Gabrielle Bartholow

When Miss Amy Lowell, in an essay upon the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson, expressed a doubt whether Mr. Robinson’s recent popularity had not gone to his head and would for the future endanger his work, no one then reading could fully comprehend the ineptitude of her fear. Perhaps the reader severely questioned her, but he could not be convinced untilRoman Bartholowappeared to prove that any such statements as Miss Lowell’s were erroneous. Miss Lowell has based her fear, curiously enough, upon the melodramatic poemAvon’s Harvest, in which, though the poet was but playing with dime novel effects, his verse was more masterfully composed than in any of his earlier poems.Avon’s Harvestin its technique alone revealed a tightening of the poet’s art. His cadences were more definite, his vocabulary less elaborate, his construction certain and replete with the artlessness of art. There was to be seen no machinery in this poem, for it had vanished in the poet’s change to an objective method. The faults ofMerlinand ofLancelotwere due only to construction and that construction itself to an intensely subjective method. In these poems Mr. Robinson did not let the story tell itself as he was wont to do in the now famous short poems, but he must, forMerlinandLancelotare essentially lyric dramas, sing for himself the love motifs, the tragedies as he himself experienced them. For this reason he must weave the story according to the whispering of his own moods. And in so doing he must lay himself open to attack on the grounds of incoherence of form. Miss Lowell was indeed one of the first of his critics to notice this, yet it is surprising that she should have refused to see inAvon’s Harvestthe correction of the faults she censured in the lyrics; to wit, the change of treatment, the growth of sureness that the poet’s objective manner was displaying. That essential objectivity which distinguishesFlammonde,Richard Cory, andZola, which previously was employed only to etch a character in a paucity of strokes,—that objectivity,with the publication ofAvon’s Harvest, Mr. Robinson announced to be the latest of his secrets for the writing of narrative poetry.

Though he followed this poem with others in the objective manner, the most remarkable of which is the little knownAvenel Gray, no complete study has appeared until his last narrative poem,Roman Bartholow, a work that is dramatic, expressive, and yet holds about it more folds of dignity and power than even the elegiacThe Man Against the Sky.Roman Bartholow, because of its complete and extensive objectivity, impresses one most signally with its inevitability, a characteristic which Mathew Arnold termed the basis for all great poetry. From the opening lines where Bartholow gazes down upon “a yellow dusk of trees” to the close of the last canto there is never a moment when the story does not move silently ahead, dynamically, inevitably, since the author has been able to withhold comment, and since he has purposely avoided an obvious climax. Mr. Robinson can no longer see climax in life, for to him destinies are decided well in advance of any catastrophe, so that the climax that does appear in the poem is one miraculously cast in overtones. No word comes from the poet that it is at hand. No word comes from the characters. The word is found in the reader’s mind, forcing him to believe its presence. He knows that Gabrielle, though she would “shrivel to deny it”, is come to the end of all her hopes. He knows she can only accept her fate. There is nothing more to say. The poet has only set down the theme, for the story has of its own force driven itself to its conclusion with the majestic restraint of an Aeschylean tragedy.

Mr. Robinson has discovered that to take Nature as she is is not necessarily to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

Yet this taking of Nature as she is, despite the fact that Mr. Robinson calls the theme a “good deal of a mix up”, in no wise complicates the bare plot. Roman Bartholow, an ailing descendant of an old Maine family, is brought to know again the joy of life by acquaintance with a man that comes to visit him and forgets to go away. This Penn-Raven, though he works a cure for Bartholow, succeeds in doing the opposite for Roman’s wife. He falls in love with her and, before the opening of the poem, has for some time possessed her adequately. Gabrielle is a peculiarcharacter, but let it suffice here to say that the liaison with Penn-Raven is no answer to her problem. In Bartholow she married the wrong man, and the Raven she comes to find intolerable. She is one who has always suffered disappointments. It is no wonder, therefore, that, realizing she cannot fully enter into Bartholow’s renascence as he would have her do, in an effort to save for him his new-found light she drowns herself. Thenceforward the solution is cruelly plain. Bartholow, unaware of Gabrielle’s act and provoked by Penn-Raven, pays him to leave the house. Word is then brought that Gabrielle is drowned. That is in midsummer. It is fall when Bartholow himself leaves the house forever to go whither he will, cherishing the light of his regeneration the while he thinks of Gabrielle who couldn’t follow his rebirth, not being reborn in his manner, and who threw herself away.

These men and this one woman are the persons around whom the whole power of Mr. Robinson’s poetry abides. Yet there is one of whom I have not spoken, a fisherman who, though playing a minor part, frets his useful time upon the stage. He makes his appearance in the two opening cantos and again in the last two. Once in the final scene between Penn-Raven and Gabrielle he is referred to as one who knows more of their relation than even Bartholow. Thus his function is immediately evident. He is the chorus that gives its warning and advice. More than that, he is the mouthpiece to Mr. Robinson’s own thoughts.

That spring when, out of a winter steeped in night, Bartholow was

reborn to breathe againInsatiably the morning of new life,

reborn to breathe again

Insatiably the morning of new life,

there came to him from across the river this prophet-fisherman, this hobo scholiast with his face “to frighten Hogarth” who was at once

Socratic, unforgettable, grotesque,Inscrutable, and alone.

Socratic, unforgettable, grotesque,

Inscrutable, and alone.

He came to Bartholow dressed in “a checkered inflammation of myriad hues” and bearing as a peace-offering for his appearance a catch of trout for breakfast. Presumably he came to bring the fish and drink a glass, but incidentally he was curious to investigate this new birth of Roman’s and to discover if it blinded his eyesso that he saw nothing further than acquaintance between Penn-Raven and his wife. Wherefore he sat with Roman and heard recounted the glory of being alive once more. But Umfraville was wise. He was in the eyes of the world “irremediably defeated” and for that reason had hid himself back in the woods where he

lived again the pastIn books, where there were none to laugh at himAnd where—to him, at least—a world was kindThat is no more a world.

lived again the past

In books, where there were none to laugh at him

And where—to him, at least—a world was kind

That is no more a world.

Hence from this distance he was able to understand the flood of human nature and capable of pronouncing judgment upon it. He was gifted, as he said, with an “ingenuous right of utterance” which gave him full license to speak his mind. He knew that Gabrielle’s unfaithfulness must come to Roman’s ears. He knew the tragedy that it would be to this proud, sensitive friend of his, and, knowing it, offered his aid if ever Roman’s light should be obscured.

It is in brilliant contrast to this “unhappy turtle” that Penn-Raven appears, Penn-Raven, the bounder, archguest, corruptor and healer in one breath. He it is, with his solid face, thick lips and violet eyes, upon whom “one may not wholly look and live”, for in Penn-Raven there is more of the devil than is safe to investigate. The devil only knows why he came to Bartholow, why he possessed those violet eyes withal, and, after he had met Gabrielle, why the devil he ever went away. He was large and muscular and imbued with a healthy-mindedness which could purge the soul of Roman. Not only was he able to change this man’s outlook upon life, bringing him light where only darkness had lain, but he could worm his way to the heart of Gabrielle and make her his for as long as he chose. He loved her with all the force of his animal self, yet he could hint to her that she was insufficient to Bartholow’s present needs. Callous Penn-Raven! He never understood Gabrielle, though he later called her “flower and weed together”. In her he saw mostly the weed, the woman who had forsaken her husband and who might be expecting him to take her away. So he thought and so he said to her, not noticing the agony he caused. He did not know the woman helater called the flower who, though she had surrendered herself to his affections, yet saved for Roman a far transcending love. Thus to hint that she go with him was perhaps insulting her. At any rate it was a brutal intimation, a selfish one—and Penn-Raven was always brutal and always selfish. He could cry aloud of his tragedies and disillusions, the while the woman by his side was preparing herself to die. He could confront the husband with a nasty truth, looking upon him with those violet eyes, half triumphant and half sad. “Setting it rather sharply,” he could say, “you married the wrong woman.”

Poor Bartholow and proud! Stung with the malevolent implications with which Penn-Raven sought to gain Gabrielle, Bartholow once leaped upon him, feeling his “thick neck luxuriously yielding to his fingers”, and in his absurd pride thought to throttle him. At that time he was experiencing more pain than ever he had through the long winter before. He as a proud idealist was waking up to the fact that to be bathed in a new light is not to be external to sorrow.

Imagine his position. During the months previous to the spring when he “ached with renovation”, Bartholow had suffered from the malady of the sick-soul. His hopes were dulled, his ideals gone crashing. In his wife, for whom he cherished a desire to bring her closer to his thoughts, he found a woman cold and bitter from the disappointments she had suffered. Plainly she knew she had married the wrong man, plainly he did not know it. For to him life meant no more than disillusion, until one day, perhaps in April, life brought Penn-Raven with his zest for living, with his red-corpuscular religion of healthy-mindedness. To Bartholow, ready to catch at anything, this formidable spirit was the light. He grasped and claimed it. The light was his remaking. He was of the elect of earth, the twice-born. With joy gleaming in his eyes, he was up at dawn that spring morning,

Affirming his emergence to the PowerThat filled him as light fills a buried roomWhen earth is lifted and the light comes in.

Affirming his emergence to the Power

That filled him as light fills a buried room

When earth is lifted and the light comes in.

Penn-Raven was the Friend! Blessed Penn-Raven! He had given him gold with which to build the city of his desires. There was Gabrielle. How glad she would be to help him build thatcity, that house of gold in particular where he and she should live! She should be partner to his every mood. Gabrielle too should receive rebirth and with him build that house. Poor Bartholow!

Bartholow is a man upon whom the Light has fallen. What he will do with it is the subject of the poem. Where Lancelot was the study of a man in pursuit of the Light, Roman Bartholow is the study of a man after the Light had come. If both men were heroes in the sense that Galahad was a hero, no suffering would be entailed. But these are mortal men and mortal men are plagued with ignorance and frailty. Each has to learn that when the Light gleams before him he must follow it alone. Alone he must live in the Light. Alone he must fight for it. Few men know this and of all men Bartholow was the most unaware.

Bartholow then, because he did not know that his new position demanded the leaving of the old, still clung, but with added eagerness, to the hope of entering into spiritual communion with his wife. He was ever besieging her with his hopes and reproving her for delinquency, but by degrees he came to perceive that she would never erect that house with him. Gabrielle had two reasons, neither of which he knew. She was no longer his wife and she alone realized that the Light for him might mean the night for her. Roman was too wrapt up in himself to discover the first, the second he could learn, as Gabrielle had learned, only through suffering. So on he hoped and thought about it. Then Gabrielle, revealing that weakness, that was so peculiarly hers, of telling preferably the wrong and obvious reason for her delinquency to the right and subtle one, made it out to him that she could not share his light because Penn-Raven was hers too intimately. Anon came the Raven himself and forced the truth upon the husband, making a darkness to cover him that was far more agonizing than any he had known. When Bartholow saw this and would abandon the Light to seek again a less tormented existence, Penn-Raven said to him, “There is no going back”. He said, with an insight and eloquence unusual to him,

Your doom is to be free. The seed of truthIs rooted in you, and the seed is yoursFor you to eat alone. You cannot share itThough you may give it, and a few therebyMay take of it and so not wholly starve....Your dawn is coming where a dark horizon hides it,And where a new day comes with a new world.The old place that was a place for you to play inWill be remembered as a man remembersA field at school where many victoriesWere lost in one defeat that was itselfA triumph over triumph—now disownedIn afterthought. You know as well as IThat you are the inheritor to-nightOf more than all the pottage or the goldOf time would ever buy. You cannot lose itBy gift or sale or prodigalityNor any more by scorn. It is yours now,And you must have it with you in all places,Even as the wind must blow.

Your doom is to be free. The seed of truth

Is rooted in you, and the seed is yours

For you to eat alone. You cannot share it

Though you may give it, and a few thereby

May take of it and so not wholly starve.

...

Your dawn is coming where a dark horizon hides it,

And where a new day comes with a new world.

The old place that was a place for you to play in

Will be remembered as a man remembers

A field at school where many victories

Were lost in one defeat that was itself

A triumph over triumph—now disowned

In afterthought. You know as well as I

That you are the inheritor to-night

Of more than all the pottage or the gold

Of time would ever buy. You cannot lose it

By gift or sale or prodigality

Nor any more by scorn. It is yours now,

And you must have it with you in all places,

Even as the wind must blow.

Like Job, when Jehovah spoke to him out of the heavens, Bartholow listened to the sentence placed upon him by one who had brought him light only to obscure it darkly. He listened and behold he was like a man that understands. He was quickly to know what Gabrielle in her suicide had done for him, and it was well he understood, before he learned of her, that he was free to live a life of knowledge and of sympathy with man, that he was alone, and that not even Gabrielle could build a golden house with him. Sadly he replied,

When a man’s last illusion, like a bubble,Covered with moonshine, breaks and goes to nothing,And after that is less than nothing,The bubble had then better be forgottenAnd the poor fool that blew it be contentWith knowing he was born to be a fool.

When a man’s last illusion, like a bubble,

Covered with moonshine, breaks and goes to nothing,

And after that is less than nothing,

The bubble had then better be forgotten

And the poor fool that blew it be content

With knowing he was born to be a fool.

Poor Bartholow! It was a hard road along which he forced himself to go, proud, defiant, hopeful, until the night when he found the Raven, like a reproving older child, pinning him to his chair lest he again try to annihilate him. After that he knew what was before him, for he was no longer hopeful, defiant, or proud. He had learned as Lancelot and like him

in the darkness he rode onAlone; and in the darkness came the Light.

in the darkness he rode on

Alone; and in the darkness came the Light.

Penn-Raven had brought the Light and showed Bartholow how it must be followed. But it was Gabrielle who was “too beautiful to be alive” that revealed to him its incessant worth. It was Roman’s wife who failed and died, Gabrielle whom Penn-Raven loved, for whom Roman hungered, Gabrielle, whose

dark morning beautyWas like an armor for the darts of timeWhere they fell yet for nothing and were lostAgainst the magic of her slenderness,

dark morning beauty

Was like an armor for the darts of time

Where they fell yet for nothing and were lost

Against the magic of her slenderness,

Gabrielle in whom there was much of spring, much of chilly fall, much of Botticelli—a shadowed mingling of violets and wintergreen. Bartholow saw this and that morning, when she stood in the doorway, half awake, watching his springtime antics of adoration of his new self in his looking-glass, he found her irresistible and

crushedThe fragrant elements of mingled woolAnd beauty in his arms and pressed with hisA cool silk mouth, which made a quick escape,Leaving an ear—to which he told unheardThe story of his life intensively.

crushed

The fragrant elements of mingled wool

And beauty in his arms and pressed with his

A cool silk mouth, which made a quick escape,

Leaving an ear—to which he told unheard

The story of his life intensively.

“He told unheard”. There, there was the cloud that must bring him darkness. Gabrielle did not heed him.

For the sake of an explanation, let us first attribute her listlessness to a dislike of physical affections from her husband. Let us say, along with Penn-Raven, that she retreated from Roman because she was an adultress, that she told him she would never build that house because that house would be founded on a lie. Infidelity must out. How great then would be the tumbling down of Roman’s house! A woman guilty as she could never hope to build a spiritual house.

Such an explanation of Gabrielle’s lack of enthusiasm is at first glance somewhat superficial. The Gabrielle of the poem who has moved us so profoundly is not the woman Penn-Raven describes in this manner. Gabrielle was not motivated by selfishness and cowardice. She did not die because she feared her husband.Yet, however one interpret Gabrielle, this judgment of her, which Penn-Raven voiced, remains partially correct. Gabrielle was essentially “flower and weed together”. In the eyes of the men the weed was uppermost and, provokingly at that, discouragingly beautiful. Wintergreen and violets! This weed to Bartholow was just a bit shallow and colder than any fish in any ocean. She mocked his renascent gestures, his Greek, and even mistook Apollo for Narcissus when she found him looking in his mirror. She even had a cursed habit of innuendo, so it seemed, for after a pretty speech of his about a soul groping in its loneliness, out she came with a furtive remark that the fish upon her plate was “beautiful, even in death”.

Shallow Gabrielle! Selfish, faithless, beautiful Gabrielle! Thus men saw her until it was too late to see her again. Like Flammonde, what was she and what was she not?

Gabrielle’s superficiality, at first so evident, appears to be explained by her later actions. In cantos IV and V Gabrielle is very far from any taint of superficiality. It is only at the outset that she gives the impression. This is done by Mr. Robinson in order that the reader may understand the attitudes of Bartholow and Penn-Raven toward her. What Gabrielle really is the reader will shortly discover. But the touch of the weed, nevertheless, remains. It was part of Gabrielle and she employed it as a protection against her lovers. Fearing lest Penn-Raven find her suffering, she preferred to be tortured by him rather than reveal herself. Against Bartholow she adopted it because, knowing herself to be totally outside his mystical experience, she hoped to ease his desires of building impossible houses.

Gabrielle, indeed, is worthy of infinite pity. Beset at once by the Raven’s exhortations that she go away with him, and by her husband with his mysticism, her situation was precarious. No light had come to her, but since it had fallen blessedly upon her husband, to aid him in his holding it was her duty. That she might desert him to sink again into the night she refused to consider. That she might do nothing but remain with him she pondered carefully. If so she stayed she could not save him. She was not worthy, as he himself had bitterly reproached her, of his mysteries. Yet how he prayed she might be! Without her allwould be as it had been, though Gabrielle knew differently. She knew he must follow the Light alone. Such was the law. It was decreed that she look with “tired and indolent indifference” upon the spring that was for Roman the beginning of a new life. “I am not worthy of your mysteries”, she had said with an insight at once supreme. Afterwards she told him,

You understand itYou and your new-born wisdom, but I can’t;And there’s where our disaster like a rat,Lives hidden in our walls....Even a phantom house if made unwiselyMay fall down on us and hurt horribly.

You understand it

You and your new-born wisdom, but I can’t;

And there’s where our disaster like a rat,

Lives hidden in our walls.

...

Even a phantom house if made unwisely

May fall down on us and hurt horribly.

A different light was come to Gabrielle. As she spoke these words, a “pale fire” descended upon her, shriveling the weed, giving luxuriance to the flower. A miracle alone could have revealed to her the truth, and if it was not a miracle, it was the light from her own tragedy. She had failed, in marrying Bartholow, to find the being she sought. Likewise Penn-Raven had disappointed her. But she loved her husband for the light that had come to him. The Light was greater than herself. Wherefore of Bartholow she thought,

If my life would save him,And make him happy till he died in peace,I’m not so sure he mightn’t have it.

If my life would save him,

And make him happy till he died in peace,

I’m not so sure he mightn’t have it.

No one had known the flower that grew within the weed. No one had cared to search beyond a certain libidinous examination. She, however, was aware. The command was come that she save Bartholow. She accepted. With her determination made she resisted two trying interviews with Penn-Raven and her husband, who successively tried to wound her sensitivity more deeply. The Raven groaned about his tragedies and disillusions, while Gabrielle was going out to die. There was nothing more in life for her than an austere duty, implacable and dark.

Where the Light falls, death falls;And in the darkness comes the Light.

Where the Light falls, death falls;

And in the darkness comes the Light.

But a cruel farewell to her husband and the faces were for her no more. This woman, greater in every way than Vivian orGuinevere, Gabrielle, the one complete and incisive expression of a poet’s ideal, the crowning achievement to a brilliant tier of characters, Gabrielle who stepped above the broken ruins of her life to save a weak man, this Gabrielle crept stilly from the house and, before descending, paused a moment in the night.

Now she could see the moon and stars againOver the silvered earth, where the night rangWith a small shrillness of a smaller world,If not a less inexorable one,Than hers had been; and after a few stepsMade cautiously along the singing grass,She saw the falling lawn that lay before her,The shining path where she must not be seen,The still trees in the moonlight, and the river.

Now she could see the moon and stars again

Over the silvered earth, where the night rang

With a small shrillness of a smaller world,

If not a less inexorable one,

Than hers had been; and after a few steps

Made cautiously along the singing grass,

She saw the falling lawn that lay before her,

The shining path where she must not be seen,

The still trees in the moonlight, and the river.

Yes, she was surely dead before she died. Tragedies had been her secret playthings and there was nothing left, nothing but to follow her peculiar light. Like Juliet her dismal scene she must act alone. She must go—forever. But the going was not difficult, for she was dead before she died.

Truly if one lingers over this pitiable death of Gabrielle’s, protesting against a destiny that will enact such evil, there is bound to rise in one’s mind the many instances in Mr. Robinson’s poetry where the same story is told. It is inThe Children of the Nightthat this judgment of the world found its earliest expression, thenceforward developing until it has now reached its culmination. Here, inRoman Bartholow, in the magic loveliness of Gabrielle it has come to a noble conclusion.

Previous to this poem Mr. Robinson’s philosophy has expressed itself negatively. It is his belief that evil is the result of moral choice. He does not call disease, accident, or war by the name of evil, because it is possible to look forward to a day when such excrescences will be removed. Evil, to Mr. Robinson, is that which is ineradicable and the ineradicable is the situation resulting from moral choice. Man has little free will. He is continuously obliged to make a choice against his wish, a choice that will bring disappointment. We have seen how Orestes was locked in evil perplexity when the alternative was presented: either to obey heaven, slay his mother, and be damned by earth, or to obey earth, forgive his mother, and be damned by heaven. Whicheverroad he followed evil overtook him. Whichever road we choose, says Mr. Robinson, evil must overtake us—with this one exception, however, that whereas Aeschylus believed the gods brought man to his doom, Mr. Robinson maintains that it is man’s own frailty. Take Lancelot for an example. Lancelot has come to a point where he must make a moral choice. Either he can accept the Light and forsake Guinevere, or he can retain the Queen and lose the Light. The alternative is implacable. The one or the other, it says. There is no middle way nor any synthesis. To accept the new situation and leave the old, that is the way of truth. Only by that way can man hope to achieve happiness. If he attempt to mediate, then he will lash himself and cry in Lancelot’s words,

God, what a rain of ashes falls on himWho sees the new and cannot leave the old!

God, what a rain of ashes falls on him

Who sees the new and cannot leave the old!

Thus, previous toRoman Bartholow, Mr. Robinson, believing that man can rarely leave his old surroundings for the new, has developed his philosophy from the negative side. He has not treated of the attainment of the Light, but has showed the struggle of the man who is making the choice. He has been interested in the man’s failure and in consequence he has written of Merlin, Lancelot, and of Seneca Sprague.

WithRoman Bartholow, however, he has represented in Gabrielle a complete and final expression of the positive side of his philosophy. Many years ago in an exquisite lyric,Bon Voyage, he wrote fleetingly of a man who saw his light and claimed it. But the poem was only ascherzo, a dash down the hill. Mocking the “little archive men” who tried to extract therefrom a “system” of thought, it raced away. Yet it contained a seed that to-day has burst into a flower that Gabrielle is, or was. It told of a man who had left the old. He had been as courageous as Galahad. To-day Gabrielle is such.

Roman, of course, in finding the Light, was obliged to abandon his earlier hopes of building that house with Gabrielle. Roman like Lancelot was unable to meet that requirement. He failed, and would have perished had it not been for Gabrielle. She was to reveal to him her incessant worth. The Light for Gabrielle demanded a mad sacrifice. There was no happiness entailed.There was alone the recompense of that cold, resistless river. Leaving an inexorable world as she followed the light, she was, to complete the list of the poet’s figures, the one

who had seen and died,And was alive now in a mist of gold.

who had seen and died,

And was alive now in a mist of gold.

Thus, after the tale is told, comes the realization of the ultimate isolation of man. Gabrielle had gone away alone. Penn-Raven too had disappeared. Each was bound from the other by ineradicable law. There never could have been a golden house with two to build it. It is not thus we are made. Bartholow was to come to understand that he could not build but by himself, that his renascence was a gift to him alone. It was Umfraville, who saw what he could see and was accordingly alone, who summed it up when he said,

There were you two in the dark togetherAnd there her story ends. The leaves you turnAre blank; and where a story ends it ends.

There were you two in the dark together

And there her story ends. The leaves you turn

Are blank; and where a story ends it ends.

So Bartholow left him there on the steps of the old house that he had sold after the others had disappeared. Umfraville was free and Bartholow, with his memories before him, was alone and free. A cold fire was his light to prove, but he knew it never would go out. There would always be with him the memories of Gabrielle, the cool fragrance of her body, the silent beauty of her deed. The key he held in his hand was the key to the ivied house. The key he held was his no longer. For the last time it had locked for him a door that once had opened to so much pain. But a tide was come and there were no more sand castles. All was as it had been and was to be.

They are all gone away,The House is shut and still,There is nothing more to say.

They are all gone away,

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

LEWIS P. CURTIS.

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