinking that she remembered it too, and knew that he would do anything in the world for her. But when he began to saddle his own nag ("of Berold's begetting")—not meaning to be obtrusive—she stopped him by a finger's lifting, and a small shake of the head. . . . Well, he lifted her on the palfrey and set the Gipsy behind her—and then, in a broken voice, he murmured that he was ready whenever God should please that she needed him. . . . And she looked down
"With a look, a look that placed a crown on me,"
and felt in her bosom and dropped into his hand . . . not a purse! If it had been a purse of silver ("or gold that's worse") he would have gone home, kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned himself—but it was not a purse; it was a little plait of hair, such as friends make for each other in a convent:
"This, see, which at my breast I wear,
Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment)
And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
And then—and then—to cut short—this is idle,
These are feelings it is not good to foster.
I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
And the palfrey bounded—and so we lost her."
There is the story of the Flight of the Duchess; and it seems to me to need no "explanation" at all. The Gipsy can be anyone or anything we like that saves us; the Duke and his mother anyone or anything that crushes love.
"Love is the only good in the world."
And the love (though it may be) need not be the love of man for woman, and woman for man; but simply love. The quick warm impulse which made this girl look round so eagerly as she approached her future home, and thank the man who led her horse for patting it, and want to hear the name of every bird—the impulse from the heart "too soon made glad, too easily impressed"; the sweet, rich nature of her who "liked whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere" . . . what was all this but love? The tiny lady was one great pulse of it; without love she must die; to give it, take it, was the meaning of her being. And love was neither given nor accepted from her. Worse, it was scorned; it was not "fitting." All she had to do was to be "on show"; nothing, nothing, nothing else—
"And die away the life between."
And then came the time when, like Pompilia, she had "something she must care about"; and the office asked of her was to "assist at the disemboweling" of a noble, harried stag! Not even when she pleaded the hour that awaited her was pity shown, was love shown, for herself or for the coming child. And then the long, spiteful lecture. . . . That night, even to Jacynth, not a word could she utter. Here was a world without love, a world that did not want her—and she was here, and she must stay, until, until . . . Which would the coming child be—herself again, or him again? Scarce she knew which would be the sadder happening.
And then Love walked in upon her. She was "of their tribe"—they wanted her; they wanted all she was. Just what she was; she would not have to change; they wanted her. They liked her eyes, and the colour on her cheek—they liked her. Her eyes might look at them, and "speak true," for they wanted just that truth from just those eyes.
It is any escape, any finding of our "tribe"! It is the self-realisation of a nature that can love. And this is but one way of telling the great tale. Browning told it thus, because for years a song had jingled in his ears of "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"—and to all of us, the Gipsies stand for freedom, for knowledge of the great earth-secrets, for nourishment of heart and soul. But we need not follow only them to compass "the thrill of the great deliverance." We need but know, as the little Duchess knew, what it is that we want, and trust it. She placed the old woman at once upon her own "seat of state": from the moment she beheld her, love leaped forth and crowned the messenger of love.
"And so at last we find my tribe,
And so I set thee in the midst . . .
Henceforth be loved as heart can love. . . .
It is our life at thy feet we throw
To step with into light and joy."
The Duchess heard, and knew, and was saved. It needed courage—needed swift decision—needed even some small abandonment of "duty." But she saw what she must do, and did it. Duty has two voices often; the Duchess heard the true voice. If she was bewitched, it was by the spell that was ordained to save her, could she hear it. . . . And that she heard aright, that, leaving the castle, she left the hell where love lives not, we know from the old huntsman:
"For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery;
So they made no search and small inquiry";
and Gipsies thenceforth were hustled across the frontier.
Even the Duchess could not make love valid there. Reality was out of them. . . . True, the huntsman, after thirty years, is still her sworn adorer. He had stayed at the castle:
"I must see this fellow his sad life through—
He is our Duke, after all,
And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall";
—but, as soon as the Duke is dead, our friend intends to "go journeying" to the land of the Gipsies, and there find his lady or hear the last news of her:
"And when that's told me, what's remaining?"
For Jacynth is dead and all their children, and the world is too hard for his explaining, and so he hopes to find a snug corner under some hedge, and turn himself round and bid the world good-night, and sleep soundly until he is waked to another world, where pearls will no longer be cast before swine that can't value them. "Amen."
But at any rate this talk with his friend has made him see his little lady again, and everything that they did since "seems such child's play," with her away! So her love did one thing even there—just as one likes to think that the unhappier Duchess, the Italian one, left precisely such a memory in the heart of that officious fool who broke the bough of cherries for her in the orchard.
And is it not good to think that almost immediately after The Flight of the Duchess was published, Browning was to meet the passionate-hearted woman whom he snatched almost from the actual death-bed that had been prepared for her with as much of pomp and circumstance as was the Duchess's life-in-death! With this in mind, it gives one a queer thrill to read those lines of silenced prophecy:
"I foresee and I could foretell
Thy future portion, sure and well:
But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
Let them say what thou shalt do!"