They say,
Thine.
ALEXANDER
If the heaven stand still and smite thee not,
There is no God indeed.
CÆSAR
Nor thou nor I
Know.
ALEXANDER
I could pray to God that God might be,
Were I but mad. Thou sayest I am mad: thou liest:
I do not pray.
CÆSAR
Most holiest father, no.
Thy brain is not so sick yet. Thou and God
Friends? Man, how long would God have let thee live -
Thee?
ALEXANDER
Long enough he hath kept me, to behold
His face as fire - if his it be - and earth
As hell - and thee, begotten of my loins,
Satan.
CÆSAR
The firstfruits of thy fatherhood
Were something less than Satan. Man of God,
Vaunt not thyself.
ALEXANDER
I would I had died in the womb.
CÆSAR
Thou shalt do better, dying in Peter’s chair:
Thou shalt die famous.
ALEXANDER
Ay: no screen from that,
No shelter, no forgetfulness on earth.
We shall be famed for ever. Hell and night,
Cover me!
CÆSAR
Hast thou heard that prayers are heard?
Or hast thou known earth, for a man’s cry’s sake,
Cleave, and devour him?
ALEXANDER
I have done this thing.
Thou hast not done it: thy deed is none of thine:
Upon my hand, upon my head, the blood
Rests.
CÆSAR
Wilt thou sleep the worse for this next year?
ALEXANDER
I will not live a seven days’ space beyond
This.
CÆSAR
Thou hast lived thy seven days’ space in hell,
Father: they say thou hast fasted even from sleep.
ALEXANDER
Ay.
CÆSAR
What they say and what thou sayest I hold
False. Though thou hast wept as woman, howled as wolf,
Above our dead, thou art hale and whole. And now
Behoves thee rise again as Christ our God,
Vicarious Christ, and cast as flesh away
This grief from off thy godhead. I and thou,
One, will set hand as never God hath set
To the empire and the steerage of the world.
Do thou forget but him who is dead, and was
Nought, and bethink thee what a world to wield
The eternal God hath given into thine hands
Which daily mould him out of bread, and give
His kneaded flesh to feed on. Thou and I
Will make this rent and ruinous Italy
One. Ours it shall be, body and soul, and great
Above all power and glory given of God
To them that died to set thee where thou art -
Throned on the dust of Cæsar and of Christ,
Imperial. Earth shall quail again, and rise
Again the higher because she trembled. Rome
So bade it be: it was, and shall be.
ALEXANDER
Son,
Art thou my son?
CÆSAR
Whom should thy radiant Rose
Have found so fit to ingraff with, and bring forth
So strong a scion as I am?
ALEXANDER
By my faith -
Wherein, I know not - by my soul, if that
Be - I believe it. God forgot his doom
When he thou hast slain drew breath before thee
CÆSAR
God
Must needs forget - if God remember. Now
This thing thou hast loved, and I that swept him hence
Held never fit for hate of mine, is dead,
Wilt thou be one with me - one God? No less,
Lord Christ of Rome, thou wilt be.
ALEXANDER
Ay? The Dove?
CÆSAR
What dove, though lovelier than the swan that lured
Leda to love of God on earth, might match
Lucrezia?
ALEXANDER
None. Thou art subtle of soul and strong.
I would thou hadst spared him - couldst have spared him.
CÆSAR
Sire,
I would so too. Our sire, his sire and mine,
I slew not him for lust of slaying, or hate,
Or aught less like thy wiser spirit and mine.
ALEXANDER
Not for the dove’s sake?
CÆSAR
Not for hate or love.
Death was the lot God bade him draw, if God
Be more than what we make him.
ALEXANDER
Bread and wine
Could hardly turn so bitter. Canst thou sleep?
CÆSAR
Dost thou not? Flesh must sleep to live. Am I
No son of thine?
ALEXANDER
I would I saw thine end,
And mine: and yet I would not.
CÆSAR
Sire, good night.
[Exeunt
FINIS
The Novel
Cheyne Walk, South-West London, where Swinburne lived with the artist Dante Gabirel Rossetti, who kept a menagerie in the back garden, much to the annoyance of their neighbours. It included a bull, a white peacock, a kangaroo, a raccoon and a wombat that reportedly had a liking for ladies’ hats. Consequently local house leases still forbid the keeping of such creatures.
LOVE’S CROSS-CURRENTS
A YEAR’S LETTERS
This is Swinburne’s only complete novel, which was published serially in 1901 under a pseudonym. Love’s Cross-Currents attracted little notice from reviewers, except for some speculation as to who the author might be.
Swinburne, 1894
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
I Lady Midhurst to Mrs. Radworth
II Mrs. Radworth to Francis Cheyne
III Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne
IV Francis Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
V Lady Cheyne to Francis Cheyne
VI Lady Midhurst to Reginald Harewood
VII Reginald Harewood to Edward Audley
VIII Francis Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
IX Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne
X Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne
XI Reginald Harewood to Mrs. Radworth
XII Mrs. Radworth to Reginald Harewood
XIII Francis Cheyne to Lady Cheyne
XIV Lady Midhurst to Reginald Harewood
XV Lady Cheyne to Francis
XVI Mrs. Radworth to Lady Midhurst
XVII Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne
XVIII Lady Midhurst to Francis Cheyne
XIX Francis Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
XX Reginald Harewood to Lady Cheyne
XXI Lady Midhurst to Mrs. Radworth
XXII Captain Harewood to Reginald
XXIII Francis Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
XXIV Lady Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
XXV Reginald Harewood to Edward Audley
XXVI Lady Cheyne to Reginald Harewood
XXVII Reginald Harewood to Mrs. Radworth
XXVIII Lady Midhurst to Mrs. Radworth
XXIX Francis Cheyne to Lady Midhurst
XXX Lady Midhurst to Lady Cheyne
DEDICATION
TO THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
As it has pleased you to disinter this buried bantling of your friend’s literary youth, and to find it worth resurrection, I must inscribe it to you as the person responsible for its revival. Were it not that a friend’s judgment may always seem liable to be coloured by the unconscious influence of friendship, I should be reassured as to its deserts by the approval of
a master from whose verdict on a stranger’s attempt in the creative art of fiction there could be no reasonable appeal — and who, I fed bound to acknowledge with gratitude and satisfaction, has honoured it by the sponsorial suggestion of a nom and a happier ‘name. As it is, I can only hope that you may not be for once mistaken in your favourable opinion of a study thrown into the old epistolary form which even the pant genius of Balzac could not restore to the favour it enjoyed in the days if Richardson and of Laclos. However that may be, I am content to know that you agree with me in thinking that in the world of literary creation there is a legitimate place for that apparent compromise between a story and a play by which the alternate agents and patients of the taie are made to express what befalls them by word of mouth or of pen. I do not forget that the king of men to whose hand we owe the glorious history of Redgauntlet began it in epistolary form, and changed the fashion of his tale to direct and forthright narrative when the story became too strong for him, and would no longer be confined within the limits of conceivable correspondence: but his was in its ultimate upshot a historic and heroic story. And I have always regretted that we have but one specimen of the uncompleted series of letters out of which an earlier novel, the admirable Fortunes of Nigel, had grown up into immortality. The single sample which Lockhart saw fit to vouchsafe us is so great a masterpiece of dramatic humour and living imagination that the remainder of a fragment which might well suffice for the fame of any lesser man ought surely to have been long since made public. We could not dispense with the doubtless more generally amusing and interesting narrative which superseded it: but the true and thankful and understanding lover of Scott must and will readily allow or affirm that there are signs of even rarer and finer genius in the cancelled fragment of the rejected study. But these are perhaps too high and serious matters to be touched upon in a note of acknowledgment prefixed to so early an attempt in the great art of fiction or creation that it would never have revisited the light or rather the twilight of publicity under honest and legitimate auspices, if it had not found in you a sponsor and a friend.
PROLOGUE
I
In the spring of 1849, old Lord Cheyne, the noted philanthropist, was, it will be remembered by all those interested in social reform, still alive and energetic. Indeed, he had some nine years of active life before him — public baths, institutes, reading-rooms, schools, lecture-halls, all manner of improvements, were yet to bear witness to his ardour in the cause of humanity. The equable eye of philosophy has long since observed that the appetite of doing good, unlike those baser appetites which time effaces and enjoyment allays, gains in depth and vigour with advancing years — a cheering truth, attested alike by the life and death of this excellent man. Reciprocal amelioration, he was wont to say, was the aim of every acquaintance he made-of every act of benevolence he allowed himself. Religion alone was wanting to complete a character almost painfully perfect. The mutual moral friction of benefits bestowed and blessings received had, as it were, rubbed off the edge of those qualities which go to make up the religious sentiment. The spiritual cuticle of this truly good man was so hardened by the incessant titillations of charity, and of that complacency with which virtuous people look back on days well spent, that the contemplative emotions of faith and piety had no effect on it; no stimulants of doctrine or provocatives of devotion could excite his fancy or his faith — at least, no clearer reason than this has yet been assigned in explanation of a fact so lamentable.
His son Edmund, the late lord, was nineteen at the above date. Educated in the lap of philanthropy, suckled at the breasts of all the virtues in turn, he was even then the worthy associate of his father in all schemes of improvement; only, in the younger man, this inherited appetite for goodness took a somewhat singular turn. Mr. Cheyne was a Socialist — a Democrat of the most advanced kind. The father was quite happy in the construction of a model cottage; the son was busied with plans for the equalization of society. The wrongs of women gave him many a sleepless night; their cause excited in him an interest all the more commendable when we consider that he never enjoyed their company in the least, and was, in fact, rather obnoxious to them than otherwise. The fact of this mutual repulsion had nothing to do with philanthropy. It was undeniable; but, on the other hand, the moral-sublime of this young man’s character was something incredible. Unlike his father, he was much worried by religious speculations — certain phases of belief and disbelief he saw fit to embody in a series of sonnets, which were privately printed under the title of “Aspirations, by a Wayfarer.” Very flabby sonnets they were, leaving in the mouth a taste of chaff and dust; but the genuine stamp of a sincere and single mind was visible throughout; which was no small comfort.
The wife of Lord Cheyne, not unnaturally, had died in giving birth to such a meritorious portent. Malignant persons, incapable of appreciating the moral-sublime, said that she died of a plethora of conjugal virtue on the part of her husband. It is certain that less sublime samples of humanity did find the society of Lord Cheyne a grievous infliction. Reform, emancipation, manure, the right of voting, the national burden, the adulteration of food, mechanics, farming, sewerage, beetroot sugar, and the loftiest morality formed each in turn the staple of that excellent man’s discourse. If an exhausted visitor sought refuge in the son’s society, Mr. Cheyne would hold forth by the hour on divorce, Church questions, pantheism, socialism (Christian or simple), the equilibrium of society, the duties of each class, the mission of man, the balance of ranks, education, development, the stages of faith, the meaning of the age, the relation of parties, the regeneration of the priesthood, the reformation of criminals, and the destiny of woman. Had fate or date allowed it, — but stern chronology forbade, — he would assuredly have figured as president, as member, or at least as correspondent of the Society for the Suppression of Anatomy, the Society for the Suppression of Sex, or the Ladies’ Society for the Propagation of Contagious Disease (Unlimited). But these remarkable associations, with all their potential benefits to be conferred on purblind and perverse humanity, were as yet unprofitably dormant in the sluggish womb of time. Nevertheless, the house decidedly might have been livelier than it was. Not that virtue wanted its reward. Lord Cheyne was in daily correspondence with some dozen of societies for the propagation and suppression of Heaven knows what; Professor Swallow, Dr. Chubbins, and Mr. Jonathan Bloman were among his friends. His son enjoyed the intimacy of M. Adrien Laboissière, secretary of the committee of a minor democratic society; and Mdlle Clémence de Massigny, the too-celebrated authoress of “Rosine et Rosette,” “Confidences d’un Fauteuil,” and other dangerous books, had, when in the full glow of her brief political career, written to the young son of pale and brumous Albion, “pays des libertés tronquées et des passions châtrées,” an epistle of some twenty pages, in which she desired him, not once or twice, to kiss the paper where she had left a kiss for him— “baiser chaste et frémissant,” she averred, “étreinte altière et douce de l’esprit dégagé des pièges hideux de la matière, témoin et sceau d’un amour ideal.” “O poëte!” she exclaimed elsewhere, “versons sur cette triste humanité la rosée rafraichissante de nos pleurs; melons sur nos lèvres le soupir qui console au sourire qui rayonne. Chaque larme qui tombe peut rouler dans une plaie qu’elle soulagera. Les voluptés acres et sévères de l’attendrissement valent bien le plaisir orageux des sens allumés.” All this was astonishing but satisfactory to the recipient, and worth at least any two of his father’s letters. Chubbins, Bloman, and the rest, practical men enough in their way, held in some contempt the infinite and the ideal, and were incapable of appreciating the absolute republic and the forces of the future.
The arid virtue of the two chiefs was not common to the whole of the family. Mr. John Cheyne, younger brother to the noted philanthropist, had lived at a great rate for years; born in the regency period, he had grasped the with his time, and sucked his orange to some purpose before he came to the rind. He married well, not before it was high time; his fin
ances, inherited from his mother, and originally not bad for a younger son, were shaken to the last screw that kept both ends together; he was turned of forty, and his wife had a decent fortune: she was a Miss Banks, rather handsome, sharp and quick in a good-natured way. She brought him a daughter in 1836, and a son in 1840; then, feeling, no doubt, that she had done all that could be looked for from a model wife, completed her good work by dying in 1841. John Cheyne consoled himself with the reflection that she might have done worse; his own niece, the wife of a neighbour and friend, had eloped the year before, leaving a boy of two on her husband’s hands. For the reasons of this we must go some way back and bring up a fresh set of characters, so as to get things clear at starting.
A reference to the Peerage will give us, third on the Cheyne family list of a past generation, the name of Helena, born 1800, married in 1819 Sir Thomas Midhurst, Bart., by whom (deceased) she had one daughter, Amicia, born 1820, married in May, 1837, to Captain Philip Harewood, by whom she had issue Reginald-Edward, born April 7, 1838. This marriage was dissolved in 1840 by Act of Parliament.” And, we may add, Mrs. Harewood was married in the same year to Frederick Stanford, Esq., of Ashton Hildred, co. Bucks, to whom, in 1841, she presented a daughter, named after herself at the father’s desire, who in 1859 married the late Lord Cheyne, just ten months after his father’s lamented decease. Lady Midhurst, then already widowed, took up her daughter’s cause energetically at the time of the divorce. Her first son-in-law was her favourite abhorrence; with her second she had always been on the best of terms, residing, indeed, now for many years past with him and his wife, an honoured inmate for the term of her natural life, and in a quiet though effectual way mistress of the whole household. It was appalling to hear her hold forth on the topic of the unhappy Captain Harewood. She had known him intimately before he married her daughter; at that time he thought fit to be delightful. After the marriage he unmasked at once, and became detestable. (Fan and foot, clapping down together, used to keep time to this keen-voiced declaration.) He had used his wife dreadfully; at this day his treatment of the poor boy left in his hands was horrible, disgraceful for its stupidity and cruelty — such a nice little fellow the child was, too, not the least like him, but the image of his mother and of her (Lady Midhurst), which of course was reason enough for that ruffian to ill-use his own son. There was one comfort, she had leave to write to the boy, and go now and then to see him; and she took care to encourage him in his revolt against his father’s style of training. In effect, as far as she could, Lady Midhurst tried to instil into her grandson her own views of his father’s character; it was not difficult, seeing that father and son were utterly unlike and discordant. Old Lord Cheyne (who took decidedly the Harewood side, and used sometimes to have the boy over to Lidcombe, where he revelled about the stables all day long) once remonstrated with his sister on this course of tactics. “My dear Cheyne,” she replied, in quite a surprised voice, “you forget Captain Harewood’s estate is entailed.” He was an ex-captain; his elder brother had died before he paid court to Miss Midhurst, and, when he married, the captain had land to settle on. As a younger brother, Lady Midhurst had liked him extremely; as a man of marriageable income, she gave him her daughter, and fell at once to hating him.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 291
