2.23 More Murderous Poetry

Robert Browning - Porphyria's Lover. A precursor to The Silence of the Lambs?

It’s always nice to have a picture of a dead poet at the top of an article

I seem to be going through a dark period at the moment, where the seamier side of literature is taking up more of my attention. After looking at Weldon Kees’ poem Crime Club last week, I became engrossed in an excellent novel, The Murder of Harriet Monckton by Elizabeth Haynes, a speculative work of fiction based on the true story of a young woman who came to a premature end in Bromley back in 1843. Like the murder in Crime Club, Harriet’s case is unsolved, but Haynes manages to weave a fine story and point to a possible solution which is both surprising and inventive. I’m not going to give the game away, but one of the suspects is a vicar who sins and falls short of the Glory of God. I love reading stories set in victorian times who have characters like than in them.

Being interested in poetry, I turned my mind to wondering about poems which deal with murder. It seems to me that the pickings are lean. there are plenty of murders in the plays of Shakespeare, but not the sonnets. In general poets seem more comfortable writing about love and philosophy than murder. I wrote a piece about Tennyson’s Maud some time ago, but although the unreliable narrator claims to have gravely wounded Maud’s brother in a duel, the whole thing seems a bit too much like a fever dream to be entirely satisfying to lovers of detective fiction.

And then I remembered about Robert Browning who was a master of the persona poem, narrative pieces in which the story is told from the point of view of a character who is not the actual poet. Maud is a persona poem, and in my humble opinion, Browning could probably have done a much better (and more concise) job of telling that story than Tennyson managed¹

Robert married fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1846. Her most famous work is probably her sonnet XLIII - How do I Love thee? Let me count the Ways, which she had published in 1845. It is reasonable to imagine that she was addressing it to Robert. But only a couple of years before that, Robert had published Dramatic Lyrics, which contained a couple of his most famous poems, My Last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover².

Both of these pieces are written from the point of view of rather horrible people. The narrator of My Last Duchess is pointing to a portrait of his wife, and telling a visitor that he had felt wronged because she didn’t smile at him any more than she did at other men³…

... Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, whene’er I passed her; 
but who passed without much the same smile? 
This grew; 
I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. 
There she stands, as if alive...

Had he stopped her smiling by arranging her murder? Browning once suggested that the commands given could meant that he “might have had her shut up in a convent”. Nonsense! That as if alive dispels that possibility. I can see the mischievous twinkle in his eye when he made that claim.

Porphyria’s Lover leaves no doubt at all. The narrator is a killer who would be instantly recognisable to viewers and readers of modern psychodramas. The Brownings marriage must have been something like Stephen King getting together with Barbara Cartland. Having said that, the last line of Elizabeth’s How do I love thee is

…I shall but love thee better after death.

That is a pretty grim way to end a love poem. Maybe the match between Robert and Elizabeth was not so incongruous after all.

The name Porphyria is an interesting choice. At first glance it seems like a classical sounding feminine name. It is easy to imagine a heroine called Porphyria in a Shakespeare play or a Mozart opera. But the word actually describes a disorder of the liver or bone marrow, which can cause purple skin and mental instability⁴. The condition has been linked with tales of vampirism in the past, which begs the question of wether the Porphyria in the title of the poem refers to the narrator rather than his victim.

Browning’s first version of the poem saw it as the second part of a longer piece called Madhouse Cells. That title conjures up a Hannibal Lecter like image in my mind, a cultured but insane maniac, with a lust for murder. This is essentially what the narrator of the poem is.

Have a read and see what you think…

Porphyria’s Lover - Robert Browning

The rain set early in to-night,
       The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
       And did its worst to vex the lake:
       I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
       She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
       Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
       Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
       And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
       And, last, she sat down by my side
       And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
       And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
       And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
       And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
       Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
       From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
       And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
       Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
       For love of her, and all in vain:
       So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
       Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
       Made my heart swell, and still it grew
       While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
       Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
       In one long yellow string I wound
       Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
       I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
       I warily oped her lids: again
       Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
       About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
       I propped her head up as before,
       Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
       The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
       That all it scorned at once is fled,
       And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
       Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
       And all night long we have not stirred,
       And yet God has not said a word!

As with so much of the poetry that I enjoy, I was introduced to Porphyria’s Lover by Ian Parks at a Read to Write session. Before then, my image of Robert Browning was that he wrote stuffy impenetrable Victorian poetry which is best avoided. Some of his work doubtlessly falls into that category, but the persona poems are something else.

One of Ian’s teaching methods is to encourage the writing of response poems, and after the group had read Porphyria’s Lover, he had us all going away to write our own versions. We came back with sequels, prequels and variations on the theme. I love exercises like that, and set to attempting to replicate the whole structure of the poem, length, rhythm, rhyme scheme and all, but telling the story from the perspective of the woman. Here’s what I wrote. It is something of a sad story, as thanks to the original, we know how it ends.

Porphyria’s Intent

I said I'd go, and go I will
      Through this cruel night, all wet and wild
I'll have revenge, I mean him ill
      For my sister, who he defiled
      As innocent as a young child.
He bent her will to feed his lust
      Without a thought of consequence
She fell for him, gave him her trust
      Let down her guard, had no defence
      'Gainst the sordid experience.
And now she is quite ruined, poor thing
      And he's put her out of his mind
But he's in mine and I will bring
      Him to account, he'll pay in kind
      Revenge is sweet, as he will find.
He did not know me, not at all
      But I made sure our paths would cross
And when I met him at the ball
      He knew not who my sister was
      I did not tell him. No! Because
I had a plan. I smiled, I tried
      To seem as one of lowly station
The type he likes. I knew that I'd 
      Tempt from him, his invitation
      I did, and masked my indignation
"Of course I'll come and visit you
      It would fill me with pure delight
I'll come alone, just me and you
      I shall be there tomorrow night"
      (and we shall see a wrong put right)
And now at last the time has come
      It's his door that I'm heading to
The wind and rain are fearsome
      As is the deed that I must do
      If, to myself I shall be true
But first I'll get him at his ease
      Performing many a menial task
Subordinated to his will
      I'll give him much more than he'll ask
      My face an open, passive mask
I shall seduce him, just as he
      Seduced my sister, for the thrill
And when he thinks that he has me
      Completely in his power, I will
      Make him taste the bitter pill
Of medicine he likes to give
      I'll ruin him I'll let him know
Exactly who he's dealing with
     My hairpin through his heart will go
     His eyes will roll, his blood will flow
And I've told no-one, not a soul
      Of where I'm going to tonight
And of my heart, as black as coal
      Nobody has the least insight
      And I'll be back before its light
To sleep most soundly in my bed
      Knowing that his wicked lust
Shall reign no more now he is dead
      Snuffed out by me, in manner just.
      It will be done. In God I trust!

1. Now there’s a writing challenge - tell the story of Tennyson’s Maud, in the style (and length) of a Browning persona poem. I might even have a crack at that myself.

2. Dramatic Lyrics also contained Brownings The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which as I can testify, was still regularly being read to schoolchildren as recently as the 1970s

3. As I only quoted a small extract, I changed the line breaks to make it more like prose and easier to read out of context.

4. King George III is now thought to have suffered with Acute Intermittent Porphyria, some people believe that Mary, Queen of Scots and Vincent Van Gogh also had the condition.