Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

is his love for her beauty; indeed, the love of Tito is almost a more elevated sentiment than that of Romola, in so far that he is unfeignedly conscious of her superiority to him. And as it arises in a warm and bright flood of selfdelusion, so it dies again with a suddenness and completeness most alien to the character of that immortal thing. There is little or no struggle in its ending; it is annihilated like a thing of earth, slain almost at a blow. Of all those gnawings and heart-rendings by which Love, wounded and deceived, makes its painful going known to many a lesser being, there is scarcely a trace in Romola. She feels the blank in her soul, the destruction of her hopes, bitterly enough; but of those sickenings of purpose, those yearnings of heart, those stings of tender habit and association, those prejudices of nature which are detached so hardly and painfully, each by repeated and separate effort, from the being, and which make the death even of a secondary affection so hard a struggle, she knows nothing. She is above all the vicissitudes, the waverings, the subtle reminders with which nature, mixing herself up in the struggle, so often gets the better of the sufferer, when he had hoped that the worst of the conflict was over. When Romola finds that the reflection of her own ideal has died out of the beautiful eyes of her young husband, when he deceives and betrays her hopes, she is able to drop him like a stone. There is no impossibility in the severance; she can do it, and does it with little pause of deliberation, yet with no after-spring of reviving tenderness. Such a sudden resolution to escape from the unworthy is natural enough, and has moved many a true lover; but seldom has Love thus been able to take wing, to detach itself altogether from the soul, to be called back by no relentings, no failure of strength and courage, no softer, pitiful plead ing of the outraged heart. This is, we cannot but think, a failure in art, as well as a lessening of nature, a denial of immortality in the affections which strikes the mind almost more painfully than even a speculative denial of immortal existence itself.

We have been drawn into criticism against our will out of the lighter subject with which we started, and the reader, we trust, will forgive the digression out of sympathy with that strong attraction of genius which makes an imaginary being often more real to us than even such a splendid fact as Florence with all her wealth and loveliness. Having gone so far, we will go still a little further, drawn by the same force; for Romola, with her loftiness and her narrowness, could never show to us as she does without the figure beside her, a still greater masterpiece of art than she, and doing (may we say it?) an equal violence to nature. Tito, the beautiful, bright young adventurer, who commences his career before our eyes with more inclination towards good than evil, and who retains through all his tortuous ways so many of the goodnesses of nature, the charm of a sweet disposition, and an unfeigned lowliness of self-estimation, is one of those unique figures in art which seize upon the imagination, and affect us like the sudden revelation of a new species. The only thing

that interferes with our admiration of the skill and force with which he is developed is the very force of the feeling he excites, and a certain aching sense we have that there is something cruel in the determination which gives him his first impulse the wrong way, instead of the right. We feel that Tito is, in some sort, the victim of his own creator, of some remorseless theory or recollection in her mind which impels her to repeated demonstration of the insufficiency of amiable qualities and superficial goodnesses of disposition, to stem the strong current of self-regard with which, she would have us believe, these gentle gifts are closely allied. The weak soul, drawn from lie to lie by one first fatal swerve from truth and honor, has been the subject of many a story; but few writers have treated this kind of sinner without a certain pity in their reprobation,

and we know none who has ventured to make so good, so

gentle-hearted, so kind a villain. It is perhaps for this reason that we feel an involuntary protestation arise in our mind against the arbitrary will which thrusts Tito into the way of evil, and has no pity nor relentings of purpose

over him. Even the terrible candor with which his good gifts are allowed, gives us an impression of cruel satisfac tion in the writer, an air almost of triumphant revenge, as by elaborate powerful touch after touch she shows how poor is all this lovely surface of gentleness, how miserable even the sweetness and genial grace of nature in conjunc tion with that ignominy of lying, and subtle selfish prefer ence of the pleasant to the undesirable. The gleams in him of a better man, which are freely and almost fiercely shown to us, would be used by almost any other writer with whom we are acquainted as a means of softening our condemnation of the criminal; but are employed by George Eliot, on the contrary, to heighten his guilt, a con clusion which by sheer omnipotence of genius she compels the reader to accept so long as he is under her power. She does not deceive us about him, does not attempt to paint him all black, with the primitive vigor of early art scorns to conceal from us that at his worst moment her smooth villain would step out of his way to do a natural act of kindness that cost him nothing, and could allow himself to be hindered even in his most momentous affairs by the claims of helplessness; but she never permits us to accept these gentle acts as a set-off against his wickedness. The other mode of treatment is a great deal more famil iar to the world. How often have we been called upon to note those broken reflections of the image of God which should make us, as gentler philosophers say, pity, not altogether condemn, the sinner? But Tito's kindnesses, poor traitor, are, on the contrary, set before us with a certain bitter indignation, as that completest of all disguises, the mask which nature herself lends to make guilt more dan gerous. He has no credit, but the reverse, for his good natural disposition, his desire to give pain to no one, to please all. His deference of mind to his betters, and absence of pride, and even the momentary movements towards a real repentance, which touch his mind, and in one case, at least, impel him to action, though too late-all these, we are taught to feel, do but blacken his sins; for how does he dare to have so much that is good in conjunc tion with so much that is evil? A certain reproach to nature, calling of shame upon the agencies which have made the man so good yet so bad, seems to breathe secretly out of the tremendous picture, with a suppressed wrath which would be almost Dantesque, had Dante ever taken the trouble to divest his sentences of identity, and spend his wrath upon an imaginary being. The force of genius in this wonderful impersonation is incontestable; but to our mind the pain in it is so great as to carry it beyond the legitimate field of Art. A touch of pity would have restored the balance; but the total absence of pity moves us, the moment we are outside the charmed circle of the enchantress, and free to think, with a quick revulsion of feeling. We feel that it is not so much Tito who has done all this wrong, but that his creator, vindictive, like an avenging god, forced him into it, by way of justi fying the penalties which already in some old record of predestination had been foreordained.

We do not know whether the author has meant to make any protestation against the common superficial judgment of humanity in her contrast and comparison of these two great figures: the man with every superficial charm, even to the subtle superficiality of disposition and "goodness of nature," yet a traitor and born betrayer of all trust and honor; the woman without any attraction of the superficial sort except her beauty proud, self-concentrated, inaccessible, kind because of duty and a high compassion, never from fellow-feeling and tender human impulse, yet noble, pure, and ineffably true. Is it a paradox? or does she mean to teach us over again the very old but never convincing lesson, that what is pleasant is always to be distrusted, and that Virtue herself is to be doubted when she presents herself in sweet graces of external_softness and amiability, in gentleness and pleasantness? If so, we doubt much the truth as well as the force of a lesson which, should an angel from heaven preach it, humanity would not and ought not to believe. It is perhaps this unexpressed sentiment which gives to the mass of readers a

esser is.

[ocr errors]

rtain awe of this book, which they know is a great book, solemnity and reverence which an imaginative and serious d of which all their instructors speak to them with en- people is so ready to give to the early dead. We do not usiasm, but which never has gained never, we believe, recollect the procession any more than the name of the likely to gain that general and common love which is dead lady; but it would be impossible to forget the aspect ten foolishly conferred, but which always responds to of the city-grave, mournful, and reflective, under a e highest inspirations of genius. Romola has no sym- clouded sky; the Arno gray and hushed, with that proathy with them, nor consequently have they with her. found sympathy which nature sometimes shows, the reflechey are too little and she is too elevated to afford that tions on his still bosom all subdued out of their usual color ound for union which fellow-feeling gives. Whether and brightness; the air thrilling with the slow solemnity is supreme superiority and demi-god elevation above of funeral bells; the passers-by hushed in voice and footmmon things is really the highest ideal of art, is a ques- step; the distant hills veiled and mournful; and all Floron which may be open to individual taste and liking; ence holding its breath in a hush of natural solemnity. ut there cannot be any doubt that when an author volun- This aspect of the town from the bridge-all sunless, arily chooses, instead of the universal crowd of his fel- gray, and still, the dim air possessed by the vibration of w-creatures, that audience fit though few to which some the tolling, most mournful of all sounds remains in our reat writers prefer to address themselves, he must accept mind like a picture, never to be forgotten. Florence, with he natural penalty. The soul which is like a star and the sun blazing on her red roofs, catching the white Camwells apart may commune indeed with its celestial fellows panile, the brown and rugged grace of the old tower that some starry language, with deeper satisfaction than the crowns the Palace of the Signoria, the low defiant strength ommon tongue can give, but must not complain if it is of the Podesta's fatal palace, where Bernardo del Nero eft outside of the kindly babble of mere humanity. The and many another noble Florentine besides died, in the greater is inconsistent with the lesser fame - we leave caprices of an ever-changing Government - gives no imo the reader to decide which the greater and which the pression of sadness to the gazer who stands upon the sunny heights of Bellosguardo, or on San Miniato among the This, however, is a very long digression out of Florence, graves. But nevertheless there is no light-minded or lightto which "Romola" serves as a very superb guide-book, hearted glitter of facile beauty or airy grace to be looked not to be equalled by any Murray known to man. Nobody for in the city of Dante. It is grave, as that man was, who has read this great romance. will fail to remember who to find the veracious way again, when he had lost it, where the Piagnoni made their bonfire of vanities; or will had to make that solemn giro-wonderful parable among have much difficulty in imagining to themselves the aspect so many parables! — by Hell and by Heaven. of the streets in which the white-robed angelic boys of Nothing can well be more different than the effect proSavonarola's flock, with a touch of mischief in their de- duced upon the mind of the stranger by that enchanted lightful rampant piety, such as no one can portray with a city and home of dreams, called Venice among men. That brighter or tenderer hand, despoiled poor Monna Brigida. the Florentine should live the life of ordinary men, work Florence is very much now what she was then, a town and sorrow, and suffer tedium and weariness like the rest unchanged though the new life of Italy betrays itself in of us, is natural. But in Venice the whole place is magthe new lines of streets, out of doors, so to speak, beyond ical a city past reasoning about, past accounting for the old limits, which increase without injuring either to incredible in her origin, in her greatness, and in her decay. the eye or the mind the old stronghold of history, of art, How she came about at all out of those low mud-banks of human conflict and passion. Thanks to the solid force that lie opaque and dull, with gleaming lines of water of buildings which were made for centuries, there is no about them under the moon as we glide onward; how, continual demolition or addition in the heart of Florence having come into being, she should be, not rude and rough to thrust away any pleasant associations or any sad ones, like other marine creatures exposed to all the assault of or to bring the new into perplexing and painful juxtaposi- winds and waves, but rich and glorious, unfretted by salttion with the old. The Florence of to-day is still the ness of the sea, uninjured by creeping damps and mists; Florence of the Medici; as the Casa Buonarotti, still in- how her walls should be marble, and her every line adorned habited and put to pleasant human uses by the family, is and rich with daintiest work, such as no landward city, Michael-Angelo's house, where that great genius sat in his surrounded by firm paths and solid earth, can boast of; closet, jammed up in six feet of space between one wall how, in that resourceless place, without an acre of corn and another, and planned his noblest conceptions in less land or a garden of herbs, dependent for every supply, for space than a modern housemaid requires for her dusters every meal, upon the world without, such wealth should and brushes, not to speak of a modern butler and all the have grown and accumulated; and how, thus having luxuries of the pantry. But in the town there is no want grown, vanquished the impossible, made and adorned herof space for all the exigencies of the day. Florence is as self like the most magnificent of brides, she should have fit to live in now as it was in the fifteenth century. There fallen away again, and dropped into poverty, downfall, and is nothing heterogeneous in its growth and expansion decay- are things for which no one can account, wonders nothing contradictory to modern progress in its noble of man's strength and weakness beyond all human power streets; for the fault of the great city was never to be short- of penetration. But so it is. A miraculous city stands sighted of the future, indifferent to posterity, or disposed there, made out of nothing, out of slimy mud oozing with to live from hand to mouth. It is no frivolous pleasure- salt and damp, the dismallest marshy wilderness turned place, no haunt for sight-seers, but the most real of cities, into one of the noblest towns in Europe. The slimy mudadapted to all national uses of daily life and work. And banks are hid away under solid marble, the desolate there is no town we know which impresses itself more swamps made into not only a habitable place, but the deeply upon the imagination, or lends itself more power- brightest, most sunshiny and dazzling of places inhabited; fully to heighten the effect of any novel sight or notable strangest unlooked-for result, which would be one of the event. As we write, such a scene rises up in our mind-greatest wonders of the world were it not so far back, and one of those moments of strangely vivid impression which live in the soul without any special reason a mere recollection, yet more truly felt than many of infinitely deeper importance. This particular scene belongs to the Florence of some fifteen years ago, which is as much a different age to ourselves, and to the world in Italy at least, as is the time of Romola. It was the day of a public funeral - we do not remember of whom a member of the archducal family then reigning a lady who had been popular among the Florentines, and who, young and guiltless of any harm, was honored by them with that tender natural

[ocr errors]

were not Venice so entirely an accepted fact, known and worshipped for centuries! To be sure we take no note nowadays, and the Doges and magnificent Senators took no note, of the generations of true founders who must have buried themselves, with their piles and stakes, upon the mud-banks, to lay a feasible foundation for the place, founding it, as every great human city is founded, upon human blood and sacrifice. But there stands the city of St. Mark, miraculous, a thing for giants to wonder at, and fairies to copy if they could. The wonder leaps upon the traveller all at once, arriving over the broad plains of Italy,

through fields of wheat and gardens of olive, through vineyards and swamps of growing rice, across broad rivers and monotonous flats of richest land, by the Euganean mountains dark upon the pale sky of evening, and the low swamps gleaming under the new-risen moon. The means of arrival, indeed, are commonplace enough, with shrieking locomotives and stifling carriages, and all the wellknown circumstances of the Iron Way; when, lo! in a moment, you step out of the commonplace railway station, commonest and least lovely of all things, into the lucid stillness of the Water City, into the waiting gondola, into poetry and wonderland. The moon rising above shines upon pale palaces dim and splendid, and breaks in silver arrows and broad gleams of whiteness upon the ripple and soft glistening movement of the canal, still, yet alive with a hundred reflections, and a soft pulsation and twinkle of life. The lights glitter above and below, every star and every lamp doubled; and the very path by which you are to travel lives, and greets you with soft gleams of liquid motion, with soft gurgle of liquid sound. And then comes the measured sweep of the oars, and you are away, along the silent, splendid road, all darkling, yet alight, the poorest smoky oil-lamp making for itself a hundred twinkling stars in the little facets of the wavelets, ripplets, which gleam far before you, shining and twinkling like so many fairy forerunners preparing your way. Not a sound less musical and harmonious than the soft plash of the water against the marble steps and gray walls, the soft lave and wash against your boat, the wild strange cry of the boatmen, as they round with magical precision each sharp corner, or the singing of some wandering boatful of musicians on the Grand Canal, disturbs the quiet. Across the flat Lido from the Adriatic comes a little breath of fresh wind, cool yet silken soft, touching your cheek with a caress; and when, out of a maze of narrow water-lanes you shoot out into the breadth and glorious moonlight of the Grand Canal, and see the lagoon go widening out, a plain of dazzling silver, into the distance, and great churches and palaces standing up pale against the light, our Lady of Salvation and St. George the Greater guarding the widening channel, what words can the wondering stranger use to describe the novel, beautiful scene? On this side, half in gloom, if gloom can be amid all these reflections more minute and varied of artificial light, lie the palace and the cathedral, which are the centre of all; the great Campanile, the winged lion on his column, the gay moving crowds, and bright windows, and pleasant groups in the brightest of public squares. Alas! the long line of great houses that lead up to the Piazzetta are all hotels nowadays, and inhabited by Goths and Gauls, and Huns and Vandals, the very barbarian hordes of ancient times- stout Englishmen who yawn and gaze and find "nothing to do" in Venice; and, let us hope, respectable Frenchmen and Germans, who are as stupid, though their groans are not so audible to us, nor perhaps their desire for "something to do" so strong. This is Venice: a miraculous place, at which the heart leaps; surely the very place where our dreams are all living, waiting for us the place we have never been able to come at in all these years the land of visions, the city of the blest. In general, the unknown has no sooner become the known than straightway the magic fails, and the loveliest scenes drop into flatness and calm of reality the moment our insatiable eyes have fathomed and taken possession of them. But the charm of Venice is so great that you may glide about its canals for days without feeling that obnoxious seizure of reality, that conviction that you are on the same earth, and are the same creature with the same cares, that you were a short time ago while still you had the hope of being transfigured by the new thing before you. No; still for the moment you are transfigured, not on earth at all, but in a place of visions, a country new and strange, where wonders dwell. Over that broad sheet of silver yonder, widening blue and pale into the unseen depths, could any one wonder if, through the stillness, with soft sob of the gurgling water about its bows, some ship of souls should suddenly come in sight, with angel faces, "long loved and lost awhile," smiling at us through the miracu

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

lous air? Could any one be startled if, out of the dark boat softly pushed to the open doorway, some friend from the everlasting silence should all at once step forth

"And strike a sudden hand in mine,

And ask a thousand things of home?'

Tears gather unthought of in the pilgrim's eyes, who know he is dreaming wildly, yet is glad to dream and feel still in his waning life that touch of youth, that thrill of the impos sible, that nearness to all miracles and wonders. We know no other place which retains after the first glance this vi ionary charm.

And how strange it is while feeling this to remember, one does, suddenly, with blank amaze, that Venice has poet! She has been celebrated by strangers, but never in her own musical tongue by a son of her own. All the gre songs of Italy have come from other regions; not only the "Divine Comedy," which would be out of place among those gleaming watery ways, but even the lighter storie strains of the "Decameron," the love-sonnets which would have chimed so sweetly to the measure of the waves. Ma sic is everywhere about, but articulate verse nowhere "Ah, oui, tous les Fenitians chantent," says in bad French and with a certain Teutonic contempt, the German wait ing-maid, sniffing disdainfully with broad Teutonic nose at the soft harmonies that rise from the floating choir in the gondola outside the window. All Venetians sing; and no doubt there are humble popular poets here as elsewhere in Italy a hundred nameless song-makers, who supply the wants of the people; but no voice great enough to have been heard beyond the lagoons has risen out of Venice proper, except in tones of statecraft and diplomacy-in roar of cannon, or in the painter's still language, the poetry of Art. Even kind old Goldoni, with his lively dramas, is a Chiozziote; and our own Byron is the greatest poetical recollection which one hears of along the noble poetic course of that canal-highway, every house of which, reflected with all its lights in the dancing water, is of itself a poem. And it is the hand of a stranger which has placed in Venice the soft, visionary figure to which we have already referred the beautiful vision of Consuelo. Never did princely visitor leave behind him a more worthy gift; though Consuelo is no great Venetian lady, no princess of a reigning family, no glorious type of the magnificence of Venice, as perhaps the highest illustration of Venice ought to be. In such a point we cannot traffic with Genius, but must accept its work under its own conditions. Consuelo, indeed, though the sweetest, is but one of many spells which the great French romancist has woven about Venice, and we have from her hand other pictures of languishing ladies in palaces and gondolas, of life which is but a dream of love and languor and heart-tearing vicissitudes of emotion, such as are apt to fatigue, if not to sicken, our northern souls. But Consuelo is not one of those voluptuous patrician beauties. The Venice she represents is that which toils, and rows, and browns in the fierce sun-not that whi h is lulled in the invisible seclusion of the gondola, by soft rocking of the waters, by drowsy chant of song, into all the dreams of idleness. The romance of her history is long, and mystical, and strange, dealing with wonders and mysteries which we have no intention to enter into, and which injure the perfection of the tale in point of art, though they never fail to carry on the reader in a strange trance of interest like the prolonged and endless stories of the "Arabian Nights." It is only its beginning which is Venetian; but that beginning is enough for our purpose; and places permanently one of the most delightful figures in modern fiction within one of the most beautiful of scenes.

Consuelo is a musician. She is a child of the streets, the daughter of a vagabond singer, a Spanish woman who earned her bread by her guitar and her voice in cafes, and public places, giving to her child neither training nor tradition beyond the very rudiments of such law and self-restraint as make existence possible. Consuelo has no reputation to guard, no prejudices of honor to get over, but has all the freedom of the very lowest social class, and all the knowledge which is acquired unawares by children brought

morning but the white stones, still warm with the heat of day. They stopped before the theatre of Pulcinella, and followed with passionate attention the fantastic drama of fair Corisande, queen of the puppets, without recollecting the want of their breakfast, and the great improbability of supper. They threw themselves into the wild amusements of the Carnival, their whole disguise and adornment being, for his part, his coat turned inside out, and for hers, a great bunch of old ribbons over her ear. They made sumptuous repasts, upon the side of a bridge or on the steps of a palace, with shell-fish and sprigs of fennel.... Though they had the most absolute and dangerous liberty, without family, without mothers, tender and vigilant to make them virtuous, without servant to call them home in the them of danger, no disaster ever befell them."

Thus the children of the people lived and grew; the boy no whit better than his peers, but the girl spotless. In her way, Consuelo is the Una of Venice, passing unharmed and untouched through perilous situations, of which it is by no means consistent with the art of her creator to spare us a single detail. We have quite enough, indeed too much, of those situations, which, however, make no more impression upon the sweet personality of the central figure than do the wilder woodland adventures of Una herself upon that type of purity. Consuelo lives in her garret unguided, except by her own instincts, without support or guardian in the world; and the reader feels nothing unnatural, nothing over-strained, in the simple goodness of the high yet lowly creature; nor even in her intercourse with her betrothed lover Anzoleto, who is not pure, as she is, but who, nevertheless, has so much of the cordial familiarity which a lad has for his friend, and of the habitual affection of a brother, mingled with the sentiment which they both call love, that even his youthful depravity is kept in check by the conjunction.

in the streets of a great city. There is nothing in her ove those antecedents; yet everything in her is above em. She is pure, and true, and honorable by some noble stinct as fine natures are in all classes, with the most onderful triumph over all preconceived ideas. She has e toleration of her class, and is not horrified by the evil and her as maidens more carefully guarded would be. ut while, as natural to her condition, she accepts the re, which she cannot but be aware of, as a fact which it not hers to judge, she holds herself instinctively, almost consciously, clear of all pollution. When we see her st, she is no full-developed heroine, but a long-limbed, evening or lead them back to rest, without even a dog to warn wkward child, in the unlovely stage of girlhood, with a eautiful voice, and much serious devotion to the education me is receiving in the musical school conducted by the old omposer Porpora. No pretentions are hers to grace or eauty. As she grew fast, and her mother was very poor, er dresses were always a year too short, which gave to the ong limbs of fourteen, thus used to show themselves in ublic, a kind of wild grace and freedom which it was at once pleasant and sad to see." The child is first introluced to us busy at her work in the music-school, at the noment when old Porpora, a somewhat grim teacher, has ust distinguished her as the most studious, the most modst, the most docile of his pupils — an announcement received with disdain by all the school, but unheard by Consuelo herself, who, bending over her book, her hands upon her ears to shut out the noise, is at the moment singing over her lesson under her breath. This characteristic opening is followed up in the whole after-tale. Consuelo is occupied with her art, with the work before her, wherever she may happen to be; scarcely ever with herself. She is conscious of herself so far as to know what she can do most useful and essential and uninjurious piece of self-estimation; but either she has no time or no inclination to inquire further into that being which is not the chief interest in the world to her- herself. Romola, as we have said, is superior to all whom she encounters; but Consuelo is no one's superior. In her quiet but much occupied mind there is always so much that is better going on, that she lacks leisure to measure her own height, and consider how she stands among others. The author does not fail to show the intense difference between this pearl of genius and all the ordinary scholars "about her, but with delightful art she manages to make it fully apparent how little Consuelo herself knows or thinks of the difference. The girl wanders fearless and free, in the confidence of her childhood, about the Venetian streets. She earns her bread by all the industries common to her kind, working with her needle when her mother is ill and needs her care; crossing the lagoon to the Lido to gather the shells on its sandy shore; sitting on the steps at the landing-place where the gondolas come and go, threading these shells into the necklaces which everybody knows, with Anzoleto at her side helping her a young Adonis, brown and beautiful, with naked feet banging down into the soft water that laps and laves the shore who is the villain of the piece. Consuelo goes on calmly working, while the old master of music and the young dilettante Count talk over her head-stringing her shells together-with dark locks uncovered under the blazing sun, with soft ripple of the winds and water about her-subdued color, sound, and movement, her shells in her lap, her eyes on her work, - a pretty, simple picture. Just so the dark-haired, brown children, with great eyes flashing from their olive faces, sit under the sunshine which Would kill an English child, upon those perpetual steps which descend to the water, and where it is so easy to dabble when one pleases, in the bright rippling wavelets so green and full of sunshine. Here is George Sand's description of the life of the Venetian boy and girl, poorest of the poor, and happiest of the happy :

[ocr errors]

"They crossed the lagoon at all hours and in all weathers, in open boats without oars or pilot; they wandered over the marshes without guide, without means of noting the time, and without any thought of the rising tide. They sang before the little chapels made under the vines at the corners of the streets, without minding the late hour, or without need of any bed till

The other scene through which the girl passes, as she proceeds through the streets and canals, is the darker one of the theatre, in which Madame Sand is always at home, and in which the noble passion of her heroine's pure genius enthralls the public, as the best always does, even though the worst may also receive the fickle plaudits of the crowd. But the little room in which Consuelo works, with her old portfolios of music, her lessons in composition, her deep and loving study of the principles of her art-though it is a poor little garret in a broken-down old house, the little paved court under its windows opening upon a dark and narrow canal - is more interesting than the theatre where she makes a brief appearance. And so is the musical school, with its harsh and bitter but great old master; and its pretty pupils, vulgar, undisciplined, and noisy, qui ne rêvent que le théâtre, and study their art for its rewards and successes, never for itself. The link of connection which exists between the watery back-slums of Venice and the brilliant boards of the opera, with all its fairy triumphs, is revealed to us with curious vividness. George Sand, like George Eliot, makes everybody inferior to her heroine; the heroine is fortunately left unconscious of it, but the reader is fully informed on the subject; and la Clorinda and la Corrila are poor enough vulgar specimens of the singing girl, eager for glory, fine dresses, applause, and pleasure. The insolence of the one and the stupidity of the other, and their dull contempt for the more heavenly creature in the midst of them, is no doubt true to the lowest types of conventional human nature; but the reader will have as little pleasure in dwelling upon these common Venetians and their evil ways, as he has in contemplation of the too carefully studied Florentines in Romola - though probably their career is a better reproduction of the ordinary life of their kind than is that of the Una who moves whitely among them, making a sunshine in a shady place. But Consuelo herself, innocent and dreamy, threading her shells on the broad steps, while the gondolas push alongside soft and rapid, receiving or disembarking their passengers, with the opening of some narrow way, a cut between two marvellous lines of building, affording a background for her figure, or some great church raising its dome into the skies, or the lion on his column standing fast and firm above; with her handsome boy companion lounging

by, his brown legs dangling into the warm canal, and his head like a Greek statue, on the alert for notice, calls of passing patrons, or glance of admiration - while the girl, with her head bent over her work, takes note of nothing; this is a picture which the reader will not easily forget.

[ocr errors]

And Consuelo, like Romola, has her moment of lovedeception, her discovery of her lover's unworthiness, her despair and flight. To say that the one story is altogether wanting in the grandeur and elaborate grave art of the other is unnecessary, for that is implied in the very nature of either tale, in the different positions and characters of the two women who are each the central figure in her own drama. Consuelo's love is not of the heroic type of Romola's; for indeed the Venetian girl has a wealth of knowledge of human nature and toleration of its imperfections which is impossible to the high-toned Florentine. Consuelo loves no ideal in the handsome Anzoleto. She knows his faults, his nature shallower than her own, his want of industry, his petulance, a hundred weaknesses which take him altogether out of the rank of demi-god. Few women of her class, we are afraid, can look upon their future husbands as demi-gods, though the heroines of poetry do, and even - Mr. Trollope, at least, encourages us to believe the young ladies of the present day. To Romola in her ignorance the beautiful Tito is as a sun-god, a young Apollo, lighting up her grave existence. But Consuelo, with a humbler truth to nature, has no such grand idea, and no such expectations. She knows the imperfection of her lover, knows him weak, not always wise, indolent, a little self-regarding yet with the perversity of nature loves him, never expecting from him any transformation of existence, but only the comfort of mutual support and union in which she shall have her full portion both of labor and help. To our thinking this is a much nobler type of love than the poetical passion which has pretensions so much higher. It is true love, the other being but supreme fancy. Perhaps it is as little to be desired that this most serious and deepest form of human sentiment should be specially supreme in a young soul, as the ideal passion, hot and sudden, which takes rank so much above it, and is so much more universally believed in; yet without this to fall back upon the other is naught, and love drops from its immortality into a vulgar thing, however high-flown. Romola's is the conventional love, Consuelo's the real. The one arises and dies alike suddenly, leaping into life at a stroke, with a subtle self-regard in it, which is veiled by all the graces of art and poetry, yet lurks beneath those flowers an expectation of supreme glory and joy to be gained; which, being not gained, turns the sweetness into bitterness, and kills the heathen classic passion, which is a failure, and has not produced what was looked for. Consuelo's, poor soul, is a great deal harder to kill. Could she shut her eyes to the sin against her, we almost fear she would do so, though her heart sickens and turns from it with a wondering disgust and anguish, which is deeper far than that supreme rebellion of the other kind of love against the being who has deceived it. The sufferer in this case is hurried away by her counsellor out of reach of her own relentings, to save her from the softenings of tenderness, the love which faints but cannot be killed. In this as in other things her story is the exact opposite of that of her greater and more heroic antitype. Romola, rigid and stern, with her love dead, can come back as duty bids, and live like a woman of stone under the same roof with the husband to whom her heart never relents, towards whom she feels nothing but a still horror and scorn; but Consuelo, with her true love, which sought so little in return, has to fly to save herself from relenting, to make forgiveness impossible, to prevent herself from enduring all things, from suffering long, and melting into kindness like the Divine Charity itself.

Anzoleto, however, is no such wonderful creation as Tito, nor does he demand the same consideration in the story. He is a common type enough of the unworthy lover, though with so much good in him as his higher appreciation of Consuelo's noble character makes inevitable. He knows what is good, and in his heart prefers it, not

withstanding the miserable jealousy, meanness, and sensu ality which lead him astray from her. But the author of his being does not hate him as George Eliot hates Tito She does not intend from the beginning to ruin and crush him into infamy, as the still greater genius of the English writer, vindictive and terrible, sets itself to do. The French woman takes infinitely less pains about it, and is content with a much more ordinary type. But notwith standing this, and all our prejudices in favor of the one against the other, we cannot but claim for George Sand's heroine a higher place in nature than that which ought to be assigned to the royal Romola. The grandeur of the Florentine is a conventional grandeur: she speaks and moves and acts like an enlarged and sublimated imperson ation of a girl's ideal of woman —an awe-inspiring goddess; whereas the poor child of the people, making her necklaces on the great marble steps, unguarded and uncared for, is of the truest and highest type of feminine character real, simple, natural, and true, with nothing of the sham or fictitiously great about her. Her sweet and friendly presence charms the reader everywhere. She smiles at us though she knows us not: never too great for us, notwithstanding her genius and her fame. Even her trifling lover, though he reverences her better nature, and knows that in art she is higher than himself, is never crushed by her superiority as Tito is by that of his magnificent wife, who towers over him with a grandeur which makes us almost pardon his lighter sins at least. We are tempted to dwell upon the contrast, because it is fundamental in art not only a contrast of two different types, but of two different systems and codes of what is best. The superior is beginning to have a new reign on the earth, thanks partly to such ideal personages as Romolaand the spontaneous and unconscious are falling into dis credit; but here, as elsewhere, true art is on the side of that which is simplest and least pretending the lowly person rather than the great.

[ocr errors]

Books and literary reputations, like everything else, fade into obscurity as time goes on, and "Consuelo has not the fame which it once had, nor even perhaps has George Sand retained her fame and extended reputation. We do not know even whether it is desirable that "Consuelo " should be sold to the excursionists as "Romola" (oddly) is, by way of lending to the general mass an interest in Venice; for French Romance, even at its climax, and when its object is good and its central figure noble, as in this case, is not so safe for general reading as English. But no one who has read the book will forget to remember it when his gondola shoots along the bright canal, or glides up to the steps on which the children are sitting, stringing their shells, or eating their outdoor meals under the sunshine. When the breeze blows from the soft Adriatic across the Lido, and the winding channels which ooze down to the sea; when the sun blazes on the steps at the Piazzetta, and the palace of the old Doges shows all its carven work, dwarfed by very richness, and the grateful shadow creeps farther and farther back in the colonnades; when the water gurgles and murmurs at the boat's head, and the gondolier chants his long-drawn cry, "Ahi! mi!" at the corner, before he plunges into the grateful dimness of the narrow canal-look! is not that the girl, seated where the dancing green ripples, all penetrated with sunshine, make a waving magical play of light at her feet; her dark locks under the sun throwing forth a kindred gleam of reflection, her young, lithe figure, too young for any thought of grace or attitude, lightly, simply posed upon the warm marble of those steps where the passers-by come and go, and gondolas push noiselessly up, and noiselessly set forth again, nobody noticing the quiet child at her work! Venice, with all her loveliness, is so much the more friendly for this soft face in it, this spotless dweller in its narrow Corti, and wanderer about its waterways.

Friend unknown! you will meet many friends in both these cities of the past. Her in Florence with the Cardellino serene, sweet mother, in holiest bloom of wom anhood; Her of the Granduca, so reverent of the child

« ПредишнаНапред »