Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads
Page 18
[quotes “Modern Love” I, lines 3–6, 8–13; and II, lines 1–4, 12–16]
As the husband’s Palace of Love lies in mere shards at his feet, the fearfulness of passionate despair is divulged partly in its own cries, partly in the revealing stroke of the poet:—
[quotes “Modern Love” X, lines 1–3, 11–16]
He invokes nature to solve the hideous paradox. There she is, leaning over human misery with the smile adamant, still
[quotes “Modern Love” XI, lines 6–10]
And thus she answers:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XIII, lines 1–2, 5–10]
From which, though he breaks off impetuously:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XIII, lines 13–16]
and comes an exquisite sonnet of bereavement and loss:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XVI in its entirety]
The poet here bares all the delicate agony of the large heart whose faith and stake were in the one love—whose fealty had been ever to the divine exaltation of the passion in contrast to its commoner abasement to animalism, but to which now, transformed, subjugated to the flinty skepticism of the world:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XXIX, lines 13–16]
Shrouded in cynicism, his stupefied nature observes a trenchant irony to the wife, while at the same time indulging in a contemptuous appetite towards a certain “golden-headed” lady who is near. There is a skin of poetry even over his passage with her; he could notice how:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XXXVII, lines 10–12]
The course and conclusion of the two guilts, the deliberate and the desperate, are shadowed forth in “tragic hints,” which, in conformity with the wreck of the two lives, permits of no consecutive sketch. There comes no angel to mediate, albeit each hour held salvation, especially one, in which, however, but freezing conjugal formalities pass, or:—
Our chain through silence clanks. [“Modern Love” XXXIV, line 3]
For after all it seems the wife, pure, was reclaimable; but he relentlessly held to distraction in the “golden-headed” one, though at times alarmed, lest the old love still breathed,
[quotes “Modern Love” XL, lines 4–6 and 15–16]
As a strange climax to the terrible drama, the wife sacrifices her home rather to the desire of peace for her husband, who might then “seek that other,” than to any search of a drug for herself, or infatuation for the original “disturbing shadow.” After which there is an abrupt conclusion in her death, and a laconic epitaph on the part of the author.
Turning from the spell of this powerful production, here is a sweet lyric, called “The Young Usurper”:—
[quotes “The Young Usurper” in its entirety]
To classical taste the following poem of “Cassandra” may be submitted; there is a roll through it, and so true a ring of inspiration that (with previous commendation of the choral cast of each final line) we can only present it to the reader entire:—
[quotes “Cassandra” in its entirety]
Entirely Mr. George Meredith’s own are his “Roadside Philosophers,” a set of ballads in the form of monologues, and placed in the mouth of men lowest in the social scale, such as a juggler, an old Chartist returned from transportation, a beggar, and a working engineer. The writer evidently enjoys the study of this class of character, and the interpretation of their souls, in much the same manner as the great artist of Adam Bede and Silas Marner.6 Poor old “Juggling Jerry” is dying out on the common, and expatiates to his faithful “old girl” upon the
[quotes “Juggling Jerry” XII, lines 1–4]
And informs her at such a moment
[quotes “Juggling Jerry” IX, lines 1–8]
The old Chartist draws his moral, as he sits by a ditch, from an old brown rat, who sits on a mudbank trying to clean himself, though “his trade is dirt,” bent notwithstanding this upon his own self-esteem: and the “Beggar’s Soliloquy” is full of rough and humourous perception, as one Sunday he lies on the heath watching the people go to church:—
[quotes “The Beggar’s Soliloquy” III, lines 1–8]
Thus curtly the vagabond disposes of the grand sentiment:—
Love burns as long as the lucifer match,
Wedlock’s the candle! Now, that’s my creed. [II, lines 7–8]
The “Meeting” may be remembered as published in Once a Week, with a felicitous illustration by Mr. Millais:—
[quotes “The Meeting” in its entirety]
“Margaret’s Bridal Eve” is another passionate woe tale, wherein is the same mastery of stroke in stamping and linking together what traits are most powerful in portraying drama. A beautiful lost but noble creature, Margaret is, after the lover’s death, in spite of her own protests, about to be palmed off in marriage by an old quean7 of a mother upon a new lover, but the girl, though she “bleeds to death,” is determined to “let out the lie” to him; so, on the bridal eve
[quotes “Margaret’s Bridal-Eve” IV, lines 41–44]
The burden of the rose which runs through the ballad is seemingly designed to relieve the tragic incident in the mind of the reader. There is a whole volume in the “eyes between his.” In a piece called “Phantasy” occurs this voluptuous picture of Naiads:—8
[quotes “Phantasy” XVIII, lines 1–4]
But the temptation to extract is leading to excess of space, and probably enough has been given to make all genuine lovers of poetry prefer the satisfaction of referring to the volume for themselves.
Notes
1. Frederick Maxse, “Poems of George Meredith,” Morning Post (London), 20 June 1862: 6.
2. Letters, I.75.
3. Owen Meredith was the pseudonym of the first Earl of Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, a poet, novelist, and public servant.
4. Before serving as conservative prime minister of England in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880, Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) was a man of letters; the quote is from his 1832 novel Contarini Fleming.
5. “androgynal”: having qualities of both sexes; Coleridge’s line was “The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous,” as recorded in Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835).
6. Adam Bede (1859) and Silas Marner (1861): two novels by George Eliot (née Mary Ann Evans, 1819–1880), considered masterworks of Realism and valued for frank depictions of rural life
7. quean: hussy
8. Naiads: water nymphs
From Unsigned Review, Westminster Review (1862)1
The Westminster Review was a radical quarterly journal edited by a variety of luminaries, such as Jeremy Bentham, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, and Mark Pattison. From the latter half of 1857 through January 1858, Meredith himself wrote the “Belles Lettres” column, taking it over from Eliot. This review begins with a discussion about meter in modern translations of ancient poetry before comparing Modern Love with the recent work of several other English poets. The author praises Meredith’s poetic technique but laments his evident interest in “guilt and sin.”
In Mr. George Meredith’s poems, there is a freshness and vigour not often met with at the present day. Moreover, there are no traces in them of imitation of any of our popular poets. Their faults are frequent roughness and occasional obscurity. Some of Mr. Meredith’s lines are very terse and effective. Several passages in his poems prove him to be a sharp observer and skillful analyst of human motives. Let the following serve as an example:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XLI, lines 1–6]
There is much truth in this remark by “The Old Chartist”:—
She suffered for me:—women, you’ll observe,
Don’t suffer for a Cause, but for a man. [XIII, lines 1–2]
There is both truth and force in the lines employed by a beggar to characterize a lady:—
[quotes “The Beggar’s Soliloquy” IV, lines 1–3]
How much is condensed in the following short lines:—
Life is but the pebble sunk;
&n
bsp; Deeds, the circle growing! [“The Head of Bran,” lines 27–28]
It is unfortunate that the subjects of many of these poems are tales of guilt and sin, of women’s temptation and fall. The manner in which Mr. Meredith treats his subjects convinces us that he has real poetical talents, and is capable, too, of producing still more effective poems than those contained in this volume.
Notes
1. “Belles Lettres,” Westminster Review (July 1862): 284–86. The Wellesley Index offers no authorial attribution for this review.
Unsigned Review, Saturday Review (1863)1
Founded in 1855 just after the repeal of the Newspaper Stamp Act, which by reducing per-page taxes on newspapers lowered the costs of production and subscriptions, the politically conservative Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art soon gained a large readership. Known for its misogyny and elitist, caustic tone, it was nicknamed the “Saturday Reviler.” This review opens by praising the “obvious and simple design” of “The Old Chartist,” yet ultimately finds the more “ambitious” poems in the volume—particularly “Modern Love” and the usually admired “Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn”—to be pretentious and in bad taste.
We are in the present day overrun by clever writers of fiction, and of that species of verse which is spun from the same kind of intellectual web that produces fiction. But the names of English novelists and versifiers now living who may be said to unite real originality of thought and aim with conspicuous cleverness in workmanship are almost few enough to be counted on the fingers. Among these few Mr. George Meredith unquestionably holds a place. His novel of Evan Harrington, which appeared three or four years ago, contained some of the most purely original conceptions that have been attempted by any writer of novels of character for a long time past. The same may be said of the volume of poems which he has, like Professor Kingsley, Miss Muloch, Mr. Farrar,2 and half a score more, as in duty bound, composed and published. He is in the habit of genuinely drawing from his own resources of observation and reflection, and his strong thought and quaint expression remind us, here and there—though at a considerable interval—of Robert Browning. In skill of phrase and rhyme he is quite as happy as his greater contemporary, and often less obscure. The poem of “The Old Chartist” is, for instance, a capital piece of writing, with an obvious and simple design. An ancient shoemaker, who in early life has had the misfortune to cross the water on account of misbehaviour on a Chartist platform, returns to his native town at the expiration of his time, and is converted to common sense by seeing a water-rat scrubbing his face contentedly by a brookside. The fresh-hearted old vagabond is made to soliloquize thus:—
[quotes “The Old Chartist” I–II]
He presently espies the water-rat going through his morning’s washing, and the train of natural thought and feeling set in motion by that sight is exceedingly well described. The first wonder is the apparent incongruity of cleanliness with the antecedents and present position of a rat:—
[quotes “The Old Chartist” VII, lines 1–4]
In the eye of nature, however, there seems to be nothing incongruous:—
[quotes “The Old Chartist” IX]
This simple spectacle introduces into the breast of the old grumbler the thin end of the wedge of self-knowledge. He has been picking holes in his superiors’ coats and denouncing the wrong, while he ought to have been doing the right. He will henceforward be wiser, and live the life of the rat, “pleasing himself and his Creator.” He will go quietly home, mend the gentry’s boots, comfort his old wife—who, while detesting his ways and his views, had faithfully stood by him with the consoling tea-can in the dock—and on some future Sunday he will bring his fine daughter, with her smug draper-husband, to see the model democrat of the mud-bank. The “Old Chartist” is certainly a good piece of writing of its kind, and “Juggling Jerry,” the “Beggar’s Soliloquy,” and “Grandfather Bridgeman,” are nearly, if not quite, up to the same standard.
It is in the direction of this racy and vigorous style of composition that Mr. George Meredith’s real forte lies, though he would hardly be inclined to subscribe to that opinion. Few people who have aimed at fine writing find it easy or pleasant to believe that their strength lies, after all, in something which, from the fine writer’s point of view, seems to be very far below. However, a perusal of Mr. George Meredith’s more ambitious productions, and especially of “Modern Love”—the composition which he has thought worthy of giving a name to his collection—leads one reluctantly to the conclusion that he has entirely mistaken his powers, and has utterly marred what might have been a rare and successful volume. It was bad enough to quit the “English Roadside” for a ranting rhapsody like the “Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn,” which we should conjecture to have been written at a very early age, when Shelley was less perfectly understood than ardently and blindly adored. The lines which follow, and which are supposed to indicate the rising of a violent south-wester, are among the milder and less uproarious passages of the ode:—
[quotes “Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn,” lines 36–46]
The first line reminds one of the old illustration to the fable, where the traveller, wrapped in a cloak, is plodding along beneath the influence of two round faces, one representing the north wind and the other the sun. The single voice issuing from the “outpuff ’d cheeks” is made to boom “a chorus” to the preluding shrieks, the nature of which last we should conceive that it must be equally difficult to imagine and to describe. The “yellow realm of stiffen’d Day” no doubt sounds as if something like it might have occurred in In Memoriam; but we venture to assert that no parallel passage to the line is to be found in that poem, any more than to the “thunderingly streaming” [sic] appearance which was remarked in the south-west wind’s mantle. There is a passage in the otherwise excellent poem called “Grandfather Bridgeman” which is congenial to these extracts, and seems too good of its sort to be omitted. It is not often that metaphor is confused with more completeness than in this description of a summer morning:—
[quotes “Grandfather Bridgeman” V, lines 1–3]
It is, as we have said, bad enough that a writer of real ability and skill should allow himself to associate this kind of fustian3 with poems of worth and merit. But Mr. George Meredith’s descent from his “roadside” style of thought and composition to his lyrical mood is, we regret to say, only trifling compared with the change which he undergoes when he indulges in an elaborate analysis of a loathsome series of phenomena which he is pleased to call “modern love.” The poem called “Modern Love” is of considerable length, and has clearly had a large share of labour bestowed on its preparation. The mere composition is sometimes very graceful, and always exceedingly ingenious. The few short passages quoted below appear to us to contain real beauty:—
[quotes “Modern Love” XXXVII, lines 10–12; XLI,
lines 1–6; XI, lines 7–8, and XXII, lines 11–12]
But no word-painting or clever analysis can atone for a choice of subject which we cannot help regarding as involving a grave moral mistake—a mistake so grave as utterly to disqualify the chooser from achieving any great and worthy result in art. The whole of this poem is occupied in portraying the miseries of married life as it exists in our modern society. The writer’s apology for his choice would probably be the same that he has put into the mouth of one of his characters:—
These things are life;
And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse. [“Modern Love” XXV, lines 15–16]
A more flimsy sophism could hardly be devised. The Muse is undoubtedly concerned with all forms of life, but these things are decay, and deformity, and death. So far from a condition of doubt and uncertainty on the general tone of matrimonial morality being in any sense an interesting or attractive thing, it is one of the most disastrous calamities that can befall a nation. To write of the rotten places of our social system as if they were fitting subjects for the Muse is just as reasonable as
it would be to compose a sonnet to the gout or an ode on the small-pox. Besides, the subject is old and outworn, exhausted by far abler hands then those of Mr. George Meredith. With the great literary error of Don Juan before his eyes, it was scarcely worth his while to commit the sickly little peccadillo of “Modern Love.” It was no doubt his conviction, derived from French authorities, that there is a species of nineteenth-century infidelity, more recondite, more interesting, more intellectual forsooth, than those which have gone before, and that this novelty was not undeserving of a bard. If he should be at any time desirous of taking the measure of his work, it would not be an uninstructive process to read over the poem of “Guinevere,” in Idylls of the King,4 and then to peruse some half-dozen of his own cantos. The contrast might disabuse him of the notion that he has succeeded in producing, under the title of “Modern Love,” anything worthy of the name of art. If he could regard his clever performance as others see it, he might perhaps agree with us in thinking that his utmost achievement has been to throw the thin veil of Coan drapery5 over a set of grinning skeletons.
Notes
1. “Mr. George Meredith’s Poems,” Saturday Review (24 October 1863): 562–63. The Wellesley Index offers no authorial attribution for this review.
2. Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), a professor of history, is perhaps best known for his fiction, including Westward, Ho! (1855) and The Water Babies (1863); Dinah Maria Mulock (1826–1887), later Mrs. Craik, is a novelist most famous for writing John Halifax, Gentleman (1857); Frederick William Farrar (1831–1903), a novelist and theologian, was author of Eric, or Little by Little (1858). All three also composed poetry.
3. fustian: bombastic, pretentious speech or writing
4. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King comprises twelve narrative poems based upon Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and Welsh folklore. At the time this review was written, only four of the twelve poems had been published.