Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  ... the Gods love not justice more than fate,

  And smite the righteous and the violent mouth,

  And mix with insolent blood the reverent man’s,

  And bruise the holier as the lying lips.

  There is some confusion about this inexorable destiny, which is sometimes spoken of as above the gods, and sometimes as being God itself. But the only independence that Man can prove, the only dignity that he can show, is, during the brief interval between birth and death, to live according to the guidance of the inward light, and defy the moira. But the singing huntsmen do not conceal from themselves the hopelessness of the struggle and the darkness at the end of the vista, and they turn, in the most majestic of their choruses, with the exultation of a vain defiance, to shake their fists against the unregarding Power:

  Because thou art cruel and men are piteous,

  And our hands labour and thine hand scattereth;

  Lo, with hearts rent and knees made tremulous,

  Lo, with ephemeral lips and casual breath,

  At least we witness of thee ere we die

  That these things are not otherwise, but thus;

  That each man in his heart sigheth, and saith, —

  That all men even as I,

  All we are against thee, against thee, O God most high!

  It was fresh from the emotion of listening to these vociferous lamentations that Ruskin wrote to a friend: “Have you read Atalanta? The grandest thing ever done by a youth, — though he is a Demoniac youth!”

  In Atalanta in Calydon a new poetic voice was heard in England, a voice so full and pure and vibrating that no one could for a moment question its importance. As a matter of fact, no one did question it; what was remarkable was the unanimity with which the young and the old, the critics and the public, vied in welcoming a poet more supple and palpitating than any other who had appeared since Shelley. Swinburne was compared at once with that unrivalled master, but he could endure the comparison, since, if the new methods were less ethereal than the old ones, they were richer and more vehement. Nothing so swift had been heard in English poetry before as sounded in the almost superhuman choruses of Atalanta. It may be well to remind ourselves of what the most learned of our prosodists, then an undergraduate at Oxford, has recorded of the effect of these bounding and doubling “verse-hounds.” Saintsbury says:

  Every weapon and every sleight of the English poet — equivalence and substitution, alternative and repetition, rhymes and rhymeless suspension of sound, volley and check of verse, stanza construction, line-and pause-moulding, foot-conjunction and contrast, — this poet knows and can use them all. The triple rhyme itself, that springe for the unwary, gives him no difficulty.

  There are many lovers of poetry to-day who would confess that their apprenticeship to the mysteries of such melody as lies hidden in the woven texture of English speech began in their appreciation of “When the hounds of spring,” and “Who hath given man speech,” and “Behold thou art over fair, thou art over wise,” or perhaps most of all the inestimable recitative around the dying body of Meleager, with its violin-like, wailing harmonies:

  For the dead man no home is; Ah, better to be

  What the flower of the foam is

  In fields of the sea,

  That the sea-waves might be as my raiment, the gulf-stream a garment for me.

  Who shall seek thee and bring

  And restore thee thy day,

  When the dove dipt her wing

  And the oars won their way,

  Where the narrowing Symplegades whitened the straits of Propontis with spray?

  These gave promise of magnificent music, which was not belied by the freshness of Poems and Ballads or by the maturity of Songs before Sunrise.

  The season of 1865 was made very pleasant to the young poet by the fame which attended his success. He went out a good deal into society, and stayed longer in town than he was accustomed to do. His friends were again made a little anxious by his racketing, and wished to get him down into the country. To some mild reproaches from Lord Houghton, Swinburne replied that he should soon “be again cultivating the calmer virtues at Holm Wood.” This was a house in the neighbourhood of Henley-on-Thames, which Admiral Swinburne had now decided to take, in the place of the old home in the Isle of Wight, which was now given up. Holmwood was a comfortable but not pretentious country-house, which the Admiral leased from the executors of Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley, Gibbon’s friend, whose southern residence it had been.

  In the summer, the French painter, C. F. Daubigny, came over to London, on the invitation of Leighton, at whose house, it is possible, Swinburne met him first. At all events, an acquaintance sprang up between them, and the English poet was gratified by the sympathy of the French painter. Eminent foreign artists were not at that dale frequently welcomed to this country, and Daubigny’s visit was something of a sensation. “He expressed himself much taken with my French songs, which were shown to him by a friend to whom I had lent them.” These were the lyrics in Chastelard, which now (July 18G5) was going through the press, together with a second edition of Atalanta in Calydon. The latter was to have been adorned by an etched portrait of Swinburne by Whistler, but this was not forthcoming.

  On one of his visits to his publisher, Algernon met an old man who, now that Landor had died, was the last survivor of the poets born before the close of the eighteenth century. This was Bryan Waller Procter, now in his 78th year; as “Barry Cornwall” and author of songs and “dramatic scenes,” he had been almost famous in the age of Keats and Hunt. His daughter, Adelaide Ann, had achieved still greater popularity before her death the preceding year. Swinburne “got on with him, as I always do with old men — another of my Spartan virtues. Mr. Procter was charming et me disait choses ravissantes, but mourned over the hard work of seven hours a day at his Life of Charles Lamb,” a biography which appeared in 1866. The old poet was not less charmed with Algernon, who was soon introduced to the wonderful Mrs. Procter, “Our Lady of Bitterness,” becoming a frequent visitor to them both until Procter’s infirmities closed the house to company. When “Barry Cornwall” died, in 1874, Swinburne paid to his memory the respect of one of the most beautiful of all his elegies.

  In the late summer of 1865, Swinburne spent a pleasant holiday with Lord Houghton at Fryston, and said farewell for the time being to a friend who occupied a large part in his acquaintance, and has not yet been mentioned. This was Richard Burton, to whom, on his return from his consulate at Fernando Po, Algernon had been presented by Lord Houghton. These two men, externally so dissimilar, had taken an instant fancy to one another. Burton, who was by sixteen years Swinburne’s senior, was a personage of virile adventure, the hero of mysterious exploits in Asia and in Africa; he was Al-Haj Abdullah, the enchanted pilgrim who had penetrated to the holy city of Mecca. He represented in action everything of which Swinburne had only dreamed. But, on his side, Burton possessed a passionate love of literature, in which he was doomed by a radical inaptitude of style never to excel, and he recognised, without envy, but with the most generous enthusiasm, those gifts which he vainly desired for himself exhibited to an almost superhuman degree by his sedentary associate.

  Accordingly, between these two men there grew up a strong friendship, which lasted for the rest of Burton’s life. They met frequently at the house of Dr. George Bird, from which Burton had been married in 1861. The Arundells, Mrs. Burton’s parents, were strict Catholics, and while they treated Swinburne affectionately, they were occasionally shocked by his diatribes. One night, at Dr. Bird’s house in Welbeck Street, after some extravagant rodomontade of Swinburne’s, Mr. Arundell felt obliged to intervene “Young Sir,” he said, in a very solemn tone, “if you talk like that, you will die like a dog!”

  “Oh!” replied Algernon, clasping his hands together, “don’t say ‘like a dog’ — do say ‘like a cat!’” Swinburne’s relations with Richard Burton at this time were charming; the two had so much to say to one another
, and so many stories to tell, and jokes to exchange, that they used to be good-naturedly allowed to sit by themselves in an inner room, from which the rest of the company would be tantalised to hear proceeding roars and shrieks of laughter, followed by earnest rapid talk of a quieter description.

  Association with Burton was, however, not good for Swinburne, intellectually or physically. Burton, a giant of endurance, and possessed at times with a kind of dionysiac frenzy, was no fortunate company for a nervous and yet spirited man like Swinburne. Houghton, observing with anxiety a situation which he had created, rejoiced when Burton received a new consular appointment that took him to South America. Swinburne, in response to warnings, wrote: “As my tempter and favourite audience has gone to Santos, I may hope to be a good boy again. I may have shaken the thyrsus in your face. But after this half I mean to be no end good.” The long visit to Fryston freshened him, and then, after a short stay in town, through the feverish heat of August, while Chastelard was going through the press, he descended upon his family in Oxfordshire, and “all,” as he used to say, was once more “joy and peace and love.” The antithesis between London and the country, between the “roses and raptures” and the “lilies and languors,” was now absolutely complete; and those who merely saw him, shaking the thyrsus, in Dorset Street could not recognise as the same person the discreet and sober student who shepherded his fancies at Holmwood.

  At this time Swinburne became intimate with Joseph Knight (1829-1907), who was introduced to him by Purnell. Knight’s great love of poetry, and in particular his extraordinary knowledge of dramatic literature, made him a sympathetic companion, and his fine appearance and courtesy of manner were very attractive. He was then living as a journalist, and mainly writing for the Literary Gazette; it was Knight who introduced Swinburne to Mr. John Morley, and in several other ways was serviceable to him.

  In a letter to E. C. Stedman (February 20th, 1875) Swinburne wrote: “Atalanta was begun the very day after I had given the last touch to Chastelard.” This statement, categorical as it is, must not be taken too literally. What it means, no doubt, is that in the autumn of 1863, feeling that the images and cadences of Atalanta were crowding on his imagination, he pulled the scenes of Chastelard together, to get them off his mind. But quite late in 1865 we find him still modifying and interpolating passages in that drama, which had been more or less continuously on the stocks ever since he was at Balliol in 1858. It is difficult to realise, in face of the smoothness and simplicity of Chastelard, that it took seven years to compose it to its author’s liking. This was the earliest of the numerous studies of the character and life of Mary Queen of Scots, which he was to produce in prose and verse. Those clear eyes of “a swordblade’s blue,” which moved so many hearts to mildness at the close of the sixteenth century, reigned like stars in the firmament of Swinburne’s imagination. Mary Stuart was the only figure in pure history to which he ever gave minute attention, but his study of her character and adventures was so close and so clairvoyant that it has received the grudging praise of professional historians, who are never ready to believe that poets can know anything definite about history.

  In this case, the young poet’s worship of the memory of Mary Queen of Scots was no new or light emotion. Like almost every one of the deepest and most durable of Swinburne’s infatuations, it began in his boyhood. The romance which hung about the history of his Border ancestors extended to the legend that Thomas Swinburne of Capheaton had taken arms for the defence of Mary Stuart somewhere between Lochleven and Langside, and had succumbed to the irresistible charm of her presence. A boyish excursion to the fortalice in Roxburghshire, which is celebrated as the scene of Mary’s dashing visit to the wounded Bothwell, was the occasion upon which the chivalrous imagination of Algernon was enslaved for ever. In the admirable “Adieux à Marie Stuart,” which he wrote at least thirty years later, he said, looking back to this enchanting day on the banks of the Water of Hermitage:

  There beats no heart on either border

  Wherethrough the north blasts blow

  But keeps your memory as a warder

  His beacon-fire aglow.

  Long since it fired with love and wonder

  Mine, for whose April age

  Blithe midsummer made banquet under

  The shade of Hermitage.

  The character of Mary, however, offered some of the most puzzling and elusive problems which can attend the attempt to resuscitate any historical figure. There can be no doubt that Swinburne’s early reflections upon it were tinctured with a juvenile romanticism which his continued studies obliged him more and more to modify. This, almost beyond question, was the reason of his slow progress, and continued dissatisfaction, with the portrait of her which he now reluctantly published in Chastelard, and it is known that in later years he did not consider it to be so successful as those which he afterwards produced in Bothwell and in Mary Stuart. He was fascinated early by the evidence of her high spirit, her ready wit and her victorious charm, but it was not until he had given prolonged meditation to the documents which have been preserved from that confused and tumultuous age that he clearly perceived the qualities which he summed up at last (in 1882) as her “easiness, gullibility, incurable innocence and invincible ignorance of evil, incapacity to suspect or resent anything, readiness to believe and forgive all things.” Moreover, even in 1865, much was still neglected, much superficially observed, in the records themselves, and Swinburne had had no opportunity of considering the investigations of later students of Mary’s reign. The figure of Mary in Chastelard, therefore, must be looked upon as a brilliant sketch, marvellously fresh and bright, but superficial in all its principal lines, and marred by the inexperience of the young historian.

  The central figure of his drama, moreover, was not so much Mary Stuart as it was the young poet whose infatuation so deeply compromised her, and who expiated his error on the scaffold. So little was he known to the reading public of 1865 that some of the reviewers supposed him to be entirely, or mainly, an invention. But in point of fact, Swinburne kept very closely to the contemporary narratives in his portrait, introducing, as tesserae in his mosaic, a great many minute features which may easily escape the notice of a reader. Pierre de Boscozel de Chastelard was as truly a conventional specimen of his age as Mary was an exceptional one. He represented to perfection the Italianated elegance and irresponsible paganism of the French Renaissance as it flourished in the reigns of the later Valois. He was like a personage in some voluptuous and high-flown tragedy of Quinault. Born in Dauphiné in 1540, he was by two years Mary’s senior; he wore the romantic halo of being a grandnephew of the Chevalier Bayard, but though without fear, he took no pains to be without reproach. He had been attached, as a page, to the household of the Montmorencys, and thus obtained entrance to the court of François II., where he met Mary. He became, in the light of those times, a man of “good sword and good literature.”

  Considerable intimacy seems to have already existed between them when, in 1561, the Queen sailed northward to assume her Scottish throne. Brantôme and Chastelard were prominent members of her escort, and the former records, with admiration, that when the ship arrived at the port of Leith (which they called Petit Lict) in the dark, Chastelard exclaimed that there was no need to light lanterns or flare torches because “les beaux yeux de ceste Reyne sont assez esclairans et bastans pour esclairer de leur beaux feux toute la mer, voire l’embrazer pour un besoing.” The whole of Chastelard, the whole of what he represented, is revealed in this feverish, gallant and preposterous exclamation. Sent back to France with the rest of the escort, his presumptuous passion so inflamed the poet that in November 1562 he slipped back to Scotland, and committed those acts of indelicate imprudence which led to his execution on the 21st of February 1563. On the scaffold he carried with him — a characteristic detail which Swinburne omits — Ronsard’s poems instead of a testament, and read one of them with ostentation. He murmured “O cruelle Dame! Marie!” as the blow fell. Brant�
�me adds the delightful comment that Chastelard suffered death “par son outrecuidance et non pour crime.” His verses, which seem to have been all addressed, with naïve effrontery, to the Queen, are lost, except a piece which closes thus:

  Ces buissons et ces arbres

  Qui sont autour de moy,

  Ces rochers et ces marbre

  Sçavent bien mon esmoy; Bref, rien do la nature

  N’ignore la blessure,

  Fors seulement

  Toy, qui prends nourriture

  En mon cruel tourment.

  These lines are genuine, but the beautiful lyrics in French, which adorn several scenes of Chastelard, and are there attributed to him, are entirely the work of Swinburne. They reproduce the manner of the latest imitators of the Pléiade with extraordinary fidelity, and are among the most amazing tours-de-force of Swinburne’s assimilative genius. We may doubt whether any of Chastelard’s actual verse was of so high a level in poetry as “Le navire est à l’eau,” or “J’ai vu faner bien des choses.”

  Swinburne did not confine himself to Brantôme’s account, but consulted The History of the Reformation in Scotland (1584) by John Knox, who says that “Among is the monzeonis of the Court, Monsieur Chattelett” surpassed all others in credit with the Queen. Knox closes his account of the execution by saying, “And so received Chattelett the reward of his dansing, for he lacked his head, that his toung should not utter the seereattis of our Quene.” Professor Hume Brown points out to me that Knox deals very gently with the fault of “poor Chattelett,” doubtless because he was of Huguenot upbringing. His tone about a licentious Papist would have been very different.