Arthur Hugh Clough owes his place among the great innovators of Victorian poetry to two remarkable verse-novels, The Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich and the epistolary Amours de Voyage. "The Bothie" (summed up by Humbert Wolfe as "a school-boy shout on escaping from school into the air") was completed in 1848, the year that Clough, having previously resigned an Oxford fellowship, refused to take holy orders. By the end of the following October he had finished the first draft of Amours de Voyage, again using the classical hexameter to open up new syntactic and idiomatic possibilities in English verse. This week's poem is an extract: the magnificent set-piece that is Letter VII (Claude to Eustace), Canto 2.
Claude (from "claudus", "lame" in Latin) is an indecisive, complex young Englishman. Like Clough, he visits Rome during the interesting times of 1849. His fellow tourists include the Trevellyn sisters, one of whom, Mary, provides the plot's romantic interest. The political situation is not simply a backdrop to Claude's emotional and intellectual journey: it helps to drive it.
A Republican government had been established in Rome, and, on April 25th French forces entered Civita Vecchia, determined to restore papal supremacy. Clough himself witnessed the siege and bombardment, and the short-lived Roman triumph. A priest was killed in an outburst of anti-clerical violence, and this is the event that Letter VII is describing. Today's readers may be reminded of scenes recently filmed on city streets in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East. Clough's poem is certainly televisual, but it gets closer, of course, than a TV report to revealing a personal, textured, multi-dimensional experience, while suggesting arguments for restraint.
From the start, Claude's letters have shown him to be a determinedly unimpressed tourist. He is disappointed by St Peter's (Canto 1, Letter I), and declares Rome "rubbishy." His scepticism extends to the notion of heroism. Alluding to Horace, he remarks, "Sweet it may be and decorous, perhaps, for the country to die; but / On the whole, we conclude the Romans won't do it, and I sha'n't." Proven wrong about the Romans, he continues to resist Republican fervour, but he is not unresponsive to the surge of events.
The long hexameter line is an ideal medium for thinking aloud and sometimes redefining those thoughts. Its flexibility also makes it suitable for eye-witness reportage. It can rattle along in an ever-lengthening sentence, or gasp out sudden, brief exclamations, liberated by Clough's skill with the semi-colon.
Claude, at his most likeably honest, tries to describe what he sees, but, finding himself in the thick of things, is not entirely sure of what he does see. (There's a nice irony in the fact, mentioned twice, that he has Murray's guide-book under his arm.) The comparison of the crowd to an incoming wave, "coming and not yet come – a sort of noise and retention" is a brilliant one. Notice the perfectly timed tense-change as the "stragglers" appear round a corner, and the action shifts to the present: "Looking up, I see windows filled with heads…"
The priest under attack is barely visible, barely human, and this makes the brutality seem all the more mindless: "I saw something", "they drag at something". But the swords are active and clearly seen "smiting", "hewing", "chopping." They come down, and rise again, bloodstained. The screaming crowds begin "dancing" their caps on the points … A National Guardsman slashes "a broad hat covered with dust." The legs Claude sees as he stoops down contrast vulnerably with the all-powerful steel. It is through the legs of the crowd he sees those of the corpse.
Claude cannot finally give his friend a definitive account. "History, Rumour of Rumours, I leave it to thee to determine." Eustace, his trusted confidante, is the first "to whom I have mentioned the matter," and it's suggested he won't want or be able to tell anyone else. At the end of the letter, he seems to revert to irony, when, in a guide-bookish voice, he recommends a visit to "the great Coliseum" by moonlight. But perhaps this new aesthetic response is a genuine one?
The women's letters in Amours de Voyage are few and brief, but cleverly reveal character. Georgina is conventional. Mary, conveying a sense of unexplored potential, waits stoically but in vain for Claude to fulfil the lover's role he has seemed, at times, to promise. The poem ends with a tragic-comic pursuit, as the sisters travel from place to place, and Claude, finally decisive, tries to catch up with them.
If he epitomised the anti-hero earlier, he becomes rather heroic in romantic defeat. He acknowledges the time wasted "fiddle-faddling" and, with pathetic bravery, declares that he "will not cling to her falsely." He has no interest in Rome, ancient or modern: nor does he any longer believe in his vague ideal, "the Absolute." He notes (Canto 6, Letter 4) with some regret that "Rome is fallen" but ruefully admits that most of his feeling is centred on "a single small chit of a girl.". Amours de Voyage ends with Claude's decision to leave Italy and winter in Egypt. He still has one goal left: "Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but knowledge abideth."
Canto 2, VII. Claude to Eustace
So, I have seen a man killed! An experience that, among others!
Yes, I suppose I have; although I can hardly be certain,
And in a court of justice could never declare I had seen it.
But a man was killed, I am told, in a place where I saw
Something; a man was killed, I am told, and I saw something.
I was returning home from St. Peter's; Murray, as usual,
Under my arm, I remember; had crossed the St. Angelo bridge; and
Moving towards the Condotti, had got to the first barricade, when
Gradually, thinking still of St. Peter's, I became conscious
Of a sensation of movement opposing me,--tendency this way
(Such as one fancies may be in a stream when the wave of the tide is
Coming and not yet come,--a sort of noise and retention);
So I turned, and, before I turned, caught sight of stragglers
Heading a crowd, it is plain, that is coming behind that corner.
Looking up, I see windows filled with heads; the Piazza,
Into which you remember the Ponte St. Angelo enters,
Since I passed, has thickened with curious groups; and now the
Crowd is coming, has turned, has crossed that last barricade, is
Here at my side. In the middle they drag at something. What is it?
Ha! bare swords in the air, held up! There seem to be voices
Pleading and hands putting back; official, perhaps; but the swords are
Many, and bare in the air. In the air? they descend; they are smiting,
Hewing, chopping--At what? In the air once more upstretched! And
Is it blood that's on them? Yes, certainly blood! Of whom, then?
Over whom is the cry of this furor of exultation?
While they are skipping and screaming, and dancing their caps on the points of
Swords and bayonets, I to the outskirts back, and ask a
Mercantile-seeming bystander, 'What is it?' and he, looking always
That way, makes me answer, 'A Priest, who was trying to fly to
The Neapolitan army,'--and thus explains the proceeding.
You didn't see the dead man? No;--I began to be doubtful;
I was in black myself, and didn't know what mightn't happen;--
But a National Guard close by me, outside of the hubbub,
Broke his sword with slashing a broad hat covered with dust,--and
Passing away from the place with Murray under my arm, and
Stooping, I saw through the legs of the people the legs of a body.
You are the first, do you know, to whom I have mentioned the matter.
Whom should I tell it to else?--these girls?--the Heavens forbid it!--
Quidnuncs at Monaldini's--Idlers upon the Pincian?
If I rightly remember, it happened on that afternoon when
Word of the nearer approach of a new Neapolitan army
First was spread. I began to bethink me of Paris Septembers,
Thought I could fancy the look of that old 'Ninety-two. On that evening
Three or four, or, it may be, five, of these people were slaughtered
Some declare they had, one of them, fired on a sentinel; others
Say they were only escaping; a Priest, it is currently stated,
Stabbed a National Guard on the very Piazza Colonna:
History, Rumour of Rumours, I leave to thee to determine!
But I am thankful to say the government seems to have strength to
Put it down; it has vanished, at least; the place is most peaceful.
Through the Trastevere walking last night, at nine of the clock, I
Found no sort of disorder; I crossed by the Island-bridges,
So by the narrow streets to the Ponte Rotto, and onwards
Thence by the Temple of Vesta, away to the great Coliseum,
Which at the full of the moon is an object worthy a visit.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Notes
Quidnuncs = sensation-seekers
Monaldini's = a reading-room containing English newspapers in the Piazza di Spagna