Introduction
Intending to publish the ballad in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref>
, DGR discussed the poem with William Bell Scott, his brother, and later with Swinburne. After having the ballad set in type in the Penkill Proofs, DGR wrote to Scott these interesting remarks: “The objection to ‘ail’ in ‘Dennis Shand’ I do not see. Certainly the signification of the word has nothing to do with being ‘able to complain.’ It simply means to ‘sicken’ or one might say ‘waste away.’ I am sure it might be found applied in much the same sense, if not in old poetry, in such poets as Coleridge, Scott, &c.—perhaps rather as regards waning light than waning shadow; but I confess it appears to me happily expressive of the gradual pining and weakening of shadows as the dawn comes on. Otherwise ‘fail’ might do instead, without resorting to what seems the most astounding suggestion of making my poor damsels ‘stale’! Really, Scotus, can you not see the universal grin that such a word would communicate to every studious mug that bent over my poetic page? Your suggestion of ‘Ann you once adored’ is so good and ingenious an one that I should be only too glad to adopt it if I did not happen to put a special value on the passage as it stands. I don't wish the lady to be over-refined at all, though indeed even high-minded dames used to claw their maids' faces in those days I fancy. Besides she afterwards uses this very illness of the unlucky Ann as a screen to new proceedings, which I think one of the best touches in the ballad which after all only aims at being amusing—and perhaps just a little improper. ‘Dennis Shand’ was written at much the same time as the ‘Blessed Damozel,’ ‘My Sister's Sleep’ &c. and I confess I look back to it as an encouraging landmark of my mental condition in those early days, which I should find otherwise to have been discouragingly angelic” (see his letter of 28 September 1869,
Fredeman,
Correspondence
, 69. 165
). DGR later began to see the poem very differently, and he eventually withdrew it apparently because, as he later told Hall
Caine,
“It deals trivially with a base amour (it was written
very early), and is therefore really reprehensible to
some extent”
(see
Caine, 122
). He said much the same thing to
Swinburne in February 1870, when he decided against printing the poem
(see his letter of 21 February,
Fredeman,
Correspondence,
70. 31
), even though the latter thought highly of
the work (he called it
“brilliantly clever and rigorous”
:
see
Lang,
Swinburne's Letters
, V. 176
). The
poem was not published until WMR included it in his two-volume edition of 1904 (I. 80), and then collected thereafter. The supression
was unfortunate for this is one of the strongest works of pastiche
ballad produced by the Pre-Raphaelite circle—a genre they made
particularly their own.
The key to the poem's success is the way it manages to preserve its
tension to the end. For in the concluding dialogue between Lady Joan and
Earl Simon, one cannot be entirely sure if her deception controls the
scene, or if he is aware of the adultery and has his own treachery in
train, through the cup which he keeps insisting that she and Dennis
Shand should be the first to drink from. The drama of that sequence is
maintained brilliantly, first, because the ballad takes such a neutral
stance toward the three characters; and second, because the narrative lacunae
are so strategically placed. DGR's ballad implies all sorts of
possible readings of the people and the events, and caps these tensions
with its splendid indeterminate ending.
It is worth noting that the crucial passage releasing the ballad's final set of tensions,
stanza 17, was a late manuscript addition (see the corrected
copy of the poem in the Harry Ransom Research Center).