The following is a poem I wrote for Harriet Whitbread, back in 2021, originally posted here. The monologue closely follows Browning’s original — My Last Duchess. As is my wont, I turned Browning’s monologue upside down, making the woman the murderer—or was she? I didn’t read it at the time, but today, while discussing it with a correspondent, I decided it was time to have it read. Needless to say, I categorically deny that the reader was me. Categorically.
My Last Husband
L.A.
[Enter Madame de B. wearing a caftan and sipping a whisky sour.]
That’s my last husband pictured on the wall
Looking as if he were alive. The great
Photographer Pierre Blanchet insisted—
And spent the week-end taking photographs.
No doubt he would have stayed a few weeks longer.
I’ve since been told Pierre had fallen madly
In love with him.
It mattered neither men
Nor women, everyone who met him loved him.
Yet after all these years I’m not surprised
You didn’t recognize him—being younger.
Fame, as they say, is fleeting. Even so
And only having seen his photograph,
You’re not the first to ask me who he was—
What with that jaw, that brow, that piercing gaze.
And not for me. Oh no. No. All of that
Was for Pierre or rather I should say
His camera.
Was I there? Oh yes, although
You’d never guess. Before he was discovered
He tended bars. He made me whiskey sours.
That’s how he was. So thoughtful. Whisky sours
For me and for Pierre a Cosmopolitan,
A Mai Tai for the bellboy, Juleps for
The scullery maid. They loved him. Everyone
Adored him. Oh but they adored him. Why
Any trifle batting eyes at him
He’d treat as if he’d known them all their lives.
A movie star! Imagine that! You’d think
There was no point in living where we lived:
This villa, planned by Lars van Alderhof;
Its stunning view of the Pacific ocean;
An architectural beacon!
But I digress.
As I was saying: Everyone who met him—
Well, I was always being told how lucky
I was. How fortunate. I was the envy
Of womankind! Imagine being married,
They’d say, to Jason of the Argonauts,
To Robinhood, to Tamburlaine and Harry
The goddamn Fifth!
The day the photograph
Was taken, on that very day, my agent
Called to tell me I’d been chosen. Me!
The starring role in La Belle Dame. I’m sure,
Of course, you’ve heard of it. I won an Oscar.
Alas but that my husband never knew.
He knew that I would star. Was any man
Supportive as he was? Was any wife
So lucky? He at once made known to all
That I, his unexampled wife, would star
In La Belle Dame; then added sans merci.
Indeed. The laughter was uproarious. Oh how
They loved him. Sans merci. Indeed.
I’m sure
You know the story. Last that he was seen
He’d driven off in his belovèd Aston Martin.
Gone, but for this: his photograph; still smiling
As if alive.
Shall we repair to the salon?
My agent will of course review the contract—
I’m sure a mere formality considering
Your studio’s well-known—munificence.
Just follow me.
And those? The magazines?
I had the covers framed. Quite lovely. Taken
Shortly after I had won the Oscar
For La Belle Dame—and while touring Italy.
The statue in the background overlooked
A gorgeous cove and was quite famous. Sculpted
By Hans of Strasbourg and entitled: Neptune
Taming a seahorse. Tragically, there was
An accident.
The workmen who’d been hired
To clean and renovate the statue must
Have loosened here and there a bolt, forgetting
To tighten them—a cable snipped?—who knows.
(Whatever does a woman know about
Such things.) But down went Neptune, down
Into the waves with nothing whatsoever
To brake his fall. The chariot was found
But never Neptune—no doubt swept out
To sea. As luck would have it though, just Neptune
And nothing else.
The seahorse, so it’s claimed,
Still stands just as it was—and still untamed.
[Exeunt Madame de B.]
