Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  To see this miracle, this Marian Erle,

  This drover’s daughter (she’s not pretty, he swears),

  Upon whose finger, exquisitely pricked

  By a hundred needles, we’re to hang the tie

  ‘Twixt class and class in England,–thus indeed

  By such a presence, yours and mine, to lift

  The match up from the doubtful place. At once

  He thanked me, sighing, . . murmured to himself

  ‘She’ll do it perhaps; she’s noble,’–thanked me, twice,

  And promised, as my guerdon, to put off

  His marriage for a month.’

  I answered then.

  ‘I understand your drift imperfectly.

  You wish to lead me to my cousin’s betrothed,

  To touch her hand if worthy, and hold her hand

  If feeble, thus to justify his match.

  So be it then. But how this serves your ends,

  And how the strange confession of your love

  Serves this, I have to learn–I cannot see.’

  She knit her restless forehead. ‘Then, despite,

  Aurora, that most radiant morning name,

  You’re dull as any London afternoon.

  I wanted time,–and gained it,–wanted you,

  And gain you! You will come and see the girl

  In whose most prodigal eyes, the lineal pearl

  And pride of all your lofty race of Leighs

  Is destined to solution. Authorised

  By sight and knowledge, then, you’ll speak your mind,

  And prove to Romney, in your brilliant way,

  He’ll wrong the people and posterity

  (Say such a thing is bad for you and me,

  And you fail utterly), by concluding thus

  An execrable marriage. Break it up.

  Disroot it–peradventure, presently,

  We’ll plant a better fortune in its place.

  Be good to me, Aurora, scorn me less

  For saying the thing I should not. Well I know

  I should not. I have kept, as others have,

  The iron rule of womanly reserve

  In lip and life, till now: I wept a week

  Before I came here.’–Ending, she was pale;

  The last words, haughtily said, were tremulous.

  This palfrey pranced in harness, arched her neck,

  And, only by the foam upon the bit,

  You saw she champed against it.

  Then I rose.

  ‘I love love: truth’s no cleaner thing than love.

  I comprehend a love so fiery hot

  It burns its natural veil of august shame,

  And stands sublimely in the nude, as chaste

  As Medicean Venus. But I know,

  A love that burns through veils will burn through masks

  And shrivel up treachery. What, love and lie!

  Nay–go to the opera! your love’s curable.’

  ‘I love and lie!’ she said–’I lie, forsooth?’

  And beat her taper foot upon the floor,

  And smiled against the shoe,–’You’re hard, Miss Leigh,

  Unversed in current phrases.–Bowling-greens

  Of poets are fresher than the world’s highways:

  Forgive me that I rashly blew the dust

  Which dims our hedges even, in your eyes,

  And vexed you so much. You find, probably,

  No evil in this marriage,–rather good

  Of innocence, to pastoralise in song:

  You’ll give the bond your signature, perhaps,

  Beneath the lady’s work,–indifferent

  That Romney chose a wife, could write her name,

  In witnessing he loved her.’

  ‘Loved!’ I cried;

  ‘Who tells you that he wants a wife to love?

  He gets a horse to use, not love, I think:

  There’s work for wives as well,–and after, straw,

  When men are liberal. For myself, you err

  Supposing power in me to break this match.

  I could not do it, to save Romney’s life,

  And would not, to save mine.’

  ‘You take it so,’

  She said, ‘farewell then. Write your books in peace,

  As far as may be for some secret stir

  Now obvious to me,–for, most obviously,

  In coming hither I mistook the way.’

  Whereat she touched my hand and bent her head,

  And floated from me like a silent cloud

  That leaves the sense of thunder.

  I drew breath,

  As hard as in a sick-room. After all,

  This woman breaks her social system up

  For love, so counted–the love possible

  To such,–and lilies are still lilies, pulled

  By smutty hands, though spotted from their white;

  And thus she is better, haply, of her kind,

  Than Romney Leigh, who lives by diagrams,

  And crosses out the spontaneities

  Of all his individual, personal life

  With formal universals. As if man

  Were set upon a high stool at a desk,

  To keep God’s books for Him, in red and black,

  And feel by millions! What, if even God

  Were chiefly God by living out Himself

  To an individualism of the Infinite,

  Eterne, intense, profuse,–still throwing up

  The golden spray of multitudinous worlds

  In measure to the proclive weight and rush

  Of his inner nature,–the spontaneous love

  Still proof and outflow of spontaneous life?

  Then live, Aurora!

  Two hours afterward,

  Within Saint Margaret’s Court I stood alone,

  Close-veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit,

  Whose wasted right hand gambled ‘gainst his left

  With an old brass button, in a blot of sun,

  Jeered weakly at me as I passed across

  The uneven pavement; while a woman, rouged

  Upon the angular cheek-bones, kerchief torn,

  Thin dangling locks, and flat lascivious mouth,

  Cursed at a window, both ways, in and out,

  By turns some bed-rid creature and myself,–

  ‘Lie still there, mother! liker the dead dog

  You’ll be to-morrow. What, we pick our way,

  Fine madam, with those damnable small feet!

  We cover up our face from doing good,

  As if it were our purse! What brings you here,

  My lady? is’t to find my gentleman

  Who visits his tame pigeon in the eaves?

  Our cholera catch you with its cramps and spasms,

  And tumble up your good clothes, veil and all,

  And turn your whiteness dead-blue.’ I looked up;

  I think I could have walked through hell that day,

  And never flinched. ‘The dear Christ comfort you,’

  I said, ‘you must have been most miserable

  To be so cruel,’–and I emptied out

  My purse upon the stones: when, as I had cast

  The last charm in the cauldron, the whole court

  Went boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors

  And windows, with a hideous wail of laughs

  And roar of oaths, and blows perhaps . . I passed

  Too quickly for distinguishing . . and pushed

  A little side-door hanging on a hinge,

  And plunged into the dark, and groped and climbed

  The long, steep, narrow stair ‘twixt broken rail

  And mildewed wall that let the plaster drop

  To startle me in the blackness. Still, up, up!

  So high lived Romney’s bride. I paused at last

  Before a low door in the roof, and knocked;

  There came an answer like a hurried dove–

  ‘So soon! can that be Mister Leig
h? so soon?’

  And, as I entered, an ineffable face

  Met mine upon the threshold. ‘Oh, not you,

  Not you!’ . . the dropping of the voice implied;

  ‘Then, if not you, for me not any one.’

  I looked her in the eyes, and held her hands,

  And said ‘I am his cousin,–Romney Leigh’s;

  And here I’m come to see my cousin too.’

  She touched me with her face and with her voice,

  This daughter of the people. Such soft flowers

  From such rough roots? The people, under there,

  Can sin so, curse so, look so, smell so . . . faugh!

  Yet have such daughters!

  Nowise beautiful

  Was Marian Erle. She was not white nor brown,

  But could look either, like a mist that changed

  According to being shone on more or less:

  The hair, too, ran its opulence of curls

  In doubt ‘twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear

  To name the color. Too much hair perhaps

  (I’ll name a fault here) for so small a head,

  Which seemed to droop on that side and on this,

  As a full-blown rose uneasy with its weight,

  Though not a breath should trouble it. Again,

  The dimple in the cheek had better gone

  With redder, fuller rounds; and somewhat large

  The mouth was, though the milky little teeth

  Dissolved it to so infantile a smile!

  For soon it smiled at me; the eyes smiled too,

  But ‘twas as if remembering they had wept,

  And knowing they should, some day, weep again.

  We talked. She told me all her story out,

  Which I’ll re-tell with fuller utterance,

  As coloured and confirmed in aftertimes

  By others, and herself too. Marian Erle

  Was born upon the ledge of Malvern Hill,

  To eastward, in a hut, built up at night,

  To evade the landlord’s eye, of mud and turf,

  Still liable, if once he looked that way,

  To being straight levelled, scattered by his foot,

  Like any other anthill. Born, I say;

  God sent her to his world, commissioned right,

  Her human testimonials fully signed,

  Not scant in soul–complete in lineaments;

  But others had to swindle her a place

  To wail in when she had come. No place for her,

  By man’s law! born an outlaw, was this babe;

  Her first cry in our strange and strangling air,

  When cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb,

  Was wrong against the social code,–forced wrong.

  What business had the baby to cry there?

  I tell her story and grow passionate.

  She, Marian, did not tell it so, but used

  Meek words that made no wonder of herself

  For being so sad a creature. ‘Mister Leigh

  Considered truly that such things should change.

  They will, in heaven–but meantime, on the earth,

  There’s none can like a nettle as a pink,

  Except himself. We’re nettles, some of us,

  And give offence by the act of springing up;

  And, if we leave the damp side of the wall,

  The hoes, of course, are on us.’ So she said.

  Her father earned his life by random jobs

  Despised by steadier workmen–keeping swine

  On commons, picking hops, or hurrying on

  The harvest at wet seasons,–or, at need,

  Assisting the Welsh drovers, when a drove

  Of startled horses plunged into the mist

  Below the mountain-road, and sowed the wind

  With wandering neighings. In between the gaps

  Of such irregular work, he drank and slept,

  And cursed his wife because, the pence being out,

  She could not buy more drink. At which she turned,

  (The worm), and beat her baby in revenge

  For her own broken heart. There’s not a crime

  But takes its proper change out still in crime

  If once rung on the counter of this world:

  Let sinners look to it.

  Yet the outcast child,

  For whom the very mother’s face forewent

  The mother’s special patience, lived and grew;

  Learnt early to cry low, and walk alone,

  With that pathetic vacillating roll

  Of the infant body on the uncertain feet,

  (The earth being felt unstable ground so soon)

  At which most women’s arms unclose at once

  With irrepressive instinct. Thus, at three,

  This poor weaned kid would run off from the fold,

  This babe would steal off from the mother’s chair,

  And, creeping through the golden walls of gorse,

  Would find some keyhole toward the secrecy

  Of Heaven’s high blue, and, nestling down, peer out–

  Oh, not to catch the angels at their games,

  She had never heard of angels, but to gaze

  She knew not why, to see she knew not what,

  A-hungering outward from the barren earth

  For something like a joy. She liked, she said,

  To dazzle black her sight against the sky,

  For then, it seemed, some grand blind Love came down,

  And groped her out, and clasped her with a kiss;

  She learnt God that way, and was beat for it

  Whenever she went home,–yet came again,

  As surely as the trapped hare, getting free,

  Returns to his form. This grand blind Love, she said,

  This skyey father and mother both in one,

  Instructed her and civilised her more

  Than even the Sunday-school did afterward,

  To which a lady sent her to learn books

  And sit upon a long bench in a row

  With other children. Well, she laughed sometimes

  To see them laugh and laugh, and moil their texts;

  But ofter she was sorrowful with noise,

  And wondered if their mothers beat them hard

  That ever they should laugh so. There was one

  She loved indeed,–Rose Bell, a seven years’ child,

  So pretty and clever, who read syllables

  When Marian was at letters; she would laugh

  At nothing–hold your finger up, she laughed,

  Then shook her curls down on her eyes and mouth

  To hide her make-mirth from the schoolmaster.

  And Rose’s pelting glee, as frank as rain

  On cherry-blossoms, brightened Marian too,

  To see another merry whom she loved.

  She whispered once (the children side by side,

  With mutual arms entwined about their necks)

  ‘Your mother lets you laugh so?’ ‘Ay,’ said Rose,

  ‘She lets me. She was dug into the ground

  Six years since, I being but a yearling wean.

  Such mothers let us play and lose our time,

  And never scold nor beat us! Don’t you wish

  You had one like that?’ There, Marian, breaking off

  Looked suddenly in my face. ‘Poor Rose,’ said she,

  ‘I heard her laugh last night in Oxford Street.

  I’d pour out half my blood to stop that laugh,–

  Poor Rose, poor Rose!’ said Marian.

  She resumed.

  It tried her, when she had learnt at Sunday-school

  What God was, what he wanted from us all,

  And how, in choosing sin, we vexed the Christ,

  To go straight home and hear her father pull

  The name down on us from the thunder-shelf,

  Then drink away his soul into the dark

  From seeing judgment. Father, mot
her, home,

  Were God and heaven reversed to her: the more

  She knew of Right, the more she guessed their wrong:

  Her price paid down for knowledge, was to know

  The vileness of her kindred: through her heart,

  Her filial and tormented heart, henceforth

  They struck their blows at virtue. Oh, ‘tis hard

  To learn you have a father up in heaven

  By a gathering certain sense of being, on earth,

  Still worse than orphaned: ‘tis too heavy a grief,

  The having to thank God for such a joy!

  And so passed Marian’s life from year to year.

  Her parents took her with them when they tramped,

  Dodged lanes and heaths, frequented towns and fairs,

  And once went farther and saw Manchester,

  And once the sea, that blue end of the world,

  That fair scroll-finis of a wicked book,–

  And twice a prison, back at intervals,

  Returning to the hills. Hills draw like heaven,

  And stronger sometimes, holding out their hands

  To pull you from the vile flats up to them;

  And though, perhaps, these strollers still strolled back,

  As sheep do, simply that they knew the way,

  They certainly felt bettered unawares

  Emerging from the social smut of towns

  To wipe their feet clean on the mountain turf.

  In which long wanderings, Marian lived and learned,

  Endured and learned. The people on the roads

  Would stop and ask her how her eyes outgrew

  Her cheeks, and if she meant to lodge the birds

  In all that hair; and then they lifted her,

  The miller in his cart, a mile or twain,

  The butcher’s boy on horseback. Often, too,

  The pedlar stopped, and tapped her on the head

  With absolute forefinger, brown and ringed,

  And asked if peradventure she could read:

  And when she answered ‘ay,’ would toss her down

  Some stray odd volume from his heavy pack,

  A Thomson’s Seasons, mulcted of the Spring,

  Or half a play of Shakespeare’s, torn across:

  (She had to guess the bottom of a page

  By just the top sometimes,–as difficult,

  As, sitting on the moon, to guess the earth!),

  Or else a sheaf of leaves (for that small Ruth’s

  Small gleanings) torn out from the heart of books,

  From Churchyard Elegies and Edens Lost,

  From Burns, and Bunyan, Selkirk, and Tom Jones.

  ‘Twas somewhat hard to keep the things distinct,

  And oft the jangling influence jarred the child

  Like looking at a sunset full of grace

  Through a pothouse window while the drunken oaths