Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844

"Lady Geraldine's Courtship" is a poem of the Tennysonian school. Some pith is put forth in the passionate parts of the poem; but it is deficient throughout in that finished elegance of style which distinguishes the works of the great artist from whom it is imitated. Bertram, a peasant-born poet falls in love with the Lady Geraldine, a woman of high rank and very extensive possessions. He happens to overhear the lady address the following words to a suitor of the same rank with herself, and whose overtures she is declining —

"Yes, your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble,
Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born."

Upon which, imagining that these words have some special and cutting reference to himself, he passes into the presence of the lady, and rates her in a strain of very fierce invective, which shows that his blood is really up, whatever may be thought of the taste which dictated his language, or of the title he had to take to task so severely a lady who had never given him any sort of encouragement. In a letter to a friend, he thus describes the way in which he went to work – the fourth line is a powerful one —

"Oh, she flutter'd like a tame bird, in among its forest-brothers,
Far too strong for it! then drooping, bow'd her face upon her hands —
And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others!
I, she planted the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands.

"I pluck'd up her social fictions, bloody-rooted, though leaf verdant, —
Trod them down with words of shaming, – all the purples and the gold,
And the 'landed stakes' and Lordships – all that spirits pure and ardent
Are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold.

"'For myself I do not argue,' said I, 'though I love you, Madam,
But for better souls, that nearer to the height of yours have trod —
And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God.

"'Yet, O God' (I said,) 'O grave' (I said,) 'O mother's heart and bosom!
With whom first and last are equal, saint and corpse and little child!
We are fools to your deductions, in these figments of heart-closing!
We are traitors to your causes, in these sympathies defiled!

"'Learn more reverence, madam, not for rank or wealth —that needs no learning;
That comes quickly – quick as sin does! ay, and often works to sin;
But for Adam's seed, man! Trust me, 'tis a clay above your scorning,
With God's image stamp'd upon it, and God's kindling breath within.

"'What right have you, Madam, gazing in your shining mirror daily,
Getting, so, by heart, your beauty, which all others must adore, —
While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gaily…
You will wed no man that's only good to God, – and nothing more.'"

In the second stanza, we cannot make out the construction of the words, "all that spirits pure and ardent are cast out of love and reverence." This vigorous tirade is continued throughout several stanzas. The poor lady merely utters the word "Bertram," and the lover is carried to bed in a fainting fit when his passion is expended. When he recovers he indites the aforesaid letter. After he has dispatched it, the lady enters his apartment: oh, blessed and gracious apparition! We quote the dénouement, omitting one or two stanzas —

Soh! how still the lady standeth! 'tis a dream – a dream of mercies!
'Twixt the purple lattice-curtains, how she standeth still and pale!
'Tis a vision, sure, of mercies, sent to soften his self-curses —
Sent to sweep a patient quiet, o'er the tossing of his wail.

'Eyes,' he said, 'now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me?
Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone!
Underneath that calm white forehead, are ye ever burning torrid,
O'er the desolate sand-desert of my heart and life undone?'

"Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling, —
And approach'd him slowly, slowly, in a gliding measured pace;
With her two white hands extended, as if praying one offended,
And a look of supplication, gazing earnest in his face.

"Said he – 'Wake me by no gesture, – sound of breath, or stir of vesture;
Let the blessed apparition melt not yet to its divine!
No approaching – hush! no breathing! or my heart must swoon to death in
The too utter life thou bringest – O thou dream of Geraldine!'

"Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling —
But the tears ran over lightly from her eyes, and tenderly;
'Dost thou, Bertram, truly love me? Is no woman far above me,
Found more worthy of thy poet-heart, than such a one as I?'

"Said he – 'I would dream so ever, like the flowing of that river,
Flowing ever in a shadow, greenly onward to the sea;
So, thou vision of all sweetness – princely to a full completeness, —
Would my heart and life flow onward – deathward – through this dream of THEE!'

"Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling, —
While the shining tears ran faster down the blushing of her cheeks;
Then with both her hands enfolding both of his, she softly told him,
'Bertram, if I say I love thee… 'tis the vision only speaks.'

"Soften'd, quicken'd to adore her, on his knee he fell before her —
And she whisper'd low in triumph – 'It shall be as I have sworn!
Very rich he is in virtues, – very noble – noble certes;
And I shall not blush in knowing, that men call him lowly born!"

With the exception of the line, and the other expressions which we have printed in italics, we think that the whole tone of this finale is "beautiful exceedingly;" although, if we may express our private opinion, we should say that the lover, after his outrageous demeanour, was very unworthy of the good fortune that befell him. But, in spite of the propitious issue of the poem, we must be permitted (to quote one of Miss Barrett's lines in this very lay) to make our "critical deductions for the modern writers' fault." Will she, or any one else tell us the meaning of the second line in this stanza? Or, will she maintain that it has any meaning at all? Lady Geraldine's possessions are described —

"She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles
Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand—
With a thund'rous vapour trailing, underneath the starry vigils,
So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure of her land."

We thought that steam-coaches generally followed the directing of no hand except the "stoker's;" but it certainly is always much liker a raven than a dove. "Eagles and vigils" is not admissible as a rhyme; neither is "branch and grange." Miss Barrett says of the Lady Geraldine that she had "such a gracious coldness" that her lovers "could not press their futures on the present of her courtesy." Is that human speech? One other objection and our carpings shall be dumb. Miss Barrett, in our opinion, has selected a very bad, dislocated, and unmelodious metre for the story of Lady Geraldine's courtship. The poem reads very awkwardly in consequence of the rhymes falling together in the alternate lines and not in couplets. Will Miss Barrett have the goodness to favour the public with the sequel of this poem? We should like to know how the match between the peasant's son and the peer's daughter was found to answer.

Those among our readers who may have attended principally to the selections which we made from these volumes before we animadverted on the "Drama of Exile," may perhaps be of opinion that we have treated Miss Barrett with undue severity, and have not done justice to the vigour and rare originality of her powers; while others, who may have attended chiefly to the blemishes of style and execution which we have thought it our duty to point out in our later quotations, may possibly think that we have ranked her higher than she deserves. We trust that those who have carefully perused both the favourable and unfavourable extracts, will give us credit for having steered a middle course, without either running ourselves aground on the shoals of detraction, or oversetting the ship by carrying too much sail in favour of our authoress. And although they may have seen that our hand was sometimes unsteady at the helm, we trust that it has always been when we felt apprehensive that the current of criticism was bearing us too strongly towards the former of these perils. If any of our remarks have been over harsh, we most gladly qualify them by saying, that, in our humble opinion, Miss Barrett's poetical merits infinitely outweigh her defects. Her genius is profound, unsullied, and without a flaw. The imperfections of her manner are mere superficial blot which a little labour might remove. Were the blemishes of her style tenfold more numerous than they are, we should still revere this poetess as one of the noblest of her sex; for her works have impressed us with the conviction, that powers such as she possesses are not merely the gifts or accomplishments of a highly intellectual woman; but that they are closely intertwined with all that is purest and loveliest in goodness and in truth.

It is plain that Miss Barrett would always write well if she wrote simply from her own heart, and without thinking of the compositions of any other author – at least let her think of them only in so far as she is sure that they embody great thoughts in pure and appropriate language, and in forms of construction which will endure the most rigid scrutiny of common sense and unperverted taste. If she will but wash her hands completely of Æschylus and Milton, and all other poets, either great, or whom she takes for such, and come before the public in the graces of her own feminine sensibilities, and in the strength of her own profound perceptions, her sway over human hearts will be more irresistible than ever, and she will have nothing to fear from a comparison with the most gifted and illustrious of her sex.

UP STREAM; OR, STEAM-BOAT REMINISCENCES

I had come to New Orleans to be married, and the knot once tied, there was little inducement for my wife, myself, or any of our party, to remain in that city. Indeed, had we been disposed to linger, an account that was given us of the most unwelcome of all visitors, the yellow fever, having knocked at the doors of several houses in the Marigny suburb, would have been sufficient to drive us away. For my part, I was anxious to find myself in my now comfortable home, and to show my new acquisition – namely, my wife – to my friends above Bâton Rouge, well assured that the opinion of all would be in favour of the choice I had made. By some eccentric working of that curious machinery called the mind, I was more thoughtful than a man is usually supposed to be upon his wedding-day; and I received the congratulations of the guests, went through the obligato breakfast, and the preparations for departure, in a very automatical manner. I took scarcely more note of the nine shots that were fired as we went on board the steamer, of the hurrahs shouted after us from the quay by a few dozen sailors, or the waving of the star-spangled banners that fluttered over the poop and forecastle – of all the honour and glory, in short, attending our departure. I was busy drawing a comparison between my first and this, my last, voyage to the Red River.

It was just nine years and two months since I had first come into possession of my "freehold of these United States," as the papers specified it. Five thousand dollars had procured me the honour of becoming a Louisianian planter; upon the occurrence of which event, I was greeted by my friends and acquaintances as the luckiest of men. There were two thousand acres, "with due allowance for fences and roads," according to the usual formula; and the wood alone, if I might believe what was told me, was well worth twenty thousand dollars. For the preceding six months, the whole of the western press had been praising the Red River territory to the very skies; it was an incomparable sugar and cotton ground, full sixteen feet deep of river slime – Egypt was a sandy desert compared to it – and as to the climate, the zephyrs that disported themselves there were only to be paralleled in Eldorado and Arcadia. I, like a ninny as I was, although fully aware of the puffing propensities of our newspaper editors, especially when their tongues, or rather pens, have been oiled by a few handfuls of dollars, fell into the trap, and purchased land in the fever-hole in question, where I was assured that a habitable house and two negro huts were already built and awaiting me. The improvements alone, the land-speculator was ready to take his oath, were worth every cent of two thousand dollars. In short, I concluded my blind bargain, and in the month of June, prepared to start to visit my estate. I was at New Orleans, which city was just then held fast in the gripe of its annual scourge and visitor, the yellow fever. I was in a manner left alone; all my friends had gone up or down stream, or across the Pont Chartrain. There was nothing to be seen in the whole place but meagre hollow-eyed negresses, shirtless and masterless, running about the streets, howling like jackals, or crawling in and out of the open doors of the houses. In the upper suburb things were at the worst; there, whole streets were deserted, the houses empty, the doors and windows knocked in; while the foul fever-laden breeze came sighing over from Vera Cruz, and nothing was to be heard but the melancholy rattle of the corpse-carts as they proceeded slowly through the streets with their load of coffins. It was high time to be off, when the yellow fever, the deadly vomito, had thus made its triumphant entry, and was ruling and ravaging like some mighty man of war in a stormed fortress.

I had four negroes with me, including old Sybille, who was at that time full sixty-five years of age; Cæsar, Tiberius, and Vitellius, were the three others. We are fond of giving our horses and negroes these high sounding appellations, as a sort of warning, I am inclined to think, to those amongst us who sit in high places; for even in our young republic there is no lack of would-be Cæsars.