Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Afford the Winter-Garden and Mabille!

  “Oh, I unite” — runs on the confidence,

  Poor fellow, that was read in open Court,

  — ”Amusement with discretion: never fear

  My escapades cost more than market-price!

  No durably-attached Miranda-dupe,

  Sucked dry of substance by two clinging lips,

  Promising marriage, and performing it!

  Trust me, I know the world, and know myself,

  And know where duty takes me — in good time!”

  Thus fortified and realistic, then,

  At all points thus against illusion armed,

  He wisely did New Year inaugurate

  By playing truant to the favoured five:

  And sat installed at “The Varieties,” —

  Playhouse appropriately named, — to note

  (Prying amid the turf that’s flowery there)

  What primrose, firstling of the year, might push

  The snows aside to deck his button-hole —

  Unnoticed by that outline sad, severe,

  (Though fifty good long years removed from youth)

  That tower and tower, — our image, bear in mind!

  No sooner was he seated than, behold,

  Out burst a polyanthus! He was ‘ware

  Of a young woman niched in neighbourhood;

  And ere one moment flitted, fast was he

  Found captive to the beauty evermore,

  For life, for death, for heaven, for hell, her own.

  Philosophy, bewail thy fate! Adieu,

  Youth realistic and illusion-proof!

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda, — hero late

  Who “understood the worth of womankind,”

  “Who found therein — provisionally — sport,” —

  Felt, in the flitting of a moment, fool

  Was he, and folly all that seemed so wise,

  And the best proof of wisdom’s birth would be

  That he made all endeavour, body, soul,

  By any means, at any sacrifice

  Of labour, wealth, repute, and ( — well, the time

  For choosing between heaven on earth, and heaven

  In heaven, was not at hand immediately — )

  Made all endeavour, without loss incurred

  Of one least minute, to obtain her love.

  “Sport transitive?” “Variety required?”

  “In loving were a lifetime thrown away?”

  How singularly may young men mistake!

  The fault must be repaired with energy.

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda ate her up

  With eye-devouring; when the unconscious fair

  Passed from the close-packed hall, he pressed behind;

  She mounted vehicle, he did the same,

  Coach stopped, and cab fast followed, at one door —

  Good house in unexceptionable street.

  Out stepped the lady, — never think, alone!

  A mother was not wanting to the maid,

  Or, may be, wife, or widow, might one say?

  Out stepped and properly down flung himself

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda at her feet —

  And never left them after, so to speak,

  For twenty years, till his last hour of life,

  When he released them, as precipitate.

  Love proffered and accepted then and there!

  Such potency in word and look has truth.

  Truth I say, truth I mean: this love was true,

  And the rest happened by due consequence.

  By which we are to learn that there exists

  A falsish false, for truth’s inside the same,

  And truth that’s only half true, falsish truth.

  The better for both parties! folk may taunt

  That half your rock-built wall is rubble-heap:

  Answer them, half their flowery turf is stones!

  Our friend had hitherto been decking coat

  If not with stones, with weeds that stones befit,

  With dandelions — ”primrose-buds,” smirked he;

  This proved a polyanthus on his breast,

  Prize-lawful or prize-lawless, flower the same.

  So with his other instance of mistake:

  Was Christianity the Ravissante?

  And what a flower of flowers he chanced on now!

  To primrose, polyanthus I prefer

  As illustration, from the fancy-fact

  That out of simple came the composite

  By culture: that the florist bedded thick

  His primrose-root in ruddle, bullock’s blood,

  Ochre and devils’-dung, for aught I know,

  Until the pale and pure grew fiery-fine,

  Ruby and topaz, rightly named anew.

  This lady was no product of the plain;

  Social manure had raised a rarity.

  Clara de Millefleurs (note the happy name)

  Blazed in the full-blown glory of her Spring.

  Peerlessly perfect, form and face: for both —

  “Imagine what, at seventeen, may have proved

  Miss Pages, the actress: Pages herself, my dear!”

  Noble she was, the name denotes: and rich?

  “The apartment in this Coliseum Street,

  Furnished, my dear, with such an elegance,

  Testifies wealth, my dear, sufficiently!

  What quality, what style and title, eh?

  Well now, waive nonsense, you and I are boys

  No longer: somewhere must a screw be slack!

  Don’t fancy, Duchesses descend at door

  From carriage-step to stranger prostrate stretched,

  And bid him take heart, and deliver mind,

  March in and make himself at ease forthwith, —

  However broad his chest and black his beard,

  And comely his belongings, — all through love

  Protested in a world of ways save one

  Hinting at marriage!” — marriage which yet means

  Only the obvious method, easiest help

  To satisfaction of love’s first demand,

  That love endure eternally: “my dear,

  Somewhere or other must a screw be slack!”

  Truth is the proper policy: from truth —

  Whate’er the force wherewith you fling your speech, —

  Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound,

  Somewhere above the lowness of a lie!

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda heard too true

  A tale — perhaps I may subjoin, too trite!

  As the meek martyr takes her statued stand

  Above our pity, claims our worship just

  Because of what she puts in evidence,

  Signal of suffering, badge of torture borne

  In days gone by, shame then but glory now,

  Barb, in the breast, turned aureole for the front!

  So, half timidity, composure half,

  Clara de Millefleurs told her martyrdom.

  Of poor though noble parentage, deprived

  Too early of a father’s guardianship,

  What wonder if the prodigality

  Of nature in the girl, whose mental gifts

  Matched her external dowry, form and face —

  If these suggested a too prompt resource

  To the resourceless mother? “Try the Stage

  And so escape starvation! Prejudice

  Defames Mimetic Art: be yours to prove

  That gold and dross may meet and never mix,

  Purity plunge in pitch yet soil no plume!”

  All was prepared in London — (you conceive

  The natural shrinking from publicity

  In Paris, where the name excites remark)

  London was ready for the grand début ;

  When some perverse ill fortune, incident

  To art mimetic, some malicious thrust

  Of Jealousy who sidles ‘twixt the scenes

  O
r pops up sudden from the prompter’s hole, —

  Somehow the brilliant bubble burst in suds.

  Want followed: in a foreign land, the pair!

  O hurry over the catastrophe —

  Mother too sorely tempted, daughter tried

  Scarcely so much as circumvented, say!

  Caged unsuspecting artless innocence!

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda tell the rest! —

  The rather that he told it in a style

  To puzzle Court Guide students, much more me.

  “Brief, she became the favourite of Lord N.,

  An aged but illustrious Duke, thereby

  Breaking the heart of his competitor

  The Prince of O. Behold her palaced straight

  In splendour, clothed in diamonds” (phrase how fit!),

  “Giving tone to the City by the Thames!

  Lord N., the aged but illustrious Duke,

  Was even on the point of wedding her,

  Giving his name to her” (why not to us?)

  “But that her better angel interposed.

  She fled from such a fate to Paris back,

  A fortnight since: conceive Lord N.’s despair!

  Duke as he is, there’s no invading France.

  He must restrict pursuit to postal plague

  Of writing letters daily, duly read

  As darlingly she hands them to myself,

  The privileged supplanter, who therewith

  Light a cigar and see abundant blue” —

  (Either of heaven or else Havanna-smoke.)

  “Think! she, who helped herself to diamonds late,

  In passion of disinterestedness

  Now — will accept no tribute of my love

  Beyond a paltry ring, three Louis’-worth!

  Little she knows I have the rummaging

  Of old Papa’s shop in the Place Vendôme!”

  So wrote entrancedly to confidant

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda. Surely now,

  If Heaven, that sees all, understands no less,

  It finds temptation pardonable here,

  It mitigates the promised punishment,

  It recognizes that to tarry just

  An April hour amid such dainty turf

  Means no rebellion against task imposed

  Of journey to the distant wall one day?

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda puts the case!

  Love, he is purposed to renounce, abjure;

  But meanwhile, is the case a common one?

  Is it the vulgar sin, none hates as he?

  Which question, put directly to “his dear”

  (His brother — I will tell you in a trice)

  Was doubtless meant, by due meandering,

  To reach, to fall not unobserved before

  The auditory cavern ‘neath the cope

  Of Her, the placable, the Ravissante.

  But here’s the drawback, that the image smiles,

  Smiles on, smiles ever, says to supplicant

  “Ay, ay, ay” — like some kindly weathercock

  Which, stuck fast at Set Fair, Favonian Breeze,

  Still warrants you from rain, though Auster’s lead

  Bring down the sky above your cloakless mirth.

  Had he proposed this question to, nor “dear”

  Nor Ravissante, but prompt to the Police,

  The Commissary of his Quarter, now —

  There had been shaggy eyebrows elevate

  With twinkling apprehension in each orb

  Beneath, and when the sudden shut of mouth

  Relaxed, — lip pressing lip, lest out should plump

  The pride of knowledge in too frank a flow, —

  Then, fact on fact forthcoming, dose were dealt

  Of truth remedial in sufficiency

  To save a chicken threatened with the pip,

  Head-staggers and a tumble from its perch.

  Alack, it was the lady’s self that made

  The revelation, after certain days

  — Nor so unwisely! As the haschisch-man

  Prepares a novice to receive his drug,

  Adroitly hides the soil with sudden spread

  Of carpet ere he seats his customer:

  Then shows him how to smoke himself about

  With Paradise; and only when, at puff

  Of pipe, the Houri dances round the brain

  Of dreamer, does he judge no need is now

  For circumspection and punctiliousness;

  He may resume the serviceable scrap

  That made the votary unaware of muck.

  Just thus the lady, when her brewage — love —

  Was well a-fume about the novice-brain,

  Saw she might boldly pluck from underneath

  Her lover the preliminary lie.

  Clara de Millefleurs, of the noble race,

  Was Lucie Steiner, child to Dominique

  And Magdalen Commercy; born at Sierck,

  About the bottom of the Social Couch.

  The father having come and gone again,

  The mother and the daughter found their way

  To Paris, and professed mode-merchandize,

  Were milliners, we English roughlier say;

  And soon a fellow-lodger in the house,

  Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen, young and smart,

  Tailor by trade, perceived his housemate’s youth,

  Smartness, and beauty over and above.

  Courtship was brief, and marriage followed quick,

  And quicklier — impecuniosity.

  The young pair quitted Paris to reside

  At London: which repaid the compliment

  But scurvily, since not a whit the more

  Trade prospered by the Thames than by the Seine.

  Failing all other, as a last resource,

  “He would have trafficked in his wife,” — she said.

  If for that cause they quarrelled, ‘t was, I fear,

  Rather from reclamation of her rights

  To wifely independence, than as wronged

  Otherwise by the course of life proposed:

  Since, on escape to Paris back again

  From horror and the husband, — ill-exchanged

  For safe maternal home recovered thus, —

  I find her domiciled and dominant

  In that apartment, Coliseum Street,

  Where all the splendid magic met and mazed

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda’s venturous eye.

  Only, the same was furnished at the cost

  Of someone notable in days long since,

  Carlino Centofanti: he it was

  Found entertaining unawares — if not

  An angel, yet a youth in search of one.

  Why this revealment after reticence?

  Wherefore, beginning “Millefleurs,” end at all

  Steiner, Muhlhausen, and the ugly rest?

  Because the unsocial purse-comptrolling wight,

  Carlino Centofanti, — made aware

  By misadventure that his bounty, crumbs

  From table, comforted a visitant, —

  Took churlish leave, and left, too, debts to pay.

  Loaded with debts, the lady needs must bring

  Her soul to bear assistance from a friend

  Beside that paltry ring, three Louis’-worth;

  And therefore might the little circumstance

  That Monsieur Léonce had the rummaging

  Of old Papa’s shop in the Place Vendôme

  Pass, perhaps, not so unobservably.

  Frail shadow of a woman in the flesh,

  These very eyes of mine saw yesterday,

  Would I re-tell this story of your woes,

  Would I have heart to do you detriment

  By pinning all this shame and sorrow plain

  To that poor chignon , — staying with me still,

  Though form and face have well-nigh faded now, —

  But that men read it, rough in brutal print,

&nb
sp; As two years since some functionary’s voice

  Rattled all this — and more by very much —

  Into the ear of vulgar Court and crowd?

  Whence, by reverberation, rumblings grew

  To what had proved a week-long roar in France,

  Had not the dreadful cannonry drowned all.

  Was, now, the answer of your advocate

  More than just this? “The shame fell long ago,

  The sorrow keeps increasing: God forbid

  We judge man by the faults of youth in age!”

  Permit me the expression of a hope

  Your youth proceeded like your avenue,

  Stepping by bush, and tree, and taller tree,

  Until, columnar, at the house they end.

  So might your creeping youth columnar rise

  And reach, by year and year, symmetrical,

  To where all shade stops short, shade’s service done.

  Bushes on either side, and boughs above,

  Darken, deform the path else sun would streak;

  And, cornered half-way somewhere, I suspect

  Stagnation and a horse-pond: hurry past!

  For here’s the house, the happy half-and-half

  Existence — such as stands for happiness

  True and entire, howe’er the squeamish talk!

  Twenty years long, you may have loved this man;

  He must have loved you; that’s a pleasant life,

  Whatever was your right to lead the same.

  The white domestic pigeon pairs secure,

  Nay, does mere duty by bestowing egg

  In authorized compartment, warm and safe,

  Boarding about, and gilded spire above,

  Hoisted on pole, to dogs’ and cats’ despair!

  But I have spied a veriest trap of twigs

  On tree-top, every straw a thievery,

  Where the wild dove — despite the fowler’s snare,

  The sportsman’s shot, the urchin’s stone, — crooned gay,

  And solely gave her heart to what she hatched,

  Nor minded a malignant world below.

  I throw first stone forsooth? ‘T is mere assault

  Of playful sugarplum against your cheek,

  Which, if it makes cheek tingle, wipes off rouge!

  You , my worst woman? Ah, that touches pride,

  Puts on his mettle the exhibitor

  Of Night-caps, if you taunt him “This, no doubt, —

  Now we have got to Female-garniture, —

  Crowns your collection, Reddest of the row!”

  O unimaginative ignorance

  Of what dye’s depth keeps best apart from worst

  In womankind! — how heaven’s own pure may seem

  To blush aurorally beside such blanched

  Divineness as the women-wreaths named White:

  While hell, eruptive and fuliginous,

  Sickens to very pallor as I point

  Her place to a Red clout called woman too!