The Epilogue describes the householder sitting desolate in his melancholy home, weary and stupid; he is suddenly surprised by the appearance of his lost wife, whose spirit has returned to claim him; he tells her how the time has dragged without her, “And was I so much better off up there?” quoth she. For decency, arrangements are made that the reunion may be in order; and so, the powers above and those below having been duly conciliated, husband and wife are once more united: “Love is all, and death is nought”—the final lesson of life.
The means whereby we may rise from the false to the true are never wanting to the earnest and faithful striver, this is the esoteric truth of Fifine at the Fair. The exoteric meaning may be “an apologia for the revolt of passion against social rules and fetters.” “Frenetic to be free,” like the pennon, is in this sense the concentration of its meaning. What was Browning’s object in this difficult and remarkable work? The question is not so difficult to answer as it appears at first sight. The poet is a soul analyst first, and a teacher next. He teaches admirably in scores of passages in Fifine, but his main idea has been to interpret the mental processes which he supposed might underlie the actions of such a selfish and heartless voluptuary as Don Juan. Not, of course, was there any idea of rehabilitating the character of the historic personage; but, as Browning held that every soul has something to say for itself, every man some ideal soul-advance at which he aims, however mistaken may be his methods, so he imagined that even this selfish libertine had his golden ideal, however deeply bedded in mire. He has not—like the great dramatists—sunk himself in his character, and striven thus to present the real man on his stage, but he has lent Don Juan his Browning soul for a while, that he may make his Apologia to the wife, whom he finds it very hard to deceive. Dr. Furnivall once asked the poet what his idea really was in the poem. The poet replied that his “fancy was to show morally how a Don Juan might justify himself partly by truth, somewhat by sophistry.” (Browning Society Papers, vol. ii., p. 242*.) See also vol. i., pp. 377, 379, pp. 18*, 61*, vol ii., p. 240*. Mr. Nettleship’s exhaustive analysis leaves nothing to be desired. (Essays, p. 221.)
Notes.—Verse ii., “bateleurs and baladines,” conjurors and mountebanks. Verse iv., “Gawain to gaze upon the Grail”: Gawain was the son of King Lot and Margause, in the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail. Verse xv., almandines, a variety of garnet. Verse xix., sick Louis: King Louis XI. of France. Verse xxv., tricot: a knitted vest. Verse xxvii., Helen: she was declared by some of the Greeks never to have been really present at Troy, and that Paris only carried off a phantom created by Hera: the real Helen, they said, was wafted by Hermes to Proteus in Egypt, whence she was taken home by Menelaus. Verse xxxvi., pochade, a rough sketch. Verse xlii., Razzi, a corruption of Bazzi, or properly Il Sodona, the Italian painter (1479-1549). Verse xlvii., Gerôme, a French painter (born 1824): he exhibited a great picture at the Exposition of 1859, called “The Gladiators.” Verse lii., Eidotheé: a sea-goddess, daughter of Proteus, the old man of the sea. Verse lix., Glumdalclich, in Gulliver’s Travels, was a girl nine years old, and “only forty feet high.” “Theosutos e broteios eper kekramene,” Greek for “God, man, or both together mixed,” from the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus. Verse lx., Chrysopras: a precious stone, a variety of chalcedony, or perhaps beryl. Verse lxvii. cannot be understood without reference to the fourth canto of Byron’s Childe Harold: the lines and words between inverted commas are taken from verse clxxx., and the argument is directed against Byron’s teaching as therein expressed: this verse was particularly obnoxious to Mr. Browning, both on account of its sentiments and grammar (see under La Saisiaz, [p. 247]). Verse lxix., Thalassia: sea-nymph, from the Greek word for the sea: Triton, a sea deity, a son of Neptune. Verse lxxviii., Arion: a Greek poet and musician: he was rescued from drowning on the back of a dolphin; his song to his lyre drew the creatures round the vessel, and one of them bore him to the shore. Periander, the tyrant of Corinth. “Methymnæan hand”: Arion was born at Methymna, in Lesbos. Orthian, of Orthia: this was a surname of Diana. Tænarus, the point of land to which the dolphin carried Arion, whence he travelled to the court of Periander. Verse lxxxii., “See Horace to the boat”: the ode is the third of the First Book of Horace’s Odes. Verse lxxxiii., “The long walls of Athens” (see under Aristophanes’ Apology, [p. 36]). Iostephanos, violet crowned—a name of Athens. Verse xcviii., Simulacra, images or likenesses. Verse cxxiv., protoplast, the original, the thing first formed. Verse cxxv., Moirai Trimorphoi, the Tri-form Fates.
Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial: A Reminiscence of A.D. 1676. (Pacchiarotto and other Poems, 1876.) Filippo Baldinucci was a distinguished Italian writer on the history of the arts. He was born at Florence in 1624, and died in 1696. His chief work is entitled Notizie de Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in quà (dal 1260 sino al 1670), and was first published, in six vols. 4to, 1681-1728. The Encyclopædia Britannica says: “The capital defect of this work is the attempt to derive all Italian art from the schools of Florence.” The incidents of the poem are historical, and are related in the account which Baldinucci gives of the painter Buti. Its subject is that of the persecution to which the Jews were subjected in Italy, as in other countries of Europe, and unhappily down to the present time in Russia. We have the story as told by a frank persecutor, who regrets that the altered state of the law no longer permits the actual pelting of the Jews. The good old times had departed, but in his youth they could play some capital tricks with “the crew,” as he will narrate. There was a Jews’ burying-place hard by San Frediano, in Florence. Just below the Blessed Olivet, and adjoining this cemetery, was “a good farmer’s Christian field.” The Jews hedged their ground round with bushes, to conceal their rites from Christian gaze, for the public road ran by one corner of it. The farmer, partly from devotion, partly to annoy the Jews, built a shrine in his vineyard, and employed the painter Buti to depict thereon the Virgin Mary, fixing the picture just where it would be most annoying to the Jews. They tried to bribe the owner of the shrine to turn the picture the other way, to remove its disturbing presence from spectators to whom it could do no good, and let it face the public road, frequented by a class of Christians evidently much in need of religious supervision and restraint. The farmer agreed to remove the offending fresco in consideration of the bag of golden ducats offered; and he at once called the painter to cause Our Lady to face the other way. Buti covers up the shrine with a hoarding, and sets to work. Meanwhile the Chief Rabbi’s wife died, and was taken for burial to the cemetery. In passing the shrine in the farmer’s field the mourners became aware of a scurvy trick played upon them by the Christians; for the Virgin was removed according to the bargain, but a Crucifixion had been substituted, and now confronted them. The cheated Jews protested, but in vain: there was nothing for them but to suffer. Next day, as the farmer and his artist friend sat laughing over the trick, the athletic young son of the Rabbi entered the studio, desiring to purchase the original oil painting of the Madonna from which the fresco of the shrine was painted. The artist was so frightened at his stalwart form, and so amazed at the request, that, taken unaware, he asked no more than the proper price! and Mary was borne in triumph to deck a Hebrew household. They thought a miracle had happened, and that the Jew had been converted; but the Israelite explained that the only miracle wrought was that which had restrained him from throttling the painter. The truth was, he had changed his views about art, and had reflected that, since cardinals hung up heathen gods and goddesses in their palaces, there was no reason why his picture of Mary should not be hung with Ledas and what not, and be judged on its merits, or, more probably, on its flaws! And he walked off with his picture.
Fire is in the Flint. (Ferishtah’s Fancies—opening words of the fifth lyric.)
Flight of the Duchess, The. (Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 1845—in Bells and Pomegranates, VII.). When Mr Browning was little more than a child, he heard a woman one Guy Fawkes’ Day sing in the street a strange song, whose burden was, “Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!” The singular refrain haunted his memory for many years, and out of it was ultimately born this poem. There is a strange fascination in the mysterious story, which is told by an old huntsman, who has spent his life in the service of a Duke and his mother at their castle in a land of the North which is an appanage of the German Kaiser. The young Duke’s father died when he was a child, and his mother took him in early life to Paris, where they remained till the youth grew to manhood. Returning to the old castle with his head full of mediæval fancies, the Duke upset everybody by his revivals of outlandish customs and feudal fashions, and this in a manner which irritated every one concerned. In course of time the Duchess found a wife for her son—a young, warm-hearted girl from a convent, who won the affection of the servants of the castle, but was treated with coldness and severity by its lord and his “hell-cat” of a mother. Chilled by the want of affection, and neglected by those whose care it should have been to make her happy, the girl sickened, and was visibly pining away. It occurred to the Duke to revive, amongst other old customs, those connected with the hunting of the stag, and a great hunting party on mediæval lines was arranged. In the course of his researches into the customs of mediæval hunting, he discovered that the lady of the castle had a special office to perform when the stag was killed. The authorities said the dame must prick forth on her jennet and preside at the disembowelling. But the poor, mewed-up little duchess, secluded from all the pleasures of life, did not care to be brought out just to play a part in a ceremony for which she had no heart, and thanking the Duke for the intended honour, begged to be excused on account of her ill-health; and so the Duke had to give way, but he sent his mother to scold her. When the hunt began the Duke was sulky and disheartened; as he rode down the valley he met a troop of gipsies on their march, and from the company an old witch came forth to greet the huntsmen. Sidling up to the Duke, she began to whine and make her appeal for the usual gifts. She said she desired to pay her duty to the beautiful new Duchess, at which the Duke was struck by the idea that he might use the old crone as a means to frighten his wife and make her more submissive, so he bade the huntsman who tells the story conduct the gipsy to the young Duchess. The old hag promised to engage in the project with hearty goodwill, and, quickened by the sight of a purse as the sign of a forthcoming reward, she hobbled off to the castle, and the Duke rejoined his party. The huntsman had a sweetheart at the castle named Jacynth, who conducted the crone to the lady’s chamber while he waited without. And now began the mysteries of that eventful day. The maid protested she never could tell what it was that made her fall asleep of a sudden as soon as the gipsy was introduced to her mistress. The huntsman had waited on the balcony for some considerable time, when his attention was arrested by a low musical sound in the chamber of his lady; then he pushed aside the lattice, pulled the curtain, and saw Jacynth asleep along the floor. In the midst of the room, on a chair of state, was the gipsy, transformed to a queen, with her face bent over the lady’s head, who was seated at her knees, her face intent on that of the crone. Wondering whether the old woman was banning or blessing the Duchess, he was about to spring in to the rescue, when he was stopped by the strange expression on her face. She was drinking in “Life’s pure fire” from the old woman, was becoming transformed by some powerful influence that seemed to stream from the elder to the younger woman; her very tresses shared in the pleasure, her cheeks burned and her eyes glistened. The influence reached the soul of the retainer, and he fell under the potent spell as he listened to the gipsy’s words as she told the Duchess she had discovered she was of their race by infallible signs. At last he came to know that his mistress was being bewitched, and he ran to the portal, where he met her, so altered and so beautiful that he felt that whatever had happened was for the best and he had nothing to do but take her commands. He was hers to live or to die, and he preceded his mistress, followed by the gipsy, who had shrunk again to her proper stature. They went to the courtyard, where, as he was desired, he saddled the Duchess’s palfrey, which his mistress mounted with the crone behind her; then, putting a little plait of hair into the servant’s hand, the Duchess rode off, and they lost her. As the old retainer tells the tale, thirty years have passed since the flight took place. No search was made for the lady; the Duke’s pride was wounded, and he would not seek her, and made small inquiry about her. The man says he must see his master through this life, and then he will scrape together his earnings and travel to the land of the gipsies, to find his lady or hear the last of her. Has all this an allegorical meaning? Many have tried to find such in this remarkable poem. But Browning does not teach by allegory: he rather prefers to let events as they actually happen tell their own lessons to minds awakened to receive them. It is not at all difficult, without resorting to allegorical interpretation, to discover what the poem teaches. And in the first place we are taught that a human soul cannot thrive without the living sympathy of its kind. The Duchess was withering under the chill neglect of the hateful mother-in-law and her contemptible son. The bewitchment of the gipsy was the charm of love—the strong, passionate love of a great human heart, enshrined though it was in a witch-like and decrepit frame. The outpouring of the old woman’s sympathy on this friendless girl sufficed to transfigure the crone till she became to the huntsman a young and a beautiful queen herself. In the supreme act of perfectly loving, the woman herself became lovely; for there is no rejuvenescence like that which comes from loving others and helping the weak. Then we learn that, as the Duchess seemed to be imbibing new life from the gipsy queen, virtue goes forth from every true lover of his kind, and degrees of rank, education, and station, are no barriers to the magnetism which streams forth from a human heart, however humble, towards another human heart, however highly placed. Life without love is a living death, and the Duchess no more did wrong when she rode off with the gipsy who saw the signs of her people in the marks on her forehead than the flowers do wrong when they bloom at the invitation of the Spring. The sign which the gipsy saw was that of a soul capable of responding to a heart yearning to help it. The girl had a right to human love; she had a right to seek it in a gipsy heart when she could find it nowhere else. In the sermon by Canon Wilberforce preached before the British Medical Association, at their meeting at Bournemouth in 1891, speaking of the power of Jesus over human diseases, the preacher said, “The secret of this power was His perfect sympathy. He violated or suspended no natural laws.... His healings were an influential outpouring of that inherent divine life which is latent and in some degree operative in every man, but which existed in fulness and perfection of operation only in Him. Is not this the force of the word “compassion” used of Him? The verb σπλαγχνίζομαι is not found in any former Greek author. It indicates, so far as language can express it, a forceful movement of the whole inward nature towards its object, and personal identification with it. It indicates that compassion and love are not superficial emotions, but dynamic forces.” Mrs. Owen, of Cheltenham, read a paper at the meeting of the Browning Society, Nov. 24th, 1882, entitled “What is ‘The Flight of the Duchess?’” in which it was suggested that the Duke represents our gross self; the huntsman represents the simple human nature that may either rise with the Duchess or sink with the Duke,—the better man. The Duchess represents the soul, the highest part of our complex nature. The huntsman aids the Duchess (the soul) to free herself from the coarse, low, earth-nature, the Duke. So that the ‘Flight of the Duchess’ is “the supreme moment when the soul shakes off the bondage of self and finds its true freedom in others.” The paper is published in the Browning Society’s Transactions (Part iv., p. 49*), and is well worthy of study by those who seek a deeper spiritual meaning in “this mystic study of redeemed womanhood” than its primary sense conveys.
Notes.—Stanza iii., merlin, a species of hawk anciently much used in falconry; falcon-lanner, a species of long-tailed hawk. vi., urochs, wild bulls; buffle, buffalo. x., St. Hubert, before his conversion, was passionately devoted to hunting: he is the patron saint of hunters; venerers, prickers, and verderers, huntsmen, light horsemen, and preservers of the venison. xi., wind a mort, to sound a horn at the death of the stag; a fifty-part canon: Mr. Browning explained that “a canon, in music, is a piece wherein the subject is repeated in various keys, and, being strictly obeyed in the repetition, becomes the “canon”—the imperative law to what follows. Fifty of such parts would be indeed a notable peal; to manage three is enough of an achievement for a good musician.” xiii., hernshaw, a heron; fernshaw, a fern-thicket; helicat, a hag; “imps the wing of the hawk”: to “imp” means to insert a feather in the broken wing of a bird. xiv., tomans, Persian gold coins. xv., gor-crow, the carrion crow. xvii., morion, a kind of open helmet. Orson the wood-knight: twin-brother of Valentine; born in a wood near Orleans, and carried off by a bear, which suckled him with its cubs. He became the terror of France, and was called “the wild man of the forest.”
Flower’s Name, The. (Garden Fancies, I.—Dramatic Lyrics.) [Published in Hood’s Magazine, July 1844.] With very few exceptions, Browning did not contribute to magazines. At the request of Mr. Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), he sent The Flower’s Name, Tokay and Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis to “help in making up some magazine numbers for poor Hood, then at the point of death from hæmorrhage of the lungs, occasioned by the enlargement of the heart, which had been brought on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive literary toil.” A lover visits a garden, and recalls a previous walk therein with the woman he loved; he remembers the flowers which she noticed, especially one whose name—“a soft, meandering Spanish name”—she gave him; he must learn Spanish “only for that slow, sweet name’s sake.” The very roses are only beautiful so far as they tell her footsteps.
Flower Songs, Italian. (Fra Lippo Lippi.) The flower songs in this poem are of the description known as the stornello. This is not to be confounded with the rispetto, which consists of a stanza of inter-rhyming lines, ranging from six to ten in number. “The Luccan and Umbrian stornello is much shorter, consisting indeed of a hemistich having some natural object which suggests the motive of the little poem. The nearest approach to the Italian stornello appears to be, not the rispetto, but the Welsh triban” (Encyc. Brit., xix. 272). See also notes to [Fra Lippo Lippi].