Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (41 page)

Clive

Published
Dramatic Idyls, Second Series
, 1880. Robert Clive, later Baron Clive of Plassey (1725–74), one of the principal architects of British rule in India, did fight a duel in his youth, but Browning’s version of the story (which he recalled hearing over thirty years before he wrote the poem) differs considerably from
the original, notably in the confession of Clive’s opponent that he did indeed cheat at cards, and Clive’s explanation that he was afraid, not that his opponent would kill him, but that he would contemptuously spare his life. The framing narrative of the father reminiscing to his son is Browning’s invention. Clive had been accused of corruption on his return from India in 1767; the story told by the poem’s narrator is set a week before his suicide in 1774. 8.
Plassy
The battle in 1757 which secured British control of north-east India. 11.
thrids
Threads. 12.
this forthright, that
meander Straight and crooked paths; from
The Tempest
111 iii 3.13.
rood
A measure of 5½ yards. 16.
rummer-glass
A large drinking glass. 26.
Scripture says John
10:1 is nearest: ‘He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’ Browning may also recall Milton’s Satan leaping over the wall of Paradise,
Paradise Lost
iv 178–83. 31.
Poor as Job and meek as Moses
Proverbial expressions, qualified in the following line: Job, made poor by his afflictions, is subsequently restored to prosperity: ‘So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning’ (Job 42:12); Moses, the meekest of all men (Numbers 12:3), nevertheless confronts Pharaoh and leads the Children of Israel out of bondage. 39–40. Clive was eighteen when he went to India in 1743 as a clerk with the East India Company; soon after he entered the army, and was a colonel when he took the city of Arcot in 1751.47.
Too much bee’s-wing floats my figure?
‘Is my metaphor too complicated?’ Bee’s-wing is the crust that forms on old port wine. The sense of the ‘figure’ in the preceding lines, as of the one in the lines which follow, is that the narrator was better able to befriend Clive in his decline than when he was at the height of his fame. 65.
drug-box
Opium, to which Clive was addicted. 70.
Pitt
William Pitt the Elder (1708–78). 71.
Frederick the Fierce
Frederick the Great (1712–86), King of Prussia, 72.
bore the bell away
Carried off the prize. 76.
mortal
Mortal nature. 91.
factor-days
Days as a clerk. 92.
Saint David’s
A fort near Madras. 112.
Thyrsis
…
Chloe
Conventional names for pastoral lovers in classical and neo-classical literature. 183–4.
Twenty-five / Years ago
An approximation; actually twenty-eight. 190. Luke 11:24–6: ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.’

[’Wanting is – what?’]

Published
Jocoseria
, 1883, untitled.

Donald

Published
Jocoseria
, 1883. The poem, an attack on the philistinism and moral blindness of the advocates of blood-sports, is also a rebuke to Browning’s son Pen, a keen hunter; he and his friends at Oxford are almost certainly the models for the hearty, unthinking young men at the beginning of the poem.
However, 11.41–4 distance the narrator from too close an identification with Browning himself, since they state that the narrator, too, went to Oxford and is a distinguished classical scholar (see
Introduction
). 5.
bothy
Hut, cottage. 12.
Glenlivet
A variety of Scotch whisky. 62.
Mount … Ben …
Ben is Scottish for ‘mount’; the narrator cannot remember the name which should follow. 76.
burnie
Small burn or stream. 79.
an end in
ich Characteristic of Gaelic names. 100.
foils
In the archaic sense of ‘treads, tramples on’. 103.
callant
Youth. 107.
brig
Bridge. 120.
scouted
Scorned. 136.
Blondin
Jules Blondin, French tightrope artist (1829–97), famous for his crossing of Niagara Falls in 1859. 182.
pastern
The part of the deer’s foot above the hoof. 206.
clouted
Patched up. 210.
bracket
To hang on the wall (as an ornamental lamp-holder, for example). 234–5.
‘within gate / Though teeth kept tongue’
‘Although I kept quiet’ (as Browning remarks, a phrase adapted from Homer).

Never the Time and the Place

Published
Jocoseria
, 1883. 7.
the house is narrow
The grave, as in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, 1.216, ‘the narrow room’. 12–13. The enemy is the devil, who in the lover’s dream suggests that the death of the ‘loved one’ means final separation, a suggestion the ‘waking man’ repudiates.

The Names

Published 1884 in a booklet printed for the ‘Shakespearean Show’ at the Albert Hall, in aid of charity; not collected by Browning, who rarely wrote sonnets and never included them in his collections (see note to
‘House’
). The poem alludes to the saying by Alexandre Dumas (the younger), ‘After God, Shakespeare has created most.’ 5–6.
That which the Hebrew reads i With his soul only
In orthodox Judaism it is forbidden to pronounce the name of God, Jahweh.

Now

Published
Asolando
, 1889.

Beatrice Signorini

Published
Asolando
, 1889. Founded on an anecdote in a source Browning frequently used, Filippo Baldinucci’s twenty-volume
Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno
(Florence, 1681–1728), concerning two seventeenth-century Italian painters, one a major figure, Artemisia Gentileschi (1597–
c
1652), the other a minor artist, Francesco Romanelli (1617–62). Browning treated the material with his usual freedom (e.g., in Baldinucci the relationship between Francesco and Artemisia is ‘an innocent friendship’; the initiative for the joint painting is Francesco’s; Artemisia knows from the beginning that she is to be the subject of the central portrait; her border is of fruit, not flowers; Beatrice destroys the portrait in her husband’s absence, not to his face), and the psychology is very much his own. The poem is Browning’s last on the theme of painting, and the only one to refer to a woman painter. 2.
Viterbo
About forty miles north-west of
Rome. 4–5.
Cortona’s school … Berretini
Pietro Berrettini [sic] da Cortona (1596–1669); Cortona is about thirty-five miles east of Siena. 16–24. Artemisia painted
Desire
(a nude figure) in honour of Michelangelo’s memory, and gave the painting to his family (‘Buonarotti’s house’); on Baldinucci’s advice the nudity was covered up. Browning’s scorn for Baldinucci’s prudishness and religious bigotry is also evident in two other poems (not in this edition): ‘Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial’ (
Pacchiarotto
, 1876) and ‘Parleying with Francis Furini’ (
Parleying
, 1887). 32.
sphery
Like the spheres, the heavenly bodies in ancient cosmology. 34.
enjoint
Embed. 79.
Guido’s
The painter Guido Reni (1575–1642). III.
acromion
The outer extremity of the shoulder-blade. 118.
motors, flexors
Muscles of motion and bending. 119–20.
Ser Santi … pencil-prig’
The painter Santi di Tito (1536–1603), renowned for the precision of his drawing, was given his nickname by Titian. 145.
Bicé
Diminutive of Beatrice. 161.
idlesse
Leisure. 251–2.
Calypso’s … Penelope
At the start of Homer’s
Odyssey
, Odysseus is ‘prevented from returning to the home and wife he longed for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who wished him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave.’ 261–76.
‘Such spells … indulged
Francesco’s internal monologue; he speaks aloud from 1.277. 262.
sex
The female sex. 298–9.
Grey / Good mouse-ear
‘Mouse-ear’ is a name given to several plants; the nearest to ‘grey’ in colour would be chickweed, which has delicate white flowers. 299.
auricula
A species of primula; ‘formerly a great favourite with flower-fanciers … the corollas often powdered with white or grey’
(OED)
. 307.
spilla
Italian ‘pin’; glossed in the next line as the ‘dagger-plaything’ with which Beatrice pins her hair. 325.
occulted star
A star hidden from view by another passing in front of it. 348.
the elder race
Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo or Raphael.

Spring Song

Published 1886 in
The New Amphion
(‘The Book of the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair’); then incorporated (without the title) as the concluding lines of ‘Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse’ (
Parleyings
, 1887), introduced as follows:

                               Here’s rhyme

Such as one makes now, – say, when Spring repeats
That miracle the Greek Bard sadly greets:
‘Spring for the tree and herb – no Spring for us!’
Let Spring come: why, a man salutes her thus:

The lyric has been placed out of chronological sequence in order to end the volume. It undoubtedly refers in some sense to Elizabeth Barrett, but not in specific detail: she is buried at Florence under a marble monument, not under a ‘mound’ in what is clearly an English churchyard. In a letter to Browning during their courtship Elizabeth Barrett referred to an untitled draft of ‘Home-Thoughts, from Abroad’ as Browning’s ‘spring-song’. Browning is known to have re-read the courtship letters late in life.

Chronology

1812
Born 7 May in Camberwell, son of Robert Browning, clerk in Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann.

1812
Birth of Sarianna, RB’s only sibling.

1820–26
Weekly boarder at Revd Thomas Ready’s school in Peckham.

1823–4
Becomes friends with Eliza and Sarah Flower, wards of W. J. Fox, Unitarian minister, political radical and editor of the
Monthly Repository
, which will publish early poems by RB in the mid 1830s.

1826–8
Privately educated at home; writes a volume called
Incondita
(= trifles) but destroys it; two poems (‘The Dance of Death’ and ‘The First-Born of Egypt’) survive in copies made by Sarah Flower, who says RB was fourteen when he wrote them.

1828
Attends courses in Latin, Greek and German at London University (founded 1827, now University College London) but leaves May 1829.

1830
Contributes to the
Trifler
, an amateur literary magazine.

1832
Sees the famous actor Edmund Kean in one of his last performances as Richard III, and conceives a ‘foolish plan’ to ‘assume & realise I know not how many different characters’ (poet, novelist, composer, etc.); writes
Pauline
, supposedly the first product of this plan.

1833
Pauline
published anonymously (Saunders & Otley), paid for by RB’s aunt Mrs Silverthorne; reviewed favourably in
Monthly Repository
; a copy sent by Fox to John Stuart Mill for a review which never appeared eventually finds its way back to RB, who responds to Mill’s comments with copious annotations of his own. Not a single copy of the poem is sold, and RB does not acknowledge his authorship until the threat of pirate publication forces him to include
Pauline
in the
Poetical Works
of 1868.

1834
March–June
: Travels to Russia as unpaid secretary on diplomatic mission.
   Begins writing
Sordello
, but lays it aside when a friend suggests the Renaissance physician and alchemist Paracelsus as subject for a poem.
   
September
: Begins work on
Paracelsus
.

1835
Publication of
Paracelsus
(Effingham Wilson); RB’s father funds this and all his son’s volumes, except
Strafford
, until 1846. The poem has considerable critical success, notably with the actor-manager W. C. Macready, who persuades RB to write for the stage.

1836
Helps the critic John Forster complete his prose
Life of Strafford
and again lays
Sordello
aside to write his own tragedy,
Strafford
.

1837
Strafford
published (Longman) and produced at Covent Garden on 1 May, with Macready in title role; closes after five performances.