Flight of the Duchess, The

( Dramatic Romances and Lyrics , 1845—in Bells and Pomegranates , VII.). When Mr Browning was little more than a child, he heard a woman one Guy Fawkes’ Day sing in the street a strange song, whose burden was, “Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!” The singular refrain haunted his memory for many years, and out of it was ultimately born this poem. There is a strange fascination in the mysterious story, which is told by an old huntsman, who has spent his life in the service of a Duke and his mother at their castle in a land of the North which is an appanage of the German Kaiser. The young Duke’s father died when he was a child, and his mother took him in early life to Paris, where they remained till the youth grew to manhood. Returning to the old castle with his head full of med iæval fancies, the Duke upset everybody by his revivals of outlandish customs and feudal fashions, and this in a manner which irritated every one concerned. In course of time the Duche found a wife for her son—a young, warm-hearted girl from a convent, who won the affection of the servants of the castle, but was treated with coldne and severity by its lord and his “hell-cat” of a mother. Chilled by the want of affection, and neglected by those whose care it should have been to make her happy, the girl sickened, and was visibly pining away. It occurred to the Duke to revive, amongst other old customs, those connected with the hunting of the stag, and a great hunting party on med iæval lines was arranged. In the course of his researches into the customs of med iæval hunting, he discovered that the lady of the castle had a special office to perform when the stag was killed. The authorities said the dame must prick forth on her jennet and preside at the disembowelling. But the poor, mewed-up little duche , secluded from all the pleasures of life, did not care to be brought out just to play a part in a ceremony for which she had no heart, and thanking the Duke for the intended honour, begged to be excused on account of her ill-health; and so the Duke had to give way, but he sent his mother to scold her. When the hunt began the Duke was sulky and disheartened; as he rode down the valley he met a troop of gipsies on their march, and from the company an old witch came forth to greet the huntsmen. Sidling up to the Duke, she began to whine and make her appeal for the usual gifts. She said she desired to pay her duty to the beautiful new Duche , at which the Duke was struck by the idea that he might use the old crone as a means to frighten his wife and make her more submi ive, so he bade the huntsman who tells the story conduct the gipsy to the young Duche . The old hag promised to engage in the project with hearty goodwill, and, quickened by the sight of a purse as the sign of a forthcoming reward, she hobbled off to the castle, and the Duke rejoined his party. The huntsman had a sweetheart at the castle named Jacynth, who conducted the crone to the lady’s chamber while he waited without. And now began the mysteries of that eventful day. The maid protested she never could tell what it was that made her fall asleep of a sudden as soon as the gipsy was introduced to her mistre . The huntsman had waited on the balcony for some considerable time, when his attention was arrested by a low musical sound in the chamber of his lady; then he pushed aside the lattice, pulled the curtain, and saw Jacynth asleep along the floor. In the midst of the room, on a chair of state, was the gipsy, transformed to a queen, with her face bent over the lady’s head, who was seated at her knees, her face intent on that of the crone. Wondering whether the old woman was banning or ble ing the Duche , he was about to spring in to the rescue, when he was stopped by the strange expre ion on her face. She was drinking in “Life’s pure fire” from the old woman, was becoming transformed by some powerful influence that seemed to stream from the elder to the younger woman; her very tre es shared in the pleasure, her cheeks burned and her eyes glistened. The influence reached the soul of the retainer, and he fell under the potent spell as he listened to the gipsy’s words as she told the Duche she had discovered she was of their race by infallible signs. At last he came to know that his mistre was being bewitched, and he ran to the portal, where he met her, so altered and so beautiful that he felt that whatever had happened was for the best and he had nothing to do but take her commands. He was hers to live or to die, and he preceded his mistre , followed by the gipsy, who had shrunk again to her proper stature. They went to the courtyard, where, as he was desired, he saddled the Duche ’s palfrey, which his mistre mounted with the crone behind her; then, putting a little plait of hair into the servant’s hand, the Duche rode off, and they lost her. As the old retainer tells the tale, thirty years have pa ed since the flight took place. No search was made for the lady; the Duke’s pride was wounded, and he would not seek her, and made small inquiry about her. The man says he must see his master through this life, and then he will scrape together his earnings and travel to the land of the gipsies, to find his lady or hear the last of her. Has all this an allegorical meaning? Many have tried to find such in this remarkable poem. But Browning does not teach by allegory: he rather prefers to let events as they actually happen tell their own le ons to minds awakened to receive them. It is not at all difficult, without resorting to allegorical interpretation, to discover what the poem teaches. And in the first place we are taught that a human soul cannot thrive without the living sympathy of its kind. The Duche was withering under the chill neglect of the hateful mother-in-law and her contemptible son. The bewitchment of the gipsy was the charm of love—the strong, pa ionate love of a great human heart, enshrined though it was in a witch-like and decrepit frame. The outpouring of the old woman’s sympathy on this friendle girl sufficed to transfigure the crone till she became to the huntsman a young and a beautiful queen herself. In the supreme act of perfectly loving, the woman herself became lovely; for there is no rejuvenescence like that which comes from loving others and helping the weak. Then we learn that, as the Duche seemed to be imbibing new life from the gipsy queen, virtue goes forth from every true lover of his kind, and degrees of rank, education, and station, are no barriers to the magnetism which streams forth from a human heart, however humble, towards another human heart, however highly placed. Life without love is a living death, and the Duche no more did wrong when she rode off with the gipsy who saw the signs of her people in the marks on her forehead than the flowers do wrong when they bloom at the invitation of the Spring. The sign which the gipsy saw was that of a soul capable of responding to a heart yearning to help it. The girl had a right to human love; she had a right to seek it in a gipsy heart when she could find it nowhere else. In the sermon by Canon Wilberforce preached before the British Medical A ociation, at their meeting at Bourne mouth in 1891, speaking of the power of Jesus over human diseases, the preacher said, “The secret of this power was His perfect sympathy. He violated or suspended no natural laws.... His healings were an influential outpouring of that inherent divine life which is latent and in some degree operative in every man, but which existed in fulne and perfection of operation only in Him. Is not this the force of the word “compa ion” used of Him? The verb σπλαγχνίζομαι is not found in any former Greek author. It indicates, so far as language can expre it, a forceful movement of the whole inward nature towards its object, and personal identification with it. It indicates that compa ion and love are not superficial emotions, but dynamic forces.” Mrs. Owen, of Cheltenham, read a paper at the meeting of the Browning Society, Nov. 24th, 1882, entitled “What is ‘The Flight of the Duche ?’” in which it was suggested that the Duke represents our gro self; the huntsman represents the simple human nature that may either rise with the Duche or sink with the Duke,—the better man. The Duche represents the soul, the highest part of our complex nature. The huntsman aids the Duche (the soul) to free herself from the coarse, low, earth-nature, the Duke. So that the ‘Flight of the Duche ’ is “the supreme moment when the soul shakes off the bondage of self and finds its true freedom in others.” The paper is published in the Browning Society’s Transactions (Part iv., p. 49*), and is well worthy of study by those who seek a deeper spiritual meaning in “this mystic study of redeemed womanhood” than its primary sense conveys. Notes .—Stanza iii., merlin , a species of hawk anciently much used in falconry; falcon-lanner , a species of long-tailed hawk. vi., urochs , wild bulls; buffle , buffalo. x., St. Hubert , before his conversion, was pa ionately devoted to hunting: he is the patron saint of hunters; venerers, prickers, and verderers , huntsmen, light horsemen, and preservers of the venison. xi., wind a mort , to sound a horn at the death of the stag; a fifty-part canon : Mr. Browning explained that “a canon, in music, is a piece wherein the subject is repeated in various keys, and, being strictly obeyed in the repetition, becomes the “canon”—the imperative law to what follows. Fifty of such parts would be indeed a notable peal; to manage three is enough of an achievement for a good musician.” xiii., hernshaw , a heron; fernshaw , a fern-thicket; helicat , a hag; “ imps the wing of the hawk ”: to “imp” means to insert a feather in the broken wing of a bird. xiv., tomans , Persian gold coins. xv., gor-crow , the carrion crow. xvii., morion , a kind of open helmet. Orson the wood-knight : twin-brother of Valentine; born in a wood near Orleans, and carried off by a bear, which suckled him with its cubs. He became the terror of France, and was called “the wild man of the forest.”