Browning and His Century Part 10

Liberalism, which had taken on social conditions to the point through legislation where every man was free to be a property holder if he could manage to become one, and to ama.s.s wealth, left out of consideration the fact that he never could be free as long as he had to compete with every other man in the state to get these things. Hence the movement of the working cla.s.ses to gain freedom by subst.i.tuting for a compet.i.tive form of society a cooperative form. Great names in literature and art have helped toward the on-coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed at the millions of the English nation, "mostly fools;" Ruskin had bemoaned the enthronement of ugliness as the result of the industrial conditions; Matthew Arnold had proposed a panacea for the ills of the social condition in the bringing about of social equality through culture, and, best of all, William Morris had not only talked but acted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM MORRIS]

To any student of social movements to-day, whether he has been drawn into the swirl of socialistic propaganda or whether he is still comfortably sitting in his parlor feeling an intellectual sympathy but no emotional call to leave his parlor and be up and doing, Morris appears as the most interesting figure of the century. The pioneers in the nineteenth-century movement toward socialism in England, unless we except the social enthusiasm of a Sh.e.l.ley or a Blake, were Owen and Maurice. Owen was that remarkable anomaly, a self-made man who had gained his wealth because of the new industrial order inaugurated by the invention of machinery, who yet could look at the circ.u.mstances so fortuitous for him in an impersonal manner, and realize that what had put a silver spoon into his own mouth was taking away even pewter spoons from other men's mouths. Although he was really in love with the new order of machine production, he realized what many to-day fail to see, that machine production organized for the benefit of private persons would most a.s.suredly mean the poverty and the degradation of the workers. He did not stop here, however, but spent his vast fortune in trying to make the conditions of the workingmen better. In the estimation of socialists to-day his work was of a very high order, "not mere utopianism." It bore no similarity to the romantic dreams of poets who saw visions of a perfect society regardless of the fact that a perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from conditions of appalling misery and degradation. Owen was a practical business man. He knew all the ins and outs of the industrial regime, and consequently he had a practical program, not a dream, which he wished to see carried out. Accounts of the conditions of the workers at that time are heartrending. Everywhere the same tale of abject poverty, ignorance, and oppression in field and factory, long hours of labor and dear food. To bring help to these downtrodden people was the burning desire of Robert Owen and his followers. His efforts were not rewarded by that success which they deserved, his failure being a necessary concomitant of the fact that even a practical program for betterment cannot suddenly take effect owing to the inevitable inertia of any long-established conditions. In showing the causes which kept him from the full accomplishment of his ideals, in spite of his genuine practicalness, Brougham Villiers, the recent historian of the socialist movement in England, says he attempted too much "to influence the workers from without, trying, of course vainly, to induce the governing cla.s.ses to interest themselves in the work of social reform.

Yet it is difficult to see what else he could have done at the time. We have already shown how utterly disorganized the working cla.s.ses were, how incapable, indeed, of any organization. They were also dest.i.tute of political power, and miserably underpaid. What could they do to help themselves? Help, if it was to come at all, must come from the only people who then had the power, if they only had the will, to accord it, and to them, at first, Robert Owen appealed. Later, he turned to the people, and for them indeed his work was not utterly wasted, though generations were to pa.s.s before the full effect of it could be seen."

However abortive his attempts to gain political sympathy for his socialist program, and in spite of the fact that socialist agitation came to a standstill in England with the defeat of the somewhat chaotic socialism of the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his efforts influenced the political reformers who were to take up one injustice after another and fight for its melioration until the working cla.s.ses were at least brought to a plane where they could begin to organize and develop toward the still higher plane where they could themselves take their own salvation in hand.

Another man who did much to bring the workingman's cause into prominence was Maurice, who emphasized the Christian aspect of the movement. He was an excellent supplement to Owen, whose liberal views on religion militated in some quarters against an acceptance of his humane views in regard to workingmen.

Notwithstanding the personal strength of these two men they failed not only in the practical attainment of their object, but their ideas on socialism did not even wedge itself into the thought consciousness of the Englishmen.

The men who did more than any one else to awaken the sleeping English consciousness were Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and Morris. Of these Morris held a position midway between the old-fas.h.i.+oned dreamer of dreams and the new-fas.h.i.+oned hustling political socialist, who now sends his representatives to Parliament and has his "say" in the national affairs of the country.

Being a poet, he could, of course, dream dreams, and one of these, "The Dream of John Ball," puts the case of the toilers in a form at once so convincing and so full of divine pity that it does not seem possible it could be read even by the most hardened of trust magnates without making him see how unjust has been the distribution of this world's goods through the making of one man do the work of many: "In days to come one man shall do the work of a hundred men--yea, of a thousand or more: and this is the s.h.i.+ft of masters.h.i.+p that shall make many masters and many rich men." This is a riddle which John Ball cannot grasp at once, and when it is explained to him he is still more mystified at the result.

"Thou hast seen the weaver at his loom: think how it should be if he sit no longer before the web and cast the shuttle and draw home the sley, but if the shed open of itself, speed through it as swift as the eye can follow, and the sley come home of itself, and the weaver standing by ...

looking to half a dozen looms and bidding them what to do. And as with the weaver so with the potter, and the smith, and every worker in metals, and all other crafts, that it shall be for them looking on and tending, as with the man that sitteth in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at last so shall it be even with those who are mere husbandmen; and no longer shall the reaper fare afield in the morning with his hook over his shoulder, and smite and bind and smite again till the sun is down and the moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made by men into the field with one or two horses, and shall say the word and the horses shall go up and down, and the thing shall reap and gather and bind, and do the work of many men.

Imagine all this in thy mind if thou canst, at least as ye may imagine a tale of enchantment told by a minstrel, and then tell me what shouldst thou deem that the life of men would be amidst all this, men such as these of the towns.h.i.+p here, or the men of the Canterbury guilds."

And John Ball's conclusion is that things in that day to come will be not as they are but as they ought to be. With irresistible logic he declares:

"I say that if men still abide men as I have known them, and unless these folk of England change as the land changeth--and forsooth of the men, for good and for evil, I can think no other than I think now, or behold them other than I have known them and loved them--I say if the men be still men, what will happen except that there should be all plenty in the land, and not one poor man therein ... for there would then be such abundance of good things, that, as greedy as the lords might be, there would be enough to satisfy their greed and yet leave good living for all who labored with their hands; so that these should labor for less than now, and they would have time to learn knowledge," and he goes on, "take part in the making of laws."

But Morris was not the man to dream, merely. Though he did not trouble himself about the doctrinaire side of socialism, he preached it constantly from the human side and from the artistic side. While some socialist writers make us feel that socialism might possibly only be Gradgrind in another guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty and loveliness would attend upon the sons and daughters of socialism. As one of his many admirers says of him: "He was an out-and-out Communist because of the essential sanity of a mind incapable of the desire to monopolize anything he could not use."

The authoritarianism of the Marxian socialists was distasteful to him, for, to quote from the same admirer, his "conception of socialism was that of a free society, based on the simple rights of all to use the earth and anything in it, and the consequent abolition of all compet.i.tion for the means of life." His att.i.tude of mind on these points led him to break away from the Social Democratic Federation, which, with its political program, was distasteful to Morris's more purely social feeling, and found the Socialist League. This emphasized more particularly the artistic side of socialism. Morris and his followers were bent upon making life a beautiful thing as well as a comfortable thing.

According to all accounts, the League was not as great a force in the development of socialist ideals as was Morris himself, who inspired such men as Burne-Jones and Walter Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as well as mult.i.tudes of lesser men in the crowds that gathered to listen to him in Waltham Green or in some other like open place of a Sunday.

Morris's chief contribution to the growth of the cause was perhaps his own business plant, into which he put as many of his ideals for the betterment of the workingmen's conditions as he was able to do under existing conditions. Who has not gloated over his exquisite editions of Chaucer and the like--books in which even the punctuation marks are a delight to the eye, and the ill.u.s.trations as far beyond ordinary ill.u.s.trations as the punctuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. If anything could add to the richness of the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of the white vellum bindings, and, again, if there is another possible touch of grace--a gilding of the lily--what could better fulfil that purpose than the outer boxing covered with a Morris cotton print! The critical may object that these Morris editions are so expensive that none but millionaire bibliophiles can have many of them. How many of us have even seen them except in such collections! And how many of his workmen are able to share in this product of their labor to any greater extent than the product of labor is usually shared in by its producers, may be asked.

Though we are obliged to answer that the workmen probably do not have the Morris books in their own libraries, they yet have the joy of making these beautiful books under conditions of happy workmans.h.i.+p--that is, they are skilled craftsmen, who have been trained in an apprentices.h.i.+p, who are asked to work only eight hours a day, who receive higher wages than other workmen and, above all, who have the stimulation of the presence of Morris, himself, working among them.

Morris's enthusiasm for a more universally happy and beautiful society combined with the object lesson of his own methods in conducting a business upon genuinely artistic principles has done an incalculable amount in spreading the gospel of socialism. Still there was too much of the _laissez faire_ atmosphere about his att.i.tude for it to bring about any marked degree of progress.

The opinion of Mr. William Clarke who had many conversations with Morris on the subject reveals that, after all, there was too much of the poet about him for him to be a really practical force in the movement. He writes:

"It is not easy to understand how Morris proposes to bring about the condition of things he looks forward to. No parliamentary or munic.i.p.al methods, no reliance upon lawmaking machinery, an abhorrence of everything that smacks of 'politics': it all seems very impracticable to the average man, and certainly suggests the poet rather than the man of affairs. What Morris thinks will really happen is, I should say, judging from numerous conversations I have had with him, something like this: Existing society is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum, disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and other parts, where he thinks its term will be short. Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilization is becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take advantage of this disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may hara.s.s the authorities and develop among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the people will, in some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the world when the capitalist cla.s.s is no longer able to direct or control it. Morris believes less in a violent revolution than he did and thinks that workmen's a.s.sociations and labor unions form a kind of means between brute force on the one hand and a parliamentary policy on the other. He does not, however, share the sanguine views of John Burns as to the wonders to be accomplished by the 'new' trades unionism."

The practical ineffectiveness of the Morris socialism in spite of its having taken some steps in the direction of vital activity was overcome by the next socialist body which came into prominence--the Fabian Society, in which Bernard Shaw has been so conspicuous a figure.

As already mentioned, the Fabians are not a fighting body, but a solidly educational body. To them is due the bringing of socialism into the realm of political economy, and in so doing they have striven to harmonize it with English practical political methods. Besides this, they have done a vast amount of work in educating public opinion, not with the view to immediately converting the English nation to a belief in the changing of the present order into one wholly socialistic, but with a view to introducing socialistic treatment of the individual problems which arise in contemporary politics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN BURNS]

Their campaign of education was conducted so well that its effects were soon visible, not only in the modification of public opinion, but upon the workingmen themselves. The method was simple enough: "If any public, especially any social, question came to the front, the Fabian method was to make a careful independent study of the matter, and present to the public, in a penny pamphlet, a thoughtful statement of the case and some common sense, and incidentally socialistic, suggestions for a solution."

Fabian ideas were thus introduced into the consciousness of the awakening trades unionists.

It has been objected that the gain was much more for the trades unionists than for the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils have, it is said, progressed beyond their masters, as a review of recent socialistic tendencies would divulge had we the time to follow them in this place.

However that may be, the great fact remains that the Fabians have done more than any other branch of socialists to bridge over the distance between what the English writers call the middle-cla.s.s idealist and the proletarian, with the result that the proletarian has begun to think for himself and to translate middle-cla.s.s idealism into proletarian realism.

Socialism, from being the watch word of the enthusiastic revolutionary, began to be discussed in every intelligent household and in every debating society. This enormous growth in public sentiment occurred during the session of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When this Parliament opened there was hardly any socialist literature, and when it closed everybody was reading Bellamy and the "Fabian Essays," and Sir William Harcourt had made his memorable remark: "We are all socialists now."

The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, the Carlyles and the Ruskins, the revolutionary but _laissez faire_ prophets like Morris, who believed in a complete change but not in using any of the means at hand to bring about that change, had given place to men like Keir Hardie and John Burns, who had sprung into leaders.h.i.+p from the ranks of the workingmen themselves, and who were to be later their representatives in Parliament when the Independent Labor Party came into existence. All this had been done by that group of progressive men, long-headed enough to see that the ideal of a better and more beautiful social life could not be gained except by a long and toilsome process of education and of action which would consciously follow the principles of growth discovered by scientists to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and physical development, the very principle which as we have seen, Browning declared should have guided his hero Sordello long before the Fabian socialists came into existence--namely, the principle of evolution. That their methods should have peacefully brought about the conditions where it was possible to form an Independent Labor Party, which would have the power to speak and act for itself instead of working as the Fabians themselves do through the parties already in power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their policy. And is there not still plenty of work for them to do in the still further educating of all parties toward the flowering of genuine democracy, when the dreams of the dreamer shall have become actualities, because true and not spurious ways of making them actual shall have been worked out by experience?

This remarkable growth in social ideals was taking place during the ninth decade of the century and the last decade of Browning's life. Is there any indication in his later work that he was conscious of it? There is certainly no direct evidence in his work that he progressed any farther in the development of democratic ideals than we find in the liberalism of such a parliamentary leader as Mr. Gladstone, while in that poem in which he considers more especially than in any other the subject of better conditions for the people, "Sordello," he distinctly expresses a mood of doubt as to the advisability of making conditions too easy for the human being, who needs the hards.h.i.+ps and ills of life to bring his soul to perfection, a far more important thing in Browning's eyes than to live comfortably and beautifully. All he wishes for the human being is the fine chance to make the most of himself spiritually. The socialist would say that he could not secure the chance to do this except in a society where the murderous principle of compet.i.tion should give way to that of cooperation. With this Browning might agree. Indeed, may this not have been the very principle Sordello had in mind as something revealed to him which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, or was this only the more obvious principle of republican as opposed to monarchical principle and still falling under an individualistic conception of society?

While his work is instinct with sympathy for all cla.s.ses and conditions of men, Browning does not feel the ills of life with the intensity of a Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of culture with the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he stand in open s.p.a.ces and preach discontent to the ma.s.ses like Morris. Why? Because he from the first was made wise to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, to be proud of men's fallacies, their half reasons, their faint aspirings, upward tending all though weak, the lesson learned after weary experiences of life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered upon the worth of every human being to himself and for G.o.d. Earth is after all only a place to grow in and prepare one's self for lives to come, and failure here, so long as the fight has been bravely fought, is to be regarded with anything but regret, for it is through the failure that the vision of the future is made more sure.

What he finds true, as we saw, in the religious or philosophical world, he finds true in the moral world. Lack in human knowledge points the way to G.o.d; lack in human success points the way to immortality.

The meaning of this life in relation to a future life being so much more important than this life in itself, and man's individual development being so much more important than his social development, Browning naturally would not turn his attention upon those practical, social or governmental means by which even the chance for individual development must be secured. He is too much occupied with the larger questions. He is not even a middle-cla.s.s idealist, dreaming dreams of future earthly bliss; he is the prophet of future existences.

Does his practical influence upon the social development of the century amount to nothing then? Not at all. He started out on his voyage through the century toward the democratic ideal in the good s.h.i.+p Individualism--the banner s.h.i.+p indeed. What he has emphasized upon this voyage is first the paramount worth of each and every human being, whether good or bad. Second, the possibility in every human being of conceiving an ideal, toward which by the exertion of his will power he should aspire, battling steadfastly against every obstruction that life throws in his course. Third, that even those who are incapable of formulating an ideal must be regarded as living out the truth of their natures and must therefore be treated with compa.s.sion. Fourth, that the highest function of the human soul is love, which expresses itself in many ways, but attains its full flowering only in the love of man and woman on a plane of spiritual exaltation, and that through this power of human love some glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to this function of the soul it is of the utmost importance that human beings should be loyal and true, even if that loyalty and truth conflict with conventional ways of looking at life. Sailing in this good s.h.i.+p he also expresses his sympathy indirectly in his dramas and directly upon several occasions with the ideals of political freedom which during the century have been making progress toward democracy in the English Parliament through the legislation of the liberals, whose laws have brought a greater and greater measure of freedom to the middle cla.s.ses and some measure of freedom to the working cla.s.ses.

But it seems as if when nearing the end of the century Browning landed from his s.h.i.+p upon some high island and straining his eyes toward the horizon of the dawn of another life did not fully realize that there was another good s.h.i.+p, Socialism, struggling to reach the ideal of democracy, and now become the banner s.h.i.+p whose work is to sail out into the unknown, turbulent seas of the future, finding the path to another high island in order that the way may be made clear for the s.h.i.+p Individualism to continue her course to another stage in the voyage toward a perfect democracy. And as the new s.h.i.+p, Socialism, pa.s.ses on its way it will do well to heed the vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes toward the dawn of other lives in other spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to bring about a more comfortable and beautiful life upon earth, the important truth be slighted that humanity has a higher destiny to fulfil than can be realized in the most Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy.

This truth is in fact not only forgotten but is absolutely denied by many of the latter-day social reformers.

To sum up, I think one is justified in concluding that as a sympathizer with the liberal political tendencies of the nineteenth century Browning is of his age. In his quiescence upon the proletarian movement of the latter part of the nineteenth century he seems to have been left behind by his age. In his insistence upon the worth of the individual to himself and to G.o.d he is both of his age and beyond it. As has been said of philosophy, "It cannot give us bread but it can give us G.o.d, soul and immortality," so we may say of Browning, that though he did not raise up his voice in the cry of the proletarian for bread, he has insisted upon the truths of G.o.d, the soul and immortality.

V

ART s.h.i.+BBOLETHS

In the foregoing chapters the relations of the poet to the philosophical, religious, political, and social movements of the nineteenth century have been pointed out. In this and the next chapter some account of his relation to the artistic and literary ideals of the century will be attempted.

Browning's relation to the art of the century is, of course, twofold, dealing as it must with his own conceptions and criticisms of art as well as with the position of his own art in the poetic development of the century.

In order to understand more fully his own contribution to the developing literary standards of the century it may be well first to consider the fundamental principles of art laid down by him in various poems wherein he has deliberately dealt with the subject.

The poem in which he has most clearly formulated the general principles underlying the growth of art is the "Parleying" with Charles Avison.

Though music is the special art under consideration, the rules of growth obtaining in that are equally applicable to other arts. They are found to be, as we should expect in Browning, a combination of the ideas of evolution and conservation. Though the standards of art change and develop, because as man's soul evolves, more complex forms are needed to express his deeper experiences, his wider vision, yet in each stage of the development there is an element of permanent beauty which by the aid of the historical sense man may continue to enjoy. That element of permanence exists when genuine feeling and aspiration find expression in forms of art. The element of change grows out of the fact that both the thought expressed and the form in which it is expressed are partial manifestations of the beauty or truth toward which feeling aspires; hence the need of fresh attempts to reach the infinite. The permanence of feeling, expressing itself in ever new forms, is brought out finely in this pa.s.sage:

"Truths escape Time's insufficient garniture: they fade, They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine And free through march frost: May dews crystalline Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit As--not new vesture merely but, to boot, Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call New truth's Corolla-safeguard."

In another pa.s.sage is shown how the permanence of feeling conserves even the form, if we will bring ourselves into touch with it:

"Never dream That what once lived shall ever die! They seem Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king Starts, you shall see, stands up."

This kindling of an old form with our own life is more difficult in the case of music than it is in painting or poetry, for in these we have a concrete form to deal with--a form which reflects the thought with much more definiteness than music is able to do. The strength and weakness, at once, of music is that it gives expression to subtler regions of thought and feeling than the other arts, at the same time that the form is more evanescent, because fas.h.i.+oned out of elements infinitely less related to nature than those of other art forms. In his poems on music, the poet always emphasizes these aspects of music. Its supremacy as a means of giving expression to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon in "Abt Vogler" and "Fifine at the Fair." The Abbe, from the standpoint of the creator of music, feels so strongly from the inside its power for expressing infinite aspiration that in his ecstasy he exclaims: "The rest may reason and welcome. 'Tis we musicians know." Upon the evanescence of the form peculiar emphasis is also laid in this poem, through the fact that the music is improvised. Yet even this fact does not mean the entire annihilation of the form. In the tenth stanza of the poem the idea of the permanence of the art form as well as of the feeling is expanded into a symbol of the immortality of all good:

"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity confirms the conception of an hour, The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The pa.s.sion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to G.o.d by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by."

The sophistical arguer in "Fifine" feels this same power of music to express thoughts not to be made palpable in any other manner.