ESC: English Studies in Canada

C O N T R O L A N D F R E E D O M : S W I N B U R N E ’ S N O V E L S MARGOT NORTHEY University of Toronto F o r a writer, it is worse to be unknown than unloved. Although the cuts of critical disfavour may hurt, there is at least the salve of having elicited a thorough-going response. And as everyone knows, the continual swings of literary taste are apt to bring those books most passionately disliked back into general favour within a generation. Swinburne’s reputation as a poet is in the midst of such a critical reversal, having never lost the power to raise a strong reaction, formerly more con than pro; Swinburne as a novelist has for the most part been relegated to the limbo of the dusty shelf. A random perusal of histories of fiction is unlikely to find discussion of either of his two novels, Love’s Cross Currents or Lesbia Brandon, and where his name appears at all, it is probably as a critic of other novelists. In those instances where Swinburne’s novels are discussed — notably in the critical biographies — they are often treated lightly, whether from a residual holdover of the old attitude that a serious poet does not write novels, or reflecting some of Swinburne’s own misleading remarks on the subject. Such a recent critic of Swinburne’s writing as Cassidy views the novels simply as boyish jeux d’esprit: Swinburne did not take his novels seriously, but tossed them off in the spirit of burlesque and with the idea of ‘poking up’ the Philistines — the same spirit in which he did the fake reviews of Earnest Clouet and Felicien Cossu.1 Of earlier critics, only Lafourcade provides a competent analysis of the works themselves, rather than merely emphasizing the autobiographical details sur­ rounding them. Unfortunately, the most extended discussion of either of the novels, Randolph Hughes’s lengthy commentary in his 1952 edition of Lesbia Brandon,2is marred by a continuous diatribe against earlier critics, especially Lafourcade, at the expense of his own critical analysis. Edmund Wilson’s brief introduction to his combined edition of both novels leans too heavily on biographical background.3The novels deserve more. That Swinburne himself held his novel writing in higher regard than Cassidy and others allow is sug­ gested by the efforts he took to get his first novel republished under his own E n g l ish Studies in C anada, vi, 3, Fall 1980 name, nearly twenty-five years after its initial serialization. At this point he was already famous as a poet. On reading Love’s Cross Currents and Lesbia Brandon, one is immediately impressed that while they are very different in form and style, they have many incidents and ideas in common and many of the same characters. Moreover, the conflict between freedom and control, evident in much of Swinburne’s poetry, is the central theme in both novels. Yet, paradoxically, this central theme is the key to much of the dissimilarity; my contention is that Swinburne’s differing response to the conflict of freedom and control directly relates to the differing form and style of each book. Love’s Cross Currents, written in 1862, was first published in The Tatler of 1877 under the pseudonym, “Mrs. Horace Manners,” and with the title, A Year’s Letters. It is an epistolary novel in which, after an involved pro­ logue, a series of letters are exchanged between the members of a large, aristo­ cratic family, giving evidence of a number of romantic liaisons which are in the end thwarted by the ruling matriarch of the group. In its general scheme, structure, and manner it shows the influence of Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses, an eighteenth-century novel, which demonstrates a typical French finesse in the handing of love affairs, unlike the excessive sentimentality in English novels of the period.4 At least one critic has seen the epistolary form as diminishing the interest and effectiveness of Swinburne’s novel. Hyder remarks that “the average reader is not likely to be attracted to Love’s Cross...