no, not THE EDGE OF AN ABYSS. 'If but a woman's heart might see For once! But that can never be.' 199 No, that cannot be. But looking into her own, and there seeing what that poor heart once was, she may find. a little light for this dark question that men could not, even Poets. I think of how Jenny stood that fatal day innocent, ignorant, (how innocent, how ignorant of harm I do not think any but a woman rightly understands) heedless, rash, too, and near the edge of an abyss the very existence of which was only a far-off ugly dream to her-only an unmeaning word perhaps and in one swift blind bewildered moment was drawn by a strong ruthlessly vehement hand over the edge-her cheerful day changed into one long black night-he that might have led so high hurling her so low-teaching her to take the very characters with which she might have spelled in heavenly radiance a word whose meaning would unfold in unutterable beauty throughout her life, and, with them, dipped in smoke and lurid fire from below, to write one that blasts her with shame and ruin. "Then it seems to me that as God's eyes look on at this, they grow dim with such a mist of the tears of pity that it veils her guilt (if indeed the blind folly of yielding herself a passive victim ought to be called guilt, just because the consequences are so terrible) even from Him; nay I will dare to say, blots it out. Afterwards with no human hand to help her up again, perhaps pushed down from above by sisters-grasped from below by ever more and more brutalized men, her poor body dragged and dragged through the mire, even then I do not believe its vileness stains through to her very inmost self. If I did, the pain would be more than I could bear these tears would burn my cheeks like flame; I should hate my womanhood-crave annihilation for the race. No! God has not cursed men with the hideous power to wreck her soul as they can wreck her body. Poor soul! it was but half awake and alert to begin with all its finest instincts yet undeveloped, else it would not have let her stand for a moment within the atmosphere of danger, but would have shed round her a subtle atmosphere banishing, dispelling danger! Now, crouched away, back, with face averted from the mad riot of a body that carries but is scarce owned by it-numb with misery, and the utter privation of all healthful activity and sympathy; conscious of itself only through sullen despair; it waits and waits, till there comes at last the mighty rescuing friend Death— mysterious New Birth. Then it finds itself once more animating a stainless body standing, not indeed among the happy sisters, but free to climb towards them carrying no defilements with it. Something within me-no echo from the Past-something more deeply convincing, more illuminating than reason or the evidence of the senses, tells me this is so. "You touch Jenny gently-tenderly even, and I feel grateful to you for that; yet I think even you are hard on her fond of guineas,' yes, for want is bitter and it always dogs her steps, or at any rate lurks just round the corner; and real enjoyments all gone clean out of life for her, she grasps at the paltriest sham ones. But A HARD PROBLEM. 201 fond of kisses,' no, I do not believe there is ever more any sweetness in a kiss for her, only, with whatever semblance it may be given or taken-an inward loathing. I could kiss poor Jenny if that would do her any good; but I fear it would not. "Perhaps it will not be so very long before women find out how to help one another. But it is a hard problem. Yours always truly, ANNE GILCHRIST." We revert to the principal subject of the foregoing chapter-An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman, anent the publication of which W. D. O'Connor writes from Washington, May 18th, 1870, to William Michael Rossetti : And here, as you will see when you receive the May number [of the Radical], our bird of Paradise has found a perch. It is the best thing possible, and in some respects could not be better. "I need not add a word about the article. It is greatand better even in type than it was in manuscript. The friends of Walt Whitman are infinitely indebted, beyond words, for so broad and luminous an interpretation. of his pages. good. you It cannot fail to let in light, and to do "I hope your own share in the matter will return to in honor-in 'good fame renounné,' as Sir Thomas Malory's preface phrases it. We are all very grateful. Faithfully yours, W. D. O'CONNOR." July the fourteenth, William Rossetti writes: "I am ready for any amount of talk or writing about Whitman: but don't very much expect to be convinced out of my own present opinions-being tough. On main points you and I agree: but nothing will reconcile me to such words as Orotund or Santa Spirita: they are as bad in the poet Whitman as they would be in the Poet Bunn or the Poet Close." Returning to the subject of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poems he says::-"I believe heartily in Gabriel's poems. Some of those I particularly like (I name them as they occur to my mind at the moment) are Blessed Damozel, Sister Helen, Troy Town, Last Confession, Jenny, Song of Bower, First Love Remembered, the Sea (which you mentioned, I think, in a previous letter), and several of the sonnets. In fact there are few of the poems that I don't think highly of: and none that I think really poor. I think they are very uncommon indeed in combined (or aboriginal) intensity of passion, insight, and art; and if these three qualities in high degree don't constitute good poetry, I don't particularly know what does. Some of the reviewers have objected to obscurity, and some to over-elaboration. The latter objection I agree with in a certain measure: I think some of the poems suffer somewhat by over-evidence of literary intention. As to obscurity I do not consider the poems strictly obscure in the ordinary sense; but some certainly demand a degree of reflection rather beyond what one is always inclined for in poetry. " Of the Essay published in the Radical, Anne Gilchrist says: "I wish they had not cut out a piece between 'out of the free air and sunshine of to-day,' and 'But this poet.' Because now the assertion out of the scorn of the Present came scepticism' stands very abrupt INTENSITY OF PASSION. 203 and unsupported. What is left out was meant to show how illogical, how utterly unreasonable are, on the one hand, the theologians who think because there is nothing at all to their minds here and now, therefore they will have everything to their minds by and by: and on the other those artists, poets, historians, who can find nothing great, divine, august, sufficingly noble and beautiful around them or within, but credit with an indefinite amount of these qualities almost anything and everything that looms dimly through the mist of Time. For my part, if I held such views as they do of the men and women around them, of life, of themselves, of God, I should be as utter a sceptic of all good as Mephis topheles himself. For the Past was made of the same stuff as the Present? Surely there is no other key that can unlock its true meaning but a profound insight into the present, wherein all is summed up? How piece together into coherent types of the whole, the waifs and strays that have floated down on the ocean of time, but by mastering the types and penetrating the meanings as now clothed in living flesh and blood around us?" "June 26. See, my letter has lain a whole week unfinished. I have such a stress of needlework to do just now, that what with some teaching, and time given to my mother, and a little music which I cannot live without, it leaves me not a moment. I do not fail daily to bless the inventor of the sewing machine, you may be sure. "... Whitman is, I believe, far more closely akin to Christ than to either Homer or Shakspeare or any other poet. I may say this to you, because I know you |