Edward Berdoe - The Browning Cyclopædia - A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning

Bifurcation.( Pacchiarotto and other Poems : London, 1876.) A woman loves a man, but “prefers duty to love” – enters a convent, perhaps, or adopts some life for reasons which she considers imperative, and so cannot marry. Rejecting love, she thinks she rejects the tempter’s bribe when the paths before her diverge. It is a sacrifice, she feels, and a great one; but her heart tells her, probably because it has been suggested by those whose influence over her was very great, that heaven will repair the wrongs of earth. She chooses the darkling half of life, and waits her reward in the world “where light and darkness fuse.” The man loved the woman. Love was a hard path for him, but duty was a pleasant road. When the ways parted, and his love forsook him to abide by duty, she told him their roads would converge again at the end, and bade him be constant to his path, as she would be to hers, that they might meet once more. But, when the guiding star is gone, man’s footsteps are apt to stray, and every stumbling-block brought him to confusion. And after his falls and flint-piercings he would rise and cry “All’s well!” and struggle on, since he must be content with one of the halves that make the whole. He would have the story of each inscribed on their tomb, and he demands to know which tomb holds sinner and which holds saint! If love be all – if earth and its best be our highest aim – then the woman was the sinner for not marrying her lover, and settling down in a suburban villa, and surrounding herself with children and domestic pleasures. But if the ideal life – if a love infinitely higher and purer than any earthly affection – be taken into account; if in her soul she had heard the call, “Leave all and follow Me,” and she obeyed with breaking heart, in a perfect spirit of self-sacrifice, then was she no sinner, but saint indeed. Surely there are higher paths in life than even the holy one of wedded love. Mr. Browning’s own married life was so ideally perfect that he has been led into some exaggeration of its advantages to the mass of mankind.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology.( Men and Women , vol. i., 1855.) Bishop Blougram is a bon vivant , a man of letters, of fastidious taste and of courtly manners – a typical Renaissance prince of the Church, in fact. He has been successful in life, as he understands it, and there seems no reason why he should make any apology for an existence so in every way congenial to his nature. Mr. Gigadibs is a young literary man, smart at “articles” for the magazines, but possessing no knowledge outside the world of books, and incapable of deep thought on the great problems of life and mind. He can settle everything off-hand in his flippant, free-thinking style, and he has arrived at the conclusion that a man of Blougram’s ability cannot really believe in the doctrines which he pretends to defend, and that he is only acting a part; as such a life cannot be “ideal,” he considers his host more or less of an impostor. By some means he finds himself dining with the Bishop, and after dinner he is treated to his lordship’s “Apology.” The ecclesiastic has taken the measure of his man, and good-humouredly puts the case thus: “You say the thing is my trade, that I am above the humbug in my heart, and sceptical withal at times, and so you despise me – to be plain. For your own part you must be free and speak your mind. You would not choose my position if you could you would be great, but not in my way. The problem of life is not to fancy what were fair if only it could be, but, taking life as it is, to make it fair so far as we can. For a simile, we mortals make our life-voyage each in his cabin. Suppose you attempt to furnish it after a landsman’s idea. You bring an Indian screen, a piano, fifty volumes of Balzac’s novels and a library of the classics, a marble bath, and an “old master” or two; but the ship folk tell you you have only six feet square to deal with, and because they refuse to take on board your piano, your marble bath, and your old masters, you set sail in a bare cabin. You peep into a neighbouring berth, snug and well-appointed, and you envy the man who is enjoying his suitable sea furniture; you have proved your artist nature, but you have no furniture. Imagine we are two college friends preparing for a voyage; my outfit is a bishop’s, why won’t you be a bishop too? In the first place, you don’t and can’t believe in a Divine revelation; you object to dogmas, so overhaul theology; you think I am by no means a fool, so that I must find believing every whit as hard as you do, and if I do not say so, possibly I am an impostor. Grant that I do not believe in the fixed and absolute sense – to meet you on your own premise – overboard go my dogmas, and we both are unbelievers. Does that fix us unbelievers for ever? Not so: all we have gained is, that as unbelief disturbed us by fits in our believing days, so belief will ever and again disturb our unbelief, for how can we guard our unbelief and make it bear fruit to us? Just when we think we are safest a flower, a friend’s death, or a beautiful snatch of song, and lo! there stands before us the grand Perhaps! The old misgivings and crooked questions all are there – all demanding solution, as before. All we have gained by our unbelief is a life of doubt diversified by faith, in place of one of faith diversified by doubt.” “But,” says Gigadibs, “if I drop faith and you drop doubt, I am as right as you!” Blougram will not allow this: “the points are not indifferent; belief or unbelief bears upon life, and determines its whole course; positive belief brings out the best of me, and bears fruit in pleasantness and peace. Unbelief would do nothing of the sort for me: you say it does for you? We’ll try! I say faith is my waking life; we sleep and dream, but, after all, waking is our real existence – all day I study and make friends; at night I sleep. What’s midnight doubt before the faith of day? You are a philosopher; you disbelieve, you give to dreams at night the weight I give to the work of active day; to be consistent, you should keep your bed, for you live to sleep as I to wake – to unbelieve, as I to still believe. Common-sense terms you bedridden: common-sense brings its good things to me; so it’s best believing if we can, is it not? Again, if we are to believe at all, we cannot be too decisive in our faith; we must be consistent in all our choice – succeed, or go hang in worldly matters. In love we wed the woman we love most or need most, and as a man cannot wed twice, so neither can he twice lose his soul. I happened to be born in one great form of Christianity, the most pronounced and absolute form of faith in the world, and so one of the most potent forms of influencing the world. External forces have been allowed to act upon me by my own consent, and they have made me very comfortable. I take what men offer with a grace; folks kneel and kiss my hand, and thus is life best for me; my choice, you will admit, is a success. Had I nobler instincts, like you, I should hardly count this success; grant I am a beast, beasts must lead beasts’ lives; it is my business to make the absolute best of what God has made. At the same time, I do not acknowledge I am so much your inferior, though you do say I pine among my million fools instead of living for the dozen men of sense who observe me, and even they do not know whether I am fool or knave. Be a Napoleon, and if you disbelieve, where’s the good of it? Then concede there is just a chance: doubt may be wrong – just a chance of judgment and a life to come. Fit up your cabin another way. Shall we be Shakespeare? What did Shakespeare do? Why, left his towers and gorgeous palaces to build himself a trim house in Stratford. He owned the worth of things; he enjoyed the show and respected the puppets too. Shakespeare and myself want the same things, and what I want I have. He aimed at a house in Stratford – he got it; I aim at higher things, and receive heaven’s incense in my nose. Believe and get enthusiasm, that’s the thing. I can achieve nothing on the denying side – ice makes no conflagration.” Gigadibs says, “But as you really lack faith, you run the same risk by your indifference as does the bold unbeliever; an imperfect faith like that is not worth having; give me whole faith or none!” Blougram fixes him here. “Own the use of faith, I find you faith!” he replies. “Christianity may be false, but do you wish it true? If you desire faith, then you’ve faith enough. We could not tolerate pure faith, naked belief in Omnipotence; it would be like viewing the sun with a lidless eye. The use of evil is to hide God. I would rather die than deny a Church miracle.” Gigadibs says, “Have faith if you will, but you might purify it.” Blougram objects that “if you first cut the Church miracle, the next thing is to cut God Himself and be an atheist, so much does humanity find the cutting process to its taste.” If Gigadibs says, “All this is a narrow and gross view of life,” Blougram answers, “I live for this world now; my best pledge for observing the new laws of a new life to come is my obedience to the present world’s requirements. This life may be intended to make the next more intense. Man ever tries to be beforehand in his evolution, as when a traveller throws off his furs in Russia because he will not want them in France; in France spurns flannel because in Spain it will not be required; in Spain drops cloth too cumbrous for Algiers; linen goes next, and last the skin itself, a superfluity in Timbuctoo. The poor fool was never at ease a minute in his whole journey. I am at ease now, friend, worldly in this world, as I have a right to be. You meet me,” continues Blougram, “at this issue: you think it better, if we doubt, to say so; act up to truth perceived, however feebly. Put natural religion to the test with which you have just demolished the revealed, abolish the moral law, let people lie, kill, and thieve, but there are certain instincts, unreasoned out and blind, which you dare not set aside; you can’t tell why, but there they are, and there you let them rule, so you are just as much a slave, liar, hypocrite, as I – a conscious coward to boot, and without promise of reward. I but follow my instincts, as you yours. I want a God – must have a God – ere I can be aught, must be in direct relation with Him, and so live my life; yours, you dare not live. Something we may see, all we cannot see. I say, I see all: I am obliged to be emphatic, or men would doubt there is anything to see at all” Then the Bishop turns upon his opponent and presses him: “Confess, don’t you want my bishopric, my influence and state? Why, you will brag of dining with me to the last day of your life! There are men who beat me, – the zealot with his mad ideal, the poet with all his life in his ode, the statesman with his scheme, the artist whose religion is his art – such men carry their fire within them; but you, you Gigadibs, poor scribbler, – but not so poor but we almost thought an article of yours might have been written by Dickens, – here’s my card, its mere production, in proof of acquaintance with me, will double your remuneration in the reviews at sight. Go, write, – detest, defame me, but at least you cannot despise me!” The average superficial reasoner is in the constant habit of setting down as insincere such learned persons as make a profession of faith in the dogmas of Christianity. The ordinary man of the world considers the mass of Christian people as bound to their faith by the fetters of ignorance. Such men, however, as it is impossible to term ignorant, who profess to hold the dogmas of Christianity in their integrity, are actuated, they say, by unworthy motives, self-interest, the desire to make the best of both worlds, unwillingness to cast in their lot with those who put themselves to the pain and discredit of thinking for themselves, and casting off the fetters of superstition. So, say these cynics, the dignified clergy of the Established Church repeat creeds which they no longer believe, that they may live in splendour and enjoy the best things of life, while the poorer clergy retain their positions as a decent means of gaining a livelihood. When such flippant thinkers and impulsive talkers contemplate the lives of such men as Cardinal Wiseman or Cardinal Newman, who were acknowledged to be learned and highly cultivated men, they say it is impossible such men can be sincere when they profess to believe the teachings of the Catholic Church, which they hold to be contemptible superstition; they must be actuated by unworthy motives, love of power over men’s minds, craving for worldly dignities and the adulation of men and the like. That a man like Newman should give up his intellectual life at Oxford “to perform mummeries at a Catholic altar” in Birmingham, was plainly termed insanity, intellectual suicide, or sheer knavery. The late Cardinal Wiseman was an exceedingly learned man, of great scientific ability, and such admirable bonhomie that this class of critic had no difficulty whatever in relegating his Eminence to what was considered his precise moral position. Mr. Browning in this monologue accurately postulates the popular conception of the Cardinal’s character in the utterances of one Gigadibs, a young man of thirty who has rashly expressed his opinions of the great churchman’s religious character. The poet, though completely failing to do justice to the Bishop’s side of the question, has presented us with a character perfectly natural, but which in every aspect seems more the picture of an eighteenth-century fox-hunting ecclesiastic than that of a bishop of the Roman Church, who would have had a good deal more to say on the subject of faith as understood by his Church than the poet has put into the mouth of his Bishop Blougram. As it is impossible to see in the description given of the Bishop anybody but the late Cardinal Wiseman, it is necessary to say that the description is to the last degree untrue, as must have been obvious to any one personally acquainted with him. A review of the poem appeared in the magazine known as the Rambler , for January 1856, which is credibly supposed to have been written by the Cardinal himself. “The picture drawn in the poem,” says the article in question, “is that of an arch hypocrite, and the frankest of fools.” The writer says that Mr. Browning “is utterly mistaken in the very groundwork of religion, though starting from the most unworthy notions of the work of a Catholic bishop, and defending a self-indulgence which every honest man must feel to be disgraceful, is yet in its way triumphant.”