First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 1868, 1880, 1888. Our text is 1855.
This poem is clearly linked to the Brownings’ period of residence in Paris between Sept. 1851 and July 1852; the closing lines allude to an event which B. witnessed, the reception of Charles Montalembert (1810–70) into the Académie Française by his political opponent François Guizot (1787–1874) on 5 Feb. 1852. In a letter to George Barrett dated 4 Feb. 1852, B. notes that ‘people are waiting curiously for the sort of reception Montalembert will have to-morrow at the Institute, where he “reads himself in”—those who, as liberals, hate him most (for his ultra-montane bigotry, “legitimate” opinions & so forth) will see it their duty to applaud him to the echo, on the ground of his having broken with the government on its promulgation of the spoliation measures—just as if he had not done his utmost to help that government when it most needed help—and now that, in consequence, it can act as it pleases, Montalembert cries out on it & expects sympathy! None of mine shall he have when I hear him tomorrow, as I hope to do’ (George Barrett 170). B.’s recollection of the event was still vivid years later, as he makes clear by quoting a phrase from Guizot’s reception speech in a letter of 19 Sept. 1880 to Eliza Fitzgerald:
I shall be greatly interested in reading Guizot’s Memoirs when you lend them to me on my return. No doubt he had strong affections and they were answerably rewarded: but I confess to a thorough dislike of the man—whose great powers nobody could dispute … Again, the strenuous protestant (I heard him say proudly in a speech “Protestant comme mes pères”[)]—he was a vehement opposer of any attempt on the part of the Italians to get rid of the Pope’s catholic rule.
(Learned Lady 92)
The poem might have been prompted by the Brownings’ proximity to two of the leading literary figures of 1850s Paris, George Sand and Pierre-Jean de Béranger. EBB.’s admiration for George Sand is expressed in a number of her poems, and, having procured a letter of introduction from Giuseppe Mazzini, the Brownings visited her on 15 Feb. 1852. The French novelist was almost as famous for her unconventional lifestyle as she was for her literary productions, but although B. later claimed to have felt that ‘his studied courtesy towards her was felt by her as a rebuke to the latitude which she granted to other men’ (Orr Life 171), he visited her seven times during the next month or so (EBB to Arabella i 480). Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780–1857) was an immensely popular chansonnier whose lyrical addresses to his mistress ‘Lisette’ were well known in England. B. saw him ‘in his white hat, wandering along the asphalte’ in Feb. 1852, and although he was too ‘modest’ to introduce himself, he claimed on another occasion to have told Pen to run up to him and touch him, so that he would later be able to claim that he had touched such a man (Orr Life 167, 356). Béranger’s reputation for libertinism in verse was matched by aspects of his personal life; even in his old age he never married his long-term partner Judith Frère.
‘Respectability’, meaning the ‘state, quality, or condition of being respectable in point of character or social standing’, entered the language during the late eighteenth century, although it quickly seems to have acquired what the OED calls ‘a somewhat derogatory implication of affectation or spuriousness’. By the mid-nineteenth century it was routinely used in a derogatory sense; cp. e.g. Thomas Carlyle’s review of Lockhart’s Life of Scott, in which he links ‘ambition, money-getting, respectability of gig or no gig’ with the desire for outward signs of society’s recognition and esteem, and the description of the parlour in B.’s The Inn Album (1875) as the embodiment of ‘Vulgar flat smooth respectability’ (l. 43). There are similar defences of conventionally ‘immoral’ conduct in The Statue and the Bust (ll. 226–50, III 357–9), Dîs Aliter Visum (p. 688), and Fifine at the Fair (1872); the last two are also associated with France.
1
Dear, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,
Have recognised your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you—live in peace!”—
5 How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,
The world, and what it fears?
2
How much of priceless life were spent
10 With men that every virtue decks,
And women models of their sex,
Society’s true ornament,—
Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
Thro’ wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
15 And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?
3
I know! the world proscribes not love;
Allows my finger to caress
Your lip’s contour and downiness,
20 Provided it supply a glove.
The world’s good word!—the Institute!
Guizot receives Montalembert!
Eh? down the court three lampions flare—
Put forward your best foot!
3. plighted troth: a reference to the wedding service in the Book of Common Prayer, in which the bride and groom conclude their vows with the words ‘and thereto I plight thee my troth’.
9. were spent: would have been spent.
10. ‘With men bedecked with every virtue’.
15. And feel] And bid (H proof, but not H proof2). Boulevart: an alternative spelling of ‘boulevard’ in the mid-nineteenth century.
17. proscribes not love: does not forbid sexual love (on condition, as the following lines make clear, that it take the respectable form of marriage).
19. your lip’s] your lips’ (1868–88).
20. The approval of the world has the effect of diminishing the sensual pleasure felt by the lovers. Gloves are often associated with the relations between men and women in B.’s poetry; see esp. The Glove (II 360) and Any Wife to Any Husband 37 (p. 650).
21.] And then, rewards—the Institute! (H proof). The Institut de France was created in 1795 to bring together five ‘Académies’, including the Académie Française; from 1805 onwards the Académie was based in the Palais de l’Institut de France.
23. lampions: festive lights hung for the occasion (not street lamps). OED’s earliest citation is from Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847–48).
24. ‘Put your best foot forward’ (present yourself in your best light). Cp. The Inn Album (1875) 844–5: ‘I put / Bold face on, best foot forward’.