Part 5 (2/2)

* In The Dusseldorf Annual the poem was signed H. H. H., and in explanation of this signature Rossetti wrote on his own copy the following characteristic note:--”The initials as above were taken from the lead-pencil.”

In reply to this I told Rossetti that, as a ”jealous honourer” of his, I confessed to some uneasiness when I read that he had been making important additions to _Sister Helen_. That I could not think of a stage of the story that would bear so to be severed from what goes before or comes after it as to admit of interpolation might not of itself go for much; but the entire ballad was so rounded into unity, one incident so naturally begetting the next, and the combined incidents so properly building up a fabric of interest of which the meaning was all inwoven, that I could not but fear that whatever the gain in certain directions, the additions of any stanzas involving a new incident might, in some measure, cripple the rest. Even though the new stanzas were as beautiful, or yet more beautiful than the old ones, and the incident as impressive as any that goes before it, or comes after it, the gain to the poem as an individual creation was not, I thought, a.s.sured because people used to say my style was hard.

Rossetti was mistaken in supposing that I possessed the latest and best edition of his _Poems_, but I had seen the latest of all English editions, and had noted in it several valuable emendations which, in subsequent quotation, I had been careful to employ. One of these seemed to me to involve an immeasurable gain. A stanza of _Sister Helen_, in its first form, ran:

Oh, the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill; But Keith of Ewern 's sadder still, Little brother.--etc. etc.

In the later edition the fourth line of this stanza ran:

But he and I are sadder still.

The change adds enormously to one's estimate of the characterisation.

All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitterness of her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like _The Broken Heart_ of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterly picture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched the same chord. Rossetti replied:

Thanks for your present letter, which I will answer with pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more convenient--the other pretty. You will find a good many things bettered (I believe) even on the _latest_ English edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from _Sister Helen_ appeared in the new form at all in an English issue. I am greatly pleased at your thinking it, as I do, quite a transfiguring change... The next point I have marked in your letter is that about the additions to _Sister Helen_. Of course I knew that your hair must arise from your scalp in protest. But what should you say if Keith of Ewern were a three days' bridegroom--if the spell had begun on the wedding-morning--and if the bride herself became the last pleader for mercy? I fancy you will see your way now. The culminating, irresistible provocation helps, I think, to humanize Helen, besides lifting the tragedy to a yet sterner height.

If I had felt (as Rossetti predicted I should) an uneasy sensation about the roots of the hair upon hearing that he was making important additions to the ballad which seemed to me to be the finest of his works, the sensation in that quarter was not less, but more, upon learning the nature of those additions. But I mistook the character of the new incidents. That Sister Helen should be herself the abandoned _bride_ of Ewern (for so I understood the poet's explanation), and, as such, the last pleader for mercy, pointed, I thought, in the direction of the humanizing emendation (”But he and I are sadder still ”) which had given me so much pleasure. That Keith of Ewern should be a three-days' bridegroom, and that the spell should begin on the wedding morning, were incidents that seemed to intensify every line of the poem. In this view of Rossetti's account of the additions, there were certainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemed to realise that Helen's hate, like Macbeth's ambition, had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work, if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility had gained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashes of hate love had arisen. In this view of the characterisation of Helen, the parallel with Macbeth struck me more and more as I thought of it.

When Macbeth kills Duncan, and hears the grooms of the chamber cry in their sleep--”G.o.d bless us,” he cannot say ”Amen,”

I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat.

Helen pleading too late for mercy against the potency of the spell she herself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to the utmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti's purpose was at once less ambitious and more satisfying.

Your pa.s.sage as to the changes in _Sister Helen_ could not well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye in the verses themselves. It is the _bride of Keith_ who is the last pleader--as vainly as the others, and with a yet more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also as regards their value to the ballad.... Don't let the changes in _Helen_ get wind overmuch. I want them to be new when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting your epistles.

The fresh stanzas in question, which had already obtained the suffrages of his brother, of Mr. Bell Scott, and other qualified critics, were subsequently sent to me. They are as follows. After Keith of Keith, the father of Sister Helen's sometime lover, has pleaded for his son in vain, the last suppliant to arrive is his son's bride:

A lady here, by a dark steed brought, Sister Helen, So darkly clad I saw her not.

”See her now or never see aught, Little brother!”

(_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Whit more to see, between h.e.l.l and Heaven?_)

”Her hood falls back, and the moon s.h.i.+nes fair, Sister Helen, On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.”

”Blest hour of my power and her despair, Little brother!”

(O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blest and bann'd, between h.e.l.l and Heaven!)

”Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.”

”One morn for pride and three days for woe, Little brother!”

(O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between h.e.l.l and Heaven!)

”Her clasp'd hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed.”

”What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?”

(O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death's, between h.e.l.l and Heaven?)

”She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,-- She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.”

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