Pre-Raphaelite and other Poets

by Lafcadio Hearn

Yet it is too late to save him. Presently the news comes that he has been shot. And the result is a civil war; for the party of Count Louis tries to avenge him. There is war also in the heart of the sovereign. How unutterably she hates her faithful old general; yet she must trust to him, for the kingdom is in danger. Pain and sorrow make Anne look already like an old woman. When the war is over she treats her general so ill that he is obliged to leave the country. By one fault, how much unhappiness and destruction comes to pass—revolution, civil war, and the ruin of many lives! And the poem ends with the quatrain often quoted in other connections than the present:

And she that helped to slay, yet bade
To spare the fated man,
Great were her errors, but she had
Great heart, Archduchess Anne.

Of course, there is just a little bit of cruel irony in the statement, for it obliges us to ask the question whether a great heart can compensate for much foolishness, whether affection can excuse the ruin of a government. I think that the poet here is quietly opposing the moral of the beautiful old Bible story, about the woman forgiven "because she loved much"-quia multum amavit. One would say that a person holding the position of supreme ruler cannot be forgiven simply because she loved much, although we may pity her with all our hearts.

Pity is not a virtue with Meredith. He reminds us often of the old Jesuit doctrine, that pity is akin to concupiscence. For example, Meredith takes a ground strongly opposed to all romantic precedents when he treats of the question of adultery. From the time of the Middle Ages it was the custom of poets to represent unhappy wives secretly in love with strangers, or to paint the tragedies arising from the consequence of sexual jealousy. Even in all the versions of the story of King Arthur, our sympathies are invoked on behalf of illegitimate love,—even in Tennyson. We sympathise a good deal with Lancelot and with Guinevere. In Dante, most religious of the old poets, we have a striking example of this appeal to pity in the story of Francesca da Rimini. And I need scarcely speak of various modern schools of poetry who have imitated the poets of the Middle Ages in this respect. Meredith takes the opposite view—represents the erring woman always as culpable, and praises the act of killing her. He gives evolutional reasons for this. For example, he takes an old Spanish love story, and tells it over again in a new way. There is a beautiful young wife alone at home. There is a terrible rascal of a husband, a fellow who spends all his time in drinking, gambling, fighting, and making love to other women. His wife gets tired of his neglect and his brutality and his viciousness. If he does not love her, somebody else shall. So she gets a secret lover, while her husband is away. This young man visits her. Suddenly her husband returns, and now we leave Meredith to moralise the situation. I think that you will find it both new and interesting.

Thundered then her lord of thunders;
Burst the door, and flashing sword,
Loud disgorged the woman's title:
Condemnation in one word.
Grand by righteous wrath transfigured,
Towers the husband who provides
In his person judge and witness,
Death's black doorkeeper besides!
. . . . . . .
How though he hath squandered Honour!
High of Honour let him scold:
Gilding of the man's possession,
'Tis the woman's coin of gold.
She, inheriting from many
Bleeding mothers bleeding sense,
Feels 'twixt her and sharp-fanged nature
Honour first did plant the fence.
Nature, that so shrieks for justice;
Honour's thirst, that blood will slake;
These are women's riddles, roughly
Mixed to write them saint or snake.
Never nature cherished woman;
She throughout the sexes' war
Serves as temptress and betrayer,
Favouring man, the muscular.
. . . . . . .
Hard the task: your prison-chamber
Widens not for lifted latch
Till the giant thews and sinews
Meet their Godlike overmatch.
Read that riddle, scorning pity's
Tears, of cockatrices shed;
When the heart is vowed for freedom,
Captaincy it yields to head.

The point upon which the poet here insists is the evolutional signification of female virtue and of all that relates to it. Evidently he does not believe that either men or women were very virtuous in the beginning—not at all; their knowledge of right and wrong had to be developed slowly through great sufferings in the course of thousands of years. In order that the modern woman may be virtuous as she is, millions of her ancestors must have suffered the experience that teaches the social worth of female honour. And a woman who to-day proves unfaithful to her marriage duty is sinning, not simply against modern society, but against the whole experience, the whole modern experience, of the human race. This would make the fault a great one, of course, but would not the fault of the man be as great? By what right, except the right of force, can he punish her, if he himself be guilty of unfaithfulness? I am not sure what answer religion would give to these questions. But Meredith answers immediately and clearly. The fault of the woman is incomparably worse than the fault of the man. It is worse in relation to the injury done to society, to morality, to progress. Society is founded upon the family; the strength of society to defend itself against the enemy, to accumulate wealth, and to find happiness, depends upon the care and the love given to the children. It is in proportion to the love and care given to the young that a nation becomes strong. Now it is especially the mother's duty to look after the interests of the young. This requires no argument. And a sexual weakness upon her part means an injury done to the family in the sense of its very life. The whole interest of society depends upon the chastity and tenderness and moral force of its women. Moral weakness once begun among the women of the people, the decline of that race begins. So indeed perished the finest race that ever existed in this world—the old Greek race.

On the other hand, though unchastity on the part of the man be certainly condemnable—from a purely moral point of view equally condemnable—its consequences are not fraught with the same danger to society, because they are not of a character to destroy the family. Really the part of man in the great struggle of life is the part of the fighter. The all important thing for the man is to be strong. If he can be morally as well as physically strong, so much the better for the race; but the all important thing is that he shall be able to fight, to contend, to conquer. It is not through the man that the moral progress of society is directly effected; it is through the woman and the teaching of the young, it is through the tenderness and love of the home—the only place where a man can rest from his constant battle with the world. It is only in his own home that he can be as good as he may wish to be. Every good home is a little nursing place of morality, a little garden in which the plants of honour and truth and courage and gentleness can be cultivated until they are strong enough to bear the frosts and the cold winds of the great outside world. In one generation home life may accomplish very little for the improvement of a race, but in the course of thousands of years it accomplishes everything. If men are kinder and wiser and better to-day than they were thousands of years ago, it is because of the virtues which have been cultivated in the family. Had the home of human history been a struggle between men only, the result would have been very different indeed, for competition and battle cultivate only the hard and fierce and cunning side of character. Taking all these facts together, the poet tells us very plainly that adultery is something which should never be forgiven in a woman, however it might be forgiven in a man, because the fault against human society is too great. And therefore he has written this poem especially to condemn those old romances in which illegitimate affection was the theme—in which, also, every effort was made to excite the sympathy of the reader with the sin of the woman. No sympathy has George Meredith; on the contrary, he praises the man who kills, in the line where he speaks of the sword—where he says that the good steel of the sword that killed was what every man ought to be—hard and penetrating, hard and terrible to deal with social wrong. It is very curious to compare this stern view of life with the tenderness of Michelet, in his books entitled "L'Amour" and "Les Femmes." Michelet actually says that in many cases the woman should be forgiven. The two opposing kinds of views thus expressed by two great men of different races do really suggest something of the difference of character in the races. Both men are liberal thinkers, both men studied the new philosophy. Yet how very antagonistic their teachings.

I do not wish to give you too much of the moral side of Meredith at one time, for fear that it should become tiresome. So before we take up another philosophical poem, I should like to speak of a poem which is only emotional and descriptive—a tremendous poem, and certainly the greatest thing in verse that Meredith has composed. I mean "The Nuptials of Attila." In some parts it is very hard reading. In other parts it is unmatched in the splendour and strength of its verse.

First we must say a few words about the subject chosen. Doubtless you remember the apparition of Attila in Roman history. You have read how he came from the East with his tempestuous cavalry and threatened to destroy the whole of Western civilization. During his brief career Attila probably wielded the greatest power that has ever been united in the hands of one man. He controlled a larger portion of the earth's surface than that to-day controlled by the Russians, and he might have realized his dream of subduing all the West of Europe, had it not been for one act of folly. That was his marriage to a young girl called Ildico, whom he demanded from her parents against her will. On the night of the wedding there was great drinking and feasting, and when the King retired to the bridal chamber he had probably drunk to excess. At all events he died suddenly in the night, through the bursting of a blood-vessel; and his death saved Western civilisation. There was not another leader in the vast army capable of keeping it together. The host broke up. The chiefs returned to their several countries, and the great empire of Attila melted away almost as suddenly as frost disappears in the morning sun. What became of Ildico nobody knows. It is the scene of the wedding night, and the scene of the morning following, that the poet describes.

First we have a few lines describing the power of Attila and the hunger of his army for more war: