Browning and His Century

by Helen A. Clarke

Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were soon visible, not only in the modification of public opinion, but upon the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: “If any public, especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution.” Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening trades unionists.

It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said, progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place. However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance between what the English writers call the middle-class idealist and the proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for himself and to translate middle-class idealism into proletarian realism.

Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary, began to be discussed in every intelligent household and in every debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed everybody was reading Bellamy and the “Fabian Essays,” and Sir William Harcourt had made his memorable remark: “We are all socialists now.”

The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, the Carlyles and the Ruskins, the revolutionary but laissez faire prophets like Morris, who believed in a complete change but not in using any of the means at hand to bring about that change, had given place to men like Keir Hardie and John Burns, who had sprung into leadership from the ranks of the workingmen themselves, and who were to be later their representatives in Parliament when the Independent Labor Party came into existence. All this had been done by that group of progressive men, long-headed enough to see that the ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and physical development, the very principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into existence—namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should have peacefully brought about the conditions where it was possible to form an Independent Labor Party, which would have the power to speak and act for itself instead of working as the Fabians themselves do through the parties already in power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their policy. And is there not still plenty of work for them to do in the still further educating of all parties toward the flowering of genuine democracy, when the dreams of the dreamer shall have become actualities, because true and not spurious ways of making them actual shall have been worked out by experience?

This remarkable growth in social ideals was taking place during the ninth decade of the century and the last decade of Browning’s life. Is there any indication in his later work that he was conscious of it? There is certainly no direct evidence in his work that he progressed any farther in the development of democratic ideals than we find in the liberalism of such a parliamentary leader as Mr. Gladstone, while in that poem in which he considers more especially than in any other the subject of better conditions for the people, “Sordello,” he distinctly expresses a mood of doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human being, who needs the hardships and ills of life to bring his soul to perfection, a far more important thing in Browning’s eyes than to live comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say that he could not secure the chance to do this except in a society where the murderous principle of competition should give way to that of coöperation. With this Browning might agree. Indeed, may this not have been the very principle Sordello had in mind as something revealed to him which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, or was this only the more obvious principle of republican as opposed to monarchical principle and still falling under an individualistic conception of society?

While his work is instinct with sympathy for all classes and conditions of men, Browning does not feel the ills of life with the intensity of a Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of culture with the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he stand in open spaces and preach discontent to the masses like Morris. Why? Because he from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to be proud of men’s fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings, upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the worth of every human being to himself and for God. Earth is after all only a place to grow in and prepare one’s self for lives to come, and failure here, so long as the fight has been bravely fought, is to be regarded with anything but regret, for it is through the failure that the vision of the future is made more sure.

What he finds true, as we saw, in the religious or philosophical world, he finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points the way to God; lack in human success points the way to immortality.

The meaning of this life in relation to a future life being so much more important than this life in itself, and man’s individual development being so much more important than his social development, Browning naturally would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental means by which even the chance for individual development must be secured. He is too much occupied with the larger questions. He is not even a middle-class idealist, dreaming dreams of future earthly bliss; he is the prophet of future existences.

Does his practical influence upon the social development of the century amount to nothing then? Not at all. He started out on his voyage through the century toward the democratic ideal in the good ship Individualism—the banner ship indeed. What he has emphasized upon this voyage is first the paramount worth of each and every human being, whether good or bad. Second, the possibility in every human being of conceiving an ideal, toward which by the exertion of his will power he should aspire, battling steadfastly against every obstruction that life throws in his course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must therefore be treated with compassion. Fourth, that the highest function of the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to this function of the soul it is of the utmost importance that human beings should be loyal and true, even if that loyalty and truth conflict with conventional ways of looking at life. Sailing in this good ship he also expresses his sympathy indirectly in his dramas and directly upon several occasions with the ideals of political freedom which during the century have been making progress toward democracy in the English Parliament through the legislation of the liberals, whose laws have brought a greater and greater measure of freedom to the middle classes and some measure of freedom to the working classes.

But it seems as if when nearing the end of the century Browning landed from his ship upon some high island and straining his eyes toward the horizon of the dawn of another life did not fully realize that there was another good ship, Socialism, struggling to reach the ideal of democracy, and now become the banner ship whose work is to sail out into the unknown, turbulent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in order that the way may be made clear for the ship Individualism to continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, passes on its way it will do well to heed the vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the dawn of other lives in other spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to bring about a more comfortable and beautiful life upon earth, the important truth be slighted that humanity has a higher destiny to fulfil than can be realized in the most Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy. This truth is in fact not only forgotten but is absolutely denied by many of the latter-day social reformers.