BROWNING'S
HEROINES
by ETHEL COLBURN MAYNE
WITH FRONTISPIECE & DECORATIONS
BY MAXWELL ARMFIELD
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1913
[Pg vii]
PREFACE
When this book was projected, some one asked, "What is there to say about Browning's heroines beyond what
he said himself?"\u2014and 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 tosuggest\ue000to open magic
casements\ue001surely 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 forles [Pg viii]jeunes,
Browning was, in the more "precious" c\u00f4terie, 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\ue002oh, thinking, if you like,
How utterly dissociated was I. . . ."
\ue003regardless 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 alwayshis 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\ue004and 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. . . ."
[Pg ix]
BROWNING'S HEROINES
1
\ue005but 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\ue006over-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!"\ue007the 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 aStandard 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\ue008so young that he had never seen a star return. Quite
differently they come back\ue009or is it quite the same? Soon we shall be able to judge, for this star is returning,
and\ue00aoh wonder!\ue00bis [Pg x]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 is dated up to the very hour\ue00cfor though he could be so many other things besides, one of his
achievements, for us, will prove to have been that he could be so "ugly."That would not have been reckoned
among his glories in the Yellow Book-room; but the wheel shall come full circle\ue00dwe shall be saying all this,
one day, the other way round. For, as Browning consoles, encourages, and warns us by showing in
Fifine,[x:1] each age believes\ue00eand should believe\ue00fthat to it alone the secret of true art has been whispered.
Ethel Colburn Mayne.
11 Holland Road,
Kensington, W.
FOOTNOTES:
[x:1] I write far from my books, but the passage will be easily found or recalled.
[Pg xi]
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Browning's Heroines, by Ethel Colburn Mayne.
PREFACE
2
CONTENTS
PART I
GIRLHOOD
PAGE
Introductory
3
I. The Girl in "Count Gismond"
15
II. Pippa Passes
I.
Dawn: Pippa
23
II.
Morning: Ottima
36
III. Noon: Phene
51
IV. Evening; Night: The Ending of the Day
67
III. Mildred Tresham
81
IV. Balaustion
93
V. Pompilia
122
PART II
THE GREAT LADY
"My Last Duchess," and "The Flight of the Duchess"
165
[Pg xii]PART III
THE LOVER
I. Lovers Meeting
199
II. Trouble of Love: The Woman's
I.
The Lady in "The Glove"
215
II.
D\u00ees Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron De Nos Jours 224
III. The Laboratory
233
IV. In a Year
237
PART IV
THE WIFE
I. A Woman's Last Word
245
II. James Lee's Wife
250
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Browning's Heroines, by Ethel Colburn Mayne.
CONTENTS
3
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