Brownings Heroines

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Title: Browning's Heroines
Author: Ethel Colburn Mayne
Illustrator: Maxwell Armfield
Release Date: April 28, 2007 [EBook #21247]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BROWNING'S HEROINES ***
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[FRONTISPIECE: Pippa]
BROWNING'S
HEROINES
BY ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE
WITH FRONTISPIECE &
DECORATIONS
BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1913
PREFACE

When this book was projected, some one asked, "What is there to say
about Browning's heroines beyond what he said himself?"--and the
question, though it could not stay me, did chill momentarily my primal
ardour. Soon, however, the restorative answer presented itself. "If there
were nothing to say about Browning's heroines beyond what he said
himself, it would be a bad mark against him." For to _suggest_--to open
magic casements--surely is the office of our artists in every sort: thus,
for them to say all that there is to say about anything is to show the
casement stuck fast, as it were, and themselves battering somewhat
desperately to open it. Saying the things "about" is the other people's
function. It is as if we suddenly saw a princess come out upon her
castle-walls, and hymned that fair emergence, which to herself is
nothing.
+ + + + +
Browning, I think, is "coming back," as stars come back. There has
been the period of obscuration. Seventeen years ago, when the _Yellow
Book_ and the _National Observer_ were contending for _les jeunes_,
Browning was, in the more "precious" côterie, king of modern poets. I
can remember the editor of that golden Quarterly reading, declaiming,
quoting, almost breathing, Browning! It was from Henry Harland that
this reader learnt to read _The Ring and the Book_: "Leave out the
lawyers and the Tertium Quid, and all after Guido until the Envoi." It
was Henry Harland who would answer, if one asked him what he was
thinking of:
"And thinking too--oh, thinking, if you like,
How utterly dissociated
was I. . . ."
--regardless of all aptitude in the allusion, making it simply because it
"burned up in his brain," just as days "struck fierce 'mid many a day
struck calm" were always _his_ days of excitement. . . . A hundred
Browning verses sing themselves around my memories of the flat in
Cromwell Road.
_Misconceptions_ was swung forth with gesture that figured swaying
branches:

"This is a spray the bird clung to. . . ."
You were to notice how the rhythms bent and tossed like boughs in that
first stanza--and to notice, also, how regrettable the second stanza was.
Nor shall I easily let slip the memory of _Apparent Failure_, thus
recited. He would begin at the second verse, the "Doric little Morgue"
verse. You were not to miss the great "phrase" in
"The three men who did most abhor
Their lives in Paris
yesterday. . . ."
--but you were to feel, scarce less keenly, the dire descent to bathos in
"So killed themselves." It was almost the show-example, he would tell
you, of Browning's chief defect--over-statement.
"How did it happen, my poor boy?
You wanted to be Bonaparte,

And have the Tuileries for toy,
And could not, so it broke your
heart. . . ."
How compassionately he would give that forth! "A screen of glass,
you're thankful for"; "Be quiet, and unclench your fist"; "Poor men God
made, and all for this!"--the phrases (how alert we were for the
"phrase" in those days) would fall grave and vibrant from the voice
with its subtle foreign colouring: you could always infuriate "H. H." by
telling him he had a foreign accent.
Those were Browning days; and now these are, or soon shall be. Two
or three years since, to quote him was, in the opinion of a _Standard_
reviewer, to write yourself down a back-number, as they say. I preserve
the cutting which damns with faint praise some thus antiquated short
stories of 1910. Browning and Wagner were so obsolete! . . . How
young that critic must have been--so young that he had never seen a
star return. Quite differently they come back--or is it quite the same?
Soon we shall be able to judge, for this star is returning, and--oh
wonder!--is trailing clouds of glory of the very newest cut. The stars
always do that, this watcher fancies, and certainly Browning, like the
Jub-jub, was ages ahead of the fashion. His passport for to-day