THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST.
27 September 1851.

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.

By Gerald Massey.

I.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

Critics are fallible as well as all other erring mortals.  What an exemplification of this was the conduct of the Athenæum, towards Carlyle's splendid prose Epic, the "French Revolution."  And I remember the flippant literary fop who noticed the "Princess" in Tait's Magazine, remarking, "This book has lain on our table for some time past, but we have not forgotten Mr. Tennyson so far as he has forgotten himself," and proceeded to demonstrate that it was unworthy of him, or any one else pretending to the name of poet.  Indeed, general dissatisfaction was growled by the literary dissectors (Aubrey de Vere in the Edinburgh Review excepted) that this should be the result of six years silent labour on the part of Tennyson.  But we must not expect journalists always to do justice to a great work of art, at first glance;—worked and jaded, like galley-slaves, as they frequently are, compelled to furnish the requisite amount of copy at thunder-speed, what marvel if their criticism exhibit no breadth, save in being very broad of the mark?  Moreover, the spirit of Tennyson's poetry does not respond to the stern questioning "under which King Belzonian, speak or die?"  Neither will it be gauged by rule and compass;— in all such presence it is dumb and shrinking as a shy, sensitive, loving maiden, brooding over her sweet secret amidst her rude and importunate brothers—but only look on it with loving favour, show that you possess the kindred sympathy, and it opens like a thirsty flower to the healing dew.  How eloquent it becomes, babbling its sweet music as a cascade its happy laughter, changing and radiating in its beauty like the burnished colours on the neck of the dove.  After reading the "Princess" again and again, one is surprised at what they missed on reading it the first time; you wilfully deceived yourself because you took it at its own unpretending estimate.  The flowers that lurk in the nooks and bye-places you did not see while watching the royal sweep of the highway, the grandeur of the mountains lifting up their peaks into the laughing heaven, and the blue and boundless burst of ocean in the far distance.  Read it again, it was your carelessness and opaqueness, not the poet's want of light and lustre.  It was your blindness, and deafness, not his lack of divine wisdom, and melody.— Disappointed?  So! you had expected him to commence again, where last the song ended, leaving you perplext with his aerial melodies, and dazzled by the glancing lights of his glorious imagery,—but no, he has travelled far in advance of you, singing his new song of Progress, hopefully and joyfully.  You had watched the majestic swan disport itself hard by, and dive under the surface of the waters, leaving you to watch the widening ripples it had made in the limpid element, expecting it to arise in the same place, but lo!  it ascends once more, out yonder in the distance—beyond the ripples it last made; it is more graceful if possible, strengthened, fold bedropt with richer pearls, only, farther away from you, and less appreciable.

    The "Princess" has all the lyrical beauty of Tennyson's former poems, it is as gorgeous in imagery, as sparkling in quaint and playful fancies, while the diapason of its rythm ranges from the faeriest flutings of elf-land music up to the grand movement of a conqueror's regal march.  And above all, it is essentially a song of Progress, timed to the beating of the pulses of the living Present.

    The grand object of the poem is to show that Woman is not Man in an undevelopt state, and that all attempts to prove the contrary—all her leaps to catch at manhood will but pluck down upon her discomfiture and utter failure.  There have been women who have unsexed themselves—and what have they become?  At best, but cold abstractions, mental Hermaphrodites who have put on a raiment of Bloomerism, and puzzled the world's curiosity,—and at worst, demons of wickedness and crime, as in the instances of Cleopatra and Theroigne de Mericourt.  Of course, the "Princess," and those whose aim she represents in this nineteenth century, are not to be spoken of in the same breath as those women, and yet the result of such emancipation as they desire would induce as fearful a slavery.  Woman cannot belie her nature with impunity—her heart of flesh. will petrify into a heart of stone—she will out-herod Herod, and out-man Man.

    Thus with the "Princess," blinded with her hatred of the old custom, and madly stung by her erring pride, she succeeds in crushing all those tender affections that cling about the young heart, and tremble into life.  She cuts the budding, twining tendrils of love, as fast as they grow, with inexorable knife.  The milk of her human kindness curdles and sours her nature instead of creaming to enrich it.  She hardens into senseless hatred against him who loves her so dearly and so well, she hurls back his proferred heart, with insult and trampling scorn, and insists on her brothers fighting with him.  She can rob a mother of her darling child, and that mother her once well-beloved friend and chief companion, that child—the "sweetest child that ever crowed for kisses,"—whom she can speak of in this wise,

And yet site is heedless of this mute pleading for its mother—and resists for a long while, the appeal of its mother herself, who Stands imploring, with

"Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye."

Vainly do they conjure up tender memories of the past, for she has well nigh slain her sweeter self, and fossilized her woman's heart.  Beautifully and truly does the poet develop the consequences of the false position she has assumed, equally unnatural and fatal as in the instances previously mentioned,—for "Woman" is not undeveloped man."

    Let Woman he educated and developed as far as possible in accordance with her nature and destiny, let her he well versed in history, and learn therefrom to cherish all that is pure and ennobling—till her heart beats grand accompaniment to theirs of old, the great, the good, the martyrs and the saints.  Let her mind be made familiar with lofty thoughts, and noble deeds, and she will learn to think and act greatly.  Astronomy, geology,—phrenology, the science of human nature,—and socialism, the science of society, should each be understood by her, in addition to the fields of learning already open to her, but all attempts to train her into manhood are as false and unnatural as it is to clip and shear the spreading, bush-green yewtree of its branched glories, and torture it into the poor, miserable effigy of a peacock.

    The "Princess," is in the main, a true champion in the cause of Woman, and heaven and earth know they need champions, for in the words of the "Princess Ida " the mass of them are

That hits off your character and takes your standard to the breadth of a hair, the generality of you, O Women of To-day!  Mothers of the Future! Why, what can the world expect from ye but slaves, and dolts, and idiots?  Dear God!  God! that Woman would but comprehend her influence, and understand the work she is missioned to do—to save the world she lost!  Scarcely a great man ever lived but has attributed three-fourths of his greatness to the influence of his mother on his character, before and after his birth.  They mould humanity either for good or evil.

    Yet it is only a just retribution on man for his selfish bestial tyranny over Women.  He has looked upon her merely—not in the light—but in the gloom, of a slave, and our system of educating Women for society, and marriage, and maternity, is quite as barbarous as the practice of some tribe I have read of, who fatten their kings' royal concubines till they are fat-blind, before they are eligible for the nuptial couch;—they only eclipse the ordinary visual means, while it is our more refined custom to put out the mental vision.

    We have had great Women; great Women are living now, glorious models for aspiration! noble examples for all time. Women have lived as noble lives and died as heroic deaths as men.  They have suffered as painful martyrdoms; and then, what unwritten sufferings, what unchronicled heroism!  Woman has also achieved no mean position in the realm of Thought and the land of Song, almost rivalling vaunting man with his vantage of some thousand years in starting.  In our own times, a Somerville, Hemans, Wolstonecraft, Mitford, Fry, Howitt, and E. Barrett Browning, and many others in the bright sisterhood of genius, have planted their glorious feet on the mountain of immortality, and earned shining and enduring names.  Though it is not so much the few great and valiant that we want, as that the whole mass should be raised; the demand of the age is not for splendid reputations to be built and pillared apart, so much as that the whole should be permeated, leavened, and quickened into higher intelligence and nobler action.  If Poetry, or Politics, or speculative science be a Woman's vital necessity, in God's name let her write, speak, or demonstrate, otherwise, let her not make them her aspiration.  There is more need of poetry to be lived than written, especially in the home-sphere and household affections of woman.  Written poetry gives us but bright glimpses down sunny vistas, into the world of poetry which might be lived, if we were wise,—somewhat akin to bringing a poor prisoned sky-lark, a cool and dewy green sod to refresh its eyes and feet with, while it is shut out from its natural heritage, the glad and glorious world beyond, radiant with all loveliness, which it ought to live, and love, and luxuriate in.  We do not want Women to be crammed with dead language, and mummied learning, but for Love's sake let them be educated up to the noblest offices and holiest duties of life, which they are not now, and manifold are the miseries consequent thereon.  Where shall the intelligent artizan endowed with large heart and brain, proud aspirations, and high sensitive nature, find the help-mate meet and worthy to unite with him in wedlock?  And the education of the middle-class is a thousand times more pernicious than the non-education of the better class of the workers, for among the latter you may chance to find some natural and noble simplicity, kind generous hearts full of self-sacrifice, with all the virgin dew and the glory of innocence upon them, which you will search for in vain among the "educated" of the middle-class.  Yet, this treasure is not the all that is essential to the wife.  True, as Goethe says in his conversations, "we do not fall in love with the understanding, the intellect of Woman,"—but after we have fallen in love' what then, if she have not understanding?  The highest meaning of marriage is not comprehended, the holiest purpose is not consummated, the bond is unhallowed, and the harrowing wretchedness of this inequality is often a very hell in its torments,—the clasping ring remains, a mocking symbol! but, hearts will fall asunder, and each misunderstanding, rends the rift of difference wider and deeper; and still we make it an incumbent duty to bear the unbearable.  What a societary state is ours! the more you probe it the more you find it reeking with rottenness, and white threading its dark labyrinth of ills—at every step you make toward the light, you tread on a fresh venomous viper.

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THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST.

4 October 1851.

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.

By Gerald Massey.

II.

As many who see this notice may not have read the "Princess," I may as well just glance at the story.—It is holiday at Sir Walter Vivian's, and he has given up his park for the day to the people, for play, instruction, and recreation.  The family are witnessing the sports from the lawn before the hall.  The poet, who is on a visit there, reads the tale of "her who drove the foes with slaughter from her walls", and praises her nobleness; Walter, the baronet's son, asks "where lives such a woman now?" and little Lilia (his sister) replies quickly,

And straightway the poet maps out a poem to the subject given, himself playing the prince.

    He, the prince, has (while only eight years old) been betrothed by proxy to a neighbouring princess, and, when the days draw nigh that they should wed, he takes fitting presents and seeks her father's house, but finds that the lady "Ida," his affianced, has forsworn the marriage state, and taking with her two ladies of her court, her companions Blanche and Psyche, has left her father's palace to rear a University for Ladies, through the portals of which no man shall enter on pain of death.  The prince, who is determined to woo, and win, and wear her, and holds

takes takes two of his comrades, Florian and Cyril, and disguised in ladies' raiment obtains entrance into the college.  They are received by the princess as ladies from the court of the prince's father. "Ida" strenuously avoids all loving talk about the prince, whom one of the three ladies is continually babbling of, and gives them fitting exhortation—

The three now enter the Lady Psyche's department,

Psyche, with great surprise and indignation, recognises her brother in Florian, and by her woman's honour, she will denounce them to the Head, and deliver them up to death for their intrusion.  But they ply her unremittingly with loving sophistry, and at length she relents, and kisses her brother as becomes an affectionate sister.  While imparting to him this interesting token of reconciliation and amity, the Lady Blanche's daughter enters unwittingly—but,—she begs pardon,—she has heard all,—but, dear little thing! she won't tell, bless her! she couldn't find it in her heart to "give three gallant gentlemen to death," not even to "answer all those hard things that Sheba came to ask of Solomon."  The three then stroll about, through stately "theatres bench'd crescent-wise," delightful gardens, and lecture-rooms where they hear

    Pleasantly passes the first day, but early the next morning, the little Melissa, Lady Blanche's daughter, hurries to them in breathless haste, and urges them to fly, for her mother knows all—not by any fault of hers.  She relates how her mother fell to canvassing them on the over-night thus—

Cyril attempts to win the mother over to keep secrecy, but finds 'twere

However, he promises that if she will wink at their advent, and help the prince to gain his rightful bride, she shall have a Ladies College to herself, where she may reign

"The head and heart of all the fair she-world,"——

being only a subordinate where she is, and very jealous of the Lady Psyche's influence, she listens to that, and for the present suspends denunciation.  Meanwhile a messenger arrives to announce that the princess is about to take the dip of certain strata to the north, and they ride forth with her.  On the way, the disguised prince still urges his suit, but the princess smartly rebuffs all mention of love.  Arrived at the spot, they pitch their tents for refreshment and rest, when one sings the following exceedingly beautiful song:

The princess cries out on such lachrymose stuff as "The days that are no more," and asks the prince—

And he in a maiden-like voice, so far as he can ape their treble, sings—

The princess, still unsatisfied, asks for some song that shall tell the manners of their countrywomen,—then—

But, in her rage arid blind hurry, she stumbles on the bridge, and falls into the roaring flood.  The prince plunges in after her, and rescues her, and she is borne home.  After examination, the three are thrust out of the gates, in their draggled women's raiment; meanwhile, the prince's father has invested the walls with an array of men, being bent on the fulfilment of the contract.  Another army is also at hand, headed by the princess's father, and brother Arac. The prince pleads for peace, but the princess will have them fight it out, in the good old English way.  It is agreed that fifty champions from each army shall combat, both parties engaging to abide by the issue, lose or gain.

    They fight, and the champions of the prince's cause are vanquished, and the prince lies on the field wounded almost to the death.  The princess, who has stood to watch the combat, chaunts a grand pœan of

She descends, and mingles with the wounded of her brother's band, calling them happy warriors, and immortal names,—when by chance she passes by where the wounded prince lies, with his old father bending over him in dumb agony.

But, gentler feelings are stirring at her heart and heaving her breast now—and "she will have the prince taken with the other wounded into the palace, late the College for Ladies, and she will tend him even with her own hand.  Firm as she had stood, like a tree rooted in a cataract, she is being gradually borne away by the stream of love,—but this will better tell the tale.

    The cold self-reliant pride that had gathered round and frosted up her true and tender heart, sealing up the sweet springs of affection at their fountain-head—gradually melts in the great and glorifying light of priceless human love—it becomes a warm living thing, pulsing boundless humanity, and budding-out like the earth at the voice of Spring; and all her better self,—the angel-side of her nature,—shines out in the dewy radiance of that holy dawn.  Long does she nurse the prince with anxious care—

The prince who has long lain insensible and raving, at last wakes sane, and seeing Ida by his side, whispers—

Glorious! she has felt the delicious happiness of being humbled by love, the dark cloud that has gathered over her has wept itself in blessed-fructifying rain, she is humbled, and broken,—but what exaltation there is in such a fall!  It is the dumb, cold marble, quickened into warm, breathing, living, loving life, stepping from its lofty pedestal and its isolation, a Woman!  She ascends the mount of transfiguration, unwonted splendour clothes her like a raiment of Paradise, and she sits at the feet and in the presence of the Beloved, glorying and glorified.

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THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST.

11 October 1851.

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.

By Gerald Massey.

IV.

Words of mine would but dim the beauty of the following jewel, which the prince lies and listens to, in the night watches, read by Ida.  Was ever Persian or Arabic poetry so charmingly tender, or so beautiful in imagery?—

And the following is akin to the noblest poetry in the songs of Solomon—

    May the happy fulness of ineffable love ever over-flow the heart, and flood the hand, that touches the lyre into such music as that! What a flood of sweet sound and delectable melody it warbles into; more luscious than dropping honeycombs, or ripe grapes, glistening with their purple life-blood, and radiant with fire drawn from summer sunlight.

    Then follows loving talk and grand conjectures, and hopeful prophecy of dear Woman's future—to them it wears the beauty of promise.

And the "Princess" concludes with lines worthy of being the Epithalamium to those bridals from which shall spring the crowning race of our humanity, whose home shall be the Millennium,

    In the epilogue, the poet, speaking in his own person, shows that he does not take up advanced opinions merely to make poetry upon, but that he is an earnest reformer;—in answer to some Tory vauntings of England's boasted superiority over France, he replies—

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THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST.

1 November 1851.

TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.

By Gerald Massey.

V.

I cannot quit the "Princess" without one more loving glance into its gallery of glorious pictures.  Tennyson is as rich in pictures as old Spenser, and as much a painter of the poets.  How vividly the mystic glory of moon-lit midnight broods over this—

How perfect the following—

And again—

How true, and how well said is this too—

This is grand as Homer—

The following is equally fine—

    It is also gemmed with beautiful similes, how aptly this hits the Italianesque of ladies penmanship—

This again is a happy fancy—

And the description of LiIia herself—

Here is a fine image—

Affright and dismay are graphically depicted and admirably realized, in the following—

Honour is justly called—

And here is a whole cluster of rich thoughts—

The "Princess" is interspersed with beautiful songs, one in the pause of each canto.  I have already quoted one of these gems "Ask me no more."  And how powerfully they contrast the true ideal of Womanhood, with the object of Ida's false ambition.  And how they enhance your estimate of Tennyson's wonderful genius, and mastery of art.  In the midst of the fanciful, the mystical, the heroic, and the false—they surprise you with their sweet and simple gushings of natural feeling, and naive truthfulness.  How direct is the following? not a simile, or metaphor, or fancy-word.  I wonder why Tennyson has altered it in later editions;—he may have improved the moral of the thing, but certainly not the Poetry.

    It seems to me that by cutting out that middle verse, he has not only injured the poetry, but, forsworn some of its love's sweetest philosophy—why, it's quite as true that a true lover will bless "the falling out that all the more endears" as that a devout Christian will bless God for purifying suffering, and ennobling chastisement; it is as true now, O, Poet, as when you wrote it; you may have waxed somewhat older, but eternal love has not,—it lives on in its immortality of youth.  But, I must conclude, and it shall be with the following lyric, unequalled in modern or ancient song; it ought to be set to noble music by some composer, grand as Handel, and subtle as Mozart—and then warbled by Jenny Lind, for its lyrical qualities to be full'y appreciated.