The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning

Notes. – Line 84, Guido Reni, a painter of the Bolognese school, 1574-1642. The Crucifixion referred to is above the high altar. l. 126, “Molino’s doctrine”: a form of Quietism. l. 300, “tacked to the Church’s tail”: it was the custom in this age for gentlemen who desired the protection of the Church for their own purposes to take one of the minor orders, without any intention of going into the diaconate or priesthood. Count Guido was thus, in a sense, under the Church’s protection. l. 490, “novercal type”: pertaining to a step-mother; cater-cousin, or quater-cousin: a cousin within the first four degrees of kindred; sib: a blood relation (A. – S., sibb, alliance). l. 537, Papal Jubilee: this is observed every twenty-fifth year. ll. 892-3, “ears plugged,” etc.: a good description of the effects of a strong dose of opium. l. 907, osteria: Italian name of an inn. l. 1044, Sbirri: Papal police. l. 1159, “Apage”: away! begone! l. 1198, “Convertites”: nuns who devote themselves to the rescue of fallen women. l. 1221, “as Ovid a like sufferer”: Ovid was banished by Augustus to Tomus, on the Euxine Sea, either for some amour or imprudence; Pontus: a kingdom of Asia Minor, bounded on the north by the Euxine Sea. l. 1244, “Pontifex Maximus whipped vestals once”: the high priest severely scourged the vestal virgins if they let the sacred fire go out. l. 1250, “Caponsacchi”: in English “Head i’ the Sack”: this family is mentioned in Dante’s Paradise, xvi.; in his time they lived at Florence, in the Mercato Vecchio, having removed from Fiesole; Fiesole, an ancient town near Florence. l. 1270, “Canidian hate”: Canidia was a Neapolitan, beloved by Horace. When she deserted him he held her up to contempt as an old sorceress (Horace, Epodes, v. and xvii.). See Notes to “White Witchcraft.” l. 1342, “domus pro carcere”: a house for a prison. l. 1375, “hoard i’ the heart o’ the toad”: Fenton says, “There is to be found in the heads of old and great toads a stone they call borax or stelon, which, being used as rings, give forewarning against venom.” See also Brewer’s Phrase and Fable, art. “Toads.” l. 1487, “male-Grissel”: Griselda was the patient lady in Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford’s Tale. She came forth victoriously from the repeated trials of her maternal and conjugal affections. l. 1495, “Rolando-stroke”: Roland, the hero of Roncesvalles. His trusty sword was called Durandal: —

“Nor plated shield, nor tempered casque defends,When Durindana’s trenchant edge descends.”(Orlando Furioso, bk. x.)

l. 1496, clavicle: the collar-bone.

Book III., The Other Half Rome. – Little Pompilia lies dying in the hospital, stabbed through and through again. She had prayed that she might live long enough for confession and absolution. “Never before successful in a prayer,” this had been answered. She has overplus of life to speak and right herself from first to last, to pardon her husband and make arrangements for the welfare of her child. The lawyers came and took her depositions; the priests, also, to shrive her soul. The other half Rome make excuses for Pietro and Violante. Their lives wanted completion in a child: Violante’s fault was not an unnatural one. Her husband was acquiescent – natural too. Violante’s confession was but right and proper; and if she wronged an heir, who was he? As for the wooing, it was all done by the Count: a wife was necessary alike for himself, his mother, and his palace; and so he dazzled the child Pompilia with a vision of greatness. The crowd said she might become a lady, but the bargain was but a poor one at best. Pompilia, aged thirteen years and five months, was secretly married to the Count one dim December day. Pietro was told when it was too late, and had to surrender all his property in favour of Guido, who was to support his wife’s belongings. Four months’ insolence and penury they had to endure at Arezzo, and then Pietro went back to beg help from his Roman friends, who laughed and said things had turned out just as they expected. Violante went to God, told her sin, and reaped the Jubilee’s benefit. Restitution, however, said the Church, must be made: the sin must be published and amends forthcoming. Pompilia’s husband must be told that his contract was null and void. Pietro’s heart leaped for joy at the prospect of recovering all his surrendered estate. Guido naturally pronounced the whole tale “one long lie” – lying for robbery and revenge – and threw himself on the courts. The courts held the child to be a changeling. Pietro’s renunciation they made null: he was no party to the cheat; but Guido is to retain the dowry! More proceedings naturally followed this strange decision. Then the Count forms the diabolical plan to drive his girl-wife, by his cruelty, into the sin which will enable him to be rid of her without parting with her money. Guido concocts a pencilled letter to his brother the Abate, which he makes his wife trace over with ink, he guiding her hand because she could not write, wherein she states – not knowing a word she pens – that the Comparini advised her, before they left Arezzo, to find a paramour, carry off what spoil she could, and then burn the house down. The Abate took care to scatter this information all over Rome. At Arezzo Guido set himself to make his wife’s life there intolerable, at the same time setting a trap into which she could not avoid falling. The Other Half Rome thinks it probable that the priest Caponsacchi pitied and loved Pompilia, who wept and looked out of window all day long; for there were passionate letters (prayers, rather), addressed to him by the suffering wife; though it is true she avers she never wrote a letter in her life, still she abjured him, in the name of God, to help her to escape to Rome. If not love, this was love’s simulation, and calculated to deceive the Canon. Pompilia, however, protested that she had never even learned to write or read; nor had she ever spoken to the priest till the evening when she implored him to assist her to escape. On the other hand, the priest admitted having received the letters purporting to come from Pompilia. He did write to her: as she could not read she burned the letters – never bade him come to her, yet accepted him when Heaven seemed to send him. When Guido’s cruelty first sprang on Pompilia, she had appealed to the secular Governor and the Archbishop; but both were friends of Guido, and both refused to interfere between husband and wife, so she went to confess to a simple friar, told him how suicide had tempted her, begged him to write to her pretended parents to come and save her. He promised; but by nightfall was more discreet, and withdrew from the dangerous business. So the woman, thus hard-beset, looked out to see if God would help, and saw Caponsacchi; called him to her – she at her window, he in the street below – and at nightfall fled with him for Rome. The world sees nothing but the simple fact of the flight. The implicated persons protest that the course they took, though strange, was justified for life and honour’s sake. Absorbed in the sense of the blessedness of the flight, she had said little to her preserver through the long night. As daybreak came they reached an inn: he whispered, “Next stage, Rome!” Prostrate with fatigue, she could go no farther; stayed to rest at the osteria, fell asleep, and awoke with Count Guido once more standing betwixt heaven and her soul – awoke to find her room full of roaring men, her preserver a prisoner. Then she sprang up, seized the sword which hung at the Count’s side, and would have slain him, but men interposed. The priest avers that the flight had no pretext but to get Pompilia free: how should it be otherwise? If they were guilty, as Guido would have the world believe, what need to fly? or, if they must, why halt with Rome in sight? He vindicates Pompilia’s fame. Guido’s tale was to the effect that he and his whole household had been drugged by the wife, which gave the fugitives time to get thus far on their way. He expected easy execution probably; thought he would find his wife cowering under her shame. When she turned upon him, and would have slain him he had to invent another story; produce love letters from a woman who could not write, replies from the priest, who could happily defend his character and prove the forgery. Then the story of the investigation before the courts was told: how Pompilia owned she caught at the sole hand stretched out to snatch her from hell; how Caponsacchi proudly declared that as man, and much more as priest, he was bound to help weak innocence; how he exposed the trap set by Guido for them both; how he had never touched her lip, nor she his hand, from first to last, nor spoken a word the Virgin might not hear. Then they discussed the decision of the court – the sentence, the relegation of the priest, the seclusion of the wife in the convent at Guido’s expense. They discussed the five months’ peace which Pompilia passed with the nuns, the application made by the sisters on behalf of Pompilia’s waning health, and her residence with Pietro and his wife at their villa. They tell of the determination of Guido, after the birth of his child, to avail himself of the propitious minute and rid himself of his wife and her putative parents, that the child remaining might inherit all and repair his losses. The sympathisers with Pompilia dwelt on the fact that, while the bells were chiming good-will on earth and peace to man, the dreadful five stole by back slums and blind cuts to the villa, asking admission in Caponsacchi’s name. Then follow the murders. Violante was stabbed first, Pietro next; and then came Pompilia’s turn. It was told how the murderers escaped, till at Baccano they were overtaken and cast red-handed into prison.

Notes. – Line 59, Maratta: Carlo Maratti was the most celebrated of the later Roman painters of the seventeenth century. He was born 1625. The great number of his pictures of the Virgin procured him the name of “Carlo delle Madonne.” l. 95, “That doctrine of the Philosophic Sin”: “Philosophical Sin,” is a breach of the dignity of man’s rational nature. Theological Sin offends against the Supreme Reason. (See Rickaby’s Moral Philosophy, p. 119.) l. 385, “Hesperian ball, ordained for Hercules to taste and pluck”: the golden apples of the Hesperides plucked by Hercules, were probably oranges. l. 439, Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, and mother of Perseus by Jupiter. l. 555, “The Holy Year”: the Jubilee at Rome, first instituted by Boniface VIII., elected Pope 1294. The Jubilee occurs every twenty-five years, and is a time of special indulgences. l. 556, “Bound to rid sinners of sin”: no indulgence forgives sin, nor gives permission to commit sin; but it is “the remission, through the merits of Jesus Christ, of the whole or part of the debt of temporal punishment due to a sin, the guilt and everlasting punishment of which sin has, through the merits of Jesus Christ, been already forgiven in the Sacrament of penance” (Catholic Belief, by J. Bruno, D.D., p. 183). l. 567. “The great door, new-broken for the nonce”: according to the special ritual, the Pope, at the commencement of the Jubilee year goes in solemn procession to a particular walled-up door (the Porta Aurea, or golden door of St. Peter’s), and knocks three times, using the words of Psalm cxviii. 19, “Open to me the gates of righteousness.” The doors are then opened and sprinkled with holy water, and the Pope passes through. When the Jubilee closes, the special doorway is again built up, with appropriate solemnities (Encyc. Brit.). l. 572, “Poor repugnant Penitentiary”: a penitentiary is an “officer in some cathedrals, vested with power from the bishop to absolve in cases reserved to him. The Pope has a grand penitentiary, who is a Cardinal, and is chief of the other penitentiaries” (Webster’s Dict.). That this particular ecclesiastic was “repugnant” is a gratuitous assumption of the poet: he probably took as much interest in his business as any other clergyman takes in his. 1413, Civita, Civita Vecchia, a seaport near Rome. 1445, “Hundred Merry Tales”: the tales or novels of Franco Sacchetti. 1450, Vulcan, the god of fire and furnaces, son of Jupiter and Juno.

Book IV., Tertium Quid. – “A third something,” siding neither wholly with Guido nor with his victim, attempts to arrive at a judicial conclusion apportioning in a superior manner blame now on one side now on the other, and, by granting on each side something, endeavours to reconcile opposing views, and from the contending forces produce something like order. The speaker is addressing personages of importance, and his phrase is courtly and polite. He refers with a sort of contempt to this “episode in burgess-life.” His account of the business is as follows: – This Pietro and Violante, living in Rome in a style good enough for their betters, indulge themselves with luxury till they get into debt and creditors begin to press. Driven to seek the papal charity reserved for respectable paupers, they become pensioners of the Vatican, and Violante casts about for means to restore the fortunes of her household. Certain funds only want an heir to take, which heir Violante takes measures to supply by the aid of a needy washerwoman who ekes out her honest trade by a vile one, and who for a price will sell, in six months’ time, the child of her shame, meantime pocketing the earnest money and promising secrecy. Violante returns flushed with success, and reaches vespers in time to sing Magnificat. Then home to Pietro, to whom is delicately confided the enrapturing but puzzling news that at last an heir will be born to him. In due time the infant is put in evidence, and Francesca Vittoria Pompilia is baptised; and so “lies to God, lies to man,” lies every way. The heirs are robbed, foiled of the due succession. When twelve years have passed, the scheming Violante has next to arrange a good match for her daughter, with her savings and her heritage. This, with all Rome to choose from, may be proudly done, and then Nunc Dimittis may be sung. Miserably poor as Count Guido was, the family was old enough to afford the drawback. The Church helped the second son, Paolo, and made a canon of him – even took Guido under its protection so far as one of the minor orders went. A cardinal gave him some inferior post, but afterwards dispensed with his services. What was to be done? Youth had gone, age was coming on. His brother advised him to look out for a rich wife, told him of Pompilia, and offered his assistance in the suit. The burgess family’s one want being an aristocratic husband for their girl Violante, eagerly accepted the Count, and they got the marriage done. Pietro had to make the best of things. Who was fool, who knave, it was difficult to decide: perchance neither or both. Guido gives the wealth he had not got, and the Comparini the child not honestly theirs – each cheated the other. It turned out that one party saw the cheat of the other first, and kept its own concealed. Which sinned more was a nice point. The finer vengeance which became old blood was Guido’s, the victim was the hard-beset Pompilia, the hero of the piece Caponsacchi. “Out by me!” he cried. “Here my hand holds you life out!” Whereupon Pompilia clasped the saving hand. Then as to the love letters, Guido protests his wife can write. How could he, granting him skill to drive the wife into the gallant’s arms, bring the gallant to play his part so well – a man to whom he had never spoken in his life?

Notes. – Line 31, “Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est! Huc apelle!” (Horace, Sat. i. 5): “Here, bring to, ye dogs, you are stowing in hundreds; hold, now sure there is enough.” (Smart’s trans.). l. 54, “basset-table”: basset was a game at cards invented by a Venetian noble; it was introduced into France in 1674. l. 147, “posts off to vespers, missal beneath arm”: a rather absurd line; a missal is a mass-book, and does not contain the vesper services; mass is always said in the morning. l. 437, “notum tonsoribus,” the common gossip – (Pr.); tonsor, a barber; zecchines: sequins, Venetian coins worth from 9s. 2d. to 9s. 6d. l. 731, devils-dung: assafœtida, an evil-smelling drug. l. 761, “cross buttock”: a blow across the back; quarter staff: a long stout staff used as a weapon of offence or defence. l. 834, “Hophni and the ark”: “And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain” (I Sam. iv., II etc.). “Correggio and Ledas”: Correggio’s picture of “Leda and the Swan,” in the Berlin Museum. l. 1054, “cui profuerint!” Whom they might profit! l. 1069, “acquetta” == Aqua Tofana, a poisonous liquid much used in Italy in the seventeenth century by women who wished to get rid of their husbands or their rivals. l. 1131, Rota: a superior Papal court l. 1144, Paphos: a city of Cyprus where Venus was worshipped. l. 1322, Vicegerent: an officer deputed by a superior to take his place. l. 1408, Patrizj: the captain of the police who arrested the criminals. l. 1577, “fons et origo malorum”: fount and origin of the evils.

Book V., Count Guido Franceschini. – We are now introduced to the persons of the drama themselves; and first to the Count, who is on his defence before the court for the murder. He has just been put to the torture, and with bones all loosened by the rack is cringing and trembling before the arbiters of life and death. He confesses that he killed his wife and the Comparini, who called themselves her father and mother to ruin him. What he has now to do is to put the right interpretation on his deed. He reminds the court that he comes of an ancient family, descended from a Guido who was Homager to the Empire. His family had become poor as St. Francis or our Lord. He had cast about for some means to restore the fallen fortunes of his house, and sought advice of his fellows how this might be done. He had thoughts of a soldier’s life; but they said that, as eldest son and heir, his post was hard by the hearth and altar. He should “try the Church, and contend against the heretic Molinists, and so gain promotion,” said one; but others said this would not do – “he must marry, that his line might continue; let him make his brothers priests, and seek his own fortune in the great world of Rome.” And so to Rome he came. Humbly, he pleads, he has helped the Church: he has disposed of his property that he might have means to bribe his way to favour at Rome; for the better protection of his person and the advancement of his fortunes, he has taken three or four of the minor orders of the Church, which commit to nothing, yet help to flavour the layman’s meat. Thus for the Church. On the world’s side he danced, and gamed, and quitted himself like a courtier. At this time he was only sixteen, and was willing to wait for fortune. He waited thirty years, hung about the haunts of cardinals and the Pope, and made friends wherever he could. One day he grew tired of waiting any longer; he was hard upon middle life; he must, he saw, be content to live and die only a nobleman; and so, as his mother was growing old, his sisters well wedded away, and both his brothers in the Church, he resolved to leave Rome, return to Arezzo, and be content. He was like a gamester who has played and lost all. The owners of the tables do not like a man to leave the place penniless. “Let him leave the door handsomely,” they say; and so his brother Paul whispered in his ear, told him to take courage and a wife – at least, go back home with a dowry. Paul’s advice was weighty, and he listened to him; and before the week was out the clever priest found Pietro and Violante, who had just the daughter, and just the dowry with her, for his brother. “She is young, pretty, and rich,” he said; “you are noble, classic, choice.” “Done!” said Guido. All the priest proposed he accepted, and the girl was bought and sold – a chattel. “Where was the wrong step?” he asks the court: if all his honour of birth, his style and state, went for nothing, then society and the law had no reward nor punishment to give. The social fabric falls like a card-house. He thought he had dealt fairly; the others found fault, and wanted their money back, just as the judge, disappointed with a picture for which he had given a great price, wanted his cash returned. Perhaps, also, the judge grew tired of the cupids. When he had purchased his wife he expected wifeliness; just as when, having bought twig and timber, he had bought the song of the nightingale too. Pompilia broke her pact; refused from the first to unite with him in body or in soul. More than this, she published the fact to all the world: said she had discovered he was devil and no man, and set all the town laughing at his meanness and his misery; said he had plundered and cast out her parents; and that she was fain to call on the stones of the street to save her, not only from himself, but the satyr-love of his own brother, the young priest. Was it any marvel that his resentment grew apace? Yet he was not a man of ice: women might have reached the odd corners of his heart, and found some remnants of love there. Pompilia was no dove of Venus either, but a hawk he had purchased at a hawk’s price. He does not presume to teach the court what marriage means: it was composed of priests who had eschewed the marriage state with Paul; but the court knew how monks were dealt with who became refractory. If he were over-harsh in bringing his wife to due obedience it was her own fault; she should have cured him by patience and the lore of love. When the Comparini had returned to Rome, they boasted how they had cheated him who cheated them; boasted that Pompilia, his wife, was a bye-blow bastard of a nameless strumpet, palmed off upon him as the daughter with the dowry. Dowry? It was the dust of the street. Under these circumstances Pompilia’s duty was no doubtful one: she ought to have recoiled from them with horror. She had been their spoil and prey from first to last, and had aided him in maintaining her cause and making it his own. He admits the trick of the false letter: it was his, and not hers; yet he protests that Pompilia, from window, at church and theatre, launched looks forth and let looks reply to Caponsacchi. And so, in his struggles to extricate his name and fame, this gad-fly must be stinging him in the face. Pricked with shame, plagued with his wife and her parents, what was he to do? Ever was Caponsacchi gazing at his windows. Was he to play at desperate doings with a wooden sword, or shorten his wife’s finger by a third, for listening to a serenade? He did nothing of that sort: he only called her a terrible name; and the effect was, when he awoke next morning he found a crowd in his room, fire in his throat, wife gone, and his coffers ransacked. The servants had been drugged too. His wife had eloped with Caponsacchi. He discovered that all the town was laughing at the comedy. They told him how the priest had come at daybreak, while all the household slept; how the wife had led the way out of doors on to the gate where, at the inn, a carriage waited, and took the two to the gate San Spirito, on the Roman road. He told the court how he had set out alone on horseback, floundered through two days and nights, and so at last came up with the fugitives at an inn, saw his wife and her gallant together waiting to start again for Rome. “Does the court suggest,” he asks, “that that was, if ever, the time for vengeance?” But he was content with calling in the law to help. He pleads guilty to cowardice: he might have killed them then; but cowardice was no crime. He urges that he had been brought up at the feet of law, and so had slain them not. He had searched the chamber where they passed the night, and found love-laden letters with such words on: “Come here, go there, wait, we are saved, we are lost”; even to details of the sleeping potion which was to drug his wine. The fugitives declared they had not written these; they were forged, they said. Then he tells how he had appealed in vain to the courts. The most he gained was that the priest was relegated to Civita for three years, and Pompilia was sent to a sisterhood. He reminds the court of its severity in cases of heresy and the like, and of its mildness in a case like his. Advice was given to him how to proceed with fresh trials from time to time, and he tried to play the man and bear his trouble as best he might; and then one day he learned that Pompilia’s durance was at an end, – she was transferred to her parents’ house. He reflected then how the Comparini had beaten him at every point: they gained all; he lost all, even to the wife, the lure; had caught the fish and found the bait entire. And now another letter from Rome, with the news that he is a father; his wife has borne a son and heir, – the reason plain why she left the convent. Then he rose up like fire; his troubles were but just beginning: the child he had longed for was stolen too, and scorn and contempt would be heaped on him full measure. He told the story to his servants, who all declared they would avenge their master’s wrongs. He picked out four resolute youngsters, and off they went to Rome. They reached the city on Christmas-eve, as the festive bells rang for the “Feast of the Babe.” This arrested him; he dropped the dagger. “Where is His promised peace?” he asked. Nine days he waited thus, praying against temptation, while the vision of the Holy Infant was before him. Soon this faded in a mist, and the Cross stood plain, and he cried, “Some end must be!” He reached the house where Pompilia lived; he knocked, asked admittance for “Caponsacchi,” and the door was opened. Had Pompilia even then fronted him in the doorway in her weakness, had even Pietro opened, he had paused; but it was the hag, the mother who had wrought the mischief, who appeared. Then he told the court how the impulse to kill her had seized him, and how, having begun, he had made an end. He was mad, blind, and stamped on all. He told the court how the officers of justice had come upon him twenty miles off, when he was sleeping soundly as a child; and wherefore not? He was his own self again. His soul safe from serpents, he could sleep. He protests he has but done God’s bidding, and health has returned and sanity of soul. He declares that he stands acquitted in the sight of God. If his wife and her lover were innocent, why did the court punish them? Their punishment was inadequate, and as soon as their backs were turned the evil began to grow again. He demands the court should right him now; thank and praise him for having done what they should have done themselves. He has doubled the blow they had essayed to strike. He urges them to protect their own defender. He was law’s mere executant, and he demands his life, his liberty, good name, and civic rights again. He is for God; the game must not be lost to the devil. He has work to do: his wife may live and need his care; his brother to bring back to the old routine; his infant son to rear – and when to him he tells his story, he will say how for God’s law he had dared and done.